Chickens Don't Have Armpits

Gatekeepers and Holes

2009-11-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

Last night I wrote a post on the publishing industry and then scrapped it. This morning, Jaime Theler points me to a blog post written on the exact topic. So I've decided to try once again.

Rachelle Gardner poses an interesting question, over on her blog. She is talking about Harlequin moving into the self-publishing world. The end result, according to Ms. Gardner, will be a decline in the quality of literature. She even goes so far as to say that ""Literature" as we know it could be a thing of the past."

She then poses the question, "Am I totally off base?"

Respectfully, I say yes. Way off base. Here is why.

Imagine a wall. Readers are on one side, authors on the other. Authors have great stories in their heads; readers would like to hear them. Under the current system, literary agents, editors, publishers, and business folks have served as the gatekeepers (as Ms. Gardner calls it). They make sure that only certain authors and their stories are allowed through the wall. They must past certain levels of quality before they are allowed to move through the wall.

Rachelle says this is a good thing because there are a lot of authors with bad stories. They have not mastered their craft, and so, the gatekeepers tell us, we the readers don't want to listen to them.

There is a serious flaw in this line of thinking. The self-imposed gatekeepers are not always the best judges of what is good. I know that is a bold statement, but take a look at this list. Gatekeepers, skilled as they may be, are prone to make errors just like the rest of us. Books like Harry Potter, The Diary of Anne Frank, Catch 22, and Animal Farm, and authors like Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, and Ursula K. LeGuin, could very well have never made it over the wall. Agents and editors do very well at spotting bad books, but I think it's clear they can often miss the good ones. The really good ones. The paradigm shifting, world changing ones. And who suffers? The readers. How many really good books have never been published because the author gave up after rejection 52?

The simple fact of the matter is that in a digital world, we don't need gatekeepers. What we need are more holes in the wall. Lots of them.

Look at blogs; 25 years ago, how many people had a medium by which they could share their thoughts with the world at large? Newspaper editors had a medium. Television personalities had a medium. You and I did not. Now, every grandmother and her cat has a blog. True, most of them are poorly written, but you know what? It doesn't matter. The cream rises to the top without the help of gatekeepers, because in the digital world it all comes down to merit. You create a fantastic blog, and people will come. You churn out mediocrity, and the world will say, "meh."

I argue that contrary to Ms. Gardner's statement, tearing down the wall will not lead to the end of literature, but in fact be the beginning of a new, exciting era. Readers will realize there is much more than the same tired fare that we've been fed for years by the publishing industry. Authors will realize that contrary to what agents and editors have been telling them, they do in fact have a good story, and there are people out there that want to read their work. Yes, crap will be produced, because crap has always been produced. And in the digital world the crap sits on the same browser as the good stuff. But we all know that there is good stuff out there, and we all know how to find it.

The publishing industry is one of the last industries to be affected by the digital revolution. The record industry, movie industry, TV industry, and newspaper industry have been grappling with this for almost a decade. Now it's our turn.

And I, for one, couldn't be more excited.

Funny Quote

2009-11-14T16:14:00.000-08:00

Overheard at my parent's house last night.

[5-year-old] - Uncle Mike, I have the funniest knock knock joke in the world.
[Uncle Mike] - Oh yeah?
[5yo] - Yeah, you start.
[Uncle Mike] - Knock knock
[5yo] - Who's there?
[Uncle Mike] - Interrupting cow
[5y0] - Inter...wait, no, you're supposed to-
[Uncle Mike] MOOOOOOO!

How cool is this?

2009-10-25T21:56:00.001-07:00

You can post pictures or documents and then talk about them. No, not as in write about them--as in talk about them. One person starts the discussion, and then others can join in.

If you want to see it in full screen, you can click on this link. http://voicethread.com/#q.b692014

Twitter Project

2009-10-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings, friends and readers.

I'm starting a project and I think it's going to be fun. I'm looking for volunteers and I expect the time commitment to be very small. I'm thinking 15-30 minutes a week, for maybe 15-20 weeks.

