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Monthly Archives: April 2011

Where DO We Get Our Ideas?

Since my children have to suffer the ignominy of a mother who writes for a living, they sometimes don’t get much in the way of frills. Even the oldest one is dressed in hand-me-downs from a more prosperous friend, and for holidays… well, sometimes we cheat. On Easter, we went out to dinner with cousins and gramps but there no baskets or eggs until a day later, when coincidently, everything was on sale for half off.

You are wondering how this relates to writing. It does. Fortunately for this blog, everything in my life reminds me of writing, even things that should not, even day-late holidays.

The kids are into “Bakugan” right now. My oldest boy was given one as a gift a while ago and ever since has been bugging me for more. These are cute little robot-like dragon-like things that fold up into balls. My son never calls them “Bakugan” but “dragon balls,” (which makes sense because they look like dragons), “transformer balls,” (which makes sense because they transform) or “climate balls” (which doesn’t make sense until he explains they can control the climate).

They are damn expensive, but I found some on sale and hid them inside the plastic eggs. They were a big hit. My son asked to take one to school, which is not normally allowed, but after some negotiation, the teacher permitted the ball to stay on the understanding it would remain in his cubby most of the day. To my surprise, when my son came home that day, he referred to his toys as, “Bakugan” instead of dragon balls.

“Where did you get that name?” I asked.

“I made it up,” he told me.

“You must have heard it from someone at school,” I said.

He looked at me as if I were crazy. “No, Mommy, I just made it up.”

I don’t believe he’s lying. I think he believes he made up the name or he simply can’t remember where he heard it. Of course, there’s no chance he just “made up” the exact same three-syllable name as the company that makes the balls also made up. He’s already trading his original imaginative understanding of the toy for the corporate, collectively sanctioned understanding. Yet he thinks these ideas that are filtering through to him are original.

This is one danger of inspiration which strikes us seemingly out of the blue. Often, it isn’t coming from as far out of the blue as we think. It isn’t as original as we think. We can’t remember where we got the idea, not because it is so preternatural, but because it is so prevalent.

One of my favorite books on writing, Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy advises you to brainstorm for new ideas…and toss out anything that just “pops” into your brain. Chances are, it isn’t your Muse, but your television, who planted the idea. To be truly original, you have to dig a little deeper. And ironically, you might actually be more conscious of the source to which you are indebted for your idea. You might feel more derivative, even as you are, in actuality, expressing more originality.

Penguin Says If You Can’t Beat Self Publishers, Join Them

So, anyone remember back when Harlequin tried to open a self-publishing branch, Harlequin Horizons?  They were pretty much reamed for smearing their good name with a venture into Vanity Publishing. Victoria Strauss on Writer Beware reported:

Like West Bow, Harlequin Horizons wreaths self-publishing in nebulous, glowing verbiage, extolling benefits and ignoring downsides. With West Bow Press, you can Begin Your Legacy. With Harlequin Horizons, you can Reach the Stars. And just like West Bow, Harlequin Horizons cordially extends the carrot of commercial publication: “While there is no guarantee that if you publish with Harlequin Horizons you will picked up for traditional publishing, Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through Harlequin Horizons for possible pick-up by its traditional imprints.”

Unlike West Bow, Harlequin Horizons bears its parent’s name. And that is making some Harlequin authors quite unhappy.

On the Dear Author blog, a lively discussion of the new venture is summarized here. Authors’ concerns include dilution of the house brand (if low-quality self-published books carry the Harlequin name, the overall reputation of Harlequin may suffer), a loss of prestige for non-self-published Harlequin authors (the perception that “anyone” can get published by Harlequin), new authors spending money on self-publishing in the belief that it’s a path to getting noticed by Harlequin (well, of course; this is one of the new service’s major marketing pitches–no surprise, since Harlequin Horizons is a money-making enterprise), and the choice of Author Solutions as a partner (given the complaints about several Author Solutions brands–one of my blog posts is referenced).

…For the record, I don’t for one teeny tiny second believe that discovering new writers, or giving them a chance to “begin their legacies” or “reach the stars,” plays a major part here. That’s just a marketing pitch. This is about money. Now more than ever, commercial publishers need to shore up their bottom lines–and adding self-publishing divisions is an easy and profitable way to do so.

The comments alone in the post on this topic over on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books were epic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it was in those self-same comments that Zoe Winters had a dust-up with Nora Roberts.

Good times. 🙂

Well, guess what, cookies, looks like Harlequin’s claims to simply be forward thinking where actually true, at least in the sense that their example is now being followed by another big name publisher. Guess who?

Penguin.

They are calling it Book Country. But you can also call it Midlistlandia or Genre World, because that’s who it targets: romance, science fiction and fantasy, mystery and thrillers. The coolest part of the whole site is definitely the Genre Map. I mean, seriously, haven’t you always wanted to see Subgenres like Techno Thriller and Legal Thriller or Cyberpunk and Steampunk graphed and color coded on a 2D matrix? Me too. (But I would have made SF blue, Mystery Green and Thrillers Red. And shouldn’t Romantic Suspense have been next to Mystery rather than Epic Fantasy? I’m just sayin’.)

