Is Lit Dead?

Every time I begin teaching a Composition Class this question comes to me like a nagging pain. Is Lit Dead? And this comes from reading the opening to The Great Gatsby and having the students complain about the elevated language or the face that no one really reads literature anymore. And I don't teach Lit. I teach composition and so I am just skimming the surface but certainly my decision to bring blogging into Comp is based on the fact I blog quite a bit but also that Comp like so many other things has gone real time.

And Literature is anything but real time. The very opening of a novel lets us know that this story is happening somewhere in the hazy twilight of suspended time. Be it John Williams Stoner or Ishiguros Remains of the Day. The fact that old clocks are ticking somewhere in the room is evident in not only the pace but the viewpoint and of course the language. Literature is at heart a romantics language. There is something wonderfully tragic in the fact time has passed.

And yet in the year 2014 I wonder if this has a place. Certainly people still write literature but do they write it for those who expect literature to act like literature and what will happen when those people pass on. Will my bloggers rule the day with our real time commentary or will people year again for something not so in our reach?

Time will tell.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Changing Face of Literature

Chapters are getting shorter and shorter. At least mine are. I don't know if literature is changing or I am but the last two books have about sixty chapters with 220 pages. And people tell me this is the way books are going. Our shrinking attention span demands these shorter bursts. Of course flash fiction is the new kid on the block that may or may not be the future.  Hard to say.

But I cant help but wonder if the internet has done its dirty work and is starting to rewire all of us. It would make sense that something we spend hours and hours interacting with and reading would change all of us. At the very least we might rebel against longer discourses that tend to take a while to get to the point. The point in the internet world is usually in the first sentence. Don't bury the lead right.

But fiction is a building process. A river if you will that we have to get used to the water first. And this takes a little time and a little acclimating. Sometimes the water is cold and rough and we have to find our way across. Then we get out payoff. But maybe we don't have the patience for that. Maybe we want to jump in swimming or not at all.

Anyway. I will try for some longer chapters next time. Maybe to just prove I can still swim.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher...on Summer Sale
 

Publishers and Social Media

I am doing a speech on Selling Books Through Social Media tomorrow and it occurs to me very few publishers really understand Social Media. Take Simon and Schuster who paid a guy six figures for his tweets that were supposed to be the ruminations of a guy on an elevator with the Masters of the Universe. You know Wall Street Guys. Problem. Turned out he lives in Texas and made it all up. But S and S will go ahead with the book of his tweet hits.

So that shows they don't get it. Social Media is ephemeral and not quantifiable. It is an effort to throw a pebble down a mountainside and see if you can get an avalanche going. But there is no certainty a pebble or a boulder will get the landslide going. Think of it as a Sonar Ping going out into the ocean and hoping it will hit something and that ping might then come back with information and maybe something that will lead to sales.

But to take the ping as evidence of a pending sale is wrong. The ping is the ping. And even if you have a million pings that does not mean those people pinging back will plunk down money on a book of tweets. The leap is mighty. But as the saying goes there is a sucker born every minute and that guy in Texas has to be laughing his ass off.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....sometimes a dream is all you have

The Art of Rewriting

You don't learn to write until you learn how to rewrite. This is true. My first novels I did not rewrite mostly because I didn't know how. But of course that is what you learn over years and it can not be taught. You have to find out how to do it on your own because it is the million and one things that have to be addressed and yes people can critique your work but you really have to find your own tuning fork.

It really comes down to connotation and denotation. And connotation is the one that guides all rewrites. How much work is each word doing. And this is something writers know or they don't. You know the writers who have not gotten a handle on this because they are the ones that flood you with words that do nothing. And again it is nuance or instinct and you either instinctually know a sentence is not right or you don't.

The big debate in writing classes is of course can writing be taught. Not really. You can lead someone to the water but they really have to have the ability to swim. And that is something in rewriting that can not be cheated. Because the book does not come from a first draft but a careful re-imaging of each scene and then the whole movement of the book has to be evaluated at the same time.

Again these are the hard to define skills  the writer must find on their own.  That is why it is an art.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

Components of a Bestseller

Bestseller. It has a ring to it. But what are the components to a book that make it take off when another book sputters. First. It has to be good. And maybe that lets out a lot of books. Good is defined by the reader who tells another reader who tells another. Bestsellers are a word of mouth phenomenon when it is all said and done. Even today with the Internet the word is still passed on from trusted source to trusted source.

This is why the people who buy  two hundred five starred reviews get little traction. The reader is missing in that scenario. And yes bait and switch is alive and well. We will still download a book that looks great from the Amazon reviews only to find we have been had. The reviewers were friends or family or they were bought and paid for. This sadly happens.

But the book that is honestly reviewed by someone who really loves it is a double edged sword. Not only will that person review the book they will then tell someone about it. It happens more than you think. I get asked a lot what I am reading and I will rattle my brain and say...well this is a great book that I read a while ago. I even helped sell a copy of Wilson's biography when a man picked it up and stared at it and I spouted out and said, 'That's a good book." We talked and then he bought it.

Yes of course you have to market. Yes you have to do all those thousand and one things to get people to notice your book. But really the real test is is your book good enough to have someone in a Barnes and Noble blare to someone else "hey I read that book! It's good." That is the acid test of any potential bestseller.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

The Long Slog Toward Spring and hopefully a Book

The holidays are over. On this we can agree. We have gained weight and added to our treasures and depleted our bank accounts. We have eaten everything under the sun and drank quite a bit too. We have made merry and now we are snowed in until the first peek of spring sometime in April or May or even June if you live in Chicago. And so we begin the long slog toward something brighter. Maybe summer.

As a writer you hope to have something for the spring. Maybe it is the change of seasons letting you know that time is slipping away. Add a birthday or a death in the family and you really feel times acceleration. The seasonal shift is always a shock. Like winter we think we can just outlast it all and that is a victory too.

But you want to have something to show for all this hibernatory living. Lets face it there is not much to do between now and the first warm days of spring except to work. Maybe that is why the work ethic in the Midwest is so fierce. The cold makes you just hunker down and grind through it. Hard to do that if it is seventy five and sunny outside your window. So time to grow your hair long and finish off that first draft or that final rewrite so you will have something to emerge from your cave with and say look; these brutally cold months were not in vain...

I wrote a book!
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Why People Still Buy Books

I noticed that my sale of print books on The Pitcher keeps pushing past the Kindle copies. They usually sort of play it out like a major leaguer versus a minor league team with the kindle downloads leading the way. But lately the books have been fighting back and staying there. So in our ebook digital I don't know what to do with all these pulpy books and CDS age why are people still buying books? I have come up with a few ideas not based on any science at all.

One. We are creatures of habit above all else. We see this with people who still have land lines and don't carry smart phones. I talked to a man who is a general contractor who never got a cell phone. Business is booming. How does he do it. He says people just get hold of him. And of course there are people who run around with legal tablets instead of IPADS. This is their preferred method. So it must be with books. There are people who like the feel of a book and do not like burning their eyes on screens.

Second would be physicality. Lets face it with a download you do not have a thing. You have some code that produces words on a screen. That's it. You have no evidence you just paid nine bucks for a book. And when you finish reading your code the book disappears versus that book that sits on your shelf or all time and calls out to you every time you pass it. You own something with a book.

Finally people like the experience of reading a printed page. There is a difference. Your eyes engage with the word differently. You have a tactile sensation. I have been reading WILSON the monster biography and I could never read that  in a kindle. Why? Because Woodrow Wilson was a man of the early twentieth century and I just couldn't see him dancing in the light on a screen as compared to me getting coffee and jelly all over him and even dropping him in the tub once.

