My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?
It didn't make our poll, but what a spectacular example.
Image description: The Cat in the Hat
Book vs. Mike Myers movie.
What book was SOOOOO much better than the movie?
Book lovers are no stranger to both giving and hearing that familiar paean: "Oh the book was better." "The book was a lot better." "Have you read the book? It's much better." "Oh the book was so much better."
Most books are just better. (Not universally, but if you had to bet a dollar, that would be the way to go.) They go deeper into the story, they have subplots. They show things that film can't. Not that film can't show things a book can't like the every intricate detail of costuming or set design, but books often have more story–more girth.
Most books are better. And this is not their poll.
This is not a poll for good books and mediocre movies. Or mediocre books and bad movies. Or great books and good movies. (And certainly not those movies that are strangely better than the books.) This is a poll for those books that are hugely, outrageously, unbelievably better than their movies. Books where you want to grab people and say "But have you read the book? Do you know that this movie is a book? Because if you haven't read the book, you must. It's better. It's SOOOOOO much better! SOOOOOO. MUCH. BETTER!!!!"
Ahem....well, you get the idea.
The actual poll is on the left hand side at the bottom, beneath the "About The Author" section. Mobile viewers will have to go to the very bottom of their page and switch to "Web View" in order to access the poll.
Our poll was pulled from your nominations, and as I said, I tallied up the "seconds" a title had gotten (or nominations later on down the page) and looked at what had received the most to create a number between 8-24. While I'm willing to do a semifinal round, I'm not willing to do endless elimination rounds and quarterfinals and such just because we're getting more participation on our polls. (Which is awesome, but I don't want every poll to take six months.) In this case NINE titles stood out with five "seconds" or more.
Everyone will get three (3) votes.
There is no way to rank votes, so please consider that every vote beyond the first "dilutes" the power of your initial vote and use as few as you can stand to use.
Two data points of note:
Number one- I love you all to bitly bits, but you have to learn to follow directions. Putting the comments in the wrong place or nominating more than two titles just got your nominations ignored. If you wish, consider Writing About Writing your tough, but fair, place to learn how mean busy people can be if you waste their time by not following directions. Honestly, it's a good lesson for writers to learn the hard way, and better to do it on some silly poll. If you're going to try to submit a manuscript to an agent (or god help you, directly to a publisher), the most important first thing you can do is to read carefully and then follow every submission guideline to the letter. They want pagination? Don't figure that's no big deal and w/e. Sample chapters? Don't send them the whole thing. Physical submission? Don't you dare email them. Hell, some of them are so overwhelmed with queries that they make up rules just to haze out entitled dillholes who can't be arsed to pay attention–they don't even care if it's really 12 pt font. Because do you think it's going to be the consummate professional who takes the time to submit properly or the twenty-two year old who put the text in an email who is more likely to have spammed out their Nano draft to every addy they found in The Writer's Market. Doesn't matter if you wrote The Catcher in the Rye, it'll be The Catcher in the Trashcan if you don't pay attention to directions.
Number two- If you're ever arguing that Hollywood (or publishing) doesn't have a diversity problem, please notice which titles made it to the poll. Please notice that they are–with ONE exception white dudes' books (the exception is a white woman) and mostly (though not exclusively) about white dudes. And I don't know all their biographical info, but I think it's all or mostly cishet white dudes at that. Hollywood seems more interested in slapping together shitty movies that use the name recognition of white dudes' books than finding something. This isn't necessarily these authors' faults, but it's emblematic of both Hollywood and the publishing industry. My next poll will have to be something deliberately designed to counteract this fuckery.
This poll will be up until February 1st-ish (maybe second or third....depends on my mood and if the votes are still coming in). You can vote once a week. Since I can't stop shenanigans, I encourage as much of it as possible. Vote early, vote often.
Recently, I loaded up on books from various free or discounted sites, because I am writing Book 5, and need something light to read.
