NaNo: The Crazy Idea That Got Away

[Note: As I mentioned some time in the recent past (I don't feel like trying to figure out which post that was, right now), my wife is doing NaNo this year. It was kind of a spontaneous decision, but, then, that's how she often does things, and the best way to deal with that is to grab on and go along for the ride. To put it in writing terms, she would be the pantser of the family while I'm the plotter. Except that that's not quite true, but that's how it often feels and, probably, looks from the outside. At any rate, her decision to do NaNo was... well, I'll let her tell you about it in her own words.]

So I got a Kindle Fire for my birthday earlier this month. This was a present from my most excellent husband (the owner of this blog) and our kids. Some things to know about me and Andrew: We're not early adopters, ever; I'm actually kind of a Luddite (despite being a data analyst for a large corporation by trade); and we both grew up reading copious quantities of physical books. Thus this gifting of an electronic device on which books can be read is a big leap for us. But he made the leap, I think, because he's got a wife who does love to read and he just thought it would be nifty; also because after 15 years together he's still not really sure what kind of jewelry I like. [Actually, I wanted to get her something that she would use and enjoy on a continuous basis, and, as much as my wife likes the idea of jewelry, she rarely wears it. And she's always complaining about how the books I want to keep take up too much space, which is a valid argument for the size house we live in.]

I was both thrilled and intimidated by this gift. Thrilled because it's for books! and intimidated because, it seems, you can do a lot of other stuff with this device, like play games. Or surf the web. Or check email. Or...I'm not sure, it may even have a ray gun inside it somewhere. And I sort of hate to figure out new devices and how to use them (see Luddite, above) and determine how much money they will cost me in an ongoing sense. (Though I admit that having a portable ray gun would probably be really handy, but I bet the per-ray charges are insane.)

After my initial moment of "whoa, what," I did do some exploring and found out a fabulous fact: Our local library system does e-book lending, and it's nearly as easy to do as just surfing Amazon and one-clicking on whatever you like (after you physically visit the library, pay your late-book fines, renew your card, and spend a couple hours surfing the library website looking for ANY e-book that isn't already checked out).

So yeah, after one-clicking, I ended up with a book titled No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. There's very little explanation for why I checked this book out, other than the fact that out of 1000 or so e-book titles in the library this was almost the only thing that even remotely appealed to me and was immediately available. (Seriously, I would have even checked out 50 Shades of Gray, but it was checked out AND had a wait list of 40+.) I wanted some instant gratification on my new e-book mechanism, and this was it.

Let me be very clear at this point: I did not check this book out because I seriously thought I wanted to write a novel. Ever. Especially not during NaNoWriMo this year.

See, this is a substantial difference between Andrew and me. He has always wanted to write fiction, and I have always known that I do not and will not write fiction. That's not to say that I'm not a writer and not a good one, because I actually am. In college I could easily write a substantial paper overnight, without revisions, and get a B or higher. (The fact that I could usually get away with such terrible procrastination is why my overall GPA wasn't generally great.) But nearly all my writing has been done in the service of completing school and then being competent at my job. (You wouldn't think that the job of data analyst requires good writing skills but it actually does. No one's better at a bullet-pointed list than I am.) I've never taken a class in creative writing, and I didn't study more literature in school than I was strictly required to do.

I started to read the book and it turns out the story of NaNoWriMo--that is, the history--really drew me in. Basically it started out as a ridiculous thing for a group of friends to do. No one thought that works of great genius or amazing craft would be turned out; rather, it was a crazy creative thing to do for the hell of it, together. It sounded like a lot of fun. [It also wasn't originally in November, which I found interesting, and none of thought that it would become what it has. I mean, they weren't thinking about the future of it at all. It was a "let's do this right now kind of thing that became a tradition and then became a THING.]

After the history of NaNoWriMo, the rest of the book was mostly about the hows of accomplishing such a ludicrous, wild goal in the space of a month. Which, to boil it down, is "keep going and don't stop." (Now you don't have to read the book, but it's actually a pretty entertaining and quick read and possibly helpful to anyone who struggles with their Inner Editor or with writing paralysis.) Chris Baty managed to make the task sound like something which even I, the non-writer-of-fiction, am up to.

