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The Dark Knight Rises – Thoughts On A Trilogy

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[Publetariat Editor’s note: this post contains strong language]

There aren’t any spoilers in this post, but there are some spoilers at the places I link to at the end, so be warned.

It’s no secret that I’m a Batman fan. In fact, that’s an understatement – I fucking love Batman, in a totally platonic way. I’ve often said that Batman and the Joker are the two greatest fictional characters ever created and I stand by that. So when talk of a new Batman film started back in 2003 or 4 or whenever it was, I was dubious. But it was to be made by Christopher Nolan, a man whose talents I already admired. The result was Batman Begins, the first of a proposed trilogy. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The first thing to remember when films are made from established literary canon, be they novels, comic books, games or anything else, is that a film is a self-contained thing. It’s finite. Batman comics have been going since 1939 and there’s a metric fuckton of established canon and ongoing story with which a film can’t hope to compete. Nor should it try. So a film will always make changes to established canon and we fans can’t be precious about that. It’s how the film plays with that canon that matters.

In Batman Begins, Nolan turned the notion of Ras Al Ghul a little bit on its head. He made Ras and Henri Ducard the same character, which they absolutely aren’t in the comic canon. He also made Ras an Irishman. But the things he then did with those characters, with Ras’s mission as an idealistic eco-terrorist, were bang on the money. Nolan did a brilliant job of retelling the Batman genesis and origin, and adding in a well favoured supervillain. Within that, he kept the darkness essential to the Batman’s story. He kept the gothic, noir edge of the characters and setting. He made Gotham an integral character in the film. So while he played with some aspects of established canon to make a film-sized story, he did it well and kept enough of what we already know intact to make a very impressive, cohesive whole. I was very happy with the film.

But all along it was touted as a trilogy. And this is where we go back to the nature of film compared to an ongoing series. This film was to be finite in three instalments. The second film, The Dark Knight, stands tall for many reasons. Not least of these is that amazing performance from Heath Ledger as the Joker, which is still the highpoint of the trilogy for me. And again, Nolan took some liberties with established canon, but stayed true to so many parts that we love that we went with him for the ride. I did, anyway. And most importantly for me, he totally got what the Joker is all about. The Joker is the worst monster imaginable, because he’s the embodiment of absolute chaos. No rhyme, no reason, no appealing to any sense or intelligence. Just pure, insane chaos. Some men, after all, just want to watch the world burn.

So I’d been waiting patiently and slightly nervously for The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final instalment. So often a third film is where a series can jump the shark. It can be the step too far. But Nolan always said this was to be a trilogy and I trusted him as a storyteller enough to hope that he would see it through well. Again, liberties were took. The big bad this time is Bane, and he’s very different from the comic book character. In the comics, Bane is addicted to and fuelled by Venom. But in this film, Venom doesn’t even get a mention. Bane’s origin is also played with, as are the origins of other key players (who I won’t discuss for fear of spoilers). But that’s okay, because Nolan is using Bane in his own way, like he used Ras Al Ghul in the first one. And he does a good job of it.

Nolan also does a very good job of using the Selina Kyle character. She’s never called Catwoman in the film, her cat ears are just her night goggles, pushed up onto her head and so on. But the core of the character is there. She’s a tough, sassy, very capable cat burglar. She’s a real-world foil to the Batman’s black and white view of crime and culpability. She’s so much more than a sexy accoutrement and Anne Hathaway does a brilliant job with a character that is very hard to play well.

And using these characters and settings, Nolan brings threads from both previous films together in The Dark Knight Rises and ties them into a truly epic story, worthy of its comic book roots and also worthy of its cinematic grandeur. He does tell a complete story in three films and he does it bloody well.

Each of the films is successively darker, more epic and more daring than the last and by far the best thing about them is that Nolan has made an absolutely self-contained trilogy. It’s not the same as the comic books, because the comics are still going on, and will continue to do so. Nolan has taken the characters and spirit of those stories and turned them into one complete and very clever tale. We see the full life of the Batman, from genesis, through origin, through rise and fall and rise again, right out to final closure. And it’s very satisfying.

