Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 20

We have to create an AI Cookbook!

You’ve heard of the famous glue-on-pizza advice, right? Well, this one is really fun as well:

Hey, Google, how many rocks should I eat per day?

BERKELEY, CA—Calling the average American diet “severely lacking” in the proper amount of sediment, Geologists at UC Berkeley recommended Tuesday eating at least one small rock per day. “In order to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle, Americans should be ingesting at least a single serving of pebbles, geodes, or gravel with breakfast, lunch, or dinner,” said Dr. Joseph Granger, adding that the rocks, which could range in size from a handful of dust to a medium-sized 5-pound cobblestone, were an important source of vitamins and minerals critical to digestive health. 

And I laughed quite a bit when someone sent me a screen shot of this advice. The ResFrac blog got a kick out of being cited in that fake advice, and for a highly technical company of some kind, I bet the surge in traffic was unusual, so I’m glad they found it entertaining.

Personally, I’m trying to imagine nibbling on a medium-sized five-pound cobblestone. It reminds me of the Horta from Star Trek. One of my favorite Original Series novels, My Enemy, My Ally, by Diane Duane, features a horta character.

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Poetry Thursday: Who Killed the Plan

I stumbled across this a few weeks ago and found it fun and intriguing:

Who Killed the Plan?

by Amos Russel Wells

Who killed the Plan?
“I,” said the Critic,
“I knew how to hit it,
I killed the Plan.”

Who killed the Plan?
“I,” the Bore said,
“I talked it dead,
I killed the Plan.”

Who killed the Plan?
“I,” said the Sloth,
“I lagged and was loth.
And I killed the Plan.”

Who killed the Plan?
“I,” said Ambition,
“With my selfish vision
I killed the Plan.”

Who killed the Plan?
“I,” said the Crank,
“With my nonsense rank
I killed the Plan.”

*****

Who was Amos Russel Wells? An author who was born 1862 and died in 1933. He wrote 63 works of various sorts, according to Wikipedia. This entry is very short. It’s hard to see how many of these “works” were individual poems and how many might have been other types of works.

What does this poem remind me of? Well, of course this English nursery rhyme. I haven’t the slightest idea where I saw it first, probably in some sort of children’s book of nursery rhymes.

Who Killed Cock Robin?

“Who killed Cock Robin?” “I,” said the Sparrow,
“With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.”

“Who saw him die?” “I,” said the Fly,
“With my little eye, I saw him die.”

“Who caught his blood?” “I,” said the Fish,
“With my little dish, I caught his blood.”

“Who’ll make the shroud?” “I,” said the Beetle,
“With my thread and needle, I’ll make the shroud.”

“Who’ll dig his grave?” “I,” said the Owl,
“With my pick and shovel, I’ll dig his grave.”

“Who’ll be the parson?” “I,” said the Rook,
“With my little book, I’ll be the parson.”

“Who’ll be the clerk?” “I,” said the Lark,
“If it’s not in the dark, I’ll be the clerk.”

“Who’ll carry the link?” “I,” said the Linnet,
“I’ll fetch it in a minute, I’ll carry the link.”

“Who’ll be chief mourner?” “I,” said the Dove,
“I mourn for my love, I’ll be chief mourner.”

“Who’ll carry the coffin?” “I,” said the Kite,
“If it’s not through the night, I’ll carry the coffin.”

“Who’ll bear the pall? “We,” said the Wren,
“Both the cock and the hen, we’ll bear the pall.”

“Who’ll sing a psalm?” “I,” said the Thrush,
“As she sat on a bush, I’ll sing a psalm.”

“Who’ll toll the bell?” “I,” said the bull,
“Because I can pull, I’ll toll the bell.”

All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.

*****

Maybe that’s it, but I almost think I have something else in the back of my brain, the same type of repeated “Who did the thing?” with a series of answers.

