Trying to balance the year that was

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Administrator

The year is almost over and it’s that time again of frantic shopping and binge merriment, of meeting people you haven’t seen since, well, last Christmas; a time of false camaraderie, of debt accumulation, of non-ending festive music, of crowds in malls and elevated blood pressure levels drowned out by copious quantities of eggnog and other spirits. Amidst this madness, I try to take stock each year of where we have come as a species and where we seem to be headed.

In 2011, the world rocked for a second time on the consequences of fiscal irresponsibility, with Western Europe descending into its deepest economic crisis since WWII. Even the mighty BRIC nations are beginning to feel the slowdown in this connected world. The stock market behaved like a manic depressive. In another part of the world, the rocking was physical, when a giant earthquake/tsunami devastated Japan and reduced real estate prices near any nuclear facility in the world to a fraction of their former glory (we weren’t immune even in our small town by a lake in Canada, ringed by nuclear plants). In the Middle East, dictators fell like nine pins, ousted by a populace drunk on freedom but with no plans for ordered democracy and growth. Equally directionless, mobs stormed Wall Street and other financial centres to occupy public parks and achieve nothing but to register their protest; they left after being ingloriously ejected for causing civil disturbances, trailing broken reputations and human detritus in their wake. The workplace began to look more like a Dickensian workhouse, replete with exploited labour, Scrooge-like capitalists and hyper-specialization reducing humans to robots. Traditional news organizations wrestled with scandals over phone spying, and leaked documents from corporations and governments were being dumped on the internet for public entertainment. The traditional publishing industry cracked wide open with online retailers grabbing bigger pieces of the pie. Oh my, what upheaval!

Are we nearing the end of days, as the pessimists and evangelists constantly remind us? Have we mismanaged all iterations of human progress and dragged ourselves down into the mud from whence we came? Is the dystopian picture in my novel After the Flood coming true?

Then I tried to look on the brighter side. Africa made a comeback after decades of war, drought, pestilence, genocide and famine to clinch the top spot for growth over the next decade. The PIIGS (the second I is for Italy) of Europe realized that taxes, if paid, collected and spent wisely, do make sense and provide for a better standard of living. Citizen journalism came of age when the quality of articles continued to improve, diversify and outpace content from traditional channels (my journalist friends will disagree with me here) and social media actually led to the fall of corrupt governments. Authors reclaimed ground by embracing direct publishing models and sticking it to gatekeepers. And our troops came home for Christmas after removing themselves from that absurd theatre war in Afghanistan. Small credits to balance this ledger from its sharp tilt towards the right.

Merry Christmas everyone! Now that you have read this, do return to your Christmas busyness, it helps keep the bogeyman at bay. And please remember to raise an extra glass for global enlightenment in 2012.

I’m going shopping!

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Those who say “yes” have more fun – by Linda La Roche

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Administrator

This is the second of Linda’s posts – for those who may be fearful of taking the leap into writing. Enjoy! Shane


Those who say “yes” have more fun – by Linda La Roche
August 11, 2011

How do we make that scary leap from thinking about writing to actually doing it?

Now, I cannot claim to be a total expert on this. There are many things that I’d like to do/am in the process of doing that may never fall under the done heading. Hiking in Nepal, taking flying lessons, and competing in a triathlon to name a few. However, I do have a decent track record of actually completing a good number of the seemingly improbable things that I set out to do. Here’s what has worked for me:

Write it down, and start mapping your path
A jump-start is by putting pen to paper as one of the best ways to make things happen. It’ll start to seem realistic when you look at it on paper. Taking it further helps even more; research, and start compiling the information that will bridge the gap between what’s inside your head and what’s not.

Blast it
Tell everybody about it! Anybody worth knowing will be excited for you and feed your enthusiasm. Also, you’ll be a less likely to back out of your plan because everyone you know will be asking you about it. Shame can be a great motivator.

Spend money on it
Most will be exponentially more likely to complete a goal that they spend money on. It’s a great step towards getting there.

