I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Having only read The Da Vinci Code, all I can say is: ouch. I certainly wouldn’t mind selling millions of copies of my books, but I’ve seen other authors names on those IWL badges and I’d much rather be like any of those.

Another 700 works from later in the Valkyrie Project bring me to the same result. I guess I shall have to resort to some sort of gimmickery now to get people to read my work. Oh well. I suppose it’s better than if I’d turned out to write like Stephanie Meyer.

The Chuck producers must totally read my blog. In Part 2 of the Frightened Rabbit on Chuck series, I criticized their use of Backwards Walk and suggested that they should have saved Frightened Rabbit for when their new album came out (which happened just a little while ago, as of this writing).

Well, they went ahead and followed my advice anyway, using the song Swim Until You Can’t See Land in the latest episode of Chuck. I was literally laughing out loud (though there was no one around to hear).

If you’d like to hear the song in it’s entirety for free, I’d recommend heading over to Lala.com. If you like it, you can get it for only 89 cents, or the whole album on MP3 is only $7.49. I’ve listened to it once through so far, and it seems like it will end up being every bit as good as Midnight Organ Fight.

Are you a man or a bag of sand?

4 Reasons I Quit Writing Exercises – I totally agree. When I’m not writing for a project, I write for my blog. I’ve done writing with prompts and journaling and other things like that, but to me, that ended up feeling like like training for a marathon by doing wind sprints.

Why Word Count Goals Can Be Destructive – Again, totally agree. I used to have word count goals, and I spent way too much time tracking my word count while writing and after my writing sessions. I now have what I think of as “soft” word count goals. They’re goals, yes, but my main goal is just to write something. I can track that easily with either a 1 for Yes, or a 0 for No. I track my words, but on a more meta-level now (at the scene/chapter level rather than on a daily output level).

Why You Should Stick With A Story – I have much less experience with actually finishing a story, but I certainly do agree with the idea that you should finish what you start. (Do as I say, not as I do!) That way, instead of practicing starting a new and exciting idea over and over, you practice toughing it out, and you practice writing a complete story. As they say, “No one wants to read just the beginning of a really cool story.”

From Charlie Stross’ blog: Why books are the length they are. An interesting read on why the coming ebook revolution will set authors free – provided that it happens soon enough that people actually still read things besides blogs and status updates.

[This post is 916 words - about 4 minutes for an average reader]

Writers are well known for their procrastination. Many call it “block”, and while the traditional definition is probably accurate in some cases, I’d venture it’s usually just that there’s other stuff to do.

It’s taken me a while, and a few readings of Getting Things Done, to get my life’s priorities sorted. But now that I have, I feel I can give a good definition/explanation of Productive Procrastination. It’s simple, really, but it does take some time and self-awareness.

Productive Procrastination is when you put off doing a task by doing another productive task. See, like I said, easy enough. There are 2 keys to being able to pull it off though, which are harder than just coming up with and understanding the definition.

1. Know Your Priorities

This is actually the easier of the two. It does take a bit of self-examination (and perhaps some David Allen style list-making), but once you’ve figured out what your priorities are (besides writing, of course), then you can move on to the more difficult Step 2.

Here’s an example: Say I’m really worn out from a tough day at the office, and while I know I should write, I just don’t have the brain power left to handle it. I could easily flop down on the couch and watch some Olympics (at this time of year), or whatever other show happens to be on (I don’t have cable and there’s still almost always something on that can entertain to some extent). I could head over to my Google Reader and check out what my friends are blogging about, and what other news of the day I might have missed. I could go on YouTube and see if the people I follow have posted any new videos. I could go on Twitter and try to come up with witty replies to other people’s witty tweets. I could put on an audiobook (always one ready on my iPhone) and wash the floors.

How do I know which one of these is the one I should do? Well, after much meditation and soul-searching (yes, actual, literal meditation and soul-searching), I know that along with work and writing, making my wife happy is one of my high priority goals. It may sound cheesy or even smarmy, but if, after all, I didn’t want to make my wife happy, I wouldn’t have married her. So, anyway, looking at what I can do in this situation, I can easily say that cleaning the floors is my top priority. (It’s one of the things that makes my wife the most happy of just about anything I can do) It does take some energy that I might not have (and that is something that David Allen {author of Getting Things Done – in case you missed that part} says is just as important a part of prioritization as how urgent something is). But, I can also listen to an audiobook while I do it, so it gets extra points added there because that’s almost like reading. Sure, it doesn’t allow you to analyze sentence, paragraph, and chapter structure like reading a hard copy (or digital copy) does, but that also means it takes less brain power, and of course, it can be done while cleaning the floors… So, it’s a decent alternative.

My next priorities in this case would be: Replying to tweets, and checking blogs (so I can leave comments). Both of these help build relationships, either with friends, or with other writers and potential readers. Both of those are important because: a) studies have shown that people with more close friendships are more satisfied with their lives (regardless of any other factors), and b) I need to work on building my “writing” network… currently it consists of about one person.

So, now that we have our priorities straight and can easily figure out what we should be doing when we’ve got some extra time, we have a challenge.

2. Be Aware When You Are Procrastinating Unproductively

Just like any bad habit (for example, I bite my nails almost constantly), it’s often hard to notice when you’re doing it. In the case above, I might just turn on the TV for background noise, and not even notice that I’ve gotten sucked in until a show is rolling the final credits. I could watch one video on YouTube and then see 5 more in the sidebar that look like they’d be really cool. (Of course, that’s exactly what YouTube wants you to do)

In order to maximize your efficiency and be able to successfully procrastinate productively, you must recognize when you are doing something unproductive. If I decide not to write (first priority), I should make a conscious note that I’m putting it off, and decide what I could do that would be the next most productive.

An example of this: Just now, I had opened up my Google Reader and gone through a few feeds before I thought to myself: you know, I haven’t written a post for my blog today (and I’m trying to write something every day now), that would be more productive than just going mindlessly through all these posts.

And so, here I am, writing this post. I had the framework for it in my mind for a while now, but because I was aware that I was doing something unproductive (and I certainly wasn’t adding to my Million Bad Words count), I came over here and threw it all down in one take.

Bam, said the lady.

Do I get to count blog posts?

An interesting question from a reader over at Barry Lyga’s blog (via Jo Treggiari):

I used to think keeping a journal was pretty good writing practice, and it is in a way, but I don’t think it’s all that helpful for my fiction. To get better at fiction, I have to write, well, fiction.

Okay, so not really a question. My apologies. And even more sorrowful, Barry says:

Your blog doesn’t help you all that much towards your million bad words!

I will give you that writing a blog is not writing fiction. (Unless you’re blogging about a fake life, perhaps, and making up stories – something which I’ve considered, but discarded because it seems like you’d either have to write a whole bunch of blog posts ahead of time, or be really good at making stuff up on a daily basis; anyway…) I would argue that my blog (at least, the one that I post to on a consistent basis; not so much this one) has helped me tremendously in getting through my million bad words. Or, perhaps, if you don’t buy that, then I’d contend that by practicing on my blog and developing a strong voice over there, I’ve cut down on the number of bad words I’ll have to pump into crappy drafts of fiction pieces before I write The Great American Novel. (And by TGAN, I mean Awesome Space Opera Pulp Adventure)

The funny thing is, though, that I agree with the reader in saying that a journal isn’t that helpful for fiction. My argument in that case is that a journal is personal and not intended for public consumption. A blog, on the other hand, is specifically intended to be read by other people – just like a novel or short story. A blog post has to be (or should be if it’s not) written and edited carefully before it’s posted on the World Wide Web where the entire web of the wide world can see it.

Also, since blog posts are shorter in length than novels or short stories, and authors usually try to write them in a correspondingly shorter time span (or perhaps with shorter deadlines), they force the writer to create a higher quality first draft so that further revisions are limited. Otherwise, the blog post may never get published (trust me on that one), and when it does, it might be woefully out of date. (Clearly this is more true of certain kinds of blogs, but I am certain it applies to all blogs as a meta rule) While the subject matter may not be directly transferable to the world of fiction writing, this ability to quickly turn out words and create higher quality rough drafts is as useful in both cases as, say, being able to run fast is to both bobsledding and football.

Jim Macdonald posted a letter from Publish America over on the Making Light blog. According to this letter, authors “published” by Publish America can now have up to 5 copies of their book sent to Random House (for the mere cost of 10 copies of the author’s book).

For those who might actually think this sounds like a good idea, here’s another idea you can do at much lower cost: Finish your novel, order a copy from a POD (Print On Demand) company, and mail it to Random House yourself. A brief check tells me that it would cost $7 to print a 200 page book on Lulu. Add another $3 to mail it yourself, and another $3 to mail it to Random House for a total of $13.

The cheapest sci-fi book I see on Publish America is $12.95. If you order 10 books (the minimum order to get the extra copies sent to Random House) at 50% off (they provide a coupon code) + $1.99 shipping per book, that’s $64.75 + $19.90 = $84.65.

Do-it-yourselfers save about $70 and probably have the same chance to get their book published by Random House as the PA authors.

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The Good: Amazing prose that seamlessly shifts between characters creating a distinct flavor for each whether in first-person or third. The setup of with the self-declared unreliable narrator adds a more experimental feel to it, while also adding some additional intrigue. The excellent prose is also used to make info dumps interesting, and while these dumps are helpful, they’re delayed and spaced out in a very professional, clearly thought-out manner. The writing alone in this book makes me want to read Banks’ “space-operatic” works (Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games to start with).

The Bad: Banks is guilty of proselytizing for a few causes at points during the book, the most obvious of which is the use of torture as an interrogation technique. Honestly, I could have done without pretty much the whole Philosopher character in the book (the who does the torturing). I realize he is important in a few places, but for the number of pages dedicated to him and his background, I feel like there should have been more tie-in with the book rather than just serving as a platform to say that torture is bad. But then, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like to examine society through the lens of a future world and would rather read and write adventure (or perhaps “pulp”) style fiction.

A Final Note (on my review in general): I am not going to review books that I feel are just mediocre or otherwise not worth reading. You can feel confident that if you see a book review here, it will be because I feel the book is worth your time to read (and this comes from a self-proclaimed slow – although actually fairly average – reader). I may consider reviewing a book that I had to put down in order to warn people away from wasting their time. But there’s enough negative media in the world already, that my goals is to focus on the good books and leave others to tell you what not to read.

Good timing because I followed a bunch of people that Twitter suggested as part of the writing community, but some of them kind of tweet like crazies. Good marketing for them, I suppose, but it was overwhelming me a bit considering I’d only started following 9 people. Seems to have calmed down a bit now, so we’ll see how it goes with the 4 new people suggested in the Writer’s Digest blog post.