BLOGGERATION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

When I blog, I preview the blog to see what Blogger fucked around with. Sections of the text appear tiny. This is usually a paragraph problem. I select the entire paragraph of tiny text and change the size around a few times, hoping that uniformity strikes like a snake at the irritation of awkward formatting.
   It takes time for the venom to have an effect. Usually, it’s quicker to take a sledgehammer to the cracked saucer, rather than embark upon a long and laborious repair.
   In that case, I select the entire blog post and change the size around a few times, hoping that uniformity strikes like a strikey thing. A nuclear strikey thing. Everything in the blast is covered for all eternity plus a few years.

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Yes, there is work backstage, offstage, and in the cluttered parking area behind the theatre. Once in a good while, or bad while, Blogger is updated with a lick of paint that came from a cat’s tongue. This is an unpleasant business.
   For a trial period, Blogger allows users to revert to the classic style. The trial period expires and the classic style is sent to the grindy-grindy machine come midnight. Does it matter if the handy button for doing that thing is now top-left instead of bottom-right?
   Yes, it fucking matters for the first few scrabbling grabs at digital thin air on the user non-interface. We’ve made it more user-friendly! How’d you manage that? Kill off all the regular users so the raw recruits don’t know any different?
   Change on Blogger leads to bloggeration. Wrath-of-God-type-stuff. Dogs and cats, living together. The most annoying change I faced on this shaky platform was the change I am facing now.
   It’s the paragraph problem.
   I type the blog up in a file…aaaaaand copy the text over to Blogger. Simple. Too easy. Blogger changed the width of the stage, the height of the audience, and the no cream in the coffee.
   But I wanted my coffee without cream, and this new lack of cream isn’t the same as the old lack of cream. Can we go back to the complete lack of cream that wasn’t there before? That non-tasted so much better.
   Now, as in…right now…I drop the text into the Blogger box and…
   The paragraphs are standing on the corner of Fucked-Up and Normal. They separate. Oil text and water text.
   Blergh.
   I didn’t have to take a guided tour of the internet, but…I took a guided tour of the internet to find out what the fucketty-fudge was going on. Just fix it. The internet just fixed it. I mean the internet just barely fixed it.
   Why are all the paragraphs separated by space, the final frontier?
   Paragraph by bleeding paragraph, I have to go in…I don’t have to go in… (I really must go in) and I cut the gap between paragraphs. Then I pump up the typographical tyres with a borrowed slice of keyboard wizardry and I am falling asleep typing this.
   The point is…using Blogger was always irritating. Over time, Blogger endeared itself to me by turning all user-friendly and that is a lie I tell myself as the realisation dawns that I have to fix this bloody blog post before it goes out to a semi-suspecting public.
   I learned the fix, and that’s as far as things went. Merge the paragraphs. Cut the paragraphs apart again. Like an angry baker throwing lumps of dough back into one huge boulder, I wonder how it came to this.
   How did it come to this?
   I might as well ask why there’s a pet snake called Reggie aboard the plane. Wait, is that where the idea for the Samuel L. Jackson movie comes from?

