A Writer's Edge

9-1-1 Send an Author

2010-05-11T10:30:00.001-07:00

What are "emergency 911 interviews" with authors? I found this phrase twice in PR material about a book. If I make a 911 call, it will definitely NOT be to interview an author. How about you? What would constitute an "emergency interview" anyway?

"Oh, quick, I'm dying from lack of a quote from the author to go with this free book publicity. Call 9-1-1, stat!"

Well, they do call them "book doctors" so maybe this isn't so far off base as first glance suggests.

The publicity agent also asks that I "please everify the best street address so we can send you a package." Is that a new verb? Makes sense: "to everify" is to verify via electronic media. Right? I think what he really wants is for me to email him my street address.

9-1-1, help! I've been hit by runaway creative nonfiction.

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Currently Reading

2010-05-10T17:08:00.001-07:00

New books pop in more frequently these days. Like what? S&S sent the paperback of Alexis Wright's CARPENTARIA, the one about the Aborigines that I loved. It's a terrible print job, but a wonderful story to revisit. Why do publishers send the paperback editions to reviewers who have already published reviews of a book when it came out in hardback? If it weren't so good, I wouldn't even mention it here.

I asked the Free Press for WISENHEIMER by Mark Oppenheimer because in the PR it sounded funny (in a good way) and the author sounded a lot like me with the love of words thing. It's not and he's not. It's all about debating. Yawn!

Atria Books surprised me with WRITE THAT BOOK ALREADY! by Sam Barry and Kathi Kamen Goldmark, the Author Enablers at BookPage.com. I just started reading this one with some trepidation. It has a chapter about self-publishing. In fact, the book is about getting published, not about writing. The authors' breezy style is a bit off-putting, and the fact that they don't discuss getting an agent until chapter five, disquieting. We'll see.

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Kitten on the Keys

2010-05-08T08:09:00.001-07:00

Couldn't play the piano version, either!

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Give it Away

2010-05-06T10:25:00.001-07:00

Give it away -- a concept that eludes the young, anal retentive, greedy and unsure. Trust me, there is no end to creativity, new toys or techniques. "Giving it away" enriches you, frees up the flow. It takes a lot of energy to hold on, to protect, to hide. Generosity enhances reputation and credibility, too.

Exactly what and how much to give away is unknown. It depends partly on what you otherwise offer for sale. Give it away until you're uncomfortable. Then give some more. Breaking through barriers brings pleasant release and satisfaction--what a paradox! The nature of the media are such that you can effectively provide only small bits of information at a time.

Let's get specific. I sell editing services to help others write well and get published. You want to sell a novel (establish a platform, sell books, connect with readers). He is a temporarily unemployed writer for print publications seeking a new job or assignments. We can all provide free information in our blogs and other social media, on our websites, in seminars and conferences and online communities without jeopardizing our incomes.

No one is not going to hire, buy or assign work because we shared our talents. I can tell others the elements of editing, but that won't enable someone to compete with my service or not need it. My abilities include years of experience and more knowledge than I could cram into, say, six years of blog posts. I give away articles on a single topic, not everything I know about how to write well. And many people just don't want to do the editing themselves. They'd rather write.

Fiction writers have unique voices that add value to their work. Discussing their writing processes, plot points, characterization or a story's background will not dampen interest from an agent, publisher or readers. Even if you give away a whole novel, you have more to write, right?

Similarly for nonfiction writers, explaining the finer points of interviewing, for example, won't enable others to instantly become crack reporters and snatch away jobs. You can also demonstrate your abilities to write well and to craft articles.

While you digest all this, think about the urgent need for writers to show mastery of electronic media. Old school is out. Open hands are in.

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Rewrites & Resales

2010-05-05T08:52:00.001-07:00

Rewriting is a major edit. It is also the source of additional income for freelancers who sell an original article. If you rewrite that piece, maybe giving it a new slant, you can sell it again as a different story. No, you don't just change a certain percentage, you rewrite the whole article, emphasizing a different aspect, drawing in unused research material, getting fresh quotes from experts.

Successful freelancer Marcia Peterson calls this "repurposing" articles in her "How 2 Successfully Repurpose Your Articles" on the WOW website. She says, "There are very few stories that fit only one market, so brainstorm all the possible angles..." and tells you how to:

Alter the original work for a larger or smaller market.

Explore new demographics.

Switch genres or styles.

Get creative.

Read the whole article and notice how she draws on resources and advice from other freelancers, providing examples of writers who succeed at rewriting their works and selling them to different markets. Why do it? You've already performed the basic research and are familiar with the topic--time saved is also money earned!