Sure, the films have flaws. With The Dark Knight Rises there are illogicalities, there are strange timing issues, there are simple nonsensical things (like the one I mentioned the other day – how the hell does Bane eat? And he’s a big boy, so he must eat a lot.) There’s actually not nearly enough Batman in the third and final Batman film. There are often certain events in the movies which are entirely too convenient and plot-driven. But, these things are relatively few and far between and largely eclipsed by all the good stuff.

There are those who have suggested that this final instalment is a pro-fascist movie (although I disagree with most of that post and the author obviously doesn’t have any real understanding of the ideology of Ras Al Ghul). I mean, sure, all superhero stories are fundamentally fascist – the super power steps in with violence, operating outside the law, to battle the greater threat on behalf of the people. But that’s a whole other discussion and not one limited to Nolan’s interpretation of Batman.

There are those who have asked what the hell happened to the Joker after the second film. Although Ledger died and couldn’t reprise his role, it’s strange that there was never any mention. Though one possible answer lies here.

(Remember – spoilers at the above links!)

There are several other concerns raised in various reviews and posts I’ve read, some valid, some not so much. Regardless, Nolan has created in his Batman trilogy something rarely seen from Hollywood these days – an intelligent, complex, complete and satisfying story along with the incredible special effects and cinematic epicness we’ve come to expect. Effects are so often utilised at the expense of story, but not with these films. The Dark Knight Rises is possibly the best of the three when it comes to simply amazing set pieces of action and downright brilliant photography. But it’s the combined power of the three films together that really stands out as Nolan’s crowning achievement here.

Personally I can’t wait till The Dark Knight Rises is released on DVD so I can put aside a day to sit and watch all three films back to back in a beauteous Bat-filled marathon of cinematic awesomeness.

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Why Your Idea Isn’t Spreading (The Salesman’s Problem)

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

This one’s inspired by you, Mr. Pushy Salesman who tried to sell me a home security system by coercing and shaming me (instead of wooing and charming me):

What? You don’t want your family to be safe?

Yeah, buddy. This list’s for you and all those like you who try to convince the customer to do what you want instead of empowering him to make the right decision.

Please stop this

Here’s why your idea isn’t spreading, why your product isn’t selling, and/or why people generally don’t want to listen to you:

  • You’re too pushy.
     
  • You’re impatient.
     
  • You don’t solve a real problem.
     
  • You insulted me.
     
  • You’re rude.
     
  • You put your needs before my own.

 

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

Publishing in the Cloud is the Next Big Important Subject

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files.

Much of the change we are living through in publishing is plain as day to see. The shift from print to digital, like the shift from stores to online purchasing, is evident to all of us, inside the industry and out.

But there’s another aspect of the change that is not nearly as visible and that’s around systems and workflows. Publishing, even in the pre-digital age, was a systems-driven business. The big companies are producing 3,000 to 5,000 titles a year: each one with its own unique contract, metadata, editing requirements, and (in most cases) market. I like to observe that “each book published presents the opportunity to make an unlimited number of decisions, which must be resisted.” Most of the time the systems don’t help so much in making the decisions, but it takes a lot of support just to keep track of them all and report them to each person who needs to know!

Over the years, the companies with stronger systems have tended to acquire the companies with weaker ones. It doesn’t always work out that way, but it has most of the time. And over the years there have been stories about when publishers almost lost their business because systems broke down. The original Macmillan (now a division of Simon & Schuster) almost died in the 1960s when they fell so far behind on returns processing that they couldn’t properly dun bookstores to pay their bills. In the late 1980s or early 90s, Penguin had a warehouse crisis that was a similar existential threat. A friend of mine with a process-oriented consulting practice really made his year working on that problem.

In the digital age, systems are once again front and center. Every publisher is facing new requirements and seeing the parameters change for the old ones. Most of a trade publisher’s revenue, for at least a while longer, comes from print but the digital side is where the growth is. Systems have to support both.

Until recently, publishers ran on systems that were, primarily, housed on their own computers, either created or heavily customized by their own IT departments, and the operators in the publishing house (editors, production people, marketers, salespeople) were at the mercy of their IT department queues. If they wanted something done, they had to get on line for tech support.

