Tag: #Writing

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Writings As Bait: Author Phishing

Few things feel so good as having a big fish on the line. The anticipation, the excitement, the joy of landing a big one is universal.

This metaphor extends to authorship. When writers put their egos on the line through their books, they make themselves vulnerable. They become vulnerable to all kinds of promotion blandishments, publishing deals, and marketing schemes–good and bad, legal and not. . And that includes phishing.

What Is Phishing?

Author Phishing

Behavioral scientists describe the term as “a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information about themselves. installing malware  such as viruses, worms, [etc.]” For our purposes, it involves playing upon the ego and gullibility of wirters and authors to spend money on worthless or nonexistent entities and promotions designed to promote their writings.

An Author Anecdote

This issue wasn’t a problem until my books appeared for sale on my Facebook and Google business pages. My newsletter piece celebrating National Unfriend Day in the November issue describes how scammers began inquiring about promoting my books to various reading groups.

Reading Group Inquiries

Reading Groups & Author PhishingInterestingly, the first approach came from an alleged reading group came from a library in Glasgow, Scotland. The scammer said all the right things, how much he admired my book, Mission: Soul Saacrifice, how much he admired its premise, and how it fit perfectly his group’s reading interests.

The Flashing Red Light

Knowing British readers seem more attuned to fantasy and supernatural themes, proceeding to the next step seemed the logical thing to do. Logical, that is, until he asked for advance money for “promotional purposes.” My involvements with most book groups in the States don’t require any upfront advance before making a personal appearance either in person or via a Zoom call.

This red light prompted a call the Library with which the group was allegely associated. The reference librarian there declared he had never heard of such a group. So, I declined their offer and thought that was the end of it.

But, no. Soon, groups all over the United States and elsewhere requested my appearing before their reading groups–money in advance, of course. Perhaps, these blandishments were due to pressure of the upcoming holidays. Or, it may have resulted from  or the sharing of my information over the Internet. But, no matter how many requests I deleted in my mailbox, more kept coming in.

Phishing Detection

Most of these phony requests were easy enough to spot. Some wanted to promote novels I’d written over twenty years ago. Others addressed me last name first, i.e. Dear Mr. Fietzer William or not at all. One addressed me properly, contained all the correct details, and in the proper order. However, they appeared in a font different from that of the inquiry–clearly a cut-and-paste job.

The Boldest Author Phishing Incident

But a request from a reading group in Melbourne, Australia topped the others for deception and sheer gall. A check on the veracity of the request uncovered a legitimate reading group existed in Melbourne. It turned out to be the headquarters of a world-wide network of reading groups, one located in Indianapolis. The request for appearance apparently came from the group president herself.

Only, the inquiry didn’t actually come from the president. Having been scorched several times, I queried the group’s contact person whether their president had contacted me about a Zoom call promotion. She replied the president told her she had not. This was the first time a scammer had impersonated the president of a real club to solicit funds from unwary authors.

What Can Be Done?

The president did provide a two-step list of actions to take (in Google) if readers or writers receive similar requests in the future. They are:

Report Phishing within Gmail (Desktop):

  1. Open the suspicious email in your inbox.
  2. Click the More icon (three dots) next to the Reply button.
  3. Select Report phishing.

Step 2

Report Fraudulent Activity to Google:

  1. Navigate to the Gmail abuse form in a web browse.
  2. Provide your contact information, the subject and body of the email, and any available message headers, which contain information about the email’s origin.
  3. Submit the report to Google.

Despite taking these actions, the president doubted these fraudulent perpetrators would be caught. However, the number and persistence of the requests I’ve received since then diminished significantly.

Author Phishing: Conclusions

Author Phishing Affects AuthorshipIt’s clear after this experience that a lot of scammers are out there willing to separate writers from their pocketbooks. True, they may act anonymously or impeersonate real people from legitimate institutions. However, most of the time their attempts are easy to spot. Or, uncovering their deceit is a simple matter of practicing due diligence.

Nonetheless, in this season of holiday commerce and gift-giving, it’s always wise to check what’s happening the other end of the phishing line. That promotional opportunity you’re about to land with a giddiness that someone’s finally interested in what you have to say? Watch out! It may leave you dangling from a scammer’s hook after fleecing you out of hundreds of dollars or more.

Take care.

What do you think? Let us know in the Leave a Reply section below. Thanks.

 

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Authorship Game-changer: Trump 2.0

Game-changer: AuthorshipThe four months after my blog post  on Trump 2.0 show him to be the  institutional game-changer many of us dreaded. My post at that time discussed how to cope with the impact of his administration in general terms. This one addresses his impact and how to deal with it in more specific and personal areas: independent authorship and publishing. The discussion below itemizes some general points with my persaonl commentary.

Game-changer in General Publishing

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) meta-search on the topic breaks down Donald Trump‘s impact on the publishing industry into five key areas:

  1. Trade and Tariffs
  2. Government Funding
  3. Freedom of Speech
  4. Author Mobility
  5. Shift to Digital Formats

Of these, items 1 and 3 may be the most significant for independent authors. The others can be dismissed for the purposes of this post.

Why?

Many independent authors already embrace digital formats through ebooks and audio formats. Government funding primarily benefits researchers and non-fiction writers in general, i.e. anyone whose income derives from government grants. In regards to author mobility, Trump’s policies affect those writers who have significant readership in other countries. A prime example is Curtis Chin . He claims to have lost ten thousand dollars per speaking engagement due to cancellations on American college campuses.

