is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.
Fastball! for September 2009
Wednesday
Sep 30, 2009
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Stacey Levine named 2009 Stranger Literature Genius — Martin
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Before she was a MacArthur Genius, Heather McHugh was Stranger Literature Genius. Other past literature geniuses have included Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Raban and Rebecca Brown. I mention this only to say that The Stranger is damn good at picking geniuses.
I’m not familiar with Ms. Levine’s work, but with a recommendation this high, I’m certain to pick up her book now.
Wednesday
Sep 30, 2009
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When Writers Speak — Martin
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From the Sunday New York Times, Arthur Krystal asks if writers should be good conversationalists.
Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person. In fact, I am smarter when I’m writing. I don’t claim this merely because there is usually no one around to observe the false starts and groan-inducing sentences that make a mockery of my presumed intelligence, but because when the work is going well, I’m expressing opinions that I’ve never uttered in conversation and that otherwise might never occur to me.
This reminds me of the old William Zinsser quote “Writing is Thinking.”
My personal experience has been that writing takes very different muscles than good conversation. Focusing on the former, sadly, has meant that the latter is under-exercised.
But I want to be a good conversationalist, so I work at it. The difference is in intention. Being a good conversationalist means listening more than talking. It means asking a person to draw out their stories, and when you share yours you are sharing them in relation to theirs. Disjointed conversations talk over each other. Good conversations feel fluid and connected.
I rarely know what I will say when I talk, I follow the flow of conversation. I occasionally know generally where I’ll go when I write, but never exactly how I’ll get there. When talking, what I say will have to be enough. When I write, it will be reworked and analyzed until it conveys exactly what I want as clearly as possible.
Thursday
Sep 24, 2009
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Let us now praise editors — Martin
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An older piece by Gary Kamiya, which I noticed on clusterflock today.
The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It’s about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It’s a handmade art, a craft. You don’t learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers.
If Antonio Stradivari had an editor, he certainly didn’t give them a signature line inside his violins.
I think editing is a noble, and necessary art. Used to be that designers hired typesetters to lay out their type correctly. To worry over the punctuation and spacing, the ligatures and em-or-en dash decisions. Now designers are responsible for this as the typesetters of the computer age.
So too must writers become editors, or at least better editors. They must be self-reliant. Design has both suffered and exploded with new creativity over the loss of typographers, so too will writing suffer and explode with the loss of editors.
Who, it should be pointed out, have every opportunity to explain to writers their value, and why a self-publishing small business person who is making their way as a writer should hire an editor to work on their texts.
Thursday
Sep 24, 2009
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The No. 1 Mistake Self-Publishishers Make — Martin
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Looks like the tide is turning on the opinion of self-publishing online. Here’s a post by Maria Schneider, former Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Digest, arguing that you might want to forgo hard-copy publishing and put your work online. The goal is to build an audience so that you’ll be more salable to a publisher.
If you have a platform — a blog with a big following, regular speaking engagements, a known expertise — trust me, you won’t have to go looking for publishers. They’ll find you.
Ms. Schneider, like many of the people I link to here, are still working inside the traditional publishing system, so their advice is geared at becoming (that most elevated of writerly goals) “A Published Author.”
In this case, her advice makes sense and is essentially “leverage the following you’ve built up to get published.”
I argue still that a time is coming where there will be other revenue streams and possibilities for writers than going for the big sell. That time is coming faster and faster, the cheaper and better digital readers become. When the best, easiest, and potentially most profitable way of leveraging that following is to do it by yourself.
But I think she has one very good thrust to this article, and especially in a some of her follow-up comments with readers:
If you were to publish hard copies, who would you sell them to? Do you have a marketing plan?
In other words, if you want to do it yourself, know what you’re doing. Asking a successful writer to be a good editor, publisher and designer is going to be the bare minimum of success in future years.
Thursday
Sep 24, 2009
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HOW TO: Write a Novel Using the Web — Martin
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Mashable.com article by Josh Catone on organizing, writing and publishing your novel using only online tools.
Thursday
Sep 10, 2009
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I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script — Martin
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Josh Olson will not read your fucking script. 1
Mr. Olson, of course, is in a unique position and doesn’t have time for amateurs. The story is about an embarrassing situation he was put into by ignorant friends who unknowingly insulted him. If the script (treatment, actually) had been great, maybe the headline might have been different.If that seems unfair, I’ll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.
Two other nuggets popped out at me from this piece:
It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.
(By the way, here’s a simple way to find out if you’re a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)
And then a few paragraphs later:
...saying something positive about [the work he was asked to critique] would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here’s the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you’re not a writer.
I recommend the Josh Olson interview about A History of Violence by Creative Screenwriting editor Jeff Goldsmith.
- I found this link via @ColleenLindsay who had good reply from @AlexIrvine: “But you know what? At some point, someone read his script.” ↩
Tuesday
Sep 08, 2009
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Naming Characters With Google Adwords — Martin
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Robin Sloan, looking to come up with an evocative and memorable name for his new detective character, ran a Google AdWords campaign as a proof of concept.
But okay, I’ll be honest. This was mostly just an excuse to try a new tool. Any nerd will tell you that tools can provide their own intrinsic rewards. There’s an aspect of exploration to it, too: you’re pressing out into new tool-territory, learning about what you can and can’t do.
Robin’s on my radar because he is making an attempt at exactly what I was writing about previously. He’s released two short stories on his website, The Writer & The Witch and Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store with attractive cover designs. Both stories are freely available and can also be bought in Kindle format.
For a novella he’s writing, he turned to Kickstarter for funding. As of this writing, he’s fully funded at his $3,500 goal plus an extra $2,000. These are pre-sold books, with some extras if you funded at a higher level.
I loved the idea of what he’s doing, so I pledged. These kind of models are great experiments into the future of publishing, and seem to be working well for Robin. We wish him luck and are eagerly awaiting our copy of his book.
Sunday
Sep 06, 2009
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Neil Gaiman's Bookshelves — Martin
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File under library porn.
Friday
Sep 04, 2009
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Special Pleading — Martin
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Cory Doctorow answers some of the criticism leveled at him as to why his experiments with giving away his work won’t work for other authors. Which can be summed up nicely here:
I don’t give away downloads because I’m just a swell guy — I do it because I’m a self-employed entrepreneur who needs to make as much as he can to support his family.
Thursday
Sep 03, 2009
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In praise of browsing — Martin
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Lisa Gold:
Browsing and searching are different — browsing is about the journey, searching is about the destination. Searching is focused on finding specific information quickly and often leads to tunnel-vision, which can prevent you from recognizing useful sources that don’t match your preconceived ideas and assumptions. Browsing is about slowing down, opening your eyes, feeding your curiosity, and allowing yourself the opportunity to make discoveries.
I love browsing.
When I was a teenager I would often spend time on the campus of Western Washington University, and not irregularly in the big library. One evening, while wandering the stacks, I discovered Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. A find that has paid many returns.
Such as, an old-school quote maybe hinting at what Mr. Bierce might have thought of Ms. Gold:
CURIOSITY, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Tuesday
Sep 01, 2009
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Dear publishers: It’s not too late to get a clue! — Martin
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Dave Gray, after a particularly ironic go-around with Penguin Books over the rights to an illustration, asks publishers to wake up.
The newspaper business is dying — people don’t read their local papers anymore, and maybe that’s sad. But it’s the way of the world and a familiar pattern: You gain power and authority, you do something original and the world starts listening to you. But over time you lose touch with them, you lose the link.
