Ever wake up and feel like the world has been bled dry of all meaning? That life is a meaningless puppet-show, a shadowdance on the walls of some dismal Platonic cave, and that every action you take is a pathetic whimper amidst the cosmic crash of chaos and catastrophe?

Really? You have? You poor bastard. My biggest problem is figuring out what to write on my blog.

I started out writing nice, long-ish personal pieces in this space. Recently, I gave the ol’ college try at publishing News of The Hour – three to five posts a day on current event topics that caught my fancy. It was an attempt to break out of a creative rut, get the juices flowing again. I didn’t want my online writing to become the same ol’ bloggy bullshit, a litany of petty grievances and amusing neuroses.

And it was great. Except that it sucked.

I don’t mean the content sucked. Well, some of it did. (They can’t all be pearls, people.) What sucked was sitting hunched over a computer several extra hours a day, churning out posts about the same shit that everyone else was talking about. What sucked was using my network of online friends – some of whom, in my more deluded moments, I think of as real, living people – as pawns in my quest for online self-promotion. I was tense, stressed, and grouchy. My shoulders ached; my eyes throbbed. Most of my important offline pursuits – drawing/painting, biking, eating well, going out – fell by the wayside.

Returning to that grind reminded me why I had abandoned it in the first place.

There’s no point to being online if I’m not a compelling person offline.  We all need time to mold ourselves into interesting people who can bring something unique to the table. I love to write. But I want what I write to be both entertaining and meaningful – to bring a perspective to the world that challenges, confuses, that makes people think. The Internet has enough junk information flooding its pipes on a daily basis; it doesn’t need another trickle of inanity.

Which is all to say that, if I’m silent for the next few days, chillax. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just giving some thought to which colors I want to splash on this infinite scrolling canvas.

Uncategorized blogging, plato, slavery, writing

I breathed a sigh of relief  this morning. The blurb in my inbox declared that publishers yearned to change the $10 price point for eBooks. Finally, I thought in my pre-caffeine naivete: a remedy to overcharging! $10 is a deal if you’re buying John Adams or The Family, which sell for a pretty penny even in paperback. But a Terry Pratchett novel that retails for $7.99 at Barnes & Noble? Yep, $10. Wasn’t the elimination of the printing press supposed to make books cheaper?

Oh, foolish, foolish Jay. Wired reports that publishers think $10 is too low. They want to jack up the price point for select titles – the same ones, I presume, that are already great deals. Not to make more money for themselves, of course. It’s all about paying the poor authors what they deserve. Hachette Book Group’s sound bite about why they want to pressure Amazon and other e-tailers to charge more for their wares is ingenious in its disingenuousness:

“In the long run this will enable Hachette to continue to invest in and nurture authors’ careers — from major blockbusters to new voices. Without this investment in our authors, the diversity of books available to consumers will contract, as will the diversity of retailers, and our literary culture will suffer.”

Spare us. Mainstream publishing doesn’t care about new voices unless they’re blockbusters. The midlist has been perishing for years, prior to the arrival of Internet The Business-Model Slayer. The blockbusters aren’t the next great authors of our generation. They’re trash factories – the Dan Browns and Stephenie Meyers. Publishers are drowning, and gouging consumers is their latest life raft.

Higher price points for eBooks will have one and only one effect: to slow their adoption just as the market is poised to take off. It’s galling when you realize that publishers want these prices, not to sell you a book, but as Cory Doctorow pointed out, to license it to you. You don’t own an eBook; you’re borrowing it for a fee. An Kindle or a Nook is a library fueled by your credit card.

Argh, I sound like a Luddite, I know. Which I’m not. I love the digital age, and I have high hopes that electronic publishing will kill the middleman and bring authors in closer contact with their readers. And we’re so close that we’re thousands of miles away. The adoption of eBooks is retarded by the restrictive licensing models, inability to share, and the cost of the readers. Hell, even I don’t want a Kindle yet. The Seattle Public Library still serves most of my book needs. They even offer some titles electronically. (I’m reading Jeff Sharlet’s The Family in a separate window on my laptop.)

But I’m more pessimistic than I used to be about Internet publishing. Some authors – the Doctorows of the world – will thrive at online promotion and distribution. Many authors will prefer to focus on their writing, and let others handle the messy legwork. As for publishers? They’ll stay fixated on blockbusters, because “the Long Tail” is bullshit.  As Anita Elberse demonstrated, media companies continue to make the bulk of their profits off of their hits.

Two years ago, New York Magazine ran a long piece by Boris Kachka on whether the publishing industry is ready for a pine casket. To put it mildly, it’s in deep shit. Sales are down; trash is triumphing over talent; retail outlets are shrinking; employees are miserable. Publishing will live, Kachka concludes, but as a pygmy version of its former Amazonian glory. I think he’s right. Writing and reading will evolve, shaped by the Internet and digital publishing. Publishers will stick around to skin profits off trash and, perhaps, promote the odd genius or two.

Yeah, that’s my best-case scenario. And as the impending eBook price war demonstrates, the power-structure will fight like hell on its way down.