On the other hand, Item 3 strikes at the heart of the independent writers movement–freedom of expression. Without independent writers, publishers, and bookstores, readers would receive their information only from the corporate legacy publishers and the writers who work for them. The current news cycle demonstrates how easily information from these sources is compromised and homogenized.

Trade and Tariffs: A Personal CaseTrump 2.0: Game-changer

That leaves Item 1. It provides an anecdotal example of Trump’s impact on indendent authorship. Aside from increased printing and shipping costs, Trump’s tariff ban reduces the already-narrow profit margins independent authors and publishers rely upon to survive. These authors either purchase paperback copies of their manuscripts from a bulk printer like IngramSpark or buy them at wholesale prices from an independent publisher. Either way, the retail markup on these items depends upon what reader traffic will bear.

In recent years, with the increasing number of books published annually (circa two million) and the increasing implementation of author giveaways to generate reader interest, the markup margin grew smaller and smaller. Based on personal experience, the top price readers expect to pay for mid-range fiction paperbacks ranges between 15 and 19 dollars. Charging more than that dampens reader purchases because it infringes on what the price range of hardcover genre fiction–$20 – $25.

Since small-press publishers charge authors 55-65% wholesale per item, price increases anywhere along the supply chain (paper, shipping, etc.) diminish the profit authors receive. Add in the initial outlay of purchasing books in bulk from printers like IngramSpark and the giveaways cited above, independent authors face a difficult time making ends meet. Trump’s 2.0 tariff policies along with his cultural ntimidation tactics chill freedom of speech and diminish writers’ livelihoods.

Authorship Game-Changer(s)Game-changer(s): What We Can Do

Some game-changer solutions lurk within the examples above. The Alliance for Independent Authors recommends (with my comments):

  • Monitoring your print supply chain–know where your books are printed and shipped
  • Diversity production–utilize Print on Demand (POD) options
  • Stay informed–consult reliable trade news sources
  • Consider other sources–ebook and audiobooks are unaffected

These bullet points summarize what independent authors can do to maintain the quality and affordability of their products. Furthermore, authors need to reinvent themselves as business enterprises.  That means deriving income from a variety of writing-related sources, not just their books.

In addition, readers can do their share.  Support local independent book stores. Write brief reviews in Goodreads or BookBub about the books you enjoy. Take a flyer on a book by an unfamiliar author at the next writers conference or arts-and-crafts fair you attend. Part of the enjoyment derives from discovering a fresh, distinct voice. That’s what independent writers are all about.

What do you think? Do you have any suggestions not given above? Give me your suggestions in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Year End Review And The Tyranny Of The Blank Page

Tyranny of the Blank Page

The end of the year offers conscientious writers the opportunity to evaluate their year-long assault against the tyranny of the blank page. Such a self-assessment can be defined any number of ways. A simple page count is one of them..But is mass productivity the proper measure of a professional writer? Or should it be quality? If the latter, how should such quality be measured?

Sportswriter Red Smith famously declared writing was easy. All one needed to do: sit down at a typewriter and “open a vein.” Given writing’s inherent difficulties and our current cultural and political turmoil, it surprises no one that writers seek a protectiveing force or idea, a champion, to mitifate the stress of filling the blank page.

Tyranny of the Blank Page: Backstory

The genesis of this concern comes from a writers’ discussion on Reddit. One of its more inflammatory headline declares “The number 1 rule of writing: Nobody wants to read your work; you have to make them want it.” Like many such online discussions, none of the commenters offered a good or even novel suggestion how to make readers want to do so (Those who possessed such a secret were using it to promote their own work). However, in keeping with the tone of the headline, some proved quite frank about the difficulties they encountered trying to reach an audience.

Beyond the customary shibboleths of knowing one’s audience or making sure your writing the best it can be, one suggested that writing for fame and fortune was an illusion. Measuring success by the number of books sold is a quantative mistake. The actual financial winners are the publshers and printers who have supplied the authors with their inventory. For every one in a million author like J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman, there are 999,999 others whose work never sells and probably never will. What little comfort these folks have lies in the group solace in anthropologit Margaret Mead‘s snide reassurance, “Always remember you arte absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

Tyranny of the Blank Page: Self-Evaluation

Appreciating the Reddit folks’ candor still left the question of what to do. Should it be a long, hard look at my work over the past year? What about the years preceding it? Should they be included as well? Moreover, should writing be abandoned entirely? If so, what avocaation replaces it?

Fortunately, my wife emailed me such an assessment titled “20 Questions to Ignite Your Best Year.” Similar to several of my writing lists, such as “Fast Writing: Ten-Step Process,” this assessment was thorough and particular. It identified ten questions regarding the past year and another ten anticipating what to strive for in the following year. The most crucial for this discussion involved the initial two regarding the past year: What stands out as your most cherished moment of the past year? and Which accomplishment are you most proud ot?

Distinguishing between a most-cherished moment and an accomplishment necessarily implies a distinction between an emotive event and an achievement. They are not one and the same. If they are, it suggests one’s sense of fulfillment lies in the abstract, in material things rather than in the emotive or socially interactive. The remaining questions built upon this subtle distinction as it applied to past actions and how this set of values applies to future endeavors.

Tyranny of the Blank Page: Personal Application

The questions raised were existential. Should I quit? Or should I continue writing? The relative paucity of my book sales, particularly after Covid, provided plenty of material reason not to continue. On the other hand, my most cherished moments occurred while expressing a thought or emotion exactly as intended. Doing so provided a frisson of satisfaction, an “Amen” moment of truth experienced nowhere else. Moreover, having readers compliment those narrative points embellishes that feeling of certainty in a thought well-expressed. In those moments giving up writing seems as impossible as preventing Picasso from transforming a discarded bicycle seat and handle bars into a bull’s head and horns.

What To Do?

Given this insidght, my choices became clear. In the past, my writing existed in the mystery/thriller genre. Back then, mystery writer Raymond Chandlers advice served as my touchstone in this regard. Chandler wrote of his detective, Philip Marlowe, “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. . . . .the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” Nevertheless, enthralling as Philip Marlowe’s investigations are, they presuppose an answer for everything. The hero always deduces the right solution. On the whole, right triumphs, if only for a little while.

In the decades since, people learned human deduction is not infallible. In fact, some situations lie beyond human reasoning. Consequently, writers’ options multiply. Do they resort to a higher power? Engage in cynicism and dystopias? Or escape into art like William Butler Yeats or Andre Malraux?

Those artists and authors are orders of magnitude above me. Yet, it also seems to me that putting my writing out there to sink or swim on its merits is the best way to deal with present-day culture and society.

In addition, it also might be OK to imbue my hopes and dreams for the future in the two champions that appear to the right of this paragraph. With Zaraoar (Pokemon) and Darth Vader (Star Wars) having my back, current events don’t seem nearly as bleak.

Tyranny of the Blank Page: Zaraora & Darth Vader

What do you think? Tell me in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Is the New Immortals Series Fantastique?

Fantastique from the Beginning

Fantastique objects in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

Readers, critics in particular, often classify fantasy literature into many different types. In Wikipedia Fantastique is just one of over two dozen categories and subgenres. The distinctions sometimes seem arbitrary and overlap with obvious and more developed categorizations such as science fiction/speculative fiction, and horror.

Despite their importance for sellers and bookstores, these distinctions seldom matter to authors who write in the fantasy genre. After all, would William Shakespeare, care whether The Tempest fell into the romantic fantasy or paranormal fantasy camps? Or whether Prospero’s application of the supernatural seemed internally consistent or not? The important thing was that Prospero’s supernatural talents captured the audience’s attention then and captivate our amazement four centuries later.

So, how does the above correlate with the subject of this article’s title? Until I identified the five titles that influenced my decision to become an author, their subject matter never seemed coherent nor affected my arc as a professional writer. But before exploring how this exercise impacted my writing career, however, let’s examine what is meant by the term, Fantastique.

Definition of Fantastique

Fantastique is a French literary term that falls under the larger category of Fantasy fiction. LIke other forms of fantasy, fantastique stories contain supernatural elements in their narratives. Unlike other subgenres such as fable, high/low, or sword and sorcery, however, fantastique tales insert the supernatural into an otherwise realistic narrative framework. And unlike dark fantasy or magic realism stories, fantastique stories portray an element of doubt about the existence of the supernatural.

The Fantastique literary genre as defined by Todorov

According to the Bulgarian critic, Tzvetan Todorov, this element of uncertainty distinguishes it from the marvelous contained withn the English conception of Fantasy fiction. This narrative tension between the supernatural and the natural, the possible and the impossible, the logical and the illogical separates such stories from what Todorov characterizes as marvelous or conventional fantasy in which magical or supernatural elements and events occur in a normal or familiar way.  

The injection of the supernatural into an otherwise realitic portrayal of events places fantastique stories between the uncanny and the marvelous. Uncanny stories push reality to its limits as in Edgar Alan Poe‘s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” On the other hand, the characters in marvelous stories regard supernatural elements as being quite normal. J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series is a prime example.

Fantastique’s Literary Heritage

Defined this way, fantastique literature contains many significant works in its canon. Identifying a few of the better-known titles includes:

Other eminent contributors to the genre include H.P. Lovecraft, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Matheson, Steven King, and Clive Barker.

Why the Fantastique Designation Matters

On the Macro Level:

It matters because so many talented writers’ works can be identified as belonging within this particular subgenre. Their inclusion goes beyond literary pigeon-holing or reevaluation of individual author’s neglected works, however. Many of the works listed above achieved distinction before Tudorov consigned them into this particular genre. Rather, their inclusion reflects the authors’ appreciation and apprehension regarding the amazing, the phenomenal, and the absurd.

Authors ranging in temperament from Sartre to Lovecraft acknowledge the power of the supernatural yet remain hesitant regarding its actuality. As playwright John Van Druten laments in his play Bell, Book, and Candle, “There’s always a rational explanation for everything if you look for it.”

On the Micro (Personal) Level:

It matters because placing my recent series Escape the New Immortals within Todorov’s classification explains my career arc as an author. My first published novel, Penal Fires, was an initial stab at the psychological thriller, little more. My second, Metadata Murders, was also a thriller, but this time along technological lines. The main plot device–the Internet–revealed the promises and pitfalls of that recent invention. The crux of its storyline involved the preposterous, almost supernatural, potential for identify theft and murder via the dark Web.

