Beyond the Elements of Style

If You Write, Get a Mac!

Okay, at the risk of losing some of you, I have to once again say that if you’re writing — doing any kind of writing — you need to be working with a Mac. End of discussion.

Cost an issue? I always used to tell people that if it costs a little more to get a machine that just works, then it’s worth it. But the reality is that even some years ago Apple was comparable to many pcs when one considered how much the pc user would have to add to her machine to make it comparable to the Mac. And in fact in the past 18 months there have been numerous articles about the many Mac models that are less expensive than many pcs with the same specs. A number of articles can be Googled that compare Dell’s prices for tower pcs, for example, with MacPro towers: they find very often that the Macs come out cheaper. (In some cases, hundreds of dollars cheaper!)

But even putting the cost issues aside, think about what a writer can do with the Leopard operating system:

1. Edit and annotate pdfs from Preview (that’s right, no more need to pay Adobe a small fortune in order to obtain a version of Acrobat that can write to pdfs);
2. Juggle several screens at once (particularly important for those of us whose laptop is our only computer), quickly and seamlessly, using Spaces;
3. Place folders that normally clutter the desktop in the Dock, one of the most wonderful of inventions, ever;
4. Work with Word documents without owning Word through the new TextEdit … and, yes, it exports as a Word doc;

(There’s also a fabulous new personal-use database program available called Bento, though I can’t comment on it, as I’m already pretty much married to the combination of DEVONThink Pro and my ScanSnap document scanner. Let’s hear it for the nearly paperless office!)

All this to say that if you haven’t looked at a Mac lately, you might want to consider it now. You can buy refurbished models at the online Apple Store, and old Macs retain their value to an amazing degree. I upgrade every two years or so by buying a new Mac and selling my old one on eBay … and it rarely costs me more than a few hundred dollars. Seriously. It’s not just a computer, it’s a decent investment. Try doing that with a pc!

I’m not a programmer, and don’t want to have to feel like one. I want my computer to be invisible, intuitive, a non-issue. It happens with a Mac. It just works.

And that pretty much puts me … beyond the elements of style!

Novel Critique Group

My guest blogger today is Meg Westley, who has this to say about a critique group for novels:

“The group I joined - Deadly Prose - is seeking new members and I couldn’t help think of all the great writers and critters who might be interested in getting whole novel feedback,” even if they’ve been done chapter-by-chapter in other critique groups.

“The Deadly Prose Critique Group consists of published and unpublished novelists dedicated to the full-novel critique and career-building. We exchange critiques using a detailed template. Deadly Prose is designed for people who have completed novel drafts and are ready to deliver and receive honest critiques.

“Critiquing sessions are scheduled for six- to eight-week periods. Your entire novel is critiqued in a few weeks (pretty intense when you’re doing the critting, but terrific when you’re receiving the crits!). You receive feedback on character, plot, pace, opening and closing of scenes, prose, dialogue, setting & point of view, as well as in-line nits –– all with the view of giving you the information you need to polish your work.

“The group is designed for serious novelists working towards a career, and there is an application process to join. If you are a published author (any genre), you’re asked to submit a list of publishing credits and a critique of a flawed chapter (that is supplied to you.) If you are an unpublished novelist with a completed novel, you’re asked to submit a writing sample (the first chapter of your novel) and a sample critique. An admissions committee of five reads submissions and votes on whether to admit the applicant or not.

“If you are interested in knowing more, you can check out the group’s public website. If you want to apply, it would be best to contact me directly: megwestley@gmail.com.

“In any case, I thought you might be interested in hearing about this group.”

(Jeannette writing now) I have to say that it sounds terrific. Most critique groups (IWW, Zoetrope, etc.) go through novels a chapter or so at a time, which really doesn’t allow for complete critiques — it’s a little like basing your opinion of someone’s physique on only having seen his or her foot, for example.

Aspiring novelists should check out the website, perhaps consider joining. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Splogs, Anyone?

From Wikipedia:

“Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.

“Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen (see blog scraping) from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.

“There is frequent confusion between the terms “splog” and “spam in blogs”. Splogs are blogs where the articles are fake, and are only created for search engine spamming. To spam in blogs, conversely, is to include random comments on the blogs of innocent bystanders, in which spammers take advantage of a site’s ability to allow visitors to post comments that may include links.”

I want to say a little more about this, because it is a problem and has in a sense hijacked the public’s perception of search engine optimization. And since a) Customline Wordware does SEO and b) I continue to work ethically, it’s worth talking a little more about it.

