For Whom Do We Write?

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This piece, by Aidan Moher, originally appeared on his A Dribble of Ink blog on 3/23/09.

David B. Coe, author of the Winds of the Foreland series, wrote an interesting piece for SF Novelists about the motivations of a writer and who they truly write for.

So my question is this: For whom do we write? And before you answer that you write for yourself, and that you’d write even if you knew you could never sell anything, think long and hard about whether that’s really true. It’s my knee-jerk response; it’s certainly the answer I want to give and want to believe. The truth is a bit more complicated. I write for myself because thus far I’ve been able to make something of a living at it.

There are easier ways to make a buck (at least there were; they seem to be disappearing) and I would never deny that I have chosen this career path because I love it, and because I have to write to be happy. But again reality rears its ugly head: If I couldn’t sell books I’m not sure that I could afford to write them. Oh, I’d write in my spare time, but I used to be an academic; my wife still is. I have friends who are lawyers and doctors and business people. I’ve seen how hectic their lives are. Once they’re done with work and family, they don’t have a whole lot of spare time or energy for creating worlds and writing novels.

I write for me because I can afford to, because I’m fortunate enough to do for a living what I love to do anyway. But if I’m to be completely honest, I write for myself and also for a whole host of other people. I write for my agent, because she has to believe in my books to sell them. I write for my editor, because he has to contract the book before it can be published. I write for my readers, because their purchases of my current novel make the next contract possible.

I’m pretty sure that my fellow professionals would join me in admitting that they don’t — can’t — write solely for themselves. And what about those of you who aren’t professionals? I’m sure that you take great pride in your creative accomplishments — as you should — and that you write to satisfy your passion for storytelling. But don’t you also write because you want to see your stories in print? I’m an amateur photographer, and I’m also a musician. I do these things “for myself.” Still, I was thrilled when I was able to display my photography in a gallery. I used to perform music in bars and restaurants and to this day I occasionally fantasize about doing so again.

I am a writer, which should come as no surprise. I expect almost every other blogger out there would consider call themselves writers and I also expect that many of my readers would consider themselves writers (or artists of another medium). I think it’s also safe to say that the vast majority of us are at a point where we practice our craft solely for ourselves, with little professional or monetary gain. I know I do.

As a blogger, I do this for free. I make no money off of it, in fact, it costs me money (in hosting fees, domain, etc…). I suppose one could consider the amount of free novels I get as a sort of reward for the work done, but in the end, A Dribble of Ink, like the majority of non-professional blogs, is a labour of love. The reward for me is to have a place where I can articulate my passion for Speculative Fiction and help spread that passion to other like-minded people.

Of course, like most writers, I have ambitions. I dream of the day when my Work-in-Progress (a contemporary Fantasy called Through Bended Grass) is a full fledged novel, lining the shelves of bookstores and climbing the charts on Amazon. Still, I know that I am just a drop in an ocean of aspiring writers, and my novel, no matter how good, will be one among many when it hits the slush piles. Does this discourage me from devoting endless hours to finishing it? Not at all. There’s always that burning desire to get the story out on paper, a feeling any artist can attest to, and the fun, the challenge and the reward is in the writing of it.

Coe touches on this honeymoon period, when aspiring writers can write for the sake of the craft and the pride they take in it:

What’s my point? Simply this: Nearly all of us who love art begin with that passion to create. We start by saying that we’re going to do it for ourselves, for the sheer pleasure of creating and celebrating that accomplishment. And we mean it. But I would argue that all art is inherently a performance. Painting, taking pictures, singing, acting, dancing, and yes, even writing — especially writing — it’s all done for an audience. When a child creates something that she thinks is beautiful her first thought is to show it to someone else — Mom, Dad, a teacher, a friend, a complete stranger if no one else is around. And I don’t think that impulse ever really goes away. Nor should it. Because art is inherently interactive. Art is about creation and appreciation, passion harnessed and passion evoked.

What’s most interesting to me is how the paradigm of being a writer shifts once it becomes a profession and how it’s not always so peachy keen as us wannabes think it is. A little Twitter conversation between Matt Staggs (Twitter: @deepeight) and Jay Lake (Twitter: @jay_lake) got me thinking about this:

Staggs
‘Turns out I’m way too busy to run a D&D game. Part of going from fan to working pro, I guess. Sad in some ways.’

Lake
‘@deepeight Dude, writing has really interfered with my reading career’

Staggs
‘@jay_lake Yeah, kind of sucks, huh? There are some good things about just being a fan.’

As a hobbyist/wannabe novelist, I’m perfectly happy to write with no other reward than the writing itself. It’s liberating and keeps my mind from gathering cobwebs. But is this what I have to look forward to, if Through Bended Grass does make it to store shelves? To join those downtrodden professional writers chained to their typewriters, forced to ignore all the great things that led to my original love affair with Speculative Fiction in the first place?

By Coe’s own admission, artists begin with a passion and curiousity for a medium, about what would happen if they applied their own touch to it. As soon as one becomes a professional, though, other factors enter the picture that determine the course of the artist and a modicum of freedom is stolen.

Tobias Buckell has been struggling with this, and recently wrote an article about how he is shelving his current Xenowealth series and trying shifting his focus to a new novel called Arctic Rising, in an attempt to broaden his audience.

Read the rest of the post on the A Dribble of Ink blog.

Writing First Person POV

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This post, by Joshua Palmatier, originally appeared on his blog on 3/13/09.

This was the last panel I was on at Boskone, and it’s one of the typical panels you see at lots of cons. I was also the moderator, so I took more notes on this one than the others. That still doesn’t mean I have good notes, just more (unreadable) scribbles than the others. *grin*

So, the idea was to discuss writing the first person POV in books. In particular, I wanted to discuss why you would want to use first person in the first place, or why you shouldn’t use it, and what advantages and disadvantages it has.