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Review: A FIERCE RADIANCE

2010-05-04T10:17:00.001-07:00

Previously, I reviewed Lauren Belfer's debut novel City of Light, and liked it immensely because of its strong female main character. Her new novel, A FIERCE RADIANCE, comes out on the 15th of next month. Again this author delivers a character who will resonate with her readers: the charismatic Claire Shipley, a beautiful and talented photo-journalist for Life magazine during World War II.

She stumbles into the greatest story of her career when she is assigned to take pictures of the scientists at the Rockefeller Institute, working against time to develop life-saving antibiotics. This plot struck a personal note for my family: during the war, my parents' first baby died of an infection as their similarly sick cocker spaniel was saved by an experimental drug available only for animals--possibly streptomycin. In Belfer's book, the drug is penicillin. She, too, had lost a daughter to an infection from a minor scratch in the pre-antibiotics years.

Belfer’s historical exploration of the origins of these life-saving drugs, whose efficacy has since been reduced through over-prescription and the growth of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, echoes in today’s heated debates over antibiotic use.

A FIERCE RADIANCE is a thriller, a love story, a family saga, and a portrait of war-time New York. It depicts the tumultuous early days of World War II, when many feared that America would lose the war and they clung fiercely to their loved ones, because no one could predict what tomorrow would bring. It was a very different lifetime in America and Belfer offers a glimpse into it, a way of life that fewer and fewer of us experienced.

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

Switching to Posterous

2010-04-30T09:08:00.001-07:00

Until I figure out a way to cram more posts into this blog, AWE continues via Posterous at @GLHancock's Posterous at http://AWritersEdge.posterous.com/ with an RSS feed at http://awritersedge.posterous.com/rss.xml

Tomorrow I'll try uploading an apt, but irreverent, LOLcat as usual for Silly Saturday. Meantime, Watch this Space at http://www.writers-edge.info/Blog.html and the feed from http://feeds.feedburner.com/writers-edge/EElx or by mail, etc. at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=349955 .

Posted via email from @GLHancock's posterous

How to P. O. Clients

2010-04-29T10:09:00.000-07:00

Writer or editor, you can piss off potential clients in a few easy steps. Create several websites and social media accounts. In each of them, offer something valuable for free ("click/download here"). Link that to an email marketing system which requires registration, or collect the email address up front in a form with the vague notation that they are agreeing to receive stuff from you.

Now you have a gullible sales prospect or "lead" who has agreed to receive your pitches (called "material" or "lessons" or "free report"). You can run them round and round with interconnected links. Deliver the promised free material if they are able to contact you and ask for it, but send them to one of your sites first. You can't be accused of sending spam because they must opt in to your mailing list at some point, trying to obtain the originally-offered free material.

We all love getting something free, right? What don't we love? A free runaround that ends in us feeling like suckers! My fave is a "free coupon" and the only part that is free is the coupon. Or a free dinner if you purchase another one. Call it a "twofer" up front, for heaven's sake!

For my "dear Internets" as Paige-the-Poet calls us: use a free email account in a fake name for such offers. Check it only when you expect to receive the freebie, and you can ignore or delete all the rest of the spam. I like to use Gmail for its large capacity and versatility. And it's *FREE*

Poetry Month Celebration

2010-04-28T04:50:00.000-07:00

Promised: one fresh, new original unpublished poem. Delivered:

Love’s Reality

There is nothing better than
To be
In love with the outdoors
Where sun beams spark
Between oak and sweet gum
Leaves in cool summer breezes
Being in the middle of nature
With its crazy squirrely antics
Tumbling, wrestling, barking
Nothing beats dining al fresco
Watching reality’s sitcoms play out
Through the neighbors' windows

Paige von Liber

Changes in Print Journalism

2010-04-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

I have not picked on the newspaper for a while. (Like they care!) One reason I laid off is because the quality of it may be on the rise after hitting a dangerous bottom coinciding with the national recession.

The new owners and management made quite a few changes (after decimating the writing staff). One was an SSP (shameless self-promotion) calculating the enormous number of people who read the rag weekly. Read it. Not buy it. But readers' eyes are what advertisers want, and advertising is the blood that sustains a major daily.

The paper also tried various subscription schemes, which I doubt had much positive result, greatly improved color technology used in print, and spectacularly revamped it's website (logo to the right) to be clean, clear and more usable.