Here’s Wired’s take on the issue: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/splogs.html (or http://tinyurl.com/knra7)
From the article: “Extreme vulnerability to spam, he says, is a defining characteristic of Web 2.0, and splogs are its first manifestation.”

SEO unfortunately got a lot of early bad publicity through those who abused it, and some of the dirt sticks; but like any other business technique, it can be used correctly and ethically, or it can be abused. Splogs (whether generated by people hired to write them or, as is done more frequently, stolen from other sites via bots) are indeed proliferating, and it’s hard to see where it will end. The author of the Wired piece seems to think that it could end the net as we know it. Stay tuned to see…

It’s worthwhile to occasionally put a long, unique phrase from your web copy into Google and see if it is being copied anywhere. I’ve found my posts copied elsewhere, and have had varying success in getting them removed, depending on the site owners and/or hosting company.

What can you do? Try this: Copyscape.com is a service with free and paid modes where you can check for pages that are duplicating the content from a particular URL.

And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Looking for Work? Try Blogs!

Just a quick thought today for those of you who may be looking for work (and if you’re like me, you’re always thinking about the next gig, no matter how terrific the one you’re doing now may be).

Anyway, something you may not have considered is the blogosphere. You probably know blogs for their literary, political, or professional content, but did you know that some blogs post gigs for freelancers? All you need to do is make a list of tags that fit your criteria (for example, depending on your freelance specialization, you might use writer, editor, SEO marketing, publishing, etc.).

Here are a few blog search engines you can try:

• Technorati: http://www.technorati.com/tag
• Google: http://blogsearch.google.com
• Icerocket: http://www.icerocket.com
• Blog Search Engine: http://www.blogsearchengine.com
• Blog Digger: http://blogdigger.com
• Fast Buzz: http://fastbuzz.com

And while you’re at it, make sure that you add your blog to their listings!

Using all the resources available to you is the best way to get work –– and keep getting it. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Query Letters Revisited

I was recently working with a client on a query letter for a novel he’s hoping to place with a literary agent. His first draft was long, elegant, filled with images and … well, the publishing world doesn’t seem to be looking for that anymore, if indeed it ever was.

Here’s what I told him:

“General: Perhaps we should have spoken, first, about the query letter as it is today. This is a lovely and elegant letter and unfortunately will end up consistently in the rubbish; the publishing world, at least in the United States, is not looking for anything lovely and elegant. It has to be to the point, to follow a form that isn’t particularly interesting but gives agents what they need to know.

“There’s no ideal or perfect letter, but successful ones all have some things in common.

“For some examples and discussion of query letters, you may wish to visit these two blogs: Miss Snark, a literary agent, held forth at http://misssnark.blogspot.com, and the Evil Editor continues to do so at http://evileditor.blogspot.com. Miss Snark no longer writes her blog but the archives are available and while she’s never particularly nice, she is usually right, at least in my experience. The Evil Editor also addresses query letters and is also short and often nasty – but very knowledgeable.

“What most people don’t know is that your query letter is really your first marketing piece for your book. You need to try and sell the agent on it, and talk to the agent as though he/she were the reader to whom you’re trying to sell the book. Like it or not, it really is all about sizzle.

Structure: So let’s look at what needs to go into a query letter!

1. You want to start with a “hook,” literally hooking the agent into wanting to read more. An example of an excellent hook I once read is this: “What if you learned that a family member was plotting to kill the president? Would you try to prove the plot, warn the person, call the police? This is the dilemma that Mark Watkins is facing …” Now, granted, a thriller such as that one lends itself well to an exciting hook; but I think that with some thought you could do one for your book, too. Get the agent interested, make him or her want to read the book, and then move on.
2. Follow the hook with what you’re selling: essentially say that you’ll find the answer to the hook in the novel you’ve written. Include the title of the novel, the word count, and if you can possibly fit it into a genre, do so here. People like to be able to put books on shelves, figuratively as well as literally. (To determine the genre, ask yourself where booksellers will place it, what section of the store. That will give you its genre.)
3. Tell about why you’re the best person to tell this story. You did that in your draft to some extent, but make the reader feel that you’re the exact right writer. Weave your extraordinary life experiences in to the telling of the story. SHOW the agent, make him/her excited.
4. Finally, get to the specifics. What you want is to offer to send a full proposal, not the manuscript itself. This also includes a brief summary of your past publications, etc. (The proposal is phenomenally important, so don’t wait to get a request for it to begin working on it!) Agents will know what you’re talking about.

Next Steps: What I’d like you to do is a little homework. Read some of the blogs that I referenced. Read my comments and do an outline of your query letter, then put it aside and think about it some. Then rewrite the letter and send it back to me. Take heart: most effective query letters are revised many, many times!”

