"Millions of young girls and hundreds of thousands of young men are novelized into absolute idiocy. Novel-readers are like opium-smokers; the more they have of it the more they want of it, and the publishers . . . go on . . . making fortunes out of this corruption."
--The Hour (1880)
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Books on Writing
Someone asked for recommendations for books for writers elsewhere, and since I made the effort to craft a response with links and everything, it seemed silly not to post it here. So, three fabulous books on writing:
William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.
Jane Yolen's Take Joy
The memoir half of Stephen King's On Writing.
Fun, well written, and filled with wisdom.
William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade.
Jane Yolen's Take Joy
The memoir half of Stephen King's On Writing.
Fun, well written, and filled with wisdom.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Question
Is there a way to delete comments? I have one over on my personal blog that I'd like to get rid of.
You know, people are a lot less courteous when they are in a place where you can't get to them and punch their teeth in. Not that I would do anything like that. I don't have enough strength in my hands and arms. Another reason to exercise on a regular basis...
You know, people are a lot less courteous when they are in a place where you can't get to them and punch their teeth in. Not that I would do anything like that. I don't have enough strength in my hands and arms. Another reason to exercise on a regular basis...
Useful Link
Another installment is up in Swordsmith's publishing series: Worldbuilding.
I really recommend these highly as resources for the aspiring writer.
I really recommend these highly as resources for the aspiring writer.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Backup!
An academic friend just lost a bunch of data that wasn't backed up. Don't let this happen to you.
This prompted me to pull this out of my files for another list:
When was the last time you backed up?
Off site?
If backing up isn't something you've done within the last seven days, it's time. If it's been more than a month since you backed up off site, get on it! If you've got a cd burner and an envelope, you can send stuff to relatives or friends from time to time or you can email it to a dummy account at Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail. Don't wait. I know of at least two case of writers losing a week or so of work - one to fire, one to robbery. However since they both did a regular off-site backup that was all they lost. If they hadn't backed up, goodbye to everything!
I use a USB flash drive that holds all my writing, plus all of the other files that I regularly change plus I email files to a web account on a regular basis. I back my writing up daily and I keep the drive with my wallet and phone. If I leave the house, so does it. So, complete a story? email it to a friend or web account. Ditto for a novel. Every couple of months I also burn a session on my backup cds and swap them for the ones I keep with a relative. It's not much hassle once you get in the habit, and so much easier than starting over.
When was the last time you backed up?
This prompted me to pull this out of my files for another list:
When was the last time you backed up?
Off site?
If backing up isn't something you've done within the last seven days, it's time. If it's been more than a month since you backed up off site, get on it! If you've got a cd burner and an envelope, you can send stuff to relatives or friends from time to time or you can email it to a dummy account at Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail. Don't wait. I know of at least two case of writers losing a week or so of work - one to fire, one to robbery. However since they both did a regular off-site backup that was all they lost. If they hadn't backed up, goodbye to everything!
I use a USB flash drive that holds all my writing, plus all of the other files that I regularly change plus I email files to a web account on a regular basis. I back my writing up daily and I keep the drive with my wallet and phone. If I leave the house, so does it. So, complete a story? email it to a friend or web account. Ditto for a novel. Every couple of months I also burn a session on my backup cds and swap them for the ones I keep with a relative. It's not much hassle once you get in the habit, and so much easier than starting over.
When was the last time you backed up?
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Practice
In case there is anyone out there who doesn't know the Carnagie Hall story...
A tourist stops a New Yorker on the street and asks, "How do I get to Carnagie Hall?"
The New Yorker replies, "Practice! Practice! Practice!"
It's a great joke, because it's both funny and profoundly true.
This brings us to the meaning of practice.
Per an on-line dictionary, practice means (1) a habitual action or way of doing something, (2) repeated performance in order to learn or perfect a skill, (3) the act of doing something.
So we practice in order to improve and practice in order to do. It's an ongoing process, like sitting meditation; and if we are lucky, we get to Carnagie Hall.
A tourist stops a New Yorker on the street and asks, "How do I get to Carnagie Hall?"
The New Yorker replies, "Practice! Practice! Practice!"
It's a great joke, because it's both funny and profoundly true.
This brings us to the meaning of practice.
Per an on-line dictionary, practice means (1) a habitual action or way of doing something, (2) repeated performance in order to learn or perfect a skill, (3) the act of doing something.
So we practice in order to improve and practice in order to do. It's an ongoing process, like sitting meditation; and if we are lucky, we get to Carnagie Hall.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Question of Talent...
According to a new article by Geoffrey Colvin for Fortune on CNNMoney.com, talent doesn't exist. His conclusion is mine: hard work and practice are the only answers. Check out: What It Takes to Be Great.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Revisions
Just got my revision notes for Cybermancy. Good stuff that will make the book stronger. Unfortunately, it means I'm back under deadline until revisions are turned in. I'll be checking out of posting till then, though I might comment a bit. See you in a few weeks.
Kelly
Kelly
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Plots
I just read over the past month of posts. There is a lot of good discussion here. I am glad I can rely on other people, when I am under the weather or have a dying computer.
I am writing this on my laptop, which does not have a name. My first desktop (a homely grey IBM) was The Grey Toad. My second desktop (a lovely little iMac) was Little Blue. The current desktop (currently being repaired) is Moby Mac, the great white computer, due to its weight. There is a lot to like about the original eMacs, but they are not light. We bought a small two-wheeler to take it to the Apple store.
Why don't I name laptops? I don't know. I sometimes call this machine The Little Guy.
Plots are endoskeletons. Short stories can get by without serious plots, the way small animals can get by with shells and skins. When a story gets to a certain size, it cannot survive without a pretty strong internal structure.
I usually think of plot as an action line, though this may be because SF has pulp roots and pulp fiction (aka tales of ripping adventure for manly boys and boyish men) tends to be action driven. I guess there is pulp fiction for girls and women, but I didn't read it as a kid.
The action can be physical. My novellas and novelettes often describe trips. In this case, the plot is a map or a AAA triptick.
It can be the classic plot out of drama: a problem which leads to conflict and crisis and then to resolution. See Aristotle and Shakespeare for more detail.
