Why George Saunders (Or Anyone Else) Can Write Whatever They Damn Well Please

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This post, by Kevin McFarland, originally appeared on The AV Club on 1/25/13.

The backlash had to begin sometime. George Saunders’ fourth short-story collection, Tenth Of December, landed on the New York Times Bestseller list in its first week after garnering significant praise, and even a lengthy, glowing New York Times Magazine profile. Saunders is unusual among anointed writers because his major works are all story collections. He’s never published a novel. Which opened up the doors for Adrian Chen at Gawker to waltz in and kick him with the assertion “George Saunders Needs To Write A Goddamn Novel Already,” a demand heady with ignorance about Saunders’ career and what makes him notable in the first place.

The premise of the Gawker piece is that any writer should want to write a novel. But plenty of great living writers (or “literate humans,” as Chen’s opening sentence calls them) haven’t. Sopranos creator David Chase doesn’t write novels. Neither does Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, or Friday Night Lights and Parenthood showrunner Jason Katims, or Hugo screenwriter John Logan, or Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal. Aaron Sorkin, Community and Modern Family writer Megan Ganz, Angels In America playwright Tony Kushner, and God Of Carnage playwright Yasmina Reza have never written novels either. It doesn’t make sense that only a writer focused on short stories must wantto write a novel, or end up stuck in the minor leagues.

This isn’t so hard to believe. “The novel” is no longer the sole measuring stick of a writer’s quality in our time—not when books compete with film and television writers. Chen severely over-romanticizes the importance of a novel in the writer’s landscape today. For a specific subset of fiction writers, it’s the most important form, but by no means the only way to tell a story, or to prove they can produce.

The Pulitzer Prize is the highest award for an American fiction author. The category recognizes all works of fiction, not just novels. Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter Of Maladies have all been awarded the Pulitzer since 2000. All three are short-story collections. (Arguably, the first two are linked story collections, novels-in-stories, or story cycles, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, but Lahiri’s book is without a doubt a traditional short-story collection.) And that’s just counting the winners, rather than the anthologies that have been nominated.

 

Read the rest of the post on The AV Club.

Why Read The Classics?

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This article, by Italo Calvino, originally appeared in the New York Review of Books in October of 1986.

Let us begin with a few suggested definitions.

1) The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say: “I am rereading…” and never “I am reading….”

This at least happens among those who consider themselves “very well read.” It does not hold good for young people at the age when they first encounter the world, and the classics as a part of that world.

The reiterative prefix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of people ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, we need only observe that, however vast any person’s basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.

Hands up, anyone who has read the whole of Herodotus and the whole of Thucydides! And Saint-Simon? And Cardinal de Retz? But even the great nineteenth-century cycles of novels are more often talked about than read. In France they begin to read Balzac in school, and judging by the number of copies in circulation, one may suppose that they go on reading him even after that, but if a Gallup poll were taken in Italy, I’m afraid that Balzac would come in practically last. Dickens fans in Italy form a tiny elite; as soon as its members meet, they begin to chatter about characters and episodes as if they were discussing people and things of their own acquaintance. Years ago, while teaching in America, Michel Butor got fed up with being asked about Emile Zola, whom he had never read, so he made up his mind to read the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle. He found it was completely different from what he had thought: a fabulous mythological and cosmogonical family tree, which he went on to describe in a wonderful essay.

In other words, to read a great book for the first time in one’s maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavor and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates (or ought to appreciate) many more details and levels and meanings. We may therefore attempt the next definition:

2) We use the word “classics” for those books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them; but they are treasured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best conditions to enjoy them.

In fact, reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, owing to impatience, distraction, inexperience with the product’s “instructions for use,” and inexperience in life itself. Books read then can be (possibly at one and the same time) formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, providing models, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value, exemplars of beauty—all things that continue to operate even if the book read in one’s youth is almost or totally forgotten. If we reread the book at a mature age we are likely to rediscover these constants, which by this time are part of our inner mechanisms, but whose origins we have long forgotten. A literary work can succeed in making us forget it as such, but it leaves its seed in us. The definition we can give is therefore this:

3) The classics are books that exert a peculiar influence, both when they refuse to be eradicated from the mind and when they conceal themselves in the folds of memory, camouflaging themselves as the collective or individual unconscious.

Read the rest of the article on The New York Review of Books archive.