This was a mistake. These books aren't very good. I am not finishing them. I'd rather shop for clothes than read them, and I hate shopping for clothes. I am also trying mightily to refrain from posting truly honest reviews, as I do not suffer fools gladly and have a very sharp tongue.
I am on various lists for writers, all of which seem to be marketing oriented, which means Building Your List (so you can spam them). People seem determined to get as much content out in the e-verse as possible, regardless of quality, though they are always asking about copy and line editors.
This is also a mistake.
They're missing a crucial step. This is the developmental editor.
Without a real developmental editor, the writer misses the fact that all the characters sound alike when they speak, that the same verbs are used over and over and over, and other errors that distract from the story. Truly, nobody "pads" in steel-toed work boots; a better word would be "clomps." Not everybody "smirks" all the time, and especially not every single character.
The writer misses that all women are called by their first names and all the men by their last names, and women, even if nominally in charge, aren't allowed to make decisions without the approval of the supposedly subordinate males, pissing off half the potential audience. They miss that a character says "sorry" all the time, and it's not a joke. The writer misses that there is too darned much exposition, that things are told, not shown, that few care about the designer (Prada?) of the holster for the far too lovingly and lengthily described weapons of choice, that talking on phones from cover is probably bad tradecraft, that every single thought of every single character doesn't have to be written down, that the plot "twist" is predictable from page 3, who did it is obvious from the second the body is found, and all the other things a developmental editor will pick up as a matter of course.
You as a writer will not catch these things yourself, not even if you let the manuscript sit for a month before you read it again. You're too invested in the story. Your beta readers, if you have any, know there is something wrong, but don't know how to tell you what it is.
You need a real editor. Yes, it's going to cost you. You ALSO need the line-editor and the copy-editor and they, too, are going to cost you. But if you want to get readers, as opposed to List-Fodder who will opt-out with your third spam-mail, you have to give people something they want to read, and a content style and universe they want to come back to, especially in a series.
As a reader, I resent paying even 99 cents for proofread drafts when I just end up making lists of What's Wrong With This Picture. As I writer, I'd rather pay more for serious developmental editing and put out really well-crafted books than add to the Everest-sized pile of "I'm not going to finish this" material that's out there, and using my budget for ads where there is no curation, just pay-to-play.
I don't want to go back to the Bad Old Days of traditional publishing, and I don't think we even can. But don't we as writers have a responsibility to produce quality books?
It can be hard to find a real editor, I know, and I am fortunate in mine. Do yourself a favor and your homework, do some research and find yours, please. Many writers edit. Pick someone you like in your genre and ask them if they do or for a referral. This is the gift that will keep on giving, the step that will make your work shine, and ultimately will make your audience bigger than all the advertising in the world.
(C) Claire Youmans, The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy series
Besides writing 6 published books, poetry and an anthologized short story, Claire Youmans has sailed oceans, owned horses and taught skiing. She recently moved to Japan in furtherance of writing more in the well-reviewed Toki-Girl and Sparrow-Boy series of historical fantasy and adventure books set in Meiji-era Japan. She’s currently working on Book 5. These charming books have a following among college students and adults because of the exciting mix of history and folklore, leading to sometimes fantastic adventures, but are also loved by children, fourth grade and up. Writing The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy series is a passion she fully enjoys. She’ll stay in Japan as long as they’ll keep her, writing more books about this fascinating culture and its incredible history in this very readable series. Of course, there are dragons.
Retailers and readers may order through Ingram, for worldwide distribution, in hard copies and all E-formats.
If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.
What book was not just better than the movie, but SO MUCH BETTER. The MOST better-er book (than the movie) you can think of?
[Note: Comments left on FB will not affect our poll.]
Usually I wait until my nomination posts have died down and then tally it all up and run my poll.
This nomination poll hasn't died down.
