Texas and stupid mergers - but hey at least there's Sandman on Netflix

Aug. 5th, 2022 09:17 pm
shadowkat: (Default)
1. I don't believe this...Governor Abbott of Texas sent several bus loads of migrant workers to NYC, which has neither the means nor space to house them.


Mayor Eric Adams is Furious After Governor Greg Abbott Bused Dozens of Migrants to NYC

These poor people. They were seeking asylum. And that asshole put them on a bus and sent them to a huge city where there's no room for him, while he lives in a huge state with a much smaller population.

2. Niel Gaiman's Sandman is on this weekend on Netflix - at last! I'd been eagerly anticipating it. And it was taking forever - there was a point in which I wondered if it would ever get an air date. Netflix is frustratingly slow about airing things.

But I'm saving it for tomorrow. I'm a third of my way through my listen of Act II Sandman - Season of Mists. The Netflix series is focusing on Preludes and Nocturns, and Dollhouse.

I'm also re-reading the comics on comixcology. I borrowed them. I did own some of them back in the day - but I got rid of those ages ago.

It is horror, by the way. I mean I just listened to a section in which a living boy is stuck in a boarding school with the dead.

3. Ugh, I went on Twitter to hunt for something else (which I'll eventually find..) and ran into this insanity from the Warner/Discovery Merger.



If you can't see it - it states that men prefer HBO content, and women prefer Discovery.

I guess I must be male? And so are most of my female friends? And my male friends must be female?

And sigh this..



Uhm, I wonder if they realize that it is called the Cartoon Network not Lifetime Channel, not Hallmark and not the dumb situation comedy network? (Can we fire market research people? Bankrupt them? Send them to the Sahara desert or maybe just an Indian Reservation in Arizona - no, the Navajho do not deserve that - send them to Death Valley. Exiled until they give up their evil marketing ways.)

I hate situation comedies, reality shows, and most if not all the content on Discovery. I love animation, serials, scripted content, and longer films. Also you couldn't pay me enough to watch American Girl specials and Degrassi.

If they do this - I may have to cancel HBO, which is ultimately okay with me, because, it's expensive. Disappointing. But it will save me - $14.99 a month, so ...

Note to dumbass television content programmers and marketing people out there? We can live without you. It's possible.

And you might want to check out how many women went to the last comic con?

Ugh.

4. I asked Twitter if I want to know who Alex Jones is - they resoundingly told me that I do not and that they envied me for having no clue who he was. From the little that I saw? I agree with them.

5. Ah, found the thread that I'd been following yesterday and today on Book Twitter.

John Maher tweets about the Penguin Random House / Simone & Schuster Merger trial

Apparently the Federal Government didn't like the fact that Penguin decided to merge with Simon & Schuster, and is calling a halt to it under the Anti-Trust act. [ I'm interested because I almost ended up working for the Director of Contracts at Simon & Schuster in 1996, and interviewed at both Random House and Penguine in the 1990s, also knew people who worked at them. Sisinlaw's step-mother had an editor at Random House.]

It's a not-so-nice insightful look inside the publishing world. And a reminder that I'm very happy to not be embroiled in it. I'm not letting it stop me from writing, revising, and potentially self-publishing my own books some day.

Snippets from the tweets (which by the way are proof that the media is definitely camped out on Twitter - and it bodes well to be very careful on the bird app - too many frigging journalists hiding out on it. Crazy workplace has told us not to - under any circumstance - to tweet about work on it. Don't worry - I won't or not explicitly.)

( Read more... )
Basically proof - that the devil is in the marketing. It truly is. The big houses have the money to launch marketing campaigns, the smaller ones, do not. And the books that get the marketing campaigns are the big ones, with the money.

I had an art teacher in college tell me that the difficulty with the art world was worst artists were good at business and marketing, while the better ones sucked at it. Nagel - excellent at marketing, Van Gough sucked at marketing. Same with writers - you don't have to be good to get published. Collen Hoover is horrid, but she is excellent at marketing herself. It's all about the branding, marketing, and selling. And knowing how to do it, and how to work the logarithm on social media marketing platforms.