Pretty much all of that is tied together. I also wanted to discuss on the panel why some people have such a strong opinion about reading first person POVs. I’ve run into this quite a bit: a strong aversion to first person POV.

So, the mechanics first, I guess. First person POV, where you’re inside the head of one of the characters and ONLY in that person’s head for the duration of the book (or those scenes in the book), is a great way to pull the reader into the story, because the reader in essence "becomes" that first person character. They see everything through that person’s eyes, they get that person’s innermost thoughts, and it gives the reader a sense of immediacy, a sense of actually LIVING the novel. If it’s done right of course.

As you read, you feel like you are THERE, doing what the character is doing, feeling what the character feels, hating and crying and loving and laughing right along with that character. I think emotions are more raw in first person. Pain hurts more, grief is more shattering, love is more intense. Overall, EVERYTHING is more intense.

That’s why I chose to use first person for my books. I wanted the reader to be there, in the scene, experiencing everything first hand. Also, the magic that my main character uses is more personal than in most fantasy novels. There aren’t any streaks of lightning or fireballs in the first novel. Such things exist and some of the magic is visible in my world, but most of the REAL magic is happening on a different level, one that can’t be seen and is hard to describe UNLESS I use the first person.

I think the emotional impact of first person is the real reason I chose to use it thought, because the magic COULD have been done in third (it would have been harder but possible), but I wanted people to live Varis’ life along with her. Because the story really is about Varis, about HER, not the world. It’s a very character driven story, and character driven stories about a single character are often better done as first person.

So, some reasons to use first person: immediacy of action and emotion; pulls the reader deeper into the story; magic of the world (or some other part of the plot) dictates first person; a single character is the driving force behind the story; it’s a character-driven story.

That list isn’t complete of course, just some of the things that came up during the panel. And of course, it only works if the first person is done well.

When shouldn’t you use first person? Well, the general response is when the story involves more than one POV. If parts of the plot or action must be told when the main character (the potential first person POV character) isn’t around or isn’t involved, then the novel probably shouldn’t be told in first person.

Yes, you can get away with having other characters tell the first person POV character what happened second hand, and you can even manipulate the book enough to have that first person character "accidentally" overhear an important conversation that reveals incredibly important information . . . but you can only do that so many times in a novel before such techniques become trite and obvious and just plain stupid. (My general working theory is that you can only do such things ONCE in a novel and get away with it; the second time you do that, you’ve blown it . . . unless, of course, you have a magical throne that allows the main character to ransack a person’s memories. *grin*)

So, if the main characters isn’t there for a significant portion of the main action . . . first person is probably not going to work. Because with first person, you MUST restrict yourself to that one person’s thoughts, actions, and feelings. You have to get across everyone else’s thoughts, actions, and feeling by using what that one character sees and hears and notices. And this is hard.

Another reason to NOT use first person is voice. If you’re going to use first person, that characters must have a very strong voice, and that voice must in some way be relatable. The reader has to be in sync with the character and has to understand that character and their motivations, and the reader has to be able to put themselves in that character’s place.

If they can’t get into that character’s head in a believable way, then the book isn’t going to work for them. They’ll be constantly kicked out of the story because they just can’t relate to what the main character is doing. So the character’s voice has to be strong, because it has to "overwhelm" the reader’s own character to some extent, so that the reader can set themselves aside and become this new person, so that they can live this new person’s life.

And again, this can only work if the first person is done well.

So how can first person be done horribly? Oh, there are so many ways. The first is just at a grammatical level. One of the biggest traps (I found) with first person is sentence structure. The tendency is to write things using the "I" all of the time. You end up saying things like: "I felt a pain in my back as I lifted the crate full of lead ingots."Or: "I saw the man cross the street and enter the darkness of the alley."

One of the biggest things I learned while writing that first first person book was that there’s no need for the additional I’s. In fact, I tried to eliminate as many I’s as possible while writing first person. We’re supposed to be inside this person’s head, so we don’t need them. The reader knows who’s speaking, who’s thinking, who’s feeling, who’s seeing, etc, so you can leave all of that "I" crap to the side as much as possible. Just say what’s happening! "A pain exploded in my back as I lifted the crate full of lead ingots." "The man slid across the street and entered the darkened alley." Much more immediate and much more succinct and engaging. So eliminate as many of the I’s as possible when writing first person.
 

Read the rest of the post on Joshua Palmatier’s blog, and also check out his follow-up post on the same subject.

Why Google Book Search Is A GOOD Thing For Indies

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You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Google Book Search lately. Mainstream publishers and authors are variously confused, angry or nervous about GBS, but for indie authors and small imprints, it’s all good.

What’s This All About, Then?

From Wikipedia:

Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. When relevant to a user’s keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com).

A user may also search just for books at the dedicated Google Book Search service. Clicking a result from Google Book Search opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher’s website and booksellers. Through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking, Google limits the number of viewable pages and attempts to prevent page printing and text copying of material under copyright.

GBS Offers Benefits To Authors And Publishers

A Google Books Page

As shown above (click image to view larger), book search results served up by GBS include a cover image, table of contents, keywords from each chapter, excerpts from throughout the book, and where-to-buy links. GBS provides publishers and authors with a new avenue to help consumers find their books, read excerpts, and even buy those books.

In addition, authors and publishers who sign up to be a GBS Partner (required if you want to upload your own books) receive additional benefits.  Partners can view reports containing detailed information about when and how their GBS books have been accessed, as well as how frequently GBS users click on the where-to-buy links for their books. GBS book pages also contain Google AdSense ads which have been targeted based on the content of the book currently being viewed, and GBS Partners receive a portion of the ad revenue Google earns for click-throughs on those ads.

So What’s The Problem?

Exposure plus maybe enough ad revenue to buy yourself a fancy coffee once in a while…what’s not to love? If you’re an indie author or small imprint, nothing. But the mainstream has four major beefs with GBS: Google didn’t ask their permission, GBS muddies the question of when a book goes out of print, GBS introduces some level of copyright risk, and publishers and authors have no control over how GBS presents their books to the public.

Google Decided It’s Better To Beg Forgiveness Than Ask Permission

When Google came up with the idea for GBS they realized it would only work if the majority of published books are part of the GBS database, because the more complete the database, the more useful and trustworthy it becomes. Rather than go to all the publishers of the world and ask if GBS could please scan each publisher’s books into their database, Google simply issued a public statement of their intent to do so. GBS also included functionality that allows authors and publishers themselves to upload books directly to the database.

Legal wrangling eventually resulted in a settlement agreement that allows authors and publishers to opt their books out of GBS, but the default setting for all books is opt-in: unless you specifically take action to opt out per the terms of the agreement, your books are fair game to be scanned or uploaded to the GBS database. Though the agreement was hard-won, most major publishers are not choosing to exercise the opt-out option, and that’s making many mainstream authors very nervous.

This is a non-issue for indies, for two reasons. First, indie books are very low on GBS’ list of priorities where getting content for their database is concerned, and are therefore only likely to find their way into the GBS database if we upload them ourselves (effecting a post-facto ‘opt-in’). Secondly, if you don’t want your books in the database but find that someone else has scanned or uploaded them, GBS provides a simple means to have them removed. Since we retain all rights to our work, we don’t have to go along with a publisher’s decision to opt in or out of GBS.

When Does A Google Books Book Go Out Of Print?

Mainstream publishing contracts typically stipulate that when a publisher stops manufacturing or distributing a given book for sale, publication rights for that book revert to the author. The author is then free to re-publish the book himself, or through a different publisher. Mainstream authors are worried about the possibility that a book in the GBS database could be construed as “in print” indefinitely, though there have yet to be any court cases to settle the matter.

Indies don’t have to worry about it, because we retain all publication rights to our work from day one. Even if the courts eventually find GBS books meet some legal definition of the term “in print”, thereby allowing publishers to retain publishing rights so long as the books are in the GBS database, it won’t matter to us because we are our own publishers.

Does GBS Pose New Copyright Risks?

Publishers and authors are also worried about the risks of copyright infringement introduced by allowing an outside party to store the entire text of their books in a database, and by allowing excerpts of those books to be displayed online. While GBS provides excerpts, cover images and bibliographic data for every book in its database, it does not provide the full text of any book to GBS users, nor does it provide any easy means to download or even print any of the content shown onscreen.

Given enough time, a motivated, technically skilled pirate could theoretically steal the excerpts and cover images for re-use in some illegal fashion, but the same is possible for any book on a public library shelf. If anything, public libraries and book lending among friends pose a greater piracy threat, since anyone in possession of the entire book can scan or copy its pages for illegal re-use.

There’s also the omnipresent threat posed to any online system: that hackers may find a way to get into the database and download entire files—in this case, books—for nefarious purposes. Possible, yes. Likely, no. And unless you’re a well-known or best-selling author, the risk that a hacker might choose to copy and illegally redistribute your book is very, very small. If you’re worried about GBS security and find your book becoming so popular that piracy is a legitimate concern, you can always just pull it out of the GBS database.

Presentation And Advertising

GBS serves up book search results in their own, fixed format, and also includes Google AdSense text ads targeted according to the content of the book being displayed on the right-hand side of the page. Authors and publishers have no control over the book display format or content, nor over the advertising display or content.

Those who want to micromanage their book’s image and exclude outside advertising are not pleased, but they don’t seem to realize that so long as their books are available for sale through any online retailer, matters of display and advertising are out of their hands anyway.

Any book available online can be found using a simple Google search, and the results page for any Google search includes targeted Google AdSense advertising links on the far right-hand side. Authors and publishers have no control over the ads, nor do they receive any portion of the revenue earned on those ads.

Furthermore, once the searcher clicks through on a link to Amazon, Borders, B&N or wherever else, the book they’re looking for will be displayed in that store’s standard format, over which authors and publishers have no control. Book listings in online stores almost always include advertising in the form of cross-sell links to other books in which the searcher may be interested—typically, competing books from other authors.

Another complaint in this area is the revenue split on advertising displayed on GBS book pages. Recall that Google splits GBS ad revenue with GBS Partners, and in the case of a mainstream publisher, the publisher will be the GBS Partner, not the author. To me, this seems a matter to be settled between mainstream authors and their publishers rather than a GBS issue.

Yet again, indies have no need for concern here. We can sign up to become GBS Partners and keep all of the ad revenue split for ourselves.

Still Not Sure Whether To Upload Your Books?

If you have concerns about the risks and possible ramifications of allowing your books to be listed on GBS, carefully review the GBS Program Policies and the settlement agreement with an attorney versed in matters of copyright and publishing law before making any decisions. You might also want to read this Authorweb piece on GBS.

One more thing – if you’re self-publishing in the hopes of attracting a mainstream publisher, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution and leave your books out of GBS since you can’t predict how a future publisher with which you may have dealings will feel about GBS.

My Experience With GBS

I’ve had my novels, Adelaide Einstein and Snow Ball, listed on GBS since May of 2008.  Joining the Partner program was very easy and GBS dovetails seamlessly with other Google services I already use like gmail, AdSense and the like.

From the time I uploaded the books it took about three months for them to show up in GBS searches, but the process is probably bit speedier now that the settlement agreement has again freed GBS to focus the bulk of their energies on scanning and uploading content.

My Partner reports show I’m getting a smattering of page views, but if viewers are subsequently buying my books, they’re not using the GBS where-to-buy links to do so. I’ve also yet to see any ad revenue from GBS. I suspect this meager traffic is due in large part to the fact that while GBS is widely known and discussed in author and publisher circles, the general public is largely unaware of its existence.Go ahead, ask a non-bookish friend or family member if they know about Google Book Search.

As the GBS database grows, and given Google’s track record of success in rolling out new products and services, GBS will probably become as ubiquitous as Google search and gmail eventually.

I have no regrets about listing with GBS. I subscribe to the Just Get It Out There In Front Of As Many Eyeballs As Possible school where my books are concerned, and GBS is poised to deliver quite a few eyeballs indeed.

April L. Hamilton is the author of The IndieAuthor Guide and the founder of Publetariat. Her latest book is From Concept to Community.

Are You Struggling Over A Small Readership?

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This article, by James Chartrand, originally appeared on the Men With Pens site on 3/27/09.

How many people read your blog? 1,000? 500? 300? Maybe even just 100 readers or less. Those numbers might discourage you.

Just 100 readers. That’s nothing, you think. You look at the big blogs you admire, and with a low heart, you notice their reader stats so proudly displayed. They have thousands of daily readers showing up. They have the readership you dream of, the stats that make you envious.

Maybe those numbers make you feel small. You might wonder if you’re writing every day or two for nothing. You may feel like you’re wasting your time.

I’d like to turn that line of thinking on its head and give it a good ass-kicking. It’s time to put stats into perspective.

The Biggest Show in Town

Imagine you have tickets to a fantastic show – your favorite artist, too. It’s going to be huge – an extravaganza! The biggest thing to hit the region!

Have you ever been to a big rock star performance? I have. It’s crowded. It’s noisy and there’s no place to sit. You can’t see the stage well. So you stand uncomfortably and watch the big screens that show clips and bits of the most exciting parts of the show.

There are lights shining in your eyes. People around you are talking, and you can’t hear well over the background noise. Someone jostles you. It smells funny. It’s long. Your legs are tired. Maybe the weather isn’t the best, either – of course the show is outdoors.

Who could fit that many people in an auditorium?

When you leave at the end of the show, you’re glad to be out in the fresh air. It’s good to stretch your legs. Your ears are ringing from all the noise. You had a good time, sure! It was the biggest show in town – amazing!

Really? I don’t think so.

Biggest Isn’t Always Best

Now imagine a different show. It’s smaller – in your home town. In fact, the performer about to take the stage is you.

So you walk out on stage. The lighting is basic. There aren’t any big screens. There aren’t many seats in the auditorium, either. Your show isn’t at rockstar levels, and you wonder if anyone is going to show up.

You take a deep breath, and the curtains open.

Look out at the auditorium. It’s small, but the seats are full. Expectant faces look back at you. Everyone is seated comfortably and they’re waiting for your performance. The sound is good, there’s not much noise, and when you begin your show, you manage to reach every single person in that audience.

Up close and personal, too. Now that’s a show I like to attend.

 

Read the rest of the article, and many more excellent pieces for writers, on Men With Pens.

2009: The Year Print On Demand Goes Mainstream

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This piece, by Wil Wheaton, originally appeared on the End User blog on 3/27/09.

"2009 is the year that print on demand goes mainstream." – Warren Ellis

We are living in an incredible time, both as consumers and creators. As consumers, whatever entertainment we want, whether it’s television, music, movies, games or books, is easier and faster to get than ever before. As creators, the barriers between us and our audience are falling faster and more easily than ever before, the time between creation and release is shrinking, and thanks to the Internet we can reach more people with less effort than we could as recently as a decade ago.

Earlier this week, I came across a post in my blog archives from September of 2002 where I said:

 

Remember how so many readers have been telling me to write a book? Well, I listened. Watch this space for details on how you can get it in about a week or so, maybe two.

I was talking about my book Dancing Barefoot, which was created from material I cut out of Just A Geek. I looked at that post and felt a little nostalgic, because that’s where my journey as a published writer and champion of indie publishing began. 

In 2002, I was just another struggling actor and fledgling blogger. I figured that, since I was having such a hard time getting work as an actor – where I had a huge resume and a lifetime of experience – it would be nearly-impossible to sell my books to a publisher. I did some research, figured out that I was able to reach a few hundred thousand people with my blog, and decided to reject the "traditional" publishing route in favor of self-publishing.

I needed an education in self-publishing, and read two books that made all the difference: The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing and The Self-Publishing Manual. They were both filled with great advice, like the importance of hiring and respecting an experienced editor, a good designer, and putting together an intelligent marketing plan. I’m not sure what the current versions of the books say, but in 2002, they both warned authors away from using print on demand, largely because the per-unit costs were unreasonably high, and when you held a POD book in your hands, it really felt like you were holding a POD book in your hands.

My, my, my, how the times have changed. The prejudice against POD persists, but that tactile difference in quality has vanished, and after a couple of my friends used print on demand from Lulu to release their books, I decided to give it a try myself. I wrote in my blog:

 

If this works the way I think it will, it’s going to be super awesome for all of us as I release books in the future: You don’t have to worry about me screwing up your order, I don’t have to invest in a thousand books at a time, you get your book in a few days instead of a few weeks because I’m not shipping it myself, and I can spend more time creating new stories while remaining independent. Best of all, I’ll have the time to write and release more than one or two books a year.

