RLLauthor@outlook.com and @RLL_author GO TO AMAZON KINDLE STORE AND TYPE RLL. YOU WILL FIND MY BOOKS.

Saturday 28 February 2015

WRITING EXPERTISE. DO YOU HAVE IT? A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Last week, in conversation with another author, I was called an expert. My horse reared up in panic and bolted from that scene, carrying me along with it.
   Nay, I demurred. Neigh, uttered the steed.


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But the other author insisted. I had to think about it. What makes you an expert in anything? Calling yourself an expert? Hell, no.


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The worst thing about Twitter is receiving messages from "social media experts" who operate in the realm of Twitter itself.
   They'll maximise and prioritise your use of Twitter. It's their business, that's what they do, and all is right with the world. That company's total Tweets?
   Oh, 25.
   Spammer. Go away and just...well...just go away. (I've removed the fucking swearing, for sensitive members of the audience.) Try again. Same sort of company. Total number of Tweets?
   Oh, 250.
   Maybe not a spammer, but not a dedicated company. Your Social Media expertise is, sadly, inexpert. Go the fuck away.
   Time to Google this shit.


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I'm staring at the top 100 Tweeters worldwide. The lowest bird on the wire sent out over 700,000 Tweets. Everyone in the top thirty is a millionaire in terms of messages sent. Almost everyone in the top forty is the same, as I type.


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You don't just say you are an expert and make it true. Expertise is built, stone on stone. More than that. You don't just get into a subject. Know your stuff. No. You end up knowing your stuff and knowing about your stuff.
   More than that. If you are called out on a detail, and asked something obscure concerning an item you just described, hell, you can show, with extended examples, that there's far more to the situation than that.
   You pick up knowledge relating to other subjects off to the side of the subject under discussion.
   Subject? Stones. And, by way of a journey from stone to stone, your subject also covers the cracks between the stones and everything down in those cracks.
   What do I mean?
   You can talk about the subject, and talk about the history of the subject, then expand on a point if asked a tricky question - all without recourse to notes. And almost always, crucially, you can manage this with a great degree of accuracy backing up what you say.
   With notes to hand, you bring those raw facts and statistics to life. To you, this casual conversation seems, to the uninitiated, as though akin to discovering how to make fire. It is sorcery.


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So I was called an expert on a subject, after talking to another author about that nonsense. I delved into the history of the topic. And I gave examples of things that related to other matters.
   The arcane topic under discussion had an affect on many areas beyond the core discussion, and I amplified on all this waffle, gave examples, and illuminated the murky landscape.
   I was then called an expert.
   Which I denied being.
   Later, I thought about it. I knew details of some boardroom battles concerning the major players inside companies. Yes, I certainly knew the history.
   I drew a line, filling in a map, and suddenly there was a world. Do I know much about the subject? Enough to be dangerous. I'm no expert. Much of my knowledge is pre-Google. I've yet to decide if that's a bad thing. It may be a good thing, for a limited time.
   Right now, I'm just going with the idea that it's a thing.

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There is no such thing as writing expertise. Writing is such a broad church that it only fits inside the back end of a Star Destroyer. (This ain't your grandma's internet. Google that shit.)
   Be suspicious of experts in writing. If you are an expert in an area of writing, a narrow one that would fit easily on the head of a pin, be content with that.
   There's always one more thing to do, and much to learn.

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No horse suffered panic in the writing of this blog. Sometimes writers resort to imagery, to get a point across. At other times, they resort to panic and frantic typing. This leads to imagery, and more frantic typing. Typing that's more frantic. And lots of it. That's a thing, now.


Saturday 21 February 2015

IS THE SHORT STORY YOUR FIRST STEP ON THE WAY TO WRITING NOVELS? A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Some writers don't go near short stories. They just dive straight in and write novels.
   There are advantages to operating that way. I've read novels by authors who were firmly in that camp. Those stories worked.


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Novels and novels alone. Nothing wrong, beginning over there. But I didn't start out on that path.
   First, there was this view that I might sit down and write non-fiction.
   The fever passed.
   Second, there was the idea that I'd finally work out how to write novels...after I read a lot more of them...after I read a lot of short stories...and after I wrote short stories.


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An early attempt, as an example. Reader walks down a hallway, looking at paintings. Each painting is a short story. Items in each story link, along this gallery. By the time you reach the end, you've read a novel that is also a collection of short stories. The reader is sucked into the last story, at the end of that artistic hallway.
   Modest Mussorgsky was an influence.
   But that project mutated into another book, before long. 


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There you go. When I speak of graduating from writing short story to writing novel, yes...I REALLY took it literally.
   So I'm here to talk about creating a novel from that viewpoint. This is old ground. Start small, build up. Do more of that building. You'll reach a mystical turning-point.
   Initially, these micro-stories will be jokes. Very quick plot. Fast opening. Not much middle. Resolution. Minimal character-development. Nothing to accomplish but grab your audience.
   The kind of thing you can do, these days, on Twitter.


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Mystical turning-point?
   Mini-stories move beyond a few paragraphs. You write twist-in-the-tale scraps. Stories with obvious twists that depend almost entirely on some bullshit you set up in the first line OR on a play on words in the closing sentence. Consider yourself advanced if you attempt this...
   Stories with obvious twists that depend almost entirely on some bullshit you set up in the first line AND on a play on words in the closing sentence.
   Eventually, you write a longer story. We'll say you scribble 5,000 words. Your story is self-contained, with hints of more to come. Almost feels like a chapter in a book.


