Publishing Old Manuscripts

Everybody has them. All those books that misfired and never took off or just blew up on the launch pad. They represent years and years of toil and you would like for something to come of them because they represent your heart and soul. So in the new environment of EBooks, you think, well maybe there is something there that escaped the publishers eyes and these books should have been published except for a short sighted editor who couldn't see the diamond in the rough. And so you start tracking them down on your computers.

Usually they are a couple of computers back that you dig out of a closet and there they are; floating around your desktop like space junk. They have weird file names you started giving them after the twenty third rewrite and you have to piece them together like cars in a junkyard. Lets see, I'll use this beginning with this middle and where is the end...ah here it is. There it's a book. So you start to read your old prose. Dammit. This was good! This should have been published! And so you continue, getting excited. Yes. Yes. Readers will finally be able to discover this great story that has been stopped because of some nimrod of a publisher.

And then...somewhere along page thirty two, the thing goes off the rails. Maybe it is the tired prose, the lackluster plot. Maybe it's just sort of hackneyed and old. But there is something missing. Some bit of modernity that gives the book spark. The prose just dries up on the page and is dated and dead and the book turns back into that old manuscript in a moldy box in a basement. And you want it to be good. You really do. You want it to be the book that it could have been, but it's just not.

So you try and resucitate some others, but they fall from the sky like satellites gliding out of orbit. There were problems. There was a reason these books never saw the light of day. And even the ubiquity of e-publishing won't save them. So you pull the plug, let the dust motes settle, and throw the computer back in the corner where it belongs.

And that book stays in darkness....where it belongs.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Writing Code--Review of The Social Network

There are all sorts of writers. Mark Zuckerberg writing code in his dorm room for Facemash to get back at a girlfriend who dumped him as he hacks his way through Harvard's computers and makes mush of their security and nearly gets thrown out of school and then he settles down to really kick it into high gear with the creation of Facebook. There are others with similar ideas but Zuckerberg is the only one who can write the code or he is the only one who does and so he becomes Facebook and the rest try and get their piece but miss the main thrust of Zuckerberg's vision which is a world where people can broadcast themselves into cyberspace in the ultimate social club.


What moves underneath this very cool movie The Social Network is the antithesis of whats happening in our world where intellectuals are seen as enemies of the state and being smart is way down on the totem pole. Not so in Zuckerberg land and we follow him through Harvard as he creates his billion dollar empire but more we see that there is a world where the people who will rule the world are hard at work becoming smarter and smarter as they busily write their code. He that writes the code in the early years of the Internet was truly king.

Nothing new here. Real originality stands out among half baked ideas and as Mark Zuckerberg pursues his vision we see a brilliant mind at work that is intent on one thing and one thing only and that is to make the world his. There is this movement underneath the movie that sneaks up on you as you watch and sort of bites you somewhere in the middle and that is this: that there are people who don't give a damn about the random ness of our popular culture because they are moving in a power chord that does not run on our highway and they are busily becoming smarter and smarter while the rest of the world is trying to follow the crude shenanigans of the Sarah Palins.

The real movers and shakers made sure they made it into the best schools and moved with the best people and if there is one thing Zuckerberg and his friends want to be is the very best in a world of the very best. This type of intensity has fallen beneath our national consciousness and papered over with the faux populism of the everyman. Watching The Social Network you realize we have all been watching television while Zuckerberg was writing code to change the world as we know it. You just wish someone had told you.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January