My Writerly Blog

I stumbled upon an online story a couple of months ago through one of the digital fiction feeds I actually pay attention to. It was a really fun, neat little story, and I subscribed to the author's feed because I wanted to read more of his work. That first story was completely free online and on various readers (Kindle included). It was a story that used elements of the new digital world, but was essentially a straightforward print story online. Nothing incredibly innovative, just good writing. It was fairly popular, though, to date generating 72 comments (not bad for a non-commercial, non-controversial post). I didn't get any further posts from that feed for quite some time. The second story that came out was under a different model - the Kindle version was for sale, and once 100 Kindle copies had sold, he would release the free online version. It took only a few days for the free version to go up. After that, he began a new endeavor: a not-yet-written novel (novella, ...

I see a lot of proposed business models floating around, blog posts on what works and what doesn't for making a living off of storytelling online. So far, I really like the idea of "pay for what you like" - it's not only an impetus to produce quality work, but it's a direct feedback mechanism for the author. Essentially, the digital author offers content for free, but asks for donations from those who like the work. Novelr has some posts related to the theory and practice of this model. I've participated in this from a consumer standpoint: I download podcasts from PodCastle, EscapePod, and PodioBooks, and I use Duotrope as a resource for short story markets. All of these services are free, but I have given donations to all of them in appreciation and support of the quality of service they provide. And this was before I started my digital fiction crusade, before I recognized what the creators were doing, before I understood it from their point of view. ...

Which I left to more supremely capable people to actually carry out, as is my habit, of course. When I did my MFA, we had a monthly Student Reading Series, which was created during my time in the program (through none of my own effort), organized entirely by the students, and is still going today, if the listserve is any judge. It was a great time to socialize, talk about our work, our professors, our SOs, our lack thereof...oh, yeah, and to share what we were writing. Uh, there was wine involved. When I found nothing much like that here, I thought "Well that blows. We totally should." And so we did. The NIECI family (NIECI is bigger than we know, but there's just the core family that participates in most of our shindigs) got together to display our wares. We dressed up in our finest frocks and gathered for wine (duh) and a wide display of work, from critical papers and radio shows to short stories and film. We chatted, drank, showed off some more stuff, drank some mor...