Time to Write

Corporate English translated

There's English and there's corporate English, as I was reminded this morning when I read this, about an executive who is leaving his job after 18 months:

"He has delivered a number of customer focused initiatives, the company said."

Translation: He tried to get people to buy our stuff, but he failed.

Here are a few more:

"He's leaving to pursue other opportunities."

We fired him.

"She will be announcing details of her new pursuits in due course."

She's looking for a new job.

"He intends to take a well-deserved vacation before seeking a new role."

It's going to take him a long time to find a new job.

"She indicated it was time for a fresh approach to the job she's done so well."

The Board to replaced her with somebody twenty years younger.

This is another real one I spotted recently: "(X) said he had been talking to (Y) for 'some time' about the latter's 'desire to work a flexible week which will give him the freedom to work on fewer projects close to his heart.'"

Translation: We've been trying for ages to get him to retire, but we'll let him stay home and work on some unimportant project part time.

 

These major publishers ought to be ashamed (the Author House connection)

Simon & Schuster, Hay House, and Lulu.com are among the companies that have gone into partnership with Author Solutions, which is the subject of two lawsuits. The second lawsuit describes the Author Solutions approach:

Author Solutions operates more like a telemarketing company whose customer base is the Authors themselves. In other words, unlike a traditional publisher, Author Solutions makes money from its authors, not for them. It does so by selling books back to its authors, not to a general readership, and by selling its authors expensive publishing, editing, and marketing services (“Services”) that are effectively worthless.

Why would reputable companies like these publishers, as well as Barnes & Noble and Writer's Digest, ally themselves with a company with such a bad reputation?

Follow the money.

On the excellent Let's Get Digital site, David Gaughran gives you the full scoop--I recommend that you read it here.

 

Psychic spies and negative calories: the internet's loose connection to the truth

I HAVE A STRONG FEELING THAT PEOPLE ARE GULLIBLE...

An infographic titled "The Truth About Intuition" distributed by Mindvalley claims:

"CIA-hired psychics [in the Stargate Project] successfully located downed planes and identified locations of hostages." 

CIA- hired psychics successfully located downed planes and identified locations of hostages

CIA-
hired psychics successfully located downed planes and identified locations
of hostages

An authoritative study showed otherwise:

1.  An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications by Mumford, Rose and Goslin "remote viewings have never provided an adequate basis for ‘actionable’ intelligence operations--that is, information sufficiently valuable or compelling so that action was taken as a result (...) a large amount of irrelevant, erroneous information is provided and little agreement is observed among viewers' reports. (...) remote viewers and project managers reported that remote viewing reports were changed to make them consistent with know background cues (...) Also, it raises some doubts about some well-publicized cases of dramatic hits, which, if taken at face value, could not easily be attributed to background cues. In at least some of these cases, there is reason to suspect, based on both subsequent investigations and the viewers' statement that reports had been "changed" by previous program managers, that substantially more background information was available than one might at first assume"

The infographic also takes at face value the experiments of J. B. Rhine.

I won't go into all the details here, but subsequent studies of his methods revealed many opportunities by the subjects to cheat, and a number of Rhine's mistaken assumptions about statistical odds. To give just one example for statistics junkies, Rhine was puzzled by the fact that some subjects performed above the predicted level at first but then their performance dropped off. He said it must be because they were gifted but got bored. In fact, it's a good example of regression to the mean (basically, the tendency for scores to average out). 

To give just one example for statistics junkies, Rhine was puzzled by the fact that some subjects performed above the predicted level at first but then their performance dropped off. He said it must be because they were gifted but got bored. In fact, it's a good example of regression to the mean (basically, the tendency for scores to average out). 

GIVE ME SOME OF THOSE NEGATIVE CALORIES!

On the fitnessingym blog, they say, "Fat-burning foods are foods termed 'negative calorie foods,' because these are foods that burn more calories even if their caloric content is less."

Huh? I think this is referring to foods that require more energy for the body to handle and process them, than is contained in their nutrient content.

Nutritionist Marion Nestle told the BBC that the existence of such foods is "total myth. Nothing else need be said." 

One example often cited is celery. In fact, a large stick of celery contains about ten calories, but the body burns only two calories to process it.

Not only that, the foods listed in the blog under that negative calorie heading include oatmeal, nuts, olive oil, berries, eggs, lean cuts of meat, and green vegetables. All those are fine to eat in moderation, but they include foods (like nuts) that are anything but low-calorie. If you eat nuts thinking you'll burn more calories than you're consuming, your scales will soon show you the error of your ways.

DO READERS BEWARE?