This summer I tweeted the Battle of Gettysburg. I found journals of fifteen Civil War Soldiers, and I followed them in 'real time', tweeting as I wen. I did this for about two and a half months. The end result for those that followed was the opportunity to experience history in 'real time', from original sources.

The Gettysburg project attracted attention from folks in the LBJ Presidential library, the National Archives, and historians from around the US. We ended up with almost a thousand followers.

I spoke with my brother the other day and he mentioned how the first pioneer group (those that came with Brigham Young) was by far the best documented. He said that the people who came over knew they were involved in an historic event,and so they kept good journals.

What I would like to do is recreate this pioneer trek in real time, on the right day. So by next July 24, Brigham Young will 'tweet', "This is the right place,drive on."

Anybody who volunteers will be given a journal of a person or family; they will be responsible for coming up with tweets for that person for each day of the trek. However, we will do this in advance in a Google spreadsheet. This way you can sit down, come up with tweets for a week or two, and then I will take care of it from there. You do NOT need to sign up for or know how to use twitter. As I mentioned, I suspect that it will only take 10-20 hours to do a complete journal, and you can spread it out over the next several months.

If anybody is interested, leave a comment here, and I'll be in touch.

Moving

2009-10-03T18:56:00.000-07:00

When I came to Logan 4 years ago, a group of my co-workers came to help move me into my house. I didn't know any of them that well, but I was very grateful for the help.

During the course of the move, Justin Ball, one of my new coworkers, dropped a box of bottled tomatoes, breaking one of the jars.

I felt bad.

Not because of the lost tomatoes. Those are cheap; probably 10 cents for the bottle, and maybe 12 cents for the tomatoes.

No, the reason I felt bad was first, he dropped the box after he tripped down our cement stairs. He hurt his ankle pretty bad. The second reason I felt bad was because I hardly knew all of these people helping me move. They pitched in because it had become 'tradition' to help the new member of the team get adjusted into their home. I didn't want Justin to feel bad because he had dropped my tomatoes. I was going to work with these folks for who knows how long, and I wanted to get off on the right foot.

Last night, I went to a party. It was held at Justin's house. If he has any ill feelings toward me for making him carry my tomatoes, he's hidden it well these past four years. Justin, as well as every other member of COSL, including their spouses, have become very dear friends.

The members of COSL have played many a board game. We've ran many a raid. We've rocked out together, and shared lunches, dinners, and even an occasional breakfast. We've built things, and attended and presented at conferences. I can brag about what we've done, only because I feel I was a small part of it.

But as I've blogged before, my time at COSL has come to an end, and today my family moved. I hired movers because...well, because I'm getting old. And hiring movers isn't as expensive as I thought.

But just as the movers were finishing up, I walked into the garage. There on the floor was a lone box, with liquid pooling around it. I opened the lid, and couldn't believe my eyes.

It was a box of bottled tomatoes. And one of the jars had broken.

My time in Logan was christened with a bottle of tomatoes, and it appears my exit is heralded with the same.

My only hope is that second break does not mark the end of my Logan years, but only a pause.

Killer Bees!

2009-09-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today my family and I went up Green Canyon. We've loved living so close to such a beautiful area, and we will miss it when we are gone.

We decided to take a pleasant stroll along the single trail. We enjoyed the leaves, saying hello to other hikers, and finding the extra special rock that must be taken home and placed in a treasure box.

My oldest son was leading the way when he gave out a cry of alarm.

"BEES! RUN!"

He came tearing down the trail, "It's a nest of bees!" he called over his shoulder as he ran past us and quickly disappeared up the trail.

I could hear some angry buzzing coming from up the trail. Now, I don't like bees as much as the next person, but I was curious. I walked cautiously down the trail. There was buzzing, yes, but I couldn't see bees. What I did see what a bunch of large flies.

And then I spied the 'nest'.

"No bees here!" I called out.

The rest of the family came up the trail. My oldest was at the rear. "What is it?" he asked.

What my son had thought was a nest was actually what we in the business call canine excrement. It was covered in flies, and when my oldest son walked past, the flies scattered; he assumed the worst and ran.

Needless to say the rest of the family got a kick out of the 'bees nest', and my oldest son still hasn't heard the end of it.

