Category: Writing

  • On writing

    For a long time I’ve wanted to be a writer, and ultimately make a living writing. My biggest problem with that, however, is actually making myself write. I’m great at thinking about writing, though, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Herewith some of my thoughts, in no particular format, just rambling (i.e., expect no conclusions).

    What defines a “writer”? For a long, long time (well before I discovered the internet), I distinguished between two types of writing: amateur and professional. To my mind (and maybe to many others as well, I don’t know), the only one that really “counted” was the Professional Writer. This was the writer that got paid to write, and had their work published. For extra points, you were truly a Pro if you not only sold your work, but had an Editor as well (as opposed to selling your work as-is for peanuts—if even that—to the various independent and/or struggling ‘zines that floated around).

    That distinction—amateur versus professional—still lingers in my mind. But with the advent of the internet, and now especially blogs, literally anyone with access to a computer can be a published writer; the lines are blurring. And, they can be paid, too, after a fashion: anyone running AdSense on their blog can make money for their writing. Does that make them Professional Writers? I don’t know, truly. My notion of what delineates writers has been pretty much trashed anymore.

    Yes, there’s irony in that I’m writing about writing on this blog after what I just wrote. There’s more irony in that, for all my procrastination in making time to write, I actually spend a fair amount of time writing here. Maybe I’m motivated by the instant gratification and feedback that blogging offers; maybe I like cutting out the middleman—in this case submitting stories, going through the reject/acceptance cycle, waiting for them to actually appear in print. Who knows?

    What I do know is that I love to write. I do. I get a charge out of it, it’s refreshing, energizing. I always sort of “rediscover” this after I write a bit (like I’m doing now). But I’m the absolute worst at violating the number one rule of writing: Write! That’s always my first and main piece of advice to anyone who wants to be a writer: make the time to write. Write, no matter what. Heh. Talk about irony.

    (Actually, when I was younger—late teens and early twenties—I used to write quite a bit. Usually late at night; probably one of the most productive writing times of my life was when I was working swing shift at the particle board plant—I’d get home by one in the morning and start writing. By hand, of course.)

    Fiction was what I always wanted to write, “professionally.” Well, science fiction mostly (big surprise there). That’s changed over the last few years; I still want to write fiction, but I find I’m also interested in writing on other things—and that’s pretty much all I’ve done since starting this blog. It’s a maturing process. It’s definitely a good way to find your voice and develop style, better than just sticking to one type of thing.

    Obviously, looking at my previous post about blogs and money I’m thinking a lot about writing online (and making money from it). It’s an attractive idea, but I wonder: could you make money publishing fiction online? Or is the online model more suited to an article model, like niche blogging? I’m thinking the latter. I’m not sure if there’s a model for selling fiction online that doesn’t involve ebooks or DRM or something; somehow attaching ads to a piece of fiction seems doomed to fail. (Although, maybe I’ll post a piece of free fiction from Gutenberg and see what happens to it with AdSense; now there’s an experiment.)

    But what’s crazy is that even though I could (hypothetically) make a career writing online, it still doesn’t feel to me like I would have accomplished anything—like I’m not a Professional Writer. Somehow it’s more validating to me as a writer to have my work printed that to just have it published online. It feels like cheating, somehow. Can I allow myself to be called a “Writer” if I didn’t have someone edit my work? If it didn’t show up in print?

    But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Well, yes, it does in certain ways. I’m sure no one would argue that a story is better with editing and review that the “traditional” publishing model provides. But—and this just occurred to me—when you publish stuff online (as with blogs), having an ecosystem of readers that can provide feedback and comments on what you write is probably a better edit/review system that the traditional channels can provide. Interesting.

    I wonder about writing books anymore; 99.9% of writers are of the struggling artist variety, that is, they might be able to scratch out a living from writing, but they’re barely getting by. There’s a glut of books out there all vying for publication, and it gets worse each year, so that there are more and more books competing for fewer and fewer publication slots. So, when I could release everything online, in any format I want, for anyone to download—isn’t that more validating that struggling to sell a book that may not even be published for years, and will most likely never print more than a first run? More satisfying?

    I think I’m mostly past the printed-as-validation snobbery, despite going on about it here. Blogging played a part in that, no doubt. I wonder how the next generation handles/will handle it. (Those that write and fancy themselves writers, anyway.) Will there be a perceived rift for them? Likely not; blogging and writing online will probably be second nature, par for the course.

    The next step, of course, is to write. No matter what.

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Jeez, it looks like I’ve taken a blog sabbatical around here. July must be that kind of month. Anyway…

    So, probably against my better judgement, I read The Da Vinci Code over the last week. (My parents loaned it to me.) It wasn’t nearly as earth-shattering as some people would have you believe (especially since I already read the source material, Holy Blood, Holy Grail a number of years ago), but overall I found it mostly, well, amateurish—poorly written.

    I mean, the writing just doesn’t follow the rules for good writing. Things like showing versus telling, dialogue, triangulation, stuff like that. It’s distracting, sloppy. And yet—and yet—this book is a huge bestseller. Huge. So what’s the formula?

    Short chapters that are quick and easy to read, keeping the pages turning. Characters that are easily identifiable. Chase scenes. And of course, a conspiracy, everybody loves a conspiracy. Especially one with a lot of religious iconographic mystery behind it.

    I don’t know if this points more to the state of bestselling fiction today or to the level of the average reader. But on the bright side, it should give hope to all aspiring writes of bestsellers out there.

  • Writing tips

    Here’s a good link for anyone who’s trying to be a writer: Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. It’s a series of posts on a message board on the topic of writing commercial novels, from a professional writer. It’s also an insane 27 pages long, with 21 (is that right? I counted twice…) posts per page. It’s good stuff, what I’ve read so far.

  • Writing every day

    Since the beginning of the year, I set a personal goal for myself to write and publish something on my weblog here at least once a day, and I’ve actually stuck to it. (Yeah, there’s some gaps on the calendar there, but if you look closely, it’s because the post didn’t get done until something like 12:07 a.m.—so while I didn’t technically get it in on the calendar day, I still count it because it was still part of the day I had, before going to bed.) The trick, of course, is coming up with something to write everyday—or rather, as I’ve been finding, something to write that I have time to do.

    (This is the point where other writers, upon hearing my complaint about not having the time to write, scoff and insist that if I truly was a writer, I would make the time. I know. Fair enough.)

    I’ve got several ideas for longer articles that I want to (eventually) write and post, but by the time I’m at the point in my evening where I can sit down to write, it’s late and I don’t really want to stay up much past midnight most of the time, so what I’m stuck with is trying to come up with shorter items to blog about. And see, that’s actually harder for me sometimes than in coming up with longer items to write about. What I could do is start longer articles in draft mode and work on them as time permits, and post them when ready—and I do, sometimes—but that doesn’t really mesh with my goal of blogging something everyday.

    Anyway, I’m rambling a bit, but it felt like something to get off my chest. I actually spent a good part of my time this evening working on a long article that I’ll publish here soon, but since that’s not ready for prime time I wanted to get this out of my system, too.

    Any other bloggers out there with similar thoughts?

  • Moving right along…

    A few random things.

    php|architect is offering a free issue of their new magazine. Anyone who’s into PHP should check this out.

    I found a neat site today called StoryMania. From their own description, they’re an “online community and marketplace for publishing, discovering, reviewing, buying and selling creative works — interact directly with authors and other viewers.” The site could use some technical improvements, but I like the idea a lot.

    So far I’ve got the first five chapters of Tom Sawyer done in Palm Reader format (.pml). It’s pretty plain, so I’ll be calling it version 1.0 and try to get my hands on the actual book to address additional formatting issues.

  • Yes, I was a French Major

    The dice tumbled across the table, bounced in unison against the far end and skidded to a halt. The woman in the red dress looked up, her full pouty lips pursed in excitement. Her face was bright and intelligent; her dress faltered to reveal sensuous thigh when she moved. “You’ve won again, Mr.—” She paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

    “Fromage.” The man’s mouth barely moved as he spoke the name around the cigar clenched between his teeth. A lighter flashed, and orange-blue flame licked the cigar’s tip, igniting a red ember. The man drew deeply, extinguished the lighter with a deft flick of the wrist, and exhaled thoughtfully. A cloud of sweet, pungent blue smoke wafted upwards over the table. “Jacques Fromage.”