8 Reasons to Comment on Books

Did you just finish reading a book? Congratulations! But your work’s not done. Consider leaving a comment about that book. Let’s discuss why.

We’re in the Age of the Internet now and everything’s interactive. That includes reading books. These days, businesses thrive or fail based on comments left by customers. The writing biz is no different.

Still, I understand why you don’t often comment on books. You’re busy and have many other things to do. There is some effort involved in leaving a comment and it just doesn’t seem worthwhile. I get that.

Consider, though, that you made time in your schedule to read the book. It affected you in some way, good or bad. What if I could give you a good reason to take 2-5 minutes to leave a comment about that book you read?

I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you eight reasons:

  1. It’s easy. Just go to the site where you bought the book, or to Goodreads.com, and leave a comment. It can be brief, but it’s best to be specific about what you liked or didn’t like.
  2. You can. For the first time in history, you can easily leave impactful comments. Before the Internet, you might write a book review for school, an analytical essay in a professional journal, or tell your friends. Most of these actions didn’t matter much to the book’s sales.
  3. Your comment matters. It affects whether other people buy the book. Readers sometimes base purchasing decisions on others’ comments.
  4. You already rate other businesses. These days, companies are always asking to be rated. Authors can’t really do that directly, since they don’t know who’s buying their books; they can’t reach their individual customers.
  5. Your comment influences the book’s promotion. The number of comments and the average number of stars go into website algorithms that cause the book to appear on lists like “You might also be interested in…”
  6. You might connect with the author (if living). Many authors welcome personal contact with fans and exchange correspondence with them. Even some deceased authors have active fan clubs you can join.
  7. Even negative comments help. The author (if still active) will learn what doesn’t work and will strive to correct weaknesses in subsequent books.
  8. Things improve through feedback loops. With tight and near-instant feedback loops, businesses (including writers) can hone their business to better please customers (including readers).

I do have some caveats to think about before leaving a comment. If you’re a friend of the author, consider how and whether your comment might affect that friendship. Also, if you are an author, don’t comment on your own books, and don’t get into flame wars with those who leave negative comments. No good can come from that.

To sum up, consider commenting on the books you read. Make it a new habit: read a book, leave a comment. Every comment helps. That’s useful feedback from—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

September 1, 2019Permalink

Books Aren’t Clutter

Is your place crammed with boxes and bins, your closet overflowing with junk, your bookshelf sagging under too many books, your table piled with stuff? It’s time you de-cluttered using the KonMari method of Marie Kondo. Your living space will be pristine and sparking joy in less time than—

Hold on, there, Captain Shipshape. Did you say bookshelf? Loaded with too many books? There ain’t no such thing as ‘too many books.’ The universe sheds a tear whenever those three words appear in that order.

An uncluttered entryway, courtesy of Pixabay.com

While you’re busy disposing of joyless junk and about to trash that book in your hand, let me tell you something about books. Books magically transport you to a different place and time. Books mysteriously relocate you into someone else’s mind. Those marvelous vehicles of paper, ink, cardboard and glue convey you in comfort to distant lands. They leave you inspired, horrified, downhearted, fuming, or ecstatic.

And you were about to take that mystical, wonderful book and dispose of it? Listen up, O Knight of Neatness, there’s an escape clause in the Rules of Organizing, an allowed exception to KonMari, and it’s this: books aren’t clutter.

I mean no disrespect toward Ms. Kondo. I like a tidy place. But books get a waiver, a pass, and a permanent exemption from all Decrees of Decluttering. By definition, books spark joy. They are cheap, compact, life-long joy-sparking machines.  

Inspired by this article in Independent, I’m here to tell you there ought to be books in every room of your place. No matter where they are, they’re never out of place.

You finally got your son to clean up his room? Well, almost. Some of his books didn’t make it to the shelf? That’s okay. His room now counts as clean.

Company is coming over, so you dusted and scrubbed until everything’s perfect? Oops. You left an opened book on that coffee table, and a couple more on the arm of your couch. Who cares? That room is now ready for visitors.

This isn’t about impressing others. It’s not some contest about personal library size or literary sophistication. Who cares what others think? It’s about the joy your books spark in you.

So, by all means, toss the trash, eject the joyless, rid your place of rubbish. Transform your pad into a shining Shinto-inspired shrine of order. But leave the books alone, especially—oh, most especially—those written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 25, 2019Permalink

Retreating to Write

Would you go on a writer’s retreat? I’ve blogged about them before, but that post took the form of a warning to set reasonable expectations for what you’ll accomplish.

This weekend, while on a retreat, I’ll put on a more positive spin and discuss the benefits. I’ve retreated to an old house in a small rural town with three other writers—the members of my critique group. Here’s a view from the house’s balcony.

The house stands an hour and a half away from my home, where I usually write. The perspective, the atmosphere, the ambiance, is different here. I like to think it sends my mind down different grooves and lets my thoughts wander strange and unexplored byways.

There’s something invigorating about being among other writers, too. When not writing, we sit and talk. It’s fun to learn of their struggles and dreams, to celebrate their victories and commiserate over their defeats.

Non-writers have their own hobbies, of course, and join with like-minded hobbyists for weekends away. But their weekends are not like those of writers. If you could be here with us, you’d see us each in our own corner of the house, quietly busy with laptop or pen. At the moment, we’d rather talk to you, our readers, through our written words than to each other through spoken ones.

Does that sound odd? Pathetic? Rude? Introverted? Boring? Perhaps it would, to non-scribblers. To a writer, it is bliss. Here, for one glorious weekend, the urgencies of life do not interrupt, the excuses for not writing are absent, the schedule collapses to just one task.

There’s something too, about a change in perspective. It unshackles the mind. If you always write in the same chair, the same room, the same desk, is it any surprise that each of your stories seems like the others? Similar characters, similar plots, similar settings? For this reason, while writing at home, I sit in different chairs in different rooms. But this retreat, to a location I’ve never been, grants me a fresh outlook.

Retreats come in different flavors, of course. Some are more like writer workshops, with an expert providing occasional instruction. Some are solitary, where the writer goes unaccompanied to a remote locale. Each of these has pros and cons.

Your retreats need not be frequent, or expensive. My group goes only about every two to three years, and never to the same place twice. We’re mindful of costs and share the monetary burden. For us, the point is not to enjoy breathtaking scenery or to visit nearby attractions. All we need is quiet time. That’s worth emphasizing: Quiet. Time. Need ‘em both.

So, writer, consider a retreat. Withdraw from the daily demands of chores, work, and family. View things from a different angle for awhile. Socialize with other writers who strive, like you, to sharpen their scribbling skills. You might find you benefit as much from it as does—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 18, 2019Permalink

Better Writing through Exhaustion?

Are you more creative when sleepy? Is that the best time for writing rough drafts?

Some research suggests people may perform slightly better on “insight”-type tasks when they’re tired. Writing that first draft of your story might be an insight-type task. Perhaps, when fatigue sets in, you’re more willing to take a chance, to perform a mental leap, to connect disparate thoughts in a novel way.

This study, by Associate Professor Mareike Wieth of Albion College, examined the performance of over 400 students on both analytic and insight tasks. Analytic tasks were straightforward math and logic problems. Insight tasks were problems that seemed, at first, to lack sufficient information, but required a flash of intuitive thought to solve.

According to this article in The Atlantic, the students performed better on analytic tasks at their optimum time of day when properly rested. No surprise there.

However, in the insight tasks, they did 20% better at their non-optimal time of day.

As I understand it, the subjects for the study were college students, not a random sample of people. Also, the insight tasks did not include writing first drafts of fictional stories. I don’t want to infer too much from this study. As all scientists conclude after every study, “more research is required.”

But you’re not interested in research. You’re interested in becoming a better writer, the best writer you can be. When it comes to writing while tired, I suspect your mileage may vary.

It might be worth a few experiments. You could stay up past your normal bedtime and write some first drafts then. Or you could wake up early and scribble out a first draft before starting your morning routine.

Here I’ll add a cautionary note. Suppose experimentation reveals you do write better when tired. There is a long list of physiological effects of sleep deprivation, including depression, obesity, and increased risk of diabetes. Writing while fatigued is one thing, but be sure to get enough sleep.

Maybe you’ll find a different way to take advantage of those creative sparks you get while exhausted. Rather than sitting hunched over a keyboard, all you need is a notepad to jot down the insights as they flash by. I’ve blogged before about the tendency for a writer’s mind to solve problems while engaged in other activities, particularly mundane tasks. The notepad technique works then, too.

Well, <yawn> it’s getting late. It’s first-draft-writing time for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 11, 2019Permalink

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

My stories are set in lots of places. I finally mapped all of them to date.

Some anthologies and magazines ask writers to come up with a brief author biography. In my bios, I often state, “I take readers on voyages to far-off places.” I wondered if I could capture all these travels on a single map. Here it is:

On this map, green dots indicate published stories and red ones indicate unpublished stories for which I’ve written at least a first draft. There are some stories in which I don’t specify a geographical location, so I can’t show them on the map. In two of my stories, characters venture underground, and I just showed their departure and return points on the surface.

As far as coverage goes, things get cluttered in Europe and the United States. Obviously, I need to write some stories set in Russia, Australia, South America, and Antarctica.

Some writers feel they must travel to the settings of their stories and conduct research to give their tales a sense of credibility. That’s less common with science fiction writers, for obvious reasons.

I’ve traveled to almost none of my story setting locations, and I don’t think it detracts from reader enjoyment. Today’s readers care more about characters than setting, anyway. They crave stories that explore the mysteries, motives, fears, anxieties, and yearnings of the human mind. That’s much harder territory to depict on a map.

Even so, strange and interesting settings are fun to read about, and often the setting itself brings out all those character qualities. Many of us love ‘journey stories,’ and I’ve shown mine as lines on the map.

Well, enough of all that. Are your bags packed? Have you securely fastened your seat belt? Who knows to what extraordinary places you’ll go next with—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

August 4, 2019Permalink

How Things Change

Change is all around us. It’s amazing to watch, and it tends to follow a single, characteristic pattern. Even though the pattern repeats, it often surprises us.

That pattern goes by various names, including the Change Curve, the ‘S’ Curve, the Sigmoid Curve, and the Logistic Curve. I’ll call it the ‘S’ Curve, mainly because my name is Steve Southard, and I’m fond of that letter.

Consider a thing, or entity. As we’ll see, it can be almost anything. It begins in a period of uncertainty, and may not show much potential at first. Then it establishes itself, finds a comfortable and promising track, and pursues that. It enjoys a period of sustained and impressive growth, making minor tweaks, but generally continuing on its established path. Finally, it reaches some limit, some constraint it had not previously encountered. That constraint proves its undoing, and it enters a period of maturity, decline, and termination.

During that maturity portion, other things/entities/systems compete for supremacy. This is a period of uncertainty and chaos. It’s unknown which competitor will survive, but eventually a single winner emerges and becomes the successor, which experiences its own period of sustained growth, and its own eventual maturity.

As you read my description of the curve in the previous two paragraphs, I’m guessing you thought of at least one example of this. The ‘S’ curve resonated with you in some way and you knew it was true.

A quick search on the Internet showed examples related to language, to socio-technological change, to human height, to animal populations, to career choices and motivation, to stock prices, to business, and to project management. There were also discussions of the curve as a general model of change here, here, and here.

The ‘S’ Curve is everywhere!