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Anyway, I use the fix. There might be a better fix than the fix I use now. But the fix I use now is a fix that works. Merge. Cut. Merge. Cut. Paragraph by ill-fitting paragraph. Of course, I tried to make it easier on myself…
   I set up a file with wholly separate paragraphs and dropped that into Blogger. Separate paragraphs. Little rafts of text, making their way down the not-so-rapid rapids of Formatting Falls. Blogger detected my cunning ruse, and I still had to merge the paragraphs before cutting them apart with my bare teeth and a rusty saw I found by the side of the road.
   In short…
   (Notes futility of making a point about the formatting problem by creating a one-line paragraph that will still be adjusted later, regardless of size.)
   Every fucking time I blog, I have to adjust the entire blog. No more dropping the text off at Blogger, running a preview, and kicking the blog over the grass and out into the world.
   No.
   I could hunt for another fix.
   Or I could change platforms.
   I think I had a WordPress account for five minutes, back in the Jurassic.
   Perhaps I shall mimic Defoe, and write without let or hindrance – abandoning the many benefits the paragraph brings to the scribbler. Robinson Crusoe isn’t paragraph-free. It just feels that way.
   The challenge is not a difficult one for the blog writer. Though something tells me, call this a wild and impulsive view, yes, something tells me the reader may not feel the ease of the reading challenge wrapped up in a one-paragraph blog.
   Usually these blogs run to 1,500 words or so. The challenge in writing is to avoid hitting the return key. You may think of that as the enter key. Bless your heart if you’ve never experienced the fun of using a manual typewriter. Big fun. All the fun.
   No fun.
   Should I inflict a one-paragraph blog on the readers? Yes, if it is also a one-line paragraph. But wait a bit. How long are my paragraphs anyway? Not long. Back in the Jurassic, I’d rarely go over six lines for a paragraph. On average, I’d write three lines.
   When I saw how my stories looked when transferred to Kindle, I knew the days of the six-line paragraph were dead. A six-line paragraph on the Kindle non-page took up the whole screen.
   I cannot inflict that on the readers. Once, just once, I wrote of a character who babbled for a whole page of text. One paragraph. The paragraph of doom – a doom that rolled over the readers and squished them flatter than pancakes.
   So I decided to blog about this paragraph problem. And I am not looking for answers. I have the fix. The fix is in. And it is annoying. But I no longer care. Perhaps I never cared. As soon as I found the fix, I fixed the problem. Inconvenient to me as the fix is, it is still a fix. There may be a better fix out there.
   I suspect the better fix will come along when Blogger is once again “improved” for the delighted user. Normally, blogging is painless. One paragraph is a different size when the text hits the preview. It is a basic formatting problem. I nuke the paragraph free of its formatting then resize. Job done.
   But here I am, down on the factory floor, conducting paragraph maintenance every time I drop a wad of text into the blogging machine. Could I sidestep the issue by typing raw text straight into the word-sausage maker?
   No.
   If I type directly into blogger, I must still use the fix. The fix is annoying. Instead of hitting the return/enter key, I must hit that key and the shift key at the same time. Yes, this is the fix. It is, to use a technical term, fucking annoying.
   Eat. Drink. Be merry. Wine. Women. Song. (Not wine, though. Wine is decaying grape juice on a long slow journey into becoming vinegar. And people who can’t sing shouldn’t. Other than that, you’re golden.)

Screenshot from the movie Sideways appears under the copyright doctrine of Fair Dealing.

I consider the office and the bookcases and the space for more bookcases and the shelves in those bookcases and the books on those shelves and the words written by good and bad authors in those books.

   Great books by absolute shits and shit books by otherwise great people.
   And I consider the coffee it takes to write those books. Right now I am considering the mints I popped like pills to get me through this meta-textual morass that is a blog post about the annoying change to my blogging routine.
   Imposed on me…
   The change to blogging, not the mints. No one imposes mints upon me. I receive mints graciously, in a room built for the very purpose. Why, yes, it smells of mint. However did you know that?
   See also Would you like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge? It’s a steal at that price. Ah, but before we even get into that bit of nonsense, I must away and slash through the thorny wilderness of formatting to carry this blog from my computer to the internet.
   Also, the chance of being sent to Sing Sing for attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge was always rather high. As high as the bridge itself. 

BOOK TITLES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

It is far better to send a report from a fugitive than to be the fugitive reported upon. You send a report out on them, warning the world, rather than enduring their manufacturing a report about you first. They framed you.

   That’s why you are on the run. And that’s why you must send your report ahead of their lies. This doesn’t mean you are telling the truth in spreading your personal propaganda, but that’s another story.

   It is far better to send a report from a fugitive than to be the fugitive reported upon.

   This is not the answer I gave to a recent question.

“Why is REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE the name of your blog/YouTube channel?”

I am eyebrow-deep in the naming of things, and this came up.

   Titles are tricky beasts, as we know from the book titles that never-quite-were. Joseph Heller’s Catch-18 fell foul of another book’s publication. Too many books with 18 in the title. No good.

   You’ll confuse the great book-buying public with, y’know, wildly different book covers and different authors listed on those covers and, y’know, 18 in the title of both books. Or something.

   And so we have Catch-22. A phrase, now. Part of the linguistic landscape. Catch-22 is a little catchier than is Catch-18. That extra syllable makes a great difference to the catchiness of the title. All those extra t-sounds.

   For minor works, unpublished works, works lying dead by the side of the road, I’ve had titles foisted upon me by a small army of well-meaning meddlers. Just once, if a title felt better than the title I’d come up with, I’d be inclined to think this a good thing. Hasn’t happened yet. Not saying it’s a bad thing…it’s just a thing.

   I have the perfect title for your next book.

   Are you saying that I Have the Perfect Title for your Next Book is the perfect title for my next book? You aren’t? Then surely I’ve just come up with that idea myself. Titles for books. Raises a question.

   Which came first: the chicken, or the dinosaur egg?

   In writing a story, does the story reach you first? Or is the title ahead of the tale? Say the story comes to you on a turn of phrase that transforms itself into the first line of the work. There’s your catchy opening. Now go and hunt down the raw plot, and deliver on the promising first line by cooking it.

   First line. Same goes for the last line: occasionally it pops up at the start of the creative process, and you work backwards – until you reach the fateful beginning, when you slap the farm-fresh title on like a production sticker as you boot the story out of the factory and into the tale-starved world.

   These are samples of the multitudinous options on special offer. Let’s embrace the collision of ideas. The whole thing comes to you in a jumble as you sleep or shower. Avoid showering while sleeping. This leads to the hospital.

   You read an article. Two contrasting facts hit the news at the same time in different parts of the world, and you throw them together with a title and a first line and an idea of how it all ends…

   The rest is typing.

   So how do I tackle this nonsensical business of naming a story? I’ll have the idea for that story and call it by name. No delay. The idea for the story includes the ending for that story. Always know how it ends. Then you are free to write in any damned way you please.

   Not to tread this worn-out path again, but…

   Write the last scene first. Or write chapters 1-4, skip to 8, go back to 5, 6, and 7, and then carry on with 9 and 10. Make a chapter twice as large as the rest and split it into two near-chapters that need a bit of stitching to stop the bleeding. Write the rest of the chapters in a conventional order with a sigh of relief.

   You know how it ends, after all.

   And yes, I’ve written that way. I find, though, that it is easier to write in sequential order. Non-sequential order calls for more coffee. This is not a bad thing, but the human frame has its limits.

   Even I, Coffee Fiend that I am, know that a coffee delayed is NOT a coffee denied – it is, jovially, a coffee for next time: anticipated coffee. There will be coffee. And stories. More coffee and more stories. And coffee.

   My knowledge of the end allows me to detour if my mind takes an unusual journey into the shrubbery to investigate this curious item or that instant sub-plot. However it is written, the tale has a title sticking out of it. That’s pretty much my title.

   A survey of published works shows that my titles are my titles, with one exception. A title rolled up in front of me, created by another hand (or leg) and I seized it out of the air for myself. Titles, whether wholly or partially mine, are almost always fixed.

   No, I don’t care to have the title changed on me. This has never really had major consequences, so I’ll let it slide. Titles foisted upon me by a small army of well-meaning meddlers in a minor article here or an unstarted story there…I can and do live with.

   The title and the story go together in the same breath. I don’t write three befuddled chapters of the tale with no name. Yes, the title is a production label. You might add your label right at the end, seconds before you heave a tale onto the lorry waiting outside the factory. But I like to know about the product I am making. Title goes in there first or almost-first, for me.

   This has a technical aspect to it, given that computer files need to be named SOMETHING. Even when I wrote on typewriter, I’d story-title every page in case of mix-ups. When writing by hand, I definitely wanted to avoid those mix-ups in pages even more.