This isn’t unexpected, is it? Some aspects of the venture aren’t even new. The “community” aspect is pretty standard by now:

And so we have Book Country, a site run by Penguin that offers a free way for writers of genre fiction to talk about and share their work. The site is limited to romance, thrillers, fantasy, and sci-fi so this is not the spot to upload your Mythbusters slashfic….

It’s all fairly simple: you create an account and you can, if you so wish, upload your work. To have it “read” or “critiqued” by others you must complete a series of steps including reading three other works by other writers. You can, obviously, game the system and just type in gibberish but that’s not very sporting.

Del Rey started the Online Writing Community years ago, and that’s still going strong, though it’s no longer part of Del Rey.

While Book Country is distinctive, it is not the only online writing community nor is it the first to be launched by a major book publisher. HarperCollins has organized the online writing community of Authonomy, and InkPop, an online community focused on teen writing. Book Country is reminiscent of iPublish, a failed online writing community and digital publishing venture launched by former Warner Books president Larry Kirshbaum in 2000. Barton acknowledged the connection and noted that she had discussions with a former iPublish editor while developing the Book Country concept. While iPublish was a pioneering venture anticipating many of the services offered by Book Country, it was a bit ahead of its time and was forced to close in late 2001 with mounting financial losses. But it’s a different time and different market for e-books and digital publishing in 2011.

You’ll see some familiar names here. Former agent Colleen Lindsay is a Book Country community manager and a moderater on the boards. But the “soft” approach, the money in this is going to be made by selling self-publishing services to authors. In other words, it is a vanity press, just as Harlequin Horizons. And just like Harlequin Horizons, the cheese in this mousetrap is the hope that the best authors will be “discovered” by Penguin.

Barton, an editor for more than seven years before moving to Penguin business development, said Book Country is an effort to discover and nurture writers of sometimes hard to categorize genre fiction. Barton said that when she was an editor she often encountered writing she liked, but didn’t think she could sell. She said that Book Country will offer writers a chance to “prove us wrong when they get rejected. They can show us there’s an audience for their work.”

“When I was an editor I had a hard time saying no to authors whose work maybe didn’t quite fit on my list,” Barton said. “When I switched over to the digital publishing side, I wanted to find a way to harness the Internet in a better way to support writers.”

When Harlequin made their move, there was an uproar from authors’ organizations and Harlequin had to backstep the idea. Will that happen to Book Country? Penguin has been careful to distance themselves from the start. It’s an independent company, with a distinct name. But I think the biggest change is the with the publishing industry itself. Indie authors have swept up into the bestsellers list. Suddenly “vanity press” seems like a quaint term, something that doesn’t automatically taint self-published authors anymore.

Furthermore, and most importantly, the competition to big publishers from small and independent presses/authors is now obvious to anyone paying attention. So if a publisher says they are starting a self-publishing branch to stay in business, hey, maybe we should take them at their word.

My favorite quote comes from Molly Barton in the PW announcement. “We created Book Country because while writing and publishing sites have proliferated in recent years, none were designed by publishing experts to create a more valuable pathway forward for new writers.”

In other words, lots of people were making money on self-publishing. Authors. Amazon. Apple. Just about everyone except the people who called themselves publishers. Frankly, the thing that amazes me the most is that they didn’t get skin in this game earlier.

Announcement

It looks like I will be sitting for my exams early–before the end of this semester.

Persephone’s Conundrum

For some reason, I do occasionally write poetry. Poetry is not a wise undertaking in any circumstance, but mine is especially unviable, because I like to make the words rhyme. I know of no poetry magazine which accepts rhyme in poems these days; most explicitly forbid such drek.

Too bad.

Here’s a poem. It rhymes. Sorry. It also draws on a Classical mythos — how quaint is that?

Persephone’s Conundrum

Persephone,
Return with me, I am Demeter your mother.
I gave you birth and all the earth as a pen for you to play in
Perfumed sunlight is yours by right, not this darkness that must smother,
smother you and sunder us; this tomb if you should stay in,
will sunder us forever.

Persephone,
You promised me, I am Hades your true lover.
Would you forget the kisses wet, drenched in pomegranate wine
with which for hours, in hidden bowers, we entangled one another?
Would you forswear what we tasted there, the night I made you mine?
Would you our bond now sever?

Persephone,
Return with me, don’t leave me alone in the cold,
I need you still, for warmth and will, for will to stay awake,
for Winter’s year comes creeping near, and I am growing old.
I helped you walk ere you could talk, now hold me as I take
the steps of my last endeavor.

Persephone,
Can you not see how much I need you by my side?
The weight of souls takes its toll upon the shoulders of their king
— a weight which wanes, if split in twain, and shared with a willing bride.
A prison cell, a loveless hell, is my portion unless we sing
Elysium’s song together.

Persephone,
Persephone,
How long can your fancy deport
Six months above — six months below; mother’s face — lover’s embrace
How long can the juggling go?
Love is eternal, but time is short,
Love is unbounded but jealousy strong.
How long to chose your proper place? Persephone, how long?
A heart will break, whichever.


Persephone by Patricia Ariel

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