Music: The Cincinnati Sound (Book Overview)

During the mid- and late 1960s, I was a bass player for several local rock bands (aka garage bands) in the Cincinnati area. (That’s me on the right in the photo below, working a Fender Precision bass.)

Like the majority of my peers, I drifted away from music after a few years, and for a variety of reasons. I sometimes regret that, but it’s just as well; the demand for bands is a tiny fraction of what it was then, and the pay is mostly poor—even less than a writer’s pay. But it was all a grand experience. Along with thousands of other teenage musicians around the country, I was living in a world that our parents, teachers, and other adults couldn’t see—let alone enter. And we made it up as we went along.

I managed to give the drugs a miss, and I remember it all well, belying the breezy aphorism that “if you can remember it you weren’t there.” I have ambitions of writing a book on the experience (the thieving disc jockeys, the big names, the rivalries, and camaraderie, the groupies, the hangers-on, the lies, minor adventures, and all the rest of the tragic and comedic experiences), but that’s on the back burner for now.

In the meantime, someone else has put together a book that offers a wonderful overview of popular and country music in Cincinnati in the 1960s, as well as the two decades preceding it. The Cincinnati Sound, by Randy McNutt (Arcadia Press, 2007) brings the rock, soul, rockabilly, R&B, country, and bluegrass music, musicians, and singers who were part of the Cincinnati scene from 1940 through 1970.

With photos, text, and ephemerae, McNutt brings to life such famous performers as Doris Day, Andy Williams, and Rosemary Clooney, all of whom got their starts in Cincinnati in the 1940s. He also introduces us to a number of upwardly-mobile acts for whom Cincinnati (and, usually, WLW) was an important way-station or stopover. Among these were Chet Atkins, Grandpa Jones, Merle Travis, et numerous al. Also on the just passing through list was Hank Williams, who recorded “Lovesick Blues” in Cincinnati, along with James Brown, who recorded many of his hits at Cincinnati’s King Records, as did Moon Mullican, Bobby Bare, Hankshaw Hawkins, and others.

In more recent memory, a goodly number of R&B, blues, soul, country, and rock musicians came from or got their starts in Cincinnati. These include the Isley Brothers, Lonnie Mack, the Lemon pipers (remember “Green Tambourine?”), the Casinos, and Billy Joe Royal. Sacred Mushroom veteran Larry Goshorn was part of the Pure Prairie League, and more than a few Cincinnati musicians left to staff other nationally prominent groups.

This book is a real trip back time for anyone who was ever a musician or singer in Cincinnati—or anywhere else, for that matter. The 200-odd photos are real treasures, and many of them have never been published. In addition to appealing to music fans and musicians, The Cincinnati Sound deserves a place on every reader’s regional history shelf.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Loss Leader E-Book Readers

Remember King C. Gillette? He's the guy who came up with disposable blades for the safety razor. The razor that used them was fairly expensive, but Gillette sold them for little or no profit in order to create a continuing market for his ultra-thin stamped (as opposed to forged) blades.

With the cost of technology constantly dropping, I wonder if we'll see someone assume the same role in the E-book world. Sell the reader at little or no profit, and make the profit on content sales. This would overcome one of the main barriers to E-books via a reader: the cost of the reader.

This isn't a new idea, I'm sure. But how about implementing it this way: Publishers distribute the reader and sell the content they produce. And with a proprietary format. Which would put the publishers in a position similar to that of selling hardcopy books. The reader takes the place of producing hardcopy books.

There's the matter of DRM, which a proprietary format could take care of. Allow each E-book to be read on two or three readers, to satisfy publishers and to accommodate readers who like to loan out books. If anyone else wants to sell E-books (a distributor, for example), they would have to agree to provide readers on the same basis as the publishers.

I'm sure most publishers would prefer restricting each E-book to one reader, but they would have to permit at least two readers, in case the owner's reader breaks or is lost.

I don't see this being implemented any time soon, if ever, because it will require a significant investment on the part of publishers. And it would be a gamble.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Reading Glasses: An Alternative E-Book Format

I’ve seen lots of proposals for ebooks, some better than others, and each having this or that problem. I started thinking about them recently when I was reading a book on my laptop. It was all-text, html, and it wasn’t long before I got a stiff neck, something that usually happens when I read. (It’s the legacy of some long-ago accidents.) I might have printed out the pages, but I was low on paper.

So I changed position quite a bit, moved the laptop here and there. I couldn’t get nearly as comfortable as I might have with a conventional book, but I plodded through 100 pages or so okay. As I read I kept visualizing myself reading the book at hand with various styles of readers I’ve seen here and there. Then the thought came to me: “reading glasses.”

No, not vision correction, but eyeglasses whose lenses were replaced with tiny screens onto which book pages could be projected. Call the gadget “reading glasses,” of course.

It’s an idea that Hugo Gernsback might have come up with back in the 1920s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if old Hugo didn’t propose it at some point in one of his early 20-century radio or science magazines. I know he designed glasses with miniature television screens.

This has been worked on, and I can see it as a real product: reading glasses into which you plug a book stored in some small media. Or maybe book text would be downloadable to the reading glasses.

What about preloaded, disposable reading glasses? Or not disposable: you read the book then sell the used “book” on eBay. Or trade it to a friend for another book. If you limit the capacity of a pair of reading glasses to that of a large book, bookstores and libraries might sell/loan a book out to anyone with reading glasses. There would be a small fee, and publishers and authors would share in the proceeds equally, after the dispensing operation takes its cut. The 50-50 publisher/author split is fair, since the publisher isn’t going to any extra effort here.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Authors and Book Covers

Blogging Heroes is completed. My part, that is; it's now in the hands of production. I noticed that Joe Wikert has posted a larger version the final cover at his blog. I like it.

I'm often asked how much input authors have in the design of a book's cover. I get the impression that a lot of readers believe that the author of a nonfiction book or novel gets to dictate or create the cover. Actually, it's rare that the author determines what the cover will be. Most writers aren't artists (really bad comic art and mechanical drawing are about my speed), and it's the publisher's prerogative to decide what the cover will be, since the cover not so much a part of the content as it is a marketing element.

And there's the fact that book designers and artists have a lot more experience than most authors at this sort of thing. (Except for the occasional artist-turned-writer, like Stephen Hickman.)

I did get to dictate the cover for one of my books, PC Confidential. I suggested that the cover be made to look like a pulp detective magazine or dime novel cover, incorporating computers. So the cover shows a 1940s stereotypical detective at a computer, with a woman in the background looking very shocked, like this:

Interestingly, though I never met the artist (someone around San Francisco) he ended up painting a detective who looks very much like one of the cops here in Oxford.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

The "Best" Training for Writing a Novel?

Have a look at this blog post over at WritersWrite.com. It has to do with whether technical writing (such as writing a computer book, or documentation to this or that) is "real" writing. A link in that article goes to a piece in the Deseret News in which a Professor Hatch (a former technical writer) contends that journalism and technical writing are the best training for writing a novel.

Maybe my viewpoint is skewed, because I've done so many kinds of writing, but I disagree. Writing--not a specific kind of writing--is the best training for writing a novel. People are not going to be good novelists because they were good tech-writers or journalists; they are going to be good novelists because they are good novelists. Writing a novel requires more than skill with language and observation, although any writing experience helps.

If Professor Hatch or anyone else is bothered that much by people who say they're not "real" writers, why not just do a general-interest nonfiction book (if not a novel) to bolster your credentials for the people in the high seats? For too many people, if they don't see it with the other books in Walmart or the local bookstore, it's not "real."
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

We're Losing Civilization's Backups

Ever notice that various pieces of the civilized landscape are slowly disappearing? Pay telephones are getting really hard to find. And clocks, those big advertising pieces that formerly graced store windows across the country or provided a public service outside banks and department stores--those are all but gone. The odd time/temp digital displays are still around, but there are few new ones going up.

I notice the new buildings at Miami University (and several at the University of Cincinnati) are sans clocks. None in the classrooms, and at French Hall at U.C. there are two clocks in offices, with dozens of other rooms entirely clockless. I expect this is echoed in new construction everywhere.

The gradual fading of those once-ubiquitous accouterments of daily life is the result of cheap technology. Timepieces are cheap, and they're added to just about every piece of electronic equipment you can think of. (Pretty much the same clock chip in everything).) And "everyone" has a cell phone. (I have one, though I've never activated it; at this point in my life there's nothing I can think of that requires me to be accessible no matter where I am, unless someone I know needs a blood transfusion from a universal donor.)

