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January 7, 2007
Essay
How to Speak a Book
By RICHARD POWERS
Except for brief moments of duress, I haven’t touched a keyboard for years. No fingers were tortured in producing these words — or the last half a million words of my published fiction. By rough count, I’ve sent 10,000 e-mail messages without typing. My primary digital prosthetic doesn’t even have keys.
I write these words from bed, under the covers with my knees up, my head propped and my three-pound tablet PC — just a shade heavier than a hardcover — resting in my lap, almost forgettable. I speak untethered, without a headset, into the slate’s microphone array. The words appear as fast as I can speak, or they wait out my long pauses. I touch them up with a stylus, scribbling or re-speaking as needed. Whole phrases die and revive, as quickly as I could have hit the backspace. I hear every sentence as it’s made, testing what it will sound like, inside the mind’s ear.
Like all good Jetson futures, speech recognition is really a memory. Speak the thing into being: as dreams go, that’s as old as they get. Once, all stories existed only in speech, and no technology caused more upheaval than the written word. In the “Phaedrus,” Socrates — who talked a whole lot but never, apparently, wrote a word — uncorks at length about how writing damages memory, obscures authority and even alters meaning. But we have his warning only through Plato’s suspect transcript.
For most of history, most reading was done out loud. Augustine remarks with surprise that Bishop Ambrose could read without moving his tongue. Our passage into silent text came late and slow, and poets have resisted it all the way. From Homer to hip-hop, the hum is what counts. Blind Milton chanted “Paradise Lost” to his daughters. Of his 159-line “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth said, “I began it upon leaving Tintern … and concluded … after a ramble of four or five days. … Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol.” Wallace Stevens used to compose while walking to work, then dictate the results to his secretary, before proceeding to his official correspondence as vice president of the Hartford insurance company. (I’ve tried dictating to my tablet while rambling; traffic and birdsong make it babble.)
Even novelists, working in a form so very written, have needed to write by voice. Stendhal dictated “The Charterhouse of Parma” in seven weeks. An impoverished Dostoyevsky had just six weeks to deliver the manuscript of “The Gambler” or face complete ruin. He hired a stenographer, knocked the book out in four weeks, then married the girl.
Not that efficiency has always been dictation’s prime selling point: in dictating his own last few baggy monsters, Henry James perfected such fluid elocution that, according to Edith Wharton, he couldn’t even ask directions without releasing a torrent of “explanatory ramifications.” James grew so accustomed to his sonatas for voice and typist that the sound of his secretary’s Oliver, when the workhorse Remington was in the shop, threw him off his speaking rhythm.
Dickens reportedly acted out his characters while looking in a mirror. In the final hours of his life, Proust re-dictated the death of Bergotte, supposedly claiming that he now knew what he was talking about. Once, while dictating “Finnegans Wake” to Beckett, Joyce is said to have answered a knock on the door; Beckett dutifully jotted down his “Come in.” Surprised by the transcript, a delighted Joyce let it ride.
The all-time champion of Xtreme Dictation, though, must be Thomas Aquinas. Witnesses report how he could relay four different topics to four secretaries at once, and even (Maritain writes) “lay down to rest in the midst of the dictation to continue to dictate while sleeping.” That’s what I really want from my tablet; I trust that technicians are working on the problem.
Why all this need for speech? Long after we’ve fully retooled for printed silence, we still feel residual meaning in the wake of how things sound. Speech and writing share some major neural circuitry, much of it auditory. All readers, even the fast ones, subvocalize. That’s why so many writers — like Flaubert, shouting his sentences in his gueuloir — test the rightness of their words out loud.
What could be less conducive to thought’s cadences than stopping every time your short-term memory fills to pass those large-scale musical phrases through your fingers, one tedious letter at a time? You’d be hard-pressed to invent a greater barrier to cognitive flow. The 130-year-old qwerty keyboard may even have been designed to slow fingers and prevent key jamming. We compose on keys the way dogs walk on two legs. However good we get, the act will always be a little freakish.
The faster I speak, the better my tablet PC transcribes. It won’t choke, even at bursts over 200 w.p.m. The real hitch remains accuracy. When in the groove, my speech software is remarkably precise, far more accurate than most typists. But no machine makes phonetic distinctions as fine as humans do, and my software’s recognition engine doesn’t model meaning. So where my fingers might stop at changing “sign” to “sing,” my tablet can turn my words hallucinatory without limit.
This machine is a master of speakos and mondegreens. Just as we might hear the Beatles sing how “the girl with colitis goes by” or the Psalms avow that “Shirley, good Mrs. Murphy, shall follow me all the days of my life,” my tablet has changed “book tour” to “back to work” and “I truly couldn’t see” to “a cruelly good emcee.” Legend claims that the astoundingly prolific William Vollmann once tried speech recognition software while suffering from repetitive stress injury. He sat down to write his folks. “Dear Mom and Dad” came out as the much more Vollmannesque “The man is dead.”
A greater barrier to computer dictation is the huge cognitive readjustment involved, especially after decades of straitjacketing keyboards. I needed weeks to get over the oddness of auditioning myself in an empty room, to trust to the flow of speech, to learn to hear myself think all over again. So what do I get from the trade-off?
For one, I can write lying down. I can forget the machine is even there. I can live above the level of the phrase, thinking in full paragraphs and capturing the rhythmic arcs before they fade. I don’t have to queue, stop, batch dispatch and queue up again. I spend less mental overhead on orthography and finger mechanics and more on hearing my characters speak themselves into existence. Mostly, I’m just a little closer to what my cadences might mean, when replayed in the subvocal voices of some other auditioner.
Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind and what hits the page. “From your lips to God’s ears,” goes the old Yiddish wish. The writer, by contrast, tries to read God’s lips and pass along the words, via some crazed game of Telephone, to a further listener. And for that, no interface will ever be clean or invisible enough for us to get the passage right. As Bede says of Caedmon, scrambling to transcribe the angelic hymn dictated to him in a dream: “This is the sense, but not the words themselves as he sang them in his sleep; for however well composed, verses cannot be translated out of one language into another without much loss of beauty and loftiness.”
Everything we write — through any medium — is lost in translation. But something new is always found again, in their eager years. In Derrida’s fears. Make that: in the reader’s ears.
Richard Powers’s novel “The Echo Maker” won the 2006 National Book Award.
Comment by Joanne — January 6, 2007 @ 3:39 pm |
I found this on the Elmore Leonard website:
http://www.elmoreleonard.com/index.php?/weblog/more/elmore_leonards_ten_rules_of_writing/
Comment by Joanne — January 6, 2007 @ 3:41 pm |
I found this on the International Thriller Writers, Inc website:
http://www.thrillerwriters.org/world/garfield.html
Comment by Joanne — January 6, 2007 @ 3:46 pm |
Check out the new KillerBook Video on YouTube – “It Takes A Thief”
Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNG_ROIGyY4
(Another desperate writer’s attempt at shameless self-promotion.)
Comment by Ray Ryder — January 7, 2007 @ 8:50 am |
FYI FWA – Some of you asked about the Florida Writers Association. Here’s their website:
http://www.floridawriters.net/index.htm
Use the pull down menus for more info on benefits, and online workshops.
The Sarasota chapter meets the 4th Wed of the month, 7 PM, at the Gulf Gate library. Hope to see you all there!
Comment by Joanne — January 7, 2007 @ 10:30 am |
Submitted at the request of Sharon Yanish:
Looking for a few tips to juice up your suspense plot? The secret’s in the secrets, according to Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel—How to Knock ‘Em Dead with Style. Writers of all genres can write better, more compelling novels by taking a mystery writer’s approach to plot. Ephron, also co-author of the Dr. Peter Zak psychological mystery series, will present a two-hour plotting workshop February 10th at the Grandezza Country Club in Estero, hosted by Southwest Florida Romance Writers.
In the afternoon session, New York literary agent Christina Hogrebe will explain The Care and Feeding of an Agent, as gained from experience in her position with the highly respected Jane Rotrosen Agency. Hogrebe will draw the names of three attendees who may submit their work to her for a personal read.
Cost is $75 ($70 RWA members) for the one-day seminar and includes a buffet lunch and a copy of Hallie Ephron’s book. Visit http://www.swfrw.org for detailed information and to register. Don’t miss this opportunity! We hope to see you there.
Comment by Ray Ryder — January 10, 2007 @ 10:13 am |
Stephen King has been raving about just not the books of Meg Gardiner (says her LA based thrillers are better than Michael Connelly’s!) but he also praised her writing advise blog, “Lying for a living.”
Check it out! I did.. it’s a hoot! I read it everyday now.
http://meggardiner.wordpress.com/
Comment by Joanne — February 28, 2007 @ 3:43 pm |
Here’s a link to the screenwriting book
I talked about at the meeting: “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; A step-by-step guide from concept to finished script” by Syd Field.
http://www.amazon.com/Screenplay-Foundations-Screenwriting-step-step/dp/0440576474/ref=sr_1_9/002-1574070-0284001?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173878394&sr=1-9
I highly recommend it to anybody who is writing a novel and needs to learn more about structure and pacing.
This screenwriting book is based on Aristotle’s classic three act structure and the basics of storytelling.
Comment by Joanne — March 14, 2007 @ 8:30 am |
LORIAN HEMINGWAY SHORT STORY COMPETITION
$2,000 Awaits Winners of
Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition
Entries are now being accepted for the 27th annual Lorian Hemingway Short Story
Competition, created to recognize and encourage the efforts of writers who have not yet achieved major-market success. Writers will compete for a $1,000 first prize, $500 second prize, and $500 third prize in this internationally acclaimed competition. Several honorable mentions are also awarded each year.
Stories in all genres of fiction are welcome. Maximum length is 3,000 words, and writers retain all rights to their work. The final deadline is May 15, 2007; winners will be announced at the end of July.
For complete guidelines, please visit http://www.shortstorycompetition.com, e-mail
Calico2419@aol.com, or send an SASE to the Lorian Hemingway Short Story
Competition, P.O. Box 993, Key West, FL 33041.
Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition
Honors Emerging Writers
When Lorian Hemingway judged Hemingway Days’ first short story competition in 1981, she and her fellow judges sat in a Florida Keys cottage reading and evaluating the few dozen entries with care. They couldn’t possibly imagine that the competition would grow into one of America’s most prestigious literary contests.
Now, more than a quarter-century later, the short story contest draws between 600 and 900 entries each year from around the U.S. and other countries as far-flung as India and Romania — and Lorian and her small judging panel still give every one of them their complete attention and respect.
Since its beginnings, the short story contest has been dedicated to recognizing and supporting the work of emerging writers whose fiction has not yet achieved success. For some, this recognition is the first validation of their worth as writers.
The first-place winner each year receives $1,000. Second- and third-place winners receive $500 apiece, and others are awarded honorable mentions.
Coordinating the competition is a pleasure and a passion for Lorian, whose books have been nominated for two National Book awards, a PEN award and a Pulitzer Prize.
“Reading a story of talent and craft, and knowing that perhaps you can help further the career of a gifted writer, is truly one of the greatest joys,” says Lorian. “I consider it my job to honor the talent of emerging writers—and if those who enter this competition are compelled to continue to write as a result of receiving the recognition they so deserve, then we are each richer for it.”
The co-director of the competition is Key West writer and publicist Carol Shaughnessy. The longtime judging panel includes editor and award-winning short story writer Jeff Baker as well as writer Cristen Hemingway Jaynes.
To date, the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition has awarded more than $50,000 to emerging writers of merit.
Comment by Joanne — March 27, 2007 @ 10:36 am |
Here’s a link to the upcoming “Wizard of Words” short story and poetry contest!
http://www.wizardsofwords.org/2007contest.pdf
Comment by Joanne — March 27, 2007 @ 10:56 am |
An Agent Speaks!
Check out this blog by an agent who calls herself “Miss Snark.” Budding scribes write in questions about the wacky writing biz and the Miz provided no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip advice.
Here’s a brief clip:
Making Conversation with Agents at Conferences
What to say after you say hello:
1. What are you reading now that you love?
2. How did you get started agenting? Do you love it?
3. Is this your first time here (if it’s not in NYC)Do you have a place you like to tell everyone to see here in NYC?
4. What was your favorite book as a kid?
5. May I buy you a drink?
Things NOT to say:
1. What advice can you give me?
2. Are you having a good time?
3. You look tired.
4. Can I show you my manuscript/query letter/pages?
5. I know I’m not supposed to do/say this but….
6. Can I have lunch with you?
7. You rejected me but…
8. I sent you a query/email. Do you remember…
9. Remember me?
Here’s the link: http://misssnark.blogspot.com/
Comment by Joanne — April 10, 2007 @ 8:02 am |
Negative reviews? #13 is my favorite!
Thirteen things you can do with a printed copy of a negative review:
1. Set it on fire in the driveway. (An obvious one, yes, but a method I’ve used on crappy drafts in the past. I have stopped doing that, but only because the Mustang has a slow gas leak. Wouldn’t that suck?)
2. Fold it into a paper airplane, launch it, then shoot it down with a BB-gun.
3. Shred it and use it to mulch your garden. Give it a few days, then douse those freakin’ too-cheery blossoms with Roundup.
4. Send it to the Feds as proof there is a conspiracy of mean girls out to get you.
5. Finely shred, mix with canned dog food, feed it to a puppy and then kick the puppy.
6. Crinkle it into a tight ball, sprinkle Comet on it and use it to scour under the rim of your toilet bowl.
7. Make a Mad Lib out of it and play with a friend. Instead of “The heroine was stupid, the hero had no motivation, and the author needs to learn craft” you could have “The heroine was smelly, the hero had no elbows, and the author needs to learn the Macarena“. Much better, no?
8. Finely chop and mix with shredded coconut, then dip in chocolate. Send high-fiber faux-Mounds to reviewer with a very polite “Thank you for taking the time to…” note.
9. Place review in paper feeder, sit on copy machine deck and superimpose your ass over her words. (I recommend not trying this at Staples, though. They’re ridiculously uptight about ass prints on the glass.)
10. Send it to Stayfree to use in their rate-of-absorption blotting tests.
11. Fold it into a lovely and graceful Origami swan, and then step on its little head.
12. (TTs start getting hard around #7, and #12’s a bitch, ain’t it?) Umm…Be really original and line your litter box with it?
13. Learn from it. Unless the reviewer has some whacked personal vendetta against you, chances are she didn’t pull those comments out of her ass just to piss you off.
http://shannonstacey.com/2007/03/29/thursday-thirteen-8-2/
Comment by Joanne — April 12, 2007 @ 10:56 am |
This is from my favorite blog: http://misssnark.blogspot.com/
When is enough?
Dear Oh-So-Wise Miss Snark:
How many agent rejections (based on partials or full ms, not queries) should a person receive before they stop banging their head against the wall?
I know one could persist forever, hoping that the rejectors all just wrong — and who knows, maybe they are — but when would a more rational person stop?
If you’re getting form letter rejections of full and partials, you need fresh eyes. Time for some beta readers with teeth.
If you’re getting personal letters, and phone calls and liveried footmen delivering engraved calling cards that say “I love your writing but this particular book isn’t for me” you’re on the right path.
Comment by sarasotabookclub — April 23, 2007 @ 8:31 am |
Here’s a piece I found on yet another blog written by an agent:
A Submission Reminder
While I know I’ve said this before, it obviously bears repeating. Whenever, anytime, every time, you send a submission to an agent, make sure to include a professional, detailed cover letter. To make it simple for you, here’s what I advise. Every query, proposal, full manuscript, or attachment you send an agent should include the following information:
* Name, address, email address, Web site, phone number
* Dear Ms. Faust (Jessica if you know me personally)
* An opening line that tells me why this material is coming my way (either I’ve requested it, you think I’m great, or you’re just looking for representation). The title of your book, word count, genre, target market.
* Your opening line should also include any details that make you stand out from the crowd. Are you published? A major award winner? Do you have editors reviewing requested fulls? All of this information can help get you to the top of my stack.
* A blurb of your book. This is that very exciting one-paragraph blurb that is so strongly written the editor will want to use it for the cover of the book. The blurb is your hook. Editors don’t need to know each and every plot point, they simply need to know what makes your book stand out.
* Additional information about you, your book, contests, organization memberships, professional background, etc. All of this can close your letter.
I can’t stress this enough. Each and every time you submit work to an agent you should include this letter. We don’t remember names, we don’t remember titles, and we don’t always remember why we requested something, so that gentle reminder (your blurb) is critical. When you send an email attachment (this should only be sent when requested), I would suggest you include your letter in the email and as the first page of your attachment. That way when I send it to my printer I know exactly what is coming back.
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/
Comment by sarasotabookclub — April 24, 2007 @ 7:40 am |
Do you know the 2%/1% rule? Of all the aspiring writers seeking an agent, only 2% will be signed. Of those 2%, only 1% will be published.
So how do you increase your odds? Here’s what NOT to do: The Turkey City Lexicon is a writer’s guide to poor technique. While this advise is geared toward Sci Fi writers, it applies to all of us. I must admit to being guilty of Kudzu plotting
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html
Comment by sarasotabookclub — April 30, 2007 @ 7:50 am |
I really like these rules for a critique group:
1) the author cannot explain or rebut any comment given by a critiquer. They can ask questions, but if they edge into rebuttal, they are gently but firmly Slapped by the Moderator.
2) no author may read the same piece twice. This includes rewrites after they’ve learned to write.
3) only two authors may read and receive crit per session, and they are timed by the Moderator. Nobody can overrun into another’s reading/crit time without the Sacred Slap as mentioned above.
Found these on a blog written by an agent’s assistant – you know – the kid who opens then rejects all our queries: http://rejecter.blogspot.com/
Comment by sarasotabookclub — May 4, 2007 @ 9:14 am |
I’m looking for a book or film with a synopsis like this:
Young woman marries, produces two children, who are doted upon and spoilt by grandparents. The spoilt children become fat. Husband becomes fat. The wife runs around trying to meet all their needs. It must be a common life story.
Maybe on the weekend before Christmas, the exhausted mother, cleaning up after a meal, falls asleep wondering what she should buy for her children for Christmas that wont have been bought or bettered by the doting grandparents. She is woken when her head slips of her hand, to find a god-mother standing behind her. Like Dickens Christmas story, the god mother takes the mother to show here what what happens if she buys them something material (they get fat obese, in trouble, health deteriorates, husband becomes a burden) or if she gives them her time and attention they need to learn responsible living. (The opposite).
do you know such a story.
Any ideas?
Comment by just Jack — May 7, 2007 @ 9:57 pm |
Hi, all! My first time here – hope I’m doing this right! (If not, someone please let me know.)
Just wanted to share a site with you that I enjoy. It’s called Funds For Writers -www.fundsforwriters.com. It has free and paid newsletters, lots of markets and contests, and just a good, fun attitude courtesy of the woman(Hope) who runs it.
Comment by Madeline — May 31, 2007 @ 9:41 am |
Hi
I’ve been ploughing my way through various books covering character, plot, point of view, etc. But practise that make perfect, so I was wondering if anyone wanted to join in a weekly workshop in which we:
1. Identify the key elements of creative writing
2. Draw up checklist for each
3. Examine two pieces of work maybe a published work or one of our chapters.
I guess the minimum needed is two people and the maximum is six.
I’m happy to offer my house for this and provide the drinks. I can start in October.
If you are interested, please e-mail me ABACAN@BayChambers.com
Jack
Comment by Jack — June 19, 2007 @ 7:31 am |
Some how half of that got lost
Is anyone going to any of the following book fairs?
St. Pete October 27th
Miami Nov
Sarasota Nov
Vero Beach Nov
Key West Jan
Zora Jan
Fort Myers March
Tampa April
If so do you want to meet up whilst there, to share transport. etc?
Jack
Comment by Jack — October 8, 2007 @ 7:34 am |
Happy and Prosperous New Year !!!
This is to announce that 21st Century Research updated its special “Print-on-Demand Publishers Directory 2008″ and “Print-on-Demand Printers Directory 2008″ and is developing more E-mail lists for promoting your books.
Check our blog: http://book-publicity.blogspot.com
Comment by Bohdan — December 28, 2007 @ 9:37 pm |