Beyond the Elements of Style

To Be Honest … Or Not?

So after a hiatus from this blog to take care of matters in my personal life, I’ve been jogged back into it by reading this article, because it captures so much of the experience one has when beginning writers ask for an “honest” evaluation or critique.

One I’ve had recently, to tell the truth.

The reality is that most beginning writers have no concept of the fact that it takes more than a good idea to produce a book or a script. Everyone has good ideas. My car mechanic has good ideas. Should he write them down? Should he? Probably not.

It takes a great deal of time learning to take a good idea and translate it into something that people will want to read or go to the theater and see. Call it an apprenticeship if you will. Call it paying your dues (though that part is often reserved for the deluge of rejections one is sure to receive). Call it learning your art. whatever you call it, it’s essential to know that great writers become great writers by practicing, getting honest feedback, thinking about it, incorporating it, and practicing again. You’ll note the use of the word “become” in that sentence — it doesn’t happen overnight. Most “overnight” successes have been writing for many many years in obscurity.

Ask for honest feedback only when and if you’re willing to take it. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Whither Publishing?

As the new year begins and people in publishing begin to take stock of the fallout from last month’s Black Wednesday, a few scenarios are beginning to emerge. There are, of course, the doomsayers who argue that publishing as we know it is over—and that, in fact, it may be over altogether, in any shape or form. Others press on.

A Salon article from the end of December posits one of the (unexpected) benefits of the crash: the reemergence of the small publisher.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, Open Letter Books, a small press based at the University of Rochester, illustrated how a more nimble firm can benefit from the freeze. The publisher bid on the English translation of Mathias Enard’s novel, “Zone” — a single sentence that stretches for 500 pages. An influential translator had called the work the “book of the decade,” and Open Letter director Chad Post expected tight competition for the rights. But no one topped his offer, and he hopes to publish the translation in 2010.

“There’s not much to cut at smaller presses, so they are going to stay the same — they will have an identity coming into the recession, and they will be the same when they come out,” Post says. “It will open up opportunities for the smaller, more stable presses. The bigger houses like Knopf and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are going through an identity shift. It will become very murky what kinds of books they produce.”

(for the full story, click here)

Years ago in this column I wrote that, in essence, the mills are closing. When the economy forced the closure of New England’s textile mills, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a lot of people—a whole lot of people—found themselves without work, without help, without hope. An entire industry had changed. Those who survived were those able to take their skill sets and refashion them for other opportunities.

Sound familiar?

The mills are closing—most of the big ones are having fire sales as we speak—and the production of literature is changing, too. We too need to refashion our skill sets as well as our expectations of how we will continue to read. Reading isn’t going away any more than the wearing of textiles has. You’ll still be buying (and, some of you, writing) books ten years from now. Will they be different? Probably. But isn’t the essence of literature—communicating ideas, enabling readers to fly away on a magic carpet of fantasy—more important than how it’s delivered?

Just trying to keep things in perspective, which keeps me … beyond the elements of style!

She’s The Spelling Queen

It’s been a lovely Sunday here in Provincetown, center of (my) universe: just warm enough, a breeze coming from the harbor, the Cape Cod Times consumed with lunch at an outdoor café. Sitting there I perused a brochure from a yoga studio that I’m considering attending — a great brochure, nicely designed, and it noted that the studio features an “alter.”

Was it me, or did a cloud just pass in front of the sun?

Now my family, of course, was quick to point out that no-one else in their right mind would have noticed, much less cared that altar is not spelled with an “e.” My spouse quickly envisioned a world in which I’d be the Spelling Queen, sitting on a throne of semicolons and exclamation marks, sentencing to die those who make sloppy mistakes such as those. We all had a good laugh about it.

But the reality is that I’m probably not going to go do yoga at that particular studio, and, yeah, it’s because of the brochure. If someone’s that sloppy about writing/proofing, they may well be sloppy about other things as well. Probably not; but I’m not taking that chance.

When I approach companies about doing marketing communications for them, most people’s first reaction is along the lines of, “I can write; anybody can write; we don’t need you to write.” Well, respectfully, no: many of us have been taught to write (though I’ve seen some of the grammar used by my stepchildren’s teachers and hold out no hope that schools are doing anything to increase correct spelling, usage, and grammar); but that doesn’t mean that we can all do it well. Or even correctly.

That yoga studio just lost a potential client. Can all businesses afford that kind of loss? Paying someone like me to write — or even simply edit — marketing communications is, at the end of the day, a bargain at any price. Those saavy enough to know their limits are the ones who will continue to prosper, even in a recession. And they’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

(Oh, and if you hurry, you can probably still get that brochure out of the rubbish …)

Help with Amazon

As Amazon grows (along with our dependency on it), I thought I’d take a moment to offer what might be some useful advice: points of contact.

If you find an error in your Amazon book listing, your name, etc., this is the email you want to use to try and sort it with the powers-that-be: book-typos@amazon.com. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t receive a reply, you can also try community-help@amazon.com; at least one major distributor that I know of was able to correct some errors using that route.

