Time to Write

Is creativity the perfect crime?

Philippe Petit, who walked a high wire between the Twin Towers, has written a book called Creativity: the Perfect Crime. I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I found an interview with him at the Wall Street Journal blog.

Why does he compare creativity to a crime?

"You have to feel free and we know freedom is a hard thing to get. There is a feeling of rebellion in any act of creativity for me. That’s why the title of the book is The Perfect Crime.”

What stops most people from being more creative?

"What I think tailors the creativity of most people are the rules that we learn from the age we are very small – in school, our parents. It’s not to say that schools and parents give bad advice, but instead of encouraging your creativity, I think – because I suffered in school – they give you a lot of rules. Unless you break those rules you’re not really going to create."

Don't expect a typical book about the nature of creativity--he says he fowns upon those kinds of books (surely not mine, Creativity Now, published by Pearson...) and his is a collection of sketches and personal dialogue about his own creative process. 

Here's a little taste:

"Born into the confines of rigid parenting, repressive schooling and the narrow-mindedness of a country busy manufacturing 365 types of cheeses, quite early I started to rebel against authority. I was not very good at following. I had to distance myself from the norm, to venture along solitary paths, to teach myself.

At six, I taught myself magic; at fourteen, juggling; at sixteen, wire-walking. In the process, I was thrown out of five different schools. Regardless, I would never have let my schooling get in the way of my education.

Observation was my conduit to knowledge, intuition my source of power."

He sounds very French, doesn't he?...I've ordered the book and will post a review of it.

 

Fewer vs. less, cliché, and multi-dementional: Write it Right

This is my favorite example of word confusion in a long time:

"This is one of South Palm Springs' most eclectic, multi-dementional communities."

Well, there are a lot of retired people in Palm Springs...It reminds me of the headline that said a community group "provides memorable experience for Alzheimer's patients."

Let's move on to few vs. less. Here's one example I saw today:

"Why the world needs less 'experts' and more GREAT teachers..."

Actually the world needs fewer experts. Few and fewer are used to refer to things that can be counted. Less is used to refer to things that can't. Fewer mistakes lead to less stress.

What about cliché? 

"I know it's cliche, but the more you apply 80/20, the more you come to realize it's one of the most profound clichés in the universe..."

It's either a cliché (noun) or it's clichéd (adjective). 

A quote for days when your writing (or your life) is a struggle

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

They want rain without thunder and lightning.

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”

– Frederick Douglass

Of course that's not to say it will be enjoyable. I get annoyed by the cheerful motivational speakers who tell us with a big grin that we must embrace failure as our best friend. I'm willing (grudgingly) to shake its hand as a necessary companion but I'll save best friend status for the occasional success.

(Speaking of motivational speakers, can they please stop asking rhetorical questions and then making the audience respond to the question, "Yes or yes?" If I go to another one of those presentations I may take along a pea-shooter and sit in the front row. "Yes or yes!?" PING!! right between the eyes). 

Do you know where your modifiers are? (Write it Right)

The term 'misplaced modifiers' brings back unhappy memories of grammar lessons in which the emphasis was more on learning the names of the things that go wrong than on how to get them right. I did learn to spot misplaced modifiers, though. 

Here's one from The Book People:

"Highly regarded and much missed, any crime fiction fan will love to discover Margaret Yorke's tense and chilling thrillers."

Presumably The Book People meant that Margaret Yorke is highly regarded and much missed, not the crime fiction fan. Even if we removed the fan it would sound like it's the thrillers that are highly regarded and much missed, which presumably isn't intended, either, unless they've been out of print for a long time.

I think The Book People meant, "Any crime fiction fan will love discovering the tense and thrilling chillers of the highly regarded and much missed Margaret Yorke."

One could make a case for using hyphens with highly-regarded and much-missed, but let's not get into that. We're having enough trouble getting people not write things like "sneak peak" or "very unique."

Just to head off a likely comment, putting the period inside speech marks at the end of a sentence (as in ...or "very unique.") is the how it's done in the US, putting it outside (as in ...or "very unique".) is how it's done in the UK. I solve the problem by being inconsistent.

Here, from the Huffington Post, is another example of a misplaced modifier:

"[he] played a doctor in Parkland, a drama that retells the day John F. Kennedy was shot from multiple perspectives."

