Category Archives: writing/blogging/publishing related

writing, blogging, publishing

Write a Novel in 3 Days? Why Not?

September 21, 2010Authonomy Related, New York Stories, Travel Blog, true story, writing/blogging/publishing related3 day novel contest, honorary mention 3 day novel, The Death Trip, writing contestsMarion

For the past 3 years, I’ve been booked Labor Day weekend — no picnics, barbecues, hikes or drives to the country. You’ll find me out on my balcony (weather permitting) with my laptop and a cup of weak coffee by my side, churning out a mini-masterpiece for the International 3 Day Novel Contest. It’s a simple premise — start and complete a novel over the 72 hour holiday weekend.

On the honor system. It’s Canadian.

The first year I entered, I did hope to achieve the ultimate prize: publication. The first prize is a book contract with a small press. They don’t announce the winners till January. I drove myself nuts waiting. It was a more intense experience than any previous contest I’d ever entered before. The reason now seems clear. This isn’t a normal situation where you enter using something that’ you wrote long ago. The 3-Day demands that you create something new and create it under intense pressure. You are allowed to write an outline in advance though mine have proven useless once I started. One emerges at the end with a sense that one has been through, if not an ordeal, then at least an intense ritualistic experience.

In my case, I’m not the only one going through it. My better half has been a devoted partner, acting as a caregiver, cook, sounding board, personal assistant , and massage therapist. He’s also signed off on the “affirmation” statement that the novel was started and completed within the time frame.

This year life issues were getting in the way of the creative flow. Ten days before the big day, I had no clear idea about what I even wanted to write. The BH demanded I show him some outlines and pick a plot so that I would not spend the first few hours staring in horror at blank screen. I came up with two ideas — one was a sort of As I Lay Dying set in present day Queens, the other a strangely lighthearted lad-lit tale of a youngish man getting romantic advice from an old man/ghost haunting his basement apartment. Thank goodness, he advised me to go for the latter.

Have I ever won? Not exactly. But winning isn’t everything; in fact, it’s not even relevant. I’d compare it to entering the New York City Marathon. It’s much more about personal best and achievement than it is about getting first place. (Though it would be nice if like a marathon they gave prizes in categories. I’d settle for best novel in the under 25k words category by a woman over 40.) However, that’s not how I felt the first time I entered.

My first entry, The Death Trip came in at a bit above 20,000 words, barely a novella. They say size doesn’t matter, but then they say it might be a factor. I didn’t even make the shortlist. My better-half who loved the story, is still bitter. But here’s what I did get out of it: I got a novella draft in need of little (but not much) revision. I not only got it quick, but I got it with a story that I might never have bothered with otherwise. I learned that I could crank out something coherent in 3 days. I also used the obsession I developed waiting for the results as the basis for a story I told at the Narativ Story Workshop which was filmed, and then used by 3Day on their website.

I revised the novella and realized after a couple of rejections there wasn’t a big market for it at that length. I had no desire to either shorten or expand it, so I decided to put it out as an e-book. To date I’ve had over 1,800 downloads.

My effort the second time around, Hungry Ghosts, actually made the short-list. It too barely made it to 20k, but I fell in love with the story and although other projects have gotten in the way, I’m still working on expanding it to a full novel length. With its combination of erotica and horror, I’m hoping it may even be commercially viable. I’m sure it never would have been written without the contest. All I had of it before Labor Day was a first line (which I wound up changing), a premise that wasn’t completely thought out, and a list of characters.

This year, I promised myself I would somehow get up to 27k, and somehow made it to just that point. Of course I’m still hoping that the third time is the charm, but even if I don’t make this year’s short list, I’m still feeling high from the writing. As a way to jump start a first draft, the 3 Day can’t be beat.

It hasn’t gotten easier over time. I had a tough first night or more literally morning this go-round, but the spirit of the thing kicked in — the idea that in some way, I’d been “preparing,” anticipating this special weekend, reserving it for a purpose. I felt like I had nothing to lose by continuing, so there was no reason not to push on to the end.

I wound up with something unlike anything I’d written before — a lighthearted view of gentrification that almost celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of people who buy and develop property, a romance that might even work, a happy ending!

The process allows writers to take risks and encourages them to follow Elmore Leonard’s maxim and “skip the boring parts” because there’s simply no time to write them. Whatever I think I learned getting my MFA is useless. More useful is the storytelling technique practiced at Narativ. Although that method was designed for oral storytelling of true stories, the method of focusing on “what happened” and not explaining it, kept me from getting lost in my story and forced me to keep going, even when I wasn’t sure of where.

Thanks to the contest, I now have one novella out in the world attracting a little bit of attention, and I have two projects that need development and expansion, so I don’t have to face the dreaded blank page. I have confidence in my ability to crank out material under pressure and I’ve further honed my skills. The contest allows you to turn your home into a writer’s retreat at a much lower cost than actually traveling to one. It costs $50 to enter, waived if you got a prize or honorable mention the previous year.

