writers-blog

Mainstream publishers, Indie publishers, and self-publishing -- the writer’s dilemma

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:15:53 +0100

In case you haven’t noticed it (and you probably have), there is a revolution going on in the world of publishing. When my first two poetry chapbooks came out in 1975, they were published by Tangent Publications of St. Paul, Minnesota, a partnership between artist David Genszler and myself. David had done some wonderful drawings for one of the books, We Play Each Other Like Jazz Musicians, we found a printer in St. Paul, and printed up about a hundred copies of each book. Ten years later when an author’s agent asked me my publication history, she wrinkled her nose and said “You self-published them, didn’t you?” In her view, my stock as a published writer plunged into the junk bond pool. No matter that I’d published a number of poems and stories in various little magazines, since none of them were “real” magazines. She, like many other mainstream people in the publishing business, seem to have forgotten that Walt Whitman published the first several editions of his great Leaves of Grass at his own expense, and that he was far from the only writer to do so.

The argument was that if your book isn’t published by a “recognized” publisher with a big name, it’s not any good, and you aren’t a “real” writer. They called everything else “vanity” publishing, where you paid a publisher publish and print your book. “Real” publishers published the good stuff that was fed to them by literary agents and read by real editors. Everything else was just trash. Which, using Whitman as an example, is simply not true. A book published by a mainstream publisher, as most of us know, doesn’t mean it’s a good book; it means it managed to make it through the slush pile.

What has totally revolutionized publishing and distribution has been the appearance of personal computers, affordable printers and software like Blue Squirrel’s “ClickBook” that enables you to take any manuscript, turn it into a booklet or a “perfect bound” book, take it to your local printer, and have them print up as many copies as you think you can sell. No more printing up 100 copies, most of which languish in a box for years, like my first two did. All of my previous books and booklets were published using ClickBook. It’s one of the most versatile software programs I’ve ever used. Before moving to Japan in early 2008, I owned my own "Indie" publishing company, Tortoise & Hare Publications (Seattle), had my own list of ISBN numbers, and published a list of mental health-related booklets (some of them still listed on amazon.com), a collection of short stories, a poetry collection, a book about living and working in the 21st century (that one sold 100 copies and I was in Heaven), a book about things I'd learned from old people and two short stories. Today I can do the same thing myself using an ebook program on my computer. Astounding and thrilling how far things have moved, and how fast.

With this new software and inexpensive printing, people began writing and publishing books in small lots and selling them on street corners, at speaking engagements, and in local bookstores that would take them. Then Amazon and ebooks came along and the world for writers and publishers exploded.

I use an Indie publisher -- Night Publishing -- that I’m very happy with. Based in the UK and with a growing stable of good authors and a great list of books across the genre spectrum, it is building a very good name for itself. There are a lot of other Indie publishers out there, too.

Part of the myth about mainstream publishing is that they do the marketing for you if you’re lucky enough to get published by one of them. This isn’t necessarily true. From what I read and hear, much of a book’s marketing is up to the author. “But I’m not a marketer!” I hear you say. I’ve said that to myself, so you’re not alone there, and neither am I. It’s something each of us can, and must learn, so keep at it.

To me, the future has never looked brighter.

Editing and rewriting

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:11:01 +0100

In a previous blog, I announced to everyone that my novel Seiji was finished. It was. Problem was it had not yet been given to an editor (though it had been shared with friends, whose responses were quite a bit less than, erm, "enthused" about it. After giving it to my editor here in Sapporo, Derek Chamberlain, I discovered that I had (and have) a lot of work to do to make Seiji the great story I want it to be. Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets and novelists. Here is what she has to say on the subject:

“If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!”

Even if you've been a writer for many years, as I have, having an editor nearby is a godsend. If you're having doubts about your story or novel or poem, share it with others. Make sure one of them is an editor, and listen to him or her carefully. Then move on with your book. "Seiji" will be the strong novel I want it to be because I've listened to my editor, and will continue to do so. As Ms. Nye says, "It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!"

