While I was growing up (and it remains a matter of debate whether I ever did) much was made about the dangers of ‘stifling a child’s creativity’. Everyone in popular culture seemed preoccupied with the idea that telling a brat that he was being a brat and that should choose to stop being a brat before someone made sure that he stopped being a brat would somehow permanently damage them. How could they be writing the great American Novel write music for the ages or craft plays, painting, films or other works of art later in their life if they were creatively stifled? Of course, one might argue that such bruising may have been the origin of writing a number of tell-all biographies later in life, but that was beside the point. So in order to avoid this stifling, an entire range of permissive parenting was wheeled out that would, it was argued, allow the child to ‘explore without fear’ and ‘get in touch with their inner creative self without have artificial constraints (a.k.a. parenting) to slow them down.

Now, it seems, we must slow down these unrestrained creative children with Ritalin. We have in our desire to ‘free’ our children raise a generation whose understanding of discipline has been completely stifled. We have a generation who were taught that they were ‘special’ and ‘unique’ but who lack any of the discipline required to translate those elements into anything meaningful and lasting.

Writing by the ‘Special’

I often have new writers in our writing workshops who, after examining our structural segments on story plot and character relationships tell me something like, “well, that’s fine for those OTHER writers. But I’m different! My imagination is too creative, to unique, and too special to fit inside the constraints of such mundane rules!” Whenever I encounter such people I realize that they are almost certainly enormously creative and most likely talented as well (those elements having not been stifled previously) but who have been completely stifled in discipline. I imagine them having managed to ‘slide by’ their parents or their grade-school teachers based on the brightness of their smile and the ‘cleverness’ of them. They now believe that they can continue that trend by writing from their talent alone. They are, in their view, above the rules and discipline.

These are also those who’s stifled discipline insures that they will never develop the craft to execute consistent art over time. They might have a ‘one hit wonder’ in the same sense that a meteorite might hit the manhole cover outside my house — but they will spend most of their lives dreaming of the incredible books they never wrote or the wonderful plays they never performed or the fabulous music they never wrote or played. Such people make wonderful readers of the writing others produce but mistake their love of reading for the ability to write. It’s creatively easy to enjoy a world-class violinist. It’s much hard to play world-class violin.

Writing is Talent, Craft and Discipline

My father once approached an artist in a museum in Paris. This man was cleaning his brushes after having painted a copy of one of the Great Masters paintings. The reproduction was amazingly exact. My father asked the artist why he had not made any changes to the copy he had just painted or tried something new of his own. The Artist replied that he needed to learn the craft and technique of those who had preceded him so that he would know the rules they had discovered before he tried to make new rules of his own.

Perhaps there are new writers out there who will break the rules in new and wondrous ways but you have to understand the rules before you can break them. It does not ‘stifle’ an architect’s creativity to understand the laws of physics, load and stress — but it does make for buildings that do not fall down before they are built.

In our writing workshops we teach the ‘foundations of story’ and the ‘physics of character relativity’. We deal with the fundamental structure of plot and how it relates to character function in the story. The craft of writing is not just about being creative; it is about translating that creativity in to writing that can be shared consistently with an audience and have meaning again and again.

Writing requires discipline … so don’t stifle it!

GRAMMAR POLICE: While the actual story is tragic … who wrote this headline for MSNBC: “Cops: Elderly couple, cat die in murder-suicide”. Was the cat a murder or suicide victim? The subheading was worse…
“An 81-year-old man shot his wheelchair-bound wife and cat, and then turned the gun on himself…” My question: What kind of person shoots a wheelchair-bound cat?

I just received a royalty statement the other day from one of my publishers. It was of more than a little interest to note that ebook sales of my novel exceeded those of paperback sales. Ah, I thought, the times they are a-changin’.

Traditional advertising methods no longer work they way they once did. Google and Facebook ads are making money for Google and Facebook but their action response does not justify the expense. Even television advertising no longer has the impact that it once had and people are becoming largely ‘banner blind’ when it comes to the internet; tuning out banner ads on pages and making them mentally invisible.