With so little of what is “out there” on the web under our control, it’s good to be able to find some places where one’s voice can be heard. Email me and let me know if you have information on others, and I’ll share it here, too!

Amazon in particular does seem to experience more than its fair share of glitches. Any time Amazon launches anything new, it’s a given that something will have to be done to fix something or other that’s gone wrong – usually when Amazon lists something for sale that shouldn’t be. A colleague of mine guesses that they just snatch all the files in storage and do whatever they want with them, not bothering to check to see if the files are, in fact, available for publication. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that any ebook vendor that maintains libraries for their customers has to keep even out of print books in storage so they can be accessed by people who bought them.

It’s mostly sloppiness rather than any ill intent when this sort of thing happens, which doesn’t make it any less a pain for those of us who then have to jump through hoops to get it fixed. On the other hand, it always does get fixed, eventually.

So there’s hope! Contact Amazon today, and you’ll find yourself … beyond the elements of style!

Netiquette 101

One of the things I used to do for a living was teach people to write effective, professional, and courteous business letters. Well, the mills have pretty much closed on that particular revenue stream, but it’s worth perhaps taking a look back and seeing what got lost – and what we might want to recapture – with the advent of the internet and email.

Emails today may or may not be effective, depending on the writer; some manage to be professional; but very few people seem to feel a need for them to be courteous.

So perhaps it’s time to revisit email etiquette 101:

• DO respond when someone emails you. I’ve often sent information requests to an individual in a company with which I do business and received no response in return, even though I know that person is in front of his computer. In these days of questionable deliverability, it’s a good idea to respond with a simple “Okay, I saw what you need, I’ll get back to you by Thursday.”
• DON’T ignore emails. Not quite the same as the above; if you don’t know the answer or cannot give the person what she needs, then just say so. You’d never stay silent on the telephone and not respond to the other person; don’t do it via email, either.
• DO phrase requests as requests. Words like “please” and “thank you” and “when you have time” are as necessary in email as they are in real life (you do use them in real life, don’t you?)
• DON’T assume that people can “hear” your tone. What is meant to be humorous can be hurtful. If there’s a “wrong” way to interpret anything, someone will find it.

We all live and work on the net to some extent. Maybe it’s not too much to hope that we can all play together nicely?

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

Check Your Assumptions at the Door, Please

The story is told by Norman MacLean in his posthumously published book Young Men and Fire. On the fifth of August in 1949, fifteen young Forest Service smokejumpers landed at a fire in remote Mann Gulch, Montana. It was supposed to be a “ten o’clock fire” — a fire that would be out by ten o’clock on the morning after the élite squad arrived. It wasn’t. Within an hour, thirteen of them were dead or fatally burned.

They didn’t die because the fire was too hot or too difficult to contain. They didn’t die because of a lack of leadership or a lack of courage. They didn’t die because they were lazy or stupid or unwilling to help each other. They died because they had been trained to deal with fires in one way and one way only, and couldn’t stop thinking of firefighting that way — not even to save their own lives.

This was a grass fire, a fire that burns hotter and faster than the forest fires to which the smokejumpers were accustomed. Suddenly cut off from their escape route, the men had only one option: to outrun a fire moving at seven miles an hour up a 76 percent incline, carrying gear they had been trained never to drop, in heat they had never before experienced.

One person didn’t die and wasn’t burned. His name was Wag Dodge, and he was the crew foreman.

He didn’t die for one reason: he discarded what he thought he “knew” about fighting fires, and he thought of something new. He dropped his heavy gear and set fire to the grass directly in front of him. The new fire spread rapidly uphill and he stepped into the burned area — now a safe zone. He called to the others to join him. They didn’t — and most of them died because of it. (Building an “escape fire” such as the one Wag Dodge improvised at Mann Gulch has now become part of the repertoire of all smokejumpers.)

One of the pieces of equipment keeping the men from running fast enough, the piece they had been trained never to drop, was a combination axe and pick called a Pulaski.

A Pulaski is very useful in a forest fire and completely useless in a grass fire; but it didn’t occur to anyone to drop their Pulaskis in their race against death.

For those of you who thought I’d never get around to writing, breathe a sigh of relief: there is a point to all of this. All of us carry our own Pulaskis; all of us “know” the right way to write, to market our work. But most of us learned to write in a world that doesn’t exist anymore: we had to have, because the world is changing so rapidly. We were trained on forest fires and we’re dealing with grass fires here.

Is it really a good idea to keep carrying a Pulaski?

We “know” certain things about writing just as the smokejumpers “knew” how to deal with fire. We have training. We have experience. Some of us even consider ourselves among the élite in our own niches. But new technology is changing the Internet and the world so rapidly that sometimes it only takes a few months for what we “know” to become obsolete. And then what do we do? What will it take for us to drop our Pulaskis?

History is filled with examples of a better technology vanquishing a less-evolved one. But part of using any new technology is realizing that the old values don’t hold: that assumptions we made based on our experience with one technology do not necessarily translate into the new one. Along with Wag Dodge, we have to think of something new.

Do you have any Pulaskis you can drop… now? You’ll be beyond the elements of style!

Fifty Years of Silence

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about reading.

