Doug Walsh's Blog, page 9

New Year’s in Los Angeles

This week’s post is over at my travel blog Two Far Gone. You can read it here.

My wife and I spent the New Year’s weekend down in Los Angeles with friends of ours, whose family hosts a large New Year’s Day feast each year. What makes it special is that it’s done according to Japanese tradition and features a number of dishes with symbolic significance. Of course, since it was L.A. and New Year’s, we also did plenty of sight-seeing around downtown, the beach towns, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.

I’ll be back next Friday with another Friday Links post.

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Friday Links #25 – A DRM-Free Snapshot in Time

I spent the bulk of yesterday taking a trip down memory lane. The destination: my long-forgotten iTunes folder, home to hundreds of CDs I ripped and countless songs I downloaded. Steinbeck was wrong: you can go home again.

Since shifting my listening habits entirely to Spotify several years ago — and the subsequent death of my decade-old iPod Shuffle (years in storage did what so much sweat and spilled Nuun couldn’t) — I’ve been a more passive listener. I subscribe to playlists that others curate and receive a drip-feed of new songs and artists that I can’t identify. It’s always on, streaming from my computer, my phone, my car, or one of the wireless speakers in my house. But I seldom bother to identify title or artist.

I hate running with a smartphone. They’re too big. Too bulky. The Mighty looks great, but is pricey. And I refuse to re-install iTunes on my computer so replacing the Shuffle was not an option. Fortunately, Sandisk, the memory company, makes the Clip Jam. I put a Christmas gift card to use and picked one up for $30. It’s got a built-in FM tuner, 8gb memory (with microSD card slot for expansion), works with Audible books, and will play any DRM-free music you already own.

Hence the dive into my music folder. What fun it was to go through the 44 gigs worth of music I haven’t looked at it in years to pick out the ones I want on my new running mix. I spent hours yesterday double-clicking so many songs I hadn’t heard in years. The soundtrack of my high school and college years; the bands I saw live and never thought about again; the one-hit-wonders; the soundtracks; the music I trained to a decade ago; the entire R.E.M. catalog for crying out loud! Artist by artist, album by album, song by song, I went through them all in a hunt for the unprotected .m4a files — damn you iTunes and your blasted protected .m4p files! I usually paid the extra twenty cents for the DRM-free 128 bit songs, but that wasn’t always the option. Like when I bought Faith No More’s The Real Thing because my favorite song of theirs, Zombie Eaters, was unconscionably absent from their Greatest Hits album.

Yes, you’ll hear P.M. Dawn on my new running mix. And yes, it might unintentionally remind me of my high school sweetheart. But it — and she — will be replaced again, immediately, by another song and corresponding memory. I’ll be cruising down trail listening to Guns N Roses, The Police, Blink-182, Jane’s Addiction, G. Love, INXS, Bad Religion, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, and even some Moby and Massive Attack. There’re songs from the Singles soundtrack and Pump Up the Volume too. Every one of them with a specific memory. Long live the 90s!

I was contacted recently about a strategy guide I wrote back in 2003. Out of curiosity, I dug out the disc I saved my files to and popped it in. Corrupt. Was it the disc, the reader, the new Windows 10? I don’t know. All I know is 14 years isn’t too long. Chances are those old music CDs I sold 3-for-$1 at a garage sale would still work. I’m thrilled the digitized files do. And you better believe I’ve got them backed up to three drives.

Save your music collection: it’s (almost) better than any photo album.

Bookish Links

The Dude, The Port Huron Statement, and The Seattle Seven – For fans of The Big Lebowski (that’s pretty much everyone, right?), this article by Colin Patrick at mental_floss sheds some light on what those bona fides claimed by The Dude actually refer to.
Would You Read the Next Sentence? – Some of you may recall that I posted some commentary last year about the first lines in each of the books I read in 2014 and 2015. Here’s a selection of ten first-sentences, some you might recognize. Would you keep reading?
You Could Get Lost in this Alternate Universe of Used and Rare Books in Downtown L.A. –  I was happy to spot this article last week about The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, before my trip there for New Year’s. This shop was our first stop after dinner last Friday. It’s a pretty neat shop, though not quite as magical as the article makes it sound. Some very nice book-statues though.
22 of the Best Single Sentences on Writing  – Spend any time on Twitter and you’ll soon think that writers spend most of their days dreaming up quotes about how wonderful/hard/impossible/inspirational their chosen field is. While cute, the quotes are meaningless. Here are 20 quotes that are actually helpful.
The Seattle Times Best Books of 2016 – Seattle is routinely ranked as one of the best-read cities in the country. Here are the books that captured the city’s literary critics attention in 2016. I added a few to my To-Read list. Any catch your interest?

Bonus Link

Serving is a Disadvantage in Some Olympic Sports –  Is it better to serve or to receive? That depends on which sport you play, and whether you’re male or female. This is an interesting look inside the world of serve-based sports like tennis, badminton, table tennis, and volleyball. And it explains some of the riskier approaches players take, particularly in volleyball.

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The Alchemy of My Year

Earlier this year I set myself a goal of reading 30 books in 2016. And with two weeks and two books to go, I happened across a list of shorter reads. One of the books on that list, a surprisingly brief novel at just over 200 pages, was one I had long wanted to read but never prioritized doing so. Now was the time. So after blazing through another one of Steven Pressfield’s micro-books, The Authentic Swing, I turned my attention to what not only became my favorite book of 2016, but one of my favorites of all time. That book was The Alchemist.

