Nobody I know hates All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a few years ago and was a best seller for a long time. Usually, there’s a large group of people who hate whatever book wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
For example, a lot of readers despised Empire Falls or were bored by The Goldfinch or thought A Visit from the Goon Squad was all over the place (there weren’t even any goons in it!). But statistically very few people think All the Light We Cannot See sucks.
All the Light We Cannot See reminds me a little bit of To Kill a Mockingbird. Nobody that I know of hates this book either. We had to read a lot of books in school, and almost all of them were hated by a majority of students most of the time. A Separate Peace was okay, but a bunch of my friends hated it. The Odyssey was despised, even though it was Greek mythology.
Every book we were forced to read was hated to some extent, except To Kill a Mockingbird. Nobody said To Kill a Mockingbird sucked. At worst, somebody might have said it was overrated, but nobody said it sucked.
The same applies to All the Light We Cannot See. Nobody says it sucks. More importantly (from my point of view), I finished reading All the Light We Cannot See. That’s saying something about the book. I start a bunch of books but rarely finish them. I finished All the Light We Cannot See and kind of liked it.
Whenever there’s a popular book that I really like, I try to analyze it (without overkilling it) and figure out a formula (something more than “it doesn’t suck). If we use All the Light We Cannot See as a guide, here’s how to write an award-winning (and maybe even a best selling) novel:
1. The Setting
First of all, it’s set in World War II. That’s going to appeal to a lot of readers. Everybody knows World War II. This story could have taken place in some form during just about any modern war, but everybody is interested in World War II. Even though World War II was a dangerous time period, it’s a very safe setting if you want a book with wide appeal.
2. Sympathetic characters
One of the main characters is a blind girl. The blind girl elicits sympathy from the reader. The other main character is an orphan boy. Everybody sympathizes with the orphan boy. It’s almost not fair to the reader to have a blind girl and an orphan boy as main characters. It’s author cheating. You’d have to be a heartless bastard of a reader not to sympathize with a blind girl and orphan boy. I don’t want to be a bastard reader, so I sympathized with them.
3. The villain
As if the dangers of the war aren’t bad enough, there’s also a Nazi gem collector who is looking for one of the main characters. This antagonist felt a bit out of place, like a stereotyped villain from an Indiana Jones movie suddenly thrown into literary fiction, but this didn’t stop me from reading. That NAZI villain probably made the book more interesting for a lot of readers.
4. Short Chapters
This book also has really short chapters. And the chapters almost always switch characters. Sometimes the shortness of the chapter is a little distracting. But I still kept reading.
There are so many short chapters that are so short that it almost reminds me of a James Patterson book. The big difference though is that short chapters in All the Light we Cannot See don’t suck.
5. Limited stream of consciousness
Most literary fiction authors use really long stream of consciousness sentences somewhere throughout the book. It’s almost mandatory for literary authors to overuse stream of consciousness. To me, most of those seem like the author is trying way too hard to show off, and I roll my eyes at a lot of them. This book had a few instances like that, but not so many that I rolled my eyes.
There was only one chapter where I rolled my eyes. It’s the chapter “White City” on page 364, and as soon as the situation was set up, I thought, “Oh, c’mon, are you really going to have a scene like this?” And, yes, there really was a scene like this. Not that it was a poorly written scene. It’s just that every war novel or movie has to have a scene like this. To be fair, it did kind of matter later in the book, but it was still trite.
Looking back, the author of All the Light We Cannot See made a lot of safe choices. The setting was safe, the characters overly-sympathetic, the villain stereotyped, and the chapters were James Patterson short. Plus, there was just enough stream-of-consciousness to justify this novel’s classification as literary fiction. If you are determined to write an award-winning book with wide appeal, this is probably a decent template to follow.
Despite these minor criticisms, I’d probably recommend All the Light You Cannot See to just about anybody who likes to read fiction. It’s literary fiction that doesn’t often feel like literary fiction, and to me, that’s the best kind of literary fiction.
