Would the Julie & Julia Formula Work for You?

If you’re struggling as a writer, not achieving the success you imagined, Catherine Baab-Muguira has a solution for you. She calls it the Julie and Julia Formula. Does that formula work?

In a wonderful blogpost on Jane Friedman’s site, Ms. Baab-Muguira described the formula. At its essence, she says “you can reach your dreams by loving another person’s work.”

Give your obsession free reign, she says, and your book will write itself, fueled—even supercharged—by your passion.

That formula worked for Julie Powell and her obsession with Julia Child—several books and a movie resulted. It worked for Ms. Baab-Muguira and her obsession with Edgar Allan Poe. It also worked for several other authors whom she lists in her post. I’m happy for the success of those authors, and find it easy to see why the formula can work.

Most writers choose subjects or settings or genres over which they obsess a bit. But the J&J Formula is more than just ‘write what you know.’ It’s more like ‘channel your passion for another person (often another writer) into a sort of tribute book.’

The formula can work because:

  • You’re an expert on, and confident about, your subject;
  • Your passion for the subject will infuse your work, creating enthusiasm in the reader; and
  • That same passion will sustain you throughout the writing project, helping you to power through the down times.

However, just because the J&J Formula sometimes works, that doesn’t guarantee success in your case (nor does Ms. Baab-Muguira claim it will). I believe two factors determine whether the formula will work for you:

  • The popularity of the person (or subject) you’re obsessing over; but mostly,
  • How well you write

As I said, your obsession will suffuse your writing, resulting in passionate prose. However, if you obsess over someone or something obscure or uninteresting to others, you’ll have to make up for that through truly strong or unique writing. (I’m thinking here of the famous honey badger video).

Conversely, even if you obsess over a very popular person, poor writing won’t gain you many readers.

In short, the J&J Formula may work, but don’t think of it as a sure-fire path to mega-sales.

In my own case, perceptive followers of my blog know of my passion for the novels of Jules Verne. However, you’ll search the best-seller lists in vain for any mention of my name (so far). Is that due to Verne’s obscurity, to my lack of writing talent, to my poor execution of the J&J Formula, or to some defect in the Formula itself? Who knows?

My own formula, for what it’s worth, comprises four words—write well and often. I believe good writing tends to get noticed. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll be proud of having written it. The J&J Formula may prove a good way for you to write well and often, but it’s not the only way.

If you’re writing a lot with nothing to show for all that work, give the Julie and Julia Formula a try. Perhaps you’ll succeed with it, as others have. If not, well, you got no rose-garden promises from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 3, 2023Permalink

Extraordinary Visions eBook

A year ago, you got excited about the publication of Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Then you learned the book wasn’t available in your favorite format, the ebook. Disappointed, you kept checking, as days became weeks became months.

Good news! Your patient wait is over. You may now purchase the ebook version. It’s available from the publisher, for the Amazon Kindle, and soon from other booksellers. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.

Those of you who prefer to read on electronic devices can now enjoy this anthology of over a dozen stories, all crafted by today’s authors. These tales sparkle with the lure of distant travel, the wonder of scientific discovery, and the drama of high adventure that typify Verne’s novels. With each story, you’ll see an accompanying illustration selected from original drawings in Verne’s works.

Two appendices close out the book. The first provides the source of each illustration. The second gives a complete list of all JV’s published works, most now available in English.

To reiterate, you may now purchase Extraordinary Visions in ebook format here and here. I’m confident you’ll delight in reading this anthology, co-edited by Reverend Matthew T. Hardesty and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 26, 2023Permalink

Decrypting Critique Comments

When you seek comments about your writing from others, sometimes the feedback will confuse you. What do you do about that?

Feedback can come from critique groups, beta readers, editors, or anyone whom you’ve asked for a review. Often busy with their own lives, these commenters might, in their haste, provide comments you don’t understand.

They may just leave a question mark without explanation, or give you vague advice, such as ‘reword this’ or ‘this bothered me for some reason.’ Worse, their hand-written remarks might be illegible.

As you go through your manuscript incorporating their suggestions, how do you proceed when you encounter confusing feedback? Should you ignore it, dismissing it as irrelevant? After all, if they can’t take the time to give you useful comments, why should you waste time deciphering their code?

I recommend you take such comments seriously.

The most certain way to get the strange comment decrypted is to ask the commenter to explain it. Ask the person, “You wrote [whatever it was]. What did you mean?” Such direct communication should clear up the matter, or the critiquer might not recall the comment. Either way, you’re no worse off and possibly ahead of the game.