The upshot of it is that somewhere in the pages of the book I became convinced that I might as well try to write a novel. I do have a lot of story ideas in my head. I don't know whether they are good story ideas, but according to Baty that doesn't really matter; it's OK to write un-original crapola and it's OK to not care about "getting published." It's OK to write pulp fiction with no redeeming social value or great-novel aspirations. It's even OK to suck at spelling and grammar, at least for this first draft. (Spelling and grammar are a couple of things I un-suck at with writing; however, I'm also aware that they don't encompass fiction writing. And I managed to misspell grammar both times I typed it just now, of course.)

So yeah, I haven't ever written any fiction, but I have these things going for me:

-- I am a well-educated and thoughtful fan of sci-fi so I can probably not hack it up too badly. That is to say, I can do better than Galaxy Quest levels of science and there will be no chompy-crushy things in the middle of my space ship.

-- I write extremely quickly.

-- Spelling and grammar are not an issue for me.

Oh, I guess I should say I'll be writing a sci-fi novel. I was planning on writing something that could be described as "dystopian near-future sci-fi" (nothing like Hunger Games, okay), but yesterday I decided to switch to something different. A new idea, just because it feels more fun. And Baty's advice in No Plot was to write something I'd enjoy writing, so I'll be going for something more space-opera. I'm tentatively calling it All Suns Go Dark. (That probably should have been "tentatively titling." I told you I'm no author.)

Wish me luck. I'll update in the middle of the month if Andrew lets me and I haven't thrown in the writing towel by then. Anyone else doing NaNo or something equally ridiculous right now?

[I do want to say that I have been trying to get her to write something for years. She does have good stories, and I envy her ability to write quickly, a skill I do not have. Assuming she is still working on this, there will be an update in the middle of November sometime.]

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Opton

Yeah, yeah, I know... you've never heard of an opton. I bet most of you own one, though. I don't, but that's not because I don't necessarily want to own one; I just don't feel like paying for one. At least, not right now. I'm sure I'll get to it at some point.

The novel Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem came out in 1961 (it wasn't translated into English until 1980). It's about an astronaut that goes away on a mission. A mission that last 10 years... for him. However, 127 years pass on Earth while he's gone (time dilation (don't ask; this post isn't about that)). As you can imagine, many things have changed... including the fact that there are no more books. Not that there are no more books, but they're all electronic. Imagine that! An electronic book that you read with a little device called an opton. The description is rather like a Kindle.
Imagine that...

Lem's work is the earliest description of electronic reading devices or, more specifically, the electronic paper display. I didn't know this, but electronic paper was actually invented all the way back in the '70s. I want to be clear about what Lem was doing here: on his Earth, books were all stored electronically. Physical books only existed as a template. One would be printed and stored and people could access the book through their optons. This was before computers. Not, of course, before computers existed, but before computers were a thing. Some countries didn't even have computers in 1961. Probably, most countries didn't have computers in 1961. I sort of bet Poland didn't, and that's where Lem was from.

Let's take a step forward:
So Lem has predicted the electronic book, but he also predicted the absence of the physical book, something that the astronaut regretted. Will we look back in 100 years at Lem's work and say "wow, he was right"? I think so. All the signs of the passing of the paper book from society are here, even if we don't want to admit it.

1. Paper books are becoming prohibitively priced. When I was a kid, a paperback was a couple of bucks. When I was a teenager, they were $4-5. Standard price for a paperback is now $10. Hardbacks... well, I don't really even think much about them unless Amazon has them on sale or it's a book I just can't wait on for the softcover. As paper prices continue to rise, and they are rising, the cost of physical books will continue to rise as well. At some point, physical books will become a status item that only the wealthy can afford.

