Inspirational Words from Ira Glass

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. For example, you want to make TV because you love TV. There is stuff that you just love.

So you have really good taste. But you get into this thing where there is this gap. For the first couple years you are making stuff… but what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is a disappointment to you. It’s still sorta crappy.

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. But the thing I would say to you with all my heart: most everyone I know who does interesting, creative work, went through years of this. We knew our work didn’t have this special thing that we wanted it to have. Everybody goes through this.

If you are just starting this phase, still in this phase, getting out of this phase, you gotta know it’s totally normal and the most important, possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you will finish one story. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have someone waiting for the work, even if it’s somebody that doesn’t pay you. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

In my case, I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I’ve ever met. It takes a while. It’s going to take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that.

Ira Glass is host and producer of This American Life.

Content vs. Craft: The Dumbing Down of the Literary World

"The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate." (Narrator from Idiocracy)

What's a guy of average
intelligence to do
in the dumbed down future?

I have something that has been bugging me lately. I've often wondered if perhaps it's just me, but I don't think so. With many things I read, and most often times conversations in which I happen to get involved, there is a remarkable lack of attention paid to grammar. Now, I know as an English-speaker in the United States that we tend to have a certain pride when it comes to our overall English language. But that's pretty much where our pride stops. Having studied a second language for much of my college career, it didn't take me long to realize that when it comes to grammar, American English speakers, for the most part, couldn't care less. This lack of attention and enthusiasm is reflected in the way literature is being written today. Don't believe me? Well, let's take a look at some recent activity going on in the publishing world.

Let me preface this article by first saying I have nothing against the wonderful industry of e-publishing. I believe the ever-increasing popularity of publishing books in this format is due, largely in part, to the fact that it makes novels more available and easy to access on just about any mobile platform. (Hey, I have a Kindle and I enjoy it!) However, I do take offense with some authors who believe just about anything is publishable and, yeah, anyone should be happy with it and not rip it apart. Those who believe this way, believe the content (i.e. their story, the creative idea behind his/her work, the saturated genre) is fine the way it is, and that the craft (i.e. the wordcraft, the language, the actual plot, the beauty in which one creates the story, the actual prose) isn't all that important. In other words, if the story is dumbed down for the reader, who cares? I care, and so should any serious writer/reader out there.

Why have my hackles been raised? For two reasons:  firstly, celebrity (or celebutante) authors, and secondly, a recent article pertaining to a poorly written e-book series getting snatched up for traditional publication.

The Truth About
Diamonds
by Nicole Richie

Although there are a few who can pull it off (and I'm not talking about autobiographies, I'm talking fiction), for the most part, celebrity authors just don't have what it takes. Ones who make me cringe are those such as Lauren Conrad (according to Lisa Schwarzbaum of EW.com -- "Is there anything LC can't do? Well, uh, yes. Write a 'novel.'"), Pamela Anderson (according to Blogcritics.org, "Pamela Anderson's recent tome is unlikely to toll any bells in the halls of academia,") and Nicole Richie with her "reality fiction" (one commenter at Amazon.com said, "How this was published when real authors are struggling just to get their work read is amazing."). These "authors" lace their plots and storytelling with glitzy, superficial worlds that don't really speak to most readers. These "creations" are mostly "reality fiction," meaning the novel has become a vehicle they use in order to spill the beans about their own lives. These works are wolves in sheep's clothing and rarely do they carry any depth when it comes to crafting a great novel. And rarely do they last more than a few months on book shelves. For some reason, because someone like Snooki has an MTV audience, therefore she must make a great writer (here's an article about her novel A Shore Thing. Classy.). Hmm.

Virtue
by Amanda Hocking

I think the final straw that broke this camel's back is an article I read in *Entertainment Weekly. Two authors, Minnesota native Amanda Hocking and former insurance salesman John Locke, have been making waves in the self-publishing world. Hocking, who writes supernatural romance, recently signed a $2 million deal with St. Martin's Press, and Locke has moved more than a million downloads with his detective crime series. The quality of the writing is what really hit a nerve. Article writer, Rob Brunner, has this to say about Hocking's writing:

❝Hocking, it's safe to say, is not a stylist. Her work reads like a high school creative-writing assignment, full of typos and misused words and lifeless language. But while wordcraft may not be her thing, Hocking definitely does have something. Despite its faults, the trilogy zips along pleasantly enough, and although the books aren't remotely in the same league as Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, they do poke at the same pleasure centers.❞

And as to Locke? This is what Brunner has to say:

❝The latest, Vegas Moon, features characters with forced-funny names like Dr. Phyllis Willis and Fast Eddie Pickles, and a flimsy plot about a lethal computer chip implanted in Creed's brain gets padded out with a weirdly detailed pasta recipe and an impassioned defense of airport baggage handlers.❞

When, as readers, as purchasers of novels, did we start asking for dreck like this to be a proper representation of skill in an industry where almost anything goes nowadays? (After all, Hocking and Locke are at the top of the unrepresented self-published game.) When did we become complacent about shelling out those $3 or less for these e-books? We have a voice, and those of us who enjoy quality literature should use our voices by not throwing away our dollars on junk, because that's about all that some of this "literature" is -- junk. I don't know about you, but I'd rather keep visiting the local library where all my choices are free and I can usually see what I'm getting into.

In the case of Amanda Hocking, as a writer, I would have been excited to hear how oftentimes belittled self-publishing landed her a fantastic deal with St. Martin's (because I truly believe there are some great self-published works out there), but when I continued reading the article I felt disgust more than anything else. I often hear people say, "Why, I should write a book. I'd make soooo much money." I just shake my head. But then a story like this crops up and I think, "Yeah, you should write that book, Mr. I-have-no-idea-how-to-even-do-it. How much worse could your writing possibly be?" After all, if Hocking and Snooki can pull it off, then anybody can pull it off. Right?

In my opinion, anyone who wants to self-publish needs to do the same amount of legwork that one would do if he/she was going the traditional route. Have a critique group and beta readers, know your genre, get all the feedback that's necessary in order to have a finely crafted creation. If you want to be taken seriously, then treat your writing seriously. Then, it would be worth the few extra bucks people would be willing to pay to read something memorable.


What about for you? Are you wasting your dollars on a high caloric diet of literary junk? Do you feel there is an influx of badly crafted work hitting the self-publishing world? Should there be a better way of regulating it now that the so-called gatekeepers (agents) of the industry no longer work as filters? Feel free to point out any grammatical errors in this article!


* The article, "The Hottest Self-Published Books," can be found in the July 29, 2011 issue, #1165.


✿ Also, for an upcoming article I'm looking for anyone who has done work as a ghostwriter. Feel free to e-mail me at writing.sisterhood@gmail.com!

Congratulations Sister Lorena!

The Sisterhood is happy to announce, and congratulate, our Sister Lorena Hughes for being one of the winners at the recent Annual SouthWest Writers Writing Contest.

Sister Lorena’s novel “The Black Letter “ was awarded First Place in the Historical Novel Category.

http://www.southwestwriters.com/contestAnnual.php

May this be the first of many awards!