Henry James wrote a wonderful short novel titled Washington Square, which is about the main character's failure to make a choice. You could call the novel a problem without a crisis, a conflict without a resolution. But what drives the novel is the need to make a choice, which is not -- in the end -- made. (I think I am remembering correctly. It's been decades since I read the novel.) In a sense, it is a book that turns on lack of action.
More later. I need to do some thinking.
I am writing this on my laptop, which does not have a name. My first desktop (a homely grey IBM) was The Grey Toad. My second desktop (a lovely little iMac) was Little Blue. The current desktop (currently being repaired) is Moby Mac, the great white computer, due to its weight. There is a lot to like about the original eMacs, but they are not light. We bought a small two-wheeler to take it to the Apple store.
Why don't I name laptops? I don't know. I sometimes call this machine The Little Guy.
Plots are endoskeletons. Short stories can get by without serious plots, the way small animals can get by with shells and skins. When a story gets to a certain size, it cannot survive without a pretty strong internal structure.
I usually think of plot as an action line, though this may be because SF has pulp roots and pulp fiction (aka tales of ripping adventure for manly boys and boyish men) tends to be action driven. I guess there is pulp fiction for girls and women, but I didn't read it as a kid.
The action can be physical. My novellas and novelettes often describe trips. In this case, the plot is a map or a AAA triptick.
It can be the classic plot out of drama: a problem which leads to conflict and crisis and then to resolution. See Aristotle and Shakespeare for more detail.
Henry James wrote a wonderful short novel titled Washington Square, which is about the main character's failure to make a choice. You could call the novel a problem without a crisis, a conflict without a resolution. But what drives the novel is the need to make a choice, which is not -- in the end -- made. (I think I am remembering correctly. It's been decades since I read the novel.) In a sense, it is a book that turns on lack of action.
More later. I need to do some thinking.
Persistence
Well, after a month of silence I am ready to begin posting again. What happened? Patrick and I went to South Dakota in the third week of September. This was for five days only, but it's a ten-twelve out drive hour to the Black Hills, then an equal drive back. It was a good, if hectic trip. We saw bison and pronthorns, wild turkeys, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, the Badlands, Spearfish Canyon, the Needles Road, the open pit gold mine in Lead, which is no longer in use, but remains a very large hole... Anyway, that kept me busy for a week or so. Then I got a serious cold, and then the hard drive on my desk top went all weird. In addition, my day job has been demanding lately.
The reason I bring this up is a study I saw recently. It turns out (according to this study) that genius (high achievement is a less loaded word) is made rather than born. What makes it? Support from other people, good mentors and a lot of practice. I have had a fair amount of support in my life -- from relatives and friends, mostly. I don't remember having any real mentors for my writing in the sense of teachers, but I've had plenty of examples of people doing hard work and good work. My problem is persistance. I will use any excuse to avoid writing: a trip, a cold, a dying computer.
Let this be a lesson! Keep writing! Always remember the way to get to Carnagie Hall!
The reason I bring this up is a study I saw recently. It turns out (according to this study) that genius (high achievement is a less loaded word) is made rather than born. What makes it? Support from other people, good mentors and a lot of practice. I have had a fair amount of support in my life -- from relatives and friends, mostly. I don't remember having any real mentors for my writing in the sense of teachers, but I've had plenty of examples of people doing hard work and good work. My problem is persistance. I will use any excuse to avoid writing: a trip, a cold, a dying computer.
Let this be a lesson! Keep writing! Always remember the way to get to Carnagie Hall!
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Writing Combat part the third - Willing Suspension of Disbelief
In any work of fiction you must bring your reader with you. You must convince them to believe in the reality of the unreal parts of your story, the term most commonly used for this is the "willing suspension of disbelief." If your audience doesn't believe in your story, you've lost them.
Speculative fiction has a double charge against it on this front in that it is both unreal in the particulars of your characters' stories (i.e. fiction), and in the setting (the world of the fantastic). So the spec fic reader has to work doubly hard to suspend their disbelief, which means the spec fic writer has to work doubly hard to earn that suspension.
Because of this, the spec fic writer has to be even more careful with details than the general fiction writer and ground the non-fantastical and fictional details very firmly in reality. Understanding and writing believable combat is very much a part of that since combat is so often an important aspect of the literature of the fantastic. So is making sure that your fantastical details are internally consistent. And getting your science right. And those latter aspects of world building are the next thing I want to talk about, though it'll have to wait a day or two.
Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms?
Speculative fiction has a double charge against it on this front in that it is both unreal in the particulars of your characters' stories (i.e. fiction), and in the setting (the world of the fantastic). So the spec fic reader has to work doubly hard to suspend their disbelief, which means the spec fic writer has to work doubly hard to earn that suspension.
Because of this, the spec fic writer has to be even more careful with details than the general fiction writer and ground the non-fantastical and fictional details very firmly in reality. Understanding and writing believable combat is very much a part of that since combat is so often an important aspect of the literature of the fantastic. So is making sure that your fantastical details are internally consistent. And getting your science right. And those latter aspects of world building are the next thing I want to talk about, though it'll have to wait a day or two.
Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms?
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Brood on it
Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
--Flaubert
The Plot Thickens
Last night at my Loft class, I had to admit the ugly truth. I know jack about plotting. This is always my worst lecture because I’m forced to rely on what other people have to say about plot and how to do it.
I know basically what plot is. It’s the stuff that happens in your short story or novel. Plot is a “verb;” it’s action, forward movement. One of the things that the Writer’s Digest PLOT book reminds me is that it is anything that a character experiences which makes a difference to what comes afterwards.
But how is it done? What makes good plot? Why do some plots snap and others fizzle? We read a short story by Maureen McHugh for class called “Homesick” which defies a simple explanation of plot because it is a deeply compelling story, and all of the students who read it thought that it “worked,” i.e., they felt satisfied by the conclusion. Yet nothing much happens, and there are events, such as a car crash, in which there are no immediate consequences for the main character, which is to say, she walks away from it and talks about how the driver was forever changed, but she wasn’t (though it can be argued that by the ending she was.) Still, it’s very non-traditional in its approach to plot, so why does it work?
Other than the answer: because Maureen McHugh is a genius, I didn’t really have a good reply because, frankly, plot is something I constantly struggle with. I think that when it works for me, it works by chance, by magic. Also, I think I’ve honed my “ear” to the point when I can tell when a scene isn’t going anywhere and I revise it so it does. If I screw that up, I have Wyrdsmiths tell me that things are dragging and that I need to get back to the plot.