Amen to that!

When Money Attains Political Power, Freedom of Expression Suffers

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:56:58 +0100

Sex, sexuality and sexual explicitness have long been controversial in the United States, where the attitude has traditionally been repressive and deeply laden with sexual guilt. Prior to the mid-1960s, sexually explicit books like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer were banned, copies confiscated, and booksellers intimidated for selling them even after the ban was lifted in 1961. It wasn’t until 1964 that the US Supreme Court declared Miller’s book not to be obscene and its sale protected by the US Constitution. But this wasn’t until his publisher, Grove Press along with the ACLU had filed a lawsuit arguing that it was illegal for officials to interfere with its sale, and Grove Press had spent more than $100,000 fighting 60 cases nationwide.

This opened the floodgates, not only for Miller’s books, but sexually explicit works from many other new and established writers like Anais Nin, launching what we all thought of as a “sexual revolution” in the arts and behavior. Finally, many believed, we have won the battle against sexual repression and the toxic beliefs that accompany.

What it did was drive it underground where it has lived on, appearing every now and then from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Jerry Falwell’s

Moral Majority and politicians like Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.

But none of it has had any real clout until now. What is the difference?

In an article titled Slippery Slope, writer and blogger Selena Kitt recently had this to say: “Well, the morality police are at it again. And this time, it’s scarier.”

What is scarier? PayPal, the well-respected credit card alternative, has begun clamping down on publishers and distributors of books containing “obscene” content (apparently defined by them, not by any law). What are their hot button words and themes? At this point, they are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica. (Reading this list, I wondered what PayPal means by “titillation” -- as defined by them, by readers, or what?)

In an email sent to authors, publishers and agents who have published erotica, Smashwords asked that they proactively remove and archive any work that contains such material. Smashwords is not the only one affected by this. Selena Kitt reports that Bookstrand and All Romance Ebooks have also received this ultimatum. What about Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple? I’m not sure, but if credit card companies and the banks that back them begin objecting to content, then that could be a problem, and a serious one, for mainstream publishers and writers like Stieg Larsson, author of the “Girls with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy (“Millennium Trilogy”).

Two things disturb me the most about this issue. First, it is the power of big money to bypass the law on obscenity by financially shutting down publishers and distributors of works PayPal defines as obscene. Second, it is big money defining what people can and cannot read by shutting down publishers and distributors by shutting off their money supply, just as big ranchers shut down small farmers by damming their water supply.

As writer and friend Soooz Burke eloquently said in a recent blog post, “We fight wars to allow others Freedom of Religion, for Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Expression...

Freedom to be permitted to live our lives without impeding the same FREEDOM to others.

Freedom to not have our reading matter decided and selected for us by anybody else.

The thing that troubles me the most is..”Where will it end?” The possibilities are more than a little worrying.”

The possibilities are more than a little worrying to me, too. Once again, big money marches in and attempts to control the universe. Well, the USSR created the grassroots Samizdat movement, where individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed them from reader to reader.

I hope this isn’t where we’re headed. One more thing for the Occupied movement to think about.

If you want to read the pose by Selena Kitt, here’s the link: http://selenakitt.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/19/slippery-slope-erotica-censorship/

For Soooz Burke’s post, here’s that link: http://sooozsaysstuff.blogspot.com/2011/09 /topic-censorship-in-literature-should_18.html

Snowflakes, a poem

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:43:19 +0100

The other day while waiting for the bus on a beautiful, cold, sunny afternoon, snowflakes began to fall. I composed this little poem in my head, then wrote it down in my notebook afar taking my seat. Poems often come to me this way.

Mother, son

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:53:06 +0100

This poem was inspired by a heart-rending, inspiring photo someone posted the other day on my Facebook page. My wife and I watched the tsunami as it washed over Japan's northeastern seaboard. Though unspeakably tragic, there is both poignancy and heroism in its aftermath. This is just one of them.

Mother, Son

They found her

in the ruins of her house,

buried

under a mountain of debris.

Lying semi-face down,

one leg slightly cocked,

one arm stretched out,

her rescuers

hoped she might still be alive.

Carefully lifting off the rubble,

they touch her cold body.

Lifting her up they find,

wrapped in a blanket,

the still sleeping form

of her infant son. Nearby

is a cell-phone, and

on it, a message.

“If, when you find us, he is

still alive, please tell him

later that his mother loved him.”

28 January, 2012

What makes a story a short story?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:52:06 +0100

What makes a story a short story?

The most effective -- and creepiest -- short story I have ever read was a page and a half long in a paperback “pocket” book that I read back in 1954 or 55. I don’t recall the author’s name, but I do recall the story in every chilling detail. Set in the parking lot of a hospital at the end of her 3 - 11 shift, a nurse was getting into her car when a criminally insane patient she knew came up to her, killed her and ... well, you can imagine how the rest of that went, can’t you?

The point I’m making is a simple one: A short story can be most any length, up to about 10,000 words (above that it sneaks over into becoming a novella). It has to tell a story, however simple. As poet Kenneth White said, a poem is the shortest form of short story. Some of these, though not poems, are very, very short. The following are several short-short stories from “Listening to the Elders”, a book I am writing and will send to my publisher in January. Your feedback is welcome.

Why older women drive

Pickup trucks

A year ago she tripped going up a neighbor’s front steps and dumped herself into the flower garden, breaking a hip. “I nearly died of mortification,” she said. Today she shows no sign of having broken anything, including her dignity. For transportation she drives a mid-sized Ford pickup truck.

“When you’re my age,” she said, “and you’re a woman and you drive a truck, when you want to turn left, people let you. They get out of your way. If I drove a car, it’d be different.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventy-three.”

“Oh.” I wouldn’t get in her way for anything, no matter what she drove.

Where do I go?

She is ninety-three years old and she doesn’t know where she is supposed to go. She stands next to the medication cart where two nurses are talking, expectant and silent. I look over at her and smile, and she comes over and says: “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

I say: “Where would you like to go?”

She smiles. “I’d like to go to Heaven, but we don’t do that here, do we?”

I tell her: “No, we don’t, so here we are. Where would you like to go instead? Would you like to go to your room?” she says that’d be nice, but we have to ask the nurses, which I do. They give their permission, and I escort her to her room. A relative has given her a beautiful swing rocker for Christmas, and I remark how beautiful it is. When I leave, she is seated in it, like a queen or a child, a smile of satisfaction on her face.

Lovers

He was eighty-six years old and lived alone in his big house, and he told me with tears in his eyes that he had lost his wife of sixty-two years six months earlier. He told me how he’d met her, and I asked what his first thoughts were when they met. Standing there in his living room, he crossed his arms over his chest and, eyes closed, said: “Oh, she is so beautiful!” It’s clear that she has always been that beautiful, lovely, loved lady, who still lives in his heart of hearts.

Her portrait hangs over the mantel of his fireplace, a truly beautiful woman with snow-white hair. I wished that I had met her. Come to think of it, I think I just did.

A cure for crabs

Alcohol does funny things to thinking, allowing people to reach conclusions that anyone in their right mind would know was nuts. This man had been an alcoholic from the time he was a kid back in Austria, and he spent all his life doing odd jobs between bouts of drinking. When I asked him how he’d managed to get himself in a mental hospital, he said he’d set his apartment on fire.

“You set your apartment on fire? How’d you happen to do that?”

“I had crabs.”

“Crabs? What does having crabs to do with setting your apartment on fire?”

“Well, I read somewhere that gasoline will kill them, so I went into the bathroom with a can of gasoline and sat down on the toilet and poured it on my privates to kill the crabs.”

“Yes…?”

“Then I lit a cigarette, and dropped the match in the toilet.”

“Did you get rid of the crabs?”

“Oh, yah.”

