darusha/blog

I've moved...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:08:56 +1300

In an effort to finally consolidate my online presence (or some other 21st century buzzwd j’argot) I’ve moved my blog.

Check it out at http://darusha.ca/blog. If you’re a subscriber by rss, the new feed is http://darusha.ca/category/blog/feed.

Working...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:48:12 +1300

So, with the incredible end of my IndieGoGo campaign, I’ve got a shot in the arm financially and motivationally. Which means I’m keeping plenty busy.

Final editing and audio recording of The Beauty of Our Weapons is coming along - it feels slooooowwww, but it’s actually moving ahead at a good pace. If the weather holds (I can’t record when it’s raining or windy), I should be done in a couple of weeks.

Then I can get final formatting done for the hard copies and start that process.

I’m also working on the short story commissioned by my patron, theoretically more than practically working on another novel and I have another short story percolating away in my brain. Busy, but happy - that’s how I like it!

(Check out the cover art by JT Lindroos. How awesome is that?!)

Self-publishing tips: ebooks

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:01:00 +1300

I recently wrote a long email to a friend who is looking to publish his first novel as as an ebook and asked me for some tips. Over 1600 words later, it dawned on me that other people might find this information helpful, so here’s a slightly edited version.

This deals exclusively with publishing ebooks only. I may write up a similar resource for self-publishing paper copies.

Copyright, ISBNs, imprints

You don’t need to do anything to copyright written work; in fact, there’s nothing you can do. However, when you make a digital or paper copy, ensure you have a copyright statement at the beginning (usually right after the title page/title matter). It looks like this:

Awesome Novel Title

by Author Name

Copyright 2012 Author Name

Published by imprint

ISBN 978-0-9999999-9-9

You’ll notice two things: the “published by” and ISBN. The first is optional, the second mandatory.

When you self-publish, you are the publisher (obvious, I know). Some marketplaces (Amazon is one) include this information on the sales page. There’s nothing wrong with using your name as the publisher.

This becomes particularly relevant because it is the publisher that is responsible for obtaining the ISBN. All books need one, and a different one per edition (separate ISBNs for ebooks, paperbacks, hardcovers etc.) Most distribution methods (Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords, CreateSpace, lulu.com - more about these later) will provide an ISBN for you, some with a fee, some without. In many cases you can find a way to get ISBNs for free.

However, if you are a Canadian publisher, you are entitled to free ISBNs. This is what I do - assign my own ISBNs, which ensures that I am always listed as the publisher. While I understand that Amazon et al haven’t enforced their rights to be listed as the publisher of work for people who used their ISBNs, they possibly could, therefore reducing your options if you wanted to publish elsewhere or remove your work from their marketplace. Given Amazon’s recent play to corner the ebook market further, I’m a little paranoid and prefer to control my own ISBNs. And, did I mention it’s free?

Canadians can set up an account and get a block of ISBNs at Canadian ISBN Service System (CISS) - Library and Archives Canada If you are resident of the US, you can purchase blocks of ISBNs at Bowker. Residents of other countries should check with their own governments’ websites, as Canada is not unique in offering this service to its residents.

Formatting Ebook Files

Turning your manuscript into an ebook can be simple or complicated. There are pay-for services (Jim and Zetta are well respected, but I’ve never used them) who will take a manuscript and make ebooks for you. There are also programs, like Scrivener (which I use anyway for writing) which will export in kindle (.mobi) and .epub formats.

You could also download Calibre, which is open source ebook library/conversion software. You could then use it to make ebook files from a .rtf version of your manuscript, though you’d need to carefully check the output.

However, for most people there is probably a better method, which is part of the next section.

Another issue is the cover. If you’re an artist, you can do a fine job on your own, with some research about what makes a good ebook cover. I’m not an artist and I did my own covers for my first three books. I’ve hired an artist the current one and the difference is astonishing (I’m working with JT Lindroos and am very, very happy). There are several good resources on what makes for a good ebook cover - I like this list at Unruly Guides. Also, browse through the various ebook stores and the covers there. You can see what works and what doesn’t.

Where/how to sell ebooks

I understand the thinking that Amazon is the 900 lb gorilla of ebook sales, so one should just stick with them. I do sell kindle versions of my books directly through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, though if you aren’t a US resident, I’m not sure I recommend it. If you don’t have a US (not US dollar, US bank) bank account, Amazon doesn’t send you any of your earnings until you reach $100. However, if you do have a US bank account, the threshold is $10, and they’ll directly deposit the amount into your bank account.