Sometimes we can perceive this curve in an erroneous way. If its time-span is long enough, say, a significant fraction of a human lifetime, people observing the entity during its growth phase often assume that phase will continue forever. Why not? It’s been that way a long time. Why shouldn’t it continue upward like an exponential curve? However, few things do.

Consider automobile engines. At the beginning of the 1900s, it wasn’t clear which type of engine (steam, electric battery, or gasoline) was superior. The internal combustion gasoline engine won and became the standard for many decades. An observer in the 1960s could well assume cars would have gasoline engines forever. Now pollution has become a problem and that engine has reached its efficiency limits, so other technologies are beginning to compete.

Consider manned space exploration, as I did in last week’s blog post. During the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, NASA made steady progress. Observers in the late 1960s could have concluded there would be many follow-on programs in the 1980s, 1990s, and later, taking astronauts to Mars, the asteroids, the outer planets, and eventually, the stars. Instead, manned space exploration encountered constraints such as cost and waning public enthusiasm, so it has remained stalled to this day.

The technologies in my fictional stories all follow that ‘S’ Curve model. Usually my tales take place during the periods of disruption and chaos.

In fact, the story-writing process itself follows the ‘S’ Curve, with little progress during the idea creation stage, then rapid progress as I churn out the first draft, then a slow period of final editing and subsequent drafts before I consider it finished and suitable for submission.

As you experience change in your life, don’t assume things will remain the same. Know that all things reach their limits and end. When things seem chaotic, seek out the winning successor. Despite all this change, you can always count on—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

July 28, 2019Permalink

Stepping on the Moon…Again…Someday

As you may have heard, July 20, 2019 marked fifty years since a human first set foot on the Moon. What follows is one fiction writer’s perspective of that event.

Neil Armstrong on the moon

I was eleven years old then, and watched the landing on my family’s small black-and-white TV. I stayed awake to watch the “first step” too, though it occurred close to 10 pm central time. There was no way to watch that live event and not feel pride and awe. Even those who balked at the mission’s expense knew how historic it was.

Fiction writers had long been imagining the moment, and had prepared us for the wonder of it. From Lucian’s True History, to Rudolf Erich Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen’s Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” writers had taken us to Earth’s silver satellite in our imagination.

Later science fiction writers gave the trip greater clarity and realism in such works as Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, and Robert Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon.

As a writer of historical technological fiction, I’ve written of flights to the moon occurring before 1969 as well. In “A Tale More True,” a rival of Baron Münchhausen travels to the moon in 1769 using a gigantic clock spring. In “To Be First,” my characters from an alternate Ottoman Empire are returning from the moon in 1933 when the action starts. And in “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall,” you can read about Dutch citizens traveling to the moon by balloon in the 1830s.

Although fiction writers helped us imagine the first trips to the moon, nobody prepared us for a five-decade lapse in missions. Nobody in 1969 thought we’d finish out the Apollo series of moon landings, and then stay away for over fifty years. If you could travel back in time from 2019 to 1969 and tell that to the world, not a soul would believe you.

The moon was ours! Surely by 1979 we’d have a moon base, then by 1989 a moon colony, and by 1999 the moon would be our springboard for trips to asteroids and other planets. The excited folks of 1969 would inform the time traveler that by 2019, naturally, average families would take trips to the moon for vacations.

How odd that we’ve stuck to our planet and near orbit for close to forty-seven years (since Apollo 17). Historians may well wonder what took humanity so long to go back, given the advances in technology that have occurred since the early 1970s. Here are some possible reasons for the long gap:

  • The Mercury/Gemini/Apollo series ingrained in the public mind that only governments can finance moon missions, and only at colossal expense.
  • The moon wasn’t that exciting, after all. Gray, dusty, airless, and lifeless, it was a place only an astronomer could love.
  • The war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal shattered the public’s former confidence in government’s ability to accomplish great tasks.
  • We’d gone there to accomplish the late President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and to win the supposed ‘space race’ with the Soviet Union. With no further goal, schedule, or apparent rival, we’d lost all impetus for further trips.

We’ll go back to the moon, of course, and with any luck, the next lunar landing will be witnessed by you and by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 21, 2019Permalink

Dial Down the Flame

Some days it seems as if the world is over-stocked with idiots: editors who reject your brilliant manuscripts or insist on unreasonable alterations; reviewers too nit-witted to appreciate your subtle prose; and there’s always the never-ending parade of dolts in the non-writing world. Luckily, you have the Internet, where you can loose your torrent of fury upon them all with wordy weapons of mass wrath.

I’m here to suggest you not do that.

Every now and then an author gets mad at someone and blasts them with blistering bombast, in full view of the entire Interweb. Sometimes the author demonstrates considerable literary prowess in these attacks, but at other times, the author reveals only the limited, curse-studded vocabulary of an incensed sailor. I won’t link to any specific examples. They’re out there.

Social media makes this easy. You’re angry, so you lash out. Before you know it, you’ve dashed off a response to the most recent slight, a retort designed to make the perpetrator understand just how low on the human scale he or she rates. That’ll teach ‘em. And it makes you feel really good.

For a moment. Then you discover the quasi-Newtonian First Law of Internet Commotion: For every action, there’s an opposite reaction, but it ain’t necessarily equal. Your two-party disagreement has become public, and the public is livid about it—mostly livid about you.

Suddenly you’re the evil-hearted antagonist in this drama. People unknown to you have gathered to defend the original idiot, and cast you in the role of the caped and mustached scoundrel roping young women to railroad tracks.

They’re denouncing you. They’re calling you names. Worse, they’re refusing to buy your books, and encouraging others to boycott your bibliography, to catapult your catalog.

Well, you’ll show them. You’ll mock the mob; you’ll criticize the crowd; you’ll harangue the horde; you’ll…

At this point, a question occurs to you. You start to wonder if there had been some moment in this escalating stimulus/response/counter-response avalanche when you held a modicum of control over the situation. Was there a point before the full-fledged flame war, before the ruination of your writing reputation, where you could have prevented this outcome?

As it turns out, yes there was. It occurred back when you first publicly spewed venom at your initial, well-deserving target. If only you’d checked your fire then. If only you’d written your raging rejoinder and not hit ‘Send.’ If only you’d listened to that angel on your shoulder who’d quoted the Thumper Rule: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

Yeah, that would have been a grand time to wedge in some sane contemplation  between stimulus and instant response. You could have risen above the ruckus, been the better being, grasped the greater good, and suffered in silence knowing your suffering would cease.

Some of you are thinking, “Oh yeah? I’ve read some pretty scorching online rants written by famous authors, so it must be okay.”

The key word in your thought is ‘famous.’ Famous authors can get away with stuff like that. If they lose a few readers because of their boorish behavior, so what? They can count on countless fans to come to their defense and to buy up even more of their books.

But until you’re famous, you can’t afford to lose readers. You won’t find a flock of fans defending you. Instead, you’ll just be one more sad statistic in the growing archive of Authors Behaving Badly.

When that moment of decision arrives, remember to dial down the flame. Remember to listen to the angel on your shoulder. Remember Thumper. And remember the advice of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 14, 2019Permalink

Technology in Fiction

Most of my fiction involves characters struggling with new technology. These days, learning how to contend with technology is a relevant and fascinating problem for all of us, and I enjoy exploring it.

I wondered if I was roaming the full realm of that topic, so I decided to map it. There are several ways to do this, but I chose to create one axis showing technology development stages, and another describing the spectrum of character responses to technology. Then I figured I’d plot my published stories on that map, and color-code the roles my characters played.

If I’d done my job well, I thought, the map would show a good dispersal of scattered points. That is, I’d have written stories covering all the areas, leaving no bare spots.

