Musings – Soundtracks for Books?

An interesting article in the Atlantic  has gotten me thinking about the future of writing and books in general lately.

The e-book is here to stay. With the release of the Kindle and the iPad, e-books have now reached critical mass and are a mighty force in the publishing world.

Technology has steadily changed the way we write over the last 10 years. Social networking, the ability to easily create a platform for your book and attract fans for your project, makes it easier than ever to publish and distribute your work.  But technology has also created some interesting new ways to market your work.  For example, the advent of the book trailer. On the surface, this seems to be, well, a dumb idea.  A video trailer for a book? It makes no sense. But many authors have done it and their sales figures support increased interest and sales as a result.

e-books are game changers. For non-fiction writers, you can now embed links to other resources mentioned within your book, incorporate videos of how-to perform a difficult task, list other resources that might be helpful to the reader, and don’t forget about inserting ads for the author’s other products or possibly the products of other writers or services.

The soundtrack is a natural extension of the reading experience.  Our generation grew up with every movie having a soundtrack, which often included songs written specifically for the movie (by the hottest flavor-of-the-month artist) along with the musical score for it.  Musical cliché’s have emerged as a result of this (check out TV Tropes.org for examples). Writers sometimes forget that books ARE a visual medium. Writers use words to paint a picture in the reader's head, so why not include a soundtrack to help evoke a certain mood or feeling?  I find writing with a musical score playing in the background helpful, and many other writers also swear by this technique.

Jodi Picoult included a CD with her latest book Sing You Home  this spring. She thought that a soundtrack was a good idea because it helped the reader get into the mindset of the character, Zoe, who happens to be a songwriter.

This is nothing new.  Some audio books have featured musical scores and sound effects in their works for years now. Works dramatized for radio have been around for decades.

So what does this mean for writers? Do we need to go back to college and get a Masters in Music Composition to reach the best seller list?  No.  You can add a soundtrack to a book, put together an incredible book trailer, add interesting and informative links to your e-book, but none of these will matter if the writing sucks. Period.  Fancy bread, gourmet mustard and rare spices cannot make a crap sandwich taste like anything but a crap sandwich.

Everyone has seen an incredible movie trailer that manages to amaze and fill you with slack-jawed awe. You shell out $10 for a movie ticket, another $12.50 for popcorn, candy and soft drink, only to discover that the trailer contained all of the best scenes in the 2 hour suck-fest. You tell everyone you know not to waste their time or money on it. The word spreads and the movie plummets down the top box-office movie listings to fade away to an obscure DVD release 4 months later.

In a world where another book is published every 10 seconds, you must write a good book.  Good books get noticed. Authors who care about quality by providing good content, clean, spell-checked, grammatically correct prose will find an audience in this new marketplace.  Those that embrace technology and collaborate with others to make the message stronger will be noticed even more.

Writing a book has always been a collaborative process. Writers, editors, publishers, marketers, agents, and even fans contribute to the process.  But now writing a book may involve a larger cast: a web-master, a video producer, a composer, a social media consultant, and who knows how many more people to bring tomorrow’s books to the audience.

Bottom line: Write good books, and stay informed on how the latest trends and technology impact the publishing business. But good writing always comes first.

Maximum Verbosity -- Why I Hate H.P. Lovecraft

There has always been a reason that I hated H.P. Lovecraft. If the densely packed paragraphs of prose, unbroken by any smidgen of dialog whatsoever wasn’t enough, the seemingly ham-handed attempts at creating an atmosphere of dread and foreboding didn’t do it… it was the vocabulary. For a “pulp” author, Lovecraft really hit the thesaurus hard. I actually had to look up the word effulgence in the dictionary because I had no idea what it meant. 

Yet, many authors such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Clive Barker and Alan Moore see him as a pioneer of the speculative fiction genre. He used the term cosmic horror to describe his work, which is according to his entry in Wikipedia: “the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity.”

His writing reminds me of a game mode you entered in the granddaddy of all text-based adventure games, Zork by typing the word “verbose:” Maximum Verbosity. That is what prose by Lovecraft sounds like to me. When was the last time you used one of these often repeated words on this list: Cyclopean (47), Accursed (76), or Daemoniac (55)?