Regardless of the US bank account thing, I still strongly recommend you take a serious look at using smashwords.com to convert and distribute your book. Thier business model is pretty much the same as Amazon’s: you give them a cut of each copy sold, and there are no upfront fees at all. Smashwords has the following advantages:

They take a .doc copy of your manuscript and do the conversion to all ebook formats for you for free
They distribute via all the major ebook markets, including Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, the Apple iBookstore, Kobo and others
Your book appears on these partner marketplaces exactly the same as it would if you published there yourself
If you need ISBNs, they will supply them for free
Smashwords takes a slightly larger cut of these distributed copies (60/40 split), but pays via paypal quarterly for earnings over $10 USD, regardless of where you live
You can also sell directly on smashwords’ site for a greater cut of earnings (85%)
They create file formats which work for anyone with a computer - no need to restrict your audience to people with Amazon Kindles (or any other particular hardware)

There a good rundown of how the process works here: http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords

I publish with smashwords and am very happy with them. If your manuscript is simply structured (eg. all the chapters start with the word “Chapter”) or you have MS Word and follow their detailed by simple instructions for formatting, I think their conversion process is as good as any other.

If you are not a US resident, you’ll need a US International Taxpayer Identification Number to sell on Amazon or smashwords. It took me a few months to get mine, so apply early. You can get the application form here[pdf] and more information at the IRS.

Price

Oy. Among self-publishing circles, this is the topic with the most discussion and the least agreement. Here’s what I can tell you: most of my books are prices at $2.99 USD. A new release I start out at $4.99 and reduce when the next one is coming soon. My first novel is priced at 99¢, but is also available for free download at various sites. I plan to reduce the price on the first book in my series to 99¢ when the third book is released in 2012.

Some people argue that pricing your book “too low” means that readers expect it to be schlock. Others argue that a low barrier to purchase means more sales/readers, and there’s a whole school of thought about the 99¢ ebook - there are forums and websites solely devoted to free and 99¢ Kindle books.

Ebooks of novels published by the big 6 traditional houses are priced all over the place, many over $15-20. The consensus among ebook readers seems to be that it’s too high and I agree. I don’t buy an ebook priced over $8 and $5 or less is my sweet spot. I’m quite cheap, though, so not a good bellwether.

This is a hard question and I don’t have the answer. If you figure it out, please tell me. How you price your book depends a lot on the answers to the next question:

What is your goal?

If you’re trying to make a living as a writer, the above probably isn’t the best way to go. The traditional route of agent -> traditional publisher will probably net you more money if you’re successful and build a career. However, few people are, in fact, successful at building a career that way.

If you just want people to read your work, you might do better releasing the novel for free on sites like Feedbooks.com and manybooks.net. I released my first novel on those sites and have had over 30,000 downloads on one site alone, plus dozens of excellent reviews. I probably got a few paying fans that way. I definitely got paying fans by releasing the books as a free audiobook download, but that’s a lot of work. If it sounds fun, look at the guidelines for authors at podiobooks.com.

If you’re looking to make a non-living career out of writing (my own goal - it’s never going to pay the bills, but it pays for itself with a bit left over), then going the pay-for ebook release is a good choice. You do need to be aware that just making the book available will not bring you readers. You need to find ways to let people know about it - get interviewed on podcasts about the kind of thing you write, get recommended by similar writers etc.

Podcasting the audiobooks through podiobooks.com got me most of my fans, with word of mouth next on the list. The marketing part is the aspect of the process I find most difficult, and there are several better resources than me to look at for that information. I recommend ePublish Unum and The Self Publishing Review as places to get started.

The executive summary is this:

Think seriously about what you want out of this endeavour
Honestly determine what you can and cannot do yourself
Determine how you can get paid
Consider using smashwords.com
Try to find a way a way to get your ISBNs for free

KDP Select - Nothing Good for Indie Authors

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:32:21 +1300

Recently, Amazon.com announced its KDP Select program. This allows authors who publish ebooks directly in Amazon’s Kindle Store to enrol their books in Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. According to Amazon “[t]he Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates.”

