This is a note to tell you
that Wall Street has taken away
the things I really needed:
my workshop, my reindeer, my sleigh.
I now make my rounds on a jackass;
he’s old and crippled and slow.
So, if you don’t see me come Christmas,
I’ll be out on my ass in the snow.
Santa mounts a new challenge.
[Editor’s note: original appeared in Dec. 2012, but brought back because it still applies. And because I can.]
Filed under cartoon by author, Christmas, poetry, Santa Claus, satire
Benjamin Barber on Capitalism and Democracy | BillMoyers.com.
Manufacturing needs and wants underminds us all.
Filed under capitalism
How Changing The Definition Of One Word Might Make TV Shows Worse But Real Life Better.
Something to consider. How do you define family?
Filed under Family
Star Trek XI Alternate Ending: The Prime Timeline is Restored – YouTube.
Back to the “real” or reel future. My preference is for the original series as it was, not as it has been re-imagined. It loses to much for me in the “re-translation.
“
Filed under Star Trek
Detroit-Based "Write A House" Awarding Free, Permanent Houses To Writers.
Maybe this will catch on in other cities.
Filed under writers
A Blue Christmas?
Are these blue lights draped around a motorcycle engine the sign of a holiday police dragnet? A sudden K-Mart blue light holiday special buy? The remains of a collision of a motorcycle and a Christmas tree (including the candy cane)? Picasso in a new blue period just in time for the holidays? A physical manifestation of the ghost of Elvis opining that he will have a Blue Christmas without you? Whatever it is, it is a little larger than your average stocking stuffer.
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday
Maps of Seven Deadly Sins in America | memolition.
Looks like Washington, D.C. is blushing red in almost all these maps. Also, parts of the South show up often, too. Hmmm.
Filed under Uncategorized
Moonlight, winter songs /
candles flicker to voices /
adorning the night.
Young carolers in Old North Knoxville. The start of a new tradition.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Rod Serling Interviewed By Hans Conried – YouTube.
A fun bit of nostalgia and a whimsical bit of interviewing.
Filed under Rod Serling
START YOUR STORY WITH A BANG!
By Alan Sitomer
If your novel doesn’t pass the bang test, chances are high it will fail. Are you familiar with the, “Start with a BANG!” theory of authorship in modern times? If not, stop and pay heed.
Why “Start with a BANG!”? Because these days very few readers will give a book 30 pages to “let things develop.” Scores of publishing industry professionals are so, so busy (and so, so swamped, more than even the rest of us) that even if you can get them to consider your work – and it’s no easy task to get an agent or editor to read anything these days – the unspoken truth is that if they are not feeling the love by page 25 of your work, there are too many other things they need to/want to read.
Objective number one has to be to prevent the following sentiment from floating through the mind of the reader at all costs: “Sorry Charlie… I gave ya a shot but my time with you is done and I’m gone-zo! Good luck in the future.”
TRUMPED BY TMZ.COM?
Let’s be honest for a sec, do you give new books more than 25 pages to prove themselves any longer? If your “I am thinking about ditching this book” antennae are up by page 10, and you are still skeptical by page 15, we all know the writer will be lucky for any of us to make it to page 20.
In truth, by this point of any book, something better have “wowed” us cause life’s too short and who doesn’t have things like Twitter, FB, email, the Huffington Post, and TMZ.com to go check?
Ugly truth for all of us: celebrity gossip that took five minutes to invent will trump literary prose that took hours and hours to craft, 9 ¾ out of 10 times.
THAT READING FEELING
On the other hand, there’s good news! Is there a “reading feeling” anyone likes better than hitting page 20 of a book and thinking to
yourself, “Holy Shy-skee, this thing is so good!” You don’t want readers merely turning to page 21 of your novel; you want readers
hungering for page 21.
This is why you want to make sure your books start with a bang. Set the bar high and then ascend. You can backfill backstory later on. (Most writers do.) But make no mistake, everything we are talking about is conceptualized as a page 1 experience.
Consider your own reading experience. By the time you are on page 2, ya better have felt, you ought to have felt, you need to have felt, (and you deserve to have felt) something. If it’s a comedy, you better have laughed. If it’s a thriller, you better have had your pulse quicken.
Maybe it’s a punch in the mouth, maybe it’s total immersion in a dynamic new world which bubbles with life, energy and action, but if you pick up a book, that author better have conscientiously worked towards making sure that the reader is getting something wonderful from the text immediately. It can be exciting, threatening, tantalizing, humorous, or whatever but it better happen right out of the gate.
My advice: Launch your book with a BANG! If it ain’t there by page 5, no one might ever see page 6. (And yes, that’s regardless of how awesome page 184 truly is.)
_____
Adam Sitomer
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
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