Starting to Run Again: Challenging the Problematic Nike+ Challenges

Now that I’ve started running again on a semi-regular basis, I know it’ll be at least 6 months before I could possibly be in marathon shape.  I need to lose a good amount of weight that has snuck back on over the last two years, and I’m basically starting from scratch with my running.  If I could run 1 or 2 miles every day this month, it would be a huge accomplishment and put me back on track to be where I want to be in the fall.  (I logged a couple of 20 mile runs in the fall of 2007 and want to do it again this year.)

So all of this said, I decided to give the “challenges” section of the Nike+ website a try.  It’s a great concept.  Basically, you can enter into competition or “virtual races” against other runners all over the world via the website and your Nike+ stats.  You don’t need to be in the same place or even run at the same time of day.  There is a start date and an end date for the competition and joining is free.

Here are some common competitions:

“Run 40 Miles in July!” = try to run a total of at least 40 miles

“4th of July 5K” = go out and run your own 5K on 7/4/09

“Run Every Day and Lose Weight” = a group of people trying to get in better shape

I believe, if you win, you get a virtual trophy for your Nike+ account.  You can even create your own competition if you don’t see one you like.  For example, if you wanted, you could create a “Run 40 Miles in 40 Days (Must Have Been Born Before 1940)”.  So your group should only have people over the age of 69.

Here’s the problem:

I joined several challenges for low milage runners (those who are overweight, starting out, older, etc) since it’s going to be a while until I can log more than 1 or 2 miles a day at the most.  I figured some kind of challenge — actually running “against” and “with” other people — would be a great motivator.

Sounds simple, right?

Except that every challenge I joined was “over” before it started.  Every single challenge had at least one person who was logging 10 or more miles a day.  No matter what the requirements to join were (old, slow, fat, no more than 10 miles per week currently, etc), there are people joining just for the “easy win”, which is pretty crappy if you ask me.

One challenge has a GREAT leader who is kicking those “cheaters” out left and right, but none of the other groups do, so it kind of defeats the purpose.  If there’s no chance of winning, doesn’t that yank away the virtual carrot we were chasing?

This is something the creators of the challenges should definitely take more seriously, especially in the beginner and low milage groups where people need every motivation they can get.

(For those who liked the Nike commercials I posted last year, here’s one featuring “All These Things I’ve Done” by The Killers…)

The Place Where Literary And Commercial Fiction Meet

When I wrote my new novel, I knew it was unlike anything I had read or seen reviewed.  If you’ve been around the publishing business, you know that was the biggest mistake I could make.

Publishers these days don’t want something unique or different.  They want “The Da Vinci Code meets CSI” or “My Sister’s Keeper… only with BROTHERS!” or “The Catcher in the Rye… only set in INDIA!”

Basically, if the story hasn’t already been a big successful book, they don’t know how to sell it, so they can’t buy it.

I’m sure, at this very moment, you’re already writing email to ask if I didn’t notice Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or some other very cool, very unique book.  But they are the exceptions that prove the rule, I’m afraid, and many of the examples you’re thinking of were a hit BEFORE a big New York Publisher grabbed them.  Maybe they were self-published or published by a small press.  Or maybe the author already had an established fan base, which allowed the publisher to “take a chance” on something different.

By the way, I’m not a literary snob by any means.  Most of what I read would be called commercial or even genre fiction.  Most of the television and movies I watch are definitely popcorn fare.  So this isn’t about New York publishing “ruining” literature or any of that crap.  I read to be entertained, and trust me, I am not entertained by page after page of nothing happening, other than someone showing off all the neat little tricks of description they learned in their MFA classes.  I want STORY.

So it’s definitely interesting to see the responses from editors to my new novel.  My agent has been passing them along at a regular clip.  Here are the two basic responses we’re getting:

1) “I absolutely love the writing and the characters, but there’s too much story! My publisher would kill me for buying something like this.”

2) “The story had me on the edge of my seat, but the writing is way too literary and refined for our line.  My publisher would think I’m selling out to the literati!”

The funny thing is, though, none of the emails are that short.  We’ve had editors write well over a page about all of the things he or she loved, but regretfully having to pass because it’s too commercial or too literary for the line.  These aren’t standard “being polite because I have to work with this agent on other things” responses.  These editors really loved the book, but were afraid they’d lose their jobs if they bought it and it wasn’t a huge hit (because they can’t “prove” in advance it’ll be a big hit).

See, if they could go to their publisher and say, “It’s Twilight with wizards instead of vampires”, the publisher would say, “Great!  Let’s do it!  Everyone loved Twilight and everyone loves wizards!”  And then, if the book bombed, the publisher would say, “Who knew the readers didn’t want ‘Twilight with Wizards’!  Oh well!”

