I am Back — Perhaps

Once upon a time, when I was young and had a lot more hair on my head, I would blog regularly — often do nothing but post numerous silly links through the day. Then times changed and like Samson after his haircut, with my rapidly thinning hair, I lost any urge to write and to post anything online. I haven't blogged for exactly eight months (I had even forgotten my password to the blog and it took some amount of head scratching and concentrated thought to remember it). Times have changed. Professional and personal circumstances in this period weren't exactly conducive to shake myself from the daily chore of getting through the day to write something else.

To tell the truth, not much has changed about my life after these eight months — some of the living is decidedly bleaker and soul-sapping with little prospect of changing for the better. But then, knowing that like Samson I can't expect the hair on my head to grow back, I could at least make use of the little I have left (while I still can) to start writing again. So I have decided to make a concerted effort to return to my abandoned blog and scribble and scratch something out whenever I can. As of now, I can't make any resolutions to be regular but I have decided to blog whenever I can, on whatever I can.

I expect the journey back will be tough (is anybody still lurking on this blog?) — Something I realized as soon as I tried to get my rusty brain to type out this post. The writing for the blog no longer comes with the same ease or intensity as it once did (not that it was exactly easier earlier). While this was expected, the struggle to think and write is still shocking. Hopefully, with some practice, and a few more posts, I'll find myself back in the right frame of mind.

Meanwhile readers, if any, please come back and watch this space as it resumes in fits and starts over the next few days.

(Phew! Time to wipe the sweat off my brow!)

The Danger of a Single Story

"The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story."

Chimamanda Adichie, a writer from Nigeria , talks about the danger of telling, writing, listening, or knowing a single story of a person, a people, or a place. She makes a strong plea for a "balance of stories" and how telling and knowing multiple stories can help one "regain paradise." Listen to this wonderful and riveting speech on the risks of stereotyping, of knowing only one side of a story. The argument she presents is compelling and coated in sparkling, yet understated humor. You will be engrossed, I guarantee it.

In case you are unable to watch the video here, visit this page: TED Talks: Chimamanda Adichie - The Danger of a Single Story.

(via: Simply Speaking)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Code-Coolie/Call-Center Executive?

[. . .] many contemporary writers are notably silent about a key area of our lives: our work. If a proverbial alien landed on earth and tried to figure out what human beings did with their time simply on the evidence of the literature sections of a typical bookstore, he or she would come away thinking that we devote ourselves almost exclusively to leading complex relationships, squabbling with our parents, and occasionally murdering people. What is too often missing is what we really get up to outside of catching up on sleep, which is going to work at the office, store, or factory.

Alain de Botton argues the time is ripe for for an ambitious new "literature of the office."

Meanwhile I'll ask my colleagues if anybody has given a thought to describing the life and times of an instructional designer.

When to Write/Tell a Story: Ink Scrawl Nugget 27

"So my tale has begun?" Poison asked, brushing her black hair behind her ear.
"Yes."
"So why can't I see it?"
"Because all the pages are blank."
Poison made a noise of incomprehension.
"You can't tell half a tale, Poison. You can't write half a book. Whatever you choose to do next will completely change the aspect of what has gone before. If you decided to suddenly kill your friends as they slept—"
"Why would I do that?" Poison interjected.
"Bear with me," Fleet said patiently. "If you did, then the tale will take on a whole new light. Instead of being the journey of Poison from Gull to save her sister, it would be the terrible story of how a young girl became a cold-blooded killer. The way it would be written would be different. Do you see? Or you may die right now, and it would turn out that it wasn't your tale all along, it was Bram's or Peppercorn's, and you were just one of the sideline characters. The whole story has to be known before it can be recorded; otherwise it might suddenly change. That's the beauty Poison. You never know what's going to happen next. When the tale is ended, then the writing will be visible to your eyes; but until then, it is unwritten."

— From Poison by Chris Wooding

Fleet, an antiquarian (a collector and narrator of tales) explains to Poison how and when the stories of heroes are written. What happens prior to the writing of a story is merely the collecting of details — the boring work of historians. Storytellers do not include details unless they are necessary. And the necessity of a particular detail is known only when the tale is ended—and when it is ready to be told.

Alexander McCall Smith's Secret Life

My real life villains ... are people with sloppy language habits, who don't articulate their words clearly, especially in call centres. Linguistic laziness is making it difficult for us to understand what our fellow citizens are saying.

More here: My Secret Life: Alexander McCall Smith, novelist, 60

Earlier posts on Alexander McCall Smith:

An Interview With Alexander McCall Smith

A Great Honour for Mechanics Everywhere. . . (Ink Scrawl Nugget 6)

Why Freud Doesn't Make Sense. . . (Ink Scrawl Nugget 5)

A Miss Marple in Botswana: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Follow me . . .

. . . on Twitter.

I got myself a Twitter account over the weekend. Wanted to try out micro-blogging — just for the heck of it and to explore its possible uses, especially in the work I do.

At the moment I am not much enamored by it. There's only so much you can update it before your "tweets" start getting mundane — I mean, how many updates would you put up letting people know that you are off for a meeting/currently having coffee or lunch/reading/watching a movie . . . before it gets all too narcissistic and (worse) pointless. And really, who would be interested in whatever you are doing in your life? Currently I don't see much use for it apart from being a sort of a delayed "IM" for the people "following" you on Twitter. I suppose the people you follow and interact with on Twitter will determine if it is worthwhile in the long run. It, of course, has its uses when you are posting about a live event (I tried that yesterday for a family function). But beyond that . . . well, lets give it a few weeks and see how it pans out.

Anybody of you out there who have found Twitter worthwhile?

Me on Twitter:

Why are SF and Fantasy Novels the Length They are?

Followers of SF and fantasy will have noticed this  — most novels/stories are big fat tomes or are split across trilogies (I am currently reading The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb after having read The Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders trilogy  — and yes, the three trilogies are related) and quartets and what not. It is almost as if a SF & F writer can't tell a tale in a slim volume. An interesting explanation for the length of a typical SF & F novel is posted by science fiction writer Charles Ross:

Until the early 1990s, mass market SF/F paperbacks in the US were primarily sold via grocery store racks, supplied by local distributors (400+ of them). The standard wire rack held books face-out, either against a wall or on a rotating stand. And that's where the short form factor novel became established. Thinner books meant you could shove more of them into a rack that was, say, three inches deep. Go over half an inch thick, and you could no longer fit six paperbacks in a 3" rack. And there was only so much rack space to go around.

During the inflationary 1970s and early 1980s, prices of just about everything soared. The publishers needed to increase their cover prices to compensate. But the grocery wholesalers who sold the books insisted "the product's gotta weigh more if you want to charge more". They weren't in the book business, after all, so just as buffalo tomatoes got bigger, so did paperbacks. (Even though this meant there was less room to go round in the wire racks.) You can only get so much milage by using thicker paper and a bigger typeface; so they began looking for longer novels.

In the 1960s, an SF novel was 60-80,000 words, with 80K being considered overblown and long. By 1990 they'd grown to 90-100,000 words. Luckily the word processing revolution came along in the 1990s, making it easier to write and revise longer books. (A different editor of my acquaintance observed that whenever one of her novelists switched to word processing, the average length of their books increased by about 10% .)

There's more in that post including an explanation about why crime and mystery novels haven't similarly bulked up. Do read.

I personally feel this could be a "chicken or egg" kind of a situation here and that there are two trends to be considered in contemporary SF & F: 

— the growing acceptance of the literary worth of SF & F and 

— the effort that these writers put into creating their fantastic worlds.  

SF & F, at least what I know about it, in its early years was much published in magazines and had roots in pulp. This is when the Astounding and other magazines established the short story or the novella as the preferred length for SF & F. Lately, SF & F has become more literary  — and writers pay much attention to the characterization, style etc. A reason for this could be that SF & F was easily appropriated by any writers who had a "political agenda" to be conveyed in their writings. Feminist writings are a case in point. As the novels and the concerns (as opposed to the earlier stories which primarily focused on adventure) became more literary the size of the books started increasing. SF & F moved away from its pulp roots and became more acceptable and thus it was alright to publish more of it. Of course, it could be that the move away from standard grocery store wire rack led to bigger books which led to a more literary style, etc in SF & F. I suspect it is a bit of both.

Compared to the earlier days, I have found that SF & F writers today (and of the past couple of decades  — the time period Ross is talking about) are more willing to take the time to build their world and characters and slowly immerse their readers in this universe that they are creating. It is almost as if the writers think and know that they are creating something so fantastic and imaginative that their readers could do with some extra help in the detailing of their universes in order to anchor themselves in the story better. This naturally leads to bigger and fatter books. A bigger book allows for more canvas, so to speak, to detail out the universe  — which is of such prime importance in SF & F. 

