Best Blog Posts of the Past Few Days

Procrastinating Writers on why he writes: http://procrastinatingwritersblog.com/2010/02/post-it-notes/

He also has a recent post on why it’s important to write every day. I can’t really disagree, though a structure I’ve found helps is to track all my time and create weekly targets. It’s not a foolproof system yet, but it’s gotten me up to a much more regular schedule, and got me to finish a first draft of something I was (and still am) a little stuck on.

Screenwriting in 3 Easy Steps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD1epFwLO2s

Utterly hilarious.

Ken Levin’s Super Bowl thoughts: http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2010/02/superbowl-xxlviixxlvvi.html

Sports make for such great stories. Yesterday morning I almost hopped in a car with some friends and drove to New Orleans to interview people about their thoughts, how they got there, etc., to pick up some stories, which I was then going to transcribe and edit like crazy, and then publish in a 10 day period to sell at the last weekend of Mardi Gras. Alas, it was not meant to be. The title was going to be: Steauxries. You can steal that, if you like.

Writers from Mudville – There’s Hope for Us, Yet

Gideon’s Screenwriting Tips just became my new favorite blog. Why? Because of this post they published earlier today:

Selling Screenplays from Outside LA

It seems that the Social Networking Age has finally reached the movie business.

Oh, sure, there have been miracles like Diablo Cody, but we can’t all be stripper bloggers from Minnesota, and until recently, nobody really believed that you could actually break into the entertainment industry without living in Los Angeles.I’ve been to the Austin Film Festival enough times to know.

There are still some who don’t believe it, but it seems that their numbers are dwindling, and just like with anything, it depends more on how each individual chooses to do business than the industry as a whole. Some producers need their writers on site, because they work best with face-to-face meetings, brainstorming sessions, etc. Fair enough. Others don’t give a crap, as long as you can write a good story, they can talk to you over the phone or over Skype.

To use the words of Ernest Thayer:

“Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, might Casey, was advancing to the bat.”

Of course, we all know how that one ended.

A guy who strikes out two thirds of the time is considered a damn good batter, but he still fails more often then not. So now that Flynn and Jimmy Blake have made it on base, we have the real work cut out for us.

Professional Coiner

Coinage – [KOI-nij] – n – the act or process of inventing words

I had this word on a vocab test once. It was a silly word to have on a high school vocab test, since it was just the noun form of a word all of us knew anyway, at a time when everyone thought it was hilariously funny to add “-age” to the end of every word. Foodage: that which could be considered to be food. Sexage: any act that approximates sex. Sufferage: the act of suffering (of course, an intentional – and we thought highly original – homonym for suffrage, which is the right to vote).

I still coin words now, except I’m much better at it and far, far more defensive. I think it’s the only reason I write my own stuff, because I know I can get away with it there. I’m approaching the end of my short story, “The Blinding Mirror,” which I’m writing in a Poe-esque style that gives me an excuse to dive into a thesaurus – one of my favorite past times. Still, I’ve found the thesaurus insufficient, and yesterday I created the word “iration,” which, to my knowledge, is not currently in the dictionary.

In context:

“He’d been in such sour spirits, on such regular occasions, now, that they rather expected it and simply placated him and his irations.”

My wife was able to define the word immediately: “angry ravings.” And thus, a word is born. When “The Blinding Mirror” takes the world by storm and is published in the next anthology of great works by up and coming writers, edited by Stephen King (’cause why not?), “irations” will trickle through the Internet and into common vernacular, and then Miriam-Webster will be forced to include it in the dictionary, just like they did with “ringtone” and “ollie” and “d’oh”.

When my father and I were writing Ups & Downs, he got mad at me once or twice for making up a word. But I responded to his irations with irations of my own, and insisted that as long as you know what it means, it is by definition a word, and it’s our prerogative as writers – our responsibility, even – to coin the words that will be used by the next generation.

This placified him somewhat. Which is a good thing, too, because otherwise I would have had to dislocute him.

The Key to Effective Technical Writing

Do you remember high school, when your teachers kept trying to get you to write more? Sometimes I think back to that and wonder whether they were just trying to exercise a muscle (like football players running through tires during practice), or whether there’s actually some sense that you need to be able to write lots in order to convey the message. Perhaps somewhere in between.

But I think back to this and it seems so ironic, because today, I spend a majority of my “writing” time actually trying to figure out how to cut words out, and still convey the same information. In a sales call recently for a company needing some technical documentation, that was basically the takeaway: This document shouldn’t be 8 pages long, it should be 4 pages long, and most of that should be pictures. When I’m developing web content, my bullet points (bullet points are key in web content) usually start out about 15-20 words long, and a few minutes later they’re 8-10 words long. That 50% drop goes a long way: people get it quicker and it’s more visually appealing, meaning they like you more and they can spend more of their precious time filling out your contact page.

