Short and Sweet

Words: they say a picture is worth a thousand of them.  Fair enough, but I think sometimes the exact opposite is true.  Sometimes nothing can portray emotion as well as a few simple words.  Consider the shortest story Ernest Hemingway ever wrote.  As legend has it, he was once challenged to write a story in only six words.  The result, as many know, is one of the most poignant, touching stories ever written.  Hemingway himself is rumored to consider it his finest story ever:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Wow.  Adding more words wouldn't add anything else to that story.  It wouldn't heighten the pain, the loss, one feels when reading that.  More verbiage wouldn't add to the broken heart you know the mother, the whole family, suffered.  Six words is enough to know they moved on, but only out of necessity.  Six words is exactly enough to convey a punch to the gut.

Ernest Hemingway, © Penn State

I think Hemingway would have scoffed at those who say 140 characters isn't enough to adequately express oneself on Twitter. I think he would have loved Twitter. I'd have followed him for sure.  He was a master at saying exactly what he meant, and only that.

There's something to be said about brevity.  It's partly why literary agents want only a one-page query.  It's why we are told to hone, tighten, shorten, to turn the whole story into a synopsis.  To create a few-paragraph back cover blurb, and then take that blurb and shorten it into an elevator pitch.  Literary agent Rachelle Gardner has some excellent advice on creating elevator pitches.  Author David B. Coe shows us how to pare a blurb down, trim it to the bare essentials, leaving nothing but a concise pitch line.

These are things every author needs to do, if nothing more than the ability they lend to edit the story itself, and make every word count.  Kurt Vonnegut's advice on the matter was, "Every sentence must do one of two things, either reveal character or advance the plot."  Elmore Leonard's was a little simpler: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

It isn't easy, but then again, no one who's written anything worth a damn ever said it was.

Query Hell

Back to the obligatory pit of author despair known as Query Hell.  In other words, everything is back to normal.

Except for me, it's not really all that hellish anymore.  I've done it too long.  I've been at this game, off and on, for the better part of several decades.  To put it in perspective, when I submitted my very first short story to a magazine, skinny ties, pastels, and leg warmers were in style - everybody wanted to look like they'd come straight off Miami Vice.  The publishing world looked much different than it does today, mainly because of the online accessibility of information to authors.

Back in the day, I'd get out my well-worn Writer's Market guide and pour over it 'til I was half blind.  After compiling a number of submission-worthy candidates, I'd carefully print out the material I'd polished and crafted, stick it carefully inside a Manila envelope with an S.A.S.E., and take my submissions down to the post office.  Then I'd go back to writing, and one by one, the rejections would trickle in.  It was always an adventure getting the mail, wondering if that would be the day I'd find an actual acceptance.  I usually didn't, and became quite calloused to getting rejections.  I filed 'em all away, collecting them like trophies, keeping the giant stack like some badge of honor.  I figure I have well in excess of a couple hundred now.  I did get an acceptance finally, got the galleys and everything.  And then nothing.  Don't know if the magazine abruptly folded or what, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Of course, there were times, jetting around the world courtesy of Uncle Sam, that this just wasn't possible.  It's hard to mail submissions out and collect rejection slips if you're not home.  Long hiatuses from the submissions game have been pretty much the norm.

And things have gotten much easier with the advent of e-mail submissions.  A whole lot easier!  I never query via regular mail now.  I have no reason to.  Yes, there are still agents out there who do not accept e-queries, but at this point in time, wouldn't you be a little hesitant of an agent who hasn't caught up with technology enough to operate that way?  Hell, a lot of agents accept only e-queries.

It's far easier, too.  There's tons of information on agents out there.  What they're looking for, how to query them, what to include, pretty much anything an author would want to know.  It's a lot quicker, too.  No complicated envelope, S.A.S.E., trip to the post office, and waiting on the postman.  Just zip it off and watch your e-mail.  You already do anyway.  Now there's more time for writing.

