musings, thoughts, and writings of Barbara W. Klaser


June 18, 2006

Until the post office runs out of stamps

Writing is risky. Especially writing fiction. As Forrest Landry points out in his latest post at For The Trees, alarm and ire have arisen over the number of writers who give up these days and self-publish. He pointed to a blog post by E. Ann Bardawill at Something Fell, on The Killing of Mockingbirds. She used Richard Adams’ Watership Down as an example, and that drew me in because it’s one of my favorite books. (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 12:18 pm PST, 06/18/06

May 30, 2006

Writing for yourself

A comment discussion at Eric Mayer’s blog post, Putting Ourselves Out of Business, involved the idea of considering one’s writing just a hobby. I have a feeling that most fiction writers, published or not, feel to some degree as if they’re hobbyists these days. After all, there isn’t much money to be made in this business, except by a very few. But they also have to take it seriously in order to get far, it has to be an intense, obsessive sort of hobby.

Late in 1993, after a lot of discouraging experiences attempting to sell my fiction, I decided to “quit fiction writing for good” and I wrote nothing but personal journals and technical manuals for a year. I began writing fiction again early in 1995, but with a difference. I did it, as I’d begun as a girl, to please myself, primarily to complete a story I thought had to be written or it would drive me nuts. That story had been percolating inside me since I was seventeen. I surprised myself then by doing some of the best fiction writing I had in my life to that point. My decision at that point to please only myself with what I wrote carried me through a kind of barrier into a different way of looking at writing fiction. (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 3:49 pm PST, 05/30/06

May 10, 2006

Gone Fishing

I’m internalizing a lot right now, I guess. I haven’t been blogging, and it’s not a reflection on my ideas, or my fellow bloggers, or commenters, but just that I’m internalizing and letting my thoughts gestate right now. Working on the novel, tweaking, tying loose ends, all that fun stuff.

Funny how we go through times like this. Lots going on inside, not much coming out (in the blog).

I’m sure that as soon as I’m done with this little fallow blogging period you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Meanwhile, when I am online (haven’t been much lately) I will try to get around and visit you all more and make sure I comment. Happy blogging!

Meanwhile the cat wants dinner, it feels like spring today instead of winter, and we have a new neighbor, called Phainopepla, who is really quite awe inspiring and graceful.

— Barbara @ rudimentary 4:11 pm PST, 05/10/06

April 28, 2006

Plagiarized or packaged to death?

Or both?

Far be it from me to judge what exactly happened with Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. I haven’t read it, and I don’t intend to—wouldn’t intend to even if the publisher hadn’t turned around and pulled it off bookstore shelves. But when I read all the off-shoot accounts of the state of book packaging today, I find myself sympathizing at least a tiny bit, as Rachel Pine seems to, with the young author. Not enough to defend her, perhaps, or to excuse what happened, but honestly—what a confusing business this has become.

I recall an old episode of The Avengers on TV, in which a publisher created a computer to crank out formula novels, then passed them off as having been written by a human being. I thought for sure that was pure fantasy until I began reading about this plagiarism case. Kaavya Viswanathan’s name is on the book’s copyright page, but according to what I’ve read so is Alloy Entertainment’s. So who is to blame? How did this happen? (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 4:41 pm PST, 04/28/06

April 23, 2006

Which words count?

I’ve decided there are three kinds of writers when it comes to word count. Those who wind up with too few words, and those who wind up with too many. Then there are those fortunate souls who write just the right amount.

I’m in the second category. I’m a wordy writer, and it frustrates me to see how many extra words I write. If I’d been able to keep my words in check, the story surely wouldn’t have taken so long to come together. Or would it? Why this need to expand so much on what can be said with so many less words? (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 4:05 pm PST, 04/23/06

March 10, 2006

Why we blog

A recent Washington Post column queried Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words. Reading it got me to thinking yet again about why I blog.

I started my website back in 2000, when Shadows Fall was first published, for the same reason most writers do, to promote my work. Four years later I started this blog as a way to provide up-to-date content on my website and let visitors know what I was working on—basically as a way to keep the website from stagnating when too much time passed between novels. Little did I know at the time that the blog would engage so much of my attention.

The immediacy of this format holds a certain attraction. Type, click a button, and what you’ve written is published. But that has its drawbacks. As easy as email, which carries its own risks, a blog can suck you out into public view in a way that’s scary and in some ways deceiving. It’s easy to forget you’re putting yourself “out there” to the degree we do online. After all, I’m seated here alone at my home computer as I type this into a little window on my screen. It doesn’t feel public at all, at the time I write. (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 2:55 pm PST, 03/10/06

February 19, 2006

Dialog

There are times when dialog seems to come by means of mental torture and pretzel twisting, and to be the most difficult writing I do. I continue to learn. In reading through my second draft, a few weeks ago, I checked for those places where the story dragged or faltered, and I found those were often the same places where dialog stumbled or rambled on too long. Nothing much seemed to be happening, even though something was, because I’d buried it inside too many words.

