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Category Archives: Personal Notes

Too Many Commas

We interrupt your regular dish of Internet fiction commentary with a brief interlude …

I admit that I’m not happy with the latest writing on Novelr. I feel that it’s starting to become too stuffy; too pedantic. Of the past 7 posts, 3 contain arguments that lack clarity and structure, 1 is a note on a month-long absence, and all involve writing processes that felt much like shitting through a bloody anus.  Moments like these call for a close look at my sentence-level construction … and I realized that I was using far too many long sentences. Dammit! I say. Bad habit of mine … and in front of a live audience, to boot!

On Novelr, I realize that I’ve got periods where I write stuff that I’m happy with – even two years down the road – and I’ve got periods where I just can’t seem to express ideas in a clear, chatty manner. I notice, too, that these writus horribilis periods seem to coincide with the waning of the moon, and are always preceded by a chorus of howling wolves. (I, err, was joking). But allow me to put up a short style guide for future reference, one you can bludgeon me over the head with if I stray too far from the beaten path. Also, feel free to learn from my predicament.

The Novelr Style Guide

The following are several tenets that I shall attempt to maintain over the next couple of months:

  • This writer shall put a lid on multi-clausal, long-winded, over-comma-ed, unstructured, rantish sentences that, added together, create multi-clausal, long-winded, over-comma-ed, unstructured, rantish paragraphs. (Sorry – couldn’t help it … I swear that’s the last!)
  • This writer shall use short paragraphs as much as is feasibly possible.
  • This writer shall stop pretending he is writing for the New York Times. He shall be personal. And chatty. Oh yes, who doesn’t love a chatty writer?
  • This writer shall stop playing casual games whenever he thinks he’s got a massive case of writer’s block.
  • This writer shall ask good questions, and (hopefully) find unexpected answers to those questions.
  • This writer shall attempt to be funny. If he isn’t funny, then he shall at least die trying.

I’m not sure how successful this style guide would be, considering that I’m supposed to have developed a proper style by now. (I have, after all, been writing here for about 3 years already.) But then again I seem to lose my way after every major examination in my academic year. No harm going back to the drawing board, and hashing out that idiot of a writer’s block. I’ll let you know how it goes.

[Update]: Thought I’d add several other things that I’ve been doing here at Novelr. All of the above are writing-related issues, things that I’ve been grappling with ever since I took that study break late last year (yeah, I lost my sense of direction during that period, which should change … in a bit). But the ones below are stylistic decisions I made, on the fly, while producing this blog. See if you’ve noticed any of them:

  • Novelr is referred to as a separate entity. Never my community; always Novelr’s community. Never my writing; always Novelr’s wiritng. This is to remind myself that Novelr is supposed to be community-centric: the ideas and the discussions are Novelr’s, and hence belong to the community clustered around it.
  • There are three kinds of articles in Novelr: Commentary, Ideas, and Bookmarked! posts. Commentary is a post providing in-depth analysis of a 3rd party link; Idea posts are original content written specifically for Novelr’s audience; Bookmarked! posts are collected links that I think you’d find interesting. This is an internal categorization, mind; not something you’d find anywhere in the blog’s archives.
  • All posts must be edited at least twice before publication. Sometimes more after. If a large amount of restructuring is needed, the post will be updated with an (edited) tag attached to the title.
  • I try to respond to all comments all the time. Lately, however, this has been erratic. Sometimes you guys are better at hashing out an issue than I am, and I gladly take a backseat in such situations. 
By Eli James | Also posted in Asides, Writing | Comments (12)
Wednesday, 1 April, 2009

A Note On The Month-Long Absence

I think I owe everyone both an explanation and an apology at the month-long absence I took in-between the last two posts. I was working, for starters, and I had only nights to come back home and go online and do proper, web-fiction related work. But the real reason for not blogging at Novelr was because I was struggling with a couple of things that I’d like to share with you today, for luck. The short of it was that I was sick and tired of writing, and for awhile I was adrift in the sea of ideas that Novelr comes across for a day-to-day basis. But consider, for a moment, the fact that I think of myself as a fiction writer, and consider too the immutable reality that Novelr (and all of blogging) is an inherently non-fiction job. This might not seem like a major problem, not at first glance, but think awhile and you’ll realize that non-fiction is not the other side of the writing coin; it is a very attractive escape, especially for the fiction writer suffering from major writer’s block.

