Chapter 9 of Scurvy Dogs!, which I read to the kids last week, was as good as I'd hoped, and they loved it as much as I'd thought they would. There's a nice zig zag at the end, and only about five of the roughly 30 kids saw the zag coming. That's always nice. (And the adult in the room didn't, so that's satisfying.)
Finished chapter 10 yesterday and was supposed to read it to the class today but got pre-empted. So I'll be reading tomorrow.
In the meantime, mostly been doing work stuff, and a lot of it. (I get paid by the story, so that's good, especially around Christmas.) And nibbling around the edges of the Chrissie Warren revision. I'll turn full bore, hard core on that next week, when school breaks for the holidays. Which works perfectly, schedule-wise. By the time school starts up again I'll be done with Chrissie. I'll send the finished (this time around) manuscript back to the agent, then be back at work on Scurvy Dogs! in time to have another new chapter for the class.
So 10 chapters done, and they work. I'm pretty sure in the final draft I"m going to want to cut these first 10 in half, but hat's a problem for another day – hopefully by early spring.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
E-books: Mistaking Content for the Container
On Nathan Bransford's blog, he often opines about the growth of e-books and the future of the "traditional book." And people always complain – rightly, I think – that e-books "just aren't the same." It got me thinking, and here's my take on the matter. I was a little surprised by my conclusion.
A newspaper where I worked many, many years ago, was converting from typewriters to computers. We had an early text editing system made up of primitive video display terminals hooked to a big mainframe. We thought we were in the future.
Inside each of these VDTs was a small speaker, maybe two inches in diameter. Every time you pressed a key, the speaker emitted a little "click." Or maybe it was a clack. Hard to recall now.
This was because the hidebound old traditionalists in the news business, the older reporters and the editors, had been working on typewriters all their lives and couldn’t deal with a machine that didn't make a noise when you hit the key. It made them nervous, edgy. So these little speakers clicked and clacked comfortingly. Those of us a bit younger (whippersnappers!) found the whole thing amusing.
The old farts (like I am now) grumbled that they weren't computer jockeys and they weren't typesetters. They said their job was writing stories or editing them, then sending the typed copy off to the composing room where the words would get set into type. They objected to the blurring of that boundary. They didn't think they're job had anything to do with using a computer.
But as time passed, people got used to the new "normal." Computers became more ubiquitous in newsrooms and in our lives. And one day one of the younger copy editors grew tired of listening to the pointless, artificial clicks coming from the VDTs. She went around the newsroom with a pica pole (another obsolete newsroom tool) and gave every VDT a "speakerectomy," cutting the wires. No more clicks! The units stopped making noise but continued to function just fine. Because of course, the purpose of the system was not to produce clicks. It was to get copy to flow from the reporter to the editor to the press.
E-books are something like that. Some – maybe a lot – of people talk about how they love the tactile experience of reading, the smell of a book, the feel, the crackle of the page. The heft of a book. They can't accept the idea of reading without those parts of the experience. I'm one of them. And I am the first to agree that a book is a desirable object in its own right. There's something about a bookshelf crowded with volumes that gives pleasure for its own sake.
But the function of a book is not to smell a certain way or feel a certain way or look cool on a shelf. The function of a book is to convey information from the author's brain to the readers', whether a novel or a textbook, an adventure story or a political treatise. Just like the clicks in the primitive VDTs, the tactile experience is secondary. It's altogether separate from the actual function of the book. It has nothing to do with reading.
When we make that distinction between e-books and traditional books, we're mistaking the content for the container. And the simple fact is, e-books have it all over traditional books in performing the actual function of a book.
Yes, I own lots of books Before we moved from Oregon to the tropics, I had to winnow our collection, getting rid of almost 3,000 volumes, and that stills leaves me with about 2,000. They are, unfortunately, still in storage in Oregon and I want them. I want them NOW. I want my copy of "Treasure Island" with the Wyeth illustrations, and my autographed "Peter and the Star Catchers: and "Empire of Blue Water." I particularly want the copies of the four "Caper" stories I wrote and self-published with Cap'n Slappy. Surprisingly, you don't find them in the thrift store here on the island.
