By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

Perhaps the future is not as bleak as we fear it to be.

According to the January 19, 2009, edition of Publishers Weekly, the National Endowment for the Arts reported last week that the population of fiction readers in the United States has increased by 16.6 million since 2002, “creating the largest audience in the history of the NEA survey.” No one knows why, exactly, but there’s general agreement that this is a good thing.

I have to tell you that the news doesn’t surprise me. For years—even during the days of the booming economy—I’ve listened to publishers and frightened authors complaining that no one ever reads anymore; yet when I walk into a B&N or Borders anywhere in the country, the aisles are fairly packed with people, and I have to wait in line before I can check out. Who are these people if not readers?

More recently, we’ve heard about the “collapse” of the publishing industry, with the concomitant panic response of layoffs and such, but then we hear of net sales declines of less than one percent. I understand that negative growth is never good in business, but a gnat’s whisker from break even—on the heels of five years of record growth—is hardly a “collapse.”

Years ago, when I was a junior officer in the fire service, a veteran captain gave me one of the great antidotes to panic: a good old fashioned deep breath. When you roll up on a working fire in the middle of the night, where people may or may not be trapped, and there’s a fleet of additional fire trucks on their way, and you have to make a thousand relatively irreversible decisions in just a few seconds, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The captain’s specific advice was to sit in the cab of the fire truck for five seconds, and allow myself a couple of cleansing breaths before I say anything to anyone. It always worked.

I think the CEOs of the major publishing houses need to take a breath. I think authors need to take a breath, too. There seems to be this snowballing of doom that is augmented by rumors of more doom. This despite the fact that bookstores are still crowded, and more people than ever are reading. More books than ever are being published. Writers make the Times List for the first time every year. The Internet is an unexplored new frontier.

There are a lot of positive things happening. Sure, there are negatives, too, but I choose not to concentrate on those.

For the time being, I get to write books and get paid for it. No, really. Think about it. I get to write books and get paid for it! The publishers and their distribution networks will find their balance, and good times will return; but even when they do, I’m still going to have to work just as hard as I do now. In fact, no matter how good the business becomes in the future, this business of living one’s dream will never be easy.

As writers, we face far greater challenge than any of the suits in the publishing houses: We have to stay relevant.

I think of that great line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Nowhere is the statement truer than in the entertainment business–our business. The reading public is building everyday. They’re building new tastes in new media. They’re seeking new inspiration, and they’re facing new fears. They’re telling us all as clearly as they know how what they’re looking for.

But will we come? Will we be the ones to satisfy their needs, or will that honor fall to others who spend less time looking behind, and more time thinking like entrepreneurs? They’re the customers, after all. We are merely the supply chain.

By John Ramsey Miller

There is an oft-told story about William Faulkner and I’m not sure if it’s true, but it probably is. One day he was walking near the downtown square in Oxford, Mississippi and someone who knew him socially spoke to him, but he didn’t so much as turn his head to look in her direction when she saluted him. Later she complained to Mrs. Faulkner, who said, “Don’t take it personal Honey, Bill was writing.” It’s a great story, and it applies to so many authors I know. It’s quiet where I live, and I have the luxury of not being interrupted through the days and nights. I do my best writing when I’m using a chain saw, building something, or driving, and when I’m plotting in my head I am oblivious to everything.

We fiction authors are a group of individuals who have so much in common. What we do is ninety percent mental and ten per cent physical. Kate Miciak, my editor at Bantam, told me that good writing requires deep thinking, and I think about what I’m going to write a lot more than I write. I think that’s true for most of us, and if it isn’t it should be. If you are writing without planning where you are going, your work could probably be a lot better.

I’ve had a long-running discussion with Gilstrap over many a cocktail ….many, many a cocktail about process. We’ve discussed this and I think John may have blogged this one, and if so I apologize for repeating it. I heard an author say recently that he creates his characters and follows them around recording what they say and do. My characters don’t write the books, I do, and I can’t imagine how much LSD I’d have to eat so that I could follow them around and record what they do. It seems absurd to me that you can let fictional characters dictate to you, but it may be true. I create my characters and I dictate what they will do on my pages, and by God they do it. Unless my editor says they can’t, or they shouldn’t oughta do it, or that it couldn’t happen in a hundred million years, not even if we’re talking California. And I never talk California, nor do I allow my characters ever to go there. They can go as far west as Las Vegas, but no farther. A character off on their own could get stuck in California, and I’m not about to go way out there to fetch them back, or follow them across Death Valley with my pen flying.

