Oracle du jour: “All the rest is silence.”

For your contemplative pleasure, as found today on the sidewalk a block from my studio.

This seemed appropriate for the grey, chilly day we’re having here in Brooklyn.

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Publishing Monday: PubIt! with a side of Slush Pile Hell

Two things this rainy Monday in Brooklyn:

1. PubIt!* As evidenced by recent actions, Barnes and Noble is desperately embracing the e-book world. No surprise, but Nook displays have gained significant real estate in their retail stores. During a recent visit to my local Barnes and Noble**, a kiosk devoted to the Nook dominated front and center; if I hadn’t known better, I might have wondered if I’d walked into a computer store. Secondly, and more of interest to authors and independent publishers, they’ve launched PubIt!, a self-distribution endeavor.

Here’s PubIt!’s aggressively friendly graphic which greets visitors to their home page:

This pitch appears after they invite you to “Live the Dream.” Which begs the question, What and whose dream?

I’m still digesting how I feel about PubIt!. On one hand, it’s a new distribution channel for independent publishers and authors—what’s not to like? So far, I’ve been distributing my own e-books and apps through Apple and Amazon; I’m glad to have a new market via Barnes and Noble. However, the disturbingly jaunty tone of “Just don’t forget about us when you’re Big Time” makes me want to…. Well, you can fill in the blank.

Someone asked me on Twitter what I think about PubIt! so far. The truth is that I don’t know yet. Though I’ve signed up for an account, I had some problems with registration. I’m set up with New York State with a business EIN (Employee Identification Number). I run my business from a commercial storefront. Regardless, there were issues regarding tax addresses and EIN addresses and other fussy technical stuff that required a telephone call to a rather bored-sounding PubIt! employee. Though he did his best to be helpful, I had the impression the poor guy had spent all morning fielding similar questions.

Several e-mails later, I think I’m good to go with Pubit!. Part of me expects another e-mail from Barnes and Noble announcing there’s still an issue with my account. Time will tell.

2. Slush Pile Hell. Though I discovered this site some months ago, it never fails to crack me up. Billed as “one grumpy literary agent, a sea of query fails, and other publishing nonsense”, it’s snarky as all out. But, like jokes about New Jersey***, I hope I’ve earned the right to indulge in some publishing humor. After all, I started out in the biz reading hundreds of unsolicited submissions for a major New York publishing company.

Based on my personal experiences, I suspect the letters published on Slush Pile Hell are drawn from real life. Here’s one example—what follows is the agent’s imagined response:

Every agent I’ve encountered thus far has been a complete idiot. Let’s see if you can prove you’re different by representing me and my book.

Stop. Your seductive charm is making me feel woozy.”

And another:

Hello dear. I want to present to you my nonfiction work.

Dear? Mom, I’ve already told you that just because you raised me doesn’t mean I’ll give you preferential treatment.”

————————–

* Yes, the exclamation point is intentional on Barnes and Nobles’ part. It! Makes! Publishing! Sound! So! Exciting!

** Yes, I usually support indie bookstores, but they had a book I needed badly and immediately. (Hangs head in guilt.)

*** I spent my formative years in New Jersey. No Snooki jokes, pretty please.

• Filed under be-mused, e-books, goddesses, publications, publishing | 2 Responses

Stuff I like: NaNoWriMo

Now that we’re at the tail end of September, is it too soon to consider the approach of November? I think not. After all, November is National Novel Writing Month, better known by its jaunty abbreviation of NaNoWriMo. That alone makes me happier about winter’s approach. (I dread winter’s cold and dark days.)

NaNoWriMo challenges writers to write a novel—50,000 words—in a month. Last year there were 167,150 participants. Think this is impossible? It’s not. I did it last year and “won.” So did 32,177 other writers. I finished with 50,590 words of THE LILY MAID’s first draft (since extensively reworked and expanded to over 100,000 words).