2. Electronic books are cheaper and better for the environment. This will be even more true once Apple and the rest of the big publishers finish getting slapped for price-fixing on e-books to force Amazon to not undercut the profits of the big publishers by pricing the e-books lower.

3. E-books are more convenient to store.

4. Physical book sales are in a decline while e-book sales are in a sharp rise.

Look, I don't even own an e-reader, but I see the day coming when physical books just aren't a "thing" anymore. The publishing industry is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet. They destroy hundreds of thousands of unsold books every year. It's just bad for the planet. As we (slowly) become more aware of the steps we need to take to ensure the viability of the planet, physical books are just going to pass away. I do believe we're in the early stages of that, right now, and I do believe that Lem was right.

I just hope he wasn't right about the rest of the stuff in that book.

Extra fun facts about Stanislaw Lem:
1. At one point, he was the most read sci-fi author in the world. Just not in the US, since he mostly wasn't being published here at the time. Like I said, he was from Poland. However, he is rarely read, now, anywhere else in the world except the US where he is often considered on the same level as H.G. Wells.
2. He held American sci-fi authors in disdain. He felt like they were more interested in money than in the science fiction. This lead to a situation between him and the Science Fiction Writers of America that lasted for something like 30 years.
3. Philip K. Dick was his only exception, and he praised Dick's work. PKD, however, wasn't convinced that Lem was even a real person. Dick felt that Lem was a composite personality formed by a committee operating under orders from the Communist party to sway public opinion. He even wrote a letter to the FBI saying as much.

Go Local! (or "Why You Should Buy My Book")

My wife and I have had a long running discussion about supporting local growers. When I first moved to CA, I had no idea of this as a concept. I'd like to say that it's because I grew up in the south and it was a normal practice there. My grandparents had a farm, so we did, actually, eat a lot of locally grown food, because it came from relatives. However, I didn't realize that this wasn't a normal thing to do. I used to go with my grandfather on Saturdays and sit in the stall at the farmers' market with him. Maybe things were just different then.

Of course, we had no idea of recycling, there, either, so I doubt it. I was surprised, when I moved to CA in '97, that there were two trash cans: one for garbage and one for recycling (more than 10 years later, they are only just now doing that where I moved from).

Anyway...
My wife wants us to buy as much locally grown produce and meat as possible. Meaning, she wants us to always buy locally when it's available. My stance is more pragmatic. I have to look at the money side of it and curtail our "local" spending to what we can afford. Unfortunately, buying locally grown stuff costs more, so it's always a balancing act of staying within what we can afford while including as much of the local market as possible. Buying local is good for the environment, though, and I'm all for raising environmental awareness. Thankfully, Safeway actually labels, now, what is locally grown, and I buy heavily from that produce when I shop.

But what does this have to do with books?
Well, supporting local artists is kind of the same thing, just on a more global scale.

Here's the thing:
Once upon a time, for an artist to survive as an artist, the artist had to find a patron. A rich patron. Someone who would put them on staff, so to speak, so that they could paint or make music or whatever it was they did. Mostly, it was painting or music related, although there was some sculpting thrown in here and there. And acting. Some of our greatest music and art has come to us because a patron supported a particular artist. Playwrights are included in this list of artists. Even Shakespeare had to have his patrons.

And when books began to be published, that meant that the author had to find someone who would pay the publishing costs so the book could be printed. Initially, this was more like giving the author a loan; later, it meant taking a percentage from the profits, not just being paid back. Of course, from that grew our "traditional" publishing model. That model says that the publisher gets to keep the bulk of the profit and makes the writer, in essence, an employee. No one looks at it that way, though.

Now, we could debate all the nuances of the publishing industry right up until it collapses in on itself in the same way the music industry is, but that's probably pretty pointless, so let's just skip that part.

