How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing

I would have titled this "How E-Books Might Change Reading & Writing". Mainly because I don't think you could have looked at the early output of Gutenberg's presses (Bibles, indulgences and religious tracts) and seen an accurate view of what would be happening once writers stopped playing with the new toy and really started to create. Of course in that time, artists labored in relative isolation, without a mass media culture to feed them lines. For better or worse, it took almost three hundred years for the presses to move from what they began doing (religious works) to printing the endless Do it Yourself books of the Elizabethan era (yes, really) and eventually the surrealist adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Machiavelli's political advice column and eventually the exploits of Don Quixote and the printing of the Shakespearean canon. Even though we will undoubtedly move the same relative distance a hundred times as quickly as the renaissance writers did, I sincerely doubt we're out of the early stages of curiousity and exploration that meet a new medium. And I'm not sure anyone can say with any assurance that we've achieved any level of sophistication or seen more than the leading edge of what e-Books will really mean for the writer and the reader... not to mention their medium.

The Janus Conundrum: Choosing Your Point of View

I don't use first-person point of view, and I don't very often find anyone else who does it well. Why this is true is difficult to explain... unless you have a kitchen accident to use to illustrate the problem.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chopping_Board.jpg

A couple of months ago, I bought a bunch of red bell peppers with the intent of making stuffed peppers. I had six more than I ended up using and rather than letting them go to waste, I threw them in the freezer as I often do. Flash forward a couple of weeks. Frozen bell peppers are fine in any application that doesn't rely upon them retaining a crisp texture. So when I decided to make chicken salad for dinner, I pulled one of them out of the freezer, took out my largest, heaviest chef's knife and set to work.

Angle of incidence equals angle of deflection, solve for finger.

When the frozen pepper rocked under the knife blade and the edge sliced into my left ring finger instead of the pepper, I simultaneously went in two different mental directions. I immediately applied pressure to the wound and raised in above my heart to minimize blood loss (a rational move). I also picked the knife back up and stabbed it repeatedly into the cutting board while I screamed (not quite so rational).

Then I sat down on the floor and went away for awhile.

Next thing I remember is sitting in the bathroom giving my wife instructions she didn't need on how best to apply gauze and tape. An hour later, as I was picking at the bandages and reflecting on my clumsiness, it occurred to me that what had just happened would be very difficult to write accurately from the first person. (Yes, this really is what I was thinking. These are the mental tricks I pursue when I'm trying not to think about the throbbing pain and stupidity of my current predicament.)

During moments like these, my attention splits and the part of me dealing with the issue has another part of me watching and commenting and giving notes. In other words, I begin to operate simultaneously on at least two levels, one of them rational and one of them very much not. How much control I have over the irrational side seems to correspond directly to whether or not I'm the one who is bleeding and if so, how much. So at the end of the day, I'd lost a hunk of finger and had a writing problem to noodle with in order to keep me from picking at the bandage. (Actually I had two writing problems, since typing without using your ring finger or wearing-out the backspace keys is a problem of its own.)

I find problems easier to deal with if I name them, so I shall call this one The Janus Conundrum. Partly because Janus is the two-faced god of Roman mythology, handy for expressing duality, and partly because I'll never get to write a Robert Ludlum novel, so where else will I have an opportunity to use a term like "Janus Conundrum"?

I've seen writers try to deal with this duality in various ways and with various levels of success, but I think that ultimately there are some things you simply cannot express fully in words. Recreating the scene at the cutting board accurately would require two concurrent narratives. One of them would be collating biological processes of coagulation, knitting epithelial cells and plotting wound care. The other more akin to a beat poet describing an angry chef with a grudge against frozen fruit.

Both are correct, but the two simply don't blend well. So how do you unite the two narratives? 

You don't. At least I don't. This is part of why most of the first-person narrators in the literary world aren't multi-track thinkers.  Direct, plain-speaking noir detectives, menschy and affable, but generally writers don't put you in the heads of physicists or writers. Throwing two viewpoints for one character involved into a tense moment is jarring and tends to break the narrative flow.

