Thanks to everyone who made it fun while it lasted, but ultimately I found myself unable to both dispense priceless advice and live up to said advice in the priceless fashion it deserved.

Right now I’m in the process of creating the next thing. At some point this blog will be deleted, but in the meantime feel free to poke around its perfectly preserved corpse.

Great fun last night getting a call from the Mobys from Melville House publicist Megan Halpern, who helped relay my acceptance speech to the fine people at The Griffin.

Thanks to the dodgy connection and the crowd noise, it was a little hard to get exact read on the room. Nevertheless,  I distinctly heard the sound of a single, brilliant, highly stylized, postmodern (and at times exhausting) tear running down the face of fellow finalist Thomas Pynchon.

Don’t take the loss too hard, old chum. Your place in literature is secure, even if you’re kind of eating it on YouTube.

Also, if you’re reading this and haven’t read THE CRYING OF LOT 49, please stop reading this and get yourself reading that. There are some things you don’t joke about.

Finally, a huge thanks to friend and co-conspirator James Lotter for making the vid a reality.

First, thank  you so much for your fascinating and helpful article in the Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers. If you have a moment, I’m wondering if you might expand a bit on the notion of the conceptual ladder? (A Google search took me to a site about the Kabbalah, which was interesting, but not quite what I was after.) Is the conceptual ladder the way in which an individual’s mind moves from concept to example and back again? Or is the conceptual ladder a series of concepts, ranging in complexity, each of which might act as a starting point? Or perhaps some combination of the two?

First, glad you liked the piece. I’m currently working on getting Poets & Writers to release it on the internet so more people can read it.

Second, before I clarify the concept of the conceptual ladder I need to do two things.

1. Introduce the following backpack:

2. Redefine art (from the point of view of the person creating it):

A piece of art represents the sum of EVERY creative decision rigorously applied

One of the ways we get blocked is that we make assumptions about our work that we don’t even realize we’re making. We unconsciously decide that a flea market backpack can only pay tribute to Barack Obama OR Harry Potter OR Sonic the Hedgehog.

Once we’ve made that decision (again, often without knowing we’ve made it) we wrestle with making our backpack great. We run our hand over many pleathers in order to figure out which one is the finest pleather. We fuss over color and dimension. We pay extra attention to every stitch and seam because our backpacked tribute has to be JUST RIGHT.

The problem is that we acted too soon. We self-imposed unnecessary limits on what we considered appropriate and/or effective backpack decoration. We failed to consider that maybe, just maybe, the best flea market backpack would pay tribute to Barack Obama AND Harry Potter AND Sonic the Hedgehog in a kaleidoscopic explosion of who’s the boss of all humankind. (Don’t listen to FAIL blog, who featured this item a few weeks ago. This is a WIN.)

So you could look at the conceptual ladder as a hierarchy of ideas that moves from simple to complex, from quiet to loud, from demure to outrageous, etc.

Or you could think of the idea as occupying a rung on some kind of imaginary idea ladder. How would the idea change if it occupied a higher rung? How would it change if it occupied a lower rung?

Or you could think of your own badass self as standing on the ladder. How does your view of the idea landscape change as you climb up and down?

Or you could come up with an entirely different metaphor (knobs, dials, sliders, DNA sequences) to belabor (as I have) at your leisure.

The point is to find some kind of tool/reminder to keep your idea-generating as fluid and elastic and expansive as you can. Then, start using that fluidity, elasticity and expansiveness early and often, because once a creative decision is made (unconsciously or not) you have to live it. Forever.

For a variety of reasons (which, by the way, my voice recognition software often interprets as “for a Friday of reasons”) many of these items never make the final cut.

And so let us take a moment to recognize and to celebrate what was almost good enough in 2009.

1. Authonomy

HarperCollins is experimenting with an online slush pile/social network/American Idol contest called Authonomy. While trying to write about this site I could never figure out if it was the Future or merely a curiosity born out of fear and desperation. (I suppose it could be both!)

2. Will Work For Praise

This BusinessWeek article caught my eye because it talks about — at least in a tangential way — part of the dark side of being a writer. As the article notes, we’ll happily do creative work for free as long as it gets us a little attention. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to take this concept and talk about larger economic and cultural forces or merely riff on how sad our profession has become, so I just let it go.

3. Self-Publishing Review

For a while I was working on a trend piece about the coming legitimacy of self-publishing. The point I was going to make was something about how if mainstream publishers continue to offer their authors less and less — and if self-publishing can acquire the rigors of traditional publishing — then our whole conception of what “real” publishing is will change. But I only got as far as finding this cool link for a website that seeks to elevate the standards of self-publishing.

4. The Book is dead, the Book will live on, blah, blah, blah

Somewhere in the middle of 2009 I decided to swear off the whole FUTURE OF THE BOOK conversation. (Too many cooks!) That said, the Institute for the Future of the Book’s if:book blog is a nice clearinghouse. And the unsinkable Jonathan Karp’s article This Is Your Wake-Up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing is a nice, um, wake-up call.

5. Good and Bad Procrastination

Sometimes you set out to write a post and in doing research for said post you discover that someone else has done a good enough job of writing it already. My post on good versus bad procrastination falls into this category. Hit it, Paul Graham!

6. Will My Video Get 1 Million Views on YouTube?

Still other times you set out to write a post (like, say, what the number of hits on your YouTube video means) and quickly find out that in order to write said post you’d have to do so much legwork that it wouldn’t be worth it. Then two days later Slate up and publishes a thoughtful, well-researched piece about the very same subject. Problem solved.

7. 10 Hallmarks of Amateur Recording

The final entry for my 2009 anti-roundup roundup comes courtesy of Des McKinney’s Hometracked blog. His post on the ten hallmarks of amateur recording had me inspired to do a similar post about the 10 hallmarks of amateur writing. Except I wasn’t going to merely copy his idea but instead create some kind of cross-disciplinary bridge between his world and mine. Then I remembered how smart you are and realized that given the opportunity you could figure it out for yourself.

Thanks again to all the readers of this blog for a memorable 2009. Here’s to the increased furtherance of awesomeness in 2010.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that all financial crises are the results of “debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale.” The recent financial crisis was no exception, with everyone — homeowners, private-equity investors, our biggest banks — taking on enormous amounts of debt. If it’s frustrating that the government is footing the bill to clean up the mess, it’s even worse that the government helped pay for the debt binge that created the mess in the first place, thanks to a tax system that actually subsidizes borrowing. Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.

Let’s narrow in a little further:

Debt didn’t get dangerously out of scale because the system was broken. It got out of scale, in part, because the system worked.

Try reading these two lines out loud.

Notice how in the first sentence your voice travels downhill to the word broken. Then, in the second line, it travels back up to end (brightly in tone, but ominous in meaning) on the word worked.

I think this is very nice. You could argue that it’s a little mechanical, but you also have to agree that it’s an effective way of erasing one set of expectations and replacing them with another. (Which is what Surowiecki needs to do in order to advance his argument.)

Like any technique the two-line reverse can be used for ill:

He left the house that fine spring morning never having felt more alive. What he didn’t know — nay, what he couldn’t know — was that this was the day he would die.

But it can also be used (slightly) more subtly.

Imagine a paragraph about a guy arriving late to deliver a big speech at an important auditorium. He hurries through the stage door. Minions scurry to get the proceedings started. He checks his breath. Wipes the sweat off his palms. He gets to the wings just as the person introducing him gets something in his bio wrong. Then this:

He takes the stage expecting to see an audience filled with hundreds of people. Instead there is one.

The “two-line reverse” gets you out of the droning quality of early drafts, where the sentences come one after another with little relationship to each other. Try it the next time you want your work to have a little more music.

First, this is NOT the cover to the January/February 2010 issue of Poets & Writers magazine, which is all about INSPIRATION. That cover was designed by Chip Kidd and is pretty rad, but for some reason the P & W website is not letting me rip the image.

So I went into Flickr where I found the photostream of Stephen Poff. He did a series on INSPIRATION and so I’m Creative Commons-ly using his work instead. We all cool/clear?

That said, I’m very happy to be part of the aforementioned Poets & Writers issue in which I have an article called “How To Get Unstuck.” The piece uses  psychology research into creativity to (hopefully) help writers of all stripes become more emotionally intelligent about writer’s block.

There are also jokes.

So far I’ve received some very nice feedback on the piece. Since it’s not available online I thought it would be helpful to create this post in the event people stop by and want to leave a comment.

To kick things off, I offer this e-mail I received from writer Emily Calvo:

I LOVED your recent Poet & Writers article about creative thinking. Having spent 20 years paying the bills by writing ads and marketing pieces, I can’t wait around for inspiration or I’d starve. Your description of the process of unlocking the brain is perfect. I’m also a psych major and a poet, so this topic is particularly interesting to me.