This isn’t new information. It’s the same thing that applies to essays, books, movies, newsletters, you name it – the more you can trim the fat, the better your product will be.

Tips for Concise Writing:

• Think about your audience: Always know who your audience is and in what circumstances they’ll be reading this document. A successful product doesn’t exist for its own benefit, but to fill a need – so if you can keep the needs of your audience in mind, and always look from their point of view, then you’re already moving in the right direction.
• Organization: The first thing I do when working with a client is to outline the project, and the few projects where I’ve failed to do that, the result has been a disaster of one kind or another. Most people don’t just get into a car and drive – they figure out where they’re going first, and if it’s somewhere they’ve never been before, they use a map and/or directions to lead the way.
• Edit, edit, and edit again: When writing Ups & Downs, my co-author and I spent about a year (much to his frustration) editing it down. From first to final draft, we probably cut about 15 of the first 20 pages. It’s important to be ruthless, keep looking at it with a fresh perspective, and figure out if each sentence, each paragraph, each chapter can get the point across quicker than it does.

2009 Successes & Failures

If I were to make a list of “What’s Hot & What’s Not,” I think New Years Resolutions are eking their way onto the “Not” list. Read John August’s latest post if you need convincing.

What I will look at is successes and failures.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the measurements of success. If we were to look at the game of football, the ultimate goal in any given year is to win the Super Bowl. Inside of that goal, are 16-19 sub-goals per year – to win the game. And inside of each of those games are further sub-goals: to score a touchdown. If you ask any coach or player what they’re thinking about in any given week, the answer is always the same: the next game. And if you were to ask any of them what they’re thinking about in the middle of the game, the answer will always be the next drive; or the next play.

And yet, inside the game of football, there are a million ways to measure performance. Rushing yards; passing yards; touchdowns; interceptions; turnover margin; time of possession; punts inside the 20; explosive plays; “passer rating”; penalties; number of 100-yard rushing games per season; December record; number of times Jessica Simpson is mentioned during the broadcast . . . the list goes on and on.

Often, as humans, we trick ourselves into thinking that the measurement is the goal itself. When that happens in football, the result is selfish players who want more touches so they can pad their stats, ultimately leading to a poor locker room environment, bad teamwork, and a team that, realistically, won’t win the big one.

In real life, it can be just as insidious, though for most of us it’s less public.

So when it comes to being a writer, what are the measures? Finishing a screenplay? Writing every day? Selling a script? Yes, those are measures. But remember, they are not the ultimate goal.

So … what are my 2009 measures of success/failure?

• I’ve doubled length of Charisma, from 40 pages to 82. I’m still embarrassed to admit that I haven’t finished it, but you know what, I doubt I’m the only one who’s struggled to finish the first project that he really cares about. The fact that I’ve kept at it for 2 years is a big deal.
• I released my book, Ups & Downs, and have had a few scattered pieces of success with it, but overall have gained very little traction. I have two boxes of books in my study, and the predictable future is that they will stay there unless I change something.
• I had 23 blog posts in 2008 and 304 visits from October-December 2008; and 64 blog posts in 2009 with 407 visits from October-December (with a few days left to go).
• Over the last few months, I’ve come up with structures to increase my productivity, and now I have one to track the time I spend doing various activities, including writing. This way, I can do with my life what football players do with their game – look at where the failures occurred, and adjust accordingly.
• I don’t know how many books I read this year or how many movies I watched. I feel like I should be tracking that, too.
• I’ve figured out that I don’t like doing marcom (marketing communications), and am shifting my business more toward narrative nonfiction ghost writing; book editing; tech writing; and proofreading, all of which I enjoy.

For 2010:

• I’d like to continue my existence/time management structures. The goal is to have my time measured every day, without gaps. Realistically, I will get upset with myself some day for not doing something I was supposed to do, will make myself wrong, and won’t do it. But I will be back on track within a week, because I have enough people holding me to account for doing it. If I can go the entire year having missed, 30 days, I get a bronze star, 20 days a silver star, and 10 days a gold star.
• Finish the novel I’m working on with my dad, a short story/novella I started right before my dad’s and my scheduled start date, and Charisma.
• Exceed this year’s 64 blog posts and 407 4th-quarter visits, without being one of those annoying people who posts what color shoes they’re wearing every day.
• Attend, in some capacity, the 2010 Writer’s League of Texas Agent’s Conference, the Austin Film Festival, San Diego Comic-Con, two comic book conventions closer to home, and two more authors/publishers conferences/conventions.
• Continue reading every day and log every book I finish.
• Come up with a marketing plan for Ups & Downs that gets the two stacks of books out of my office as a result of sales.

So are these New Years Resolutions? Maybe. But they’re realistic, and I know going into it, that the likelihood of completing every one is slim, and if I screw up, I won’t stay mad at myself, I’ll just get back on the horse and keep riding.

Because success is just a function of being willing to fail more times than the other guy.