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That's you. On your way. Keep telling stories in the same setting, or with the same characters, and you'll have enough of those excerpts to string into a series. There's your novel.
   Not really. But...really.
   If you are going to write a novel in chapters - and that's by no means right, wrong, certain, desirable, or undesirable - then think of each chapter as a short story.
   Not necessarily self-contained. If you take a chapter and examine it in isolation, it may not make sense once devoid of context. That's okay, and that's not what you are looking for when you check a chapter in isolation.
   You are checking to see that SOMETHING happens in that chapter. When you wrote short stories, you didn't have space to fuck around...so, by fuck, something had to happen.
   Make sure, playing in a larger sandbox, with more than sand, that something happens in each episode. By all means, develop themes, expand on characterisation, fill out that story.
   Sink your teeth into description, exposition, atmosphere, and all the rest.
   Treat the novel as a gathering of short stories in a queue. They might bunch up or spread out, but they are all in the queue for a reason. Your readers are sticking with the story for a reason.
   If that reason is just to get to the fucking end of the story because, fuck it, I'll be damned if I let this bullshit fucking book defeat me, then I'll go out on a limb and call that a bad thing.
   I've read those hyperbole-magnet award-winning tomes that, er, aren't really about anything. No, I won't name names. Taste is taste.
   If you start with short stories and then write novels, don't get lost in the need to create a longer form. Those chapters are still short stories.
   Yes, you'll develop different storytelling techniques as you go along. But...and this goes for all writers, no matter the path...don't lose the plot in the words. Or, indeed, in the shrubbery.


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Mayhap you are sitting there, saying to yourself, well, I've never written short stories...and I'm about to embark upon a novel that isn't even written in chapters...this all sounds like bullshit to me.
   My response is simple. Read the first paragraph of this blog post. Go and write your novel.



Saturday 14 February 2015

AMAZON AND KINDLE PUBLISHING FILES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Farewell, People's Republic of China. We hardly knew ye.


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I'm not talking about the People's Republic of China. But I often thought of China when I created PRC files for Kindle books.


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Amazon no longer supports the PRC file it pimped out to me at every fucking opporchancity. Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story - by converting it to PRC.
   And don't forget to drop two important pieces of metadata in there before hitting the BUILD button. Fare thee well, BUILD button. Your like, we shall not press again.
   I won't speak of the arcane process involving the Table of Contents and its Frankensteinian creation. There was a ceremony for this, and...


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My legs! Argh!
   Don't think that knee will ever be the same. It hurts on rainy days.
   Anyway, I didn't use the arcane ceremony - for the simple reason that I couldn't get the fucker to work at the last gasp.
   Instead, I used the outré method of dropping two lines of code into the PRC file's metadata - forcing Amazon's Kindle system to see my Table of Contents and, good gravy, nod in the general direction of the start of each book.
   What fresh hell is this?
   I believe a lot of writers uttered that phrase to themselves as they went through this non-process.


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And it's all gone. Amazon shifted over to MOBI files. I didn't shift over with them. Instead, I opted to test the basic Microsoft Word file.
   No fucking around with software, metadata, no remembering codes, no fucking nothing. Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story.
   Done. Melissa C. Water, mentioned elsewhere on the blog, wanted to put out some of her stories. I offered to format the books, using basic Word files, to see how things looked.
   After uncovering one invisible glitch, I saw that the system took the strain. Farewell, PRC. I'll miss you like rabies. Well. Damn.


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I don't deny, I learned a lot when I put those files together. They were great for testing. But Amazon keeps advancing its Kindle products, and who am I to stand in the way of Darth Bezos?
   Besides, provided my book is formatted to within an inch of its life, just using the Word file takes away an awkward moment or two of coding shit that I need never remember again.
   And the world is a better place for that.

Saturday 7 February 2015

FUCKING IDIOTIC WRITER MODE 2 - JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK IN THE WATER: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Better to have too many files than too few. All files are copied. Precaution is nicer than caution.


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So much for the flashback.

   After blogging about checking archives, I checked the archives again. And I found a file folder in one location. Forty-odd files inside it. All tied to a specific date in 2013.
   What.
   The.
   Fuck!?!
   :0


*

I did nothing. The hard drive requiring examination was the one stored in my skull. I consulted the memory banks. No computer files were touched. I did nothing.

   It's important to do that whole nothing routine, once in a while.
   Still, I did nothing. No frantic keyboard attack. Unwise. Just think it through. There was a purpose to the folder when created. What was it? Two years on, what was it?
   Why is the creature nowhere else?
   The folder is misleading. Concentrate on the files. Search the 2013 archive for those files. One by one, they popped up. A few files were derived from the internet.
   Timeline. I still relied on the public library for a regular internet service back then. Therefore...
   These files, grouped into one folder on one day for sheer convenience...
   Yes, these files were gathered off the internet or generated as a result of internet activity. I'd read an article then write a piece, say.
   It's a TEMPORARY folder. The files in it have all since gone into the right sub-folders within the 2013 archive.
   I am staring at a digital appendix. Useful, in its day. But its day is long-done. The folder was shunted aside, but not deleted. It should have been wiped...


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Better to have too many files than too few. All files are copied. Precaution is nicer than caution.



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And there's my lesson, taught right back at me two years down the line. I checked the files existed in the 2013 archive, and deleted the stragglers. Well. Damn.