Author: Jason

Novel Editing: Week Eight(ish)

My editing run through the hard copy of “the novel” (I need to figure out a name for this thing) wrapped up weeks ago, but everything else has conspired to slow down my efforts to type up those edits. And I’m finding myself still editing beyond my notes as I type them in and review the book on the screen. Which is all part of the process. Eventually the book just has to be done.

So the next task at hand trying to figure out what to do next. Honestly, I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while now. I haven’t written anything new in so long. But what exactly to write I don’t know.

I’ve been reviewing my old bits and notes for a novel I started involving Jack Diamond (Hell Of A Way To Live was a short story I did to get a feel for things). The whole thing was an experiment in playing with supernatural and noir, both of which I never touch. I’m more excited about playing with the noir than the supernatural so I supposed I could drop the latter but it’s easier to write stuff when I can just make it up and ignore things like physics and the real world.

I have the constant temptation to return to my more lighthearted comic nerd fare that was Bush43 or at least continue revisiting the characters via the Post Modern run (one, two, three) that started but fizzled out. Or just do an reboot of the whole thing and take the names but restart from scratch with the lot of ’em. Or just make a movie of the Bush43 script I wrote a while back. Anyone got a camera?

Or none of the above and start from scratch. But of what?

As the editing wraps up I’m digging around for writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing. OneWord is always fun but does little to help with actual development of anything. Stream of consciousness could be the way to go but I rarely find that lasting more than a thousand or so words before it really just peters out and still makes absolutely no sense.

Who knows. I just feel the need to force myself to write something so maybe I’ll just have at and see what bubbles to the top. Besides, maybe I’ll be so busy trying to shop this finished book around I won’t have time to think about writing.

Media Holdouts In The Digital Age

The Economist writes about media’s analogue holdouts and how they may be missing out on some awesome digital benefits:

They have some good reasons. Online advertising is worth much less than television or print advertising. It is hard to persuade people to pay much (if anything) for digital content. Technology firms such as Amazon and Apple can often set retail prices. Digital products can be less beautiful than physical ones.

But such gripes are widespread in the media industry. They must be set against the fact that digital distribution is a low-cost way of reaching huge audiences. What is more, refusing to go online is a sure way to alienate many potential customers. So why do the analogue holdouts hold out?

It comes down to different strokes for different folks.

While an online presence may be “low-cost” in the overall scheme of things, cheaper than print, cheaper than smoke signals, etc, it still is a cost. You have to pay for the site and someone to maintain it, not just posting new content but policing any interactive areas. When ad revenue from websites is so much less than print, a firm has to decide if it can at the very least pay for itself but that comes after an initial investment that may not be worth the effort.

Beyond that, if you’re providing a product that is dependent upon sales in order to remain in operation, why are you doing to give it away online? This mainly applies to specialty products, niche targeted items that don’t provide services easily found elsewhere. Washington Post can’t afford to fall behind New York Times online in regards to its national coverage, but a women’s weekly magazine with a solid subscriber base can keep itself merely focused on print as long as it provides quality content unavailable elsewhere. Giving it away online in the hopes that someone will then decide to subscribe to the print (as the article suggests) is a frightening prospect when most companies would fear losing a number of already existing subscriptions to their now free online service.

Beyond news, the article suggests the Beatles could really benefit from a digital catalog and that whoever convinces them to do it will make a boatload of money. While true, the Beatles aren’t hurting for money or sales of the physical copies of their music. Here you’re talking about a brand that is so hugely popular that it has no need to go digital in order to reach masses it might not otherwise. Every music store carries the Beatles catalog and any number of “best of” compilations to saturate the market. If someone wakes up at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat because they just HAVE to hear Come Together or they’ll never sleep again, Walmart is right around the corner with three different CDs to choose from.

The internet is hardly one size fits all and not all people absolutely have to be in a rush to get online and digitize their content that they’d otherwise charge for. There’s a reason newspapers are flipping out over how to make money. In their rush to be ahead of the digital curve they completely removed their at one time profit base and helped breed a society now used to getting the news for free. To suggest others need to rush to do the same is drinking the digital Kool Aid without first having it pass the sniff test.

Novel Editing: Week One

I’m finding my original edits from 2003/04 were more thorough than I remembered in some areas and missed some glaring errors in others. One week in and about half the book has been cleaned up. Surprisingly I haven’t needed a second red pen. I worry that is more a judgment of my editing abilities than my writing.

Admittedly it’s weird to read this because it flashes back to seven years ago, a different time in my life (as it was for everyone else, too). The book is fiction but uses loosely autobiographical elements: locations and settings, some individuals, some events blown out of proportion ten times over. So it’s natural to be dragged back.

What’s most interesting to me is how the style is so different. Second person, present tense. Themes across the story. I haven’t written like this in seven years. I’d be hard pressed to imitate or duplicate it now.

Maybe that’s reflected in the edits. Different word choices or maybe outright fear of my in ability to do major rewrites should they be needed. I dunno.

Halfway in and I’m having my doubts. But that’s to be expected so far removed from the story. We’ll see how the back half goes.

[M]aybe it would be cool to have conversations about this thing that I’m the most passionate about in my life with the person I’m most passionate about.

Jessi Arrington speaking of business partner and husband Creighton Mershon. cf. “Once you’re on the job, having a best friend at work is a strong predictor of success. People might define ‘best’ loosely (think of this as kindergarten where you can have more than one ‘best’ friend), but according to a Gallup Organization study of more than 5 million workers over 35, 56% of the people who say they have a best friend at work are engaged, productive, and successful while only 8% of the ones who don’t are.” —Why Friends Matter at Work and in Life (via bobulate)

10. Torture your protagonist.

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid.

Janet Fitch’s Ten Rules For Writers

Novel Editing


On the left is a printing of my finished 2003 Nanorwimo novel that was roughly edited in the months after it was written and then shelved. On the right is a current printing of the first draft with plenty of space for me to really go hardcore on the edited. Not pictured are the handful of other edits, notes, and the like not just made by myself but friends who have added their thoughts through the years.

I am going through the new printing with a fine tooth comb as well as combining all of these other edits into one final marked up mess that will then be used to fully clean up the manuscript.

This is the year I truly and completely finish this book and see where I can take it. Well, the “take it” part may be 2011. But the book will be clean by then.
It’s only taken 7 years.

Handwritten non-sci-fi contest leads to no entries

Across the lake in Kent, England a H.G. Wells story competition ran into a bit of trouble:

Budding young writers were invited to send their short stories creating a picture of contemporary life in Kent, to Reg Turnill, a former BBC aerospace correspondent who as a young reporter interviewed Wells.

But due to what Mr Turnill now believes were over-strict rules, he has had to change the entry conditions.

Interesting to note, the over 25 years of age category pulled in entries no problem. Longhand is starting to become another lost art (like headline writing) but maybe the “no sci-fi” requirement was the biggest hurdle, especially since last year they were fine when sci-fi was allowed. How can you have a Wells writing contest and not allow sci-fi? Sure he wrote other stuff, but c’mon! (via Boing Boing)