virtualDavis

In addition to the “write every day” and “create a routine” stuff by which so many other writers swear, Connolly stresses the need for flexibility. “There are many ways to get from start to finish,” he says. The key is to allow each project to be its own thing and deal with it in the way it ought to be dealt instead of tackling a uniform approach.(Kieron Connolly’s Newspaper Novel-Plotting Game)

This kernel of wisdom from Irish writer Kieron Connolly — the author of Water Sign, There is A House and Harold — was harvested during a novel writing workshop at the American Book Center in The Hague by  Avery Oslo. It appealed to me for its candor and an almost unorthodox willingness to step away from the routine, routine, routine mantra which pervades much writerly advice.

Each new work is unique, and its creation may well require different routines, different methods and habits and rhythms than previous creations. This will to adapt the creative process per the needs of each new creation is not only more realistic than the systematic, procrustean assembly line model, it’s more exciting. Each new creative experience should be an adventure. A journey. An exploration. This is what makes creating and telling a story so damned interesting!

I wasn’t surprised that Avery Oslo (@AveryOslo on Twitter) had been inspired by Kieron Connolly, and yet I’ve never met either one. Chalk it up to Twitter. Again.

I don’t recall how I stumbled upon Oslo, but I suspect it may have been a retweet shared by a mutual acquaintance. A familiar “digital introduction”, followed by a visit to Avery Oslo’s blog where I read this:

I was raised by nomads (proper nomads. The kind that pick up and move every year at least once) and that makes me a native of nowhere (but also of everywhere!). I am most comfortable in mobile groups of other travelers and transplants. Everything I write addresses some aspect of being transient, at a crossroads, or otherwise in a state of flux. My characters often deal in the currencies of movement and future dreams. If you can relate to that, you might like what I write. (Avery Oslo)

I can relate to that!

Update:

After posting this blog, I received the following tweet, adding another interesting Twitter twist:

It’s no mystery that the folks at Just Beer at Buzzard’s Bay Brewing are a slightly quirky bunch, so it should be no surprise that their newest version of India Pale Ale is served up with a novel idea: A hard-boiled detective tale in twelve chapters, one on each of the 22-ounce bottles in a 12-bottle case.

The Case of the IPA, the name of the beer and the story, is a result of the melding of the minds of brewer Harry Smith, author Paul Goodchild and owner Bill Russell. The noir-style tale, reminiscent of “The Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Hammett’s gritty detective novels and his serial magazine stories of the 1920s and ’30s starts off with the main character, “a two-bit shamus in a dirty, gritty, bluesy, and cool city of some renown” who is summoned to a wealthy businessman’s “swank starter mansion in the ‘burbs” and wraps up 264 ounces later. And Russell has one suggestion for readers: “Please don’t drink Chapter 12 first.”

Goodchild, who described himself as an artist who doesn’t count on royalties, said he came up with the idea of writing a story on Buzzard’s Bay beers about five years ago, but it didn’t fly until the Just Beer brand started making the 22-ouncer, just the right size for each chapter. “At first I thought about writing a science fiction serial because I love that genre, but I didn’t want people to think we were pandering to kids. This serial is decidedly adult — not XXX — but a hard-boiled detective, noiry serial; it’s perfectly oriented to the IPA. I’m a big fan of Dashiell Hammett,” said Goodchild. (Herald News)

Is it too late to pretend I invented this? This may be one of the most compelling reasons yet to focus on print publishing versus digital publishing. I mean, how often do folks offer up virtual cocktails on Twitter, etc? And how disapointing are they when you toss them down the hatch?!?! But this is the real deal. Analog literature for the mind and soul…

Related articles

• Hoppy, I Mean Happy, IPA Day! by Lauren Buzzeo (winemag.com)
• Should You Serialize a Novel on Kindle? (janefriedman.com)
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The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.  Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!  The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine).  So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use. (usbtypewriter.com)

Hat tip to Chris Casquilho (@chriscasquilho) for putting me onto this gem!

“Working on the query letter” by Doug Sharp, on Flickr

I don’t think a query is a one-size-fits-all device. I don’t think the same query necessarily works for all agents or all authors. That being said, I don’t think it should either.

The most important part of the query is the blurb, the part that tells the agent about your book, the part that grabs her attention and makes her want to read more. Here’s the deal, though: What you should strive for is writing the query that best represents you and your book. It should show the reader a bit of your voice and the blurb shouldn’t necessarily be about hook or characters or plot. It should be that one thing about your book that makes it stand out from all others. (BookEnds)

Literary agent Jessica Faust over at BookEnds dishes up what-should-be-but-isn’t-so-obvious advice for all of query letter scribblers. Sell your book by selling yourself. Give’m a taste of your brilliance, grace, humor, whatever makes you stand out and stand tall. Distill your dazzle and intoxicate the agent/publisher… No pressure!

