More future of the book stuff

I am still stuck on this whole future of the book thing that I posted about yesterday. I can't get away from the fact that we are so focused on what's ahead that we don't anticipate the ramifications of if. For those of us who want to get a writing career going there are so many advantages to the written word going online. Just think, I can write an article for almost any publication around the world from any location around the world and get it to them in seconds and read it the moment it is 'published'. There are opportunities to get published, to start building a good 'published' portfolio available now that bypass the years that writers may have had to take to get to the same point in the past. But if by participating in that, we are inadvertently wrecking the things that made us fall in love with the written word in the first place, the book, the newspaper or magazines, well, aren't we missing the point? I am not suggesting that we do things differently, just consciously.

Googlebooks just made a deal to get a staggering number more books online.

Institute for the Future of the Book

I found this site recently when I was looking for something else. Affiliated with the University of Southern California, the Institute for the Future of the Book describes itself as 'a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens. There is a ton of information on their pages, a blog and links to a ton more information.

It's an interesting notion to ponder. Anyone taking the time to read this blog must be interested in the written word and also in technology. I love exploring new ideas in the arts- writing, music and visual art- and we now have the capibility to express ourselves in ever-changing multi-media. Blogs, ebooks, cellphone novels are just a few places that the written word has become a norm. As much as I like experimenting with the new, the thought of a world without books, newspapers or magazines is an alarming one.

If you are interested in this subject you should definitely take time to browse through the work of this think-tank. I will be doing just that myself.

Musings from the Fiction Exchange

This is me, in case you want a face to the name. I've been slow to post recently and I have been thinking a lot about what I am trying to do here. I was trying to hard to be a neutral 'resource' that I don't think I added any personality and so I am going to be a bit more me and a bit less neutral.

I have been working on a new novel and am happy with the progress so far. The process of writing raises a lot of questions for me and I would love it if this site gained followers who contributed their views, thoughts and ideas. The question that I have been pondering today is, whatever it is that you write- whether short stories, poetry, screenplays, novels or whatever, do you plan it all out before you start and if so, in how much detail? If not, how do you manage to control where it goes or how it ends up?

I read a book on writing screenplays some years ago and it changed the way that I planned my stories. Before I read that I planned very little and could easily get stuck or lost. Fast forward to five years later and I am 10,000 words into my latest piece of writing and I know exactly where I am, where I am going and it is so so much easier. The only thing I don't have enough of is time.......

Any thoughts are welcome.....

Catherine Pate in the Hot Seat

Catherine Pate lives, works and writes in London, UK.

FE: What inspires you to write?
CP: I think my best work has been inspired by personal experience – it’s sometimes easier to get under the skin of a situation if you’ve actually been in it. I’m also fascinated by the dark places in my imagination, which don’t have any outlet in real life, and that inspires me to write, so I can sort of ‘act out’. Recently I’ve been inspired by observing people who don’t know they’re being watched, not in a stalkerish way (!), but it’s really interesting to see what people do when they’re not interacting with anyone and to imagine what they might be thinking about, or where they’re going, or what their life is like.

FE: What gets in the way of your writing?
CP: The ‘select-all/delete’ function on my computer! I have a tendency to be overly self-critical and to compare myself to all the good writers that I read, which is not a good thing. I know the best way to write is just to, well, WRITE, so I’ve been endeavouring to do that more – to get it out of my head, then prune later. 

FE: Which of your pieces are you most proud of and why?
CP: I wrote a poem for someone that really summed up an intense and hugely romantic week we’d had together. It was a gift, but the process of rationalising my thoughts was therapeutic too, and for once I was very satisfied when I read it back. The recipient of the poem told me recently that they intended to write the words into a song- it made me really happy to think that they had a life beyond the one I’d given them.

FE: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an aspiring writer?
CP: It was a technical comment – write what you observe about your characters and let the reader do the work to figure out what that means. For example, “beads of sweat were visibly forming on his forehead and he glanced rapidly from side to side” is so much better than “he sat there looking nervous and suspicious”. 

FE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
CP: I’ve very often suffered from writers’ block owing to the fact that I’m too critical about my own work. Recently I addressed it by starting a journal, and hand-writing letters. It’s a great discipline because you have to get out what you want to say in one go, and can’t delete things like you can on a computer. And the act of regular writing has got me into the habit, so that now when I attempt fiction or poetry, the words flow more easily.

Catherine O'Flynn in the Hot Seat

Catherine O’Flynn is based in Birmingham, England. Her first novel, ‘What was Lost’ was published in 2007 and her second novel is due out in 2010.

FE: How did you get your first novel published?
CO: I sent it out to about fifteen agents in a fairly clueless way. I just went for ones that accepted unsolicited manuscripts (it never occurred to me that I should approach others and try and get my manuscript solicited) and got back either no response at all or a generic rejection letter that gave no indication the ms had been read. I suppose I wasn't that surprised really - I knew the odds against me were enormous and I've never been much of an optimist so I kind of assumed rejection would be the inevitable outcome. Eventually though a friend recommended an agency to me and I sent it to them and they liked it - something which still to this day is probably the single most miraculous piece of news I received. My agent worked with me on the book - suggesting some work that needed doing on the ms. When it was ready she sent it out to four major publishers all of whom rejected it. The main problem seemed to be that it didn't fit in with any clear genre and wouldn't be easy to 'place' in the market. We opted then to go for a small independent publisher (Tindal Street Press), as we thought they might be more risk taking and see beyond genre. This turned out to be true and they put everything they had behind the book.

FE: Why do you write?
CO: I think it's usually just to get to the bottom of something that's niggling at me. With What Was Lost I wanted to answer the basic question 'What was it about the shopping centre where I worked that so got under my skin?' Writing is a way of exploring my thoughts and understanding how I feel about things.

FE: What’s your greatest challenge with writing?
CO: I suppose the challenge is coming up with a story that allows me to do the exploring mentioned above. I think coming up with a story that isn't too big and isn't too little is something that takes up a lot of my time.

FE: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
CO: Oh God - probably that they should disregard advice from novelists keen to dispense it. The only thing I can think of is to write because you enjoy it or find it helpful in some way. You have no control over publication, but if you get something out of it for yourself then whether you are published or not is not the most important thing.

FE: What are you currently working on?
CO: I'm working on what I hope is the final draft of my second novel. I haven't developed a snappy description of it yet. Its theme I suppose is ageing - both of people and of cities. The main character is a superficially corny local tv news presenter who is haunted by disappearances and the stories that never make the news. It's about town planning and brutalist architecture as well. It sounds terrible doesn't it? I will never make a blurb writer.

More about Catherine

More about What was Lost

Alison C Frost in the Hot Seat

Alison C Frost is originally from Brooklin, Ontario and is now living in Vancouver, BC. Alison has been writing fiction since she was 12, back when she wanted to be a journalist.

FE: Have you had any work published?
AF: I have had short fiction published in Canadian literary journals, but it is a struggle. I have learned to take each rejection slip out of the mailbox and send the piece straight back out. The whole submission/acceptance or rejection process is a long one and there’s no point waiting around. But it is ultimately not the most important part of writing.

FE: Why do you write?
AF: I write because through writing I process, if not fully understand, my experiences and what goes on around me. Things come to me as sentences and images and scenes, the world gets translated/ transformed that way in my head. I feel uneasy when I am not being creative, namely when I am not writing. It just doesn’t feel okay not to be writing regularly.

FE: What’s your greatest challenge with writing?
AF: My greatest challenge with writing is not knowing when to let go of a story and move on. I am not a prolific writer; I spend a lot of time working and reworking the same terrain. I would like to let go of old material and call it done, but that is hard for me. Any piece can always be un-done and reworked. I want to draw those hard edges, but ultimately any piece is amorphous.

FE: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
AF: Call yourself--that is name yourself-- “writer,” at least in your own head. Don’t get caught up thinking you have to reach a level of publication or notoriety or success before you have a right to call yourself “writer”. If you write, if you must write and that is how you negotiate the world, then you are a writer. Believing in the authenticity of that gives confidence and motivation and can keep you going when no exterior element can do it for you.

FE: What are you currently working on?
AF: I am currently on yet another reworking of a collection of 10 short stories that I hope to publish as a book. I am working on several stories at once, trying to figure out how they all work together as one.

FE: How do you support yourself?
AF: I have supported myself through various retail and teaching/editing jobs. I steer clear of any job which might become too consuming for too long since that would take away from the writing. I have only started to get paid for some writing and that feels like a real victory of sorts. At this point, the truth is I am lucky I have a husband with a steady paying job.