Technological Generation Gap?

2009-09-20T11:23:00.001-07:00

We may be witnessing a serious gap in technology. One that spans thegenerations. But I'm not talking about those wacky old people who don't know a bit from a byte. I'm talking about the youth. That's right, people are starting to wonder if these young kids are using technology like they're supposed to.

A recent report gives us some shocking information. Sixteen percent of people on Twitter are under the age of twenty. While twenty percent are older than 55.

What!

That's right, there are more people tweeting about their dentures than there are tweeting about acne medication. Today, kids use technology to goof off. In my day, we used technology to hack into government computers and start fake nuclear wars. Oh, and goof off.

I'm fine with this. I'm part of the 60+ percent of twitter users between the age of 25 and 55. I'm starting to think that my generation, the one labeled only with an X, is the greatest generation when it comes to technology.

But you see, this is a real problem. I write books for kids, and the internet gives me a never-before-seen opportunity to reach an very wide audience. I can write a blog post and it can be seen by millions of people. Ok, it's only seen by a few hundred, but that is not the point.

But all these new-fangled technological ways to reach my audience aren't coming to fruition because my audience is doing things like...reading actual books. Or playing outside. Or talking with other people. What are they thinking?

Think about it. I can post my book as an e-book, and it can be downloaded onto a kindle or iPhone. But I doubt many 10-year-olds have a kindle or iPhone. I can relase it as an audio book, but again, how many of them have mp3 players? Or for that matter, how many of them even have a commute on which to listen to it? I can let them listen or read it right in the browser; but as good as my book is, it's not going to be more interesting that something like...Keyboard Cat. Seriously, now; how am I supposed to compete with a cat in a blue leisure suit? I'm not, that's how.

So, I need a different medium. I need to find a way to get my stories in the hands of my target audience. A medium they are already familiar with. I could try to go the book route, but then I have agents, editors, publishers, and large bookstores standing between me and my audience.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Crowd Source Your Game Design

2009-09-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

I find the idea of crowdsourcing interesting. Crouwdsourcing is the idea of getting a large group of people to help you out in a project. You pay them a bit of cash, or give them a promise of possible cash, and they do the work for you. Examples might include the X-Prize, or the Netflix Prize. If you want to get in on the money side of crowdsourcing, you can check out Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of boardgames, and Days of Wonder, a top notch publisher of some very good games, has either knowingly, or unknowingly, started crowdsourcing their game design. They held a contest to see who could come up with interesting characters in one of their games. One person had such an interesting idea they are making an expansion to the original game.

Maybe we need a few open-source games, just to see what the wisdom of the crowds can come up with.

Image Courtesy of masmad.

The New Group

2009-09-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of life changes in the past few months, and those changes have rippled to other aspects of my life. One change is that I've no longer been able to meet with my old critique group. Since I'm staying down in SLC, it's just too hard to go to the meetings.

Through pure chance, I happened to go out for frozen custard at this year's storymaker conference with a great group of folks. I got chatting with a few up and coming writers, and over the months I've exchanged e-mails and followed their blogs. Through the course of the discussion we came up with the idea of starting our own critique group.

Tonight was our first meeting. Or rather, the first time we got together to talk about a book. And that book was mine.

It was a great experience. They started off by telling my how much they loved my book. They went on and on until my neck muscles were straining, trying to keep my big head upright. "Tomorrow," I thought. "Tomorrow I'll have agents beating down my door, trying to get me to sign up with them".

And then they tore my book apart. Not the kind of tearing that makes you give up and feel discouraged, but the kind of straight-to-the-point, useful, hard-to-hear-but-exactly-what-you-need-to-hear kind of tearing. The feedback was incredible. They didn't pull punches, but those punches were precisely placed. Everything they said rang true.

I came away with two things last night. Five talented writers think my book is really good, and five talented writers told me how my book can be even better.

Time to get working.

The Wife's Blog

2009-09-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

My wife has started a blog. So for those of you who know both me and my lovely wife, feel free to check it out.