One additional thought I’d like to share with you. In the many brainstorming sessions I’ve conducted, I’ve noticed that the ideas generated eventually become grossly inappropriate. Politically incorrect, humorously nasty and just plain X-rated. Too often, that’s when the participants want to “cash-in.” They assume that they’ve reached the bottom of the barrel. However, I’ve noticed that when they keep going, the best stuff decides to finally pop out of their heads. It’s as if the inappropriate ideas have allowed them to open the door to greater flexibility and less fixation.

So far so good. I’ve been able to keep up with my deadlines. I’m back on Facebook. Pretty soon I’ll be able to be up on this blog with more frequency.

I’ve also gotten a lot of interest from writers about how the software works, its accuracy, and in general what it is like to write with your mouth.

And so here is my take on using voice recognition software. With the exception of a few minor tweaks, I am letting the work stand.

How does it work?

It’s pretty simple. You install some software. You “train” the program so it recognizes your distinct speaking style (this takes about 10 minutes) and then you’re ready to go.

Included in the price is a headset with a specially designed microphone. So you pop that baby on and commence filling the air with your words.

You can speak about as fast as you normally speak, although you have to tell the program when you’re using punctuation, which can slow you down a little bit. But after a while you get pretty good at putting in the commas and periods and then you don’t notice that you’re even doing it.

If you make a mistake, then all you have to do is say “scratch that.” If you’ve just called for a piece of punctuation then the program will remove only that. Otherwise it will pick a word or phrase and delete that. More on how this affects your writing later.

Is it accurate?

Yes. For the most part it gets what you say right. It can handle homophones (full disclosure: it did take me a few takes so that word didn’t come out “humble phones”) although when it gets something wrong it can be frustrating and your best bet is to put in a placeholder word and move on.

For example, I would have preferred to write “sweet, delicate forearms” in my opening line, but I had to go with “sugary” because the program got the context wrong. It kept writing the word “suite” as an address. Still, the fact that the software takes context into account is a big plus.

If anything most of the problems have been my fault. One of the humbling aspects of using voice recognition software is that it lays naked your bad diction.

For example, I didn’t realize that I pronounce the word “already” like the man’s name Artie. As in “I Artie did that blog post.”

(I was also called out by a friend when I promised in an e-mail to “deftly” get in touch with her after the holidays.)

But this is easy enough to fix by over enunciating some words. When I need to say the word “disgust” I put more of a Z. sound into that first syllable, so it doesn’t come out “discussed.”

Does it feel weird?

At first I felt like a parody of the slick, self-involved artist who talks his thoughts into a micro recorder. But once I started enjoying using this new tool I got over any feelings of self-consciousness.

What’s nice about the software is that once you get into a groove you find that you can produce a lot of words in one sitting.

You can also talk your way through an idea and it captures your entire thought process. You are not always as aware of what you are writing as you are when you do it by hand, but I like that quality, especially when I’m in the discovery phase.

But that lack of awareness also brings us to the most important question:

That’s nice, but is it writing?

I’m going to say that it’s not writing, but that doesn’t mean the voice recognition is not an extremely useful tool for writers.

The reason I say it’s not writing is that the nature of the software rewards you for plowing forward. There are all kinds of commands for editing text but so far for me they’ve proved to be too cumbersome. Even saying “scratch that” a million times to undo the work can become a pain. Often it’s just much easier to spew and then fix it later.

I’m also going to say it’s not writing because it’s so easy. You just don’t agonize over the words, the structure, the internal rhythms, etc. of your work the way you do when you’re writing by hand or typing. It all just kind of comes out and that’s okay.

I’ve also noticed that after four hours of dictating I’m not at all tired. It reminds me a little bit of when I first started writing and everything that came out of my pen seemed like pure gold to me. And the reason was that while I was generating copy I wasn’t purposefully working the material.

Same goes for this software. I’ve had a 5000-word morning using MacSpeech Dictate, but when I went back and looked at those 5000 words I ended up cutting a lot more than I would have cut from 5000 typed words.

But given how I work that’s not a problem. I’ve always liked getting it all out in front of me and then working with it later. So this tool suits me well. But I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to the writer who agonizes their work one line at a time. I think you’d get too caught up in the mechanics of the program and you’d lose any benefits from being able to say it to the page.