On Writing: Ink Scrawl Nugget 25

The art of writing consists in putting two things together that are unlike and that belong together like a horse & cart.

 — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Apologize for any Incontinence . . .

. . . and more examples of the Cupertino Effect: How Spellcheckers Wreak Havoc

Save the Words

Yearly, hundreds of words are discarded by lexicographers from the dictionary to make way for new words. Lexicographers spend hours researching word usage, scanning publications and other communications, and may drop words that are no longer in use.

The process works in reverse too. The lexicographers also look out for words that make their way back in usage again and these words are re-entered in the dictionary. "Wheatgrass" was one of the words lost to us for many years before health-conscious eaters put it back in circulation.

The Oxford University Press has started an initiative called "Save the Words" to prevent the lesser-known English words from becoming extinct and re-include them in the dictionary.

The OUP is enlisting the help of all of us in saving the words. You adopt an endangered word (or words) through "Save the Words" and pledge to use it (or them) more often in daily conversations and written communication. A lexicographer, encountering the word again, may reinstate them in the dictionary. 

For every word you adopt, "Save the Words" will send you a certificate (like those which dot this post). All you have to do, after adopting a word, is something like this on a regular basis:

My sad life misquemes me so much that I am always lugent and nothing can mulcible me which accounts for my vultuous countenance.

(Not bad for a first time effort? Eh?)

If it had Been Difficult I Wouldn't be Doing it

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it.

One of my favorite writers— Iain Banks' Why I Write interview in the Guardian.

More on Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials

Philip Pullman talks to John Mullan about plot, morality, language, and Milton in His Dark Materials in the Guardian book club podcast. Quite a fascinating interview though there are a few moments when you can't help hoping that the interviewer would stop demonstrating his learning and his deep reading of Pullman's texts and let the author speak.

It is wonderful to hear an author explain and think aloud on his craft. Don't miss Pullman's responses to the audience's questions at the end of the interview.

Some excerpts:
On the criticism of his interpretation of the Bible:

The criticism comes it seems to me from people who think there is only one way of reading the Bible and its their way and if you read it another way, you are doing something wrong or evil or something. Well that's not what I believe. I think there are many ways of reading the many books of the Bible because they are all not the same thing at all. Its appropriate to read one part of it as history, another part of it as poetry, another part of it as law, another part of it as . . . nonsense and so on and we should use our judgement out here - judgement which is formed by our education, by our experience of the world and reading other things to decide which is the appropriate way to read it in each case rather than the one literally . . this is literally true and if you read it any other way you are going to go to hell which is the fundamentalist way of reading the bible which I think is wrong. Simply wrong.

On the autocracy of authorship and the democracy of reading:

. . . Here I am wondering if I should interpret my own work and tell you what it means. I am kind of reluctant to tell you what things mean because as I am the chap who wrote it that gives me a sort of authority in this field but I am not sure that I do have that sort of authority because if you think you have got a theory about what Dust means and you have worked it out you have every right to do that. When the book is finished and published, the autocracy of writing - it is an autocratic procedure. I am a despot. I am tyrant when I write because I have the absolute power of life and death over every sentence, every comma, every character. I can kill them, I can bring them to life, I can cut off this, end this chapter, and start somewhere else. I am the authority. No one can tell me not to do it. But once the book is published the autocracy of authorship comes to an end and the democracy of reading begins and that's the point where I cease to have any authority. I can't tell you what it means. I can tell you what I think it means . . . and so can anybody else. But if I tell you what I think it means that'll, because I wrote the book, people might think that is what it really means and there is no more argument about it. But I don't want that to happen. I want there to be discussion about it. I want you to think what all the things it might mean . . .

Listen/Download the Guardian book club Pullman podcast (47 minutes, 49.2 MB mp3 file )

Elsewhere Leslie Baynes wonders if the ferment about His Dark Materials is just Harry Potter vs. Fundamentalists redux, a clash that generates heat but no light? Probably not.

If you are intrigued by what Pullman had to say about authorship and reading, do read this post on the Death of the Author.

And here's an earlier Pullman post: The Art of Darkness.

The Art of Darkness

Excerpts from an interview with Philip Pullman:

[. . .] "I'm fundamentally a storyteller, not a literary person, if I can make that distinction. If I wrote a story that had enough vigour and life to pass into common currency and be recounted by people who had no idea that I was the author, nothing would give me greater pleasure."

[. . .]