Make it irreversible
Now that you’re making tendrils of progress, keep going. When you’re really serious about something and you know intuitively, that it’s the right choice, don’t allow yourself the luxury of a backup plan. I once bought a one-way, non-refundable ticket to Europe expecting to stay six months and instead it turned into three years. Be courageous! By putting yourself at the mercy of fate you are going to have so much fun!

Doing begets more doing
I’ve found that action begets more action. Once you’ve published your novella, you know that you are capable of moving to Hong Kong on your own, or learning to speak Hindi, and you can’t be deterred from starting an import business–all these things are totally doable, you go-getter, you!

Freelance writer, Linda LaRoche teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada and continuing education classes at UNLV. Her last two multi-cultural novels and collection of short stories portray a heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the grip of love.
Find out more by visiting: http://www.lindalaroche.com/blog
And join the discussion on her blog, the Quill.

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No two ways about it – by Linda LaRoche

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Administrator

This week I am featuring guest blogger, Linda LaRoche, an author and editor who teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada. Linda shares my zest for travel and for getting to the heart of why we write. I hope you enjoy her blog and welcome your comments
Happy reading!
Shane


No two ways about it
February 8, 2011
In my classes I was recently asked two questions, “When did you know you were a writer?” And, “Is that all you do, write?” They are identity questions, self-worth questions, fulfillment and personal freedom questions–a nascent creative soul’s penetrating questions. And loaded into the questions seem to be an underlining ground-zero that tethers the one asked to a primary sense of identity— something presumably more real, more acceptable, more common, much more stable. To be a loan officer, you apply for the job and show up every day for work; to be a writer, you have to know –via, perhaps, some mystical experience – that you’re a writer.

You are a writer when you are writing. I know it sounds simplistic, yet it is true. Do not roll your eyes, reader, as if I’ve heard that one before. As we evolve in our work lives, piecing together various kinds of employment to earn money, step-by-step nudging out the non-writing stuff and making the writing central (or at least that which is writing-related), I find it to be even more starkly true: I am not a writer when I am editing or critiquing someone else’s work, or composing social media articles. I am not a writer when I am nibbling on wine and cheese at a fashionable literary event. I am not a writer when I am teaching, i.e. talking about craft and helping others with theirs. I am not a writer when I am tweeting other writers or keeping up on my self-promotion, or reading literary blogs. I am not a writer when I am on a search for a new book to read or when I am drinking coffee in Starbucks leafing through the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com. I know I am a writer when I am writing. When I am working with words, when I am making ideas and characters come to life with written language. When I am laying out the pages on the desk and taking my blue sharpie to chunks of text that I know don’t work in the story, when I lose myself and forget basics like the hour, eating, brushing my hair, while typing a paragraph where something terrible, or euphoric, or quietly illuminating is happening. This may sound naïve but I feel strongly that I must be honest; I must be writing to be a writer. Otherwise, I feel like a fraud. Even if it’s just an hour because that’s all there’s time for, or even if I’ve been working on the same damn narrative arc problem in a short story for weeks, I know that I cannot stand in front of either my own mirror or even in front of you, dear inquirer, and exhort you to “show, don’t tell” or “up the emotional stakes” or instruct you to “live your passion” if I am not myself at the writing desk, messing with words, living in the trenches and heights of which I speak.

That is how it feels to be a writer; nothing more, nothing less. It’s a full-time job, anything else distracts from it. I’ve had my share of work that has taken me away from writing, and it may not be all I do, but it’s my priority in life, and the secret to being a writer is to not stop writing and to show up for work.

Freelance writer, Linda LaRoche teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada and continuing education classes at UNLV. Her last two multi-cultural novels and collection of short stories portray a heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the grip of love.
Find out more by visiting: http://www.lindalaroche.com/blog
And join the discussion on her blog, the Quill

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Standing on the Edge, Again

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Administrator

I recently bought a small place back in the Big Smoke. A bold move for a guy with indeterminate income who had started to get comfortable in semi-retirement, writing books and playing guitar in his small town by the lake. I will have to work again – I mean, really work – to afford it all, with a hovering recession and high unemployment that refuses to go away as my travelling companions. In exchange, I would be opened to the attractions and distractions that the city would offer: theatre, art, literary events, traffic, rent-a-bike, smog and crime. And I would stand once more at a window on the larger world of diverse and displaced people struggling to make it in their new home, just like I did, oh so many years ago.