I'm hoping the merger fails. I agree with Steven King, and the worried Jon Irving. It hurts us all, and only benefits the already rich assholes.

6. It's been a week. I'm glad it's over. For my trouble - I'm going to binge watch The Sandman on Netflix all weekend in air conditioning.

I might jump out for food. I might also clean the apartment. Laundry does need to be done at some point, I suppose. But there's no immediate rush.
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Topsy Turvy Week

May. 29th, 2015 11:07 pm
shadowkat: (doing time)
I leave this week confused. Although no longer frustrated. So progress?

It's been a rather chaotic work week. And a topsy turvy one emotionally speaking, regarding my book aka the little novel that could. For those of you who haven't been following along? I wrote a book, ten years ago, revised it about 10 times (because you sort of have to), and finally found the courage to send it out into the universe. It's entitled "Doing Time on Planet Earth" (see nifty icon) and is available at the following outlets:

* Amazon.com
* Barnes and Noble
* Kindle (also Amazon) - it is exclusive to Kindle (electronically), but you can get in paperback virtually everywhere else.

Oh, and I got my first responses.
( responses to the little novel that could )

( and the compulsive obsessive virtual book touring is about to go on hiatus )

Social media is a curious thing, isn't it? When it works..it's lovely. But lately, I've wanted to kick it to the curb. It feels as if I'm talking to myself most of the time. And perhaps I am. The silence can be deafening. Writing is after all, a solitary sport. Hence the reason so many writers are on social media. The need to interact with other writers is addictive. You desperately want to know what they thought about this or that. But when the interaction appears to cease...you wonder what the point of it all is? It's why I've never quite been able to put up a personal blog, because...again, what if you don't get any responses? How do you know if anyone grokked what you wrote? And if they say nothing at all - did they hate it? Were they ambivalent? Most likely ambivalent. People tend to respond to things that trigger strong emotions. Ambivalence, not so much.

Topsy turvy week. I find myself second-guessing everything I've done with my book. Should I have added the bio? Was it better without it? Should I have done the Good Reads Giveaway? Did I accomplish anything from it? Should I have done it for two months instead of five days? Should I have provided 5 copies of my book instead of just 2? (I admittedly went the cheaper route). Should I have promoted the Free Kindle Promotion more? Should I have let it last longer? Should I have spent a little money on online promotional services such as Underground Book Reviews - in the hope that someone on it would review my book? (Too late already did, so restrain yourself from saying I shouldn't). Should I have made it available on Story Cartel and paid a pittance for people to review it? (Yep, did that too.) And what if the reviews are negative or more in line with the blogger and less in line with my co-worker? (Somewhat counterproductive that - which is why I absolutely refuse to pay for reviews. If they are great - you wonder if it's the bribe, if they are awful, you think - damn, I'm out $250-400 bucks. Besides I write book reviews for free, other people can too.) Did my co-worker like it more because he actually knows me? I don't know. There's no way of knowing for sure. I feel like I'm making this up as I go along. Blubbering my way through. And I'm constantly bombarded with advice, even when I'm not seeking it.

I've posted my baby, my little novel that could, practically everywhere now or everywhere I can think of - to the four winds and back again. Various places will take two-three months to let me know if I made the cut or will be promoted further. (One I joined but opted out of "Books Daily" - after realizing it would cost me $50 bucks a month for them to promote my work on what amounted to an internet listserve. The cheaper one - just $40 (Underground Book Reviews), I went with instead. And of course there was The Story Cartel, which cost $7 for a book launch token - 18 days available to reviewers.) Exposing myself on the net, in the process. Publishing a book feels a bit like paying someone to take off all your clothes and strutting naked through Times Square in broad daylight. You wait for the hecklers, even though you hope to God there aren't any.

