I can’t claim to be a master o’ the written word, but I can pretend to be one. With that in mind, I am compelled to push forward any writing-related knowledge I may have in hopes that you too can promote a false sense of superiority.

Today’s lesson: Writing has two ways to keep you grounded in your story, or “anchors,” as I will call them.

1. The words you’ve already put down
2. The words you have yet to put down

The first anchor is touched upon in the brilliant book by Ron Carlson, aptly titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story (which I reviewed at the How Publishing Really Works blog). Basically, the idea is that every word you write should be used as a bank of ideas to further the story itself. For example, if I begin a story with the following line:

Greg topped his tank for what he knew would be the last time in many miles, days, perhaps even weeks.

Then I already have a wealth of information to use as I continue the story. Writer’s block be damned. Here I can explore who Greg is, why he is traveling, why it will be the last time for a while, what kind of car does he drive, whose car is it, and so on. This advice seems obvious doesn’t it? Because it is. So many times we simply fail to recognize the simple things. Keeping this bank in mind can literally help sprout a full story from a single, random line.

The second anchor is a reference to story outlines. I am a strong proponent for outlining a story. The concept is scary to many writers, as it implies the structured tiered outline forced upon us in middle school. But, an outline can be something as simple as a numbered list of plot points. The goal is to simply know your general direction so that you are never daunted by infinite possibilities. Believe it or not, restriction is important when writing. The goal isn’t to open you mind to infinite ideas; the goal is to tame those ideas down to a manageable level.

I think it is Max Barry who compares this second anchor to a car’s headlights (if anyone knows the source for sure, please let me know in the comments below). One should write with only a few future plot points in mind, basically the distance that a car’s headlights reach. I agree with this. The headlights allow a story to move in a visible direction while at the same time not allowing the story to wander off the road.

Now, tell your friends that I am a genius.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oberazzi/

Disclaimer: I am far from a career author. I’ve made enough money to buy a few fifths of whisky and some diapers for my baby, so needless to say I’ve got a long way to go. The following plan reflects this outsider (re: possibly ignorant) perspective.

The idealized author spends his time alone, churning out typewritten manuscripts to meet constant deadlines. He drinks. Probably smokes. He’s respected. He vacations in tropical seclusion, but still, even with the changed view, he writes. He has no day job. He is an author. Writing puts his kids through college.

There is a reason this image contains a typewriter. Much like the machine itself, the idealized author is all but extinct. I think a lot of writers would like to go back to this model. Is it possible to not just retain the author career, but to make it thrive?

Given the following set of assumptions, I believe it would be possible to bring back the author career:

1. Content will continue to outweigh consumption
2. The marketplace is spoilt by free content, and much of that content will continue to be free
3. eBooks/eReaders will be a primary content medium within the next decade
4. The cost to produce and distribute market-quality products will continue to fall

More authors are producing more content than ever, so it’s fair to say the larger onus is on the publishers to bring back the career. The problem is that publishers have no incentive right now to court authors in the way they once did. Publishers have the above items #1 and #2 going for them. A culture of expected free content coupled with an overflow of content, means authors have been trained to work for cheap or free.

But, authors have items #3 and #4 above as important pieces of leverage. If publishers don’t adapt to the changing market, and work with authors to do so, then the publishers will die. Because authors have the ability to create and distribute their own work, and because they have been trained to work for nothing, authors have little to lose by abandoning the publisher. Without authors, publishers die. Without publishers, authors continue.

What can be done?

1. Consolidate the agent and publisher roles. Basically, this combined entity should act as a time and beaurocracy manager for authors. Today, authors have the ability to publish and distribute their own content without the help of agents and publishers. If this Pub/Agent composite can give authors time to write, then they will ultimately be given the sort of consistent product that the marketplace loves. Marketing thrives on trends. Giving authors time is the way to nurture trends.
2. Increase author royalties. As media becomes electronic, the savings on overhead and distribution must be passed on. Court your talent, publishers. I’ve read the arguments against electronic media being cost-savers for publishers, and I just don’t believe them.
3. Embrace the eBook paradigm shift. As a reader, I haven’t yet fallen in love with eBooks. As a writer, I am very excited by the possibilities. Instead of fighting to keep print alive, fight to make eBooks thrive. eBooks have the potential to increase the pool of readers, much as the iPod did for music enthusiasts.
4. Brand yourselves as independent records labels do. Make fans out of your press, not just out of your authors. I won’t go into much depth here about this, but we do have an episode forthcoming at the Welcome to The Velvet podcast on this topic.