Related:

• Seduce the Agent
• Write. Book. Pitch. Agent. Right?

Although the visual effect is clever (and ultimately compelling) it tires the eyes and pushes the concept too far. That said, Stephen Fry’s reflection on the increasingly overlooked wonders of language (as well as the tendency for critics to harp on language fouls and blunders rather than celebrating the extraordinary richness of words) is delightful. A welcome tune for many wordsmiths, and a reminder that we should emphasize the power and beauty of language rather than beating up the language manglers. I remember my mother telling me as a boy, “You’ll get more flies with honey.” Right?

If somebody sets out in great detail what is before us, we very quickly become bored. That is not the way we see the world; we look for salience, we look for the feature that will engage our interest… The trouble with overwritten prose is that it takes away from the reader the opportunity to imagine a scene. We do not want to be told everything; we want a few brushstrokes, a few carefully chosen adjectives, and then we can do the rest ourselves. (Wall Street Journal)

Crisp, concise language sounds like a worthy goal. And indeed it is. But words are so delicious, so tempting, so distracting. It’s often quite difficult to cull the best and lose the rest. Especially because we writers like words, collect words, romance words, get totally distracted words… See where I’m going? It can be damned difficult to weed out all the superfluous language. Even when we know it’s the right way to write!

Alexander McCall Smith’s article, “Block that Adjective“, hits the nail on the head:

“For some people, being able to use all these words is rather like being faced with a chocolate box with multiple layers; the temptation to overindulge is just too great.”

Yup. I’m one of those chocolate lovers. Hello, I’m George Davis, and I’m a word glutton. Recognizing I have a problem is half the battle right? Nope. Not even close. It’s a fresh battle each time I sit down to edit what I’ve written. Clean out the clutter. Clean out the distractions. Clean out the overindulgence. What’s left? The essence. The story…

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose deeply political work vividly examines the perils of power and corruption in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday… Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” (NYTimes.com)

In my senior year at Georgetown University I had the good fortune of sudying with Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. I was already a fan of his fiction, and the opportunity to meet with this wise, gentile man of letters for several hours each week to ruminate on his favorite jewels in the Latin American literature crown was arguably the highlight of my four undergraduate years. I also had the good fortune of translating a nonfiction essay for Mario Vargas Llosa for publication in The Georgetown Journal. I offer this background to underpin the depth of my pride and excitement when Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

With his typical grace and commitment to literature Vargas Llosa has focused on teaching Borges at Princeton and avoided the pomp inevitably accompanying his laureatship. He acknowledged the sometime comic results of winning the Nobel Prize including a solicitation to invest the approximately $1.5 million into an ice cream venture!

But Vargas Llosa prefers Borges to ice cream. I remember this from my days in the classroom with him, so it’s ironic that he’s currently teaching the work of his Argentine hero who never won a Nobel.

Our great writers have all been prolix… Borges is the opposite—all concision, economy, and precision. He is the only writer in the Spanish language who has almost as many ideas as he has words. He’s one of the great writers of our time. (Paris Review)

This reverence for Borges endures, and it’s not altogether unlike the admiration I have for Vargas Llosa. And not just for his writing, but also for his grace. But this for another day…

“Create buzzz for your book” with AuthorHive

Generate Some Serious Book BZZZ : With help from the marketing experts at AuthorHive, your book can be the talk of the town. No matter what your marketing experience or budget, our marketing consultants can help you create an integrated campaign to tell your story. (viaAuthorHive)

Yet another sign of the times, shifting services toward writers, empowering the author to step increasingly into the shoes of the publisher. Have you had any experience with AuthorHive or a similar book marketing service? Is it the wave of the future?

Writers basically have two choices: they can build enough of a platform to entice an acquisition, or build one that’s bigger than just books and enables their long-term independence. (And by independence, I mean making a sustainable living, not just self-publishing your book via Amazon or Lulu or Smashwords and declaring yourself an “indie”.)

Similar to work-for-hire vs. creator-owned, it’s evolving into the difference between being a writer and creator. In the digital era, writers sell stories, while creators build storyworlds.

The former is a transaction-based existence focused on the traditional publication of books or articles, with everything else viewed as ancillary. The latter is an approach that sees traditional publishing as just one of many ways via which a storyworld — your fictional universe — can be experienced, and focuses on your ability to reach and engage with readers across a variety of channels. (loudpoet.com)

Why “limit yourself to just writing and publishing a book?” Guy LeCharles Gonzalez asks over at loudpoet.com. The ever burgeoning array of media channels is encouraging a new era of writers, storytellers who see the transmedia evolution as an exciting and promising renaissance.