And smaller publishers doing 50 titles or 100 titles or 200 titles a year had to make do with less robust, less customized, and often less capable systems even though their outputs also required thousands of decisions to be tracked and they are no less affected by the shift from print to digital.

But this is changing. Or maybe we should say it has changed. The new systems in publishing are Cloud-based. They are frequently referred to as SaaS: software as a service. They don’t live on a company’s own computers but are hosted by the service provider. They often don’t require an IT department to customize them and they certainly don’t require an IT department to keep them up to date. And the best news of all is that they are cheaper to acquire and faster to install in a company’s workflow than the systems of the past.

Within this change, there is enormous opportunity. Big publishers can sidestep the tricky question of scaling down their print-based systems and scaling up their digital ones. Small publishers can now use systems and workflows that give them capabilities equivalent to their much larger competitors.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Publshed but NEW here!

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Here I am at this wonderfully interesting site! I’m not only new but practically computer illiterate but what I lack in expertise I try to make up for with perseverance (ie – stubborn-failure is not an option – LOL). At the moment it’s practically impossible to get away from me if you’re a reader since I’ve got something in every formant (currently) known to man on the NET or on Amazon.com. My favorite things to write are souhern cozy mysteries and like life, my characters and plot twists are full of adventure; reality; humor; romance; relationships; and colorful characters. An example is this thumbnail of a recent novel : "(title left out) is about BLOODY red murder; COLORFUL characters and clues scattred from New York to a small town in Tennessee; and has enough paranormal scenes in it to make the television paranormal shows GREEN with envy – enjoy!" Now – if you like a mystery – go to my list of works on Amazon and see if you can figure out which of my novels this describes. CLUE: It’s part of the Maryvale series.

Good luck and good reading to all of us,

Jackie Griffey 

Monthly Mash-ups: 7 Encouraging Posts For Writers

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Being a writer is often lonely and thankless. If we’re fortunate, we can make a living by our words, but that can take years before it happens.

Here are 7 encouraging posts to keep you going  when it feels like you’re getting nowhere.

  1. Turning a Stall into a Start by Barbara McDowell — Sometimes life gets in the way of our writing. Barbara gives us a pep talk and suggests joining the ROW80 crew to keep us on track.
  2. Keep Money in Its Place by Rachelle Gardner — In this post, Rachelle reminds us that when we focus on the money instead of the joy of writing, we can lose that joy. Her suggestion is to “keep your writing life separate from your financial anxiety.”
  3. What are “Hidden Sales?” by Mary DeMuth — Most published authors, trad and self, have heard someone say they loved their book so much they just had to lend it to a friend. Mary gives us a way to look at those lost sales that puts it all in perspective.
  4. Why Fiction is Good for Your Heart by Colin Falconer — We’ve all heard how reading is good for our brains, but did you know reading fiction is good for your moral character? Colin leads us through how reading fiction is good for us.
  5. How Fiction Shapes Worldview by Mike Duran — If “all truth is God’s truth”, then we can use general truths to move our readers to specific Christian truths without needing to use specific scripture or dogma, according to Mike.
  6. Making God Your Partner — Fulfilling our visions, be it in writing a great book or anything else, means making connections. In this post I break down Cheryl Ricker’s 5 connections we must make to achieve our goals.
  7. Blog Better by Slowing Down by Timo Kiander — In this post, Timo takes us through his thoughts on why we should re-consider blogging multiple times per week, including avoiding burnout and broken relationships.

What other tips, tricks and posts do you know of that encourage you to keep writing?

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s blog.

Are You Published?

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This is such a loaded question. Whenever somebody asks me this, I don’t really know how to respond because I’m not sure what they are really asking or what it is they really want to know. Are they just making idle chit chat and don’t care one way or the other what the answer is? Are they asking if I’m making a living–i.e. is this my job instead of a hobby? Are they asking if some authority figure (i.e. a big NY publisher) deemed me “worthy enough” to have my words see the light of day? i.e. are they asking about prestige? Are they trying to figure out if I’m a “big deal”?

