Writing Gooder

For decades now, we’ve all been accustomed to the almost obligatory mini book catalog at the end of many a novel; the ones that say “You may also like…” or “Upcoming books from Penguin…” or “Other books by this author”.  But, as advertising goes, it’s pretty invisible.  That may change.

This past Thursday, the Wall Street Jounral’s Ron Adner and William Vincent wrote:

With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers’ profits? The surprising answer: ads. They’re coming soon to a book near you.

Source: WSJ, Get ready for ads in books

Paul Carr of TechCrunch summarizes their argument nicely: (more…)

I thought this was pretty cool: in Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley has declared that March 10 is Young Writers’ Day.   The news story I found on it doesn’t give the reasoning for it, and there are no press releases on it either, but if you’re living in Alabama, you’re young and you write, then today is your day.

Does it mean anything?  Heck no.  But it’s better than the typical Wednesday.

Source

It’s an absurdity you’d expect Douglas Adams to mention as a quick aside in one of his books.  That is, a First Grader from Newark, Delaware had to go before a character witness hearing last week at his school.  Why?  Because he brought an eating utensil that serves as a fork, spoon, and knife to lunch.

Unfortunately, I don’t think events like this one are isolated.  After all, students regularly get suspended for offering classmates Tylenol.  But, the Supreme Court long ago decided that the rights granted to all American citizens, regardless of age, don’t apply within the boundaries of a school, even though a school is government property.  So while normally you’re innocent unless proven guilty, that axiom does not apply if you’re a student.

In any case, read more about the first grader in the New York Times.

From MTV News:

There are some things you can always count on in one of today’s modern vampire novels: a breathless, cross-species love affair, bone-breaking lovemaking, lots of smoldering eyes and buckets of spilled blood. But, according to TMZ, an author named Jordan Scott claims she saw a few too many similarities between her 2006 vamp tale, “The Nocturne,” and “Twilight” scribe Stephenie Meyer’s 2008 book, “Breaking Dawn.”

In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by the site, Scott’s publisher claims the fourth book in the “Twilight” series has “striking and substantial” similarities to “The Nocturne,” part of a trilogy that 21-year-old musician/author Scott began writing when she was 15.

The letter claims there are a number of coincidences in the plotlines of the books, including a wedding, a post-wedding sex scene, a woman becoming sick because she’s carrying a child with “evil powers” and the death of a main character. The letter from a lawyer for Scott also claims that “both the ideas and in many instances the text” of the two books are very similar.

Among the examples of the similarities is a scene in which a main character is ill from carrying a child with dark powers. In Scott’s book, the description reads in part, “Her face was so pale, it was frightening; and there were beads of sweat pouring down her forehead. She couldn’t even stand, she was so weak. … She was violently ill, vomiting and scarcely able to catch her breath.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Sounds bogus to me.

For many of you YWS’ers, the name Bobo strikes awe, admiration, and even aspiration.  To most of you, however, it probably just strikes you as odd and unfamiliar. I invite you, however, you cast your eyes upon the top of the YWS home page, where you will see a logo much like this one:

Now, you have identified the truth that lies behind the name of Bobo.  You see, in the year 2005, Nate opened the YWS store on Cafepress.com, and needed logos for the Young Writers Society so he could make money off of it (he claims it all went to keeping YWS alive, but we all know that in 2006, the site went down anyways, probably because he was keeping the money for himself… just kidding, Nate!).  Anyways, to make a long, boring story a short, boring story, I designed the above logo (as well as another one that is found in the store), and since then it has become the standard logo for the Young Writers Society.  I also created several templates for the site, although the only one remaining now is the “Chimped Out” skin—the only template, ironically, that I never fully completed.  Hence the lack of chimps on the Chimped Out skin! (more…)

In the Western San Bernadino County, California school district, school children are about to lose their summer break.  Due to a bureaucratic snafu, they have to go to school for an additional 34 school-days.

