THE STORY SO FAR: YR 2: PT 18: FRIDAY

WE SEEM TO BE PARTICULARLY ADDICTED TO ANSWERS BY THE NUMBERS—AS IN FIVE RULES EVERY NEW AUTHOR SHOULD FOLLOW

There is a great deal of advice available for new authors—or even old and battle-scarred writers like myself—but I suspect the only way a writer learns is by reading and writing. You study the work of the masters and then then you do the deed yourself again and again until your inner voice is satisfied.

Reading is so fundamental to understanding writing that I have to wonder why so many aspiring writers are so ill-read—and yet think that their innate talent will conquer all. Conceivably it does occasionally, but normally the road to writing success is best travelled with a book in one hand and a pen in the other – metaphorically speaking—and wear a comfortable paid of shoes, because it is likely to be a long road.

But back to the Five Rules. These are by Bobbi Linkemer and are targeted at the non-fiction writer.

Rule #1: You must be able to explain your book, and its main benefit. in a single sentence.

Rule #2: Before you write, you must have a plan; that plan is called a book proposal.

Rule #3:  Every writer needs an editor—a professional editor.

Rule #4: It is important you understand your publishing options and which one is right for you.

Rule #5: Marketing starts at the beginning of the book-writing process, not at the end.

On the face of it, it is hard to argue with such ‘rules’—and there are thousands out there on the internet. However, they make me uncomfortable, because just about everyone who advances such ‘rules’ is out there trying to sell you something, and has their own agenda. In short, they are not really talking about writing. They are really making you a sales pitch.

“But everyone hustles—it is the American way,” I hear you cry.

Fortunately—even in this hyper-materialistic consumer culture—it is not. There are many people out there who are motivated by a love of writing, a genuine desire to help, or are just plain high-minded. It’s my experience that such people will set you on a truer path than the hustler.

But, it’s your call.

THE STORY SO FAR: YR 2: PT 17: THURSDAY

“NOT ONLY CAN I LAND BY MYSELF, BUT I CAN PICK A SAFE PLACE TO LAND ON!”

The above is the Boeing Little Bird – with a difference. It can determine where it is safe to land – and then land itself autonomously. No human pilot required.

One of the many rather remarkable aspects of the Little Bird is that its basic design dates back to the Vietnam War where it first put in an appearance as a compact, light, maneuverable, recon helicopter which quickly required a reputation for being highly survivable in the event of a crash.

One tactic that was used in Vietnam was for the Little Bird to flow so low that it’s pilot could literally eyeball the enemy and then for a helicopter gunship to finish the job if the hostiles were either seen or provoked to fire. This was a tactic that required great skill and strong nerves—but neither were lacking in Army aviation then, as now.

To be continued…

THE STORY SO FAR: YR 2: PT 16: WEDNESDAY

BLOGGING, WAR, PEACE—AND BOOKS

You can make a very strong case that virtually all of America’s wars and military excursions since WW II—Korea is marginal—have been a mistake; and that our excessive military expenditure over that period has been a primary driver in pushing our enemies into a whole series of arms races.

In short, the argument that the excessive militarism, which the U.S. has displayed for so many decades, has been a disaster for both the American people and the World as a whole—is compelling. And I write that as someone who writes about military matters, who is a great supporter of the U.S. Army, and whose fiction books feature considerable violence.

But, I have also experienced real violence—and can tell you this: War is best confined to books and movies. It should absolutely be the last resort in real life. 

War and militarism are also a staggering waste of resources—and the fact that so many American families have done so badly economically for so long is due, in no small measure, to the fact that we have spent far too much money on the wrong things.

It’s time to re-allocate our priorities. The U.S. needs re-building.

In that spirit, let me quote from that quirky, but consistently interesting blog, FABIUS MAXIMUS.

The world’s richest, most powerful nation remains locked in fear about tiny numbers of insurgents fighting in the poorest regions of the world. We spend on our military many times the sum of all likely enemy nations combined. We spend on counter-terrorism a fantastic multiple (probably thousands) more than spent by every terrorist group on the planet. Something is wrong with this picture.

This madness suggests the time has come for change. The wheel of history has rolled to a new era in which the US can and should return to its non-interventionist roots, a defensive strategy.

There is no perfect safety outside Heaven. But we can achieve reasonable security for far less than we spend today, freeing funds desperately needed elsewhere.

The rewards will be large costs savings, fewer Americans sacrificed in futile foreign wars, and equivalent or perhaps greater security. Making the change takes only the involvement of the American people: will and effort.  We can do it.