Where is the audience? They are obviously still out there and still reading … but they moved and we who make our living off of the written word need to move with them. So where is the power today to get the attention of our audience and get our words read?

In an age of Big Media it is found ironically in your friendly, neighborhood website, facebook page and podcast. It is found in personal connections between you and me entering into a conversation that is personal. It is in properly conducting virtual blog tours, skype interviews with niche podcasts and in developing a personal connection with a developing audience.

I’m looking forward to our WK 5 Seminar called ‘How Are My Englush?’ It’s going to be a crammed course on the current and rapidly evolving state of publishing today and how authors need to make the leap of faith to New Media and a new way of seeing the business of their writing. It is going to turn into something of a writers ‘mad scientist’ laboratory of new ideas, approaches and commando-publishing that will get your works profitably READ by an enthusiastic audience.

Evolve or die, is my motto: as writers we either change with the times or get left behind. I hope you’ll join us for this evolution of revolution in our online Seminars.

After all, the times, they ARE a-changin’

This rather well-read fellow believes he has discovered the ‘secret code’ behind C. S. Lewis’ ‘Chronicles of Narnia.’ After ponderous thought, long study and research, he has apparently found that C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece was founded entirely on the mythology of the planets.

May I take a moment and cast a skeptical eye on this from a writer’s perspective. Margaret Weis and I once speculated on a future time when a scholar — not unlike this well-intended fellow — would examine our ‘Dragonlance’ novels from the perspective of an astrophysicist. He might carefully plot the periods of time in the book between when the red, silver or dark moons were in evidence, extrapolate the planetary mass of Krynn and determine the precise orbits of all celestial bodies in our book. He might then congratulate both Margaret and me for our brilliance in determining the orbital characteristics of these bodies and declare that astrophysics was the foundation of our work.

The truth is that the moons came up when we thought it best for the story.

The moral of this tale — for me — is that criticisms, deconstructions and literary examinations of this kind are not that helpful unless you have access to the author and can ask him what he was thinking at the time.

Likely as not, that author’s answer will be no deeper or complex than that it seemed right for the story at the time.

Young writers are always looking for the ‘secret’ — the magic elixir, the golden chalice, the hidden knowledge — that published and well-read authors seem to keep hidden from the rest of the world. If only they had that ‘secret code’ then they, too, could be famous and well-paid for their words.

The truth is that if you are looking for the ‘secret’ — you need to stop looking, roll up your sleeves and get to work.

If you want to become a published and well-read author — you need three basic things: Talent, Craft and Discipline. This is the subject of the first seminar in our Foundations course. We give you the tools you need: the structure of story, characters, world building and the craft of writing in our curriculum here at Scribe’s Forge. Our writing seminars and workshops are designed to deal with the real foundations of story and writing that you can apply to your writing today — not abstract theories.

What do you think? Leave your comment … but please don’t ask us about the orbit of our three moons.

Matt Lamprose — the friend of mine who pointed out that books are the ‘souvenir you keep after you’ve read the book’ and thereby formed the inception of our serial publishing — send me an article that appeared today in the New York Times. It was entitled ‘Selling a Book by its Cover’ by Peneope Green and was featured in the Home and Garden section.

The Home and Garden Section of the Time’s is interested in books?

It appears, in the article, that people actually WANT physical books as a statement in their decor.

The printed, bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community. In this Kindle-and-iPad age, architects, builders and designers are still making spaces with shelves — lots and lots of shelves — and turning to companies like Mr. Wines’s Juniper Books for help filling them.

Doomsayers have been proclaiming the death of the printed word since the rise of personal computers in the 1980′s. Does anyone remember the ‘paperless office’ concept that was supposed to save us from having filing cabinets or deal with reams of pesky printouts? What those prognosticators failed to appreciate is that people WANT the tactile connection with the information. This is at the heart of the Scribe’s Forge Publishing method: deliver the story now via the internet AND deliver the physical experience and connection at the end of the journey.

