Choosing A Choice

While it is entirely arbitrary to most people, my gut instinct is telling me that, if I am going to take one version of Out in the Garage off-sale, it is going to be the second edition. While that might seem counter-intuitive, I do have what I feel is solid reasoning to support why I would do this, which I guess makes it more than just gut instinct, but, hey, you know, whatever... It really all comes down to the fact that I never should have written the second edition in the first place. I should have just stood behind the first edition and not let what other people think bother me, since there are plenty of people who read it and liked it. While it might not conform to contemporary ideals, that is not necessarily a bad thing, and I have spent much more time reading and studying literature that was written well before I was born, and my biggest influences as a writer were either well dead or quite old when I was born. I studied literature, I didn't go through an MFA program, and, as of now, I don't intend to. Not that there anything wrong with getting an MFA, it is just not my choice. I believe, and have been taught, even by people with MFAs, that the best way to learn how to write is to study how writers you like do it, and then do it, and do it, and do it. So that is what I am doing. When I started writing Out in the Garage, I didn't know what I was doing (and some would argue that I still don't, but hey, whatever, you can't please everybody), and, over the course of writing, editing, rewriting, and editing, over and over again, I, sort of, developed my artistic vision for it, which I then compromised when I decided to rewrite and edit and make the changes that I did to get the second edition. While yes, in theory, the changes were designed to make it more marketable, it was really just stupid and weak on my part. The first edition, for all its faults, is genuine. When I finished it, it felt finished. I just lack the self-confidence to not continuously second guess myself, which I am trying to change. Anyways, I like the first edition, and if I have to choose one (which I don't, really), it is the one that I am going to choose.

Genrefication

While I might not be rewriting or re-editing Out in the Garage these days, I am still attempting to hone my publishing and marketing of it, seeing what is working and what isn't, and one area where I struggle still is fitting it into a genre. I started out very generally describing it as literary fiction, but that isn't really working, so, after thinking long and hard about it, I have gotten a bit more specific.

The first edition I am going with coming of age and satire as the genres, since, because of the structure and the additional parts, is more general than the second edition. Even though the genres are still pretty general, they are a better fit than literary fiction or general fiction. Coming of Age works for the genre because it is, on the surface, about a teenager dealing with changes in his life and transitioning into adulthood. Satire is also an accurate description, since, as Wikipedia describes, "vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement." While this was more obvious in the original Escapes version, it is still pretty evident if you read through the layers and don't just taking it at face value. At least I think it is pretty evident, anyways.

The second edition, like the first edition, is still labelled a satire, for the same sort of reasons, but because of the focus, and the structure, the other genre that best describes it is young adult/juvenile fiction -- visionary and metaphysical. Since much of the story is the mental journey of a young adult character through his life, which comes across as a sort of dream-like, altered state of reality, and is written in a way that might appeal more to an adult audience that reads young adult fiction, it made sense for me to label it in this way.

No matter what genre is the most appropriate, both versions are heavily allegorical and can be read as extended metaphors, and, unless I am mistaken, this is not something that many writers are doing nowadays. It is not necessarily uncommon, but it isn't exactly what the academy is teaching, either. I suppose that it would make sense that I would write in such a way, since I am most familiar with literature from the 19th and before, when it was more commonplace. Herman Melville, as many of you are probably aware, is one of my bigger influences, and it would be very difficult to read Moby Dick and make much sense out of it without reading it as being an extended metaphor, and the same goes for much of his other work. I mean, try making sense out of The Confidence Man without reading it allegorically.

While perhaps it is an outmoded way to write, it is what came naturally to me when I was writing it, and writing allegorically, for me, was a good way to make social and cultural criticism and also tell a story that makes sense on a surface level. While I do want my readers to read (either version) allegorically, and I hope that they do, it is not necessarily necessary, either.

In the end, classifying it as one genre or another doesn't really change the novel itself, but readers' expectations on what they are getting, and how they know they are supposed to read what they are purchasing. I am hoping, by seeking out the most specific genre where it fits, I will be able to find the right set of readers, who will read it as it is intended to be read. 

While I can't control exactly how people read it, finding the right genre does help lead the reader in the right direction, and that's all I really can do. I just need to do it more effectively.

Monomania

Job searching is... hard. And frustrating. There are many ways I could describe this process, but these seem the most fitting.

I supposed it wouldn't be as difficult if I had more direct professional experience in the area where I am trying to find employment, but, really, I am not getting very many responses, in general, so it really makes me second-guess myself and my skills, knowledge, and intelligence... Am I just truly not qualified for these jobs? Am I just destined to work whatever crappy job comes along? What the hell am I not doing that I need to do? What am I doing that I shouldn't be?