Nuisance

I once met a retired physician who told me he’d given up his practice because he got tired of all the drunks and druggies coming in. They could be pretty insistent and were a hard lot to get rid of. He told me about one drunk who sat thee in his waiting room hassling him until he was about to have his nurse call 911, when one of his patients came through the door, a very large lady, who weighed in at somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds. She stood there eyeing the situation for a few moments, then marched over to where the drunk was sitting, stuck a finger in his face and said:

“Look, buster, if you don’t beat it, I’m going to sit on you right in front of all these people!”

Jolted by the prospect of her sitting on him, the drunk shut his mouth, got up, and fled.

The ancient bird

(Old Man Walking In The Snow)

We were in the midst of one of those late winter storms that Minnesota has when I saw him. It was one of those storms that dumps heavy, wet snow and blows it around in blasts of icy needles that sting your face and takes your breath away. As I stepped out through the door of the hospital where I work, the wind lunged at me, and I set off running for the bus shelter with one hand on my hat and the other gripping my briefcase. My face burned from the cold. Behind me the big flag, whipping and snapping on its tall pole, sent out loud rifling reports as the wind tore at it. The cold wind was bitter and biting.

When I reached the bus shelter, I went inside and pushed the button on the heater. There was no one in the shelter but me, and no one on the street but a few drivers who went slowly by hunched over their steering wheels, staring straight ahead, jaws clenched. I turned and looked back at the hospital, and it was then that I saw him, a very old man, coming slowly down the walk from the medical office building, lifting one heave-booted foot and then the other in a slow old man’s way. He was dressed in a long black overcoat that hung to his boot tops, and a hat on his head with flaps pulled down over his ears. He stopped, stamped his feet, struck his mittened hands together and looked back at the building as if wondering if it would have been wiser to wait until the storm subsided. Then he turned and continued toward the bus shelter. When he came to the ridge of snow that lay between him and the street, he stopped and looked at it. He stamped both feet. He lifted one foot way up and lowered it, then raised and lowered the other one. Then, holding his arms out like wings, he stepped up onto the ridge and, waving and waving his arms, hopped down into the street where he stamped his feet again and looked back at the medical office building one more time. Then, as if satisfied, he turned and walked down the street toward the bus shelter.

The old man’s feet were inside enormous buckled black rubber boots. As he walked, he moved them up and down in a deliberate sort of way, stopping every now and then to stamp each one on the packed snow, then moving on, the big boots going up and down, up and down, like slowly-driving pistons. Looking at him I could see that he was very, very old; his face was thin and gray and nearly swallowed up in the hat that came down to his eyebrows. As he came nearer, I saw that he had no teeth, and that he held his mouth in a tight O like a knothole in a tree. His eyes receded back into their sockets, from which they looked out like small wary animals from inside their burrows.

As I watched him, two women hurried into the bus shelter, holding their collars around their faces and exclaiming at the fury of the storm. The wind shook the plastic walls of the shelter, causing the older woman to exclaim that she hadn’t seen such a wind all winter, most people have better sense than to be out in it, to which the younger woman replied, “Yes, but look!” The old man, having reached the intersection near our shelter, paused for one last look at the medical office building, then came stamping his feet across the street toward us. When he got to the high ridge of snow that blocked his path, he stopped and gave it a long, hard look. Then he lifted one big foot and put it down, and repeated the motion with the other. He waved his arms. He struck his mittened hands together. Then, lifting one booted foot high into the air and looking straight at us with his bright black eyes, he came up the ridge like it was a long steep hill, picking up his booted feet and waving his arms, with his head thrust forward and his stubble-covered chin jutting out and the dark circle of his mouth pulled tight and the big boots slapping-slapping the snow.