When I first started writing, I reasoned that the blank page was a beautiful thing; an invention that gave the outside world the inner workings of my head. I could give a gift of imagination - my imagination – to others; to allow them a smell of the flowers planted outside the palace of Samarkand, to give them a taste of stolen cloud, taken from underneath a flying monkey God. And indeed that was the ideal that I strove for, that little imagined place where both writer and reader could meet; not over ideas, but over stories and shared experiences.

But then take non-fiction, where you’re still writing, and you’re still using the same tools of the craft, but you’re not actually telling any story. I find that non-fiction is often a weaker substitute for fiction, in the same way some people may chew gum to make up for an addiction to nicotene; or watch porn to make up for a lack of human love. Writing essays and blog posts are easier; they’re instant gratification to the slow-release pleasure of writing a novel; they make you feel as if you’re still engaged in the act of writing, with one crucial difference: you’re not actually doing any storytelling. And we all know how much harder storytelling really is, compared to the direct, non-fiction electricity of ideas from head to hand. This could be one reason why so many novelists turn to essays in their downtime, between books. It could also be one reason why I’d been writing so little fiction over the past 6 months. And it was true, and it was painful – the crux of the matter was that between Novelr and my blog I didn’t feel any need to ease myself into the hard grind of crafting and telling a good story. And that was sad indeed.

I wonder now if writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin write non-fiction because they believe in this lie. Or if they’d examined themselves as fiction writers, found themselves wanting, and settled for the still-respectable, instantly-gratifying joy of non-fiction. Because to me it suddenly seemed that if you were not writing fiction you weren’t partaking of the most powerful thing writing had on offer: the ability to take yourself out of time, to live beyond your years in the curls of your letters and the ozone of your paragraphs. I believe now that stories last forever; that only ideas grow old and die. And what I was doing, I found, was that I was writing so much non-fiction that I was putting aside almost nothing of myself for the timeless craft of the fiction writer.

So what made me come back? Two things, I suppose. The first was a 43 folders podcast, How To (…) Turbocharge your blog with Credibility!, a punchy, inspiring chat between two old-time bloggers that reminded me of everything I had started out to do when I first launched Novelr. But that’s personal, and you aren’t likely to identify with me on my reasons. It’s the solution to my second problem that I find worthy of sharing: I decided that no matter how much work I was going to do on Novelr, or how many essays I wrote for myself, I would always, always set aside some time for wrtiting fiction.

And the thought of this – the very idea of it – made me instantly happier. I’m sorry for the hiatus. But I’m back now, and writing again. Thank you for sticking with me.

N.B.: Have any of you struggled with this? Or has fiction/non-fiction been your one and only calling? I’m interested to know if anyone’s had similar doubts, and similar blocks. Drop me a line in the comments section; I’d be delighted to hear from you.

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides, Learning To Write | Comments (17)
Friday, 9 January, 2009

Memorandum

Welcome, folks, to a redesigned Novelr. I call this version two point oh, draft eight, and I hope you like it as much as I do. (Note: bugs are still being ironed out, so please bear with me for awhile).

Before I talk about the upcoming changes in Novelr, I’d like to explain the idea behind the visual lift Novelr now sports. I have been intending to redesign Novelr for quite a bit now. Part of it was due to the Picture Book post I did last year, where I discussed how a website design affected the way readers saw your content (and in the case of blooks, how they saw a story). It was one of my favourite posts of 2008, but I felt a little off about it at the time because Novelr itself was a very colourful, hippy, non-serious blog; quite at odds with its content, as you can imagine. A redesigned Novelr would mean a Novelr that wasn’t so dissonant – a redesign would mean a stronger message.

Throughout the 4 week redesign process I didn’t write on Novelr as I did before my study lift. I know that my last few posts have been lacklustre at best, and I also realize that this is completely my fault – I have a bad habit of not writing for a site that I’m designing, and this applies even when said redesign takes an extraordinarily long time to complete. For that, and for the lousy, linkish posts I have churned out over the last two weeks, I ask for your forgiveness. Novelr will return to its core immediately in the posts that follow this one, that I promise you.

Wait, What Core?

