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Why Is Throwing Away Books So Hard?

Oh my, controversial. Photo by pcorreia on Flickr.

Like most writers I know, I have a room full of bookshelves, all of them overflowing. Some have been read. Many haven’t. Most, I consider indispensable. A few, I have resolved to get rid of, but that’s like saying I want to be the world’s first ham-juggling world champ. I can say it all I want.

I have at least two canvas bags full of hardback books in my living room, longing for a new home. The used bookstore doesn’t want them — and in some cases I really can’t blame them for not taking my complete set of Mechwarrior Saga: The Last Thing You’d Ever Want to Be Caught Reading. My friends won’t take them. I could try selling them on the internet, that’s often a losing proposition when BookBargainJackholesDotCom can undercut me by selling for a penny.

So why can’t I just chuck them in the trash?

I’ve certainly thought about it. I’ve also thought about firing them out my window at the kids who ride by on their bicycles, which somehow doesn’t seem any more appealing. I’ve thought about starting a bonfire in the parking lot screaming JESUS IS LORD as I throw some old Star Wars novels into the flames, but I figured the landlord might frown upon that for some picky reason.

Long story short, I’m still stuck with these books. Why am I so averse to tossing them out?

Books Have Sentimental Value

Yes, I am sentimental about books. I’m nostalgic about them, too. I won’t apologize. I’ve had far too many conversations with Kindle fanatics who talk about emotional attachment to books as if it were some kind of disease. Shelf full of books? When you read paper, you murder the world!

Ahem. Sorry. I should really let that go. Anyway, many of the books I own have been deeply formative to me in one fashion or another. Just because I no longer get anything out of a particular volume, that doesn’t mean no one else will. So just tossing a book in the trash feels like I might somehow be cheating someone, somewhere, out of that experience. Is that really likely to happen with this copy of Steve Perry’s The Omega Cage that I can’t unload? I’m guessing not. This is a totally irrational feeling, yet it’s tougher to shake than a rabid howler monkey.

Books Retain Their Utility

Soon to be a major motion picture with Jean-Claude Van Damme, only not really, and thank God for that.

I don’t have this issue with, say, my busted microwave or that free Amazon review copy of From Justin to Kelly some complete asshole in the Seattle office  thought I would enjoy. I’ll fire those at people’s heads all day without a single moral qualm — because their utility has expired. When electronic devices go bad, that’s it. I’m probably not going to hang on to my Kindle when it finally clicks its last, caressing its face like a dead lover and shedding manly tears as I think of those times we spent together reading blog entries on Instapaper. Okay, this is kinda creepy now.

My point is, it takes a lot to destroy a book. A book can take a hell of a beating and still be readable. Thus, the miserly curmudgeon inside me minces with snooty horror when I think of throwing something perfectly good into the trash. I keep expecting my deceased grandmother to rise up like a terrifying undead revenant and tell me about how bad they had it during the Depression. We had a complete set of the Black Stallion novels, and that was ALL, and we were THANKFUL, ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl ftaghn!

And So, In Conclusion…

Want some books? C’mon, Omega Cage, you know you want it. Going begging. Anybody?

No, but seriously — I’m surely not alone in this, am I? What do you do with your old books? Do you toss them out, give them away, or do they just hang around forever, like unwanted guests who drink all your gin and put ABBA Gold on repeat?

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How To Lose Readers and Alienate People

Photo by istolethetv on Flickr.

A few weeks ago, I received a free book of short stories from an indie author as part of a blog contest. The author of the book didn’t ask for a review, but I gave one anyway. My review, unfortunately, was not very positive. Neither was it scathing — I had a few issues with what I felt were grammatical problems and a couple minor structure issues. I rated it below-average, but was careful to say that I enjoyed the bulk of the short stories (which I did).

A few days ago, the author (whom I will not identify) emailed me to correct me on my criticisms. She told me that I’d mistaken her stylistic choices for grammatical errors and brought up her college pedigree. She implied I didn’t understand how fiction writing “worked” and made suppositions about my own grammatical predilections. According to her, I had undoubtedly expected a dry academic text and not living prose.

Finally, she informed me that the only low ratings she’d ever received on her work came from males, implying pretty clearly that my criticisms stemmed from my gender. To be fair, she did admit that perhaps her assumption was wrong, but let the implied accusation lie anyway.

This email bothered me. Not only because it made some pretty hurtful assumptions in response to a review I felt was both honest and fair — but because it left me very disappointed in the author herself.

I’m not writing this entry to get any cheerleading. I don’t need (or want) reassurance that I’m not sexist, or that the review was fair. That’s all entirely too subjective to determine sans context, and I have no intention of sharing the review or the subsequent correspondence.

Instead, I want to urge you, writers: do not do this.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t think the book was terrible. I didn’t tear it to pieces. I said it had some problems, rated it honestly, and thanked the author for the opportunity to read the book. Obviously, the author was under no obligation to like or agree with my review, but writing me to inform me that my criticisms were invalid, born of ignorance, and possibly sexist? That’s a different matter.

Not every book that an author turns out is a winner. Some of my favorite authors in the world have turned out volumes I think are turkeys. That doesn’t stop me from reading them. I would probably have continued to read this particular author’s work — in fact, I had one of her titles in my shopping cart, thinking I’d try it out and see if I liked it any better. But that email just guaranteed that not only will she never see another sale from me, but also that I’ll have nothing positive to say about her ever again.

Of course, that might not amount to much — I’m not going to name the author in question, because I have no interest in hurting her reputation. One or two lost sales isn’t a big deal, right?

But to me, this sort of behavior screams one word, loud and clear: Amateur.

Criticism is hard to take, especially if you feel it’s unfair or unwarranted. I look at some of the one-star reviews my favorite authors get, calling them everything short of Hitler himself, and I think about how difficult that must be to swallow — much less disregard.

But that’s kind of what you have to do, if you want to be a professional writer.

Accept that not everyone will love your work or think you’re a visionary. Accept that some people will think you’re pretty damn bad. A few may think you’re the worst thing ever. Fair or not, that’s how it is, especially on the Internet.

By sending this email, the author changed my perception of her permanently. I’ll never look on her work objectively again — assuming I read anything she writes in the future. I’m likely to think (true or not) that she’s only interested in positive reviews of her work. I find it nearly impossible to respect her as a writer, because she sure didn’t respect me as a reader.

Lastly, I fear this will probably have a chilling effect on the indie books I review in the future, as I’ll be disinclined to bring up any negatives for fear of some sort of retaliation. Would you want your readers to feel that way about you? I sure wouldn’t.

Fortunately, not every writer is like this. Only two weeks prior to this incident, I left a review of another author’s work on Goodreads that was pretty far from glowing. I liked the author and enjoyed the book well enough, but I thought it had some pretty significant issues. The author liked my review, told me it was more than fair, and asked if I’d be interested in “beta reading” her next installment. I happily agreed and am looking forward to working with her in the future.

One of these authors will be getting my money, and my positive recommendations, well into the future. The other will not. My ego’s not so large that I think this will make a vast difference either way — but as indie authors, our readers are all we’ve got, and I believe they should be treated with respect. And yeah, that includes me.

So the next time you get a less-than-favorable review and feel an urge to retaliate, ask yourself: is this really how you want to be seen? Do you really want to create an environment where the only readers whose opinions you value and trust are the ones who praise you unequivocally? Do you want to “correct” your critics by telling them they’re wrong to feel the way they do about their work?

Or do you want to be a professional?

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Dabbler or Disciple: How Serious Are You About Writing?

Photo by laurelville_gallery on Flickr.

Today’s guest post comes from Ruth over at Bullish Ink, who delivers some stern truths about the passion and drive the writing life requires.

Do you want to be a writer or do you just want to write?

Here’s the difference. Those who want to be a writer experience the Writing Life as an unquenchable fever in their soul and those who want to write  experience it as a casual crush.

There’s no right or wrong answer. My objective here is to simply help us figure out what we want from the Writing Life. Do we want to dabble with it like a casual date or become its devoted disciple?

Truth is, the Writing Life doesn’t want to be penciled in. It wants to screw up your schedule without any resistance on your part. It demands your slavish devotion. You want to be a writer? Cancel your gym membership. Give up your favorite tv show. Beg out of dinner dates.

Committing To The Writing Life

Think of it this way – would you only spend fifteen minutes a day with your best friend or significant other? What kind of relationship would that produce?

Imagine saying to your spouse: “Well, I’d love to pick up milk on the way home, pudding-pie, but you’ve used up your allotted time today. How about I pencil it in for tomorrow – time permitting?”

If you continually tell your Writing Life that you can only afford it fifteen minutes a day, the relationship will self-destruct. It isn’t going to wait around forever for you to get your life figured out. It’s going to pack its bags and hit the road.

Once the two of you split the sheets, reconciliation is no peach. Forget about open arms, tender reunions and mind-blowing make-up sex. It isn’t that easy  to rekindle the romance.

I’m speaking from experience here. The Writing Life and I split up a few years back. Got pretty messy. Things were said. Feelings hurt. Vows made. Just about the darkest period of my history.

And trust me, reuniting was no picnic. Took a couple years to get our mojo back. I had to put in a lot of late nights and write hundreds of thousands of words of crap before we were able to effectively communicate again.

And that’s when I realized that I didn’t just want to write, I wanted to be a writer. I was smitten with the written word. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.

Making Time For The Writing Life

The paradox is this: we are so damn intent on figuring how to fit the Writing Life into our day-planners and warping out because there just aren’t enough hours in the day, when the simple truth is that we make time for our passion without giving it a second thought.

See, if we are passionate about writing, if our hearts pump ink and the scent of paper causes us to tremble, we will make room for writing with nary a thought to logistics.

Remember what those first few weeks of ‘being in love’ feel like? You don’t need to eat. You don’t need to sleep. You have all the time in the world to bask in the presence of your lover because you make the time.

Your calendar miraculously clears itself. Duty and obligation and busy-work fall away – unmissed, rendered unnecessary and no longer important.

That’s what it’s like to be a writer. You instantaneously and unapologetically give up activities and interests that previously defined your entire existence so that you are free to pursue your passion: the Writing Life.

Just as creative talent makes room for itself, passion makes time to pursue the lover.

The Bottom Line

So, is writing something you plug into the weekday schedule like the gym and the dentist?

Or is it something that causes you to forget to buy groceries, change your socks and flounder for your child’s name?

Are you dabbling with writing or are you its devoted disciple?

Until you move the Writing Life from your To Do List to your Can’t Wait To Do List, you won’t be able to bridge the gap between wanting to be and being.

Ruth is a forty-something administrative professional who enjoys fast-paced stories, vintage cars and southern rock. A reader by birth, paper-pusher by trade and novelist by design, storytelling is her passion. You can read more of her take on the writing life at www.bullishink.com or swing by the frugal living blog she shares with her sis at www.shoestringwithstyle.com.

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The Cake is Not a Lie: Wordmongering, Write, or Die

This Nanowrimo (and yeah, we’re just about done with talking about Nanowrimo for another year, in case you’re plumb tired of it yet), I saw a lot of people swearing by Write or Die on Twitter and in blogs. I’d given it a try once or twice, but it never really grabbed me until I combined it with the up-and-coming Twitter sensation that is #wordmongering (see below). Also, on a mostly-unrelated note intended to cash in on someone funnier than me, Write or Die always makes me think of Eddie Izzard’s indelible “Cake or Death” routine:

The concept behind Write or Die is this: You write X words in Y minutes (you choose both, you lucky devil). Once you start writing, you have to keep writing. If you stop for any reason, the screen slowly turns red, and a few moments later, you start hearing the most annoying sound in the world, which persists until you start writing again.

(There’s also a “kamikaze mode” in which the application starts deleting words if you stop writing for too long. No thanks. I can easily imagine one unexpected phone call turning a writing session into a ballad of shame and wasted lives.)

At first, I was pretty dubious about this concept — isn’t typing like a crazy person the enemy of coherent prose? Don’t I write sloppily enough without extra prompting? I certainly thought so, until I realized how well Write or Die clicked with my convictions about falling out of love with a first draft.

One of my biggest writing hurdles has always been overcoming perfectionism in my initial draft. I read a big radioactive pile of advice about how the first draft is just the beginning, and first drafts are crap, and so on. I never really believed it until I typed “The End” on a few books and realized just how much work those books needed — and, until Write or Die, I didn’t realize how much I tend to agonize over word choice, descriptive details, and other tiny hurdles that slow me down.