What can writers do?

1. Provide consistent and brandable content. As Dan Holloway says in the comments at Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works blog, “If you are writing for the art, by all means try your hand at getting an agent, but don’t be upset if you don’t get one – and if the feedback is that you should be more commercial in order to get one, then make the decision – do you want to write for the pay packet, or do you REALLY want to do it for the art? And if it’s the latter, don’t expect to be picked up, or blame the publishers when you aren’t.”
2. Prove that you can provide that content. As Jane Smith says in a response to the above comment, “I think that a big reason that most writers make such a paltry amount is that there are lots of people out there who call themselves writers but who only really dabble with writing: they sell an article every now and then, take several years to write just one book; sure, they’re writers–but not full-time, serious writers.”. A career author must write as though it is a career.

I want to sit alone and write fiction for a living. Help me do that. Make me believe.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaywalk/

As far as meeting this goal, I failed. I did not reach 5,000 print-quality words in one day. However, I did learn something very important. I am simply not meant to write all day. I am glad that I can no longer blame my non-productivity on time constraints. In fact, I actually work better given 2-3 hour windows. As you can see by the time-line below, the day started off quite well.

What to make of this? As much as I would like live the romanticized writer’s life, I simply do not have the constitution to do so. My apologies to anyone who lost gambled wrongly on this outcome. My advice is that next time you wager money on someone’s likelihood to meet a goal, don’t use me if your choose the affirmative side.

(this is more of a rant than a cohesive post. Also not a cohesive post: an ionic neutral road sign…oh, I went there, sirs and mams)

When I say that best-selling doesn’t mean best writing I understand the hipster ditch I dig. It sounds whiny and pretentious, all the more so when one realizes that nothing of mine is even close to best-selling. I’m not sure the word “best” could be put in front of any word and used to describe my work. Best tinder, maybe. Best use of paper bound by a cover bearing the name Caleb J Ross, perhaps. But someone could write my name on a phone book and it would be more “best” than my work. This ditch, though, it’s easy to dig, yet difficult to fill. But I will try.

When I say that best-selling doesn’t mean best writing, I’m really attacking the concept that commercial success defines artistic success. The Hitler example here would be Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code (“Hitler example” is a term I use to connote the extreme example; when someone wants to conceptualize something bad, Hitler is the go-to reference. Instead of explaining all of this, I should have just used a different term, maybe).

Many writers commonly denounce Dan Brown. While this may come off as petty jealously (we all want his money and readership), envy shouldn’t diminish the fact that his books are not well-written. Yes, they are great stories (those that I’ve read, I can vouch for), but they are not great writing. This is the divide between commercial and artistic success. Craig Clevenger, in an article for the Santa Barbara Independent (reproduced here at The Velvet) has much to say on Brown’s quality, even making the point that his prose is nearly indistinguishable from that of erotica, a genre accepted even by many of its authors as one meant for quantity over quality.

My point being, I suppose (see, even I don’t know if this thing has a point. I warned you), that it’s okay to voice your hate for a commercially successful book on terms of art. I think the key is to be able to back that opinion with a wide frame of reference. I would guess that the people who regularly and primarily read blockbuster novels (those by James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer, and Dan Brown for example) don’t often read other types, or many other, books. Therefore, they do not have a large enough frame of reference for measuring the quality of a book. So, those that may cite jealously as the source of any Brown-bashing, may be doing so without ever having experienced a truly well-written book.

Transformers might make tons at the box office, but film geeks know that The Machinist is a much better movie of humans vs. machine.

KC Masterpiece barbeque sauce sells truckloads around the county, but fat guys know that Cowtown is way better.

Or, shit, maybe people don’t care about writing and instead just want a story. That’s cool. As long as people are reading, I guess.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yorkjason/

I’ve been asked a few times lately about my infatuation with cigars, specifically regarding my pairing them with reading and writing. Though I will likely be forced to continue defending my obsession, I feel laying it out in a blog post may curb the questions. Or it may rouse a group of like-minded gourmets, in which case, Welcome, Friends!