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I have no idea. Because a lot of non-publishing/non-author people have a lot of serious misconceptions about the publishing world. And even many of us IN the publishing world, have some pretty big misconceptions at times, so how can the general public be blamed, when the ignorance spreads so far and wide? (And by ignorance I mean a simple lack of knowing something, not an insult.)

It’s also impossible to know what assumptions somebody is starting out with. In the general public there seem to be two very opposite views about authors in reference to making money. Either they think it’s nearly “impossible” to make a living doing this and that only a lucky handful of authors ever can or do. Or they think just being published period means you’re raking in the big bucks. Neither situation is really true.

Those that assume “having a publisher” means you are “making the big bucks”, don’t grasp the economics of publishing. For many published authors only doing a book a year and living somewhere on the midlist, you’re talking maybe a $5,000 to $10,000 book advance. A lot of books don’t make the author more money than the advance. Some do. But a lot don’t. There are foreign and audio and other rights that might also make an author more money, so it’s not “just” the advance. But in general, few authors, unless they are bestsellers are making a living writing one book a year.

And yet… a vast majority of writers have been trained into this mode of thinking where 1 book a year is a lot of pressure and oh my God it’s just SO much work… and so anybody stuck at that level who doesn’t really “break out”, is unlikely to be making a living.

It’s hard to make a living as an indie at that publishing rate as well, but the money, for most authors isn’t “great” in traditional publishing. And that was one of the big motivators for me going indie. When I found out that most NY pubbed authors aren’t making a living from their fiction, I decided I wasn’t interested in going that route. The only reason for me to fight and claw for something like that is if it would end in a career making career-level money just doing that. If I wasn’t going to make a living, I wasn’t letting anybody else control any aspect of my work, period.

Which is what a lot of “regular people” (meaning people not in this business), don’t understand. If they didn’t understand publishing before, they don’t understand the new shift in publishing now, for the most part. (There are, of course, exceptions. Some people read author blogs for their favorite authors and know a bit more about it than the average man on the street.)

Given the very slow publishing schedules in mainstream publishing and the fact that there is a limit to how many books a publisher wants from any given midlist author in a year, the money odds for “most” of us who are not famous or breakout bestsellers… is in the indie side of things, because we can publish on a faster timetable, while still keeping the quality up. Remember, a lot of us aren’t buying into these myths that were sold for so many years inside the mainstream system of publishing.

Also, those of us labeled “prolific”, don’t necessarily have shorter creative cycles, we just have more of them going on at once. At any given time I have several books in various stages of production… one in planning, one in rough draft, one in editing/with betas, one with the copyeditor. I don’t always have irons in all those fires at once, but just about, which is why sometimes my publishing schedule is like boom. boom. boom.

We also can make a lot more per book sold, which means fewer copies needed to make decent money. So making a living becomes somewhat more probable, depending on work ethic and of course on how your audience responds to the work you give them and if it’s compelling enough for word of mouth to go to work. Every author, depending on popularity, needs a different number of titles to make and maintain a living doing this, whether they are trad pubbed or indie.

They say the best way to market your work is to write another book. The reason is that word of mouth is king in book publishing. Sometimes other forms of marketing and promo can get the ball rolling or help to get a book back in people’s minds again, but it’s got to grip people enough that they talk about it or all the advertising in the world won’t do any good. (A lot of people complain about how their publishers won’t market them, and they are expected to do all that themselves, but given that it’s nearly impossible to know what the public will “go for” in a big way, most advertising on any author who isn’t already a proven quantity is a big financial risk. It might not seem fair, but it’s just business.)

So that brings me back to “Are You Published?” and how to answer that question. I usually just say yes because frankly any other answer is going to lead into a long boring conversation (like this one) that they probably don’t care about anyway. Then I’ve gone from “mystique” to making their eyes glaze over. Why have a conversation that’s going to make me less cool by the end of it?

It’s akin to the other question that drives me batshit: “How’s your book coming?” WHICH ONE? Often this is a question some ask me every time they see me. If I don’t see them for 6 months I wonder if they think I’m still working on the same book. In 6 months a LOT has happened in my publishing world and the book they’re talking about is probably in my rear view by that point.

So when someone asks: Are you Published? I say yes. I have books out. I’m making a living. This is my job/career. If they care about prestige and authority figures over actual results, then I honestly don’t care if they think I’m a liar.

And when someone asks: “How’s your book coming?” I just say fine.

I assume both questions are just small talk and the questioner probably doesn’t really care anyway. I can tell there are times when the person IS really genuinely interested in my job, and when that happens I give them more than a flip monosyllabic answer, but most times Yes, and Fine, suffice and it saves me a lot of explaining and frustration.

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

How I Got A Big Advance From A Big Publisher And Self-Published Anyway

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This post, by Penelope Trunk, originally appeared on her blog on 7/9/12.

I have a new book out today. It’s called The New American Dream: A Blueprint for a New Path to Success. You will notice that the link goes to Hyperink. They are an independent publisher.

I sold this same book, two years ago, to a mainstream publisher.

I have been reporting on research about on how to be happy for almost a decade. It’s important to me that everyone learn what I learned, which is if you want to have a good life, you shouldn’t focus on happiness, but rather, on making your life interesting. That’s what makes us feel fulfilled. Searching for happiness is making us crazy. And creating an interesting life is actually intuitive to most of us, it’s just that we feel like somehow we are doing something wrong. This book explains why you are probably on the right track, and all that stuff you hear about the pursuit of happiness is from another time. A time of ignorance, when we knew a lot less about what makes us human.

So I sold my book to a mainstream publisher and they sucked. I am going to go into extreme detail about how much they sucked, so I’m not going to tell you the name of the publisher because I got a lot of money from them. I’m just going to tell you that the mainstream publisher is huge, and if you have any respect left for print publishing, you respect this publisher.  But you will not at the end of this post.

To be clear, I wrote my book, and they paid me my advance, in full. Three months before the publication date, the PR department called me up to “coordinate our efforts.” But really, their call was just about giving me a list of what I was going to do to publicize the book. I asked them what they were going to do. They had no idea. Seriously. They did not have a written plan, or any list, and when I pushed one of the people on this first call to give me examples of what the publishers would do to promote my book, she said “newsgroups.”

I assumed I was misunderstanding. I said, “You mean like newsgroups from the early 90s? Those newsgroups? USENET?”

“Yes.”

“Who is part of newsgroups anymore?”

“We actually have really good lists because we have been working with them for so long.”

“People in newsgroups buy books? You are marketing my book through newsgroups?”

I’m not going to go through the whole conversation, okay? Because the person was taken off my book before the next phone call.

At the next phone call, I asked again about how they were going to publicize my book. I told them that I’m happy to do it on my blog, but I already know I can sell tons of books by writing about my book on my blog. So they need to tell me how they are going to sell tons of books.

“LinkedIn.”

“What? Where are you selling books on LinkedIn?”

“One of the things we do is build buzz on our fan page.”

I went ballistic. There is no publishing industry fan page that is good enough to sell books. No one goes to fan pages for publishers because publishers are not household brand names. The authors are. That’s how publishing works.

“You know what your problem is?” I said, “Marketing online requires that you have a brand name and a following, and the book industry doesn’t build it’s own brand. But I have my own brand. So I’m better at marketing books than you are. I have a voice online and you don’t.”

I scheduled a phone call with my editor’s boss’s boss to tell him that. I told him his business is online marketing and his team has no idea how to do it, and he should hire me.

He told me, “With all due respect [which, I find, is always a euphemism for I hate your guts] we have been profitable every year that I’ve run this division and I don’t think we have a problem.”

Then he told me he really needs me to work well together with the marketing and publicity team, so they flew me to their office to have a meeting. There were five people in the meeting.

Here’s what I learned at the marketing meeting, where I sat through an interminable set of PowerPoint slides on the book industry.


Read the rest of the post on Penelope Trunk’s blog.

How to Have a Career: Advice to Young Writers

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This post, by Sarah Manguso, originally appeared on Work In Progress in June of 2012.

Work.

Be relentless. All over the world, people are working harder than you. Don’t go to events; go to the receptions after the events. If possible, skip the receptions and go to the afterparties, where you can have a real conversation with someone.

Money.