It may seem obvious that we need to check information rather than taking it at face value, but 72% of the people who have grown up with the internet as their main source of news and information never verify what they read on the internet...including percentages... :)

Crucial book descriptions that don't quite work

 

jjjjjjjjjjComing up with a snappy description of your book is important these days. Here are a few that aren't terrible but have room fo improvement:

Little is known about the great artist Rembrandt’s life — but this enlightening biography reveals the man behind the paintings. Read this lively, fascinating portrait of one of history’s most enigmatic figures! 

Little is known..so you made it up? In that case, isn't it a historical novel instead of a biography?

With a killer on the loose, brilliant but damaged FBI profiler Jacob Thorne and special agent Emma Kane are determined to track him down. Their hunt for the murderer leads them through rural Nebraska in this harrowing thrill ride. 

Is it just me, or does "rural Nebraska" not go well with "harrowing thrill ride"?

When Cindy and Mattheus part ways, Cindy leaves the Caribbean to start a new chapter of her life. But before she can settle in, another shocking murder pulls her back to Bermuda — where, together again, she and Mattheus must solve the crime before it’s too late… 

I guess if you have already read other books featuring Cindy and Mattheus this would make sense. Even so, "before it's too late" is a bit vague...too late for what?

It's not an exaggeration to say that your book description (to be featured on the back cover, Amazon listings, letters to agents, and so on) may be the hardest and most important part of writing your novel.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge lied (knowing this might encourage aspiring writers)

In an article on the fastcompany.com site, Mad Man creator Matthew Weiner mentions that Coleridge's claim that his classic poem, Kubla Khan, came to him in a rush when he woke up from an opium-inspired dream was a lie.

Apparently there's evidence that he had been working on it for months and even gave it to some of his friends for feedback. 

As Weiner points out, often writers and artists like to give the impression that they're so brilliant or inspired that their work just flows easily from their pen or brush. In fact, in most cases they put in a lot of hard work--but that's not as glamorous a story.

The same holds true for people who are hailed in the media as overnight successes. If you dig a little deeper, often you'll find years of work with no recognition before the big break. Again, that's not as interesting a story for the media.

These lies can be discouraging for the aspiring writers and artists who begin to wonder whether they should give up because obviously they don't have that magic spark. 

Weiner, however, was happy to share the story of his struggles: his writing samples weren't considered good enough to get him into a writing class at Wesleyan College, his thesis was totally destroyed by the cruel remarks of a humanities professor, and his films never won the prizes at his film school.

He did develop a survival strategy: "thrive on rejection and hold on to compliments. Rejection enrages me, but that 'I’ll show you!' feeling is an extremely powerful motivator."

There was plenty of rejection--three years of writing spec scripts while his wife supported both of them. Enough rejection that he gave up for a while.

What turned things around was making a low-budget, small, quirky comedy in which he played himself and used his wife, his apartment, and his car to finish the film.  

After that, his career started to take off, but it took seven years from the time he wrote Mad Men until it was produced. He says, "I lived every day with that script as if it were going to happen tomorrow. That's the faith you have to have." 

And if you're beating yourself up for not being farther along, this comment might help: "The greatest regret I have is that, early in my career, I showed myself such cruelty for not having accomplished anything significant." 

(The interview is excerpted from Getting There: A Book of Mentors, by Gillian Zoe Segal, published by Abrams Image.)

thrive on rejection and hold on to compliments. Rejection enrages me, but that "I’ll show you!" feeling is an extremely powerful motivator.

Why social media doesn't work for unknown novelists

If you're a novelist who expects social media to lead to book sales, the truth may shock you. 

After all, everywhere you look you're told to get on Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest and other social media outlets to attract people. Get a lot of followers, then when your book comes out they will buy it.

"YES, MY  FOLLOWERS WILL BUY MY BOOK!"

A friend recently told me about one of her friends who started a blog about how to write children's books. He posted almost every day and the blog became quite successful.

Then he published a children's book of his own and mentioned it frequently on his popular blog.

Very few of his followers bought his book. 

The reason isn't actually all that surprising. They go to his site to learn how to write their own books. A few may appreciate his effort enough to buy his book as a token of thanks, but not many.

If your blog posts or tweets or pictures are not directly about your book, the odds are there will be little crossover.

"THEN I'LL BLOG ABOUT MY BOOK!"

I have more bad news...very few people will want to read a blog about a book by an author who isn't already known. 

I see advice all the time suggesting that novelists blog about the setting of their novel, or write posts in the voice of their protagonist, or reveal the true-life inspiration for the book.

I'm sorry to be so blunt (especially since this is true for anything I would write, too), but...who cares?

 "OK, I'll PUT A BOOK TRAILER UP ON YOUTUBE!"

Again, who cares? What's going to make people want to watch a book trailer for a book they've never heard of? 

"SO I SHOULD GIVE UP?"

Yes.

Just kidding. I think there are a few things that can work, and I'll cover them in the next post.