All of this got me thinking about the many forumlas out there, the options for doing things one way … or another. I’ve seen successful query letters that I would have said never had a chance in the world to succeed, and brilliant ones that still haven’t. The bottom line is, of course, that getting published depends on so many factors that it is in many ways a crap shoot.

The answer? Do the best you can; don’t give up; don’t take it personally; hone your craft.

And maybe buy a good-luck charm, too! Then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Try Something New

Feeling stagnant? Need to try something new? One possibility you may wish to check out is WEbook.com, a project-based system that encourages small contributions with a one-thousand-word limit per piece. You can use it as a project system for building a novel or nonfiction book, open it up for comments, even allow multiple contributors to write pieces of the project.

I spoke with one WEbook user who noted that the idea of being able to contribute small chunks encourages the act of writing, “and it is dead easy to just bash out 500 words or so in Word and then just paste it into the editor.”

From the site:

WEbook is a revolutionary online book publishing company, which does for the industry what American Idol did for music. (Modestly speaking, of course.) Welcome to the home of groundbreaking User-Generated Books. WEbook is the vision of a few occasionally erudite people who believe there are millions of talented writers whose work is ignored by the staid and exclusive world of book publishing. It just makes logical sense that if you create a dynamic, irreverent, and open place for writers and people who like reading to meet, write, react, and think together, the results are bound to be extraordinary. Cue WEbook.com, an online publishing platform that allows writers, editors, reviewers, illustrators and others to join forces to create great works of fiction and non-fiction, thrillers and essays, short stories, children’s books and more.

There’s also a lively community with discussion groups, message boards, and more. Check it out, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Amazon is Your Friend

Yes, I said it. Anyone who knows me knows how far I’ll go to impress upon people the ethical requirement to patronize one’s local independent bookseller (”or they won’t be around any longer,” is my usual tagline here). And I still believe that, with all my heart. And I love love love my local booksellers and can’t imagine life without them.

But as I get older I’m less binary in my thinking, and I don’t believe that the Amazon/local bookseller necessarily has to be an either/or proposition.

Look at it this way. The goal for any published author is to sell thousands and thousands of copies of her books in a very short time, and she needs to be willing to do whatever is necessary to work with her publisher to make that happen.

And there’s no denying that Amazon is an excellent tool. The company actually does the industry a lot of good.

I love independent booksellers, but for economic reasons they are not always able to do what Amazon can and does (giving publishers workable terms and not ship returns, for example); and the reality is that for authors as well as for publishers and independent booksellers, selling books is a business.

The other thing I’m noticing about Amazon is that it is a tremendous marketing tool. Many people search Amazon for books and then buy them from their local independent bookseller. You can’t call a local bookseller or and ask the sales people to read you the blurb, the first chapter, or the reviews; and if you don’t happen to live close to said bookseller, this can be a problem — but you can get that information from Amazon.

Yes, Amazon is an impersonal megalithic corporation, and I don’t believe for a second that corporations are our friends. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot use them to our advantage, because they’re not going away anytime soon. Buy your books whenever possible at your local independent bookseller — I stand by my signature phrase — but don’t dismiss Amazon as a great venue for selling your books, as well.

And less binary thinking would be healthy for everyone … beyond the elements of style!

What’s a Platform, and How Do I Get One?

Many authors quake at the portion of the book proposal that asks for their platform. What’s a platform? Why is it necessary?

The two questions go hand in hand. A platform is perceived by most publishers as being necessary in order to promote and market one’s book; it’s a way of reassuring the reader that you do indeed know what you’re talking about. It’s essential for nonfiction writers, but important also for novelists, especially those whose names are not (yet!) household words.

So what can you do if you don’t currently have a platform? Don’t despair; there are a number of ways of promoting yourself and your expertise in the public eye.

• develop some short how-to articles related to your topic and submit them to local print newspapers as well as to article sites (such as Helium) on the net. Make sure that you’re not submitting the same article everywhere or you’ll run into duplicate content issues; but get a lot of them out there.
• develop and market speaking topics of interest to groups like Women in Communication (AWC), your local Association of Business Communicators (ABC), and National Speakers Association (whose members often develop books to go with their platform message).
• teach a class in your subject area at a local adult education or community college facility.
• give a free presentation at your local public or city library on your topic. Build on this exposure and give more at less-local facilities. Don’t forget schools! High schools in particular are terrific venues for presentations or workshops.
• publicize yourself. Send out press releases whenever you’re involved in anything related to your topic. Send the releases to your local newspaper.

