Posts in the topic "Writing"
NYT returns to SF/F
Posted 04 Sep 10
It’s been a few years since the New York Times Book Review tried a regular science fiction review column. Dave Itzkoff’s tenure was notable for the criticism directed at his column from the SF/F community. Whether or not you agree with the sort of vitriolic assessments Itzkoff attracted, it was striking how few of his columns actually reviewed, you know, new science fiction novels.
But that’s in the past. Sam Tanenhaus has apparently signed up Jeff VanderMeer for another go, and his first column — called “Science Fiction Chronicle” — appears this week.
Five books reviewed, from Ian McDonald’s latest to a French author I’ve never heard of (Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud) to a visual compilation of mid-century space-tech advertising (ANOTHER SCIENCE FICTION). I’m impressed: a wide range, and all interesting.
Furthermore, VanderMeer is an accomplished author in his own right, someone whose qualifications and energy cannot be doubted.
High hopes! And credit where it’s due to the NYT, which has struggled with genre fiction for a long time. Now if only they’ll open a column devoted to romance titles – which, after all, are the single largest segment of books published in the United States …
This post indexed as: Reading, Writing
“The Insider” is now outside
Posted 06 Apr 10
So to speak. My first paranormal story, “The Insider,” is included in the MWA’s new anthology CRIMES BY MOONLIGHT, which has just been released.
This post indexed as: Personal, Writing
Photography Lessons
Posted 30 Mar 10
That is, lessons for writers from the collapse of photography as a profession.
The NYT has a bleak article today on the vanishing — not to say vanished — future of professional photographers. Three factors have converged: the disappearance of buyers as magazine pages are cut; cheap, easy-to-use digital cameras; and the willingness of amateurs to sell their photos dirt cheap.
Today a creative director, rather than hiring a pro for hundreds of dollars, can buy an adequate stock photo for a fraction of that. And increasingly, those stock photos come from hobbyists who’ve placed their snaps on, say, Flickr, and who are happy to be paid anything at all.
“People that don’t have to make a living from photography and do it as a hobby don’t feel the need to charge a reasonable rate,†Mr. Eich said.
Now consider the market for short stories. In the old days, getting published meant sending out your manuscript to New York in a big brown envelope. Each response could take weeks, and you had to pay return postage, too. After a few rejections you’d have to retype the damn thing, what with the dogears and coffee stains. The process was expensive in time, effort and money.
Today? It’s as easy as hitting SEND a dozen times.
But the more important parallel with stock photography: most current story markets pay next to nothing — and writers are still happy to take it.
Decades ago it was difficult to publish, but once you did, you could actually make money. A fair number of authors even supported themselves, as late as the 1960′s or even 70′s.
Now we find the reverse: easier to write and (relatively) easier to get published, but impossible to be paid a living wage.
People still read. They still look at glossy, printed photographs, too. But that sure doesn’t make it easy on the folks who actually produce words and pictures.
This post indexed as: Technology, Writing
Use The Right Word
Posted 16 Mar 10
Okay, sure, I’m more sensitive on the topic than people who don’t get paid for writing. But: a typical English speaker has a learned vocabulary of some 20,000 words. Total English “word units” (that is, counting declined forms, plurals, etc etc all as one) approach four times that. No matter what concept you hope to express, there’s almost certainly one good, precise, well-established word for it.
So why not use it?
Just one example. It is common to hear someone described (often by himself) as a “fiscal conservative” — meaning, in favor of tax cuts. But “fiscal” refers to both halves of the income statement: revenue and expenditures. Using the word properly, a fiscal conservative wants a balanced budget. “Fiscal conservatives,” especially Republicans, often neglect the second half, with problematic results.
Every Republican president since 1974 has increased the annual federal budget deficit: Ford, from $26bn to $275bn; Reagan, from $190bn to $279bn; Bush I, from $279bn to $434bn; Bush II, from a surplus of $90bn to a deficit of $455bn. Carter and especially Clinton cut the deficits: from $275bn to $190bn, and from $434bn to a surplus of $90bn respectively. (all figures in current dollars.)
True, Obama’s deficits are even higher. No need to argue about whether they’re justified or not; my point is simply that you don’t hear Obama describing himself as a fiscal conservative.
It is not an act of political courage to vote for tax cuts. But, in isolation, it is not the act of a fiscal conservative either.
This post indexed as: Personal, Writing
“Shipbreaker” Breaks Into BAM
Posted 16 Feb 10
My story “The Shipbreaker,” first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine last year, has just been selected for Otto Penzler’s Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Lee Child is the guest editor, and the pub date is roughly October. I am thrilled and honored!
This post indexed as: Writing
I, The Jury
Posted 01 Feb 10
Some time ago I sat on a jury. The case was difficult — if it were easy, it wouldn’t have gotten to trial — and after long deliberation, we deadlocked, 11-1.
This was unfortunate, but not rare; while only two percent of federal cases result in a hung jury, the rate for local jurisdictions is 6-7% (NCSC). It’s up to the prosecutor what happens after that (commonly a retrial).
