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"Watership Down with Armadillos"

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Author Jerry Weinberg recently posted this on a listserv and gave permission for folks to use it. He asks a provocative question about how we refer to books.

A pet peeve of mine:
Because books (usually) made of paper have been around for hundreds of years, they have captured the name “book” as their exclusive property.

Because electronic books have been around for about one generation, they have a different designation, “e-books,” which makes them sound like they’re not real “books.”

I’ve started distinguishing between the two types by calling the old type “p-books.” P could stand for paper, or print, or perishable, or whatever you choose.

The e in e-books could stand for electronic, easy-to-use, enduring, elastic (for their ability to change dynamically), or whatever you choose.

Both p-books and e-books are equally “books,” not “real books” and some “johnny-come-lately pretend books.”

And who knows, maybe there will be other types of book – x-books, for any number of x’s. (like a-books for books delivered in audio format)

I’m encouraging my friends and colleagues to use this nomenclature, rather than “e-books” and “dead-tree-books” or some other clumsy attempts to bring e-books to the same stature as p-books.

From now on, I’m using the term “book” to refer only to the contents, not the form. If I’m talking about a paper book only, I’m using p-book.

If you’d like, feel free to join the campaign. Thanks for listening.
Jerry

Please leave a comment–do you think pBook is a good term for print/paper books? Does aBook for for audio books?

Summer is just around the corner. How do I know? Because at least once an hour, the TV reminds me that summer isn't be worth living unless I drop a size or two; or a National Tutoring Chain assures me my child's brain will turn into a blank slate over the summer. (I especially like the commercial with equations and words tumbling out of the ears of some hapless kid.
    For those of you who don't watch as much TV as I do (guilty, guilty, guilty), the first sign of summer might be The Summer Reading List. I say might because I usually find my daughter's Summer Reading List crumpled under the couch about mid-July. If your child springs forth on the last day of school, waving the SRL and demanding to go to the library right now...which is the kind of kid I was...you might want to skip on down to the Writer's Workout.
     Although I was willing to read what the school district thought every third grader should read, I usually lost my enthusiasm by book two or three. I am an omnivorous reader, and always have been. Yet, somehow, the Literary Poobahs in Curriculum Development managed to come up with twenty of the dullest books available for the grade level; Newbery winners, biographies about Important Men (always men, never women) and "classics" of dubious value. But I had to read at least one all the way through, because the first assignment on the first day of school (after the "What-I-Did-On-My-Summer-Vacation"essay) would be a book report on one of the summer list books. Not once did any teacher ask if I liked the book. The point was that words passed before my eyes at some point of those three months.
     In my child's school district, book reports have gone the way of the Walkman. Reading is "encouraged" by taking computerized multiple choice tests on Certain Books Approved by the Company Who Sells the Test Software. Certain books are assigned so many points. (I will save my opinion of this sort of thing for another day and rant, but I will tell you that I couldn't pass the test on Yankee Girl...and I wrote the book!)
    In short, up until high school, the emphasis is on plot, characters and the odd nitpicky fact. No one ever asked if we liked the book, or not until, my sophomore English teacher. That was a real loser of a year as far as required reading: Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables (before Broadway ditched all the boring parts and added some great music.)  Where other teachers acted personally insulted when we didn't froth with delight over Evangeline or The Scarlet Letter, Miss Strain cared.  We didn't have to like a book or a character, but we better have a reason why. "Just 'cause" or "It's dumb" were not acceptable reasons. Without telling us, she introduced us to the concept of critical reading.
     Many, many years pass. I become a librarian. I read constantly, almost unconsciously. I taught myself to speed read in college, so I blew through dozens of books a month. When I finished, I sometimes had the feeling I had just wasted my time. Other books, I loved so much I had to force myself to slow down and savor every word. Yet, all the time I recommended books to readers (or not), I could not tell you why I did or did not like a book. I assumed that if I didn't like a book, it must be my fault, that I just didn't get it. After all, this writer had a book published, and I didn't.
    Many years pass and I finally get the guts to enter an MFA in Writing for Children program.  Almost the first thing we newbies are told is that we will be doing a lot of reading. . .and critiquing.  Criticism of the educational variety was something that had not crossed my mind since my days in Miss Strain's class.
    "To be a writer, you have to learn to read like a writer," we were told.
    Uh-oh.  No more read

What have you given up in order to have time to write?

When I started out, giving up my hour of pleasure reading in the afternoon (the kids’ naptime) was the biggest sacrifice I made. I loved that hour of escape where I rose above my daily chores and relished adult language and words longer than one syllable. Yes, I could still read at night when the kids were in bed, but by then I was too sleepy to keep my eyes open.

Are You Sacrificing TOO Much?

We’ve talked lately about tracking your time and then sacrificing some of your current pleasures in order to write. And yes, time for pleasure reading may have to be cut back drastically in the “learning years.” Like many writers, my pleasure reading is now used as a reward. (I often set my timer and write for thirty minutes, promising myself a ten-minute reading break for each thirty minutes of writing. I love those reading breaks!) I try to read at bedtime too, but I still fall asleep too quickly.

I once had a student who read five romance novels per week, every week. Really! I had no problem recommending that she turn 75% of that time into writing time. Most of you don’t have that kind of time to read for pleasure–and I don’t either. You may only have thirty minutes to an hour for pleasure reading. And when you give it up, you’re losing a writer’s #1 most favorite pastime: reading.

Short-Term Sacrifice

If you’ve given up pleasure reading in order to write, I hope you will be able to add it back to your life soon. I think writers need to read. (And not just books on craft or books in the genre you hope to publish in.) Reading for pleasure nurtures our soul–and keeps us in touch with what readers want.

So how can you balance this while you’re learning to write, especially when you’re juggling a day job and/or a family? Make use of alternative methods. Discover books on tape, and listen during car pools or while washing dishes. Discover books on MP3 players like Playaways, or download digital books from your library, and listen to them while you run or garden.

When my time was the shortest–when the kids were small and I was working another job in addition to the writing and school visits–all I could carve out for pleasure reading was fifteen minutes per day. It wasn’t enough time to finish a book in a month–and I couldn’t figure out the plot in those little bits.

During those years, then, I re-read the classics on my shelves. Consequently I’ve memorized whole chunks of Pride & Prejudice, Little Women, and other favorites. Since I already knew the plot and characters, I could relax and just enjoy seeing old friends for fifteen minutes each day.

No Time to Read

I know a good number of full-time professional writers who have given up pleasure reading altogether. They said they just don’t have time. What do you think about that? Is pleasure reading something you’d give up in order to have the writing career of your dreams?

Why–or why not?

During the past year I’ve done more novel critiques than usual. Some have been so-so, some were very good, and a few have already sold.

What made the difference between the “very good” stories and the manuscripts that sold? In my opinion, it was the overall strength of the novels.

Often the “very good” book manuscript was strong except for just one area. Maybe there was no felt emotional connection with the main character, or all the dialogue voices sounded like the author’s voice. Perhaps the one weak area was lack of suspense despite beautiful prose, or poorly researched historical facts, or terrible mechanics.

Oops!

Often when I mentioned the trouble I saw, the writer emailed me back and said, “I knew that was a problem. I guess I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” It’s better to listen to your gut feeling and assume if you know there’s a problem, others will see it too.

“Hoping an editor won’t notice” isn’t a solid marketing plan. Even if they had the time (which they don’t), editors aren’t in the business of fixing the story for you or teaching you how to write. That’s up to you-but what can you do?

Back to School

“Unless you’re working with an expert instructor, you need to be designing your own writing improvement program,” says James Scott Bell in The Art of War for Writers. “Work out a systematic plan to overcome your weak areas by setting up self-study programs.”

We all hope our novel’s strengths will over-ride the weaknesses, but you want your novel to be healthy overall, not just mostly healthy with one or two weak areas. If your physique were great except for flabby underarms, you would target that flapping fat with exercises and a program designed specifically for upper arms. In the same way, if your novel is weak in one or two areas, you need a specific exercise program to strengthen that area.

Make a Plan

For example, if your problem is dialogue that all sounds like the same flat voice, you might need a self-study program called “Creating Distinctive Voices.” Your study question might be: How can I create distinctive voices for each character, so distinctive that I can tell who’s speaking without any identification?

Here’s one plan, and you can adapt it for any area you want to improve:

1. Make a list of novels where you remember the characters coming through in their dialogue as distinctive. (accent, regional speech, slang, choppy vs. languid speech, hip vs. old-fashioned, formal vs. grammatically incorrect, straightforward vs. flowery speech, etc.)
2. Choose several of these novels and re-read them specifically for the dialogue. Keep your study question in mind as you read. Underline passages that do the job and then write a few scenes where you try to accomplish the same thing through dialogue. Don’t copy their words, but try to copy the technique used.
3. Buy some books on the particular writing problem you have and study them. There are good writing books available on every area of craft you can imagine. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel, nor do you have to submit stories that are weak in one or two areas.

In today’s economy, your stories need to be the cream that rises to the top. Ensuring that your novel is strong in every area is one way to do that.