Tag Archives: Writing

Frame of Mind

I find it fascinating to watch people in the process of creating. I don’t know why this is but I think it has something to do with the fact that I have my own special brand of “getting in the mood” and I’m looking for some sort of validation that I’m normal. More and more lately I suspect that I am not.

I was on the phone with my wife and she was telling me to get some words done while she was out and the kids were asleep. Sage advice from a woman who knows me very well and wants me to finish this damn book. The only problem was that I was exhausted from a week of working the day job and I wasn’t in the mood to write. Plus, with only 13,000 or so words left in the novel I was beginning to realize that an outline would have been a good idea. These were some of my notes for unfinished chapters:

Insert some stuff about the police in here doing police-type things
Hint a bit more about extreme nefariousness
Peter and Dana come across some disturbing shit

This is going to win me Kafka Prize, I can feel it.

Franz Kafka

As someone with a history of traumatic brain injuries I can attest to the fact that sometimes the best ideas are the ones that come to you when you’re head is not on straight. Out in the real world they are usually called “bad ideas” and people end up losing their jobs, or their loved one, or their friends; but for creators a bad idea is still salvageable – it’s just going to take a little bit of creativity.

A while back I did a post about giving birth to ideas; a process that in my opinion is significantly less interesting compared with what actually happens when someone starts to work on that idea and begins to flesh it out and bring it to life.

For most people, getting into a creative mindset is nontrivial, and for some finding the Creativity Zone is almost as elusive as finding the G-spot (only the Creativity Zone actually exists). You may be thinking, “But it looks like people do it effortlessly” Well these people are few and far between. They are amazing to watch and invaluable to interact with to be sure, but they are definitely a rare breed. For the rest of us schleps, finding the right frame of mind is a fair amount of work – just like anything else.

Frame of Mind (I know, I know…)

Even one of the most creative minds on the planet will tell you that there’s a process to it, that it doesn’t just appear out of thin air like a catapulting cow that’s just been hurled over the wall of a castle. If you have 36 minutes you should watch the John Cleese on Creativity video. It completely changed the way I approach things. If you don’t I’ll sum it up for you:

If you’ve got a nice quiet place to work, about 90 minutes, and access to some like-minded creative people then you’ve got what you need to foster a good amount of creativity.

This brings us to my problem from the second paragraph of this article. Exacerbating it is the fact that there are very few moments in a day where I have all those things at the same time. The best I can do most days is have the kids asleep, a couch to sit on, the Internet on my laptop, and 120 minutes before I go to bed. The other night it turns out that this was close enough.

What I did then, was sit by myself with my manuscript open in one window and YouTube and Facebook in another. My cursor was set to the part of my story that was in need of attention. Then, I watched a good half an hour of Louis CK stand up comedy. This guy is really funny and I find that laughing out loud has a way of relaxing the mind. Then I hit up a friend on Facebook who had a few minutes to spare. We chatted for a bit and just tossed random silly ideas back and forth. The last one I came up with went something like this:

“I think I’ll write a story about a window washer. A transsexual window washer who doesn’t use scaffolding but instead floats down from the roofs of buildings on one of those big Cirque du Soleil velvet ropes, squeegee in hand, washing the windows and winning the hearts of big city Dallas.”

All he needs is a squeegee

What?!

I had been reading something about transsexuals recently and my story takes place in Dallas. There was that Cirque person who tragically died a while back during a show, so that was probably in the back of my mind as well. As for the window washing, I can’t explain it. I think I just like the word squeegee.

Squ-ee-g-ee.

SquEEEEE-gEEEEEE.

Once I hit that point I was off to the races and I flipped over to my MS and just started typing. I guess it worked because 24 minutes later I had more than 700 words on the page and was still going strong (anyone who has done NaNoWriMo knows that this is a pretty good clip).

So there you have it. One example of what it took to get from “I’m not in the mood to write” to real life words on a page. I hereby dub it The Squeegee Process™. Is is fascinating? Probably not to most people, but it works for me, multiple concussions and all.

If you have a creative process you’d like to share please comment below. I’d really like to know that I’m not alone.

~ Andrew

Once Upon a Hashtag

LOL, OMG, SRSLY, #WTF

Between text messaging, social media, and dictionaries adding the most absurd “words” it is clear that the English language is changing at a torrid pace. If I’m being honest, I can say that I purposefully avoid anything to do with all this gosh darned newfangled hogwash poppycock. My text messages contain full words only interrupted by the occasional smiley face or ampersand (to convey a specific emotion or provide a more logical grouping of words) and the same goes for my social media posts.

Listen up: I’m a writer. If I can’t say it using Oxford English Dictionary words from before the year 2000 then I am failing miserably at my craft and should feel embarrassment and shame.

Keep in mind that I am also human, which means I am also imperfect. A quick search of my Twitter feed for the two most common non-words that are now words (LOL and OMG) came up with the following:

(The tweet at the top links to this particularly funny cartoon, the second tweet from the top is a conversation between myself and Christine Reid – that makes absolutely no sense to me today, the second from the bottom links to this old blog post of mine with a shout out to Wren Emerson, and the bottom tweet links to an old Hockey News article I dug up in my archives)

I think that’s a pretty damn good track record. Out of more than 7,600 tweets there are exactly 4 that use stupid acronyms (none in the last 18 months when, arguably, I started to get more serious about writing). If you’re into percentages, that’s somewhere around 0.05% I think I’m going to start creating badges to put on blogs and profile pictures:

Like anyone else I have my vices and whether it’s on Twitter or on Facebook I have a habit, an addiction really, to all things hashtag. Hashtags, as they kids are saying, are all the #rage.

For those not so well versed on the nuances of social media here is the definition from our friends over at Wikipedia:

Hashtag

A hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #.^[1]^[2] It is a form of metadata tag.
Short messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Tout,
identi.ca, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Google+ or Facebook may be tagged by putting “#”
before important words, as in:

#Wikipedia is an #encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Hashtags provide a means of grouping such messages, since one can search for the hashtag
and get the set of messages that contain it.

Well that clears that up.

It’s probably best to look at a few examples of what the hashtag provides in terms of added value. I took the liberty of doing a hashtag search on the most popular site for hashtags (Twitter) and one of the newest sites to start incorporating the hashtag (Facebook). Naturally the hashtag I chose to use as my search was #hashtag:

Twitter Search for the Hashtag #Hashtag

Facebook Search for the Hashtag #Hashtag

If you take even a cursory glance at the results you’ll be able to see that some people are using the hashtag #hashtag in their posts for no other reason than to have a hashtag in their post. I wonder if they think they’re being clever? #lame

So what’s wrong with just searching for any old word? Context. Not that there is a lack of context, but plain text searches tend to give you more of it than you need. The hashtag acts as a consolidator to group similarly contextual posts together so that not every one that contains that word shows up in your results (though Twitter will often return search results from all the other text in the tweet as well. #sigh)

For a while, Facebook refused to get on board the hashtag train. In fact, some people would get downright angry if you happened to drop a hashtag into a status update or comment. When it was introduced a few months ago there was a flood of hashtag use and I have to admit, even this hashtag lover was mildly #annoyed. What’s more, I did a quick check on searches for hashtags of a questionable nature on Twitter and Facebook and the latter is censoring their search results to a much higher degree (not cool, Facebook. Not cool at all.)

That aside, in my tweets and Facebook statuses, and yes even in the occasional text message (this is how you know you have a hashtag problem) I will continue to use, and advocate the use of, hashtags. Right or wrong, for better or worse, it’s the path I have chosen. #YOLO

As far as this post is concerned I just can’t take it any more, so I make this promise to you now: you won’t see any hashtags in future posts or formal writing of mine ever again. Never mind the fact that I won’t feel at all bad if someone catches me breaking my promise. That just means someone is actually reading my stuff, and I’m perfectly okay with that. Cleverness #FTW!

~ Andrew

Your Comment Is Awaiting Moderation

10 Replies

Pre-moderating: sensible thing to do or petty censorship?

When it comes to pre-moderating comments on blogs I have to say that I’m a little bit baffled. If you’re a site for children I totally get it; and the same for a news or media outlet, but if you’re just one of a boat load of blogs out there, from the big name to the small time, what’s the rationale for pre-moderating comments?

News sites tend to moderate the hell out of their comments. Given that they are in the business of spreading news to hundreds of millions of people it behooves them to keep a tight reign on the content below their headers. The last thing they need is for some wingnut to fly off the handle in front of an audience the size of most nations.