Novelr is now two years old. When I first started writing it I set out to create a one-stop resource for all the writers on the Internet: the ones who weren’t yet published; the ones who wanted to use the Internet to get their work read. That core remains. Over the next few weeks I’ll be editing and rewriting major portions of the Ultimate Blook Guide, much of which had been rendered obsolete in the months since I first published it. By the end of Step 7 of that guide a novice writer should be well versed in the ins and outs of publishing on the Internet – how to write, where to write, and where to find other fellow writers. 

There are other things to do, of course. In the past year Novelr has become a point of community for the many who already write web fiction. The joint efforts of that community resulted in Web Fiction Guide, a fantastic filter for new readers to the medium, powered by a wonderful team of editors, writers, programmers and readers. But that is only the beginning. There’s a recession going on, and the mass publishing-industry-shift to the Internet has changed the landscape quite a bit. This is ironic, this is: many of the things Gavin Williams predicted in a 2008 Novelr guest post are now coming true, and more besides: the middlemen are bleeding red ink; the publishers themselves in need more than ever of a new business model, or at least a new bestseller. These are bleak times, yes, but great ones for those working only on the Internet. And it’s Novelr’s job to make sense of that chaos. Web Fiction Guide may be a good start, yes, but how do we channel new readers to that site? How do we get more people to read? How do we make webfiction mainstream? These are problems that Novelr and its community have been struggling for a full two years, and our jobs have suddenly turned easier with the stumble of the traditional literary establishment. If you’ve got some insight to the situation we’re facing, or if you’ve got something to say to the online fiction community, feel free to contact me to write a guest post about it.

Read more (estimated 5:32 mins reading time)
By Eli James | Also posted in Asides | Comments (8)
Monday, 8 December, 2008

Life as a Web Fiction Guide Editor

My exams ended on the 4th of December, and I was suddenly left alone with my newfound freedom. I surfed the Internet a bit, clicking about in random directions, in much the same way a criminal may run in circles after being released from prison. His freedom renders him purposeless after years of confinement, the same way I was rendered purposeless after 3 months of crazy studying. I think it’s quite possible for one to equal the other.

I’m back, and I’m sorry for not updating Novelr earlier. My exams have left me frazzled and a little woozy, and it’ll be some time before I can get back into gear here. It doesn’t help that I’ve got quite a few other things to do – I have been spending the last couple of days reading up on PHP, because it’s about time Novelr got a redesign. And there’s design work to be done on Web Fiction Guide (WFG) as well. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

This post is a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be a WFG editor. The editors, if you don’t already know, are the people in charge of reviewing and rating the 144 or so blooks listed on the site. I’ve not been a very good editor: WFG was started months ago, but I’ve almost never reviewed anything there. Put it down to my academic schedule, I guess, and bang me on the head with a wooden spoon.

Behind The Scenes: The Art (or torture) of Reviewing

What, you think we randomly choose what we review?

A review assignment usually begins as such: we hop into the Editors’ private forums and skim through the latest discussions. The topics here run the gamut from serious to nonsensical: one might be about a delisting request (the editors decided it was against WFG policy), while another might be about how we’ve been called semi-professional (go check them out!) by a StumbleUpon user. Very often, however, our personal lives slip through and colour our discussions: Gavin Williams had a baby a few months back, and we paused our discussions to congratulated him and the missus.

The chief reason we log into the discussions area is because of a spreadsheet Chris Poirier updates. It contains all the new listings and it tells us who’s reading, or reviewing what. The unreviewed listings are marked in bold, and the editors place R, W or X under their names to mark the various stages they’re going through, with regards to that particular work. An R is for Reading, W means ‘Writing a review’ and X marks a completed assignment. R sometimes last two weeks, if the blook in question is boring as hell.[1]

Read more (estimated 3:59 mins reading time)
By Eli James | Also posted in Blook Reviews | Comments (7)
Tuesday, 26 August, 2008

Open Mike: Do You Support The ‘F Word’?

The Open MikeI’ll be taking a study break from Novelr until late December, which means my posts here will be fewer and further between. Yes, I know this sounds quite awful, but I’m currently studying about 4 hours a day and it’ll only get worse as my Finals approach. Guest posts and community alerts are welcomed – I can come online, but only in very short bursts – so please shoot me an email if you’d like to write something for the blooking community.

I’d like to do an open mike before I vanish. An open mike is a post where you take the center stage, be it in the commenting section below, or back in your own blog, about a topic I’ll be discussing today. Brains turned on, then? Alright.

