There’s no need to worry about dealing with troublesome human-beings anymore, when it comes to having your precious manuscript edited. IBM has unveiled the Watson Tone Analyzer.
I don’t think that it actually says “I don’t like your tone” in a menacing way, as it’s far too geeky and polite for such malevolence. I cut and pasted a gruesome section of my novel into the demo tone analyzer, in which the corpse of a victim is found after laying outside for a week. The feedback that I was offered gave my 500 words an emotional tone of 3%, a social tone of 91% and a writing tone of 5% – well, there’s nothing more social than standing around a well-rotted body!
I can see this artificial intelligence method of analysing one’s writing as being useful to weed out repetition, though that can be done using the word search function of your writing software – and, believe me, it’s a frightening thing to do. How accurate such software can ever be in judging the feel of your writing, and offering alternative words that convey more of the mood you were striving to achieve, I really don’t know.
The robots are taking over – don’t say that, say this!
Lots of differing opinions in the article, about how worthwhile having a strong social media presence is when it comes to getting published. Followers online aren’t necessarily going to buy your book.
It caught my eye, as I’m in the early stages of establishing my author platform, with a view to returning to self-publishing. My blog on writing is almost ready to go live, after which I’ll build a WordPress website devoted to my Cornish Detective novels.
(Me waiting for a train full of readers!)
I’ve long had a jaundiced view of Facebook, though I’ve had a personal page for 16 years and a business page for four years, which I’ve done nothing to. Facebook was once useful to promote sales by advertisements, but many writing gurus reckon it’s had its day:
Marketing experts are favouring mailing lists generated by subscribers to an author’s blog and website as the way to go to generate sales. I was mulling over how much time to devote to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, when the latest newsletter from James Oswald arrived. I’ve mentioned him several times before, and his success story continues to inspire me:
He reveals his attitude to social media sites. He’s removed his presence from Facebook, owing to their stance on sharing users’ data. He doesn’t see the point of Pinterest (where I started 27 boards) and admits that he became addicted to Twitter—to no real purpose of serving his writing or book sales. I’m amazed at how many intelligent creative people have admitted to this addiction, so it’s something for me to be wary of…I’ve only made one introductory tweet when I joined three years ago. Oswald has suspended his Twitter account and relies on communicating with readers directly, by a CONTACT ME email link on his blog, but, as he runs a livestock farm, the animals take precedence. He says:
‘Above
all else, though, Twitter is an enormous time sink. Struggling with
deadlines, I often find myself nipping back to the site for a quick
look ‘while I gather my thoughts’. It’s a kind of addiction, and one
I can do without.
To that end, I’ve logged off the site, and am keeping my distance for the moment. I won’t delete it like I did Facebook. My publisher would have a heart attack if I abandoned social media entirely. My daily Blipfoto uploads automatically, as will notification of this newsletter going out. I will return to posting occasional Highland cow and sheep pictures, too, now that lambing is over. But until Inspector McLean book ten is delivered, my presence will be much diminished. Newsletters are the new thing, honest.’
Interesting, that he favours an image sharing site called Blipfoto, which I hadn’t heard of…where he posts pics of his sheep and cows. I may join:
The only tactic I believe in
when it comes to social media, is to link everything that you do,
driving readers towards your sales points. (Makes them sound like
cattle!)
I’m going to be following
James Oswald’s example by giving my first novel away for free,
following up with the second in the series at a reasonable price.
I’ve got three more written and edited, so feel like I’m in a strong
position—but that’s only so if readers like them. I favour his
reliance on newsletters. I’ll use Twitter to make contacts, network
and to tweet the occasional witticism.
There are various ways of declaring one’s writing allegiances,
including messages on T-shirts, but what about having an illustrious
playwright on your underwear?
The Bard appears, along with Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn, Queen Anne and
Elizabeth I on underwear sold by Not On The High Street:
I had the puerile thought, that a man could make Henry’s nose twitch, if he thought hard about it….
It led me to wonder which writers would be ideal candidates for appearing on undergarments. Being confronted with some authors’ faces could be off-putting. How about Charles Bukowksi howling at you?!
Breathing is a process that for, most of the time, takes place
automatically and unconsciously.
We become aware of our breathing at times of stress. It’s commonly
advised to “take a few deep breaths” when upset, to
help you calm down, to take time to reflect on what to do next and
not lose your temper.
This advice has been refined into a technique called Resonant
Breathing. It’s easy to do:
‘Take five breaths per minute, and keep it going as long as needed. This means each inhale will last six seconds, and each exhale six seconds. That’s it!’
It’s reckoned that this way of coherent breathing also reduces
symptoms of depression, by changing the messages that the brain
receives.
Controlling one’s breathing can also help you drop off to sleep. Known as the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise, it’s a simple way of influencing one’s physiology and thought processes to move into a state of relaxation:
Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight. This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
I’d argue
that a certain amount of aggression is needed to grind away at the
more onerous tasks involved in writing, such as editing and
querying—even if it’s aimed at yourself in a restrained way. Wimps
don’t get published!
This article in New Republic makes for salutary reading. It shows how it’s not what you know, or what you write, but who you know that determines whether you get published. If you already have an ‘in’ to the publishing world, then your submission is more likely to be given serious consideration.
But escaping the slush pile might be down to the whims of unpaid interns: if you think that your three chapter writing sample, synopsis and query letter is scrutinised by a literary agent or editor, then think again.
Any novice writer starting out, soon realises that there’s so much
commitment needed to create a story that it’s going to mean
self-denial, humiliation and pain. More experienced writers accept
that they’ve grown a thick skin to withstand rejection and that
tremendous willpower is required to complete the tidying up of a
manuscript after The End is typed.
The term ‘masochism’ comes from a writer—Leopold von Sacher-Masoch— whose sexual proclivities included submission to powerful women.
BDSM has become mainstream in recent years, but masochism includes
more than painful sexual activity. The Cambridge English Dictionary
gives a definition of masochism as:
‘The enjoyment of an activity or situation that most people would find very unpleasant.’
It’s arguable, that to achieve success in any endeavour, an ability
to power through pain and denial is essential. Patience and
perseverance are needed to get published.
I feel unlike a writer this year, for although I started a novella as
therapy while I became a self-publicising blogger and social media
poster, I’ve been ploughed under by the repetitive mechanics of
promoting myself and my novels.
I started the year by transferring 44 titles from Smashwords and Amazon to a new digital publisher called Draft2Digital.
It took longer than I anticipated, as I had to take my ebooks off Smashwords and Amazon, then reformat the manuscripts to suit D2D’s requirements. It was tedious—the opposite of being creative—I disliked doing it but soldiered on.
In reactivating my Paul Pens blog, which I started in 2014, then neglected ignored in favour of writing, I’m using many of the threads I started on The Colony. Although I’m glad to have them as a resource, editing and updating what I wrote, including checking if hyperlinks still work, has taken me a month of 8-10 hour days. I’ve ended up with 400 posts, which sounds impressive, but I have no idea if anyone will read them or how it will contribute to my author platform. Like anything in writing, what I’ve done is speculative.
I was relieved to complete this nit-picking task, which didn’t feel like much of an achievement—more like I’d finally stopped scourging my back with a cat o’ nine tails!
Once my blog goes live, I’ll begin to tweet, post on Instagram, update the pins I’ve already made on Pinterest, post fresh material on my Facebook business page and offer to do guest posts for other bloggers. I’m going to try to enjoy these activities, and I reckon I will get something positive out of interacting with people who make comments, but I feel more like a business agent than an author. I’m having to force myself to do it—my Cornish Detective novels require publicising if they’re going to sell—it’s a form of advertising. Not only am I a part of show business, but I’m also a manufacturer and self-promoter and performer. Ta dah!
I’m brainwashing myself into staying positive—but not go so over
the top, that my blogging and social media activity becomes
sadistic—as if I’m inflicting myself on potential readers!
Actually, I’m also concerned that I’m getting off on the masochistic
side of writing and publishing…will I forget how to enjoy creating
new stories? I know that Rome wasn’t built in a day,
but I had no idea how many bricks were involved to build a writing
career.
All
of us, at some time or other, say to ourselves “Why am
I doing this?”
How do you cope with the insecurity and disappointment of writing?
Do friends and family worry about your dedication?
There’s a difference between fear and dread—it’s subtle—but, as writers, we should use dread to create an atmosphere of unease…a pervasive foreshadowing that coats our characters.
To me, dread implies fearful expectation, or anticipation, whereas fear is a response to a threat that’s appeared.
These days in Thriller and Crime writing and film adaptations, there’s too much instant gratification—BOOM!—big explosions, courtesy of CGI that the hero is immune to, calmly walking away from them, as if shock waves, heat and debris don’t exist. If our hero is injured, it’s usually a designer cut on his cheek, that won’t leave a scar. No one ever receives a wound that makes him weak and insecure and vulnerable…which could crank up the tension, rather than detract from their powers.
I’ve just finished reading Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst, in which she created a cumulative sense of dread from seemingly unconnected incidents, skilfully using all of the senses, including smell and touch.