Or maybe it is because we are not bits and bytes but flesh. We are real. So it is with books.

www.williamhazegrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Googling into the Abyss or Book Marketing for Infants

In football there is a thing called broken field running. I used to do it in high school. Basically you run to the side of the field while everyone else is running the other way. You cut back against the grain. So on a sweep to the right with everyone flowing over to the right side you turn and go to the left and go against all that momentum. At the end of the year  2013 this to me seems an apt metaphor for how we should treat tech.

Google is a great thing. We in the book marketing world use it all the time as does everyone else. But there is a point of diminishing return where Google turns against us and the best thing to do is run the other way. We see this in someone who wants to find the very best deal and googles until their eyes fall out and misses the deal anyway. Versus the man who calls the friend at the car dealer who scores a better deal than the googler every could.

Why is this? Because the human factor still trumps the Google factor. Authors now pound the Internet looking for readers but in fact they are running where everyone else is going. So the portals they find are already bursting with authors pushing their books. Versus the author who picks up the phone and calls the editor who gets their book covered in a magazine that leads to a book signing that leads to a book club picking up the book. Or the person who visits the Independent bookstore who takes on their book and talks it up.

These things happen because we still live in a world of humans and most people now prefer the Internet as a means of interacting. It is safer  and more convenient and not embarrassing. But that is exactly why you should run against the grain and go to the opposite side of the field. Who knows. You might even score a touchdown.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
 

This is It...Call it a Year

For writers this is it. You have written what you will write in 2013. Squeak one more in the door but really it is times up. The holidays are beginning and the year is ending and you either did it or you didn't and all you can do is tally up the year and live with it. I snuck in one more rough draft before the year ended and gave it a rewrite and then realized today was it. There will be no more writing in 2013. At least serious writing.

I have burned through gallons and gallons of coffee and exhausted my body with sugar and trashed out my insulin and my eyes and everything else to produce fiction. And it is over and let the chips fall. The books are out there or they are not out there and the world will turn on and maybe there were things I could have done that I didn't but it just doesn't matter now.  Sweep the floor and break the pencil and ride to the New Years.

And you do that look back thing and did you move along the bar and did the books you wanted to write come out and the ones you didn't write are they still there. But for now it is all water over the dam and all you can do is let the dead dogs lie and  uncork on the bubbly.

2013 is already a ghost.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Shooting a Book Trailer with a Drone

Since Amazon is hyping drones I thought I would tell my drone story. We shot the first book trailer for my novel Rocket Man with a camera mounted on a drone. My friend is a filmmaker and he procured the use of the drone and since the book involves rockets I brought the model rockets to a field in Oak Park Illinois just west of Chicago. The drone we were using was worth thousands and the digital camera was worth more. Ok. Keep that in the back of your mind.

He set up the drone and I set up the rockets. It was cold and our fingers numbed out fast but we got to the point where I was holding the ignition switch and he was holding his laptop for the drone. His drone looks just like the ones we are now seeing in Amazon commericals and news footage. A spider with a bunch of propellers. So he lifted the drone off and got it above the trees and I hit the ignition switch and whoosh. The rocket blasted off.

We watched the footage in his laptop as the drone hovered and followed the rocket until the parachute popped out. We did this over and over. On about the tenth time we decided to put a bigger engine in the rocket and so we took the drone really high. We were staring up when the drone suddenly took off for Chicago. My friend jammed the keys on his laptop but the drone had slipped out of range and was now cruising for the West side.

We jumped into his car and started chasing the drone. It sends out a wifi signal he explained and I grabbed the laptop and started searching for the DRONE2 signal. We drove into residential neighborhoods. The drone had a fail safe where once it lost contact it was supposed to set itself down and send out its signal. That is if it didn't just crash into a tree or lose power and smash into the ground. We drove and drove looking for the thousands of dollars that would be lost if we didn't find the drone and the camera.

We were about to give up when we turned a corner and I picked up the drone signal DRONE2 searching wifi signals with my phone. We pulled over and looked up and down the street. It could be anywhere my friend muttered as we got out of the car. I turned and saw twinkling green diodes on a slanted roof. The drone. One in a million we would find it, but we were able to bring it down with the laptop.