What prompts this post, however, were the changes I noticed in last Sunday's Arts section, where a paltry few book reviews are crammed. I saw more advertising, which usually translates into a little more copy space--enough to sustain eight pages this time, except one was a full-page ad.

I saw more citizen-type journalism (hyperlocal is the new buzz) with a major feature written by a name I recognized (probably one of those laid off staff writers) as a Special which usually means freelance. Also new, a blog-type "Opera Diary" by a performer in the summer Shakespeare Festival.

Big surprises jumped out from the top of page two: lists of the top ten singles from Itunes and movies from rottentomatoes.com. The only book sales reported were the ten top sellers at a local book store. No more New York Times multiple lists. How will our book clubs make selections now?

This week offered only two, but longish, book reviews. One was a reprint from the San Francisco Chronicle filling more than a quarter-page, the other by the Arts editor. The rest of the section covered local theater and music, with the entire back page devoted to television listings and blurbs.

What provoked me to write anything at all was that intrusion of web content into print media. Is this the trend? It is traditional to run reprints, but a different matter for a paper to report information gathered for other organizations' websites. That, with the hyperlocalism and the spiffed up Signonsandiego website offer a view of where print media are headed. They no longer carry staffs for professional investigative journalism, and I wonder if they pay for content from websites.

With web news organizations increasingly depending on "citizen journalism" for content (think HuffPo with its many unpaid bloggers), and readers viewing only what agrees with their established opinions, it's no surprise that the populace becomes increasingly polarized on important issues. Fewer reviews of informative books only exacerbates this dilemma.

The End of Shenk's Genius

2010-04-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

I saved my tendons today to finish a formal review of David Shenk's The Genius in All of Us, which I've mentioned several time in the last month. Before it is published elsewhere, I felt I owed readers here the resolution of my feelings about the book's message: he is wrong. He pulled together disparate research data and concocted an untested theory that my 66 years experience refutes.

Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.

Cats on Obscenities

2010-04-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Leave it to the LOL linguists to ride herd on our words.

Self-edit Yourself

2010-04-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

Self-editing is a hot phrase among the DIY litterati. I'm all for editing ourselves, if that means watching what we say and controlling our behaviors. That's what civilization, at least socialization, is all about.

Editing our own writing is something else. The longer the piece, the more we need another pair of eyeballs cast over it, taking a fresh look. When we write, we know what we mean, what we are saying. Those meanings stick in our brains so that we can't see the typos, grammatical goofs and silly syntax that slips in.

Enter the Professional Editor. She (usually) might work for a publishing house or work freelance. Many editors more back and forth with the economy from employed to "consulting". Some are on call for times a publisher needs an extra editor or has a special job. The Bay Area Editors' Forum provides good definitions of the different types of editorial services you many encounter or need.

However, when writers are thinking and talking about "self-editing" they often refer only to copyediting and proofreading. Rather than repeat my past posts with editing tips, I'm referring you to the most comprehensive list of resources for editing that I have seen: KOK Edit :: Copyeditors' Knowledge Base, Editing Tools. Indeed, Katherine O'Moore-Klopf's whole site is an education in itself and great for aspiring copyeditors to study.

If you ask her why writers need copyeditors she says:

To ensure clarity
To ensure a smooth, logical flow
To double-check plausibility of events in plots
To verify facts
To fix grammar, syntax, and spelling errors
To ensure consistency of point of view and tone

Professional editing will put that final polish on your writing that might make the difference between "send the manuscript" or "we'll buy it" and "no thanks." If you have the least doubt about your grasp on grammar or assume syntax is a way for government to profit from naughtiness, invest in your career with an editor's help.

Buzz Mother Earth

2010-04-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

Earthly buzz I have known since the 1960s:

ecology

biodegradable
ecosystem
One World
organic
One Straw Revolution
back to the land
gaia
Earth Mother
renewable resource
slow food
green
sustainability

Do you know other associated words?

I Haiku You

2010-04-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

It is National Poetry Month once more. I was happy to feature hometown (San Diego) poet, Rae Armentrout, last week. She's the most recent winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Soon I'll publish FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE an original poem by a dedicated -- and possibly unpublished except for DIY and community sites -- poet. Wait for it ... wait for it ...

In the meantime, here is my annual, perpetual spring haiku:

Faking It The California Way

Shall I sweep or blow
Drifting pear tree petals
Look like SoCal snow

Alrighty then, moving along: you may have noticed the possibly cryptic previous message about something called "Posterous" (a preposterous name for a website/service, no?) I'm trying it out hopefully as a method to keep this RSS stream active after Blogger axes FTP uploads at the end of the month. (Just can't let go ...) Please note the correct use of an adverb.