Anyway, I tripped over another poem by Amos Russel Wells that’s particularly suitable for February:

Some Questions for Saint Valentine’s Day

Why Sir Cupid do you chooseFor your happy festivalJust the bleakest month of all?Rosy June why don't you use,Or the dainty fingered May,Or some jocund August day?"It's because I want to showHow against dear Love's sweet reignHarshest seasons rage in vain;Ice and sleet and blinding snowBut the blustering captives are,Chained to her triumphal car."Then, Sir Cupid, prithee tellWhy your merry day should fallIn the shortest month of all?Is your wonder-working spellAs distinctly fugitiveAs the month in which you live?"Stay in shame your slanderous tongue!It is I, and none but I,Make this month so quickly fly.Lovers' time is ever young;And this month, were I not here,Were the longest of the year!"

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Out now

Here’s a book that looks kind of neat —

“Show, don’t tell.” “Murder your darlings.” “Write every day.”

Certain pieces of advice are widespread in the writing community — but what do they really mean? And are they nuggets of universal wisdom, or do they only apply to some writers in some circumstances? Award-winning author Marie Brennan tackles these old saws, dissecting each one to see what purpose it might serve . . . and when you should toss it aside.

As you know, I think all writing advice sits somewhere on the spectrum from harmful to useless. I will reluctantly concede that occasionally, in specific circumstances, if you feel like it, you might want to consider taking some random bit of advice seriously.

I will much more willingly grant that you should take specific feedback from a gifted editor, copy editor, or fact checker. I mean feedback such as, “Those verys are creeping back like cockroaches, maybe you should stomp on some of them.” (Barely paraphrasing.)

Here’s the ToC

A Prefatory WarningPROCESS“Real Writers Write Every Day”“Your First Million Words Are Crap”“Write Short Stories First”“Write What You Know”“Write What You Want to Read”/”Write For Yourself”“Don’t Revise as You Go”“Feedback Should Hurt”CRAFT“Show, Don’t Tell”“Murder Your Darlings”“Eliminate Adjectives and Adverbs”“Start With Action/Start in Medias Res”The One True Universal Rule

Those all seem rules that need a stake driven into their hearts. Or rather, they might be okay in extreme moderation, if the author applies common sense and doesn’t take the rule very seriously. Good for Marie, breaking the topics neatly into process / craft rather than jumbling them up. I was just snarling about posts where the author can’t tell they’ve switched from grammar issues to storytelling issues. And, I haven’t read any part of this book, but I know what I think The One True Universal Rule is.

You can’t succeed as an author unless you finish at least some of what you start.

That’s it, in my opinion. I’m tempted to pick up this book just to see if Marie Brennan agrees.

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Coming this fall

So, there’s a new long-ish novella by Sharon Shinn coming out this fall, which I bet you did not know. Here’s part of the description from the link:

Part of the Twelve Houses series, Shifter and Shadow takes place between the end of The Thirteenth House and the beginning of Dark Moon Defender. 

Donnal is a peasant’s son who has been Kirra’s protector and companion for years. Although he’s always loved her, he’s always known she was destined to marry some titled lord and take her place in society. After watching her fall in love with another man, he has tried—and failed—to leave her. A shapeshifter himself, he has accompanied her to Dorrin Isle [to help while she heals dying children from an illness], determined not to take his human form again because he finds it too painful to be around the woman he knows he cannot have.

But Kirra needs him. So do the dying patients. And if he’s going to help any of them, he has to have the shape—and the heart—of a man.

I expect I’ll remember to mention this in September, when it comes out. But I read this novella a few weeks ago, and absolutely loved it. There’s some gorgeous writing here, as well as a plot twist that was obvious only in retrospect. Some of you will pick it up faster than I did, probably, but I bet it will still work.

Plus various cute puppies, so, I mean, there’s that.

I didn’t re-read any of the Twelve Houses books before I read this novella, by the way. I don’t think you need to. This story stands just fine on its own.