For most things corporate I understand as well, though I do find it refreshing when the big players don’t turn every web page like a giant legal cover-your-ass exercise. The Google Blog doesn’t moderate their comments – at least it doesn’t pre-moderate them (it’s possible they just delete anything that doesn’t meet their standards for submission after it’s posted). While Google isn’t exactly a small time company they’re also well known for being a little more relaxed about things so I’m taking the absence of pre-moderation of comments for what it’s worth.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8gCV0KYdJc?rel=0]

As for my little corner of the blogosphere I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that a comment would need my approval before I allowed it on my site. It smells a little bit like censorship, don’t you think? Besides, who the hell am I to say what people can and cannot say about something I fully intended the entire Internet to read (or at least a few hundred people)?

Back in 2005 I had a different blog and one particular asshole starting commenting and causing a ruckus. For a time I just didn’t allow comments in hopes he would find someone else to hassle but realizing that it wasn’t fair to other readers who did want to comment I turned them back on. It was at this point that I tinkered with the idea of moderating the comments. In the end I chose not to, but had my finger on the “report” button just in case he got out of hand. He never did. Contrary to some beliefs, there are a lot of problems that will just go away if you ignore them.

A brief poll to a few friends who blog and a little bit of research on the web dug up the following nuggets of extrememly precise data:

A large number do not moderate their comments
Many only moderate for spam
Some use a form of word verification

It would seem that for those who moderate spam is the biggest concern. No one wants a slew of ads and unrelated links clogging up their comments section and this is where I think the word verification comes in. That was one thing I ended up implementing myself, and as far as a security feature goes; forcing a person to enter in a couple words just so you know they’re not a robot isn’t much, but it does keeps the spam down and in my case also allows anonymous comments (while I prefer people stand in front of their comments by putting their name on them, I can understand that some people may have concerns over privacy and things like that).

There’s lots of comment plug-ins for the popular platforms like Blogger and WordPress and both have at least a couple variations on moderation. Another one is Disqus, which I used for a while but abandoned for reasons I don’t remember.

But to the question at hand, is it just best practice or are we making it out to be worse than it is? As far as my blog goes, I’ve decided that until I actually have a problem I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I like to think of it as giving the public an opportunity to disappoint.

So far, they have not (except this person).

~ Andrew

For those interested, here’s a sampling of a few news sites and their moderation policies:

NY Times
Click this sentence for just the policy text

CBC
Click this sentence for just the policy text

Keep Your Content relevant to the topic and avoid repetitive posting.
Be respectful and courteous, as if you were having a face-to-face discussion.
If you are writing about legal issues, remember that people are innocent until proven guilty (that may mean using words such as “allegedly”).
Feel free to link internally within the CBC.ca/Radio-Canada.ca site as many times as you would like. As for external web addresses, we allow no more than three links per post. CBC/Radio-Canada does not endorse the content of external web sites and has no liability as to their content in any event. CBC/Radio-Canada reserves its right to take-down any external link.
Radio-Canada: Use French for all of your exchanges and comments. Other languages cannot be used except for an occasional word.
CBC: Use English or French for all of your exchanges and comment. Other languages cannot be used except for an occasional word.
We want to hear your own opinion. Your Content must be created and owned by you, including any music and artwork. Breaking copyright rules is not permitted (that includes copying and pasting excerpts from other sites without permission and attribution). If the majority of Your Content was written or created by someone else, even with a proper credit, it won’t be accepted.
Any of Your Content that is offensive and likely to expose an individual or a group of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability is prohibited.
The following kind of Your Content is also prohibited:

Pornography, vulgarity, obscenity or sexually explicit content
Anything illegal
Hate speech
Threats, harassment
Personal attacks, insults and defamatory statements
Threats or suggesting committing a criminal act
Attempts to mobilise people for any purpose outside of a CBC event

Respect other people’s privacy by not including personal information in Your Content (such as phone numbers and email addresses) or private dialogue.
Be sensitive in ‘Your Content’ regarding the death or injury of private individual, especially children.
Make it personal, not commercial by leaving out press releases and commercial promotions.

