Blog Archives

Advice That Got Me Against All Odds

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Let me start by saying that I am not all head-over-heels for Inception the way everyone else seems to be.  I thought it was an intriguing idea, but not as mind-bendingly original as it has been hyped.  Plus, I felt the director (and his screenplay doctors) got a little sloppy with it at the end.

Also, I don’t find a lot of writing advice that doesn’t make me grimace at how narrow and peevish it is: “Avoid all adverbs!” — “Only use the word ‘said’ as a dialogue tag!” — “Always start in media res!”

But, Lydia Sharp at The Sharp Angle has managed to overcome my ambivalence toward Inception and my advice-o-phobia with her blog post in which she uses the film remarkably well to illustrate how to mix high concept with emotional resonance to create a compelling story.  I recommend it to all writers!

Odd Thoughts on Support

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A three-legged table is vastly more stable
__than one- or than two-legged tables.

But I think you’ll be able to see that a table
__with no legs is equally stable.

Category: Odd Thoughts, Poetry

Archaic Definition of the Week – Yest

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publishingyest. (1)  The foam, spume, or flower of beer in fermentation; barm.
(2) The spume on a troubled sea.

Johnson’s Dictionary: A Modern Selection by Samuel Johnson (1755), ed. E. L. McAdam and George Milne (1963).

Category: ADOTW | Tags: , , ,

The Ship That Failed To Stop The Burning of Washington

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The War of 1812 is one of America’s least known wars and yet the conflict in which we truly established our place as an independent actor on the world stage.  (There really should be more historical fiction written about this war!)

Now, a ship discovered decades ago in a Maryland inlet could shed light on the Chesapeake Flotilla that battled the invading British fleet, and serve as a showpiece for the upcoming 1812 bicentennial.  Found in the 1970s and excavated in the 1980s — but then reburied due to lack of funding — the ship is believed by archaeologists to be the USS Scorpion, part of America’s defense of the DC region.

The Flotilla’s ships were driven into the Patuxent river’s mouth, however, and were sunk to keep the warships from falling into the hands of the British, who later went on to burn the Capitol and White House.

These Are Literary Parodies, Not Mash-Ups

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I first became aware of the slippage of the idea of a mash-up when I found songs on the iTunes store identified as “mash-ups” which were in fact merely remakes or sample-derived songs. 

A mash-up is, as its name implies, a work created by blending two or more existing works.  It is not a refashioning of a single existing work, nor is it an existing work altered primarily by adding original material to it.

One can forgive musicians for being imprecise with language, but when the publishing community does it the imprecision tells a different story.  It speaks of sloppy thinking, sloppy decision making, and sloppy art.

This recent trend of books that add material to classics — like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and now Dick and Jane and Vampires — is not a “mash-up” trend.  A literary mash-up would be combining passages from, say, Moby-Dick and The Old Man and the Sea to create a new, derivative work. 

Plain and simple, this trend is about sampling and remaking for the purpose of parody.

Justin Cronin Tells It Like It Is

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If today’s Telegraph interview with The Passage author Justin Cronin had only contained his characterization of Meyers-esque pseudo-vampire fiction as “the vampire industrial complex” I would have been pleased enough to pass it on to you guys.

But, beyond the tale of how he constructed his best-selling novel during bike rides with his daughter, Cronin offered up some excellent insights into the literary-genre divide.

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Anne Rice’s Sad Publicity Stunt

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The literary world is abuzz with news that author Anne Rice has abandoned Christianity. In the name of Christ. Or something like that.

I’m not going to take a position for or against the religion or the political and moral issues Rice cites as her reasons.  However, I would like to take a stab at the logic of her controversial revelation to see if another, more professional motive might explain it better than the stated one.

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Tom McCarthy and the Archaeology of Literature

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When I first read the headline of the latest salivation for Tom McCarthy’s eagerly awaited novel, C, I rolled my eyes: “Tom McCarthy: ‘To ignore the avant garde is akin to ignoring Darwin’

God help us, another pretentious twit comparing the absence of whatever he or she deems as true literary fiction with the downfall of rational civilization. If the “avant garde” is identified with Darwin, could the comparison of genre fiction with Creation Science be far behind?

But, ever curious about the state of literary theory, I gave the article a go.  I was pleasantly surprised by what I found there, much more nuanced and fair that the above Guardian headline would lead you to think.

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Brick and Mortar Carrion

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Today I set out for DC’s King Library to buy a few books in their used bookstore.

Now, I know this is generally a No-No, but the books I buy are almost always older and obscure academic books that are either out-of-print or would never blip my radar unless I stumbled across them at a library sale or used book store.  So, technically there’s no replacement factor; the authors aren’t being robbed of royalties they would otherwise receive.

But, unknown to me when I set out, the King Library store is only open on weekdays.  Undaunted, I decided to walk down the street toward the White House, a few blocks east of which is a Borders®.

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Category: Uncategorized

Archaic Definition of the Week – Demonocracy

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publishingdemonocracy. Government by demons.  Greek daimon, a ministering spirit; kratos, rule … There is also the form demonarchy (Greek arche, rule), which seems a better word to employ than demonocracy, lest one elide a syllable.

Dictionary of Early English by the ever-witty Joseph T. Shipley (1955).