Learn to live on air. Buy the best health insurance you can afford. If you have roommates, work in the library. Run and do calisthenics instead of paying for a gym membership. Invest in ear plugs, good sneakers, and a coffee machine. Buy oatmeal in bulk. Learn to cook simple, nutritious meals. Save and eat leftovers. Cafes are a waste of money, calories, and time; leave them to the tourists. Buy books used, perform periodic culls, and resell them. Wasting money on clothes is the stupidest habit of all. You will only ever need two good outfits.

Health.

Stay healthy; sickness is a waste of time and money. Smoking or overeating will eventually make you sick. Drinking and drugs interfere with clear perception, which you will need in order to make good work. It may be worth paying for psychotherapy sessions now instead of paying for inpatient treatment next year; see someone in-network.

Friends.

Avoid all messy and needy people including family; they threaten your work. You may believe your messy life supplies material, but it in fact distracts you from understanding that material, and until you understand it, it is useless to you. Don’t confuse users, hangers-on, or idols with friends. If a former friend asks you why you don’t have time to see him or her anymore, say your existing responsibilities have made it impossible to socialize as much as you used to. Cutting someone out with no explanation is an insult that will come around.

 

Read the rest of the post on Work in Progress.

What Are You Saying?

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This post, by Jenny Hilborne, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 7/4/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

“What is the main theme or message of the book?”

I heard this question quite a bit on a booth I shared with 5 other authors at the LA Festival of Books this past April. I’ll admit it had me a bit stumped and I had to scramble for an answer. Madness and Murder has a theme of second chances woven through it, although I wasn’t actually aware of this until a reader pointed it out in a review. 


When I start writing a new novel, I have a main plot in mind and a possible working title, and that’s it. I definitely don’t have any kind of message or theme on my mind. If I’m honest, I don’t intend to convey any kind of message in my novels. I write to entertain rather than to educate. One reason for this is that I can’t be sure my message, should I decide to send one, would be interpreted in the way I intended.

I’d like to pose a question to readers: how important is it for a novel, a work of fiction, to carry a message? Does it need to be moralistic? 

I read fiction (thrillers) because I like to be entertained and I enjoy trying to solve the mystery. I’ve never thought much about whether there was a message in the books I read, and it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment if there isn’t one. Having just read (and loved) To Kill A Mockingbird, I’m not so sure anymore. I believe books with a message are more memorable and stay with the reader for longer. These are the books that generate conversation, which creates interest and spreads the word among the reading community.  Without a message, does the book stand a chance of breaking out from the ever-growing crowd? 
 
I’ve read books by authors who use their work to express themselves and their personal opinions, be it politics, religion, whatever. I tend to shy away from those. As a reader of fiction, I don’t want to know the author’s opinion on a subject and have it slant the outcome of the novel, or have it shoved down my throat. I just want a good story. After a little thought on the subject, I’d say I’m of the opinion a message is fine, good even, as long as it’s not too intense, but I don’t care if there isn’t one. How do you feel about it? Do you feel let down if there is no underlying message?

 

Read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

Publetariat Observes Independence Day

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Publetariat staff will be off from the evening of July 4 through the evening of July 5 in observance of the United States’ Independence Day, also known as The Fourth of July. No new content will be posted, no site registrations will be processed, and no email will be answered during this time. The site will still be up, and registered users will still have access to post to their blogs if desired.

To our American readers, we wish you a happy and safe Fourth of July, filled with the requisite grilling and fireworks. To all of our readers, we’ll see you back here on July 5th at 6pm PST. (No need to click through – this is the end of the post!)

Will Obamacare Create More Full-Time Authors?

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This post, by Jim Kukral, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 7/3/12.

Sarah Woodbury writes books and sells them online. A big part of her family income comes from the sales of those books; in fact, her family can live off of her income alone. Yet, because of the rising costs of health care, her husband is forced to work a full-time job to ensure they keep their coverage.

Sarah is indicative of a group of authors who have been meaning to make the jump to full-time, but can’t do it because of fear of losing their health care coverage.

"We can live on my income now, but health insurance?" said Mrs. Woodbury. "Yeah — the lack of it if he quits his job is one of the two things keeping my husband at his job. We have four kids — going without health insurance isn’t an option."