So when Amazon talks about delivering your packages with a drone... know that it might get there or it might just take off and fly over Chicago and go land on someone's roof.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man Book Trailer
 

The Pitcher is on Air Force Two on the way to South Korea

So this is the way it happened. I know someone who knows someone who is part of the press corps going with Joe Biden to South Korea. So the someone who knows someone gave the book to the journalist and he is going to give The Pitcher to the VP. Now it is a long flight to South Korea and Joe is probably looking for a little escapism before confronting the North Koreans. What better than a baseball story right?

I imagine old Joe kicking back on Air Force 2 and maybe taking off his shoes and then plop The Pitcher lands in his lap. My guy says something like..."Mr. Vice President if you are looking for a great story of overcoming adversity and getting your dreams, then this is the book for you." Now Joe is probably pretty bored at about this point and so he opens the book and gets lost for a few hours while he is winging his way to the other side of the world.

By the time he reaches South Korea he has finished the novel and is a changed man. Joe gets off the plane with book in hand and waves to reporters and holds The Pitcher high as a question comes from the press. " Mr Vice President, do you think you can get the North Koreans to change their minds?"' Old Joe lifts The Pitcher high and says, "Hey, if this kid can do it...anybody can do it." And everyone claps as they try and see what book the Veep is holding.

Of course he might not read it at all...but that would be a different story.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Cutting the First Forty Six Pages of a Novel

It happens every time. Every time I write a novel I end up cutting the first quarter of the book and I wonder why that is. When I wrote Tobacco Sticks I think I cut seventy five pages before I said that is where the novel begins. And you would think six books later I could stop this needless exercise but it happened again. I was rewriting and I realized the first forty six pages had to go. Now why is this?

Because it would seem the store is given away too early. Or maybe I cant find the characters for a while or maybe I just need to warm up for forty six pages before I can really find the book. Hard to say but there is no doubt these pages have to go. The consequence of not cutting the pages is a not only a slowed book but a flawed one. Truly less is more can be applied here.

But maybe it is just where the voice of the novel kicks in and this can take some time. Many times you start writing about one thing and end up writing about something else entirely and usually that one thing is in the first forty pages.  So you really have two different books and then it is an easy choice. If sixty thousand words are written one way and twenty thousand written another then it is very easy to know what is going under the chopping block.

The twenty thousand. 

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

No More Bad Reviews

As per a New York Times article Buzzfeed will no longer feature bad reviews. The writer of the article seemed to veer back and forth between thinking this was a good idea and then finishing up with a dig at the whole concept. My thinking is it is the final evolution in the idea the Internet fostered long ago  has taken hold big time....anybody can be anything without any sort of work at all. Or like grade school we all get a ribbon for trying. There are no losers in T ball

Taking the first concept though lets face it you want to be a rock and roll star then burn a CD. You want to be a writer publish a book on Amazon. Boom. You are the writer or the rock star  or both. The point is the message is look you really don't have to pay your dues at all just start. The only bummer in this equation was that people would evaluate your work in the form of a review. At least if you became a writer they would. What a drag.

Someone would actually say if they thought it was any good. And what purpose does this serve? Buzzfeed thinks it serves no purpose. Maybe. But of course the message that we are all the same and all have the same talent is furthered by this sort of everybody gets a star for trying motif. Lets face it we are reviewed every day. We lose jobs. We get divorced. We sink into bankruptcy. We lose our homes. Or we become fabulously wealthy or famous. Another sort of review.

So why the hands off on a a literary review? Sorry. If you pick up the pen then someone is going to review it and it might be bad. What does this do? It lets you know where you rank and how much work you have to do. Yes there are bad bad reviews but there is generally some truth lurking out there somewhere. It all comes down I guess to if you just want a ribbon for trying...