I remember when I first “retired” from writing and moved abroad, in my early twenties, because at that time all the stories of my tender life experience had been written and I needed new fodder. I never thought that I would ever write again. I wanted to “do” not “dream.” The next 20 years of “doing” and screwing up gave me enough for a truckload of books and stories, but now that conduit too has slowed to a trickle. The time to hunt has begun again; the new harvest, or gathering, will have to follow at a later date. Life, it seems, full of new beginnings. What is the alternative? An ending? The END?

But now there are those reports of the “throwaway glass condos” springing up all over Toronto, buildings that are energy efficient yet not durable in the long term. Have I picked myself one of these lemons? Should I have stayed put in my cottage by the lake and buried my money under a mattress to escape the stock market’s never ending case of the hiccups? Am I suffering from buyer’s remorse? Am I scared of change, of the unknown? Isn’t life all about surprises? Couldn’t just the next medical check-up spring a surprise?

They say that growth happens on the edge, not in the comfort zone, and I am deliberately placing myself on the edge again I realize, hoping that it would bring me raw material for the next round of stories, whether that even includes personal loss. Unlike my last “retirement”, my life span is a lot shorter now, so I can’t afford another 20 years of “doing” before the next harvest of experiences. I am going to have to gather as I do and hope that the finished material falls into a coherent whole. Writing on the go will also help me deal with the fear of taking the plunge again.

Stepping off edges doesn’t get easier with age; on the contrary, it’s bloody scary, but exhilarating! What will I attempt next? Russian Roulette? Or bungee jumping off the CN Tower?

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So Amazon and Kobo want to be Publishers, eh?

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Administrator

The recent announcement by these players to advance up the book industry value chain from retailing to publishing comes as no surprise. In an industry which has many handoffs in its delivery process, and many players, each player muzzles for maximum turf over time. The ones upstream (i.e. the creators) try to advance down the chain like oil companies muzzling into retail gas stations. Those at the tail, retailers like Amazon and Kobo, try to move into the middle currently occupied by publishers, and those in the middle try to go both ways like departments stores that create loyalty programs at one end and private label merchandise at the other.

Success will depend on what value is provided. In the case of Amazon and Kobo, their original value proposition lay in their ability to provide the largest selection of books, globally, without the shopper having to leave the comfort of his home. In becoming a publisher, one has to be selective (also known by that dreaded term “editorial integrity”) and promote only “the selected.” This is a different stance from the presently held “come one, come all” position of these online retailers. So what would Amazon and Kobo do in their new roles as publishers? Provide two-tier distribution: a premium level for authors who self publish through them and a more basic level for all books coming from other publishers? Start a separate branded line for their own publishing streams of books? Cherry-pick the best-selling authors and offer lucrative one-shot deals? Or hire an army of interns to wade through miles of slush piles should every unpublished author want to self-publish through them? This new move is surely going to raise questions about the altered value propositions that these two players now bring to the reader, and to the author.

The danger when two or more bed mates jostle for elbow room on the same bed, especially if one has a lot of muscle, is that the muscular one gains at the expense of the others. The ones with less and less room, risk falling off the bed altogether and may leave to sleep elsewhere with other bedfellows. And there is no fun in sleeping in a bed with one big elephant – be that a major publisher, a retailer-turned publisher or a distributor turned one-stop-shop. In this incestuous game, many bed mates, each having equal space, is good – it’s also called competition, in case I was stirring orgiastic imagery in you!

The wild card for everyone is the technology that is making these moves possible. And technology, while enabling bigger and newer entrants to muzzle in for space, can also scuttle the best made plans plans. In this case, the new technology also allows the story-teller, (aka – the author) to reach his audience directly, for it is no big deal to publish a book these days, be it in trade book format or e-book format, if one is reasonably adept at word processing and has access to some conversion software. And it’s no bigger deal to distribute it directly from one’s website with no intermediary hand-offs. All the author needs is a facilitator who can help his audience find, sample and endorse him. The reader needs the facilitator too, to point him to good reading material. This facilitator role is the one going to be prized both by readers and writers in the future – not a big bully who keeps the lion’s share and offers poor quality in exchange, but a big brother who makes it happen for the writer and the reader.