The Alchemist is a warmhearted philosophical tale, bordering on proverb and fable, about a young Andalusian shepherd who goes in search of his treasure. His journey is not without setbacks. He quickly finds himself in debt, out of money, and delayed. Yet he persists. Because the shepherd knows that it’s not just treasure that he seeks, but his own Personal Legend.

It’s rather ironic that I should read this after The Authentic Swing as so much of Pressfield’s works, particularly The War of Art and Turning Pro feel like the tough love companions to The Alchemist. Where Pressfield commands you to wage battle against your inner resistance, Paulo Coelho charms you into understanding the reasons why, swinging his story in front of you like a talisman. The Alchemist is a guide to life fulfillment. It’s inspiration. It’s encouragement. And it’s justification (for those who need it) to chase your dreams.

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

Closer Than When I Started

On my bulletin board is a four-year timeline I created in the summer of 2015. The timeline details a rough plan for how I am to spend 2016-2020 launching my career as a novelist, i.e. pursuing my Personal Legend. The timeline contains plucked-from-the-ether, self-imposed target dates for drafts, agent queries, and everything else related to the business of being an author-preneur. It was educated guesswork at its finest, written down in the vacuum of best-case-scenarios.

The first year is over and there was progress. There were also setbacks and distractions and life. According to the timeline on the wall, I’m behind schedule. But that’s not how I choose to look at it. I choose the shepherd’s view.

“The hills of Andalusia were only two hours away, but there was an entire desert between him and the Pyramids. Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure… the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn’t matter.”

By the end of 2016, Year One, I had hoped to have already completed the second draft of my first novel. I have not yet completed the entire first draft (something I expect to have done by the end of February). While that is a disappointment, the first 70 pages of my book have already advanced beyond the third draft thanks to the incredible critique group I was accepted into. The quality of my writing has improved and I have such a greater understanding of my story. My outline has expanded and though it may be taking longer, the work is of higher quality.

I will never be one of those authors who crank out multiple books a year. That’s not how I work, it’s also not how the books I love were written. The books that stuck with me, the ones I recommend to others, were all labors of love that took the authors multiple years. That’s the art I hope to create (though improving to one per year would be nice).

Life Battles the Dream

Last year my wife and I returned home from the pursuit of another dream, the treasure was travel. The reentry has been smooth, but not without its challenges. Namely, housing. Selling a home in western Washington in 2014 and trying to buy in 2016 is, shall we say, not recommended. In fact, it’s essentially impossible. It is tempting to kick ourselves over our choice, especially when surrounded by friends celebrating the massive amounts of equity that has poured into their homes, or those who have now bought nicer homes and rent out their prior ones for mortgage-covering profits.

That could have been us, I think to myself. And then I open a book. Any book. And there’s a very good chance I have been to the region, if not the exact town, in which the story takes place. And I love that.

“It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. Tangier was no longer a strange city, and he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world.”

I’ve been to Tangier. In fact, here’s a photo of me trying to negotiate some zip-ties and rubber tubing at a hardware store in Tangier. Much of The Alchemist takes place in Tangier, the deserts east of Morocco, and the Andalusia region of Spain. All are areas we bicycled through (though not the greater Sahara, obviously). Tangier is a town we spent 10 days in. A town where a produce merchant greeted me with a hug each day and insisted on giving me free tomatoes as a sign of gratitude for my loyalty. It was, in fact, our favorite town in Morocco.

As I said to a friend the other night, twenty years from now, an extra fifty or a hundred grand in equity isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. But having those travel memories, and being able to relate so much more to the books I read, will mean so much more.

The Pursuit Continues

The shepherd boy spent a year getting just two hours closer to his treasure. Yet, in that year, he had learned new skills and filled his pockets with enough gold to buy twice as many sheep as he ever had before. He gained experience and knowledge. And though he was physically no closer to his goal than when he began, he was far more prepared. His odds of success were far greater because of the year’s so-called delay.

As I prepare for the second year of my pursuit, and the terrifying dark of night before the dawn that will be a finished manuscript, I can look back at this first year and count many successes as well.

December, 2016 will mark my seventh consecutive month of increased year-over-year sales for my book One Lousy Pirate .
Not yet counting my final December numbers, I’ve managed to increase my platform (i.e. audience) by ~450% this year.
I will finish 2016 with a total word count of roughly 360,000 words. Breakdown: 28% fiction, 20% blogging, 40% videogames, 13% other.
I armed myself with a team of writers whose weekly critiques and encouragement have helped sharpen my craft beyond my own capabilities.
As mentioned above, I met my goal of reading 30 books this year.

These are the marks of progress that I can look to should I feel that I’m only two hours (or in my case, 208 first-draft pages) closer to my Personal Legend. I wish you the best of luck on your own personal journeys in 2017 and the years to come. And, as Paulo Coelho wrote in The Alchemist…

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

Happy New Year. See you in January.

*All quotes included in this post are taken from The Alchemist, a book I highly encourage everyone to read.

Post Image by Dorothy, used under Creative Commons.

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Friday Links #24: The New Year Started Already

Maybe it’s burn out. Maybe it’s just the end-of-year distractions, the weather, or the promise of having a clean slate arriving on the first of January (funny how the fresh start that is every waking morning doesn’t carry the same heft). Whatever the reason, the end-of-year blues are spreading. To me, to others in my critique group, and maybe to you too.

Side-effects are many, but the most common include a lack of motivation, a nagging urge to make excuses, and the tendency to promise yourself that you’ll be more productive come January 1st.

Whether it’s an exercise regiment you’re trying to stick with, some household chores you’re wanting to get done, or some sort of personal or professional task you’re struggling towards, like writing a novel, learning an instrument, or reading in a foreign language (i.e. the trifecta of failed resolutions), I have three tips to help you get started yesterday.