At the bottom, he stopped and looked at us. Then he came stamping his feet into the shelter, all out of breath from fighting with snow banks and wind. He said something to us that sounded like “fuff-fuff-fuff” and “heh” and sent his eyes darting around over us, saying A”heh-heh, fuff” until the older of the two women turned to him and said, “Here, why don’t you sit down right here, Grandfather?” and guided him over to the long wooden bench at the rear of the shelter, under the heater. The old man backed up and started to sit down, but he straightened up again and looked at the woman with his whole aged face and reached out a hand and patted-patted her arm. She turned and looked at him and said “What?” and “Oh,” as he crinkled up the corners of his eyes at her, said “fuff-heh,” and sat down.

When the bus came a few minutes later, the women helped the old man to it through the roaring wind, then the rest of us got on. There were only the four of us waiting for the bus that afternoon, and only two or three on the bus. I sat toward the back and watched the old man. He got off a few blocks later and stood on the sidewalk waiting for the light to turn green. When it did, he was off, moving his huge booted feet up and down and holding his arms out from his sides, looking very much like a huge black flightless bird.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As Woody Woodpecker used to say at the end of a film, “Th-Th-Th-That’s all, folks!”

A brief introduction to "Seiji"

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:41:19 +0100

Seiji is off to the publisher in January. Watch for it sometime next year. Here is a brief introduction to the character and his story:

At five feet nine and a half inches Seiji is taller than average for men of his generation. To see him in a crowd, you wouldn’t take him for anyone special; his rectangular-shaped face is so ordinary looking that it is easily missed. It is his way of walking and his eyes, which take in everything and express kindness and humor that catch one’s eye. That and the fact that nearly everyone who sees him gives him greeting, which is returned with a smile and a few words before he is off again, his sketchbook clutched in one hand and his shirt pocket full of pencils.

Few are aware of the terror, pain and loss he experienced as a young boy during World War Two, and what it cost him. His two art teachers -- one of them a Japanese-American soldier -- know, and so does the young woman who becomes the love of his life. A major novel of love, romance, and recovery from the horrors of war

This morning I finished editing my novel "Seiji"

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:18:28 +0100

It's been a year and a half since I typed the first word. This morning at around 8AM I finished my first edit. In a week I'll do another go through and make changes, then it's off to the publisher after the first of the year. What a feeling, and what an adventure it has been!

And then what? Could be the book about Mexico City ("The City Has Many Faces"), but is likely to be something else that I'll have more to say about later. Other than writing book reviews, mapping out the next book and reading Haruki Murakami's huge 1Q84 and some other books I have sitting on my desk and in my Kindle, I'm taking some time off. This afternoon I'm going to a nearby Starbuck's (yes, we have them in Sapporo, Japan) and relax for an hour and a half.

More later about what I'm planning for my next project.

Signing off for now.

Whatever happened to September?

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:25:44 +0100

Here we are already halfway through October, and I haven't posted a thing since August 29th. Part of my lapse was being out with a cold for 9 days, then needing to get out of the condo to get some badly needed exercise. Well, now I'm back, within a day or so of having my "Seiji" novel finished (1st draft), then on to editing it and sending it off to a publisher. When that is done, I think I'll take my first month off from writing in about three years. I should; I have plenty of reading to do and sights to see around this big city of ours before the winter snows set in.

Then what's on my writing agenda? A novel about Mexico City in the early-mid 1970s when I lived there for a time and fell head-over-heels in love with the place. Sights, sounds, smells, music, dance, haunted houses -- you name it, I encountered it somehow. When I later met a guy in Minneapolis who had been born and raised there, he asked me how many years I'd lived in Mexico City, and was shocked when I told him it was something less than three months. He didn't think it was possible to jam so much into under 90 days, but somehow I did it, managing to always be on the move somewhere. Should be a ball writing it.

All for now. Back with more sometime next month.

Writing Seiji

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:17:14 +0100

“What are you doing, son?” the American soldier with the Japanese face asks.

“Drawing.” Seiji holds up a scrap of cardboard on which he has drawn a picture of his old neighborhood before Tokyo was firebombed and his neighborhood erased.

“Nice work!” the soldier says in Japanese. He squats down to have a closer look. “Is that all you have to draw on?”