Sometimes I just think it's the system, and that it is set up against me, since I don't know anybody, and I didn't grow up anywhere particularly special. But maybe that's just an excuse. Maybe I am not trying hard enough, or maybe I need to focus my search in a different particular area.

But through all of my schooling, I have never been led to believe anything but that I am a capable, talented writer. I have always seemed to have a natural knack for it, and I have always been willing to put in the work to further develop my skills. I have never been discouraged away from writing--indeed, quite the opposite. Particularly in my journalism and my creative writing classes, but also in many of my English classes, and even by professors who have reputations at being tough, I have been encouraged to keep at it.  

Maybe I am just not patient. Maybe it just takes more time. Maybe I need more schooling yet. I don't know. I am not going to give up. I don't know if I am even capable of it. I suppose that's why I have a white whale tattooed on my forearm.

Giving in to Insecurities and Paranoia, or Finding Peace

"He gazed up at the enormous face.  Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache.  O cruel, needless misunderstanding!  O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!  Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose.  But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.  He had won the victory over himself.  He loved Big Brother."--George Orwell, 1984

Through my schooling, I have begun to realize that there is no objective Truth--at least not in the way that most people understand it--and that all truths are others' narratives where they seek to understand life and the ways of the universe, and perhaps some are closer than others to some sliver of understanding.  I have realized, to some extent, that it is absurd that we continue to live by others' narrow conceptions of life while feeling miserable and powerless to do anything for ourselves because everything seems so far out of our control.

But that lack of control is an illusion, it is a fundamental part of the status quo--that subjective truth that the major lives by--because it is how social order is maintained.  If people realized that truth is malleable--that they are living by others' conceptions of life and not their own, and that they can create their own conception of living based around their needs and not others'--they would realize that it is possible to change their lives and to live the way they choose.  

Of course, it is not as easy as all that.  The status quo has a powerful effect on people, feeding them lies about morality and nature, feeding them things to desire in order to distract them from their actual desires, making them powerless, by choice, to make any significant changes.  The shackles are there because we place them on ourselves.  

In spite of these shackles, there are changes that need to be made.  Instead of each going off in our own direction, however, we should work together to create our own conception of the status quo, and bring about a new, more encompassing version of the social contract, one that leaves no one out of it. We need to strike a balance between our individual needs and social needs, and not allow anyone to have too much authority over either.

Otherwise, we are going to destroy ourselves, or let ourselves be destroyed.

Somebody is going to attempt to create change, and instead of meaningful change, they are going to create chaos and further erode our freedoms.  Your finger might not be on the trigger, but if you sit by and idly watch as everything unfolds around you, your complacency allows that trigger to be pulled, and you are every much as deserving the blame as the person actually pulling it, because you did nothing to stop it.  If more people don't stand up and fight for what they believe, and what they really believe and not what they have been lead to believe, then it will be too late.

It might already be too late.  We might just be trapped in a cycle that will only be increasingly more difficult to escape  The void might already be below us, and all we have to do is look down to realize that we are already falling into emptiness...

But wait...  Is that merely me projecting my own insecurities, my own conception of reality?  Are things really that way, or am I just paranoid, insecure, and feeling betrayed by my intelligence?  

Even though I have worked hard, and struggled, but never-the-less supposedly succeeded in doing what I was told would help me get a better job and earn a living, and pay off my bills, buy a house, a car, etc., pursuing "the American Dream", it has gotten me none of those things, so far, and I only seem to be getting further and further away from them.

It has all seemed to turn out to be a lie that has been perpetuated so that more people would go to college, so the administrations, filled with people with business degrees, could justify their large salaries and the turning of the institutions of learning into for-profit businesses that feed off of government-sponsored student loans, putting those who they are seeking to control, under control, since being in debt places limitations on you that are hard to get past.

It doesn't seem like I am projecting, but then again, a crazy person supposedly doesn't know he is crazy.  Maybe I am truly crazy and out of line, and just need to accept reality as it is and not as I think it should be.

Maybe, like Winston Smith, I just need to accept that there are forces that are more powerful than me, accept my powerlessness and their power over me, and just move forward, and take whatever job, and do it, and do it, and do it, until I can't even remember what the hell my problem was in the first place. 

Or maybe the zombie apocalypse is already happening, and most people have already lost and the only real way to survive is to think for yourself.  Maybe that means that you will never succeed in their conception of the world, but maybe that is okay.