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Rewriting/Revision

From Jane Friedman’s blog — Free Yourself from Rewriting Paralysis

So, recently, two different people commented to me that until they heard me talk about revision, they sort of thought that authors just threw a mass of words on the page and boom! Done! And I laughed. I’m not sure I ever had that impression, but if I did, it was so long ago that it’s lost in the mists of time. I just accept as part of the process that revision will take from 50% as long to about 100% as long as writing the draft. (Or sometimes a lot more than that, I guess.) (Which I do not enjoy.)

I like the grace that George Saunders confers on the discomfort of rewriting: “An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing one’s intention and then executing it does not make good art.” He continues with a useful metaphor:

The artist…is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?…As text is revised, it becomes more specific and embodied in the particular. It becomes more sane. It becomes less hyperbolic, sentimental, and misleading.

I don’t know about more sane or less misleading. I would say —

It becomes more effective.

It carries more punch.

It becomes more evocative.

It contributes to rhythm.

It sounds right.

I do think that this metaphor about optometry is great. “Is it better like this? Or like this? … Like this? Or like this?” That’s entertainingly accurate. How many of you went to an optometrist over and over as a kid? I was farsighted, my vision kept changing, my glasses kept needing to be adjusted, that went on until my vision shifted into the normal range when I was in my late teens, and I can easily close my eyes and imagine myself in that chair, with the optometrist flipping from one lens to another.: “Which is better? This? Or this?”

Honestly, that is a lot like revising a specific sentence or paragraph. Which is better? This? Or this? Should this passage be one paragraph, or three? Should this be two sentences, or combined with a conjunction? A conjunction here, or a semicolon? Is it better like this? Or like this? I like that a lot.

Here is the article from which that metaphor was drawn:  George Saunders: what writers really do when they write.

Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments. The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?

The interesting thing, in my experience, is that the result of this laborious and slightly obsessive process is a story that is better than I am in “real life” – funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining.

I wouldn’t say that’s interesting … fine, okay, maybe it’s interesting, but it also seem inevitable. Obviously if you could edit your personal interactions in the real world through a zillion little incremental adjustments, those interactions would turn out better. Hopefully funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathic … good heavens, I’m describing Groundhog Day, and right here in February, too! That’s very suitable, and this is such a great movie, I should get out my DVD and watch it again, even though I missed February 2nd.

But back to Saunder’s linked post:

When I write, “Bob was an asshole,” and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista,” then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” and then pause and add, “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas,” – I didn’t make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.

But it is more compassionate. Bob has gone from “pure asshole” to “grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person, to whom, normally, he would have been nice”. Bob has changed. He started out a cartoon, on which we could heap scorn, but now he is closer to “me, on a different day”.

This is a great article! I’m glad the post at Friedman’s blog led me to it.

But why did I make those changes? On what basis? On the basis that, if it’s better this new way for me, over here, now, it will be better for you, later, over there, when you read it. … This is a hopeful notion, because it implies that our minds are built on common architecture – that whatever is present in me might also be present in you. … when you start crying at the end of Tolstoy’s story “Master and Man”, you have proved that we have something in common, communicable across language and miles and time, and despite the fact that one of us is dead. Another reason you’re crying: you’ve just realised that Tolstoy thought well of you – he believed that his own notions about life here on earth would be discernible to you, and would move you.

Tolstoy imagined you generously, you rose to the occasion.

By all means, click through and read the whole thing.

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Update: one step back, one step forward

So, I was getting annoyed at the thought of a tiny bit of revision I knew I was going to need to do EVENTUALLY, and last week I got annoyed enough about this that I paused to do a fast revision/trimming pass through the whole story from the third chapter onward. (The first two chapters are peachy and I left them alone.)

The basic thing is, I’m working with a lot of characters (I’m sure you’re not surprised), and while initially I had brought in a named character who has been referred to in other books, with the intention of developing this character, I eventually decided I have more than enough going on without her. Therefore, I took her out of the story completely. Sorry, but there goes a neat female character who could have been important. Maybe we’ll see her later, somewhere else, but not here.