If you can’t get back in touch with the reviewer, or if doing so doesn’t clarify things, I still urge you not to dismiss the comment. For cryptic observations, it sometimes helps to revisit them a day or two later. A fresh look and some deeper thought might reveal the comment’s meaning in a useful way.

In his book Novelist as a Vocation, author Haruki Murakami gave interesting advice on what to do about comments with which you disagree. I think his guidance also applies to comments you don’t understand.

Murakami recommends making a change of some sort to your manuscript. If you disagree with the comment, you need not comply with the commenter’s suggestion, but make a change to some third way (different from both your original text and the reviewer’s proposed revision) with an eye toward improving readability.

His rationale recognizes that the reviewer did take the time to read your manuscript. As they did so, something tripped them up. Something yanked them out of your story. Since that happened to one critiquer, it could happen to one or many readers if you get your story published unchanged.

As I mentioned, this advice also works for confusing or illegible comments. In these cases, review your text again while imagining you’re a first-time reader. Read it aloud. You may well discover what the critiquer meant. Even if not, consider making a change intended to lessen confusion and enhance understanding.

Even the most bewildering comments can result in improvement to your stories, and those of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 12, 2023Permalink

Taking Vonnegut’s Story Shape Theory Further

Is it possible to depict all story plots in graphical form? If you could, would you find some graph shapes more common than others? The late author Kurt Vonnegut thought so.

In 2004, he gave a lecture describing his system and that talk is so good, you ought to watch the video, at least the part starting at minute 38. He’s entertaining. Someone has animated Vonnegut’s graphs at this delightful website.

His lecture covers several basic story types illustrating a protagonist’s experiences of good or ill fortune as ups and downs on the graph. If the author writes well, the reader will feel uplifted during the ‘good fortune’ periods and sad during the ‘ill fortune’ portions.

The main story types Vonnegut presents in his lecture are ‘Man in a Hole,’ ‘Boy Meets Girl,’ ‘Cinderella,’ and ‘Metamorphosis.’ Watch the video to hear his descriptions of each one.

Vonnegut comments that we humans often struggle to recognize and appreciate times of good fortune in our own lives. Therefore, I think, we often experience, and can relate to, the uncertainty of Hamlet.

Then Vonnegut’s system breaks down. He tries to illustrate Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and ends up drawing a boring, straight line. Since Hamlet doesn’t know if the ghost he’s seeing is real, or significant, he spends much of the play in a state of uncertainty, not knowing if he’s experiencing good fortune or ill fortune.

Still, it is possible to depict uncertainty on a graph. Scientists use error bands, often shown as shaded areas.

My graph is one possible way to depict the uncertainty faced by Hamlet. In general, readers don’t like uncertain characters or vagueness about their state of mind. If a character doesn’t know if her life is good or bad at a given moment, the reader could dismiss her as being stupid.

With a skilled writer, like Shakespeare, however, we understand Hamlet’s confusion and sympathize with him. We don’t think he’s dimwitted or insane, despite his attempts to feign madness.

You can depict uncertainty on a Vonnegut-style story graph. In fact, I think the entire mystery genre involves uncertainty to some extent. For much of these stories, the detective can’t tell if a given clue gets her closer to solving the case or not. The detective strives to diminish uncertainty until the end.

I’ll leave you with one more observation about Vonnegut’s graphs. I don’t believe the ones he covered in his lecture constitute the only possible graphs, and I think he would have agreed. Story graphs may take any shape, but some (the ones he showed) work better with readers than others.

In the end, it’s the writing that matters. It’s how you convey the emotional highs and lows to the reader that counts. If you tell a good story, you can make almost any graph shape work.

This concludes your combined Math and Language Arts classes for the day, thanks to your favorite professor—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 5, 2023Permalink

48-State Odyssey

I just completed a road trip to all forty-eight contiguous states. First of all, my apologies for not visiting people I know in many of those states. The point of my trip wasn’t for visiting, but just to get through it in a reasonably short time.

During the trip, my wife and I drove 9898 miles in 21 travel days. We made the journey in two loops, a counter-clockwise western loop covering the states west of the Missouri River, and a clockwise eastern loop. That allowed us a break in between.  

Having just completed our tour last night, I’m still compiling statistics and organizing notes I took. I promise to write more about this trip when I can. For now, it must suffice to say I enjoyed the chance to ramble the roads of this country and touch the soil of each of our connected states.