If no silly LOLcat posting appears on May 1 -- or is it May 2 (hard to tell what Blogger.com is really going to do) -- we'll know it isn't working. Maybe.

Isn't this exciting?

Cats Can Haz iPad

2010-04-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

Now everyone is getting into the iPad craze. Even cats.

Too Much Hype

2010-04-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

An insidious creeping phenomenon among writers is over-hyping themselves. I'm seeing blogs and other social media for books that don't even have publishers yet. People who may have acquired an agent are calling themselves "authors" and writing about their books and characters, as if they were already bestsellers. Too much "visioning"! They're already working on sequels or the "next in the series" about the same character or theme, or other series at the same time. Such chutzpah! You're not all Isaac Asimovs.

If I want to write about a book and author, first I look for the publisher (to avoid self-publishers unless some well-known literati gave the book a smash review or blurb). I seek an Amazon listing and a graphic of the cover. If I find no link to online or physical booksellers and no publishing info (release date, ISBN, publisher), tiny warning bells start tinkling.

Sure, we have been suggesting for years that beginner writers have sites, blogs (maybe not so much now with Twitter), participate online and start a site for a book six months prior to publication--by which time it would be sold to a publisher. These moves were advised as platform building. Now some people have gone way too far. I think social media are being used to avoid the necessary hard work to become a published writer, particularly a novelist.

Another facet of authors I might research are their academic backgrounds. If one tosses about literary terms and definitions as gospel, I want to be sure the author has the credentials to back up opinions and information. As I prepared to review David Shenk's The Genius in All of Us, I felt certain he would have a Ph.D. in psychology or education. Hint: if it isn't listed on the book cover, the author probably has no advanced degree. Sorry, that's less credibility, which leaves a nonfiction writer more vulnerable for attacks -- exactly what has happened to Shenk.

Finding multiple sites, blogs, Twitter, chats and other SM accounts for a related author/book/theme is starting to be a sure sign of a beginner. Probably an unpublished book writer. Why? Because these forms of SSP (shameless self-promotion) are easy and F*R*E*E. And that's sad. The Web, a marvelous tool for teaching and learning is filling with mediocrity, dragging down the quality of the online experience. It's increasingly meatless media.

Poetry Pulitzer Armentrout

2010-04-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Poetry is short-hand communication. I don't know why academics and other intellectuals (critics) invoke "deconstruction" to explore the meaning of literature. With poetry, analysis is a matter of reconstructing the poets' messages into whole sentences.

Take the controversial and cryptic verse from David Lynch's equally weird movie and TV series, Twin Peaks:

"Thru the darkness of Future Past
the magician longs to see
one chants out between two worlds
Fire - walk with me." ~ lynchnet.com/tp/

I've been thinking about death this week, more specifically, about writing a personal essay and starting an Artist Trading Cards series on the topic. This poem(?) has enchanted me for years, and here's one meaning I've decrypted:

Magicians desire to know the hidden future (which will instantly become the past). A particular magician stands at the crack/line/surface/veil between life/good and death/evil and calls out to fire, the element of both underground heat/hell/death/evil and aboveground air/heaven/good/life. The magician believes fire will allow movement between both realms, enabling vision or knowledge of past events which were/are the future and future events which are/will be the past.

All the slashes indicate alternative words which occur to me. One may sing to you best. Other poetry dealing with death just won a poet a Pulitzer Prize.

Rae Armantrout, a name familiar to me for the last 25 years, is a well-known poet and professor at UCSD. She's also the 2010 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Versed, which also won the NBCC in March. It is her 10th published book.

Movies on Writing

2010-04-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

The best listing I've seen of movies about writers and writing, lurks in the depths of a site you would never guess. It's called "Online Universities," owned by Patricia Gavins, and it's for sale. Anyway, for inexplicable reasons, the site's blog frequently features posts about writing and writers, such as Top 25 Movies for Writers. The movies are linked to their IMDB listings.

When I think about writers and movies, all I can remember are Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile in which a female freelance journalist gets out of her apartment to have fantastic adventures with a hunky Indiana Jones-type. Yeah! Neither are in Gavin's list, but I did discover that my favorite, I Capture the Castle has a film version. That book by Dodie Smith probably had the most influence on my wanting to become a novelist (as well as a poet, short story writer and business manager).

I should have thought of Misery, The Shining, and Capote, all of which I've seen. I had not heard of most of the others, and am not inclined to see the gloomy-sounding ones. Except for Quills.