Anyway, those once-common pieces of civilized landscape (public clocks and pay telephones) aren't the only things gone missing. New buildings are going up without water fountains. How much has that to do with the popularity of bottled water? And what's next? Will street signs stop being replaced, or even put up, as GPS-driven maps become more common? Will catering to people who can't afford GPS systems, cell phones, and bottled water become too much trouble?

I think we need our backup systems. If some cell towers go out or there's some sort of EMP event, it'll be nice to have public landline phones for emergencies. For those who just can't afford cell phones, pay phones are vital. And people forget watches, and some just can't buy 'em. Finally, those computer maps aren't perfect. Look up the "center" of Oxford, Ohio, with MapQuest; it's a one-block, dead-end street on the edge of town. Weather maps used by local television stations (all provided cost-effectively by some "accurate" national service) sometimes show towns 50 miles and a state away from their real locations. And routing systems take you 60 miles out of your way because they ignore local roads, or have them in the wrong place. MapQuest still hasn't changed errors I reported to them 10 years ago. (I suspect that southern California MapQuest maps and directions are the only onez that are perfect, because the people who use MapQuest use those.)

Anyway, let's keep the big clocks going, and pay telephones in place. And give us paper maps that are accurate. Don't kill the backups because you can make more money without them. Look what happened with the railroads; they were a good backup for personal transportation, but it was possible to make more money trucking. And now we have a personal transportation system that grows more costly every day--and no backup.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

A Blog is a Book is a Blog ...

The blog/book hybrid seems to have become a successful phenomenon. The early entries in this sub-genre include The Long Tail, Naked Conversations, and Lifehacker--each of which is worthwhile, and each of which benefited greatly from the novelty factor. That is, each grabbed a lot of interest because of blog affiliation/origin. (These books stand on their own and would have done okay without the blogs--though not as well.)

But what happens when "everyone" is turning their blog into a book? I think that will dilute the blog-book hybrid concept. It will probably be like disks and CDs with computer books. Blogs will be created for books on any pretext, and the public will become jaded and numb to the fact that there's a blog to go with the latest [whatever] book by [whomever]. Then readers will go back to evaluating books as books.

But I suspect some bad books will be published because they are linked to blogs.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Something Different: PostSecret

Some of you are familiar with PostSecret. For those who aren't, it's a site that displays homemade post cards that tell secrets. People make cards with illustrations of their choice and write their secrets on them, and send them to Frank Warren, who runs the PostSecret blog. It started as a community art project, but has grown into something of an institution.

PostSecret doesn't accept advertising; that would dilute the content. It's almost pure content, and Warren treats the secrets with respect--which is one reason he's received tens of thousands of them. The secrets that Warren receives cover just about the total range of human experience. Most are works of art in miniature—many rough, some collages. A few are photographs “I quit karate because of a panic attack,” one person confesses. We assume the writer is a woman because the words are written across a photo of a woman in a karate gi, her face obscured. Another submitter assures the world, “I no longer look out for high places to hang myself from when I walk down the street.” An image of a Norman Rockwell painting is labeled, “My prom date was gay. I pretended not to know.” Mysteriously, an early photo of the Beatles is captioned, “I sometimes still wish I had had an abortion.” Pick a card, any card: It could be heartbreaking, terrifying, disgusting, inspirational, or hilarious. Or it might be lustful or incomprehensible. Each one tells a story—or stories. Each one could inspire dozens of new stories, fictional or real.

I interviewed Frank Warren for my upcoming book, Blogging Heroes, and I'm sure you'll find his story fascinating. In the chapter about PostSecret I note that he calls himself "an accidental artist." This is probably the best description of what Frank Warren is doing with PostSecret, week in and week out. Have a look at the PostSecret blog for yourself. There are 20 new secrets posted every Sunday.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Quotable Quotes Department

I tuned in Charlie Rose on one of my local PBS stations last night, and there sat Esther Dyson. "This should be interesting," I thought--and it was, save for Charlie tromping on her statements now and then. He would ask a question, and as Esther began answering interrupt her to "clarify" the question--which didn't need clarification. Anyway, the quotes:

(Anent social networking) "People now want to spread their presence around the world. "

"If Google was self-aware what would it say?"

"There’s diabetes, which is too much sugar. Then there’s information diabetes, which is too much pablum."

--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Upcoming Blog Posts

In case anyone is wondering, I will get around to writing parts 2 and 3 of "Correspondence Courses for Writers" Real Soon Now.


I also intend to write about the Incredible Disappearing Editor (to balance out my earlier piece on procrastinating writers). And I'll continue with the interview advice, too.

I still have the editing work on Blogging Heroes to do, and I'm looking to buy another car. The Ford Windstar (never buy one of those!) is gone, literally dragging a wheel as it went, and the Jeep has an exhaust leak and a bad alterntator. (But it sure is nice when the big snows come, so I guess I'll yank the alternator and swap it out for a replacement at AutoZone, since the one I bought for it three years ago was one of the "lifetime warranty" jobs. They really make out on that in the long run, you know, as only a minority of the lifetime warranty buyers remember they have a lifetime warranty when the part breaks--those who haven't already gotten rid of the vehicle in question, that is.) Maybe a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry this time ...

Q the Dog got a haircut, finally. She had collie-length hair, but it was just too much in the heat. Took her two days to get used to it, and now she's happy again, runninig around grinning.. The outdoor cats (there are no indoor cats), suspicious that they may have missed something, are giving everyone sullen and reproachful looks.
Write on!
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

I'm Back (sort of) and I'm Late!

There several posts I intended to write over the past two weeks, but I had to write instead. That is, complete a book that was past it's deadline. (That sounds so much better than "I'm late!")

Which reminds me of conversation I had with an editor, Meredith Mark, 20 years ago or so, regarding a book that I was going to write, then waited a year to start. We were discussing the book and I was bemoaning the fact that I felt I really should have written the book a year earlier. Not that it was due, or even scheduled. But I finally had started writing it, and Meredith pointed out that perhaps the reason I hadn't written the book sooner was becauase I couldn't write it at that time.

I bristled for a second, thinking she was impugning my ability, then realized what she was saying. "Yeah, you're right," I told her. I wasn't the same person a year ago."

Which I bring up to support some advice I offer some writers: Don't get too bent out of shape if that book (or story, etc.) just isn't coming along. Maybe you just can't write it now--but you will be able to write it later, when you're the right person.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Wave of the Future?

As just about everyone knows, blogging is all the rage. It's a big enough phenomenon that the Wall Street Journal covered it (and got the facts wrong), so it's Official Mainstream.

While blogs are hot, there's something new developing that will

http://stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog/

Are These Champion Blog Readers?

How many blogs do you read? Three or four (my speed), 50, 100 or more. Check out this post for a sampling of how many feeds are in the readers of some well-known and busy bloggers. It's by Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ, who was interested in the distillation of some my research for Blogging Heroes.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Mark Twain on Writing

"Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for."

"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."

Writing Aphorisms (Writing, Sex, and Rejection)

Over the years, I've collected a good number of aphorisms or sayings having to do with writing. I've also created a few. Here are some samples:

"Writing is like sex. When we're not doing it, we're thinking about it, talking about it, looking forward to it, or recovering from it." –Pat Cadigan

"Writing is not easy; having written is." –Michael A. Banks

"A rejection is an opportunity to sell to a different market." –Michael A. Banks


--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright 2007, Michael A. Banks, Patricia K. Cadigan

Editing Interviews and "the F-Word"

I have probably been interviewed more times than I have been an interviewer. But I know well from both ends how comments can be somehow transformed between tape recorder or notes and final publication. As an interview subject I am always careful to speak slowly and offer quotes that will (I hope) read well. I write down quotes for the reporter's use. I figure that if I'm not careful in what I say, the interviewer will end up writing what he thought I said, rather than what I said.

When I interview someone, I always ask the subject if it's okay to "clean up" some of the quotes, mainly by adding punctuation to eliminate confusing run-on and fragmentary sentences (although I may move sentences, too). But I promise to retain the sense and meaning of the original words, and I follow through on that promise. It's a courtesy that I haven't always been afforded as an interview subject, and one that you would do well to offer when you interview someone.

