A dose of reality for today.
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brigitte+devin+davis&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the show Writing in the Tiny House. The entire point of this podcast is to help the tormented artist by sharing what I know about writing, publishing, and stress management, so that you can have the tools to produce the content that you have been eager to write. If you have the steps in place, you can produce a short story in as few as three months or a novel in as few as 18. And hopefully through the ideas in this podcast, you will have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you need to. I am Devin Davis, the guy who lives and writes in a tiny house in Northern Utah. Thank you for tuning in, and please enjoy today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.
Hello and good morning. It is another [00:01:00] Wednesday. And here we are in the tiny house doing another episode of this awesome show guys. It has been rough. Things have been rough, and I will compile another clip episode on my experience with beta readers later, just because that whole process isn't finished yet.
I have a few beta readers who have not given feedback. I'm going to be meeting one of them tonight for drinks. I'm excited to hear what she has to say, but there has been a reality check in my life, and I have decided to share that reality check with you all today. at the same time, I don't want this to sound bitter or whatever, just because sometimes when we have moments like this, it's really easy to just get mad and it's okay to get mad.
It is also a very healthy way to realize your life and to realize what you're doing, to realize the next [00:02:00] steps to realize. Your reality, hence the reality check. here's the fundamental question with all of this that I don't know that I've addressed in a previous episode of writing in the tiny house, what does it take to be a writer?
What does it take for a person to say that they are a writer and like with so many art based things? I mean, in reality, you don't, you don't have to have painted anything in order to say that you're a painter, you certainly don't have to have sold any of your paintings to say that you're a painter and you don't have to have any of your artwork in your house.
It is something where you can say it. And it is true I mean, with painting, perhaps you, you need to have held a brush at some time in your life, and that could have been at any time. And at that moment in time, you were a painter and you could still claim to be a painter because, because, because of opinions, because of, [00:03:00] you know, time isn't real, anyway, stuff like that.
Writing is the same. If you have written an essay ever in your life, you are a writer and today you could still claim to be a writer. If you have not written a single word since that essay in junior high school at the same time, though, if you do claim to be a writer, people will want to see.
the fruits of your labor. They will want to see what you have done. And so if you say that you are a writer, especially if it is your profession instead of your hobby, and that's another tricky part with this friends, if you want it to be your profession, there's a lot of stuff that you're going to have to do.
and the fact of the matter is most writers in this world do not support themselves through their writing. If you want to support yourself through your writing, there is a [00:04:00] lot you are going to have to do, and it will take a long time. I mean, there are always exceptions to all of the things that I'm going to be saying, but by and large, most writers don't support themselves with writing and.
Those who do it has taken a long time to get there, or a lot of the writers that we see today are able to write full time because a loved one is actually supporting them Or whatever they write full time because they don't need to worry about income.
Income is being provided somewhere else, either through a loved one or inheritance or whatever, whatever. and like I said, there's always exceptions to that. , but here we are here. We here I am. I finished another pass with TIS and we're doing the beta readers and I received feedback that ti needs to be longer ti needs to be a full on novel instead of just a Nove The beta reader who said that [00:05:00] had all of the reasons to back it up, had all of it for this reason and that reason and whatever the thing is, I originally wrote his. thinking that it would just be a short story. And so I worked it out in the method that we see short stories.
There aren't many characters. There aren't many characters who speak, everything feels pretty condensed. and that's how I wanted it, but was it the best way to do it? This beta reader has shown me that probably it wasn't. So while there were definitely strong parts in Ts, and I appreciate that and I love knowing that those things were there.
thus far, I've gotten a lot of good feedback from ti. Another trick, like another kind of interesting thing with beta readers is if somebody says that they don't like the main character and another person says that they do like the main character, the thing is both of those beta readers are right.
I mean, there's always a chance that the first person missed [00:06:00] something or there's a chance that I didn't do it. Right. Or there's probably. A greater chance of a little bit of both of those possibilities, but I've received very good feedback from ti thus far, but one beta reader wanted to understand the scope of it all.
the thing is TIS is supposed to be the first book of a world of books. I. Hesitate to say that it's a, well, it would be a series, but the thing is, each of the books is not necessarily a continuation of the previous book. Most of these books will have different characters with different plots and different things, but they all take place in the same world.
And so this collection of books, this tales from LAER stuff. That we've been doing for the past while is actually a world of books. It is [00:07:00] a world of lives. It's a world of people and not necessarily all of the books are continuations of a previous plot. and that's where we are. So we have stories that take place in this city.