What about you? Do you long for the black and white publishing world of yore? Or are you ready to embrace the multimodal storytelling opportunities emerging today? And tomorrow?

Related articles

• Gutenberg, Meet Amazon (virtualdavis.com)
• Jane Friedman on the Future of Publishing (virtualdavis.com)
• Digital Book and Audio Book Integration (virtualdavis.com)
• What Good Salespeople Know That Writers Should (janefriedman.com)
• Can’t Live Without Us, Says Publisher. Can Too, Says Konrath (ereads.com)
• Traditional Publishers Relevant? Hmmm…… (diamondpublicationz.wordpress.com)
• Everybody Knows (accordingtohoyt.com)

I’ve just polluted a perfectly wonderful blog post over at Multi-Hyphenate, and I’m feeling a little ashamed.

No, not the blog troll sort of graffiti that I find reprehensible. But the kind of run-on comment that should have been a blog post instead of clogging up someone else’s blog post (which I alsofind reprehensible.) So… aside from a mumbled apology at the end of my comment, I’m reposting my thoughts so their wise editor is free to abbreviate or remove the comment I posted to Annie Q. Syed’s “There is No Muse“.

A “muse to amuse your ego” is an amusing and clever tongue twister that I can’t resist borrowing for a quick blog post… But I’m not sure I’m 100% convinced.

I’m with you here: “At the end of the day… you are simply a storyteller and you have a job to do: tell the damn story. ” Just spent this morning listening to Tom Ashbrook interviewing Eric Bogosian about his novel, “Perforated Heart”. (You can hear the On Point rebroadcast, but note it was originally broadcast May 26, 2009.) He tells the story. In more modes, manners and muddles than most storytellers,

Eric Bogosian (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Bogosian tells the damn story. An acquired taste, especially if you’re not male and/or not connected in some way with NYC, but Bogosian is a storyteller without precious, pretentious muse mongering.

Or is he? Perhaps we just don’t meet his muse. Perhaps Bogosian’s muse is personal, intimate, private. Perhaps it is a changing muse, evolving along with his own writing style, ambition, skill. I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t much care because his storytelling stands on its own, muse or no muse.

What’s the point? I think that storytelling need not be divorced from muse. A muse. Many muses. But the story, the finished product, need not reflect the role of the muse in the creative process. A storyteller’s craft is complex, and the journey is often long (as you’ve readily acknowledged) between story seed and finished story. For me, the muse is one part of that journey. She’s part inspiration, as you’ve mentioned above, but she’s also my collaborator. I don’t mean to get too fanciful hear, but recall that storytelling is not a hermetic art. It requires an audience. Else it is mere babbling! The burps and farts of a crazy man. You’ve said, “Sometimes when I write words feel like picking precious beads in sand.” Right! And why? Because you’re not writing for yourself alone. You’re telling a story for an audience and precise, accurate language is the currency of a storyteller if s/he is to find a receptive audience. I’ve slipping into pedantic drivel, sorry…

So inspiration, yes, but my muse is also more of a collaborator. Like music to a dancer. And perhaps also like a dance partner. I’m a crumby (but enthusiastic) dancer, so take this comparison for what little it is worth. I can dream up a clever dance, practice and refine my steps, my rhythm, my gesture, my poise, etc. But it’s only when I attempt this creative process in conjunction with music — real or imagined — that my dance evolves away from the dizzying courtship of a park pigeon into something more compelling, more complete. And better still when I extend my hand to a dance partner — real or imagined — to enter into the dance with me, to mirror, to oppose, to resist and beguile and charm and challenge that something beautiful can be born.

Yes, I’ve overextended the metaphor. Apologies! But there’s an idea in there, an idea that a creator can extend the limits of his or her creativity significantly when amused by a muse. ;-)

That indulgent difference aside, there’s much we agree on. The work of a storyteller is also to know the difference between this creative dance and the hard work of distilling the finished product from the draft. After narcotic creativity transports the storyteller beyond initial inspiration and indeed often beyond the anticipated scope of the story, it’s time to begin the hardest work. The editing, the weeding, the focusing, the revising. The muse does not belong in this process, at least in my own writing. She’s a temptress, a dazzling temptress who’s creative genius forever outstrips my own. And so the time comes when I must bid her farewell, for a while, remove my dance shoes, sit down at my desk and work. Dancing is divine, but I have a job to do!

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• Consulting Your Writer’s Muse (blogcritics.org)
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• Talker’s block (sethgodin.typepad.com)
• Avoiding the Muse (dawnewebber.wordpress.com)
• Is Journaling a Cure for Creative Blocks? (artistsroad.wordpress.com)
• My Muse (wellnessspirit.wordpress.com)
• My Muse has ADHD (megganconnors.wordpress.com)