   Filling a blank page is a skill that needs a polite boot up the arse to jump-start the process, and there’s no finer boot available than the boot that stamps its title on your empty piece of paper.

   If I had to change a title for legal reasons…then I’d change a title. But I am not in the habit of changing titles. A technical glitch leads to a title-change. Okay, been there and done that. Minor stuff.

   The objectionable Ernő Goldfinger objected to the objectionable title of Ian Fleming’s book. Fleming offered to change the villain’s name to Goldprick throughout. (We have the hidden hand of Cyril Connolly to thank for that one.) Goldprick and Pussy Galore. Well. Damn.

   Let me pause for reflection while I listen to Shirley Bassey. Overlaying the alternative title as she sings…it’s just not the same. Perhaps that’s for the best. As a title, Goldfinger benefits from that extra syllable.

   Expectation rears its monstrous visage on a snaky body. It’s possible to name a story after something that never appears in the story. Though is that advisable? Of course not. You may gain from the comedy effect, if there is a comedy effect – and that’s for the audience to decide. You have little say in the matter.

   Wild West Shootout on Main Street better contain gun-toting action that’s outside the saloon, or there’ll be hell to pay. The Arrival of Godot would, presumably, depict an appearance by the character.

   If I buy shoelaces that turn out to be newts, I’ll wonder what went wrong. When writing of newts, feature newts in the title and not shoelaces. Shoelaces for Newts is, naturally, one notable exception.

   The longer the title, the worse you fare as you struggle to navigate the vastness of the ocean on which the title floats. Or sinks. I favour shorter titles over longer ones. Daniel Defoe wrote in a style we’ll charitably refer to as pre-paragraph. It stands to unreason, then, that his story of one-page paragraphs would be heralded, advertised, and proclaimed using a paragraph-long title.

   And so, we have…

THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRIZING ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, Of YORK, MARINER: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Ifland on the Coaft of AMERICA, near the Mouth of the Great River of OROONOQUE; Having been caft on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perifhed but himfelf. WITH An Account how he was at laft as ftrangely deliver’d by PYRATES. Written by Himfelf.

Turning to my shelves, I encounter Moll Flanders.

As brevity is the soul of lingerie, we’ll just refer to Moll by her name. By the time you pass the title’s fifteenth word, and each of those a tombstone to brevity, you might just have the aching suspicion that this book is written by the overly-wordy Daniel Defoe.

   An encounter with a long book title should be like an encounter with your dentist. Once every six months is quite enough.

KINDLE FORMATTING. PARAGRAPH INDENTATION.

This next piece proved useful to people, so I’ll repeat it here with a few visuals thrown in.

To turn my story into a Kindle product, I use MS Word and convert the file to PRC using Mobipocket Creator. (PRC is nothing to do with China, as far as I know.) Go to the Kindle section of Amazon. Find a book, any book, inviting you to LOOK INSIDE!

   Do just that.
   What are you looking for? The first line of the story. Chances are, that line is indented. Amazon has a default setting within its publishing factory, which has given rise to this decidedly non-paperback phenomenon.
   When I was struggling to deal with the format of my first self-published manuscript, I soon discovered this joyful stumbling-block. That’s what the Previewer is for. Well, how do I get my book to look like a book? With the first paragraph free of indentation…
   Solution?
   I couldn’t find one. Answer – chip away at all possible permutations until I found one that worked. This solution relates to using Microsoft Word for the original text, before it goes through the caterpillar-butterfly transformation.
   Start with the chapter title. Type carefully. The chapter title ends with a tap of the return key. MS Word recognises this symbol as a paragraph mark.
   On-screen, the symbol resembles a capital P flipped to face the other way, with the hollow section filled in, and two legs to stand on instead of the usual one leg.

 

   Some of you may think of the return key as the enter key. Others might still call it the carriage return key. I feel I must refrain from making comments about age.

