Out of the Ashes: Firing Up Blogging Burnout
If you write a personal blog — are you now, or have you ever been — a Burned Out Blogger? If so, how did you pull yourself from the ashes?
Continue reading → Out of the Ashes: Firing Up Blogging Burnout
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Is it Fake or Fiction?
I always find it wildly malfeasant and mindlessly entertaining when the mainstream press gets involved in “outing” a book that promises non-fiction — but turns out to be invented or reality-inspired fiction.
Oprah bagged James Frey on her television show after it was revealed his book was not all “true” — and now the author of a gangland story is being “outed” for fakery on the page.
The Role of the Writer in Society
The role of the writer in society is one of a questioning dissent.
It is not enough for the writer to merely go along with the status quo or to live in the mainstream meme.
The Magic Pen
I have a Mont Blanc Meisterstück Rollerball pen. Yes, a Rollerball. Yes, it is a Magical Pen.
You Cannot Push a Shove
When people make mistakes, there is a certain art in “making it up” to those that were wronged.
The easiest way to do this is to “shove something their way” like a gift or money or something else that will not just make them whole again, but add a special pizzazz to the experience that makes forgiveness in the face of an oversight easier to take.
The problem with “making it up to you” is that people under 40 do not comprehend the concept. They believe a simple “Oopsy!” is enough of an emollient to sooth the hurt feelings and the betrayal.
How can you get the under 40 crowd to learn how to shove? You can’t. They don’t have it in them because they were raised in a generation where they are precious and can do no wrong.
The hard lesson is you cannot push a shove because it cannot be taught or requested: A shove must be a part of the person from the start and that is why “making it up to you” is a dying art.
Own Your Copyright
In my article — Writing Advice for Authors — I implore all authors to demand, and get, Copyright in their name from their publishers.
Agents and publishers will tell you Copyright in your name doesn’t matter — yet many publishers will fight you to the death to keep the Copyright in their name and not yours.
Why do publishers demand to own your Copyright when you do the writing?
Why do authors allow publishers to own their Copyright?
All Television Writing is Shakespeare
I recently wrote a WordPunk article called — Show Business Not Show Show — and the meat of that article argued Show Business is about making money and not creating art.
That said, we need to realize many professionally trained television writers — many are member of the Writers Guild — believe everything they write is on the quality level of Shakespeare… even if they are writing for situation comedies or reality shows.
That need to feel important and to lift the ordinary writing to higher level by historic association is vital to the author ego because it is a form of protection from the dual reality of their job: Dreck passing for earnest entertainment.
Most television writing is pretty awful. It lacks structure. It has no substance, conflict, or dramatic core.
Of course, no television author reading this thinks I’m writing about them — and we’d have it no other way.
Where We Are Going: 2008 Predictions
Hooray for 2008 and I hope your year is joyous and not yet bloody!
The Equalization Effect of Digital Publishing
Established mainstream authors like John Updike are furious with Google for scanning books into the public domain and they’re angry with publishers that choose to sell electronic editions of books — any book. We argue authors like Updike are angry because their specialness in publication is being ravaged by the equanimity and the equality of the digital publishing, print-on-demand, business model creeping into the book world.
Continue reading → The Equalization Effect of Digital Publishing
Plowing Hollow Lives in Fallow Land
As an author, you must focus your life on writing good stuff.
Many authors are more obsessed with achieving fame instead of creating greatness in their words.
When fame is the locus of your life — instead of good writing — your perspective is skewed to serving the middling taste of mainstream success.
When you instead concentrate on construction and on craft — you are concerned about the story and the showing of the drama in the lives you hope to perpetuate — and that means you feed the world instead of starving it with selfishness.
If your writing is good, fame will follow.
Fame without good writing plows hollow lives in fallow land.
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