Generally I do it a lot, and don’t think much about it; but as I’m currently writing a book about reading, it’s probably a good thing to have on my mind. And today I interviewed someone for the book, and was amazed to hear a story of growing up with dyslexia, and not discovering the joys of reading until this individual was in her fifties.

Think about that for a moment. Not be able to read for half a century!

It’s just a reminder of all the things we take for granted. Recently there was a memorial service in the virtual world Second Life, for a person who was able to spend the last few years of his life experiencing activities such as sailboat racing without leaving his room – because he couldn’t leave his room.

I complain about my own disability – cluster headaches – and don’t stop to think of how little I really am incapacitated by it. I grew up with books as my best friends, and fell in love with words before I fell in love with any person; the thought of being without them is frightening.

The point? If you read (and I assume you do, since you’re reading my blog!), take a moment to be grateful. Grateful that you do. Grateful that you can.

I know that’s what I’m feeling, today. And that puts us all … beyond the elements of style.

Looking Failure in the Face

“My greatest good fortune was that I didn’t know that I was doing everything wrong. If I’d have done a single right thing I probably would have failed. If I’d known how hard – statistically speaking – it is to get a first novel published, I might have given up. What success means is really looking failure in the face and tossing the dice anyway. You may be the only person who knows the dice came up, but in that knowledge you have something that millions of people will never have – because they were afraid to try.” (Tom Clancy)

I’ve never been an avid reader of Tom Clancy books, generally preferring character development to plot, but my friend Carem loves his stories and has urged me to just try “one more time.”

Well, the verdict is in: I’m still not nuts about Tom Clancy books, but it’s another indication that you can not like one part of a person (or of their oeuvre) and still find wisdom in other things they have to say. Thomas Aquinas once said something to the effect of, “Remember the good you hear, and forget who it is that said it.” And I’m all for that.

I actually wrote a long paragraph expanding upon the Clancy quote, above, and then erased it. He said it well. Persevere, persevere, persevere.

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware Inc.

Is Illiteracy Next?

Well, apparently (as if we needed to hear this from yet another quarter) America doesn’t read anymore. Two of the three big book chains reported bad sales for the nine-week stretch through December 30: Barnes & Noble termed it “somewhat disappointing sales for the season in a highly promotional and competitive environment,” with comparable store sales slipping 0.1 percent at the superstores at $1.1 billion overall (putting them down 0.3 percent on a comp basis for the 48-week period, at $4.1 billion). BN.com sales rose 2.7 percent to $108.5 million for the holidays, but are still down 2.4 percent from a year ago for 48 weeks, at $376 million.

Sales suffered even more at Books-a-Million, down 2.1 percent, at $124.5 million for the holidays. CEO Sandra Cochran says in a press release that “(s)ales for the holiday season were below expectations as we confronted a quiet media environment and strong comparable sales in the prior year. The absence of a major movie tie-in affected both traffic and sales.”

As a wordsmith, I’m obviously both disappointed and concerned. Books didn’t do well because there was no movie tie-in? Some publishers are confronting the competition from television directly: Court TV now offers a program hosted by a rotating group of mystery writers that include Michael Connelly, Lisa Scottoline, and Patricia Cornwell, in which the writers talk about the crime in question and how they would handle it in fiction. Sounds a little too close to the Judith Regan/O.J. fiasco of last December that everyone would just as soon forget.

More and more, authors need to find innovative ways to market their books, and that innovation must be part of any marketing plan that you offer a potential literary agent or publisher. As I said in n earlier blog, the mills are closing. We need to find ways to keep our craft alive.

And perhaps eventually the pendulum will swing the other way and people will begin picking up books again. That will be… way beyond the elements of style!

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware, Inc.

ARGH!

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time putting together a proposal for a feminist press that had put out an RFP for a project they’re working on called Girls and Science, to try and get girls more interested in the area.

I was excited, because I’ve long noted the absence of women (and of people of color, for that matter) in software engineering. When my stepdaughter Anastasia was around eight, I wrote a book for her about Ada Lovelace, arguably first computer programmer, certainly first technical writer; and later I enlarged it with a glossary and anecdotal sidebars and activities, and tried to sell it, but to no avail. So I made it the cornerstone of my proposal, outlining a series of five such books highlighting women in computing, with the same collateral material. I did research to indicate how and why good role models can help change one’s way of thinking about something. I put together all the studies about women and computing, how from a very young age girls are excluded from the boys’ clubhouse (girls use computers to *do* things — word processing, music, accessing sites like MySpace; but they’re not terribly interested in *how* they work). All that. Sent the proposal in.

Answer came back almost immediately: we’re not interested in proposals for elementary-aged children, we want high school and college level proposals.

Can I COUNT how many things are wrong with that?

First off, nowhere in the RFP was any age group mentioned. Secondly, if you really want to change the world you need to start with younger children. But, um, this is a feminist press, and they refer to high school and college-aged females as *girls*?

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Guess I’ll keep shopping my proposal elsewhere. It’s the perseverance that pays… and keeps me beyond the elements of style!

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware, Inc.