1: Seek Inspiration in Craft

Regardless your goal, someone has done it before. And they’ve told their tale. If it was worth doing, there’s already a book about it, a how-to video on YouTube, or a blog devoted to it. Trust me on this. When I find my motivation waning, especially as I plod through the murky middle of my novel, I find a fresh dose of inspiration in books that deal with the craft of storytelling. Reading of all kinds usually spurs my imagination and serves as a good example, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reading a how-to book dealing with some aspect of fiction writing, and had to stop to jot down an idea for my own book. Arming myself with fresh ideas is a surefire way to guarantee that I’ll be back in the writer’s chair asap.

I’ve read books on gardening that inspired me to want to start a micro-farm; I’ve read books on feats of endurance and travel that inspired me to travel the world by bike. If you’re not going to actively begin working on your task right now: then at least motivate yourself through the works of others who’ve gone before you. 

2: Condense Your Plan

I thought my first draft would have been done in June. Or October. Certainly by the end of November, if not Christmas at worst. And each time those dates came and went, I sat idly by realizing that life, other work, and the challenge of the task had proven that my goals were not only arbitrary, but not based in reality. Now that I can see the finish line and have a clearer understanding of exactly what my workflow is — and how I work best — I have put together a calendar that takes me from the middle of December through the end of January. 6 weeks, 24 tasks. Accomplish those two dozen tasks and the first major goal will be completed. It’s so easy to look at the new calendar and give yourself a goal for doing something by May. Or maybe by the end of summer. Don’t fall into that trap. If you’re starting a major project, identify the first major goal and set the end of January as your target date. Then break it into smaller chunks. so you know what you should be working on every day.

I’ve got 22 scenes left to write to finish my first draft. Instead of continuing to “try to get one or two done a week” while I also revise and rewrite earlier scenes with my critique group, I’m committing to writing a new scene every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, leaving Wednesday and Thursday for work on earlier material. I outlined exactly which scene I need to work on for every day now through January 31st.

3: Celebrate Your Successes

It’s tempting to doubt the worthiness of your goal, to think that all the hard work is just a waste of time. That nothing good will ever come out of it. Leaving aside the personal satisfaction from gaining a new skill or accomplishing a major task (and that’s really all that matters, in the end), you need to look to your past successes for inspiration. If you’re the type of person to dream big, and have big goals, then certainly you’ve accomplished something in your past. Or, if your’e trying something for the first time, and have been working on it for a period of time, look back over the prior months and years for rays of hope. Perhaps there were some signs that there is an audience waiting for you to finish, but you haven’t noticed yet.

By investing time in this blog, by giving presentations, and by being minimally active on social media, I’ve managed to grow my audience by nearly 500% in 2016. I can choose to either wallow in despair about how small those numbers may still be, or I can be happy that the number is still 5x the size it was last year. Similarly, my book One Lousy Pirate is a small self-pub’d title in a very tiny niche on Amazon’s massive website. It will never net me much money. Yet, ever since also making it available as a paperback in November, sales have increased substantially*. Contrary to the title of Steven Pressfield’s new book, someone apparently does want to read my shit. And they’re paying to do so nearly every day.

*Most of the sales are still in electronic form, but since more people search the full Amazon bookstore instead of just the Kindle store, having a paperback available places my book in more search queries.

So those are the three things that I’m trying to do to kick my 2017 off to a great start. And none of them require waiting for the arbitrary calendar flip. I’m starting them now. After all, waiting for January 1st is just another admission of defeat at the hands of resistance.

Bookish Links

Guest Blogging for Authors – Anne R. Allen’s hilarious blog post covers all the ways you should and shouldn’t query bloggers in hopes of guesting on their site. The ten tips further down in the article are exceptionally helpful. Check them out before you hit that send button!
10 Things You Didn’t Know About How the NYT Book Review Works – This Q&A with Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review answers a bunch of questions about how the NYT handles their book reviews and their Best Books of the year lists. An interesting look behind the curtain.
William Fotheringham’s Top 10 Cycling Novels –  The Guardian’s cycling columnist lists his ten favorite novels in which the novel was “centered on the act of cycling, rather than merely including bike riding as a means of transport or in background description.” I’m not so sure my current WIP, Tailwinds Past Florence, would meet that criteria (though there is a fair bit of cycling in it), but this is an interesting list nonetheless.
Comedy Writing Secrets: Triple the Funny  – Mark Shatz discusses the concept of three in writing humor. Setup, Anticipation (the triple), and Punchline. I don’t intend to write funny scenes, but sometimes my critique group laughs. I don’t know always know how to take that.
25 Short Books to Help You Meet Your Reading Challenge Goal – If you’re hoping to squeeze a couple more books onto your reading list before the New Year, then this list will help you find a few short ones you might be interested in. Some of these, such as The Alchemist, are shorter than I realized.

Bonus Link

A Beginner’s Guide to Kaiseki, the World’s Finest Meal –  There’s nothing quite like enjoying a kaiseki meal while in Japan. Imagine, eleven plates of photo-worthy food, most of which you will have no idea what it is, only that it looks incredibly exotic and delicious. Some of our best days in Japan were capped with a kaiseki, particularly this day in the Hakone region. Yet I must admit that I didn’t fully understand the significance of the dishes or the symbolism wrapped up within them. This article (with video) offers a history lesson on the subject of kaiseki… and has me anxiously awaiting our return to Japan next September.