I have never been a cigarette smoker. In fact, growing up, I routinely took a dramatic exit when my mother lit up in the living room (she doesn’t smoke anymore, hasn’t for years). I fanned barely noticeable smoke from my face when entering bars. I vehemently stomped on butts left to smolder on sidewalks and curbs. In short, I was a snobby little punk.

The impetus of my cigar habit is a mystery; the staying power, however, is quite explainable. I love the smell. I love watching the large plumes of smoke. I love that a cigar, due mostly to its size and smoke duration, forces one to relax. You can’t clean the kitchen when holding a lit cigar. You can’t run a marathon with smoke in your face (being a fat lazy guy surely has nothing to do with my marathon avoidance).

My wife calls me a hippy when I talk about watching the smoke. I admit, there isn’t any tangible, measurable benefit to watching smoke, which could place it into the get-a-goddamn-haircut-you-freak category of leisure. But watching smoke, like the very act of smoking, forces relaxation. This numbed mindset pairs well with reading and writing, both of which require a freedom of distraction.

So, hippy though I may be, a beautiful cigar—the look, the smell, the taste—is a Pavlovian trigger to push me into reading and writing in ways that other writerly clichés (coffee, alcohol, vampires) simply cannot.

Here are a few of my current favs. These, with the exception of the Leon Jimenes Cafe Dom. Corona are way to expensive for ritual savoring, so I reserve them for perfect weather only.

Drew Estate Natural Ltd. Irish Hops	Drew Estate ACID Kuba Kuba
Drew Estate ACID 5	Leon Jimenes Cafe Dom. Corona

What are your writerly/readerly vices? The more cliché, the better.

I’ve been accused of being a bit of a literary snob. Mostly by best-seller groupies who smell like trade paperbacks and poverty. Why don’t you go save a few dimes at a used blog store, and leave the shiny new posts to those of us with taste!

/UNDESERVED SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

My justification for being a literary snob (literob?) always has been that if a book is best-selling and intellectually easily accessible, then it likely isn’t confronting dangerous (i.e., important) topics. I want to believe that fiction should be more than entertainment. For the most part, I still agree with this logic. But a few months ago, at the AWP Conference in Denver, CO, I came to a bit of a realization, with some help from author Tod Goldberg.

I realized that despite any drive to challenge the established format or structure of fiction, it is the story itself that keeps readers reading. I wanted to believe that a unique concept, or beautiful language, or inventive formatting alone could carry a book-length work. But no, it cannot. A book told from the perspective of a cancerous cell? Conceptually unique, but no. A book intimately describing that cancerous cell? Beautiful language, but no. A book giving dialog to every cancerous cell in a body, matching the text color to the cell color? Inventive formatting, but no. A book that imbues a cancerous cell with character traits similar to a human while putting that cell in a morally conflicted position? Sure.

My fault rested not entirely with the assumed intellectual ease of commercial (vs. literary) writing, but also with the ill-conception that plot-driven genre fiction is somehow weaker and easier to write than a high-Art piece of literary fiction. This opinion was birthed in college, where I first began to read and write. Had I read as a child, I may have understood the basal importance of plot long ago. But my literobbery was rooted in college, too late to let aesthetics matter. I was a head case (vs body case) from the beginning.

Now, five years post-graduation, a degree in-hand, and without a writing career that nullifies a day job, I’ve started to wonder about the role a university education plays in a writer’s life. Note: I wouldn’t trade my university experience for anything; I love being a literob. But I do wish that a stronger focus would have been placed on the writer’s career, and less on the writer’s life.

If someone loves to weld, they go to a welding school to learn to be a professional welder. If someone loves to write, shouldn’t they go to a writing school to learn to be a professional writer? The key word being “professional,” meaning, to get paid doing so. 

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lepoolpe/

I’ve been a member of The Velvet for a few years. During that time, I’ve come to respect the pool of talent over there not just for their writing chops, but for their reading tastes as well. They are my taste-makers.

I am glad to now be able to share that camaraderie with you. Episode #001 of The Velvet Podcast just went live a few hours ago. Me, Gordon Highland, and Rob Parker talk about a few things writing, specifically regarding writing communities.

I look forward to the future of this podcast. Please, give it a listen. Subscribe via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, RSS, or iTunes (coming soon). And don’t worry, it won’t be my lame voice on the Podcast for every episode.