Huffington Post

Click this sentence for just the policy text

Size Matters

4 Replies

When I started writing my novel I had a grand idea that it would be at least 100,000 words. Before I had even determined the full arc I knew I wanted to write 100,000 words. It was a nice round number and as far as I could tell it would make a pretty decent length book. The problem was that as much as I wanted the 100k the more I wrote the more I discovered that it was either going to be a stretch to get it there or it would wind up being a 150,000 word marathon.

So what’s the right number? If quantifiable numbers are your thing you can look to the Smashwords article from May 2013 for a very telling answer. A book’s success can be directly tied to its sales and the average length of the top 100 books on Smashwords is a hair over 115,000 words. Of course even Smashwords says flat out that most authors would be thrilled to be in the top 500. So, if you look at their top 500 the average length is just a bit over 77,000. Double the ranking and it only drops a couple thousand words. So, if the top 100 is any measure (which it should be) you’re writing a good length novel. If you’re happy sitting in the top 1000 (which you should be) then you can probably do with 40,000 words less – almost an entire novel – and still be doing just fine. Of course, when you look at the same Smashwords data you’ll see that the top book (#1) outsells #50 by a margin of 7 to 1 and #50 outsells #500 by another 5 to 1. I’m sensing a trend here…

That same Smashwords article also had a price point comparison and it looks like FREE and 99¢ are the big winners, but $3.99 seems to be the magic number, which if you’re an indie author could mean a serious advantage over someone who’s traditionally published and has all that additional overhead – and cost – associated with their book (that, or the author is taking a serious cut when it comes to royalties).

So what about the short story? Is it doomed? The numbers seem to suggest that short stories don’t sell very well at all. To me, this seems counter-intuitive, especially in the digital age. They make perfect sense, and all for one very simple reason: time! With every device under the sun capable of displaying a book, and in today’s go-go-go world I would think that it would simply be easier to pick up an anthology or collection and read a couple short stories and then move on as opposed to having to invest hours and hours of reading chapter after chapter (and if you’re reading Dan Brown, chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter…)

My theory seems to hold especially true for short story erotica. You may be asking, how is it that people can sell erotica for $2.99 or even $3.99 for a 10,000 word short story and get away with it? That’s the same price as an average length (and commonly priced) full length 115,000 word novel! Well, in addition to the time factor the the answer also lies in re-usability. You’re not likely to re-read that 400 page novel over and over, but any time you’re in the mood for a quick… um… “break”, you’ll bust out that erotic short story quicker than a prisoner on conjugal visitation day.

Now, as the writer of a blog (a new post every Sunday here at Potato Chip Math) I’ve been long curious about the optimal length for a blog entry. Now, it seems that if you go looking for this information you’ll find almost as many answers as you find experts. One recent article I found was particularly interesting. It basically says that people value longer copy over their shorter counterparts. While I think there is definitely some truth to that statement I think that the author goes out of his way to over-simplify. At one point he simply compares length of post (greater than or less than 1500 words) to number of tweets and Facebook “likes”. The posts greater than 1500 words got more of both. The scientist in me is going absolutely crazy over this. How many other variables are in play? Too many to be able to say with any degree of certainty that this is a result you can hang your hat on.

That being said, there was one interesting statistic that it mentioned which did make me go “hmm”: Google search results. Here’s a quote directly from the article and the graph they had to support it:

“The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2000 words.“

So maybe there’s something to a post or article with a bit more meat to it. As for all my posts, as I eluded to above, views to word count isn’t a direct comparison because so many other factors go into each one. Did I tweet about it more often? Did I post in a comment thread on another blog or article? Did I try to engage my audience or just pump out noise? Ding! Ding! Ding! Here’s a pro tip for you: engagement works but it takes work! Frankly, I’m okay with the traffic I am getting for the amount of work I’m putting in. I know when I try to do more with it I get more impressive results, and sometimes that’s just what I do, but I have to be realistic with my time. Blogging isn’t my full time job. Heck, it’s not even a job at all. It’s a tool and like most tools, it’s all in how you use them.

So, size does matter but the experts agree, content is king. I don’t think this should come as a surprise to content providers and creators of the world. I know I like to ask, “Aren’t people impatient; with the attention spans of small children?” The answer is generally yes, but I have found that this doesn’t hold true for people who actually like to read. Sure, we all like snazzy infographics and quick information, but people who are looking for reputable information and who want to learn and explore new things and are generally curious will usually go beyond the fold to get what the’re looking for.