One thing I do know is this: I’m working and my arms don’t hurt. So I will continue to use the software and perhaps even dig deeper into its many features.

Take care and have a great holiday break. I’ll be back up on the blog in the new year.

The good news is that I’m actually typing this and it doesn’t hurt like the Devil. The bad news is that these 144 words are the only writing I’ve done all day. So we’ll see what happens when the holidays are over and the money work returns and I have to manage both.

Help might come in the form of my new voice recognition software, which has been amazing. The next thing I do (hopefully sooner than later) will be to dictate what it’s like to “write” using only your brain and your mouth. I think you might be surprised.

In the meantime, be good.

Cheers!

I have to go dark again for awhile until I heal up. I’ve been calling it tendonitis although the physical therapist I met with yesterday said it was really more a case of “forearm overuse” and “tired arm.”

I think this is payback for all the times I made fun of people with Restless Leg Syndrome.

Bottom line is I can’t type. Like, at all.

I just bought some voice-to-text software that I will be training in the next few days. It’s going to be an adjustment but hopefully I’ll be back “writing” sooner than later.

Take care of your hands, people!

I knew that it’s the largest body of fresh water in the world, that it contains about twenty percent of the world’s fresh water, that it’s 1,637 metres (more than a mile) deep at its deepest, that it was created by continental landmasses moving apart, that is has species of fish found only here. But, beyond its facts, Baikal really does have a magic to it. Travellers who wrote ecstatically about it in the past were not exaggerating. Most of Russia’s inland water is sluggish, swampy, inert; Baikal’s is quick. For sparklingness and clarity it’s the opposite of swamp water. The surrounding hills and cliffs that funnel winds along it keep it jumping. It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land.

From Ian Frazier’s “Travels in Siberia-II” from the August 10, 2009 issue of The New Yorker.

We’re about to enter Paragraph Party season again so I’m featuring this beaut to get us back in the mood.

One of the things we talk about in the Paragraph Party is the concept of Enter, Develop, Exit.

We use these words to avoid vague language like Beginning, Middle, End and to keep us far, far away from the confines of Topic Sentence, Supporting Sentence, Concluding Sentence.

Enter, Develop, Exit is about getting the reader in, making things happen, and then (delightfully) kicking them out. Frazier’s graf about Baikal shows this principle at work while also nicely illustrating how even basic scene-setting can be magical.

First, I absolutely love the Enter on this graf. Frazier starts out with some Best of Wikipedia tidbits, but he does a couple of things that rescue him from sounding like a 5th grader giving a geography report.

First, the phrase “I knew that” is wonderfully dismissive. It has a “as you may have heard” ring to it without calling attention to itself. You forgive him for his indulgence without even realizing it’s happening.

Second, Frazier breaks your will with details. A typical writer would just tell you that Baikal was the largest fresh water body of water in the world. Frazier keeps on you until the enormity of this lake really sinks in. If you’re not impressed with the high percentage of global fresh water, then he’ll take you a mile(!) under the surface, and if that’s not enough then he’ll give you special fish and continental drift.

The Develop section of the graf is the weakest, but Frazier still does a nice job of creating a bridge between the facts in the beginning and the beautiful imagery of the final line. I would’ve appreciated a quotation from one of those ecstatic former travelers, but I respect the choice to keep things clean.

What I do like is how Frazier puts Baikal in context with the rest of Russia’s inland water. “For sparklingness and clarity it’s the opposite of swamp water” is kind of a weird sentence, but you need it to build the overall image of Baikal (quick, jumping, etc.).

Now we’re ready to Exit.

“[I]t seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land” is just lovely. I especially appreciate that Frazier didn’t write this sentence so it ended on the word “sky” although I admit that on the first read I felt like this was a missed opportunity. What writer doesn’t want to lead their reader into the wild blue yonder?

Then I went back and figured out why I was wrong and Frazier was right. You’ll find the reason in beginning of the first line of the next graf. I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out:

“When a wave rolls in on Baikal, and it curls to break . . . .”

I will not bore you with the details, but let’s just say that when you pay $9.97 per year for Domain Name Mapping, then you can expect about $9.97 worth of customer service when it goes wrong.

In any case: back. The first lesson from Awesome Writing Prompt #15 will begin shortly.

Two childhood friends unexpectedly fall in love during a trip to New York.

The scenes do not have to be in order. They do not have to cohere. They do not have to be original.

This is an exercise in reacting to an idea. Keep it fast and loose and automatic.

Please post your results in the comments or send them to me at dennis <dot> cass <at> gmail <dot> com and we’ll put them to good use.

Final thought:

Duplicate answers are beyond okay. So if you see something in the comments and you feel that it’s already been covered, please post anyway. The more people who contribute the better.

I’ve been reading your blog for a while, but haven’t really gotten engaged for the simple (if depressing) reason that college leaves me little time for any creative projects of my own. That said, there’s always been one nagging (meta-)question that I am finally going to ask: why? Not to sound thankless (far from it), but why are you so adamant on helping complete strangers for what seems to be little to no personal gain? As someone who spends 8 months of the year around New Yorkers (and the other 4 around retirees), your seemingly sincere altruism is refreshing, but also somewhat baffling.

I have had this question in the hopper since February. Every week I take a stab at it and every week I set it aside.

In the past seven months several glib answers come to mind, answers like:

Giving is the new taking.

(Unfortunately, like so many glib answers, it’s not as original as I thought.)

This spring, while playing Resident Evil 4, I latched on to something Luis said to Leon when Leon tried to get to the bottom of Luis’s zombie-killing altruism:

“It makes me feel good. Let’s leave it at that.”

There’s also this wonderful line from Clay Shirky’s HERE COMES EVERYBODY when he quotes former Internet Society trustee Scott Bradner:

“The internet means you don’t have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before you try it.”

The”why” lies in a mixture of all three.

Depending on the day I do this primarily because I believe in altruism for altruism’s sake, or because helping people feels good, or because I don’t have to explain to anyone (and in particular a bored and jaded New York magazine editor) why writing about paragraphs and pineapples is important.

In short:

I care about writers and good writing and would like to see more of both.

For now those are good enough reasons for me. I hope they’re good enough for you.

After receiving my MA in philosophy I decided that adjunct teaching would give me time to write fiction. But now that I am teaching 8 courses/semester and doing assorted freelance work I just want to get some sleep. So I’m thinking of a career change.

My big plan was to start an Master in Library and Information Science.

You seem to spend a lot of time in libraries–and know about publishing trends. The recent budget cuts for public libraries in Ohio have compounded my fears.

Do you have any thoughts on the long term value of an MLIS either for working public/college libraries or for a new line of freelance work (i.e the non-traditional path seems to include things like working for publishers, ghost writing, etc.)?

One of the earliest readers of this blog is getting her degree in library and information science. I think it’s an exciting and valuable line of work to pursue.

The budget cuts are scary, but I’d advise you not to get too distracted by the short-term noise. If you enter this field you’ll be right in the middle of the following big questions:

• What is the future of the old-fashioned, paper-based book?
• How are we going to realize the full artistic and cultural potential of electronic books?
• How are we going to preserve our cultural and intellectual heritage if it’s locked up in (possibly unreadable) data?
• Format aside, how are going to cope with the incredible volume of information?
• Finally, who owns all this information and what rights do people have to use/alter/share it?

I don’t think the money is going to be a real issue here. Yes, there are going to be budget cuts to some public libraries, but university libraries, corporate libraries, foundation libraries, etc. are only going to grow.

I also believe that any number of innovative, surprising and perhaps even bizarre new entities will spring up around the hardcore information science issues. The Google Books Library Project is the just the beginning.

The real question is whether or not you want to be a part of all this chaos and uncertainty, because I think it could get pretty hairy.

My apologies if I’m reading you wrong, but it seems to me that you have this image of becoming a librarian so you can pad around in crepe soled shoes and quietly shelve books while you secretly think about your novel.

I have a feeling that doing this career right may involve more of an Indiana Jones approach. It may require much more whip cracking, swashbuckling and switching sandbags for golden icons than any of us imagine.

So by all means do it. But do it with gusto and verve. We’re going to need it.

I know how to look for agents. I’ve got books, website lists, blahty-blah. And I get the long road thing and the keep trying thing. Okay. But while there are a lot of agents in the world, the numbers aren’t infinite.  I mean, first I probably need to focus on American agents–seeing as I live in America and all.

Then I’ve got to focus further on my genre. Done.

Focus in more on agents that seem legit. Done.

Then on agents that are accepting queries. Done.

And so if this list isn’t as long as the road–in fact the road appears to be running off the map–then what? End of list…rejections received…now…?

Burn book and map? Get off the damn road?