Though not the first to make a journey like this, I’d guess only a tiny percentage of Americans have done it. People talk about the number of states they’ve been to, but that’s the result of many disconnected trips taken over years or decades.

Occasional traveling provides stimulation for writers, and my journey accomplished that. As I said, you may look forward to more about this forty-eight-state odyssey, as written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 29, 2023Permalink

End the Backwards Book Trend

In recent years, a distressing trend has infected TV shows featuring household interior design. I’m talking, of course, about the display of books backward—pages out—on bookshelves. This must end.

Somehow, this bizarre book-positioning method caught on and became a thing. Normal people, in normal homes, now arrange their books this way.

Why? Some claim they prefer the monotone look of shades of white on a bookshelf to the chaos of multi-hued book spines. Others say they enjoy choosing books to read at random without knowing author or title.

Those reasons strike me as rationalizations for a decision really more about imitating a new fad seen on TV.

An internet search reveals the reason cited by these shows for hiding the spines of books. They blame it on copyright law. If they exhibited the titles, they say they’d have to obtain permission from the publisher of each displayed book.

That explanation doesn’t ring true. What bookseller, publisher, or author would sue because they didn’t want their book spine displayed before a nationwide audience? With print book readership in decline, you’d think these entities might even pay the TV show for the publicity of some bookshelf space.

Further, if the interior design shows fear copyright lawsuits, why do TV news programs routinely feature interviews of people with properly displayed book spines on shelves in their background? Shouldn’t the same legal threat apply to news shows?

Turn your books around the right way, I say. Stop this insidious disease before it spreads further.

If it continues infecting more homes, I’ll implement my own method of protest and no doubt it will catch on with other authors. I’ll get my publishing companies to print my book titles and my name on the page side of my future books.That way, if you turn the book around, you’ll still see what’s also printed on the spine.

I don’t expect things will go that far. Fads come and go, and this one must die of its own accord. As the newness fades, and as people search in vain for specific books on their shelves, they’ll realize how silly they’ve been.

They’ll turn their books around to reveal the informative spines once more. As they do so, they’ll pause a moment to thank—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 22, 2023Permalink

My Weekend at ICON 2023

This past weekend, I attended and spoke at ICON 48, the science fiction convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What a great time!

Bill Pitcher, me, Tony Penticoff

On Friday night, I spoke at a very imaginative panel on the topic of “Dyson Spheres and other Megastructures in Space.” Tony Penticoff did a marvelous job of monitoring the panel (and making an informative presentation) while Bill Pitcher and I talked about various aspects of these structures. The ten audience members seemed engaged, and asked several detailed questions.

Michael Fraska and I

My first Saturday morning panel covered “Embracing Technology isn’t only for the Young.” (How would I know? I’m not old yet.) Still, Michael Fraska and I talked about that topic in an informed way and I think the three attendees got something out of it.

Me and Myron Williams

Next came an Author Meet and Greet. I sat at a table with Myron Williams while prospective readers stopped to talk. To my surprise, I sold a couple of books.

Me, Tom Ashwell, and Jim Hines

After lunch, I moderated a panel on the topic of “Riding the Publishing Roller-Coaster,” and authors Tom Ashwell and Jim Hines (ICON toastmaster and Hugo award winner) helped the seven members of our audience understand the ups and downs of the writer-publisher relationship.

Me and Paul Price

In mid-afternoon, I moderated a panel called “The Rapid Increase of Population Growth” with retired EPA scientist Paul Price. He gave the eight-member audience a much better understanding of the rise in human population. Though the world’s populace may experience some problems in the near term, it may be best to worry about something else.

Nobody attended my scheduled author reading with fellow author Trisha Anderson. I chatted with her for some time, though, and spent a pleasant half hour learning about her novels.

Joseph Isenberg, me, and Tony Penticoff

Saturday night, I served as a panelist for two artificial intelligence topics. The first, “Artificial Intelligence in World of Creators,” drew a crowd of three people, but moderator Tony Penticoff and panelists Joseph Isenberg and I explored how AI may soon create stories as well as human writers can. We might have to adapt to a future where AI writes better fiction.

Tony Penticoff, Bill Pitcher, and me

The next panel, “How AI Will Transform Our Lives Over the Next Five Years,” garnered an audience of eleven. Tony Penticoff moderated this panel as well, and Bill Pitcher joined us. A lively discussion occurred, with great audience participation.

Me, Tom Ashwell, and Athena Foster

Sunday mornings at scifi cons tend to be subdued after attendees have stayed up late the past two nights, and a sense of winding down pervades the hotel. However, eight alert and curious audience members gathered for a 10:00 am panel titled “First Time Authors – How to Get Published.” I moderated, while authors Tom Ashwell and Athena Foster imparted excellent advice.

At noon I moderated an interesting panel called “Writing a Compelling Fight Scene.” Author Alexis D. Craig did a masterful and enthusiastic job of educating the ten-person audience about how best to do that.

Rachel Aukes, me, and Megan Mackie

My last panel, “How Do I Get My Work Out There?” started at 1:00. Author Rachel Aukes moderated, and author Megan Mackie sat on the panel with me. I believe the six attendees of this panel walked out with solid tips on how to get their manuscripts published.

All in all, a wonderful con, and, having grown up in Cedar Rapids, it represented a nice homecoming for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 17, 2023Permalink

My Schedule for ICON 2023

If you’re not planning to be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from October 13-15, consider it. I’m scheduled to appear at ICON, the science fiction convention there. Cedar Rapids means a lot to me—I grew up in that city.

Here’s my schedule for that weekend:

Friday

9 pm               Dyson-Sphere – Megastructures in Space (with Bill Pitcher and Tony Penticoff)

Saturday

9 am               Embracing Technology Isn’t Only For The Young (with Michael Frasca)

11 am             Author Meet and Greet

1 pm               Riding the Publishing Roller Coaster (with Jim Hines and Tom Ashwell)

3 pm               The Rapid Increase of Population Growth (with Paul Price)

4 pm               Author Readings (with Tricia Anderson)

7 pm               Artificial Intelligence in a World of Creators (with Tony Penticoff and Joseph Isenberg)

8 pm               How AI Will Transform Our Lives Over the Next 5 Years (with Tony Penticoff and Bill Pitcher)

Sunday

10 am             First Time Authors – How to Get Published? (with Tom Ashwell and Athena Foster)

12 pm             Writing a Compelling Fight Scene (with Alexis D. Craig)

1 pm               How Do I Get my Work Out There? (with Rachel Aukes)

I’ve never been to ICON, and I’m looking forward to it. They’re holding the con at the Cedar Rapids Marriott at 1200 Collins Road NE. Online registration for the con is closed, but you can register at the door.

All I can say is—hey, Cedar Rapids, I’m back! We’ll see if the old town can stand a whole weekend of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 8, 2023Permalink

7 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing

When you see books for sale online or in stores, do you ever fantasize about seeing your name on the cover as the author? Decades ago, before I began writing fiction, I pictured that and wondered, “how hard can it be?”

Beginner Me, Current Me

At that time, I had a great story idea and estimated I’d achieve bestseller status in a year or two. Many facts about writing remained unknown to me then, things I wish someone had told me. Today, I’ll tell you.

  • Make Characters Appealing. To Beginner Me, stories consisted of plot. The author just dropped characters in to have things happen to them. Not true. Readers yearn for engaging characters. Give them a protagonist they can love, or hate—just feel strongly about. Many authors come up with characters first, then figure out what happens. An exciting plot might provide a literary sugar rush, but all truly great books showcase memorable characters.
  • Start Short. These days, novels predominate over short stories. Readers tend to take novelists more seriously. For that reason, beginning writers often tackle a novel first. Beginner Me did that. His unpublished novel sits on my shelf. It served the purpose of getting Beginner Me accustomed to daily writing, and of learning things about the craft. I wish someone had suggested I start with short stories. Some time after I switched to them, I started getting published. You can crank short stories out faster. The submit-reject-submit cycle runs more rapidly. You can establish a readership and move on to novels later.
  • Accept Long Odds. A few—a very few—inexperienced writers get their first novel or short story accepted early on. Most—a vast majority—pile up many rejections before their first acceptance. You might be one of the few, but odds are, you won’t be.
  • Understand the Tiers. Those books you see on bestseller lists, on lists of what to read next season, on the top of Amazon’s ‘Featured’ lists, and on the prominent bookstore shelves, have one thing in common. They’re published by one of the ‘Big Five’ publishers based in New York. If your novel gets accepted by one of them, an army of workers will design your book’s cover, arrange for book reviews, publicize your book, put out press releases, and line up interviews for you. If your story or novel gets accepted anywhere else, that army dwindles to one person…you.
  • Market and Network. Beginner Me thought writers typed up prose while others took care of marketing details. For those few who land contracts with the Big Five, that’s true. The rest of us do our own marketing. You may not see yourself as the glad-handing, back-slapping used car salesman type, but you’re going to have to abandon your introvert comfort zone and learn those skills. It helps to network with other writers to watch and learn from them.
  • Be Realistic. Beginner Me had heard of writers getting paid advances of thousands of dollars. I’d jot down some words, submit the manuscript, sign a contract, and soon I’d be sailing my yacht to my private island, where I’d have a mansion. Yes, a few authors receive large advance payments, but most writers work a day job. Their writing hobby pays for lunch, once a week.
  • Get Help. At least Beginner Me knew this one and didn’t have to be told. Others have trod the writing path before you and are willing to share their knowledge. You may read How-to-Write books, take college writing courses, and go to writing conferences. Beginner Me did all of those. You may also attend writing workshops. I got the most help from critique groups. Find whichever type of help works best for you.