 

How can authors promote their novels without tweeting or blogging?

in the previous post I wrote about why social media generally doesn't work for new novelists. What does work?

1: Get the book to the attention of book reviewers, mostly bloggers and podcasters who have a large following. Not easy, because they are approached by a lot of novelists, but possible. Follow them, make intelligent comments, praise them (ideally, mean it). In other words, let them get to know you a little before you ask them for anything.

2: Get an endorsement from a celebrity whose followers like to read. This eliminates most pop stars, many actors, etc. but that's fine. Set up your book as print-on-demand as well as an ebook so you can print some copies to send to celebrities who might find your book of interest.

Try to find some relevant link between them and the book--did they grow up in that location, did they play a role similar to that of your protagonist, have they expressed interest in helping end domestic violence (if that features in your book)? These may or may not be enough to pique their interest, but it's worth a try.

The ideal is if they Tweet about it, but if they have one of their minions send you a message saying, "Thanks for the book, I enjoyed it!" you can use that quote.  

3. Create a video that is so entertaining that people will want to pass it along to their friends. Another challenging task, because in addition to being entertaining, it has to be relevant to your genre. A funny video of people slipping on banana peels might get a lot of views but I doubt that it would help sell a detective novel. 

 If yours happens to be a children's book, then a charming short video with a little story featuring the same characters might work. 

If you happen to write romance novels, send your trailer to Robin Covington, who features selected romance book trailers at her USA Today site:  send the link to [email protected]. Any subgenre is fine as long as it is a romance!

4. Do something that gets major media attention. The media don't care that you've written a book, so forget about trying to interest them in that per se.

Recently one publisher was lucky enough to have Facebook refuse to accept their book trailer ad because it included nudity--in the form of medieval and Renaissance paintings, drawings, and sculptures of female biblical characters. After Abel and Other Stories, by Michael Lemberger, is a series of Bible stories reimagined from the perspective of women. The Facebook explanation: "Ads are not allowed to promote the sale or use of adult products and services, including toys, videos, publications, live shows, or sexual enhancement products." 

Naturally the publisher, Prospect Park Books, immediately fired off a press release and the resulting publicity will help them more than the Facebook ad ever would have. 

In this case, it was just good luck. Generally you have to make an effort to get attention. Let's say you've written a funny novel about blind dates. You think of a blind date-related stunt--maybe a speed dating event in an unusual location, or one where singles bring their dogs, and if your dog likes the other person's dog you have to go on a date. That could get media coverage. Somewhere in that coverage it will mention your novel and its title. How many people who read the story will actually buy the novel? That's anybody's guess, but if the story makes a national news, it could pay off. 

Charlie Chaplin's Love Yourself Manifesto

Please include attribution to http://mindvalleyacademy.com with this graphic.

Sunday Flash Fiction: Watch on a bench

"You're right, it's a fake, but it's a good one. Somebody's gonna find it and think they hit the jackpot. There are a few people I could have given it to. Roy, the guy who brings the Meals on Wheels, or the UPS delivery guy, I don't know his name but he's always friendly. But anybody who's seen me recently knows my situation and I think it would creep them out to be wearing a dead man's watch. I hope it's found by a young guy, somebody just getting his start in life. I hope it makes him feel like he's gonna be rich and live forever."

image: Ryan McGuire

Words: Jurgen Wolff

Write it Right: Hoard vs. horde

Has Apple been stashing away excitable young women? That's what you'd conclude from this opening line in an article in the Evening Standard:

"A hoard of excitable young women--iPhones held aloft--crowded into the Regent Street Apple Store last night to swoon over Matt Smith and Ryan Gosling."

HOARD: a large amount of something valuable that is kept hidden

HORDE: a teeming crowd or throng

 

Dept. of Unnecessary Technology: the emotion-reading app

The MobileInsider newsletter describes a new app in development that will be able to tell your emotional state from the sound of your voice. It says, 

"...the app analyzes your tone and cadence and matches it against an arsenal of pre-stored voice samples that will help it to qualify the caller’s emotional state. So if someone is speaking rapidly and in a high-pitched voice, the phone takes this frequency and tone to mean that he is anxious, or perhaps angry."

Uh, yeah. And if it detects sobbing, I guess it will take that to mean that the person is upset. 

How could this be used? The article comes up with these examples:

Maybe it knew you were really stressed at a certain time of day and took it upon itself to give your screen a complete makeover, changing the colors and hues to calmer, cooler tones that are easier on the eyes. It almost would feel like your phone “got you” and was, in a strange way, taking care of you. 

If I'm really stressed, I don't think changing the color of my phone screen is going to help. Maybe if it could scream at the person in the supermarket checkout line in front of me that she should have thought about getting her cash or credit card out of her purse BEFORE the checker packed the very last item, I'd feel my phone "got me." If it Tased that women, I'd really feel taken care of. 