Infographic: The Future of Libraries

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We’re glad to be able to share this excellent infographic from Open Site, which has generously released it under Creative Commons licensing.

The graphic shows some very interesting statistics about library usage, demographics and how technology is being used in libraries. It should be of interest to authors and publishers everywhere.

If text in the image below is difficult to read, click here to view the infographic in a larger format on Open Site.

Writing Classes: Are They Worth the Investment?

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This post originally appeared on The Writer’s ABC Checklist on 12/12/12.

Have you considered taking a writing class, but not been sure if that option was right for you? Today, [guest blogger] Kate Willson outlines the pros and cons.

Writing Classes: Are They Worth the Investment?

Throughout my years of working as a freelance writer, I’ve seen countless authors, bloggers, and professional writers jump into heated discussions and debates over whether or not writing is a natural gift, or if it is something that must be honed and developed through years of hard work and intrinsic learning.

I doubt we’ll ever see an end to this age-old debate, but nevertheless, I strongly believe that it can’t hurt to learn more about the art of writing from time to time. That said, I’ve found that writing classes have tremendously helped a great deal of my writing colleagues and acquaintances. If you’re looking to improve your writing work, enrolling in a writing class might be a viable option to consider. Here are some of the pros and cons of enrolling in writing classes.

Pro: Time set aside for writing
When I was a young writer, I used to bemoan the fact that I never had time to write for fun since my newspaper job took up most of my creative energy. With writing classes, however, you’ll have a designated amount of time set aside to do your personal writing. If you have been putting off writing a book, poem, or short story, you’ll finally have a time to do so in your writing classes! Most of the writing classes you’ll take require you to spend a lot of time writing solely for fun, so you’ll not only be practicing your craft, you’ll also be knocking out those side projects you’ve been putting off for much too long.

Pro: Practice makes better
No, practice doesn’t make perfect; it does, however, make better. One of the greatest pros of enrolling in writing classes is the opportunity to stretch your writing bones and improve your craft. Each and every day you spend learning about writing, you’re not only learning more about the ins and outs of professional writing, you’re also improving your body of work. So, if anything, writing classes give you the opportunity to spend practicing your writing skills. And as all seasoned writers know, practice is essential to becoming better.

Read the rest of the post on The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

The Importance of Research in Writing

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One of the things I like most about writing is the research it leads me to. I think of a story idea and start developing it, then discover I need to know more about something that’s relevant to the story. When I was writing MageSign, for example, I needed to have a good working knowledge of cults and their methods of indoctrination. I could have just made it all up, but it’s important to me to know that I’m getting things right. And I owe it to my readers to deliver something as factually correct and consistent as possible. There’s an authenticity to well-researched fiction. Equally, poorly researched fiction stands out as being pretty rubbish, even if a reader can’t quite put their finger on why. That’s the basis for my Write The Fight Right workshops, after all.

Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump

With the cults thing I was lucky in that my mother-in-law is a psychiatrist. She’s been exposed to all kinds of stuff in her line of work and was able to direct me to good quality resources on the subject. I read a lot, educated myself and hopefully wrote an engaging and authentic book that resonated with readers. Along the way, I greatly enjoyed the process, because I learned new things. Education is good, mm-kay.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, I had a really good read partly spoiled by poor research. I’ve just read a novel by Tim Lebbon called Fallen. It’s a great read – a dark fantasy set in the world of Noreela. It’s a bold idea, got great characters, excellent writing and some really cool stuff happens (although I was really disappointed with the ending, which was a shame). I won’t give much away, except to say that the story follows two Voyagers, Ramus and Nomi, and their band of bodyguards. Ramus and Nomi travel and learn for the sake of expanding the knowledge of their nation. To the far south of their land is the Great Divide, a huge wall of rock that stretches from coast to coast and is lost in the clouds above. No one knows how high it is, what’s at the top (if it even has a top) or anything else. So, for reasons explored in interesting ways through the book, Ramus and Nomi set out to climb the Great Divide.

It is a good book and I enjoyed it for the most part. Other than the ending, which I won’t spoil, the other thing that really annoyed me was the climbing research. I don’t know how much experience Tim Lebbon has as a climber. Personally, I’ve only climbed a little bit. It’s a great pastime and one I’d like to do more. However, when I started reading the bit about the climb (which, as you can tell from my brief synopsis above, is a very large and integral part of the book) I had a shock. The characters, as they climbed, kept hammering crampons into the rock face to tie their ropes to for safety. Crampons? I has a confused. This is a crampon:

crampon The Importance of Research in Writing

Crampons are things you strap to your boots to improve traction on snow and ice, especially for ice climbing. You can get walking versions too, for glacier walking and the like. Can you imagine hammering one of those into a rock face and tying a rope to it? You be pretty fucking dead, pretty fucking quick.