I am keen to see whether Amazon and Kobo will truly transform into Big Brothers or lose both authors and readers because they ended up being Big Bullies.

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Is the e-book going to stall without standards?

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Administrator

Let’s see, a hard cover is a hard cover no matter which bookstore you buy it from, and a trade paperback is the same. But an e-book? At the technology end, there are formats as diverse as Kindles and .epubs and PDFs and PDPs. On the distribution side, separate distribution agreements are required for Nook, Apple and B&N, and of course Amazon is an enclave unto itself. On the device end, e-readers have already ceded to tablets and the innovation of non-glitter screens are losing out to the old laptop-style back-lit screen variety

How does one find an e-book that is readable on any device and purchasable universally? Not yet, is the answer, because this industry is so young, and its leaders are struggling for supremacy, just like VHS and Betamax duked it out once upon a time until one fell and left a lot of us holding redundant equipment. But what if the dust settles on perhaps two, or three e-book platforms, like it did in the software industry with Microsoft, Apple and Linux? Then, which one would you buy? Or would you just shrug and go back to buying a trusty old tree-book and let the electronic varieties kill each other off a bit more until only one is left standing (and hopefully not too bruised to also succumb shortly thereafter)?

Standards eventually evolve when an industry matures, and I was heartened when that proprietary behemoth Microsoft signalled a truce and ditched its .lit format and embraced what could be the industry standard, .epub. Will that other proprietary monolithic hold-out of the book industry, Amazon, also send the same signal, turf its kindle standard, embrace .epub and bring e-books into prime time? Time will tell. In the meantime, we wait and watch and buy platform-agnostic tablets, hedging our bets. And we desperately hope that a savvy middle-man, one who can marry the fragmented ends of supply and demand of this emerging channel, does not emerge to siphon away the bulk of the shrinking revenues, holding us all to ransom, just like history has played out in the past in other once-emergent industries.

This saga continues to evolve…by the hour…stay tuned.

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Completing the Circle

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Administrator

I did not have the opportunity to go backpacking in Europe during my undergraduate years when it was a fashionable rite of passage among North Americans, and a safe one, for if you ran out of money you could always wire home for more. Although I did go to Europe once in my early twenties, without much money, because my home country had banned the export of foreign exchange, and I lived off the largesse of whomever I bumped into in those historic cities. I returned home quite emaciated on that occasion – but that’s another story.

This time however, I had the money, the patience and the time to explore a corner of Europe with my trusty backpack. I walked a lot, and the result was soul-enriching. I went primarily to get a feel for the major cities in the Alsace-Lorraine region where I have set my next novel, a historical piece taking place in the late eighteenth century. It was wise not to rely too much on Google and Wikipedia for my research; visiting a locale gives depth and texture to the research done on paper or on the Internet.

It was good to get up in the morning and see the Vosges mountains, just as my hero would have done two hundred years ago, to view their changing colour on the skyline at different times of the day. To walk older parts of the cities of Metz, Nancy, Strasbourg and Luxembourg and distinguish which buildings had been around in the eighteenth century vs. those that had been erected later but modeled in eighteenth century (or earlier) style. To imagine what it would have felt like wearing tunics and boots and riding down cobblestoned streets in horse drawn carriages at a time when the slightest shift in political wind could see one thrown into a dungeon or guillotined (execution still happens in some parts of the world even though the guillotine has gone out of fashion). It was refreshing to get wet in the early fall drizzle that came down every day and warm up with a generous goblet of wine later and know that one would not easily succumb to the consumption, thanks to the advent of antibiotics.

