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Work For Hire is a Bad Ideal

Authors should never write as “Work For Hire” because it demeans their aesthetic and demands they are nothing more than ordinary laborers with no investment in the future profitability of the project.

It is hard to persuade new writers away from the “Work For Hire” carrot because the initial, solitary, payment can be more immediately enticing than lower upfront money against a future royalty percentage.

If you get royalties you are in partnership with your publisher.  If you are “Work For Hire” you’re used up when you’re done writing.

Publishers live to exploit that hungry author desire for fast money now — and in the process of the “Work For Hire” hiring — the author not only loses a potential profit bonanza, but also sells out their self-respect, self-worth, and fellow authors.

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Bending Ideas into the Realm of Reason

It isn’t enough to just have an idea because everyone has an idea every day.

Our challenge as authors and artists and poets and pedants is to form the idea and bend it into something new — preferably with the force of reason and against the recognition of other ideas — to make something holdable from the whole.

An idea that stretches is a thought that lives in multiple dimensions and when we brand that creative process into something others find appealing, we have reached the nadir of suffering and we are on our way to the pinnacles.

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Mandatory Writing Test for All Politicians

I am convinced all candidates for public office should be given a timed, public, writing test so we can witness in live time the real logic of their mental process and reasoning.

Do we appreciate their arguments and rationale?

A writing test confirms or disproves if the candidate is true, educated, and appropriately emotionally expressive.

A writing test gives us the best educated insight into the confirmed person beyond the fluff and the handlers and those who “shape the message.”

You cannot hide from your words or the consequences of your thoughts.

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Daring David Pogue

We just finished writing the Google Apps Administrator Guide for Thomson Publishing and we are now Daring David Pogue.  We have composed the following missive to the master Mac author:

Dear David Pogue:

We are daring you — actually, DOUBLE SECRET daring you (and when “we” say dare we mean “I’ but there is more power in the collective imagination) — to ignore us.

We are coming at you — hard and heavy in all your safe places and in The New York Times Square tower — by writing two new Apple books for Thomson/Cengage Publishing due to hit international bookshelves soon:

Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

and

Picture Yourself Learning Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

We are hungry.  We are dedicated.  We are fast.  We will outlive you!

Thank you.

Sincerely,

David W. Boles (aka “The WordPunk“) Boles Books Writing and Publishing http://BolesBooks.com

NOTE: We have yet to actually send that note directly to Mr. Pogue for we are in fear of appearing ungrateful and inappropriate in the light of our ongoing love of his previously hard-won books on the Mac OS and Apple.

P.S.: We also mention here and now we are writing another new book for Thomson called Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 and it includes a Bonus DVD for learning the signs and phrases.  Janna M. Sweenie is once again our co-author after our raging success writing Hand Jive:  American Sign Language for Real Life together.

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Blog Depression in Fourteen Million

Do blogs create democracy and foment The Citizen Journalist?

Or are all bloggers just begging the wind?

Here are some sobering numbers reported on The McLaughlin Group over the weekend:

  • 140,000 new blogs started each day
  • One blog is created every second
  • 14 million new blogs are started a year

Is there a point to blogging any longer or will the little people with the small — but important — voices be drowned out by the traditional Big Media sites who will suck all the bandwidth and chew up all the pertinent search returns?

Is the Golden Age of Blogging now dead?

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Swollen Hands at the Feet of Opportunity

Have you ever typed so much for so long in high heat that your hands started to swell?

My hands have been swollen for over 24 hours now and I can’t figure out how to get the blood out of my fingertips.

I’ve tried icing, exercise, water pills and push-ups.

Nothing helps.  The hands remain swollen and the fingers are unbendable.

Still, we solider on, and continue — as evidenced in this post.

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Memory or Meme or Me?

Which comes first:  The Memory or the Meme or Me?

The meme — the invisible sharing of knowledge — comes before the memory.  The exchange of thoughts and ideas creates the expectation of moments and the living makes the shared memory.

Continue reading → Memory or Meme or Me?