Of course ultimately it's not about taking care of us, it's about selling us stuff:

It will also afford the ability to find people in an emotional state when they are more open to a very specific marketing message and even more importantly, when they are not.

I can imagine the message to advertisers: "Detect when phone users are most vulnerable! Yes, even people experiencing grief can be persuaded to buy, and depressed consumers are sitting ducks for comfort food."

Don't call me and I won't call you.

 

 

 

Dystopian fiction or dystopian fact: how will your faceprints be used?

Consider this scenario:

A social media site creates "faceprints" based on photos you and your friends post.

Upon demand, due to "special circumstances" (e.g., massive public demonstrations) they hand over all the data to the federal government, which uses it in conjunction with photos of demonstrations, to arrest or intimidate people involved.

Science fiction? Paranoid fantasy? Fact?

A bit of each. The faceprints exist and not everybody is happy about it. Here's an item from the Daily Online Examiner:

Facebook has been hit with a lawsuit alleging that its collection and use of “faceprints” to identify users violates an Illinois law regarding biometric data.

“Not only do Facebook's actions controvert industry best practices, they also violate the privacy rights of Illinois residents,” Carlo Licata alleges in a potential class-action complaint filed in state court in Cook County.

Licata's lawsuit stems from Facebook's automatic photo-tagging feature, rolled out in 2010. That feature recognizes users' faces and suggests their names when they appear in photos uploaded by their friends. To accomplish this, Facebook draws on its vast store of users' photos.

Licata alleges that Facebook's compilation of that database runs afoul of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires companies to obtain written releases from people before collecting “face geometry” and other biometric data. The Illinois law, passed in 2008, also requires companies that gather biometric data to notify people about the practice, and to publish a schedule for destroying the information.

The part about this information being used the government is fiction (I think), but in light of revelations that ten years BEFORE 9/11 the US government started collecting all phone calls made to 116 countries, maybe it's not too far a leap. 

I'm sure some people might consider it far-fetched. My readiness to believe is based to some degree on experience--during the Vietnam War protests, the government would have loved to have these kinds of tools. Richard Nixon would have been able to pull more dirty tricks. Potential whistle-blowers and others would have been much easier to intimidate. Mass arrests would have been easier. Being identified could have led to getting fired or admission to colleges being denied. 

So...is this faceprint scenario just a good basis for dystopian fiction...or is it our future? 

PS: You can opt out of being automatically tagged, but how many people do? (I didn't know you could, nor did I even think of how it could be mis-used until I saw the news story above.)

 

An ad man on the most revealing thing about a character

In a recent email, Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, made this statement:

Tell me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.

He tied this to the idea of image, the picture of ourselves we try to create for the world--which probably isn't paying attention, by the way. 

It's a good way to think about a character as well as about real people. If you know what your character admires, and the image he or she wants to project, you know a lot. And if you know how that image differs from who they really are, you know even more.

Can you guess which of these two authors sold more books last year?

Which one sold more, both in terms of quantity and gross revenue, in the UK in 2014?

David Walliams - Awful Auntie

Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl

Well, unless you assume that the most likely answer is the wrong one or else I wouldn't bother to write about it, you probably will think it's Gone Girl. 

And you'd be wrong because I'm bothering to write about it because the most likely answer is the wrong one. :)

According to the Daily Telegraph, the sales of Awful Auntie were 553,921, £3.3 million (about $4.65 million).

Gone Girl: 529,602, $3.0 million (approx. $4.5 million)

For the record, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars beat both of them: 871,815, £4.6 million (approx. $6.9 million). 

As the article says, Walliams is now a one-man publishing phenomenon. Awful Auntie is only one of his titles. All together, his books generated £7 (approx. $10.5 million) in sales last year. 

 

Creating characters: what men and women find attractive

If you're writing a screenplay or novel and want to create a character your reader or audience will find appealing, there's one trait that, according to recent research, appeals to both men and women. 

According to a report published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 

“…participants ostensibly in a small-group interaction showed preferences for nonconformist opposite-sex targets, a pattern that was particularly evident when men evaluated women.”

The same results came up from surveys. 

This may not be all that surprising to writers (or indeed readers and regular movie-goers) since the best-loved fictional characters tend to be quirky, whether you're reading Dickens or Vonnegut or watching movies like Groundhog Day, Tootsie, Birdman, Whiplash or The Imitation Game.

The dangers are creating bland characters or overloading your character with quirks or having all of your characters be quirky. A little quirkiness goes a long way.

(For guidance on creating compelling characters, see my books, Your Writing Coach and Your Creative Writing Masterclass, both published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing and available from your favorite bookseller.)