This sort of thing is pretty tedious. Judging from past experience, she’s probably still there in one or two references that I will hopefully catch later. As a plus, removing a character requires quite a bit of re-reading, which makes a good time to do some sentence-level trimming. So I cut 7000 words (not even half what I would have liked to cut, by the way).

Then I referred to my accumulated notes about things to tweak and went back and forth through the manuscript, adding bits, tweaking, and removing those notes. I’m taking about notes that go, basically, “Someone needs to have a conversation about xxxxx so that xxxxx doesn’t come out of nowhere in chapter 15. In fact, it would be best to refer to xxxxx at least twice before chapter 15.” So then I go back and forth looking for good places to put the right kind of conversational mentions of xxxxx. I’m not necessarily trying to be super subtle. I’m pointing at xxxxx with considerable emphasis so the reader will notice it. But in a way that seems natural, obviously, not with any character thinking, “I bet xxxxx will probably be important!” Readers should feel that without any character needing to be nearly that explicit. That’s the aim.

Anyway, then I started moving forward again, winding up chapter 14 and moving forward with chapter 15, and here we are, with xxxxx appearing almost immediately. I actually thought we might get farther into the starlit lands before xxxxx became important, but nope, we have barely had time to look around and think how pretty the glowing flowers are and boom, there it is! This is actually a scene I had in mind from the beginning, I just needed to set it up more clearly.

It’s always fun to write a scene I’ve already imagined in detail. This is true even though the actual details change a lot, generally. A lot of the dialogue and details do remain just as they are in my head.

Also, I believe I will now be able to begin cutting down on characters. I will probably need to do that more later (and, a lot later, I will need to do it a lot more, but probably not until the next book after this). Anyway, cutting down on characters is always helpful. Someday I will write something with ONE character on stage, such as Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell, for example, and that will present a wholly different challenge that is presented from having a lot of important characters in a crowd.

Anyway, the upshot of last week is that I dropped 7000 words and added 7000 words and now I’m just about exactly back where I started in terms of wordcount, but this bit of annoying trivial revision is now behind me and I’m more comfortable about moving forward.

And now I’m going to find out a lot about the starlit lands …

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Recent Reading: Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

All right, so, I’ve read a few other books by Rainbow Rowell; in particular:

Attachments, which I liked a lot – I like epistolary novels – and I think Rowell pulled off the difficult romance in this story, which was, essentially, “I fell in love with you because I got to know you while spying on you, can we possibly have a future?” So that’s a difficult situation.

Fangirl, which I loved very much. This is my favorite of Rowell’s so far.

Carry On, which is the fictional Harry Potter-adjacent fanfic the protagonist is writing in Fangirl, so it’s a neat meta concept as well as being a story that stands on its own. I doubt I would have read it except for its connection to Fangirl. I liked it a lot more than I expected, but I didn’t go on with the second or third books in that series.

I haven’t read the well-known Eleanor and Park, which I think might have been Rowell’s debut book, successful enough to kick her permanently up to semi-household-name status, meaning people who like contemporary YA have probably read at least some of her books. E&P might be on my TBR pile – I don’t actually remember whether I picked up the full book, a sample, or just have it vaguely on my radar. I haven’t read her Landline either, and in fact I’m not sure I knew about that one before I wrote this post.

But, for whatever reason, when I opened another story by Rowell, it wasn’t E&P, it was her newer one, Slow Dance. Which I note is just $1.99 at the time I’m writing this post (which was earlier this week, not ten minutes ago).

