Planner or Pantser?

or 

When it comes to writing, 99% of the stuff I read on line talks about planning. Here's a great example, It talks about the 3Act play, and having scenes and beats and that before you begin writing a single word you should have this written down and planned in quite a lot of detail.

But I say bullshit. It's not that you shouldn't have some sort of idea where you want to begin and what you vaguely want to happen but that's as far I ever go. The middle bit is made up on the fly. I know the name of the main character and what the story will involve, but that's as far as it goes.

Are there problems with this? Sure, I guess so. But whichever way you cut it, writing is hard. If you're a planner, the novel requires a great deal of thought to work things out, but pantsers just do this later or in the revisions, somewhere along the process of writing there will be points where you have no idea where the story is going or that you're near the end and it runs out of steam, But you either do this in the planning stage or in the writing.

I say do what comes naturally to you. My name is Stuart and I'm a pantser.

Judging a book by its cover Part 3

In part of an interesting post by JA Konrath he explores the use of animated covers, which, whilst not supported by online booksellers just yet, do certainly catch the eye.

Whilst there are certainly design issues with some of them, they do show what can be done to attract readers attention. He really doesn't need the little publicity this blog will give, but these are worthy of comment.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.tw/2012/05/ja-konrath-vs-stephen-king.html.



The only problem I see is that if these styles of covers become ubiquitous there'll be too much noise and we'll be back at square one, where the most noticeable covers are the static variety, In the same way that the most noticeable TV ads are the black and white variety that don't scream and shout at you.

Judging a Book by its Cover Part 2

Cover 1

Cover 2

Cover 3

Cover 4 and Final

It appears that the subject of covers of e-books is on everybody's mind recently. Not least on my because I keep redesigning my own e-book cover.

In lieu of the fact that I'm no designer, I've taken inspiration from an excellent essay on the subject of book covers from Craig Mod
http://craigmod.com/journal/hack_the_cover/

Judge a book by its cover

The hoary old adage - "don't judge a book by its cover"- is a great piece of advice but one that's very hard to follow when more so than ever we have less time than ever to to make our decisions. Having a leisurely browse through the leafs of the pages in a book shop is an almost forgotten pleasure. Today's book browsing is more likely to be done from a computer screen when being distracted by incoming e-mails or Facebook conversations.

So now, we have to punch harder and come up with punchier titles and better graphics to convey the message in even less time.

As the Crow Dies can be bought here.

Where do Words Come From?

Ever wondered where the words you use come from? Etymology is a fascinating subject, but if you just have a passing interesting and not the will to go wading through  Douglas Harper’s wonderful online dictionary of etymology  its worth looking at a new project from Ideas Illustrated http://ideasillustrated.com/blog/2012/04/01/visualizing-english-word-origins/.

Here, the author has a selection of quotes which are highlighted in different colours to indicate where they derive from.

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

This is a surprisingly complex Monty Python quote where the colors represent Old English (pink), Middle English (red), Anglo-French (orange), Old French (light orange), Middle French (pale orange), and Classical and Medieval Latin (both yellow). I suspect that both the complexity and variety of word sources is intentional — standing in humorous contrast to the appearance of the speaker.

Found in translation | SF Bay Guardian

I'm a big fan of Haruki Murakami and am constantly surprised by his work. But I read his work in English, a far cry from the original Japanese and I'm amazed at how well the surreal nature of his work comes across. I'd known for a while that he only used two translators, to preserve the quality of the original and now here's an interview with them from the SF Bay Guardian


Found in translation | SF Bay Guardian

You SHALL be green!

Personally I'm sick of being told to be environmentally friendly by everyone from my kids (who have been brainwashed at school) to governments (who don't seem to do much to reduce corporate energy wastage). But, one of the more interesting green arguments is how much more environmentally friendly are e-books over printed books? Obviously e-books don't need to be printed and then shipped but the devices they're read on do. So are they really any more environmentally friendly than paper?

To answer this the national geographic has an interesting piece:

The amount of paper used for books in one year was estimated at 1.5 million metric tons, and each book produced gave off an estimated 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide. Study groups have found that the carbon released from eBooks is offset after people read more than 14 eBooks. For the life cycle of a device for reading books, the carbon emitted is offset after the first year. The savings in carbon emitted into the air is around 168 kilograms for the following years after the first year of use.

It concludes with this bit of advice:

An avid reader, who will read more than 10 books a year, should consider buying a device anddownload ebooks to benefit our environment. 

You can read the full article here.