Oh, nerds...I love you.

More word nerd art projects by fab Matt Robinson.

(Yes, Jerusha, this is for you!)

CNN reports: Is it bon for Google to scan contents of French library (and hold rights for 25 yrs)?

Read the story.

Visit Bibliotheque municipale de Lyon.

Call for Submissions to American Stories NOW

Friends, if you have a taste for flash-non-fiction, your submissions are warmly welcomed at my f-n-f site, American Stories NOW. In the past I've shared the work of emerging writers including Cassondra Ellis, Michelle Lee, John Summerfield, Boudreau Freret and Noreen Lape, along with my own experiments in the form. What is American Stories NOW? Developed out of an assignment I often give to apprentice writers, ASN invites you to work within specific parameters, and is a great exercise for enhancing observational and memory skills, listening for the story, writing away from the self and capturing detail. The guidelines are simple. ASN accepts:

--Original, previously unpublished work. Length: 500-1,000 words

--Non-fiction (i.e. "true" stories)

--Stories that focus on a recent ("NOW") event, conversation or encounter here in America

--Stories that focus not on the writer, but rather on another person (or people).

The charge is to develop ourselves, both as writers and human beings, as people who listen closely and generously to the narratives of others. Interested? You can send your story in the body of an email to stories@mylenedressler.com. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at that address. I do try to read and review stories as quickly as possible, and to post them within a few weeks after acceptance.

Happy listening, happy writing!

--MD

Wise words to a struggling young writer

Mylene's response to Kathrine's post below was way too wonderful to be buried in the comment section, so I'm taking the liberty of posting it up front. What a great example of how we love and mentor each other (especially our younglings) as artists.

Mylene said:

By now you will have dried your tears, and I hope will hear me when I tell you that that was one of the most lucid analyses of one's own work I have every read. It takes talent not just to write, but to know when something isn't good enough. It takes courage not to let it slide. It takes heart for it to mean so much to you that you weep in the quest for mastery. It takes insight to parse the problem and grope toward the solution. You have all of these. You are almost there.

Remember that the frustration you are feeling right now is not ordinary, and that is why it is intense. It is what the choreographer Martha Graham calls "divine dissatisfaction." You are trying to make something that is fit and meet--something that refuses to be pedestrian. This connects you and your struggle to all the angels of better creation. It would be easier just to let those chapters stumble inadequately along. But you refuse to. And therein lies your gift.

This thought doesn't necessarily make it any easier while you're struggling, I know. But whenever I reach the same kind of impasse, I remember Graham. I may feel lost, groveling, lowly. But this is an error in my perception. I am dancing. I am burning with the same hectic fire as the stars. And eventually will burn my way through.

Hug.

I am not quitting! (even though tonight I think my novel sucks)

Today was one of those days. Finally got time to work on the book after a hectic week of play rehearsals and teaching, and decided to look back at my overall structure. This is not the first time. The first time was after my workshop told me they loved the beginning of my novel and the whole last half, but that there was a solid chunk in the middle that really dragged. So one balmy evening in May, I sat down on the porch with my aerospace engineer husband and hashed out the problems with the plot. I ended up backwards plotting from the end of the book all the way to the beginning, abiding by one principle: be absolutely ruthless. What this meant was that a significant portion of the novel ended up being rewritten, not heavily revised, but completely rewritten, from scratch. I sucked it up, dumped those 60 pages in the trash, and went on with the novel and my life. Over the next eighteen months, I ended up rewriting an even more substantial part of the novel, until my second draft barely resembled the first. The concept is the same and so are most of the characters, but the whole novel is tighter, leaner, and cleaner--except for a very frustrating 40 pages.

They're annoying me because they are very near what is now the beginning of the novel, and they do set a lot of very important things up. The problem is that there are too many threads and they aren't weaving together. They do later, but they aren't coming together right then. The result ends up being several tight, tense scenes back to back, followed by a few more leisurely background scenes, also back to back--and therein lies my problem.

