So after skipping one for Christmas, I thought I’d sneak one last round up in for 2009. As well as gleaning more tips and advice from the writing blogs, I learned that culture is doomed, I tell you, DOOMED! What with Twitting, and celebrity book-alikes choking up the shelves, and with most of us becoming our own brands it’s no wonder that authors are revolting. Oh, and I sneak in a bit of Tintin.
Alexandra Sokoloff reminded us that for all the teaching materials out there, the best source remains books and movies from the genre in which you work. She advised that writers build a list of books and movies, and then break down their stories. I’ve been meaning to do more of this, and it has instantly risen to the top of my things to do list.
It’s that time of year. Larry Brooks of Storyfix posted his top ten posts of 2009. I’ve only been reading closely for a few months, so I had no idea his blog was only seven months old. That’s some productivity. And he’s not afraid to use his platform to sell his skills. I sometimes find that a little off-putting, but I’ve been bitten by my own self-deprecation in the past. This year I’m going to be selling my services as a freelancer once again, so I should learn something from Larry besides the story structure goodness that is his stock in trade.
I try to avoid links to links, but JK Evanczuk’s roundup in LitDrift this week included a NYTimes blog post on books you can throw away . More useful advice. I find it very hard to let go of anything printed, and my parents-in-law still frequently mention the attic’s worth of books we left them last time we came to live in the States.
Jennifer Blanchard at Procrastinating Writers pinpointed a mistake that dogged me for years. That is the all or nothing fallacy. The sense that if your available time is limited you might as well not start. It was to overcome that paralysis that I started using the 10 minute writer technique that still works for me — at least on first drafts.
Roz Morris at Dirty White Candy provided some advice on beginnings. It seems you can start too well. No point wowing them with an amazing start if you can’t match up to it later.
Madeleine Bunting posted in The Guardian’s Comment is Free on the plague-like rise of celebrity books. I don’t like them or read them, but they seem eminently ignorable to me. The question is, do they push other titles from publishers’ lists, or do they subsidise them?
Colin Horgan, also, in The Guardian’s Comment is Free waxed pensive on the ten year anniversary of Naomi Klein’s No Logo. Apparently we are all brands now. And there is something to that, I can’t deny it (as I renew yet another domain name, and ponder this site’s first proper design). Still, I’m not sure that Klein’s point is any less valid now than it was then. A brand is just a badge after all, and it can express something truthful about its subject. Or it can be detached from its subject, and pumped full of meanings that distract us and disguise some pretty unpalatable realities.
While I’m on that topic I’d like to recommend Klein’s recent book: The Shock Doctrine which examines the techniques by which both natural and man-made cataclysms are exploited to introduce disastrous free market reforms.
James Harkin joined in the wail at the state of modern culture with a piece on the ubiquitous world of the social network.
…in the absence of anything more solid to work with, we’ve been happy to stare at our own narcissistic reflection in a shiny new medium. Maybe in the coming decade we’ll think up some ideas worth passing around.
Since I’ve just added a twit-this link to this blog, I should probably pipe down. It’s true that social networks are narcisistic, and the wisdom of crowds is supect, but do social networks really challenge craft and authorship? I believe there are serious ideas and debates flying around out there. It’s just that with the absence of publishers and editors to filter for us, we have to look a little harder for them. Perhaps it’s the filters, and not the ideas we need to work on.
Alison Flood posted in The Guardian’s Books Blog on thin-skinned authors who answer their critics back. LitDrift covered the same story. I haven’t been to the Amazon page for my most recent non-fiction book (no link since you’re not a geek, right?) since the second edition came out. I really don’t need another thing to obsess over.
Finally, thanks to the New York Times, here’s a New Year’s card by Tintin creator Herge from 1942. I hope we can all look forward to a better year than Europe faced in 1943!
Happy New year!