Books that are borrowed would earn a share of a fixed pool of funds. In December 2011, the fund is $500,000. Amazon explains it thusly:

Your share of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Fund is calculated based on a share of the total number of qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles. For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%), or $7,500 in December. (from the FAQ)

Sounds pretty great, right? I thought so, too, and was all ready to enrol my three Kindle titles in the program. Until I read the fine print: “When you choose KDP Select for a book, you’re committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc.”

From the Terms and Conditions:

Exclusivity. When you include a Digital Book in KDP Select, you give us the exclusive right to sell and distribute your Digital Book in digital format while your book is in KDP Select. During this period of exclusivity, you cannot sell or distribute, or give anyone else the right to sell or distribute, your Digital Book (or content that is reasonably likely to compete commercially with your Digital Book, diminish its value, or be confused with it), in digital format in any territory where you have rights.

So you are stuck with Amazon’s Kindle Store as the only place the digital copy of your book may appear. All those readers who don’t use Kindles or Kindle software have no way to access your book. Worse, still, all those readers who live somewhere not services by the Kindle Store, have no way to read your ebook. So, even if you want to sell (or give away) your book in Switzerland, where Amazon’s Kindle Store does not operate, you can’t.

“But,” you ask, “everyone uses Amazon, right? And there’s Kindle software for everything, PCs, Macs, smartphones, tablets. Who cares if I only sell on Amazon?”

Maybe you don’t care that you are forcing your readers to use only Kindle products. Maybe you don’t care that all those potential fans who already use other technologies will never see your book.

“What potential fans?” you say.

Well, according to Publishers Weekly, a recently study indicated that Amazon had 38% of the ebook market and its market share was dropping. Indeed, a reduction in market share is a fine reason for them to introduce this kind of program.

Let’s say that study is out or date, or just plain wrong. Let’s say Amazon actually has 50% market share. By making your books exclusively available on Amazon, participants in the KDP Select program are losing half their potential sales in exchange for the mere inclusion of their books in a list of books which include bestsellers by well known authors. The real potential for income generation by inclusion in the Select program has yet to be seen, but the cost is clear: the readers from all those other sales channels.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program is overall a great boon to independent authors, but it seems evident to me that the KDP Select program is a net loss to independent authors who publish ebooks.

Think before you click Enrol.

IndieGoGo Campaign Update

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:45:16 +1300

Almost halfway there!

The fundraising campaign for the release of The Beauty of Our Weapons is almost halfway funded. I’m busy working on layout, editing and getting everything ready for the print versions and I’m hoping to have a preliminary cover design to show you all soon.

One of the limited rewards just got snapped up, so if you had your eye on one, you’d better get on it.

Thanks everyone for contributing and sharing this campaign. I appreciate all the support thrown my way.

If you haven’t taken a look at the fundraising campaign yet, check it out at IndieGoGo for pre-orders, limited edition hardcovers and other goodies.

My drabble (100 word story) "Homecoming" is up at Luna Station Quarterly.

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:41:54 +1300

My drabble (100 word story) "Homecoming" is up at Luna Station Quarterly.

My short story appearing in Luna Station Quarterly

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:34:44 +1300

My short story appearing in Luna Station Quarterly:

I’ve got a short story appearing in the December all drabble issue of Luna Station Quarterly. Check it out - it’s free to read!

Help Me Release My Next Book

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:34:50 +1300

I’m going to be releasing my newest book, The Beauty of Our Weapons, in early 2012. To help fund the release, I’m raising money through IndieGoGo.

Please go take a look at the campaign and fund it if you can. There are great goodies for all contributions, including pre-release copies of the book in all the formats I usually publish.

And please pass it on. Even if you can’t contribute, please post on all the social media sites you use. The more exposure I get, the more successful this will be.

Thanks!

Nothing Exists in a Vacuum

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:34:37 +1200

Recently, we celebrated the third anniversary of leaving Canada. It’s not that we’re particularly happy to not be living in Canada - rather, we miss the places and people all the time. But instead we were celebrating the three years of traveling the world, testing our limits and living the Big Adventure of living on a small (relative to the grand expanse of the ocean) sailboat.

It’s been a fabulous experience, but we both feel like it’s time to slow down. We aren’t necessarily giving up cruising, but we want a bit of a normal life for a while. So when we get to New Zealand this spring (fall, for you northern hemisphere folks), we plan to stick around for a while.