Read the rest of the post on the End User blog.

The Psychology of Writing, Pt. 2 – Writing For A Living: A Joy Or A Chore?

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Publetariat’s series on the psychology of writing continues with this piece, which originally appeared on The Guardian UK site on 3/3/09.

Colm Tóibín claims he does not enjoy writing very much. Do other authors share his view?

AL Kennedy

AL Kennedy

The joy of writing for a living is that you get to do it all the time. The misery is that you have to, whether you’re in the mood or not. I wouldn’t be the first writer to point out that doing something so deeply personal does become less jolly when you have to keep on at it, day after cash-generating day. To use a not ridiculous analogy: Sex = nice thing. Sex For Cash = probably less fun, perhaps morally uncomfy and psychologically unwise. Sitting alone in a room for hours while essentially talking in your head about people you made up earlier and then writing it down for no one you know does have many aspects which are not inherently fulfilling. Then again, making something out of nothing, overturning the laws of time and space, building something for strangers just because you think they might like it and hours of absence from self – that’s fantastic. And then it’s over, which is even better. I’m with RLStevenson – having written – that’s the good bit.

Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri

Writing novels is no fun; nor is, generally speaking, reading novels. Reading people writing about novels is not always fun, either, because relatively little of this kind of writing is any good. Then there’s the group of people who don’t enjoy being novelists, to which I probably belong; whose lives are at once shaped and defined by, and to some extent entrapped in, the act of writing fiction. I still find it difficult to believe that I’m something called a ‘novelist’; but this hasn’t stopped me from dreaming, frequently, of alternative professions: second-hand bookshop owner; corporate worker; cinematographer. There are many reasons for this unease. One of them is a fundamental discomfort with narrative itself, and involves admitting to yourself that you derive your basic pleasure not from knowing what happens next, but from arrested time or eventlessness; this makes you constantly wish, as you’re writing, that you were elsewhere, or it makes you work to make the novel accommodate that impulse. Another reason is the professionalisation of the vocation, so that the novelist is supposed to produce novels as naturally, automatically, and regularly as a cow gives milk. In such a constraining situation, money can certainly be a compensatory pleasure; so can that paradoxical and sly addiction, failure.

Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru

I get great pleasure from writing, but not always, or even usually. Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline – trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out. Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like Sisyphus; ending sometimes comes with the disappointment that this finite collection of words is all that remains of your infinitely rich idea. Along the way, there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you’ve nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting. But when you’re in the zone, spinning words like plates, there’s a deep sense of satisfaction and, yes, enjoyment…

John Banville

John Banville

Civilisation’s greatest single invention is the sentence. In it, we can say anything. That saying, however, is difficult and peculiarly painful. Whether we are writing a novel or a letter to our bank manager, we have the eerie sensation that we are not so much writing as being written, that language in its insidious way is using us as a medium of expression and not vice versa. The struggle of writing is fraught with a specialised form of anguish, the anguish of knowing one will never get it right, that one will always fail, and that all one can hope to do is ‘fail better’, as Beckett recommends. The pleasure of writing is in the preparation, not the execution, and certainly not in the thing executed. The novelist daily at his desk eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it. Money is necessary to pay the dentist’s bills.

Will Self

Will Self

I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy petting – but novels are the full monte. Frankly, if I didn’t enjoy writing novels I wouldn’t do it – the world hardly needs any more and I can think of numerous more useful things someone with my skills could be engaged in. As it is, the immersion in parallel but believable worlds satisfies all my demands for vicarious experience, voyeurism and philosophic calithenics. I even enjoy the mechanics of writing, the dull timpani of the typewriter keys, the making of notes – many notes – and most seducttive of all: the buying of stationery. That the transmogrification of my beautiful thoughts into a grossly imperfect prose is always the end result doesn’t faze me: all novels are only a version- there is no Platonic ideal. But I’d go further still: fiction is my way of thinking about and relating to the world; if I don’t write I’m not engaged in any praxis, and lose all purchase.

Read the rest of the piece, which includes responses from Joyce Carol Oates, Geoff Dyer, Ronan Bennett and Julie Myerson, on The Guardian UK site.

Adverbidly Yours

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This post, by Janice Hardy, originally appeared on her The Other Side of the Story blog on 3/24/09.

Adverbs.

Writers the world over just shuddered when I said that. The experts tell us to never use adverbs. Adverbs are bad, adverbs are evil, adverbs will sneak into your room late at night and strangle you in your bed.

Well, not really.

Poor use of adverbs is bad, but adverbs are a perfectly good tool in any writer’s toolbox. Many have equated them to a heavy spice, like cayenne pepper. A dash spices things up, but too much makes the dish inedible. Some writers, especially those just starting out, think they must kill all adverbs and never ever use them or their work will be rejected.

Again, not really.

Agents aren’t counting your adverbs and if you go over a secret number they reject you. What they are doing, is reading your story to see if it makes them want to keep reading it. If they find reasons not to, they’ll stop. One of those reasons is bad writing, and bad adverb usage is high on the list of what’s considered bad writing.

Adverbs are acceptable if used well. The trick is to know when you’re being lazy and when you’re using the right word to say what you mean.

Adverbs are often misused in dialog. We’ve all seen (and probably written):

"I hate you," she said angrily.

In this instance, there are plenty of great ways a writer can dramatize anger. The she in question can bang her fist on a table, spit in his face, pull out a Sig Sauer nine mil and blow his brains out. All of those would be more exciting than angrily, which can mean something different to everyone who reads it. By using an ambiguous adverb, not only are you falling into lazy writing, you’re missing a great opportunity for characterization. The gal who would bang her fist on a table is not the same gal who’d break out that Sig.

Now, look at a line like:

"I hate you," she said softly.

Many people would swap out softly for whisper in this instance, but whisper isn’t the same as speaking softly. I can speak softly and not whisper. Softly is an adverb that conveys something specific depending on the context in which it’s used. What you pair with this adverb will make or break it.
 

Read the rest of the post on The Other Side of the Story.

The Dreaded Moment of Suck

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This piece, by Alison Janssen, originally appeared on the Hey, There’s A Dead Guy In The Living Room blog on 3/29/09. In it, Ms. Janssen talks about that dreaded moment of self-doubt many authors and, apparently, editors sometimes feel when looking back over a finished manuscript: the (hopefully) fleeting moment when you’re absolutely certain the work is horrible and you’re a fraud.

During the lifespan of a Bleak House book, I may read the same text seven or eight times. Sometimes a time or two more, sometimes a time or two less. (It depends upon my working relationship with the author and the way we work through revisions.)

Suffice it to say: I read each title *intensely* before it’s bound between hard covers and made available for mass consumption.

And over the course of those months, at some point after my initial acquisitions read but before my final check-all-tiny-last-minute-changes review, I experience a moment while reading when I think,

"Oh god. This book is terrible. Is this book terrible?!"

*Gasp*

I know! I’m almost ashamed to admit this. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think any Bleak House book is less than stellar. Obviously, right? What would that say about the company? Our authors? Heck, my own professional skill set?

But I want to talk about this because I sometimes hear authors address a similar feeling, and I find it fascinating. I hear them talk about the moment of self-doubt which seizes them — wholly unfairly — and convinces them that the ms they’re slaving over is utter crap. Some authors I’ve heard speak to this say the feeling creeps up just after they reach the halfway point of their first draft, when they’ve set everything up, invested a ton,and know pretty well where it’s all going, but still have to get it there.

That makes sense to me — having focused so much on a ms, worked mostly in solitude, and being essentially past the point of no return, I can believe that it’s easy to doubt yourself. No matter how many previous titles you’ve published, no matter how many bestseller lists you may be on. Bestseller status doesn’t fill blank pages for you.

My experience with a ms is much different from the author’s, of course. My work is not creation, but refinement. I still, however, spend a lot of time with the mss. And I certainly feel a sense of ownership when I usher a book from query through publication.

I want to be proud of the work that I do, and I want to be praised. (That’s natural, yeah?) I want Bleak House to be renowned for publishing great crime fiction. And I believe in what we do, and the titles and author in which we invent.

But, just like the authors I discussed above, I encounter that moment — when I’ve been shut up so long with a ms, trying to brainstorm a solution to some little character flaw, or soothe some plot hiccup, or elegantly replace some overused (but totally awesome) word. The dreaded moment of suck. 

Read the rest of the post on the Hey, There’s A Dead Guy In The Living Room blog.

read this b4 u publish :-)

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This article, by Max Leone, originally appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly site on 11/10/08.

A 13-year-old boy tells the industry what teens want.

I am of that population segment that is constantly derided as “not reading anymore,” and is therefore treated by publishing companies as a vast, mysterious demographic that’s seemingly impossible to please. Kind of like the way teenage boys think of girls.

The reason we read so little in our free time is partially because of the literary choices available to teenagers these days. The selection of teen literature is even more barren now that the two great dynasties, Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl, have released their final installments. Those two massive successes blended great characters, humor and action in a way that few other books manage. When they went for laughs, they were genuinely funny, and their dramatic scenes were still heart-poundingly tense, even after I’d read them dozens of times. 

And so, after weeks of brainstorming and careful consideration (three months of procrastinating and two hours of furious typing), I will now attempt to end this dark age of adolescent prose. I will start by stating the main problem with books aimed at teenage boys. Then I will give some examples of what teenage boys actually want to read.

The first problem with many books for teens is archaic language. Seriously. It is the kiss of death for teenage boy literature. Any book infested by it is destined to become an eternal object of derision around the cafeteria lunch table. It is a problem that applies not only to the “classics” (yes, I will use quotations whenever I use that word. Live with it.), but also modern teenage literature. “Methinks”? “Doth”? Really? So we are constantly ridiculed for “lol,” while these offenses go unnoticed? To all writers of books aimed at teenage boys, I beg you: please use only modern language, no matter what time period or universe your book takes place in.

Another giant, oily blemish on the face of teenage literature (that was entirely intentional) is whatever urge compels writers to clumsily smash morals about fairness or honor or other cornball crap onto otherwise fine stories. Do you not think we get enough of that in our parents’ and teachers’ constant attempts to shove the importance of justice and integrity down our throats? We get it. I assure you, it makes no difference in our behavior at all. And we will not become ax murderers because volume 120 of Otherworld: The Generica Chronicles didn’t smother us in morals that would make a Care Bear cringe.

And then there are the vampires and other supernatural creature that appear in many contemporary teen novels. Vampires, simply put, are awesome. However, today’s vampire stories are 100 pages of florid descriptions of romance and 100 pages of various people being emo. However much I mock the literature of yesteryear, it definitely had it right when it came to vampires. The vampire was always depicted as a menacing badass. That is the kind of book teenage boys want to read. Also good: books with videogame-style plots involving zombie attacks, alien attacks, robot attacks or any excuse to shoot something.

Finally, here is what I consider the cardinal rule of writing for young adults: Do Not Underestimate Your Audience. They actually know a lot about what’s going on in politics. They will get most of the jokes you expect them not to. They have a much higher tolerance for horror and action than most adults. Most of the books I read actually don’t fall under the “young adult” category. I can understand the humor in Jon Stewart’s or Stephen Colbert’s books as well as any adult.