The Supreme Court ruling that the Obama health care legislation is in fact constitutional has created quite a stir with authors all around the country. Many now feel like they can finally make their writing into a full-time career now that they can’t lose their health coverage.

Kate Delaney, author of 5:00 Breakout, says, "The biggest thing keeping me at my day job is healthcare. Depending on the cost of premiums after the Act goes into full effect, I will definitely be examining the options."

An anonymous message board poster only known as "Gutman" had this to say:

I am close to retirement (I’m 58.) I’m only working the day job full time because of health insurance. I can honestly say that if the bill survives the election cycle, and all its parts kick in by 2014, going to half time and buying health insurance through the pool becomes a real possibility for me, and makes it possible to transition to writing full time in retirement by writing half time until I’m 65.

But others aren’t so sure.

Victoria J says it’s a wait and see decision. "I have no plans to. I would like to see how things look after 2014 before I ever made such a decision."

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

Why The Deepest Lessons Take Time To Absorb

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This post, by John Caddell, originally appeared on the 99%: Insights On Making Ideas Happen site. While the article takes business ventures as its subject, the advice in it can be helpful to those dealing with failed books and other creative projects, as well.

As the expression goes, "hindsight is always 20/20." But how long does it take to get that 20/20 perspective? Here’s what Jerome Chazen, the co-founder of fashion house Liz Claiborne, told Knowledge@Wharton about the biggest mistake of his long career at the company:
 
With the benefit of hindsight, I would have worked harder to moderate our growth. I think we allowed the growth potential to overtake the company instead of us being in charge of it. It’s a hard thing to explain. But you know, it was so exciting, for me anyway, to report better and better numbers, especially after we went public. I mean I loved it. I loved those quarterly [numbers] that were up 20% or 40%, whatever. I think, looking back now, that I got carried away, that we should have done things more moderately.

 
Liz Claiborne went public in 1981. Thirty years later, Chazen had learned the lesson that his excitement over making quarterly numbers was not in the long-term best interests of the company.
This kind of time lag in learning from a mistake is not unusual. For the deepest lessons an individual can learn, it’s required. Only with the passing of time can the intense emotions (positive or negative) of an event fall away and allow us to recognize mistakes and our contribution to them.
Not every mistake takes 30 years to absorb. Small oversights, process errors, results of projects or experiments can be evaluated hours, days or weeks after completion. Failures of these types result from lack of knowledge, routine human error, or poor assumptions.

But with another class of mistakes the stakes are much higher – the setbacks and failures that derail your future plans or call into question your self-image. These are the ones that occur because of your deepest weaknesses and flaws. For this reason, we prefer to avoid thinking about these mistakes, or to attribute them to circumstances out of our control.
 

I’ll share a personal example. I started my own consulting business in 2006. I expected that all the people who’d benefited from my expertise in my 20-year career would come calling as soon as I hung out my shingle.
Yet it took me seven months to land my first client. A little while later I got a second, who sustained the business for two more years. When that project ended, I couldn’t replace the lost revenue. I realized I couldn’t make a go of it, and took a corporate job. I spent my first year as a salaried employee in complete denial. Any incoming call or email tempted me to jump right back into consulting. I blamed the failure on any reasonable factor – the poor economy, the structural changes in my industry, a dispute with my former company.
All those factors contributed to the situation, but dwelling on them was beside the point. It wouldn’t change anything going forward. I had to understand what I could have done differently, what I should do differently next time.

 

Read the rest of the article on 99%.

Is A Self-Publishing Backlash On The Way?

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This post, by Henry Baum, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review on 3/2/12.

It’s been a good run.  2011 was the year when self-publishing broke open with the successes of Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and JA Konrath.  The stigma is gone.  No one thinks a self-published book is bad just because it’s been self-published.  But people are creative – there are some out there who actively want to dislike self-publishing, and will look for reasons to criticize.  There are also plenty of people who still want to believe in the validation of a traditional publisher: if an agent and editor like it, I must be good.  So now the stigma is not: self-published books are bad, but self-published books are hard to sell.