Except that there's not.  That time has been replaced by blogging, and tweeting, and all the other endless forms of social media out there.  Most agents want an author to have a good online presence.  They want to see the author is engaged himself, has worked to market himself as much as possible already.  It makes their job all that much easier.

Looking back, things haven't gotten any easier, but I've gotten better at it.  The one thing that jumps out at me right away is how much better I understand the publishing industry.  Publishing Separate Worlds was a tremendous learning exercise for me.  This blog has been too, especially with all the research I've put into the Literary Agents tab and sidebar.  I know better how to find what I'm looking for, and how to write better what they're looking for.

So it's back to the trenches for now, writing, editing, pouring over submission guidelines and then trying not to mix 'em up with I send the queries out.  It's still frustrating at times, but I've gotten as jaded to rejections as literary agents are to bad queries, so it's all cool.  And hey, it's not personal, it's the way things are.

The Virtual Landscape of the Future

Technology expands exponentially.  Innovations seem to explode onto the scene overnight, and in seemingly no time at all, what was once the realm of science fiction is reality.  In fact, we're already living in a world that rivals the speculative worlds of great science fiction writers of the past, and there is no end in sight to the advances we'll see in nuclear studies, medicine, physics, space exploration, and other areas of scientific study.

Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) implants have been around since 1998.  We've seen them used commonly in pets.  They have even been implanted with success in humans.  In fact, they've been in the news recently in Mexico, where kidnappings are on the rise.  People are turning to them to aid in recovery efforts should they become a statistic in a crime that has jumped over 300% in the last five years.

While some of the claims made by companies selling these chips may or may not be valid, this does raise several interesting points of discussion.  Much has already been debated about the ethics of this type of technology.  There's the Big Brother aspect, and the potential for malicious theft of information, but there is also ability to more quickly and effectively save human lives, save money and time, and make aspects of our lives much easier and more convenient.  The technology is neutral, neither good nor bad.  And it is here to stay.

Now, scientists have further used the medical world to advance computer technology by creating intelligence chips based on the human brain.  This is important because it's a radical departure from the traditional von Neumann architecture we've used to create computing machines in the past.  This structure exponentially increases computing power, while keeping power dependency and size to a fraction of what is now necessary.

Quick Response (QR) Codes, first seen in 1994, have seen a recent explosion in their use and popularity.  More and more we are seeing them pop up, used in everything from extra content to advertising.  They've been called the future of marketing.  They're the natural evolutionary step of the barcode, but with a 7,000 digit capacity in two directions, instead of 20 digits in a single direction.

This technology, coupled with advances in wireless technology, and the need for smaller, faster, more easily accessible information has led me to the next jump in logic in my own speculative world.  In the future, we will be connected via ourselves to the virtual world.  That's right.  Devices will become a thing of the past.  No longer will we have a phone or computer connecting us to each other in the virtual world.  We'll do it through our own bodies.

All that's missing is the invention of an interface between the brain and this technology.  A neural connector chip, implanted by nanobot technology, would be able to form a connection between the brain and wireless transmission architecture to the outside world, thus linking our brains directly with the virtual world.  Once this is possible, how soon would we be able to implement a QR code-like interface where our very eyes would be the conduit sending information to this connector, which would then translate the code into usable format inside the brain.  We could simply look at the code to watch the content, free from any handheld scanning or computation device.

Couple this further with other sources of input, such as sonar technology, or other such conduits to new perceptual realities, and our virtual world would become so much a part of reality, in time it would become virtually impossible to live without.

Better yet, imagine this, but through your own eyes, and populated with whatever content you wanted it to show:

It would be like augmented reality eyewear, but without the eyewear.  Imagine the overlays from movies like the Terminator, or the technology of any number of recent science fiction movies, except for use in everyday situations.

Need to keep tabs on your kids in a crowded mall?  Turn on their identification feed to track them.

Need to find a place you've never been to?  Now you'll see it without seeing that little sign hidden in the corner of the window.

Looking for coffee?  Turn on the virtual connection to that type of service via the augmented reality stream.