So to anyone who writes fiction or has even thought about writing fiction mark your calendar now and start thinking about the book you’ll be writing Labor Day Weekend 2011 (thinking is not against the rules).

Here’s the clip of me talking about my first 3- Day experience:

My Kindle — Week Two

August 1, 2010Authonomy Related, book reviews, Politics and Culture, writing/blogging/publishing relatedKindle proofreading, Kindle vs I-Pad, Kindle vs Nook, Kindle vs print, self-publishing kindle, should i buy a kindle?Marion

So after endless discussion and debate — internal and external, I finally bought a Kindle DX. As my regular readers (I’m talking to you Kirkland and Walsall) know, I love books – the look and feel of them, the way they turn to dust and crumble in your hand. I love used books that have yellowing paper that breaks off if you try to fold a corner to save a place. But there’s only so much room in my apartment.

Why a Kindle? Why not a Nook, or Sony E-Reader, or Brand X, or I-PAD?

After reading the recent New Yorker article on Bezos v. Jobs and Big Publishing, I decided maybe it was worth supporting Amazon. If we’re all going to be reading e-books in the future, it would be nice to be reading them cheap, and Bezos at least acknowledges that it costs much less to produce an e-book than a print book and some of those savings should be passed on to consumers. As a print consumer, most of the books I buy are discounted or more likely used. I like the idea of more cheap content, and Amazon offers droves of it. As a writer, I love that Kindle offers easy access to self-publishing with 70% royalty, which also deserves supporting.

I get the utility of the I-PAD as an easy display to show off your photos, watch movies, surf the web, etc. It’s great for reading art books, graphic novels and those “books of the future” with lots of live links including to video clips, photos, etc. However, for reading words on a page, the Kindle is far superior. No backlight, good contrast, and lightweight. It doesn’t give me a screen headache. Call me a relic, but I’m fine surfing the web on my computer, and if I had unlimited income I’d buy an I-PAD as well, but for reading books and other texts, this works best.

I chose the DX, a big price jump from the regular Kindles, because I wanted the screen size. The Nook, by the way, doesn’t come big. I’ve always been farsighted and since passing into my decrepitude, small print has been a lot of work. The DX allows me a full screen of text displayed in a reasonably large font. It’s a nice size for reading and storing work-related PDFs and an alternative to printing them out.

What I’ve Learned So Far:

Proofreading. Who knew?

One thing I didn’t even think would be useful is the “text to voice” feature. Just as an experiment, I turned it on to listen to my novel, Loisaida. Despite having proofread several times the old-fashioned way and with friends as readers, I was suddenly “seeing” a ton of errors and formatting inconsistencies I hadn’t caught before. I was able to note them using the mark-up feature. It’s awkward for editing as you can’t directly change the text, and the keyboard isn’t great. But the combination of being able to read something that looks like print and hear the words clearly (albeit mechanically) is a terrific proofreading tool.

Sharing, not encouraged.

I’m enjoying my two-week free trial subscription to The New York Times on Kindle. It’s great to browse through the articles one at a time and not have to move from page 1 to page 13 to finish reading something. I thought I’d be able to save some trees and chuck my home delivery subscription, however, here we run into a problem. I am pair-bonded. Even if my better-half had his own Kindle, he’d need his own subscription to read The Times on it. I suppose the idea would be for him to get his own Kindle and we could each trade off with different subscriptions, but this is not happening anytime soon, Mr. Bezos. While my husband says he’s fine reading the paper on the computer screen, he says it in an “I’ll just read in the dark” tone, so for now at least we’ll stick to the paper version of the paper.

(Of course, I’m hardly the first to notice the sharing issue and there is a less than perfect fix. Apparently, if we bought another Kindle and kept my name on the account for both devices, The Times could go to both. But that would destroy our sense of individuality and hence the marriage itself, leading to a court fights over custody of the content when we divorce.)

Thumb fatigue and the Plight of the Left-Handed

I wish there were a better way to turn the page. The button that needs to be pushed, feels counter-intuitive. Why not a touchscreen (like I-PAD) for this one feature? I noticed also when I was reading intensely (my proofreading binge), my right arm from thumb to elbow started to ache. I’m a righty, but would have liked to switch hands. The only way to do that is to turn the image upside down and then turn the Kindle itself upside down. This means, however, that the page turning arrows will be pointing in the wrong direction and the keyboard — in case you want to make notes, adjust the font, etc., — will also be upside down. I don’t know whether or not the other devices are more “left-hand friendly,” but I wouldn’t recommend this one to a lefty.

One Click Buying Adds Up

I’m no expert on the economics of the Kindle, but I imagine the main money is not in the sales of the apparatus itself, but in all the Amazon products bought once you own one. While the Kindle doesn’t surf the web, it does surf the Amazon store quite easily and allows you to purchase anything you want with just one-click. Impulse buying is encouraged and just about every periodical and blog comes with a free two-week trial, which you have to remember to cancel before they start charging you.