I see that. I have seen that. I want to fix it. But for the life of me, I can't figure out how. I can't figure out how to organize that material, and I can't figure out which parts of the subplots to develop, and how to develop them without detracting from the main plot. Today I sat with what I think could be a gem of a manuscript, but there's just that one big flaw. There are other smaller problems throughout, of course, but that's the major problem. 5 out of 33 chapters. That's it--but because it's near the beginning of the novel, it's everything!

Tomorrow after church, I will come back and get the index cards. I will read and comment to student fiction and work yet again on my own. I will do what I've done before, so many times--I will map this out, and I will be ruthless.

That's what I will do tomorrow. But tonight I am in tears.

Macmillan authors are back in biz on Amazon

Looks like things are settling down. Just saw this note on John Scalzi's blog. Looked at several other authors with St. Martin's and other Mac imprints, and they're all back as well.

Whew. For a lot of reasons.

Saturday morning cartoon: Oscar nom "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty"

"She was soon to learn that when it comes to the harsher lessons of this life, beauty is not going to get you very far!"

Really not much I can add to that. Sleep tight?

From E.L. Doctorow, The Creationists

"Wherever fiction begins, whether in the music of words or an impelling anger, in a historic event or the importunate hope of a justly rendered composition of one's own life, the work itself is hard and slow and the writer's illumination becomes a taskmaster, a ruling discipline, jealously guarding the mind from all other and necessarily errant private excitements until the book is done, the script is finished. You live enslaved in the piece's language, its diction, its universe of imagery, and there is no way out except through the last sentence."

Agreed, my friends? Or is there some small piece missing, here, something of the joy of writing, the sense of being enslaved to something that flies as well as plods?

I do highly recommend The Creationists. A nice set of essays, although I bemoan the fact that there is only one woman among the many creative writers whose work Doctorow explores.

3 Quick Tips to Pump Up the Punch in Your Scenes

I've spent nearly a week wondering why I couldn't move forward and complete the scene I've been writing. Until suddenly, the proverbial light bulb flashed and I realized the root problem. I'd been wimping out.

Wimping out happens when you shy away from a scene with real emotional impact and rob the story (and by extension, yourself) of an opportunity to connect with the reader at a visceral level.

Here are some warning signs that you may have wimped out when writing a scene and some tips to pump up the punch:

1. You've put the most powerful, memorable lines in the mouths of a secondary or throwaway character rather than allowing your protagonist to star.

Possible solutions: Is there a way to give your protagonist a terrific comeback, wry or insightful observation, or show him/her driving the events/outcome? Readers love an active character with impact in his/her own life rather than a "dust mote" buffeted by every breeze.

2. You've failed to show a crucial turning point by "cleverly" alluding to it in subsequent scenes. Or maybe you have a character remember or flash back to a strong scene, especially one the reader was anticipating.

Possible solutions: Rewrite the power scene in the "real time" of the story to avoid distancing the reader from the action and emotion. (I swear, I have to relearn this particular lesson with each book!)

3. You're stalling on the tough stuff by writing scenes detailing the characters' routine activities. Zzzz...

Possible solutions: Try a "jump cut," leaping into the next power scene, then very briefly alluding to the critical details that made it happen (a bread crumb trail of necessary backstory.) In other words, as Elmore Leonard advises, "I just leave out the stuff that people don't read anyway." Same goes for boring, routine "how are you/I am fine" type dialogue. Kill it before it breeds a boring, routine and ultimately unreadable manuscript.

Do you ever find yourself using any of these techniques to avoid writing an emotional scene? Do you have any additional solutions to add to my list?

Hey, Amazon! I just bought another Macmillan book from Powell's.

It may be a small thing, but I'm buying a Macmillan imprint book from a non-Amazon online bookseller every day the Macmillan authors' buy buttons are missing from the Amazon site. Here's today's money-where-my-mouth-is salute to author solidarity:

A Whisper to the Living by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Forge, Jan 2010) Click link to buy from Powell's.