So at high noon tomorrow, I will be closing the nominations and starting to tally up which 8-24 titles will be going on to the polls. (Either one poll or semi-finals and a final, but not fifty thousand elimination rounds.) Noon! No matter what. Absolutely, posifuckingtively high noon.
HIGH NOON!
I mean there is a small chance that I'll be moving my car EXACTLY at noon, and then I'll close the nominations when I get back like two minutes later. Or if I'm eating lunch, I might finish up–I got this eggplant parmesan thing from Trader Joe's that is really tasty. Or if I have started an episode of Daredevil because I'm almost done with the first season. Also, I might be napping. But very close to the area around noon, this is happening.
The Update Schedule Planner WILL
be operational before the
Emperor arrives.
Just a few things.....
Want to see my new update schedule organizer card Deal-A-Meal inspired thingie?
This is what I spent my weekend doing. Well, this and watching Agents of Shield. So I figured a little photoblog would be a nice jazz hands to immediately take all this effort and flip it off by getting off-schedule.
Gathering supplies. After I decided to wait on a laminator (to see if this whole thing even actually worked) the final price tag was not too bad.
Here is the inside of the organizer I got. What I really needed were lots of slots for business cards. As you can see, I found one that was basically a business card holder.
I picked up a couple of journals since they were buy-one-get-one-free. My plan was to use them (somehow) in my organization scheme. Of course that's similar to my plan to use all the other journals I have, which is probably revealing an affectation more than any capacity for well thought out schemes. I think my current number of absolutely pristine, nery-a-mark-in-them journals is now up around fifteen or so.
The initial plan to put them in the outside pocket of the organizer didn't really work. They fit, but then the organizer didn't want to close very well.
This is my day calendar that I use to plan out what I'm going to write. I slid its back behind the legal pad's pages so it stays anchored inside the organizer.
I mean if you can't do it with gel pens, what is even the point?
I tried to buy blank business cards, but the only thing Office Depot had was business card paper (so you can print your own). I was not fucking around with wanting these bad boys to be standard, so I picked up a pair of scissors, then put them back and picked up this bad boy instead.
Hexgrids fuckers! Awwww yeeeeeeaaaaah.
The hex grid wouldn't perfectly cut them in half, but that would have made them just a tiny bit too small anyway.
Not pictures is cutting off the bottom centimeter or so.
There was definitely a learning curve at first, but eventually I was doing three at a time and they took only a minute or so per set.
Perfect size. On to step two.
Time to bust out the gel pens!
These are all the "weekly" cards. As I write the post in question, I pull the card out and move it into one of the big pockets.
Each week (in the case of weekly) the big pocket cards go back into their slot.
It took some time to fill them all out. (There are about 60 cards all told.) But here they are all tucked away.
This is why I wasn't sure an app would help without getting to digitally confusing. Some of these refresh every week, some once every two weeks, some once every month, some once every time I get through them There are probably some list apps that could do everything I need, but the kinesthetic interaction (or maybe it's the third dimension?) are able to handle more stimulation "clutter before I feel overwhelmed.
As I plan a week, I pull the cards for the articles I plan (or look to see what I still need to do in a given rotation). Then I have an exact gauge of what I haven't done in a while as well as how many "major" things are left to do.
This week won't quite be full throttle, but you can see how it shakes out.
And that should help me be much better about updates.
And if I'm good, and this works, I get to be an absolute total fucking NERD and reward myself by laminating the cards.
Not THOSE kind of agents! Image description: Agents of Shield
There's a bad need in non-traditional publishing for someone who wants to learn how to help writers navigate the non-writing part.
Several years ago, back during the first year of Writing About Writing when I had readers in the double digits and made a penny a month, I spoke of a niche in publishing. I made my instructors eyes go wide as saucers and my friends in publishing go "Hot DAMN! You're onto something!"
And at the time, I was.