Consequently, creating a narrative involving a conflict between a psychologist-turned- shaman and a band of psychic vampires from the collective unconscious doesn’t seem such a surprise, In retrospect, it seems a rational if excessive thematic development in my growth as a writer.

A Fantastique Summation

In Escape the New Immortals

My personal commitment to the Fantastiqu concept appears most strongly in the first two novels of my Escape the New Immortals series. In an otherwise ordinary and rational world, each of the protagonists encounters a supernatural entity in unconscious reality from which they must escape. Each of them, Victor, Miriam, and Todd at times doubt the veracity of that experience. Their individual story arcs reflect the internal conflict of coming terms and ultimatelly vanquishing those supernatural beings whose existence defies rational explanation. In short, their acceptance of supernatural reality ultimately enables them to vanquish their foes in the rational world.

From Five Books Transformed My Life

It is said the strongest believers in heaven and a deity are those who fought hardest against it. Saul of Tarsus before he became St. Paul comes to mind. Two examples from more recent literature appear as the top two in my most recent blog post, Marcel (Remembrance of Things Past) and Lawrence Darrell (The Razor’s Edge) seek something not of this world. For Marcel it is what’s often mislabeled as deja vu–the recreated sensory experience. His tasting of the madeleine cookie he remembered as a child provides the reader with a supernatural depiction of primitive time travel.

For Lawrence Darrell, the fantastique aids him in finding the meaning to man’s existence. He never finds the answers he seeks, but he always continues the search. His healing trick for his stressed-out friend involves no more than his trying to hold onto a coin. His inability to do so demonstrates that the supernatural power for healing our tormented souls lies not in the power of others but within ourselves.

Little from these examples is rational; none of it seems real or true. Yet these occurrences continue pervade ordinary reality every day, doubtful as that may seem. That is why they and my novels fall under the label of the fantastique.

What do you think? Give your opinion in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Five Books Transfomed My Life

The Problem and Criteria to Resolve It

It’s almost June–that summer time of year when authors, writers, and readers convene to discuss the intricacies of writing. At such events, attendees often ask which books influenced the guest authors the most. Asked another way: which books are their favorites? It seems a facile question, but a difficult one. How do you identify the most influential books when you’ve read so many? How do you whittle the influencers to a manageable number–say five book? Every author impacts your artistic sensibility in some way, big and small, positive or negative.

After mulling this over, it became clear there was no objective criterion to rate those books that influenced me. Gut instinct ruled my decisions instead. Rather than overthink it, the following five titles became those which first entered my mind. Like the five poems previously identified for last year’s Valentine’s Day, Here are the top five books ranked in revers order that influenced me as an author.

5. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

This wasn’t the first novel I read as a kid. Farley’s The Island Stallion holds that distinction based on our local public librarian’s recommendation. But Farley’s depiction of the bond formed between a boy and a wild male horse while trapped on a desert island transfixed me with its exoticism and sense of adventure.

Subsequent volumes in both series fascinated me to the point of imitation. In fact, my first novel attempt was entitled Black Phanton. Unfortunately, it only remained an attempt. I never wrote the text, only designed the cover. The books gave me a lifelong fascination with the sport of kings and its lore, but I never owned a horse nor learned the practical aspects of caring for one. That experience provided my first lesson about writing, though: know your subject.

4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

1st ed. cover

After my debacle with the Black Stallion imitation, my reading tastes changed. This occurred during the time of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and Laika (first dog into space). Consequently, I became interested in all topics involving the heavens and supporting sciences. My reading tastes changed too. I read the novels and short stories of the many authors who appeared in the compendium called A Treasury of A Science Fiction. Thrilling stories by Heinlein, Van Vogt, Sturgeon, and Pohl were just a few of the writers inhabiting its pages.

Above them all stood Isaac Asimov whose collection of short stories chronicled the evollution of man’s relationship with the creation in his own image. Asimov’s stories were subtle; his ideas complex, yet told in a direct, never condescendingway that made the most complicated concepts accessible and understandable. This style he carried over into his nonfiction works as well. His work on the elements in the periodic table became a special favorite.

3. One, Two, Three . . . Infinity! by George Gamow

1, 2, 3 ...Infinity

By the time I was reading Asimov’s explanation of the elements, it seemed clear to me I was headed toward a scientific career of some kind. All of my high school classes were college-preparatory with as much a scientific emphasis as I could muster. Thus, it surprised me when my senior English teacher, Mrs. Greene, presented me with a copy of the above volume a week before my graduation.

One, Two, Three . . . Infinity! introduced me to the then novel concepts of the Moebius strip and Einstein’s space-time continuum. However, the content, did not surprise me so much as the fact that this flinty, sharp-tongued high school teacher, feared by many, should honor my graduation with a copy of one of her husband’s (local newspaper editor) favorite books. Perhaps she thought one day I might write one of my own. Certainly, I remembered her gift when I changed my college major from chemistry to English.

2. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Up to now, my choices follow each other in chronological order. But, at this point, I must skip ahead to my life in the army after graduating from college. Rocked by the cataclysmic social and personal unrest caused by my induction into military service during the vietnam War, I took refuge in reading novels, sometimes as many as four or five a week.

These books were more than mere escape, however. Reading them completed the education I never received in college. They taught me the value of the hook to lure the reader in, the pacing to keep him/her turning pages, and how to bring a story to its climax and suitable ending. This choice, however, did more than that. Reading it showed me how an author could bring to life a distant period in time and space as seen through the focal point of a young boy reliving the taste of a madeleine upon his tongue. It also taught me about love, obsession, and perversion–all motives never expounded upon in my college texts.