***

Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together … everybody but Shiloh and Cary. They were just friends. Best friends. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They promised each other than, no matter what, their friendship would never change. …

Now [Cary is a lieutenant commander in the Navy], Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there – and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

***

Okay, so, this story definitely didn’t bump Fangirl from its place as my favorite book by Rainbow Rowell. I didn’t like it as much as any of her other books. I started reading it last year some time, drifted away from it, came back and read a bit more of it, drifted away again … and finally read the last quarter of it, maybe the final fifth, much faster and with a lot more enthusiasm, a few days ago. This is not generally the way I read novels. To be fair, it’s becoming more common. Even so, when I drift away from a novel, I don’t usually go back to it.

So, I read Fangirl fast, Carry On fast, Landline in basically one sitting. what is different about this story?

Well, first, it’s a braided novel. Past and present are braided together, and so are Shiloh and Cary’s points of view. I don’t object to this, theoretically. I’m fine with braided structures, including complicated braided structures, which this is. Rowell sets this up with a present-day meeting between Shiloh and Cary at this wedding, then does a flashback to high school, and then the structure becomes complicated because the flashbacks aren’t in chronological order, or I don’t think they are. Frankly, I lost track. This definitely isn’t a simple alternating present/past structure, because, for example, the first eight chapters are present-present-present-past-past-past-present-past, and so on.

I think the first fifteen or so chapters are from Shiloh’s pov and then we get the first Cary pov chapter, and I know for sure I lost interest for a while at that point. Switching pov is hard for me, especially if I didn’t expect it, and after that many chapters from Shiloh’s pov, I didn’t expect it here. It’s worse if the pov switch happens during a period of misunderstanding or regret or some other negative emotion is going on during and after the switch, which is also the case here.

Also, another thing, the chapters are very short. There are 84 chapters in 390 pages, which is an average of 4.8 pages per chapter. But this is an average. Some chapters are just a page long. (I don’t know why I’m seeing pages in ebooks now, either.)

Actually, I don’t even know that I’d call all these things “chapters.” A lot of them, maybe the majority, are actually vignettes. They don’t really have the structure of chapters, and maybe that’s because each vignette is suspended in time, as it were, because the story is being told so thoroughly out of order. In particular, most chapters set in the past are really vignettes, while most of the present-day chapters are really chapters (I think. I really did lose track).

So, there we are, with a complicated braided structure, consisting of short chapters and even shorter vignettes, shifting from the present day to various moments in the past. Which is a lot to handle, and I expect it gave Rowell absolute fits to put this together. It might be intellectually interesting to label the 84 chapters with time cues and two words about what’s going on in each chapter and see if it’s possible to figure out why Rowell settled on the final order of scenes she chose, but I’m not going to do that because it’s more trouble than I want to go to.

But the more important issue for me was, I really did not like Shiloh much as a person. Or rather, I didn’t like her much as a pov character; she’s all right as a person, I suppose. Young Shiloh got in her own way so much, which is frustrating, and Present-Day Shiloh kind of does too, which is also frustrating. I liked Cary better as a pov character, but he was secondary – we don’t get as many scenes from his pov. And he’s so into Shiloh. Which is fine, I guess. But he is nonverbal at the most irritating times. I don’t think I was entirely sold on this relationship because I just didn’t like Shiloh all that much, and I particularly didn’t like Young Shiloh. (She did improve.) (To be fair, so did Cary.)

Also, the heart of the problem was very much lack of communication. Plus being young and kind of idiotic, but mostly it’s lack of communication. This really is one of the stories where you want to shake the protagonists and shout, “Tell him what you’re thinking! Tell him what you’re feeling! And you – tell her what you’re thinking and feeling!”

***

I really should say here that I liked the latter quarter or fifth of the story a lot better. Present-Day Shiloh is an improvement on Young Shiloh, she and Cary finally have various important conversations, and honestly, they might not – probably would not – have been able to sort things out as well as kids as they can now that they’re in their thirties. It’s realistic for them to have these serious miscommunication problems when they’re eighteen. The way they’re shown at that age, it’s honestly hard to see how they could have gotten their lives in order at that point.

