Ebooks, giving power to the people.

So, just had some thoughts about what Mike Shatzkin had to say on The Kindle chronicles recently.

Mr Shatzkin stated "It's hard to see what's not there" in reference to his argument that things like Steve Jobs or Washington or Lincoln biographies would go away in a world without big publishing companies to finance long term writing projects.

"It's hard to see what's not there" is not an argument in favor of the publishers, since the case for stuff that's not there is every bit as strong with big publishing companies standing in the way of progress and publishing books with controversial or unpopular ideas. 

Also... I don't see his argument about the Steve Jobs biography, it has made so much money and sold so many copies. I don't know how something of that kind would be published in the future, but the sales are so high that I think someone will find a way. I don't think it is the popular ideas that need protection, because they will always find a way.

Kickstarter has been running for a few years now, and many authors have the money to write and publish books that way. That's the problem with a free market, we don't really know what's going to happen in the future, but I would say that any kind of book that is published now and makes money is going to be published in the future because it makes money, and people in the future will be every bit as interested in making money as people are today.

Mr Shatzkin failed to make the case that on the podcast that ebooks will be forced to drop below $9.99, so until I know what case he makes for that I don't really know how to respond to his insistence that high profile books and authors would be selling books for $6.99-$5.99 and driving beginning authors out.

He also said that the new e-publishing paradigm would be hard to break into for new authors... this is true, but it has always been hard. Some authors will find success that wouldn't have before and some authors probably won't. but if Stephen King can sell millions of books, but wouldn't have been able to without marketing and support, then there will always be a place for people or companies that can offer support to authors who will potentially sell millions of books. 

I don't think these future entities will hold the power that publishing companies have traditionally held, they will be partners to authors not masters

Stealing stories. if it was good enough for Shakespeare then it's good enough for me.

in ancient Greece the plays written by the great masters were all just their own version of the same story, told in their own way.
Most of Shakespeare's stories were around before he made them his own.
Like Romeo and Juliet "Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but, to expand the plot, developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris."


So in this day and age most people would look down on a writer who "merely" wrote their own version of a story, not to mention the legal action that would take place if the story was still under copyright. But what makes it a problem for a modern author to "steal" a story if the greatest writer in the English language stole virtually all of his stories?


There is certainly an aversion to being unoriginal, and most people feel they need to write everything from scratch or they aren't original. But what other than the author's creativity and imagination distinguishes "the lord of the rings" from a buddy-cop movie? 


I think the idea to be completely original impedes many writers who would otherwise be honing their craft. a blank piece of paper is a very tall wall to climb, and when you could write anything then you cannot in fact write anything. to quote Ayn Rand "if something can be anything, it is actually nothing; if you feel, “Now I can write anything,” you will write nothing. Only when you have some specific entity in mind—some germ of a plot—can you make something out of something and begin to build." (Art of Fiction, 43)
I think that people who give the advice to start with a blank page and just start writing even if you are just writing gibberish, are giving very bad advice indeed. What beginning writers need is what people learning any profession need. They need to learn good habits and starting writing from an idea is a good habit. if that means taking a story from some other source than your own imagination then that is ok. One cannot expect a person just starting out in pottery class to turn out a Ming vase, or a kid with a guitar to write "yesterday" when he first sits down with the instrument. But this is what we expect from writers and what many writers end up expecting from themselves.


You cannot be too proud to steal a story and work to make it your own, if it was good enough for Shakespeare then it's good enough for me.

Writing more is simple.

So if you listen to or frequent discussions of writing fiction you've probably heard people talk about outlining versus not outlining. For years I have been confused about this point. Let me relate my experience and perhaps it will make some sense. So several years ago I was out walking, and this was at a time that I was carrying around a notepad to jot down ideas. Well I had an idea about a play focusing on a vain and self important count. The idea came out pretty well formed and I wrote down a. Basic outline of the various scenes of the play. The next day I started writing the play on a computer we had that did not have Internet access and was finished within a month. It seemed that writing from an outline was therefore the best way to write. Everything had gone so smoothly, the play spilled out quickly, I had little writers block, and the finished product was pretty decent. Over the last decade I have taken that to mean that I ought to be writing an outline when I write something, and have been struggling with it. At various times I will have some inspiration And write an entire play or short story from that inspiration, but then I've tried writing from an outline, first I would write the outline and then try to write from that outline. Writing from an outline in this fashion produced very stiff and uninteresting writing, and what's more is that the writing was very hard, like pushing against a brick wall in my mind. So of course I decided that I must be the kind of writer that writes from inspiration. Waiting for inspiration is a tricky thing because it is so frequently hard to find. Inspiration also does not come to those who are not prepared. If if you aren't writing then you are not really prepared for inspiration, and if you must haves inspiration to write then you won't be writing. It's a good way to get bogged down and spend years not writing very much even though you sincerely want to. In the last two days I have written 1,394 words and 2,100 words on a story that I started sometime in 1997. I have tried to write the story many times before with and without an outline and never got half as far. What has changed? Well i read a blogpost http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html and another from the same blogger about her process for plotting a novel in 5 steps. What I realized is that I needed to know what I was going to write next. I had been approaching writing without knowing what I wanted to write. It was like I was building something without any particular plan or structure and so I would be looking at the smallest component a sentence in a scene and trying to decide what that sentence should look like without knowing if I was building a sports car or a nuclear submarine. It makes sense to me that I can write a one act play or a short story from inspiration because I can hold that whole structure and plan in my mind, but it's a much harder thing to hold all the particulars of a longer story in mind while writing. I can't help the feeling that I should have gotten this years ago. I guess that's just how life goes, anyway I can't turn back the clock. I was going to say something about Ayn Rand's book art of fiction because she talks about knowing things about what you a writing before you write, but she doesn't specifically apply it to the process of writing and whether and how to make outlines. Anyhow I think I've rambled enough, and exposed the fact that it is also good to have a plan before going into writing something as simple ass a blog post. I wrote this on an iPad, so any typos are the fault of Apple.