After playing with Prezi.com, it’s hard to go back to creating Powerpoint, or even Keynote, presentations.
Check out this a lovely Prezi presentation on Transhumanism 101 Willow Brugh gave today at Gnomedex. After playing around with this, I’ll have difficulty returning to creating Powerpoint, or even Keynote, presentations.
I’ll be at Gnomedex Friday and Saturday, soaking up new ideas.
I’ll be at Gnomedex Friday and Saturday, soaking up new ideas and meeting new people.
Working at a computer, connecting via all the usual social media platforms, certainly gives you the feeling of being exposed to new ideas. But the in-person experience is so much less controllable and, usually, so much better.
I’ll report back on the highlights — or maybe I’ll see you there and we’ll get to talk.
My favorite Seth Godin book is the recent Linchpins.
Last week I had a day in which I felt as though I were moving backwards. Every small, simple step I took, I got shoved backwards. Every road I took had a roadblock. People who are usually supportive were suddenly cranky and irrational.
Fortunately, my email included the daily blog post from Seth Godin. He has a talent for getting a lot of us past the roadblocks, and inspiring us to charm the cranky and irrational — or sometimes, to learn a valuable lesson by examining why people are being cranky and irrational.
My favorite Seth Godin book is the recent Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? Today he released an addendum to the book that profiles people who are linchpins, from Wired’s Chris Anderson to Jo Ann McGrath, a high school teacher. It’s free! Enjoy.
Wikipedia defines it as “the act of using a person’s name in an original story as an in-joke.”
Tuckerization is one of the little perks of being an established writer. You get to attach your friends’ names to your bit characters. While I suspect it has a long, long history, the modern use of Tuckerization takes its name from science fiction editor Wilson Tucker who made a practice of it.
The most recent twist for authors is auctioning off to third parties the privilege of submitting the names to be Tuckerized.
I bring this up because Michael Swanwick (winner of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards) is offering a version of Tuckerization as part of his fund-raising gig for the Clarion West Writers Workshop Write-a-thon. For $10 sponsorships, he will write you your own short-short and post it online at his blog and on the Clarion West website.
Visit the Write-a-thon site to read excerpts of fiction from the 74 participating writers (including Swanwick, Kij Johnson, Kelley Eskridge, Cat Rambo, Eileen Gunn, Vonda McIntyre, Nisi Shawl — and me. Use the Pay Pal button on any of our pages to make a donation to support the Clarion West workshop program. We thank you!
Publishing isn’t dead. It just looks different. The way it has looked different every few decades (or, perhaps, every century) since Grak & Thog published the first stone tablet and underpaid the content producer. Ink-stained wretches whining over their absinthe never go out of style.
I think I’m at risk of having my credentials as a blogger-about-writing revoked if I don’t address the question “Is Publishing Dead?”
Everywhere I go on the web, there seem to be armies of literary zombies staggering around groaning “We’re dead. We’re dead.” Among the crowd is Garrison Keillor who in a recent New York Times op-ed piece summed up the future of publishing as “18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.”
On the other side of the argument are the literary vampires, who seem to have no trouble finding plenty of fresh blood on the writing scene. (Perhaps this explains why so many best sellers these days are about…vampires.)
In an effort to stave off attacks from either faction, I’ll make my point quickly:
Publishing isn’t dead. It just looks different. The way it has looked different every few decades (or, perhaps, every century) since Grak & Thog published the first stone tablet and underpaid the content producer. Ink-stained wretches whining over their absinthe never go out of style. (You notice how absinthe has recently made a rebound? Now is the time to be on the lookout for collectible quill pens and inkwells. You heard it here.)
For those of you with a bit of reading time, a few observations:
• Books. Easy publishing has resulted not only in a proliferation of really bad books but, sadly, a proliferation of bad books that have the cores of quite decent books in them. There’s no longer any motivation to edit, refine, and restructure a book for years to gain the attention of a publisher (who’s likely to treat you like a peon, anyway). It’s just too easy to self-publish. The result is that the author breaks even in the short term, but the actual book suffers. On the bright side: Great books on obscure topics are easier to publish and easier for readers to find.
• Editors. While publishing is busy shape shifting in dark corners, it’s editing that’s on its death bed. (Or possibly on its deathbed or death-bed — who knows, these days? As long as you don’t put an apostrophe in the possessive “its,” you can get away with quite a bit these days. Particularly if you steer clear of Martha and the Knights of Good Grammar at SPOGG.) People who used to be editors have turned into content producers and writers where they edit content the way that your mother used to tuck a napkin into your sack lunch — hoping, vainly, that someone will appreciate it. It’s increasingly common to see books published by major companies that have received only a cursory edit and, apparently, no proofreading at all. It’s sad, but editors are nearly extinct.