Just ignore the picture of me when I was 23. I looked like a dork. Not the stunning image of grace and strength you all know me as now.

Few and far between...

2009-09-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

Wow, when you work two jobs, have a 190 mile commute, and don't have internet access in the evenings, there isn't much time to blog. But I did want to drop a line as I was mentioned and quoted in an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education's blog. You can read the article here.

My favorite part of when the gentleman was interviewing me was when he asked about my blog. David Wiley had told him that this was my blog. But then it had this bizarre title. And the guy listed on the side was Matthew Buckley, not Marion Jensen. Was this really my blog?

After I explained the methods behind my madness, all was good.

Allow me to buy you a book.

2009-08-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a nice guy. A really nice guy. You've seen other blogs that give away a book to one lucky reader? Those guys are pretty nice. But I'm even nicer. I'm going to give a book away to everybody reading this post.

That is right, not one book for one person, but multiple books for multiple people. The book is a good one. I've just started reading it, but I've followed the author, Chris Anderson, ever since his Long Tail days. He's a smart cookie.

I know what you're thinking. "Stop typing and get to that part about the free book." OK, the book is called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It will be interesting to most of you, but should be particularly interesting to many of you, especially my fellow authors out there. Many industries have already struggled with the concepts Anderson covers in his book--the newspaper industry, for example, is currently in the throes of it--and book publishers are about to follow suit.

Seriously, if you are an author, you need to read this book.

Now, about your free copy...I'm not going to buy you the boring hard cover. You can only read that if you're not driving, exercising, deep-sea diving, making deviled eggs, or doing sign language. No, I'm going to buy you the audio version of this book, read by the author himself. That is right, you can listen to the book while doing just about anything except for cleaning your ears with cotton swabs.

So, go to iTunes, do a search for 'free future radical' and you will see the audio book. What I've done is track all of your IP addresses, and pre-paid for a copy of the book. That is why is appears as 'free' on your iTunes. That's right, I'm just that tech-savy, and I'm just that nice.

And if you like the audio version, consider buying a hard copy for your editor. They will need it sooner than they like to think.

iPods

2009-07-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to wear iPods,
and a time to leave iPods at home.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

My wife dragged...er, I mean invited me to go camping with her and the kids last night. We had a fun time swatting mosquitoes, eating raw food, sleeping on gravel, and listening to teenagers drive up and down Green Canyon all night.

This morning, I reluctantly pulled myself away from this veritable carnival, and went for a bike ride. I made my way slowly up the canyon on the wonderful single trail.

Before I left, I thought about taking my iPod. I enjoy listening to podcasts, or music, but I hesitated taking my tunes along with me. If I had those buds stuck in my ears, I may not be able to hear other bikers, cars, or marauding bears. I finally decided to leave the tunes back, and head up with just my thoughts to keep me company.

I got bored really quick.

Anyway, I was about a half mile from the top; the path had a steep ravine on the left, and a steep wall of dirt on the right. The trail was narrow, and there wasn't a lot of room for one bike, let alone two.

My bud-free ears thought they heard something. I wasn't sure, but it almost sounded like...

Before I could decide what the noise was, a biker, going what looked like to be almost the speed of sound, shot around a bend about 10 yards in front of me came . He was tearing it up.

I didn't want to leap down the ravine, as gravity and I have never really had a good relationship. So I threw myself and my bike to the right, up against the wall of dirt. At the same time, I yelled, "Ho, ho!"

Why I choose that moment to quote Old St. Nick, I can't really say, but I'm glad I did. You see, the guy coming down the trail wasn't listening to an iPod either. He slammed on his brakes, and was just doing about 90 mph when he rode past me on the left. He hollered over his shoulder "Three more coming!"

I hugged and caressed the side of the mountain until I saw three more blurs zoom by, and then I continued my slow ascent to the top.

So, there you have it. Another post brought to you by Matthew Buckley where he does little more than recount a slightly interesting story, and then states the obvious.

Tune in next week when I discuss why you don't want to drive with your teeth.

Come now...

2009-07-24T10:45:00.001-07:00

Have we really gotten this desparate for advertising dollars?