But because there isn’t an easy way to compare this book to previous successful titles, it’s that much harder for the editor to take the chance.  If the publisher has to be “talked into” buying the book against his or her “better judgment” and the book fails to be a hit, then the editor has just put his or her job on the line.  There isn’t a lot of room for error these days, especially if you’re a young editor without a serious track record of success.  Publishers only want bestsellers.  So I don’t blame the editors one bit for being afraid of this book.  It could kill their career, after all.  I know it, and so do they.

As an author, your best bet of launching a successful career is to look at the popular books you love and ask yourself, “How can I combine two of these, or how can I take that story and make it a little different while retaining what made it popular?”  Do that, and do it well, and you’re in a great position.  You’ll make your agent and editor’s lives much easier.

But in case you’re wondering, I strongly believe the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  That’s why my new novel, which I’ve making some headway on right now, is unlike anything else I’ve ever read or seen before.

It’s really the only way I know to write.  It may not be the successful approach, but it works for me.

Not Writing or Running (And, Appearently, Not Posting!)

Well, it’s been a long time since I posted here.  I’m still alive, but there just haven’t been any topics I’ve felt compelled to blog about.  There’s also been a lack of motivation.  I barely have any time for my “real” writing at the moment due to some family obligations and long days at work, so I haven’t made the time to post on here.

I also haven’t been running on a regular basis and I’ve, unfortunately, gained some weight and “reverted” to my worst running condition.  Basically, I can run one mile every day if I want.  I might be able to get myself back to 2 miles by next week.  But after that, it’s going to be a long haul to get into marathon shape, which is still the ultimate goal.

Who knows, this could be my last post, but I doubt it.  Every now and then, I’ll realize I want to post about a bunch of different topics, and I’ll make the time.

One of those posts, which I started but haven’t finished, is called “What I’m Doing Right (And Wrong) With This Blog.”

If you guessed that “not posting often enough” is #1 on the WRONG list, you’re today’s lucky winner.

See you all again real soon, hopefully!

Padding Your Story is Like Padding Your Bra: When Someone Gets Close to the Goods, You’re Going to Be Embarrassed

Some authors seem to get really hung up on word counts.  No great novel has ever been rejected because it was 89,000 words instead of 90,000.  If your story is complete as it is, I would just go with it.  And if that means you’ve written a novella instead of a novel, so be it.  The important thing is that the story be the story you wanted to tell.

Don’t add additional layers unless those layers actually add something to the reading experience.  Readers (and more importantly, agents and editors) are going to realize that you’ve packed words in there just to hit an artificial goal.  They may not actually know WHY the book is slow and dragging, but that doesn’t matter.  All that matters is the pacing is all wrong and not enough is happening.  Or stuff is happening that adds nothing.  Or the characters are acting out of character for some reason all of a sudden.

Please note: I receive a review copy of at least one “adult” literary or commercial novel each week that is barely 50K.  These are from major New York publishers.  So don’t let anyone tell you that your book HAS to be 90,000 words to get published.  You know what’s more important?  A good hook and a great sales pitch.  If you can’t get your manuscript read, you can’t sell it, right?

So if you think your manuscript is polished enough and the story is what you want it to be, take it out there.  There are publishers for every kind of book you can imagine.

My first published novel was 80K, the one my agent is shopping is 85K, but I’ve written two novellas in the 25K range, too, which both sold and did very well for me.  It takes all kinds of stories for all kinds of readers.

Maybe don’t mention the length in your query letter, though.  I know a lot of the template examples suggest saying, “I’ve written a 90,000 word thriller” or whatever, but if your HOOK and SALES PITCH are exciting enough to get the agent to request the MS, no agent is going to write you back when the manuscript arrives and say, “Never mind, I don’t want an ‘almost novel’.  This is 5,000 words too short to be a great book.”  He or she will still look at the first page and see if the opening GRABS his/her attention. And if your book is awesome and rocks the agent’s world, trust me, you’re going to get offers.

Plus, publishers do love shorter books when it comes to their printer bills.

Good luck with your writing, whatever the length may be!

Finding your right length: short stories, novellas, novels, and young adult books

I find writing a novel to be the toughest thing I have to do as a writer.  I also think I would be excelled at the form 50 years ago when most novels were just 40,000 words.  I’m certain I would have been doomed a little further back in time, when 150,000 words was the average length of a novel.

Short stories come easiest to me and I enjoy them quite a bit.  I’ve written three this year, which is more than last year when I was devoting all of my writing time to other miscellaneous projects.  Yet I hear from some friends that writing a short story is the hardest thing for them to do.  Too little space to spread their wings and create a world.