Here are some uncomfortable statements about your writing career that may or may not be true:

• You may not sell your first book. Or your second. Or your third.
• You may sell your fourth book first, then publish your first book second and then turn pieces of your second into a short story and write an essay about why you’ll never publish your third.
• You may rewrite your first book a dozen times over a dozen years before you get it right.
• You may discover that your books don’t really work as books and become a playwright.

You’re asking me about the finiteness of agents, but I sense that the question behind your question is about the nature of the path you’re on. When is this going to happen for me? IS is going to happen for me?

I don’t know. But I do know this:

Getting published is a byproduct of doing the work.

Unless you’re a celebrity (in which case getting published is a byproduct of doing other work) then your day will come because you got the work right. Not necessarily great work (or even good work) but work that is right.

So chin up. Focus on the page.

I promise you won’t run out of agents.

A few months back, you posted (here) on the idea of carefully crafted “tent poles” — which, as I read it, meant key scenes, Big Moments, not necessarily with fights and explosions but with a lot of propulsive (even if intellectual) energy. You didn’t say explicitly in your post to construct the tent poles first, and then go back and cover them with canvas (as it were). But that’s what I’ve been experimenting with. And I think it’s working. So far.

My question: can you think of a handy set of guidelines for how to establish a rhythm of such scenes? This might factor in the length of the novel, the kind (action-y vs. less so), maybe the number of characters, the POV, whatever. I’ve got one HUGE tent-pole moment — the climactic chapter — and maybe six or eight lesser ones. Structurally, I can imagine a plotline in which the tent poles were gradually ramping up to the huge one; I can imagine a rhythm established by the lengths of these scenes, and the lengths of the scenes which tie them together; I can imagine a rhythm in which the energy alternates more or less evenly, going UP, down, UP, down, etc. until finally there’s a sort of pause — an extended down, I guess you could say, followed by the big UPPPP of that last one. Not looking for some precise mathematical or geometric rule, of course. Just wondering if you see relative value in one vs. another.

Without seeing the work it’s impossible for me to give you feedback on structure, but I think you’re on the right track in how you’re thinking about tent poles:

You seem to get that the number of tent poles is finite

If you feel you have 27 key scenes then you either can’t tell the major from the minor or you’re trying to do too much in one work.

You’re right about rhythm

Go too long between tent pole moments and your reader might get bored. Pack them too close together and your reader might feel overwhelmed. Finding that right balance between tension and release is key.

You’re also right that tent poles don’t have to involve plot, big character movement, etc.

While pondering this question I kept thinking about the scene in the film Gone with the Wind when Scarlett O’Hara is at the train depot and the camera cranes up to reveal wounded Confederate soldiers stretching to the horizon.

A tent pole moment can be as seemingly insignificant as a transition or an aside, but it has that “wow” factor that makes you love the work and want to keep going.

Final thought:

Getting back to your question about sequencing, I think the best thing you can do is to stay loose and playful.

Screenwriters and television writers often write the gist of scenes on note cards and pin them to a cork board.

See what happens when turn  your tent pole moments into building blocks that you can move around in space.

I would like to apologize to a former editor for being an arrogant little sh*t. I don’t necessarily need, want, or expect to work with this person again. But it has been weighing on my conscience for many months. Should I apologize, as a fellow human being who was clearly in the wrong? Or would any attempt be viewed as a pathetic attempt to suck up? Should I write a letter and stick it in a drawer? I can’t decide if my need to apologize is purely selfish and should be some ritual for my own personal catharsis, or if it would actually be a decent human thing to do to send it and ultimately appreciated by the receiver. Even, as I mentioned, if we never work together again. Help me, Mr. Blue.

The conventional wisdom says that one should never explain and never apologize. Saying that you’re sorry makes you look weak and does nothing to un-burn the bridge.

As I alluded to in yesterday’s post, you should especially hold your apologies for things outside of your control. Never apologize for not being published, or for being published locally but not nationally, etc.

That said, if you did something wrong then there’s nothing wrong with apologizing. The only catch is that you have to do it right away. If you apologize within 24 hours then it seems sincere. If you’re apologizing after a few days or a week then it seems calculated.

Also, people in this business are tougher than you think. Keep the apology simple and direct. Then move on and never mention the incident ever again.

Final thought:

If you’ve let the relationship go and for some reason want to rekindle the editorial flames, send in a smokin’ hot pitch. Fresh ideas heal all wounds.

