So. Here we are. The last day of the Inkshares/Nerdist contest. Wow.

Congratulations to the winners. I hope winning the contest is everything you hoped it would be, and you are able to use this wonderful opportunity to its fullest extent.

Congratulations to everybody who has finished writing a novel. Short stories are sprints, novels are effing ironman marathons. Just being able to complete a major work of art such as a novel is a minor miracle, and you should be very proud you have done it.

Finally, congratulations to everybody who is working on their first novel. Being an artist is a lonely, frustrating, highly misunderstood life – and we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

So, that’s me. I know I still have 45 days to get my book published here, but honestly: if I couldn’t get 40 preorders in 45 days, how likely is it that I’ll be able to get 960 preorders in the next 45 days? Besides, I have a novel to finish writing by the end of the year, and November and December are likely to be filled with my data entry day job, so the next month is the only realistic time I will have to finish it.

Thanks to everybody who has supported Both Sides. NOW! That has meant a lot to me. And, fear not for Both Sides. NOW! It’s a very good novel, and they always find a home somewhere sooner or later.

CONCLUSION

I say this at the end of all of my readings and interviews, so I thought I should probably end with it here. If you read a book by a small press or self-published author that you really enjoy let the world know! Blog about it. Post reviews to Amazon, Goodreads or the like. Mention it to your social networks. Small press and self-published authors live and die by word of mouth, and your friends would probably be grateful to find a good book by a new writer. Everybody wins!

PS

If you’re interested in keeping up with me beyond the Inkshares/Nerdist contest, I’m all over the place.

MY WEB SITE: Les Pages aux Folles (http://www.lespagesauxfolles.ca)

ON TWITTER at https://twitter.com/#!/ARNSProprietor (I follow back any HUMAN who is NOT TRYING TO SELL ME SOMETHING, whether it be a product or a religion)

ON FACEBOOK at http://www.facebook.com/ira.nayman (personal page)

ON FACEBOOK AGAIN at http://www.facebook.com/ThrishtyFriednishes (author’s page – Shtay thrishty my friednishes!)

ON AMAZON.COM: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AIra%20Nayman (in case you’re curious about my available writing)

Oh, dear – I didn’t post an update yesterday. Sorry, but I was busy writing.

I contributed 3,300 words to a short story (I polished it today and sent it out). That is by no means a record for me, but it’s more words than I have written in a single day in the recent past, so it felt good. Really good.

I had been struggling with this story. The setting and characters were great, but the story I had originally come up with was way too involved; some day, it may make a great long novella or even short novel, but that wasn’t going to help me write something that had a reasonable chance of getting into the anthology I was considering submitting to. Yesterday, having realized that I had to put that story aside, I came up with a story that used the same setting and characters, but had a much smaller scope. Coming up with the idea took a week and a half; writing the story took about 12 hours, on and off. It goes that way sometimes.

Tomorrow, I start finishing my latest novel!

POST-MORTEM, DAY FIVE

Be fearless.

In the 1990s, I was part of a couple of different radio sketch comedy groups. With the first, I was so nervous about performing that I did very little behind the mic (the fact that we were recording at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation headquarters did not help). With the second, Dead Air, I had no choice.

Dead Air was started by four writers; we had several auditions to get actors (and one for other writers, but that didn’t pan out). At the first recording session, we found that the female actors were amazing, but the male actors? Meh. We didn’t ask all but one of them back to the second recording session. But, of course, that left us with a huge hole in the cast. Three of the four writers ended up performing. Including me.

At first, I was given small straight man roles. But Scott, the unofficial director, must have seen something in me, because he started giving me crazier roles. This was a gamble, inasmuch as I was (and remain) a quiet, laid back person. To both our surprises, I rose to the occasion, giving some truly crazed performances.

To do this, I learned an invaluable lesson from famous comedians (people like Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell): be fearless and commit. No matter how bizarre a character is, you have to be totally committed to the character’s reality and you have to have no fear of falling flat on your face or looking ridiculous. If there is even a shadow of fear in your performance, the audience will sense it and you will lose them.

How does this relate to something like the Inkshares/Nerdist contest? Well, I always hated asking other people for favours. As people who have been following my personal history will appreciate, I never wanted to impose on anybody because I didn’t feel I deserved anybody’s support. I suspect asking for help does not come naturally to a lot of people, who fear being turned down. However, you cannot expect to do well in a contest of this type if you have that attitude.

So, I tried to be fearless. I asked everybody I knew for help. I asked a few people I knew only tangentially for help. I asked complete strangers for help. To my delight, most of the people I knew were happy to help, including some that I didn’t think I was especially close to. People actually like helping others – who knew? A couple of people I knew explained why they felt they could not help, which was cool. Others didn’t respond, which was fine. Most of the people I cold contacted didn’t respond, but that’s understandable; when I start getting requests for help from strangers, I don’t honestly know how I will respond. For me, it’s actually really important that I was able to act against my personality to help my career.

One thing I realized is that you don’t get what you want out of life if you don’t do everything you can to get it. That doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk. But you do have to be fearless.

POST-MORTEM, DAY FOUR

Don’t be embarrassed.

Seriously. If there are 100 entries in a contest with five winners, 95% of the contestants won’t win. I think there were closer to 200 entries, so that means that 97% of the contestants won’t win. Losing, in other words, is the default position; despite this society’s emphasis on winning, there’s no shame in that.

Early on, I pointed out that, win or lose, you should look upon the Inkshares/Nerdist contest as only one part of your artistic/life’s journey. As Richard Bach once said, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” As I used to tell my students when I was a university lecturer, a career in the arts involves 30, 40 or more years of work with no guarantee of success. If you can see yourself doing something else with your life, save yourself the heartache and do it. On the other hand, if you can’t imagine doing anything else with your life, you won’t let a setback like not winning this contest stop you.

You did your best. If that wasn’t enough to win, do your own post-mortem and learn the lessons you need to learn from the experience so that you’ll do better next time. Another quote I like to bandy about in situations like this comes from the great 20th century playwright Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Failing better may not be all that inspirational. But it is a realistic goal.