Here’s what I’d like to know: would you rather censor foul language for the sake of your audience, or would you keep it in your story, because that is telling the truth? Where do you stand when it comes to vulgarity in fiction?

This is an argument I’m pretty unsure about, because there are very valid opinions on both sides. On one hand we have Stephen King, who defends his use of the f-word because he is writing about common, working-class people, and they say fuck more than they do foie gras. On the other hand (the cleaner one, you’d suppose) you have the argument that it is just impolite to litter your prose with, well, impolite language. The most creative treatment of vulgar language I have seen is by children’s writer Diana Wynn Jones. Yes, you got me right – a children’s author. In her book Wilkin’s Tooth the neighbourhood bully is a particularly rude child, and he frequently uses (in her words) ‘colourful language’. Jones treats this quite literally – her dialogue from the bullies is filled with “orange” and “black” and “you purple red green boy you!!” Witty stuff.

Where do you stand on this issue?

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides, Writing | Comments (21)
Wednesday, 4 June, 2008

Novelr Has Forums!

Right. Just a short shoutout here – Novelr’s forums, aptly titled NovLounge (yeah it was a hot afternoon and I wasn’t very feeling creative, so don’t clobber me) is up and running. There’s a handy button on the sidebar that I put together on the run – it’s made out of various image scraps I’m got lying about the computer and you can use that to visit the forum too.
I know I should give a long and inspiring speech about how I hope everyone will get together and build community and write well but I’ve been doing that for some time now and I think I shouldn’t push it too hard. Well, not in this post, at least. But I started NovLounge to gather a small team of people for a site launch we’re going to do next year, and since I’m going to be offline soon the team and I have decided to open it up to Novelr’s community.

Now I’d like to admit here that I’ve no particular vision for NovLounge – I’d like you all to do whatever you want with it, so if you want to compare notes on the best ice cream flavour, go ahead; if you’d like to talk writing, do that as well. We’ve got plenty of places doing intellectual, so it’ll be nice if NovLounge is a little different: a kind of a laid-back bar for Internet writers. Whatever it is, though, it’s up to you. No, really.

That being said, here’s a brief introduction to the forum: there are four categories: Voxpop (for random stuff), Commentary (for discussion of the medium and the craft), Off Tangent (for forum games) and Lounge News (covers forum news and issues). Interaction guidelines can be found here, and the administrators are, in alphabetical order:

If you know them then you’re probably in for a bang of a time. Head over there now, have a cup of coffee, and enjoy!

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides | Comments (3)
Friday, 30 May, 2008

Novelr Needs Your Help

novelr stats[Update]: I have upgraded the hosting package and Novelr is above the waters once again. I am humbled by the support and goodwill you guys have shown. Thank you, all of you.

I don’t think there’s anyway I can approach this other than by talking straight: Novelr ran out of bandwidth yesterday. As of writing there are 55 active visitors on the site, with 162 visitors within the past hour. Most of them are from stumbleupon and they’re nice folk, for the most part. They are, however, bringing this site to its knees.

Why am I writing this post? Simply put: I might have to upgrade the hosting plan Novelr runs on. I’m aiming for a $5 a month package, which provides the site with 10 gigs of bandwidth. At the moment I have 3 gigs per month, not much certainly, but I wasn’t expecting 3k spikes of traffic back when I first started. Novelr does not make enough with advertising to cover the bandwidth it uses up at the moment. At midnight last night I rushed online to purchase extra from my host, and at 10 this morning I was told that the extra 2 gigs I had bought were running out as well.

Helping Novelr Out

Now, before I get into the nitty-gritty of how you can help I’d like to explain to you where I’m coming from. Some of you may ask why I’m asking for donations, instead of paying for this with my own credit card. The truth is that I don’t have one – I’m still studying, and I’m not ‘earning’ anything other than knowledge. Novelr is passion, a hobby, or perhaps a part-time job if you’d like to call it as such, and I can’t pay more from my own pocket than what I did at the start of the year. Most of my time is spent studying, writing, and reading; a significant portion of my week is used to sharpen the ideas that I post here.

There are two things you can do to keep Novelr running. The first is to donate to Novelr by clicking the shiny donate button below. The minimum for a donation is $3, and if you have a little time, plus if you enjoy the stuff I’m writing here then please consider helping Novelr out. The donate button uses Paypal, so I hope it won’t be too much of a hassle.