THE STORY SO FAR: YR 2: PART 15: TUESDAY

THE CREATIVITY IN WRITING CONUNDRUM—SOLITARY ANGST VERSUS HITTING THE TOWN

CREATIVITY VERSUS ‘SQUELCHERS’

Though I strongly believe that no one creates anything completely alone, I have long thought of writing—certainly my kind of book-writing—as, primarily, a solitary activity (if only because I spend most of each day entirely alone sitting in front of my computer).

Of course, I don’t feel alone because my brain is preoccupied with my characters and their various activities—or, on the case of non-fiction—with concepts that so fascinate me, that they seem (almost) to have human qualities. And, I have some exceptional friends.

But here is the point: Would I be a better writer if I circulated more—and generally benefited from contact with a wide variety of creative people?

I was prompted to contemplate such a possible failing in my way of life by reading a marvelous piece by Richard Florida in the New York Times of September 15, 2013. Here is a brief extract.

What fosters creativity? More than anything else: The presence of other creative people. The big myth is that creativity is the province of great individual geniuses. In fact creativity is a social process. Our biggest creative breakthroughs come when people learn from, compete with, and collaborate with other people.

Cities are the true fonts of creativity. With their diverse populations, dense social networks, and public spaces where people can meet spontaneously and serendipitously, they spark and catalyze new ideas. With their infrastructure for finance, organization and trade, they allow those ideas to be swiftly actualized.

As for what staunches creativity, that’s easy, if ironic. It’s the very institutions that we build to manage, exploit and perpetuate the fruits of creativity — our big bureaucracies, and sad to say, too many of our schools. Creativity is disruptive; schools and organizations are regimented, standardized and stultifying.

The education expert Sir Ken Robinson points to a 1968 study reporting on a group of 1,600 children who were tested over time for their ability to think in out-of-the-box ways. When the children were between 3 and 5 years old, 98 percent achieved positive scores. When they were 8 to 10, only 32 percent passed the same test, and only 10 percent at 13 to 15. When 280,000 25-year-olds took the test, just 2 percent passed. By the time we are adults, our creativity has been wrung out of us.

I once asked the great urbanist Jane Jacobs (see photo) what makes some places more creative than others. She said, essentially, that the question was an easy one. All cities, she said, were filled with creative people; that’s our default state as people. But some cities had more than their shares of leaders, people and institutions that blocked out that creativity. She called them “squelchers.”

I have come to the conclusion that Richard Florida is right—in general terms.  However, I don’t plan to change my way of life significantly—because I have had the advantage of living a rich and adventurous life—and now just hope I have enough time to write the stories that such experiences have inspired.

But I do wish that I had had the chance to meet the great Jane Jacobs. Anyone who has such a command of the English language as to come up with the word “squelchers” is my kind of person.

THE STORY SO FAR: YR 2: PART 14: MONDAY

ANTIBIOTIC OVERUSE IS UNDERMINING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ANIBIOTICS—AND IS KILLING LOTS OF AMERICANS IN THE PROCESS

IT WILL KILL A WHOLE LOT MORE IN THE FUTURE

We huff and puff and spend over a trillion dollars a year on National Defense—and yet we tolerate death from within on an industrial basis with equanimity. After all, we have known for years that overuse of antibiotics creates resistance—yet we tolerate massive overuse use of antibiotics by Big Agriculture throughout the U.S. meat industry. Such lethal practices are required as a preventative measure to counteract disease resulting from the appalling conditions in which our feed animals are kept. Eighty percent of U.S. antibiotic consumption is used in this way. In effect, the vast majority of American meat is life threatening.

The following are brief extracts from a piece written by the estimable Tom Philpott of Mother Jones magazine in September 2013.

Finally, there's Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which racks up 80,461 "severe" cases per year and kills a mind-numbing 11,285 people annually. The CDC report doesn't link MRSA to livestock production, but it does note that the number of cases of MRSA caught during hospital stays has plunged in recent years, while "rates of MRSA infections have increased rapidly among the general population (people who have not recently received care in a healthcare setting)."

Why are so many people coming down with MRSA who have not had recent contact with hospitals? Increasing evidence points to factory-scale hog facilities as a source. In a recent study, a team of researchers led by University of Iowa's Tara Smith found MRSA in 8.5 percent of pigs on conventional farms and no pigs on antibiotic-free farms. Meanwhile, a study just released by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that people who live near hog farms or places where hog manure is applied as fertilizer have a much greater risk of contracting MRSA. Former Mother Jones writer Sarah Zhang summed up the study like this for Nature:

In short, the meat industry's protestations aside, livestock production is emerging as a vital engine for the rising threat of antibiotic resistance. Perhaps the scariest chart in the whole report is this one—showing that once we generate pathogens that can withstand all the antibiotics currently on the market, there are very few new antibiotics on the horizon that can fill the breach—the pharma industry just isn't investing in R&D for new ones.

