I love blank journals, but this is so true:
I tried to explain that I hadn’t written in it because I loved it so much and I didn’t want to ruin it. The pages were so nice, and sewn in, you couldn’t just rip them out. Whatever stupid thing I wrote down would be in there permanently. — Elissa Schapell, Blueprints for Building Better Girls
From The Millions, here are 12 Holiday Gifts That Writers Will Actually Use.
The author Neal Stephenson’s reputation for prescience about the online world is well earned, even if he regards it lightly.
Here is Neal Stephenson’s piece for the World Policy Institute, in which he describes his Hieroglyph theory: Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute
Posted in Geeking Out
Tagged Computing, Innovation, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars, Neal Stephenson, Optimism, Science fiction, Space elevator, Technology, The Future, Writing
Image via Wikipedia
In school as an English major, I learned how to interpret symbolism in literature. Take Moby Dick, for instance. My professor made a point, which I still remember, of how Ahab’s hat symbolized his manhood, which the whale stole from him. He likened that to the scene in Thelma and Louise when the girls blow up the trucker’s shiny big rig full of oil (like a whale, ha ha) and then steal his hat before driving away.
Finding symbols, making connections, trying to guess what the author wants you to know — this is what English class is all about. In studying literature, we are meant to be doing something “important,” which is why we spend so much time discussing what the writer intended and what the text really means. We are taught there is a right way and a wrong way to read literature, that we either get it or we don’t. No wonder so many people get turned off of reading.
In creative writing classes, however, I learned what I already had guessed –writers mostly wing it. They write from the gut, or the subconscious, if you prefer. They don’t think in symbols any more than I, walking through a mall, would see a pair of red shoes in a store window and think, “Ah, there’s a symbol of my lost youth, if I ever did see one.”
Today I’ve come to think of reading a book as having a conversation with the writer. It’s a conversation where both parties are separated by time and space, and the writer will probably never hear my side of it, but it’s a conversation nonetheless. The writer brings a lot to our conversation, of course — characters, setting, plot, theme — but as the reader, I bring a great deal as well. My life experiences, my beliefs and values, my current preoccupations, even what happened to me that morning or what I read in the news last night — all affect how I respond to and interpret what I read.
The writer has put something on the page, some words. Some time later, I read them. And together we decide what those words mean for us, in that moment when they are read. If I read those same words twenty years later, they may mean something entirely different, and then the writer and I will have a different conversation, even though the words themselves haven’t changed.
All those English classes spent trying to figure out what the author meant by such-and-such an image were probably pretty useless. The point is not to become preoccupied with what the words are supposed to mean, or try to guess the right interpretation. Any writer who’s overly concerned that his readers understand his precise meaning at all times is probably not a lot of fun to read, anyway. I think what’s more important is the meaning that is created between the reader and the writer when the book is read. A novel is not a lecture. It’s a conversation. Or at least that’s what it should be.
I like this take from Clive Thompson on how the blog, once a literal log of Websites, is now becoming a forum for longer, in-depth analysis once reserved for magazines and newspapers. His thesis is that Twitter and similar tools have replaced the quick link-sharing function once served by blogs, and that these social networks also provide a more appropriate place for instant reactions to news and stories — the “short take,” as he calls it. So more thoughtful analysis has moved to the blog. What really suffers, he posits, is the “middle take,” once provided by weekly newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek, but probably unnecessary in our wired world.
I see this at work in my own blogging and online sharing. I tend to confine links and thoughts “of the moment” — such as breaking news and reactions to it, or something that’s momentarily funny — to “short-take” forums like Twitter and StumbleUpon. I reserve more thoughtful pieces for sharing on my blog and preserving in Delicious.
But for truly long-form writing, such as essays, short stories and book-length writing, I return to paper. I still can’t stomach reading anything much longer than a typical blog post on the computer screen. Maybe if I had an iPad?
Read: Clive Thompson on How Tweets and Texts Nurture In-Depth Analysis | Magazine.
So, this article over on Salon.com, prompted some thoughts: Better yet, DONT write that novel. The rant is a response to the annual write-a-thon, National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWrMo, as it’s known around the Interwebs, encourages writers and would-be writers to bang out a first draft in a month in an effort to just get it written.
I do take issue with Laura Miller’s tone in the Salon article. Let me paraphrase: “Hey, amateur writer, anything you produce during NaNoWrMo is going to be dreck, so why even bother?” Here’s why. Every person should feel free and encouraged to express themselves creatively in whatever medium works best for them, whether that’s writing, art, music, crocheting, cooking, ice sculpture, I don’t care what. It’s good for the soul, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re awful or not. Creative expression is something we all need to do more of, and I think it’s patronizing that Laura Miller feels like she has to tell NaNoWrMo participants not to bother their little heads with trying to write a novel.
But she doesn’t want to see that dreck foisted on the world, and I have to agree with that. Still, that’s why we have literary agents and publishers, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be our editorial gatekeepers. That’s why it’s so damn hard to get published. There’s a lot of competition, most of it is awful, and only the best of the best probably eke their way through. The flip side of that is that if you’re a choosy reader, you have a good chance of finding a more-than-decent novel to read on each trip to the bookstore.
Miller also makes an impassioned case for nurturing readers. As a reader myself, I’m on board. But I think the fault lies not with the legions of amateur writers out there, but with the publishers, who I think have gotten sloppy in recent years. It’s not that they’re publishing bad books; on the contrary, I’ve been reading a lot of great new books. But even hardbound literary fiction seems to be riddled with typos and other careless mistakes, which really distract a careful reader from the pleasure of reading. I don’t consider this the writer’s fault, although a writer who can’t grasp the basics of grammar and spelling probably shouldn’t make it far as a professional. Instead, I suspect that publishers are skimping on that lowly, often freelance, most definitely underpaid necessity: the copyeditor. And any publisher who can’t be bothered to pay someone a few bucks an hour to copyedit their books shouldn’t be in the business, in my opinion.
I’m not even going to get into the whole issue of e-books and gouging readers while not even letting them truly own the digital books they publish. I’ll only purchase an e-reader when there are no paper books left to read. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that any book I shell out my hard-earned money for be free of errors. These are professional editors, after all.
But amateur writers, please keep writing your hearts out. I wrote a novel once that’s completely unpublishable, but at least I wrote a novel. I get it. It’s about the feeling of accomplishing a goal, of creating something. It’s not about making Laura Miller read another bad book.
Better yet, don’t write that novel (Salon)
National Novel Writing Month
The web has made it easy for anyone anywhere to publish their writing with very little effort or money, and for the most part, I believe this is a VERY GOOD THING. There probably hasn’t been a time in history when people could so easily express themselves, and instead of shouting into the void, there’s a good chance that someone somewhere is actually listening.
But as freeing as this collective outpouring is, the writers of the web are producing a lot of dreck. Originality is as rare a commodity online as it is anywhere else. But I have found that the worst writing doesn’t come from the vast sea of personal blogs (although there is plenty of bad writing there), but from the so-called professional blogs that rely on a never-ending stream of content to get ads in front of eyeballs.
It’s depressing reading the same rehashed, boring, generic prose over and over again. These sites, which seem to constitute the bulk of what gets published online (at least on a regular basis) occupy the same wasteland as the magazines in the grocery store checkout line or the Today Show and its ilk — except they are much harder to avoid. Google’s search algorithm doesn’t filter for quality, as far as I can tell.
And I have to blame Google for this never-ending babble, because these sites believe they have to publish quickly and often. I know that pageviews drop if you don’t post frequently. And if pageviews are your bread and butter, then the act of posting — rather than the content you post — becomes the crucial thing. Who cares what you have to say so long as you keep talking?
So we get list after list of 20 this or 50 that, pseudo-slideshows designed to keep us mindlessly clicking, unsupported prognostications of the end of everything, vague punditry that answers questions none of us cared to even ask. Because of the pressure to keep posting, few take the time to ruminate, percolate, revise or edit. This isn’t writing; it’s masturbation by blog post.
I’ve found the best online writing either at the very top of the food chain — on the sites of renowned print magazines like The Atlantic or The New Yorker, some publishers that have invested writer and editorial talent in their websites, and blogs of well-known writers — and at the bottom, where individual writers toil in relative obscurity, simply for love. (I try to highlight those writers here when I unearth them.) The best links rarely show up in Google searches; they are shared by my virtual friends on Twitter, Google Reader, and the comments areas of my blogs and blogs I read.
But there’s a certain randomness to waiting for good writing to fall into your lap. There is no online library where high-quality writing on all kinds of subjects has been selected, cataloged and annotated. Who would be willing to pay for such a service when we are so used to getting everything on the web for free, even if it is one that we could all benefit from?
In the meantime, we keep floundering in the sea of dreck. The reward is when we discover a new insight or thought or poetic piece of writing. Sometime it happens several times in a day; sometimes it doesn’t happen for a week or more. But still, it happens.
I have been following all of the conversations about the future of publishing, particularly with regard to e-books, going on over the past few months with interest. I thought I’d share some of the more interesting conversations I’ve found, as well as some of my still-nascent thoughts on the whole kerfuffle.
I have a bit of an inside view of publishing — 10 years out of date, but it’s not an industry that changes very quickly — and it’s not a positive one. I love books and writers, but publishing, as it exists today, seems like a necessary evil. It is too big, too cumbersome, too costly and too reluctant to change. Their business practices, which didn’t make any sense years ago, seem woefully out of date, wasteful and expensive today. The industry is ready for upstarts with new ideas to come in and turn things upside down.
When the world is changing around you, you either adapt or die. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know someone will come up with it. And that’s likely who we’ll be buying books from in the future.
Please to read more on this:
Posted in Notebook
Tagged Books, Digital age, Digital publishing, Publishing, Self-publishing, Thoughts, Writing
Here are some follow-up thoughts on my post about why writers should not write for free.
Some readers may be wondering if I am saying that you should never write anything without getting paid for it. That actually is not what I’m saying at all, but let me clarify. What if you just really love to write? You don’t care about making money — you just want to do it for the love of it. Isn’t that allowed?
Sure. People do things they love without getting paid, or even investing a lot of their own money, all the time. These activities are called hobbies, and if writing is your hobby, great. For my part, I really enjoy blogging, cooking, gardening and reading. These are all hobbies of mine that I don’t get paid for, nor do I expect to be paid. I also don’t intend to turn any of these things into my profession, although I don’t find any fault with people who manage that feat. It’s always great to get paid for doing something you already love to do.
But there is a fundamental difference between writing for free because you love it and letting yourself be exploited. If you are just writing for a hobby, then by all means start a blog or contribute to a little literary magazine that someone else is publishing as a hobby or self-publish your book and give it away to your friends and family. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.
What I object to are writers who want to write for a living, who have that as their expressly stated goal, and then agree to poor terms with an entity that is making money off their work. That is exploitation. If you want to be a professional writer — if you want to make money at writing — then act like it and charge for your work.
Cooking is my hobby. What if someone ate a dish I had cooked and said to me, “That is so great that I want you to cook in my restaurant. I can’t afford to pay you, but you will get great exposure.”
Would I then say, “Cooking is my art, and I wouldn’t think of charging for it. Of course I will cook in your restaurant for free, even though you are making gobs of money off my work.” Of course not! I think the response of any reasonable person would be, “Great! What’s the salary?” There are two words in the phrase dream job, and one of those words implies payment in exchange for work performed.
So I do think people should write just for the love of it. I do that every day. But if you are that good at it that someone else can make money off your work, then you deserve a fair cut. That’s all I’m saying.
For more about writing, go read this excellent post over at John Scalzi’s blog.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2724d85d-ea13-4144-b9f3-0870ccc1e8f1)
I saw a couple of posts on this subject on the World in the Satin Bag, and the subject of whether writers should give away their work for free is a perennial debate. So in case anyone cares, here are my two cents’ on the subject.
I was a working writer for 9 years. By “working writer” I mean that is how I earned my living, full-time. I never once gave away my work without getting paid a fair wage. I wrote nonfiction, and I was usually paid by the job. I actually set an hourly wage for myself that I felt was fair and reasonable for the quality of work I produced. When I got a new contract, I divided the total amount by my hourly rate, and that is how long I spent on the job. Just like a plumber or an electrician, I made sure that I was getting paid what I was worth for each hour I worked.
When a writer gives away his work or accepts a very low payment, that writer is essentially saying, “This is how little I value my own time and skills. My work is worth less than the work of the guy flipping my hamburger at McDonald’s.” Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the writer to value his own work. Publishers will always, always try to get away with paying as little as possible. It is up to writers and aspiring writers to stand up for themselves and to not accept substandard pay.
Anyone who wants to be a professional, working writer would never just give their work away. Even if they never sold a thing, they believe their work — and the time they spent on it — has a tangible value, and they act accordingly. You do not break into the business by giving away free writing — that’s a myth perpetrated by publishers who don’t want to pay up. You do what other writers do: Work hard, hone your craft, get good and then find an agent who is willing to sell your stuff for a reasonable sum of money.
Somewhere along the line, someone is attempting to make money off your writing. If they do, then the writer deserves a fair share of that. If the publisher is selling the work in a book or magazine, the writer deserves a cut. If the publisher is using the work to attract visitors to a website or blog, where they hope to sell a good or service, then the writer should receive payment. What if a big-name company approached you and said, “Write all our advertising copy. We can’t afford to pay you but you’ll get great exposure.” What would you say? Most people would say, “No way. I need to get paid.” It’s no different when a magazine or publisher or website says the same thing. And if they can’t afford to pay, then maybe they can’t afford to be in business.
After all, if you went to your day job tomorrow and your boss said, “We can’t afford to pay you any more, but we still expect you to come in for 8 hours a day and give us quality work,” what would you do? Most people wouldn’t agree to work for nothing. So why is it somehow different for writers?
If you really want to work for free, in order to develop your writing skills or get exposure, there are plenty of legitimate avenues to do so. Join a workshop or a writers’ group, or take a class. Start a blog and publish excerpts there. At the extreme, self-publish, but at least charge a little something for your e-book or whatever.
People do not value what they get for free. When a writer gives away his work, he is essentially saying that his writing has no value. And that’s usually true — free writing is generally, in my experience, bad writing. But good writers, professional writers, know their worth, and they charge accordingly.
The blogosphere — the wisdom of our fellow travelers — offers a lot of good life advice. So much good life advice that it’s sometimes hard to process it all. Here are four great pieces of advice originating from blogs I read and one piece of advice from me that, taken together, provide a more-or-less complete instruction manual for how to find out what makes you happy — in work, in life, in all things.
Not that this advice is necessarily easy to follow. Much like meditation, you have to practice doing these things every day. Some days will be harder than others. You don’t just arrive at happiness, like the peak of a mountain after an arduous climb or the destination of a long train ride. Happiness has to be part of the trip itself. As with anything else, you get better with practice.
I’m submitting this article to ProBlogger’s Top 5 Group Writing Project, by the way. Cruise on over there to see a whole lot of variations on the “top 5″ theme.
shannon.turlington AT gmail.com
