Beyond the Elements of Style

Favorite First Lines

Well, gentle readers, here’s something fun to do over the weekend: an opportunity to add your favorite first lines to this fabulous compendium of … favorite first lines!

I have to warn you, however, that not all of those mentioned will be to your taste; in fact, it seemed to me that a couple were misplaced, and their creators were looking instead for the Bulwer Lytton contest instead.

I’m off to a day away from my desk, but I’ll be adding in my own favorite opening line … and I’ll be sure to include it here!

So share your favorite with the world, and see what others have to say. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Kirkus Lives Again!

Kirkus Reviews, which describes itself as posting “over 500 pre-publication book reviews every month in multiple genres,” and was (to our horror) shut down in December by the Nielson Company, has been resurrected! Oh, frabjus joy!

Kirkus’s new owner is Herb Simon, “the owner of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team, and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group, a shopping mall developer,” according to the New York Times. Plans are for Kirkus to continue to be published “as a print magazine while beefing up its digital offerings.”

“With the growth of e-books and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing. But turmoil like this creates opportunities,” said Simon in the NYT article. “At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry.”

Simon is apparently just as interested in publishing as he is in sports: he is already the owner of an independent bookseller (and we love independent booksellers!).

So there is hope in these changing times, and your next book in prepublication may yet see the light of day in the new and possibly improved Kirkus Reviews. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Hope for Authors?

Does Apple’s new iPad represent hope for authors?

Okay, yeah, so I’m a Mac girl, and of course my cult believes that the world will be saved by the Macintosh. But a new product offering hope to those of us who spend our days sitting in a room and writing?

Bear with me for a moment here. Let me take you back to the beginning of the century, when record labels suddenly realized that musicians could make a perfectly good living without them. Creation and recording? Online. Distribution? Online. Marketing? Online. And while the music consumer in me loved the change (iTunes rocks, let’s face it), the author in me said, hey, wait … at least there’s still an income stream here for musicians. The song itself isn’t the product: the concerts, the t-shirts, those have become the products. Musicians can thumb their noses at the establishment and still pay the rent. But what about authors? Come on, who’s going to spend $75 for a favorite author’s face on a sweatshirt? Or pay $150 to go to a reading?

Ain’t going to happen.

So along with other writers I’ve been watching events unfold with some trepidation. And while I will admit to owning a Kindle and having become addicted to the ease of download and portability, I also have concern about the monolithic control of Amazon. So I was interested in this article by Eliot Van Buskirk in Wired magazine (and thanks to my friend Pete Tedlie for turning me on to the article!):

Wired.com’s Brian Chen and Dylan Tweney were right about Apple launching a book store to complement the iPad. The new iBook store will work pretty much the same as iTunes, functioning as one of 12 new apps that come installed on every tablet, and allowing users to choose books from a growing catalog. People who may never have contemplated actually buying an e-book before might consider it, now that it’s something they can do on their shiny new tablet. Authors and book publishers will have a larger market to pitch to, and they could take more risks on lower-selling authors, given the low cost of distributing e-books.

Still, books have not fared well during the growth of other electronic media and will face the same stiff competition on the iPad that they face elsewhere. Either way, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos should feel a bit tense today facing new competition from an extensible device that also does e-books and can be had for less than the price of a DX Kindle.

I was able to perceive some hope there. I have an acquaintance who makes a very nice living, thank you very much, exclusively writing ebooks. Right now the only categories that afford that kind of income are erotica and romance, but where they lead others may follow.

And anytime more people have books accessible to them, it’s a Good Thing. Consider the possibilities of the future, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The Book Industry in 2009

There’s obviously a lot to say … it’s been an amazing year (not always in a positive way!) for the book industry.

A 2009 roundup of the happenings in the book industry is offered here by USA Today. it covers the emergence of ebooks, the question of whether literary novels are dead, and the rise—yet again—of the vampire genre.

My best advice? Read about the trends, but follow your heart. Write what is in your soul to write. If it’s meant to be out there, it will be, eventually. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Readers’ Reactions

We’ve been talking a great deal about book promotion here recently, and I wanted to take a moment to share with you one of the more delightful fruits of one’s labors … namely, the responses of readers.

