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Just Another Leap From Space

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Earlier this week, Felix Baumgartner, as you’ve probably heard, leaped from his capsule 24 miles above the earth, in a death-defying feat that stunned and amazed people all over the world.

All I can say is big deal. (Warning: spoof alert in effect).

I repeat, BIG DEAL. Baumgartner’s not the first one to put on a super suit (Anyone remember Frozone? Anyone?); embark on a tortuously slow journey; disconnect all forms of support; take a huge leap of faith; and hurtle at supersonic speed toward an unknown and possibly calamitous fate, occasionally spinning out of control, with only the thinnest of parachutes to stop him before the crash.

Self-published authors do it every day.

Need proof? I’ve got a super suit. They’re called pajamas (yes, the ones that make me feel and look like a big pink Po. That’s a Teletubby, BTW, not a missing vowel…) and fuzzy slippers. They insulate me on even the coldest days, and mine even come with an extra special feature that toughens my skin against unexpected critics and verbal smackdowns from folks bearing sour grapes in their hearts.

That 2 1/2 hour balloon climb Baumgartner undertook to get to that dizzying altitude? Let’s see him write a novel. Now that’s a long trip.

As far as support systems go, well, I think it’s safe to say that when authors decide to go rogue and self-publish, they give up a lot of that. No marketing department (although traditionally published authors don’t get much of that these days either); no editorial support; no agent negotiations. Self-published authors do without, and they have to do it all. Did you see the team Baumgartner had supporting him the day of the jump? I’d love to have a mission control center like that for Widow Woman…

Yes, we self-published authors take a huge leap of faith, too, and once the book is out there, it’s easy for things to start spinning so fast it feels like a loss of control. You know, the air in the publishing world can be pretty damned thin, too. If you’re lucky (and I am), you’ve at least got (if not an enormous mission control staff) a supportive network of family and friends and colleagues who will grab hold of you when that starts happening, jerk you back upright, and set you on your feet again. They are that thin, ultra-strong fabric that stands between you and the ground–which, I imagine, hurts when you hit it at the speed of sound. A lot.

So if self-publishing is so tough, then why do it?

I’d imagine that it’s for the same reason that Felix Baumgartner decided leaping from 24 miles up was a good thing to do.

He felt compelled? He felt exhilarated? It was a mountain he needed to climb, a challenge he had to accept, a moment in his life that was so great that he would always regret not having attempted it? It was something so vitally important for him to accomplish he was willing to risk a horrible death for it? All right, I concede on that last one–I like my book, but I don’t want to die for it. Just to clarify. But all of those other things?

Yeah. I get ’em. I’m a writer.

P.S. Way to go, Felix. Outrageous.

Let’s do the time warp again…and again…and again

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For this twenty minutes, I am forcing myself to take a break from my manuscript. I’m finding, as I’m spending more time on it now, that it is increasingly easy for me to get lost in that other world and lose all sense of time.

For example, when I settled down to work on it on this morning, I anticipated spending an hour or so on it before moving on to other projects. Um. I was shocked to look at the clock just now and find that I’d been writing for over two-and-a-half hours straight. It felt as though I’d only just sat down! Hence the title of this post: I had entered The Time Warp, that magical place writers visit when they are neither here nor there; when their bodies slump carelessly over notepads or laptops, seemingly lifeless but for the scritching of pencils or clicking of keyboards; when the words come on and on, heedless of the passage of time (or the increasing insistence of full bladders, which is what finally broke the spell for me. I think this may be why so many writers I know drink so much coffee while they work: it creates a biologically timed round trip of sorts, forcing you to return to the real world occasionally. This is just a theory, but a plausible one, I think).

The Time Warp doesn’t always happen for me. Sometimes the writing is a grueling chore, where I count every word and swear that I can actually hear my hair growing while I wait for inspiration, so when I do ‘warp’ away for a while, I am extremely excited and inspired about it. It usually means something good just happened in my book. I think it did this time–time will tell, right?

It’s time to go back now, at any rate: I’ve taken my little break from the manuscript, attended to a few biological imperatives, and refilled and nuked my next cup of coffee. I am ready for my return warp–I hope it didn’t leave without me. See you next trip.