Maybe it is okay to have a different value system--one that is predicated on empathy and sound judgment rather than on just following what you are supposed to do unquestioningly.  Maybe true freedom is a state of mind, and that you can break free from the shackles and live the way that you wish to live, regardless of what it seems like everyone else around you is doing.  Maybe it is all about how you perceive reality, rather than how reality is.  Maybe you do have control over it, and by selecting a better narrative, you can have a better life.

Perhaps you do need a job to survive in the world, but that job doesn't have to be your life.  It doesn't have to control you, and you don't have to place your soul on the altar of some artificial value system.  Maybe the best thing to do is to find a job that allows you to have a balance between your life, and your job function, so that you can dedicate yourself to that job function when you are performing it, and leave it behind at the end of the day.  Perhaps, it is all about finding a balance and finding a state of mind that allows you to be at peace with yourself and the world around you.  Maybe that is maturity.

The real battle isn't you versus others, you vs. society, you vs. sin, you vs. whatever other outside force that may or may not be real, but you vs. yourself.

Revelations

In an effort to achieve a higher level of professionalism, for the second edition of Out in the Garage, my wife, the lovely and talented artist, Sarah, used her graphic design skills and helped me create a new cover:

As you can see, it looks amazing, and I couldn't have done it without her hard work and talent, and I feel truly lucky to be married to such a talented individual.  This is going to be the final, definitive version of this book, and I am pulling out all of the stops and making sure it is every bit as good, as high in quality, as is possible.  I will shortly be ordering a proof and going through the text to make sure there are no typos or other glaring errors.  

I have come a long way since I first began this venture, and I am excited and happy to be almost through with this first novel, so that I can really start focusing on the next one. Well, focusing on writing the next one as I am marketing this one.  In case you haven't noticed, I am already busy at work, establishing the Gabe Gott, indie fiction / underground fiction, brand, and soon I am hoping to reach out to different  underground fiction websites and forums and introduce them to me, and hope for the best.

Thank you all for your patience and your support.  I know this whole thing is crazy, and it has taken me forever to get to this point, and I keep retreading the same territory, again, and again, but I am determined to move forward, and to leave it how it turns out this last time, for better or worse.  There will be two versions out, two versions to choose from, and I will apply what I have learned, what I will continue to learn, to my next project, which, over the years since I came up with the idea, it has really taken shape--all I need to do really is to sit down and write it.  

I am hoping that I can do write and edit it in a relatively short period of time, so that I can release it next year, because I also have third, fourth, and fifth novels in mind to write.  Once I get past this "Out in the Garage hurdle", I will be productive and give shape to all of my ideas, and get them out to the world.  This is only the beginning.

The Revisionist

One thing that I have accepted about myself is that I am a revisionist of my own work.  Of course, I am also learning and experimenting, but I do think that it is necessary to reach a point where I am happy/content with a version of a work and then move on to the next project.  If every book that I write takes me ten years to finish, then I will only write like three or four more books, and I have more ideas than that now, and I can only imagine that I will only continue to come up with more ideas over the years, and that I will never have a shortage of new material.

I have comes to terms with the fact that the second edition of Out in the Garage is not necessarily any better than the first edition of Out in the Garage, just different.  With the second edition, I am conforming to the criticism I have received in order to reach a wider audience that has a narrower view of what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to plot and narrative in contemporary fiction.  It is more tightly focused and is tied together in a more obvious way, from beginning to end. The nonlinear plot actually helps to bring out themes that are less obvious in the first edition (however still present).

The first edition conforms less to contemporary standards than the second edition but has its basis rooted in the classic literature that I have been studying.  The linear plot throws people off because it takes place over a longer period of time than what is standard today, and it echoes the plot of a traditional romance rather than a work of realism, where the narrator is on quest, but not to find anything, to escape (that's why the original version is call Escapes).  It also shows the series of cause/effect relationships as they happen, rather than as flashbacks--it rolls along rather than unfolds.

It has taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that no matter what I write or how I write it, I probably won't ever be a mainstream success and that no matter how I change my work, somebody will have some sort of problem with it.  That means I can either continue to change it, and keep changing it again and again, or I can just focus on the fact that I am doing this for myself, first and foremost, and that as long as I am happy with my work, that's all that really matters.  If I am true to myself, then it will at least be genuine. It is possible to strike a balance between the art and the commercialism.

I am finding that the audience I am discovering is my own is the type of audience that is open minded and willing to give genuine works of art a chance--accepting them for what they are and not for what they are not, the latter of which seems to be more the philosophy of contemporary literature and the traditional publishing industry who are the gatekeepers of the status quo.  Maybe Out in the Garage could have made a good YA Lit novel if I had changed it more and made it fit more into what is contemporary, but it is not that and doesn't have to be.  For that reason, I do somewhat regret making a second edition--even though I do like the way it is turning out and I do think it will be easier for contemporary audiences to digest.