None of this, however, is good advice to students. How would you teach someone about plot? Does anyone know of any good articles about plot out on the internet?
I know basically what plot is. It’s the stuff that happens in your short story or novel. Plot is a “verb;” it’s action, forward movement. One of the things that the Writer’s Digest PLOT book reminds me is that it is anything that a character experiences which makes a difference to what comes afterwards.
But how is it done? What makes good plot? Why do some plots snap and others fizzle? We read a short story by Maureen McHugh for class called “Homesick” which defies a simple explanation of plot because it is a deeply compelling story, and all of the students who read it thought that it “worked,” i.e., they felt satisfied by the conclusion. Yet nothing much happens, and there are events, such as a car crash, in which there are no immediate consequences for the main character, which is to say, she walks away from it and talks about how the driver was forever changed, but she wasn’t (though it can be argued that by the ending she was.) Still, it’s very non-traditional in its approach to plot, so why does it work?
Other than the answer: because Maureen McHugh is a genius, I didn’t really have a good reply because, frankly, plot is something I constantly struggle with. I think that when it works for me, it works by chance, by magic. Also, I think I’ve honed my “ear” to the point when I can tell when a scene isn’t going anywhere and I revise it so it does. If I screw that up, I have Wyrdsmiths tell me that things are dragging and that I need to get back to the plot.
None of this, however, is good advice to students. How would you teach someone about plot? Does anyone know of any good articles about plot out on the internet?
TC Resources for the F&SF Writer
This is a quick detour from the Writing Combat thread, which I'll come back to with my next post. I got an email today from an aspiring local writer who's been reading the Wyrdsmiths blog. It was a very nice note and I wanted to point him toward a bunch of Twin Cities area resources for fantasy and science fiction writers. Then, once I'd put the list together (all stuff I had in my head, but it took a bit of digging around to get all the urls right) I realized I should probably post the resource list here where others could also make use of it. So, here's the info with the personal bits redacted:
At the top of the list for F&SF writers is the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network which has an associated workshop. And for writers in general The Loft Literary Center where both Lyda and I teach speculative fiction courses from time to time.
This is followed closely by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF) and the Minnesota Society for Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy (MISFITS).
And by the numerous Twin Cities science fiction conventions of which MarsCon, MiniCon, Convergence, and Diversicon are the largest. I'd also add that WisCon in Madison is one of the best cons in the midwest if you're interested in writing.
Another important resource is the local speculative fiction magazine TOTU run by Eric M. Heideman who is himself an absolute treasure for the Twin Cities area F&SF community with his deep involvement in numerous cons both in running them and in running tracks of literary programming. Numerous professionals have sold one of their first stories to TOTU, myself included, and it publishes many more on an ongoing basis.
I know I've missed lots, so please feel free to add things in comments and I'll post an update with more links in a couple of days.
At the top of the list for F&SF writers is the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network which has an associated workshop. And for writers in general The Loft Literary Center where both Lyda and I teach speculative fiction courses from time to time.
This is followed closely by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF) and the Minnesota Society for Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy (MISFITS).
And by the numerous Twin Cities science fiction conventions of which MarsCon, MiniCon, Convergence, and Diversicon are the largest. I'd also add that WisCon in Madison is one of the best cons in the midwest if you're interested in writing.
Another important resource is the local speculative fiction magazine TOTU run by Eric M. Heideman who is himself an absolute treasure for the Twin Cities area F&SF community with his deep involvement in numerous cons both in running them and in running tracks of literary programming. Numerous professionals have sold one of their first stories to TOTU, myself included, and it publishes many more on an ongoing basis.
I know I've missed lots, so please feel free to add things in comments and I'll post an update with more links in a couple of days.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Rejections Past
While I was filing away my most recent rejection letter, I noticed that I had an F&SF rejection slip from a couple of years ago for a short piece that I'd sent in, "The Weatherlight Witch", which is more a character sketch than a story. The thing is, it wasn't a rejection from John Joseph Adams. It was from Gordon Van Gelder, and it was the "alas" letter, which totally rocks. Pretty much everyone in Wyrdsmiths liked the piece when I workshopped it, though I heard one universal problem with it--it isn't a story. There's no plot arc. The language is lovely, the character is well-drawn, but there's no story. Makes sense that GVG wrote "...this didn't do enough for me, alas." (italics mine) But wow, does that rock--and I didn't even know about it at the time!
Anybody have weird/strange/funny/odd rejection stories that might enlighten us, or at least lighten our moods? What's the most interesting rejection letter you've gotten?
Anybody have weird/strange/funny/odd rejection stories that might enlighten us, or at least lighten our moods? What's the most interesting rejection letter you've gotten?
Writing combat, part the second
More questions from my workshop, and more thoughts on why they matter.
How can you tell someone is a sword fighter? This one was phrased in the Sherlockian sense. What would give away a swordsman to an informed observer. My answer involved looking for the muscles in the forearm and wrist that have to be developed to control the sword, physical stance and confidence, visible awareness of surroundings. There are lots of other good answers and other avocations that will share many of the same traits, dancers for example. My fencing improved significantly in the window when I was both unofficially TAing a stage combat course and taking modern dance because there was a lot of overlap in skill sets.
In the workshop description you mention the physics of swordplay and that a rapier is always going to beat a broadsword—why is that? So I talked about the time-to-target issues of a weapon that is already extended in front of you and very close to your strike point vs. one that need to have a good swing for full effectiveness and is thus several feet at least from the strike point. A thrusting weapon is simply faster than a swinging weapon. Then we discussed the history of weapons as a history of technological innovation and development and how advances in weapons drove advances in armor and vice-versa. And also how things like improved steel making technology and the introduction of gunpowder or the long bow changed things.
Who owns swords and other weapons? I was particularly pleased with this one. Weapons are often expensive and depending on where you are in history they can be very expensive. The socioeconomics of weapon ownership is something any fantasy or science fiction writer should take into account. If, for example a sword costs a year's earnings for a peasant, and the owner is not a rich noble, how did they get the sword? How does its cost affect the way they treat the blade?
At root these and other questions are all about making your writing believable, and I'll talk a bit more about that in my next post, since I've already used up a lot of words and my alloted non-fiction writing time. In the meantime, does anyone have any thoughts on the subject of weapons in writing? Problems they've been having that they want to share? Anything like that?
How can you tell someone is a sword fighter? This one was phrased in the Sherlockian sense. What would give away a swordsman to an informed observer. My answer involved looking for the muscles in the forearm and wrist that have to be developed to control the sword, physical stance and confidence, visible awareness of surroundings. There are lots of other good answers and other avocations that will share many of the same traits, dancers for example. My fencing improved significantly in the window when I was both unofficially TAing a stage combat course and taking modern dance because there was a lot of overlap in skill sets.
In the workshop description you mention the physics of swordplay and that a rapier is always going to beat a broadsword—why is that? So I talked about the time-to-target issues of a weapon that is already extended in front of you and very close to your strike point vs. one that need to have a good swing for full effectiveness and is thus several feet at least from the strike point. A thrusting weapon is simply faster than a swinging weapon. Then we discussed the history of weapons as a history of technological innovation and development and how advances in weapons drove advances in armor and vice-versa. And also how things like improved steel making technology and the introduction of gunpowder or the long bow changed things.
Who owns swords and other weapons? I was particularly pleased with this one. Weapons are often expensive and depending on where you are in history they can be very expensive. The socioeconomics of weapon ownership is something any fantasy or science fiction writer should take into account. If, for example a sword costs a year's earnings for a peasant, and the owner is not a rich noble, how did they get the sword? How does its cost affect the way they treat the blade?
At root these and other questions are all about making your writing believable, and I'll talk a bit more about that in my next post, since I've already used up a lot of words and my alloted non-fiction writing time. In the meantime, does anyone have any thoughts on the subject of weapons in writing? Problems they've been having that they want to share? Anything like that?
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Writing combat, part the first
So yesterday I taught a 3 hour workshop on writing combat scenes for fantasy. This is a meet-the-weapons deal where I bring in swords and knives and things so that my students can get some real idea of how things like look and feel with a big Q&A component to tailor the content toward what the people who attend are actually writing.
I love doing these things both because I did a variety of western and eastern martial arts when I was younger and because I invariably learn things. I'm a good generalist on muscle powered combat, and not a tightly focused specialist so at least one of my students always has a more in-depth take on some of the esoterica than I do. So, for example I had a couple who'd been doing research on traditional Native American missile weapons, and who could say that the Native Americans that they'd been studying used a string grip style much more like the Asian thumb ring model than the European three finger grip which I did not know. Cool stuff.
But perhaps of more interest is what the questions tell me about what's important to my students as writers and readers. I always get a lot of questions about what to emphasize in a fight scene, how much detail to go into, level of gore, things like that. My answer on all of those btw: is that it's a mix of two things
1—giving the reader an accurate picture of what they're looking at.
2—Showing the reader what's important to the character about what they're seeing.
My main point though is always this: Story is king. Accuracy and reality are important, because some subset of people will know when you make mistakes and it costs you in the willing suspension of disbelief area that is so critical for keeping your readers in the story. But reality is less important than story. It's important that you know the rules not because you must never break them, but because you need to know when you're breaking them and decide whether doing so does something that important enough for the story to make it worth the break.
More later.
I love doing these things both because I did a variety of western and eastern martial arts when I was younger and because I invariably learn things. I'm a good generalist on muscle powered combat, and not a tightly focused specialist so at least one of my students always has a more in-depth take on some of the esoterica than I do. So, for example I had a couple who'd been doing research on traditional Native American missile weapons, and who could say that the Native Americans that they'd been studying used a string grip style much more like the Asian thumb ring model than the European three finger grip which I did not know. Cool stuff.
But perhaps of more interest is what the questions tell me about what's important to my students as writers and readers. I always get a lot of questions about what to emphasize in a fight scene, how much detail to go into, level of gore, things like that. My answer on all of those btw: is that it's a mix of two things
1—giving the reader an accurate picture of what they're looking at.
2—Showing the reader what's important to the character about what they're seeing.
My main point though is always this: Story is king. Accuracy and reality are important, because some subset of people will know when you make mistakes and it costs you in the willing suspension of disbelief area that is so critical for keeping your readers in the story. But reality is less important than story. It's important that you know the rules not because you must never break them, but because you need to know when you're breaking them and decide whether doing so does something that important enough for the story to make it worth the break.
More later.
Friday, October 13, 2006
A Funny Discovery
(This is cross-posted from my live-journal blog, but I thought it might be of some interest here.)
I was at my local, independent, science fiction bookstore (Uncle Hugo’s) yesterday because Don needed more copies of my first novel Archangel Protocols, which is now out-of-print. I’d forgotten to sign them at home, so I sat down on the floor and started scrawling my name on the cover page. I’m chatting and signing, and my fingers fumble and I find myself looking down on the copyright page.
Archangel Protocol went into a second printing.
How do I know this? Well, I learned from my friend and fellow Wyrdsmith, Bill Henry, what all those numbers that seem kind of random on the copyright page mean. They look like this:
You can tell what printing you have in your hand by the last number. In the case above, you’re holding a first printing. I was staring down at:
This is not the same as getting a second “edition.” All this really means is that the publisher sent out (not necessarily sold, they may still be waiting on returns from bookstores) all of their initial print run of your book and had to go back to the printer to make more to meet demand. Still... this is often the kind of news an editor shares with their author because it’s considered _good_ news. People want your book. Yay.
No one told me.
I have no idea even when it happened.
So now I’m in a very weird place of being really happy about having gone into a second printing on a book that’s out-of-print. Yay! Boo. Is this the sort of moment one says, “Uh, congratulations on the success of your failed book?”
I was at my local, independent, science fiction bookstore (Uncle Hugo’s) yesterday because Don needed more copies of my first novel Archangel Protocols, which is now out-of-print. I’d forgotten to sign them at home, so I sat down on the floor and started scrawling my name on the cover page. I’m chatting and signing, and my fingers fumble and I find myself looking down on the copyright page.
Archangel Protocol went into a second printing.
How do I know this? Well, I learned from my friend and fellow Wyrdsmith, Bill Henry, what all those numbers that seem kind of random on the copyright page mean. They look like this:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
You can tell what printing you have in your hand by the last number. In the case above, you’re holding a first printing. I was staring down at:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
This is not the same as getting a second “edition.” All this really means is that the publisher sent out (not necessarily sold, they may still be waiting on returns from bookstores) all of their initial print run of your book and had to go back to the printer to make more to meet demand. Still... this is often the kind of news an editor shares with their author because it’s considered _good_ news. People want your book. Yay.
No one told me.
I have no idea even when it happened.
So now I’m in a very weird place of being really happy about having gone into a second printing on a book that’s out-of-print. Yay! Boo. Is this the sort of moment one says, “Uh, congratulations on the success of your failed book?”
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Wordplay Blossoms
Wow. Stories suggest themselves in the oddest ways.
Lyda said something enigmatic on my blog, and I responded to her by writing the following:
Ah... kemosabie speaks goodness, like smooth wind of honeysuckle for the mind. I will drink green tea and mediate between the yin and the Yangtze...
There I was, just playing with words, and the story title "The Yin and the Yangtze" pops out, immediatly suggesting a girl in China, growing up alongside the world-famous river--perhaps drowning Ophelia-like. The Yangtze, being the yang part of that equation, is clearly the male element--so a story where the river represents the powerful, unmoving male dominance of women in Chinese society over their history. Weave in some of the difficulty that people have with crossing rivers, the concept of "crossing" the powerful in society, and the grass is greener on the other side mentality, and I'm beginning to see a touchpoint story for a woman who, in her own quiet way, wants to break out of the social bonds that are put on her; a commentary on one part of Chinese society and its struggles. Populate the story with her family--men who demand or ask for too much, who expect her to do what they say; women who are too silent except amongst themselves, but who wish for more--and the river, flowing inexorably, silently past them, inexorable, timeless, and forever changing.
Just the seed of an idea, but how quickly those seeds blossom!
How does wordplay figure into your story development? What ways do you find stories springing into being? How do you become aware of a story waiting to be told?
Lyda said something enigmatic on my blog, and I responded to her by writing the following:
Ah... kemosabie speaks goodness, like smooth wind of honeysuckle for the mind. I will drink green tea and mediate between the yin and the Yangtze...
There I was, just playing with words, and the story title "The Yin and the Yangtze" pops out, immediatly suggesting a girl in China, growing up alongside the world-famous river--perhaps drowning Ophelia-like. The Yangtze, being the yang part of that equation, is clearly the male element--so a story where the river represents the powerful, unmoving male dominance of women in Chinese society over their history. Weave in some of the difficulty that people have with crossing rivers, the concept of "crossing" the powerful in society, and the grass is greener on the other side mentality, and I'm beginning to see a touchpoint story for a woman who, in her own quiet way, wants to break out of the social bonds that are put on her; a commentary on one part of Chinese society and its struggles. Populate the story with her family--men who demand or ask for too much, who expect her to do what they say; women who are too silent except amongst themselves, but who wish for more--and the river, flowing inexorably, silently past them, inexorable, timeless, and forever changing.
Just the seed of an idea, but how quickly those seeds blossom!
How does wordplay figure into your story development? What ways do you find stories springing into being? How do you become aware of a story waiting to be told?
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Quick Hit
There's a lengthy aritcle in the current issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction by Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake about Narrative Voice and Authorial Voice which I thought might be of interest to y'all. (Hopefully, you can view this without having to subscribe...).
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Enriching your craft
I was cleaning my desk today, and ran across notes I took before moderating a panel of writers on how we improve our craft.
One of the questions scribbled on the sheet: If you could choose one educational or experiential thing to build your craft, what would it be?
For me, if I could choose ANYthing, I would like to go get a BA in History, focusing on Europe before World War I. (And including both some basic and advanced classes on Eastern Europe.) I majored in Religion, and minored in South Asian studies. This was fascinating and rewarding, but if I could go back and do it again, I'd major in History because it would be so useful, given what I do now.
On a smaller scale, I'd love to spend some time riding horses. I did a very small amount of horseback riding at Girl Scout camp as a kid, so I know how to get on and off and how to tell a horse to go and stop, but that's about it.
I'd love to hear other people's fantasies about what they'd learn more about if they had more time/money/resources.
One of the questions scribbled on the sheet: If you could choose one educational or experiential thing to build your craft, what would it be?
For me, if I could choose ANYthing, I would like to go get a BA in History, focusing on Europe before World War I. (And including both some basic and advanced classes on Eastern Europe.) I majored in Religion, and minored in South Asian studies. This was fascinating and rewarding, but if I could go back and do it again, I'd major in History because it would be so useful, given what I do now.
On a smaller scale, I'd love to spend some time riding horses. I did a very small amount of horseback riding at Girl Scout camp as a kid, so I know how to get on and off and how to tell a horse to go and stop, but that's about it.
I'd love to hear other people's fantasies about what they'd learn more about if they had more time/money/resources.
Locus of Control—Stress and Writing
So, something we've talked about in Wyrdsmiths from time to time is how life stress affects our writing. There seem to be two basic models.
1. Stress = no writing.
2. Stress = more writing.
Under number one, the writer needs a place of calm to work from, and stress prevents that. It's more complex than that of course, but I'm much more qualified to talk about the second model because that's where I land.
Under number two, the writer finds writing to be one place in their world where they can exert some real control and so does more and more writing work.
As I said above, I tend to the second of those models, though there does come a point where stress can push me over the edge into reduced productivity—it never seems to truly stop me. I think in my case that's an interaction between control issues and being a happy writer. Writing makes me happy, and when I'm happy I tend to write more. It's a positive feedback loop. There's the converse negative feedback loop, not writing makes me unhappy, being unhappy means I write less, etc. But I'm simply not as prone to that because being unhappy also makes me want to do something to exert control over the situation, and for me work is one of the best ways to re-exert control, which breaks the negative cycle and kicks in the positive one.
So, how about y'all? Do you fall into mode 1 or mode 2? Or something completely different? How does mood interact with writing for you?
1. Stress = no writing.
2. Stress = more writing.
Under number one, the writer needs a place of calm to work from, and stress prevents that. It's more complex than that of course, but I'm much more qualified to talk about the second model because that's where I land.
Under number two, the writer finds writing to be one place in their world where they can exert some real control and so does more and more writing work.