What about editing "objectionable" content or words? I ran into this when doing an interview with the late Martin Caidin, which turned into one of my favorite pieces--an article/interview in Writer's Digest.

The problem with quoting Caidin was that he always said what he meant, in the exact way he wanted to say it. And he used "colorful" language--just the sort of language that you might expect from a man who had, among other things, broken just about every bone in his body at one time or another in airplane crashes, faced a Bolvian firing squad, and crossed the Atlantic in a PBY Catalina. To him, "fucking" was an just adjective, like "sweet" or "ugly."

The editor, Bill Brohaugh, and I dithered over using every word of some really great quotes, worrying that doing so might offend a good many of the readers. In the end, we let all the colorful adjectives and nouns stay. It turned out to be a good decision; if we hadn't let Caidin speak in his own words, the profile would have lost some of the essence of his character, and thus its effectiveness.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright 2007, Michael A. Banks

One Way to Get a Job Writing a Magazine Column

I've written columns for several different types of magazines--fan magaiznes, Fantasy Modeling (one of Starlog's mags), writers' magazines, and in several computer magazines, like Windows and PCM Magazine.
In every case but one, I was invited to write the column. The exception was my first column, which was in Computer Shopper.

Those of you who remember Computer Shopper (and I mean the classic Computer Shopper, on newsprint, before Ziff-Davis messed it up) will know what I mean when I say things were kind of wacky there. It was as near a clone as possible to something called Camera Shopper, published out of the Melbourne, Florida, area. The magazine was edited by a crusty old guy named Stan Veit.

(Stan was something of a pioneer in computer retailing, in New York City, and his autobiographical tome, Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, is a must-read. )

I had been reading the magazine since its beginnings, and in 1985 I decided the magazine ought to have a column about PC communications and the online world. So, I wrote two sample columns and sent them to the magazine's editor, about whom I knew nothing other than this name, Stan Veit. I included a cover letter offering a column like these each month.

I had sold articles and reviews to Stan before. In fact, up until them Stan had bought everything I sent him. I never queried; I just wrote something I thought fit the magazine and sent it in. A couple of months later, a check would arrive, and eventually my work would appear in the magazine. But I never really communicated with Stan. The whole thing seemed natural enough to me, since Stan was somewhat notorious for his unconventional approach to running a magazine.

I heard nothing about my column submissions for seven weeks. One day the phone rang; I pikced it up and the gravelly voice of Stan Veit roared. "Banks! Where the hell's the next column?"

I almost blurted out, "What column? Nobody said I had a column!" Instead, I said, "Oh! I was getting ready to send it out today."

As it turned out, Stan had put my columns in the next two issues--the first column in an issue that would be out within a week. Now nearing the deadline for the third issue ahead, he needed my column. Which is why he called. Details like notifying me that I had a column were unimportant; he needed that column.

So I wrote the column and sent it in the next day. As it turned out, the column ran for six years. The last few years it paid a thousand a month. How it came to an end is another story, for a later post.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copryight © 2007, Michael A. Banks

On Writing When One is Ill, Sick, or in Pain ...

Yesterday I took a “break” because the book chapter I was writing was turning into drudgery. I figured that was because I had been too focused on it for too long. I didn’t give a thought to the sinus headache or kidney stone-level back pains I was experiencing at the time. Nor did I take into consideration that fact that I hadn’t eaten anything all day because of the pain.

During that break I wrote a post about laptops and seating and ... well, it was bad. So I deleted it, and my apologies to those who have this blog on their RSS feeds.

I’ve written when I was ill before, but never when I had so much pain. Normally, if i write when I'm ill, my work is usually shot-through with typos, but it still follows a theme and makes sense. Not this time.

I think I’ll stop trying to write when I’m sick.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Correspondence Courses for Writers, Post 1 of 2

So What About Correspondence Schools for Writers?

Is it true that Stephen King took a correspondence course in fiction writing? Seems to me I read that somewhere--or maybe heard it said, though not by King. Larry Niven says he took the Writer’s Digest School course, though he didn’t complete it. Anyway, I get asked about correspondence courses for writers now and then and I know there are a good number of people are curious about them—often because they’re thinking about signing up for one. Stick with me and I’ll tell you quite a bit about correspondence schools in general, the Famous Writers’ School scandal, who teaches writing courses by mail, what they cost, and exactly what the student goes through—in three parts.

I’m not going to argue the question of whether writing can be taught. Nor do I buy into the “Those who can ... /Those who can't ...” crap. I’ve written several dozen published books (fiction and nonfiction), three dozen short stories, and going on two thousand magazine and other nonfiction pieces. Plus some radio scripts. I’ve taught writing (by correspondence and at writers’ conferences and in universities--both credit and non-credit courses and seminars), and some of my students have been published. I know people who have taken courses from other instructors, and succeeded. So, it can work. Whether it does depends on the student.

I think I’ve done everything there is to do with correspondence courses for writers. About 30 years ago I took one—and it got the idea of plot into my skull. A few years later I taught the same course (kind of like piecework by mail). And sometime in the late 1980s I helped design a new course in short-story writing.

So, are these things worth taking? Yes, though they are overpriced. But those I know about are worthwhile. (I’ll get to which courses I know about in a bit.)

There was a time when Famous Writers’ School and the Famous Artists’ School gave the whole arts correspondence course business a bad reputation. It seems that each had some big-name people on their “staffs.” Rod Serling was listed as being with the Famous Writers’ School, for example. (And may have remained on the staff after he was dead, I’m not sure.) The truth was, none of these people taught the courses, nor had anything much to do with them; the story is that the Famous Company just rented their names. I heard that what staff there was, wasn’t of sterling quality, but I don’t know that for sure.

And, although you had to take a "test" before you were accepted, the school had a reputation for accepting anyone, no matter how poor their writing. Apparently the test was simply a gateway to more intensive marketing.

Government agencies eventually got on to the outfit, and that was that. Other writing correspondence schools seemed to fade away for a while, although more than one general school (like the National Radio Institute) offered writing courses by mail.

But that was a long time ago and, for some people, far away. The current offerings I find in the writers’ magazines, like Writer’s Digest School (WDS) and The Longridge Writers' Group, are legit. Again, they’re overpriced, and the instructors are underpaid (which, to me, is more the crime). But they’re taught by writers who are currently publishing in their fields. As noted, I taught a WDS short story writing course for a while, and at the time I was published science fiction and detective stories, and novels. (SF and fantasy fans will be intersted to know that Barry Malzberg and others in the SF field have also taught these courses.)

That's the overview. Again, "Those who can .../Those who can't ..." is crap. Stay tuned; I'll get back to this in a few days.
(Addendum: It's been a few days: Click here for the second part of this.)
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Typewriter Memories ...

Hey, remember typewriters? Maybe you took Typing 1 in high school for an easy half-credit, like I did. I finished the semester with a C-minus and figured I’d never use a typewriter again.

Boy, was I wrong about that!

I wrote my first two published books on a portable manual typewriter. A used Smith-Corona Skywriter, to be exact. It had a steel cover that popped off to reveal a very low-profile machine whose platen rested at the same level as the top of the machine. It was about 2-1/2” tall all the way around—except for the fold-down carriage return lever, which stuck up another quarter inc.

I’d bought this at a yard sale in 1971, largely because I liked compact gadgets of all kinds, and this was the smallest typewriter I’d ever seen. The price was $12.50, the amount the seller said some recent repairs had cost her.

After I took the typer home, it became apparent that the shop that did the “repairs” had cheated her. The ribbon rewind didn't work; I had to stick a pencil in the take-up reel and rewind it every few pages.

But that wasn’t the machine’s only drawback. Despite my less-than-stellar performance in high school, I was still capable of typing fast enough to cause key-jams every couple of minutes. And my big hands on the small keyboard resulted in lots of typos. Which meant stopping to apply Liquid Paper, let it dry, and hope the overtyping would come out legible.

If not, I had to retype the entire page. I retyped a lot of pages, anyway. As I worked I was constantly finding flaws in my prose or the structure of the story or article I was writing. This usually meant I had to go back three or four pages, make some critical changes or additions, then and retype everything from there.

Between those and other logistical problems I’m surprised that I didn’t give up the idea of writing for publication. But I persisted, and soon was writing well enough that most first-draft pages were final draft. And I eventually started making enough money writing on the side that I afford to rent an electric typewriter—the bigtime!

A couple years later, I got my first computer and everything changed ...
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Understanding Public Domain, Copyright, Published, and Fair Use.

Just came across this post at Dick Margulis' blog. It is a very brief, very lucid explanation of the issues involved in copying text without permission. I recommend it if you have any questions at all about the difference between "published" and "public domain," Fair Use, or whether you need permission to use material that you've "found" on the Internet or in offline sources like books and magazines. Dick is a publishing professional and he's done an excellent job of summing up the sometimes confusing and often contentious issues involved.

I expect that most people reading this already understand these issues, but it doesn't hurt to review them. And if you have a blog, why not direct your readers to http://ampersandvirgule.blogspot.com/2007/07/mine-and-thine.html? It would be a nice public service.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Learning to Write Better Dialogue by Observation

Some time back in the early 1980s, I recall science fiction author Larry Niven saying that he learned a lot about writing dialogue from reading Robert A. Heinlein's novels. That got my attention, and I pulled out copies of Niven's Ringworld and Heinlein's Starship Troopers and started comparing dialogue in scenes, side-by-side.

I learned a lot about dialogue from those observations. Dialogue techniques that I had missed in the past stood out clearly when I saw how Niven had borrowed or learned them from Heinlein. (Simple things like putting a short statement in its own paragraph for emphasis, plus many more subtle and complex techniques.)

I found the same when I paired these short-story collections: Niven's The Magic Goes Away with The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein. Actually, any Niven/Heinlein combination will do.

Try it yourself. If you're not a science fiction reader, compare other writers' techniques. For example, contrast the dialogue techniques in A Painted House, by John Grisham, with those in Havana Bay, by Martin Cruz Smith. Better still, contrast Jane Smiley's dialogue in A Thousand Acres with Grisham's in A Painted House or the autobiographical The Coalwood Way, by Homer Hickam.

I guarantee that you'll learn more than you expected.
--Michael A. Banks
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

The Best How-To Guide to Dialogue I've Ever Read

I keep telling other writers (and would-be writers) that I'm going to show them the best how-to article on dialogue I've ever read. Real Soon Now.

The only problem is, I can't find it. And I wrote it. It was published in one of the three or four Writer's Digest Yearbooks that came out every year in the late 1980s. (I think it was the late 1980s.) Like so many other things, I've misplaced it or thrown it out accidentally. Bill Brohaugh, former editor of WD, sent a copy to me once, back in the early 1990s. And I lost that copy.

Writer's Digest itself can't help; in one of their moves they lost a lot of back issues of this and that.

In all modesty, this really is a good article. I'd like to update it. If anyone has a copy of the WD publication in which that appeared, please let me know. I'll gladly pay copying and mailing costs, or just buy the magazine from you.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Do You Have to Be Crazy to Be a Writer?

Creativity and/or high IQ are often associated with mental illness. I see the connections made in popular literature, writer's resources, and even professional journals. No one is certain about it, though. Which probably means that nobody ever got a grant to do a statistical study.

Of course, mental illness is not exclusive to writers or the highly intelligent. There are insane people who are not very smart, and criminals who are brilliant underachievers (true of many writers), just as there are intelligent people who are really bughouse. And certainly we've all seen our share of writing that proves that a given writer is nuts.

And then there are books that make you wonder if the publisher was nuts.

Anyway, it all leads to a question we writers are fond of asking one another: "Do you have to be crazy to be a writer, or does writing make you crazy?"

Personally, I think all writers are a bit off ... and I believe a touch of Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is necessary if you're going to write a book with any alacrity. But writing can make you crazy in several ways. Repeated rejection of a good manuscript or idea, late payment, no payment, disappearing editors (a topic for a future post of its own), plagiarism, writer’s block ... but then, each career or avocation has its drawbacks.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Procrastinating Writers

I recently had conversations with several editors about writers who don't deliver on time (something that every new editor quickly learns is not uncommon). Most writers who deliver late are just plain procrastinators. They put off starting on books for weeks and even months. Some have to be forced into writing by nagging editors and agents, or by the need of money. One such was Harold Robbins, who is described in Another Life by Michael Korda as having to be watched over (on occasion, under literal lock and key) before he would finish a novel.

But what is procrastination? In this case it is a quick catch-all term that covers several reasons for writers being late. (Note: Now and then, writers are kept from writing by circumstances beyond their control, definitely not procrastination. Family problems, health issues, and bizarre things that no one would buy as fiction. I recall being really late with a book after being hit by a divorce and an auto accident within weeks of one another.)

So why do writers (like the aforementioned Harold Robbins) who are given plenty of time to write their books, and don't have any life emergencies between signing the contract and the manuscript delivery date, run late? Some writers get too comfortable; they have money, and there's loads and loads of time before the book is due, so why not take a few days (weeks, or months) off and enjoy it? At some point they realize that the deadline is on the horizon, and panic--which slows down writerly production something fierce. (Just about any emotion can slow production--fear, joy, hate, terror. Everything but love, in my experience. Love has been known to actually speed up writing!)

And then there are writers who are seized by fear as they get into their project--fear of being unable to complete it, fear of rejection, fear of not doing their best. This usually happens to first-time writers, but pros are not immune to the problem. A sudden change in the relationship between the editor or publisher and the author can make for delays--egos and attitudes, that sort of thing. Writers have also been known to slow down or stop working when advance checks don't arrive on schedule. And there's that mysterious malady, Writer's Block.

How to deal with this? Editors cope by harassing the writer--a surprisingly effective tactic. Some beg, some manipulate, and some threaten. (They may threaten to bring in another writer as permitted in the author's contract.) All's fair in the battle to bring in the manuscript on deadline.

And how do writers handle the situation? Many are in denial, so they do nothing but give in to pressure or threats, not a good working situation. Others will come up with all sorts of situations on which to place the blame for their tardiness, and still crank out a good manuscript really quickly.

The minority of writers who admit to themselves that they've been procrastinating just dig in and crank out quality chapters in impossibly short periods of time (I've been known to do that). And some produce really bad prose because they're trying to cram 6 months worth of work into 2 months. (Yet another reason why bad books get into print.) Of course, it's best to avoid the situation entirely.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright 2007, Michael A. Banks

Does Being Famous Sell Books? Do You Have to Be Famous to Sell Books?

I recently read this in a business blog:

"... ideally you're supposed to be famous so people will buy your book."

Not true. Not even ideally. More often, publishers want writers who know their subjects and can turn in a good manuscript on time. By way of illustration: Over 20 years ago I wrote a book titled The Modem Reference (long out of print). I was merely a midlist science fiction writer at the time, and wasn't famous for anything public. But the book sold 200,000 copies.

If I wasn't famous, why did it sell so well? Because I brought the required knowledge to the book, and I wrote the book in an appealing, easy-to-understand style. When I started CROSLEY, a New York Times bestseller that also made the WSJ and Business Week bestseller lists, I brought only my style and technique, over five years of research, and enthusiasm to the book. I'm not known as a great biographer or historian, but since December, 2006, the book has sold more than 48,000 copies in hardcover.

Here again, I was not dealing with a subject area in which I was famous.

Point 1 of 2: The right knowledge, a good presentation, and great writing can sell books to the public--often more effectively than fame. And in the end publishers are out to sell books, not to link to fame, unless it's move-star level fame. (Not incidentally, as an editor I negotiated the deal for three of modern science fiction's bestselling novels ... written by an author who was a complete unknown at the time. Of course once that author became famous within the SF field, fame did help sell books.)

At the same time, there are books by famous authors that go nowhere. Whether they flop because the author tried something new that didn't work, or because she lost her writing ability, or because she's only writing the same story over and over doesn't matter. That kind of fame doesn't automatically sell books. (At the same time, there are bad books by famous authors that do well. Why? See my post on why and how bad books get into print.)

Books by and about famous people can flop. Examples: Spiro Agnew's suspense novel, and lots of other rock and country music autobiographies that didn't become million-sellers.

All of which leads to Point 2 of 2: Fame alone doesn't make a saleable book; the aforementioned enthusiasm and good writing are usually necessary. (Point 2.1: Bad books get into print and sometimes do well for reasons that have nothing to do with fame or quality. There's an exception to everything, even gravity.)
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Deciphering Poor-Quality Interview Recordings

As I noted in an earlier post, playing back a tape or digital audio recording can help you make out poor-quality recordings, and get past ambient noise that may creep into the recording.