The second thing you can do is to purchase advertising on Novelr. Novelr offers both Text Link Ads and image ads, and both cost $15 a month. There’s a prime spot in the sidebar for both.

I believe people reading this would be divided into three groups – the first wouldn’t mind tipping the site, the second would move on to other articles, and the third (which I believe is the majority) will think about it. And I’ve no problem with that, really. I thank all of you for reading what I’ve got to say, regardless of whether you comment, you donate, or you lurk around reading.

I’ve put a lot of energy into Novelr and I hope you enjoy it. Please help me keep it running.

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides | Comments (9)
Saturday, 3 May, 2008

One Big Leaf

I’m happy to announce that Novelr is now a part of 9rules.

9rules is a blogging network that aggregates the best content from the blogosphere. It is many things to many people, but at its core 9rules has always been about quality. Finally seeing the 9rules badge on this site is – I must admit – a very fulfilling experience.9rules leaf

What Does This Mean For The Readers?

Becoming a part of 9rules is a milestone for any blog, and I promise you that Novelr will maintain the same level of quality that got it into the network in the first place. Updates will be slow in coming for the next few months, but whatever posts that make it through will be well thought-out, highly polished affairs. Novelr is and always will be for the promotion of Internet fiction. We’ve still got a long way to go on that one.

Being part of 9rules will not affect the way you interact with me or the site. The blog functions as before, only now Novelr’s content is aggregated on the 9rules homepage and writing community, and you get to see that cute little badge in the header of this blog. Writing, reading and commenting is business as usual.

If you’re new to Novelr: welcome. I hope you enjoy the thoughts I’ve collected over the past year, and I look forward to meeting you in the comments section of this site. Feel free to argue, to question, or to hit me over the head with an umbrella – you’ll find me mostly a reasonable person to clash with.

Special Thanks …

To the triad – the people behind 9rules: thank you for accepting Novelr. It’s been great knowing you, laughing with you, arguing with you.

To my friends in Chawlk: thanks for all the encouragement you’ve given me over the past year. I am particularly in debt to Norbert ‘Gnorb’ Cartagena – not too long ago he took the time to go over one of my short stories, and edited the whole thing almost word for word. That herculean effort is still fresh in my mind, and it’s a sterling example of the kind of passion and the kind of people you find in 9rules.

Most importantly, however – to the readers who have followed Novelr: thank you. You’re the guys who matter the most in the end – the blookers, the writers, the thinkers. We have much Internet storytelling to do, and only so much time to do it.

Onward.

By Eli James | Comments (5)
Saturday, 14 July, 2007

I Will Tell This Story In _ Hours

The concept of a story within a set period of time has always interested me. Readers know how many chapters there are going to be: rather than keeping them guessing on how long before the story is concluded they have a sense of urgency as the events in the story unfold.

Take 24 (the TV series) as an example. The concept is pretty simple to grasp: each episode is 1 hour (of a day), and 24 makes up the entire season. This makes for pretty interesting plotting: you have the end in sight, now what is going to happen within those 24 hours?
24
Another example of this is Life Of Pi. Early on in the novel Yann Martel tells us he would give us Pi’s amazing story in exactly 100 chapters. As the book went on I found myself wanting the book to last longer, and I used the chapters as a yardstick for how much story there was left.

This has an interesting effect. In 24 the characters are plunged into a crisis, and the writers throw complication after complication at them. In writing, set periods coupled with non-stop hurdles prove for very interesting stories. When your characters are in deep, deep trouble readers are probably wondering how you’re going to get them out again … which is very good if you’re writing with a need of holding the reader’s attention.

Like, for instance, the computer screen.

I wonder how far I can push this concept – really short storytelling in … 25 chapters? Should be interesting, don’t you think?

By Eli James | Also posted in Learning To Write, Writing | Comments (0)
Thursday, 17 May, 2007

Smell The Page

Chalk up another reason why the screen will never replace books: your nose.

It didn’t really hit me until today when I picked up one of those new Penguin Popular Classics, rejacketed in a lovely green skin. It was made mostly out of recycled paper, and it smelled sweet. As in honey sweet. I stopped every few pages to hold the book up and breathe in its heady scent.
jane_eyre
Well, acting against this experience is Bill Gates – who once made a prediction that reading is going to become completely online.