At the end of it all, and as far as my novel is concerned, agents and editors will have a better sense of what changes are needed to achieve results. That’s why they do what they do and why I’ll gladly pay them to do it. What this means means for me is that I should take as many words as I need to tell the story. No more, no less.

As for this post, well, by the time it’s done there will be 1,171 words on the virtual page. I’m already curious to see how many views it gets.

~ Andrew

Brokeback Blogging

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

2 Replies

A while back I wrote a post on how the general consensus is that for books that are made into movies, the book will almost always be better. After seeing not one, but two stage versions of The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” I have come to the conclusion that musical theatre is to music as movie adaptations are to books.

Rock & Roll music made into a movie with some of the
biggest names of that time in showbiz

There’s a reason there’s the musical expression “phrasing”. Music, you see, is a language. From our friends at Wikipedia: “Phrase and phrasing are concepts and practices related to grouping consecutive melodic notes, both in their composition and performance.” Music, much like the words on the page, allows the mind to wander, fill in the gaps, and fill the consumer with wonder and amazement.

Neither the 1995 nor the 2013 editions of “Tommy” did any of that for me and mostly for the same reasons. I expect a certain style when it comes to musical theatre, but I also have expectations when it comes to live music (not just concerts, but any non-recorded music). Live music should be bigger, louder, full of emotion and energy. It should invoke feelings, and lots of them.

I know, I know. $75 freaking dollars – for balcony?!

Granted, I was only 21 when I saw the 1995 show but I was no stranger to theatre. For its time the visuals were outstanding but I found the actors to be disengaged and tentative, almost as if they were afraid to make a mistake or personally offend the original creators. The music was definitely loud enough, but it was lacking most of the criteria I was expecting.

Now with a few more years behind me (eighteen to be precise), I can look at the performance from this week and, well, basically say the same things. Most of the players were pretty engaging, but I found the lead (teenage Tommy) to be weak. It was as if during the whole performance he was wondering what he’d be having for dinner after the show. The new fancy backdrop visuals were distracting and didn’t add any value. The music could have been louder, and it was lacking intensity. It was as if someone threw a towel over the guitarist’s amp and took away his distortion pedal.

Stratford Festival ticket deal for the win!

Now here comes a comparison with another stage show based on popular music: Abba’s “Mamma Mia!” (this could very well be the first time someone’s ever compared Abba and The Who. A quick Google search turned up 40,700,000 results of which I looked at the first two pages and found no such comparison. Feel free to check out the other 40,699,960 results and prove me wrong).

This principal difference between the two plays (aside from the vastly different plots) lies in the music and the musicians themselves. Abba songs are not rock & roll. Abba songs are poppy, toe tapping ditties and they lend themselves quite nicely for use in a live musical. Abba songs aren’t bigger than life; the stage production brought them to life and then gave them more heart. Songs by The Who absolutely ooze rock & roll. Songs by The Who are not toe tapping and the lion’s share are far from anything I’d classify as a ditty.

They are amplifier exploding epics that make you want to smash things.

You know what I expect when I hear someone play The Who? More freakin’ guitar, that’s what. Cowbell is to Blue Oyster Cult as guitar is to The Who and from what I heard in Stratford – and in listening back to the original 1995 stage recording – Peter Townshend should be rolling over in his grave (wait… what? He’s not dead?! Oh. Sorry, Pete. Moving on…) At the end of it all I simply found “Tommy” to be a little too much tea & crumpets and not enough rock & roll (finale excepted – it was great in both performances).

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised though. Music, really good music, packs so much into each song that it has got to be really difficult to breathe more life into it, short of performing the song live at an actual concert. Could this be a reason for there being such a lack of stage musicals based on popular music? I happen to think so. That being said, if anyone wants to go out and put together a stage production of RUSH’s 2112 I’d be all for it. Lord knows that would at least allow for a better comparison than ABBA.

RUSH’s 2112 “Starman”

~Andrew

Quiet Writer Drives Through

Got Stuff?

2 Replies

What do Monsanto, Apple, Disney, and Stephenie Meyer have in common? The way I see it they are all in the business of creating stuff for the sake of turning a profit. Of course, I say that as I sit here at my laptop on my comfortable couch in front of my big screen television waiting to answer my iPhone (via Bluetooth).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac?rel=0]

“Ever notice that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”

Now, I am a big fan of a high functioning capitalistic society; money makes the world go ’round and all that… but at what cost? As much as I enjoy “stuff”, the more I look at my children and what we’re leaving behind for them, the more I begin to wonder if the costs of consuming are worth it. Is it possible to reverse the path we’re on and focus more of our time, energy, money, and attention on creating to improve instead of creating to capitalize?

Thankfully, there are concerned individuals much smarter than myself who are asking tough questions on the topic. These are the types of things they are asking us to consider:

If we grew food to actually feed people instead of to just sell food how many people would still be hungry?

What would our world look and sound like if music and television weren’t assembly line productions controlled by just a handful of companies?

If we invested in science and technology to learn and understand the universe instead of just to be the one who sold more phones/televisions/computers this year how much further would we go?

What would we see if the best selling books in the world weren’t formulaic, predictable, and based on the latest force fed trend?

Hmm…

Some of you are thinking, “Oh lord, the guilt trip continues” (or something to that effect). Don’t worry, I’m not here to make anyone feel bad about themselves or the lifestyle they keep. The goal of this blog is to provide my thoughts and observations, usually on topics based on my newcomer experiences to writing and content creation, to generate conversation or get people thinking in a direction they might not have otherwise.

Lately, I have found myself asking the question, why are we (as a society) creating the things we’re creating?

I have found all too often that the answer is to sell it, or even worse, I don’t know, and that’s a scary thought. What’s scarier though is that George Carlin released his bit “A Place for My Stuff” on vinyl in 1981 – 32 years ago – and it’s probably more true today than it was then.

Stuff is cheaper so we can afford to buy more stuff. Stuff is smaller so we stuff more stuff into our other stuff. We’ve made it easier and repeatable to create stuff so just about anyone can produce stuff and the internet makes it so that just about anyone can buy it.

My daughter created this with chalk in the kids’ area at a music festival.
For as long as we were there it was the only section no one erased.

Why are we creating the things we’re creating anyway?

I don’t know, but I’d like to issue a challenge to anyone willing to give it a try:

Have at least one meal this week made with non-genetically modified, locally grown food, or better yet, start a small garden of your own

Turn off the television or video game at a time when you would normally do such a thing and find a song by an independent musician and just listen to it (there are tons available on YouTube), or better yet, go watch a local musician play live

Invent something to fulfill a need, or better yet, do it without having to buy any new materials (as a note, this becomes noticeably easier to do if you have children or are capable of thinking like one)

Read a short story by an author you’ve never heard of on a topic you know nothing about, or better yet, write one about something you do

~ Andrew

Anyone Can Write a Book

6 Replies

So this quote came across my Facebook wall a week or so ago:

“After I had written this book I told several friends. Their response was polite and mild. Later I was able to tell them the book was going to be published. Almost to a man they used the words ‘I am proud of you.’ They were proud of the result but not of the action.” – Hugh Prather

Attached to that post was some additional commentary from the person who posted the quote. He was proud of all his friends for their actions, not the end results. In that moment, I felt very fortunate to know this person and I felt even more fortunate that he was just one of many people in my life who echoed that sentiment.

You see I have written a short story that was published in an anthology. When I got the email saying that I had made it into the book my wife came up to me and said, “Congratulations, you’re a published author!” On the surface would appear that this was praise attached to the result. That would be true as becoming published is a big deal, however, if we go back not a month earlier I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

NaNo, as it is affectionately known, is a challenge to write a novel in 30 days (a novel being defined as at least 50,000 words). I tried in 2011 and failed miserably, barely squeaking out 21,000 words. In 2012 I also squeaked out a number – 50,000 in 29 days (I took the last day off to celebrate AND grew a moustache for Movember the whole time). As soon as I crossed the 50,000 word plateau I paused and took a moment to soak it all in. My wife wrapped her arms around my neck, kissed me on the cheek and said, “Congratulations, you’re a novelist!”

The support and the support of those around me as I muddle my way through this whole book writing thing is absolutely outstanding. To them, and certainly to me, the journey toward becoming a novelist is an accomplishment to be proud of.