Would I have gotten it together to start a novel otherwise? Perhaps, but doubtful. Knowing myself, I’d just put it off until a future date. Or until I felt more confident as a writer. In other words, probably never. The good people at NaNoWriMo acknowledge that most people have these same excuses reservations. They offer these wise counterarguments:

1) If you don’t do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a “one day” event. As in “One day, I’d like to write a novel.” Here’s the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It’s just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you’ll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.

2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you’ll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you’d never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.

3) Art for art’s sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and “must-dos” of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.”

I can attest that all of this is true. NaNoWriMo is life-changing. It’s also a lot of fun, which is reason enough to participate imho.

Though I won’t be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year—instead, I’ll be doing a private National Novel Editing Month as I revise my novel—I’ve been encouraging all of my writer friends to participate. I’m envious of the wonderful time they’ll be having, but it would be difficult to abandon THE LILY MAID at this point to jump into another narrative—like leaving a baby in the bathwater without supervision.

So, think you have a novel inside you? (Of course you do!) Are you ready to jump into a month of literary abandon? (I hope so!) Can you stand so much creativity? (Mais oui!) Good news: the 2010 NaNoWriMo website will be live at the end of the week for you to sign up for free. Then you can use October to outline or research your novel in preparation for November.

Let me know if you do. I’ll be cheering from the sidelines.

ETA: The 2010 site is now live!

• Filed under The Novel, be-mused, creativity, events, stuff I like, the world around me | One Response

Publishing Monday: First Lines

The first line of a story Thea wrote for kindergarten about her hamster, Hamsty,
complete with her special glyph for “hamster”.

American Book Review has posted a very engrossing list of 100 best first lines from novels. They appear to be listed in an order similar to a radio Top 100. The first sentences range from the obvious — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, #2) — to the not-so-obvious (at least to me):

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” — James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (#85)

This got me to thinking: What makes a great first line in a novel? Obviously, it has to be something which is intriguing enough to compel you to continue reading. Yet it’s more than that—it has to have that intangible something. But what is it?

All this contemplation of first lines is especially timely—I’ve been mulling them over as I head back into revising THE LILY MAID. My current one isn’t bad — “I was surprised when the invitation arrived that June morning from St. John Dulac.” But I’m sure this sentence won’t remain since I plan to rework the book’s opening scene.

Interestingly, the original first line from my NaNoWriMo novel (the root for THE LILY MAID) still remains. The sentence is now tucked into a penultimate chapter near the end: “The original plan was for a candle or two to light the rowboat’s way.” I suspect my current first line will meet a similar fate of “gone from the first chapter but not forgotten.”

Anyone with any thoughts on what makes a great first line feel free to post in the comments! In the meantime, I’ll be trying not to spend too much time obsessing over this. As I know too well, it’s very easy for me to get caught up in the details—a great way to procrastinate.

Hamsty, the protagonist of Thea’s story.

• Filed under The Novel, be-mused, publishing | 2 Responses

On the radio with the Tarot Tribe

Last Sunday I was pleased to be Donnaleigh de la Rose’s guest on her inspiring Tarot Tribe radio show. We spent over an hour talking on the phone about my art, my tarot decks, and much more. I especially liked Donnaleigh’s tarot tips feature which offers very concise and artful advice for readers of all skill levels.

Besides chatting about my work, we gave three tarot readings to call-in listeners. For this purpose, I used the Lover’s Path Tarot (aka the Love Tarot app) on my iPhone. So I had Donnaleigh on one phone, my tarot deck on my iPhone—a two phone endeavor. Fun!

As part of my show, I offered two custom tarot spreads. The first spread, the Goddess Circle, was created for the Goddess Tarot iPhone app. It’s meant to offer a meditative examination of your life at this moment. The second, the Lover’s Spread, is an adapted Past-Present-Future layout designed to give quick relationship insight.

If you’d like to listen, the show has been archived here. You can also access the tarot spreads* here.

*Thanks to Catherine Chapman of TarotElements.com for creating the lovely handout!

• Filed under be-mused, events, iPhone apps, tarot and oracles | One Response