Review of Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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Measuring Stick

We put so much pressure on ourselves to succeed in what we are doing. As an author we all want to be best selling authors on the NYT, USA Today, or on Amazon. Just being on the list can give you a nice boost on sales that you didn't have before. Not everyone is going to make that list in spite of writing something great. This is why I want to talk about the measuring stick. This is the standard that you use to measure your success. You can use it to measure other things, but Godzilla may look at you funny then set you on fire.

Set Your Goals

You can't be the underpants gnomes from South Park and expect to be successful without a plan. Of course you have the larger goals that you want to reach like being on the best seller list, making enough money off your writing to support yourself, or own all the Twinkies in the world. How do you make that happen though? You need smaller manageable goals that you KNOW you can accomplish. Small steps you can take that will lead up to the larger goals.

These are the smaller goals that I work the living crap out of. If you don't squeeze all the innards out of these then there is a chance of infection. Trust me, you don't want your dreams to become infected. Unrealistic goals can poison your whole outlook on what you are doing. It can push your spirits down and force you to quit. You know how the saying goes. Quitters never win, and winners go to Disney Land. Well? Do you wanna go to Disney Land with me?

Manage Expectations

I did a little digging and found that there are very few debut novels that make the NYT bestseller list in any given year. The Girl On The Train is the only one I can think of in recent times that made #1 although there may be another one this past year. Now that self publishing is somewhat mainstream there are thousands of books published every year. Think about that. The chance of being a NYT bestseller on your debut novel is better than winning the lottery, but worse than your chance of being chased by a murderous clown or shot by a toddler.

Don't use someone else's stick to measure your level of success! The quickest way to hit the quit button is by trying to measure your level of success against the Stephen Kings, Tom Clancys, or Chuck Tingles of the world. You are not them and you never will be. It's comparing apples to oranges with the expectation of them both tasting like chocolate. Don't do that, it's like slapping yourself across the face repeatedly and saying you should stop but you keep going anyway. That's never fun and should only be done on Tuesdays. Everyone knows that!

Success

I have reached several of the goals set from the beginning. Here is a short list of the goals I have accomplished thus far. I finished my first novel, formatted it myself, sold my first book, someone has read and enjoyed it, and the latest goal I accomplished yesterday was to sell enough books to make the money back for the stock copies purchased. The only goals set that haven't been reached yet are for getting reviews and selling enough stock copies to require another order. I expect to reach every goal set and have been surprised at the amount of support thus far (all of the <3 for that! :) That is my measuring stick for success for the debut novel. No you can't use it. Why would you want to? You don't know where it's been, or where I have been, or where those snuggling Care Bears have been... Wait, where have YOU been? *runs away screaming something about Nutella*

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Writing Progress Updates

Virtual Wars: Running (Writing First Draft)
Current word count: 18,049

The Ghost Season 1
Editing: Page 4 of 47

When the Muse Calls

It has been almost 2 weeks now since I released my first novel and I must say that this isn't how I imagined things starting out. Not that things have been bad. Everything has been positive so far. What I am talking about is all of the unexpected things that have been happening lately. The biggest one is the call of the muse. Before we get into that I want to talk about a couple of the other things. The ones that go bump in the night.

I have gotten many requests from people asking me to provide a link to purchase an autographed copy of my novel online. Boom! It is done. I now have a link for that in the right sidebar. Now whoever kidnapped the fluffy bunny, please let it go!

I also decided to try participating in NaNoWriMo last month which I did not win. I have much respect for those of you who did. For me it was simply a case of trying to take on too many things at once. If you are thinking about doing it then I suggest you clear your calendar. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get 50,000 words written in one month. I did learn a lot in the process. You have to go in with a plan and budget your time and word count to ensure that you finish. Setting word count goals for each day is important. If you can't write as much one day then you have to figure out how you can make up that time. It's so easy to get behind bit by bit. You know what else is easy? Getting stomped by Godzilla.

The Muse

The muse is whatever it is that inspires you to make your awesome. It is your sunset. It is your lover. It is your plastic bag floating in the wind. Anything and everything that speaks to you. The muse for me more often than anything is a dream. I have more story ideas based off dreams than anything else. When you read my works it really was all a dream, but I did not read "Word Up" magazine.

I do get ideas based off of other people's stories, but most of those feel fake or second rate. It feels cheapened because I am taking someone's idea and molding it into my vision of what it should be. That story has already been told. Those ideas don't excite me, only chains and whips do that.

Lately I have been getting called by the muse to work on the sequel to my novel. What I have found is that when the muse calls it is not always friendly. While I should be working on promotional stuff and building on what I have started the muse has been laughing at me. The call the muse is putting out is like a violent grabbing and twisting of the ear. It wants me to type the words that give life to my dreams and it will not let go. This is fine although the timing of it has not been helpful. The muse waits for no one and you must listen when it calls. You never know when or if it will call again.

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Writing Progress Updates

Virtual Wars: Running (Writing First Draft)
Current word count: 18,049

The Ghost Season 1
Editing: Page 2 of 47

Hope

Before I get started today, I want to push FREE STUFF onto you. OK not really free stuff, it's a raffle and also a copter and you maybe get a prize. The rafflecopter giveaway of an ebook copy of Virtual Wars: Initialization ends 11/22! Godzilla told me he will stomp on those of you who resist! At least that's what I think that roar meant.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Princess Leia once said that Obi-Wan Kenobi was our only hope. I like to think there is a little Kenobi in us all singing Uptown Funk. No matter what you do or what your dreams are there is hope that you can reach them. It takes determination and hard work.

You CAN

Tell this to yourself this over and over again. There are going to be many people who say that you can't. Don't be one of them! If I had a nickel for every time someone told me I couldn't write a novel then I would have a vault filled with nickels to swim in like Scrooge McDuck! Friends and family alike have told me that I can't do the things that I have done. Use it to fuel the fire. Build the fire bigger and hotter until it is large enough for astronauts to see it from space, then sing "Smooooke on the water, FIRE IN THE SKY!"

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the size of the project I am faced with I ask myself, "What is stopping you from succeeding?" All too often the only answer is myself. Don't be the obstacle standing in your way. You CAN do this! Pull up your socks and...

Get to Work!

Work harder than anyone has ever worked before. Hard work gets rewarded and the more hard work you put in the better you get at it. If you continue to grind at it and put that time in then it is only a matter of time until you succeed. The only way to fail is to give up and quit.

People will tell you that it isn't that simple. It IS that simple. Period. End of story. Work hard, be awesome, share your awesome, and let people celebrate you with a My Little Pony dance party. Sticking with it and working hard to get what you want is the most difficult part of it all.

Hope

Be the light, the beacon of hope for others. Share that light with anyone who will listen. This is the way to fight the darkness of doubt that tries to cloud everything. It helps breed confidence and belief in yourself. Others will follow suit. Doubt has its place and makes us strive to improve or lets us know when we need to work harder to squash it back down. There is always doubt, but at the same time there is always hope. Share the hope.

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The Mad Dash

Welcome to the everything is fine portion of our program. Usually when someone says that it means the exact opposite. I feel like I am so far behind on the everything that I don't mind the fires burning all around me. This is the mad dash and we all go through this. The usual suspects that cause this are taking on too much, looming deadlines, and self-imposed pressure to be great. Today I am going to talk about all of these then end the post with a small treat. I wish I could send coffee and chocolate, but whenever I try to shove them through the tubes of the interwebs they get stuck. I'm hoping you will like the treat anyway.

Taking on too much!

This is something I tend to do over and over again. I have so many ideas that I think are the new Velcro that I want to do all of them at the same time. I need to remind myself that I do not have a time machine nor to I have 8 arms. Unfortunately cybernetics has not advanced far enough to give me extra arms. I am not a character in GURPS although sometimes I wish I could be a disembodied brain with psionic powers. Don't ask.

Taking on too many projects leads to not having time for any of them which leads to not finishing any of them which leads to staring at a wall while shoveling air from an empty ice cream container into my mouth... Don't judge! It's not like you've never done it before!

Looming Deadlines

These are the ghosts that haunt my dreams as of late. I have a novel coming out soon which means I have 18 bazillion things to do that are driving me crazy. OK I know that's a short trip, but I like to think I can cross the line to sanity's side every once in a while. The voices told me it was OK. 

What doesn't help is that I decided to take on this monster called NaNoWriMo which I have never done before. It forces you to write until your fingers bleed then you must write more because the bone isn't poking out yet. At the end of the month I am also on vacation where I will spend most of it in a mad dash to complete 50K words for this National Novel Writing Month. The contest is over half way over and I am not near half way to the word count goal.

Self-Imposed Pressure

This is the biggest butthole of them all. Like Godzilla stomping on an ant kind of pressure. I am such a perfectionist that every little thing must be just right for me to be satisfied sometimes. It's hard for me to let go yet I know that nothing is ever truly perfect no matter how much I want it to be. Now that my novel is coming out I have to pretend it wasn't written by me because I know it is not perfect while promoting that it exists and was written by me.

Then there is the pressure of how it performs. I put up a good front with all the smiles and joking around, but inside I'm screaming. I do hope that people read it, enjoy it, and tell their friends. There is a small voice of doubt that is persistent in my head saying that it doesn't matter how hard I worked. I try to squish that voice, but the jerkface is like a cockroach swimming around in my head.

Mad Dash

So here I am typing away on ye old blog as part of the mad dash to get things done. Like giving away a free copy of the e-book version of my novel! Cue the rafflecopter! I TOLD YOU THERE WAS A TREAT weeeeeee

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Writing Progress Updates

Virtual Wars: Running (Writing First Draft)
Current Wordcount: 13223

The Ghost Season 1
Editing: Haven't started yet! Hey, I got it printed and ready for the red pen at least!