Uncategorized amazon.com, books, ebooks, kindle, publishing, seattle public library, writing

It amazes me that I managed to whittle away my teen years reading the likes of Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Stephen R. Donaldson, and Douglas Adams, but never once read anything by Terry Pratchett. It’s like living in Manhattan and never visiting the Statue of Liberty. Which I also did, so, bad example. My point remains. No matter how many times I heard the word “Discworld,” I was determined to remain ensconced in sloth. I didn’t pick up the first book in that series until this last September, almost two years after Pratchett was diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare form of early Alzheimer’s.I instantly regretted the delay.

Pratchett is brilliant. Yes, he can be wearing; reading too much Discworld in one sitting is like drowning in an ocean of wisecracks. There are times I pity his poor wife for having to live with such a chronic smartass for 42 years. But every time I go back to a Discworld novel, I’m amazed, not just at Pratchett’s taut and humorous writing, but the rambling, frolicking twists of his plots. It may be, like most writers, that Pratchett feels like producing each book is a root canal. But they read like Mardis Gras. Every time I read Pratchett, I fall back under his spell. That I didn’t discover this talent until his struggle with Alzheimer’s strikes me as a cruel and unusual punishment inflicted by life.

Pratchett is making news again by asking that the United Kingdom legalize assisted suicide, and make him the first test case. With his usual wit and wisdom, Pratchett documents what an ordeal it was for him just to compose his Richard Dimbleby lecture, and the slow but inexorable nature of his illness:

You see, the disease moves slowly, but you know it’s there. Imagine that you’re in a very, very slow motion car crash. Nothing much seems to be happening. There’s an occasional little bang, a crunch, a screw pops out and spins across the dashboard as if we’re in Apollo 13. But the radio is still playing, the heater is on and it doesn’t seem all that bad, except for the certain knowledge that sooner or later you will be definitely going headfirst through the windscreen.

Contemplate that. This man may wake up one day to find that he is no longer himself. What’s worse, he may suffer occasional flickers of awareness that he isn’t himself before sinking back into the morass of lost self-identity. The Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge working together in committee couldn’t devise a more devastating torture for a man of words and imagination.

Pratchett tackles those who claim assisted suicide would be abused and used to kill off the old and infirm, noting that no recorded cases of forced euthanasia exist in the Western world. Just the opposite – relatives insist on keeping their loved ones “alive” even when they are, for all intents and purposes, dead (*cough*Terri Schiavo*cough*). In the West, we’d rather that people suffer than allow them control over their own exits.

Good for Terry Pratchett. Not that I won’t mourn the man’s loss, but it’s his life, and his decision. We’re going to lose him to this disease years before we lose him to the calcareous Reaper. He ought not be forced to fumble through it on his own, enlisting friends and relatives who leave themselves open to prosecution by moral scolds.

Here in Washington state, physician-assisted suicide has been legal since the last election. It was first used befy a woman with pancreatic cancer, a vile and virulent cancer whose late-stage prognosis approaches fatalistic. I only wish all people who are facing a slow, painful and de-humanizing demise had the same freedom.

Mr. Pratchett: you’ll probably never read this, but if you do, be happy to know that after your death, millions of us will continue to celebrate your life.

Uncategorized alzheimers, assisted suicide, authors, books, terry pratchett, writing

You know those cockteasing blog posts where the author goes on about how her life is topsy-turvy, but she can’t tell you about any of  it, because then her best friend would grab a voodoo doll and pushpins, or her mother-in-law would seek a license for automatic weaponry, or her husband would sulk and pout and do even fewer dishes?

This was almost one of those posts.

There but for the grace of Blog go I.

This “writing” thing is an iffy business. It’s not a dog, but a cat. It doesn’t come when you call, but rather when it’s damn well good and ready. Sane people avoid getting hit by lightning. Creative people stand in an open field with a metal rod held aloft while shouting, “GIMME YOUR BEST SHOT, MOTHERFUCKER!!!”

Some writing days are better than others. On those days, topics overflow like manna from heaven – or at least like manna from a high-volume bakery. These are usually the days when my mind and my life are relaxed enough to observe the helter-skelter swirling about me. I’ll see something like a convention of reptile Truthers, and my mind will race. Or I’ll be walking through Capitol Hill and notice that the Western Washington headquarters of the Episcopal Church has a parking spot reserved for its Caterer, and the ensuing thoughts (“How long do you have to work at being pious before you get your meals delivered?”) will provide the germ for a short story.

If I’m lucky, these ideas trip me into autopilot  and it’s off to the races: words find other words; like-minded thoughts gather and swarm with their fellows; the path on which I began meanders, twisting its way toward an unexpected conclusion.

Eventually, a finished work emerges. No one is more amazed by this than I.

Other days are like…well, now. Life is so busy that there’s no time to soak it in and let my mind ramble. Eventually, I notice that I haven’t posted anything since the invention of ARPANET. The desire to write a long, rambling post about the happy chaos of my daily grind – to talk about something, anything – kicks in.