“We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It’s up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links. The ads … are completely targeted as opposed to just being run-of-print, where many of the readers will find them completely irrelevant. The ads can be in new and richer formats. In fact the only drawbacks of the digital form are the things associated with the device: how big is it, heavy is it, how many hours of power does it have, how much do I have to spend to buy it? But those are things that once you achieve that threshold, in terms of the convenience and the cost, then you see a dramatic change in behavior. Today, for people who read newspapers and magazines, even the most avid PC user probably still does quite a bit of reading on print. As the device moves down in size and simplicity, that will change, and so somewhere in the next five-year period we’ll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today.”

For some reason I imagine a little iPod-like device with holes … from which we get little chemical particles that smell just like a new book. And as the file fades away (or gets corrupted) we smell mildew and dust and (gah!) rot. And soon we’d be all saying to each other: “Gosh! It’s got that new eReader smell!”

I understand that the way things are going books may very well be phased out, a direct result of commercial interests. And I don’t want to speculate. But I dearly, dearly don’t want books to go – if not for the feel of the page, the smell.

Like my copy of Silence Of The Lambs: smokey, old socks.

Want to take a sniff?

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides | Comments (4)
Monday, 14 May, 2007

The Orange Prize

The small bookstores in my town are conspiring against me.

A week ago I saw the usual selection of Stephen Kings and Jeffrey Archers, and lusted over We Need To Talk About Kevin (which I had never thought of buying before). I returned two days ago, determined to purchase just that. Headed straight down the aisle, reached for an unblemished copy, stood up. And found myself face to face with this:

theobservations_1.jpg

It was one of the nominated books for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. And it was a debut novel, to boot.

I was petrified. Caught up between buying something I had wanted for a month and something … current.

And then, there! Another nominee for the Orange Prize! At the corner of a bookshelf, at that!

halfofayellowsun_1.jpg

Oh no oh no oh no! I was trapped – only had enough money to buy one book. And all these books are so expensive!

What’s one litblogger to do when faced with such consummate strategy?

Read more (estimated 2:09 mins reading time)
By Eli James | Also posted in Asides | Comments (0)
Tuesday, 8 May, 2007

Shut Up And Write

hopeI have writer’s block today.

Took a few minutes to get away from the computer; to smell the flowers in my garden, listen to the birds, watch my dog lolloping around. Then a rogue bee came and chased me back inside the house. The stark whiteness of the computer screen is biting at me now.

The writer’s block won’t go away, dammit.

I’ve been writing since I was 7, and I know the feeling well. You want to write something, anything, and yet your fingers freeze. The paper crinkles in your hands; its blankness a testament to your failure. I check back the archives in this blog: I’ve written about how computers don’t help me in being productive, I’ve also written on what I do to overcome writer’s block.

None of it is working now. The paper is laughing at me on my desk.

Top 5 Things To Do When Your Paper Begins To Laugh At You

1. Make a cup of coffee. I find this helps in the most dire of situations – the caffeine will then either: A) inspire you ; B) make the paper laugh louder. In case of B), prepare a bottle of vodka. If vodka doesn’t inspire you I don’t know what will.

2. Read a good book. One that explores themes relating to suffering, obstacles, sex and murder. Note: all these elements can be found in the Bible. I’ve always found it fascinating how Solomon could describe women:

Oh, you are beautiful, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair is like a flock of female goats descending from Mount Gilead.
(Song of Songs 4:1)

Don’t ask.

3. Take a nap. And maybe when you wake up the page will be filled with words. You can hope. Pray. Fervently. Or at least dream about ideas descending Mount Gilead like a flock of female goats …

4. Play Desktop Tower Defense. I mean, seriously. This little game is addictive. And making sure the monsters don’t get through is sure a lot better than stressing over some lousy deadline you’re supposed to be working towards, right? Right?

5. The truth. Somedays you just can’t overcome your Writer’s Block, no matter what creative things you do. And when you get one of those days the best solution would be to force yourself to write – be it for a research paper or a blog or a newspaper article – just close everything down, bite your lip and tackle that topic head on!

There. I’ve completed this blog post as part of Darren Rowse’s group writing project. And my paper is still empty; it is still in front of me. “What are you going to do with me now?” it taunts.

I take up my pencil.

“I’m going to write.”