Success, sometimes I think, is risking brutal failure. It's why I loved Wile E. Coyote. Say what you will about that guy, but at least he tried.
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Apr. 3rd, 2015 11:56 am
shadowkat: (warrior emma)
Learning a lot about self-publishing. In fact maybe I should re-title this journal, "How to Self-Publish Your Book on Create Space".

After massive amounts of research on ISBN numbers - I've decided to use the Create Space ISBN. And not get the custom one or purchase my own. The reason is simple - I'm not going into the publishing business. I don't have a lot of business material that I want to self-publish and market myself. I don't have an aggressive marketing campaign. And I'm not necessarily publishing a series (not really a fan of the concept, most people who write series - seem to get burned out by the fifth book. Trilogies work better.)
Also, here's the thing about ISBN numbers, outside of being expensive, you need a new one for every edition, version, type of publication that you publish. If it is a different size - new ISBN. Different cover - new ISBN. On paperback? New ISBN.

For libraries? You need an LCN - Library of Congress Number. Which I've decided to purchase.

There's lots of choices that are involved in publishing a book. Never quite realized how many. Writers who are traditionally published via places like Random House or Simon and Schuster - probably never notice or know about them. They certainly never blog about them.

1. Simple Interior Design Format - you can do classical/literary (3 options and fonts), modern edgy/contemporary (2 options), whimisical/romantic (2 options).

I chose option 2 - edgy modern (which is similar to the font used in Jim Butchers novels and Jonathem Lethem.

2. Finish - I went with Matte over Glossy. Mainly because I don't like glossy for most books. Depends on the book design of course.

3. Paper - Black and White, White, Cream - I went with White, more flexibility, fits my theme better.

4. Trim - 6"9 because it is over 300 pages.

The book will definitely be published in Kindle Format - I bought Kindle Conversion as well, although it's amongst the cheapest of the services. When I'm done - my book will be available through all Amazon services, (International and US), Baker & Taylor, Ingrams, Barnes & Nobel, Kindle, and other retailers.

I intend to submit the book to Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Publisher's Weekly to see if they'll do a review. As well as IndieBound.

I'm going to wait to provide it on Kobol, Nook, Apple, Googlebooks - to see how people respond. Because that would require a new ISBN and a separate conversion service.

Found out that when they provide me the high resolution cover - it is mine. I own the rights to it, once they clear them. Nifty. I can use it again for a separate conversion.

Getting excited about this. This is going to work. I think.
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Jan. 30th, 2015 11:43 pm
shadowkat: (Just breath)
1. I'm going to miss Jason Katim's Parenthood, which like Friday Night Lights before it was a well-written, if at times uneven, family oriented drama. With quiet moments, and under-stated acting. And much like FNL before it - wrapped things up in such a way to uplift the viewers spirits and leave a gentle smile on my face...humming the title credits theme song.

Can't say that about many television shows, unfortunately.

The season finale was tonight.

It will be replaced by another violent spy drama, which appears to copy heavily from The Americans and Elementary.

I'd prefer a family drama. If just for a change of pace.

2. The Most Dangerous Book - seems to be as much a historical account of the publishing industry or rather it's beginnings as it is a story about a fight over a book. It's also about the history of censorship and copyright laws. Found out a few things I did not know.

* The Modern Library which in turn gave birth to Random House - was started by Cerf and Klopher for a $250,000 which at the time was actually quite a bit of cash and the most anyone had spent for a second edition or third edition publishing line. This was back in 1925 or thereabouts. The Modern Library was basically the republishing of books already in the public domain or that had previously been published. In 1927 - they decided they wanted to publish first editions or books that had not been previously published in the US - it would be a bunch of random books, not that many to start. And they decided to call it, Random House. Years later they sold Random House and the Modern Library for $45 million.
The Modern Library did very well during the hey-day of Wall Street.