I will just note in passing that, from my current perspective, getting your life in order when you’re thirty-three doesn’t seem like it’s THAT slow, either.

But my point is, both protagonists are indeed more mature and that’s fine. They both have lives, and I did like seeing them work out their present-day problems, which have much less to do with lack of communication and a lot more to do with complicated family relationships, so that was far better.

There are some great moments in this story as Shiloh and Cary finally work things out. I like this a lot:

Shiloh led him downstairs. She’d been planning on not touching him in front of her children. But the landscape of her worries had shifted. She held his hand.

Cary has had a rough day, and I like this idea about Shiloh having  a plan about how to handle this relationship in front of her children, but now the landscape of her worries has shifted. That’s a great line, and it’s also the right choice, a good decision from Shiloh, which is nice to see.

One of the funniest bits is when Cary puts on his dress whites to visit his mother in a nursing home type of place – his mom likes to see him in uniform – and then

When they got out of the car, Cary produced a very impressive hat. White, with a black brim and a big gold anchor. “You look like a cruise ship captain!”

“No, they look like me.”

I might have laughed out loud. Plus, the whole thing with Cary’s mother and complicated family, and Shiloh’s kids and her complicated family, this was all handled really well and I liked this part of the story a lot. Also the way Cary and Shiloh finally worked out their relationship and their lives.

So … I wound up liking this story. But it was astonishingly slow for me for an astonishingly long time. I would literally put it aside for a month or more at a time. And yes, I was doing stuff that slowed me down, but if a story is really catchy, I read it, and this wasn’t.

I should start a list of “novels I eventually finish,” because the list of novels that take me months to read but that I actually do finish is really short. I can think of just a few others offhand, such as Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo series, where a horrible thing happened and I literally set the series aside for five years or so before going back to it and finishing it. At least I can say this wasn’t that bad.

But it doesn’t make me want to move Eleanor and Park or Landline up to the top of my TBR list, either.

Fangirl is really good, by the way. And Attachments. If you’ve read Carry On and the sequels, what do you all think of the other two Simon Snow books?

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Just give me the $%()$^#^ Links, dammit

So, have you heard about the different ways to stop the Google AI Overview thing from turning up at the top of your search results? Because there’s the easy way and the funny way, so I thought I would share those with you.

Here’s the easy (and polite) way: Just type your search and add, at the end of your search term, -ai

There you go. The AI overview will not appear (at least not right now). According to the linked article, the minus sign followed by various (many?) text strings will do the same thing.

Here’s the possibly more satisfying but less polite method: If you type your search and add the word “f*ck” or variants, or other curse words, to your search, that will also stop the AI overview from appearing.

I really think that’s hilarious, but I have to say, typing -ai at the end of a search is really easier. As well as more polite.

More methods are described at the link.

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Poetry Thursday: How long is the night, brother?

I was actually looking for poems for a different reason, tripped over this poem by Henry van Dyke, and paused because I really liked it.

Day And Night Henry Van Dyke 

How long is the night, brother,
  And how long is the day?
Oh, the day’s too short for a happy task,
  And the day’s too short for play;
And the night’s too short for the bliss of love,
  For look, how the edge of the sky grows gray,
While the stars die out in the blue above,
  And the wan moon fades away.
How short is the day, brother,
  And how short is the night?

Oh, the day’s too long for a heavy task,
  And long, long, long is the night,
When the wakeful hours are filled with pain,
  And the sad heart waits for the thing it fears,
And sighs for the dawn to come again,—
  The night is a thousand years!

How long is a life, dear God,
  And how fast does it flow?
The measure of life is a flame in the soul:
  It is neither swift nor slow.
But the vision of time is the shadow cast
  By the fleeting world on the body’s wall;
When it fades there is neither future nor past,
  But love is all in all.

***************

I have previously only encountered (that I remember) one poem of van Dyke’s, which I liked a lot. Then here this one is, and I like it a lot too. After reading that, I went looking for more poems by van Dyke. Here’s a very short one:

***************

Time Is

Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not.