For those that run ads on their sites, you know you get money if somebody clicks on the ad, but you also get money if somebody just comes to the site (much less, but a little).

So the other day I am looking to see if there are any tutorials for the Sicilian Language (never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line). I find a link to About.com and this is what I see.

Can you find the content? There are five pages, each with about 2-3 sentences. The link I just gave you only had a single sentence of content. Everything else on the page is advertisements. You get a paragraph of material, and they make you wade through five pages to get it. And it doesn't even link to any real language tutorial, is just babbles on about random Sicilian history.

But then again, who am I to argue against progress? My next blog post will be spread out across 49 pages, and you'll get 2-3 words per page.

Thank the heavens...

2009-07-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

Thank heavens for the EFF.

Believe...

2009-07-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Speaking of falls...

The family went to Bear Lake on Friday. We went with our good friends the Harpers. They took us out on their boat, and showed us how they can both 'surf' behind their boat. The boat makes a wave, and they can surf for a long time, without even hanging onto the rope.

They asked me if I wanted to try, and of course, I said...YES! Here are the results.

I gave it my best shot, several times, but just couldn't get up. I didn't feel too bad. I figured if I really kept trying, I'd get it eventually. But we had 10 kids, and 3 adults in the boat. They had better things to do than watch me nose dive into Bear Lake all afternoon.

Then my wife said she'd like to try. On her second try, this is what happened.

She tried several more times, and did great! I was amazed. She has as much experience as I do (i.e. none), and yet she was doing it!

I decided to give it one more shot. My wife made it look so easy; she had inspired me.

I got back into the water, grabbed the rope and...

It was absolutely exhilarating. I don't know what changed. It may have been the simple fact that I had seen somebody else do it, and I realized it was possible. Whatever it was, I'm glad I hopped in the water one last time, and tried again.

Hey...it's usefull after all.

2009-07-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've spend the last four years working on USU OCW. I have seen the incredible amount of traffic we get, but I think deep down I've always worried that maybe nobody really used the site. Maybe all that traffic was people just coming across information, realizing it wasn't that helpful, and then leaving. Maybe all my work, and the work of the professors, was for naught.

Then a few days ago, I was asked to create a Flash file. I opened Flash and quickly became lost. I thought to myself, "If only I could find a good set of tutorials on the web." Then I remembered...Andy Walker...Intro to Flash.

Thirty seconds later I was watching Professor Walker's video, and learning Flash. I realized it's not just an academic exercise, but something that helps real people in their real lives.

Fireworks

2009-07-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

Two years ago I posted on how cheap I was. I spent $.72 on fireworks, and I reported on how much fun we'd had.

This year we went all out. I mean ALL out. I spent $2.67. We bought 6 packs of sparklers, and the old standby--four flower zippy things. However, this year we lit all four of the flower things at once. That's right, all four; things were a hopping at our place.

Then the kids spent a good 20 minutes playing with the sparklers. I got a few good pictures of them.

My oldest son said, "Remember that time we stacked all the snaps and had a bonfire?" Why, yes I do. My plan is working. The kids get such a kick out of a few dollar worth of fireworks, that one day I'm going to go to Wyoming and buy $500 worth of exploding goodness, and knock the socks off them.

End of an Era

2009-06-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Four years ago I took a class from David Wiley. I liked what he was saying, and we started a conversation. The next thing I knew David offered me a job as Utah State's OpenCourseWare director. When I came to the project we had 8 courses online. There are now over 80. We average as many as 2,000 unique visitors to the site every day from all over the world. We have mirror sites up in Africa, China, and Indonesia (that we know of). Our site has been translated into several languages, and is the third most visited site on the usu.edu domain. Being the OCW director is something I've loved doing the last four years.

It is also coming to a close.

Budget cuts have resulted in the program coming to an end. We've spent the last six months scrambling to find a way to keep the lights on. We've sought after state money, private money, grant money, and my boss stopped me from going after embezzled money. We've found nothing, so as of June 29th, I will be starting a new job.

Emotions bubble to the surface when you go through change. On the one hand I am very sad to be leaving a job I love. I love the openness movement, and hope to be able to return to it someday. But starting a new job has its own excitements; new people, new challenges, new skills. I'm looking foward to working with Shelley again.