The Modern Library also gave birth to The Great Books Foundation. [Which has some meaning for me - considering it was my father's first major job. He worked for the Great Books Foundation in Chicago, when I was born. He trained facilitators and book leaders around the country. As well as wrote training manuals on how to teach and interpret the material.] At any rate, according to Birmingham - this was initially a means of selling the Modern Library's listing to subscribers. He goes further to state that Ulysses or rather Joyce's rational for Ulysses inspired them - Joyce's view or the whole point of Ulysses was that the human condition can be expressed through art. That we can understand ourselves and others through literature. [I'm not so sure this is a new idea. I think people had it before Joyce. Not all roads lead to James Joyce. Come on.]

* There was a lot of piracy going on back then. Apparently in the 1920s - English copyright did not translate into American copyright. In 1926, you could only claim copyright protection in the US if your English-language book had actually been printed on American manufactured plates within (at most) six months of the initial publication. If it had been published in England or Britain and shipped to the US, it did not have copyright protection in the US and was in the public domain. Which is why it was hard to get books published in Britain but not published in the US - distributed in the US. This rule has since changed, thankfully. As a result, in the US, where it was being banned, James Joyce's Ulysses had fallen into the public domain - and people could do whatever they wanted with it. [This may not be interesting to anyone but me...]

* The British were as nasty with their censorship laws as the Americans (sigh, dang puritans lived on both sides of the Atlantic). At one point they went after a famous literary critic, Levitias..who taught at Cambridge. The critic wanted to use Ulysses to teach a course in Modern Literary Criticism. When he was told that he could not teach Ulysses to a co-ed class or at all for that matter, or own it. He said that he could have gotten it down on the docks for cheaper. And there was a cult surrounding the book. He was merely proposing examining it and critiquing it. But was shut down. They didn't just want to censor books back then, they wanted to erase them from existence and along with that erasure any proof of censorship. Approximately 300,000 copies were burned. (It may be more than that - can't remember exactly - go read the book yourself to find out.) But not to worry, Harriet Weaver just ordered more to be printed from Paris and smuggled in. It's rather funny in way, reading about the amount of money the British government and US government spent to ban this poor book.
Also a bit disturbing - think how much better our world would be if they put the funds to a more positive purpose - such as feeding the hungry or housing the poor?

* Joyce meanwhile underwent thirteen painful eye surgeries...he was rapidly going blind in both eyes. He was far-sighted not near-sighted. In short, he needed glasses to read and write and reading and writing strained his eyes. He also had most of his teeth removed, various abscesses, etc. His eyes were treated with atrophine, cocaine, scopalpine, and various other pharmaceuticals, including leeches. The medication he took - either induced hallucinations, anxiety, or giddiness. At one point he complained that he was being haunted - he saw his desk, chairs, and books flying around in the air.

In part because of the iritis, which rapidly evolved into advanced glaucoma, and the medications he took for it - Joyce receded into his own thoughts and consciousness. His writing was his world. His thoughts were everything. He was isolated by his illness and in some respects trapped inside his own head. His book is an expression of the limitations of the human body and the beauty of it. And it is in a way a direct result of his illness and what he was going through at the time.
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Venturing into the Murky and Somewhat Confusing World of Self-Publishing

Nov. 30th, 2014 05:38 pm
shadowkat: (reading)
So done a little bit of research and have discovered the following self-publishing platforms:

1.( Create Space )

2.( Author House )

3. ( Kindle Direct )

4. ( Dog Ear Publishing )
5. ( Lulu )

6. ( Infinity Publishing )
I don't know, color me confused. Feeling a bit overwhelmed and depressed by the whole thing. I either have to do it all myself or spend a lot of money to get someone else to do it...while getting very little back in return either way. Good thing, I'm not publishing my book for the money. (Most writers, well fiction writers, like dancers, actors and artists aren't really in it for the money (lots of money)...it's rare you'll make that much. This is the sort of thing you do for love and often have a day job or someone else with a day-job to fall back on.)
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Five Things I'd Like to Say To Published Writers ...also regarding Fanfiction

May. 10th, 2010 09:57 pm
shadowkat: (writing)
There's been several insightful posts online regarding the fight that erupted between professional writers and fanfic writers. I read the two main posts in question, although not all of the discussion. There were over 400 comments. One was by Fantasy writer George RR Martin, the other by romance novelist - Diana Galabadon - two published writers who did not like fanfiction.