There are conspiracy buffs who believe Kennedy was shot from multiple perspectives but that's not what the Huffington Post had in mind. Presumably they meant, "[he] played a doctor in Parkland, a drama that retells from multiple perspectives the day John F. Kennedy was shot."

When it's not about something so tragic, a sentence with a misplaced modifier can be quite amusing. The University of Wisconsin Writing Center shared some examples from essay and short stories:

1. Oozing slowly across the floor, Marvin watched the salad dressing.
   
   
2. Waiting for the Moonpie, the candy machine began to hum loudly.
   
   
3. Coming out of the market, the bananas fell on the pavement.
   
   
4. She handed out brownies to the children stored in tupperware.
   
   
5. I smelled the oysters coming down the stairs for dinner.
   
   
6. I brushed my teeth after eating with Crest Toothpaste.
   
   
7. Grocery shopping at Big Star, the lettuce was fresh.
   
   
8. Driving like a maniac, the deer was hit and killed.
   
   
9. With his tail held high, my father led his prize poodle around the arena.
   
   
10. I saw the dead dog driving down the interstate.

 In general, the way to avoid problems is to make sure the modifier is closest to the thing you're describing or that's doing the action. For instance, putting "driving down the interstate" closest to "I" makes it, "Driving down the interstate, I saw the dead dog." 

Sometimes commas are the solution: "My father led his prize poodle, with his tail held high, around the arena." Even though I think that's technically correct it still may create a vision of Dad with his tail held high, so even better would be to refer to "its" tail instead of "his" tail. 

How to win writing contests

The best way to win writing contests is to write better than everybody else, but there are a few additional tips I can offer.

First, look for contests with narrow qualifying criteria. These can be geographic--for example, in the U.S. there are quite a few contests open only to the residents of individual states. Sometimes there are age limits as well. Here's an example:

The Next Chapter Award
will support an emerging Scottish writer aged over 40 who is yet to publish a full-length work. The selected writer will be offered nine months of mentoring to be arranged by Scottish Book Trust, four weeks on retreat at Moniack Mhor and a £1000 bursary. Applications close 16 May.

and another:

The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition
features a brand new Under 21 Prize, and an increased total prize fund of £5000 now on offer.  Both competitions are open to all writers born in or currently living in Wales. Entries close 16 May.

By way of contrast, here's one with almost no limits :

The Raymond Carver Short Story Contest is open to writers from around the world and is known to award top prizes to virtual unknowns and never-been-published writers.There's a first prize of $1500 for stories under 6000 words. The deadline for entries is May 15.

This may well be worth entering, but as they take entries from around the world and there are no age or other restrictions, most likely you'd be up against a large number of competitors.

2. Ask how many entries they usually have. Not many contests list this in their promotional material but some of them will tell you if you ask. 

3. Take the entry fee into account. A high fee limits the number of entries especially if the money prize is low. Normally that's a good reason to avoid entering, but if there is another benefit (e.g. a residency, meetings with agents, etc.) and you feel you have a strong entry it may be worth going for it. 

4. Read and follow the rules carefully. This sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many people don't adhere to the required word count, for example.  

5. Consider contests which require entries on a particular theme or mentioning a location, etc., like this:

Tell It Strange Essay & Story Contest
is for entries up to 1000 words written in response to one of three selected Annie Proulx quotes. First prize is US$1000, publication in The Writer magazine and a creative writing workshop in New York City or online by Gotham Writers Workshop. Entries close 31 May.

For more generic contests, people will dig up something they've already written. Responding to a more specific topic or style usually means sitting down and writing something new, and fewer people will put in that effort. 

Good luck!

 

 

How many copies do you have to sell to be an Amazon best-seller?

Amazon doesn't release sales figures in the kind of detail that would be required to have a definite answer to the question of how many copies you have to sell daily in order to be in their top 5, but Pubiisher's Weekly took a shot at doing the math. 

Their educated guess is about 300 per day. That would vary depending on time of year--in the run-up to Christmas, for instance, you'd have to sell quite a few more because that's the most competitive period.

This is for the "all print books" category. For a while online marketers were offering to sell you a plan to be an Amazon best-seller in a category, like Reference, or a sub-category, like Cookbooks, or Asian Cookbooks. If you go far down enough the line of subtopics, it doesn't take many sales t be number one for a day or part of a day. However, I think just about everybody has caught on that getting all your friends to order your book on one day so that your book is a best-seller in that sometimes very narrow niche for an hour or two isn't all that impressive.