The books we keep are a statement we make about ourselves. Quoting Peter Pennoyer, a New York architect:

“A book is a meaningful, sensory experience,” he pointed out. “If we buy her all new Trollope, then she’s suddenly looking at a volume that’s foreign, that doesn’t smell right or have the typeface that’s familiar. If she doesn’t have the memory of having read the book, it’s not going to mean the same thing. My thought is to elevate all these mismatched bindings and put them in these containers, so it all looks uniform and pretty, but the client can keep the books she’s loved for decades.”

This is why books have become an integral part of the design of homes, spaces and offices. Indeed, the perceived demise of the physical book in the age of Kindles and Nooks may be contributing to the rise of peoples awareness regarding their connection with books.

As it happens, the-book-as-relic was forecasted by marketers. Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting for JWT New York, the marketing and advertising agency, noted in her trend report for the coming year that “objectifying objects,” she said, “would be a trend to watch.”

Quoting from her report, she added: “Here’s what we said: ‘The more that objects become replaced by digital virtual counterparts — from records and books to photo albums and even cash — watch for people to fetishize the physical object. Books are being turned into decorative accessories, for example, and records into art.’ ”

Ms. Mack added that she was working with a decorator to “refresh” her own Manhattan apartment, and was hoping to decorate lavishly with books. She wondered if she might stack her books and turn them into legs for a coffee table.

“Then,” she said, “I can put my Kindle on top.”

The revolution of New Media is not the death-knell of the printed word. If anything — handled properly — it may elevate its stature once again from the common to the cherished.

I can have my Kindle … and love my printed books, too.

I believe that the situation publishing is facing in new media today is highly analogous to the old ‘Studio System’ that existed in Hollywood from the 1920s until its abolition through anti-trust legislation in the 1950s. During this period of time, Movie Studios (like MGM, Paramount, Fox and the like) owned the entire production and distribution chain of films. They ‘owned’ contract players (much like professional athletes today) and would trade them like property. They also put directors under contract as well, insuring that they would only work for their ‘dream factory.’ Then, to top all this off, the studios also owned their own theater chains — controlling who distributed their movies. If you wanted to see Clarke Gable’s latest movie, then you could only find it at an MGM owned theater. Or, if you were an independent theater owner and you wanted the latest Clark Gable film (blockbuster) you were required to purchase an entire slate of lesser-quality MGM movies as well. When this secure channel of distribution was challenged, it seemed for a time as if movie studios were going the way of the dodo — but then studios wised up and realized that they weren’t in the business of making movies — they were in the entertainment business and that they needed to change with the times. The result is the current reality in Hollywood where studios provide financing and facilities services to independent production companies … and everyone is making money again. No studio owns Cameron’s Lightstorm production company — but both Cameron and the studio backing him made a killing on ‘Avatar.’

Big publishers find themselves in a similar position, I believe, to that of movie studios in the 1950s. Their classic and time honored distribution system is being challenged by new media. The old models aren’t working any more. I believe that publishers will also have to change in much the same way as studios did in the 1950s and 1960s.

To this end, Laura and I are establishing Scribe’s Forge Publishing. While we hope to teach what we have learned about the craft and art of Science-fiction and Fantasy writing, we are also hoping to develop it into an ebook/new media production house. Such places, I believe, will become filters for future readers in much the same way that traditional publishing filtered out the noise from the signal. I would like people to come to Scribe’s Forge Publishing looking for our latest published author (possibly like yourself) because we develop a reputation for publishing only quality works rather than anything that is just tossed up onto the internet. By becoming a focal point of quality, more readers will be drawn to our place first rather than random searching the web, and thus serving our authors with better revenues. At least that’s the model that I think the future holds for us all.

New media? Yes, please, I’d like to be a part of that frontier!