Cat Writer's Block

2010-04-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Writer's blogks? We haz 'em toodaiz!

Successful Self-Publishing

2010-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Continuing to clean out my Blogger drafts garage (Blogger cuts me off at month's end): consider self-publishing, especially if you have written nonfiction or a book for your family (memoir, family history) or one to give away, or just because you want it (hobby publishing).

Dr. Carol Buchanen offers some of the best guidance I've seen in Successful Self-Publishing: Asking the Right Questions at the Self-Publishing Review site. Don't miss the subsequent two parts of this informative series. She covers:

The Six Phases of Publishing

Entering self-publishing, I confess to some advantages. I had already published, I had worked in the publishing industry and in print shops, and I had taught newspaper editing at the college level. As a result, I understood the publishing process and could ask questions relevant to each phase of it.
A book goes through six phases before it ends up on a reader’s bookshelf:

Writing the book
Acquiring the book (We self-publishers can skip this one.)
Editing and Designing the book (Known as Pre-Production)
Manufacturing the book (Known as Production)
Marketing & Promoting the book
Distributing the book to those who want to sell or read it

We self-publishers have to do all of the above, or contract for it to be done.

Along with following Carol's suggestions, I recommend material available from the SP guru, Dan Poynter, Mark Levine's book on The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, Keith Howick's Blow Us Away!: Publishers' Secrets for Successful Manuscripts, Paul Krupkin's Trash-Proof Press Releases (free at Smashwords, I think) and Ink Tree Marketing's FREE eBook: 101 Things You Need to Know About Publishing.

Become a Published Writer

2010-04-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

This continues comments on David Shenk's The Genius in All of Us, which will appear at #31 in the New York Times Book Review BestSellers NonFiction list next Sunday, a fact he touts in his blog and his Author Page. On the book's page at Amazon, you'll find an amazing array of customer reviews and video that you can link to directly.

Previously I wrote of hoping to have adjusted to the notion that I am not gifted, unless taking IQ tests well is considered an Olympic Event. I reached page 139 last night and still feel upset, but I'm not certain why. Shenk's book seems to say that what I thought was a gift or talent (high verbal skills) was/is nothing different from everyone else. This would be much worse if I had been struggling with creative writing all these years, or had decided after much praise that I would switch to a career as a watercolorist. Same for musical skills to a lesser degree. No, I'm just a normal person who couldn't focus.

I thought I had something special because I seemed to tackle any activity, master it and usually win a first prize. After that I get bored and move on to something else. Then there were the admonishments received all through my school life that I did not "live up to your potential." No one told me what that potential was or how to live up to it. I once had a "patron" who abandoned me in disgust when I didn't produce, as she put it, "the next Great American novel." She gave me a year to do it.

What is this, some kind of perverse ADHD? How could I, without the basic foundations outlined in the previous post, achieve modest success at so many different activities? I can see now why I didn't become a great whatever. And it's all my own fault. First I depended on my "talent" to blossom and carry me into greatness or at least a published novel, and secondly I practiced and persisted and gave up too soon. I did not have that single-minded drive needed to rise to the top of any field.

Part Two of Shenk's book is "Cultivating Greatness." Oh, great! I thought. I'm already 66, too late to be great. Too tired, too. Shenk offers some "guiding principles for the ambitious." It's no surprise that I can correlate them with much of my advice on becoming a successful writer:

Find your motivation - writing must be the top priority
Be your toughest critic - aim toward perfection in the writing
Beware of blues of failure - get used to rejection; get over it
Ignore shortcomings - hold on tight to your dream
Delay gratification - keep your eyes on the prize ~ MLK
Know your heroes - there is no "overnight success"
Find a mentor - one of the best of resources for success

Shenk quotes an unidentified New York magazine and book editor:

The best writers at age twenty-five are very rarely among the best writers at age fifty. Just staying in the game is difficult, and for those that do, there's a process of quiet, incremental improvement over time that has no substitute. I've found that time is a crucial input into excellence.

Participatory Reporting

2010-04-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Pardon me while I indulge in reporting an event I witnessed yesterday.

San Diego, Cal. -- Much of the audience for Pirates of Penzance rushed out of the North Park Theater on Sunday, missing the end of the first act. They'd felt the beginnings of the largest earthquake to hit southern California in the last 30 years. For many, it was the strongest temblor they'd ever felt. I was one of them.