I haven’t been writing much for the past few days because I’ve been winterizing my pump house, and the chicken coop because the Yankees are sending their damned cold weather down here. Heated water bowls, brooder heat lamps, thick layer of sawdust on the floor, covers on the outside faucets, stacking firewood close to the house, and gathering chestnuts to roast. I don’t want my rooster’s comb to get frostbitten and turn black, which can happen and could seriously diminish his sex appeal although he’s the only rooster in the yard and the hens have no choice in mates. Cold is an unwelcome export and definitely not a Southern thing and from here on out none of my characters will be allowed in the North in winter, although my villains might well come from there.

I am going to try to write a few hours every day on my new book, regardless of the weather. It’s hard to write on a book that’s set (at its beginning) in the Louisiana Lakes area south of Houma in August. Think par-broil. I fish there a few times a year, and there isn’t a more beautiful place on earth and although I’ve used the locale in other books, I’ve never had a Cajun protagonist before. I like Cajuns. They talk funny but there’s nothing funny about them if you piss them off. How do y’all feel about Cajuns?

That’s it for this week.

http://www.johnramseymiller.com

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

If you’ve ever been a thirteen-year-old boy, chances are the title of this blog entry made you chuckle. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just say it out loud.) When I was a kid, this was the Holy Grail of setups. I lived for the moment when I could set up a friend or a teacher—or, ideally, a store clerk—to help me find my friend. As far as I know, the only time it ever worked was in the movie, Porky’s, but at least I had a goal.

Thinking back on those days, it occurs to me that language is funny. It’s such a regional thing. Where I grew up, a group of more than two people were greeted as “y’all.” Where my wife’s family comes from in the Pittsburgh area, that same group would be “y’uns.” Each of us thinks and writes in the language that resonates to us.

Cussing was part of my kid culture. I’d have cut out my tongue before I did it in front of my mother—or any adult, for that matter—but the creative use of the F-word was a major league sport among my friends. By the time I joined the fire service, I considered myself a veteran potty-mouth; but man did I have a lot to learn. Hanging out in a firehouse was like a master class in creative cussing. Way beyond the words, there was that magical combination of cynicism, dark humor and truly foul imagery. It was inspiring. Seriously, if you’ve never been chewed out by a fire captain, you’ve really never been yelled at.

It makes sense, then, that my potty mouth would transfer to my writing. My first book, Nathan’s Run, is replete with cuss words—enough, in fact, that the book has been banned in some school districts, despite the fact that the protagonist is a 12-year-old. There are F-bombs galore, more than a few GDs, and a character who calls herself The Bitch. I didn’t put the words into the book with any intent to shock; I just wrote it the way I heard it in my head. Who knew that the rest of the world would be so offended? If I had, I would have written it differently.

While F-bombs and GDs ruffled a few readers’ feathers, nothing—nothing—brought as much hate mail as my assassin’s one-time use of the C-word in a sentence. As in, “I’m going to effing kill you, you effing c-word!” Whoa.

It seems horribly naive, I know, but this was a dozen years ago, and I had no idea that that word carried the burden that it does. I’m not sure I fully understand it even now, but I sure as sh . . . shootin’ know not to use it again. In fact, now that I know that bad language actually offends a lot of readers, I’ve recently made a concerted effort to de-effify my writing. The F-bomb still detonates from time to time, but now it’s a conscious decision on my part, and it’s used to make a specific point.

Writing is ultimately about the reader, not the writer . . . right? What accommodations to readers’ tastes have y’all made in your writing?

John Ramsey Miller

This past week I drove to Mississippi from North Carolina and returned a few days later. I did the same thing two weeks ago to hunt (if you are keeping up with this clap-trap). The round trip is roughly 1500 miles and I make it five or more times a year. I truly enjoy the eleven-hour drive through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, but the trip would be mostly tedium were it not for the books I listen to. I sometimes get books from our library, but if I don’t make it to the library, I stop at Cracker Barrel. This past trip I listened to Dean Koontz’s THE HOUSE OF THUNDER, and for the most part I enjoyed the story even though I found it dated. In fairness it was written in 1991. Koontz is a master at setting up a nice box of normal and having something unsettling slip into it and it’s done convincingly. I also listed to SMALL FAVOR by Jim Butcher. That is the first of his books I’ve had the pleasure of reading (listening to) and I intend to go back and read them all in order. I often wonder how many great authors are out there that I haven’t had the pleasure of reading.