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My Favorite Reads of 2016

The snow is falling, multi-colored lights encircle windows and doors, and I just received my annual “Year in Books” summary from Goodreads. New Year’s is definitely around the corner. I’m still hoping to read another book or three before the bell tolls on 2016 (good riddance), but I’m happy to receive the annual summary early, as it dovetails nicely with this week’s post which is all about my favorite sentences/passages from the books I read this year.

A quick glance at my reading stats for 2016 is all it takes to know that I didn’t read any of the books nominated for the multitude of “Best of” awards this year. That’s normal for me. One of the things I enjoy about reading, particularly compared to movies and video games, is that books don’t ever look dated. Sure, styles may change over decades and centuries, but unlike video games, my imagination always generates the images with photo-realistic graphics.

Speaking of technology…

The Kindle Highlighter and Scrivener

I’m currently reading The Stone Raft by Jose Saramago, a softcover I purchased at the famed Lello Bookstore in Lisbon, one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. Sadly, I wish I had it on Kindle. Aside from the obvious issue of having to hold the book open while reading it, I am an avid user of the highlighting feature built-into the e-reader. And I miss it. I am constantly highlighting important facts, quotes, unique turns of phrase, and even examples of really good/bad writing and dialogue with my Kindle.

Once a year, I pull the MyClippings.txt file from the Kindle and cut/paste all of those highlighted excerpts into a master file in Scrivener. I’ve created a separate document for each book I’ve read (108 since getting a Kindle in 2010) and am in the process of tagging each of the clippings with descriptors (metaphors, dialogue, description, etc) so that it is easily searchable in the future. Yes, this is a lot of work. But maintaining a searchable catalog of inspiration and great examples is worth the effort.

My Favorite Readings From 2016

I’m going to leave out the how-to and story craft books I read and focus on those with a narrative, both fiction and non-fiction. But before I launch into my favorite highlights from the year, here’s a rundown of my favorite reads from 2016 in three categories: Fiction, Classics, and Non-Fiction. I’m going to set Water for Elephants apart from these lists, as it’s one of my all-time favorite books and I’ve read it numerous times over the years.

Favorite Fiction

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Favorite Classics

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

Favorite Non-Fiction

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan
The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief by Ben Macintyre
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Dracula (Bram Stoker)

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.

The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf)

Marriage, marriage that was the right thing, the only thing, the solution required by every one she knew, and a great part of her meditations was spent in tracing every instance of discomfort, loneliness, ill-health, unsatisfied ambition, restlessness, eccentricity, taking things up and dropping them again, public speaking, and philanthropic activity on the part of men and particularly on the part of women to the fact that they wanted to marry, were trying to marry, and had not succeeded in getting married.

The Time Traveler ’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

Town was groceries and hardware and Mackenzie’s Bakery and the sheet music and records at the Music Emporium, Alicia’s favorite store. We used to stand in front of Appleyard’s Photography Studio making up stories about the brides and toddlers and families smiling their hideous smiles in the window. We didn’t think the library was funny-looking in its faux Greek splendor, nor did we find the cuisine limited and bland, or the movies at the Michigan Theater relentlessly American and mindless. These were opinions I came to later, after I became a denizen of a City, an expatriate anxious to distance herself from the bumpkin ways of her youth. I am suddenly consumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret. I glance over at Henry and see that he has fallen asleep.

The Rescue (Nicholas Sparks)

Every time you do something crazy, I can feel my little hairs committing suicide by jumping right out of my head and plunging all the way to my shoulders. If you listen carefully, you can sometimes hear them screaming all the way down.

The Piano Teacher (Elfriede Jelinek)

Friendship in sports ends where the other guy threatens to surpass you. A buddy is someone who measures his own strength against his buddy’s lesser strength and increases his own lead.

The Napoleon of Crime (Ben Macintyre)

 “Never under any circumstances do an action which could be called in question if known to the world.” Morgan’s principle, and that of Worth, was closer to: “Do whatever you want, and so long as you maintain a consistent front, the world remains in ignorance.”

Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)

With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.

Turning Pro (Steven Pressfield)

Here’s the truth: the tribe doesn’t give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it.

Do the Work (Steven Pressfield)

You can board a spaceship to Pluto and settle, all by yourself, into a perfect artist’s cottage ten zillion miles from Earth. Resistance will still be with you. The enemy is inside you.

The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler)

God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that persons resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work with the shapes that God imposes on us. God is power, and in the end, God prevails.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

Storming (K.M. Weiland)

“I think… running away is also kind of cage, yes? How can we ever run far enough to run away from running away?”

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

The Big Burn (Timothy Egan)

“What better way can an old man die than doing a young man’s work?”

The Nightingale (Kristin Hannah)

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.

The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late–that’s bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.

It (Stephen King)

How you don’t stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown’s trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing bluejeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup’s face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep, maybe, like a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

Fates and Furies (Lauren Groff)

We’ve got some cash now, a house, you’re ripe still. Your eggs may be getting a little wrinkly, I don’t know. Forty. We’re risking some springs going sproing in the kid’s head. Though it may not be so bad to have a dumb kid. Smart ones are off as soon as they’re able to escape. Dumbos stick around longer. On the other hand, if we wait too long, we’ll be cutting his pizza for him until we’re ninety-three.

So that’s it for 2016. I’ll be taking a look at the first sentences of each of these books in the coming months. Until then, happy reading! And, as always, if you have any book recommendations you think I might enjoy, please leave them in the comments.

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Friday Links #23: Musical Angst Gone Missing

We risked a snowy drive home from the city last night to attend a black box, low-rent performance of American Idiot at the theater equivalent of a dive bar in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It was as far from Broadway as you could get and still be called theater. Which isn’t to say it was bad. Some of the singers did a fairly good job with Billie Joe Armstrong’s vocals, and the band, tucked in the corner beneath an ironic “No Stagediving” sign (there is no stage) did an admirable job. Unfortunately, the garage-band (or was it garage sale?) sound system wasn’t on par and the audience had to endure plenty of feedback.

American Idiot is one of my favorite full-length albums, not just by Green Day, but by any band. I can think of few other albums that beg to to be listened to entirely, in order, as a story. And certainly none since it’s 2004 release, at the dawn of the mp3 and streaming era. I’m thrilled to hear HBO has picked up the movie rights and can’t wait to see it. Hopefully it comes to Amazon Prime.

The rock opera, for those like me, who hadn’t ever caught it before, plays through the album in its entirety while following the stories of three disaffected suburban youths. The performance we saw was chock full of subtext as nearly a dozen performers were on stage cavorting, doing drugs, having sex, moping, dancing, licking their war wounds, and going to the bathroom at any one time. It was equal parts feast for the eyes and chaos. Maybe it was the season, maybe the weather, but I couldn’t help but feel the performance was just a Snoopy-on-the-piano shy of devolving into a full-blown Peanuts Christmas pageant rehearsal.

Good grief, indeed.

Of all the influential 90s bands (many of which I still listen to), I’d argue that Green Day has managed to continue as the most relevant of those not named Pearl Jam, at least on a mainstream level. That alone is pretty remarkable. And I thought about that a lot last night while watching American Idiot. Specifically, I thought about it in terms of the cast which all appeared to be in their early 20s, and the lyrics of all those songs I once screamed along with.

The 90s gave us grunge, alternative rock, and the post-N.W.A spinoffs of hardcore rap. Throw in a vibrant punk rock scene and you got wall-to-wall music devoted to calling out society’s bullshit. Gen X’ers had plenty to gripe about as we were first in line to feel the repercussions of the prior generation’s addiction to consumerism, greed, and divorce.

But all signs point to today’s Millennials having it even harder. Their student loans are higher, non-tech jobs are scarcer, and rent is through the roof. In fact, just yesterday the Seattle Times had on its front page an article about a 130-square foot “studio apartment” complex with a door-less toilet in your room and communal bathing and kitchen space, fetching $750 a month. Some compared them to parking spaces. Others called them what they really are, prison cells. Drug abuse and homelessness are up, the state of politics is a mess and getting worse (and more embarrassing) with every election, and the cost of food and drink continues to climb.

This is the current world we live in, yet I’m not seeing it reflected in today’s music. Where’s today’s Rage Against the Machine? Where’s today’s answer to the political commentary and social outcry of bands like Bad Religion? This isn’t to say that there isn’t good music being made by new artists today. There is. But it’s all so soft and cuddly. Music, like all good art, needs to hold a mirror up to society. For every Sir Mix-a-Lot we had to endure in the 90s, we had a Nine-Inch-Nails and Ice Cube to counter it. Today’s got plenty of Bieber, where’s the salt chaser? It can’t all be snarky Tweets and Crying Jordans.

If you’ve got some good angst-y modern music recommendations, let me hear about it in the comments.

Bookish Links

Bill Gates: My Favorite Books of 2016 – If you’ve ever read one of those articles about the habits of successful people, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the ways they spend their downtime. Hint: It’s not watching America’s Dumbest Home Videos. Bonus points for including DFW in the list. No, not the airport.
The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was a Summer in San Francisco – Mark Twain never said this. In fact, he never said half the things people attribute to him. This is a wonderful little essay about Twain, the origins of the title phrase, and the detective work necessary to figure out who actually came up with that quote. And what makes this so special, is that it’s a blog post on the webpage of Anchor Brewing. Go figure.
How to Get Self-Published Books into Stores and Libraries – This one’s for those of you with self-published books in print form. It’s not easy — and the article doesn’t sugarcoat that fact — but there are some good tips for accomplishing the goal of having your physical book in physical locations.
Things I Wish I Knew About Writing a Cookbook – This article by Allison Day has five great tips on things she learned writing her cookbook Whole Bowls. Many of her tips can likely be applied to any writing project.
Janet Fitch’s 10 Rules for Writers – Quick-hitting tips that cover most of the things I try to keep in mind every time I sit down to write.

Bonus Link

If You Are What You Eat, America is Allrecipes –  Interesting and depressing all at once about the gulf between the food we talk about and the food we as a nation actually eat. “In the era of the ornate food description, Allrecipes favors a house style shorn of ostentation. The site uses “stir” or “cook” instead of “sauté” (“because that’s a French word,” explains Esmee Williams, Allrecipes’ vice president of consumer and brand strategy).” For those of you think we were running out of things to dumb down, this article will show you how much room there still is to fall.

Post Image by Iggyshoot, used under Creative Commons.

The post Friday Links #23: Musical Angst Gone Missing appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Top of the List!

My travel memoir One Lousy Pirate now sits atop the Ridiculously Underrated Books list (for books with less than 20 ratings), but I'd love to get it into the lists for books with more ratings.

If you have a moment and don't mind for voting/rating for it, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Vote Here!

App Review: Hemingway

I don’t believe you. I understand why you feel the way you do, but I disagree. Grammar still matters. Proofreading is as important as ever. To deny it, is a defense of laziness. Just because we live in a post-truth, 140-character, listicle world of fake news, in which human decency may or may not have also been heaped upon the funeral pyre that is 2016, there’s no excuse for sloppy writing. Fortunately, you can save yourself from it for the low, low cost of ten bucks. I’m talking about the Hemingway app.

Bookmark this link now and use the web-based version for free. It’s perfect for those angry rants you post on Facebook. You’re welcome.

Ernest Hemingway, as you’re probably aware, was famous for a lot more than being a fan of bullfights, alcohol, women, and death. He was also an ardent believer in stripping a sentence down to its simplest form. He’d never use a ten-dollar word when a five-cent one would do, he abhorred adverbs, and he’d no sooner write a run-on sentence with multiple clauses than he would order a Shirley Temple. As you can see, I am no Hemingway. But with the app, I can get there if I choose.

Readability on the 8th Grade Level

The Hemingway App allows you to copy/paste (or import from Word) a selection of text for analysis. The algorithm detects use of passive voice, adverbs, complex phrasing, sentences that are hard to read, and sentences that it considers very hard to read. It then assigns you a Readability score based on the U.S. educational grade level. According to the app’s help page, the measurement (the Automated Readability Index used since the days of electronic typewriters) aims to gauge the lowest education needed to understand your prose.

The average American reads at a tenth-grade level. Hemingway’s novels scored at a fifth-grade level. Many of us can read at much higher grades, but doing so becomes tedious, especially if the text is filled with jargon. Writing for a higher grade level is a sure-fire way to turn off a lot of readers and find yourself a smaller audience.

My advice would be to aim for no higher than a tenth-grade level and use the app’s color highlights to tighten as possible. If you can get it down to an eighth-grade level without losing your writing voice, then you should try to do so.

A sample from an early draft of Tailwinds Past Florence, my work-in-progress. Click to see a larger version.

Counting Adverbs and Passive Voice

One of the things I particularly like about the Hemingway app is that it doesn’t try to enforce a zero tolerance rule regarding adverbs and passive voice. While there’s no doubt the app would go bonkers with a selection from Harry Potter, it does allow for 0.88% of words to be adverbs (based on my experience with it). Similarly, it will tolerate 1.45% of words in passive voice (or up to 20% of sentences which I think is far too high). This prior sentence being guilty of said crime.

The app highlights all of your adverbs blue and use of passive voice in green. One of the nice things about addressing the blue and green highlights first is that doing so often lowers the complexity of the sentence, thus killing a second bird with the same edit.

For example, when I changed the “He’d been caught daydreaming” in the accompanying screenshot to “He daydreamed” it not only addressed the passive voice, but also removed the yellow highlighting as well. The app no longer considered that sentence hard to read. Address enough of those hard and very hard to read sentences and the Readability score will report a lower grade level.

Whether or not I make that change in the final draft is ultimately up to me (or, hopefully, an agent and editor) but I may not have noticed the flaw if the app hadn’t highlighted it.

Replacing Those Fancy Words

The Hemingway app and I don’t always see eye to eye on what it considers a complex phrase. For example, in the scene I pasted into the app, it highlighted the word “purchase” as being one that has a simpler alternative. Mousing over the purple highlight, a pop-up appears telling me to replace the word with either “buy” or “sale.” Unfortunately, the English language is complex and that wasn’t the meaning of purchase I was going for. I was using it (admittedly as a fancy alternative) for traction.

The three other phrases it highlighted for replacement (the app’s suggestion in parentheses) included: “all of” (all), “numerous” (many), and “very” (remove the word).

Defining Hard to Read

I don’t worry about addressing the sentences it highlights yellow and red (hard to read and very hard to read, respectively) so long as my readability score is below Grade 10. This isn’t to say that I ignore them though.

Instead, I scroll through the selection and look for the white (un-highlighted) space. I don’t want to see large blocks of red and yellow where multiple complex sentences bunch together. Rather, I want to see a mix of red, yellow, and white. This is a mark of good pacing. I like it when my writing (and the writing I read) mixes long, complex sentences with simple, punchy statements. Here’s a sample paragraph from the opening scene of my work-in-progress.

Edward moved his left hand to his hip — an old steadying maneuver he retained from his racing days — and turned to face his wife. Her yellow handlebar bag and panniers were spackled white and her gloves looked soaked, but even through the gauzy curtain of snowflakes he could see her smile and a few curly tendrils of hair sticking out beneath her helmet. Two weeks in and he still couldn’t get used to the purple highlights. “Are you sure you’re okay riding in this?”

As you can probably guess, the Hemingway app colored the first sentence of that paragraph yellow (hard), the second red (very hard), and the third and fourth it left white. It also highlighted the “were spackled” green, indicating the passive voice. I’ll probably leave it since there are so few instances of passive voice in this scene and I like how it reads.

And that’s the beauty of the app. It helps you write with intent. Often we don’t know we’re using the passive voice, or using fancy, cumbersome words, or sprinkling our text with dozens of -ly words. The app points them out (it also underlines typos). What you do with the suggestions is up to you, but I for one couldn’t imagine sending a query letter or a contest entry without first running my text through the Hemingway app. It’s no replacement for an editor, but for $10, it’s a mighty good investment.

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Skyrim, the Mini-NES, and the Confused Gamer in Me

During my time writing strategy guides, people often assumed that I had played all of the biggest, most popular releases. They were always surprised to discover I never carjacked in Grand Theft Auto, sang in the space opera of Mass Effect, or embraced any of a number of popular hits, from Assassin’s Creed to Civilization to World of Warcraft or even Demon Souls or Skyrim.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t buy some of these games (or Gamefly them when physical media was still a thing). I did. And it’s not to say I didn’t play games that I didn’t write guidebooks for. I did that too. What I didn’t do was play the large-scale games that required dozens (even hundreds) of hours. I stuck with games that asked less of me. Plastic guitar games, tower-defense games, racing games, Gears of War multiplayer.

Pick up, play, and forget until the next project was done.

Embracing the Epic

I entered my retirement from strategy guide writing with over forty unplayed games on my Steam account, another ninety on my wishlist, and a new Falcon Northwest gaming PC that can play anything on Ultra settings. Those who subscribe to my monthly newsletter have no doubt spotted some of the games I’ve been playing in my Reading|Playing|Watching updates.

The most recent installment showed Skyrim: Special Edition, the not-so-special remastered version of the Elder Scrolls game released in 2011. The accompanying strategy guide is over a thousand jam-packed pages. People have been known to squeeze over a thousand hours of gameplay from this title. It’s big.

I bought Skyrim when it first released on Xbox 360 (played it for 2 hours) and then a year later on the PC (9 hours), but since I also had the expansions for the PC version, I got the Special Edition free when it released last month.

I’m currently at 18 hours and counting.

I limit my gaming to 45 minutes or so most evenings and a bit more on the weekend if we’re not doing anything. Though I’d like to camp out in front of the monitor for a marathon session, finishing the first draft of my novel is the only “epic quest” I’m on right now (180 pages and counting). It’s also the reason I’m not training to race across Washington State in the spring (though every time I click that link, I get the urge).

Gaming has been a lifelong release for me, a great way to wind down. Now that it’s completely separate from my day job, I’m enjoying it even more. Or am I?

Becoming Dragonborn

Though I’m now approaching the larger, more complex games with the attention and time they require, I’m finding that my patience for high difficulty isn’t what it used to be. Skyrim, on the default difficulty, can get pretty hard. It begins easy, then jumps in difficulty after ten hours or so. It’s not uncommon for my character, a level 18 Imperial at the time (battle-mage) to get slain by a handful of level 5 Bandits.

The game was forcing me to experiment and branch out from my trusty Flames-and-Elven Axe combo. I learned to quicksave often, gave the Staff of Paralysis a try, dual-casted Flames, and I advanced, clearing Faldar’s Tooth and stealing the plans for some such thing… I don’t really pay attention to the story.

Yes, this is me embracing my inner geek.

Last month I ripped through the hilariously funny, yet slightly boring South Park: The Stick of Truth role-playing game. There were many “Dragonborn” references within it, responsible in part for me playing Skyrim now. A quick check of Steam player stats reveals that I only played Stick of Truth for 14 hours, yet completed the game. That’s barely considered a flirtation with Skyrim.

I considered quitting Skyrim the other night after an ill-timed quicksave and an accidental auto-save combined to trap me between a Bandit Chief and a hard place. My most recent other save was from an hour earlier. I was ready to give up on this third and final attempt at enjoying the game, content with the knowledge that the Elder Scrolls games just weren’t for me. But I somehow fought my way through, escaped the cave into the bright of day and encountered a dragon. Slaying that dragon made it all worth it.

Yet, I feel my attention waning.

Mainly, I want to play something with a bit more pick-up-and-playability, a bit more just-one-more-match-itis. Like Hearthstone which, I have just taken a break from writing this to re-install. I hadn’t touched it in over a year.

Or maybe my interests lie on something smaller. Older.

Alas, there is another dragon on the horizon. A familiar one.

Enter the Mini-NES

If you’re between the ages of 35 and 45, you’re probably keenly aware that Nintendo has recently released the original NES console in miniature form, pre-loaded with 30 of the best original games, and equipped with HDMI outputs for modern televisions.

You’re probably also aware that the damn thing is almost impossible to find. Don’t expect it for Christmas unless you happen to have Indiana Jones as your Secret Santa. Apparently, Nintendo would rather have the publicity of widespread sell-outs than the profit that comes from shipping millions of units. I’m not surprised, as the Mini NES is, in my opinion, just a tool to stoke the fires of fandom before the Switch releases in March.

Obtaining a Mini NES won’t be the only challenge, however. Those games were hard. Today’s games may be complex and filled with numerous systems and smarter AI, but the games of the 80s were physically hard. I hadn’t thrown a controller in a long time, but with the Mini NES, I know that streak will end. The games of the 80s demanded pinpoint precision and lightning-quick reflexes. Sixty bucks is a fine price for a trip down memory lane (only a fool would pay the exorbitant ransom the scalpers are demanding online) but I suspect it will be a quick trip for many of us.

Though the Mini NES now has the ability to save your progress at any time (so long, password saves!) I still doubt many of my peers will find the constant trial-and-error of the 8-bit era to be much fun. We only put up with those challenges back then because we were young and new games often only came on birthdays and Christmas. You wanted to play, you played the game you had. Nowadays, there’s always something newer, better, available. Alas, adulting with discretionary income! Even if Steam sales didn’t make gaming cheaper than ever, our time is too valuable to spend beating our heads against the wall. But gaming is cheaper than ever. Hence, my immense backlog of unplayed games. Most were purchased at 50-70% off during Steam winter and summer sales. Like so much in our first-world lives, we suffer from too much choice.

Destination Undetermined

If it feels like this post is meandering, lost in the woods, I agree. It’s partially intentional. Or, at least, unavoidable. It’s because, when it comes to gaming, I can’t really figure myself out anymore. I was given a free download of Gears of War 4 and haven’t played it for a minute. Are my old Gears friends playing it on Friday nights? Probably. Maybe. For years, it was my favorite franchise, particularly multiplayer, but I just don’t care to bother with it.

I want the Mini NES as much as I know I don’t need it.

I play Skyrim each night, hoping to finally uncover what made the game so popular. I’ve yet to find it.

I re-installed Hearthstone knowing what a massive time-suck it is.

I’m changing. People change. Gaming has changed. I don’t know what I want from my lifelong hobby anymore, other than for it to be accessible, mentally stimulating, and casual. No wonder Hearthstone keeps pulling me back in just when I think I’ve broken its spell for good.

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Friday Links #22: Two Book Announcements

I logged onto KDP last week and noticed that Amazon had added the option to (relatively) painlessly offer existing Kindle eBooks as paperbacks. The program is still in beta stage and currently doesn’t offer the ability to receive proof copies, order wholesale (author) copies, or allow you to make the paperback available on non-Amazon websites, but they say that is coming.

I wasn’t necessarily going to make the conversion at first, particularly as my book, One Lousy Pirate, is only 62 manuscript pages and tucked away inside a hidden compartment of a niche on Amazon’s site. But, as with everything I have done with OLP thus far, this was yet another opportunity to learn. So I spent an afternoon converting the files and mulling over pricing.

One Lousy Pirate is now available as a 108-page paperback for $4.99 and as an eBook at $1.99. And, as always, if you’re so kind to buy a copy, please do consider leaving an honest review, it really helps.

Amazon uses their CreateSpace publishing platform to ready your paperback conversion and, thankfully, their cover builder utility takes the guesswork out of determining the cover dimensions. It’s not enough to choose a book dimension — 6″x9″ is common — but page count and paper thickness must be accounted for in determining the width of the spine. Their sophisticated proofing system alerts you within minutes about problems you might have regarding resolution, dimensions, and font choice.

Let this be a reminder to always keep your original .eps, .ai, or .psd cover files! I did, thus making it relatively easy to change the dimensions from a 72dpi eBook cover to a 320dpi paperback cover. I had to shift the text a little to account for bleed and cropping, but this was all easy.

One thing that CreateSpace doesn’t do is transpose your eBook text document into the new layout. This must be done on your end, manually. I recommend using Word. It took numerous iterations to ensure the right margins and gutter, correct addition of blank pages, and the proper placement of the page numbering, and to ensure that scene breaks all lined up properly. No matter how many times you think you got it right, you’ll always notice another page to fix. Take your time, enjoy the process. Amazon had the paperback for sale within 12 hours and, within 48 hours, all of my existing reviews were carried over and the two separate formats merged into a single listing. Easy-peasy.

So that’s one book. It also brings me great happiness to get all Proud Big Brother for a moment and tell you about the journal my sister Jessica has created. Her book, Questions for Life: Two Year Guided Daily Journal for Intentional Living (which I was proud to copy-edit), prompts you with four prompts for every day of the year, with space on each page for two years worth of entries. Not only does this make it convenient to reflect upon your shifts from one year to the next, but it also keeps you from having to buy a new journal every year! The daily questions include three repeating prompts to build a habit of daily reflection and a fourth question unique for each day.

Questions for Life: Two Year Guided Daily Journal for Intentional Living is available as a 382-page 8×10″ soft-cover for $18.99. You can read more about the book at her blog and even get November’s entries as a free download.

 

Bookish Links

The Rose Main Reading Room Reopens – My only trips to the New York Public Library, of  Ghostbusters fame, took place while the reading room was closed for renovation after some of the decorative ceiling had fallen (fortunately, at night). It’s a beautiful room as the photos and videos on this page show. The time-lapse of the books being re-shelved is particularly well done.
What Makes Bad Writing Bad? – I really enjoyed Toby Litt’s article on why bad writing exists, why it’s defended by the author, and why I will not enlist those who love me to be beta-readers. Nobody wants to write poorly, but not everyone wants to do what it takes to write well. Worth reading for the magic trick comparison.
The Strange Life of Punctuation – Did you know that people perceive text messages with periods as less sincere? I didn’t But if you ever wondered about the effects the Internet and texting has had (or will have) on punctuation, then this article by Chi Luu is for you. While this may sound dry as chalk dust, it’s a pretty interesting read. Why won’t you check it out ?!??!
7 Things That Will Doom Your Novel – Another NaNoWriMo is upon us and while many strain to get their 50,000 words done, I’ve watched my own wordcount slow to a trickle as the puppy continues to require near-constant attention. James Scott Bell’s article has a number of great tips on how to avoid the traps set before us.
Amazon KDP Select Ads Guide – The author of this very helpful marketing piece, Tyrel, reached out to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind testing his guide. I did with tepid results. Though i suspect my less-than-stellar results was because of the nature of my product (perhaps the cover art, as well). Nevertheless, the ads did yield a profit. And maybe more than I realize as books downloaded for free by Prime members aren’t counted as a sale, despite paying the author per-page-read. If you’ve got a book on Amazon, I highly recommend following Tyrel’s tips for creating a Sponsored Products ad. Give it a month, set up a $3 max daily spend and a $0.06 max bid and see what happens. Many of my bids went for just $0.02. And, as Tyrel says, this is certainly far easier to scale for those with higher priced items. My $1.99 eBook left little profit margin as very few clicks turned into sales. I’m going to try again with new ad copy for the paperback and see what happens.

Bonus Link

51-Year-Old Credits Mountain Biking for His Sub-17:00 5k – A guy who ran in college, took his 30s off to focus on mountain biking, and then got back into running at age 40. And is now winning national master’s races. That sounds so familiar to me (except the last part). Will have to think about this some more. For now, enjoy the inspiration and have a great week.

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