These days people use passive safety devices called nuts or hexes for securing their ropes, or more active devices like spring-loaded camming devices. In the old days, they would have just hammered iron spikes into the rock face, I imagine. I don’t know this for certain and would have to research it, but that wouldn’t be hard. Especially with things like Wikipedia and all the hobby forums out there.

Incidentally, even though Lebbon made that mistake, how does something like that get past an editor? Does no-one connected with that book know what a crampon is? Well, I guess that’s a stupid question. Obviously no-one did. And it really spoiled the read for me, because I do know what a crampon is and every time I read about a character hammering one into the rock the narrative became farcical and I ground my teeth and had to try to ignore it and push on regardless.

I’m glad I did because, like I said, it is a good book, ending notwithstanding. Except for the bloody crampon thing. There was another thing I read once, written by an American, where a character passed briefly through England and stopped in a shop. He was charged in Euros. They don’t use Euros in Britain – still the good old pound sterling. It’s a small thing that’s really annoying because it makes the author look dumb and makes the reader question everything else included in the book. If a writer can’t tell the difference between a shoe accessory and a safety device, can I trust him or her on anything else? Unless, of course, I’m really missing something vital and there’s another definition of crampon that I’m not aware of and couldn’t find when I checked.

Even in fantasy and other forms of speculative fiction, it’s really important to get the details right. Internal consistency is essential and building your speculative world in a framework of believable and accurate detail is the only way that suspension of disbelief will survive. We all make mistakes, I’m sure. I bet there are some things in my books that make certain people grind their teeth in frustration. I really hope there aren’t, but I’m not so egotistical to think that I’ve got everything exactly right. But I do try to get things right, I research deeply and the bonus is that I really enjoy that research.

We’re always told to write what we know. Which is a load of bollocks, of course, because we’d run out of things pretty quickly. But we can learn about stuff and then write about it. It’s important that we do, because the process is good fun and it makes us better writers and more informed people. Then we write better books and stories.

Perhaps this whole post is easily summed up thus: When you’re writing, make sure you know the difference between a spiky shoe accessory and an iron spike.

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe site.

Plowing

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This post, by Peg Brantley, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

Sometimes when a writer digs, they find rich soil. Fragrant. The kind of dirt that sticks to your fingers just a little bit and compels you to bring it up to your nose to smell. The kind that brings images of lush growth. The kind where the fertilizer has long lost its poopy scent and blended perfectly into a pungent ripeness, ready for the touch of a master. It brings a promise all its own.

At other times, full of good intentions, a writer hits elusive sand. Or even worse, dense and sticky clay.

So what then?

God, I wish I knew.

I have this amazing story that I’m about a quarter into. I have a self-imposed deadline (but it’s still a deadline), and the date is looking more impossible to achieve every day. I’m struggling to find my focus. My touch. The thing that brings magic to my writing. Energy.

Last night I returned from a week long road trip with my dad during which I wrote not one new word. That’s okay. Sometimes making memories is more important than making a sentence. Truly. And the road trip? Thirteen hours each way, fourteen if you count the breakfasts at Denny’s (which I don’t recommend) and stopping to fill up the gas tank. My dad’s nickname is Rocket-Ass when it comes to road trips. I sort of learned I have a bit of Rocket-Ass in me as well, but that’s another story. Right now all I feel is wiped out. Even with a good night’s sleep in my own bed.

I’m feeling as if I’ve lost my way. After the holidays I never really got back into gear. Tonight I feel as if getting back into gear is the least of my worries. I’ve misplaced the damn car.

Today I’ve been sidetracked. Do I have Amazon Author Pages up in all of the available countries, and if not, why not? Have I refilled all of the bird feeders? Watered the plants that need watering? Have I contacted all of the possible sites to announce the free dates next month for The Missings? Is the grocery list put together enough that I can run my other errands and hit the store without a repeat performance the next day? What about scheduling those dates with friends? Writing… it didn’t happen.

I know I need to just start digging. To believe that among the yucky clay I’m bound to find fertile loam.