This post is so wrong it’s almost not worth linking to, but it’s an interesting sentiment with a provocative title: Self-Publishing is Over –

I’m not saying self-publishing doesn’t work. The fact that I’m spending my days building a 40′ ocean going catamaran is proof that it does, or at least that it did for me.

I am saying that it takes a very particular sort of person to do it, and that person has to be comfortable with the idea that they’re going to spend upwards of 75% of their time and effort doing things they (probably) regard as secondary to the creative act, and that there’s no (longer) special reward for undertaking the effort. The chances of your work being embraced by the market are not higher than going the tradition route; the return on your investment of time and effort (and in the case of movies, money) is not higher than going the traditional route.

And self-distro is certainly not the (much hyped) solution to the chaos and uncertainty that reigns in music or movies or publishing. It’s simply another route that might work, but probably won’t.

Perhaps with all the hype about self-publishing’s successes, people have gotten the impression that self-publishers think it’s easy to make it rich. But most know that self-publishing is hard.  That doesn’t make it “over,” just…hard.  As is releasing any book.  And the argument’s so old but – traditionally published writers need to do a lot of work they didn’t used to do as well: social marketing, arranging book tours, etc.  All publishing has elements of self-publishing.

That post was responding to another in The Atlantic:

One of the illusions most common to writers — an illusion that may make the long slow slog of writing possible, for many people — is that an enormous audience is out there waiting for the wisdom and delight that I alone can provide, and that the Publishing System is a giant obstacle to my reaching those people. Thus the dream that digital publishing technologies will indeed “disintermediate” — will eliminate that obstacle and connect me directly to what Bugs Bunny calls “me Public.” (See “Bully for Bugs”.) And we have heard just enough unexpected success stories to keep that dream alive.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Self-Publishing Review.

What E-Publishing Means to a Country Boy

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This post, by Stant Litore, originally appeared on New Wave Authors on 6/21/12.

Bea over at Writing Off the Rails asked me a few days ago what digital publishing, indie publishing, e-publishing, etc., means to me. That made me sit back and think a moment, because it means a lot to me. And not just what you’d expect. Here’s the answer I came up with.

It means all bets are off.

For the first time in quite a while, writers have options. A writer with a fantastic story, some marketing chutzpah, and the self-discipline of an old workhorse can take a decent shot at self-publishing, and that’s been good for a number of novelists. It’s a long shot, but thanks to the rapid growth of the e-book market and the ease of connecting writers and readers via the Internet, it’s far more feasible than it has been in the past.

Another thing that’s exciting to me is the new species of publishers emerging. Some of the small presses are not only entrepreneurial but also give their writers a fair deal, which is something that hasn’t really been the norm among large publishing houses since the 1950s.

And there are the Amazon imprints – Montlake, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and the others. These not only offer a fair deal but a very powerful marketing engine, and they’re run by innovative people who invest in the author-editor relationship. They’re bringing good work out and they put their weight behind it – not just behind one or two titles they’re banking everything on, they put their weight behind all their books. I’m impressed by that. 

All of this means that a good writer has a better shot at making a living than has been the case in quite a few decades.

That’s a good thing.

But what the e-book market and the digital publishing phenomenon really means to me is bigger than that. Much bigger.

 

Read the rest of the post on New Wave Authors.

12 Most Striking Tendencies of Creative People

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This post, by Kim Phillips, originally appeared on the 12most site on 3/13/12.

Ever wonder what makes those wacky, creative types tick? How is it that some people seem to come up with all kinds of interesting, original work while the rest of us trudge along in our daily routines?

Creative people are different because they operate a little differently. They:


1. Are easily bored

A short attention span isn’t always a good thing, but it can indicate that the creative person has grasped one concept and is ready to go on to the next one.

2. Are willing to take risks

Fearlessness is absolutely necessary for creating original work, because of the possibility of rejection. Anything new requires a bit of change, and most of us don’t care for change that much.

3. Don’t like rules

Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken. They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs freedom in order to work.

4. Ask “what if…”

Seeing new possibilities is a little risky, because it means that something will change and some sort of action will have to be taken. Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.

5. Make lots of mistakes

A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony. Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.

6. Collaborate

The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one. Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.

 

Read the rest of the post on 12most.