Now there will be two versions.  After I am finished with this second edition, I am determined to move on and continue honing my style and writing the types of novels and stories that I like to write.  I will focus on getting them to work for what they are and not for what they are not or what they could be.  It's a hard lesson to learn, but, ultimately, I am glad that I am learning it--even if it could have come sooner, it's better to have learned it late than to not have learned it at all.

Instead of  continuing to work on the same novel, again and again, I will work on one, get it to the point where I am happy with it, publish it, take the criticism into consideration, and take what I learn and maybe, if it makes to do so, apply it to the next one.

Out in the Garage First & Second Editions...And More!

At some point over the last few days it occurred to me that I might as well keep the first edition of Out in the Garage for sale.  While I could easily just keep it to myself and make sure that it never sees the light of day again, I am opting to keep it on sale along side the second edition.  The first edition is $5.99 in print at Create Space and 99 cents at Smashwords.  The second edition will be available July 4, 2014 and will be $6.99 for the print version and $1.99 for the eBook version, which, all around, I think are decent prices.

I have all these different versions of the same damn book anyways, so I might as well try to make it an asset rather than a fault (If you want to change other peoples perspectives, you first need to change your own perspective).  I don't plan on doing it with every book that I write, just this one, since I have already essentially done it, anyways.

I believe the cult fiction/underground fiction/fringe fiction audience that I am marketing towards will be fine with me having more than one edition of the same book--as the editions are quite different from one another.  Since I don't write genre fiction and I need to market to a specific audience, in order to build an audience, I feel that this is the best route for me to go.  People who tend to like fiction, music, movies, etc. that are not mainstream tend to be more open-minded and open to experimentation, and also tend to want to engage in media that makes them think in a deeper way.  I believe my works meet these criteria (especially since I tend to like things that aren't popular anyways--I know, I am a dirty hipster,whatever).

My main focus, of course, will be the second edition, but if someone would be so inclined as to read both versions for comparison sake, it will be possible.  In fact, in keeping with the spirit of having more than one version of the same novel, there is a third version with the title Escapes that is actually based more closely on the original version of the novel (the version that I wrote and gave to friends to read before I went back to school and went crazy with the changes-making), so I might eventually put that out as well, as I don't really have to do anything to it but proofread it.

When it comes down to it, it is all the same story, it is just three different ways of reading it.

It might be interesting to see how they each compare with one another.  It might make a good essay, anyways, to sit down and analyze what I have done.  In fact, an essay might be an appropriate way to cap off this whole project.  That way it can be more appropriately labeled "experiment" and the literati won't make me disappear--I mean, it hasn't happened yet, so it's *probably* not going to happen.  I guess they are a pretty passive bunch, anyways.

This is a hobby for me--albeit one that I enjoy, am really passion about, and would love to do for a living--but I am realistic enough to know that I am probably not going to do it for a living.  That is no reason to give up, to not keep trying new things, or to not keep trying to improve, that just means I have to find another career, which is fine with me, to be honest (I am doing that right now anyways).  The best material comes from going out into the world and interacting with people, and I always find the time to work on this stuff, no matter how busy I am with something else.

In the next few weeks I am going to finish proofreading the manuscript of the second edition, upload it to Create Space, get a proof made and proofread it again, and then release it for sale.  Then I will start promoting it, order a bunch of copies to give away, and hopefully, get some good reviews, which should help me begin to build an audience.

Anyways, I have a lot to think about and a lot to do, so I should probably get started.  It's time to get organized!

Reformatted, Navigable, Tales from the Fringes

I am uploading to Smashwords (and soon Amazon and Barnes and Noble, too), a reformatted version of Tales from the Fringes.  I have made the Table of Contents functional and the file navigable, and standardized the formatting of the punctuation, which was inconsistent.  I have also fixed some nagging grammatical errors.  Other than that, it is the same collection--no major changes have been made.  This makes a higher quality, more professional version of the product.  I have done the same thing to the print version, but I don't have time to finish the process now (with this whole paper thing I've got going).  Also, I have lowered to price to 99 cents to attempt to reach a wider audience.  As I understand it, 99 cents is the ideal price for an independently published eBooks--even though I will be making less in royalties, I will theoretically, be selling more (hopefully).

Well, that is all for now.  See you cats tomorrow after I finish and turn in this paper.  I hope to be able to sit down and actually write out a full-length post.  I know I am due for one, but this... paper...  It will be over soon enough.  I am progressing well now, so I should probably get back to it.  Peace!