Maybe tomorrow.

8 Ways to Get Reviews That Aren't Fake

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This post, by , originally appeared on The Huffington Post Books blog.

We’ve always had a problem with “fake.” Whether it was a fake Kate Spade handbag or a knock-off clothing line, fake has always been a part of our culture. Most of this is made popular by the “don’t you want to have it, too?” mindset that often surrounds celebrities: “Get the dress Jennifer Aniston wore for only $200!” Most of us, however, can spot fake. Or, to help avoid litigation, many reputable companies offer knock-offs of celebrity Oscar gowns and what-not. Fake, however, is not limited to fashion anymore.

Now, fake and counterfeit has begun permeating the publishing industry. We’ve seen things like 35 Shades of Grey and other knock-off titles that seem to circumvent any legal challenges, but there’s a new challenge on the frontier, that of fake reviews. Do you believe reviews? A majority of us don’t, but more often than not we believed the consumer reviews. Not so much anymore, especially now when reviews can be bought, or in some cases, simply faked. The message seems to be: if you want to get noticed, you’d better be prepared to “fake it till you make it.” That’s a nice saying, in theory, but when you’re talking about polluting an Amazon page with a bunch of dummy reviews, that’s another story.

So, what’s an author to do? I’m sure as time wears on it will be tempting to buy into this but what happens when we do? We end up with a cluttered market packed with “I loved this!” and we’re left to wonder, did the person really love it and, even worse, did they even read it? We all want to be liked, or, rather, we want our work to be liked, but to what end?

Several years ago we were on a team retreat. At that time a savvy team member came to me and said, “We can’t put our stock in reviews, these folks are inundated with books to look over, we need to find other channels.” And so we did. Where we used to do review-centric programs (meaning that the success or failure of a marketing campaign depended on the number of reviews we got), we now offer campaigns that are balanced, and yes, we like to get reviews for our customers, but that’s not always the best way to grow your market. Here is perhaps a different set of ideas (and maybe a few you’ve heard before) about getting exposure and (if you’re lucky) getting reviews:

  1. Stay engaged: I see a lot of folks who aren’t engaged in the process or their reader. I’m not talking about running through your to-do list of marketing activities. I’m talking about staying engaged with your reader. Talking to them via your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, whatever. Your reader is your end user, you want reviews to get to them, but in the absence of reviews, guess what? Your outreach to your reader will have a far greater impact on your market and your sales.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 7 more tips for getting genuine reviews, on The Huffington Post Books blog.

How Reading Shakespeare And Wordsworth Offer Better Therapy Than Self-Help Books

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This article originally appeared on The Daily Mail site.

He wrote that the ‘human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants’.

And it appears that simply reading those words by William Wordsworth prove his point.

Reading challenging works by the greatest writers in the English language such as Shakespeare’s King Lear and Philip Larkin’s poetry provides a ‘rocket-boost’ to the brain that cannot be matched by more simplistic modern books, research suggests.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool found the prose of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and the like had a beneficial effect on the mind, providing a ‘rocket-boost’ to morale by catching the reader’s attention and triggering moments of self-reflection.

Using scanners, they monitored the brain activity of volunteers as they read pieces of classical English literature both in their original form and in a more dumbed-down, modern translation.

And, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the experiment showed the more ‘challenging’ prose and poetry set off far more electrical activity in the brain than the pedestrian versions.

The academics were able to study the brain activity as readers responded to each word, and noticed how it ‘lit up’ as they encountered unusual words, surprising phrases or difficult sentence structure.

This reaction of the mind lasted longer than the initial electrical spark, shifting the brain to a higher gear and encouraging further reading.

Read the rest of the article, which also includes brain scan images, on The Daily Mail site.

The Business Rusch: Editorial Revisions

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This post, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her site on 1/23/13.

Recently, the Passive Voice blog pointed out a post on editing by Lynn Price of Behler Publications. Behler Publications is an independent traditional publisher which buys manuscripts and turns them into finished books, distributing them to various book outlets and sending authors royalty statements. Behler has a contractual relationship with its authors.

I state all of that because some of the comments in the PV blog seemed to confuse Behler with independent editors whom self-published authors pay to go over their manuscripts before publishing the book.

What I realized—well, actually remembered—as I read over the comments is that writers have no clue what an editor is and what their relationship to that editor should be.

Writers don’t even seem to be aware that there are many kinds of editors within traditional publishing houses, and even more kinds of editors outside of those houses.