(image via NPR)
With the end of 2019 approaching, top ten lists of the year are all over the place. Book blogs have put out their lists of best books of the year. Entertainment websites have published their top movies of the year. Music websites have told us their picks for the best songs or artists of the year.
I treat these lists skeptically (I bet the writers are being paid off most of the time), but I read them anyway. I haven’t read the Best Books of 2019 (I’m too cheap to buy most new books), and I haven’t seen the Best Movies of 2019 (well, maybe I’ve seen two or three of them), and I haven’t listened to the Best Music of 2019 (I’ve aged out of new music), but I like to read the lists.
If you are into the top ten lists or the Best of lists, here’s your one-stop blog post for all the best of 2019!
The Best Books (by Genre) of 2019- Goodreads
The Best Music of 2019- Rolling Stone
The Best Technology Products of 2019- PC Reviews
The Best Cars of 2019- Car and Driver
The Best Movies of 2019- Indie Wire
The Best Television Shows of 2016- Esquire
The Best YouTube Channels of 2019- Digital Trends
The Best Video Games of 2019- Vulture
The Best Fast Food Restaurants of 2019- QSR
The Best Scientific Discoveries of 2019- Digit
The Best New Words of 2019- Merriam Webster
The Best Memes of 2019- Popbuzz
What do you think? What other categories should be included in The Best of Everything 2019?
Putting profanity in a book title is lame, no matter what genre it is. A few years ago, some guy I’d never heard of wrote a bestselling book called Sh*t My Dad Says. This was lame because the author’s dad said all the funny stuff and the author got the bestselling book.
On the other hand, if the dad had written the book and called Sh*t I Say, then it probably wouldn’t have sold as well. If you say sh*t, it’s better to say somebody else said it. If the sh*t is funny, you still get credit, but if the profanity backfires, you can blame somebody else.
I’m not a prude about profanity. I put profanity in my own blog posts. I even put it in a few of my blog titles. When I use profanity, I even spell it out. I don’t replace any letters with an asterisk to hide what I’m saying.
Anybody who reads my blog Dysfunctional Literacy knows that f*ck means fuck. Even kids who aren’t supposed to say fuck know that f*ck means fuck. The only people who don’t know that f*ck means fuck are the people who don’t know what fuck means, so using f*ck is meaningless.
Anyway, I can understand why an unknown author would put bad words in a book title because a struggling author has to do something shocking to get attention. It’s still lame, though. The worst is when a celebrity puts profanity in a book title, like when celebrity film writer Kevin Smith put out a book called Tough Sh*t. Kevin Smith proved himself to be selfish when he used Sh*t in his book title because he’s diluting the shock value of profanity, thereby stealing from lesser known authors who might need it.
Now a bunch of self-help books are resorting to the use of bad words in titles. Just this week in a brick and mortar book store, I saw the following titles:
F*ck Feelings by Michael I Bennet and Sarah Bennet
F*ck Love by Michael I Bennet and Sarah Bennet
Stop Doing That Sh*t by Gary John Bishop
Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop
Find Your F*cking Happy by Monica Sweeney
Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight
Calm the F*ck Down by Sarah Knight
How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t by Andrea Owen
Self-help books haven’t always been like this. When I was a kid in the 1970s, the big self-help book was I’m Okay, You’re Okay by Thomas A. Harris. Even at my young age, I knew that was a lie. I figured I might be okay, but I knew most other people weren’t, and the book title was lying. I refuse to read books that lie in the title. but at least there was no profanity in the title.
That’s why I refuse to read You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. A true badass isn’t going to read the book because a true badass doesn’t need any advice that might (but probably isn’t) in the book. A true badass would see the title You Are a Badass and think, yes I am, and keep walking. The title is lying and also uses profanity. I can’t trust the author now. And her last name is Sincero.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson also a lie because the author obviously gives a fuck. If the author truly didn’t give a fuck, he wouldn’t have censored the title. Maybe it’s the publisher who didn’t want fuck fully spelled out, but in that case, an author who truly didn’t give a fuck would have found a publisher who didn’t a fuck. Either way, the title is a lie.