If they were all e-books, I could have slipped them into my pocket before I got on the plane. I'd have them now and not still be sending monthly checks to the storage company.
If you've ever directed young people in a period play, even something written in the 1960s like "Play It Again, Sam," you'll find that when the character they're playing has to make a phone call, they have no idea what to do with a dial phone. They really don't. They stare at the thing and you have to show them how to pretend to use it, and even then, it's not convincing because they have to think about it instead of doing it naturally. They don't miss dial phones, or even digital phones wired to the wall, because they've never experienced them. And that also points to where books are headed. It won't be long before they are curiosities, not necessities.
And if you think about how telephones and newspaper text systems have changed in just a couple of decades, you'll realize e-books will also change so much, so fast, that in a few years we'll barely recognize today's Kindle or Nook as e-books, just like today's reporter would be baffled by those old VDTs.
E-books will replace traditional books because in the ways that matter, they offer far more benefits. They're less expensive to produce, don't consume trees, are far more portable. Soon we won't even say "e-books." The word "book" will mean the content, not the container, to coming generations, most of whom will never read or even hold a traditional book. Just like the comforting clicks of the old VDTs, the tactile experience that we think of as reading but which actually has nothing to do with what the word means, will bow to the realities of the electronic world.
Books will go on. Masses of paper smeared with ink and bound between covers probably will not.
A newspaper where I worked many, many years ago, was converting from typewriters to computers. We had an early text editing system made up of primitive video display terminals hooked to a big mainframe. We thought we were in the future.
Inside each of these VDTs was a small speaker, maybe two inches in diameter. Every time you pressed a key, the speaker emitted a little "click." Or maybe it was a clack. Hard to recall now.
This was because the hidebound old traditionalists in the news business, the older reporters and the editors, had been working on typewriters all their lives and couldn’t deal with a machine that didn't make a noise when you hit the key. It made them nervous, edgy. So these little speakers clicked and clacked comfortingly. Those of us a bit younger (whippersnappers!) found the whole thing amusing.
The old farts (like I am now) grumbled that they weren't computer jockeys and they weren't typesetters. They said their job was writing stories or editing them, then sending the typed copy off to the composing room where the words would get set into type. They objected to the blurring of that boundary. They didn't think they're job had anything to do with using a computer.
But as time passed, people got used to the new "normal." Computers became more ubiquitous in newsrooms and in our lives. And one day one of the younger copy editors grew tired of listening to the pointless, artificial clicks coming from the VDTs. She went around the newsroom with a pica pole (another obsolete newsroom tool) and gave every VDT a "speakerectomy," cutting the wires. No more clicks! The units stopped making noise but continued to function just fine. Because of course, the purpose of the system was not to produce clicks. It was to get copy to flow from the reporter to the editor to the press.
E-books are something like that. Some – maybe a lot – of people talk about how they love the tactile experience of reading, the smell of a book, the feel, the crackle of the page. The heft of a book. They can't accept the idea of reading without those parts of the experience. I'm one of them. And I am the first to agree that a book is a desirable object in its own right. There's something about a bookshelf crowded with volumes that gives pleasure for its own sake.
But the function of a book is not to smell a certain way or feel a certain way or look cool on a shelf. The function of a book is to convey information from the author's brain to the readers', whether a novel or a textbook, an adventure story or a political treatise. Just like the clicks in the primitive VDTs, the tactile experience is secondary. It's altogether separate from the actual function of the book. It has nothing to do with reading.
When we make that distinction between e-books and traditional books, we're mistaking the content for the container. And the simple fact is, e-books have it all over traditional books in performing the actual function of a book.
Yes, I own lots of books Before we moved from Oregon to the tropics, I had to winnow our collection, getting rid of almost 3,000 volumes, and that stills leaves me with about 2,000. They are, unfortunately, still in storage in Oregon and I want them. I want them NOW. I want my copy of "Treasure Island" with the Wyeth illustrations, and my autographed "Peter and the Star Catchers: and "Empire of Blue Water." I particularly want the copies of the four "Caper" stories I wrote and self-published with Cap'n Slappy. Surprisingly, you don't find them in the thrift store here on the island.
If they were all e-books, I could have slipped them into my pocket before I got on the plane. I'd have them now and not still be sending monthly checks to the storage company.
If you've ever directed young people in a period play, even something written in the 1960s like "Play It Again, Sam," you'll find that when the character they're playing has to make a phone call, they have no idea what to do with a dial phone. They really don't. They stare at the thing and you have to show them how to pretend to use it, and even then, it's not convincing because they have to think about it instead of doing it naturally. They don't miss dial phones, or even digital phones wired to the wall, because they've never experienced them. And that also points to where books are headed. It won't be long before they are curiosities, not necessities.
And if you think about how telephones and newspaper text systems have changed in just a couple of decades, you'll realize e-books will also change so much, so fast, that in a few years we'll barely recognize today's Kindle or Nook as e-books, just like today's reporter would be baffled by those old VDTs.
E-books will replace traditional books because in the ways that matter, they offer far more benefits. They're less expensive to produce, don't consume trees, are far more portable. Soon we won't even say "e-books." The word "book" will mean the content, not the container, to coming generations, most of whom will never read or even hold a traditional book. Just like the comforting clicks of the old VDTs, the tactile experience that we think of as reading but which actually has nothing to do with what the word means, will bow to the realities of the electronic world.
Books will go on. Masses of paper smeared with ink and bound between covers probably will not.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Someone a Lot Smarter than Me (16)
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekov
Anton Chekov
Update: 685 words on "Scurvy Dogs!" this morning, but it finished what I think may be my best chapter ever, and brings the total for the book so far to 14,205 words.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
General Thoughts/This and That
Did some really good revision work on "Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter," the last couple of days, though there's much more to do. Did write one passage that I like very much, so I'll probably have to delete it ("Murder your darlings," as the saying goes) and the new framing device is working very well.
Today and tomorrow I'm finishing up a new chapter of "Scurvy Dogs!" because the kids don't care that I have a deadline – they want another chapter.
And it's not a pressing deadline. The agent thinks there's little point in pushing before the holidays, you can barely get publishing house editors on the phone, and you certainly can't get them to read something during this time of year.
In the meantime, there were two good blog posts today on dealing with agents when you're in the query stage. The first post is some good advice on turns of phrase that might set off alarm bells for a potential agent. (Alarm bells are bad things, of course. You want your query to set off choirs of angels or something similar.) The second blog has some advice on how not to behave with agents, written by an agent who had just had an off-putting experience. It's the sort of thing you wouldn’t think you'd need to be reminded of. I mean, real "duh!" stuff. but there you go. Some people think the rules don't apply to them, or aren't aware that there are in fact rules.
Anyway, the agent, Janet Reid (who has both her personal blog and the very helpful "Query Shark" blog, explains it really succinctly. If I may quote: "I'm astounded people think this is Undergraduate Lit 101 and I'm some sort of prof with office hours for writers to drop in and get help. This is a for-profit business and I spend my time doing what I think is going to make me boatloads of money. Shiploads would be better. Helping you figure out why your book doesn't work is not going to make me any money. It makes you feel better. Those are NOT the same things."
Books are such a personal thing, and a love of good books marks you as a sensitive individual. So sometimes people sometimes forget that the first thing about the book business is – It's a business.
As to the boatloads of money, sounds good to me. Although I'm always ready to settle for a suitcase full, as long as it's a pretty big suitcase and none of the bills are smaller than twenties.
Today and tomorrow I'm finishing up a new chapter of "Scurvy Dogs!" because the kids don't care that I have a deadline – they want another chapter.
And it's not a pressing deadline. The agent thinks there's little point in pushing before the holidays, you can barely get publishing house editors on the phone, and you certainly can't get them to read something during this time of year.
In the meantime, there were two good blog posts today on dealing with agents when you're in the query stage. The first post is some good advice on turns of phrase that might set off alarm bells for a potential agent. (Alarm bells are bad things, of course. You want your query to set off choirs of angels or something similar.) The second blog has some advice on how not to behave with agents, written by an agent who had just had an off-putting experience. It's the sort of thing you wouldn’t think you'd need to be reminded of. I mean, real "duh!" stuff. but there you go. Some people think the rules don't apply to them, or aren't aware that there are in fact rules.
Anyway, the agent, Janet Reid (who has both her personal blog and the very helpful "Query Shark" blog, explains it really succinctly. If I may quote: "I'm astounded people think this is Undergraduate Lit 101 and I'm some sort of prof with office hours for writers to drop in and get help. This is a for-profit business and I spend my time doing what I think is going to make me boatloads of money. Shiploads would be better. Helping you figure out why your book doesn't work is not going to make me any money. It makes you feel better. Those are NOT the same things."
Books are such a personal thing, and a love of good books marks you as a sensitive individual. So sometimes people sometimes forget that the first thing about the book business is – It's a business.
As to the boatloads of money, sounds good to me. Although I'm always ready to settle for a suitcase full, as long as it's a pretty big suitcase and none of the bills are smaller than twenties.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
THIS is the fun part!
It may be Saturday, but I couldn't wait to get to work today. Not on "Scurvy Dogs!" My agent yesterday sent the revision notes for "Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter."
These are suggestions that he has, six pages of notes with his reactions to the book, things he thinks I ought to consider before it's ready to be shown to publishers. Plus a marked-up copy of the manuscript with thoughts and suggestions.
Scanning them, they fall into three categories – things I agree with completely; things I can see the point and have to consider; and a few, very few things I don't agree with. He made it clear, these are his suggestions, it's my book and it’s my call.
But c'mon. He's the agent, he's the one who will show it to publishers, he's the one who understands what they're looking for and how they think. More importantly, he's an informed eye giving me the benefit of an outside view. I'd be a fool to ignore him.
The big issue is the pace of the opening chapters. I knew some people found that problematic, but wasn't sure what to do. I thought I'd made it as solid as I could and couldn't really think of how to pick up the pace. If the book is about the change the main character goes through as a result of the action, changing from a quiet, timid girl into a courageous, active figure, then don't we have to see that timid person?
But I had one of those "Aha!" moments, literally. I was driving home from an errand, I wasn't driving more than 10 minutes and I wasn't thinking about the story. But when I got out of the car I had it all in my mind – exactly how to make it work! "Aha!" I said.
I love moments like that.
Funny thing – One of his notes is that he's not crazy about the title. "Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter." Now, as I wrote earlier, that was not the original title. The original was "The Wreck of the Gladys B." and it was the name for about two years. It took me a long damn time to come up with "Chrissie Warren Pirate Hunter," and it took a chance comment from my daughter to get that. So I don't know if I've got anything better. But I'll think about it.
And if anyone is reading this and has an idea, I'll listen.
But I've gotta get back to work. I have already written – rewritten – the first 700 new words, and I’ve got lots of work to do. This is the fun part. Writing the story is hard work. That's where you discover what the story is. This is the part where, I know the story, now how do I tell it the very best way possible so that people will want to read it? That's fun.
These are suggestions that he has, six pages of notes with his reactions to the book, things he thinks I ought to consider before it's ready to be shown to publishers. Plus a marked-up copy of the manuscript with thoughts and suggestions.
Scanning them, they fall into three categories – things I agree with completely; things I can see the point and have to consider; and a few, very few things I don't agree with. He made it clear, these are his suggestions, it's my book and it’s my call.
But c'mon. He's the agent, he's the one who will show it to publishers, he's the one who understands what they're looking for and how they think. More importantly, he's an informed eye giving me the benefit of an outside view. I'd be a fool to ignore him.
The big issue is the pace of the opening chapters. I knew some people found that problematic, but wasn't sure what to do. I thought I'd made it as solid as I could and couldn't really think of how to pick up the pace. If the book is about the change the main character goes through as a result of the action, changing from a quiet, timid girl into a courageous, active figure, then don't we have to see that timid person?
