The 200th Post: How it all began, how it's going, and sure signs of an exciting future
For those of you new here, welcome! Please stick around for the redemption arc at the end.
Sometimes to figure out where you're headed, it's good to look back at where you've been. When I started this blog, I owned a house in a completely different state with a pastoral backyard.
And this monster of a tree, looming over my former home, has served not only as a major inspiration, but became the main banner graphic for my website.
The tree was technically featured in my second post. In the first one, I made a simple and bold declaration that, having recently finished college, I would settle down and write a book during the duration of this blog, come Hell or high water.
I said those words as a personal promise to myself - that this would be my last chance. I placed all my cards on the table knowing that if this blog dies, it means I've given up on my dream.
THE STATE OF THINGS
I've been feeling creative lately, working on at least two pieces of artwork each day. I've also spent the past five months learning piano from scratch. Seeing how far I've come from daily piano practice has greatly encouraged me in all my artistic endeavors.
Which leads me to the short story I posted eleven days ago, One Last Dream.
It's a "first" for me in several ways:
first time I've ever written a story based on a prompt (let alone an image prompt).
fastest short story I've ever written, having only taken two days to conceptualize and write, and four more to edit and polish.
first time I've posted a complete story publicly to the internet.
Up until now, I've only made snippets of my tales available to the wider public. So it feels good having a complete story out there, even if it was written for no pay and is just sitting on my own website at the moment.
Though not as deep as most of my other stories, One Last Dream is a good representation of my current skill level. It would probably be difficult to market this story on its own in the publications I like to target (since it doesn't feature TESTOSTERONE-FUELED ACTION), but I believe it would fit snuggly into any mythology-themed short story collection.
The image prompt it's based on ("The Sylph") attracted me because I enjoy fairytales and mythology. I knew writing something for this particular prompt would fit right in with my existing collection of works.
What resulted feels like a competent, neatly polished yarn. Like a modern fairytale for grown-ups: melancholy in tone, but with a superversive and uplifting, if bittersweet, ending.
It was enjoyable to write, with just enough worldbuilding to hint at a larger universe, tackling people's struggles with religion and death to provide what I feel are much-needed answers. Every character has an arc that gets resolved in a satisfying way, and all of this is achieved in under 3,500 words.
They say...
Sometimes you gotta do something for free, be it to move the needle or just to exercise the virtue of charity.
Of course, this is all assuming I'm actually good at something.
DAMAGE REPORT
Being the artist, it can be difficult--extremely difficult--to gauge how good the art you create actually is.
I submitted this story for consideration to get a mention over at the IronAge Media website. It's not up for print or anything. It's just up for a list inclusion, with the possibility of being "featured" at the top of the page as a sort of spotlight... if it were to receive enough votes.
But at first, crickets. I thought I had another dead-on-arrival story. Self-doubt began creeping in.
As of today, here's the total stats on that post:
Okay, so it had poor reach. But at least it had a great capture rate.
And, being totally honest here, that's actually really good performance for my main blog.
And it's not like this is a free domain. I'm paying for this sucker. I'm also paying for an account on X to help drive traffic and engagement.
Seeing stats like this, month after month, year after year, can be disheartening as a writer and creator.
My previous blog (which no longer exists except as a backup file) had done much, much better by its 200th post, sometimes raking in hundreds of views per day.
I had a Reddit account that managed to reach the front page more than once (we're talking posts with over 50,000 Reddit upvotes and hundreds of thousands of karma)... until I received an unjustified and unexplained lifetime ban that even spills over onto my alts.
I also had an Instagram with over 2,000 followers which I sadly had to walk away from out of principle when IG decided to take political sides and rub our faces in it.
The world has tried to censor me, and it seemed like it was going to work.
At times, I felt like I was screaming into the void posting here, and my gaps in productivity were largely due to a near-zero return on views and engagement despite all the hard work and heart I'd poured into each and every post... not only in the blog-o-sphere, but in my personal writing.
If I were to wager a guess, NickEnlowe.com had been shadowbanned at some point by search engines. Perhaps my rants on Alan Moore did it. Or perhaps my traffic was being throttled by Wordpress simply because I'm not paying for the extra-super-premium membership? Difficult to say. (And if that last one's the case, what's funny is I got considerably more traffic when I wasn't paying for the domain.)
There were times I almost gave up. On writing, on everything. But somehow, I pushed through to 200 posts anyway.
If nothing else, I'm still here. Still stubborn.
And no matter what happens, I've stayed true to myself. Doing anything else wouldn't have been authentic.
I'm not here to game the system, folks. I'm not going to start generating A.I.-driven content to spam you with daily robo-posts. I won't stoop to creating clickbait articles or outrage journalism. I'm doing this the old-fashioned way.
There's a reason I almost never post based on current trends or the latest buzz topics. I didn't design the algorithm that punishes independent thinkers while serving slop to sheep, and I'm not about feed or encourage it, either.
I'd rather set trends than follow them. I'd rather come up with my own ideas rather than have topics handed to me. If exile is the price for retaining my dignity, so be it.
That's why it's taken me this long to write a story based on an image prompt- I enjoy cooking up my own stories from scratch. It's an intimate, authentic experience.
But I'll grant that people are extremely topical creatures.
They say you should be authentic. "Be yourself." That audiences can "smell fakery from a mile away". But it's simply not true.
People at large don't care about authenticity. They want wiggly-armed tube men. They gleefully gather around plastic salesmen, buying their fakery all the time. Mr. Beast. Boogie2988. Neil Gaiman. We're surrounded by beloved, idolized fakes. And then everyone acts surprised when they turn up in a scandal.
People say they want depth and nuance in their stories, but then pay to see all the Michael Bay films. People say they want more female POVs, but then scratch their heads once given one. Truth is, most people lie about what they want -- What they actually want is McDonald's.
Most people's entertainment diet consists of a never-ending conveyer belt of Top 10 lists, cute pet videos, and subversive gray goo content based on their favorite IPs from 40+ years ago. They like trends. They like comfort food.
(If you're reading this now, you're a special case. An independent thinker. Thank you.)
I've found that, so long as the marketing is there, people have a tremendously high tolerance for bad cover art, half-assed reboots, poor grammar, bad dialogue, misspellings, and continuity errors.
But the tolerance is very low for newcomers, especially ones like myself who can't self-market their way out of a paper bag.
I've stated all along that my main goal has been to engage with other writers and get something published. I don't think that's unattainable or even too much to ask, even in this crazy upside-down world. So I'm keeping my eye on the prize, believing such a reality still awaits me.
And perhaps, to some extent, it has already arrived.
SUBMITTING
Sept. 3rd, 2023. A little over a year ago. I was writing from a much lower, humbled place.
I wanted to be the up-and-comer author who knocked everyone's socks off. But I realized for the first time in my life that I wasn't going to be an exception to the rule.
I know, I know. I wanted to be a snowflake.
I'd taken all the precautions to avoid damaging my fragile little ego (by spending decades studying the craft of writing), but it turned out I wasn't going to dodge the rejection letter hazing that all writers must go through.
So let's see where things stand now...
SUBMISSIONS TO DATE:
College contest:Â
Never heard back.Submitted three stories to a Writing Excuses podcast contest:Â
Never heard back.Short story to Cirsova magazine:Â
Heard back, they enjoyed the story and said it was interesting, but it was rejected for space.Artwork to author Brian Niemeier:
Accepted and published! As a result, my name's out there on Amazon on an actual book cover, even if as a published artist rather than author.Short story to Anvil magazine:
Carefully revised the same story I had submitted to Cirsova. Form rejection.Short story to Iron.Age Media for a spotlight contest:
More on this up ahead.
Sticky Wickets:
The Baen editor never got back to me.
The card game is still in limbo.
In my defense, I chose the worst times to submit to both Cirsova and Anvil, as (just my luck) they both had a record-breaking number of applicants. In those outlier months, not only did I have to compete against an inordinate mountain of prose making a favorable outcome statistically unlikely, but being a newcomer meant I wouldn't get prioritized over tried-and-true well-known names that readers love to see listed on the cover over and over again (and perhaps rightfully so).
I was also competing for space against sleek, real-estate-hungry comic book entries. It's a tougher arena than I thought. I've come to peace with that.
So instead of going through the usual doldrums over a form rejection, I did extensive reading and research, studying the history of Sword & Sorcery to begin writing a serialized S&S tale of my own, Howard Andrew Jones style. I'm hoping that narrowly focusing on the genre and tone these magazines typically target will help tilt the odds in my favor.
The first two parts of my Sword & Sorcery series are pretty much complete, and the third has been outlined. Just need to keep my eyes peeled for submission calls!
And then Sword & Sorcery author Erik Waag posted this on his Twitter feed:
It spoke to me on so many levels.
Getting rejected from magazines? Build your own.
Does an author need permission from someone else to get his stories read? No.
If you think about it, posting an entire short story for free is doing exactly what this image suggests. I am a published fiction writer now. I just had to publish it my own damn self.
A think-outside-the-box mentality like this, one that bucks the gatekeepers and makes no apologies is exactly what created rebellious indie movements like the #IronAge in the first place. No one can define my success but me.
And you know what? I'm happy with what I've created.
SUBSTACKING (The Redemption Arc!)
Perhaps the best writing-related decision I ever made was to cross-post over at Substack.
While Wordpress has left me languishing in some sort of algorithmic ghetto, my free Substack account has respected my time.
204 views. 4 restacks. 6 retweets. Comments! Reviews! Discussions! Likes! Sure, the stats aren't Earth-shattering, but writing for Substack feels worth it and has kept NickEnlowe.com--and my dreams of publishing a novel--alive.
Y'see, us authors--especially those of us struggling in the crab bucket--need a pulse check every now and then to keep us motivated, and Substack delivered when so many other platforms could not.
For better or worse, I posted a complete story. And at first there was nothing. That dead silence that follows after you've put your creation out in the world. In crept the self doubt.
Then something wonderful happened.
People actually read my story! And they liked it. A lot!
"Good job! I like how the thread of light became a plot point and not the main attraction."
"OH Nick this is so beautiful!"
"This was amazing."
"Beautiful."
And then Iron Age Media gave me a signal boost. (Plus, it turns out they were backlogged due to RL stuff and had been unable to get to all their Emails.)
Ever since then, people have been checking out my Substack in record numbers. Just yesterday, I got 50 more views on one of my latest posts.
And then. THEN, an author reached out and asked me a question because he was having a worldbuilding issue he wanted help with. It meant the world to me.
And THEN a USA Today bestseller--with many published books under his belt--reached out and said he'd love to answer any questions I might have on my journey to getting published, and said he'd love to chat with me anytime. He saw me as a fellow author to exchange stories and drink coffee with. He treated me as a peer.
We've chatted about three times so far and he's been very cordial and engaging. How cool is that?
And then yet another author reached out, asking me about the kinds of stories I write.
And then ANOTHER.
Please understand... I've hardly ever been reached out to by other authors in the many years I've been interested in this hobby, which technically started wayyy back in 2007. By comparison, the past week alone has been an absolute windfall. And it was all because I decided to put myself out there despite the rejections.
So if you're in a similar spot, thinking about posting a whole story and you've been holding back because you're worried about "reprintability issues", or "first publication rights", or "doing it for free", etc., maybe reconsider. Because putting your work out there shows people that you can complete a story. It proves you're not all talk. That you can weave a decent tale and provide satisfying catharsis.
So I guess it all comes back to the mantra "Show, don't tell."
In the end, I'm glad I chose to be Superman and not the Joker.
My story still isn't up on the Iron Age website, but I've seen other awesome entries for the same prompt that aren't up there yet, either, so I'm not worried at all about it. Honestly, I'm okay if it never gets posted there.
Besides, IronAge already acknowledged me with a signal boost. And only good things have happened since then. So... as far as I'm concerned, my mission is already accomplished!
*Aside from my loving and supportive family, I'd like to make special mention to R. H. Snow and Brian Niemeier, who have both been so supportive of me and my endeavors. I'd also like to thank so many more for accompanying me on my journey, people like Based Papist, Rawle Nyanzi, Man of the Atom, ArtAnon, and so many others. Thank you.