It was alarming to be reminded that “might is still right” however much we cloak the message in respectability and “position” it with modern media; the only redeeming feature is that modern megalomaniacs do not build such disproportionate edifices of self-aggrandizement like the cathedrals and palaces of Medieval Europe (except perhaps in some despotic dictatorships), many of which have become tourist attractions and museum pieces today. But it was good to be reminded of how far we have come in liberalism, how removed we have become from religion’s stifling cloak since the days of Inquisitions, and how far our politics has moved from Reigns of Terror (although these still happen in some parts of the world). It was also good to be reminded of how much leisure and the pursuit of art and culture is still appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic despite a globalizing society caught up in the instantaneous culture of the handheld PDA.

And what was most enlightening to me was the evidence of continual human migration. To set up camp in a different location periodically must lead to growth. The hero in my novel left this part of Europe to seek his fortune, and after travelling halfway around the world, landed in an island in the Indian Ocean. His progeny dispersed all over the world to seek theirs several generations later, some ending up in North America. And here was I, completing that circle and going back to the place where it had all begun, walking those same streets and asking the eternal question of the immigrant, the question asked in many of my novels and stories: “why?”

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Do titles sell books?

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Administrator

I know that covers sell books, well, at least for now, before e-books run us over, but do titles do the same? Is it best to plagiarize an existing best-selling title, and modify it a bit to ensure that unintended searches will unearth your book and present it to an unsuspecting reader? I know I had some unasked-for success when my last novel After the Flood came out a few months after a more famous book called The Year of the Flood (honest, I did not plagiarize here, I had been toiling at my tome for over seven years and had a mass of publishers and other gatekeepers to wade through before I arrived at my launch party, late, as to be expected)

Or is it better to use the most unremarkable title like The (Something) or a longer one like the curious incident of when I went to buy groceries and met a long cool woman in a black dress? Or adapt one of those biblical passages that Hemingway was so fond of using even if it has no relevance to the story: I lie me down in green pastures.

I have been struggling to find the title for a collection of linked stories that I would like to see published next. These stories cover the immigrant experience from both sides: the home country and the host country, and deals with the unfinished business often left behind, the emotional baggage that prevents the immigrant from making that final commitment to his new home, to what was originally just a leap of faith. I started with Unfinished Business, then I found out that there were plenty of titles under that moniker; also it could be mistaken for a poorly written business book. I lingered over Memories – too soppy and melodramatic. Departure Stains was next, but it sounded like someone had taken a dump on the old country and run away in a hurry seeking sanctuary in the new home (which is true of some shadier immigrants, but is not a general condition). From Both Sides Now is the name of a famous song, so I discarded that one. In desperation, I thought of Untitled but even that has been taken several times over. My Short Stories would be too immature, Immigrant Stories would be better as a sub-title, and I Can’t Bloody Find A Name For This Book would definitely sound paranoid.

I thought of asking my publisher. After all, they are going to market my book, let them do some work. But then I could see their rebound question hitting me squarely in the face: “You can’t even articulate the meaning of your book with an appropriate title? Okay – Reject Pile. Next!”

Dear readers, you seem to be my last resort. If you have an idea, please let me know. Perhaps cyberspace will come to my rescue, and as Frasier Crane said, “I am listening…”

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Caught between Fear and Greed

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Administrator

It seems that fear and greed have taken firm hold of the world. Aided by instant communications that keep us up-to-the minute on everyone else’s fear and greed, we are able to spread this contagion everywhere. In good times, we want more: greed (or in stock market parlance “buy, buy, buy, borrow and buy some more”), in bad times we want to hang on to what we have: fear (or in stock market lingo, “sell, sell, sell, bail me out and sell more”). The Herd mentality takes over. I thought that bulls moved in droves and bears in litters but their owners seem to move in herds.

Now we are heading into the double-dip recession that everyone dreaded. But this is more than that roller coaster. Henceforth, there is going to be a rapid dipping and bobbing that will come with every byte on the news ticker now that we have got everyone psyched for flight. Need a “sell” reaction? Just drop some bad news from the Street, fact or fiction. Need a “buy”? Publish an optimistic financial outlook, fact or fiction. It is as if someone with the right read on people’s panic buttons could become the next Public Enemy #1; and you don’t have to kill anyone to get there, just drop those poison news snippets like droplets from the Chinese water torture machine and watch everyone squirm.

My financial advisers recently advised me to sell or “de-risk”. I replied, “Man, life itself is a risk. A guy wakes up in the morning, coughing, and finds blood in his phlegm and is told that he has lung cancer – what can you de-risk here? A woman crosses the road, is hit by a car, and is history – de-risk?” I told my financial advisor to not waste his time on me. I have other, better, things to do than waste my time following the herd.

What my investment strategy boils down to is this: do I find the world still a good place to be in, is the majority of its enterprises honest and therefore would I want to remain invested in this world? And my answer today is “Yes,” the world is still a good place, despite a bunch of panic ridden people in positions of influence running around like chickens with their proverbial dicks (or was it necks) cut off. They would be better off taking a deep breath and asking themselves some deep questions:
a) Why do you have to keep continuously growing exponentially, and then punish yourself when you don’t?
b) How can you expect to live off other people’s money (e.g. bailouts and borrowings)?
c) Can you gear your lifestyle to be a net producer than a consumer? If we all did that the world will be left with more when we leave it than when we came into it.
d) Why does winning at all costs for oneself matter more than winning for mankind? This question is especially aimed at those deadlocked politicians who cannot see the bigger picture and are out to pummel each other like punch drunk opponents in an Ultimate Fighting Championship final
e) If value is inflated, it will to be taken out. If value is depressed it will rise to its true worth. This will happen whether markets panic or not, through a rapid process or gradually. Let buyers decide. Your excitement only clouds this decision making – so shut up and step aside, or go on holiday if you cannot take the pressure.

So having said my piece, I returned to my day job, grateful that I still had one.

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Is Writing like Farming?

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Administrator

I was trying to find an analogy for writing when farming came to mind. A new novel is like a farmer’s new crop. Consider what goes into getting the novel to that stage: first there are the seeds of an idea, then the first drafts, then the feedback, the hunt for a publisher, chasing the market by promoting the work, and later, counting the pennies as royalties roll in (if they roll in!). Finally, wiping the slate clean and writing the next book.

Farmers too plant seeds of various kinds: tried-and-true varieties like canola, soy and corn, or specialty organic seeds, just as the writers develop their ideas in either mainstream or literary fiction. Aren’t trial crops like drafts, isn’t the weather at times just as hostile as literary criticism and rejection letters, isn’t the hunt for buyers of farm produce in a commoditized market difficult, and aren’t the pickings slim? Isn’t the harvest like a book launch? Isn’t Fall the most lucrative time of the year for a farmer as it is for an author? Is letting the field lie fallow over the winter before re-planting in spring like letting the imagination rest and re-invigorate itself for the next novel?

Some farmers sell out to conglomerates and co-operatives and work for guaranteed prices and quotas, much like contract writers or journalists. Others take their chances at selling their wares at country fairs and friendly co-ops like self-published authors do. Some writers even peddle their work at weekend farmers markets, rubbing shoulders with their buddies-in-hardship? There must be an unexpressed kinship and bonding taking place at these venues among these silent types. Oh, and lest we forget, Canada Revenue likens farming to writing as the only profession in which the practitioner is not expected to make a profit during his lifetime!

The only difference between these two vocations I find is that as farms wane and farmers exit their industry today, writers are entering theirs in droves and we are awash in new literature delivered via traditional and non-traditional forms. Writers are at a different end of their cycle than farmers, it appears. But cycles do go around. The recent rise in global food prices is a harbinger of what happens when farmers are not given their due respect. Perhaps faming will return to its once held place of pre-eminence among the trades once global food scarcity levels hit a higher notch, if we aren’t there already. It be nice to see writers return to their once lofty pedestal too, being provided just reward for their sincere toil, for unreservedly sharing their imaginations with the world. Ah, but then I am a dreamer.

There is another glitch to realizing this dream. Farming produces stomach food while writing generates soul food. And in the human hierarchy of needs, farming will always come first. We have not evolved as a society yet to recognize that soul food is as important as belly food. I wonder if I would be treated with more respect the next time I introduce myself not as a writer but as “a farmer of soul food?” Would I be embraced graciously or would I be asked a dumb question like “Can I buy your stuff at the grocery store? Which aisle?”

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