In the last letter I wrote to my nephew I discussed the way that point of view dictates how you introduce characters and how much you tell the reader about them. That same lessons pays forward through the whole of the narrative. How much we see of the action and how the characters react depends greatly upon the point of view we're using to view the kitchen accident (or gunfight, or blimp disaster, or earthquake or whathaveyou...) and how much we know of the duality of their actions will depend upon how much it would be apparent to an observer.

Which brings us back to how we choose our POV. In the first person narrative, I would have to find a way to deal with the Janus Conundrum. This is one of the stumbling blocks of first person narratives. Someone else watching me waling on the cutting board and screaming while holding my bleeding hand aloft would relate the incident very differently than I would. They might react to a normally rational and even-tempered man freaking out at the sight of his own blood or reacting to his own stupidity, or they might not know me well enough to do so and wisely run away from the nut with the knife.

I would be prone to call this the inherent superiority of a third person omniscient viewpoint. I can show duality without confusing the audience. Because the audience is watching rather than living inside the nut's head. Not that it gets you entirely out of the knotty problem of telling a story with multi-track thinkers as your characters.

But here my kitchen accident solves the problem as well as illustrating it. It's far better to reflect upon the mental gymnastics after the fact rather than trying to show all of them in real time. Instead of uniting multiple simultaneous mental tracks in a single narrative in 'real time', I prefer to reunite them after the fact. Reflective characters picking at their bandages and contemplating their previous stupidity/heroism. With the able assistance of an eccentric doctor just begging to be written into a future novel, my finger is mostly healed now.

All that remains is the lesson (cut the peppers before you freeze them), the scar and the conundrum.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of historical suspense. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on revising his NaNoWriMo novel, tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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The Digital Divide... Is it separating readers and publishers?

From today's Washington Post.

E-books spark battle inside the publishing industry

By Marion Maneker

Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 27, 2009 "The evolution of publishing from print to digital has caused a schism in the reading world. There are now two constituencies: readers (and writers) on the one hand, and the publishing world on the other. And they don't want to hear each other. . ."

Happy Holidays

Phew! Maintaining a regular blogging schedule is difficult this time of year. My family and I are celebrating Christmas, but no matter which of the many concurrent holidays you are celebrating, stay safe and happy and warm this season. And remember to take some time to curl up with a good book in a comfy corner and report back on what you read.

Mightier than the sword...

Start by reading this short post in the New York Times sent to me by my friend Denny:  
Why Handwriting is History
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/why-handwriting-is-history/?partner=rss&emc=rss

This is today's "Big Idea"? Handwriting is dead, long live the Blackberry! Stop teaching kids to write things by hand, man, that crap's old hat. Teaching handwriting skills is clinging to a romantic and Luddite notion of things best allowed to die. “Thus for monks, print was capricious and script reliable..." and all attachment to handwriting is romantic nonsense. Sentimentality that just slows us down, impedes our thoughts.

Next you'll tell me that painting is "dead" because the sable brush is inferior to the brush tool in Adobe Illustrator.

To begin with, I can only assume that the scholar being quoted knows that the monks purported distrust of the printing press is is much the same as auto workers distrust of robots. It's not about sentimental attachment or reliability, it's about being replaced by a machine. Gutenberg's press was the death knell of the monastic scriptorium. The printing press turned books from a rich man's plaything into an exchange of ideas accessible to the burgeoning middle class.

I'm sure that on the level of the scribes themselves, there was a great deal of sniffing about how fast a Bible could be produced debasing the meditative act of carefully crafting each page, etcetera. But on the macro level, the ecclesiastic objections to the printing press wasn't about speed or a misplaced sentimentality about handwriting, it was mostly about losing their monopoly on the transmission of ideas. It was about a loss of control.