Publishers can stop panicking and worrying that the teenage boy market is impossible to crack, that teenagers hardly ever read anymore, and that they have only a few years before books become obsolete and are replaced by holograms or information beamed straight into people’s minds. Okay, they probably do have to worry about that last one. But if they follow the simple rules I outlined above, they’ll be able to cash in on the four or five minutes each day that teenagers aren’t already spending on school, homework, videogames, eating, band practice and sports.

P.S. I have very good lawyers, so don’t bother trying to sue me if none of these suggestions work and your company goes out of business.

Author Information: Max Leone attends eighth grade in New Jersey.

The Dragon's Pool Preview on CreateSpace's new tool

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Since the 3rd Book of The Jade Owl Legacy Series – The Dragon’s Pool, is nearing publication in early May, I decided to use CreateSpace’s kool new PREVIEW tool to get feedback on the first chapter. Here’s the link:

https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056199

Ed Patterson

Publetariat Joins The BookLife Network

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Publetariat is now part of Publisher’s Weekly’s BookLife network! 

 

From the BookLife site:

Welcome to BookLife
…a growing network for book lovers. BookLife is for people like you…readers, book buyers, authors, sellers, recommenders, illustrators, publishers, librarians, trade, agents, distribution and media. The partner sites reflect the passions of their founders. You get incredible depth, insight, informative blogs, links and connections to others who share your interests. Discover new book destinations that satisfy your love for books.

Your favorite authors – interviews – thousands of book reviews – videos – publisher news – insider information – book signings and tour dates – and, most importantly, communities of people like you who love books.

Other member sites include GoodReads, BookSlut, IndieBound, LitMob and Litopia.  Check out BookLife to get more information on these and other partner sites.

 

What Twitter Can Do For Your Pitch

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This blog post, by Angela James, executive editor for Samhain Publishing, originally appeared on her Nice Mommy – Evil Editor blog on 3/26/09. In it, she discusses how Twitter’s 140-character limit presents authors with an opportunity to hone a book pitch.

ETA: The first thing to say is that a pitch isn’t necessarily about selling your book to an agent/editor. Time to move out of that mindset! Read on…

Here’s another one to file under conversations from Twitter. This came up this past weekend in a conversation about Blood and Chocolate by Annette Kurtis Clause. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it. Someone (@lihsa, follow the link for her article on it) on Twitter asked for a review/description and the challenge was on. 140 character review for a book? It’s the “elevator pitch” at its most refined!

Now, it’s been a few years since I read Blood and Chocolate so even though it’s one of the books I recommend often when someone asks for paranormal YA, I still had to stop and think how to refine it in an interesting way. Years after I’d read it. Hard!

I came up with: teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

I don’t think it’s the best review/pitch but it does start to refine the ideas. I could make it punchier, ramp up the hook, really get someone interested. Let’s see…

Rebelling against her society. Searching for love. Desperate for a chance. Can this teen wolf reconcile what she is with who she wants to be?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m actually over by one character but I figure if I delete a space, I’ll be okay. What do you think? Better? It took me 15 minutes of fiddling to come up with that versus the first one, which I just popped off the top of my head.

But what I’m getting at is that it’s important to be able for authors to refine your book to its purest hook. The conflict, the angst, the info that’s going to make a reader, editor or agent want to pick it up to read, go find an excerpt, request a full or keep reading your query letter.

TV does this with what they call log lines. A one sentence hook meant to engage the viewer and get them to watch the show. Something that will easily fit in the TV guide or, for many of us now, on the guide channel. There’s no second chances when the viewer has only that guide to look at and base their decision off of. So the log line has to be good enough to convince the viewer to turn the channel right then and there, without a bunch of extranneous detail or someone saying “oh wait, that didn’t quite hook you? Well let me tell you just a little more”. The log line is it. The same should be considered true of the elevator pitch or, for purposes of my blog post, the Twitch (Twitter pitch. Ha! I’m funny).

At Samhain, we do something similar with each of our books’ blurbs, but we call it a tagline. If you go over to the website, the tagline is what you see on this page. Something to pique the interest of readers browsing our website, to entice them to click through to the book’s blurb and then excerpt.

I remember being at a conference a few years back and someone at our lunch table asking another author there about the book she wrote. I remember it was a historical but that’s all I remember because she spent the next 15 minutes talking, in depth, about the plot of her book and all the details. Ouch. Those are the times that I have to really struggle to pay attention.

It’s harder if it happens during a pitch session because, let’s be honest, it’s hard for any of us to be talked to for 8 to 10 minutes without drifting off and thinking about lunch (unless you’re at lunch, in which case you’re thinking about your post-lunch nap and how much you’d like one). But I can be hooked by a plot refined down to its most interesting conflicts and ideas. Something that either makes me want to ask questions and find out more, or go buy the book and find out more.

Read the rest of the post on Nice Mommy – Evil Editor.

The Future of Publishing, As Seen From The Future of Publishing

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This piece originally appeared on The Bookish Dilettante on 2/23/09.

Today – the Bookish Dilettante happily yields the floor to a new voice – Mr. Aaron Hierholzer. Aaron, a young gun in the publishing world, attended this year’s TOC conference, and has graciously offered up his observations. With no futher ado, Mr. Aaron Hierholzer…

Last November, former Collins publisher Steve Ross said, “It’d be absolutely terrifying to be starting out now, to be young and to not have the benefit of years, if not decades, of perspective . . . I would have seriously considered leaving book publishing." Days later, literary agent Esther Newburg said, “I would hate to be starting out in the [book] business.”