Another help is to use an earplug, like those musicians wear on stage to protect their hearing. I use a brand called "Hearos." These soft silicone rubber plugs allow you hear but reduce volume and seem to filter out a lot of the high-end noise (which is what sounds like a fan or air conditioner or music or airplanes or passing cars make).

I put the plug in my ear and use a headset. Between this and slowing down the recording (and getting words from context or memory) I can work out almost anything that's said.

In a worst-case scenario, you might be able to use a program that allows you to see visualizations of sound (like EasyAudio Editor) to do comparisons and pick out the odd garbled word.

If you are still using a tape recorder, consider switching to a digital recorder like Sony's ICD-P320 (less than fifty bucks, and it can record over 30 hours). Feed the output from that directly into your computer and you can hop from place to place in the recording, while speeding up or slowing down the playback as necessary.

What about voice-recognition software, you ask? That's a question for a later post...
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Harry Potter Remains a Boost for Reading

For those of us who are pro-reading, it's encouraging to see all the hullabaloo surrounding the release of the final Harry Potter novel. One can easily imagine children and teenagers wondering what all the noise is about and picking up one or more of the Potter books. And then becoming lifelong readers.

For an interesting twist on the continuing Harry Potter saga, see this story in Sara Pearce's Litchick blog.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Writers: Speed Up Interview Transcription

One of the real chores of interviewing is transcribing the quotes. Type ... listen ... back up ... replay ... back up ... type ... back up ...

You can speed up the transcription process--and eliminate most of the backing up--if you just reduce the playback speed by half or more. With the talk going by slower than you type, you will have few problems keeping pace. If the interview was recent, your memory will probably cue up a few words now and then, and you'll find yourself typing ahead.

(Plus, you have an opportunity to hear what you sound like as a word-slurring drunk.)

Finally, as you may already know, slowing down a poor-quality recording (or one with a lot of background noise) can make it easier to decipher questionable sections of the recording.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Dealing with Writing Interruptions

Many people do not regard writing as "work." This is especially true if you're writing on the side while holding down a full-time job. People see (or imagine) you sitting in a comfortable chair, writing or pecking at a keyboard, and they know that's not work. It can't be: no one is yelling at you, there's no heavy lifting, you're not running around with a look of fear on your face, and you're certainly not building anything anyone can see.

Most of these folks figure you're just goofing off. (Or, as my late, famously alcoholic father, who made a lot of money doing something else entirely, used to put it, "Sitting on your ass all day.")

It gets worse when you are writing full-time. People who see you home all day may assume you aren't working (or you're on the Midnight shift, or selling drugs). Combine being home all day with sitting on your ass, and you're a perfect target for people who figure they can get you to help them garden, move, run errands, or give them a ride somewhere, since you're not really doing anything.

I learned the hard way that you have to say “No” to most such requests. Some people try to get you to agree by whining, begging, threatening—whatever they can think of. But I noticed that every time I took time away from my work for someone, it just encouraged them to impose on me again. And again.

Not long after I started writing for a living, I was forced to adopt a policy of always being on deadline—even if it was invented on the spot.

“I’m really sorry," I would say, "but I have to finish what I’m doing before five o’clock, so I can FedEx it to my editor.” I never discouraged a petitioner from their errands or tasks; I simply excluded myself.

Sometimes, I suggested someone else who might help them, or a different way they could do what they need to do on their own. After a couple of months, people stopped calling for help. A few took it personally, figuring that I didn't drop whatever I was doing to drive them into the city (where the one-way streets confused them) because I didn't care about them. Others thought I was really smart when I came up with a way for them to move that piano without my help.

A very few finally got their heads around the idea that someone could be at home yet still working.

And I got to write.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Obsession for Writers

I've often said that you have to be at least a little bit obsessive-compulsive to be a successful writer. How else can you finish a novel (or non-fiction book, article, whatever)? You have to be able to become temporarily obsessed with every aspect of the work you're creating. This is particularly true when you are writing a book; the only way to sustain interest, to hold the gestalt in your mind, to push through obstacles is to be obsessed with the project--with the words, the sentences and paragraphs, the chapters--everything.

I've been obsessed with the subject of my next book--blogging--for weeks now. And in the middle of that obsession, as I interview bloggers who have millions of readers, I'm hearing the same advice over and over: you have to be obsessed with your subject to be successful. Which is what I've been telling writers and would-be writers for twenty years.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Help Choose My Next Book's Cover!

Everyone knows how Chris Anderson's The Long Tail was written primarily online as a collaborative effort. So were Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, and a few other books.

My next book happens to be about bloggers, and though there is some discussion of blogs turning into books in it, I'm not writing it online.

However, you can have a say in selecting the cover the next book, Blogging Heroes, to be published by Wiley this fall. Having discovered opinions are spilt almost evenly over the two possible covers for the book, publisher Joe Wikert is seeking reader input.

Check out Joe's blog at http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2007/07/which-cover-do-.html, where you can have a closer look at the cover candidates and vote for your favorite!
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Q&A Interview Tips, Part Two

(Continued from Part One)

Actually, it's best to just have a conversation, and work in your questions. If you get formal and start firing off questions, one after the other, you're likely to get a series of short responses that make for uninteresting reading.

Note that an interview conversation should be pretty much one-sided. Which means that you should stay out of it as much as possible. After the subject responds to your question about buying his first guitar, don't feel obligated to tell him about buying your first guitar. It'll clutter up your recording and probably be embarrassing if anyone else has to listen to the tape.

You won't use all the questions you've prepared. Some will turn out to be irrelevant or stupid in the light of things the interview subject tells you. And you'll come up with new questions inspired by the conversation with your subject.


When you've completed the interview, feel free to edit for clarity of meaning and to make the subject look like she has more than a nodding acquaintance with the English language. Nobody speaks perfectly, but a literal, direct transcrption is likely to read something like this:

Do you ever feel famous?
I, like, don't have a real gallery and I, like ... well, like I don't do shows, and so it's really sometimes hard to, you know, really wrap my head around the fact that, like, this is something that is important to, like, thousands of people, you know. It's, like ... well--you know, and it's, you know, like really difficult to understand why so many people are interested in what I do because it's like... but it's not like millions of people are really, like—not like millions of people are coming to see what I do. It just seems—it’s like, mind-boggling. It’s like, it’s not even like something l can totally comprehend at any level.

When what you want is more like this:
What is it like to be so highly regarded in your field?
I do so few shows that I don't get much public reaction. So the idea that what I do is important is not something I can comprehend.

Any questions?
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Q&A Interview Tips, Part One

You've probably read Q&A intervews where a celeb, politician, business leader--whomever--is asked a series of questions, and answers those questions. It sounds like a plum job for a writer, or a non-writer; all you have to do is chat with the subject, transcribe the answers, and turn in the manuscript. You could do that, nothing to it!

But it's not quite that simple. Before you do anything else, you have to figure out the interview slant, and whether the questions will be issue- or event-driven, or subject-driven. (Examples: "So, what made you hate spinach so much?" or "Why did you destroy 30 acres of spinach with a flamethrower?" or "What attracted to becoming a green-vegetable expert?") Which of course means you need to research your subject, maybe find some earlier interviews with her.

And yes, you really need to do the research, no matter how big a fan you are of your subject, and no matter how much you think you know about him. There's always something new you can dig up. (One of the joys of doing such research is finding some fact that no other interviewer has discussed with the subject. Sometimes the subject likes it, too. Answering the same questions from interviewer after interviewer gets old.)

Armed with your research and a list of questions based on that research, you sit down with the subject, in-person or by telephone. After you're set up recording equipment, of course; you weren't planning on just scribbling shorthand, were you? You'll need a recording for all sorts of things--the nuances of meaning conveyed by voice inflection, the demands of your editor to prove that your subject really said that, and the claim by the subject that she said no such thing.

Okay, so you sit down and ask questions. Or do you?
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Would You Buy Your Own Writing?

Would you pay money for your own work?

Are you honest enough with yourself to answer that question?

I like to think that I would buy most of what I've written, if it were by someone else. But not everything--not books on subjects I didn't select. But yeah, everything else I believe is good enough that if I found it with someone else's name on it I'd be interested in reading it. (And I'm darned glad I wrote some of my older telecomputing books. Not only did they make a lot of money, but I also find myself using them as references today, two decades later!)
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

The Best Way to Get Readers for Your Blog

As noted earlier, I'm at work on a project that involves bloggers. But not just any bloggers; these are the most successful bloggers on the Web. Bloggers who regularly place in Technorati's 100 most-favorited and most linked-to blogs.

