Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I know what you mean, Margaret. I watched The Road recently and will avoid the book at pretty much all costs.

I've decided to focus on sci fi. I've seen a gazillion sci fi movies and tv shows but somehow skipped the fact that a lot of them started out as books?

Point being: ripping good yarns that take place in convincingly created worlds seems like a good influence for my novel.

I had a poetry professor in college tell me that I was obviously "done" writing my childhood, that I needed to get out there and live a little, and then I would have something to say. She was right. Maybe I didn't have to totally stop writing for 17 years, but she was still right. At 37 I don't really know that I have something to say that's useful but I'm working on it.

Awesome! I'm scheduled to arrive at 1:20. I'd be happy to help with gas or food along the way in return. :))))

Sigh. Losing on both counts. Ben is 67 and JE is 41. I guess I better get cracking if I want to make this list.

See, and I went back in here to add Othmer and then thought... hmmm... and now I find out you're a charter AARP member.

Well. Jonathan Evison and Ben Loory aren't on here, so this list sucks.

Do you have a keg right next to your desk? I'm coming over.

For the full effect see the movie with Helen Mirren in it. Helen... does an excellent job. As always.

That's why I love records too, Patrick! I have this thing for having to get up and put the music on every 20 minutes or so - makes me pay attention - and the sound is so rich and amazing... and what would the music be without some skips?

And my record player - it's about 50 years old - claims to be "stereo" but has this lovely mono ring to it so that I can pick out all the different instruments, voices, etc. Very cool.

My parents had a huge record collection when I was a kid, too. That makes me sentimental, I think.

In fact, I'm off to listen to the Dinah Washington now. :)

What I want to know is, who the hell buys five Poang chairs?

And... I have a Hemnes bed! ha!

There is a certain universality to the experience of IKEA but this passage is really just descriptive and her choices say nothing about her as a character. I mean, yeah, sure, we've all been there and bought those things -- the word "improbable" usually applies most to lighting -- but the way he describes it tells me nothing about her.

I have a distinct set of opinions and perceptions and a series of thoughts that run through my head about things I bought there when I was in college, for my apartment in Manhattan... me and IKEA go way back.

The film Fight Club did all that needed to be done with IKEA.

I see these books being read on the el all the time. Haven't seen the film yet. Maybe I get a pass... I have a dragon tattoo. (Technically it's an ourobouros but I don't bother to explain when people say, "Nice dragon tat.")

Autonomous networking. Check it out.

That and we have to find a way to use less electricity for the hosting of our data. It grows by exponential amounts every day.

Oceana, oceana... Hm. For someone with a lot of sci-fi views on things I know nearly nothing about it. Is this a sci-fi thing?

Bought my tickets! Being relatively broke and all, I'll need a little help getting from SEA-TAC out to the cabin but it all seemed to work out just fine last year... I get in on the 1st just after 1 pm and leave on the 6th at about 2 pm... !

I had... no idea. Why didn't someone tell me about this before? No, really!

The Paris Review has these fabulous Interview books where they curate these great interviews across the years.

They are a near miracle for a writer:

-- comforting. It makes me feel good to hear of the struggles of other writers so well established. That they think too much. That peeling back to the bone hurts them, too.

-- brilliant. So many amazing viewpoints and ways of looking at the world.

-- challenging. Throwing down the gauntlet, challenging me to challenge myself.

-- esoteric.

-- universal.

Esther, send me your resume (shelbybower@gmail.com). At the very least I can take a look and give you any pointers I might have, and if you tell me where you'd like to work... I might be able to help. Where I work, we place writers in all kinds of gigs (Aquent).

Summa cum laude - you should give yourself about a thousand pats!

Well, I knew you didn't die. :)

"Good" writing/publishing/editing? May be best to start a freelance thing from home...

And congrats on the degree! Nicely done! My mom went to school and worked full time when I was a kid, so I have a sense of how hard it is. :)

The New Yorker's innovation issue just came out.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...

About Amazon, the iPad and the Kindle and the book business. My. How timely.

Really good article, too.

"In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers—like executives in other media—are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business. To thrive, he believes, publishers have to reimagine the book as multimedia entertainment. David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, says that his company is racing “to embed audio and video and other value-added features in e-books. It could be an author discussing his book, or a clip from a movie that touches on the book’s topic.” The other major publishers are working on similar projects, experimenting with music, video from news clips, and animation. Publishers hope that consumers will be willing to pay more for the added features. The iPad, Rosenthal says, “has opened up the possibility that we are no longer dealing with a static book. You have tremendous possibilities.”