From the LA Times:

“We made an error on the minimum days of about five minutes,” said Dickson Principal Sue Pederson. “Realistically, that’s our accounting mistake as adults. We’re unfortunately making the children pay for it by making them give up their summer.”

Students at each school exceeded the state’s requirement of at least 54,000 minutes of annual classroom time, but the problem arose in the district’s minimum days. Schools typically have one shortened day per week, allowing teachers to use the remaining time for planning and parent conferences. Under state law, these days must be at least 180 minutes, and the daily average classroom time over 10 consecutive days must be 240 minutes.

An internal audit in early May discovered that 34 minimum days had been 175 minutes at Dickson and 170 at Rolling Ridge, said district spokeswoman Julie Gobin. That adds up to a shortage of 170 and 340 minutes, respectively, which could be made up in one or two school days. But under state law, these too-short days do not count at all, meaning that all 34 must be made up to avoid a state penalty of more than $7 million.

“The penalties for not meeting the instructional time requirements are high, much higher than just making up of the time,” said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. “It was the intent of the Legislature to make the penalties so stiff [in order] to discourage districts from shaving off minutes here and there.”

I was reading an interesting article this morning in the DC Examiner that posed the question: can creative writing be taught?

Can it?  I don’t think so.  Creative writing relies on an active imagination, which is fortunately something almost all of us are born with.  Unfortunately, that imagination isn’t always nurtured and many people lose it by a certain age.

On the other hand, I certainly do believe you can teach someone how to write well.  But learning how to write clearly and in an educated manner is leagues away from being able to spin a story.  Then there’s poetry…

I’m not sure what qualities one must have to write a good poem; I just know I don’t possess those qualities and neither do most people.  You certainly can’t write a good poem just by knowing about rhyme scheme and couplets; it requires something more.  Unfortunately, many otherwise good writers go their entire lives thinking they can write a good poem!

So, what do you think?  Can creative writing be taught?

Online Privacy

Recently in California, a student at the University of California wrote a poem on her MySpace blog about how much she hated her hometown Coalinga. The poem was picked up by the local newspaper in Coalinga, and the student subsequently received death threats from residents there.

The student sought to bring a suit against the newspaper by asserting that she had a right to privacy. That is, by publishing the poem, the newspaper infringed upon her right to privacy. Needless to say, the California Court of Appeals disagreed. If you are interested in reading the opinion, check out Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel, Inc.  It’s fairly short.

A couple things to note here.  First, the right to privacy differs from State to State and there is no Constitutional right to privacy.  Second, the state of California does have a right to privacy enshrined in its State Constitution.

Here, the Court found that by publishing the poem on MySpace, the student waived her right to privacy.  The Court seemed to find it important that MySpace is hugely popular, so the ruling may not apply to sites like YWS.

What should you take away from this, though?  Be careful about what you write online. Too often, people write things believing them to be private communications when in reality anyone with an internet connection can read it.  I remember in college running into a friend and I commented on something I read on her blog.  Despite posting it on her blog (which she linked to from her AIM profile), she was bewildered I knew about it.

On the other hand, I’m bewildered the student didn’t sue the newspaper for infringment of copyright.  Maybe there was a reason she couldn’t, but generally speaking, if you write something and you can prove you wrote it, then you automatically have a copyright on that work.  Here, the newspaper had already acknowledged the student wrote the poem, and also presumably profited from the publication of the poem.  Seems like an open and shut case of copyright infringement to me.

I’m excited, this looks great:

The first time I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was back in either 2001 or 2002.  I was a member of The Young Writers Club, and another person was talking about having to write 50,000 words during the month of November.  I didn’t hear anything else about it for another two years.

Now NaNoWriMo attracts tens of thousands of writers.  Only a precious few ever complete their novel, but most do get a fair ways into it.  The goal, as mentioned already, is to write at least 50,000 words in November  That’s over 1600 words a day, which is no mean feat.

If you’re interested in participating this November, head on over to http://www.nanowrimo.com.  And if you are planning to participate, let us know what your novel is going to be about.