The ongoing series of conversations I've had with these bloggers reveals some interesting themes, one of which is that search-engine optimization (SEO) is not the way to get large numbers of readers into your blog. Naturally, those who write books about SEO say otherwise, but here we have people who are getting tens of thousands of readers per day talking about SEO as "second-order" and "not an effective way to get readers."

If SEO isn't the best way to get readers, then what is? I'll leave that for the culmination of the project. It will be in a book tihs fall ...
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright 2007, Michael A. Banks

Product Placement in Books: Authors Selling Out?

I've just finished reading the Mindstar Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Set mostly in and around Peterborough, England (and in orbit), the novels are Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder, and The Namo Flower. They are set in a post-global warming era in the not-too-distant future, and are excellent reads. The books are liberally seeded with fascinating ideas involving nanotechnology, society and politics, human-computer interfaces, biotechnology, and more. Though they're more than a decade old, they could just as well have been written this year.

So: the books have grand ideas, interesting characters, engaging setting, and fascinating events--but one thing really stood out in a somewhat jarring manner: the overuse of brand names. The names are mostly from the mid-1990s, when the books were written, which accounts for part of the jarring. There are some brand names that no longer exist, or which are unlikely to exist--like Rockwell hand weapons, Westland parawings, Bedford trucks, and etc. This is probably the result of exposure to a school of novel-writing that posits that the writer should use brand-names (in any fiction, not just SF) for verisimilitude. That's fine, but a little goes a long way.

All of which is not to criticize Hamilton so much as to a) recommend his work and b) introduce the subject of product placement in books.

Does it happen? Do writers accept money to have a character drink Coca-Cola rather than Royal Crown Cola? To drive a Kia rather than a Toyota? I don't believe it happens much. It's been going on in films for years; one of the most blatant instances was the menage of corporate brands on the sides of trailers towed by trucks rolling out west in E.T. And there's always been buzz over what kind of car James Bond would be driving in the next film. (Nothing beats the Aston-Martin DB-5, for my money.) And it has a long tradition in television (closing credits of My Three Sons: "Cars provided by the Chrysler Corporation.") But I have yet to meet a novelist who was paid to equip her protagonist with a Acer laptop or have her buy a ticket on Southwest Airlines.

Writers do that sort of thing on their own. If they like Fords, their characters drive Fords. A writer who drinks Lipton tea will have his hero dipping a Lipton tea bag in a cup of hot water. But, again, out of the many scores of published writers I know (from first-time novelists to repeat bestsellers), none have picked up money for flogging a product.

Non-fiction writers do better at this, though they don't get cash (unless they're writing a book about a product for the manufacturer), I received a new computer in exchange for offering to acknowledge the fact that I used it to write a particular book, in the book. The manufacturer went out of business before the book was published.) I've noted other writers crediting software and computer hardware in their computer books. But even that is rare. Otherwise, I might have scooped up some cash for talking about certain institutions and products in CROSLEY and eBay.

I think the reason that this happens so infrequently is that there are so many books (tens of thousands every year) that marketers would have to pay tiny amouts to get in every possible book. And books are not seen as having the same clout as television or film or popular Web sites. And many writers are so independent that they wouldn't agree to taking money (actually, most of those people wouldn't take such payment--or wouldn't admit it--for fear that their writer friends would accuse them of being phoney and selling out. And many of their writer friends would do just that--probably out of jealousy.)

But I'd take a thousand bucks to mention the ____ brand of ____ in my next book. Or, in my next three books for $2,250. It can't hurt.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has been paid to include a certain brand in a novel, or as an example in a non-fiction book. Or anyone who knows of such a deal. I recall reading about the possibility of this in one of the news magazines a couple years ago, but if it happened I've forgotten it.

I'll be posting on a related topic, freebies for reviewers, magazine writers, and book authors, in a day or two. In the right fields, you get all sorts of free goodies. As I understand some bloggers do--which points to another interesting topic: bloggers selling promotional posts.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Back Up New Technology with Old (and Check the Plugs!)

So here I am, all set up with my digital audio recorder, telephone pickup, voice-recognition software, memory sticks, laptop, laser leveler, headset with air conditioning and 21 jewels, and all the other gear a modern writer could want.

I spend an hour doing an important telephone interview. It's taken two weeks and a dozen calls to connect with this guy. The interview goes just fine. I get all sorts of enlightening statements and excellent quotes. End of interview. Thank you!

It's not until I hang up that I notice that the phone pickup is plugged into the headphone jack rather than the mic jack. All I've recorded is my side of the interview.

Hopefully, I can catch up with the subject soon enough to make my deadline. And hopefully he'll be willing to spend another hour replicating our conversation. Meanwhile, I'm reminded that there are still a few things that machines can't do.

And, yeah, I really should have made notes! New rule: whenever possible, back up new tech with old tech.

Details, details--the devil's in the details!
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Addendum: I've since redone the interview. And I ended up with information that didn't come out first time around.

Copyright Theft and eBooks for Sale Online

Elsewhere I've written about online piracy of copyrighted ebooks, specifically those copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code for sale on eBay. Lots of people report these scams, in which the seller offers "complete resale rights" along with a download of the ebook for 99 cents or some other absurdly low price. (Sometimes three or four ebooks are offered for $4.95.)

I've tried to contact Random House and Brown's agent about this, but no one wants to talk about it. What's up? The "reseller rights" is a blatant lie (I'm sure many of the people offering the book and reseller rights actually believed it when they fell for the same kind of offer. But somewhere along the line someone created this scam, knowing that the greed of eBay sellers would make it easy for them to believe the lies he was telling.)

Maybe this would stop if Random House goes after these sellers the way John Wiley & Sons are going after Carlos Velasco for selling Wiley ebooks on eBay. The complete story is here, at AuctionBytes.com.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Writing Blogs and Books

I've been talking with a number of well-known bloggers in connection with a project I'm doing, and I've noticed that there are two bits of advice that they all offer to other bloggers. And they definitely apply to writing books--which should be of no surprise, since several blogs have become books, and at least three books I know of are going to become blogs.

The first bit of advice is that you ought to blog about something for which you have enthusiasm. The other is to avoid imitating others--in content as well as in style.

I feel like I'm always telling would-be writers these things. If you write about something you're interested in (and enthusiastic about) you don't have to do as much research, and the enthusiasm will show in your writing. It seems obvious, but some people miss it when they try to write a book or a blog because it's a "hot topic" and will probably make money. If it's that hot, 9,000 other people have already thought of it. (Of course, if you need the money and someone asks you to write a training manual for a UNIX system admin and you really need the money, this rule is suspended.)

If you try to imitate another writer, you'll usually end up reading like an imitation of that writer. Follow too closely when it comes to content, and you might find yourself plagiarizing--something that happens a lot more often with blogs than books. I think m ore people get caught up in this than write books about stuff they're have no interest in. Most writers are dissatisfied with their writing styles early in their careers, and long to be able to write as well as (insert name of favorite writer here).

The problem with imitating another writer because you don't like your own style is that you almost always end up looking like an imitation of that writer--or worse. That's most likely because you don't know enough about writing to be able to analyze the style of the writer in question. If you did, you wouldn't be worrying about your style; you'd already be there! So, work on your style. (Tip: Instead of trying to write like so-and-so, try rewriting one of her paragraphs in your own style. You'll probably learn something about your stylistic weaknesses, and the strengths of the other writer!)
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Recreational Writing and Data-Gathering Pranks

Being creative, writers often find their recreation in creative ways. On occasion some of us have so much creativity (or madness or frustration) bubbling away in our brains that we just have to let it out. The result is recreational writing, a few examples of which you'll find on this blog. (See the original version of the Beatles' "Rain" and the origin of Web 2.0 and my history of the Internet.)

On occasion these bits are published. For example, I’ve sold several bogus advertisements to radio and magazines. Among were a one-minute spot for the Famous Barbarians' Correspondence School, and a pitch for the Ultimate Personal Computer (the human brain and body described in computer terms. That one first appeared in ANALOG Science Fiction Magazine, and was reprinted in the United States Air Force Cryptologic Command Newsletter and elsewhere.) These, and oddities like "What Do I Do if I Get a Phone Call from Mars?" were written during idle periods when I felt this great urge to do something.

