David Kudler's Blog, page 25

Last Day of the Kickstarter Drive!

Today is the final day to help launch Stillpoint Digital Press’s first original title by contributing to the Kickstarter drive for Sail Away: Journeys of a Merchant Seaman! We’ve already achieved our minimum funding goal thanks to the support of a wonderful group of backers. This guarantees that we’ll be able to get the book completed as envisioned and on schedule. Any additional pledges will ensure that this nautical memoir will reach the audience that it deserves.

If you’ve already pledged, your support is gratefully appreciated! If you’ve been waiting, pledge now and reserve one of the very first copies of the print and/or ebook edition. The link is: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3...

The (Other) Little Death

Painting © Helene Steele

My fourteen-year-old interviewed an artist yesterday for Fastforward, the local kids’ newspaper: a wonderful painter by the name of Helen Steele. I went along as chauffeur and photographer.

Julia asked some great questions, which got Ms. Steele talking eloquently about the most interesting thing of all: her process as an artist. She talked about how she starts a painting–not the way that I’d have thought, with an image in mind, but by working with texture and color until she sees something on the canvas and then begins to work to bring it out. Fascinating.

“There comes a point in every painting, though,” Steele said, “where I have to take what I thought I was doing–the thing that I’ve been so focused on–and kill it off, let it die. And that’s usually when the painting really takes off.”

Her comment hit me between the eyes like one of the diamond pickaxes from the games of Minecraft that Julia’s friends are always talking about.

I realized that the same thing was true of just about every writing or editing project that I’ve been involved with: that at some point, I have to take the part of the book that I’ve been fussing at and obsessing over for hours or weeks or months (or, in the case of a book I finished writing recently, for four years) and kill it. Let it die.

And that made me think of the schema of the Hero’s Journey mapped out in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. There’s a point in most hero tales where the hero (or heroine) has to face a death–either real or metaphoric. Harry Potter allows himself to be killed. Luke Skywalker cuts off his own head (though he thinks it’s Darth Vader’s at the time). Odysseus goes down with his ship before washing up naked on the beach to be found by Nausicaa.

It’s only after this death that the hero can reach his or her potential–can become truly a hero. The old self has to perish in order for the true self to be born.

In every creative project, there’s that moment: the pinnacle of frustration and the abyss of despair. And it’s only by letting go of the thing that we think is so important–the sequence or passage or sentence or character or scene or chapter that we’ve been banging up against that we can discover what the heart of the piece we’re working on truly is.

So, hard as it is, we have to learn to welcome that little death and learn to see it as the narrow, dark passage to the unknown, glorious fulfillment of our own creative work.

Riverrun, to a Monitor Near You — Joyce Manuscripts Now Online

The Irish National Library releases James Joyce's manuscripts online

The Irish National Library has very quietly taken advantage of the entry this year into the public domain of the works of Irish novelist James Joyce by posting its horde of rare Joyce manuscripts on its online archive.

The files include a marked-up manuscript of the “Circe” chapter of Ulysses, early proofs of Finnegans Wake (dubbed soon after its publication “the greatest novel that nobody’s read”) and a vast collection of what the INL calls “the Joyce Papers 2002, c. 1903–1928.” According to The Irish Times:

A very important part of Irish heritage is now easily accessible. There is no need for special visits to the library, and no need to obtain a reader’s ticket. Instead, the documents are there for all to see online….

There are two initial points to bear in mind: due to the rushed nature of the library’s action (in response to a pre-emptive strike by the Joyce scholar Danis Rose) the photographs of the manuscripts are in low-resolution PDF form. The quality, it must be said, is not great, so that Joyce’s hand, especially in the Ulysses manuscripts, is difficult to decipher (not to mention that, in the case of the notes, they are often crossed through in thick crayon).

The library has promised that the manuscripts will be available in “very high-resolution formats” from June 16th next, and has also declared that it is “developing new image-viewing software which will ensure that online images of the James Joyce manuscripts can be researched in minute detail by NLI website visitors”.

The other issue is that the manuscripts have been placed online in a very raw state, without any real context or annotation, let alone transcription. There is no reason why all this should not follow in due course.

For the past thirty years, academic access to Joyce’s work has been problematic. Joyce’s grandson, Stephen, set himself up as the gatekeeper of his grandfather’s and of his family’s legacy. He sued academics who wished to publish versions of Joyce’s letters and either refused to grant permission to quote from James Joyce’s work, or charged fees that have been termed “extortionate.”

However, on January 1 of this year, the seventieth anniversary of Joyce’s death, his copyright passed into the public domain in the European Union.