One of the things I've made a practice of doing for a long time, all the way back to my teens, is buying music I liked from the artists at their concerts. At first, this was because I was seeing a lot of musicians that were unlabeled or on labels that were hard to find at your standard music stores. This was before the Internet, so, if you didn't buy it at the concerts, you didn't get to have it. As I got older, it was because I knew that the musicians got more of the money if I bought it directly from them as opposed to buying it at the store, and I thought that was a good thing, so I would actually wait to buy a new CD at a concert if I knew I was going to be seeing a particular band within a reasonable amount of time after the release of a new album. However, it was much later before I realized that the future success of a musician or band might be dependent upon whether or not I bought a CD [or cassette, because CDs weren't a thing, yet, when I was a teenager, so I have this huge collection of cassettes that I really can't play anymore].

Two things happened to really cement that idea in my head, and both of them had to do with me buying self-produced CDs from two different bands. Both of these bands went on to get signed by a label and shoot to the top of their particular genres. I bought one of these CDs because of one particular song. I heard it, and I knew, "this song is going to be a big hit." I started making people listen to the song and telling them what I thought of it. Mostly, people didn't listen to me. I was right, though; somewhere over a year later, the group's first labeled CD was released, and that was their first single. A huge hit. The CD went platinum. The biggest song in its genre to date, and it was released about a decade ago.

The other event isn't quite so spectacular. The group is hugely popular in its genre, but the important thing here is that the self-produced CD I have by them is, in many ways, better than any of their label releases. Some of the songs, good songs, have never been re-recorded. I still listen to that CD as often as I listen to any of their later music.

I often wonder about other groups (whose CDs I own) who have faded away. Mostly, no one's ever heard of them. Some of these singers/groups were good. Good enough to make it. But they didn't. At least one of them, whom I had a slight association with, didn't make it because too many of the members of the band had to go out and get "real" jobs and no longer had time to do the music thing. Would they have made it if more people had supported them when they were just starting out? It's a hard question. Because what we want to say is that if they were good enough they would have made it. That's the easy way out. But it's not true no matter how much we'd like it to be true. But, you know, if it was true, it would absolve us of any guilt in  the matter. The truth is many artists "don't make it" because they are forced to give up creating in order to survive. Because, in the past, their local communities didn't support them.

The world, though, is changing. There is no "local" community for art, anymore. The Internet has made the whole world the local community. The music industry has made that blatantly apparent. We, as a people, have the ability to become the patrons. We can support artists independently of producers, publishers, and gallery owners. We can support them directly, cutting off the leeches that want to feed off of others' talent.

Now, I'm not saying we should be indiscriminate in our support, but, you know, when we value music or literature or art, we should do our best to support what we like. That can be a bit more difficult when it comes to writing. I mean, we can evaluate a musician or band in a few minutes with just a few songs. Even if we don't like an album, we can probably buy just the songs we like, but a book... well, a book takes a time investment as well as a money investment, so we can find ourselves much less willing to throw in our support. Someone else has to prove to us, first, that it's worth our time.

Often, we rely on the publisher to tell us it's good enough. I mean, they published it, right? It must be good. heh Publishers don't even believe that. If they did, they would make an investment marketing the books they print. However, they leave it to the readers to be the marketers. We can do that without them being involved at all.

And to bring this back around to the environment, the publishing industry is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet. Every year, hundreds of thousands of books are destroyed because the publishing industry is built on a model of waste. [And I have first hand experience with this having worked in book stores and being involved in the comic book industry for a while.] But it doesn't have to stay that way. They won't change on their own, though. We, the readers, have to show them that there are better ways. e-books. POD (print-on-demand). Smaller, more personal book stores. Book stores willing to support the authors in their community and help them to find a voice.

How do we do all this? Support new authors. Buy directly from authors instead of from the big chain book stores. By POD books when they're available. Or e-books. But,  you know, if you're like me and like to actually hold a book you can smell in your hands, POD is the way to go. And, you know, buy my book. >cheesy grin< No, not really. I mean, yes, do, if you want to. I'd love that. But what I really mean is that you should find new authors that you believe in, support them, prove that they don't need the big publishers to be successful. Become a patron. We actually  have the power to change the industry if we want to do that.

And, you know, it really is just good for the environment! Go local! Save a tree!
And let the oil companies know we're coming after them, next!