And Finally: The Kindle Community — Are we just talking to ourselves?

Another glitch, probably worthy of it’s own dissertation or at least a post — the Kindle of course comes with its own “Kindle Community” of forums because couldn’t we all use more social networking? There are tons of threads. Some are about Kindle devices. Many are about content, and most of these seem to be self-published Kindle authors hawking their wares. This leads me suspect that in some ways, the “Kindle Community” isn’t very different from the “Authonomy Community” with one exception. Whereas, Harper Collins allows writers to display their work for each other to see and comment on free of charge, Amazon charges for downloading other people’s work, counting these as “book sales” and gets a 30-65% (depending on price) piece of the action. While there are tens of thousands of self-published books available on Kindle, it’s not at clear who is buying other than other self-published writers.

Shirley Sherrod — Troll Survivor

July 22, 2010Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, writing/blogging/publishing relatedAndrew Breitbart, Faux News, Fox News, Shirley Sherrod, trollingMarion

Trolls, for those unfamiliar with the concept, invade chat rooms and various kinds of social networking sites. They usually enter with false identities. The purpose of trolling is to create chaos and division. This is done for the “lulz” — trollspeak for entertainment value. Often troll attacks involve more than one troll and may include “trusted” long term site members, who like Russian spies in the suburbs, are not who they seem to be.

In the case of Shirley Sherrod, the primary troll was Andrew Breitbart whose previous trolling included the Acorn incident. He presented himself as a legitimate member of the media, which he is not. He went to Faux News and gave them a story. It was a ridiculous story, and his proof was a snippet of video. Because the people at Faux News are bigots, he was able to instigate, leading the “reporters” on Faux News to make further statements about the racism and hypocrisy of the NAACP and the Obama Administration.

This is similar to a recent online trolling incident that I witnessed. A poster, in an online social networking site for aspiring writers, opened a forum thread with a link to a 9/11 conspiracy video. The initial poster was not an actual troll herself. Think of her as a kind of site-Glenn Beck. She wondered what would have happened if Hitler had won the war, and speculated that “Some say ‘the world would have been a better place’.” The Jews hadn’t been explicitly mentioned yet, but the atmosphere was ripe. A troll entered and made increasingly outrageous remarks about the role “the Jews” had played in world affairs, thus stirring up some of the stupider people on the thread and getting them to agree with a few of his statements regarding Jewish bankers, and the culpability of “the Jews” on 9/11. Several of the trollees, came off looking like anti-Semitic, conspiracy wing-nuts or just plain idiots. Truth could be established by finding clips on Youtube. Anyone who disagreed was a hypocrite or would be accused of disrupting a legitimate conversation and being in favor of censorship. This led to a shitstorm of more threads denouncing two of those who objected to the blatant anti-Semitism and charging them with the capital offense of “political correctness.”

When Breitbart brought his clip to Faux News, that “fair and balanced” media outlet already believed that the Obama administration was filled with (reverse) racists and hypocrites. They had previously aired comparisons of Obama to Hitler. In this Bizarro World, the NAACP is a bigoted organization while the Tea Partiers are the true egalitarians. This made them easy troll bait — in fact whether or not they knew the story to be false — they were troll-collaborators. They not only bit, and didn’t ask questions or in any way investigate, but they went straight into righteous indignation and saw the video as proof of everything they already “knew.”

While it’s startling that the Department of Agriculture and possibly the President himself, got drawn into this, it’s a similar dynamic to what happens at social networking sites. Instead of acting rationally by first looking at the source and his track record, then actually interviewing Sherrod and getting a hold of the full tape, and finally saying to Faux News, “Dudes, you are being trolled,” the NAACP and the Administration both became entangled and defensive.

“We’re not racist.”

“Yes, you are and hypocrites!”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Prove it”

“Ok. We’ll show you! We’ll denounce her. We’ll make her resign because we’re not racists!”

There was no strategy in firing Sherrod. It was pure reaction without taking the time to think — an act of cowardice designed to prove to whomever was reading the threads, oops, I mean following the story, that they would not tolerate racism even in their own ranks.

Eventually, some real reporters did the job, and found the full video as well as the white couple whose farm Sherrod had helped save over 20 years ago, and to whom she referred in her story. The NAACP and the government apologized to Sherrod. Brietbart and Faux News did not.

As with any “successful” (from the troll’s point-of-view) trolling event, the troll walks away unscathed and unapologetic and “the teachable moment” is the revelation of the true character of those involved in the mess. Shirley Sherrod is a strong woman who has always done the right thing and will survive. Faux News is racist and manipulates others, but is also easily manipulated by anyone who offers “evidence” for its beliefs and is not in any way a credible organization.

And the Administration and the NAACP? They’d rather eat their own than ever be accused of hypocrisy or racism. Their defensiveness makes them weak and vulnerable to future trolling attacks and even more serious mistakes.