A few years ago, I wrote my own book called Crap Is NOT a Bad Word! I meant it as a joke because I’m always complaining about profanity in book titles and then I wrote a book with profanity in the book title, except I claim it really isn’t profanity. I even convinced myself that crap isn’t really a bad word. I convinced myself so convincingly that I still get mad when I think of the times I was punished for saying crap.
Even though I wrote Crap Is NOT a Bad Word! several years ago, I think it’s still relevant, and I spell out all the bad words in the book. There are a lot of bad words, but it’s not really a self-help book, except maybe for polite people.
Anyway, if you’re going to put profanity in your self-help book title, go all out. I don’t trust self-help gurus who are desperate enough to put profanity in their book titles. And I really don’t trust self-help gurus who lie and use profanity in their titles.
*****
Sometimes I’ll ask a question in a blog title and answer it, but this time I have no answer. I’m curious. Why do so many self-help books today have bad words in their titles? What do you think?
Comic books are easier to review than novels for several reasons. Comic books are shorter. The reviewer can show more pictures and make the review more appealing visually. The comic reviewer can also critique words and art, giving the reviewer more to work with.
Despite all this, I rarely review a comic book on my blog. Comic books don’t have the universal appeal of most bestselling novels. Plus, comic book readers would rather read a comic book themselves than waste their time reading a comic book review.
Comic books based on classic novels are a little different, though, at least for me. When I was a kid, my dad had a small collection of Classics Illustrated from the 1940s and 1950s, and I read a bunch of these over and over, and then when I was a teenager I started reading the classic novels. Without the background and context of the Classics Illustrated comic books, I might not have understood much of what was going on in these classic novels. With the help of these classic comics and a little persistence, I finished most classic novels that I started.
One of those difficult novels was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein is a perfect novel for a classic comic. There’s enough interesting stuff going on in the book to make for interesting illustrations, and the words in the book are difficult so that most average readers struggle with the book.
Without further ado, here’s my review of my very own copy (which originally belonged to my dad) of Classics Illustrated #26: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
(image via wikimedia)
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word they is 2019’s Word of the Year. At first glance, they might seem like a stupid choice. The word they has been around for generations as a third-person plural pronoun. Yet, curiosity over the word they has skyrocketed this year, with a 300% increase in hits on 2019 the dictionary’s website.
One reason for the Interest In they is that they is now considered a gender-neutral pronoun. People who don’t want to be labeled as he or she can choose they as their pronoun of choice. I’ll admit, I don’t get the whole nonbinary or gender neutral thing, so I won’t judge that, but I have a strong opinion about the word they. I don’t think they should be messed with, and here’s why.
It’s pretty simple. They is a commonly-used plural pronoun and shouldn’t be used in the singular form because it messes up subject-verb agreement. All my life I was taught to use present-tense verb forms in sentences like “They are going to the movie.”
If people use they as a singular pronoun, then a writer/speaker referring to a person who identifies as gender-neutral will write/speak “They is going to the movie.”
That’s going to lead to a lot of confusion, especially among English teachers. Grammar NAZIs will flip out too. Regular NAZIs don’t have a high tolerance for people who claim to be gender-neutral (I don’t know any regular NAZIs, so I’m just speculating about that), but the grammar NAZIs (who are often very tolerant about alternative lifestyles) will also resent the change in language.
Merriam-Webster should know this. When I was a kid, dictionaries reluctantly accepted any changes in the English Language. We tried to make up words and rule changes all the time, and the dictionary (and our teachers) would never go along with it. If we had tried to change the meaning of they, we would have been held back a grade, humiliated in front of our peers, and beaten up after school.
I’m not saying we should go back to that. I don’t wish that on anybody. But now the dictionary seems to be accepting change without thinking about the consequences.
Subject-verb agreement is the foundation of sentence structure in the English. If you mess with it, everything else collapses. Language fractures, people can’t communicate, and then people start genociding each other (Yeah, genocide probably isn’t a verb, but you know what I mean. If a person who claims to be gender-neutral can make they singular, then I can turn genocide into a verb).
The most disappointing part of this is that the dictionary should know better. Young people have always had stupid ideas, many of which were worse than using they as a singular pronoun. Young people are supposed to have new (and usually stupid) ideas. The older generations are then supposed to postpone the implementation of those bad ideas until the young people get old enough to realize how stupid their old ideas were.
In this case, Merriam-Webster has abdicated its responsibility as the wise (but cranky) mentor. Instead, the dictionary has encouraged confusion and future madness by enabling youngsters to use they as a singular pronoun.
This conflict isn’t even necessary. Most people don’t care if somebody identifies as gender-neutral. There are countless potential letter combinations that could be used as a gender neutral pronoun, preferably one that hasn’t already been established as a third-person plural pronoun, like they has been. There is enough confusion in this world already.
And we don’t need dictionaries to make things worse.
I don’t read many political books anymore, for reasons I’ll explain later. I also don’t finish many books that I read, for reasons that I’ve explained in other blog posts. Despite my current reading habits, however, I read most of A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney.
I initially noticed this book because of the author’s name, Bruce Cannon Gibney. Cannon? The guy’s middle name is Cannon? For a long time. I thought Brad Thor was the coolest author name a guy could come up with. Then I saw Bruce Cannon Gibney.
Now I’m wondering, how can a guy get lucky enough to have a middle name like Cannon? I’d love a middle name like Cannon. Even Brad Thor is probably jealous of the middle name Cannon.
If Brad Thor had a cool middle name, you know he’d use it on is book covers. Cannon is such a cool name, though, that it needs something less impressive like Gibney to bring the guy back down to earth. With a last name like Gibney (my last name isn’t impressive either, so I have no room to mock), Bruce is lucky his parents middle named him Cannon.
I admit, I’m jealous of Bruce Cannon Gibney’s middle name, and I’m not an envious person.
Oh yeah, I have a book review here too.
For decades, this book had no sequel, and everybody was better off for it.
Sequels have a bad reputation, and they probably deserve it. Even though almost everybody agrees there are too many sequels, especially for movies, sequels keep getting made, and they often keep making money. Maybe the problem isn’t so bad in literature, but there are still some examples of unnecessary sequels to popular books.
To be fair, sequels not written by the original author don’t count. It’s not fair to blame Margaret Mitchell for a bad sequel to Gone with the Wind. It’s not fair to blame Mario Puzo for a bad sequel to The Godfather. It’s really not fair to blame Truman Capote for a bad sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird (but I’ll get to that later).
Having established that, here are five great (or popular) novels that have unnecessary sequels:
Popular Novel-The Shining by Stephen King
Unnecessary Sequel- Dr. Sleep by Stephen King
Stephen King fans probably disagree with me about this, but they’re more biased than I am because they’re Stephen King fans and I’m just a guy who used to read Stephen King books. I liked The Shining a lot, but decades later I had no interest in Dr. Sleep. Looking back, The Shining might not even be as good as I remembered it. Some of the writing in The Shining was pretty bad, but I didn’t recognize bad writing back then when I first read it.
When I finished reading The Shining, I wanted more Stephen King, and I got more Stephen King with The Stand. Then I got even more Stephen King with It, and I stopped reading Stephen King.
Even at my peak of Stephen King interest, I didn’t care about what happened to the kid at the end of The Shining. I barely even remember the kid’s name. I’m not saying Dr. Sleep is a lousy book (I haven’t read it). I’m just saying that nobody ever clamored for a sequel, and that makes the sequel unnecessary.
Popular Novel- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Unnecessary Sequel- Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Go Set a Watchman is fairly despised because it was promoted as a sequel or companion novel when it was really just a rough draft that was stashed away in an attic. I don’t blame the book publishers for selling it as a sequel. I blame book buyers for falling for the trick. I’m as gullible as a guy can be, and even I knew this sequel was a scam.
Almost everybody knew Go Set a Watchman was a scam, and it still sold a lot of copies. If the publishing companies are open about how they rip off the public and the public still falls for it, the book publishers will never stop.
Go Set a Watchman might also validate those who believe that Truman Capote actually wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. I used to joke about that just to tick people off, (I’m not like that anymore), but now I wonder. The quality of writing in the two manuscripts is so different that it’s almost like they were written by… two… different… people. Maybe I shouldn’t even count Go Set a Watchman as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, but the publishers put Harper Lee’s name on the cover of both books, so I had no choice..
Popular Novel- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Unnecessary Sequel- The Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry
I’ll admit, it’s been decades since I’ve read The Streets of Laredo. I don’t remember much because I tried to forget it as soon as I was done. As far as I’m concerned, The Streets of Laredo never happened. It was never written. It was never alive for me.
The Streets of Laredo isn’t just an unnecessary sequel; it’s a bad sequel, and it’s a bad sequel for several reasons. It takes beloved characters from Lonesome Dove and ruins them. In some ways, The Streets of Laredo make the events in Lonesome Dove irrelevant. I actually got angry at The Streets of Laredo because of the way the characters were treated.
Some might say that it’s a sign of a great author that readers get mad when the characters get mistreated. Yes, Lonesome Dove was a great novel that treated its characters, even when horrible stuff happened to them, with respect. The Streets of Laredo was downright disrespectful. And it was unnecessary.
Popular Novel- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Unnecessary Sequel- Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain
I’m a fan of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It isn’t my favorite book ever, but I respect the character. Tom Sawyer hated school. He protected Becky. He spoke up for an innocent man even when it put his own life in danger. He figured out a way to get other kids paint the fence for him.
Tom Sawyer, Detective might be okay, but nobody asked for it. I read the first few pages, and it was okay, but I didn’t finish it. Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer, Detective decades after Tom Sawyer, and maybe he wanted to recapture former glory or maybe he needed a quick bestseller.
Or maybe Mark Twain was ahead of his time with Tom Sawyer, Detective and nobody has recognized that because nobody read the book. That would have been frustrating, to have written a detective novel ahead of its time, but so few people read it that it was never even discovered in the time it was meant for. Maybe I’ll try reading it again, just to make sure it wasn’t (or was) ahead of its time.
Popular Novel- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Unnecessary Sequel- Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, so it must be a great novel, but I’m not sure because I’ve never read it because I didn’t care who Olive Kitteridge was/is. I’ve never even heard anyone talk about Olive Kitteridge.
It’s not the only recent (from my point of view) Pulitzer that doesn’t get talked about. I’ve never seen anybody read Tinkers either or Less. Readers, however, passionately argued about A Visit from the Goon Squad. Readers also argued about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and then the author made it worse by getting accused of sexually harassing women (though he MIGHT just be an awkward guy who doesn’t know how to interact with females).
In its favor, Olive Kitteridge won an Emmy in 2015, but it was for Limited Series, so the interest in Olive Kitteridge is limited (limited is their word, not mine!)
If Cormac McCarthy wrote a sequel to The Road, I’d understand it. I’d be skeptical, but I’d understand it. Readers love The Road. People still read The Road. The Road is still relevant. But I don’t want a sequel for The Road either. If there’s no sequel for The Road, then a sequel for Olive Kitteridge is also unnecessary.
*****
But enough about me! What do you think? I’m sure there are a bunch of popular novels that I missed. Maybe you even disagree with some of my choices. Either way, leave a comment below!
Don’t ask what he’s doing. (image via wikimedia)
On Masturbation might not be the best title for a book. A book title is supposed to make a potential reader want to start turning pages, but few topics turn off readers more than masturbation. I’m not going to read a book called On Masturbation, no matter who wrote it. I’ll read anything else by Mark Twain. I’ll even read Tom Sawyer Detective if I have to. But I refuse to read a book called On Masturbation.
On Masturbation was originally a speech called “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” That might be a better title, except the word Onanism is a reference to a Biblical figure named Onan, and a lot of people don’t read the Bible anymore, so too many potential readers didn’t know what Twain was talking about.
In case you didn’t know (I didn’t know either), Onan was a masturbator whom God struck down. This demonstrates how times have changed. When I was a kid, the story was a guy would go blind if he gratified himself too much or we’d grow hair on the palm of our hand (or both). Nobody told us we’d be struck down by God.
The good news for On Masturbation is that schools supposedly are teaching self-gratification in their curriculum now, even in elementary schools. That means if The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gets banned from schools, it could easily be replaced by On Masturbation. Teachers could get their sex education and classic American literature done at the same time.
Some people see masturbation as a dirty word. I don’t know; it’s kind of long for a dirty word. You don’t see many vulgar words whose roots are three-syllables long. Masturbation might be considered the technical word, kind of like how fornicate is the technical word for fuck or defecate is the technical word for shit. There’s no monosyllabic word for masturbate (why is the word monosyllabic five syllables long?). Masturbate has a bunch of compound word euphemisms that end with off, like jack off, beat off, or whack off. It’s weird that so many euphemisms for masturbate are compound words when masturbation requires only one person.
I’m sure On Masturbation is a funny book. Supposedly it was one heck of a speech as well. It’s too bad that YouTube didn’t exist back in the 1800s because Mark Twain talking about onanism was probably awesome. Even so, I don’t want to carry that speech around with me, and I don’t want to be seen reading it, especially if the word MASTURBATION is in giant letters.
Masturbation might seem like a tasteless topic, but at least Twain gave his Onanism speech in Paris. The French are supposed to be a bunch of perverts, but I don’t know if that was true in the 1800s. If you’re going to give a speech about masturbation, tell it to a bunch of perverts in France. Don’t talk about masturbation to a bunch of school kids.
When I was a kid, if a teacher had talked about masturbation, the teacher would have disappeared and nobody would have asked questions. You just didn’t talk to kids about that. Even creepy guys in white vans didn’t talk about masturbation to kids, and now schools are supposed to teach it. If teachers start promoting masturbation, don’t be surprised if more teachers start driving white vans.
Even if schools teach masturbation, I don’t want to be seen reading a book called On Masturbation. Guys don’t want to talk about masturbation, even if it’s called onanism. Maybe schools should just refer to masturbation as onanism. Then teachers could teach it and kids wouldn’t even know what they’re talking about. That would make everybody happy, the perverts who want to teach onanism to kids and the parents who are horrified that perverts are teaching onanism to kids. The only people who wouldn’t be happy would be the kids at school, and their opinions won’t matter until they’re 18.
And by then they’ve usually figured out onanism on their own.
And then Mark Twain’s book might make more sense to them.
But I still don’t like the title.
(image via wikimedia)
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for a bunch of writers and bloggers. Despite being a writer and a blogger, I have never been a fan of National Novel Writing Month. One of my first blog posts ever denounced National Novel Writing Month as National Bad Writing Month, and over the years I haven’t changed my mind, even though I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things since then.
Over the last few years, I have changed my mind about football. I have changed my mind about conspiracy theories. I have even changed a lot of my political opinions. But I haven’t changed my mind about National Novel Writing Month
Here are five reasons why I think NaNoWriMo is a bad idea:
- National Novel Writing Month has a crappy acronym.
NaNoWriMo is a really stupid-looking acronym. I understand why it has to be like that. It’s a pain to keep writing National Novel Writing Month repeatedly, so we bloggers use the acronym NaNoWrMo, which is kind of possible to pronounce if you really want to.
The acronym NNWM isn’t really an option because it’s it’s more difficult to say than National Novel Writing Month. NNWM also sounds like a controversial 1980s rap group, and that’s the kind of controversy that most bloggers don’t want. Plus, nobody likes vowel-free acronyms. It’s a sign of no creativity, and an acronym for writers should sound creative.