Fast forward to one of the first comments on that Facebook post I started this article with. It read:

“Anyone can write a book. The trick is writing something good enough to convince a publisher that enough people will find it interesting enough to buy.”

Sitting on my couch reading that comment over and over I went right properly ballistic.

After settling down a bit I re-read it and I guess there’s a certain amount of truth to the statement. In one month, technically, I wrote a book, but his over simplification of the task and his assertion that for your book to be “good” you need to “convince a publisher that enough people will find it interesting enough to buy”, are well… *cough cough* bullshit *cough cough*

First of all, I suspect that there’s only so much convincing that you (or your agent) can do. At the end of the day content is king. It does need to be interesting, but the idea that if you can’t convince a publisher it will sell that you have nothing to be proud of, or that your book isn’t good, is completely absurd. Quite frankly, those sound like the words of someone who is never going to write a book.

The first thought that went through my head was actually, Sure anyone can write a book. In the same way that anyone can become an astronaut. This was echoed by my writer friend Gareth Young when I mentioned this Facebook post to him and he replied:

“It’s a little like saying you just have to study and train hard, be a genius level polymath and Olympic level athlete to be an astronaut. Sounds pretty straightforward when you put it like that. Although now anyone can be an astronaut too. All you need is plenty of money and the Russians will strap you into one of their rockets and shoot you into space.”

If we take it a step further, these days anyone can get a book published too. Self publishing is a rapidly growing business and many writers are having a pretty good go with it. So, Mr. Facebook Guy, does this mean that if you self-publish you have nothing to be proud of? Is your book not “good enough”?

Now, because (surprisingly) not everyone has read everything I have ever written on this blog you may not know that back on February 9th I wrote this:

“Good ideas are even harder to come by. Those are like the crystal clear double rainbow you see after a short summer rain where you can imagine giant pots of gold at each end and a bevy of leprechauns dancing a jig around them. Oh, and let’s not forget that all this has to be interesting enough for people to read. That’s like trying to describe your rainbow scene in such a way that someone would rather read about it from you than see the photograph of it taken by someone else.“

My excerpt was in the context of being a writer – as in, anyone can write but not everyone can write something readable. On the surface you’d think my comment and the Facebook Guy’s were just variations of each other, but there’s a solid distinction to be made. Gareth (this guy is good with words – I mean really good) also had this to say:

“Anyone can write a book but not everyone can be a writer. Writers are a whole different animal from people who just write books.”

Indeed. Anyone can blather 50,000 words onto a page and say “I wrote a book”. I did it, and I’m a giant lazy turd with a day job and a family and more procrastination techniques than anyone I’ve ever met. But that’s not all there is to writing a book – at least not if you want to be a writer. Blathering gibberish onto a page is making a book, not writing a book.

Properly writing a book means a whole lot of research, hard work, patience, and dedication. When you’re done and you’ve got your fifty, sixty, seventy, or a hundred thousand words down on the page; with all your characters developed, your plot points covered, your beginning, middle, and end all tucked away between the title page at the front and the final punctuation mark at the end you take a break, and then you edit it. You edit the living hell out of it. Then you edit it again, and possibly again. Then, you let someone else read it. Maybe it’s some beta readers, maybe it’s a professional editor, maybe it’s your husband, your wife, your best friend, or your mom. You take this thing that you’ve just invested countless hours on, put your heart and soul into, devoted those precious few free waking moments to, and you hand it to someone – and you wait. You wait and you wait and you wait. You wait for them to tell you… that it’s not good enough.

Then, you suppress your anger, you hide your tears and bite your lip, and you take the comments, one by one, and you learn from them. You make changes and you re-write and you re-work and you polish. You push through the pain and the heartache, and you keep writing. You just keep writing.

Just keep writing.

After you have spent more time editing and re-writing (and crying) than you did writing it in the first place, you finish. Done. You write your acknowledgements and you celebrate, for you have accomplished something great.

It is said that a first novel can take someone years to write. If you still think anyone can do it I dare you to try – just once – give it a try. I’ll check back with you in 2015 and see how you’re making out.

~ Andrew

For Dad

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Not surprisingly, a good number of the memories I have that involve my father also involve sports. Whether it was sitting on the porch listening to the Toronto Blue Jays on the radio; me with a lemonade, Dad with a can of Schlitz, or him taking me downtown on the subway to sit in General Admission at Exhibition Stadium and watch them play live. I can still hear the chants of “Er-nie! Er-nie!” echoing through the ball field and out onto the cool waters of Lake Ontario.