My pet peeve with audio books is how many of them don’t bother to add what I believe is a detail of great importance, and courtesy to the listener. How much trouble could it possibly be to add the words, “This is the end of disk one. To continue put in disk number two.” On each disk. I hate to be listening to a chapter and when it ends the narrator goes right back to the start of the disk I just listened to. My own unabridged CD set for SMOKE & MIRRORS doesn’t have those crucial words at the end of those disks either. “They” usually don’t ask my opinion on such matters. I like to think there wasn’t room at the end of the disk for all those words. But maybe those words are copywrite protected like LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE! in the first published audiotape and anyone using the words since has to pay.

I once wanted to use the e.e. cummings poem, BUFFALO BILL’s DEFUNCT, in my first book coming in dialog from my antagonist, and it turned out that e.e.’s estate wanted five thousand dollars to let me use it. The publisher and I agreed I could change the scene by omitting the poem, and the book suffered in my view. In fact, before I had to take that poem out I was a shoe-in for an Edgar, A Booker, A Penn Faulkner and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Christmas is coming and I’m ready to be with my family over the holidays. By the way, I have a new book out December the 30th. THE LAST DAY.

Here’s the cover:
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa107/JRMMiller_049/LAST1_Page_32.jpg

By Joe Moore

Who said there are no rules for writers? Of course there are:

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague.
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Don’t use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. . .
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally…
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Did we miss any?

John Ramsey Miller

This week we learned that the Big 3 automakers bailout package included pay raises for Federal judges. I’m sure there’s lots of other pork in there as well. And it failed, and I’m not sure how I feel about it, but only because three million jobs are at stake. Everybody but the auto company’s executives knew where they’ve been screwing up for decades. All week long they pumped out cars by the thousands to ship out next week so they can sit rusting in lots across the country because nobody is buying. Less demand, fewer cars produced. Easy. Bad mileage, high gas prices, who wants them? High drama from the idiots we elected, as usual. There is NO leadership in DC. I pray that isn’t true after the 20th of January.

The governor of Illinois (a man who looks like Bob’s Big Boy) was arrested by the FBI for trying to sell Barak Obama’s Senate seat. Jesse Jackson’s son may or may not have been willing to buy it. He says he wasn’t going to buy it, but when has any politician admitted to doing anything on the first pass? Nothing ever changes in politics except the faces, and President elect Obama has so far made the campaigning-for-President Obama a pipe-dreamer at best and a skilled liar at worst. Not that there’s anything new in candidates lying, but a lot of people who are idealistic and believed the hype, are disappointed already, and they should be. I had an uncle who said the only thing under heaven worse than an attorney was a lawyer elected to an office.

A lady saw the Virgin Mary in an X-ray this week.

One of the pillars of Wall Street has been running a financial Ponzi scheme that cost his investors $50,000,000,000.00. Some of his clients were respected charities, and I suppose they’ll be bailed out along with the rich investors. Enron only lost a few billions more than this one guy.

In Greece thousands of Anarchists (mostly young people) burned the entire country, or large sections of it because some kid who’d been throwing Molotov cocktails at cops was killed by a ricocheting warning shot. The cop was put in to prison to placate the mobs, but yet they rage on and are still burning buildings and businesses. Call me old fashioned, but any kid who is threatening cops with death can catch a bullet and I won’t lead any riots. And it’s spreading across Europe like a plague. I’m not looking forward to the same here in the near future, but I smell it in the wind.

Caylee Antony’s corpse was found ½ mile from her home. Everybody in the United States, except the unfortunate child’s grandparents, knew the party gal killed her daughter, and that no mother who isn’t in a coma waits a month after the babysitter fails to return a child to tell someone about it. Just don’t happen.

Here’s a few headlines from this afternoon:
Canadian Man Builds Himself Robot Girlfriend, Clues found at Caylee kin home, Rapid-Fire Killer Robot Passes Flight Test, Muslim Scientists Prepare for Battle With Creationists, water vapor detected on distant planet, Who Needs the Big 3? Atlanta Company Plans New Police Car, Failing U.S. automakers popular in Europe, Teacher reveals Santa’s identity, Woolies’ facing bankruptcy, John Ramsey Miller’s dog Buddah run over by a gas truck…

I’m sure I’ve missed something huge, but the point is the world is feeding us plots and sub-plots and characters. Could you have not spotted something this week to put into your newest project?