Of course now that niche has been filled by several companies and is even competitive, but in 2012 it was an open market and would have been a cash cow (at least for a while). It wasn't for me because I wanted to write, and, sadly, even though a lot of people around me were telling me that I'd definitely found an empty niche, I only had readers in the double digits. So it was filled by a few small presses that eventually found it and no one whose name I could drop or anything.
Well, I have another.
It's nothing I would ever do (again, I'd rather write), but if one or some of you might feel entrepreneurial enough, there's probably money to be made. I wouldn't invest the Grantham fortune on it or quit my six figure day job, but I've got a lot of friends in the industry (the agent/publishing end) and they've pretty much never heard of this. But I also know a lot of writers, and they would totally pay for it or something like it.
I'm not sure if you would label it more like a "manager" or a "non-traditional literary agent" but the job would involve helping writers publish, format, and update in various non-traditional venues. Basically they hand you their finished word document, and you make the magic happen. Then fill out an invoice.
I'm talking about learning the formatting for various e-publication venues. For example, formatting a book for Kindle on MOBI is different than an EPUB file, which is what several other readers use. And BOTH of those are very different than the word document a writer has at the end of writing a book that they aren't sure what to do with. Someone they could just pay to handle that would be worth it to many of them. This would probably involve a lot of technical savvy and maybe some light coding.
Also keeping various sites updated like the book's Amazon product pages, Goodreads, or any other venue is time consuming, technical, certainly has a learning curve for every. single. venue. and is probably something most writers would rather farm out, even if they had to pay for it. Likely setting up some social media would (or could) also be involved for many writers or just being a whiz at how a new writer can promote their new book to get some eyeballs. Possibly the relationship could even involve finding places that would be good for guest blogs or useful self-promotion. And it's even possible that a good client/agent rapport might involve some heartfelt advice prior to publication about what changes might make something a little more marketable–much like a traditional literary agent. The writer may even pay for things like chapter deadlines and a little bit of pressure to get them moving on subsequent books.
Not that fucking kind of agent!
Who's in charge of finding pictures?
I want them sacked. Image description: Matrix agents.
It would be a lot like being a literary agent in many ways–just very much non-traditional. I imagine at first one would have to accept a lot of clients who only want their book formatted and absolutely no input, but as time went on and a reputation grew, they could be pickier and pickier about clients and take on fewer clients who pay more for a relationship where someone is really taking care of the business end of their non-traditional writing career. Lord knows I'd pay for that. I spend too much time as it is NOT writing with all the Facebook shit.
And like most things in non-traditional publishing, one of its benefits is that you could start immediately. Today. Just create a website and a FB page, hang out a virtual shingle and start trying to find clients. You could probably have a couple of writers lined up before next week.
The only thing I'm aware of that exists that is even a little bit like this is scams. Those "Publish Yourself" packages that are WAY overpriced and CLEARLY designed to fleece an unwary writer who thinks they're a book release away from being the next George Martin. They take WAY too much money, run your book through a grammar checker, put it into ONE format, and if you pay quite a bit extra they do a social media campaign that is.....to be generous....lackluster. Then they take thousands of dollars and run; most authors using them feel properly conned.
So hey, it's not my thing, but if you end up being a Non-Traditional Literary Agent, maybe you'll remember who pointed you that direction when I'm shopping for one.
Text in image: "Dear haters, I have
so much more for you to be mad at.
Just be patient."
If you're the type of fragile broflake, edgelord, or SQiD who threaten to leave Writing About Writing every time I deign to suggest that social issues A) matter, B) are affected by things like written language, C) are features, not bugs of our deep seated culture, D) a progenitor culture that might just be influenced by the arts, media, and entertainment, and E) that bigotry sucks, then this post might make you gnash–
Eh, you know what? I don't give a shit. Actually, it might give me one of those shivers of ecstasy–not quite a full-on Big O, but definitely pleasant.