I’ve started exploring a possible story on SUPER SECRET STORY IDEA and I’m successful getting email replies to my original query from some significant clinicians and players in research. So, the question I’m often asked is: “What magazine are you writing for?” Of course I wish I had an assignment from a magazine. Our buddy Dan Baum, even lacking the assignment, would say he’s writing (in his example) for “Wired” because in a sense he contends that he is–doing all this leg-work free for an article he’s going to pitch at “Wired”. But I can’t get away with this can I?–”I’m writing for Psychology Today.” When the question has come up in the past I’ve said that I’m writing on spec and hope no one asks where I’ve been published. “Well, a couple literary quarterlies.” So how do I handle ingratiating myself to key sources so that they don’t blow me off and have enough confidence in me to spill the beans?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being honest. Tell them that you’re a freelance writer and that your plan is to take the story to Psychology Today.

If the source asks where you’ve been published then mention the name of the journals. Or tell them that you’re just starting out.

Whatever you do don’t apologize. There’s no shame in being new.

If they won’t talk to you, then ask them if they know anyone who will. If they offer another source then pursue that lead.

If they say they don’t know anyone (or if the person they recommend doesn’t pan out) then press them again to help you. Appeal to their vanity. You know from your research that they’re the single most important source for this story, a story that will completely change how we think about INTERESTING SUBJECT MATTER.

Or try luring them into a conversation. Tell them you just want to verify one fact or confirm one theory (then shut up and watch while they talk for half an hour).

If they still won’t talk to you then move down the list and pick the next source.

Wait . . . you don’t have a list of sources categorized by information need and then ranked in order of importance?

If you don’t have such a list, then get one. Every story has its dream scene, its dream quote, its dream fact. With some pieces it’s obvious, like getting the tobacco executive to admit that they’ve known for decades that cigarettes are harmful. With other stories it might be more subtle: a tough guy in a moment of vulnerability or a public saint betraying a hint of avarice. In the right context a boring statistic can be undeniably powerful.

If you can identify these ideal outcomes then you’re more likely either to get them outright or to recognize variations of them that fall into your lap.

Final thought:

Knowing what you want also helps your credibility. In my experience I’ve always gotten more out of interview subjects when I’m a mission. I don’t know how they can tell, but sources know the difference between hunting and fishing.

For the past three weeks I haven’t read a blog, listened to the news or picked up The New Yorker. The Sunday Times has been used entirely to light coals. My ass has been completely unplugged and I have to confess that for all my love of music, books, TV and film I haven’t missed our culture one bit.

But I have missed you. There were moments (like while eating a fudge-covered Belgian waffle on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair) when I thought about spiking this blog. But then I thought of you, dearest, gentlest, sassiest Reader and I knew I had to come back.

Giving up feelings great . . . but it never lasts for long

I was also severely burned out when I went into the break. I was burned out on writing and reading, but I was especially burned out on keeping up.

This happens to me once in a while, when the Dream in all its dreaminess feels like a crushing, cement pillow instead of a fluffy, lifting pillow. The only solution is to quit, which I did. And I meant it. Until I didn’t.

Now I’m back working on the novel, teaching, this blog, etc. and it feels good.

(Sidebar: I’ve never been a fan of the writer who says he HAS TO WRITE. Because if you were abducted by an alien race who took you back to their planet and forced you to mine peanut butter, then guess what? You’d f*ckin’ mine peanut butter.)

I’m bored with the state of the industry . . . but I’m still 100% committed helping you

A writer friend recently sent me this amazing and spine-tingling article by the amazing and spine-tingling Daniel Menaker. It’s perhaps the best article I’ve ever read about why publishing is broken, but it’s also the thousandth, and frankly I’m sick of hearing about it.

I also realized during my paragraph partying that I really enjoy working on the page. It’s perhaps the one aspect of what we do that’s immune to all the other nonsense that passes for our industry.

I’ll continue to give career advice, but if you notice a shift toward craft please don’t be alarmed.

That said, I have a backlog of questions to answer. Best get to it.

I will be moderating comments (and chiming in occasionally) so don’t let me hold you back.

In case you’re new here (or need some reminding of all the good works we’ve done) here are five popular posts that will demonstrate what we’re all about:

Five Common Writing Mistakes That My Students Make That I Still Make (and You Probably Make Too)

How Do I Start My Writing Career?

Five Thoughts from a Short-short Fiction Contest Judge

The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ’09 Catalog

Getting Published Without Querying