What’s a person with a passion for bringing books to readers to do when the old guard implies that running for the hills might be best? What’s one to do when you find out that neither MGMT, Diplo, nor a good chunk of your acquaintances even read books? What’s one to do when one could compile a lengthy volume of humorless “end of publishing” articles from the past four months, alone?

Attending "O’Reilly’s Tools of Change" conference isn’t a bad place to start. I got to go earlier this month, and the enthusiasm for the future of books both p- and e- was truly infectious, and helped dispel some of the gloominess I was feeling about Bookland.

Overall, TOC’s gloom-dispelling ability was directly proportional to its specificity: anyone who’s been paying attention knows that reading is increasingly a social act, that one can instantly access almost any fact on a mobile phone, and that Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. These harped-upon broad strokes grew tiresome, and when news that HarperCollins terminated its Collins division spread through the conference on Tuesday, it seemed there were more pressing questions to address. Questions like, "where’s the money going to come from when most of the knowledge of mankind can be found for free via Google?" Questions like, "should I run for the hills after all?"

Thankfully, many presenters did get to the nitty-gritty and the applicable, talking about things like how we’re going to get readers to value (and therefore be willing to pay for) digital content. I wish the “Success Stories and Failures in Digital Publishing” panel could have lasted all day—the skipped slides by rushed presenters were heartbreaking. Hachette’s Stephanie van Duin, Macmillan’s Sara Lloyd, and Lexcycle’s Neelan Choksi all talked knowledgably about the pricing and profitability of digital content, and about the fearlessness it will take to find a workable solution.

In nerve-wracking times such as these, staying focused on why we publish books in the first place is a good alternative to worrying about the end times of reading. And the point that kept striking me over and over was simple: readers come first. Publishers have got to treat the reader, the end user, with utmost respect. That can take any number of forms—not publishing absolute dreck; not treating the purchaser like a potential thief by imposing draconian DRM; not making digital offerings confusing, and frustrating, and messy, and overly expensive.

Read the rest of the article on The Bookish Dilettante.

Hello from a newcomer

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I’m enjoying turning my stories into books which are softcover and self published.  My best seller is an Amish Story titled "Christmas Traditions – An Amish Love Story"  ISBN 143824889X sold by Amazon or through me at booksbyfay@yahoo  210 pages

When readers get back to me with the great reviews about this book, I have made some great Internet fans and friends.  So look for my book about Margaret Goodman and Levi Yoder.  Follow along as they fight the urge to love each other after years of being apart when Margaret visits the Yoder farm to see Levi’s son.  A heartwarming story with Amish farm scenes and rural background.  The story puts you at a school Christmas program, ice skating on Yoder pond, rescuing a drowning girl in an icy creek, nursing Margaret after a cow nearly kills her and watch Margaret and Levi wrestle with hidden feelings that keep coming to the surface.

Copyrighting Your Work 101

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This post, from the Open Publishing Lab at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, originally appeared on the OPL’s Open Publishing Guide site on 1/25/09.

Something we get asked about a lot is copyright.  As creators, we want to make sure our work is protected from intellectual property theft, and ensure that we control the publication, distribution and adaptation of what we’ve created. The problem is that copyright can be confusing and there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Hopefully, I can help clear some things up and give you some resources for more information on copyright if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
 

Please note that this information is focused on copyright in the United States. For more information on International copyrights, please check out the links at the bottom of the post.
 

What is Copyright?
To begin with, I’m going to get the easy stuff out of the way. With a quick Google search, you can find the basics of what copyright is as well as in-depth discussion and even some analysis. As such, I am going to keep this as simple as possible. Copyright protects the rights of creators of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. Specifically, it gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to, and to authorize others the right to, reproduce, distribute, perform, or display the work. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the law to copyright holders.

For more information on what copyright entails, check out the US Copyright Office’s Copyright Basics.
 

How Do I Protect My Work?
The good news is that a work is considered copyrighted as soon as you create it. So, as I’m typing these words, they are simultaneously copyrighted under the law. As a result, you don’t have to do anything beyond creating your work (which, sadly, is the hard part). However, holding a registered copyright is extremely helpful if you find yourself in litigation if you have to deal with a copyright violation. With a registered certification you will be given a certificate of registration, will be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation, and if the registration occurs within 5 years of publication, then it is considered prima facie evidence

The US Copyright Office now allows online registration of copyright, making the process even easier. Of course, you can still register using paper forms, but doing so is a little more expensive, and can take longer to process. Filing for registration online is $35, and you can get started here. If you choose to file online, then you can upload your work to the copyright office or mail copies to them.
 

Some people claim you can create a “poor man’s copyright” by mailing a copy of your work to yourself via certified mail (or another trackable system). However, copyright law does not cover this type of protection, and as a result does not confer the same protections as registering your copyright.
 

What Other Options Are There?
If you are interested in protecting your work in some ways, but want to allow others to build upon and share your work, then you may be interested in using a Creative Commons license in place of a standard copyright. Creative Commons works alongside copyright, and allows you to apply a series of free attributes to your work, which you can choose whether or not to use. The license options are Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works.
 

By assigning Attribution to your work, you give others the right to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as they give credit the way you request. Share Alike allows others to distribute derivative works, but only under the same license you have assigned to your work.

Noncommercial allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as it is for noncommercial purposes. Finally, No

Derivative Works allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work, but not derivative works. These licenses can be combined into six licenses, which are covered on the Creative Commons site.
 

There you have it, the basics of copyright. I hope this was helpful. If you are looking for more information on the subject, these links are a good place to start:
Where to Copyright – Global Copyright resources
10 Myths About Copyright by Brad Templeton (Chairman of the Board of the EFF)
Copyright Essentials For Writers By Holly Jahangiri

Visit the Open Publishing Guide for a wealth of additional resources related to self-publishing.