One of the reasons that this is a compelling choice for me, is that I really miss having an in-person writing community. I am well connected with other writers via the internet, and feel like I have a very supportive online community. But I often miss the meetings I had with the critique group I was involved with back in Canada, and am really looking forward to participating in the vibrant artistic community alive in New Zealand.

I’m already a member of SpecFicNZ, though I never managed to make a meetup when we were there last year. I’m hoping to remedy that situation in 2012, and also hope to possibly attend one of the Spec Fic conferences.

While writing is fundamentally a solitary activity, it doesn’t have to be a lonely one. I’m looking forward to connecting with new colleagues in an active scene in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I'm an Alien

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:01:00 +1200

[This was originally published as a guest post on John Mierau’s blog]

(photo by rarebeasts)

As I write this, I have been an alien for over three years. I’m a Canadian, but I’ve been in Canada for fewer than two of the past 36 months. I live on a sailboat and since 2008 I’ve been traveling the world about as fast as a dog can run. Sometimes it seems hard to believe.

But all authors spend much of their lives as foreigners. In our stories we, like our readers, are visitors to the fictional lands we’ve created. But unlike our readers, we authors are the tour guides and as such we have to pay attention to the little things that the locals take for granted.

We need to spend some time in our stories, finding the best grocery stores, figuring out the local transit system and poking our noses into that hole in the wall eatery in the sketchy part of town. Each story is an opportunity for cultural exchange between the world we live in and the world of our characters.

Editor extraordinaire Ben Bova wrote, in the must-read The Craft Of Writing Science Fiction That Sells:

“Your job as a writer is to make the reader live in your story. You must make the reader forget that he is sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair, squinting at the page in poor light, while all sorts of distractions poke at him. You want your reader to believe that he is actually in the world of your imagination, the world you have created, climbing up that mountain you’ve written about, struggling against the cold and ice to find the treasure that you planted up at the peak.”

Writers all know that the key to writing success is best distilled as “butt in chair.” But there’s more to writing great stories than just pounding away at the keyboard. If you want to create a world in your story that is more real to the reader than her own comfy reading chair, you need to get away from the keyboard every once in a while and interact with the real world, especially the parts of the world that are strange. At least, strange to you.

Whether you write mainstream young adult fiction, warm-hearted Christian romance or hard SF space opera, you can get ideas for settings, plots and characters from engaging with people and places that are unfamiliar to you. Visiting a foreign country (or even a foreign part of your own town) can open your eyes to new ways of living, to new styles of dress or culture and to new people.

My attraction to travel is, perhaps oddly for a writer, based more on seeing new places than meeting new people. The humbling solitude of sailing the wide open sea of the Pacific, craning my neck to follow a tropic bird soaring past the peaks of Polynesia, listening to the endless animal song in the jungles of Central America — these are the rewards I seek from a life on the move. But, even so, I know that those places that were the most wonderful of all I’ve visited were made that way as much by the people I met there as by the grandeur of the landscape.

Fiction writing is all about character. Settings, especially in science fiction and fantasy, are incredibly important, but without the characters we love to live through, all that worldbuilding is meaningless. If we want to write compelling stories, we need compelling characters in compelling situations. And travel, at its best and its worst, puts us in a position of meeting all kinds of characters.

Many of the people I’ve met along the way have found their ways into my stories — a turn of phrase here, a hair-raising anecdote there. I’ve learned that the more people I meet, from as diverse backgrounds as possible, the better and more real my characters have become. Plus, people tell wonderful stories about their lives and their homes. Just as a writer must be a reader, a storyteller must be a storylistener as well.

The places I’ve visited and the people I’ve met there don’t show up unadulterated in my stories. I don’t have a story about spending 30 hours on a dilapidated bus in South America and I don’t have a novel set in the ancient Mayan capital of Tikal. But those adventures have given me ideas which do appear in my stories, disguised by the veil of fiction but made more real because of my experience.

This is what fiction writers ultimately do — distill the kernels of their own experiences into stories that, even though they never factually occurred, expose a core human truth.

I have the great fortune of having spent over three years as a full-time traveler, but you don’t need to sail a boat half way around the world to see new places and meet new people. Go for lunch with a co-worker you hardly know. Take a bus to the nearest city or small town. Visit a different church or take in a public lecture at the local college. Expose yourself to something different; don’t be afraid to be the stranger in the room.

