As an unknown (to me) stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe said, “Life is more complicated than Dan Brown would have us believe.” Real life, transferred directly to the page, runs a high risk of dullness or worse, inauthenticity. It takes hard work–OK Matt, it takes craft–to make reality come across as, well, real.
It’s one thing to write what you know, quite another to include what you know in what you write. The former would be appropriate in an autobiography; the latter in fiction. That goes for characters too. A fictional character should be just that–fictional. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your great aunt Nellie’s interesting verbal tic for a character in your story, but naming that character ‘Nellie’ and/or giving her an identical history to that of your great aunt would definitely be stretching the definition. Elizabeth Spann Craig has come to the conclusion that writing about people we know can be an uncomfortable experience for the subject. Randy Ingermanson posted similar views, mentioning the legal issues along the way; still, as he pointed out, the only way to really be sure of giving no offence is to quit writing altogether.
Author Jody Hedlund wondered whether it’s possible for writers to promote their work without seeming egotistical and self-obsessed. She concluded that it is…
Still on the topic of self-promotion, Joanna Paterson apparently took a look inside my head before posting the first half of “A good enough guide to starting a blog”. I guess it’s not just me, then! On Mystery Writing is Murder, Elizabeth posted some useful resources for bloggers so’s we nervy types can keep going a tad longer. The Urban Muse aimed over our burned-out heads with a guest post from Lilit Marcus about adapting your blog into a book. As Nathan Bransford would tell it: Not! Going! To! Happen!
Ebooks vs trad publishing filled the blogosphere for the nth week in a row. Successful marketing author Seth Godin announced that he is going independent; fiction author Jamie Guiney explained why he chose to release his books through a mobile publisher; Todd Rutherford wrote of his belief that print books will survive chiefly as collectibles; Kill Zone authors debated the future of mass market publishing; The Literary Lab have an entire series on the not entirely unrelated issue of self-publishing.
For all the noise, nobody really knows where this is going–but I was saddened to read this week that the OED will now only be published online. The Guardian marked the occasion by putting together a useful list of online dictionaries, together with comments and prices (where applicable.)
There’s some really good query advice doing the rounds; check out these posts from Kater Cheek and Tawna Fenske. A few characterisation notes, too, from Gail Carson Levine and Vanessa Di Gregorio. (Key phrase here: shades of grey.)
Nathan B wrote a useful post explaining what he–and hopefully not just he–means by the term ‘high concept‘.
Darcy Pattison’s Random Acts of Publicity Week is upcoming. The idea being that you promote someone else’s work, which does in fact come easier to most of us than promoting our own. I’ll start by linking to Janice Hardy’s blog–her fantasy novel ‘The Shifter’ came out in paperback this week.
Natalie Whipple’s after starting a movement of her own. Or a coven. Or something. Her idea is to have a Happy Writers Society that celebrates… failure. And why not? It’s all part of the learning process, after all. Natalie’s mission statement: To spread writerly cheer, celebrate the journey, and otherwise purge writers of angst. Fridays, over at her place.
One list that will give some of us a bit of that writerly cheer: Debut Novels By Writers Over Forty.
Anna Staniszewski has published another of the remarkable ‘Letters to Myself‘. I mean to mention this series every week and never seem to leave myself enough space, so please do make yourself a cup of coffee, sit down and read the backlog–you’re bound to find something in there that will make it worth your while!