So I’ve decided to give you a two-week short course on how to work with an editor in both traditional and self-publishing. I’m using the term “self-publishing” this week instead of “indie-publishing” primarily for clarity.

Even though I’ll be dealing with traditional book publishing this week, those of you who self publish need to read this to understand what professional editors do and how they can help you. When you self-published writers hire an editor, you become their boss. So you become the traditional publishing company who has contracted with an editor who will then edit a manuscript from some writer. Even though that writer is you, you need to think of the writer as someone else in this instance. If you know how editing works in the big leagues, then you can approximate it in your own small company.

If you are an editor at a traditional publishing company or one who now works for herself, please read this as well. Remember that most writers have no idea what you bring to the table. And some editors never seem to understand that they are not the last word on any manuscript, ever. Just because you editors think something is flawed doesn’t mean that it is. It simply might not work for you.

Traditional publishers have a variety of editorial types working for them. Once upon a time all of these people worked in-house. Now many of them work at home as contract employees, doing piecework, much like writers do.

I will be dealing with book publishing, not magazine publishing or anthology publishing. Editors in those fields have yet a different function which will only confuse matters here.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s site.

50 Essential Science Fiction Books

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This post, by Richard Davies, originally appeared on the Abe Books blog on 1/16/13.

This was a virtually impossible task. Put together a list of 50 must-read science fiction books and don’t make anyone angry. Science fiction is the most discussed and argued over genre in literature but it actually goes way beyond books and into film, TV, video games and even toys.

Here are the criteria I used. One book per author, so that was hard on the big three of science fiction – Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, who each have multiple classic titles to their name. Attempt to show as many sub-genres of science fiction and plot themes as possible. Include early stories that influenced the genre as a whole and launched popular themes, even if those books appear a bit dated today.

I wanted to show the unbelievable breadth of this galactic-sized genre and, of course, I failed because this is just the tip of the spaceberg – there are probably 500 essential science fiction books, not 50.

The War of the Worlds is on the list, a famous example of invasion literature, but I could easily have used The Time Machine. For Ray Bradbury, there’s The Illustrated Man but I could have used Fahrenheit 451 or The Martian Chronicles.

Many people include alternate reality novels as science fiction but I didn’t feel comfortable having them on the list as there’s not much science in that sort of fiction.

The list includes hard and soft science fiction. Hard science fiction features great attention to detail in the quantitative sciences, while soft riffs on the social sciences. You’ll also find space opera with its heroes and heroines on distant planets; cyberpunk, loved by nerds in goggles everywhere; time travel – a simple concept that’s been around since Mark Twain’s day; military science fiction where soldiers drive the narrative; dystopian fiction where society has usually gone awry; superhuman stories where humans develop new or greater skills (and that usually means trouble) and the always cheery apocalyptic fiction sub-genre (where we could be battling to avoid the end of Earth or struggling to survive after a catastrophe). There are many recurrent powerful themes such as machine and human relationships, aliens and human relationships, biological and ecological matters, and paranormal activities.

 

Read the rest of the post, which lists Davies’ book picks, on the Abe Books blog.

10 Steps to Finding Your Writing Voice

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This post, by Jeff Goins, originally appeared on his site.

Recently, I wrote a guest post for Problogger called, “Finding Your Blog’s Unique Voice.” In the post, I explain the following:

  • Your blog needs a voice.
  • It needs to be exclusive.
  • It has to be authentically you.


Here, I want to share a little bit about how to find your voice. This, I believe, is the greatest struggle for writers. It’s also the key to unlocking your potential. Spending some time deliberating over voice is worth your attention and focus.

Whether you blog for fun, write novels, craft poems, pencil melodies, or inspire people with nonfiction prose, it’s essential for you to find your unique writing voice.

If you struggle with retaining readers or with being consistent in your writing, you may need to spend some time finding and developing your voice.

An Exercise for Finding Your Writing Voice

Here’s a short exercise that can help you:

  1. Describe yourself in three adjectives. Example: snarky, fun, and flirty.
  2. Ask (and answer) the question: “Is this how I talk?”
  3. Imagine your ideal reader. Describe him in detail. Then, write to him, and only him. Example: My ideal reader is smart. He has a sense of humor, a short attention span, and is pretty savvy when it comes to technology and pop culture. He’s sarcastic and fun, but doesn’t like to waste time. And he loves pizza.
  4. Jot down at least five books, articles, or blogs you like to read. Spend some time examining them. How are they alike? How are they different? What about how they’re written intrigues you? Often what we admire is what we aspire to be.
    Example: Copyblogger, Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Ernest Hemingway, and C.S. Lewis. I like these writers, because their writing is intelligent, pithy, and poignant.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jeff Goins’ site.