When I left my last job I mourned leaving the people I'd grown to care about. I thought there would be no way to find friends like the ones I left. And now I can't imagine finding friends like the ones I've grown fond of here in Logan. Game night, Rock Band, lunch at Great Harvest and Cafe Rio...

Change is rough. Change is exciting. And I feel like I'm about to get spades of it.

Are you seeing this?

2009-06-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

We are seeing history in the making, my friends.

Whether we really want to admit it or not, we often only get information that other people want us to see. Yes, we have many news outlets; the evening news, newspapers, magazines, etc. But much of what we read has been orchestrated by those sitting in power. I'm not talking deep conspiracies here, but the simple fact that there are a relatively small number of people who decide what gets put on the front page, and we often miss important stories because the people sitting in the big offices decide to run something else.

Case in point. Iran just held elections. There have been protests and violence in the streets of Iran; people fighting for their right to have a voice in their government. You have probably heard of it by now, but you almost missed it.

At first the news coverage of the event was all but absent. The lead article on CNN's homepage was a story about how the US just made the switch to digital broadcast signal. The FCC recieved 300,000 calls. Exciting, eh? Only a single sentence mentioned anything at all about the protests in Iran.

In another day and age, that would be the end of the story. A nation would struggle and the rest of the world would move on unaware. We wouldn't get the information because there are simply no channels. What are we supposed to do, hear it from those right on the streets?

Well, yes.

We have twitter. I'm watching thousands of posts scroll by, all with the keyword #iranelection. I'm hearing people posting what is going on right outside their homes. I'm reading US supporters setting up proxys by which Iranians can get their Tweets out. I'm seeing people changing their proiles to green, to show their support. And it's all in real time.

I also saw another significant hash tag--#cnnfail. Yes, twitterers protested the lack of coverage that CNN and other news sources were giving to the event. From The New York Times (free subscription requireD):

"Steve LaBate, an Atlanta resident, said on Twitter, “Why aren’t you covering this with everything you’ve got?” About the same time, CNN was showing a repeat of Larry King’s interview of the stars of the “American Chopper” show. For a time, new criticisms were being added on Twitter at least once a second."

That is right, the world hear of an event because people were twittering it. Then they demanded coverage, and got it. As I type this I'm now seeing images and coverage from the Iran elections as the lead story on CNN's page. People demanded to hear more about the event, and CNN gave it to them.

If that doesn't make you want to go sign up for a twitter account, I don't know what will. We're living in a new world folks, and it seems to me to be getting more and more exciting every day.

Hospital Stay

2009-06-13T22:23:00.001-07:00

I’m writing this in the hospital, sitting next to my son John.

John is a trooper. About 10 days ago he got a cold that settled into his chest. John has suffered from asthma since he was a boy, and he always struggles when sickness gets into his lungs.

Early Thursday morning John woke up at 4:00 with a horrendous cough. Instead of crying for Mom to come take care of him, he quietly got up, got a cough drop, drank a little water, and coughed into his pillow, trying hard not to wake the rest of the house.

Twenty-four hours later he was in the emergency room, struggling to breathe.

Tonight, after driving for 20 hours back from Wisconsin, I came to see John. I brought my oldest son with me and read a little to both of the boys. After I finished I asked John if he wanted me to sleep here in the hospital room with him. He told me I didn’t need to stay, and that he would be fine.

I gathered my things up and got ready to go. As I went to say goodbye, John looked up at me with his big brown eyes and asked, “Would you have fun if you stayed here?”

I was exhausted. I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. I knew that he would fall asleep within minutes if I left, so I said, “How about this. I’ll take Spencer home, unpack, shower, and then I’ll call the nurse. If you’re still awake, I’ll come back. If you’re asleep, I’ll come back early in the morning.”

He smiled and nodded. I took my things out to the nurse’s station and got their phone number.

I looked back into the room and little John had pulled the sheets up over his eyes. I went back into the room and heard him sobbing quietly in his bed. He wanted so much for me to stay, but he didn’t want to be a bother.