I’m not a Joycean scholar, certainly, nor am I a master of textual forensics. But having loved Joyce’s work since I first dove into his short-story collection Dubliners when I was a college freshman, the opportunity to see the working papers of one of the English language’s greatest writers is more than a little exciting. And as someone who’s edited two books on Joyce’s novels and is in the middle of editing a video series on the subject, I’m thrilled that this rich legacy is now available for anyone to peruse.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

Maurice Sendak, Author of Where the Wild Things Are, Dies at 83

Image © copyright 1963, Maurice Sendak

If you were to ask me what piece of literature has had the most profound impact on me, I wouldn’t have to think at all. It was Maurice Sendak’s picture-book masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are.

Understand, books are, in a very real way, my life. I’ve always been a passionate reader–a story addict. Books have been a profound part of my mind, my study, and my working life. I could name hundreds of titles that infected my imagination, that moved my soul, that blew my mind.

But none crawled under my skin more deeply than Sendak’s diamond of a hero journey.

I was born in 1962, the year before Where the Wild Things Are was published. When I started learning to read, I know I had dozens of books of my own, but I can’t really remember any, excepting an illustrated collection of Hans Christian Anderson tales, a tiny box containing Sendak’s Nutshell Library (which sparked my lifelong love of chicken soup with rice), and one well-worn copy of Where the Wild Things Are.

Max’s story—his wolf suit, his rage, the transformation of his room, his odyssey “in and out of weeks and over a year,” and of course his sojourn among the Wild Things (which I was delighted years later to discover were based on Sendak’s aunts and uncles) inhabited my imagination utterly. I was Max. I sailed on his boat. I ruled over the Wild Things, baying at the moon with them and swinging through the trees. And I returned to my room, transported in every sense, to find my supper, still hot.

As I grew older, I stopped reading the book. It passed on to my younger brother. But I never forgot it.

In and out of weeks and across a quarter century, I found myself a father. My eldest was two, and I was astonished to realize that among our prodigious collection of picture books we didn’t have Where the Wild Things Are. So I bought it.

As soon as I got home, I hugged Sasha and invited her to read with me—always a favorite activity for us both. I plopped her up on my lap, pulled out the book, opened to the first page…

On the night Max wore his wolf suit….

And the hair went up on my arms.

I knew every word. I remembered every line of every drawing. Twenty-five years after I had last opened the book, it was still there, etched indelibly into my mind.

A few years later, just before the publication of my own first (and, to date, only) picture book, I wrote Mr. Sendak to thank him—to tell him how much I had loved his books, first as a child and now as a parent and neophyte author. I recounted the story of reading “Wild Things” to my daughter and told him that he had taught me the power of children’s books, that they don’t merely (merely!) teach and delight, but that they truly can shape young minds at the most profound level.

He sent me back a post card (decorated with Wild Things) thanking me, and wishing me well in my literary endeavors.

Whatever books I’ve edited or written, whatever books I go on to have the good fortune to create, I will always know that Max and his wolf suit are lurking somewhere between the lines, looking to get into mischief of one kind and another.

Farewell, Maurice Sendak. Fare well.

Stillpoint Digital Press:

So, remember the news I’ve been hinting at?

Here it is:

The Human Face of Digital Publishing

The ebook explosion has promised a new relationship between authors and their readers—one that is more immediate and personal. And yet writers looking to take advantage of this new medium find themselves in a familiar bind: either seek to publish through a traditional publisher and receive pennies on the dollar, self-publish, or use a service that is happy to publish your book for you (for either a fee or a percentage of sales)–but without providing any editorial services.

Stillpoint Digital Press is an ebook publisher that provides a human touch. We are an experienced publisher of electronic and print books, ready to help you convert your manuscript or your print volume (whether in- or out-of-print) into a vibrant, exciting digital book. We will help you edit, create a cover, design, and sell your book.

A Price to Fit Your Pocket

How much does this cost? It depends on how much help you feel you need. Our general fee for converting a book with a minimum of design complications (complex tables, images, verse, etc.), copy-editing it, designing the book, creating a cover and posting it to all of the major ebook outlets (Amazon’s Kindle Store®, Apple’s iBookstore®, Barnes and Nobles’s Nook Corner®, the Google Ebook store and more) is either 40% of any money that comes in or $200 plus 20%. If your book is more complex, or if you need more editorial assistance, we would be happy to negotiate either an hourly rate or a percentage of your sales.

Get Published, Right Now!

Do you have a book you’ve always wanted to share with the world? Do you have a work that’s gone out of print—or that’s still in print, but which the publisher wants to take 75% for selling as an ebook? Contact us at editor@stillpointdigital.com and make your publishing dream a reality!

At the stillpoint of the turning world

There the dance is

—TS Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

NOTE: Stillpoint is a small press; we regretfully reserve the right to pass on your project. So don’t wait!

Psst! Check it out!

A project (with attendant website) that I’ve been working on for months has gone live:

It’s still in the early stages, but I’d love you to check it out and tell me what you think!