The reason this update schedule change, which SHOULD be quite simple, is literally taking me weeks to accomplish is chiefly because Breath of Wind is pretty cool there aren't enough hours in the week.
While my update schedules are mostly for me, and perhaps the three or four readers drooling to know how often they can expect some various type of update to show up ("How often does he do a mailbox? Damn it, man! I need a mailbox! I must know! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, I MUST KNOW!!!!"), one of my goals for 2018 was to revamp the seat-of-my-pants flying that I'd been doing for....oh about three fucking years now. At least since cancer, and probably more like since The Contrarian popped in.
I put it to the Patrons what they wanted to see more of.
Then I tried to set up a schedule with that in it.
And basically I got an error message. "We're sorry, but you have either tried to divide by zero or think that you can get 10 updates a week into a 7 update a week schedule. Do you wish to restart from the save point before you blew up the entire universe in a gout of flame and screaming babies?"
*click "Yes"*
*start over*
So here's the problem. Seven updates a week. Somewhere around THIRTY-FIVE different segments we do (not including polls) that I'd like to rotate through on a regular basis. And four of those segments are going weekly (and one twice-weekly) leaving exactly three slots a week open to rotate through the other thirty segments, some of which should be bi-weekly.
You see why I'm adding a 27th dimension to get the bosonic string calculus to work. I mean otherwise we'd have to fire up the T/S vortex portals and we kind of learned that was a less-than-capital idea during the first season.
The MCP is working on this when it's not playing frisbee with Tron, but the idea of an "Update Schedule" the way we've had them in the past (Monday is personal update day. Tuesdays I upload myself eating a taco....) is basically going the way of the Dodo. I had to design something completely different from the ground up. (Let's turn that into a motivational quote!)
"I had to design something completely different from the ground up."
So what I've come up with instead is more like a few guaranteed "staple" posts each week, every other week, and the rest of the segments I will kind of handle like a two month cycle of Deal-A-Meal* posts, trying to work through all of them without repeating before starting over:
SEVEN POSTS PER WEEK Weekly
Two Mailboxes a week (might be one educational and one not or one old and one new or one long and one short or one red and one blue, but it'll be two)
One "Educational" Post (listicle, craft, process, basics, etc...)
A "plot arc" post or something otherwise fun and silly
Bi-Weekly
Personal Update/Novel Progress
Reviews (Craft Books, Products, Movies, or Twizzlefizzlepop)
Social Justice Bard
Guest Posts
Deliberate Jazz Hands (Writing Metaphors, Linguistics & Grammar, Blogging about Blogging, The Weirdosity of Fledgling Fame, etc...)
Monthly
VLOG
Inspiration
Prompts
"Guest" Bloggers (Leela Bruce, Evil Mystery Blogger, Cannon, Guy Goodman)
Fiction
Freeform (Done in place of full posts on days I'm busy or sick, as needed [such as in the case of polls], or overwhelmed )
Polls (Calls for nominations, Polls, Reminders to Vote/Nominate, Results)
Potpourri
Pointer Sisters Links
Fluffy Jazz Hands (Fortune Cookies, Meta Updates, Bellwethers, Extra plot posts, etc...)
As a reminder I still nanny for a four year old, sometimes have more pet sitting than I can handle and teach summer school six weeks a year, and my host body occasionally succumbs to your Earth illnesses, so those times may not be 7 posts like clockwork or may involve going off the rails of my usual updates
This should also cut down on the thing where I'm apologizing to absolutely fucking nobody that it's Tuesday and I've yet to put a taco video up. As long as I get in all the entries that week, my readers (who have literally never said anything in six years about my update schedule) and I can give me a break.
Admin weekends will still be a thing–I'll just do five or six posts for that week, depending.
And if you want to never have fewer five or six post weeks, or even maybe get me up to eight or nine posts a week, with more obligations for fiction and "meaty posts," you are welcome to become a Patron and make sure I don't have to pet sit, teach summer school, double book, and always take shifts to make ends meet.