Honorable Mentions

Before naming my number one literary influence, it is the custom of such lists to mention items which didn’t make the cut. There are two in my case. The first is the Scrooge McDuck comic book character who appeared in a series first created by Carl Barks. Not only does he provide the financial means for his adventures (important groundwork for any story), but as a protagonist Scrooge provides insight into a nuber of myths and legends. One story in particular, Barks’ “The Seven Cities of Cibola” inspired movie directors George Lucas and Steven Spielburg’s film Raiders of the Lost Ark. A great endorsement indeed, though Barks’ story needs no such endorsement.

My second honorable mention belongs to the ouevre of Raymond Chandler, particularly his The Big Sleep. His sardonic take on the private eye tale through his avatar, Phiip Marlowe, is entertaining and insightful of 1930 and 1940s Los Angeles. My own authorial voice would never contain such smart-aleck delivery, but that didn’t stop me from reading Chandler’s entire output in one week.

1. The Razor’s Edge by William Somerset Maugham

Collier ed. from my uncle's library

This book most inflluenced me to write. Its protagonist, Larry Darrell, asks the same questions I’d been asking ever since my mid-teens. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? And since we are, what should we do with our lives? Like the others cited above, it contains more exotic locales with a variety of intriguing, sometimes off-beat characters. It also contains its fair share of soul-searching. Darrow doesn’t achieve his goal, but unlike the protagonists of Sartre and Camus, he finds solace in striving toward that goal of self-knowledge and understanding. That message is what makes me return to it time and again–a mental reset as it were.

Denouement

There are my top five. You may not like their style or agree with the the philosophies contained in them. Discovered during my formative years, they come from a different era which draws further away with every passing year. However, the themes they address are timeless. The answers they seek may be out there. Or they may reside inside in each of us.

It’s up to each of us to continue the search and tell our own narratives about our philosophical expeditions. In the meantime, read. Read all you can this summer–and beyond. Maybe you, too, will find that book that sets you off on your first great adventure, imaginary or real. Reading one or all of my influences might help put you on that quest!

What are your favorite books?pu

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Fast Writing: Ten Step Process

Fast Writing
Ten Tips To Fast Writing

One panel on which I’m participating at the Multiverse Convention in Atlanta (Oct. 20-22)is titled Fast Writing. Though uncertain what the panel topic originators mean by this term (maybe the panelists will define it), here is my ten-step process for overcoming the greatest fear of most writers–the tyranny of the blank page.

Outline before you begin

Fast Writing: Outline
Outline Before Starting to Write

Whether writing a novel, creating a procedure to accomplish a task, or responding to a question on a blue-book written exam final, preparing even a simple outline takes only a few minutes. Organizing your thoughts this way keeps you on task and enables you to meet your deadlines, whether 30 minutes or six months.

Decide whether you are an organic or architectural writer

Particularly in writing fiction, understanding your creative style can save time and effort. Architectural writers, such as many mystery writers, work from detailed outlines They need to know the plot points to place the clues for their readers. Organic writers take a more fluid approach. They start with a basic concept or conflict and build their stories from there. Discovering which type of writing style suits you best takes time and practice, but results in less time and dissatisfaction overall.

Don’t Fret Over Deadlines

Fast Writing: Deadlines
Deadlines Can Be Our Friends

Consider them your friends instead. Without meeting deadlines, most projects never would get done and stories would never get written. There’s always one more fact to research or another way to write a scene. It’s called procrastination.

The secret to keeping the deadline monkey off your back is having a plan. Break the interval between when you receive the assignment (now) and the time the assignment comes due (future). Once you know how much time you have, you can break it into its component parts. For example–to write a 60,000 word novel, give yourself six months timeframe. That means writing ten thousand words a month spread over thirty days, or prodlucing three hundred thirty words a day. That’s roughly one and a third pages assuming you’re writing a standard double-spaced mss. using 12-point arial or Times Roman font face. Taking off weekends, (more on that below) would leave approximately twenty workdays per month, which stretches daily production to 500 words per day., roughly two type-written pages–a very achievable goal–IF you stick to it.

Write Freely.

Free Writing: Let It Fly!
Let It Fly!

This injunction is the one  I violate most frequently. And one I expect the panel will address. In other words, don’t pause to correct spelling and grammar errors while writing. Allow the prose to flow out of your fingers onto your word-processing keys as you compose. Even in this simple sentence I violated this rule twice to correct for spelling and word usage. On the other hand, exchanging word-processing for handwriting is more applicable to today’s writers. Corrections made  at the moment words are placed on a page helps set up the verbiage and verbiage to follow (Remember organic vs. architectural writing).

Stop mid-scene.

Fast Writing: Stop Mid-Scene
Stop in Mid-Scene

The next several steps apply more to fiction rather than non-fiction writing, but they’re applicable in the second instance, too. In this instance, mid-scene means concluding your narrative at a point where the action has built in intensity and you’ve reached your word and emotional quotas for the day. Ernest Hemingway advised this point in the story was a good place to quit and resume the action the following day. In my experience, few things in writing are more difficult than restoring interest in the next scene after you’ve reached an emotional climax in the one preceding it.

To remedy the mid-story tyranny of the blank page, i.e. a new chapter, end your day’s writing in mid-climax. Or, if you’ve reached a determining plot point, end the scene with a question or problem your protagonist needs to resolve in the next scene or chapter. If all else fails, take Raymond Chandler‘s advice and have the villain come through the door with guns blazing.  That keeps the reader turning pages and forces you, the writer, to figure out what happens next (See Step one–the need for a good outline).

Revise What You Wrote the Previous Day

Fast Writing: Revise
First Revision

The guidebooks say most writingis rewriting. Revising the day after gets you staDrted on that process  to a polished final manuscrpt. It also helps get you into the emotional flow of what you plan to write today. Think of the following day’s revision as a mental warmup for the current day’s writing.

Take Breaks Every So Often.

The ergonomic specialists at HealthCentral.com recommend standing up and getting away from the desk every 30-60 minutes.  Taking a break refreshes the mind and relieves body stress as well as renews your energy to continue writing. The creative meenergy of your prose flows from the critical and emotional energies of your mind, so recharge by taking a break  on a regular basis.

Meet Your Quotas

Though this seems to contradict the previous step, it reinforces the point expressed in Step 2. Take breaks, but organize your time. If you adhere to the writing schedule outlined in Step 3 on a daily basis, you’ll meet your weekly, monthly, and overall objectives based on the timeframe you set.

Allow Ideas to Percolate

Fast Writing: Subconsious
Let Ideas Percolate

Perhaps you do end a scene on an emotional downturn and don’t know how to continue. Or you don’t know how to get your protagonist out of a complicated or dangerous situation. Take a break, take a shower, go for a walk, do anything that takes your focus off the problem that vexes you. It’s not for nothing life advisors recommend you sleep on an idea before making a decision. Allow your subconscious to work on the problem while you devote your time and attention to other issues. You’d be surprised how many problems can be solved this way.

Live!

Enjoy life as much as possible. To fuel your writing, your creative self must have raw material from which to draw. This, to me, seems the underlying injunction to much method acting. In order to embody the emotion, they must experience it first. And that means living. It holds true for writers as well. Beginning writers often are advised to write what they know. Thinking they don’t have sufficient life experiences, they make something up. But their narratives ring hollow because they haven’t experienced the emotion or situation themselves.

Of course, taken to extreme, this means crime writers need to commit the crimes about which they write. But, rather than commit some illegal or immoral act, they can research or interview those people who have experienced or committed such acts. Those instances aside, a writer can share those experiences all of us feel: love, friendship, betrayal, hatred–the list goes on.  The importaint point is that in order to make your writing genuine, you need to experience those emotions yourself. And that takes time. And organization.  Something, hopefully, this list has imparted.

The Upshot

All ten of these steps are recommendations. Like my advice in “Five Steps for Power Panelists,” they are most honored in the breech more often than not. But adhering to them most of the time should result in the outcome(s) you desire–a completed first draft ready for substantive revisions should they be necessary.

Which of these steps do y ou employ? Do you have other fast writing you employ that help meet your goals? Tell us in the Leave A Reply section.

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AI Threatens Publishers & Writers

AI in Book PublishingArtificial Intelligence (AI) already affects writers and the publishing industry. However, the recent release of ChatGPT threatens authors’ livelihoods on a whole new level.  In a Publisher’s Weekly opinion piece, electronics publisher Thad McElroy calls the recent innovations in AI a “game changer.” He believes “every function in trade book publishing today can be automated with the help of generative AI.” And if this assertion is true, “the trade book publishing industry as we know it will soon be obsolete. We will need to move on.”

Death knells for the publishing industry have sounded before. Remember word processors, automated printing, and “Print Is Dead”?  McElroy does, and other writer/publishers seem to agree with him. For example, Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur gmailed that the cost for Amazon’s print-on-demand service is schedeuled  to increase on June 20th. This decision affects writers and publishers alike. If the industry’s need to move  on is real, the question becomes “To What?”

Alternatives

To thwart the apocalypse before it happens, McElroy offers a nuanced analysis of the problem with a pragmatic solution. Since AI promises to take over all the production aspects of publishing, it’s best for everyone involved to accept that fact and discover the opportunities ChatGPT and its kindred programs provide. In terms of the book-production process, for example, McElroy equates the current situation to 1988 when publishers linked the MacIntosh computer to the Linotype printer.  Dramatic increases in output resulted in exchange for increased editorial errors and mediocre page design. But readers accepted this “good enough” product quality in exchange for easier access and wider availability of resources.

Acceptable Quid Pro Quo?

Whether this exchange was equitable remains debatable. For his part, McElroy Definition of Quid Pro Quo itemizes the opportunities AI offers in terms of acquisitiion, production, and marketing. In his view, AI could depose Amazon, the over-charging, 800-pound gorilla in the publishing industry. While independent publishers like him might welcome the overthrow of their competition, individual entrepreneurs, writers, and artists could find themselves shoved further down down the publicity and marketing chain.  McElroy’s  analysis is astute, but relies heavily on his approach of book publishing being an information-dispensing industry.

Making a Choice

For authors, particularly fiction writers, the question boils down to what inspired them to become writers in the first place? Was their decision based on the promise of fame and fortune? Or because they needed to express themselves, to write something no one had ever said or thought before? Was their choice inspired by images carefully crafted on the page or by graphs and equations neatly presented on an I-pad?