   Follow that single tap of the return key with manual line breaks. Hit the return key and the shift key simultaneously. That generates a manual line break. On-screen, the symbol looks like an arrow coming down and veering left.

   I use three manual line breaks like that before I start writing the first paragraph. The general recommendation is that you never use four or more.

   That should do the trick. Chapter title. Paragraph mark. A number of manual line breaks to suit your own taste – no more than three. (People like to read books on their phones, and more than three breaks will cause trouble for those readers.)
   With the title/paragraph mark/manual line break sequence in place, the first paragraph of a chapter then loses the annoying (unseen) default indent.
   You can’t just use paragraph marks one after the other, as they don’t show up when used in a straight sequence. Once converted to Kindle, they might as well not be there – leading to no space between chapter title and first line. Awkward, unless you are aiming for that style.
   (However, note that, in the above screenshot on chapter links, I place a paragraph mark at the top of the page before the title. This removes a formatting glitch from the book in relation to hyperlinked chapter titles. The title shown isn’t hyperlinked, but I use the extra paragraph mark as a matter of routine. This extra paragraph mark doesn’t show up in the finished product.)

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For breaks within chapters, I separate the sections by means of an asterisk.

   End the section of text with a paragraph mark. (The return key again.) Next, add a manual line break. (Shift and return. Not one after the other. Together or not at all.) Then type the asterisk, followed by the return key.
   To end the sequence, hit shift and return together. After that, type your new paragraph. Go back and centre the asterisk. The line break above the asterisk should also centre, though the one below should not.

 

 

   Beware. If the next section opens with direct speech, you may find inverted commas starting with closing quotes instead of opening ones. Some fine-tuning is required.

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Why place an asterisk between chapter sections? The reader will always see the asterisk. If you leave a blank space between sections, that space can be lost in the Kindle shuffle, depending on font-size. A new section, without indent, should indicate where the next scene kicks off. The best solution is to have some form of character, preferably an asterisk, right there as an obvious visual cue.

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For authors who wish to follow the advice, remember – this arrangement worked for me. You may be doing other things in the background, or foreground, bringing my advice into conflict with how you run your office. Solution. Keep trying.
   All of my books get around the Amazon default setting of the first line paragraph indent. Is this something readers are bothered by? We’re in the Twilight Zone on that one...
   How far does an e-reading experience stray from the paper one? An army of readers, used to paper publishing conventions, will want something that resembles what went before. With all the advantages e-reading brings, into the bargain. (Instant dictionary, etc.) In another generation, who knows...
   Some readers will convert completely. Others will mix and match between paper and e-reading. A few will sample then reject outright, clinging to the familiarity of the past. There is a cry for “proper” books, whatever those are.
   If you feel that you are going to alienate many of your readers by dropping traditional publishing conventions, do your best to take account of this. Though remember – there was resistance to the end of the one-page paragraph. Robinson Crusoe would be a touch easier to read if rendered in smaller chunks on the page...
   For my part, I couldn’t cut loose of an established publishing convention even though I embraced digital publishing. I wrote my fiction that way anyhow, and stuck to that format. To first para indent or not is your choice.
   If it makes production of your book easier and you don’t receive thousands of complaints, ye are harming none and saving yourself some bother if you decide to stick with the Amazon default.
   We’d all like to think it’s what we write the readers are interested in, and not how we encode our scribble...

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Paragraph indentation itself is handled in the Format box. Highlight the text you want to indent. Inside the tab marked Indents and Spacing, there’s an option for Special settings. To generate paragraph indents, set the feature to First line and select a measurement. I use 0.5 cm, as shown in the screenshot.

   Once you’ve set up the indentation, that’s it for the rest of the text unless you put in obvious breaks. Then you’ll have to highlight again.

   I can’t cover all the quirks here, as I don’t know how you write your stories. But you’ll see how things pan out as you go.
   While your attention lingers on that screenshot…
   Line spacing should be set to 1.5 for the eventual conversion to Kindle.