Speed wasn't the enemy of the scribe. Shorthand has been around as long as writing itself. It seems that no sooner was the first alphabet codified than some jerk was figuring out a way to make it quicker. Formal texts have always been beautiful creations just as the books on the shelves behind me bear little semblance to the notebooks of the writers that created them. The workaday writings of the early scribes were likewise utilitarian in nature. Early scribes used wax tablets as notebooks because the wax could be 'erased' by rubbing out the marks. Cuneiform arose out of a need to create account books and receipts. The mental image of writing as a mystical act played into the power dynamics of the Babylonians and Egyptians and on down through the ages to the advent of Gutenberg's press. But in truth, it was a largely utilitarian affair. Carolingian court documents are almost illegible because each monk had his own peculiar blend of ligature, ideogram and symbol to get him from the top of the page to the bottom. Medieval monks weren't nearly so prissy about scripts as the article implies. They weren't skeptical of speed, they were skeptical about the idea of teaching the common people to read and write at all. To say otherwise is to betray an ignorance of history or far worse in my mind, to be misrepresenting history in hopes no one will notice.

As a rule, I hate sweeping generalizations. Many notable writers today (including the futurist Neal Stephenson, mind you) hand-write entire manuscripts before they're ever committed to a computer. Dismissing the practice as worthless sentimentality is absurd. The faster road is not inherently superior to the slower. Cormac McCarthy chooses to write his award-winning novels on a typewriter. There's something that happens in the writing process that binds the creator with his or her work, and making any sweeping claim that one method of creation is better than all others just because it's newer and faster is an unsupportable thesis. And the idea that transmission of thought into text should never slow you down ignores the fact that this is part of its function and benefit. The additional conceit that teaching legibility is somehow wrong is also anathema to me.

Nevertheless, I say you should write your stories on a Blackberry, typing with your thumbs, or carve it into a clay tablet or scribble it in a Moleskine with a pencil or type it in the usual fashion on typewriter or laptop as most of us do. If you're creating words from electrical impulses jumping around your cerebrum, no one gets to tell that you are doing it wrong. The writing should never be an obstacle to expression of ideas. That much we agree on. But likewise it should not be an obstacle to understanding the idea. Any thought that is encoded in illegible gibberish will be an idea wasted. Legibility at a faster rate -- that was what Parker wanted for his students. Typing can give us that. But to cease teaching handwriting altogether is to remove a valuable tool from the table, and that we should never do.

We should learn from the artists who may add tools without taking the old ones away. Pens, pencils, brushes, palette knives, fingertips, pastels, charcoal and even the brush tool on their computer's drawing program are equally valuable as they search for the one that best suits their personal expression. No one is inherently better than the other and the artist who uses canvas and brush is not a romantic sentimentalist, inferior to the computer animator. Whatever tool you choose, wield it wisely and well. And if you get a chance, use it to poke people who tell you it's just so much romantic nonsense.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of historical suspense. His current novel is The Palimpsest and is working on a new project tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Googlebooks News - French Court Objects

A French Court has declared Google's goal of creating an online library by digitizing all the world's books and posting them online is illegal under French copyright law. Presumably unless they pay to play. From MSNBC.com

The smoke of digital battle...

Voting in a hidden election...

Seattle's legendary independent bookstore Elliot Bay is moving from the location in Pioneer Square it has occupied for almost forty years.

This is perhaps not so momentous for those bookhounds who live beyond the Puget Sound, but for those of us close-by it's a bit like hearing that the Space Needle is going to be relocated. The legendarily creaky plank floors of the Elliot Bay book store really are that much of an icon to the literate denizens of Western Washington.

Thankfully, they're just moving up Capitol Hill (which puts them closer to my brother-in-law's place, come to think of it) rather than closing as previously feared. But the economic necessity that drove them to seek less-expensive digs is an eye-opener on the state of bookselling in America. If even the most iconic bookstore in a city that has been the most literate city in America for many years is endangered, what does that say about our buying habits?

I hope they install some creaks and squeaks in their new location.

I've been a manager for both of the major chains and my brother in law used to work for Amazon. I have a better appreciation than most for what large bookstores bring to the party, and for all the complaints people have about them, they have been largely responsible for the integration of reading into modern American culture. Many books and authors may never have found an audience without the big-box chains needing to fill shelf space and selecting them out of the dustbin of the backlist. Many publishers would not have survived into the new millenium without their broad avenue of distribution.