Or a trophy for winning.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Why Do Anything?

It comes like that. It numbs out your head and you are paralyzed. A fog really before the world and you sit in your car or in front of your computer or at your desk and the enormity of the task hits you. And it comes just like that. Why do anything? Maybe it is better to go back to bed because it all seems so hard. Writers know what I am talking about. Entrepreneurs  know it. People who have  lost their jobs. It is the knowledge that if you don't do it nobody else will

And that can get you in the strangest times. Take book marketing. A thankless toiling job with little result. And yeah the writing is great but marketing feels like a trudge up a hill with a weight on your back with buckets of mud on each foot. You get the picture. Its a bit like Walt in Breaking Bad. The reason that show was and is so popular is not because of the meth component but because Walt is a middle class guy who goes bad. He hits the f it moment.

And who has not felt that? But of course right behind this is the moment where you try again. You put one foot in front of the other and really what is the alternative? To do nothing. Certainly the odds are against you but isn't that true in life? So it is the action taken that wins out. Really it comes down to just do something. Anything.

You can always deal meth if all else fails.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Building Anxiety of Breaking Bad

Can't sleep. Tossing and turning. Or better yet waking up after an hour of sleep and not knowing where I am or who is next to me. Freaky. Then tossing and turning again and not sleeping. Too much coffee. Too much sugar. Maybe. Or is that show that has me up all night and I am now in the fifth season and when I go to bed I am  wound up tight like a spring about to pop...could it be the building anxiety of  Breaking Bad.

I had been warned. Don't watch it before you go to bed. Pshaw. I can handle it. I have watched worse. But no there is something bothering me now. The moon night.  The blue glow outside where the wheel barrel sits in the yard. Did I leave it there? What about the step ladder still on the front porch from Halloween. What about the back door...did I lock it.

The dog jumps up and barks by the window. I  jump out of the bed and stare out the window. Wired. Too much. Too much. And I am only season five. Something has to give. This watching before bed is making me strange. Back under the covers and watching the bright yard. No one is there. But there is that shadow....I have really got to stop this.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Giving it Away Again or...FREE

I will be doing it again. Mica Highways my third novel (Southern Mystery) is the story of an African American  man and a woman in 1968 who are murdered for having a relationship and will go on FREE kindle download November 19-23. This novel is the follow up book to Tobacco Sticks that was on free download before and while I understand the logic behind these giveaways they are hard to get used too. Why in the world would you give something away to sell more?

But that is the new marketing. Read it to sell it and of course this is only possible with the ebook because a publisher would go broke doing this with a real book. But of course the big publishers do give them away. They give away a thousand copies and more to create buzz for their lead titles. For their smaller titles maybe twenty ARCS (advanced reader copies) And these publishers knew then that if they flood the booksellers with comp copies the booksellers  will read it and recommend the book.

Now take the new modality. You allow people to download as much as they want of a book for a restricted time period say five days. On Tobacco Sticks 31,000 people downloaded the book. Staggering. That many people got the book for free. Is there anyone left who will pay to download the book? Maybe.

But that is what is now. Free to sell. Crazy world we live in.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Mica Highways
 

Does your Website Sell Books?

Alright. Websites. Once upon a time they just laid there and were essentially billboards. An elaborate business card if you will. But now they have to do more and for authors they have to do a lot. I started out like everyone else with a website with my books and some facts about me. That was aabout it. But then I started to realize nothing was happening. The site was doing nothing for  my sales and so I trashed it and started over.

First of all the question is what is driving traffic? Anything? For me it is my blogs and my tweets and my Current News. But there really should be more. The problem is  a lot of web designers are stuck in the old modality of ok here is your site. Here is your books. Here is your bio. Here is your picture. And that is about it. What you need is someone who can figure out what you are selling and the best way to do that.

There are a lot of good web people out there but only a few really get what authors are about. Here is my site. www.williamhazelgrove.com It  isn't perfect but it is on the way and I can make changes to it any time I want which is key for authors because authors like to write...right? And tweaking is the name of the game in websites.

