Welcome to the Z-list! It’s a bit of a secret round here now, but soon I’ll be launching the Z-list bloggers seminar.
Z-list bloggers sometimes ramble, and often don’t remember to make every second post a list of ten things their readers should do to make themselves BETTER. Z-list bloggers think pithy is someone with a lisp getting cross. Z-list bloggers like people well enough, but often forget to collect them and use them effectively as part of their brand strategy. Z-list bloggers rarely sell their books, seminars or selves as part of the pay off to a post. In italics.
Unfortunately Maureen Johnson, can’t be a Z-list blogger, because she’s too smart and successful. Never mind, we can at least agree with her witty and heartfelt manifesto. YOU ARE NOT A BRAND (via io9).
Now where was I? In the Publishers Weekly Genreville blog Rose Fox was incensed by the stereotyping of genre writers and their fans. This was prompted by Allen Houston’s report of a panel at Columbia University that featured Neil Gaiman, Walter Mosley, Joe Hill and others. The review, in the New York Press, threw gobbets of snark so indiscriminately that it’s hard to distinguish an individual target. I’m not sure that genre fans came off any worse than aficionados of literary fiction in the piece, and they weren’t even at the event.
More about the Cloud Atlas in the Guardian this week. This time David Mitchell himself wrote about the book’s genesis. I was interested to note that Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveller was an overt influence. I loved that book at university, but secretly couldn’t get over the betrayal that none of the false starts would ever get ended. Postmodernism is all very well, but you got to give people some kind of resolution. Discuss.
In The New York Review of Books blog Tony Judt posted a love letter to words.
Is your book ready for publication? You sure? Get the humorous but allegedly useful wallchart thing. As featured on the NY Times Paper cuts blog.
At Paperback Writer Lynn Viehl investigated article submission criteria for a range of writers’ magazines.
Roz Morris revealed some tricks for staying productive on a novel when you’re time poor. Most of us are stuck with the need to make a living, so this is essential stuff. The only thing I’d add is that you can also foster a ten-minute mindset. Once you see ten minutes as a richly productive period, you’re suddenly able to sneak real writing into previously unexploited nooks in your day.
Glen Beck is one of one of those rightist Fox twerps (you know the kind of thing — Obama-is-a-Muslim/Nazi/foreigner, public health provision is evil, and so on until your mind gives up on his words and you just sit back and watch the smug-o-meter hit the red). He has written a thriller. Cue derisive reviews. Even the fans, apparently, are struggling with this one.
At Make a Scene Jordan Rosenfeld wrote in praise of revision. I don’t much like revision myself. I always feel I should be writing.. even though I agree that writing is rewriting. On the other hand there’s something very liberating about the message that revision matters. It means the terrible first draft I have before me is just a stage, a necessary first step towards something of which I can be proud. The difficult part, I think, is distinguishing a first step from a misstep.
The always excellent Plot to Punctuation blog (aka Show Some Character) looked at techniques for portraying a leader. A take away phrase? It’s not the what, it’s the why. It was I have a dream, not I have a plan.
Writers’ Digest linked to this neat prompt wheel.
A submission beguiled the Query Shark at first bite.
Alexandra Sokoloff discussed reactions structure-oriented plotting in another dispatch from the story planning wars. A sensible take, I think. If you don’t need a structure-based approach, then don’t use it. Personally I’m keen to learn as much as I can about story. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll know enough to dismiss techniques like this? But by that time perhaps, I’ll have internalized a lot of it anyway. Another thing I liked here was the acknowledgement that the guru-ification of the field is not entirely healthy. I’m personally put off by blogs in which every post is a thinly disguised pitch. But as Alexandra wrote:
the structure gurus who do teach also have written books; it’s not that you can’t get the same information for the perfectly reasonable cost of a book. And that’s a whole hell of a lot cheaper than, say, film school. The way you learn how to write is to write, which costs time – and your soul – not money.
According to the Guardian, Terry Pratchett is to return to Science Fiction in collaboration with Stephen Baxter.
Inflatable Ink is a Z-list blog. Learn how you too can join the Z-list. 600 dollars will buy you so much more than a weekend in a corporate hotel (board not included). Gain access to seminars, break-out groups, snacks, stuff like that. Wear hats and badges. Invent new words. Wave your hands around and say paradigm_. Send me money. Love me._ Branding. Paradigm
