The Evolution of Verbs

Verbs evolve much in the same fashion as DNA.

For decades, scientists have realised that languages evolve in strikingly similar ways to genes and living things. Their words and grammars change and mutate over time, and new versions slowly rise to dominance while other face extinction.


In this evolutionary analogy, old texts like the Canterbury Tales are the English language’s version of the fossil record. They preserve the existence of words that used to be commonplace before they lost a linguistic Darwinian conflict with other, more popular forms.

The rest of this very interesting article is here.

The Writer's Palette

AN*NO*TA*TION blog has a really interesting idea to keep yourself motivated and/or inspired when you're writing. She calls it a "writer's palette" and I think it's a great idea.

Shelfari

Shelfari makes it easy to see what your friends are reading, what others with similar tastes have enjoyed, and even get and give book recommendations.

And it's free.

It's a lot like Librarything.com's method which I use on this blog. I'm not sure which is better than the other, try both and see :)

Andrew Taylor's Plot Advice

Andrew Taylor has some brief words of advice for creating your plot.

Book Signings

Here's a really fun read about what has happened to some authors when they go on book signing tours.

"The whole time I'm doing my spiel, I'm thinking, 'Cookies, cookies ... how long until I get to eat the cookies?'" Slaughter said, laughing. Then the thought struck her: What if they were poisoned? (She writes thrillers.)

Slaughter eyed the author escort who was spending the day driving her to interviews: "He'll be my canary in the coal mine," she decided. She urged him to eat a cookie.

Ancient Diaries

Frozen communion wine, soft rains that caressed the earth and winds that wrought an all-consuming yellow fog are described meticulously by the 17th century Swiss monk in accounts once consigned to dark ecclesiastical archives.

It's a bit sobering to read the words of someone who lived 300 or so years ago describing their thoughts on the weather and how it makes them feel. That something as simple as a quill and paper could endure throughout the years and bring the thoughts of the long dead to us now.

Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "weatherman" of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. "Since I've been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice."
"But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory," he adds.

Drinking Ink

Everyone's nibbled on pen caps or pencil erasers or even chewed the wood on a pencil and some have even been forced to eat their own books but not many have chugged raw ink before. There is that old saying about feeding the writer inside but I think this kid takes it a little too far.

A boy in Southwest China's Chongqing with an alias of Yang Yang has a unique taste - drinking ink, toilet water, shower gel and things of the sort, the Chongqing Evening News reports.

Tips for Writers

I absolutely love Mac OS X's text clipping feature which I shouldn't because it's been broken for years. However, I still clip gobs of text and the little clippings collect like used tissues in a wastebasket when you're battling the latest bird flu or monkey pox.

I've been sorting though some of the detritus that's eating up space on my hard drives and ran across this tid bit of writer's advice. I have no idea where I clipped it from unfortunately:

- write every day, try to get around two or so pages. Just keep writing and worry about the editing later.
- every scene must have conflict. Introduce it, act it out, and then resolve it.
- Every 'hero' must have an equal and opposite 'villain' opposing them.
- empathy for your characters, NOT sympathy.
- the list of things you have already heard goes on and on and on...

Atlanta Nights: A Novel

I've run across this a few times but only recently did I actually remember what it was called. What's Atlanta Nights you ask?

Atlanta Nights is a collaborative novel created by a group of science fiction and fantasy authors, with the express purpose of producing an unpublishably bad piece of work and testing whether publishing firm PublishAmerica would still accept it, which they did.[1]

Why target PublishAmerica?

It has been the subject of controversy because it has been accused of being a vanity press or author mill by some writers and authors' advocates,[1] despite its claims to be a "traditional" advance- and royalty-paying publisher.

If you sniff around enough it's possible to turn up a downloadable copy. I can't make it through the whole manuscript but reading it in chunks can be a laugh out loud experience.

DIfferent People, Different Perceptions

Something interesting happened to me this week after I hit upon what I think is a really interesting idea for a short story. Part adventure, part creep-me-out I ended up staying up very late jotting down notes for it. The next few days I told a handful of close friends the idea and got different reactions from nearly each one:

One friend said it was boring because nothing happens at the end. There's a build up and then nothing.
Another friend went off the rails and put a comedic spin to the whole story.
Yet another said, "Don't tell me things like that. That's just creepy."
A fourth friend didn't really offer an opinion but helped flesh out the details of the events in the story.

To me the very fact that something doesn't happen at the end of the story and we leave it just as we begin, but with a greater awareness of what's going on is what creeps me out. It's a story that won't be difficult to write mechanically speaking but on subtler levels it still pops in and out of my thoughts every day since I came up with the original idea.

It's like the old saying about how you can't please everyone all the time. Different people have different life experiences and interpret the world through different filters. I suppose the trick to being a successful writer, or painter or musician is not the quality of the work you're making but with how many people it resonates with. Maybe it's an inverse proportion quality vs popularity, I hope not.

Jack Kerouac, Scrolls and Ginsberg

This is just kinda neat because it combines to things that I'm fairly passionate about, writing and photography. Jack Kerouac was photographed by fellow writer Allen Ginsberg.

Also interesting is that the original scroll Kerouac used to write On The Road has been published by Viking so if you want you can finally read the original draft of it. Somehow the idea of writing a novel on a scroll is very appealing to me. I can just see myself now carrying around a scroll and handwriting a novel or short stories on it.

Despite several friends and even two strangers giving me copies of the book I've never managed to read the entire thing which is something I plan on correcting this winter.

A Novel In Weeks, Six Weeks

Just about anyone can write a "light-hearted" novel in 6 weeks, probably less really given the popularity of NanoWrimo or a novel in a weekend or a Novel A Day contests. (Btw, nothing against them, I'm going to do Nano again this year.)

But when you're hired to write a novel in an incredibly popular series, one that is literally a household name, it seems to me that you should spend as much time as you think you need to hammer out something worthy of the brand you're keeping alive. Maybe this guy did, I dunno, I have not read his novel yet.

The deal is that:

Author Sebastian Faulks has revealed that he completed the new James Bond novel, ‘Devil May Care’ in just six weeks.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know a writer who clackity-clacks their way though 10,000 words in a day then doesn't touch their keyboard for days, and I know another who is lucky to get maybe 200 words a day every other week. Writing isn't about speed, it's about telling a good story. If this guy can do it -and do the brand justice- in six weeks more power to him I say. But that's something I, personally, wouldn't brag about unless it was for something like Nanowrimo.

Pushing Reality Aside At An Early Age

Reality is a hassle; that's why many people like to read and it's something that's not just attractive to young adults onward, apparently preschoolers can find themselves swept away by a good yarn...

A large part of enjoying a good book is getting immersed in the life of a character, especially a character's thoughts and feelings. A new University of Waterloo psychology study shows that preschoolers can already perform this impressive perspective-taking feat and get into the minds of story characters.

Pulp Fiction Cover Art

Someone has posted a really fun gallery of pulp novel cover art over at Flickr.

Check it out.

Need iWork Templates?

iWork from Apple is nearly a complete package now that there is a spreadsheet application called Numbers. However, as great as the templates that come with the suite are you can always do with more. Here are some places that have additional templates:

iworkcommunity (lots of free ones)
KeynotePro (they sell their templates so I have no idea how good they actually are)
Jumsoft has some very orange ones for sale.
Oneeyedgoldfish has some for sale and a free one.

Those are about the best I could find. I'm sure there are more floating around though.

Backing Up Your Writing To Gmail

I love Gmail. LOVE IT. I've been using gmail since the very early days of it's inception because a good friend of mine invited me. Since Gmail is no longer invitation only and it lets you keep over 2 GBs of mail you can use it as a handy backup place for small files. I think the current upload limit per-email is 20MBs.

What I did is create a gmail account solely for the purpose of archiving some of my writing and small files like photos and such. The great thing is that most word processing documents are tiny so I .zip them and email them to my archive account and I have access to them from just about anywhere there is a computer. And they sit there, safe and sound until I need them. It's become a habit now to email documents and small files to this account so I know I'll have them when I need them. It's like a manually operated Mozy.com that only needs a web browser.

Book Plots In A Minute

Book-A-Minute Classics features descriptions of famous novel's plots that are so condensed some are only three sentences long.

If you thought Reader's Digest had condensed books...

Unintended Plagiarism

Maybe I should call it Accidental Plagiarism instead. Back in 2002, Pete Hamill penned a novel entitled "Forever" which is about a character named Cormac O' Connor:

Cormac was killed centuries ago ... and brought back to life _ eternal life. Granted immortality, he lives in Manhattan, still bearing the scar of his fatal wound, learning to play the piano, romancing the city's women until he finds the one who can grant him peace.

So, soon Fox will air a tv series about:

[A] lead character [who was] killed centuries ago ... and brought back to life - eternal life. Granted immortality, he lives in Manhattan ...

If you read the article you'll read about some other similarities between the two stories. Similarities that Fox is claiming have nothing to do with one another...it's all coincidence. And it very well may be. There are so many creative works out there that every now and again two ideas will be birthed which will be twins only from different mothers. But there's something else going on here I think.

If you take the premise of these works there's a natural tendency to create similar story arcs and rules. New York is a happening romantic place, immortals are usually battle-damaged (in fact it's estimated that if you were immortal you'd only live to be about 500 before, based on guesstimation, you'd die in some horrible body destroying accident), immortals would be lonely and they'd have lots of time to learn complex things. The initial premise, to me at least, seems to lend itself to a natural flow of components to the tale and character.

Then there's the old film Highlander too...lets not forget that one about Connor MacLeod, the scarred immortal, who lives in New York...etc...etc...


Connor and his Piano


Connor's Scars

Bonus Pithy Remark: While we're talking about immortals, why hasn't anyone made a decent film about Count of St Germain who also played piano (among a zillion other things)?

3 Million Dollar Book

Roger Shashoua is offering a diamond-encrusted edition of his new book Dancing With The Bear for the sum of three million dollars.

He says Russian tycoons are the target readers for the made-to-order book which features more than 600 flawless diamonds.

The book is an account of how the author made £100m through business in post-Soviet Russia.

I'm offering my unpublished book for 10Million dollars. I haven't finished it yet and I don't have any real ideas other than the title which will be "How To Sucker Rich People Into Buying Crap They Don't Need, To Fulfill Their Empty Souls And Lives Devoid Of Purpose".

Bean, a free word processor.

Bean has been updated. It's a simple word processor for OS X that many people like because of it's small footprint and low requirements yet it has enough features to be handy. It's actually quite nice for things like NanoWrimo or using on older hardware.

Features

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that includes:
a live word count
a Get Info panel for in-depth statistics
a zoom-slider to easily change the view scale
an Inspector panel with lots of sliders
date-stamped backups
autosaving
a page layout mode
an alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)
an option to show invisible characters (tabs, returns, spaces)
selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, etc.
a floating windows option (like Stickies has)
easy to use menus
remembers cursor postion (excluding .txt, .html, .webarchive formats)
all of Cocoa's good stuff (dictionary, word completion, etc.)

What Bean doesn't do

Bean doesn't do footnotes, customized headers and footers, columns, pre-defined text styles, floating graphics (but it does do in-line graphics).
Also, no OpenDocument (.odt) format support (but it's coming with OS X Leopard).

Give it a try and see if you like it here. Oh, and it's free.

Cheap G4 iBooks

otherworldcomputing.com has a few used G4 iBooks for sale for around $500 USA. They get these specials in every few months it seems. I've bought one G3 iBook from them and one G4 iBook because at $500 or less (the G3 iBook was around $250 I think) they're -as far as I'm concerned- disposable electronic typewriters that can also do email and surf the web.

They're dinged up, scratched and usually the keyboards are a little warped but they run Mac OS X 10.4.x, Pages (albeit slowly on the G3) and can take a beating overall.

The G4 iBook I just bought has a battery that "ioreg -l | grep -i IOBatteryInfo" tells me has only been power cycled 23 times, the screen has one tiny dead pixel way off to the side and the keyboard was a tiny bit warped which was easily bent back into shape.

I love these things because I don't care if they live or die and I ALWAYS back up my new writing with Mozy AND to a tiny flashdrive at least once a day. I take one with me everywhere because I never know when I'll need or want a typewriter.

The Grandiloquent Dictionary

I'll freely admit I'm a sciolistising lexiconophilist, heck, I even know the difference between hypnopompic and hypnogogic but if you want some really fun words check out the Grandiloquent Dictionary.

Rummaging around the site I get a distinct whiff of sniglets but of the handful of words I randomly tested several were listed in a few online dictionaries. They even have a convenient pdf to download.

But I'm no logastellus, that's for sure. Logophile sure...

Worthless Word of the Day

I'm a word junkie (yes, there's a word for that heheh) so one of my daily sites is the Worthless Word of the Day.


I highly recommend it for such morsels as:

suffisance
cumulose
obscurantist
subreption

and the hilarious:
helliferocious & ambisinister

p.s. no, it's not wordphile, it's logomaniac.

Quotation and Punctuation Marks

I've always been terribly confused with how punctuation works when it's around quotation marks. Do they go on the inside, or outside and how on Earth can you always know? I did a search for it and found this on some quotation marks page:

Inside or outside
Punctuation marks are placed inside the quote marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (this system is referred to as logical quotation).
Correct: Arthur said that the situation is “deplorable”.
(When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period is outside.)
Correct: Arthur said, “The situation is deplorable.”
(The period is part of the quoted text.)
Incorrect: Martha asked, “Are you coming”?
(When quoting a question, the question mark is inside because the quoted text itself was a question.)
Correct: Did Martha say, “Come with me”?
(The very quote is being questioned, so here, the question mark is correctly outside; the period is omitted.)

From the quotation marks wiki page we find this:

In both styles, question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside quoted material on the basis of logic, but colons and semicolons are always placed outside[2]:
Did he say, “Good morning, Dave”?
No, he said, “Where are you, Dave?”
In the first two sentences above, only one punctuation mark is used at the end of each. Regardless of its placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence in American English.

So it's fairly simple: if what you're quoting has punctuation, put it within, but if it doesn't, put it on the outside.

The Gender Genie

The Gender Genie purports to autoMagically discern your gender from your blog posts (although I suspect any bit of writing would suffice). What would be fun to do is to test it out with the same blog post and see if minor variances in the way the text was constructed affect the results. For example, I suspect that the more non-contraction word sets one uses would shift its results to that of female since, in my experience at least, I've noticed that females tend to write out "do not" more than they use "don't". But that's me.

Anyways, check it out here.

Just in case you're wondering, this blog post -what's above this sentence at least- caused it to think I'm female. I guess that just means I'm more sensitive than the average male :)

The Literature Author

The Literature Author generates text in several different styles. It uses rather difficult words, but at least they sound genuine. Best results are achieved when used with language you have some knowledge of.
A mathematically oriented aquintance told the algorithm has something to do with Markov Chains.

Try it out here.

Short, Short Stories

This site (which I can't read yet somehow know about) wants short, short stories. The stories have to fit in 160 characters so they can be SMS'd to people. That's pretty cool.

For comparison, this message is 64 words long.

The Sounds of A Writer

Do you miss the old days of actually hearing more than your keyboard when you type? For me I love the visceral sound of typebars striking a ribbon or even the 70's typeballs in Selectrics. Ever wanted to make your computer sound like a typewriter?

If you're using Mac OS X here's how, for free:

01) Launch System Preferences.
02) Hit Universal Access
03) Hit Keyboard
04) Turn "Slow Keys" ON
05) Tick "Use click key sounds"
06) Set "Acceptance Delay" to Short

It's also not a bad joke to play on friends.

The Espresso Book Machine

A company called OnDemandBooks has released a printer like no other. I literally prints out and BINDS books. Yes, you read that correctly.

On Demand Books LLC. is planning to become the first company to globally deploy a low cost, totally automatic book machine (The Espresso Book Machine), which can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention.

Rather than describe it, just watch the video.

You know what's cool about this? Not printing out your own books, which is, but the potential to browse a library's library and downloading and printing out your very own copy of the book to run around with and read. Or, if a library doesn't have a book you want, rather than have one shipped, they'll just print it out for you in a few minutes and you're on your way. There's something romantic about having your own copy of a book printed to me. I love the idea.

ThumbThings For Free

A company a while ago was selling something they creatively called a ThumbThing (their website seems down as I post this). Which was a .000001¢ piece of plastic that you put on your thumb while you read a book which held it open for you freeing up your other hand for whatever you need it for while reading.

I was pretty astonished to see these things being sold for $2 or so in bookstores. There had to be something you could use that was readily available that did the same thing and wouldn't set you back $2 if you lost or broke it.



Yes, that's the cap to a drink bottle I had on my desk.

Why is a bottle cap better?
- Doesn't cause even more plastic to end up in our landfills.
- Flatter surface doesn't score a line into the pages of your book.
- Won't cost you a thing usually so you won't be bummed if you loose it.
- Convenient storage place at the top of your drink.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books

I LOVED Choose Your Own Adventure Books when I was a kid. Heck, I still do. In a more perfect world I'd have a complete collection. In fact I partially blame them for my obsession with writing because I think that when I was reading those books, and making my decisions and turning to those pages to see what happened I was trying to predict what would happen and many times what ended up happening just wasn't as exciting to me as what had already happened in my imagination.

However there are volumes that no one will ever collect because they're just for fun.

Some very funny people have retitled some familiar Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the results are hilarious. It was popular not too long ago to re-title scans of book covers. If you take the time to search around you'll find some very funny ones.

Coincidentally I did one myself for a friend just the other day:

Books As Art

Not the words inside, the actual books themselves. I've never been one to deface a book. To me they are like sacred objects containing fragments of the mind of their author. But someone named Georgia Russell does do some interesting things with books by eviscerating and goring them into misshapen splayed open objects.

It's a bit horrifying and intriguing simultaneously. The gallery is here.

What fascinates me is that while they're still books, they're now unreadable. Yet the fact that they are/were books is what makes them more than just abstract art. You can almost hear the information inside screaming.

The 100 "Best" Novels

Random House has a list of the 100 best novels. Actually there are two lists: The Board's List and The Reader's List.

There are some fun and interesting differences between the two lists. See if you can spot the trends here.

The Snowflake School of Writing

Randy Ingermanson has a page up with tips about how to write using what he calls the Snowflake method. While I don't generally like nuts and bolts methodologies (like Syd Fields books on screenwriting) when it comes to creating art some of his tips are more common sense and organization than rote hardcoded rules.

It's worth a read.

Plagiarism, Harry Potter & Dracula?

I'll admit I've never read any Harry Potter book and have no plans to do so. But, a post at a message board led to a search which turns up some interesting parallels between Bram Stoker's Dracula and J.K. Rowlling's Harry Potter.

So, when we arrived at the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes in order to vanquish him, as made clear in HBP, I knew I'd met this plot device before.

I've read Dracula but not Harry Potter so my opinion is only half-formed ;)

There have been other accusations of plagiarism directed at J.K. Rowling before though.

Harry Potter was a character in a 1986 movie called "Troll." In the movie "Troll" Harry Potter was a dark haired, ordinary boy that discovered magic and battled a troll.

Many see striking similarities between "Harry Potter" and "The Worst Witch," by Jill Murphy. Murphy wrote the first "The Worst Witch" novel in 1974 when only 18. This book was made into a 1986 movie.

"The Worst Witch" is the original story of Mildred Hubble and her life at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches," which Jill Murphy based on own school. A pointed hat was added to her normal school uniform, and spelling class actually became SPELLing class. "Miss Cackle's Academy For Witches." "The Worst Witch" was written almost 20 years before the first Harry Potter book, and the movie was made 15 years before "Harry Potter" was filmed.

Again, I have not read either but it's interesting if true.

Two Heads, One Idea

It's funny how some people far away from one another will basically have the same idea. Take the idea of a hero without a head.

The first time I heard of an idea like this was for a videogame called "Dead Head Fred" where:

The core gameplay revolves around Fred's missing head. By progressing through the game the player can collect an assortment of different heads which all have different abilities.

But then a while later the Sci-Fi channel aired a pilot for a show called simply enough, "The Amazing Screw-On Head" where:

[The author] imagined a robot with a head that screwed onto different bodies to suit the occasion-hence the "Screw-on Head".

Just thought it was interesting.

Choosing Your Novel's Title

I thought this was interesting. I've been toying with the idea of a steampunk novel for a while so I've been looking around getting the feel of what the genre is about (no, I'm not calling it genre fiction, at least I hope I'm not) and I kept seeing one author's name popping up over and over but oddly enough, the title of his novel would change, seemingly with each interview.

I'm not sure with this person's story is but his name is Trent Jamieson (his blog, which I haven't really read is here) and in three different features on him his steampunk novel is called "The Night Beyond Land," "Roil" and "The Festival of Float." I'm beginning to think this guy is a fabrication of some kind but there are other interviews with him, like this one and this one. Fortunately he is listed on Amazon.

Anyway, the point is that you're allowed to alter the name of your novel all you want, authors do this all the time. However, it's a good idea to stick with one title once you go public with your manuscript because I think that changing the title of it so many times in the public eye doesn't reflect creativity so much as instability.

1500 Books Someone Thinks You Should Read

Someone named Calazet has compiled a list of 1500 books he thinks you should read as well as some serials.

You may have some trouble getting the long list to load. What's interesting is not what's there but what is missing as well as some texts which most would agree need explanatory companion texts. There are also, as of this post, some mistakes like listing Orwell's "1984" twice, once as a number and once as text. Also, Issac Asimov's "I, Robot" is seemingly listed as just "Robot" in the serial section at the end.

There are some good things on the list to be sure but there is a subtle bias present as I suppose all lists of this length would have. For example, there are several religious texts listed, yet no books against religion nor are any books listed that explain religious texts in context, historically.

Still it's worth a gander.

Writing Tips, Advice and Cover Letters

Here are two quick links with advice about writing fiction in general and some advice for writing cover letters. I haven't read much on these two sites, but the portions I skimmed though seem worthwhile reading. Hopefully I'll have time to read more on there in the next few days.

Wordsmitten's Advice on Cover Letters & Holly Lisle's general tips for writing fiction.

Post-Potter Depression

Post-Potter Depression is now listed at urbandictionary.com.

The empty feeling that comes from finishing the seventh book in the Harry Potter series and realizing there will be no more.

Dangerous Laser Printers

Okay, I know this isn't about writing but other than electronic documents the most common format to show off your work is the printed page. Now it happens that if you print things using a laser printer you may be breathing in particulates from the printer that you really don't want to be.

Here's the troubling story.

First-Time Author Gets Six-Figure Deal

And she probably deserves it.

The pitch intrigued the publishing world: "Forrest Gump wins Powerball."
And with that, Patricia Wood's new novel, Lottery, was launched into a bidding war that nabbed the first-time writer a six-figure deal.

And for more inspiration there's this:

She had written three earlier novels and has "a stack of rejection letters" to show for them. Lottery came to her quickly last year. She spent eight hours a day, seven days a week for three months writing it, she says. "I was consumed."

She sent e-queries to agents, hoping to attract interest.

"Most of the time I'm so busy, I don't read the e-mail queries," says Dorian Karchmar, a literary agent with William Morris in New York. But on a slow day last summer, she read Wood's and was hooked by the Gump line and five manuscript pages Wood included.

Full Article Here.

Self-Publishing Online For Free

David Wellington has done well for himself. He's written several popular novels that have been published in real life yet he still publishes them for free, in their entirety online.

They're worth checking out.

It's something I'm thinking of doing with my next "throw-away" nanowrimo novel using something like the Creative Commons Licensing deal. What I'm toying with doing is publishing each day's writing to a blog not only so others can read it while it's still warm from my fingers, but so I can keep track of myself and my word count and hopefully keep myself encouraged and motivated throughout.

We'll see.

"I could care less" vs. "I couldn't care less"

I ran across this page earlier today and just remembered it. Have you ever said "I could care less" something or other? You may not have ever realized it but that's probably not what you meant to say. What you probably meant to say was "I couldn't care less."

Here's a fun little page about it.

Is Language an Inveterate Trait In Humans?

While not specifically related to a written language it is about expressing ideas and thoughts with "words"...

If we shipwrecked a boatload of babies on the Galapagos Islands--assuming they had all the food, water, and shelter they needed to survive--would they produce language in any form when they grew up?

There are some interesting thoughts on this here.

Writing Advice

After reading the Jeff Vandermeer advice for writers below I started to think of what advice has really stuck with me over time. A few things seem jammed in the wet confines of my Hippocampus:

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
— Salvador Dali

And so, by giving myself permission to fail, I was able to begin.
— James Patrick Kelly

And the now famous The only 12.5 writing rules you'll ever need:

1. If you write every day, you'll get better at writing every day.
2. If it's boring to you, it's boring to your reader.
3. Get a writing routine, and stick with it.
4. Poetry does NOT have to rhyme.
5. Resist stereotypes, in real life and in your writing.
6. Writers read. Writers read a lot. Writers read all the time.
7. Make lists of your favorite words and books and places and things.
8. There doesn't always have to be a moral to the story.
9. Always bring your notebook. Always bring a spare pen.
10. Go for walks. Dance. Pull weeks. Do the dishes. Write about it.
11. Don't settle on just one style. Try something new!
12. Learn to tell both sides of the story.
12 1/2. Stop looking at this list. WRITE SOMETHING!

I've always thought that in writing and reading fiction it's more about the journey than the destination.

And whatever you do, please never go for one of Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations, let your story develop on it's own.

Jeff Vandermeer

My buds over at Skullring.org just clued me into an interesting read on advice for writers from Jeff Vandermeer entitled "Evil Monkey Guide to Creative Writing," it's worth a read and maybe even printing out.

Never seek validation from others. Some people will always think you should not be a writer. Some people will always think you should be a writer. All of these people are fools. There is only one way to determine whether or not you are a writer: you must find the secret tunnel leading to the hidden door. Once there, you must place your hand upon the doorknob. If you are really a writer, the door will open. You will be ushered into a magical palace. Inside of this palace, a beautiful woman (or man, depending on your wont) will take your hand and whisper in your ear, “I’m glad you made it here. I need someone to mop the marble floors. I’ll pay you good money. This will keep you from starving while you write.” Of course, everyone is chosen. The door opens for everyone.

Go read it right now. Refresh your coffee later.

Automaton Books

This doesn't have much to do with writing but these books are animated with a sensor so when you walk past them as they sit on your shelf the middle one slides out a bit and they emit spooky sounds.

Writing a Novel on a Cell Phone

Robert Bernocco, an IT professional took advantage of his travel time by writing a 384-page science fiction novel, Compagni di Viaggo (Fellow Travelers), on his Nokia using the phone's T9 typing system.

I love the idea behind this. Writing a novel in spare moments here and there is something I think more people could do if they thought seriously about it. The concept isn't new, it was used as a plot device in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Hocus Pocus. I guess the danger is in it turing out more like a blog than narrative fiction. Plus I STILL can't type efficiently on my cell phone...

But for some writers that's the trick; writing a little every day. I know people who write great swaths of text every day and others who struggle to bang out a few sentances...but they write every day. It has to do with how you not only manage your time but how you view your tools.

Collaborative Novels

I've never been one for writing with a partner. Sure I've collaborated on scripts and short stories and one novel with other people but overall I prefer to write alone. But the idea of a communal novel has always fascinated me. One that everyone thinks of first is opensourcenovel.com which is up to um...page 4 as of this post. I'd contribute to it but it's written in the first person and I'm not a big fan of anything other than 3rd, I'm snootish like that. Then there's Novel Twists which is quite similar and up to page 41. A million penguins is another one but much further along.

Scriblist is interesting because it could be a door to getting published.

Other famous collaborative books range from the classic novel format such as The Whole Family which had 12 authors, one for each chapter (Natural Suspect is a modern version of that idea) to the more technically minded tomes of Wikibooks and a variant on that called OpenEffort. Even fan fiction has dipped into the idea with things like the Blade Runner Interactive Story.

There are even collaboratively created worlds such as those at Galaxiki.

One thing to consider regarding open source collaborative novels is the concept of crowdsourcing where the creative energy expended transitions from something fun and donated to something that's labor and a potential profit making project.

Another thing is that this collaborative crowdsourced novel idea doesn't always work. Smart Gene is an example of this. Then there was unblokt which (I think, from memory here) allowed a different person to pen each sentence in a collaborative novel.

Other than Wiki's there are a few online tools out there for open sourcing novels. Two of the best I think are Glypho and Writeboard.

(There is some novel that was written collaboratively by various authors mailing in their chapters and not having read or even knowing about the other authors work. It was published and there was some confusion about it but I just cannot remember the name of it...gah. I'll post it here if I think of it.)

Overall, other than for the sake of art I don't think collaborative novels work all that well. Too many cooks and all ya know? As experimental art okay, and for technical books it could work but for fiction I'm beginning to think that even two authors is one too many for a novel.

Gordonator Precision Search Engine

I have no idea really how accurate or updated the "Gordonator Precision Search Engine" is but it's a good idea overall.

The Gordonator Precision Search Engine (GPSE) seems merely complex, but is actually extremely complex. The basic idea is to make finite categories which describe the plot, character, setting, and style of a book or movie and list those categories to users and reviewers in a logically organized hierarchical system. By making the categories finite and presenting them to the user, the user is helped because he is presented with the same list that the reviewer of the book used when the book was categorized. Also, by presenting the categories to the user, the list of options may give search ideas to the user that the user hadn't before considered.

Try it out here and see for yourself.

Of course the main site has a more basic plot search engine but it's not that good. Searching for "talking spider" did not turn up Charlotte's Web.

Harry Potter vs Trees

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

first printing will consume 16,700 tons of paper (which, depending on whose estimates of tree per piece of paper you believe, equals roughly 400,800 trees), according to Scholastic.

Although some editions will be printed on recycled paper and some of the wood for the initial print run comes from so-called "sustainably harvested" trees, that's still an astonishing figure.

Hyping Your Own Book

Antony Moore describes the trials and tribulations and, frankly, dirty tricks of a first-time author trying to get his book noticed in the days just after its ‘birth’

I really can't put it any more succinctly than that. The very interesting article is here.

Read A Book

Read A Book is a music video (with some potentially offensive lyrics) that addresses the lack of interest in not only reading and literacy but other issues as well. It's not a race issue, in my opinion, it's a question of the individual and what they see the future holding for themselves and their level of self-worth. It's causing quite a stir on some message boards.

Either way it's serious satire in the true denotative sense of the word.

(Thanks to Willie for the link)

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Ok, this doesn't have much to do with real writing but Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is just a brilliant parody of classic 80's horror television and celebrity authors like Stephen King.

The premise of the series is that in the mid-1980s, Garth Marenghi and his publisher Dean Learner made their own TV series on a shoestring budget. Set in Darkplace Hospital in Romford, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace tells of the adventures of Dr. Rick Dagless, MD, as he fights the forces of darkness while simultaneously coping with the pressures of running a modern hospital. In spite of the programme's obvious flaws — wooden acting, cringeworthy scripts and amazingly poor special effects, to name but three — both Marenghi and Learner still regard the series as a masterpiece. But nobody else does, which is why it's taken nearly 20 years to reach the screen.

It's hilarious, and to me at least, what's funnier still are the interviews (most of the good ones are on the DVD) where they play up in perfect style the self-aggrandizing gobbledegook that most interviews with artists end up being full of.

If you've ever been a fan of 80's horror and horror authors and shows like Tales from the Crypt and Monsters, then you're bound to love Garth. It's just fascinating how saying just about the same things about writing and creating horror and fiction in real interviews and then in a parodic context end up being so hilarious.





Here's a sample of an interview with his Publisher:

"I will generally put in punctuation. I see that as my job. Garth, does one draft. He doesn't want to dalliance by constantly revising. He'll do one draft and he'll often elect to omit punctuation. That's his call. I will, put in commas. I won't put in semi-colons, this isn't Joyce. Um...I will omit dashes, again, this isn't French writing. I will make sure sentences start with capital letters; that's what they're called. I will make sure the book is long enough. Or should I say, thick enough. And that could be a question of adding more words. It could be a question of making the paper thicker. Depends what we've got time for."

Some Harry Potter Books Are Missing Pages

Egads.

The Associated Press reports that Scholastic said that of the twelve million books printed, several hundred have pages missing.

And this is to be expected I guess. It is one of, if not the, largest initial print run in history.

I did buy an anthology many years ago of short horror fiction and while I was reading it I noticed that it had a chunk of pages in the middle duplicated. I went back to the store and they happily exchanged it but it was a weird experience. People come to trust books in many ways and to see one flawed like that was just unsettling in some way to me.

It's a bit frightening to wonder if any of the as of yet unread books lining my walls are defective...

THE BIG BOX OF OLD PAPERBACKS BOOK CLUB

Last summer, while shopping at a Half Price Books And Records location in Chicago, I [Keith Phipps] came across something I didn’t know I needed until I saw it. After perusing the recent arrivals, I made my way to the less heavily trafficked back of the store where, next to stacks of back issues of Good Housekeeping I found a big, narrow box wrapped in plastic. It contained over 75 old paperbacks published between the ‘60s and ‘80s, all of it genre fiction, most of it science fiction. I had to have it, and at the price of $35, I somehow couldn’t afford not to buy it.

I also gave myself the project of reading the entire box. And after neglecting that project for a while, I decided to revive it here

He's started on his 5th book and I think it's a lot of fun to keep up with his reading of the entire box.

(I've always though books with commercials/advertisements in them were just hilarious.)

The Accuracy of Novels

I don't mean how accurate the facts contained therein may be but how accurately your edition of a novel is represented according to the author's original text. Take the infamous Great Illustrated Classics editions for example.

GIC published The Time Machine a while back since it's in the public domain just about everywhere right now. It'll be PD in the EU around 2017. But they changed the text without really letting anyone know. But this wasn't the first time the text of The Time Machine was altered upon publication.

The Time Machine was first published as a series between 1894 and 1895. But even back then it was altered before reaching the public's eyes, for an entire chapter was excised because it was thought too harsh or depressing or just too shocking for the readers of that time. You can read this "lost" chapter here.

But, the GIC edition did something even more sinister in my opinion; it ADDED an entire chapter to the novel (and changed the ending). This chapter, added years later...

[Tells of a time] in which the Time Traveller blunders into a highly advanced future society where time travel is illegal. The time machine is confiscated and the Traveller is arrested, but he eventually escapes after one of the future men attempts to steal the time machine.

It makes you wonder just how complete or at least what version of a novel you have and have read is. One red flag unfortunately may be the simple fact that the novel is now in the public domain.

Stealing By Remembering

This is something to think about. Is it legal to read a book in a bookstore without buying it and then leave? And if not, why is it okay to read that same book in a Library without checking it out and then leave?

Here's a fun comic about this.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free.

I haven't tried it but I hear (and read) good things about it. I don't know much about online copyright and how rights and usage in the real world translate to the interwebtubes but this could prove helpful to someone.

For me it's interesting because I'm seriously considering releasing a novel I've been working on online in it's entirety so maybe a Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" license is just what I'd need.

Scribd

What is Scribd?
Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser. There are all sorts of other features that make it easy and fun to publish, convert, embed, analyze, and read documents.

Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.

It's an interesting idea but it's already pockmarked with seemingly unimportant documents and images. I think it's a great idea in concept but without moderation it's poorly executed. There are already a few clearly illegal documents and copyrighted works even entire novels. However, given time, I think Scribd could be something useful.

What's neat is that Scribd is kinda like Youtube for documents in that each document is it's own file and they're converted into flash so viewing them is 99% possible by everyone since Flash is pretty much ubiquitous. Plus they allow embedding, direct URL links and downloading of documents in several different formats.

One thing I'm not sure about is if you can keep some documents private. I'm not sure how that would fit into their revenue plan and it's not mentioned in their FAQ but if you could keep documents private then Scribd would be even more useful to small companies and individuals to an extent.

If you have a book in print, you can upload an excerpt (or even the whole thing!) to Scribd as a promotion.

Really, it's a place to host your documents for free and view them in any web browser. I like that idea. Since we talk about writing fiction here, here is a link to files tagged with "Novel" at Scribd. And here are the collected works of Poe which is of questionable legality I'm sure.

This is a fun one I found on there.

The Humor of Hyphens

This made me laugh for nearly two minutes straight because I've done this for a LONG time in my head.



Check out xkcd.com for lot more funny stuff.

It's not all related to writing though, but if you're like me you think math IS fun.

Here's a bonus writing related comic.

Online Dictionaries Redux

So I've become a bit obsessed with online dictionaries as of late and decided to run an Online Dictionary Showdown which really isn't as hard as it sounds. I picked four words:

encyclicals
monitories
poshlost
chattel

What's great is that there is a one stop shop for most online dictionaries...onelook.com.

Here's how they did:

encyclicals = 2 dictionaries had it.
encyclical, however has 22.

monitories = 1 dictionary.

poshlost = 1 dictionary, at Worthless Word of the Day, no less.

chattel = 21 in general and 13 in business categories respectively.

The winner in this impromptu test? Dictionary.com...gah.

Online Text Tools

I thought this should get a separate post because it covers several different things, but this page, has several fun online tools relating to words, text, readability and so on.

Anything from intentionally misspelling your text, to analyzing your text for word usage, readability or complexity, to finding how rare or unusual the words are in a text (or suggesting them).

Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

While I'm talking about words, especially unknown ones, here's a way to gauge how difficult a text supposedly is. The Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test.

It's pretty much the de facto standard for measuring a texts readability and what grade level it's written for. The scales are a little hard to conceptualize (for me) at first because for the Ease of Reading metric, the HIGHER the number the easier something is said to be to read. That seems backwards to me, but...that's me.

If you have the inclination it's fun to measure your own work and see where it stands. There are some automated tools online to do this but I have no idea how accurate they (or any of this) really is.

Btw this is the score for the text above this line:

Number of characters (without spaces) : 539.00
Number of words : 123.00
Number of sentences : 8.00
Average number of characters per word : 4.38
Average number of syllables per word : 1.49
Average number of words per sentence: 15.38

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index : 9.40

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index : 8.06
Flesh Kincaid Grade level : 7.96
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 6.90
SMOG : 9.71

Flesch Reading Ease : 65.36

List of sentences which we suggest you should consider to rewrite to improve readability of the text :

The scales are a little hard to conceptualize (for me) at first because for the Ease of Reading metric, the HIGHER the number the easier something is said to be to read.
There are some automated tools online to do this but I have no idea how accurate they (or any of this) really is.

I was just thinking that this would be VERY FUN to do to people's emails to see at what level they write at on average...hmmm

Another version of the test is here.

Unknown Words While Reading

I've had this problem for a long time now, ever since I've started reading actually. How to handle words in the text that I don't know. I've tried different things:

Looking them up immediately
Making a list for each chapter and looking them up afterwards
Ignoring them and just flag the page to go back to later

The trouble is I don't like looking up words while I'm reading because it's a hassle and I'm lazy like that. I can get myself to make a list while I read but then I'm looking up the words out of context. Ignoring them and thinking I'm going to get back to them later never works. So what to do?

Overall, probably the best solution is to look them up as I read but that's not always convenient because sometimes I'm reading outside, or in bed or sitting in some room someplace or riding in a car...it's just not convenient to lug around a dictionary. I guess an iPhone would be good for this, then I could access ninjawords or something (btw, ninjawords isn't as comprehensive as dictionary.com or others so far. Unfortunately, dictionary.com has a 100% success rate for me while the other online dictionaries I've tried at best get 99% from me...gah).

I have a HUGE dictionary here on my desk. HUGE. I've had it for a while now and while it's not completely up to date with the latest words like I dunno, blog, woot and ZOMG! it's overall fairly comprehensive. I've been making tick marks next to words I've looked up over the years so when I end up looking them up again I know I should be familiar with it. That's why I dig ninjawords history list so much. In a more perfect world dictionary.com would have a history list.

So I'm open for ideas. I'm thinking the best solution (until I get an iPhone or something) is to look up words right then and there or if I can't for some reason, jot down the word on the bookmark I'm using in the book and look them up later. What words don't I know you say? Here's a small selection from my current list:

Splenetic
Encyclicals
Monitories
Scabious
Missal
Lees
Santonin
Nasturtium
Antiphony
Dalmatic
Faille
Samovar

The Wilmarth Cafe

I've never "been there" but it seems like a decent enough place. What's interesting though is that their website has nearly all the works of H.P. Lovecraft (apparently, not sure, his works are in the public domain now) and they have some interactive fiction in the vein of Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Author Podcasts

This is pretty cool. Book Expo America has podcast interviews with authors. Since I'm largely -nearly exclusively actually- interested in fiction, here's the page with podcast interviews with authors of fiction.

I haven't had time to listen to too much but I think it's worth bookmarking and maybe even subscribing to. Of course I have to promote a podcast of one of my favorite fun (and by fun I mean it's basically light reading) authors F. Paul Wilson the creator of Repairman Jack.

(btw, it looks like there's going to be a Repairman Jack film soon. I'm not sure how I feel about this as Hollywood seems quite adept at turning good things into bad on a regular basis and they seem to love not only words like "remake" and "re-imagining" but "franchise" as well. Gah.)

Books Which No Longer Exist

On the opposite end of the field from non-existent books lugubriously lay books that never existed.

Probably the largest collection of texts that no longer exist is the Library of Alexandria's collection of knowledge. Destroyed largely due to religious intolerance and ignorance only a few fragments remain as well as a few titles of forever lost scrolls. These will likely never be recovered.

Les Journées de Florbelle and other works by the Marquis de Sade. Upon his death the Marquis de Sade requested that much of his work be destroyed. Unhappily some were. Again, there's little chance this will ever be recovered.

Ernest Hemingway lost, literally, an entire suitcase full of his writings. It's debated exactly what was contained in the suitcase be it original or carbon copies and from what period in his life they came from, but nevertheless, they're now lost. There is the chance that somewhere this suitcase or portions of it's contents are still floating around either misplaced in someone's attic, exchanged quietly between private collectors or buried somewhere deep in a landfill.

Louisa May Alcott's Long-Lost Novel was found unexpectedly.

Capote's lost novel was recently discovered.

And then there are the individuals such as Maurice Girodias who have produced false novels, purporting to be actual books that are only fictions themselves within a novel.

He also got into serious trouble with Simon & Schuster and author Irving Wallace over a book called "The Original Seven Minutes" by JJ Jadway which purported the be the actual book featured in Irving Wallace's title The Seven Minutes.

Bizarrely enough, this "fake" novel of The Seven Minutes (retitled 7 Erotic Minutes) is still available.

Jennifer Weiner's Advice

Jennifer Weiner is an author of chick-lit or book club books or something. I'm not sure. I've never read any of her novels but she does have a page with some good advice for those wanting to write and get published. Here's a sample:

I sold my first story to Seventeen magazine - one of the shrinking number of mass-market magazines that still publishes fiction. No agent. I just printed up my story, wrote a cover letter saying who I was and what I'd done, and mailed it off, and was thrilled and delighted a few months later when I got a phone call….and, eventually, a check.

Now, granted, I went to Fancypants U., and I was able to do some name-dropping on my cover letter. Did that help? Sure, probably it did. Is it necessary? I don't think so. I think if I'd submitted the same short story (it was called "Tour of Duty," and published in the spring of 1992), with a letter that left out all the stuff about Princeton, and just said I was a recent college graduate working as a reporter, the story would have met with the same happy response. No matter where, or whether, you went to college, good writing finds a home.

Not all of it applies to everyone but it's worth a read.

Detective Sheep Novels

Her novel, just released in the United States, is a detective story with a twist. Shepherd George Glenn is discovered murdered in a sheep pasture, with a spade in his chest, but the humans are helpless so some talking sheep come into play to solve the crime.

Not only is the idea not what you expected but the author is already working on a sequel and a film is already in the works. Full story here.

The amazon link is here.

What's interesting to me is that the novel is largely told from the sheep's perspective. It's not hard to be reminded of Animal Farm or myriad other stories about animals like Charlotte's Web but that humans are observed by the animals is something I'd like to see more of.

Here's the description of Three Bags Full:

In this refreshingly original detective story from debut German author Swann, a flock of sheep investigates the murder of their beloved shepherd, George Glenn. Leading the effort is Miss Maple, considered the cleverest sheep in the Irish seaside village of Glennkill. She slyly "pretends" to graze while eavesdropping on suspects who come to search George's caravan for something he may have died for. When a long-lost ram recounts an incident that occurred upon his departure years earlier, Miss Maple uncovers the catalyst for George's death. The wooly troupe reveals the crime's solution in a near-Shakespearean mime at the annual "Smartest Sheep in Glennkill" contest. The author's sheep's-eye view and the animals' literal translation of the strange words and deeds of the human species not only create laugh-out-loud humor but also allow the animals occasional flashes of accidental brilliance.

I'm also reminded of Jean George's Frightful's Mountain wish is told from the perspective of a falcon.

Non-Existent Books

Some books should never have been written, and some, never were.

I like the old phrase, "Some books were never meant to be written" myself.

Here are two links to lists of non-existent books:

Best Non-Existent Books

Answers.com list of non-existent books.

And here's another good list.

The Book of the Book

Idries Shah's The Book of the Book is a fairly well known, well, book.

From this wiki page:

Author Idries Shah, distrusting critics' reviews of his books, wrote The Book of the Book (1969, ISBN 0-900860-12-X), which consists of sixteen written pages of reviews of itself. The rest of the book is intentionally filled with about 140 blank pages to give the appearance of a normal book. Initial reactions were generally negative, but over time critics have come to praise it.

I've flipped through this book online, and may even order it just to A, have a copy and B, see what it's all about but aside from that this has reminded me of another, similar book:

It is an anthology of imaginary reviews of nonexistent books. some of the reviews remind the reader of drafts of his science-fiction novels, some read like philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers, finally others satirise and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.

This is A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem, circa 1971.

There is also mention of a book entitled Investigations of the Writings of Herbert Quaine by Jorge Luis Borges but I can't find mention of it at his wiki page and very little else other than this page.

Either way this has started me thinking, not so much about the "antinovel" but really what's possible with experimental novels. Nothing experimental and/or different just for the sake of being different, mind you, but more along the lines of Experimental and False Histories.

I have some notes on it and I think it would run the gamut from alarmingly simple to nearly impossibly difficult to write. I may give it a go though. I have a title for it, translated into Latin to sound even more mysterious, but I'll hang onto that for now. It's not terribly original meaning that there are some books around like this, but not many and there hasn't been one with a cohesiveness to it as far as I've seen similar to my idea.

Harry Potter Book 7 Leak

It was not unexpected. Of course someone would leak "HP7" onto the net in some form or another. Other than the repeated hoaxes of a leaked pdf or text file of the novel (which usually contained nothing more than a popular - and long- fan fiction) someone actually did leak the entire novel. But how?

They guy took photos of every page. EVERY PAGE. 396 images.

If you look around at all the popular places it's not hard to find at all. It's remarkable to me that someone could take the time and expend the effort to take all those photos and then upload them to the IntarTubes. But what a desideratum this guy made eh? Apparently, if rumors are to be believed, the guy that took the photos works at a library and (again, this could be apocryphal) libraries could open the boxes containing the books early so they could catalog them and place the protective jackets on them and all that fun stuff. I mean it doesn't take that long to snap off...

396 images. Geepers.

Tom Swifties

Tom Swifties (and Wellerisms) are a lot of fun for me to spot in books. Authors consciously write them into some novels as easter eggs or even more humorously, inadvertently. Some examples from fun-with-words.com.

"I need a pencil sharpener," said Tom bluntly.
"Oops! There goes my hat!" said Tom off the top of his head.
"I can no longer hear anything," said Tom deftly.
"I have a split personality," said Tom, being frank.
"This must be an aerobics class," Tom worked out.

Careful though, they can be addictive.

Google Books

This one may have slipped your radar, maybe not.

Google Books.

What's google books?

Search the full text of books to find ones that interest you and learn where to buy or borrow them.

How about that? Basically, it's an archive of books, some in their full text, some partial and some are only listed. Either way, it's a worthwhile resource to look up a book that's been shadowing you.

Check it out; it's pretty neat. Keep in mind that like gmail recently was, this is in it's beta stage.

Online Dictionaries

I love the meaning of words. To me not only does finding just the right word for something help you sub-vocalize about things in a more precise manner but it allows you to really communicate your ideas clearly but I'm really getting tired of dictionary.com.

It's slow.
They want you to pay for some content.
They have big banner ads.

Now there are a lot of online dictionaries out there:
Dictionary.com
Thefreedictionary.com
Etymonline.com
Merriam-Webster
Google (yes, really. Just type in "define:word" where word is the word you're looking for.)
dict.org (Thanks Mat!)

And one you should bookmark:
Urbandictionary.com

I've decided to use two online dictionaries from now on. My second deeper investigation of a word will check dictionary.com, but from now on my initial search for a word will be at Ninjawords.com.

Ninjawords is clean, fast and efficient. It's like google for words in many ways. And they have one feature that just blows dictionary.com out of the ocean.

A PERSONAL SEARCH HISTORY. Finally.

Bookmark it.
Love it.
Use it.

The Lyttle Lytton Contest

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to pen the world's most atrocious first line to a novel. Winners — and, for that matter, runners-up and honorable mentions — are generally very long.

It's hilarious.

Malevolent vs. Benevolent

Okay, make sure you get these straight because I'm tired of seeing them getting mixed up in newspapers.

Malevolent:
1. wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious: His failures made him malevolent toward those who were successful.
2. evil; harmful; injurious: a malevolent inclination to destroy the happiness of others.
3. Astrology. evil or malign in influence.

Benevolent:
1. characterized by or expressing goodwill or kindly feelings: a benevolent attitude; her benevolent smile.
2. desiring to help others; charitable: gifts from several benevolent alumni.
3. intended for benefits rather than profit: a benevolent institution.

The Scriptorium

The Scriptorium is a nice site that has some good info on so-called "experimental" authors all in one place.

If you want to further explore experimental fiction a handy link to have is The Modern Word.

Wordie

What if LibraryThing and Flickr had kids?

Wordie.

Wordie lets you make lists of words—practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. See who else has listed the same words, add citations and comments, and discuss.

Slang and Profanities in other languages

The Alternative Dictionaries
Slang, profanities, insults and vulgarisms from all the world

What else is there to say really?

Blondes Have More Macrobez

An escaped prisoner in a foreign land trips over a dead platypus and is knocked out near a river while being chased by the local militia of retired police officers since it's a national holiday. Over the course of the night, laying there unconscious, his DNA is examined by intelligent microbes not known to science and who have never seen a human before.

The intelligent microbes decide to alter their own dna so they can have arms and legs and in the matter of a fortnight they do so and grow rapidly. By this time our escaped prisoner has made it to the nearest small town which doesn't speak a language he knows.

That night the band of intelligent DNA modified microbes descends upon the town trying to find their creator. To fit in they steal clothes and drink at the local bar. They only talk in gestures and by drawing pictures.

Getting frustrated with the locals who don't understand them they fax a drawing portraying them holding the town hostage to the country's president saying the town is under their rule and everyone's a hostage until their creator is found. But he's been recaptured and is now in another country in solitary confinement for escaping.

Then the country's swat team laughs after a newbie hot blonde at SWAT HQ figures out that the fax isnt' a hoax and that the microbes are holding her grandmother and her 3 yr old daughter hostage as well. The microbes are getting smarter and more dexterous every minute. No one believes her so she steals a tank, the tank's manual and some ammo and drives to the town alone to rescue everyone.

Title: Blondes Have More Macrobez

Signature Balloon

Absurd Plot:

Here's another:

A man works as a model for balloon figure designer. But he decides that one of his poses is so "him" so it's trademarked. After he sees people making his signature poses with balloons he decides to take the designer to court over it. But before that he snaps and goes on a rampage with a pellet gun shooting all the balloons in the world.

The balloon appreciation society is aghast and decides to hire a hitman to take him out. At the end he's killed while doing his signature pose. But in Malaysia, on a Wednesday while in a silent movie theatre watching an avant-garde expressionist film about gingerbread men.

Then the cloned intelligent dinosaurs from the future show up.

Absurd Plots.

As a writing exercise I like to try and come up with the most absurd plots I can think of. Usually they end up being funny but not always. Thinking about the previous post...

A trio of robotic alien clowns are lost in space in a damaged spaceship. Their home world was lost in an unfortunate full-scale Dyson Sphere experiment and they barely escaped the planet's destruction by stealing a damaged ship low on fuel, that was being towed away after a crash outside their circus tent.

Mulgador, the lead robot alien clown, has his dead wife's memories encrypted on an old bio-chip, (the gov't backup in case something like this would happen) made before she married the clown, and needs to get it decrypted because as the former president of their galaxy she was the only one left who knew The Secret. And who controls that knowledge will rule the known universe.

That's when the notice a big metal crate in the cargo hold marked "Never Open."

So then...

If you get blocked or loose inspiration try making up an absurd plot or imagine a really horrible description for a novel that you would read on the inner sleeve or rear cover. Sometimes that's enough to get your creativity flowing again. It's a lot like the random association method of overcoming a creative block but I'll post about that later.

Romance Writers Competition

I have no real personal interest in writing romance stories unless by romance I mean hot giant-robot on giant-robot action and building sized mutant rats all against one human with an alien ray gun of which he lost the manual to 200 years prior while escaping an exploding planet with only a chip of the recorded memories of his lost girlfriend. Oh, and that chip is encrypted by some lost alien race. Around then is when the nano-clowns show up.

But...if you ARE interested in writing romance novels and aren't too busy with your 70 days romance novel, check out the Gather.com First Chapters Romance Writing Competition.

Here’s How It Works: From August 1 through August 22, aspiring romance writers will have the opportunity to submit a full-length romantic fiction manuscript for consideration. Over the course of the competition, authors will post chapter one of their manuscripts in the First Chapters Romance Group. These chapters will be rated by the Gather community and the Gather Editorial Team, and five finalists will be selected through two rounds of voting. (See our new voting guidelines.) One Grand Prize Winner will then be chosen for publication by a panel of judges.

So yeah. There's that. Oh, what do you win?

This unique opportunity will enable one talented Gather member to win a guaranteed publishing contract, along with a $5000 cash advance!

$3.75 Million for a Vampire Trilogy

This is kind of, and still kind of not, unexpected given the popularity lately of Vampires in media.

Last week, we hear, agent Ellen Levine at Trident Media closed a deal for a postapocalyptic vampire trilogy with editor Mark Tavani at Ballantine.

For $3.75 Million dollars.

Read about the deal here.

Online Free Writing Workshop

Rosina Lippi is hosting a writing workshop on her blog. It's free and interesting so far. Check it out.

Pronouncing Words

Sometimes it's nearly impossible to know how to pronounce a word. Take things like Gerund or Ignominy for example. Is it a G as in Grover or a G as in Gerald? Or Ignominy...is it Eg-nom-in-ee or what?

Dictionary.com has all kinds of charts and tables to help you figure this stuff out but sometimes it's like trying to work out a secret with your Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring. They have audio files that help you hear how a word is said but they're for premium users.

So, looking around I noticed that Encarta has audio files for a lot of words in their dictionary...like Ignominy and Gerund.

What's cool is that they're just tiny mp3 files too if you want to keep one for later reference.

Pseudo-Fiction

Alex Hutchinson in an award winning poet and novelist. He is the creator of Suburban Fiction, a new genre for writers who fictionalize parts of their lives into Bio-Thrillers. Alex has six books in print and they are all available at www.Suburbanfiction.com

(from his writerscafe.org about box)

New genre. Bio-Thrillers. It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure exactly how this benefits the reader however, because to them no matter what it's still a story. In a sense it's admitting lying to your readers from the outset and telling them, "Hey, this started out true but here's what I wish would have happened." Or what could have happened I suppose.

Now, to be fair I haven't read any of them but I get the sense that they're literary daydreams, which is fine. It's a journal of lies in a way. It's saying, "Here's what my life could have been like, had this happened, had this path been taken." I'm not against it, I'm not against even calling it a new genre, I just question how it's different to the reader, to the average Joe or Jane in a bookstore who picks up the book from them picking up a novel of complete fiction. It's like buying a lightbulb and not caring if it was made in the USA or China...it's still a lightbulb...they're still novels largely comprised of fiction. I question whether it's new as well.

It immediately reminded of the un-produced screenplay based on Bob Lazar's life where it delves into his (allegedly true) UFO reverse engineering experience in the desert of Nevada but ends up with him being chased by the government while he clutches a gun and runs through speeding traffic, something he never claimed happened. Likewise, Bio-Thrillers just seem to me -without having actually read one- to be Hollywood-ising one's life. Great if that knocks your hair back and gets you writing but I fail to see the benefit or attraction to the faceless reader over the Bio-Thriller author's shoulders.

What's interesting is that Hutchinson uses iUniverse to self-publish his novels. I have nothing against self-publishing other than I wish there were some logo or medallion on a book's outer jacket -front or back- that indicated that it was indeed self-published. Unless you know names such as iUniverse or Lulu you're likely to never know and wonder why (occasionally) there are spelling mistakes or glaring grammatical errors in your copy of whatever you just ordered from amazon.com.

Still you gotta give Hutchinson credit since he's getting his writing out there. Kudos to that.

Self-publishing is great to make your book look like a real book but it does not guarantee that it's been professionally vetted and scrutinized by unbiased eyes before being printed.

Btw, Author House is another self-publishing company.