But sometimes words aren't enough. Then it's time for action. When I reach that point, I look for interesting pranks that serve a purpose. One of my favorite is an ongoing study of public honesty I've been conducting for about a year now.

The venue is the local Post Office. The study involves dropping bank envelopes that appear to be packed with cash, then observing to see what people do when they find the envelopes. I print, "Cash for money orders" boldly on the outside of each envelope. The envelopes are stuffed with bank deposit slips for realism, and each includes a special note intended for the dishonest types (details on that in a few lines).

The procedure is to drop an envelope between myself and the counter while I'm talking to a clerk. (The clerk helps with observing the subjects.) Then--if there aren't many people present--I walk away and watch from the outer lobby or through the windows in front of the building. If there's a crowd, I leave the watching to the clerk, lest I tip off the subjects of the study.

The results are probably what you think: out of 12 test-drops, 5 people have handed the envelope over to the clerk, while 6 have kept the money--surreptitiously dipping and retrieving the envelope, then sliding it into purse or pocket.

One subject surprised us. A student at the local college (Miami University), he swooped down on the envelope as he approached the clerk, opened it and pulled out the contents in front of the waiting line of postal customers. Then he opened the envelope, glanced at the dummy paper inside, and laughed, "Hey! Someone's having a joke--cool!"

The note inside, printed on more than one ticket so the dishonest subject is sure to see it, reads: "You thought you'd get away with someone else's cash. So did all the people who watched you pick up this envelope."

Never have learned how the dishonest types reacted on learning that they'd been scammed.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyight © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Can't We All Just Tell the Truth?

Just when I thought we were done with the whole sell-a-bad-novel-as-a-true-story thing (ala A Million Little Pieces), another autobiographical tome that wasn't quite what it said it was is back in the news. It had already been established that J.T. Leroy, author of Sarah, the autobiographical story of an underage male prostitute, doesn't exist. The real author, a woman of legal age named Laura Albert, had sold the rights to a film company, and when the truth came out the film company sued. A jury found in favor of the film company on June 22.

You can find the full details at any news site. What I'm interested in here is not so much who told which lies for how much, or whether the author believes the non-existent Leroy exists, but how the reading public responds. I expect the sales of J.T. Leroy books to climb, just like the sales of A Million Little Pieces did after it was revealed that its author had scammed Oprah.

Maybe she'll be a guest on Oprah's show and explain the whole thing. Whether or not that happens, the gullible American public will doubtless be buying her books in the usual knee spasmodic response to national publicity.

Hey, media types: as long as you're guiding the public around by its nose, how about publicizing some worthwhile books? There are lots of those with scandals attached ... but who needs scandals when you have a good read?
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Big Claims for E-Books, and the Economics of Print Publishing

I just read some interesting claims by the author of an E-book on search-engine optimization. This SEO maven claims to be selling around 4,000 copies per year—at $79 a pop. In addition, the author informs us that publishers have been offering deals to publish the book, it’s such a winner.

Skeptic that I am, I have my doubts about the sales claim. I don’t think the E-book business is mature enough to spin off that kind of money from a book on a worn-out topic by an unestablished writer. But I suppose it could be true. After all, everyone knows that the Internet is the absolute the place to go if you want to make forty-seven million dollars in three days while sitting in your hot tub after you lost your job, went deep into debt, and watched your family slowly starve. And this author might one of those select few who have the secret to Internet wealth, and has broken the Money for Nothing Code of Silence. Lots of people would be willing to blow $79 on the chance that the E-book will deliver on its promises. You spend more than that on a chance to win a $30,000 car in a charity raffle. All that has to happen is for enough of the right kind of people to stumble across the Web site, and the author might be making several hundred grand per year. (Of course, there are tens of thousands of other Web sites trying to sell those millionaire raffle tickets, so getting 4,000 customers a year might prove difficult.)

Regardless of how likely that is to happen, I have more serious doubts over the claim about print publishers tripping over themselves to buy the book.

Even if the author provided absolute, unequivocal proof of selling 4,000 copies per year at $79 and grossing $300,000, I don’t believe a print publisher would spring for it. There are too many SEO books out there already. And there’s just not enough money to make a publisher interested.

How can I say that? Because the book is very unlikely to sell 4,000 copies, and it definitely wouldn’t sell for $79.

Hard to believe? I’ll explain the second statement first. Except where textbooks and professional references are involved (and I mean real professions, like medicine and law), readers are accustomed to certain price caps. A bookstore browser would expect the big trade paperback that such an SEO book would be to cost $30 or less. If she picked it up and saw a $79 price tag, she’d probably think, “This is a book. I know what books cost. Big paperback books like this go for less than thirty bucks!” and go on to something else.

Some optimists would look past the price and flip through the book, hopes still high. And they would be dissuaded from buying it because it doesn’t look like something they can use to make ten bucks, let alone millions. Not something they’d bet $79 on, anyway. (That kind of price works on the Internet because you don’t get to see what you’re really buying, and you can sustain your million-dollar fantasy long enough to buy. And few print books make the kind of outrageous promises that Web sites make to convince someone to buy into a fantasy.)

So, maybe the book would sell for $25.

Now, let’s set up a scenario where the book sells 4,000 copies. Wouldn’t that be enough money to interest a publisher? Probably not. Maybe they do a 5,000-copy print run of a trade paperback, typical run for an unproven book by an unproven author. Publishers know they can always print more if the need arises. At a cost of three bucks per copy the total expense is $15K. Add another $10K author advance. That $10K maximum because the author in this instance would be regarded as a midlist author, if not a new writer altogether. There’s a little overhead in there (editorial and promotion and warehousing), so say the publisher has $30K invested to produce the book and print 5,000 copies.

So 4,000 copies sell—and that’s a generous sell-through, equal to the number of customers the aforementioned E-book author claims to have found already. The publisher’s net is going to be around $50,000. Subtract the author advance and production costs, and the publisher makes $20,000. (And the author has failed to earn out his advance.)

But there’s no guarantee that the book will sell that many copies. Like a lot of other books, this one will hit the market with the expectation that it will sell about half the print run and break even. There would probably be very little promotion or advertising; when publishers advertise, they tend to put money into proven authors and books. A new author’s work has to prove itself. Once an author and book start bringing in big orders with a high sell-through rate, then the publisher will get behind the book.

And it’s unlikely to sell another 4,000 copies, since the market has already been tapped, the topic is old, and the book will soon be outdated. Any publisher will choose invest in a book that has a better chance of earning more than $20,000 for the same investment.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

Blogging and Honesty

“Blogging allows us writers to state our biases and admit them, thus bringing more honesty to the things we write.”
--Mary Jo Foley
All About Microsoft

With Apologies to Lennon & McCartney ...

It is a little-known fact that the Beatles song "Rain" was based on a song written by Paul McCartney's sheepdog, Martha. In commemoration of Martha, who shared Paul's birth-date (June 18), here are Martha's original lyrics, later incorporated into "Rain" by Paul:
---
If the rain comes,
dogs run and hide their heads,
from the booming they all dread,
If the rain comes, if the rain comes.

When the sun shines,
they romp on the green grass
and gen'rally have a blast.
When the sun shines, when the sun shines.

Ra-a-a-a-i-n
I'll go hide.
Shi-i-i-i-i-ine
the weather's fine.

I can show you
that when it starts to rain
the carpet I will stain.
I can show you, I can show you.

(Chorus)

Can you hear me,
that when it rains and shines
it really blows my mind.
Can you hear me, can you hear me?

(Chorus, fade w/backward lyics)

--Mike
http://www.michaelbanks.com
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks

On Syllables ...

Polysyllabic is.
Monosyllabic isn’t.

Leveraging Paradigms with Jargon

(Or should that be Leveraging Jargon with Paradigms?)
-------------
I've written several essays making fun of the overuse of jargon--especially in business communications. It's gotten to the point where you can write a sentence like "Leverage my profit with a new paradigm," change the words 'round in any order, and still be accepted. Try it! "Profit my paradigm with a new leverage," and "Paradigm a new leverage with my profit" make about as much sense as, say, "Increase my income with a new pattern."

Rather like the Emperor's new clothes, overall.

I'm not satisfied with any of my essays, but Dick Margulis points us to the best commentary on businessspeak I've yet seen. Check out this post.