Certainly, there’s a time and place for careful word choice, but the first draft generally is not that time. Write or Die makes sure it’s not the time. Stare into space for too long searching for just the right power verb, and the Devil’s Interval will start sonically attacking your genitalia. Which is more motivational than you might think, and less risky than writing while having a small child use your groin as a punching bag.

So I dropped ten bucks on the application. It’s the best ten bucks I’ve spent on writing tools in the last year.

I put this concept to good use combining it with #wordmongering, a community-driven 30-minute word sprint founded by Monica Marie Vincent (@MonicaMarieV) and Alice M (@notveryalice). Thirty minutes to write as many words as possible, and to blazes with your (writing) inhibitions. Normally, I can churn out maybe a thousand words an hour if I’m feeling “on.” With this technique, I could crank out over 1500 words in thirty minutes. After a quick break to give my fingers a rest, I’d come back for more.

I went from a daily output of around 1,200 to over 5,000 combining Write or Die and #wordmongering. And if I don’t feel like socializing between writing sessions (which is frequently) I just skip the ‘mongering and stick to beating the clock.

Now tell me about you.

Finding a new writing process is always exciting, especially when it really works. So I’d love to hear about your process. What are your writing routines and habits? What really works for you? What doesn’t? Please feel free to leave me a comment below. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

(Also, a shout out to a few of my fellow wordmongerers: @JulieJordanScott, @Ava_Jae, @mohio73, @frbrown906, @GeorgeSirois, @digitalinkwell, @BPuttroff and anyone I may have missed! Interested in joining? Come on over! We have cake.)

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No Go Nanowrimo: Should You Feel Bad About Not Finishing?

Well whoop-de-doo. Get out.

Another National Novel Writing Month has come and gone. Maybe you pushed through and collected your intangible little badge. (I did. Nary a free drink nor swooning supermodel in sight so far. I have been lied to.) Maybe life got in your way and you got distracted. Maybe you stopped caring about your book. Maybe you just stopped feeling like writing. Maybe space chimps replaced your brains with Captain Crunch and you liked it. Life rolls on.

So let’s say you didn’t finish Nanowrimo this year. Should you feel bad about that?

Yeah, I think maybe you should.

Bear with me.

About two-thirds of the way through this year’s Nano, I struggled a lot — as I do pretty much every year. (November really is a terrible month for a project like this, especially if you’re not used to daily output. Newcomers to Nanowrimo invariably discover this with keen astonishment, many of them waiting for that mythical “better month” when, presumably, life will stop happening.)

I was way behind. I disliked my story. Other time obligations intruded. I lost sleep. My fingers hurt. Walking Dead was on. And so forth.

A couple of friends tried to cheer me up. Hey, if you don’t make it, that’ll be okay, they said. You can just pick it up in December, champ. No big deal.

Only it was a big deal, and it took me a little while to parse out why attempts to comfort me and let me off the hook only aggravated me further. And then it hit me.

If you didn’t make Nanowrimo, and you’re unhappy about that, then it means you were serious. Or, at least, you wanted to be serious.

And if you fell short of your goal and didn’t feel the slightest bit bad, then maybe what you were doing didn’t mean much to you in the first place.

This is true of everything in life, not just writing. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about missing the mark you were shooting for — as long as you get back up and try again. Reams of cliched platitudes have been built on this fundamental principle.

Yes, Nanowrimo is a big, frantic communal goal, and falling short, especially when you see other people go racing past you, can hurt. But don’t lose sight of why it hurts — because, presumably, you really want to write.

Don’t let that disappointment turn into something bigger than it is. It’s not a sign you “don’t have what it takes.” It’s not a soul-crushing insight on your total lack of character. Don’t start playing Pink Floyd’s “Time” over and over while squinting into the middle distance and crying. I said stop it.

Now, maybe Nano didn’t work out for you and you feel just fine about it. That’s cool too. It can be a sign you’re not serious, but that’s not necessarily the case. Plenty of writers start out with Nanowrimo and reject it without blinking an eye. Not a thing wrong with that, as long as you replace it with a process that gets your ass in the chair and words on the page. Whatever works, as long as it works.

But if you find yourself feeling crushed by this year’s Nanowrimo — take your time. Get a little sad about it. Get mad at yourself if you want to. It’s okay. Work through it.

Feel better?

Cool. Now get back to writing.