If I could devote all of my writing time to short fiction, I believe I could build a pretty good (if small) collection each year without repeating myself too much.  Many authors, when dealing with the short form, tread the same ground — themes, ideas, concepts, and most importantly structure — a lot.  It’s not as obvious in their novels, especially with genre or commercial work, due to the bigger scale, but in a short story collection, it all starts to taste the same very quickly if you’re not careful.  So if someone uses the same formula for their novels, book after book, their publisher will probably love them, assuming the books sell well.  If you use the same formula or structure for a bunch of short stories and then collect them together, it can get very boring very quickly.

My favorite form, by far, is the novella.  Lately I’ve been reading a lot of them again, and last year I wrote a new one, which I sold to an independent publishing for $3000.

20,000 to 50,000 words just feels like the right length for a good story to me.  Enough room to develop real, living, breathing characters and give the reader a tale with a nice arc, but not a lot of filler.  Just character and story.

My novels often have a very slow build to them, with the first third developing the characters and “worlds” very fully — and then the last two-thirds have been described as a “wonderful rollercoaster” and an “express elevator to the surprising, wonderful conclusion.”

I think this is because it takes me those first 30,000 words to really get into a groove and find the characters and their world when I’m trying to tell a bigger story.  Maybe I need to get better at going back and cutting from that first 1/3 because my slow build is rarely described as an asset by people in the New York publishing business.  If it’s going to sell well, it has to start with a bang and speed up from there — or so they seem to think.

I have a friend who once said he writes 50,000 words before he finds the beginning of the story — and then he cuts everything before that point.  I’m such a slow, deliberate writer that I can’t imagine “throwing” that much text away.  It boggles my mind.  Yet he’s very successful with his approach and he writes very enjoyable books.

Several people along the way have suggested I should try my hand at young adult books because of the length.  I’ve considered it, but I don’t feel like I know that field very well at all.  Yet, when I’m at the bookstore, I look around that section and I think, “Wow, these books have really changed since I was a kid.”  Especially the growing hardcover selection of new releases.  A lot of those look like books I would have read when I was a kid.  Dark and mysterious.

Anyone else here dabble in young adult fiction?  Do you enjoy it?  How’s it different from the other things you write?

Obsessing About Distance and Time

As I’ve mentioned before, I love the Nike Plus system for my iPod Nano.  Even when I was just running around the block in high school (1/2 mile loop), I kept track of the time and distance.  It didn’t feel right not knowing how far or how long I had run.

So when my wife bought me an iPod Nano and the Nike+ kit for my 28th birthday, it was quite a revelation.  The year before I had started using an iPod Shuffle, but before that I was still running to mix tapes in my Walkman.

My first couple of runs before I calibrated the distance on the iPod’s settings were WAY off.  Luckily, we have a good track just down the road, so I was able to get the iPod calibrated to my running stride, and it’s been fairly accurate since then. If you run a lot faster or a lot slower than normal, it’s definitely going to be off, so I still tend to run the routes I measured before I had the iPod, just to have a better idea of how accurate it is.

I’m not “hardcore” about running exactly the “right” distance, but I am very obsessive about knowing how far I ran and how long it took. I cannot imagine going out for a run with no way to judge the time and the distance!

For those who don’t know, you have to attach a little white receiver to your iPod Nano for the system to work properly.  I’ve heard the new iPod Touch has this receiver built right into the system, which means you’re not limited in your select of cases and armbands to hold the iPod.  (Because the receiver sticked out of the bottom of the Nano, several very cool cases are not an option.)  If the next generation of Nano has the receiver built right in, I’ll upgrade in a heartbeat.

Actually, I’m kind of surprised Apple and Nike haven’t produced a “special edition” iPod Nano exclusively for Nike+ that has a receiver built into it and maybe a special color scheme.  They could charge $30 more, since that’s what the receiver costs separately right now, and I bet they’d sell a ton of them.

Anyone know someone who works in Nike or Apple’s product development offices? 

iTunes Doesn’t Recognize Your Nike Plus Account After You Restore Your iPod Nano

Since it took me a little while to figure this out again tonight, I thought I’d post the information for anyone else and for my future self when this happens again in six months:

I had to “restore” my iPod Nano tonight, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the “Nike + iPod” tab in my iTunes to recognize my account information, which means it wouldn’t upload my next run to my account.  (I learned this the hard way last year when I had a similar problem and had to restore.)  So every time I clicked on “visit nikeplus.com”, it just went to the generic front page for the Nike+ site where you can log into your account instead of actually logging me right in automatically.