Nice to come across a hardback book so well-designed with the use of colophons depicting reeds, ivy leaves, a magpie, carved devil heads, bulrushes and leafy vegetation to mark chapter and section breaks. I was delighted to see an eel slither onto the corner of page 165 out to make mischief. Good too, that there’s a red ribbon bookmark attached to the spine. Such features make a book feel special, that it’s worth the asking price.
The dread-full atmosphere of Wakenhyrst put me in mind of the Fantasy and Ghost stories penned by M.R. James in which he weaved a creepy atmosphere, where nothing was quite what it seemed to be, leading to a satisfying crescendo.
Several of these tales were adapted by the BBC, in a strand of short films under the banner A Ghost Story For Christmas. Shown from 1971-1978, with a one-off in 2005, they were eagerly anticipated by viewers and much-discussed afterwards.
I vividly recall several scenes, including one from the first shown, The Stalls of Barchester, based on M.R. James story TheStalls of Barchester Cathedral, in which a scholar is haunted by a ghostly cat, as he investigates the mysterious death of his predecessor. What made me jump, was a scene where the doomed protagonist is sitting in the darkened cathedral, with only a candle for illumination, nervous of an unseen cat yowling nearby, grasping the arm of his chair for reassurance—which suddenly turns from wood into black cat fur!
In my own writing, I try to create a sense of dread in my Cornish Detective series, sometimes by letting the reader know things that the coppers don’t, meaning they blunder into dangerous situations. Judging how well I’ve made the reader uneasy, is as tricky as deciding how funny a listener will find a joke I’m telling.
This article suggests that writing in longhand or by typewriter is a more stimulating method of creating a story than skating the surface of a soft-touch computer keyboard.
That there may be ‘hidden efficiency’ in pen, pencil and typewriter ribbon is intriguing. I agree that I remember information better if I’ve written it down, which is partly why I jot ideas onto scraps of card that are dotted around my laptop’s cooling cradle. I’ve got hundreds of documents stored in scores of folders on my desktop, which I’m sometimes glad to find while looking for something else, for I’d forgotten that I’d already done that bit of research!
I’ve written a few poems in longhand, but never anything in prose. I love relying on my laptop, which I also use to aid my concentration by playing music as I write. I even defy the common advice of not having an internet connection while I write, for sometimes it’s best for me to get a fact right at that moment, rather than doing it later when editing, as it will affect what I write next. I’m very focused, checking just that one fact and not wandering off to surf the web.
What about you?
Do you do everything on a computer?
Or by longhand or typewriter, afterwards producing a computer file?
This article in Vox.com reveals some startling examples of product placement by authors and screenwriters:
When a writer signs a contract agreeing to mention a company or product a certain number of times in their story, then the book is really an extended commercial…more so, if the company’s name is part of the title, as in Fay Weldon’sThe Bulgari Connection.
Although a fashion blogger turned novelist, called Riley Costello, is attempting to patent the term ‘shopfiction’, it seems that the notion of promoting product names in books has declined in use, largely because books are seen to be less influential these days.
Setting a story in the world of fashion or music, come to that, it would be impossible not to name names, as both activities are driven by competition between labels and brands for clothing, perfume and instruments. That’s not necessarily product placement.
Some commercial names become common expressions, such as to hoover, google it, jacuzzi, q-tips and tupperware.
Product placement is not usually an issue with Crime writing, but it’s something I’ve taken into account in penning my Cornish Detective novels. Without meaning to infer that what vehicles my characters drive are in any way desirable, I mention their cars, bicycles and motorcycles more as a way of showing their natures. I’ve read some crime novels that didn’t describe the make of car at all, which seemed daft, for the author happily named the detective’s gun and even which ammunition it was loaded with.
I’m happily working my way through James Oswald’s Inspector McLean series. I’d hazard a guess, that Oswald admires and maybe owns an Alfa Romeo, for his protagonist drives a classic Alfa, wildly unsuitable for his job, and a more modern Alfa only lasted one book before it was destroyed when a building exploded.
I tend not to have my detective protagonist say “google it” when his officers are searching for information while staking out a suspect’s house, instead he asks someone to look on their smartphone. One of my beta readers called me on what she thought might be product placement, as I’d had my main character order a collectable Victorian book on orchards from AbeBooks, which seemed to be the most likely place that he would have found it, and that sounded less clumsy than saying “an online book retailer.” Admittedly, when I wrote it, I thought some readers might benefit from knowing about AbeBooks, but I don’t see any money coming my way! Nor will I get anything for mentioning Taser, the electroshock weapon, which has been used a couple of times in my stories.
How do you handle the issue of mentioning product or company names?
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