My best experience in this area was a letter I received after the publication of my novel Wings. One of the characters in Wings, Sarah Martin, is modeled on Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to hold a pilot’s license. The letter read, “My husband knew Harriet Quimby, and he says she would have liked the life you gave her.”

A few years ago I wrote a book called Open Your Heart with Geocaching, and have had very nice feedback on it indeed. But even better is when what you write inspires others, makes them take your thoughts further, allows them to appropriate truths from it for themselves. So I was pleased to receive the following email:

I hope you don’t mind me sharing a few thoughts with you relating to my experiences after I started reading your book on Geocaching.

I have struggled for years to find a hobby that I can really get interested in. I tried woodwork for a while, but it just didn’t grab me. Then at the start of this year I stumbled across Geocaching and everything fell in place. I think it is the way in which the sport manages to pull together all the different interests that I have. It does not matter what your interests are, you will experience the same ability of Geocaching to pull unexpected things together at the most unexpected places.

I find it extraordinary how your mind gets informed of something and you then shortly thereafter encounter it in a totally different context – almost like a confirmation! In the copy of the listing of “Dark Satanic Mills” in Appendix C of your book, you quote an excerpt from Jerusalem by William Blake. I am one of those types that read more than one book at a time. It was therefore at the same time quite surprising but also entirely expected that a few days later I found a quote from Europe by William Blake (1794) in the story of the 9 remaining moon walking astronauts – Moon Dust by Andrew Smith (Bloomsbury 2005). What makes it quite incredible is that this quote is a very accurate description of the experience of the earth at creation which is similar to that which one can expect to experience while you are out in nature geocaching: “every particle of dust breathes forth its joy”!

The use of poetry in Geocaching is quite special. I recently did a multi-cache that also makes use of poetry in its various waypoints. This cache is situated in a very well kept cemetery – the Fourways Garden of Remembrance. Fourways is a suburb approximately 25 km from the centre of Johannesburg. The cache – Celebration of Life GC1CWP6 – is extremely poignant. The celebration of life in a cemetery is a beautiful concept – the use of poetry appearing of various graves makes it all the more special.

Here your advice to breathe and experience the location really made sense.

Look for the delight that your words can bring to others. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Social Media for Readers and Writers

So let’s start our tour of social media with my favorite group of people—people who read and people who write! With some exceptional help from some of my colleagues at LinkedIn (a social network site you’ll find mentioned here), I’ve put together a list of social media sites you might want to check out. They’re not in any particular order, so don’t bother looking for one; perhaps you can see it as an example of the random nature of the Net!

Remember as you browse the first rule of social media: there’s no one-size-fits-all here. Some of these sites may interest you; many of them will not. And that’s as it should be, because you don’t want to spend all of your time online! Explore the sites at your leisure, see which ones seem to work for you, try them out. If you don’t like one site, move on.

And if you find more to add to the list, drop me an email at jcezanne@customline.com and let me know!

• Literature Map: Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors.
• Book Glutton: Read books online with other people—suggest books, discuss books, see who’s reading what. Sign on as a glutton and take the video tour!
• Library Thing: So if you feel a need to catalogue your personal library online, Library Thing is the place for you. You can do it here, and then connect with others whose libraries you like. Note that there’s a fee once you pass 200 books.
• Good Reads: Another book cataloguing site. Also offer some great lists and trivia. (As I write this, Twilight is simultaneously on the “best books ever” and “worst books ever” lists, so it’s even-handed!)
• Author’s Den: From the site: “While some of the other sites focus on readers, here’s one that focuses on authors as well. From the site: “The largest most vibrant free online literary community of authors and readers! Visited by 1,400,000+ readers/mo.” It claims that authors “willreach many readers” and that readers
  can “discover, interact, get personal, buy and read!”
• Red Room says that it’s “where the writers are,” and explains, “Red Room provides authors and members with free, easy-to-use, elegant online homes. It’s a place for the literary community to promote their work, express themselves, and connect with their favorite authors.”
• Swap Tree is a book- (and music-, DVD-, and video-game-) swapping community. Have a book you want to trade for another? This is the place for you!
• We Read: Ger personalized recommendations for books, share your recommendations with others. Includes discussion forums.
• Write Lit“aims to bring writers and readers together from all parts of the globe. It seeks to help the writer — technical, commercial, and literary — earn a living, and find audiences for his work. Furthermore, it aims to provide a venue for readers to share their passion for the written word.”
• Authonomy: This is a community sponsored by HarperCollins UK that “invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read. Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.”
• Writers’ News/Writing Magazine: This is a singularly useful site, a clearinghouse for a number of different activities: competitions, classes, book discussions, forums, links … it’s all here.
• Bookworm: a blog that celebrates books and reading with lovely enthusiastic reviews by the author, Lubya Kably.
• Media Bistro: Though not strictly an author/reader sort of site, Media Bistro is a community that can be useful to writers looking to improve skills, get jobs, and connect with other media professionals. They have local chapters throughout the United States that offer get-togethers in person.
• Book Marketing Network, part of the whole Ning family of social networks, describes itself as being “for book authors, self-publishers, book publishers, publicists, marketers, and others involved in writing, publishing, and marketing books.” Includes, in true social media style, something for everyone—photos, videos, discussion boards, events, and blogs.
• The Book Place, also a Ning community, features a blog, podcasts, reviews, and discussion.
• Writers Digest: the online community associated with the grande dame of aspiring writers’ magazines, Writers Digest , the site offers some social networking but mostly supports the magazine. Online subscriptions are available.
• Gaia Community: once you join the community you’ll have access to the books section. Very useful if you’re interested in spirituality and healing topics.

