Charles Bukowski

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Charles Bukowski







You know, I think he's right.

As a book author, it's your responsibility...

As a book author, it's your responsibility to cast a vision for your book about the length and the appearance before you pitch the idea to a publisher.

Why? I'm not sure I even know what this means - are you? I'd agree that forward planning in relation to the length of your book or novel is relevant, yes, but the appearance? I think most publishers are intelligent enough to have their own vision(s).

A lot of writers get obsessed with the 'concept' surrounding their work rather than with the work itself. The look of the text, the font, the font sizes, spacing, use of white space, the title, chapter titles, or the lack of etc etc etc. Just write the book. Leave the marketing to someone else. If the book is good, it shouldn't need pitching very far now should it?

Organise your writing to flow in an easy-to-digest manner

Organise your writing to flow in an easy-to-digest manner.


Right - what does this writing 'tip' actually mean?
Does any writer who knows what they are trying to achieve actually set out to make the prose difficult to read? Really? Do they? I know some academics try to make their essays/books hard to read to 'keep the riff raff out', no really, they do, but the honest to goodness fiction writer? I don't think so. Obviously class, time you were born, how you were schooled, where you were schooled, whether or not you're writing in your first language amongst many, many other things, come into this.

My tip? Cull the adverbs and keep it as honest as it needs to be. No unnecessary words!

Authors@Google: from the Official Google Blog

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I have been reading The Official Google Blog for a couple of months now. I subscribed to it shortly after starting to use their personalised homepage and email services. A rather interesting post on Friday 27th April seems worthy of mention here as it is about authors.


Google invite some of the worlds leading authors to speak about their recently published books at Google's offices in the US and have expanded this programme to other offices throughout the Googlesphere. Imagine going to work and Martin Amis or Max Barry is speaking at lunch time! Fantastic huh?


If you're interested in watching one of these talks, you can do so on YouTube by getting on over to the Googletalks video archive at YouTube. There is also an index of videos at Google.
Don't forget you can subscribe both this blog and the google talks video feeds by clicking on the appropriate button.



The 'official' Official Google Blog: Authors@Google is available by clicking on this link.




All the best

Mark

Nokia memory dump - Why a writer needs a mobile phone.

I was recently diagnosed with CFS and as a result have a few issues (not problems) with memory.
I find myself searching for the correct word, that is sometimes just out of reach, quite regularly.
Similarly, I find myself wandering the supermarket wondering what I've come in for.
So I started to make lists, notes, reminders, aide memoires of all sorts.
First on bits of paper in my wallet - this became cumbersome and made my wallet very thick and uncomfortable to sit on.
Then I started buying small notebooks. Spiral bound at the top and with a piece of elastic attached to the back cover so I can fasten the thing shut. A bit like a police notebook.
From there I started using 3 x 5 index cards after reading about a thing called a Hipster pda, securing them with a big red bulldog clip I got from Staples.This was good. I liked it. But they became many, and they became dog eared and I hated that. Plus they didn't fit in my shirt or jacket pocket as easily or as snugly as my little notebook from Paperchase.
I then graduated to a real PDA. A Palm TX no less! This is good too, better even. It is much more immediate than booting up my laptop, but not quite as easy as using an index card and pen.

As a writer, I have ideas that I want to remember. On a daily basis. I wrote them down. I tapped them in. I've even phoned them home. Speech is the easiest, it simply has to be. So I've set up my Nokia 6070 as another repository of ideas. It is a great little phone. Fifty quid and has a radio and a camera with video capabilities. Not great quality but hey, it was fifty sheets. I use the camera to capture interesting images from all over the place, stuff I want to remember later or write about. If I wanted great pictures, I'd take a proper camera with me.
If I have an idea and I want to speak it, why pay to phone it home when the mobile in my pocket is a dictaphone too? I can record five minutes (I think) of continuous speech/noise/whatever into this gadget and then listen back later at my convenience. I can even beam the audio snippets into my laptop via the IR link.

Soon I won't have to think at all.

All invaluable for the writer I think.
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All the best,

Mark

www.markchambers.org.uk