Per the flap:

A Whisper to the Living continues the adventures (some would say trials and tribulations) of Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing Russia.
Rostnikov and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring...and in doing so Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs. Or their lives.

Latest on Macmillan grrr Amazon

From Macmillan CEO John Sargent to Macmillan authors and illustrators via a paid advertisement in Publisher's Lunch:

I am sorry I have been silent since Saturday. We have been in constant discussions with Amazon since then. Things have moved far enough that hopefully this is the last time I will be writing to you on this subject.

Over the last few years we have been deeply concerned about the pricing of electronic books. That pricing, combined with the traditional business model we were using, was creating a market that we believe was fundamentally unbalanced. In the last three weeks, from a standing start we have moved to a new business model. We will make less money on the sale of e books, but we will have a stable and rational market. To repeat myself from last Sunday's letter, we will now have a business model that will ensure our intellectual property will be available digitally through many channels, at a price that is both fair to the consumer and that allows those who create and publish it to be fairly compensated.

We have also started discussions with all our other partners in the digital book world. While there is still lots of work to be done, they have all agreed to move to the agency model.

And now on to royalties. Three or four weeks ago, we began discussions with the Author's Guild on their concerns about our new royalty terms. We indicated then that we would be flexible and that we were prepared to move to a higher rate for digital books. In ongoing discussions with our major agents at the beginning of this week, we began informing them of our new terms. The change to an agency model will bring about yet another round of discussion on royalties, and we look forward to solving this next step in the puzzle with you.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

And a salute to the bricks and mortar retailers who sell your books in their stores and on their related websites. Their support for you, and us, has been remarkable over the last week. From large chains to small independents, they committed to working harder than ever to help your books find your readers.

Lastly, my deepest thanks to you, our authors and illustrators. Macmillan and Amazon as corporations had our differences that needed to be resolved. You are the ones whose books lost their buy buttons. And yet you have continued to be terrifically supportive of us and of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a great joy to be your publisher.

I cannot tell you when we will resume business as usual with Amazon, and needless to say I can promise nothing on the buy buttons. You can tell by the tone of this letter though that I feel the time is getting near to hand.

All best,
John

(I'm curious to know how comforting this is for authors who had book releases in Jan and Feb. I can't believe they won't restore the print editions of all Macmillan imprints since this is a squabble over ebook sales. Hard to see the forest for the trees, I guess, especially when you're busy razing the forest to the ground in order to erect a strip mall.)

John Scalzi's Play on Publishing

Frustrated by the current publishing climate and "give it to me now and give it to me free" attitude of those who feel entitled to download your hard work on the downlow?

If you'd rather laugh than cry about it (at least for today), I highly recommend you click your way over to Hugo-nominated, New York Times bestselling science fiction author John Scalzi's Whatever Blog to read Why In Fact Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon: A Deeply Slanted Play in Three Acts.

You, Mr. Scalzi, clearly rock. And Mrs. Scalzi, I'm sending you a cyber-high five for that appearance in the Third Act.

On Substance

My friends, when you are feeling small and inconsequent, or worry that your work may be small and inconsequent, please undertake the following exercise.

Imagine lifting your own weight over your head. Do this deliberately, and in this way: Imagine that you are standing in front of yourself. Imagine you are bending at the knees--say, like a circus performer--and holding your upturned hands out toward yourself. Now: imagine your heels stepping forward and into your hands. Imagine you are slowly straightening and lifing your entire body, your own feet, in fact the weight of your complete being, from the ground up--right over your head.

Feel the heft of you? Feel the substance?

No small thing.

This is what we do every day. We carry ourselves through the world. And our work.

We flag, at times. No wonder. We feel small and baffled. Why, we ask ourselves, do we bother at all? Here is where the error lies: in thinking, because we sometimes tire and buckle, that we don't amount to much.

Nonsense.

Take a moment today. Feel your substance.

Stand.

--MD