"It's a foolish thing for the teller of a story to answer critics. If you're putting forward an argument, you can argue back and demonstrate why your argument is better than theirs. But if someone doesn't like a story you've written, what are you going to say? ‘Well, you should'?"

[. . .]

"I dislike his (C.S. Lewis's) Narnia books because of the solution he offers to the great questions of human life: is there a God, what is the purpose, all that stuff, which he really does engage with pretty deeply, unlike Tolkien who doesn't touch it at all. ‘The Lord of the Rings' is essentially trivial. Narnia is essentially serious, though I don't like the answer Lewis comes up with. If I was doing it at all, I was arguing with Narnia. Tolkien is not worth arguing with." [. . .]

The complete interview here.
Do trawl through the comments and discussion at the end of the interview — there's much to be gleaned from them.

Fairy Tales fit for the 21st Century

The Guardian challenges three writers to come up with fairy tales fit for the 21st century and they come up with some interesting stories.

What the F***?

Steven Pinker gives us a linguistic perspective on swearing:

[. . .]
When used judiciously, swearing can be hilarious, poignant, and uncannily descriptive. More than any other form of language, it recruits our expressive faculties to the fullest: the combinatorial power of syntax; the evocativeness of metaphor; the pleasure of alliteration, meter, and rhyme; and the emotional charge of our attitudes, both thinkable and unthinkable. [. . .]

Is There a Secret to Writing?

Yes: write and then rewrite with a colder eye and then rewrite again and never be quite satisfied.

Adam Thorpe interviewed by Sarah Kinson

Robotic Authors? Don't we Have Enough Already?

White Smoke software announces a computer program that is said to turn "prosaic dunces into lyrical poets".

White Smoke claims that the new version of its "text enrichment" software uses artificial intelligence to not only check spelling and grammar but suggest alternative words and usage that will take your writing from "take your writing from simple to sophisticated". White Smoke claims that its software draws upon millions of examples of well-written English, then applies them to new contexts: from legal forms, to love letters, to creative writing.

Miles Johnson at Guardian's books blog wonders if in the future could not we potentially see a computer being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature?

On a related note, I wonder if some books would be more readable after being put through White Smoke.

International Book Idol

Now an online contest to decide what (and who) to publish.

Amazon is joining hands with Penguin and Hewlett Packard for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The contest which kicked off on October 1, 2007 will allow contestants from 20 countries (including India) to submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon till 5 November, 2007. Following this Amazon will ask a group of its top online reviewers to assess 5000 word excerpts and choose a 1000 participants who will go on to the next round. The full manuscripts of the chosen 1000 will be sent to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. These reviews will then be posted online, along with excerpts and thrown open to Amazon's customers for comments. Using these online comments along with the Publishers Weekly reviews, Penguin will narrow the field to a 100 "finalists." Penguin editors will then cut the number down to 10 and send the manuscripts to an expert panel. The panel's comments will be posted on Amazon and the readers can then vote on the winner.

The winner gets a publishing contract and an advance of $25000 from Penguin.

Details of the contest here. Contest rules and FAQs.

Blogging had Been Temporarily Suspended . . .

. . . For nearly three months. Some illness, a PC in sick bay, work that occupied too much of my limited mindspace, and a general feeling of loserliness ensured that blogging was afflicted. Well nothing much has actually changed. The tons of conference calls, meetings, storyboards, writing, reviewing, and "fire-fighting" at work continue. And after doing all that there's still so much more to do that on a Sunday evening I am already aching for the weekend to arrive the next day.

Well but . . . today I decided to dust the cobwebs from the blogger interface (and some from my mind) and see if I can get back to blogging. This post is a start. Blogging may still be infrequent for some days to come but I hope to build up some momentum and get back to regular blogging soon. If I can do a bit of my usual filter blogging and a longish post every week or two, it will be a good enough start. Normal blogging service will resume soon.

If any readers are still sticking around, please come back. And let the others know.

Writing Dedications

Edward Docx on writing the toughest part of a novel: The Dedication.

[. . .] To whom, then? And how do you say it? It’s an almost impossible choice for, aside from the chosen one, every person you hold dear is going to be disappointed. Put it another way: writing a dedication to a novel is a bit like composing an email to your closest friends and family, explaining that you don’t like them as much as you have been pretending, hitting “send all” and cc-ing the rest of the world. Where to start? [. . .]

The piece lists quite a few dedications but strangely omits the Wodehouse classic from The Heart of a Goof:

To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

And it makes no mention of this singular dedication by Tom Holt to his mother from Here Comes the Sun.