The title of this post is a lie. (The best lies are the big ones.) I’m always a potential topic. What self-respecting writer doesn’t self-examine? But writing about my life in real time too often seems shallow and perverse. I prefer the benefit accorded by perspective. I’d rather catch on that my latest misadventure is a bad idea before the rest of the world does.

So I avoid that desire to ramble like the plague. There are stories here, but I’ll share them when they’ve ripened. Until then, I’m grabbing my metal rod. It looks like rain today.

Uncategorized creativity, inspiration, writing

For years I have feared writing fiction, even though it’s been my first love since I was wee. My life is punctuated with “fiction fits.” Every three to six months, I’ll take a spin at jotting down the weird ideas that have cycled through my brain since age 12. Halfway through a draft the task feels so daunting that I throw up my hands and run screaming to a room without computers. (Or paper.)

Yes, the mechanics of character and plot and dialogue can feel overwhelming. But there’s something deeper. My fiction voice feels…un-me. It comes out heavy and morose, like a royal We who is clearly not amused.

Until I read Stephen King’s On Writing, it hadn’t occurred to me that my problem wasn’t writing, but reading. King is emphatic that great writers are (duh) avid readers:

Good writing…teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling….Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing – of being flattened, in fact – is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. (p. 141)

Problem is, my reading over the past few years has barely hovered above flatline. I blame the Internet. And Amazon. (Wait, what? The Kindle’s down to $249? Hmm…technically a man can get by on one kidney, right?) With little new writing to influence me, my fiction voice imitates the fantasy works I read as a kid – Moorcock, Donaldson, Zelazney, et. al. Excellent writers, sure. But that was almost 20 years ago. In the interim, I’ve been writing nonfiction, and have crafted a voice that’s more humorous and relaxed. Whenever I return to fiction, it’s like stepping in the Wayback Machine. Without any rollicking, humorous fiction writers to influence me, my prose drips of musty caverns and Gothic architecture.

I’m still reading “heavy” fiction (The Time Traveller’s Wife and The Lovely Bones are both on my docket), but I’m leavening it with a health dose of Terry Pratchett, Carl Hiaasen, Chris Buckley, and L. Sprague de Camp. And I’m reading constantly. A two-book-a-week minimum. The investment is already paying off with a few stories that may (gasp!) cross the first-draft finish line.

Not that they’ll be any good. But they’ll be done – in rough, at least. For this decades-long fictionaphobe, that’s a point of pride.

Uncategorized fantasy, fiction, stephen king, writing

Imagine that you’re Moses. (Not saying that you’re that psychotic. But, if you are psychotic, the following exercise might be easier). God has summoned you up a giant mountain and given you 15 Ten Commandments – ten iron-clad rules meant to govern human behavior until the arrival of Christ, at which point humanity will bicker incessantly about whether to chuck the fuckers or display them outside of an Alabama courthouse.

Only, instead of writing them down for you, God insists you chisel them into stone yourself.

Can you imagine how the course of human history might have changed? Without the benefit of those Commandments, mankind would have spent the past 4,000 years killing, stealing, and coveting your hot wife. Because you know you wouldn’t have bothered to hang around a mountain for a week or more, painstakingly banging every letter of every word into a block of rock, you lazy sack of shit. God wasn’t stupid. He knew that if He didn’t produce a finished product  Moses would say “Fuck this shit,” and go whoring and gambling instead.

The thing is, we 21st-century sophisticates still employ a form of etching into stone. It’s called writing in cursive.

Cursive is a form of self-expression as pretty as it is cruel and inhumane. As an art form, it’s beautiful; as an efficient means of storing information, it’s an abomination. It’s the 21st century, for Frederick’s sake. I can communicate more quickly via text message, using the 12 keys of my cell phone, than I ever could putting pen to paper. Even the lamest two-fingered hunter-and-pecker, hunched painfully over a computer keyboard, is a cheetah compared to the cursive snail.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war. It is Humanity vs. Cursive.

The good news? Humanity is winning. Cursive is on the decline, and the arguments for keeping it are threadbare at best:

For [Professor Cheryl] Jeffers, cursive writing is a lifelong skill, one she fears could become lost to the culture, making many historic records hard to decipher and robbing people of “a gift.”

By the same argument, every child should be fluent in Ancient Greek by Grade 9. I mean, seriously – when was the last time you read the correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in the original cursive?

If schools want to teach cursive, let ‘em…in art class. The only people who still regard cursive as a crucial life skill are people who were brainwashed in their pre-Internet youth into regarding it as a mark of education. Me? I discovered word processing on the Apple IIe in 7th grade, and never looked back. Which explains why my handwriting is at its best as clear as a doctor’s, and at its worst resembles something scrawled by a blind monkey with three missing fingers.

If I ever find myself stranded on a desert island with no cell coverage, unable to write a legible note-in-a-bottle…well, I’ll give the cursive zealots a point. Until that day? Die, cursive. Die like the archaic relic of the past that you are.

Uncategorized computers, cursive, God, moses, writing