I'm totally going to double dip sometimes.
Image description:
Coffee mug with text- "If you
think writers like me should shut
up about politics and stick to writing."
Next......If you are following WAW and have (or are among the legions of who exist on WAW's FB page who definitely have) a sort of vaguely inflamed sense that you are entitled to an experience of hilarious, ineffable, absurdly-high-quality writing blog (*COUGH*) that is unsullied by all those nasty hobbit politickses, here is a heads up that this was never your prerogative and is about to be scoured like the shire. Crushed like a human skull in a Terminator movie future sequence. Shot down like an extra in a Star Wars battle. Killed like a red-shirted ensign on a planet with an unknown monster. Torn open from the inside out like the a-hole who is just in it for the money.....uh.....
Uh...
Well, you get the idea.
You see, while it is entirely possible, even likely, that as your eyes glazed over and you skimmed over the update bullet points above, you missed one teensy-weensy, but ever-so-crucial little, tiny detail.
Image description: Back of mug above-
"A) Fuck you. B) You're wrong.
One of the things my Patrons requested more of almost across the board was more Social Justice Bard posts.
To be honest, I'd been holding back. I'd like to be writing a lot more about these issues and it's one of the deepest wells of inspiration and almost daily topicality, and I had been second guessing myself a lot. Being a childhood abuse victim meant that the immediate social media backlash to those posts really took some getting used to.
Me: I took a macro from my page down because I think it might have perpetuated rape culture.
SQiD: Verily, tis the greatest shame of the fascism of social justice thought when writers begin to censor themselves. Lo, this is a dark day indeed when you have succumbed to external forces to tell you what you should write.
Me: Nah, I wanted to take it down. I agreed once it was pointed out to me. But point taken. I should post more of my social justice thoughts on the blog instead of worrying about the backlash.
Of course, adding a post or two a month with a particular focus won't actually matter to most people. Even folks who don't agree with everything I write often thank me for giving them something to think about. It is only those folks who out of their deep concern for my well being and analytics will advise me with what is of course the most well-intended counsel that my best move as someone who is doing [whatever they don't like] is to immediately cease and desist and go back to [the part they like.]
They're just looking out for me, you know.
For starters, it is impossible to not write somewhat politically. It simply can't be done when one considers what politics is. You're either questioning the status quo or you're supporting it, and while it might be unthinking your themes will reflect that. Unless you have a story with no conflict (which isn't a story) something political will be happening. Further, if your story (even allegorically) involves the conflict of man vs. society, you are absolutely writing politically.
"Politics" in the case of folks who want me to not "taint" my blog with them is being used as a placeholder for "social issues that don't affect me and that I don't want to think too much about." And to that I say, "QQ moar, n00b."
Even if I could somehow apolitically point out that the written word is the most powerful social force on Earth, I wouldn't want to do so in a way that keeps everyone sure there is nothing in their culture or upbringing that maybe they ought to consider contributes to the unfair world they see around them. Unfortunately, I'm not here to tuck people's cognitive dissonance into bed at night.
Sorry.
As you may have guessed, however, this guidance perhaps comes more from personal bias and an aggressive championship of the status quo than any keen insight into social media or audience interest. And much like shrugging as they suggest their genius insight into "what sells" .....which happens to match exactly with all their tastes......which happen to match exactly with the status quo, their insistence that
SQiD: You're going to lose people like me, your once-faithful customers, if you fall down the long, dark hole into this social justice nonsense. It just ruins an otherwise good page, and we'll ALL just leave. One more ghost town tainted by social justice. It'll just be you in your little, tiny echo-chamber bubble talking to like six feminazis who already agree with you.
Me: Actually, those posts regularly do better. I wouldn't have the audience I do without them.
SQiD: Well that's just because...um....er....echo chamber....boilerplate....platitude.....bubble. AAAAAA*NAZGUL SCREAM*