But the independent bookstores embody the culture of their cities, and to cavalierly throw that away is a travesty. This is a hard sell in tough economic times, believe me, I know there are genuine economic reasons to shop the chain stores or online for your books. Not every city or town has - or ever had - a thriving independent bookstore. But the price wars like the recent one between Amazon and WalMart are unsustainable.

The dollars you throw into the kitty of one or the other of those rivals won't be a vote to preserve those prices. Price wars are fleeting, but the damage they do to those who cannot participate (and to some who do) is permanent. And once closed, an independent bookstore in your area is gone, likely never to return.

Witness the towns across America who now lack a grocery store because they threw their business to WalMart until that was all they had left. Every dollar you spend on books this holiday season is a vote in a hidden election. And like any election, the consideration cannot be wholly economic. Because while money cannot buy culture, it can preserve it.

Bookselling is a peculiar world, a meeting place of art and culture and commerce. A place where the boundless thoughts and ideas and dreams of our culture are exchanged, and as consumers we get to vote on the venue we think best suits that exchange. I posit that this sort of activity thrives best in a marketplace with as many competing voices as possible given as much room to run as we have to offer. Don't know your local Indie bookseller? Find them online using this handy tool provided by IndieBound.

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Update:  The new Elliot Bay is in a beautiful new location, in the sort of permanently up & coming neighborhoods Seattle is famous for. Sadly, they didn't bring the creaky floors with them, but they did salvage their iconic stained glass...

Wordplay

The other day I was talking to someone (who shall remain nameless) about language. They told me that they felt English was effectively dead. This was followed by a lengthy rant about how our language has no life, no humor, nothing bright and how it only stifles creativity.

I suggested that they write in Spanish or French, but they didn't like that suggestion.

Now, the reason I'm not going to mock that person by name or post their photo and email address so as not to hog the mockery all for my very own, is that I've been there. That person's in a bad spot in their writing.

Let me not cast that first stone, for I've certainly had moments when my optimism fades and I'm left staring at that hated blinking Microsoft finger flipping me off, casting its little shadow across a blank screen. Mocking me. Oh, how I hate that little cursor.

There are a lot ways I get unstuck and we've talked about those before. Unfortunately, most of them only really work if you're writing fiction. Fiction's a lot easier for unsticking, traction can be invented out of whole cloth. If you're writing nonfiction, what do you do? What if it's a school paper or an annual report?

I do a lot of copywriting and business writing and so forth and don't talk about it much because it's not as fun as talking about literature and mystery novels. So one of the things I haven't mentioned yet is this: Get silly. Play around. Noodle with it. Find the absurdities. Find the fun in your topic.

English isn't dead and absurdity abounds. Go looking for it. Nothing is more absurd than a business report, go find it and have fun with it. English isn't dead, it's borderline crazy. This is why there's no coffee in coffee cake and there are no fairies in fairy cake. Girl Scout cookies contain no Girl Scouts, butterflies are blissfully butter-free. Because truth, you see really is more surreal than fiction and there's room to play. Linguistically, at least, the rules are malleable and the potential for whimsy abounds... especially in a business setting. So maximize those synergies.

I have very little advice for non-fiction, so this is the best I can do -- remind you to play with your language. If it's not fun, you're not going to want to do it and you're going to get stuck sitting at your desk trying to look busy. Make everything fun. Irreverence is fun. So remember that a new vice president isn't a "paradigm shift" and it doesn't get much funnier than a bunch of execs talking about moving cheese. And while we're at it, coffee beans aren't beans and English horns are neither English nor are they horns, which is somehow overshadowed by the fact that French horns are really German. So be a little nuts if you need the boost. It's okay, you can always delete the whimsy later if it doesn't fit the desired tenor of the piece. (There's only so much room for knock-knock jokes in your annual reports.)

Play with your language. And if anyone has a problem with it, tell them I sent you. (And while their trying to figure out who I am, make your escape under cover of their confusion.)