The company that did my site is running a special with free setup right now. Here are the particulars.

 Early "Black Friday" sale exclusively for Authors/Writers
- 1st month free for Deluxe and Standard Website Packages

- Coupon Code for Deluxe Plan: awbps13n
- Coupon Code for Standard Plan: 1wbps13b

- Main company site: http://lyquidagency.com
- Link to Author Page on Lyquid Agency: http://golyquid.com/author

     Good luck!

The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have

My Dad and William Faulkner

So we are sitting in Berghoffs in Chicago and dad just drops the bomb. You think you know your parents and then they roll something out like the grenade they forgot to tell you about that was always there. Oh I knew William Faulkner.  That was how he said it and I don't even know how it came up. I think I said something about one of his books and then between cabbage and soup dad just says he knew the man. I used to socialize with his daughter Jill and Bill Faulkner taught my English class he explained.

Well I just fell off my chair. Dad went to the University of Virginia in the fifties and I had read more than one Faulkner biography to know that Bill Faulkner did a Writers in Residence stint there. He taught your class? I persisted. Oh yes. Now that was Joseph Blottners class but he brought Faulkner in regularly to teach. I sat back from my lunch. I have read everything William Faulkner ever wrote and yet I had never heard this. Now like I said I socialized with his daughter Jill and when I went over to her apartment her father was there.

I forgot all about lunch. And what was he like? Oh he was very dapper. He was a small fellow. What about class...what did he say? My father squinted. I don't really know. His accent was so heavy we couldn't understand much. And there you have it. The greatest writer the South ever produced and dad couldn't understand him.

But your mother used to see him when she took your sister in the stroller in Charlottesville, he offered up.  Dad went back to his lunch. I stared at him. And did he ever say anything to her?
Dad shrugged. I think he tipped his hat and said good afternoon madam.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

A Good Book Signing

In the age of the Internet book signings have taken it on the chin. Everybody pretty much hangs online and the book signing of old might go away eventually. But right now they are the  independent booksellers best friend and for good reason; they still bring readers and authors together. I had a signing last night in a great store in Oak Park called Magic Tree bookstore. The chairs were set up with a table in front and the books were stacked. Then you wait.

To have a good signing you need people. Ten is a nice number. You settle for five or even four. And if you hit twelve or thirteen you are doing really well. People are busy and going to a bookstore on a Thursday night is not a priority. But there they were.  Fifteen braves souls sitting in the wooden chairs and an author up front. And then it begins and you have all those great questions about writing and how the book came about.

And that magic dynamic happens beyond the Internet and chat rooms and every other disembodied experience that comes from interacting with a screen. It is actually very American to sit in a small town in a small bookstore and have a literary event. It speaks to a healthy culture. And you even sell a few books.

And then it is over and you are left with a great feeling. It's not just the book signing or the selling of books. It is the fact you just bumped up against your readers and had a great time. And that is priceless for any author.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Starting A New Book In Winter

Some people write in summer. Some write in fall...me...I write in winter. Something about the way the world slows down. At least in the Midwest it does. And the lack of light and the short days and everything dying. Time to grow a beard and sit by a fire and think about where you ended up and where you are going. And that's how books start. Some sort of reassessment of your whole life and hopefully you don't drink yourself to death or shoot yourself in the process.

But then a book starts. Kind of like a lawnmower that sat for a long time. Lots of smoke and cleaning out the pipes. Rough. Fitfully. Then it starts to turn over and you think that its been a long time since you used the thing. And you are amazed it still runs because every time you put it away you think maybe that is it and it wont start again. But it does.

And so the winter goes dark. And the world turns cold. And you figure what the hell. Might as well hide with the rest of the creatures and yeah you didn't get to where you wanted but maybe this time you might get it right. Who knows. So the snow falls and you wait and work and in the spring you will emerge again.

But for now... you're just gone.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher