I am hard at work on Arisugawa Park 1.11 - Faded Beer Poster. It should be up in a few hours... a ramen shop conversation between the old detective Hayao and his former protégé Jiro, in which (the fictitious) TMAT makes its first appearance.
I have been experimenting with blog posts, trying to find a readership pattern. The take home seems to be that when I post a new section of the novel I get 600+ views in a day. When I post a poem or something offhand, I get less than 200. Note to self: quality counts and some people are getting into the narrative flow. Which motivates me to speed up the editing process, get sections out. Even at top speed, say one section every 2-3 days, Ari Park is of a length that it will take more than a year to complete.
If I start getting thousands of views (serious readers, no gimmicks) a day I may drop my SEO work for a week or a month and really focus on shaping the novel up, because now we are talking about potential e-book purchasers and a way of making a living as a creative writer.
How is the editing-on-the-fly process going with Arisugawa Park? Let me give a little sample, an audio capture* of what I do with music, words, flute––whatever I have on hand to set a rhythm, take me deeper into the narrative structure. This is the secret sauce––the reason why the words are so textured and dense. The reason why I am still finding creative paths when algorithms have pronounced them dead and IT geniuses proclaimed content free.
About the music, spoken word triangulation process: if the words fit the music, I am good to go (for the nonce). If they do not, I adjust . (The background music here is PERRO**, an acoustic project with Garcia, Crosby, Kakounen, Freiburg, etc. that I stumbled on on Youtube literally minutes before I employed it in the service of literary production - the flute at the end is naturally my own).
Musical compatibility does not mean the passage is ready to go. Like as not, I will mull it over, come back again the next day and change it up other subtle ways.*** (You can blame the training I got from William Winston as a fledgling writer for that).
Beyond readership, putting Ari Park online as a serial has become a necessary process for me. I am finally (and very quickly, considering the thousands of hours already chalked up) settling on a finished version of the novel, with no editorial or marketplace pressures.
Are you listening, Franzen? It's me, Damon.
I have been experimenting with blog posts, trying to find a readership pattern. The take home seems to be that when I post a new section of the novel I get 600+ views in a day. When I post a poem or something offhand, I get less than 200. Note to self: quality counts and some people are getting into the narrative flow. Which motivates me to speed up the editing process, get sections out. Even at top speed, say one section every 2-3 days, Ari Park is of a length that it will take more than a year to complete.
If I start getting thousands of views (serious readers, no gimmicks) a day I may drop my SEO work for a week or a month and really focus on shaping the novel up, because now we are talking about potential e-book purchasers and a way of making a living as a creative writer.
How is the editing-on-the-fly process going with Arisugawa Park? Let me give a little sample, an audio capture* of what I do with music, words, flute––whatever I have on hand to set a rhythm, take me deeper into the narrative structure. This is the secret sauce––the reason why the words are so textured and dense. The reason why I am still finding creative paths when algorithms have pronounced them dead and IT geniuses proclaimed content free.
About the music, spoken word triangulation process: if the words fit the music, I am good to go (for the nonce). If they do not, I adjust . (The background music here is PERRO**, an acoustic project with Garcia, Crosby, Kakounen, Freiburg, etc. that I stumbled on on Youtube literally minutes before I employed it in the service of literary production - the flute at the end is naturally my own).
Musical compatibility does not mean the passage is ready to go. Like as not, I will mull it over, come back again the next day and change it up other subtle ways.*** (You can blame the training I got from William Winston as a fledgling writer for that).
Beyond readership, putting Ari Park online as a serial has become a necessary process for me. I am finally (and very quickly, considering the thousands of hours already chalked up) settling on a finished version of the novel, with no editorial or marketplace pressures.
Are you listening, Franzen? It's me, Damon.
* So far blog reads have not translated into a significant number listens. I am curious to see if a couple hundred views of this post translates into more than 3 SoundCloud listens. The reason for the disconnect? My audio output may seem relatively scattered and formless, particularly given the western tradition in which most readers are immersed. I tend to seek out the scattered and formless for those nuggets that send shivers deep into my soul.
** Planet Earth Rock n' Roll Band. Very 1970 redwood hills, I know.
*** Literary sleuths may be interested to compare the audio with the finished written version, when section 1.11 goes live.
SEO Alert - Damon Shulenberger, planet Earth writer.
** Planet Earth Rock n' Roll Band. Very 1970 redwood hills, I know.
*** Literary sleuths may be interested to compare the audio with the finished written version, when section 1.11 goes live.
SEO Alert - Damon Shulenberger, planet Earth writer.
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