***************

That’s wonderful. I think Henry van Dyke does a lot with a very simple format there. Here’s one with a very different format and style. The link goes to Project Gutenberg, where a whole bunch more poems can be found:

***************

LIGHT BETWEEN THE TREES

Long, long, long the trail
Through the brooding forest-gloom,
Down the shadowy, lonely vale
Into silence, like a room
Where the light of life has fled,
And the jealous curtains close
Round the passionless repose
Of the silent dead.

Plod, plod, plod away,
Step by step in mouldering moss;
Thick branches bar the day
Over languid streams that cross
Softly, slowly, with a sound
In their aimless creeping
Like a smothered weeping,
Through the enchanted ground.

"Yield, yield, yield thy quest,"
Whispers through the woodland deep;
"Come to me and be at rest;
"I am slumber, I am sleep."
Then the weary feet would fail,
But the never-daunted will
Urges "Forward, forward still!
"Press along the trail!"

Breast, breast, breast the slope!
See, the path is growing steep.
Hark! a little song of hope
When the stream begins to leap.
Though the forest, far and wide,
Still shuts out the bending blue,
We shall finally win through,
Cross the long divide.

On, on, onward tramp!
Will the journey never end?
Over yonder lies the camp;
Welcome waits us there, my friend.
Can we reach it ere the night?
Upward, upward, never fear!
Look, the summit must be near;
See the line of light!

Red, red, red the shine
Of the splendour in the west,
Glowing through the ranks of pine,
Clear along the mountain-crest!
Long, long, long the trail
Out of sorrow's lonely vale;
But at last the traveller sees
Light between the trees!
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Discoverability and Trustability

This post by James Scott Bell at Kill Zone Blog strikes me as handling the topic of discoverability in a more sensible way than usual: Staying Afloat in the Roiling Sea of Books.

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Industry observer Mike Shatzkin added this [says Bell]:

I had reason to learn recently that Ingram has 16 million individual titles loaded in their Lightning Source database ready to be delivered as a bound book to you within 24 hours, if not sooner. So every book coming into the world today is competing against 16 million other books that you might buy. …

Of discoverability, agent Rachelle Gardner recently observed:

How can any single book stand out in that large of a field? It’s very difficult. The problem is known as discoverability and it means the odds are stacked against us when we want to bring readers’ attention to our books.

***

And here I do want to pause and add, as I’m pretty sure I have before: I completely agree that discoverability is a big thing. But I don’t think it’s nearly as much of a problem that there are so many books available as everyone else seems to believe. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something. However, saying that there are 4 million books published per year, or 16 million books available titles in the Lightning Source database, or 50 million books available on Amazon — none of that is in any way relevant to how many titles are visible.

When a new book by Stephen King hits the shelves, everyone knows about it. This book is highly visible. When a new book by Naomi Kritzer comes out, some people are aware of it. This book is somewhat visible. When an excruciatingly terrible new book by some self-published author is published on Amazon, no one knows about it. This book is invisible. We see lots of posts that assert, for example, that “We live in a world full of terrible e-book titles that ruin ebook discovery and make it difficult to find a good book” and this is simply not the case because no one ever sees those terrible books.

Amazon does not put them in front of readers. These books do not come up in search results unless you very specifically search for the title and author, and sometimes not even then. (I have sometimes tried to find a book after being given the title and author’s name, and the book is unfindable unless you search for some variant of title and author, but does not pop up if you search for the full title plus author name. I don’t know why, but suspect something is screwed up in the metadata.) These books cannot hamper the discoverability of good books because they are invisible to readers. It doesn’t matter how many there are.