“Mmmm, I found it over there.” He aims a charcoal-begrimed finger at a nearby trash heap next to the concrete remains of what was once an elementary school.

The soldier gets up, goes to his Jeep, rummages around for a moment, then returns carrying a sketchbook and some charcoal drawing sticks. Squatting down again, he says: “Would these work better for you, son?”

Seiji looks at the sketchbook and the charcoal, each piece wrapped in paper and sharpened at one end. The soldier’s eyes are kind. Giving a slight smile, Seiji nods his head.

“Then they’re yours.” The soldier smiles and pats him on the shoulder. “I have a son your age back home. Do you come around here often?”

Seiji takes a moment to answer. “Sometimes. It’s a nice place for drawing.”

“If you’re here tomorrow would you mind my stopping by? I have more drawing supplies in my office that I’ll gladly share with you.”

“Mmmm,” the boy replies without committing himself. Mother has warned him about American soldiers. But this one has a Japanese face and speaks Japanese. Perhaps it is alright. Getting to his feet, he gives the soldier a quick nod, bows, and runs home.

So begins the story of Tokyo artist Seiji Matsuda. Where did he come from? If you have a few moments, I’ll tell you.

Sometime in early 2009, Malaysian writer and editor Aneeta Sundararaj encouraged me to write a short story and send it to Professor Mohammad A. Quayum of the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, who was editing a collection of new Asian short stories. I thanked her but turned the idea down, pleading the obvious: though I live in Japan, I am not Asian. Persisting, she explained that his parameters were probably broad enough to include me.

But what would I write about? I hadn’t a clue. Going through some old newspaper clippings, I ran across a photo of the Tokyo firebombings in 1945, that I’d clipped from a Seattle newspaper in 2005. One of the devastated areas was Asakusa, one of my favorite Tokyo neighborhoods. In my mind’s eye was an eight-year-old boy drawing on a piece of cardboard in the middle of the devastation. The boy was Seiji. I had my story.

I wrote the story, sent it to Professor Quayum, and waited. Selecting it from nearly 140 submissions it was published in his book, A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories, published by Marshall Cavendish Editions, Singapore, in late 2010. Then I made a discovery: There was a lot more to Seiji’s story than would fit into a short story. So a little over a year ago, I began writing my novel about the life of an extraordinary artist and human being named Seiji Matsuda, owner of a little art shop named Matsuda and Son on Nakamise Street, in Asakusa.

Seiji is a survivor, a visionary, a supremely talented artist, a teacher, a community builder, a loving husband and father, a funny guy, and a very good friend. Few are aware of the terror, pain and loss he experienced as an eight-year-old boy during World War Two, and what it cost him. Or what his friendship with the American Army sergeant would mean. (I was as surprised as he was about that.) At five feet nine and a half inches tall, he’s taller than average for men of his generation, but if you were to see him in a crowd, you might not notice him, his rectangular-shaped face being so ordinary-looking that it is easily missed. It is his way of carrying himself, his presence, and the way his eyes probe so deeply everything around him that people notice.

“Who is that?” people ask.

“Him? Oh, that’s Seiji Matsuda. He owns Matsuda and Son over on Nakamise Street. You ought to drop in there sometime. It’s quite an experience.”

In the novel, that’s what people ordinarily do.

I’m nearly finished with the novel’s first draft — so close, in fact, that I can see it. Then I’ll edit and rewrite where it’s needed, run it by a couple of people for proof-reading, and send it to my publisher. But I’ll never bid goodbye to Seiji; he’ll be with me until I die, one of those unforgettable characters that I almost missed, and would have, had it not been for the persistence of a Malaysian writer / editor named Aneeta Sundararaj, and the kindness of professor from Malaysia who published my short story in his excellent collection of new Asian short stories, A Rainbow Feast.

Watch for the novel’s publication date.

(A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories is available online from The Book Depository (www.bookdepository.com) (free shipping to most countries), Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon Japan and your local bookseller.)