On Editing

A fellow writer and friend Shane Joseph is my guest blogger. His post, On Editing was written over three years ago, but is timeless and has relevance to the writing life.

 

Shane is a strong writer and his wit sparks. We met in San Francisco and in many ways; our paths have been very different.  He was born in Sri Lanka, I, the United States. He has lived in four countries; I have lived in two. He works in the corporate world; I teach. He plays in a rock band; and I sing in the shower.

 

And yet, we are also similar: we are both avid travelers and share a philosophy of visiting a foreign location every year.  And we both have lived in the desert. He said his time there was an intellectual void; I call it a hypnotic placidity that floats where nothing ever falls or changes.

 

Please welcome him.  You may enjoy his style, or you may not, but please make your comments known.  We are trying something new to support each others' creative endeavors, which I appreciate.  I hope you do too.

On Editing

Friday, August 1st, 2008

A writer once went out into the fields of imagination and created an animal with a lion’s roar, a giraffe’s neck, a cheetah’s speed, and a horse’s gait; he gave it the vegan diet of an elephant, the conceit of a cat and the faithfulness of a dog. The animal, which the writer decided to call “Novel” due to its uniqueness, took on the colours of the rainbow as it danced in the light of a fading sun. Both writer and his creation played and frolicked until it was time to go home.

 

At home, he met his friends, fellow writers, who did not like the lion’s roar (too frightening) and the cheetah’s speed (too racy). The writer took them off Novel to please his friends. He met his editor, who was livid that a giraffe’s neck should go with a horse’s gait (inconsistent). The writer met his publisher, who said, “How can I sell this…this…thing?” More cuts were made to appease all aggrieved parties. Finally, the publisher was happy and petted the animal, saying, “Now you are understandable and non-threatening. Everyone will want to have a clone of you in his house. They will enjoy you on their lap in their armchair beside the fire on a winter’s evening. They might even let you live in their bookcase.”

 

As the publisher walked away figuring out how many clones he would make, the teary writer sat dejectedly with his animal, now reduced to a tiny dog, and said to it, “Who are you?”

 

Shane Joseph is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories. His work After the Flood won the best futuristic/fantasy novel award at the Canadian Christian Writing Awards in 2010. His short fiction has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies. His latest novel The Ulysses Man has just been released. For details see www.shanejoseph.com

Blog Smart

In talking with a screenwriter friend about blogging I was asked how many hits does a writer need to be recognized.  I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-300 hits a day. That would make 3,000-9,000 in a month and is achievable.  But 9,000 Twitter followers and  thousands of Facebook Fans? Not so easy.  In fact, you’d have to be an author endorsed by Oprah to make those numbers. So are we all wasting our time?

I originally began to blog two and a half years ago as a way to market myself and a book.  But as the Internet is becoming more saturated, I believe it will be more of a strain for a new blogger to make waves in the blogosphere.

There’s a difference between having a writing platform so tall that you can snag a book deal based on your reputation alone and having a well written book with a little social media behind it to show agents and publishers that you’re out there making connections and that you’re book-marketing savvy. The key is to make sure the book-writing comes first followed by the blog, Twitter, and Facebook.  I say this to remind writers that there are times when we feel like we are spending more time on social media than on a book, which is counterproductive. Because without a great book, what’s there to market?    

While I don’t think blogging is a waste of time, I think blogging poorly is a waste of time. The key is to find your niche and delve in. Write about what interests you, what makes you unique. If that’s rock climbing, gardening or speaking Portuguese, then that’s what you should blog about because people with those interests will find you and follow you and read your work.

What about you? Do you have a particular niche, something that makes you different from all the other writer/bloggers out there?
In my next post I’ll be having a fellow writer join in as a guest blogger.

Evocative

Some of my more mature students come to class with a desire to write a memoir. My question follows –what memoirs have you read? I recently put one down, The End of Boys by Peter Brown Hoffmeister that was filled with gripping and disturbing anecdotes from his past, including being asked by his mother to kill a neighborhood cat to perpetually participating in fights, drug-use, and mischief.

In the book, Hoffmeister demonstrates not only the strength of his writing but also his fearlessness when confronting the trauma of his childhood. With sobering honesty and gripping narrative, Hoffmeister has created a riveting memoir, one that will leave you shocked at its content while thankful for a story that can turn such pain into something beautiful.

The cover alone immediately demonstrates the perilous state of his childhood. The family photograph is a striking image of two young, blond boys–Peter inhaling a cigarette with deep concentration while his brother looks on, completely mesmerized. And one need not question where their parents are– their mother, an artist is the supplier of the cigarette, as a way to make them artists like Picasso, she claims.