At the moment, the marketing hustlers are offering to tell you how to make a fortune from ebooks. Needless to say, it's wise to regard their hype as highly suspect. Some of them have huge marketing lists in place that they can use to sell many copies of one of their own publications, but that doesn't mean you're going to be able to do it.

The other big hype right now is about webinars. The gurus are offering to teach you how to hold online webinars in order to sell your book or other information product.

Again, they are masters at this themselves and have huge mailing lists and affiliates who push their products, but without that online marketing infrastructure in place, you're not likely to match their results.

Also, often they show you their impressive gross income from selling a particular information product but neglect to mention how much of that gross income went to affiliates (who usually get 50%), how much they spent on building their huge lists, and how many refunds they had to give out. By the time you subtract all those, the numbers may not be so impressive.

The incredible lightness of creativity

Naming your characters (or yourself)

 

A recent study shows that when people read something by a (made-up, not famous) writer who has a middle initial or two or three of them, they rate the author as being more intellectual than when it is represented as having been written by the same name minus the middle initials.

Here is part of the study's abstract: 

Middle name initials often appear in formal contexts, especially when people refer to intellectual achievements.

On the basis of this common link, the display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements.

We document this effect in seven studies: Middle initials in authors' names increased the evaluation of their writing performance (Study 1), and middle initials increased perceptions of status (Studies 2 and 4).

Moreover, the middle initials effect was specific to intellectual performance (Studies 3 and 6), and it was mediated by perceived status (Studies 5–7). Besides supporting our hypotheses, the results of these studies yield important implication for everyday life. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Authors with two middle initials are rated even more highly, and those with three middle initials even more. 

If you are writing a work of fiction and want your reader to assume that a character is intelligent, give him or her a middle initial or two or three.

If you are writing a work of non-fiction it might be worth using your middle initial(s) if you have any, or inventing some if you don't. 

That's my advice - yours truly, Jurgen S. O. B. Wolff--wait, I think we might have to be careful which middle initials we choose...How about J. K. Wolff? Actually, I'm thinking of using a pen name on a children's book I'm writing, but I'm inclined to change my last name to one that starts with a letter in the middle of the alphabet. When your last name begins with W, your books tend to end up on the harder-to-see bottom shelf.

What to look for and avoid when getting feedback

What should you look for (and avoid) in getting feedback on your writing or other project?

Max Brooks, author of World War Z, said this in an short collection of tips on Publisher's Weekly:

"I’m very careful who I let proofread my unfinished work. Too often people will want to rewrite the entire story or take it in a direction I never intended. Vetting proofreaders over time allows me to find eyes and brains that want to help me get where I originally intended to go."

He calls it proofreading, which I associate with looking only for typos and spelling errors, but what he describes is more typical of people giving feedback on whether or not what you've written works. The danger he points to is that they, with all good intentions, start pointing you toward the way they would have written the story or scene, rather than givng you feedback that helps you write it better the way you intended to.

My advice is to ask them to stick to identifying the problem--maybe the scene feels like it goes on too long, or something isn't clear, or the dialogue doesn't come alive--and leave the solution to you.

The Laughing Heart - a short film of a Bukowski poem

This is a short film by Bradley Bell of a poem by Charles Bukowski...just because it's an important message.

I vs. me: write it right

I received an email today from somebody offering an online event. The headline was, "Are you joining Amy and I?" 

Me, myself, and I: if you look these up you'll find lots of references to personal pronouns, subjective pronouns, objective pronouns, but it doesn't have to get that complicated.

One of my teachers long ago taught us a handy way to determine whether to use "I" or "me" when you're one of two or more people: say it again, this time leaving out the others.

In this case, you wouldn't say "Are you joining I?" You'd say "Are you joining me?" and that's also correct when speaking of both: "Are you joining Amy and me?"

The same test will steer you away from using "myself" incorrectly; you wouldn't say "Are you joining myself?" 

It also works when you and others are the subject. "Amy and me are going to the fair?" or "Amy and I are going to the fair?"  

If it was just you, you wouldn't say, "Me am going to the fair," you'd say "I am going to the fair." Therefore, "Amy and I are going to the fair." 

Thank you for making that one easy, Mrs. Drake, wherever you are!