Five things I want to convey to the published authors online who may or may not come across this post, but like to rant about fanfiction and self-publishing in the blogs to the great dismay, embarrassment and chagrin of their devoted readers and fans:

( cut for length, in defense of self-publishing and fanfiction. )
  • Current Mood: aggravated
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Capitalism vs. the book: Can books really be sold as commodities?

Jan. 13th, 2008 09:52 am
shadowkat: (writing)
Before going to bed last night, earlier than usual due to the onset of a head cold, I read an interesting essay by Ursula K. Le Guin in this month's Harper's entitled: "Staying Awake, Notes on the alleged decline of reading." Not sure if anyone else has seen or read or commented on it yet? (Am woefully behind on the reading of flist, sorry.)

In the essay, she discusses two polls, one by the National Endowment of the Arts and one by The Associated Press - which both stated that readership of fictional works has been in a sharp decline. She does question the accuracy of the two polls, stating NEA polled 13,000 adults and stated only 46.7 percent read any book, yet oddly excluded "non-fiction" from "literature" in its polls, "so that you could have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Voyage of the Beagle, Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte, and the entire Letters and Diaries of Virigina Woolf that year and yet be counted as not having read anything of literary value." Proof that polling remains an inaccurate science at best and doesn't tell us very much. But you already figured that out just by watching the New Hampshire primaries. Doesn't stop us from doing it though - that and list making, for some reason.

At any rate, in the AP poll - the AP correspondent, Alan Fram - quotes a telecommunications project manager in Dallas - who states: "I just get sleepy when I read." Fram comments:"a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify."

This statement intrigues Le Guin and she launches into a critique of the franchise bookselling and publishing industry in the US. Making some valid points. First she provides a little history on reading and book publishing - how reading and writing was never something everyone did - in fact at one time it was a practice done by only the elite or those in power, the vast majority were illiterate. Women at one time could not read and more importantly were not permitted to learn. This is still the case in some Muslim societies. "Reading," Le Quin states, "was considered an inappropriate activity for women, as in some Muslim societies today." In the 1960s there was an upsurge in reading - and in the 1800's people often talked about books on trains the way we talk about tv shows. They'd have conversations about the Old Curiousity Shop by Charles Dickens, wondering if Little Nell was going to cop it, much the same way we might discuss whether Buffy would end up with Spike, or if Sawyer would get killed on Lost. Back then, Le Quin states - "A man might be less likely to boast about falling asleep at the sight of Dickens novel than to feel left out of things by not having read it." "The social quality of literature," Le Quinn goes on to state, "is still visible in the popularity of bestsellers. Publishers get away with making boring, baloney-mill novels into bestsellers via mere P.R. because people need bestsellers. It is not a literary need. It is a social need. We want books everybody is reading (and nobody finishes) so we can talk about them. (Not sure I completely agree with her on this - everyone I know has finished the bestsellers they've read such as Harry Potter, whether they remember them that well after having done so is whole other issue.) "The Potter boom," she states in the next paragraph, "was a genuine social phenomenon, like the worship of rock stars and the whole subculture of popular music, which offer adolescents and young adults both an exclusive in-group and shared social experience."

"Books," Le Quinn writes, "are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidy of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities."