Travel doesn’t have to mean expensive vacations. Travel means encountering that which is different with an open mind and a true willingness to learn about something new. And after all, isn’t exposing us to different lives and different worlds what great stories do?

How to Survive the [blank] Apocalypse for Foodies

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:25:59 +1200

photo by stevendepolo via flickr

Living on a sailboat in the tropics teaches a person many things: “tradewinds” does not mean 15 knots from the east all the time, stingrays are amazingly cuddly and eating food from stores doesn’t have to be awful.

We’ve been living in a special kind of future for the past couple of weeks — there’s no grocery store but there is broadband internet. It’s a tough call whether the reverse would be preferable. But there it is. Due to a combination of events, we’ve been kind of stuck here, so I’ve gotten lots of recent practice with cooking from stores.

We keep a good amount of canned food and other stuff that lasts on board, exactly because of situations like this. Even in places where there are supplies, sometimes the weather doesn’t let us get ashore or the shops themselves are out of things (the great Labasa butter shortage of ‘11, for example). So I know how to manage on not much. Here’s how a reasonable supply of emergency food can be made palatable:

Add a decent dried herb and spice collection to your Oh God, It’s The Zombies food horde. A can of tomatoes, a can of beans, some onions and garlic aren’t much on their own, but with some nice curry powder, it’s a feast. And it’s a proven fact that zombies hate the smell of curry.
Making bread isn’t that hard. So long as your yeast is alive and you have an oven, homemade bread will keep you going. And PB and J tastes a million times better on warm, fresh bread.
Couscous or bulghur beats rice any day when water or cooking fuel is scarce. Both absorb less water and cook faster than rice, plus you can just chuck them in the sauce of your stew (see #1). In a pinch, couscous can even be prepared with cold water, which works fine for your tabbuli salad (just add parsley and mint from your spice cabinet).
Beans. Pre-cooked protein and hours of entertainment after the meal.
Lots of food can be kept unrefrigerated and therefore used in the direst of apocalyptic situations. Eggs, most condiments, pickles, onions, potatoes, many cheeses, bread, peanut butter and jam all will last in a milk crate or backpack while fleeing the torch-wielding neighbours. And if an egg does go off, it makes a decent projectile weapon.

So when you’re supplying to wait out some kind of catastrophe, you don’t have to live on hardtack or Clif Bars. Just remember to bring bowls and spoons along with your shovel and towel.

Act of Will is a Parsec Award nominee

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:54:26 +1200

In excellent company, Act of Will was given the nod as a finalist in this year’s Parsec Awards. The Parsecs celebrate excellence in speculative fiction podcasting, and it’s a great honour to have made it to the finals.

Congratulations to my co-finalists:

FRANK - Vol.01: Boiling Point by Neil Colquhoun
The Hidden Institute by Brand Gamblin
Kissyman & the Gentleman by Scott Sigler
Marco and the Red Granny by Mur Lafferty

Junowrimo

Mon, 30 May 2011 15:59:06 +1200

About a month ago, I started to have this familiar feeling. It’s kind of akin to heartburn crossed with nervousness. I know that sorta sick sorta excited feeling. It’s a novel idea. Not a new or previously unthought-of idea. No, it’s an idea for a novel.

But it’s not merely an idea. That’s too small. It’s like this universe is forming in my mind, small at first, then expanding rapidly until all these little details have been made extant - a character’s nickname, the colour of a house, the title (always the hardest part for me). So. I guess I’m writing another novel.

The timing wasn’t great, I thought, given that it’s May and all. Then I heard about the Southern Cross Novel Challenge (SocNoc), and I was like, “Hey! That’s perfect!”

So, for the month of June, I’m pretending it’s Nano time and writing this novel that won’t get out of my head any other way. It’s not like I have anything else to do here in Fiji where the water is clear and warm and full of beautiful fish to look at. No. Nothing else at all.

I got this done yesterday by the amazingly talented Renée Lee at...

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:59:00 +1200

I got this done yesterday by the amazingly talented Renée Lee at Art n Soul Studios in Whangarei, New Zealand.

The background is a maori design representing the four winds, with sails near the bottom and islands near the top.

Great design and excellent tattoo work!

Why I Love Goodreads

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 18:48:17 +1300

If you’ve never heard of Goodreads, it’s sort of like an online book club. Or library. Sort of.