By Eli James | Also posted in Writing | Comments (81)
Thursday, 3 May, 2007

Authors: Male vs Female

Sharon Bakar has posted up a fascinating piece she wrote for Chrome magazine in January 2006, which struck me not because of its truth (the publishing industry is well aware of the stigma surrounding female authors) but the quotes from some of her readers.

For the uninitiated, her article is about how men prefer to read male authors, opting out of reading prose written by the fairer sex. Listen to this:

… (a) blogger, Amir, felt that “prose written by a lot of female authors tends to be, how do you say it? Delicate? Detailed? Ditzy?”.

“I don’t think women can write like Marquez, Nabokov or Gunther Grass,” wrote one blogger known as Greenbottle, “to me these guys write as though with p*nis instead of pen, full of masculine animal energy.” He felt that many women writers, on the other hand, tended to produce “saccharine, wimpy or effeminate writing”.

If that was the case I would’ve never read The Age Of Innocence – one of my absolute favourites. Nothing like heart rending, heart stopping dialogue as a warmup.

By Eli James | Also posted in Asides, Publishing | Comments (4)
Tuesday, 10 April, 2007

Take A Step Away From The Computer

That’s right. Hands in the air. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court.

I’m finding that my computer doesn’t really help the writing process. And that doesn’t make sense – what is so different about writing with a pen and writing with a keyboard?

Everything, as it turns out.

I write best with pencil and paper. Pens won’t do, since I can’t stand crossing out phrases that could be improved upon. Pencils give me the freedom to doodle along the margins and to mind-map all my plot ideas, themes and characters … in cute little bubbles. It’s aesthetically pleasing.

Composing my thoughts on the computer, like in Wordpress or in Word is an entirely different thing. I don’t see the empty document window or text box as a canvas on which my art can be crafted and molded on. I see obstacles to my creativity (and my lovely email inbox).

Writing this post has taken me 2 hours. During that time roughly 30 minutes had been spent on actual typing and forming sentences, while the other 1 hour 30 minutes spent on surfing Amazon, checking email, catching up with friends on Skype as well as reading up on the latest reviews over at the NYT.
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In contrast, it takes me roughly 4 hours to write a 3000 word chapter on paper. That means 750 words an hour – a hefty pace, considering I spend a lot of time on rewriting entire pages.

You know what? I should spend more time writing my posts offline. I believe the quality would improve, as well as give me the time to doodle and drink coffee (no fear of a short circuit!) and to smell the flowers and run from the bees.

Take a day away from the computer. It helps.

By Eli James | Also posted in Writing | Comments (10)
Wednesday, 4 April, 2007

Books I Want To Read

A quick trip over to the bookstore yesterday found me updating my ‘must-buy-book’ list. Let’s see:

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin caught my eye, nevermind the fact that it was on a bottom shelf at a tucked away corner of the bookstore. You’d expect the kevinbook_1.jpgwinner of the 2005 Orange Broadband prize for fiction to be prominently displayed – but no – the Da Vinci code and Jeffrey Archer’s newest novels occupied the top rows. Bestsellers vs Award Winners right in your face – and this was a small bookstore, mind you.

I like the premise of Kevin: shortly before his 16th birthday, Kevin Katchadourian kills seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher. The main narrative of the novel is then contained within a series of letters by his mother, Eva, to his estranged father, telling him the story of Kevin’s upbringing. Is she at fault for her son’s actions? Or is the evil he shows inherent in Kevin’s very being? The novel asks some very disturbing questions and I can’t wait to read it.

2. Lord Of The Flies is my favourite book – something I’ve read twice over – but my copy went missing about a year ago. I’m on the lookout for a better, nicer looking edition (let’s say my old one had encountered a few insect problems) and this cover caught my eye:

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It looks kind of innocent, especially for a novel with such dark, overarching themes. But I still love it – and if it tricks my family members into reading it, then why ever not?

3. The Book Of Air And Shadows. I know it soundsbookairshadows_1.jpg very much like the Da Vinci code (A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death … A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries … An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth …) – but we all need a regular dose of roller coaster fiction, don’t we? Something you can enjoy and … that’s about it. No need to rethink your set of values, no need to consider a theme or point of view that the author presented and which you’ve never thought of before. Just pure, orgasmic reading.

This is going to be bliss. I’ll be expecting to buy these books within the next two months, if I can find copies at the (mostly small) bookstores I frequent. And when that happens I’ll probably disappear from the web, immersed in a world quite unlike our own.

By Eli James | Comments (4)