Overcoming Procrastination

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This article originally appeared on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Student Affairs Counseling Center site. While it’s geared toward students, procrastination is a pretty universal problem and one many writers particularly struggle with, so if this is an issue for you, the article is definitely worth a read.

Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination technically refers to the avoidance of a specific task or work which needs to be accomplished. But this technical explanation doesn’t begin to capture the emotions triggered by the word. For most of us, the word “procrastination” reminds us of past experiences where we have felt guilty, lazy, inadequate, anxious, or stupid–or some combination of these. It also implies a value judgment; if you procrastinate, you are bad, and as such, you lack worth as a person.

Procrastination and Its Causes

In order to understand and solve your procrastination problems, you must carefully analyze those situations where your work is not being completed. First, determine whether the cause is poor time management; if so, you will need to learn and develop time management skills. If, however, you know how to manage your time but don’t make use of those skills, you may have a more serious problem. Many individuals cite the following reasons for avoiding work:

  • Lack of Relevance – If something is neither relevant nor meaningful to you personally, it may be difficult to get motivated even to begin.
  • Acceptance of Another’s Goals – If a project has been imposed or assigned to you and it is not consistent with your own interests, you may be reluctant to spend the necessary time to see it to conclusion.
  • Perfectionism – Having unreachable standards will discourage you from pursuing a task. Remember, perfection is unattainable.
  • Evaluation Anxiety – Since others’ responses to your work are not under your direct control, overvaluing these responses can create the kind of anxiety that will interfere with work getting accomplished.
  • Ambiguity – If you are uncertain of what is expected of you, it may be difficult to get started.
  • Fear of the Unknown – If you are venturing into a new realm or field, you don’t have any way of knowing how well you’ll do. Such an uncertain outcome may inhibit your desire to begin.
  • Inability to Handle the Task – If through lack of training, skill, or ability you feel that you lack the personal resources to do the job, you may avoid it completely.

Procrastination Takes Many Forms

Read the rest of the article on the UIUC Student Affairs Counseling Center site.

newbooklaunch.com – Sock Puppeting 2.0

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Just when you thought the fake reviews scandal ushered in by Locke-gate was over, along comes newbooklaunch.com to assist Locke-minded authors who are willing to pay for Amazon reviews.

On the site’s Book Reviewers Wanted page, someone named “Jerry” makes the following offer:

——————–

Book Reviewers Wanted

Buy A Book & Agree With Tags to Receive $2 Plus Cost Of Book

Post A Pre-Written Review & Receive $5 More!

Example:

Buy a $2.99 ebook & Agree with tags 3-5 days later we send you a review to post

You Receive: $9.99 Via Paypal $7 profit for a few minutes of work!

——————-

Notice how these people aren’t even being paid to write fake reviews, they’re only being asked to post reviews written by someone else under their own name and Amazon account. And many who respond to this offer will be blissfully unaware that this kind of activity is against Amazon’s policies and can get you banned from the site.

Still, with so many people hurting in this economy I’m sure the offer looks very attractive to potential “reviewers”. But what about the authors who are obviously paying “Jerry” to recruit these not-quite-sock-puppets to post pre-written (e.g. fake) reviews?

Their fraud hurts all of us by shaking consumer trust in Amazon book reviews, and by subjecting all of us to whatever measures Amazon elects to take to put a stop to it. Remember, after the last fake reviews scandal Amazon revised its review policies to bar authors from reviewing one another’s books, then it went a step further by retroactively removing book reviews written by authors.

If you are an author or publisher who only wants honest, legitimate reviews for your book(s) and would like to see this kind of fraud stopped, please report the newbooklaunch.com site to Amazon. Here’s how:

1. Login to your Amazon account

2. Click on the Help link in the upper right-hand corner of any page on the site

3. Click the yellow Contact Us button in the right-hand column.

From there, you’ll have to navigate a series of drop-downs to zero in on the issue you’re reporting; just keep selecting ‘Other’ until one of them includes a ‘Customer Reviews’ option. Select it, and you’ll be able to enter an email and send it to Amazon.