I have never used any of these words in any of my writing until now, so anyone who wants to keep a tab, mark this: Cyclopean (1), Accursed (1) or Daemoniac (1)

Grist for the Muse Manifesto

Obviously I’ve been struggling with keeping a blog. The Grist for the Muse newsletter hasn’t gone out since sometime in 2006 and I feel as if I still have not found my voice in the blogosphere. So here is what I’m going to do. Write my own manifesto. That’s right a manifesto. I don’t want this to be a forum where I talk to myself about the hardships of the writing life. Really. I am boring. I am the most boring subject out there. So much so I bore myself with my own blog entries. So here is what I’m going to do for the next 6 months: an experiment to see what I should do with this platform I’ve created:

1. Not to rely so much on my experiences and knowledge for the blog. You can get that anywhere on the web. I’ll still put together original articles and content, just not rely on it as much as a basis for the blog.
2. Post cool things of interest to writers that I stumble across on other blogs and web-pages.
3. Inject my “humble” opinions on these items of interest, when applicable.
4. Not be so afraid to inject my “humble” opinions on those items of interest, the writing life, or life in general. I have, at times, held back on writing about something that might not sit well with some of the people I know, or backtracked when presenting an honest, but cutting review (after the author of the reviewed book contacted me). This is the politically correct “teacher-side” of me that emerges often to edit out my unkind thoughts. I need to stuff the teacher-side back into the tiny junior high school locker, where he belongs. I have definite likes and definite dislikes, and I will share them.
5.  Post more often. At least once a week, although I’d prefer to make a habit of posting 2 or 3 times a week, to keep you coming back to see what’s going on.
6. Continue to produce “Muse Reviews” for not only books about writing and creativity, but expanding them out a little further with reviewing books in general (and perhaps the occasional movie or TV show) that are either really good or really bad and why.
7. Actually answer and thank those who take the time to leave comments on my posts. With apologies to Ched, Nita and Alanna. I am embarrassed to say that I always meant to respond to your posts, but something in my scrambled ADHD mind always seemed to get in the way, and then so much time had passed since you posted a comment that it was awkward figuring out just how to respond: “Thank for the comment you left 9 months ago, it was really important to me.” And it is, I just didn’t say this with my fingers. I thought kind thoughts in my head and felt pangs of extreme guilt and embarrassment every time I saw them when I opened up the blog.
8. Share my journey (the struggles, failures and successes) and try to be honest and uncensored, and allow you to see how I-don’t-have-it-together-at-all. And funny. I have been told I’m funny… and I really am sometimes. Because let’s face it, writing is a crazy thing to do and crazy is always funny… well maybe not always…
9. Stop being such a technical idiot. Learn to format these entries so they can be easily read. Maybe how to put a nifty picture or two in ‘em from time-to-time. I’d like to overhaul the design of this while I’m at it… but not right away.
10. Stop being such a perfectionist. There are times where I sit on a good topic, or I write and write about it (but more often than not, think and think about it, not writing at all). And get complete stage fright, where I revise and revise whatever piece I have, worrying about how it will be seen by my students and complete stranger who have expectations when they visit the blog. I need to get in the habit of thinking on the page again, in front of an audience. And not ramble on and on so much…
11. Be entertaining. There are so many interesting and engaging writers out there. I want to be like them.
12. Continue the Shameless Self Promotion. A guy’s gotta eat, right?
13. Be available to answer your questions.
14. That these guidelines of this manifesto are fluid and subject to change as determined by my mood, audience response, and interests change.

So there you have it. The Grist for the Muse Manifesto. Thoughts?

Starting All Over Again...

I’m digging out of my long funk at last. It has been about 2 years now since I’ve really been actively engaged in any writing projects and that is a lot of lost time. With a new little one that we adopted from China last summer, and my wife going back to grad school, I’ve had to cut back my teaching schedule as well.

So this is going to be like starting all over again and re-discovering my writing identity. As well as finding out what Grist’s new identity is as well. This will be a process which we will go through together I think as I use the blog to drive content for the newsletter once again. Drop me a line. Let me know what you are up to.

What I do know is that Grist for the Muse will be part good info that I find out on the net… both writing-related and non-writing related… it may have some ranting and raving, maybe a little unsolicited opinions about the world and life in general. I’ll try to make it visually appealing with an occasional picture or two. But mostly it will be about me, the writing life, and trying to figure it all out.

My Slacker Year

At the end of December I inevitably begin taking an inventory of my accomplishments for the year, and look forward to the upcoming year and this year I realized a few things:

I didn’t achieve crap. I didn’t make any formal resolutions. I didn’t put together a marketing plan for my writing projects complete with assignments, projects and tasks. I didn’t set any goals on how much income I should generate from my writing endeavors (from teaching classes, selling books and JumpStart Jars).

I didn’t complete that second book, or begin aggressively marketing the JumpStart Jars, or expand the scope of them in any significant way. I haven’t updated the website in quite some time and the blogs… Well, neither Grist for the Muse http://gristforthemuse.blogspot.com/ nor the 15-Minute Writer http://15minutewriter.blogspot.com/ has been touched in almost two months now.

I didn’t even read a lot this year, unless you count superhero graphic novels and audio books. I haven’t been sending Grist for the Muse on time (supposedly the last Wednesday of every month or the first Wednesday of the month, depending on my whim) on a regular basis, sometimes even skipping months just because I didn’t get around to putting it together on time. I haven’t made efforts to expand my readership of it either. My email is in shambles, my michael@flashwriting.com address is choked with SPAM for approved loan requests, endless false bounced addresses usually advertising some penny stock that is guaranteed to take off TODAY, and I haven’t figured out how to curtail this within my web-based email account.

My master bathroom renovation, started back in July, is still not yet finished. On the third attempt to properly install vinyl floor tile, I think that I have at last succeeded, but the walls are still stripped down to drywall, and we only have a working toilet and (hopefully later today) a new working sink in the bathroom. The new shower base is propped up against the back wall of the bathroom and the shower stall walls still sit on my front porch, next to the front door. I have storage tubs of summer clothes piled up in the hallway, awaiting their trip up to the attic for storage. I have a woodstove that isn’t drawing air properly, so it is not heating our house with any sort of efficiency, and in fact seems to be generating a huge amount of creosote, making it dangerous. I haven’t changed the oil on the lawnmower for over a year. I haven’t yet taught my kids how to play Risk.

Those of you who know me well will be SHOCKED by this revelation, but it is true nevertheless. I haven’t been doing my writing practice. I probably completed less than 50 wide-ruled notebook pages of it the entire year. Yes, I am breaking the very rule that I beg all of my students to follow. Do writing practice, if not every day, at least do it five days a week. And the result of it shows… I am slow to get started with my writing, when I do it, it is harder and it takes longer to pull a decent draft out of me. I frequently forget how much I love to write and I am crankier in general because I haven’t been doing it on a regular basis. I feel guilty about it. I feel like a hypocrite. A fraud. A slacker.

I forget that I decided to help coach Isaac’s soccer team, because the man who was supposed to coach was called up to serve in Iraq. I forget that the finished bathroom will be a considerable improvement over the lime-green carpeting, the leaky, rust-stained, mustard-colored shower stall with matching toilet and sink. I forget that I can’t help that I’m a home-improvement retard who isn’t even qualified to shop for myself at Lowes. I forget that I completed an outline of, and most of a proposal for, my next book, The 15-Minute Writer: How to Achieve Your Creative Writing Dream in 15 Minutes a Day. I forgot that I finally completed the Fabulous Fiction JumpStart Jar, which has turned out to be the most popular jar of them all, but most of all… I forget to be forgiving. Not only of others, but myself as well.

For writers forgiveness is essential. You are going to have days where life is going to get in the way. You may have an urgent project at work that requires extra attention, or a friend that needs help putting in a new picture window in his atrium, or a tree that falls down in your yard that needs to be cut into pieces to haul them off. You are going to catch the flu and not feel well enough to do anything, especially write for a couple of weeks. And you may have a month, or two, or three where time just gets away from you, and you are not quite sure where it went, and you can choose to feel guilty about it, call yourself names: loser, dreamer, slacker, and you can criticize yourself, questioning your desire, your dedication, and your skills, or you can wipe the slate clean, forgive yourself, and pick up a pen and start all over again. That’s what I did yesterday. I sat down and wrote this rambling reflection of 2006, and began drafting a plan to make 2007 more focused and productive.

So if you haven’t been living up to your writing potential and still are punishing yourself for it, time to let go of it and start fresh, and what better way to start fresh with a brand new year? I’m drafting all of my resolutions right now and I will post them here when I have cleaned them up and decided which ones are realistic. One of them is to post to this blog more often and make it work, so stay tuned.

--Michael