Not incidentally, I think "paradigm" should be pronounced "pair-a-dij-em." Part of the magic of jargon is having words that are not pronounced as they look (with the occasional smatteering of foreign terms).
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Google: A Prank with a Point

If you have an opinion on Google Book Search--or if you're still trying to form one--have a look at this post at Richard Charkin's blog. Richard is Chief Executive at Macmillan publishing. Last week he was at the BEA (Book Expo America), where he pulled a prank with a point on Google Book Search. It's self-explanatory, and hilarious!
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Speaking with Johnny Bench

Photo by Janet Tittle
One of the more fun things about being a writer is that you get invited to interesting events. I recently had the honor of speaking at a charity event with Baseball Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench.

The event was "Step Up to the Plate" that supports the Center for Children and Families in Cincinnati. The venue was Great American Ball Park. It was a perfect Spring day, sunny and mild--a great day for a ball game. (The Reds were in San Diego, where they beat the Padres 2 to 1.)

I gave a talk on the Crosleys at the Reds Hall of Fame Museum. (For those who don't know, Powel Crosley, Jr. owned the Cincinnati Reds from 1934 until his death in 1961, and the Reds' home park was Crosley Field from 1935 until 1970.)

The event was one of the most enjoyable of the many signings and talks I've done in connection with the Crosley book. Following my address, Bench gave an inspiring talk in support of the charity, standing near his old spot behind home plate.

As a bonus, attendees had the opportunity to hit some balls from home plate--pitched the Reds' batting practice pitcher. (Home plate is just behind Bench and me in the accompanying photo. There was a long line of batters off to the right.) A fine dinner and silent auction followed.

I'd not met Johnny Bench before this. He's a quiet, unassuming guy, and in pretty good shape, just a bit heavier than I remember him from the days of "the Big Red Machine."

And yeah, shaking hands with Johnny Bench is like shaking hands with a catcher's mitt!

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com

Photo © 2007 Janet Tittle

Books on the Business of Writing

This is the fourth in a series of posts in which I recommend books for aspiring and published writers. Each post covers a category, including biographies/autobiographies, magazine writing, how-to-write books by notable writers, fiction how-to, and more.

These books address the business aspects of writing and publishing.

• Mastering the Business of Writing, by Richard Curtis (Allworth Press, 1996)
  This Business of Publishing: An Insider's View of Current Trends and Tactics, by Richard Curtis (Watson-Guptill, 1998)
• Magazine Publishing Industry, by Charles P. Daly, Patrick Henry, and Ellen Ryder (Allyn & Bacon, 1996)
• Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future by Jason Epstein
• The Book Publishing Industry, by Albert N. Greco (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003) Every Writer's Guide to Copyright and Publishing Law, by Ellen M. Kozak (Owl Books, 2004)
• Another Life: A Memoir of Other People, by Michael Korda (Random House, 1999)

You can find most of these books at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com or other online retailers. For a few of the out-of-print titles you will have to go to eBay or a used book store.

(For additional recommendations, see this list at Amazon.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Books About Agenting, Contracts, and Related Topics

This is the third in a series of posts in which I recommend books for aspiring and published writers. Each post covers a category, including biographies/autobiographies, magazine writing, how-to-write books by notable writers, books on the business aspects of writing, fiction how-to, and more.

These books cover agenting, contracts, and related matters. They are a must if you don't use an agent, and worth reading even if you do.

How to Be Your Own Literary Agent: The Business of Getting a Book Published, Revised edition, by Richard Curtis (Houghton-Mifflin, 2003)
Be Your Own Literary Agent: The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Getting Published, Third edition, by Martin P. Levin (Ten Speed Press, 2002)
The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success, by Donald Maass (Heineman, 1996)

You can find most of these books at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com or other online retailers. For a few of the out-of-print titles you will have to go to eBay or a used book store.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Books About Magazine Writing

This is the second in a series of posts in which I recommend books for aspiring and published writers. Each post covers a category, including biographies/autobiographies, how-to-write books by notable writers, books on the business aspects of writing, fiction how-to, and more.

Interested in writing for magazines? Check out the books on this list.

• Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer, by Moira Anderson Allen (Allworth Press, 2003)
• The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, by William E. Blundell (Plume, 1988)
  Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles, by Sheree Bykofsky (Alpha, 2000)
• Associated Press Guide to Newswriting: The Resource for Professional Journalists by Cappon
• You can Write for Magazines, by Greg Daugherty (Writer's Digest Books, 1999)
• Writer's Digest Guide to Magazine Article Writing, Edited by J. Fredette (Writer's Digest Books, 1990)
• The Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It, by Peter Jacobi (Indiana University Press, 1997)
• Start and Run a Copywriting Business, by Steve Slaunwhite (Self-Counsel Press, 2005)
• How to Write Articles for Newspapers & Magazines, by Dawn B. Sova (Arco, 2002)
• The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook, by Joseph Sugarman (Wiley, 2006)
• Writing for Magazines: A Beginner's Guide, by Cheryl Sloan Wray (McGraw-Hill, 2004)

You can find most of these books at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com or other online retailers. For a few of the out-of-print titles you will have to go to eBay or a used book store.
--Mike

Biographies for Writers

This is the first in a series of posts in which I recommend books for aspiring and published writers. Each post covers a category, including magazine writing, how-to-write books by notable writers, books on the business aspects of writing, fiction how-to, and more.

The books listed in this post are biographies or autobiographies, and as such do not focus on writing and getting published. However, the authors offer writing advice now and then, and there is much to be learned from the experiences they relate.

You can find most of these books at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com or other online retailers. For a few of the out-of-print titles you will have to go to eBay or a used book store. (The list is alphabetical, by subject.)

Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, by M.J. Simpson (Justin, Charles & Co.,
June 2005)

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King (Scribner, 2002)

Another Life: A Memoir of Other People, by Michael Korda (Random House, 1999)

Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis L'Amour (Bantam Books, 1990 Reissue)

The Way the Future Was, by Frederik Pohl (Del Rey Books, 1978)

Tomorrow's Child, by Jack Williamson (Benbella Books, 2005)

--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

Procrastinating Writers

I recently had conversations with several editors about writers who don't deliver on time (something that every new editor quickly learns is not uncommon). Most writers who deliver late are just plain procrastinators. They put off starting on books for weeks and even months. Some have to be forced into writing by nagging editors and agents, or by the need of money. One such was Harold Robbins, who is described in Another Life by Michael Korda as having to be watched over (on occasion, under literal lock and key) before he would finish a novel.

But what is procrastination? In this case it is a quick catch-all that covers several reasons for writers being late.

(Note: Now and then, writers are kept from writing by circumstances beyond their control, definitely not procrastination. Family problems, health issues, and bizarre things that no one would buy as fiction. I recall being really late with a book after being hit by a divorce and an auto accident within weeks of one another.)

So why do writers (like the aforementioned Harold Robbins) who are given plenty of time to write their books, and don't have any life emergencies between signing the contract and the manuscript delivery date, run late? Some writers get too comfortable; they have money, and there's loads and loads of time before the book is due, so why not take a few days (weeks, or months) off and enjoy it? At some point they realize that the deadline is on the horizon, and panic--which slows down writerly production something fierce. (Just about any emotion can slow production--fear, joy, hate, terror. Everything but love, in my experience. Love has been known to actually speed up writing!)

And then there are writers who are seized by fear as they get into their project--fear of being unable to complete it, fear of rejection, fear of not doing their best. This usually happens to first-time writers, but pros are not immune to the problem. A sudden change in the relationship between the editor or publisher and the author can make for delays--egos and attitudes, that sort of thing. Writers have also been known to slow down or stop working when advance checks don't arrive on schedule.

And there's that mysterious malady, Writer's Block.

How to deal with this? Editors cope by harassing the writer--a surprisingly effective tactic. Some beg, some manipulate, and some threaten. (They may threaten to bring in another writer as permitted in the author's contract.) All's fair in the battle to bring in the manuscript on deadline.

And how do writes handle the situation? Many are in denial, so they do nothing but give in to pressure or threats, not a good working situation. Others will come up with all sorts of situations on which to place the blame for their tardiness, and still crank out a good manuscript really quickly.

The minority of writers who admit to themselves that they've been procrastinating just dig in and crank out quality chapters in impossibly short periods of time (I've been known to do that). And some produce really bad prose because they're trying to cram 6 months worth of work into 2 months. (Yet another reason why bad books get into print.)

Of course, it's best to avoid the situation entirely.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright 2007, Michael A. Banks