NPR: How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing

Earlier, on Facebook, I said this article was sort of interesting, and sort of not.

I would like to revise that statement.


I'm glad for people to be talking about how eReaders and the growth of electronic literacy -- two very separate things -- might change the ways in which humans tell stories.

In the end, that's what all literature comes down to -- the ways in which humans tell stories.


The article represents a distinct failure of imagination and a fundamental refusal to understand eReaders and electronic literacy from the inside. Picking up a Kindle and paging through a few works of fiction does not mean one understands eReaders from the inside.


We'll start with Carr,

"When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg's press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation," says Carr. "All of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen ... it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page."


We've come upon the perennial cry that the cultural sky is falling.

For one, the article appears to be conflating eBooks and electronic literacy, which are two different things. One is a form/at, and the other is a shift in perspective. Neither are the death knell of art.


Let's get some historical perspective: the printing press ultimately encouraged something like that "encouragement to read deeply," but it also destroyed the culture of orality. After all, who needs to create epic poetry -- meant to be spoken and sung -- when we can simply write the story down?

More perspective: the culture of oral storytelling was communal. Reading a novel is an isolated experience. Fittingly, the novel became a bourgeious experience; I'm not saying that with judgment right now, just trying to locate us in a social and historical context.

Also, Guttenberg didn't personally revolutionize literacy; it happened gradually and coincided with the rise of the middle class and the eventual democratization of education. It didn't so much "encourage people to read deeply" as teach them how to read in the first place.

Y'know. You have to be taught to read. That requires a number of resources.


At this point electronic literacy is hard to predict. We're still in the middle of the paradigm shift, but that's a fucking exciting place to be!

At present, I'll conjecture that electronic literacy moves us toward a new and more communal form of storytelling -- because readers have greater opportunity to connect with one another, and because individual stories are themselves easier linked to one another. We may reconnect with the intertextuality -- the heteroglossia -- which Bakhtin saw with the advent of the novel.


I should come back to all this, particularly what I mean by that last point. It's hard for me to parse my thoughts right now because the whole "decay of art" rhetoric... irritates me. It's a case of seeing what one wants to see, and it belies a serious lack of imagination.




Moving on to some of the things Grossman says.


"It will be incumbent on novelists to hook readers right away," says Grossman. "You won't be allowed to do a kind of tone poem overture, you're going to want to have blood on the wall by the end of the second paragraph."

Let's all take another step back.

The more books that are available to readers, the more important good openings are, espeically if you want to capture a large audience. That's called mass production. That's nothing new. The greater selection a reader has, the more choosey she can afford to be. Of course they're going to reach for the story with the best hook.

Once could say that the importance of a good hook is Older Than Fuedalism -- possibly even Older Than Dirt -- with the Classical advice that a story should start in media res.


Moreover, a strong hook and beautiful poetic language are not mutually exclusive.

There is no necessary relationship between the two, and it's disengenous to claim that there is.


I don't yet own an eReader, but I have spent a great deal of time reading fiction on a computer screen -- which is actually a gread deal more inconvenient than eReaders. On a computer screen you may be scrolling endlessly; all the eReaders I'm familiar with actually model the turning of a page.


I would conjecture that the main effect eReaders will have is twofold:

1) They will encourage a rennaissance in the short form.

We've already been seeing an increase in successful short story anthologies. Short forms have long been a hard sell in the publishing industry because they're largely not cost effective -- but that statement is based on the print model of publishing.

Hopefully this will open the door for writers who primarily work in the short form; it may even bring back the idea of the single author anthology. There's no inherent reason why you couldn't treat a eBook short story collection much like one treats an .mp3 album on iTunes or what-have-you. Buy one story, a couple stories, or the whole thing at a discount. (No, I don't expect the industry to hop immediately on board with such an idea, but I'm interested in potentials here.)

Moreover, the short form lends itself more easily to experimentation. Readers (and publishers) are more likely to take a chance and read outside their comfort zone if the length of commitment is low.


Don't misunderstand; I'm not suggesting there's no place for long-form experimental pieces.

No, right now I'm interested in highlighting the organic opportunities, which may emerge from the proliferation of eReaders.


2) Yes, there is some difference in the experience between reading a printed page and reading off a screen

In my experience, shorter paragraphs are easier to read on screen. In fact, I think that's rapidly apparent in the blogosphere. I believe many internet-based story markets are aware of this as well -- c.f. the guidelines at Clarkesworld.

However, we've been slowly trending toward this since the early 20th century, as should be apparent to anyone who's read a 19th century novel or two.

Short paragraphs and tight openings are not a death knell for the novel. Neither are mutually exclusive with strong prose. Short paragraphs in particular could present whole new possibities for poetic prose.

Most poetry is a very short form, after all; it's given to stanzas and shorter statements.


Novelist Rick Moody gave it a shot.

"I began to see that trying to write within this tiny little frame, 140 characters, was kind of like trying to write haiku. It's very poetical in its compaction, and it kind of got under my skin, and I kept thinking, 'Wouldn't it be fun to try and work with this?' " Moody says.

I agree wholeheartedly with Moody's desire to play with the constraints of a twitter length story. Ultimately, 140 characters is not a feasible length to sustain a whole genre, but the desire to play with limits should always be celebrated.

After all, Hemingway wrote a successful six word story.

The article does suggest that the presentation of Moody's twitter story wasn't entirely successful, but the flaw appears to have been with the new technology and not the story itself.



In the end, what use is it to cry and moan and gnash our authorial teeth that the vast intertubes will destroy art?


I'm much more interested in looking at the opportunities that come with the constraints of a new form, the paradigms that open up with a new way of reading.

Allegedly, these are Seven Tips for Becoming a Great Writer.

Yet they have nothing to do with writing. Indeed, a better description would be Seven Tips for Becoming a Great Poser because they have everything to do with cultivating an image.

1. Don’t write every day – write when inspired -- You know what writers are really fucking good at? Procrastination. I'll elaborate on why you should write every day in a minute, but for right now it's good to remember that to be a writer, writing must be your profession. Would you take a day off from work every time you felt a little grumbly about going into the office? Better yet, wouldn't you get fired if you did?

2. Read narrowly -- Because God knows a writer should be ignorant of what's out there.

3. Write what you know -- Taken to its logical extreme, this means you should never write a pov character of a different gender, ethnicity, age; never write a setting you've never visited. (I wonder where that leaves much Spec Fic?) Oh, you my dear reader may object that the point isn't meant like that; I should look at it more closely. "Writing what you know is boring if you work in an office, so make sure you’re living a life worth writing about." Ah, I get it now. One can only be a Great Writer if one has the priviledge of abandoning one's day job.

4. Shun writing workshops -- This comes back to #2, because God knows a writer works best in isolation, with no one around to give perspective or call bullshit. And yes, all writers have bullshit.

5. Quit your job -- You're going to get a lot of writing done in all that freetime you have once you're homeless.

6. Drink -- Are we really using Hemingway as an example here? I know insecurity, alcoholism, depression, and suicide are all really attractive, but personally, using alcohol or any addictive behavior as a crutch will only weaken your creative ability.

7. Be extreme -- This wouldn't be a bad tip if it were actually referring to writing; you don't want to flinch when you're writing. However, cultivating eccentricity has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with being a poser. Being a poser will not help you to write. In fact, it may actively interfere with your writing because writing demands honesty. You are not a special snowflake.



For contrast, I present my Seven Tips for Being a Writer.

1. Get pissed off -- Spite is a great motivator. (Indeed, it's driving me right now.) More seriously, strong writing is driven by a strong emotional response, and anger is one strong emotional response. Analyze what makes you pissed off, and use it.

2. Do not quit your day job -- Not until you can earn a living wage as a writer. This is sheerly practical advice; you can't write if you can't eat. If you go bankrupt, you're going to be distracted from your writing. Remember your day job is a day job; remember that writing is a second job. Plenty of people work two jobs.

3. Write every day, whether you feel "inspired" or not -- Writing is your profession. Full stop. You have to take it seriously. Write at least one sentence every day. Write at least one sentence even if it's crap and you cross it out the next day to write another sentence in its place.

4. To reiterate, do not wait for "inspiration" -- If you wait around for some ideal "inspiration" you've built up in your head, you'll never write a damn thing. As I said, writers are good at procrastination. What's more, if you're not actively thinking about a story, any story, you'll never get to that beautiful place where the story clicks.

5. On that theme, poke it with a stick -- If you don't see an immediate way through a story or a scene, keep after it. Break it down. Come at it from another angle. No, not every story is salvageable, but if you give up just because it gets hard, you'll never finish a damn thing. Make it work. It doesn't need to be perfect on the first draft--in fact, it shouldn't be perfect. That is what drafting is for.

6. Read everything that catches your attenion, even if it's crap -- No, don't suffer through reading something if you really don't want to read it anymore, but as a writer you need to know what's out there. Reading good things is important, but reading crap can be useful, too. Reading crap 1) can be entertaining, 2) is often instructive, and 3) may very well get you pissed off. (See #1) This is even more important if you're writing a particular genre or trope; you have to know what's been done otherwise you run the risk of coming off dated, stale, or boring.

7. Don't be a poser -- Studied eccentricity will get you nowhere. A cult of cool will get you nowhere. Writing is about honesty. If you don't care about what you're doing, if you don't love it to your core, no one else will care either. Readers can sense a fake, and the last thing you want to do is talk down to your audience.


(Yes, I am wearing a hat right now.)

(Also, yes I am sober. It's ten in the morning.)

Y'know how designers create inspiration boards when they're working on a collection? I should do that for this novel-thingy.

It's not like I don't compulsively save interesting images to my hard drive.



Maybe I will post a few of the pictures.


(I'm caught between "ooh project!" and glaring balefully at the novel-thingy itself.)

(Part of the problem is I'm feeling all nostalgic--not so much for school but for a fall semester of classes, if that makes sense.)

So I am writing a novel, which is probably really fucking unsurprising if you know anything about how I do original fic.

Let me start over again. So I'm writing a novel, and it's incredibly difficult to call it a novel, even though it's clearly a novel. I'm writing a story, a long story, a novel thingy. It's a novel, or it's trying to be.

Well, it is a novel. Let's leave it at that.

There's part of a post about this that's been hanging around my head since, oh, late July. I angst a lot about not writing much this calendar year. I angst about not being able to pick back up with the novel I started last year after I inadvertantly laid it down during the holidays. I angst about how difficult it is to re-discover the habit of writing everyday, about how I can't average an easy 1200 words a sitting anymore, and about how I need to remind myself of the lesson behind Neil's infamous wisdom: "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch."


However, we can all agree that the emo look is a bit unattractive and overdone.


So I'm writing a novel, and I don't know a whole hell of a lot about what's going on in it, but as my Stel keeps reminding me, that's why you write something in the first place. She's absolutely right. Somewhere in the under-used logic section of my brain, I know that stories don't spring fully formed from your mind like Athena from--

Okay, yeah, speaking of me doing overdone.

The principle holds true. A couple months back, I was scared and doubting myself because I didn't know all these about the story, so how could I possibly try to write it? and she asked me, well, what are you doing to find these things out? I replied with Dumbstruck Silence. Probably the most profound Dumbstruck Silence I've ever done.


Finally, finally, this is the first week I've felt like things are clicking again. I mean, there was actual motherfucking prose last weekend, just shy of seven hundred words.


...


In other news, I need to think about short stories again, too. I wish the short format itself worked better for me, but we just don't get along well.

That said, I would really like to write a story called "Caren and Chloe Troublefield and the Case of the Talking Coke Bottle."

An allegedly random name generator app which draws on information from the U.S. cenus gave me Caren Troublefield and Chloe Troublefield right next to each other in a batch of fifty. They certainly deserve their very own spec fic story, don't you think?

Kind of like the Bobsey Twins, only not.

Perspective.

2008 was a fine writing year, probably the best I've ever had.

2009... is not over yet.


Nope.



I remind myself that my life is changing--overall for the better--but in ways which force me to adjust how and when I write. A big factor is that I'm cobbling together about forty hours a week at work, but those hours are never quite regular. Plus, as some of you know, I wasn't able to work for a couple years... and I've never had a job schedule as erratic as this.

(I teach for a major test prep company, but I also do office work for them as well. The former involves being on my feet for three hours straight; the latter is part customer service, part secretarial work, part putting together material for classes and events. I get paid by the hour, hence the erratic hours.)


On the other, infinitely more awesome hand, Stel and I are coming up on our one year anniversary. <3



I'm on Good Reads: cw.

I'm back on twitter: @redgonewrong.


I am, in short, a work in progress.

25,004 / 80,000 (31.3%)

The madness has officially set in.

I'm shuffling around my apartment in ratty jeans, an old t-shirt, and a men's extra large flannel shirt. I'm carrying a little stuffed puppy with me like a security blanket. I feel like I'm throwing myself against a brick wall for hours just to get 1000 words out. I sit hunched over my laptop like a troll.

I'm having flashbacks to writing my undergraduate honors thesis, a task that was accomplished in a haze of exhaustion and caffeine and repetition of the word fuck.

I have taken to consoling myself with hot chocolate and marshmallows. Sometimes I toast these marshmallows over the open flame of my gas stovetop. (This has resulted in trauma to my tongue.)


I call my girlfriend in fits of frustration, and she says beautiful sane words to me. Love keeps me grounded.


I expect the madness will soon pass. I expect it will eventually return.

The Unexpected Novel.

Also known as This Week's Ghost.

19,017 / 80,000 (23.8%)

80k is of course just a ballpark figure, a minimum.

I've got maybe the next 10-15k sussed out, too.

Not outlined because I don't really do that sort of thing.

But it's there. In my head.

I'm singing the "Still Don't Have a Title" song.

Seriously. I made it up just now.

It goes:

still don't have a title
still don't have a title

and I'm doing a little side-to-side shimmy dance in my chair as I sing:

still don't have a title
still don't have a title

got to send this story out
neeeext weeeek

got to send this story out
neeeext weeeek

still don't have a title
still don't have a title



Also, I am out of printer ink.

My first week at Clarion, Kelly Link gave each of us Clarionites two books, and one of mine was The Truth about Celia by Kevin Brockmeier.* (If you're curious, the other novel was Flanders by Patricia Anthony, and I haven't read it yet.)

I read The Truth about Celia in one evening last week. It's a short novel, told in chapters that are almost self-contained. The novel is almost ephemeral, which is fitting, but it's not quite ephemeral because at its core is the weight of loss.

I understand that this is a difficult book for parents to read. Seven year old Celia is playing in her backyard one afternoon, and she disappears without a trace. The loss of her is absolute. The conceit of the novel is that it is written by her father, a science fiction writer who was home at the time of her disappearance. The book is his way of dealing with his grief... in as much as he can deal with it.

The chapters alternate between what might have happened to Celia--she slipped through space and time, she was lured away by a ghost, she leads a normal life with no memory of her first seven years--and what is going through the hearts and minds of everyone she left behind--the community as a whole, her mother, her father.

As I said, the loss of Celia is absolute and will stay with you after the novel is done, and the grief that is borne with that loss is handled with perfect restraint by Brockmeier. The novel novel is quiet, and all the more painful because of that.

It's a very good novel, and it's a very sad novel. It is beautifully written, and I strongly recommend it.


*Kelly was our week one instructor, and if you're not familiar with her work, why are you standing around here? Go get a copy of Stranger Things Happen or Magic for Beginners. Check out Small Beer Press. Kelly is fabulous.

So I was talking to Stel the other day.

She's my go-to person with which I talk about writing. I think everyone should have one of those. One of the things I've confessed to her over the years is that writing feels so terrifying because it is a part of my identity.

I feel like this is true of all writers.* We are writers whether or not we are in the process of writing anything. Whether or not you are a writer is a question that only you can answer. No one else can answer it for you.

The upside of this is, hey, no one can answer the question for you. If some asshole tries to tell you that you're not a writer, the appropriate response is to tell them to fuck off.

The downside of this is that no one else can answer the question for you; you have to own the strength to answer it yourself.

I'm confident in my identity as a writer, but that wasn't the case for a very long time. I always knew on some level that I was a writer, but I didn't have the courage to admit it. (No, that's not how it is for everyone. I know some people don't necessarily recognize it for a long time and others don't find it difficult to admit.) The point is that I had days where I desperately wanted someone to come along and tell me "yes, you are a writer"--not because I didn't know, but because I needed the outside validation. I wanted to know I wasn't somehow deluding myself. Hell, I still have days where I feel like that.

The problem is that even if someone whose judgment you implicitly trust comes along and says yes, you are a writer, it's not actually enough. They can't answer the question for you. You have to answer it for yourself.

What's more, you'll have to answer it over and over and over again.

Being a writer is a question of identity--not of hobby or profession--so it's a question that has a lot at stake. That can make it a hard question to answer. It's a question that requires some amount of courage. I believe you have to be brave to look honestly at yourself.

The corellary of all this is that you are the only person who can stop you from writing. it's a problem we all have to deal with. No one can be wholly self-confident all of the time. You have that moment of self-doubt and you start wondering, start worrying. However fleeting, the thought crosses your mind--maybe you're not a writer after all--and you panic or get depressed.

The silver lining here is that if you weren't a writer you wouldn't be so upset about possibly not being one. It's kind of like sanity: I've always heard that if you're still worried about going crazy, you aren't yet. If you freak out over the possibility of not being a writer, you probably are a writer. If you feel like you'd lose a part of yourself if that identity was taken away from you, you are a writer.

"But CG," you say, "according to your analogy, writers are the only sane people and all the folks who don't write are insane. Given the reputation writers have for being completely neurotic, don't you find this much too ironic?"

Not at all. Peple who don't want to write seem crazy to me. I mean, the way I understand it, is most people stop playing make believe at a certain age. How is that possible? What do these people think about all day? How boring must their lives be! I can imagine a lot of things, but I can't imagine that. I can't imagine not telling stories, even if I'm only telling them to myself.

Okay, yes, there are people out there who are not necessarily writers but still play make believe in some form--particularly all kinds of artists and roleplayers. Those people aren't crazy either, but the rest of you folk...

*shifty eyes*

But getting back to the real issue:

You are the only person who can stop you from writing. Even when you know that... Well, it's one thing to know that and another to live it on a daily basis.

Right now, I'm making the effort to write every day. I'm trying very hard not to pay attention to my daily wordcount (a particular hang-up of mine) and focus on the act of sitting down and making the effort every day. The effort is the important thing. Even still, every time I sit down to write I have a flash of this is scary and hard, so I don't want to do it.

Then i start to write anyway. Yes, it is scary and hard, but I know in the long run I'll be more unhappy if I don't write. Writing can be scary. Writing can be fucking terrifying--when it's not being a tremendous amount of fun. It takes courage to write when it's being scary.

All of which leads to the subject of this post.

I think the most productive attitude to have towards the act of writing is this:

I am badass.

I am badass, and no one, nothing, can stop me from writing. Sure writing is hard and scary, but I am way too much of a badass to let a little fear slow me down. I don't pussy out. Every word I write signifies how badass I am because writing is not for the weak at heart. I am a writer, therefore I am badass. I am tough, and I am smart, and I am brave.

I am a badass writer.

Fuck yeah.



*I am making a distinction between being a writer and writing as a hobby or a profession. I don't think there's anything wrong with or lesser about writing as a hobby or a profession, and I don't think anyone should be discouraged from writing anything for any reason ever, but I do think it's an important distinction to make. What's more, being a writer has nothing to do with whether you've been published or even want to be published.