The rest of the developed world has been acutely aware of this problem for decades—and has taken appropriate action. In contract, the U.S. continues to put corporate profitability ahead of American lives. Industrial Food is bringing us an Industrial Rate of Death as a consequence.

Think of that next time you contemplate tucking into a steak, enjoying a pork chop, or dieting with a ‘healthy’ chicken salad.

THE STORY SO FAR: YR2: PART 13: SUNDAY

MY MUSCLE MEMORY IS BEING BETRAYED—SHAME ON YOU EVERNOTE!

I’m a great believer in work routines—particularly when they have been set up to combat a known weakness.

In my case, I suffer from certain memory issues—apparently a form of dyslexia—which affect both my short term memory in various ways (together with certain other areas).

Oddly enough, my memory can be quite good if I have a prompt, and I have a real talent for making connections between all sorts of seemingly unrelated matters; but without prompts, I have a tendency to flounder. This is not good in any situation, particularly if you are a writer where a quick brain is de rigeur. However, a quick brain requires raw material to process at speed—which, in turn, requires a well developed memory to feed it data (also at speed).

I have tried all sorts of workarounds to improve my memory over the years—with varying degrees of success—but one area I have long pursued zealously is collecting data about areas which interest me (and I have wide interests). This used to take the form of hand-written notes, books, and audio recordings. Now, my data obsession is near entirely computer based. I say ‘near’ because I also rely on well-labeled lever-arch files and—of course—books. Here, the mere sight of the file or book is often enough to act as a prompt. For that reason, often when I am stuck—which, fortunately, does not happen that often—I like to wonder along the book-shelves. It rarely fails.

For about 25 years, I kept virtually all my computer based data in askSam—but when, sadly, it became clear that software was no going to be developed further, after searching high and low (and experiencing one epic disaster), I eventually ended up with Evernote, where I am proud to say I am a paying Premium customer. It is worth it.

One of the great conveniences of Evernote is Evernote Web Clipper, which essentially allows you to capture an article, a full screen, or a section you have marked, with one click. That data is then saved on both your local hard drive and in the cloud—so you can access it from anywhere. The synchronization is excellent.

The trick to retrieving data is to index (tag) it correctly. Yes, you can use free text search, but you tend to get too many results. In contrast, indexing with your own keywords makes the results more focused.

Keyword indexing (tagging) does slow the process but, in my opinion, is best done immediately after the data is captured. For nearly 18,000 pieces of data collected over the last couple of years, I trained myself to do just that. And then Evernote changed the way Clipper operates! Now, it appears (I’m still exploring the thing) you have to tag the piece after saving—a slower procedure in my opinion, and positively not the way my muscle memory has learned to work. It is currently crouched in a corner having a stiff Scotch.

Evernote—what have you done! My muscle memory is having a nervous breakdown and I’m in shock. A pillar of my working world has crumbled.

It’s tough being a writer.

THE BOOK ‘SMARTER THAN YOU THINK’ This looks fascinating and gets to grips with that key question: Is all this technology making us smarter or dumber? Check out a marvelous discussion on www.brainpickings.com – a commendable web site.

THE STORY SO FAR: YR2: PART 12: SATURDAY

WRITING CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR COGNITIVE ABILITY

Get to know enough writers and you may be tempted to agree with that statement.

No, I jest. We scribes may be a moody, introverted, and melancholy lot—though I find writing to be decidedly cheering—but writing is hard mental work, so I expect that we score reasonably well in terms of brainpower.

In fact, believe it or not, it was Socrates who believed that writing was a negative influence—and I don’t mean any old Socrates, but THE MAN himself.

This is what he said (he didn’t write it naturally—it was probably Xenephon). Do you know when I was young and foolish, I once read Xenephon in the original Greek—a truly soul scarring experience which cemented my affection for the English language.

This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

No wonder he was ordered to drink hemlock—criticizing writers can be, and should be, hazardous to one’s health—especially since his jury was composed entirely of devoted readers (not a widely known fact).

Incidentally, do you know how hemlock causes death? Such information may be useful if you have a problem with critics.

Coniine (hemlock) causes death by blocking the neuromuscular junction in a manner similar to curare; this results in an ascending muscular paralysis with eventual paralysis of the respiratory muscles which results in death due to lack of oxygen to the heart and brain. Death can be prevented by artificial ventilation until the effects have worn off 48–72 hours later.^[3]For an adult the ingestion of more than 100 mg (0.1 grams) of coniine (approximately 6 to 8 fresh leaves, or a smaller dose of the seeds or root) may be fatal.