Without further preamble, here’s the map:

To make it, I chose the stages of technological development posited by the technology forecaster Joseph P. Martino. These are:

1.   Scientific findings: The innovator has a basic scientific understanding of some phenomenon.

2.   Laboratory feasibility: The innovator identified a technical solution to a specific problem and created a laboratory model.

3.   Operating prototype: The innovator built a device intended for a particular operational environment.

4.   Operational use or commercial introduction: The innovation is technologically successful and economically feasible.

5.   Widespread adoption: The innovation proves superior to predecessor technologies and begins to replace them.

6.   Diffusion to other areas: Users adopt the innovation for purposes other than those originally intended.

7.   Social and economic impact: The innovation changed the behavior of society or has somehow involved a substantial portion of the economy.

I then came up with typical responses to technology along a positive-to-negative spectrum: Over-Enthusiastic, Confident, Content, Cautious, Complacent, Dismissive, Fearful, and Malicious.

I grouped my characters into four roles: Discoverer, Innovator, User, and Critic. Some of my stories involve people discovering lost technologies or tech developed by departed aliens, so I had to include that role. The other roles should be obvious.

The resulting map shows many of my published stories, indicated by two-letter abbreviations of their titles. Where a single story occupied two areas, I connected them with a line.

Details of the map aren’t important, but you can tell a couple of things at a glance. First, I’m nowhere close to covering the whole map. I’ve concentrated on the Operating Prototype and Widespread Adoption stages more than the others.

Second, innovators view technologies positively and critics negatively (duh), while users tend to view technology negatively in the early stages and more positively in the later ones.

As far as map coverage goes, I wonder if the Operating Prototype and Widespread Adoption stages provide more opportunity for dramatic stories than the other stages.

Has anybody studied technology in fiction using a similar method? I can imagine a map with hundreds of colored points on it, representing an analysis of hundreds of science fiction stories. It would be fun to see how my stories stack up against those of other authors.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to write. As more of my stories get published, perhaps you’ll see future versions of this map, updated by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 7, 2019Permalink

Your Writing Voice: A Different Take

Some time ago I wrote about finding your writing voice. Recently I read a post by Jessica Wildfire and it forced me to think deeper.  

In my original post, I said a writer’s voice included two aspects: the stuff she writes about, and the way she writes it. In other words, (1) the topics and (2) the style. My suggestions on choosing topics are still sound. But Ms. Wildfire introduced some new thoughts about style.

Her 11-item list of style principles is so good I won’t repeat it here and will merely urge you to read her post. (Here’s that link again.) I’m just going to emphasize the part I found most disruptive.

She suggests reading Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, and I intend to do that. But she goes on to advise writers to toss The Elements of Style in the garbage.

Really, Jessica? Throw away my copies of Strunk and White? I couldn’t bear it.  

I understand why she says that. The Elements of Style dates from a century ago, and contains numerous rules presented in a way that sounds rigid, overly prescriptive, and archaic. I’m guessing those are the parts she ‘hate-reads’ to her students as counter-examples.  

But the overall message of Strunk and White, the vital essence of the work, is timeless and I hope Ms. Wildfire would agree. Elements is a plea for the writer to keep the reader always in his thoughts. Yes, your job as a fiction writer is to entertain, but to do that, you must first be understood.

As you look over Ms. Wildfire’s 11 principles of style, you’ll see she doesn’t care much for the old rules—the ones about grammar and showing rather than telling. But what comes through in her principles is a message Strunk and White would agree with. Write for the reader. Never confuse or bore the reader.

She advises writers to tell their stories in a voice readers can connect with. To do that, listen to the way real people talk. Notice the flow of words, the rhythms of their speech. If faced with a choice between clarity and correct grammar, opt for clarity. Delete the boring parts and cut to the chase. 

Okay, Ms. Wildfire, I’ll follow most of your advice. But I’ll never throw away the Strunk & White I got back in 1976. I consult it occasionally and re-read it just a couple of months ago. Elements will remain on the bookshelves of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 30, 2019Permalink