2. NaNoWriMo leads to bad writing.
A 60,000 word novel in a month is a lot, especially if you have a full-time job and a family. It’s tough for full-time professional writers to get to 60,000 words in a month. James Patterson hires coauthors” to write for him, and they still don’t hit 60,000 words and the novels still suck. 60,000 words is an unreasonable goal, and unreasonable goals lead to bad writing.
- NaNoWriMo is an internet challenge.
I’m not a fan of internet challenges because I don’t like the internet telling me what do. It’s bad enough that the internet monitors where I go and what I read and what sites I visit. It’s also bad that the internet tries to predict my future actions by giving me recommendations. Now the internet is challenging us to do stuff. When the internet challenges me to do something, I tell the internet to take a hike.
- NaNoWriMo is a long internet challenge.
Most internet challenges are short. Stuff like The Ice Bucket Challenge a few years ago takes only a few seconds. NaNoWriMo takes a whole month. That’s too long for an internet challenge. I’m against internet challenges, but if I ever participate in one, it will be a short challenge. Maybe I’d write a six-word story on a napkin. Six-word stories can be challenging, but it won’t take as long as a 60,000 word novel. If I fail the challenge, I can fail in a few minutes. It won’t take me a month to fail. I pride myself on my efficiency; I’d rather fail at something quickly than slowly.
- NaNoWriMo causes stress.
Writers get stressed out over NaNoWriMo. They get stressed out if they fall behind in the word count. They get frustrated at the quality of their writing. Sometimes I think the powers-that-be want us to be stressed out. If we’re stressed out, we can’t think clearly, and when we can’t think clearly, the powers-that-be can do what they want without the rest of us noticing. The powers-that-be might be manipulating us with the fake stress of NaNoWriMo, and I choose to keep my writing stress-free.
I don’t want to come across as a whiner about NaNoWriMo, so here are some alternative challenges to NaNoWriMo. Like I said, I’m not a fan of challenges, but if you’re going to do one, here are some suggestions!
- The Spend a Month Revising and Editing your Best Blog Post Challenge!
- The Write a Novel in the next Ten Years Contest!
- The Help a Struggling Indie Author by Buying A Book Challenge!!
- The Limit Yourself to Reading Only Three Books per Author Challenge!!
- The One-Star Review For Bestselling Books (but logically explain why it’s bad without being mean) Campaign-
+++++
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t look down upon writers who participate in NaNoWriMo. It takes commitment, and I respect that. But I still think National Novel Writing Month is a bad idea.
What do you think? What other factors make NaNoWriMo a bad idea? If you disagree, why do you think NaNoWriMo is a good idea?
(image via wikimedia)
It’s easy for bloggers to be negative sometimes. In this age of social media, video creators on YouTube or Instagram get a lot more attention than writers who merely blog. Independent bloggers like us can put a lot of time into out writing, but our audience reach can be more limited than that of other platforms.
Face it, a lot of people would rather watch videos or listen to podcasts than read blogs. It can be frustrating. But I don’t like to be negative for very long. Blogging is still awesome, so awesome that I don’t mind using a few exclamation points to express it!!!!!! I would ALL CAP MY ENTHUSIASM, but I don’t want to be too obnoxious.
Here are five reasons why blogging is awesome (just in case you didn’t already know).
- Blogging is physically easy.
Writing used to be a physical chore. Writers had to physically hold a pencil or a pen and physically write out each word on a sheet of paper. Even worse, back in the really old days, writers had to dip quills into ink and then they got beaten by monks if they made a mistake.
I’m not sure that ever really happened because there’s no ancient video footage of monks beating writers who made mistakes. If there’s no video footage of an event, I’m skeptical that it ever happened. Then again, back in the 1970s I saw nuns rap student knuckles with rulers, so if nuns in the 1970s were doing that, I’m pretty sure in the really old days monks did much worse to young writers who made errors on their parchments. After all, nothing inspires perfection like the threat of mild violence.