Narrative Efficiency …

… and a reason why you should clean out your Inbox.

I was just going through all my “starred” g-mail items, and came across one that my wife e-mailed me 2 months ago, which contained a link to Validation by Kurt Kuenne, which I still hadn’t gotten around to watching. Putting aside the message, which is a whole conversation unto itself, I just love the narrative efficiency.

Consider: In scene 1, somebody comes up to our hero, and he validates him. The scene is roughly a minute long. In scene 2, a woman comes up and he validates her – this one only takes about 15 seconds. Cut to someone running. “There’s a problem,” he says. And they go to this guy, and there’s a line out the door for people waiting for parking. We’ve just skipped months, and it only took two minutes to establish the premise, then the pattern, and then result.

The stakes continue to go up just as quickly. By the end of the third minute, he’d solved peace in the Middle East. Which left me wondering where on earth they could possibly go from here.

But of course, it moves brilliantly forward by giving him an obstacle he can’t overcome, and then the classical “ordeal,” followed by the “Dark Night of the Soul” where he pulls out of his low-point, and then the resolution. Thorough, complete, riveting, and only 15 minutes long. Fantastic!

10% Inspiration, 90% Marketing – Books & Modern Media

People hate technology. They really do.

Of course, this is a vast generalization, and really what I mean is that businesspeople hate technology. But even that’s not true, because plenty of businesspeople out there embrace it and use it for exactly its intended purpose – to provide a new way of providing something consumers want, and in exchange, receiving monetary profit.

Which means that it’s not that businesspeople hate technology, it’s that business-dinosaurs hate technology, because they’re too blind to realize that change is inevitable, so they should embrace it and figure out a way to incorporate it into their business model.

And for some reason, well-established artists seem to be least creative when it comes to inventing ways to take advantage of technology, because they’re so incredibly stuck in the old paradigm of Intellectual Property. I wrote about this several months ago, and as a self-published author of a fantastic book who’s completely loused up the marketing process, it’s something I think about quite often.

In response to how much easier it is to copy and distribute art today than it was even 10 years ago, an organization called Creative Commons has created a “some rights reserved” license, a.k.a. the Creative Commons license, which lets the copyright-owner choose the conditions upon which copying and redistribution are permitted.

By now, most people are aware, at least vaguely, of the existence of the Creative Commons license. Many, I suspect, still haven’t seriously considered using it. Why? Because using this license requires throwing out all the books you’ve read that tell you how to break into the business. It requires a D.I.Y. approach to publishing, and it requires trusting that if you give someone something for free, the money will flow in your direction. Stephen King tried this approach nine years ago, and it was ultimately unsuccessful. Fair enough – he’s already got a model that works for him.

But Cory Doctorow recently published a column in Publisher’s Weekly about how he’s done exactly that. Here’s someone who clearly has no problem coming up with ingenuitive ways of marketing his work, and has reaped the rewards as a result.

I think we can all learn a lesson from Cory Doctorow, Diablo Cody, Stephen Elliott, and the other mad artists working in the world of modern technology. Come up with something new, and dedicate your time to it.

Because the more time I spend in this business, the more I realize that there are few things harder than finishing a book – but marketing that book happens to be one of them.

Narrative Nonfiction – Where to Start

I received the following e-mail the other day:

I was approached by a friend of a friend to help her write her story about <specifics edited out>. It is an intriguing story. My experience and previous publications are technical, business, and romance. Any suggestions on a good place to start with what I believe should be classified as narrative non-fiction?

Like anything else, I think the place to start is with the structure. Spend an hour or two with this woman, get really absorbed into the story, and then try to figure out how to organize it on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Once you know what each chapter is about, plugging in the details should be pretty easy.

I will say that one of the dangers of narrative non-fiction is that it turns into a “this happened, then this happened, then this happened” kind of sequence, which you want to avoid. To maximize its potential, the structure should look remarkably like a fiction story – turning point, progressively more-challenging obstacles to overcome, rise to a climax (that seems impossible to overcome), and then overcome it and finish quickly.

A great example of this is Crashing Through by Robert Kurson – about a guy who was blinded by chemical burns at the age of three, and went on to serve in the CIA and break Olympic downhill skiing records, before undergoing a corneal stem cell transplant surgery at the age of 45 that gave him his sight back. The amazing part of the story is the struggle he went through after the surgery to try to see normally.

I got this book when I was researching for a project about an athlete who had to overcome a physical disability. I’d definitely recommend doing the same thing – find a narrative nonfiction book that’s in the same “subgenre” as the one you’re looking to write. It will help give you ideas in the best way to tell your story.

Review of Stephen King’s Under the Dome

The full review of Stephen King’s Under the Dome is now available.

Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer

As I was tooling around, trying to figure out a way to drum up some buzz on Stephen King’s soon-to-be-released book, Under the Dome (which I’m currently about two-fifths of the way through), I came across this old post on Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer.