THURSDAY'S MUSINGS. (PART 2)

Status: Writing Chapter 16 to Stories of the Dead Earth-Book 3: Jasper

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out

Watching: Nothing at the moment. (News hasn't started.)

Listening to: "Sugar Steps" by Kama Sutra; Visions of Ibiza--Disc 1.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 123)


TOPIC: BUCKING THE TREND


As I discussed earlier at the beginning of the last entry, there are people out there who want to either sanitize or severely trim my books so that they read better, sound better, and yadda, yadda, yadda.

I remember coming across someone yesterday in one of my writer groups; telling everyone that her book was 195,000 words, but she managed to get it down to 120,000.

She said that it sounded better, read better, and was more "action-packed".

The sad thing about this example is this writer may not even know her own true potential--if she keeps axing out all the important parts to her novel; if she keeps streamlining her work to fit a standard template for publishing.

I've seen this many times over the years, where writers have novels ranging from 150K to as much as 300K--but in the end...?

They end up taking so much out of it.

And for what? To fit in?

The point of being a writer isn't to destroy what you've gone and created for the sake of money, the premise of being traditionally published, and the potential to become one of those famous authors who can live independently on their own self-absorbed income.

The point is to tell a story. To build a foundation for yourself and your work.

Naturally, I have people tell me that I cannot hold onto everything I write, but I do--because I am telling a story. Not just writing a novel.

The use of words is more than just an illustrious example of going for the Big Cheese and impressing your peeps on the internet.

We use them to express ourselves, to illustrate our creations, and most importantly--to tell a story.

But if we strive to limit ourselves in our pursuits of that, then we limit ourselves in our own potential as a writer.

How do we profess to be published authors, if we continue to take out the most important parts to our novels--by toning down our words, trimming out every bit of prose and replace it with choppy; non-connected sentences and phrases?

It may look good and passable to the untrained eye, but for those of us whom write and weave our tales into telling tomes which enrapture our respective audiences...?

Inside, I'm screaming!

For example?

In my first generation version of The Starchild, there is a scene between Isis and Bayen at a place called Observation Park.

This is the first opening sentence to it:

"...it was the most breathtaking place she had ever been to. The trees in the park gave way to a translucent dome that showed a panorama of stars and a pure white moon..."

To anyone reading this, this would sound okay, right?

Wrong!

This opening paragraph just sucks! Why? Because it doesn't show anything!

It doesn't go into depth, doesn't express the whole feeling of actually being there, and doesn't impart anything important to the reader.

It lacks detail, it lacks depth, and it lacks impact.

But this example is what publishers want for their books! Overall, the majority of the novels we read today are done in this particular format.

This streamlined example is what goes into most writers' exposes when they complete their books.

Here is the updated version to that same scene. And while you may instantly notice that there is no mention of the dome, the trees, or the stars in the opening scene, most of what went into Observation Park's description had been taken out for something more sublime and easier to assimiliate:

"...The very second the doors opened, Isis felt like she was walking into another world. From her point of view, that’s exactly what it was. And this raw sense of feeling left her breathless as a result..."

What's changed between the two examples? Quite a bit!

In the 10 years since this book was completed, the style and voice in which I had been stuck with had suddenly transformed into something which exudes more confidence, more imagination, and more emotion.

The first opening words to the first example: "...it was the most breathtaking place she had ever been in..."--had been replaced with, "...the very second the doors opened, Isis felt like she was walking into another world..."

4-5 years ago--this particular change had taken place because I had started to see things differently about the way I was writing. It wasn't something which I was desperate for, but it was a natural evolution in my abilities and writing.

And I took that opportunity in May of 2003 to reconstruct The Starchild completely from scratch by rewriting the 2nd draft version into something new.

But this new version was much different than the old-version. The old version was more compact, more direct--and didn't offer the reader a chance to do much of anything--except to plow right through the novel at a breakneck pace.

This second example illustrates how my writing style transformed into something else. Something which is lacking in the current media mainstream of novels.

The first example only used 2 short sentences to describe the opening scene (which was on page 105 of the first draft), and didn't use more than one powerword to impact the reader with. (Breathtaking)

The second rough example used three sentences to revamp the opening scene with (which was on page 480 of the third draft). But they aren't short sentences either. They are elaborately spun pieces of prose.

By drawing out the scene into something the reader can picture inside their heads, the reader can get a good, solid grasp of what's really going on.

This isn't what publishers really are after. They want books that are quick and to the point. Namely because readers these days have woefully short attention recall, and the older generation of readers aren't reading as much as they used to. (Not to mention that teens these days are spending more of their reading time on the 'net, on their games, and other techno-distractions--that reading has become something of a lost 'art' these days.)

The second example also uses a revamped version of breathtaking by using the word breathlessly to describe an emotional state.

When was the last time your character freely expressed themselves in one manner or another--rather than just blindly rushing through the whole scene or the process altogether?

Dollars to doughnuts, they haven't. And if they have, the moment in question was much too fleeting to pay it any mind; for both the author and the reader.

Oddly enough, I find that the second example needs some further tweaking--which is yet another clear example of my abilities evolving further still.

But...

The second example has been transformed from what was a bland form of writing into a more emotional core platform which gives Isis McGowan a sense of realism and physical presence.

Which the first example clearly lacked.

This is what is meant by "bucking the trend" in writing.

By doing something which rubs against the grain of conventional thought and due process.

This is what the industry and many of my critics are so dead set against wanting to see happen.

Being traditionally published may be good and all for the aspiring writer whom craves nothing more than their 15 minutes of fame, but what it will always boil down to is whether or not that published plebe has the ability to convey themselves well as a master story-teller.

Doing a rush job on the whole thing won't get any of us any closer to our said goals. Because once you write something and complete it, you really aren't finished with the project in question.

You're just starting a process that only scratches the surface.

If you really want to shine, then you have to really grasp what you've written. Not just how well it reads to you, but every little crack, every little nuance--until (at some point)--you're really certain that this is what you first envisioned when you started out.

Because if it isn't...?

Then you still have a lot of work ahead of you until you do.

And that's the truth.

MONDAY TRIPPIN'.

Status: Currently writing on The Price of Freedom--Chapter 185.

Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails; working out.

Watching: Evening News

Listening to: "Halcyon" by Chicane

Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey

TOPIC: READING LESS AND LESS?

Government study: Americans reading less

NEW YORK - The latest National Endowment for the Arts report draws on a variety of sources, public and private, and essentially reaches one conclusion: Americans are reading less.

The 99-page study, "To Read or Not to Read," is being released Monday as a follow-up to a 2004 NEA survey, "Reading at Risk," that found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year.

"To Read or Not to Read" gathers an array of government, academic and foundation data on everything from how many 9-year-olds read every day for "fun" (54 percent) to the percentage of high school graduates deemed by employers as "deficient" in writing in English (72 percent).

"I've done a lot of work in statistics in my career, and I've never seen a situation where so much data was pulled from so many places and absolutely everything is so consistent," NEA chairman Dana Gioia said.

Among the findings:

• In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

• Money spent on books, adjusted for inflation, dropped 14 percent from 1985 to 2005 and has fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s.

• The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in reading prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

Some news is good, notably among 9-year-olds, whose reading comprehension scores have soared since the early 1990s.

But at the same time, the number of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly ever" read for pleasure has doubled, to 19 percent, and their comprehension scores have fallen.

"I think there's been an enormous investment in teaching kids to read in elementary school," Gioia said. "Kids are doing better at 9, and at 11. At 13, they're doing no worse, but then you see this catastrophic falloff. ... If kids are put into this electronic culture without any counterbalancing efforts, they will stop reading."

Publishers and booksellers have noted that teen fiction is a rapidly expanding category in an otherwise flat market, but the NEA's director of research, Sunil Iyengar, wondered how much of that growth has been caused by the "Harry Potter" books, the last of which came out in July.

"It's great that millions of kids are reading these long, intricate novels, but reading one such book every 18 months doesn't make up for daily reading," Gioia said.

Doug Whiteman, president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA), said sales of teen books were the strongest part of his business. But he added that a couple of factors could explain why scores were dropping: Adults are also buying the "Potter" books, thus making the teen market seem bigger on paper, and some sales are for non-English language books.

"There are so many nuances," Whiteman said. "Reading scores don't necessarily have any relevance to today's sales."

The head of Simon & Schuster's children's publishing division, Rick Richter, saw another reason why sales could rise even as scores go down: A growing gap between those who read and those who don't. Richter considers it "very possible" that the market is driven by a relatively small number of young people who buy large numbers of books. Test scores, meanwhile, are lowered by the larger population of teens who don't read.

"A divide like that is really a cause for concern," Richter said.

The report emphasizes the social benefits of reading: "Literary readers" are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work.

"This should explode the notion that reading is somehow a passive activity," Gioia said. "Reading creates people who are more active by any measure. ... People who don't read, who spend more of their time watching TV or on the Internet, playing video games, seem to be significantly more passive."

Gioia called the decline in reading "perhaps the most important socio-economic issue in the United States," and called for changes "in the way we're educating kids, especially in high school and college. We need to reconnect reading with pleasure and enlightenment."

"'To Read or Not to Read' suggests we are losing the majority of the new generation," Gioia said. "The majority of young Americans will not realize their individual, economic or social potential."

TUESDAY RUMBLINGS

Status: On vacation

Doing: Writing this blog

Watching: PBS's Rick Steve's Europe series (TV's on mute)

Listening to: "Emotional" by Falco; Final Fantasy 7 JENOVAD Trance OC Remix

State of Office: Worse than New Orleans is at the moment; expect a cleanup on Aisle 4 later tonight.



TOPIC: Author Introductions


Oh god! What have I done?!?

Created another blog using one of my other Yahoo! accounts. (It seems as though blogger doesn't want me to use the same account for a different blog. I'll have to talk to them about that--whenever they get off their butts to...you know...do something about it.)

Had to use my Foundation Aerospace one to get this thing to work. (lol)

Yeah...this could be a bad idea. I mean think about it: There's hundreds of thousands of blogs already created and I just went and created hundreds of thousands plus one.

Sigh...

You think that people like me would learn by now that most readers and visitors barely have time to glimpse a blog entry these days--let alone read one.

By and far, I'm not a newbie to this. I have a ton of blogs and websites out there--but nothing dedicated to me. The reason why I haven't done that is because I value my privacy.

I'm not talking about internet privacy because that's been pretty much blown out of the water. But the privacy at home and locally. I can tell you pretty much anything going on in my life on the internet--but at home?

Don't expect a miracle. It ain't going to happen. I'm simply too busy at the moment--consumed by chaos and other happenstance stuff--to stop for a moment to entertain people.

I just don't see the real point.

Don't get me wrong: I plan on becoming a successful writer.

I'm just not that much of a traditionalist--outside of roughing it. (I can create an impressive lean-two using a hack-saw, brush clippers, and about 2 rolls of rope twine.)

I don't go out there to seek a name for myself.

I hate advertising myself so openly and blatantly. (Sounds a bit fake if you ask me.)

I have my own methods. They may seem off kilter and not going according to Emily Post, but they work for me.

I just don't actively seek the limelight, the media attention, or whatever it is that drives most Hollywood powerhouses out there in the world today to severe alcoholism and prescription drugs these days.

Why? I want to be well known, but I don't be another Paris Hilton.

Her recent exploits completely turned me off to any potential media exposure for myself. If this is what it means to be part of the limelight--well, Fay Wray can have it!

I may be another Thomas Pynchon-style author whom seems to be hell bent on keeping himself out of the public eye, but this is the way that I am.

I use what resources I have afforded to me and I expect people to understand that--and be patient.

My books will come out when they are good and ready. Not when some mainstream hack demands that I write till my fingers bleed, or my head falls off.

I spent a long time on some of my books, but it wasn't because I was slow at it.

I just didn't see the need to rush.

I know the mainstream is in the business of rushing things and they are good at it--I'll grant them that--but for me, the art of writing isn't to rush. It's to tell a story in the only way that I can.

And it does take awhile to work the bugs out.

In the meantime, I plan on writing, promoting and advertising, and just going the way that's been pointed to me all these years.

Sometimes, you have a live a little bit before you can sit down and write about what you've seen.