His parents, both educated don't apply intellect or common sense into their home lives. I found myself thinking– why do people assume they can parent just because they can reproduce? An unconscious animal can procreate but only a conscious living being can parent.

This memoir captures such a lonely story and it's not an easy read but when you put it down, I think it will make you a better parent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOHWCSs2mHU

Anybody Home

Students ask me if creativity can be learned. My answer is– we owe it to ourselves to open the door to our creative urges, honor it and its challenges and by doing so we sustain passion and joy.     

We all have our definitions of what it means to be successful with our creativity. All too often, those definitions are based upon the insatiable appetite of the ego, for external recognition.

Not that there is anything wrong with external recognition. Recognition can lead to success and that can be fun, remunerative and reduce, for a while, one's anxiety about –how talented am I really.

Problems arise when we give credence to the ego story that writes external success as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Even if we chance to dip into that pot, its riches are never enough for the insatiable ego; thus any perception of loss acerbates feelings of failure and sends us on a desperate search to redo the success and, should that fail, to give up. 

When we hand over validation of our creativity to others, we become victims of their judgments.

Creativity in its infinite expression is our most vital experience of life energy and the adventure of life itself. When we answer creativity's call, we give our self one of the greatest gifts that life can offer. We give our self... there is tremendous power in those words. For what we give our self, no one can take away, unless we allow them to. The creative part of you will never give that gift away, but the ego will and does.

Just another crazy woman

Again I'm taking a detour. Every Monday night I look forward to the HBO show Enlightened (http://www.hbo.com/enlightened/index.html). When it came out last month, I had three immediate reasons to watch; first, I was attracted to the name, second, because Laura Dern has always reminded me of my eldest niece and third, how can anything on HBO not be good? As I watched, I identified with character Amy. It took me back to a professional moment when I wanted so desperately to change the world and all I witnessed was television corruption and cowards that hid in the shadows that wouldn't take a stand. 

Main character Amy has an affair with her boss that costs her a breakdown. She goes to a spiritual retreat to mend her brokenness and returns with a fresh and very honest approach to life that no one seems to be able to handle. What her co-workers, ex husband and mother do is dish out their superficial attitudes with their judgmental stares and intolerance for her being different a.k.a., being in her integrity. The company she works for– Abaddonn (it's Hebrew for Hell) tries to shun her and facing a wrongful termination lawsuit demotes her throwing her into a basement where she won't be seen or heard.

The last two weeks have left me in tears and feeling hopeful at the same time. It's creators, Mike White and Laura Dern are geniuses and first-rate artists for stepping out of the mold. If you can stomach these issues then stay tuned: embracing your inner Zen can be isolating. Grief can be grotesque. Mental instability is rarely tolerated. Deportation can split families and be painful. Alienation from your parents can be painful.  Mothers can be strangers.  Corporate America is soul-shattering. People can be shallow. Men can be philanderers.

Enlightened is not filled with mundaneness or laughs except for dark humor.  If you're looking for ordinary and light that eats up your time and leaves you empty, then don't watch the show–you won't find it. What you will find is a show about an intense and sane woman trying to make the world a better place through serving humanity– and ultimately isn't that the reason why we were given life?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Nj5xLuT6c

Did any of you watch Enlightened last night? If so, what were your thoughts?

Gutenberg's Invention on the Decline

It seems that Amazon can do everything. First they taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers. Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.

It has set up a flagship line, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. But can Amazon create its own best sellers?

I'm certain publishers are terrified and don’t know what to do. If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon is stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.

If writers have one message drilled into them these days, it is this: you have to hustle yourself. You are told you need to build your platform, start a blog, get on all the social networks, make yourself known and put your work in the viral spotlight. And do all of this marketing in addition to your writing to get an agent interested in “you” and do it at your own expense because publishers will pay you as little as they can get away with.

As far as I can see, traditional publishing is now fading into the sunset.

I have to admit, I'm still unsure what I think of this particular development. Amazon's apparent desire to remove every one else from the book chain is a concern. Crowding out smaller players, concentrating buying power, narrowing publishing towards a certain device, these are all trends that I don't feel are strictly business models but are based on greed and consumption. Big bully Amazon is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Aggressively pushing its' way into the hearts and minds of readers, dictating all the rules to gain control. The concept that comes to mind is a monopoly– will Amazon be infringing on our first amendment; and will we be able to read what we want or simply that which becomes available to us?