I meant this list to inspire you, not discourage you. You may see some items as depressing, but that’s not my intent. If the writing dream burns within you, if your story demands to be written, nothing I say will dissuade you. You’ll take the journey. Best to take it in an informed way, and not learn everything along the way, as did—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 17, 2023Permalink

Should AI Write Your Book Title?

Some writers struggle to come up with titles for their stories and books. Capturing all that text into a few pithy and alluring words seems to confound them.

Yes, I’ve blogged about this problem before, but it’s time for an update based on new technology.

Before I get to that, I recommend reading this post by book marketing expert Dave Chesson. It’s helpful if you experience difficulty with titles.

In his post, Chesson mentioned a new resource to help if you’re stuck thinking of a title—ChatGPT. It’s the conversant AI that’s available to everyone for free, here.

Credit to mozarttt and Pixabay

As you know, I’ve blogged before about writers using AI and my opinion remains unchanged, for now. ChatGPT is the equivalent of assigning the same homework assignment to a million junior high school students and getting the best answers back instantly. Yes, it’s instant, but it’s junior high school level. That last part may change in the coming months and years as AI improves.

You can seek help from ChatGPT to come up with a title. You can give it a long description of your story or book (or even input the entire text) and ask for any number of suggested titles. Note: there is some question about who owns content provided by that AI, so check the terms and conditions first.

To test how well ChatGPT can generate titles, I decided to have it come up with alternative titles to a work in the public domain with which the AI is familiar. I chose the Jules Verne novel Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. The literal translation from the French would be ‘A Tour of the World in Eighty Days,’ but in a bolt of titling genius, an early translator rendered it as Around the World in Eighty Days.

That’s become the most iconic of Verne’s titles in English, played with and altered to suit hundreds of other applications.

Something about that format and word choice struck gold—“Around the [world or other object] in [time period]” gives that sense of encompassing something on a strict schedule. It’s literary magic.

For computers, the rule is ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ What happens when you put literary magic in? I gave ChatGPT this task: “Come up with 10 alternate titles (in English) to Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

Here’s the output:

  • “Globetrotting in Eighty Days”
  • “Across the Planet in 80 Days”
  • “A Journey Around the Earth in 80 Days”
  • “Around the Globe in 80 Days”
  • “Eighty Days of World Exploration”
  • “Circumnavigating the Earth in 80 Days”
  • “Across Continents in Eighty Days”
  • “Around the World Adventure in 80 Days”
  • “Around Planet Earth in 80 Days”
  • “Expedition: 80 Days Around the World”

See what I mean? They all lack the zing, the flair, the magic of the actual title. In twenty minutes of solitary brainstorming, you could do better. That’s my point.

Before you AI enthusiasts sic a terminator on me, I admit I could have pressed ChatGPT harder. I could have gone on to ask it for more interesting and creative titles—titles that don’t just paraphrase the real one. Maybe the AI could have given me more to work with had I prodded it further.

At present, I think it best to partner with AI but not rely on it. Adopt the centaur model I mentioned in my February 26, 2023 blogpost. ChatGPT can recommend titles and they might be inferior or even so-so, but one or more of them might spark the killer title you’re after. You might not have thought of that title had you not consulted the AI.

My answer to the question posed in this post’s title is probably not, but there’s nothing wrong with using AI as a brainstorming tool. So far, all my titles have come from the unassisted mind of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 10, 2023Permalink