I'm giving up momentarily on finding the best interactive fiction engine for
my Treo-- it's just too frustrating. The Hugo engine only plays one game at
a time and now I have the weird feeling that everything I uploaded to my PDA
has become lost to me, but is undeletable. Besides, I'm more interested in
prose than interactive fiction at the moment-- at least until I find some
good software for both desktop and Treo and can play the games reliably.
Despite Hugo's apparent cross-compatibility, there are bugs everywhere.
There are other software to pursue, but I'm tired of thinking of all of it.
I'm more interested in free fiction on the Internet. I thought today of what
would make a successful free book, and this is my working idea:
(1) the achievement of a whole work of fiction, short story or novel;
(2) the available resources and education to edit/revise that novel to the
best of one's ability;
(3) comprehensive criticism and feedback for further improvement.
I can think of no other steps that better benefit a sold, published book
than these, save marketing and promotion, which are exactly what repel me
from the bestseller lists. Now that there is a way for people to publish
their writing on the Internet, many are doing so, and in the cases of the
best, there is no substitute in published form.
As it happens, my goal is to publish my writing on my site to the best of my
ability, without attempting to publish it in print form. Having abandoned
that idea for almost a year, I feel amazingly free to write whatever I want.
I know this must be a good thing: I feel as I did when I first began
writing, before I started growing anxious about what I would ever sell. Now
I don't worry about it. I don't desire the recognition of a published book,
really, and the money certainly means nothing to me. To have others read my
work is all I want, and now that e-books are becoming more accessible, I see
no reason why I shouldn't concentrate totally on putting my writing on the
web, according to my working formula above.