We have stories that take place in another city and the stories are unrelated except for a single element that ties in later. And of course, all of this builds for the final thing at the end, just because that's how it gets to be. Right. You build for 10 books and then you have the final trilogy at the end with a big battle.
it? It's something that we've seen a lot in fantasy. going back to this idea of being a writer and what it all kind of looks like this beta reader wanted to understand the scope of where we were headed with this of where T was going of the [00:08:00] future projects. that are on the horizon, so to speak.
And she said that the story is too big and the world is too complicated. And the intricacies of the magic system are such that it cannot all be properly developed in a Nove. And the thing with releasing a collection of short stories and a collection of Noves over time is the entire world is not fully developed in each Nove.
And unless the Noves are all released at the same time, the reader is only going to get a half baked world in each Nove over the next. Many years until I'm finished with them. And so I can either release a collection of Noves all at once, or I can kind of flex my muscles and do all of the world building and make [00:09:00] TIS a big beefy novel, which will then set off this entire collection of this entire world of books with a splash.
There's a lot of. heat writing on the first book of any collection of stories and any series. The first book is super important and I am convinced right now that a Nove is not the best way to do a first book. It was a year ago. That I was seeing a trend of people releasing a Nove as a way to test a theory or to test the market, to see if releasing something larger or something, you know, along those lines of the Nove later would land well.
And so the novella was a way to test the market and the thing. Now that we are [00:10:00] 18 months beyond that, beyond me hearing about that first trend, I have not seen the fruit of any of the people following those trends yet. I know of one person who released a Nove. His name is Daniel Green. and it was his first, anything that he ever wrote, he has a very large following on YouTube, a very respectable, big following.
And so he's self-published because he already has a big audience that he directly addresses, I think two times a week on his channel on YouTube. And he released a novella and I don't know what has come of. I don't know if he has continued with that or not, or if it was just a good project that he did.
And now it's done. Who knows? I mean, I could, I could figure it out and I probably shouldn't include that on a podcast episode, but here we are just standing here thinking so. [00:11:00] considering the length of time that comes in between these projects is a Nove the best way to go. Like I said, I'm convinced that it's not, that also means that ti gets to be largely rewritten.
And so to be a writer, here's the thing, friends here is the hard thing
to be a writer you write to be a writer does not mean that other people will have to read what you have written. You do not need to land yourself a big following in order to be considered a writer. I have thus far written, literally hundreds of thousands of words. Literally hundreds of thousands of words that all belong within this world of lado.
And this dates back to my first novels that I released when I was 24. I mean, this was forever ago. And I mean, it's what happens when you're 24 and you're eager to have a book out in [00:12:00] the world. And so you release a book that has not had a final proofread. So those books are not available now, but they take place in lado and so, here we are. I have written hundreds of thousands of words. I am going to write hundreds of thousands of more words until a readership gets a hold of any of it. And so the question of the day is, and I ask this very seriously because I already know my own answer, but I'm going to pose it to you.
The listeners of writing in the tiny house. I'm, I'm assuming that most of you are writers are hoping to be whether professionally or as a hobby or whatever writing fulfills in your life. If you end up writing hundreds of thousands of words and a handful of people only ever get to read some of it, is it all worth it?[00:13:00]
So go ahead and think about that because hundreds of thousands of words represents hours and hours, hundreds of hours. if not more and as a writer, is it worth it? If only a handful of people ever read a fraction of the stuff you have written. So for me, the answer is yes, that's something that I've been toiling with for a long time.
And I have this big ass series. That I have been struggling with for a long time to begin to start. And now, because life is different than it was 10 years ago, I can start it, but this is something that will likely carry me into my sixties. There's enough books and enough, there there's enough content to carry me into my sixties.
we get to just wonder if something that takes up so much [00:14:00] of my life, doesn't get read by somebody else or only a handful of other people and whatever else is it going to be worth it, something to think about. So thank you for joining me. And I leave you with that sobering thought.
And that is it for today. Before we go, I need to say that my current work in progress Tiz the next installment of Tales from Vlaydor is ready for beta readers, people to read the novella and share with me their experience. It's a big, important step before publishing. So if you wish to be a part of this project, reach out to me on my social media handles; on Instagram I'm @authordevindavis, and on Twitter I'm @authordevind. And remember that my short story Brigitte is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible as an audio book. Check those out today. [00:15:00]
Check out this episode!