The more your name can be associated with your topic, the more you;ll be building your platform. Make sure that you keep track of all of your articles, speaking engagements, etc. in some sort of database so that the information is at your figertips when it comes time to write about your platform.

For novelists, remember that you can (and should) build your platform on more than just your writing ability. Your books will often center around a place, an activity, an occupation, or an idea; build your platform around that more tangible information and see how it helps sell books!

Building a platform takes hard work, but its rewards are myriad. Try it, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Political is Personal

As NPR today has a show exploring how the art world and artistic expression are dealing with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I need to report that I’m already ahead of the curve there. Not in anything I’ve published in real life, but in an art installation in the virtual world of Second Life.

I’m already well acquainted with Second Life, as I co-write Second Seeker, a blog that reviews PG-to-R-rated places and activities in Second Life, and also co-authored chapter three of Wiley’s new book, the Official Guide to Second Life. But when my co-author, who is an artist in Second Life, approached me about collaborating on a project there, I was indecisive.

I’m used to having a lot of control in my writing. By its very nature, writing is linear: one reads from front to back, top to bottom, and the author is thus able to control how his or her words appear to the reader. What Paul was asking me to do was allow my words to float in the air as others walked through the installation — including walking through the words themselves! What that meant was that I could group pieces of the words together, but know that some people will start reading in one spot, some in another, and that all will walk through the installation in different ways.

It was one incredible challenge. Yet I was ready to do something. I’d become first tired of and then angry with people telling me to not take politics so personally — the political is always personal. So I wrote something that expressed my pain … and could be read with different starting-points.

And the political is always
personal.
And God bless America
isn’t anywhere in
the Bible.

Paul — or PleaseWakeMeUp Idler, as he is known in Second Life — created an incredible build with my words as a starting-point. In one space, visitors are walking through films of red, causing one reviewer to call them a “fog of blood.” In another, faces of Iraquis follow the visitor along with the plaintive words — “Why am I dying?” Yet another space speaks of and illustrates conspicuous consumption, the energy that drives acquisition and aggression. One illustration shows Americans clutching Bibles and guns; on the flip side is an Iraqui clutching the Koran and a gun. Finally, one section of the installation requires one to confront the names of American military dead — and the names of Iraqui civilians dead.

As one reviewer notes,

I didn’t know what to expect, but the wall of text that greeted me - names, ranks, ages, dates, places of death, sickened me. I could have known these people. Some were so young. Some of the notes left me ill. “body found near…”, “Baghdad?”, “checkpoint on outskirts of…”, “road between…”, “throat slit”, “Mother of”, “Son of”, “Sister of”, “Father of”.

What are these children, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers doing now? Now that their loved ones have been taken for nothing more than senseless greed?

The installation — called Political is Personal — will be available for viewing in Second Life until the end of March. Come make yourself an avatar in Second Life and visit it. It’s so far beyond the elements of style that I’m not even going to use that catchphrase here today.

What’s an Author To Do?

A colleague remarked to me the other day that he sees publishing going the way of the music business, with more and more “indies” appearing. He predicted that eventually there will be no conglomerates, no large publishing houses.

It’s a question being debated long and hard in a lot of venues, that’s for sure. I disagree with my colleague to some extent — what we’re seeing is more and more consolidation of the book industry (like many others — Beatrice Foods owns just about everything these days, doesn’t it?) and right now there are only really about seven publishers out there that matter. Oh, there are tons of other ways of getting one’s book out, and I think that that’s what my colleague is talking about. But there are some real differences between the music industry and the book industry that stand in the way of our doing what they did:

1. More and more musicians are finding that they do better just “giving” away their music: creating buzz on the net, making downloads easy, that sort of thing. Music and viral marketing were made for each other. It’s much harder to get that kind of buzz going about an author: you can’t hear two minutes of their work and decide that it’s cool.
2. Those same musicians are finding that the money is coming in in different ways, now that they’re giving away the downloads. Two major places where they’re generating income is in swag (shirts, posters, hats, jewelry, etc.) and concert tours. Neither of these is a viable money-maker even for a major author, much less anybody else.

So I don’t see that as a model. Things will change, mind you; people will hack the ebook readers and get books for free, no question about that, and we need to be ready for it (and not many really are, so many authors I know are crying that the sky is falling but not looking for creative solutions for shelter); but I think we need to find another model for it all.

And until then, the only way to get an endcap at Borders or Barnes & Noble is to pay for it, and only the Big Publishers can do that. Being in a period of transition is uncomfortable, but there’s part of me that’s hopeful: the world was never changed by people living in their comfort zones, and it seems to me that the future holds a lot of opportunities for authors — we just have to figure out how to seize them.

And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!