Here’s what I did: I manually logged into my Nike+ account from the website’s main page and then I went back to my iTunes.  I clicked on the “visit nikeplus.com” link again and this time it logged right into my account.  I returned to iTunes and my account login ID now shows up “Nike + iPod” tab.

Hope that helps someone else!

By the way, in case you’re curious, the reason I had to “restore” my iPod is the infamous Paula Radcliffe glitch.  After every run, she congratulated me on running “another 500 kilometers”, which I have to admit, I had not actually run that day.

I ignored the problem for a while, but then my iPod started giving ALL of my run data in kilometers, no matter how many times I double-checked the measurement setting.  And when I’d select a 4 mile run for my program, the iPod would convert that to a 3 km run for some reason.

To save my sanity, I simply restored the iPod to the factory settings (losing all of my settings and data) and started with a clean slate.  This will last about six months, based on past experience.  It’s an annoying bug, but I still love the software anyway.  Hopefully they can fix it eventually.

Opening the trunk, peering inside

Have you ever opened up your fabled author’s trunk (or closet or desk drawer or paperbox in the storage area under the basement stairs) and re-read something you wrote many years ago?  A book you shopped around but couldn’t sell, or maybe something you didn’t even bother sending out?

How’d that go for you?

I’ve been thinking about returning to a novel I wrote when I was 19 that (in my memory, at least) held a lot of interesting ideas that were not well executed or explored.  I almost sold this book to an independent publisher when I was in college, but then I backed out because I got cold feet about having “that” book be my first novel sale.  It was a good call, in hindsight.  That company ran into trouble soon after, and my next book, of course, was much better and much less embarrassing.  Still, I think, with 10 years of experience under my belt, those early ideas could be re-explored in a way that would be very marketable today.

(And let’s be honest — if you’re writing for a living, you DO need to worry about what you can sell.  If you’re writing as a hobby or still finding your feet, you can experiment with a 600 page epic poem if you like.  If paying the bills hinges on a timely payment — which won’t be timely anyway because they never are, but let’s play pretend here for a moment — you need to think about the market, at least a little.)

I know how much my writing has improved in the last decade, so I’m actually a little nervous about going downstairs and digging through all of the manuscript boxes and re-reading this trunk novel.

What if the ideas actually aren’t any good?

What if the book really can’t be salvaged?

I’m a very slow writer, so re-writing this old manuscript could take me the better part of a year.  Would I be better off just tackling something new during that time?

Then again, I’ve found very little motivation to write the new novel while my agent is shopping the current book (more on why that is another time), so this could be a fun distraction… something to take my mind off the business for a while and get me in the groove again.

Anyone else return to an old work and actually enjoy the re-write process?  Did you sell it?

What is your ideal writing time?

Last night I couldn’t sleep, so from 2 AM to 6 AM I wrote a short story.  It’s the second short story I’ve written this year, and both have been due to invitations to contribute to projects by people I admire.  Otherwise, these stories probably wouldn’t have gotten written.  I just haven’t had a lot of time for the short form, although I think it’s where I do my best work.

But this was an anthology I really wanted to contribute to, and the opening sentences of the story just popped into my head from out of nowhere last week, and then I filled in the details during a nice four mile run yesterday, so everything was there: a good title, a good idea, a good ending, and a great market.  Now I just needed the time to write.

Insomnia may not be the answer to all of life’s problems, but it worked out well for me this time.  I wrote 3,600 words in 4 hours, which isn’t great, but I have a head cold (a first for me — this is a very weird experience) and I was running on no sleep, so I’m pleased with the overall results.  The rewrite this morning when I got up added another 600 words, and I suspect the final count will be 4,500 or so.  I’m going to let the manuscript sit for a week before I read it again, make whatever tweaks are needed, and then it’ll go off to my readers.

It also occurred to me that, for the last decade or so, I haven’t been writing during my ideal time of day.  From 1 AM to 5 AM, I can write like there’s no tomorrow.  I have very little luck “squeezing in” a page here or there throughout my day.  I always thrived with a nice 4 hour block to just write, write, write.  I’m quite envious of those who can sneak in a few hundred words over lunch, between meetings, etc.  That has to be pretty awesome.

So what is your ideal writing time?  In the morning before the kids and spouse get up?  After everyone’s in bed?  Over your lunch break?  When do you write best?

The Creative Process according to Scott Adams

I meant to post a link to this a few months ago and then never got back to it and then I forgot about it, which is kind of ironic given the topic.

I think Scott Adams’ post last year about The Creative Process was interesting, especially since I have a pretty poor memory and worry about writing the same thing over and over again:

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_creative_process/

How about you?  How is your memory?