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The Blogging Thing versus the Book-Writing Thing
A year ago Friday I brought a month-long hiatus in this blog to an end. It was all really rather melodramatic. Some loser tried to get my goat by leaving a comment threatening Zeke. My goat was got. This joint got taken off-line for a few days while I sorted things out — resulting in more traffic than CRN had ever had before, or has had since. (This was, I will confess, a source of some rueful inner joking about readers responding when one gives them what they want.) And then I came back for a few days, realized I liked my time with Zeke better with the blog turned off, and went fishing for a month.
This had kind of an unexpected, delayed effect. One of the ways in which I have (dealt with my grief/tortured myself) about Zeke has been to read blog entries for the year before, committing what I could to deeper, long-term memory, chuckling over anecdotes I’d forgotten and such. And then November, and no anecdotes: a hole in the historical record.
And suddenly my blog got a whole lot less interesting to me. I started remembering that there were things called books, some of which were waiting for me to write them, and even more waiting vainly for me just to read them.
Then the trolls hit after CRN won that awards thing (a brief video of said awards victory can be seen here.)
So by the time our pal The Theriomorph announced her new and restricted publication schedule, I was primed to pay attention. Beth had already posted something thoughtful and provocative on the frequency of blogging issue, and I had been rolling it around in my mind. (Beth has posted another good one on the topic this week, too.)
I have an application for grant funding for the Joshua tree book due in a couple weeks, and I need to spend time looking for other ways to cover the expenses involved in finishing the book. A lot of finishing involves just sitting in a chair and frowning at the keyboard for a few days, and that’s cheap. But there are places I need to go in the desert, and even camping is getting more expensive these days what with four-dollar-a-gallon gas. There’s a dissertation I’d really like to read for a small but important detail in one chapter I’m revising right now. No local libraries have it for copying, but I can score a copy for forty bucks if I order it from my desk at UCSF. Part of the research yet undone involves poring over Mormon pioneer diaries, which will likely mean a couple weeks of staying in Salt Lake City. There are important places I ought to visit that my 2-wheel drive pickup can’t quite handle: renting a 4WD for a couple days would make things easier. Interviewing Native elders often — if you want them to get the idea that you take them seriously and respect them — involves the giving of gifts. I’ve got some fundraising to do, in short.
This work is going undone. I’ve been blogging instead.
I was talking with the e-faun last weekend about her decision. She told me about having done a kind of cost-benefit breakdown of her blogging, finding that it was, in effect, a distinctly poorly paid full-time job. And then she said “and I can’t even imagine how much time you spend on CRN, Chris.”
It was an interesting point. I kinda let the blog sit for a few days this week while I mulled it over.
Cost: I am putting essentially a full-time-plus work week into this blog, most weeks. This is probably why I flip out twice a year and take a break from blogging forever. (!!!1!) And between that and trying to earn some cash to pay the internet bill so that I can continue to blog, I haven’t been leaving myself much time or energy to write them books.
Benefit: The community, first and foremost, in ways both tangible and intangible, mainly having to do with emotional support in a sucky year, and with pleasant distraction in a sucky year. And occasional baked goods. There are other intangibles: immediate feedback on writing, a gift most writers in history have not enjoyed, illuminating discussions, and catharsis-by-troll-stomping. Unintangibles are somewhat more limited. A few folks have offered donations through the Amazon tip jar, and more have sent me gift books, and I’m moved deeply when that happens.
Mostly tangibles going out. Mostly intangibles coming back. It’s how hobbies work. No big deal. But once this becomes more than a hobby, The Theriomorph’s talk about abundance and scarcity starts to ring in especially profound tones.
As this conversation spreads slowly throughout our corner of the blog world, people are grappling with the prospect of scaling back their blog writing, sometimes markedly, in order to focus on those parts of life that provide more tangible returns, whether that’s writing books, or focusing on one’s day job, or whatever. And each person will have a different balance that seems right to them. And I’ve been spending the last week considering whether I ought to mothball the blog, at least for a few months. I love writing here, and my writing has gotten better writing here, and you people are one of the chief joys of my life. But well, one must sleep, and one must earn a living, and 30, 40 hours of blog maintenance atop that is draining in the best circumstances.
But I wonder if there isn’t a third way at least potentially available here, a way to take the Theriomorphic abundance model and make it work in this situation, to tap into the abundance generated by this community of people so that I can balance the book writing and the blogging without either one suffering.
It’s worked before, after all. About a year ago I asked people to chip in for a generator for the Wampum folks, and asked other people with blogs to add the appeal to their sites. I understand we covered the cost of the generator in a few hours. The year before that CRN spearheaded a multi-blog campaign to send Lauren to the BlogHer conference. We had airfare, hotel room, and Lauren’s lost wages paid for in 18 hours.