...

"Publishers maintain that digital companies don’t understand the creative process of books. A major publisher said of Amazon, “They don’t know how authors think. It’s not in their DNA.” Neither Amazon, Apple, nor Google has experience in recruiting, nurturing, editing, and marketing writers. The acknowledgments pages of books are an efficiency expert’s nightmare; authors routinely thank editors and publishers for granting an extra year to complete a manuscript, for taking late-night phone calls, for the loan of a summer house. These kinds of gestures are unlikely to be welcomed in cultures built around engineering efficiencies."

...

"For the moment, Jobs is the publishers’ best ally. “Steve is very proud that Macmillan put a gun to Amazon’s head,” the insider said. But in the long term Apple and Google will not necessarily be better partners than Amazon. One day, they, too, will complain about the cumbersome publishing process, or excessive prices. Just days before the iPad went on sale, on April 3rd, there were rumors that Apple might list best-sellers for as little as $9.99. Apple agreed to the agency model for just one year, and, as publishers are acutely aware, Jobs has a history, with music and television companies, of fighting to reduce prices. One publisher said, “Maybe Apple will want to come back in a year and bite our heads off.” The iPad may even make it possible for Amazon to reach new consumers. Apple now offers about sixty thousand e-books, far fewer than Kindle does, and Amazon has launched an app that allows it to sell e-books on the iPad. No matter where consumers buy books, their belief that electronic media should cost less—that something you can’t hold simply isn’t worth as much money—will exert a powerful force. Asked about publishers’ efforts to raise prices, a skeptical literary agent said, “You can try to put on wings and defy gravity, but eventually you will be pulled down.”

Well, I still buy and sell vinyl all the time (though I had to, um, give away quite a few in the divorce).

I don't have a cd player (or even a cd drive), tape player or 8 track. But I have a record player and a creature for my digital music that plays music from my laptop through my network.

Matt wrote: "Shel wrote: "As to the book/device problem for kids, I still say, think longer term. Really? Bandwidth? We're talking bandwidth? It won't be long until wi-fi or its cousin crosses the planet and in..."

So -- you didn't bring up electronic reading devices?

I think it's unfortunate that we have to rely on corporations to provide the funds to educate our children. But now we're getting into public policy, no? How important education is to our nation as a whole? How important critical thinking and comprehension are?

Laser discs... laser discs... Hm. People bought those? We've all fallen victim to fads. And it's possible that the devices we see now are faddish but they are also important stepping stones. We are the test group for the future of a more integrated device. Look at all the innovation the iPhone has inspired. Can't you see a day when a holographic keyboard pops out of a touchscreen device? Or projects movies perfectly? And learns voice commands from you? I can.

Again, not slavish or fanatical - but closing one's eyes to the possibilities is to turn our backs on some amazing stuff... and to sit back and "let it happen."

Who's slavishly praising anything here? I thought we were discussing. Last I checked.

Books will never go away (and shouldn't), hell, I still buy records, but IMO the real issue is the publishing industry itself. Blaming people who are trying to innovate with devices or software for killing "The Book" is just "slavishly" dancing to the beat of blaming technology for every wrong in society.

The entire industry will have to shift to a print on demand model, if not something even more adventurous, because the current model doesn't work -- not for writers or readers (or even for publishers, really). Right now it's all over the place because no one knows what will work, and that's part of the problem. Someday, someone will come up with something totally out of the box we've never seen before and we will all be like, "Oh. So that's how it's supposed to be." And the big publishing houses will adapt or die like so many Wall Street behemoths.

And JE, if there's anyone who's adapting to this new model of how to stay alive as a fiction writer today, it's you, dude! All writers are going to have to adapt. You've found the answer for now - leverage the tech to build community and buzz around your work to sell the books themselves.

As to the book/device problem for kids, I still say, think longer term. Really? Bandwidth? We're talking bandwidth? It won't be long until wi-fi or its cousin crosses the planet and internet access is completely free. It also won't be that long before the world gets all of its data from the same network that manages itself. Ten years ago I couldn't put a streaming video on my website without ten thousand warnings about file size and shitty resolution for the file itself. As for the devices themselves, that's a corporate giving thing. It'll happen. Once the devices themselves are a little more... um... kidproof, it will make more sense.