In addition to the list above, there is a Facebook application called Visual Bookshelf that you can access from inside Facebook. It’s another community that shares reading lists and reviews.

So that’s it for now! I’ll update this list periodically, as community life on the Net is always changing, always growing … but this should get you started. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Audio “Reading”?

On one of the (far too many) discussion lists to which I belong, the talk has all been about the new Kindle and its capacity to read books aloud — and the subsequent response from the Authors Guild and the National Writers Union. Which has, naturally, re-ignited talk about audio books in general. And at least one person has spoken of them disparagingly, which is disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the printed word. I love books. I love the smell of them, the feel of them. I love used books, seeing where the previous owner has scrawled notes in the margins, underlined passages, found food for thought. I love my own library, the spines that promise so much wonder within, the old friends and familiar titles, the new ones I have yet to peruse. I love books.

But what are books? Paper and print and glue? Or ideas, stories, places you can travel, songs you can sing, concepts you can ponder, information you can integrate with your worldview?

At the end of the day, does it really matter if the enlightenment and pleasure come from ebooks, printed books, or audio books? I tend to think not. They’re all spokes in a wheel, starting from different places but reaching the same inner circle. Everyone wants to get there differently … but everyone wants to get there.

And maybe those of us who are really committed to (or stuck to!) one form of getting there need to challenge ourselves to try something different. Listen to a book in the car. Check out an ebook on the computer. You never know how much that might widen your horizons. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Winter Reading Contest

I was writing my usual Wednesday blog article over at the DreamTime Publishing site this morning, and decided to run a contest. Why not? It’s February, I’m looking out the window at a beautiful (but cold!) snowscape … what better time than that to do something just a little different?

As I point out in that article, everybody is always talking about summer reading. But what about winter reading? What about comfort food for the mind?

What do you like reading in the wintertime? Visit the blog post above, leave a comment with your choices, and you’ll be automatically entered to win a copy of my book Open Your Heart with Reading (which will introduce you to a whole lot of other books and authors as well!). And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Read a New Book Today!

Along with most of the world, I spent a fair amount of time yesterday mesmerized by the inaugural ceremony in Washington, rejoicing in the fact that the United States has a new president and that a new day is dawning here.

And just as many people helped President Obama on his way to Washington, so too did many ideas, ideas he encountered through … books. His speeches are brilliant and, in many way, erudite. This is a man who has read much and often, and has pondered what he has read.

In a day when publishers are cutting back and even closing their doors, when bestsellers are often vacuous repetitions of the same message or story in different packaging, it’s worth our while to pause and ponder what we do read. Everyone is talking about format (ebooks! print on demand! whither are we drifting?) without considering content.

What’s on your to-be-read pile? Are there new ideas there? Books that will challenge your thinking and help you grow? Where are you going this year, and what books will take you there?

Why not add one to that pile now, just one, that will make you think, and even perhaps think differently about something? 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!