I have little problem asking people for money on others’ behalf. It’s much harder — mortifying, in fact — to rattle the tip jar for my own work. But I’m going to suck it up here and do just that.
I’m asking for your help in meeting the expenses involved in my finishing the Joshua tree book.
The budget is open-ended, because the project is open-ended. Twenty bucks would pay for half a tank of gas. Fifty would cover duplication expenses and postage for a relevant dissertation. Two hundred would cover living expenses for three weeks of field observation, or a few days’ room and board while I interview land managers in the USGS Las Vegas office.
You can donate at my Amazon tip jar with your major credit card. If you don’t like Amazon, you can email me for a mailing address.
If you’re a blogger and you think your readers might be interested in helping support writing of what will be the only mass-market book on the Joshua tree’s natural and economic history, its ecology and biology and ethnology, please consider mentioning this appeal to them on your blog.
If you’re unfamiliar with the kind of writing I do on desert issues, you can look in the “desert” category and browse around. Of recent posts, this one on piñon-juniper forests, or this one on a bit of eccentric desert lore, or this first-person narrative provide good examples of my related writing.
If you provide me with your name when you donate, I’ll be happy to mention you in the acknowledgments to the book.
The donation page is here.
Thank you.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
Definitely want your books, Chris - the Joshua Tree book, a collection of essays from here, new essays, a poetry collection should you feel like it.
Definitely also want you to have the reliable material abundance you need to have the freedom you need in all areas of your life, to do whatever you need to do. Which requires significant investment of time, which means less here.
I do still think CRN may have more direct material benefit to your publishing than Theriomorph has to mine, in part because of size, but primarily because lit fic and cross genre stuff is a very different market than science and nature writing essays - so, I hope all who can help out via donations and it makes a significant difference.
It won’t address everything, but may bridge the gap, and that may be all that is necessary. If the book does well, your options change radically.
I love this blog - the community here, your writing. It’s a regular source of art, soul, community for me.
And, whatever you decide to do long term, I support it.
By: By Theriomorph on 2007 11 30
There is another option, hard to articulate because it doesn’t exist as a finished product, as a broken and tamed trail. Consider this question:
What is so special about piles of paper inked and bound, trucked to a convenient retail outlet near you?
Even shorter:
What can inked paper say that blogged bits can’t?
Shortest:
And vice versa?
Every day I walk by the offices and production facilities of the local newspaper, circulation ~80K. Old and new buildings occupy more than a city block. Multiple semi-truck docks have replaced the rail spur laid to serve this one customer’s demands for bulk paper. This is a factory working a 24/7/365 schedule. It employs managers, accountants, pressmen, multitudes of hand delivery people; even, not so indirectly, a cadre of lumberjacks. Also, a few writers.
The medium that hosts CRN has a much more efficient superstructure, requires a lot less maintenance. It offers the writer —
1) more efficient distribution, worldwide;
2) more Empathy Bandwidth in form of reader feedback and sophisticated expression tools like video, recorded sound, ELIZA scripts. Etc.
As of this am there is no clear way to use this new medium to satisfy the needs of the older media’s end users. This is not an intractable problem and it will be solved. By someone. I suspect that CRN’s generous host is better equipped to find a way than the sum of everyone in those buildings that cranked out today’s edition in time for breakfast. (At least the decision makers.)
By: By black dog barking on 2007 11 30
Good questions, black dog barking.
Here are two answers to the longest version:
What is so special about piles of paper inked and bound, trucked to a convenient retail outlet near you?
1) The possibility of a minuscule portion of that retail outlet’s gross income landing in the writer’s lap as royalties, not yet possible with a blog;
2) The possibility that having those piles of inked and bound paper in print will help sway someone to establish financial conditions in which the writer can continue writing instead of carrying omelets for a living, either through a subsequent book deal, or a teaching post, or signing on as the writer’s agent, or grants, or marriages of convenience, or whatever.
You are right that both these differences are likely to change. I suspect they are likely to change in a direction making books more like blogs rather than the other way around, which is sad. So I want to get in while I can.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 30
i’d be tickled if there were a seekrit number, right near the sitemeter stats, telling how the fundraising drive’s going. the generator fund and the lauren excursion were mightily satisfying, partially because of how fast they happened. feedback’s powerful.
By: By siriosa on 2007 11 30
Next to relationships, books are a most precious commodity.
I love reading these blogs, and I cherish each interaction that presents itself through this media. However, electricity isn’t needed to read a book. I can be much more physically comfortable reading a book.
Although I love the potential for instant comment, sometimes I just want to let my imagination play out its own little movie, get caught up in my thoughts and feelings about something without anyone else’s editorializing. That is one of the things, along with the $, that has kept me from having a blog of my own.
