Throwback Thursday: What makes good writing? – Revisited
Thursday August 1, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments

I downloaded a free version of Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper on my iPhone Kindle app. I read the entire series many moons ago when I was a young man and my recollection of the story doesn't match the reality I'm faced with reading it now. I remember the characters and the setting as being quite awe inspiring, and they are, but the prose are so heavy and overblown with description and obtuse phrasing that it's very distracting from an author's perspective. I am starting to get the feeling that reading now is going to be like riding on an airliner is for me. I fly large jets for a living and I'm not a great passenger now, as I know what every noise is. I really don't want the flight attendant to ask me if there is anyone onboard that can fly a jet. I find that spending the last couple of years writing and learning about writing has made me acutely aware of story and prose. I still enjoy well written books as much as the next person, maybe even more than before, but if the writing is marginal I have a much lower tolerance now. I don't think the Cooper's books would sell today, at least not in their present form. Mr. Cooper would get a rejection letter that would tell him to keep trying, that his characters were memorable and the setting vivid, but his story just didn't quite fit with their vision, and good luck. Does that make it a poorly written book? I don't think so. The thing we have to remember about "the classics" are they were groundbreaking in their day and the rules for writing were different, as were expectations. Some of them hold up quite well, but idioms and commonly used words were often contrary from what we are used to now. I thought about trying to get my young son to read it, but I think it'll have to wait a few years. On average the populace is WAY more educated today and in this fast-paced, gotta-have-it-now world our expectations to have something user friendly and easily digested have dramatically increased. I think we all (well, most of us anyway) recognize good prose when we see them, and I really appreciate when an author has me feeling a scene instead of reading it. But even then opinions vary on what makes good writing. Some appreciate the sentence structure and rules of grammar as the gold standard of writing, while others want something that goes down easy and doesn't bog us down with a lot of description or big words. What sells? Is that important in your calculations of what kind of story to write and how you want to write it? Ultimately I think you have to write for yourself. You can't fit your square novel in the round hole of publication. You should write about things you have a passion for and in your own voice. You have to figure out what that voice is. And that is a blog for another day. Clear Ether Read More
Throwback Thursday: The Future of Publishing Revisited
Thursday July 25, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
These are from a series of posts I did back in the week of December 10, 2010. This was the week I discovered Dean Smith and Kristine Rusch. Other than updating a few of the links below, and the price model that is referred to at the bottom is probably out of date. Otherwise, nothing much has changed in nearly ten years.
That amazes me. Back then a lot of people were saying it was going to be the end of traditional publishing.
But Kris was right on the money, although the Big Five haven’t completely figured it out, even now. They are not going anywhere. If anything, it has only made it harder for unknown writers to break in to traditional publishing. This makes me scratch my head. We will see what the next ten years bring.
Part 1 I don’t know where everyone gets the idea that the costs of publishing eBooks are zero. I see that comment all the time. If you want someone to edit the book or prepare it for the zillion formats that eReaders use it comes with a price tag. That stuff doesn’t happen all by itself. If you expect the author to do that stuff you are going to see a lot fewer books coming out or coming out in limited formats. The biggest complaint most people have about eBooks is the poor quality of editing, so if you think you are going to self-publish without the proper number of rounds of the editing process you are setting yourself up for failure. Self-publishing is growing dramatically and so is the eBook market. It's leading to a problem of differentiating the good from the bad. Some new filtering mechanism is likely going to develop to separate the chaff from the wheat, but I haven't seen it yet. There is still a lot of crap making it out into the online market. There are a lot of well-known authors making an effort to take control of their publishing but it does take a toll. I think marketing is a huge issue, maybe the biggest. If you can't reach your audience you aren't going to sell any books. Having an actual marketing plan and following through on it will likely be the difference of success or failure of your book, and that holds true for eBooks and traditional paper books. Large publishing houses can market your book in a way that you will likely never be able to manage unless your name starts with J.K. Publishers have their place in the scheme and I don’t think most authors want to do those things that publishers can bring to the table. It takes away time from writing and a lot of it requires a skill set they may not have. It's all a matter of finding the right pricing structure that will make the publisher a viable entity and still provide the author with the appropriate level of compensation for their efforts. Some of the publishers are figuring it out and moving in the right direction now. Time will tell if the big publishing houses will figure it out. Part 2 Just after I finished my last post Jane Fancher posted that she had run into Patty Briggs this weekend and mentioned that she was releasing a new book and posted a link to it. In that post Mike Briggs, Patty’s husband who runs her website, linked to another post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch about the very subject I had posted on earlier. Her blog is usually focused on the business end. She knows the publishing industry from the inside and from the writer’s perspective and she is in the middle of a series of articles trying to define where the industry is heading and what it means to writers. I am linking all the posts below that she has already published as of today. They are lengthy and very well researched and very informative. http://kriswrites.com/2010/10/21/the-business-rusch-changing-times-overview/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/10/28/the-business-rusch-understanding-publishing-changing-times-part-2/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/11/04/the-business-rusch-challenges-for-big-publishing-changing-times-part-three/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/11/10/the-business-rusch-how-e-books-will-save-big-publishing-changing-times-part-four/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/11/17/the-business-rusch-the-nimble-presses-changing-times-continued/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/11/25/the-business-rusch-bookstores-changing-times-part-six/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/12/01/the-business-rusch-writers-the-overview-changing-times-part-seven/ http://kriswrites.com/2010/12/08/the-business-rusch-bestselling-writers-changing-times-part-eight/ Here is just one snippet from her outstanding blog:
"Enter electronic publishing—which is, as the bloggers say, a game-changer. But it’s not a game-changer the way that the bloggers believe it is. Electronic publishing will enable Big Publishing to change its business model. In other words, electronic publishing won’t cause the demise of Big Publishing. Electronic publishing will save it."Part 3 The publishing landscape has changed dramatically in the last two years and continues to change. Distribution was always tough for a small publishing house and forget it if you were trying to self-publish. But that's all changed now. Dean Wesley Smith has a section on his website devoted to debunking the myths of writing and publishing a book. Here is one gem I found in the comments section below his post about self-publishing:
Put your novel up on Kindle. Cost: Free Put your novel up on Smashwords, which gets you to Sony, Nook, iBook, and other places. Cost: Free Put your novel through CreateSpace in trade paperback form in POD. That gets it to Amazon. Cost: Free (or $39.00 if you want better distribution into all stores.) Put your novel through LighteningSource in trade paperback form in POD. That gets it to Ingram. Cost: around $100.00 No reason for a self-published author these days to pretend to be a traditional publisher and go into the produce model. And besides, why do it until you’ve tried to sell it to a traditional fiction publisher first? --Dean Wesley SmithHere is a link to his “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” website. It’s chock full of great information and advice for someone trying to break in to the writing business: Dean Wesley Smith I highly recommend it! All this reading I've been doing has convinced me all the more that I just need to spend more time writing and worry about the other stuff after I finish the manuscripts. I'm back at it.... Read More
Throwback Thursday: Writing Guilt Revisited
Thursday July 18, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
[caption id="attachment_1480" align="alignleft" width="200"] Credit to Gaël Blanchemain [/caption]
This goes back to Dec 30, 2010. So, if this is actually true I started this writing journey 12 years ago. I don't think that is really accurate. Maybe I thought I had started, but I hadn't actually written anything yet. I was close on the retirement part, but I left a year earlier than this estimate and ended up taking another full-time gig that I like a lot. The guilt is still a thing, though.
I started down this writing road about 3 years ago, or was it 4? Slowly but surely I've learned the tools of the trade. I've also slowly become more immersed in the act of writing. I have a day job still and will for at least 9 more years, but I'm preparing myself for writing success and a career after my current career. I write more and more in my spare time. When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing or blogging about it. I recently saw a quote:
"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else." - Gloria SteinemI find that to be very true. Then there's this one:
"Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life." ~ Lawrence KasdanLOL, it's so true. I used to like to watch a few TV shows or catch up on DVDs of movies that I missed at the theater. Now I just write in my free time and if I'm watching one of those TV shows or a DVD I feel guilty, that I really should be writing instead. Anyone else have this issue? Clear Ether! Read More
Yeah, I Write Poetry
Monday July 15, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
When I was at In Your Write Mind last weekend, I took a workshop on Poetry. One of my good friends, Suz Jay, sent me a link for a Writer’s Digest contest this week and it seemed like fun. I spent a half hour and wrote a poem. This is a particular style called Zejel. It is an old Spanish style, with a specific rhyming scheme.
As it turns out I like this. It fits my short attention span very nicely. I hope to do a lot more.
Anyway here it is, please to enjoy:
Writing
Spilling your guts upon the page
Racking your brain, confine the rage
Squeeze your heart and open the cage
Character, Setting, Conflict, Story
Try and Fail, Nail your Quarry
The elusive plot turned Allegory
Keep on bleeding, you’ve set the stage
Plots and Arcs and Point of View
Mix it all into the stew
Maintain Voice all the way through
No pity for the war we wage
Show don’t tell, crank up the dial
Active voice all the while
Don’t forget the Elements of style
Now your drama has come of age
5 Things I Love About Writing
Friday July 5, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
- Pride in a job done well. It’s amazing when you write a passage that really sings. I
wouldn’t call it a muse thing or being struck by lightning, but craft, at its best. You have managed to really get into the head of your character and moment happens that shines on the page. We all aspire to that constantly, but truth be told it simply doesn’t. I read a book by Lisa Cron, Wired for Story, and she talks about how good prose are wonderful but the real trick is telling a good story. So, it’s not hugely important to be able to write amazing prose to be a successful writer, but you do have to be able to convey story well. All that said, it’s still a joy to write a good scene.
- Magic. There are moments when you write when magic happens. You are in the head of your character and you have a fence post you are traveling towards, assuming you have even a sketchy outline, and then the character goes in a completely different direction than you had planned. You didn’t see it coming, but it works even better. Those are the moments we all write for. It makes for more work potentially, because now you may have to replan the outline, but let me tell you, it is worth it. It happens with free-writing as well, when you characters do something that surprises you.