Already most of the civilized world is connected via at least one form of social media, and many of us keep up with several.  Raise your hand if you've seen someone type that no one will hear from them for a while, as they are going on vacation, or will be away from the internet for a while.  How about someone mysteriously vanishing for a few days only to resurface later with a story of how their internet crashed and it took forever to get back online.  Yea, I thought so.  This sort of thing would allow us to more easily manage that sort of thing, and would allow us to interact without the need to sit down at the computer and type something out, or not being able to tweet something because we left our phone at home.

It's coming, folks.  In a world that revolves around portability, ease of use, and size, it's only a matter of time before innovation makes devices of any sort obsolete.  It sounds like a scary thought, but then, the technology of today would look quite scary to anyone even as recent as the 1960's.  Fifty years from now, the technology that surrounds us today will look to us then like the 1960's do to us today.  And with the exponential rate of advance, it may be a fraction of that time before it happens.  Personally, I can hardly wait.

Social Media: Publicity, Exposure, and Devourer of Time

Exposure is everything for an author.  Always has been and always will be.  If no one knows about your books, no one will read them.  Whether good or bad, that is a simple fact of life in the business of writing.

In today's digital world, this is even more the case.  Today we tweet, we blog, we socialize, we surf, and we connect.  The digital world out there is gargantuan, and yet we usually only come in contact with a small fraction of it.  Even before Google+ came up with circles, they appeared as indigenous elements of the Internet.  Sites would attract like sites, which would in turn link back to the original sites.

The problem this poses for authors is how to gain further publicity and exposure of their work.  Word of mouth is still the best source for viral growth, but it usually takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to accomplish this.  Nearly identical websites or blogs can have very different results with regard to growth and popularity.  One may take off at a tremendous pace, while the other does not.  And while some reasons are apparent, the exact causes and their effects on virility could be material for a PhD thesis.  This is where social media can make all the difference in the world.

It's official.  I am completely immersed in the world of social media.  Since you're reading this, you obviously know I blog.  I also post from time to time on sites like Absolute Write and the Kindle Boards.  And I'm on Facebook, and Google+, and now - finally - Twitter.  Yep, I've taken the plunge.  I'm all in.

This is great for exposure.  It's great to build a following of people that will (hopefully) buy my books.  Regardless, it's great to have a large support system out there comprised of others who write, who are trying to get published, or who just share my love of fiction.

The problem is, it's a time sink.  I don't have the ability to travel time like some of the characters in my latest science fiction project do.  Like they say, time is money, and even someone without a nine-to-five job eating away at it, time is pretty precious.  It slips away from you before you know it.

By the time I put out a blog here, and update the various social media outlets I have, it's time to keep up with what's happening in the world of writing and publishing, and lately, that's been an awful lot.  Then there has to be some time allocated for frequenting some of the forums I do, and commenting on topics I find interesting or at least in need of my two cents.  I have a list of blogs I follow, and I try to do that with some sort of regularity.  Then it's on to the various household and garden chores that need to be done, as well as busing kids back and forth to their daily summer activities.  And I'm in the process of putting the final (and this time I mean final!) edits on Separate Worlds, the novella I'm readying for e-publication.  Doing it right takes time, lots of it.  And by then, the day is usually winding up, and it's time for supper and a little relaxation with the family before bedtime.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  Writing.  There has to be time for that, and therein lies the problem we've run into with social media.  With so much to do and so much to keep up with, a writer has to prioritize time to effectively be able to socialize for needed exposure and still find quality time for writing.  After all, that's the whole point of being an author.  An author, by definition isn't someone who chats on social media or frequents blogs and forums.  An author is someone who writes.

It'll get easier.  Setting things up is the hard part.  Figuring out how to steer Twitter without crashing over the handlebars is harder than throwing a quick tweet out for the world to see.  Once everything is running great, it's not nearly as time consuming, or at least it doesn't have to be.  And as long as I remember that, I can effectively do both.  And of course, here I am, pouring my thoughts into blogging instead of my latest work in progress.  Heh.  Back to the ol' word document for me!