Even when writers didn’t have to worry about hyper-critical monks and nuns, using a typewriter could be frustrating. If you weren’t a good typist, you spent more time making corrections than actually writing. The most frustrating weekend I ever had was during my senior year in high school when I had to type out my own term paper for English class. An entire Saturday was spent making corrections with white-out or retyping pages altogether. My mom, who typed 70 words a minute, said it taught me a valuable lesson, to always have a few spare bucks lying around to pay somebody to type my essays in college.
Blogging now with a computer/tablet is much easier than using a typewriter, pencil, or quill, and we don’t get beaten by monks when we make mistakes.
- Bloggers can get an instant audience.
20 years ago, if I wanted an audience, I had to join a writer’s group, and even then, I had to wait until the next meeting (which could have been a week, two weeks, or even a month away, depending on the group) before I received any feedback for my writing.
Now, writers can get instant feedback. With blogs, Twitters, Instagrams, ebooks, and much more, writers have a bunch of choices of how they want to write. As long as writers are patient, we can eventually get an audience.
To be honest, when I started Dysfunctional Literacy, I didn’t get any feedback for about six months, but that was probably because I didn’t deserve any feedback. When I received my first “You suck!” comment, I knew I was finally doing something right. When a writer hasn’t gotten any feedback for 20 years, “You suck!” is exhilarating.
3. We bloggers can write what we want.
Nobody can tell us what to write. If I want to write a 60-episode blog serial about a crazy ex-girlfriend (who had a lot of cool qualities), then I can write a 60-episode blog serial about a crazy ex-girlfriend. If I want to write a blog post about Scott Baio appearing in my dreams, I can do that too. I can even write about the repercussions of trying to talk like Donald Trump.
No editor can tell me that I can’t write what I want. No outrage mob can influence a spineless editor who has control over what I write. This blog is mine. I am my own editor. Being my own editor might be like a lawyer who represents himself/herself, but I don’t care. This blog is mine and mine only. And that’s awesome!!!
4. Bloggers can be anonymous.
Some people complain about anonymity on the internet and how it allows people (usually trolls) to misbehave without any real repercussion. To me, anonymity is essential because it keeps me from getting fired. Most people who get fired for online writing lose their jobs for posting/writing/tweeting comments that are on the “wrong” side of political issues or hot topics of the day.
The getting fired issue seems to be getting worse too. Years ago, people would get fired for stupid stuff they wrote that day or the day before. Now people are getting in trouble for stuff they wrote over ten years ago. Even worse, there are internet researchers out there who gleefully look up old stuff and try to get other people fired. In an age of getting fired for internet writing, it’s great to be anonymous.
Bloggers don’t have to show their faces either. Sometimes it’s good if writers don’t show themselves. Words by themselves leave a lot for the imagination, and readers can be disappointed when an interesting writer looks like a boring, everyday schmuck. Plus, if you’re an anonymous writer, nobody bothers you in public. When you crave attention, you can write. When you want to be left alone, you don’t write.
If you like anonymity, blogging is the best.
5. Bloggers don’t have to deal with people.
Even though a lot of writers are borderline anti-social, we sometimes have to deal with others to get published. Before the internet, if we wanted to get our work out to the public, we had to get past literary agents and publishers. It was frustrating to writers. Even if we thought we had something publishable, too much was out of the writer’s control. Unless we had connections or were willing to network to make those connections, we were most likely never going to be published.
Now, the anti-social author doesn’t have to deal with anybody. Bloggers can put out their own stuff without anybody else’s approval. We don’t need connections. We don’t need to schmooze anybody. I’ve published my own ebooks on Amazon, and I’ve never had to talk to anybody during the entire process. True, my ebook sales aren’t as good as I want them to be, but that’s okay because I didn’t have to talk to any literary agents or publishers to get them out there. That has to count for something.
*****
What do you think? Why are you glad that you are a blogger right now? If you aren’t a blogger, have you ever had to use a typewriter? Have you ever been beaten by a monk/nun for making a mistake while writing? Have you been fired for something you wrote? Has anybody ever told you that “You suck!” on your blog (or other writing format of choice)?
Dysfunctional Literacy 