Sometimes when you’re a dad you don’t always know what to do. Other times there isn’t a question. When you're a dad, there are some things that you just do.

“I’ll take Spencer home and come right back, OK John?”

I am crammed into a hospital chair, and will likely only get a few hours of sleep tonight; but that is a small price to pay for the hug I got when I returned to the hospital. John is sleeping well, and on the mend, and that is what is important.

Good Times

2009-06-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'm a lucky guy. I have written two novels, and have been paid for my work. But that is not why I'm lucky. I'm lucky because I get to hang out with some of the coolest folks on the planet.

I just got back from the teen writers conference. It was fantastic. We had Josi Kilpack, Julie Wright, Jessica Day George, Jeff Savage, James Dashner, Nancy Allen, Lisa Mangum, Annette Lyon, and many more, all under the same roof. These people are so nice, and I'm so glad that the fact that I wrote a book gives me a chance to see them 3-4 times a year. I feel like I have so much to learn from them all, both about writing and their willingness to be so free with their time and talents.

I leave conferences like this fired up and ready to write. Thanks all!

Conference, conference, confernce...

2009-06-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

Three conferences in two weeks is too many. I've got the teen writers conference tomorrow, and then GLS next week. When I get back it will be time to start cranking out the query letters. Should be...fun. Or something like that.

Where will I be?

2009-05-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Where will I be on June 4th, from 10:00 in the morning until noon? I'm glad you asked.

I will be here.

UVU puts on a great conference about teaching and technology. Registration is free, and the sessions all look very interesting.

I will be talking about an interactive GPS game that we created that allows you to talk to characters, pick up items, and solve puzzles--all based on your location. You'll learn how to both play the game, and create your own.

See you there!

Interesting Results, Wrong Conclusion

2009-05-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

I think I'm the only author in the known universe who doesn't follow Nathan Bransford, so I'm slow on the draw with this one.

Last month Nathan held a contest on his blog. He gave out 50 query letters to 300 regular citizens, and he asked them to pick the best ones. Hidden in that pile were 3 query letters that ended up getting their authors book deals. If each person got 5 guesses, could any of the 300 folks pick out the 3?

As it turned out, only 2 people picked all three. I find this interesting, but what I find even more interesting are Nathan's two conclusions. I think he misses one point, but nails the other one.

First Nathan seems to be saying, "See? This is why being an agent is so hard. You didn't pick the right ones, but we agents can. Being an agent is harder than it looks. We don't look to see if a query has met all The Rules (insert angels singing), we look deeper into the soul of the work." I find this interesting because Nathan's blog, every agent's blog, and every publisher's web site is FILLED with advice on how to follow The Rules (insert angels singing). And every last one of them will tell you that if you fail to jump through their hoops...er, I mean, follow The Rules (insert...oh, you get the point), then your manuscript is tossed into the fire.

I don't buy it.

Second, he goes on to say, "The other main element I'd take from this challenge is how subjective this business really is. What resonates with you might not resonate with someone else."

This is where he nails it. It may resonate with somebody else. In fact, it may resonate with a lot of somebody elses. And those people might just be paying customers. And they might really enjoy that book. But because it didn't resonate with the agent, they will never get that chance.

Does anybody else see what is wrong with this? Not the conclusion, but this simple fact? A few days ago I posted a link to an article that named 30 authors who were rejected multiple times before they finally got published. J. K. Rowling, Steven King, Ayn Rand, and Anne Frank were among those rejected. I think it's time we asked the obvious question. Should agents and publishers still be looked at as the gatekeepers to what we read? Sure there is a lot of garbage out there, and they do a lot of sifting. But how many really good books never get into our hands because somebody started their query letter with a rhetorical question? Or misspelled an agent's name? Or went really off the deep end and used...I don't know...Helvetica sans-serif!

New technology has allowed musicians, artists, photographers, and directors get their art straight to the public. Why not authors? Why don't we have a YouTube or a Flickr that gets us directly in touch with our fans? We know the model works. We've seen it work for other crafts.

When will we finally step up and say it's our turn?