As I said above, I tend to the second of those models, though there does come a point where stress can push me over the edge into reduced productivity—it never seems to truly stop me. I think in my case that's an interaction between control issues and being a happy writer. Writing makes me happy, and when I'm happy I tend to write more. It's a positive feedback loop. There's the converse negative feedback loop, not writing makes me unhappy, being unhappy means I write less, etc. But I'm simply not as prone to that because being unhappy also makes me want to do something to exert control over the situation, and for me work is one of the best ways to re-exert control, which breaks the negative cycle and kicks in the positive one.
So, how about y'all? Do you fall into mode 1 or mode 2? Or something completely different? How does mood interact with writing for you?
Friday, October 06, 2006
Revision, and Editing vs. Writing—boggled
Sean said something in comments that completely blew my mind and I just had to pull it out and unpack it where others can comment. I, too, see the revision process as a form of "editing", whereas I think Kelly would think of it as just "writing" and then Sean talked a little bit about authorial vs. critical modes in writing.
This is so alien to how I see the book process that I just boggled. For me, the whole thing is writing the book. There is no line between my inner editor and my inner author. I write, edit, and even read all from the same part of my psyche, and I don't think it's ever occurred to me that there was any other way to do it. The same voice that writes the sentence assesses it before and after and then rewrites and even copyedits.
Quick survey: Do you compartmentalize your writing processes? Creative and Analytical? Or is it a sort of continuum? Or is it all just in one big box? Or something completely different?
This is so alien to how I see the book process that I just boggled. For me, the whole thing is writing the book. There is no line between my inner editor and my inner author. I write, edit, and even read all from the same part of my psyche, and I don't think it's ever occurred to me that there was any other way to do it. The same voice that writes the sentence assesses it before and after and then rewrites and even copyedits.
Quick survey: Do you compartmentalize your writing processes? Creative and Analytical? Or is it a sort of continuum? Or is it all just in one big box? Or something completely different?
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Never give up
Every story you send out is one more chance at publication, every time you send it out. Just because twenty-four editors have said no, doesn't mean the twenty-fifth won't say yes.
My longest dry spell on an individual story is nineteen misses for one hit. My friend Eric Witchy recently sold something to a major new market on it's 32nd trip through the mail. You should always start at your dream market and work your way down, but never stop sending things out.
Also, keep track of who is reading and editing at magazines. An editor may have turned a story down for a market five years ago, but if the editor moves on that's a market you can now send the story to again since the new editor hasn't rejected it yet for that magazine.
That's how I sold my 4th novel first, and how many others have sold novels even further along the line than that. Kris Rusch, Elizbeth Bear, Barth Anderson, Lyda Morehouse. None of these people sold the first novel first. Neither did many others you would recognize.
Keep pounding your forehead against the wall. The forehead heals, the wall doesn't.
My longest dry spell on an individual story is nineteen misses for one hit. My friend Eric Witchy recently sold something to a major new market on it's 32nd trip through the mail. You should always start at your dream market and work your way down, but never stop sending things out.
Also, keep track of who is reading and editing at magazines. An editor may have turned a story down for a market five years ago, but if the editor moves on that's a market you can now send the story to again since the new editor hasn't rejected it yet for that magazine.
That's how I sold my 4th novel first, and how many others have sold novels even further along the line than that. Kris Rusch, Elizbeth Bear, Barth Anderson, Lyda Morehouse. None of these people sold the first novel first. Neither did many others you would recognize.
Keep pounding your forehead against the wall. The forehead heals, the wall doesn't.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Writing the Alien That is Us
Sean said something tonight after class that blew my mind... and I'm going to try to talk about it coherently, but... well, it was late, and I've had a lot of coffee.
We had been talking about writing convincingly about aliens, and he said that one of the reasons that portraying an alien culture is so difficult is because we tend NOT to think about the things that make us normal. Instead, we (as humans/Americans) tend to think about those personality traits, social interactions, etc., that set us apart, make us individuals.
I found that whole idea generally fascinating. His concept is interesting to think about not only because it's true I think, but also because it taps into something that's profoundly _about_ living the writing life.
I remember Neil Gaiman saying in an interview I did with him for Science Fiction Chronicle (when it was still called that) that no moment in a writer's life is wasted because we're always NOTICING and taking mental notes to use later in a story. He said (and I'm paraphrasing, of course) that he sometimes felt guilty when he's at a funeral because instead of just being sad, part of him is always paying attention to how people are interacting, how they're going about their business, and, well, frankly, how WEIRD it all is.
Writing (in general, but also specifically speculative fiction) is about noticing how truly odd every day life really is. Mainstream writers have to portray the weirdness of the mundane in order to comment on it and to further illuminate the human condition. Speculative fiction writers have to do all that, plus extrapolate from all those social weirdnesses a future/magical universe that "rings true." In other words, one's aliens have to be as screwed up as humans are, only in their own way. They have to have their own cultural/personal analog to the dysfunction of Thanksgiving with the Family, you know?
As clichéd as my example is, that's still a very hard thing to do -- to give the alien his/her/its/their own f---ed up family, their own personal place in their society. Most of the time when humans encounter aliens in speculative fiction stories, we don’t meet the individuals. It's that whole Star Trek phenomenon of alien homogeny. The reader/viewer seems to only encounter perfect examples of the alien culture, that one individual creature who is living a life few of us really experience: a life in perfect harmony with the social norms, morals, etc.
Part of the difficulty is that the writer needs to establish what the alien culture is before they can show how a individual alien fits inside it and/or steps outside of it (is out of step with it?)... all without infodumping and through action/reaction, ie. the dreaded "showing."
I will interject here that I have never successfully written about The Alien, (unless you count writing about straight men as an alien experience for me as a lesbian.) So, I don’t fully understand how it’s done when it's done well.
I do know it when I see it, though. A couple of good examples, in my mind, of people who did it well would be our very own Eleanor Arnason in her story “Knapsack Poems.” The goxhat are not only truly alien, but the goxhat that we meet in the story stands inside/outside of her/his/its culture as an individual. The moral decision he/she/it makes regarding the abandoned child are not in keeping with the traditions of her/his/its people, yet it's not a break with tradition so much as a fortunate dysfunction. Similarly, David Levine's Hugo winning story (congrats, David!) “Tk’tk’tk” has an alien restaurateur who is inside/outside his culture as an individual.
Both of these stories manage to present the alien cultures norms through the eyes/filter of the individual characters, although in David’s story, the main character is a human who learns about himself from his various interactions with individual aliens on the planet he gets stuck on.
I'm sure there are other examples, but I've used both of these stories when teaching, so they spring quickest to mind. The point is that both authors manage convey the cultural norms of an alien society and an individual alien's personal reaction to their culture. An amazing feat, when you think about it. I don’t know how they did it, but I’ve become convinced that being an observer of society is a first step.
What do you think?
We had been talking about writing convincingly about aliens, and he said that one of the reasons that portraying an alien culture is so difficult is because we tend NOT to think about the things that make us normal. Instead, we (as humans/Americans) tend to think about those personality traits, social interactions, etc., that set us apart, make us individuals.
I found that whole idea generally fascinating. His concept is interesting to think about not only because it's true I think, but also because it taps into something that's profoundly _about_ living the writing life.
I remember Neil Gaiman saying in an interview I did with him for Science Fiction Chronicle (when it was still called that) that no moment in a writer's life is wasted because we're always NOTICING and taking mental notes to use later in a story. He said (and I'm paraphrasing, of course) that he sometimes felt guilty when he's at a funeral because instead of just being sad, part of him is always paying attention to how people are interacting, how they're going about their business, and, well, frankly, how WEIRD it all is.
Writing (in general, but also specifically speculative fiction) is about noticing how truly odd every day life really is. Mainstream writers have to portray the weirdness of the mundane in order to comment on it and to further illuminate the human condition. Speculative fiction writers have to do all that, plus extrapolate from all those social weirdnesses a future/magical universe that "rings true." In other words, one's aliens have to be as screwed up as humans are, only in their own way. They have to have their own cultural/personal analog to the dysfunction of Thanksgiving with the Family, you know?
As clichéd as my example is, that's still a very hard thing to do -- to give the alien his/her/its/their own f---ed up family, their own personal place in their society. Most of the time when humans encounter aliens in speculative fiction stories, we don’t meet the individuals. It's that whole Star Trek phenomenon of alien homogeny. The reader/viewer seems to only encounter perfect examples of the alien culture, that one individual creature who is living a life few of us really experience: a life in perfect harmony with the social norms, morals, etc.
Part of the difficulty is that the writer needs to establish what the alien culture is before they can show how a individual alien fits inside it and/or steps outside of it (is out of step with it?)... all without infodumping and through action/reaction, ie. the dreaded "showing."
I will interject here that I have never successfully written about The Alien, (unless you count writing about straight men as an alien experience for me as a lesbian.) So, I don’t fully understand how it’s done when it's done well.
I do know it when I see it, though. A couple of good examples, in my mind, of people who did it well would be our very own Eleanor Arnason in her story “Knapsack Poems.” The goxhat are not only truly alien, but the goxhat that we meet in the story stands inside/outside of her/his/its culture as an individual. The moral decision he/she/it makes regarding the abandoned child are not in keeping with the traditions of her/his/its people, yet it's not a break with tradition so much as a fortunate dysfunction. Similarly, David Levine's Hugo winning story (congrats, David!) “Tk’tk’tk” has an alien restaurateur who is inside/outside his culture as an individual.
Both of these stories manage to present the alien cultures norms through the eyes/filter of the individual characters, although in David’s story, the main character is a human who learns about himself from his various interactions with individual aliens on the planet he gets stuck on.
I'm sure there are other examples, but I've used both of these stories when teaching, so they spring quickest to mind. The point is that both authors manage convey the cultural norms of an alien society and an individual alien's personal reaction to their culture. An amazing feat, when you think about it. I don’t know how they did it, but I’ve become convinced that being an observer of society is a first step.
What do you think?
Monday, October 02, 2006
Cutting hurts, do it anyway
Muneraven made a comment about cutting material in comments and when I started to answer I realized it really deserves a front page post. Doug beat me to some of it, but I think there's more to add.
Cutting's always hard. So how do you go about it.
First, what Doug said. Anything that doesn't serve the story's core has to go and what the core is will vary by writer.
Second, cut big. The best lesson I ever had on that was in my first short story sale. Everyone in my writers group at the time agreed that the first half of the story was outstanding and that the second half was good, but that they didn't belong together. I ended up throwing away the ending (it's still around here somewhere) and writing a new one. It taught me to be brutal and cut big chunks where possible rather than nibbling around the edges.
Third, time and emotional distance help. One of my stories has sold to at least one nice professional market that paid me in advance before they folded and didn't publish it. That story was 8,000 words the first time out, but my writers group said it was flabby. I didn't see any flab, so I sent it out after making some of the other changes they suggested. No sales for one year and I didn't look at it at all in that time. At the end of the year I looked it over (annual review is something I do this for all shorts when I'm working the short markets). They were right. It was flabby. I cut 4,500 words and started sending in it back out. Got a few nibbles that said it needed some more motivational work for the characters. One year later I looked at it again. Added in 2,500 brand new words that covered some of the same ground the missing 4,500 had. Sold it to the next market. If you can't figure out where to cut, put it aside and come back to it in a year.
Fourth, sentence origami. My friend Mike Levy coined this phrase to describe taking sentences, sussing out the core meaning, and then refolding them to say the same thing with fewer words. I got rid of about 12,000 of the 18,000 words my editor wanted me to cut from WebMage that way. It can work wonders if you're careful, brutal, and diligent. About 1,000 of the words I chopped out of the short mentioned in my third point above went this way as well. Here's an example from a real story that was bought with the first version and published with the last: So I nodded my head in assent became So I nodded my head and then, I nodded.
Does anyone else have any suggestions for chopping the appendages off your darlings?
Cutting's always hard. So how do you go about it.
First, what Doug said. Anything that doesn't serve the story's core has to go and what the core is will vary by writer.
Second, cut big. The best lesson I ever had on that was in my first short story sale. Everyone in my writers group at the time agreed that the first half of the story was outstanding and that the second half was good, but that they didn't belong together. I ended up throwing away the ending (it's still around here somewhere) and writing a new one. It taught me to be brutal and cut big chunks where possible rather than nibbling around the edges.
Third, time and emotional distance help. One of my stories has sold to at least one nice professional market that paid me in advance before they folded and didn't publish it. That story was 8,000 words the first time out, but my writers group said it was flabby. I didn't see any flab, so I sent it out after making some of the other changes they suggested. No sales for one year and I didn't look at it at all in that time. At the end of the year I looked it over (annual review is something I do this for all shorts when I'm working the short markets). They were right. It was flabby. I cut 4,500 words and started sending in it back out. Got a few nibbles that said it needed some more motivational work for the characters. One year later I looked at it again. Added in 2,500 brand new words that covered some of the same ground the missing 4,500 had. Sold it to the next market. If you can't figure out where to cut, put it aside and come back to it in a year.
Fourth, sentence origami. My friend Mike Levy coined this phrase to describe taking sentences, sussing out the core meaning, and then refolding them to say the same thing with fewer words. I got rid of about 12,000 of the 18,000 words my editor wanted me to cut from WebMage that way. It can work wonders if you're careful, brutal, and diligent. About 1,000 of the words I chopped out of the short mentioned in my third point above went this way as well. Here's an example from a real story that was bought with the first version and published with the last: So I nodded my head in assent became So I nodded my head and then, I nodded.
Does anyone else have any suggestions for chopping the appendages off your darlings?
Back Cover Copy and Reader Expectation
During class we had the inevitable discussion of how critical it is to insert the main conflict into the first paragraph of your novel or short story, which led to the usual revelation regarding how long editors/agents give a manuscript under review (ten seconds is the average, I’ve heard.)
I have an incredibly thoughtful group of people this quarter, and where most times the discussion would have been over at this point. Yet someone on the group had the comment that they’d heard that if you’re going to kill the Sheriff you need to do it in the first chapter, but when he sat down and critically looked at the novels he was reading, the Sheriff didn’t die until somewhere in the middle of the book. He postulated that published writers were relieved of the necessity of an overt “hook” because the back cover copy set out the main conflicts for the reader.
Is he right?
In my opinion, the answer is a resounding no. I actually work quite hard to set down a fairly concrete “problem statement” (as I think Kelly coined it,] for each book in the opening paragraph, despite having written seven published novels to-date. I do this partly because having that sort of information up front (what’s at stake? What does this character stand to lose? Why should I care?) helps the reader stay focused on the point of the book, even when the narrative meanders (hopefully purposefully) into subplots.
However, my student is very astute. The back cover copy is essentially a hyped-up version of the main conflict. Very, very few readers enter into a relationship with a book without having read the back cover copy. In fact, that copy may be the single reason that the reader has plunked down their $6.99 US/$9.99 CAN investment in an author’s work.
Yet the author has no control over it.
In the case of my publisher, when I started, I never saw the back cover copy until I the ARC/galley arrived at my doorstep. These days I might get a courtesy copy of the back cover copy (and other supporting cover material) pre-production. But, I don’t sit in on meetings (and, yes, Virginia, these things are decided by committee). However, it is clear that my editor has input, and, in some cases the copy has been influenced by the book proposals that I’ve sent in (which should show you how important those dreaded synopses really are. If those aren’t clear, the back cover copy could be muddy or misleading too.).
In fact, in talking about this Shawn and I could both think of times when we were duped by back cover copy into expecting something from a book that it wasn’t. Or worse, key plot elements were revealed far too early and much of my experience as a reader was, in essence, waiting for the shoe to drop and for I what I perceived as the “real story” to start. And if I had to wait too long, I got frustrated and sometimes even stopped reading.
How do you deal with this as an author?
I think that the opposite of my student’s assumption is actually the truth. Because it’s so easy for the people in committee to misinterpret your theme/your main character’s conflict, it is extraordinarily worthwhile to put as much effort as possible into making those issues clear and up front.
Make it simple so no one -- not even the dreaded marketing department -- can mistake your intent.
What do others think? Ever had that experience where the book didn't match its cover copy??
I have an incredibly thoughtful group of people this quarter, and where most times the discussion would have been over at this point. Yet someone on the group had the comment that they’d heard that if you’re going to kill the Sheriff you need to do it in the first chapter, but when he sat down and critically looked at the novels he was reading, the Sheriff didn’t die until somewhere in the middle of the book. He postulated that published writers were relieved of the necessity of an overt “hook” because the back cover copy set out the main conflicts for the reader.
Is he right?
In my opinion, the answer is a resounding no. I actually work quite hard to set down a fairly concrete “problem statement” (as I think Kelly coined it,] for each book in the opening paragraph, despite having written seven published novels to-date. I do this partly because having that sort of information up front (what’s at stake? What does this character stand to lose? Why should I care?) helps the reader stay focused on the point of the book, even when the narrative meanders (hopefully purposefully) into subplots.
However, my student is very astute. The back cover copy is essentially a hyped-up version of the main conflict. Very, very few readers enter into a relationship with a book without having read the back cover copy. In fact, that copy may be the single reason that the reader has plunked down their $6.99 US/$9.99 CAN investment in an author’s work.
Yet the author has no control over it.
In the case of my publisher, when I started, I never saw the back cover copy until I the ARC/galley arrived at my doorstep. These days I might get a courtesy copy of the back cover copy (and other supporting cover material) pre-production. But, I don’t sit in on meetings (and, yes, Virginia, these things are decided by committee). However, it is clear that my editor has input, and, in some cases the copy has been influenced by the book proposals that I’ve sent in (which should show you how important those dreaded synopses really are. If those aren’t clear, the back cover copy could be muddy or misleading too.).
In fact, in talking about this Shawn and I could both think of times when we were duped by back cover copy into expecting something from a book that it wasn’t. Or worse, key plot elements were revealed far too early and much of my experience as a reader was, in essence, waiting for the shoe to drop and for I what I perceived as the “real story” to start. And if I had to wait too long, I got frustrated and sometimes even stopped reading.
How do you deal with this as an author?
I think that the opposite of my student’s assumption is actually the truth. Because it’s so easy for the people in committee to misinterpret your theme/your main character’s conflict, it is extraordinarily worthwhile to put as much effort as possible into making those issues clear and up front.
Make it simple so no one -- not even the dreaded marketing department -- can mistake your intent.
What do others think? Ever had that experience where the book didn't match its cover copy??
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