Please write the books, Chris and Theriomorph - please.
hugs from PA - where we are awaiting a snowstorm this weekend that may allow me to catch up on some book-readin’.
Connie
By: By connie on 2007 11 30
(I’m posting this here because I’m not sure which of the several email addresses I have for you is current. Mine is in my CRN profile, so you can reply to me there if you wish.)
Kicked in a token contribution. Partly because your work seems more satisfying than mine right now. And partly because I want to read the book!
On another related note: I’m thinking of renting a 4WD myself sometime over the post-Solstice break (trad holiday period), and taking a desert trip. If’n you wanted to join up, might be able to plan an acceptable joint itinerary. If the Lee Flat Joshua forest is one of the places you need to visit, so much the better.
By: By Fred Levitan on 2007 11 30
(siriosa - if you click on the donate link, it should give you a running total - at least, it did for me)
I’m with Fred - I donated because I want to read the book too!
(So put me on the list of people who will buy the hardcover when it comes out.)
I’d also love a print version of the blog.
Why book-style? Because I can pick up a book and take it with me anywhere, and write in it, and stare at it lovingly on the shelf, and all kinds of goodness like that. Blogs, I have to read at work, with students popping in to talk with me.
By: By Rachel Shaw on 2007 11 30
Allow me to chime in with a me-too affirmation on the topic of a book or set of books based on the wonderful writing here on CRN.
A lot of the people who I know would love your work are just not Web-reading types; I’d love to be able to send them a set of slim, inter-referential* volumes.
Plus I really, really want to see the Joshua Tree book now, with all those hints of content from this post.
*is that even a word?
By: By embee on 2007 11 30
(siriosa - if you click on the donate link, it should give you a running total - at least, it did for me)
Just for precision’s sake: That running total includes a couple of donations from 2006 and some from 2005. The actual (still deeply touching) figure seems to be about 150 bucks lower.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 30
Just chipped in a bit as well. I like your writing, I like Josh trees, I really like Xantusia vigilis; what’s not to like?
By: By Sven DiMilo on 2007 11 30
Thank you for reminding me to “tip” my favorite bloggers more regularly (and without having to be prompted!).
Just in case you haven’t found this yet, I will include a link about a woman raising a coyote pup:
http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/
I don’t know what your opinions on the ethics of raising wild animals as the companions of humans are, but I was struck by her eloquence (and those pictures!). Reading her posts made me feel very happy and relaxed.
By: By Ollie on 2007 11 30
Well, Ollie, my feelings on humans raising wild animals as pets are complex and mainly negatOH MY GOD HE IS SOOOO CUTE I WANT TO KISS HIM ON THE BACK OF THE HEAD AND GIVE HIM COOKIES RIGHT NOW PLEASE.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 30
Not wanting to be a spoiled-sport here, but it’s important to think very clearly and realistically about potential book revenue. I wrote a book of national political interest, published by a pretty good outfit, and the royalties I’ve gotten so far wouldn’t cover a couple of month’s rent in most cities. Part of that is because so damn many people LENT the book to their friends - I’ve heard that again and again - I think the readership is at least triple or quadruple the sales. We all have the idea - or hope - that our efforts and love for a subject will catch the imagination of lots of people who will buy the book and support us, but in the great majority of cases that just isn’t how it turns out. I hope it will be in yours, Chris, but you just can’t bank on it - you’re going to need other sources of income besides the books you write, especially at first, and I’d like to see you find ways to make this blog, with its large and committed community, into one of those, on an ongoing and sustaining basis. You deserve it for what you give all of us.
By: By beth on 2007 11 30
Just sent a donation via Amazon. Good luck with the book!
I was reading your blog about a year ago but then forgot to keep checking back. I’ve discovered RSS feeds now, so that problem should be fixed. I missed a lot of important stuff.
Here’s a vote to keep your blog going at least occasionally (and do the book too)!
Strangely, as you’re contemplating leaving the blogosphere I’m pondering entering it. I’d love to chat with you sometime soon about the ups and downs.
Best wishes and hang in there.
By: By Larry Hogue on 2007 11 30
Yup.
And if you go writin’ stuff like what all I’ma writin,’ you won’t even get one month’s rent. Poems and literary fiction are wildly successful if they stay in print for one year - even if you win big prizes, which confer HONOR, but rarely even honorARIA.
However. You can get teaching positions, artist in residence gigs, readings at colleges (which pay well, as opposed to bookstores, which pay nothing, usually), maybe radio gigs, whatever else.
Again, I think CRN is potentially a source of actual income/abundance model support for life and writing. Or at least a support towards that. The numbers are here, the loyalty is here, your style appeals widely, etc - I’m with Beth on that. Could happen with some creative thought.