• Publishers. The people and companies that make money by redistributing what writers (and other artists) produce will always be with us. Today they’re running around buying domain names, signing contracts with printing, binding, and shipping companies, and negotiating deals with distributors (from Costco for print to Amazon and Apple for digital publications). No matter how many editors they lay off—while wailing about downsizing and “the state of publishing these days”—many of the same folks are still at the top and, not so mysteriously, still in business. And they’re still interested in authors who write the sorts of stories that readers still buy — whether as ebooks, audio books, or print volumes. Publishers are doing just fine.
• Authors. While the threshold for becoming a published author has been lowered dramatically by inexpensive self-publishing and internet marketing, the layout of the literary world once a new writer crosses that threshold and stands, blinking, in the lobby is pretty much the same as before. The big hitters. The cool people. The literary-prize winners. The mid-listers. The late-bloomers. And the one-hit wonders. Authors are in the same place they’ve always been.
Hyperbole is like acid — splash too much of it around and it starts to eat away the ground you’re standing on.
Untrue. But does truth matter?
As one of the owners of Snopes.com told the New York Times recently, “When you’re looking at truth versus gossip, truth doesn’t stand a chance.”
I found that pronouncement amusing and heartening. But I think the biggest enemy of truth these days is not gossip, but gossip’s close buddy, hyperbole.
It used to be that people who didn’t like a restaurant complained that the food tasted like sawdust, the waitpersons were rude, and the patrons at the adjoining table carried on like frat boys.
No more.
Now citizen reviewers on Yelp proclaim that “this taco place ruined my life” and “I was, like, permanently traumatized by this sashimi.” People who leave comments on Amazon.com frequently assure us that a book is “the worst book, ever.”
From an editorial perspective, hyperbole is like acid — splash around too much of it around and it starts to eat away the ground you’re standing on.
What makes a great blog?
1. A clever topic
2. A great writer who’s passionate about that topic
3. Nice design and photos
I’m delighted to introduce you to Stuff Southern People Like (“all manner of dixie delicacies and doo-dads”). Enjoy, y’all.
fiction writing, writing rules, Elmore Leonard, The Guardian, Seattle Speculative Fiction Writers Meetup
Thank you to the leader of the Seattle Speculative Fiction Writers Meetup for pointing me to this recent article in The Guardian. It’s called “Rules for Writing Fiction” but it might better be called “Rules for Fiction Writers” — you’ll see why when you read it.
It includes tips from Elmore Leonard and Neil Gaiman. Leonard says:
Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
I’d add to that: Avoid using the word “somehow,” and never, ever, use it multiple times in the same story. The only exception to this rule is in dialogue or narrative spoken by a highly confused character.
This week I did something that can be risky and even traumatic for a small business: I changed my internet service provider.
This was particularly tough for me because I’d been with Seanet, one of the best ISPs in Seattle, for about 15 years. They installed DSL at my house in Wallingford at a time when I was one of the first broadband customers in North Seattle. Ten years ago, when a change in DSL service required that I move from another telecom service to Qwest service, they walked me through it. And when the old DSL service got shut off before the new service got turned on, they went to extraordinary lengths so that my business was online and none of my clients were inconvenienced (this was in days before coffee shop wifi).
However, I no longer use the email and hosting features of my Seanet account. And Qwest technical support service has improved to the point that I am willing to let them handle the ISP portion of my account (which I’d been paying for, but didn’t use.) It was a way to save a significant chunk of change every year.
At any rate, it’s done. I’m completely shifted over to Qwest service, and just had a very pleasant farewell call with Seanet. I’ll sure miss them.
Read novelist John Scalzi’s color commentary on the Amazon vs. MacMillan catfight this weekend.
Three reasons to read novelist John Scalzi’s color commentary on the Amazon vs. Macmillan catfight this weekend:
1. You followed the Tweets and blog posts documenting the mysterious disappearance of one-sixth of Amazon.com’s books (those published by Macmillan) from the website Friday evening and want to know what was going on behind the scenes.
2. You tried to ignore the back and forth, but want to know how it ended and why.
3. You are a public relations or marketing professional and you want to follow along as Scalzi documents all the ways that Amazon set the scene for a PR disaster and made things worse every single step of the way.