George Bernard Shaw in 1911As individuals, people respond to differIent stimuli differently. George Bernard Shaw once claimed “It is the mark of the truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.” Most of us, however, are not so swayed nor sympathetic to their impact. To impel action, people need the emotional stimulus that well-honed words on the page provide. Most of us, writers and readers included, remember a favorite book or story that stimulated our imaginations, one that prompted us to write something as good, as beautiful, as true.

A Personal Note

For me, that story was Walter Farley‘s The Black Stallion. In its honor I created a coverThe Black Stallion binder for my proposed work, Black Phantom. The binder remained empty for years, however, because I had no access to horses of any kind. Finally, when the chance to ride one did happen, I clung to the saddle horn for all I was worth while the horse galloped back to its stall for a fresh bucket of oats. However, the action, the adventure, the thrill of that incident stayed with me. Like Farley’s narrative of a boy’s enduring love for his horse, these qualities inspired the path I’ve chosen these many decades later.

This is not to say others of a more analytical bent cannot be inspired by facts and figures derived out of the multiverse of mental calculations. One of my favorite scientific authors, Carl Sagan, was at home in the professional realms of astrophysics and education. His respect for science and logical thinking came through in every book he wrote. But, his  passion did, too. In his most popular book, Cosmos, Sagan’s awe for the universe and its mysteries flies off every page, stimulating and resonating his audience with its own.

The Decision

Pros & Cons of a DecisionFor these individuals and the people inspired by them, “good enough” is not acceptable.  Publishing information remains limited to the quality and accuracy of its sources. The 1960s adage, “Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO), still holds true. Currently, Chatbot writing, no matter how proficient or well-supported, cannot be as affective as human writing because it has no soul, no sense of self to be inspired by directed words on a page. To be certain, it can define the word “metaphor” and provide examples of one, but it can’t deliver one that moves human readers because it has no feelings of its own to be moved.

The reading public already drowns at the firehose of information provided by the predecessors of artificial intelligence. Do they wish to be inundated by the information tsunami that ChatGPT threatens to unleash? Probably not. Yet, the answers to such questions remain to be answered. As participants in the publishing world, everyone must decide which choice will insure our survival. As with so many other issues in this uncertain world, make your best informed decision, then wait and see.

What do you think? Put your response in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Discover Media You Can Trust

Discover Media You Can TrustIn your reading, did you discover media you can trust? Do they cite their sources and check their facts? Or do such constraints seem to get in the way of a good story, convincing opinion, or solid argument?

Reading Reservations

These reservations among others occurred to me while following the links in a story about Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that appeared in the Science & Technology section of the news website 1440.  The snippet contained two articles which contained stories about artificial intelligence ChatGPT programs creating biased narratives about a conservative American professor and an Australian shire mayor. The programs falsely accused the former of sexually harassing his students and the latter of accepting bribes before he ran for office. Two tawdry instances among many others that show artificial intelligence programs cannot be trusted–right?

Following the reference trailDown the Rabbit Hole

Perhaps. But dig a little deeper and it turns out that the updated bersion of the bot story correctly identified the mayor as a whistle blower who “was not involved in the payment of bribes.” As for the professor’s implication that the reason why a ChatGPT made up a quote, cited a non-existent article, and referenced a false claim against him is because “the algorithms are no less biased and flawed than the people who program them.”  However, his claim that  “recent research has shown ChatGPT’s poltical bias” fails to stand up against even casual scrutiny. Following the link to his source reveals that quote comes from an article, “Danger in the Machine: The Perils of Political and Demographic Biases Embedded in AI Systems” which appears on the website for MI, an abbreviation for the Manhattan Institute.

More Sleuthing

Detective workOK. At this point, case closed. Or is it? One instance appears on the BBC News web page, the other on the web page of a “leading free market think tank.” Both sources for these links appear reliable, but consider the context in which these articles appear. The BBC is government-owned entity renowned for being “the world’s oldest newscaster” according to Wikipedia;  MI or the Manhattan Institute, formerly the Manhattan Iinstitute for Policy Research, formerly the International Center for Economic Policy Studies, is a conservative think tank originally founded in support of supply-side economics and privitization of government services during president Reagan’s administration. Two less-in-common resources would seem likely to be paired in the same article.

The Conundrum

Does this mean both viewpoints are equally valid? Or do both contain biases of their own that mitigate anyMBFC logo objective evaluation of the issue? My procedure: when in doubt in the 21st century, conduct a Google search. The first result of a “media bias” search turned up Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC) whose first menu item contains a list of nine bias categories in a continuum ranging from Least Biased to Left Biased to Right Biased to Conspiraacy-Pseudoscience.  Each of these categories identifies media outlets, newspapers, websites, and social platforms in alphabetical order from around the world. Each entry is measured and evaluated against a system of standards designed to measure the source’s objectivity, honesty, and reliability.

Site Evaluations

How did the two web sites measure up? About as expected. The BBC ranked slightly left of center on the bias scale, their credibility  marred only by their occasional use of emotion-laden headlines and some questionable. left-leaning sources.  The Manhattan Institute received a Right bias rating that almost reached Extreme due to their lack of transparency about their funding, their use of poor sources, and one failed fact check. The overall result showed the BBC wavered very slightly to the left of the center point denoting complete objectivity on the MBFC continuum while MI landed on the Extreme right of the MBFC continuum because of its blatant promotion of right-leaning philosophies and causes.

Take-aways

What does this investigation show?

  1. Tracking down the credibility of content and its sources can be a time-consuming rabbit-hole of a search.
  2. Even the most reliable sources can fall victim to sensationalized claims and headlines.
  3. Some news outlets (Radio Free Europe and Al-Jazeera come to mind) are not the biased sources their detractors claim them to be.
  4. Many impostor sites, both human and AI-written, dispense false information under such banal titles such as the Southwest Minnesota Herald (Metric Media alone drives over a thousand of such impostor web sites that look like legitimate local news sources).
  5. Though alphabetical, MBFC’s listings tend to cluster around T and A because initial articles are included as part of the title.

Note of Warning

Chatbot logoMBFC is only one of several sites devoted to information objectivity and bias-identification. Many media experts regard Snopes as the gold standard in this area. MBFC has its flaws to be sure, e.g. its founder admits that its grading scale is by no means rigorous or scienfific. Still, it does identify and evaluate unexpected and unknown sources which contextualizes the information you and I read and base our opinions/decisions. If an article or website tells a good story or promotes a strong opinion, MSFC is one place you can consult to evaluate the quality and reliabity of the content these media sources use in telling it.

What do you think? Tell us in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Writing Tips: Rule Of Three

Last month we identified the five best love poems to honor St. Patrick’s Day. This month, we examine the Rule of Three in celebration of good writing.

Rule of ThreeWhat Is the Rule of Three?

The Rule of Three is a writer’s guideline for conveying the most information in the briefest amount of space in the most effective way possible.  The rule applies to characters in a story, words in a title, or adjectives in front of an idea. Advertisers use it for its brevity, poets for its rhythm, and comedians for their wit. Growing out of the oral tradition of story-telling, the Rule of Three possesses something of a mythic quality by enabling audiences to comprehend and remember concepts in a train of thought.

Examples

The Rule of Three appears everywhere:

  • In folklore: The Three Little pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Three Billy Goats Gruff
  • In literature: The Three Musketeers, the three ghosts which visit Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,  the Three Witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
  • In religion: the Three Wise Men who visited Jesus after his birth, the three gods (Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma) of the Hindu religion,  the three aspects of god in the Christian trinity.
  • Expressions and Catchphrases: Tom, Dick, & Harry–a phrase used to describe anyone or people of little consequence; “Turn on, tune in, drop out” phrase of the 1960s counter-culture movement; “Veni, vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)” attributed to Julius Caesar.

Special Instances

The last set of examples above exemplifies the use of the tricolon in good writing. They achieve a symmetry  of expression through the parallelism in their number of words or syllables and in the likeness of their concepts. Those progressions whose concepts increase in weight or magnitude are called ascending tricolons; those expressions that do the opposite are called descending tricolons. Bicolon (two) and Tetracolon (four) are other forms of this type of parallel expression.

Words of Warning

Enjoyable and succinct as these forms of expression are, an author should be careful in employing them in his/her writing. So many of this type of expression, the bicolon in particular, have crept into common usage that using them in an original text is considered lazy or unimaginative writing. Describing a story as “cloak and dagger” or a character as “tall, dark, and handsome” is as much a writing faux pas as opening a story with Snoopy’s sendup of Edward Bulwer Lytton‘s “It was a dark and stormy night.” And reversing the order of a common binomial expression like “law and order” or “bride and groom” is a particularly egregious errror unless intended for comedic effect.

What It All Comes Down To

Writing should be fun. For me as for most writers, nothing is so satisfying as stating our themes and ideas in a way that was “ne’er so well-expressed,”  to borrow from the poet Alexander Pope. If you can compress a theme or idea into a rhythmic paralielism like the examples above–great. If knowing the concepts behind such constructions aids your writing so much the better. The measure of a writer is in doing so wisely and well. Not every Tom, Dick, or Harry can do it.

Are you up for that challenge? Tell us why or why not in the Leave a Reply section below.

 

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How Larry Woiwode Inspired My Life, I Think

Author Larry Woiwode

Earlier this week I was shocked and saddened to read the New York Times obituary of author Larry Woiwode. We were not close nor can I say he influenced me in any tangible way. But for a brief while, he was my creative writing instructor at the University of Wisconsin in the spring of 1974.

It was a period of great emotional stress in both our lives. After the success of his first book, What I’m Going to Do, I Think, Larry was struggling to complete his master opus, Beyond the Bedroom Wall. I was struggling to find myself returning to graduate school after a traumatic interval of military service during the wind down of American involvement in the Vietnam War. According to the Times, writing this blockbuster nearly cost Mr. Woiwode his health, his wife, and his sanity. But it never showed in his conduct of our class nor in his comments about the quality and style of our writings. He was always incisive and supportive. And I, who had entertained aspirations of becoming a writer before being drafted into the Army, appreciated that.

 

Two things stand out in my memory of that class. One: Larry preached to us time and again that prose had to be written at least as well as poetry. Two: after I quit graduate school mid-semester and left for Boston with the woman who later would become my wife, Larry sent me his comments on my final short story which ended with “Best of luck to you and your chosen one.”

 

Did I need this blessing to justify my decision? I doubt it. Has it made a difference in how I view the world and my success within it? Perhaps. Though we write in different genres with different philosophies, I’ve always strived to maintain the reverence for the printed word that he did. That has shaped my life more than anything.