Be sure to include the URL for the page with the offer quoted above:

newbooklaunch.com/book-reviewer/

Lovers and Lupecalia

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This post, by Cristina Smith, originally appeared on the OM Times site on 2/9/12. The article provides some interesting historical background on Valentine’s Day, and may be useful for anyone working on a Valentine’s Day -themed manuscript or story.

Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15th every year in honor of Lupercus, a god of fertility whose Greek counterpart is Pan. The word lupus is Latin for wolf, an essential animal in Roman history. It was a ceremony for purification and fertility. Parts of the celebration are included in February traditions even today, such as Valentine’s Day and fasting customs such as Lent.

The festival, whose flower is the yellow crocus, is as old as Rome itself when it was nothing more than a few shepherds living on a hill surrounded by a wolf-filled wilderness. Lupercalia centered around a cave on that Palatine Hill, the lupercal. According to legend, this was the cave where the lost twins Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome, were nursed by a she-wolf and saved from starvation.

The rite went something like this. Vestal virgins brought sacred cakes made from the first ears of last year’s grain harvest to a fig tree. Two naked young men, assisted by the Vestals, sacrificed a dog and a goat, animals with strong sexual instincts, at the site. The blood was smeared on the foreheads of the young men and then wiped away with wool dipped in milk. At this point, the youths were required to laugh. Then the priests, or lupercai, would run about in loincloths made from the skin of the sacrifices, slapping everyone with strips of goat skin. Most believed the thongs to be februa that cleansed their sins and assured good fortune so they tried to be struck. Young wives were particularly eager since they believed it promoted fertility and easy childbirth. There was also lots of feasting and drinking, which is not too unusual when the ceremonial highlight of the festival is being slapped with goat strips.

Long after Palentine Hill became the seat of the powerful city, state and empire of Rome, the Lupercalia festival lived on. In fact, Lupercalia was not dropped from the liturgical calendar until 1969. Historic records indicate that Mark Antony was master of the Luperci College of Priests. It was at the Lupercalia of 44 BCE that he ran up to Julius Caesar who watched from the Rostra and offered him a laurel wreath as a symbol of kingship. Caesar rejected it and exactly one month later, he was assassinated. Conquering Roman armies took the Lupercalia customs with them as they invaded France and Britain. One of these was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in an urn and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer. Some speculate it is from this practice that our modern Valentine’s Day has evolved.

Read the rest of the post on the OM Times site.

Publishing Coach And Author Emily Hill Talks About Kindlegate

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This article, by AR Vasquez, originally appeared on Digital Journal on 1/21/13.

Seattle– With Amazon’s expansion into new markets such as India, Brazil, Japan and Canada, Amazon’s KDP reporting for Kindle book sales have encountered technical glitches causing many upset authors to post messages in the KDP community forum.

Digital Journal had an exclusive video interview with Emily Hill, an indie author and publishing coach and founder of Kindlegate.starts.com, to discuss her experience with the KDP Select Program, Kindlegate, NaNoWriMo 2012, her coaching business and her interest in the paranormal world.

In the interview, Ms. Hill reveals how she was surprised to see her best selling books suddenly have zero sales in October 2012. She had been selling her books consistently every month and was extensively marketing and promoting her fictional paranormal book series Ghost Chaser’s Daughter in preparation for the Hallowe’en season in the KDP Select Program.

The KDP Select program is Amazon’s incentive for authors to sell their ebooks exclusively on the Amazon site for 90 days. The exclusivity means that authors cannot sell or give away their ebooks on other platforms such as Kobo, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Smashwords or even their own website. Another incentive in the program is the ability for authors to choose 5 days within the 90 days term to list their books for free on the Amazon site. Kindle books that are not enrolled in the KDP Select program limits authors’ ability to set the lowest selling price for their books to 99 cents. Other perks in the KDP Select program include higher royalties up to 70% for some Amazon networks around the world. Also, Kindle books in the program can be added to the Amazon Prime lending library which gives Amazon prime members the ability to borrow books for free with certain restrictions which pays authors a percentage from the KDP Select Global Fund.

When the KDP Select program was introduced in early 2012, many authors who joined experienced positive results. Some reported on their blogs their Kindle books were downloaded thousands of times during the free days promotions and watched in awe as their Kindle books rose up the best seller list rankings.

Read the rest of the article on Digital Journal.