What should we make of the individual who remains steadfast in his or her opinion, despite considerable pressure from everyone else in the room? In our case subsequent information, revealed after the trial, strongly suggested our holdout was mistaken — that the other eleven had come to a proper conclusion.
Popular opinion tends to glorify the individual, especially against mass conformity. But really, we don’t live in 1984, or 1930′s Germany, or even 1960′s Greensboro. Chances are, if you think one thing and everyone else thinks something else, you’re wrong.
We can’t all be John Galt.
That said, I have a short story that has accumulated a dozen rejections, and I keep sending it out. It’s a good story, by God, and someday someone will realize it!
This post indexed as: Crime, Personal, Writing
You can’t crowd-source cultural criticism
Posted 25 Jan 10
Everyone knows that online reviews — of anything — suffer from grade inflation. Just like Ive League undergrads, everyone is (far) above average.
Which makes me wonder, again, why anyone thinks something like Amazon reviews can replace print-venue literary criticism. If you want a reasonable plot summary, sure. If you’re interested in the opinions of political trolls on books deemed controversial, yup, got that. If you’d like a long list of complaints from everyone whose order was late or screwed up somehow, look no further.
But thoughtful commentary, setting a work in wider context, that’s well-written to boot? All too rare.
A viable, internet-based model may emerge. But so far, the loss of print literary culture is just that — a loss, with no replacement yet.
This post indexed as: Reading, Writing
Naked Truth
Posted 12 Jan 10
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured, on the front page, a photograph of a young woman in her underwear. The online link is here, but the picture they include shows the entire group of protesters, of which only one is semi-clad and female; for the front page, the Journal’s editors cropped it down to highlight her.
No one really expected better from Murdoch, did they? So okay. (Anyway, there are far more substantive complaints one could make, like how utterly, conventionally wire-service-like the WSJ’s international reporting has become. For example, despite a couple of good-length articles about the recent resignation of Japan’s finance minister, you’d have to read The Economist to discover the real reasons for his departure.)
Furthermore, Murdoch is, of course, only giving his readers what they seem to want. A friend of mine manages much of the online presence of a trade magazine well-known in its professional niche. He says that far and away their most popular articles are those featuring underdressed women (a topic only distantly related to the profession in question). Or celebrities. Or best of all, underdressed celebrities.
Again, that’s no surprise. The tracking tools available even to casual bloggers are remarkably powerful. Suppose you pay close attention to what draws your readers, and adapt your offerings accordingly. Pretty soon, natural evolution will lead to … well, you can imagine.
This blog will try to resist the temptation. However, I must note that when I tweeted about the underwear-protestor yesterday, the bit.ly link received more click-throughs than any other so far (in my admittedly rather brief Twitter history). What to do, what to do …
This post indexed as: Reading, Writing
Shiny New Vocabulary
Posted 06 Jan 10
SF authors are always onto the next thing, and not just science and plots and ideas. Especially in harder-edged stories (which I admit I tend to prefer) cool new words are always appearing to seize their moment in the limelight.
Some years ago, for example, the word “regolith” seemed to show up everywhere (or at least in every description of a rocky, airless moon, where regolith is the pulverized dust you get after millennia of pounding by meteoroids). Or “nonbaryonic,” used to describe certain exotic forms of matter. Words like that sound good, they imply deep scientific understanding, and suddenly everyone is using them.
Anyway, today’s word is saccade, which appears in both of the first two stories in The New Space Opera 2. As a bonus, the two authors used the word in quite different ways.
Look for it everywhere, soon.
This post indexed as: Writing
TMI: Tradecraft
Posted 06 Jan 10
One reason I enjoyed reading thrillers and spy novels, when I was younger, is the tradecraft you could learn. Detailed instructions for evading a tail, planting a bug in an embassy, exchanging coded microdots in dead drops — it’s all there, in between the gunfire and betrayals by venal politicians. A fascinating window into the secret world, unavailable anywhere else …
until now. This once-mysterious arcana is now laid out in dozens of neat, lesson-planned how-to books, aimed at all ages. The gift shop at the International Spy Museum includes (among many, many more) the following titles:
Handbook of Practical Spying
The Real Spy’s Guide To Becoming a Spy
Ultimate Spy
Other tricks and techniques are detailed in books like The Worst-Case Scenario Survival series. Wannabe MacGyvers have Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things (or, for that matter, The Unofficial MacGyver How-To Handbook).
From an author’s standpoint, it’s sort of like forensics. In the old days, half the fun of a police procedural was, well, the procedure: how to take a fingerprint, run a DNA scan, or spray a hotel room with Luminol. Thanks to CSI: Everywhere and a cultural fascination with this stuff, readers now know far more about it than I ever will. Even autopsies — for a mystery to be publishable, apparently a pathologist has to saw open a braincase by Chapter 3.
I can’t possibly keep up, but now that the information is out there, maybe it doesn’t matter so much. I guess there’s always character, plot, setting and voice to fall back on.
This post indexed as: Intelligence, Technology, Writing