By: By Theriomorph on 2007 11 30
Oh, and don’t forget the extra-American possibilities for books, too, via a decent agent - other markets (Spain, France, Germany in particular) have been much kinder, longer term, even in translation) to friends of mine who’ve written amazing books beloved by readers but not pushed by American publishers who thought them too ‘demanding’ (or, loved them but remaindered them after a very short and light period of half-assed promotion to peddle the next insta-book instead. Also worth mentioning: mass market quick money via garbage insta-book? Likewise a short-lived and small-scale income for the author).
I repeat: colleges are your friend. Getting a book onto syllabi is a good thing, generating readers, readings, sales, word of mouth.
There are urban legends and fantasies galore (here’s where someone tells the John Grisham ‘generated vast wealth on the subway to work writing on a yellow legal pad for 20 minutes each morning!’ story, or mentions J.K. Rowlings).
The rarity (and inaccuracy) is such that it’s not really worth engaging with that fantasy, I think, but instead pays off to think about what you want to write, why, how, and how to make it as self-sustaining as possible via whatever means are available.
And, this is all from my literary fiction and poetry perspective, so may be not very useful food for thought.
Your experience may be different than mine and my lit fic pals.
It *will* be different.
Your appeal is to a much larger audience, you are male and thus get authority conferred which women of whatever legitimate authority do not, particularly in writing about science/natural history (a privilege you can use subversively, and will, I know), you can write both to and beyond a niche market, the fact of CRN’s wide readership will make you ‘ooo, marketable!’ to agents/publishers, and on and on.
The more I think about it, the more I think the differences will all be in your favor.
So go for it, C.
It’s time, eh? And autonomy is good.
By: By Theriomorph on 2007 11 30
Yes. And T’morph, thank you.
Beth, as you likely suspect, I’m far from being under the impression that book royalties are the path to fabulous wealth. Though I do think that this particular book, working title A Heartbreaking Tree Of Staggering Adaptation To The Mojave Desert And The Women Who Love Them In The Sisterhood of the Traveling Colored Parachutes, stands a pretty good chance of buying me that villa in Tuscany.
Or at least a bottle of olive oil from Tuscany. Or Tuscaloosa.
Really, it’s about getting the book written. The possibilities of royalties, likely scant, are lagniappe.
Larry, it’s an utter delight to see you here. If you start a blog, I’ll read it and send you traffic. Everyone, check out my review of Larry’s book on the southern California deserts and then buy it and then read it and then buy copies to give to your friends. And do the same with Beth’s book. Thank you.
And thank you.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 30
Please.
Please.
Please call the book “A Heartbreaking Tree of Staggering Adaptation.”
By: By Theriomorph on 2007 11 30
Nah, Ms. Morph.
If Chris really wants to ace Mammon, the title should be “A Heartbreaking Bunny of Incredulity.”
But I’m not sure I really believe that.
By: By Sherwood on 2007 12 01
not doing my best looking, apparently. on the amazon page, i don’t see the numbers. that could be because i did not give amazon any money. (i’m still a little peeved at the way they behaved toward the older amazon bookstore in minnesota.) the check is, however, in the mail.
and i did a little mention on my tiny, rarely-updated, thinly-read blog. widow’s mite kinda deal.
By: By siriosa on 2007 12 01
The counter kept climbing way out of proportion to actual donations. Last I saw it it said 1800 or so. I took it down lest it confuse people.
As of right this second, not counting checks in the mail and in-kind-type offers, the total netted so far is $991.71. This is about a sixth of what I’d roughly figured I needed to raise to cover basic yet thorough expenses, and it came in in one day. I’m humbled, folks.
And that leaves 5/6ths! So no need to feel left out if you haven’t dropped a five-spot in the till yet but wish to. The book can certainly still use it.
I ought to note, with a bit of embarrassment, that a few people have complained to me about the upper limit on donations being 50 bucks. That’s Amazon’s limit, not mine. They will let you do more than one transaction, should that be your wish, and there’s always the snail mail option.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 12 01
Warren, #11:
Permanence, or the possibility of it. Digital storage does not have the staying power of pulp.
I suspect some of “permanence” is illusory. Change finds a way. Those Gutenbergs may still be legible but not many alive today can actually read the words.
But the existence of the Gutenbergs does enforce a permanence on the text—you aren’t able to change it without detection. There is a moment for all authors of printed books where no more change is possible, what’s done is done. Digital distribution is more flexible for good and ill.
By: By black dog barking on 2007 12 01
Boy, do I relate to your deliberations about blogging. And I’m so happy to have discovered your site! I’ll be back, with more comments, etc. You and I have a few things in common. :-)
All best,
By: By John H. Farr on 2007 12 03