If I was really lucky we’d sit in Right Field – Reserved Bench!

I have a family of my own now and my wife’s father enjoys heading down to the ballpark as well, so every so often for Father’s Day she and I will buy tickets for our dads and we’ll all go down to the ballpark and catch a Jays game (preferably against the Yankees). Where do you think Dad likes to sit? Yup, out in left field above the Jays bullpen – not too far from the old General Admission days at Exhibition Stadium.

By the age of 5 I had watched more games on Hockey Night in Canada than I could count. In 1979-1980 my dad, as the principal of a school, would bring home boxes of confiscated hockey cards (no shootsies allowed in the hallways!) and I would catalogue each and every one, diligently using the checklists to see which ones I was missing. Dad would sometimes get hockey tickets from a parent and take me down to see the game and if he was really itching to go to and didn’t have seats he’d hop on the subway and get some off scalpers. The most memorable moment would have to be the 1987 playoffs against St. Louis. Toronto won the series in 6 games on the same ice that I scored a goal on a little more than 2 years earlier. Dad and I were in standing room “seats” and I thought the building was going to collapse! After the game Mom said she saw us on the news; Dad carrying me on his shoulders as fans paraded up the street. Even if I didn’t know what it meant at the time that night was probably the first truly surreal experience of my life.

1984 Thornhill Rebels crammed into a broom closet in the bowels
of Maple Leaf Gardens. I was 10 years old.

All grown up, able to afford my own tickets (and a knack for being able to actually get some), I would make a point of taking my old man to a game every year. The last Toronto Maple Leafs playoff game we saw was in 2001 at the new home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Air Canada Centre. Wouldn’t you know it, the Leafs would win in overtime and we were fittingly situated in standing room (it was the game Sergei Berezin actually passed the puck!) Dad didn’t put me on his shoulders but an usher did have to instruct him to get down off the railing and stop banging on the bottom of the press box.

Now, as any good hockey fan knows, when you’re not out on the ice you should be out on the course. When it came to golf Mom had more patience (and a hole in one!) but played a lot less than Dad. Not that Dad played a whole lot, but both his parents were avid golfers and he definitely liked to get out on the course and hack it around. Dad would let me borrow his clubs and I’d go out to the Unionville Par 3 course with a friend and just make a total mess of things. I’m pretty sure the only reason every club came back in one piece was the uncertainty of what would happen if even one of them came back broken.

Since Dad retired he’s played a lot more golf, and since I’ve grown up I have as well. Now, once or twice a year we go out on the course and shoot a round, usually 9 holes so it doesn’t take as long. I couldn’t tell you how many times we’ve played, but I can definitely tell you how many times I’ve beaten him: once. That’s right, I’ve only beaten him one time. I’ve never been able to hit his curve ball, and apparently when he’s around I can’t hit a fairway either. I bought him a round at the course by my house for Father’s Day this year and I have this sneaky suspicion that he’ll eek out the victory just like he’s done all all those times before.

Pretend score card from the one time I beat Dad (as if I shot a 44)

If it’s possible to be influenced into enjoying a certain type of book I was definitely influenced by my father. He’s read all the classics of course, and as an English major from Waterloo Lutheran University and public educator for 34 years he has read his fair share of novels. The man loves to read, and one of his go-to genres is the one I head to first when I’m looking to buy a new book: suspense / thriller. I have borrowed many a book off of his shelf written by Dan Brown, Steve Berry, or Robert Ludlum and have certainly purchased many of their works or taken them out from the library as well.

Is it any surprise then that my novel, just a few thousand words shy of a completed first draft, happens to be a conspiracy suspense thriller? I’m 39 years old and still trying to get in my dad’s good books.

One thing I am looking forward to is writing on the inside cover of his copy and handing it to him sometime this year; heart in my throat, terrified he’ll think it sucks. I have another feeling though, that he will think it’s a perfectly readable book, and even if he doesn’t, one thing I know is he’ll put me up on his shoulders one more time and place my novel proudly on his bookshelf right beside Ludlum, Brown, and Berry – and every time I visit it will be surreal.

~ Andrew