I – Internet

04/10/2014 Leave a comment

II think I would like to make the claim that few things have changed the craft of writing as much as the Internet has.

I mean, there are some things. The printing press. The invention of the novel. But really, even something like computers just let us write in a different way: but it was still just writing. Spell check is nice, but in the end, that’s what the editing process was for: now that process is just a background process.

But the Internet lets anyone publish. It lets you talk about obscure things, and be able to point people to information about those obscure things. From another angle, it lets you write about obscure things and be found by people wanting to read those things.

It gets everybody writing. The Internet lets your audience talk back to you, in unprecedented ways and to unprecedented extents. There’s more comments coming back in than can be read for anything that gets big or viral. There’s no way to read this much fan mail!

The Internet also helps break down major language barriers, with translation services. It opens up the world so much.

Unfortunately, what all of this means in a lot of ways is that it has also become infinitely harder to find the good stuff. I’m a librarian. We see this problem coming. At some point, we will have generations who have to deal with the fact that anything they search for is going to come back with millions of hits. How do we find what’s good? The point of this post is not to answer this. The point is to say that now, all of a sudden, everyone can write, and so very many of us are writing, and the world has gotten smaller, and yet also bigger, and more full of things.

It’s a brave new world out there. Write on!

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H – Hook

04/09/2014 6 Comments

HFor many of the letters of the A to Z challenge, I had ideas pouring out for what to write about, and I started organizing things to not overlap too much, discuss different topics, to be short, personal and opinionated, and of course writing-related. For a few letters, I was left hunting a bit for words. Just so with H, where I found the essential writing term “Hook.” I had forgotten this term, but it is of course one I know and employ, or even over-employ, in my writing. I know when I first did NaNoWriMo, every chapter started with a hook sentence, In Media Res, and the action caught up with it.

However, that got me thinking of the other sorts of ways the idea of the Hook comes up in our world today. What began its life as a writing technique has become something of a way of life in our information-heavy world.

For instance, in blogging, or other sorts of writing online. They say that for search engines, you really want to have your keywords in the earliest parts of your post. That effectively, the search engines are optimized to consider your hook. Also, in RSS feeds, you generally only see the first bit of the post, and this is the Hook that gets people to click-through and read more of your post. Thus, in blogging, the Hook is an essential tool to get read – without a good Hook, the post is likely dead in the water.

By this standard, I’m pretty sure this post fails!

Thinking about the Hook in terms of blogging got me thinking about it in terms of the rest of the Internet in general. And in particular, some of the ways in which the Internet approaches these things like a Journalist. That is to say, we think about webpages in terms of what is “above the fold” (like with a newspaper) – the content that you can generally see without scrolling down, as this is the most-seen content. And really, the first paragraph being the Hook is a heavily used Journalism approach to writing.

And what about Social Media? Twitter in many ways functions as a giant Hook machine – at least, any tweet with a link or picture or anything else you need to click. It has to be interesting enough that someone clicks! It has to Hook them, and it has to do it in under 140 characters. Less, really, with a link in there too!

So be thinking about what you write and put online. Yes, the first paragraph might be the first that you write. But it also has a pivotal role in whether you get read. So go back and look it over before you publish!

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G – Graphic Novel

04/08/2014 6 Comments

GOkay, comics have been around a long time. Even shows and movies about comic book characters have been around a long time, though they are proliferating and succeeding today like they’re the new thing. However, the graphic novel – a longer story form than just a comic, but definitely more comic-styled than novel-styled – is a newer sort of medium. There is a strong blurring of the two, really; many graphic novels are set in the comic-book worlds, many comic story-arcs have been turned into graphic novel collections; and many graphic novels today are coming out episodically as comics.

However you want to look at it, and whether I am really just talking about comics, trade paperbacks, collected editions, or graphics novels… together they are a growing, and exciting, force and trend. For someone like me, who is a slow reader, the addition of the visual storytelling, and the reduction of the text down to essentials, lets me get through far more content. For someone even more visual than I am, I could see this being even more of an excellent artform.

There are some great storylines being written in what can either be described as graphic novel or indie comic form coming out today, and you should check some out if they interest you. Horror stories like Locke & Key, space operas like Saga, alternate histories like The Manhattan Projects. And then there’s all of those graphic novels that have been adapted for film – Red, 300, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and more.

And there’s part of me, as I enjoy reading these graphic novels so thoroughly, that really thinks that maybe this is the genre and medium I want to write for. That this is how I want to structure and tell my story. At least one. And I have a couple of friends looking over my world and ideas now to consider it.

Because I don’t think this is a fad, and I don’t think graphic novels are going away. A couple of reasons. One is, you now have a bunch of young people who are getting into these and are going to carry this on into adulthood. But that’s always the case with things. The other, however, is that I think that comics and this visual medium have found their perfect delivery method: the tablet. I am on the fence about e-books and e-readers versus their physical counterpart. I am completely sold on digital comics. Whether you use the guided view, that takes you panel-by-panel, or read one page at a time, I think this is the right device for reading comics. My top two activities on my iPad are absolutely blogging, and comics reading. So the future for comics is really only just beginning.

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F – Fine Arts

04/07/2014 9 Comments

FWhen I was considering Master’s Degrees, one of them I was strongly considering was a Master of Fine Arts. One of those interesting degrees where you see a number of people who do the work that is associated without having the degree. And there’s a difference, then, between those who have and have not gotten the degree – right? Maybe? Who knows!

Like with just having a blog, just having a degree in Fine Arts will not automatically make you a writer, because it does not automatically make you write. Writing still involves having the time, and more importantly, taking the time, to write.

So am I happy about my decision, to instead get my Master of Science in Library and Information Science? Bit of a mouthful, anyway. But this gives me options. Jobs I am qualified for. And the hope is, with stability and time comes the opportunity to write. Not perfect, just like other thoughts, but a hope. And it’s a nicely related field, as I get to be surrounded by books and help people work with them every day.

Whereas, with a Master of Fine Arts, with a degree just in writing, the thing you have to do is write. You better hope you’re good. You better hope you’re quick. Well connected. Get a good agent. Self publish. Something. Because otherwise, just like me, you’d find yourself doing other work.

But will I write as well as if I had the degree? In some ways, hopefully not. Otherwise, where is the value in the degree? It might take me longer, or more edits. I may not learn all the tricks of the trade in advance, but will have to do so as I go. But that’s something to accept.

How about you? What do you think about a degree in Fine Arts? Good idea? Bad idea? Any personal stories? Let me know in the comments below!

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Taylor Grace, you continue to rock – The Sunday Re-Blog

04/06/2014 3 Comments

I have to admit, part of why I am sharing this post is because the author, Gene’O, said it was his most-shared post. Just adding to that expansion…

A couple of lines of thought here. One is about watching, and stressing over, the blog stats. The other is about Canon and Canonization. I care about both things, making this a great post to think over.

Gene'O's avatarMy Former Blog

I just need to post again. Nothing else will do, and my friend Taylor Grace has the perfect thing for me to blog about. A post about what numbers do to the mind. Especially a writer’s mind. Here’s the lede:

I have to admit, I’ve done it. I stared at the blog stats until I knew the numbers by heart, then I would check and recheck. The blog became a live entity I needed to keep happy…and, well, I wasn’t miserable but it was close.

Here’ s the rest. Taylor’s post includes lots of good links – nearly all of her posts do. One of the reasons I love her blog so much is because she turns me on to things I would never see otherwise.

I’ve been right there – looking at those numbers, checking and rechecking, and it wasn’t that long ago. You can measure it in…

View original post 1,180 more words

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