As the guest of a couple of friends, I was watching the famous Gilbert and Sullivan extravaganza for the first time. We sat in the back row (ground level) of the small recently restored theater built in the 1920s. Those luxurious seats with great views were individual, comfortable chairs, not row seats. I had forgotten that tiny detail when I noticed the first jolt. I thought someone down the row shook it with laughter. When the movement continued, I glared at my host to my right, thinking he was the source, kicking my seat. He was oblivious, engrossed in the performance.

That's when I remembered I was sitting in a separate chair and thought I heard a vague roaring accompanying the repeated movements. I turned to my hostess on my left and asked, "Do you feel that?" She just gave me a blank look. I knew it was an earthquake; visions of the Haiti devastation flooded my brain. I feared the old building would fall apart and glanced up at the swaying golden chandeliers. I pointed them out to my friend, but she just smiled and sat still.

Usually, earthquakes in southern California provide one or two jolts or the gentle rocking feeling of a wave passing beneath. By the time you realize what it is, it's over, too quickly even to get up from a chair. This one kept on shaking. About 15 seconds of movement prompted many other attendees to stand and head toward exits.

Despite the sensation of unreality, I thought, "Shit! This is the worst earthquake I've ever felt!" I could not resist panic and urges to get out of a once crumbling structure. When my hostess wouldn't move, I climbed over her and bolted down the empty row to join the growing crush at the doorway to the little lobby.

Outside, some claimed they could still feel the ground moving. I only felt myself shaking from fear and a wildly pounding heart. We inanely discussed how we were not standing in a very safe spot, under a marquee, and everyone I heard said it was the biggest quake they'd ever experienced. Most of them were seniors, including me, and many were natives. A fire truck rumbled around from the back of the building, pulled into the street and headed east on a main thoroughfare, causing some wonderment. I was thankful its sirens were not blaring.

Fortunately it had been almost time for the intermission when people began to leave the hall. My friends finally emerged. We talked and I decided that if we were staying, I wanted a glass of wine to calm me. There was no wine. There was no little white pill in my purse, either. In a crisis, I am usually calm and clear-headed. I've never experienced a sudden scare continuing to affect me for so long afterwards. (Evaculation from the wildfire in 2003 was an extended, exhausting fright.) After the performance resumed, I felt a strong aftershock shake us again and cringed again, but it was just one jolt.

At this time on Monday (9 a.m., PT), we have had many more five-point-somethings, but not the six-pointer seismologists expected. As long as I live, I will never forget the Pirates of Penzance!

Holiday Recipe

2010-04-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Pour boiling water down a rabbit hole:

Hot cross bunnies!

Who's a Writing Genius?

2010-03-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

According to David Shenk, no one is a writing genius. Nor is writing well a talent, a result of inspiration or an example of giftedness. He explains in a new book published by Doubleday, The Genius in all of Us.

I wished on Twitter for someone @Doubledaypub to ask me to review the book. Wishing on Twitter is much more effective than wishing on stars. Within a week, the book arrived (yesterday). Study commenced immediately. This often happens when I receive a book I want to read for personal reasons.

Shenk's premise, backed by a plethora of studies in different disciplines, is that outstanding performance in any field is mostly the result of practice. Perhaps that is too simplified. It's the result of a process, the interaction of genes and environment: G x E, with emphasis on the interaction. He says most all of us can display genius, recharging the Human Potential movement.

If this information ever penetrates the airy-fairy "white veil" visionaries who dream and talk endlessly of becoming rich and famous as Authors, maybe they will cease waiting for the Muse or Inspiration to strike and pontificating high-minded platitudes and theories about achieving success in writing.

Writing success arrives after practice, practice, practice.

I admit that I wanted The Genius in All of Us for a vehicle in my quest to understand myself, my family, background and my life (to a lesser extent). I am struggling with Shenk's revelation, even though I already knew about some of the research he cites. Giving up the notion of being "gifted" can be difficult, especially if you feel that's all you have going for you. Letting go of some elements of the foundation of my higher education in psychology leaves me feeling asea.

I'm only at page 52 and trust that by the time I reach page 139 (the beginning of 160+ pages of back matter) I'll adjust to this new paradigm or at least climb out of denial. Of course I looked at all the back matter first. It's quite impressive and often the most valuable part of nonfiction books.

What's the take away so far? To become a great writer, you need a highly complex verbal and supportive environment in your earliest years and positive reinforcement for your earliest writing efforts. Then you need an intense education about writing (an M.F.A. for creative writing? J-school for nonfiction?) and most of all, you need to try and fail and keep on (practice!) until you succeed.

Just write the damn thing!