Like Shelfari* and LibraryThing*, Goodreads is a social networky place where you can list the books you’re reading, have read and want to read. You can read and post reviews, see what folks you know are reading and whatnot. There are links to buy books online from every book page, too, so it’s easy to get your fix fast.

While this sounds cool, I’ve been surprised at how cool it really is. I read a lot, like really A LOT, now, and a lot of the books disappear into book exchanges. By keeping track of what I read, I can see what I’ve read and what I thought of it. A great way to remember the books I’ve loved (or less than loved).

I also have managed to get great suggestions of books to read from people I know, which I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s not a very chatty social network, like Facebook or Twitter, though you can seamlessly post reviews and what you’re reading to either or both sites if you like. For me, GR is more like a source I use to keep track of the books I’ve read and want to read with a dose of “ooh, look, she liked that? Maybe I should read it, too” every once in a while.

Seriously, if you read a lot, check it out.

* I’ve never used Shelfari or LibraryThing, but I suspect they are just as cool, if one or either of them is more your cuppa tea.

Love Podiobooks? Lend a hand.

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:47:58 +1300

Love Podiobooks? Lend a hand.:

Folks (like me) love the free fiction available at podiobooks.com. They love it so much that the cost to host the site have climbed through the roof. If you want to help out, throw ‘em a few bucks.

We all want smooth sailing ahead!

PS. Originally I typoed “the costs to hose the site…” Freudian Fingerslip, indeed!

Why I Self-Publish as Explained by Someone Else

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:49:23 +1300

Why I Self-Publish as Explained by Someone Else:

My good pal Dave had written a lot about why he thinks authors should give the two-fingered salute to traditional publishers, and here’s another salvo on that front.

He’s much more articulate on this issue than I am, so it’s a good read for those of you who wonder why I self-publish rather than fight to go the trad. publisher route.

As explained by snarky Dave:

The literary world wants you to know two facts: 1) If you open an independent, non-chain and non-corporate bookstore you should be supported. 2) If you publish your own work as an independent, non-chain and non-corporate publisher the book is clearly bad and should not be supported. It’s so obvious. Hustling to sell other peoples books == good. Hustling to sell your own books == bad – but only when you are making most of the money. If you hustle to earn 15% of retail price, then it is back to good again.

Writing Underway

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:51:02 +1300

Now that I have successfully reached 50000 words this November, and another Nanowrimo win, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Because I have to admit that trying to write a novel while undertaking one of the most challenging ocean passages of our trip might not have been the best idea.

Being underway seems like the perfect time to write. Most non-sailors don’t realize that most of the time underway is spent doing more or less nothing. Cruising boats are set up to drive themselves - on Scream we have two different tools for self-steering, a windvane and an electric autopilot, and we are almost always using one of these. On an ocean passage out jobs are mainly are just making sure that we are more or less on course and that everything is working correctly. You’d think that would leave lots of time for other activities, like writing.

The reality is that even though most of our time is spent just hanging out, it’s not that simple. It’s tough to hang on to a laptop in rolling seas, especially when we take the occasional unpredictable wave into the cockpit. And working down below, while it seems like the ideal solution, is a recipe for seasickness.

On our passage from Tonga to New Zealand, I was hoping to write 1500-2000 words a day. As it turned out, I managed the following on the ten day trip:

Day 1: 0
Day 2: 435
Day 3: 1,964
Day 4: 1,169
Day 5: 1,878
Day 6: 1,588
Day 7: 0
Day 8: 1,520
Day 9: 2,046
Day 10: 0

You can see pretty clearly the days when things were a little rough.

Happily, I’ve been getting lots of writing time in now that we are safely here in Opua, New Zealand. It’s nice to be able to relax, and now that I’ve got the win firmly under my belt, I can concentrate on finishing the story. And enjoying the land of plenty.

Comments? Talk to me via twitter, @darusha.

Water water everywhere...

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 12:20:00 +1300

Living on the sea, water is the one constant in our lives. The oceans are so vast, it is almost impossible to describe day after day of seeing nothing but water in all directions. At times it feels as if the whole universe is made of water.

But, of course the need for water, fresh drinking water, is one that we feel in our lives much more acutely here than we ever did living on land. Not only are we away from city mains with treated water supplies, and reliant on our own water tanks for our supply, but we have been making landfall in parts of the world where reliable drinking water is not guaranteed. In the year we spent in Latin America, we spent only three months in a country where you can drink the tap water (Costa Rica). The people living in Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Ecuador have to purchase bottled water to drink and for cooking, and some of these are the poorest people we have met on our travels so far.