And here she launches her critique:( Read more... )
  • Current Mood: contemplative
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Jul. 21st, 2007 06:57 pm
shadowkat: (Default)
The Harry Potter postings on my flist are making me laugh. In a recent article booksellers and book publishers were bemoaning finding the next Potter phenomena. See - the trick isn't finding a book kids will love. The trick is finding a book that kids and adults will love. That's why it was a phenomena - it hit a broad spectrum - not just kids, not just adults, not just the elderly and not just one culture, gender, or ethnicity. But everyone. You find a way to make a product that a BROAD range of people obsess over and your golden. It isn't easy to do and often just blind luck. If it wasn't, there would be a lot more multi-millionaires out there.

Oh - a tidbit to anyone who thinks Potter hurts bookstores or publishing. It doesn't.
Looong time ago, when I first moved to NYC, I had a rather enlightening little chat
with Random House Senior Editor Robert Loomis - who had optioned John Grishom and worked with Emily Praeger - the author of A Visit to the Footbinders, and Eve's Tatooe (she's sisinlaw's pseudo step-mother - yes, Six Degrees and is the reason I got to chat with him.) Loomis told me that the only reason Random House could afford to put out Emily's book was Grishom's sales. Books like Harry Potter and The Firm make it possible for publishing houses to publish literary novels that get a smaller readership and they often take a loss on. Same with booksellers.

People come in to buy the best-seller or the Harry Potter, but they are there. Looking around. Looking at the other books. Thinking, hmmmm, that one looks cool. And they pick them up. A kid falls in love with Harry, the series is over, and hunts another book to replace it, so say picks up Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
That's what happened to me with Narnia and Nancy Drew.

Writers and booksellers who scoff at popular books like Harry, forget that's what brings in people to buy theirs. It's Marketing and Advertising 101. You piggy-up on the leader.
Thank Potter for making it possible for smaller lesser known works to get out there.

I did buy Harry today. Went to the indie first - it was charging 34.50 for the book. Uhm, no. Not when I know I could get it for 20 or 17 or something elsewhere. Yes, the price wars hurt the indies, but that's not the fault of Harry Potter - that's Capitalism and supply and demand. So off I go to Barnes and Nobles - yep, 22.50. Much cheaper. And yes, that's why indies call it the evil book store. It wasn't crowded. Went right up to the cashier, leisurely asked for the book, didn't wait in any lines, didn't have to worry about getting a copy. Easy.

Now it sits on my bookshelf where I can pick it up at my leisure.

Oh also picked up Spike - Shadow Puppets. Which looks cool. Thank you, Brian Lynch, for enabling my Spike addiction. If you'd been a bad writer and they'd hired George Jeanty to do your books, it may have died a nice and normal death. But nooo. Frank Urruh is doing them and you rock. Damn.

James Marsters fans? He's supposed to appear in the second episode of Holly Hunter's new series Saving Grace or so I heard. Playing an oil man who may have committed murder. Soo, you do not have to wait until January to see the man act again - you can catch him the week following this one, on TNT. It's right after the Closer.

Off to eat and watch Breach via netflix. Or maybe my favorite summer show.
It's not what you'd expect and no on my flist appears to be watching it.

Bet you can't guess what it is? I'd give you a hint but that would be cheating. But I'll do this much - you are not watching it. OR rather if you are, you never really mentioned it and if you did mention it? I missed it. Not that anyone's going to guess - 80% of my flist is busy devouring Harry Potter. I'll probably have to avoid my flist for the next two weeks until they finish posting reviews on it. Then scroll back to read them after I finish reading the book.
  • Current Mood: chipper
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On Writing....

Jun. 7th, 2007 10:04 pm
shadowkat: (writing)
To post or not to post...therein lies the question. Yesterday, Wales gave me an article entitled My Book Deal Ruined My Life - it is basically about how writers can't help but write, even if their habit kills relationships, makes them lonely, and often broke - taking day jobs to support it. Oddly comforting.

Anyhow - I found a link to it - so you too can read it and be comforted or not as the case may be.

http://www.observer.com/2007/my-book-deal-ruined-my-life

Here's a couple of snippets:

“You hear about these big contracts coming in, and it whets your appetite,” said Leah McLaren, a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who landed a book contract with HarperCollins Canada in 2003 for her chick-lit novel, The Continuity Girl. “You start to think, ‘This is my lottery ticket …. It could be optioned for a movie or become a huge best-seller!’”