It’s not that discoverability isn’t THE issue; of course it is. But that’s not because of competition from other books, especially not competition from terrible books. The problem purely involves getting your book in front of readers who would like it, period. Nor are you exactly competing with all the other good books out there. If a reader likes cozy mysteries and does not like taut political thrillers, then the authors of cozy mysteries are not competing with the authors of taut political thrillers. AND the authors of cozy mysteries are not exactly in competition with each other, either. You can tell this has to be true because the odds are so high that if those authors read a new cozy mystery by a new author and love it, they will say so, to each other and to their readers, because authors don’t keep that sort of thing secret. The reason authors don’t try to prevent readers from discovering other authors is because competition isn’t actually very important when it comes to discoverability.

What is the key? Well, getting your book in front of readers who would like it. Readers who read a lot. If someone reads five books per year, then they aren’t going to read your book; they’re going to read Stephen King’s latest and whatever the hot thing is in fantasy and so on. You aren’t competing for their attention because you aren’t going to get it, so there’s no point. You want your book in front of the readers who read 100 or more books per year … alas, not me anymore … and who like your genre and tone. If you can get your book in front of those readers, then your readership is likely to grow over time until you’re doing okay as an author.

Toward the end of this post, Bell offers this list:

***

A) Write the very best books (plural) you can, at least one per year.

B) Keep learning and growing in the craft.

C) Decide what kind of writer you want to be. If self-publishing is on your mind, consider:

Can you be sufficiently productive?Do you have the discipline to learn basic business practices?Are you willing to invest between $500 and $2,000 for cover design, editing, and proofreading for each book?

***

Let me pause here.

What, you may wonder, does Bell thinks are basic business practices? Other than keeping reasonable track of expenses versus income, which is probably the most basic business practice ever. On clicking through, I found that is actually a link to a book of his: How to Make a Living as a Writer. Here is the table of contents. Here’s a screenshot:

Hmm. I think … Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 look potentially useful. And perhaps Chapters 17, 22. and possibly 24.

Well, that was a digression. Back to the other half of Bell’s list from the linked post:

D) If traditional publishing is your goal, ask:

Am I patient enough to wait up to 18 months for my book to come out?Will my agent fight for more author-friendly non-compete and reversion-of-rights clauses?Am I ready with a plan should my publisher drop me?

***

And this is where I said to myself, “You know, this looks right to me.” Including the last item: Am I ready with a plan should my publisher drop me, because I think that’s pretty likely and I think you should have a plan for that. I also think this should be the same plan for item four, not included in Bell’s list, but I think it should be:

4. Am I ready with a plan should I get fed up with traditional publishing OR write a book my agent can’t place with a traditional publisher OR feel I have gained enough of a readership to transition to self-publishing?

Because I think you should have that kind of plan, because — this is admittedly based on my own experience — but I think most authors who begin with traditional publishing are pretty likely to want or need to move toward self-publishing at some point. These days, various hybrid options are appearing and those options do expand the possibilities for authors who want to move toward self-publishing, or who decide they need to do so.

Then Bell says something even more important:

As I argued a couple of years ago, we need to get out of “discoverability thinking” and into “trustability thinking.”

You should be thinking that each new offering is an opportunity to prove to readers that you deliver the goods. As you do this, time after time, trust in you grows. Consumers buy more from businesses they trust. Readers are consumers and you are a business.

I don’t think I agree, exactly. I think discoverability is essential, absolutely essential. But I do think that trustability is also essential, and this is the first time I can remember seeing anybody mention this. I haven’t thought about it that way myself. From the post linked just above:

Trustability does not mean you don’t market what you publish. It does mean, however, that you have realistic expectations and are patient, knowing that it is going to take you a number of years and consistent production to establish a significant upward trajectory––if your readers trust you. … Make it easy for a happy reader to sign up for your email list. You need to build an email list because that’s how you directly communicate with those who are putting their trust in you. And through it all, continue to do the following: Keep up a flow of production, keep growing as a writer, keep learning about business.

I think that note about patience is important. And the idea about consistency, too. Basically, I just think this idea of trustability is important. But I think it goes along with discoverability. They’re both key for authors. That’s what I think.

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