However, many of the places we visited where you can’t drink the water are not that poor: In Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, the government is spending millions on a new bridge, when a fraction of that amount could be spent to treat the town’s water supply. Mexico is, compared to the other Latin American countries we visited, a wealthy nation and you can’t drink the water anywhere there.

Here in Polynesia, the water situation is much better. You can drink the water everywhere, and the large annual rainfall makes for a relative abundance of water most of the time. The people here don’t waste water, though, which is something we find we notice very easily now.

When we were in California, we installed a desalinator, which allows us to use electrical power and filters to make fresh water out of seawater. We have been very happy with it, filling up with “dock water” only twice since we left the USA. We did catch rain extensively in Central America, taking a cue from the locals who often have excellent raincatching facilities on their properties. The desalinator, along with our large 1000 litre tank, gives us a relatively large water budget on Scream. Many of our friends are not so lucky, their primary concern whenever they make landfall being “Where can I get water?”

Even with the comparatively large amount of water available to us, we have discovered that we use so much less water than we ever did on land, and we imagined ourselves to be conservationists then. We recently estimated that we average no more than 8 litres per day per person on Scream, and that seemed like a huge amount. Compare that to a single bathtub of water, which much be at least 200 litres!

We do our own laundry on board, and that 8L figure includes the year and a half when we did our laundry with a washing machine, which used about 50-60 litres per load. We shower regularly, even underway, but we can no longer imagine the days of standing under a running tap for five minutes. Even in the USA, when we used shore facilities, the dollar for three minutes showers would do both Steven and myself with time left over for luxuriating.

It has become obvious to us that the way we used water when we lived on land is incredibly wasteful compared to the the way so many people live around the world. Being at sea and having to actively manage our water usage and creation, I feel like I’ve learned a valuable lesson in not taking for granted a single drop that comes from our taps.

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This post is crossposted from my sailing blog and is part of Blog Action Day.

Dreaming of Safeway

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:16:00 +1200

image by DoGoLaCa

I had an amazing dream the other night. I was walking through a fancy Safeway store, in the produce aisle. There were giant bins of vegetables - eggplants the size of your head, zucchinis galore. When I woke up, I had that feeling you get after incredible flying or sex dreams: wow, that was wonderful. But, how terrible, it’s not real.

I envy people with ready access to grocery stores. Where you can buy whatever you want whenever you want. I haven’t had that in over a year.

Envy is one of those emotions which gets a bad rap. You’re not supposed to be envious of others; you should be happy with your lot in life. And, certainly, I have no cause to complain about my life. I’m usually on the receiving end of envy, especially lately. As I write this, I”m at anchor in the unique and beautiful Galápagos islands, watching penguins, seals and blue-footed boobies hang around my boat. I know a lot people who wish they were here, and I can’t blame them.

The thing I’ve realized about envy is that it’s useful. Being envious of someone shows you what you want. I want hot and cold running fresh vegetables. Some people want a better job or an iPad or a supermodel’s body. Those things are all typical desires. The trouble is when we focus on these little envies instead of our real goals.

The key to envy is that you can use it to figure out the difference between what you’d have if you could have or do anything and what you really, truly want. In my experience, figuring out what you really, really want is one of the hardest things in life to do.

If I really wanted the Safeway store more than anything, I could have it. Sell my boat and move back to Victoria, where there were several fabulous grocery stores, plus a bunch of great weekend markets. It wouldn’t be all that hard to do, if I truly wanted it. But, of course, I don’t want grocery stores more than anything. I’m perfectly happy to give up easy shopping for my life on the sea. I have other envies where the decisions are less clear, but thinking about what I’d have to do to make them happen throws into sharp focus what I really want and what I don’t.

To go sailing I’ve had to give up on other desires, at least temporarily. My writing career has had to take a certain shape, and I’m not able to focus on it the same way I would be able to if I were a landlubber. And I’m often envious of my writer friends who are able to promote their work more than me, who are going to cons and working on a gazillion projects. But, like with the grocery stores, I know exactly what I would have to do to fulfil that desire. And so the choice becomes easy, and the envy doesn’t consume me, it helps me.