But I had one of those "Aha!" moments, literally. I was driving home from an errand, I wasn't driving more than 10 minutes and I wasn't thinking about the story. But when I got out of the car I had it all in my mind – exactly how to make it work! "Aha!" I said.
I love moments like that.
Funny thing – One of his notes is that he's not crazy about the title. "Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter." Now, as I wrote earlier, that was not the original title. The original was "The Wreck of the Gladys B." and it was the name for about two years. It took me a long damn time to come up with "Chrissie Warren Pirate Hunter," and it took a chance comment from my daughter to get that. So I don't know if I've got anything better. But I'll think about it.
And if anyone is reading this and has an idea, I'll listen.
But I've gotta get back to work. I have already written – rewritten – the first 700 new words, and I’ve got lots of work to do. This is the fun part. Writing the story is hard work. That's where you discover what the story is. This is the part where, I know the story, now how do I tell it the very best way possible so that people will want to read it? That's fun.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Someone a Lot Smarter than Me (15)
"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
Ray Bradbury
Thursday, December 1, 2011
"Scurvy Dogs" Update
I'm not sure when and I'm not sure how, but today I wrote about 2,200 words on "Scurvy Dogs!" This after managing just a couple hundred here and a couple hundred there the last four days. Sometimes it's nice when you can clear the deck and just plug away.
So anyway, the total is now 11,961, which isn't bad. We're making progress, it's (at a wild guess) about a fifth of the way from the end.) And the next chapter will be the best yet. I'm certain of that.
I do really like one part of the last chapter, where the squire is talking about his youth on Jamaica, sailing with Henry Morgan, and Jamie is kind of shocked. He'd known that the squire hadn't always been a middle-aged, mild-mannered man peering over the top of his glasses, but it had never occurred to him that he might have been young and adventurous and – well, of course they didn't use the word this way back in 1690s Jamaica, but – cool!
And I thought about my own folks. We never can know the whole truth about our parents, and it's hard to think about my dad as a young man, marching across Belgium with a rifle, ready to shoot other young men, some of them probably with the same last name – Baur is the Bavarian spelling of a common German name, after all. He talked very little about his experience in World War II, mostly just his Christmas story (perhaps I'll share it at Christmas) and a few funny basic training stories. Whenever, as a boy, I asked for a "war story," he kindly and gently excused himself. It wasn't something he wanted to talk about, so I can only guess. We can never really know our parents.
Anyway, after reading the chapter to the class (I added another bunch of students – the other fifth grade class – so now I've got an audience of about 40 for this) I asked them to do some homework. Go home and TALK to their parents and find out one cool or unexpected or just fun thing their mother or father did when they were young.
I'm looking forward to hearing the stories.
So anyway, the total is now 11,961, which isn't bad. We're making progress, it's (at a wild guess) about a fifth of the way from the end.) And the next chapter will be the best yet. I'm certain of that.
I do really like one part of the last chapter, where the squire is talking about his youth on Jamaica, sailing with Henry Morgan, and Jamie is kind of shocked. He'd known that the squire hadn't always been a middle-aged, mild-mannered man peering over the top of his glasses, but it had never occurred to him that he might have been young and adventurous and – well, of course they didn't use the word this way back in 1690s Jamaica, but – cool!
And I thought about my own folks. We never can know the whole truth about our parents, and it's hard to think about my dad as a young man, marching across Belgium with a rifle, ready to shoot other young men, some of them probably with the same last name – Baur is the Bavarian spelling of a common German name, after all. He talked very little about his experience in World War II, mostly just his Christmas story (perhaps I'll share it at Christmas) and a few funny basic training stories. Whenever, as a boy, I asked for a "war story," he kindly and gently excused himself. It wasn't something he wanted to talk about, so I can only guess. We can never really know our parents.
Anyway, after reading the chapter to the class (I added another bunch of students – the other fifth grade class – so now I've got an audience of about 40 for this) I asked them to do some homework. Go home and TALK to their parents and find out one cool or unexpected or just fun thing their mother or father did when they were young.
I'm looking forward to hearing the stories.
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