“But then, it could completely disappear and sell five copies,” added Ms. McLaren whose own book was published to little fanfare as a paperback original in the States this spring. “And you’ll never be heard from again. You’ll disappear. And that’s the real risk of writing a book.”

Then there are the truly epic downfalls of authors like James Frey, whose fabricated memoir caused his life (and his seven-figure two-book deal with Riverhead) to shatter into a million little pieces. Now he’s writing two novels without a contract and posting on the blog and message boards on his Web site, bigjimindustries.com—the literary equivalent of living in a trailer park.

[I always thought the publisher and editor should have gotten the brunt of that attack not Frey who was talked into taking a fictional story he wrote and turning it into a memoir because that would sell. They had no interest in doing it as fiction. If the editor who told him that should have lost his/her job over it. Maybe they did. Not sure.]

And then there’s the self-loathing.

“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”

And even before the potential post-publication humiliation, there’s deadline pressure; crippling self-doubt; diets of Entenmann’s pastries and black coffee; self-made cubicles structured with piles of books, papers and unpaid bills; night-owl tendencies; failed relationships; unanswered phone calls; weight gain; poverty; and, of course, exhaustion.

But...if this is the case why do we do it?

Mr. Sullivan has held 27 jobs to support his writing career, from selling chapstick on the street to being a night guard in an art gallery (“That was my favorite job ever, because I just sat in a chair and read novels all day,” Mr. Sullivan added.)

He is currently working on his second novel. His first one, well, “There are eight drafts of it—they’re in my basement right now,” he said in a phone interview from his Fort Greene apartment. He trashed the novel after he got into a public fight with his first agent and decided to start anew. “You have to learn how to suppress your gag reflex in order to get anything out. Like in love, you make a lot of mistakes and you learn from them.”

Indeed, despite the heartbreak, the loneliness, the trashed drafts, the rejected proposals, writers will continue to reach for the golden ticket, the fulfillment of their American dream.

“In terms of the most joyous life to have in the world, in terms of pleasure receptors, it might be like being a heroin addict: It’s the most pleasurable thing that you could choose, if you have that constant access,” said Mr. Englander, before hanging up to head to the coffee shop and write. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, it almost killed me,’ but I’m saying that in the most positive way, because it’s all I want to do.”
- The article is by Gillian Regan.

I remember ages ago...in a Creative Writing course in college - it was approximately a semesters worth of work crammed in the space of two months. Did the same thing for a Creative Writing Poetry course. All you did was crank out the work. In the space of two months I cranked out over fifty some stories, revised them, and worked late at night in the campus library computer room with over a 100 degree fever (didn't own my own computer so had to use the school's - computers were pricey back in those days). Ironically the story that ended up winning second place in the college's annual literary contest - was the one I wrote with the fever. At any rate, my Creative Writing prof, an old curmudegeon of a guy, looked a bit like a troll, or rather how I'd imagine a troll would look, wrinkles falling in on themselves, protruding upper lip, bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows, heavy forehead, big and squat, with bulging eyes behind magnifying glasses - told the class that if you were writing because you wanted to be a bestseller or Stephen King, for the glamour, don't. Since that was unlikely to happen. Write, he said, because you can't help yourself. Because you have something to say. The drive.

I looked at Wales the other night, somewhat bummed, and said..."It's true. I can't help myself. I've been known to stay up until midnight or two in the morning on a work night writing in my lj. That movie review I sent you? Nothing. Do those all the time. I would rather write than hang out with friends at a restaurant or bar. My jobs? To support my writing habit. It's insane. But I can't stop. I love it too much. I love writing stories, letters, posts, what-have-you. Just writing. I can't explain it."

Wales simply nodded and said, "you don't have to."
  • Current Location: bed
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