I got lost in the accompanying narrative, the setting, the characters’ activities, movements, body language, or overwrought cleverness. Sometimes I bogged down in the minutiae of sighing, nodding and eye gazing. Writers can get so caught up visualizing each detail of character interaction they rob readers of their mental interplay, their own visualizations based on common human experience. We presume readers don’t know how a character might deliver a line in a given situation. The stream of dialog reads as dammed up where it should flow. It loses its surface tension, its sparkle, and its undercurrent. It becomes stagnant.
(more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 10:39 am PST, 02/19/06

February 5, 2006

While I wasn’t blogging

Linking the past days together— It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and I didn’t know. Isn’t that usually in January? I don’t pay attention to professional sports, and some years my only clue about when that event occurs is the date they tell you the winner of the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes will be announced, which doesn’t apply to me, since I don’t enter. If Ed McMahon shows up at my door it’s more likely to be about Neighborhood Watch, or because he just spoke to Johnny Carson and he’s heard I have an interest in contact with the other side. (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 3:30 pm PST, 02/05/06

January 19, 2006

I started writing by hand

in the privacy of my bedroom, as a teenager, with colored pens. This involved lots of doodling as well as writing. Little hearts, daisies (shudder). I’m better at drawing the daisies now.

Later I taught myself to type on an old Smith Corona typewriter my mother or her mother purchased when Mom was in her teens or early twenties. She was born in 1923, if that gives you a clue to its age. It’s one of those typewriters that could be used to trace a murder suspect because of the way it slightly superscripts certain characters. I used it while seated on the floor of my bedroom beside my bed. Sometimes the typewriter rested on the floor, sometimes on a little castoff maple end table.
(more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 5:47 pm PST, 01/19/06

January 14, 2006

Truth and fiction

Everyone’s blogging about James Frey, whose book I haven’t read. The Smoking Gun calls it A Million Little Lies. I found my favorite comments on the subject over at Duane Swierczynski’s Secret Dead Blog, in An Open Letter to James Frey. They’re my favorite because Duane made me laugh, and I wish I could dismiss the whole subject as laughable. But as Lee Goldberg pointed out in his post, Lies are the new Truth, we seem to live in a world that devalues truth.

Is that the way you like it? (more…)

— Barbara @ rudimentary 4:18 pm PST, 01/14/06


Recent Comments

Recently Commented Articles

Bookmarks

Blogs

  • An Englishman in New Jersey
  • Beyond the Fields We Know
  • Blog Trek
  • Cassie-B
  • Clear Lake Reflections
  • Conscious Junkyard
  • Down the Writers Path
  • Eric Mayer
  • Goddessing
  • Grapez
  • Greetings from Blogdog
  • Herbal Connection
  • how to save the world
  • Jana’s Journal & Sketchblog
  • Kingfisher Cove
  • Paula’s House of Toast
  • Reenie’s Reach
  • Sarah
  • Spinning
  • violetismycolor
  • Wall Street, Main Street and Me
  • Zen Knit

Resources for Readers

  • Authors’ Blogs
  • Best Author Blogs
  • Blogging Authors
  • Book Talk Radio
  • Bookslut
  • Campaign for the American Reader
  • Cozy Library
  • Cozy Mystery List
  • First Book
  • Goodreads.com
  • Mary Reed & Eric Mayer

Resources for Writers

  • A Writer’s Edge
  • Agent Query
  • Authonomy
  • Blog Your Book to the Top
  • Book Chat with Janet Boyer
  • Mary Gordon: The Art of Teaching and Writing
  • Preditors and Editors
  • The Book Deal, An Inside View of Publishing

Sites of Interest

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day
  • InkPot
  • Janet Boyer.com
  • Post Secret
  • The Art Shack Studio

WordPress Plugins

  • Arne Brachhold
  • Jerome Lavigne
  • Peter Harkins
  • Scott Buchanan
  • Theron Parlin
  • Alexking.org
  • Bad Behavior
  • Better Feed
  • boren.nu
  • Bread Crumb Trail Generator
  • ChaitGear
  • Contact Form
  • Customizable Posts
  • Edit Comments
  • ElasticDog
  • Elliot Back
  • GaMerZ
  • guff
  • hitormiss
  • Jixor.com
  • Live Comment Preview
  • Paged Comment Editing
  • Paged Comments
  • Photo Matt
  • Recent Comments
  • Related Posts
  • Roblog
  • Simple Thoughts
  • Spam Karma 2
  • Weblog Tools Collection
  • WordPress Plugin Database
  • WordPress Plugins
Spam Karma 2
Rediscover the Web

View XML RSS 2.0 feed
Technorati Cosmos





  1. https://www.posmn.com/
  2. https://horseswithouthumans.org/
  3. https://mysterynovelist.com/
  4. https://www.alianzademediosalternativos.org/
  5. https://hemophiliasc.org/
  6. https://rebuildingtogether-oaklandcounty.org/
  7. https://www.albertanthonyrealestate.com/
  8. https://www.thewildestjourney.com/
  9. https://www.doumouchtsis.com/
  10. https://www.phocaltherapy.com/
  11. https://liviacstein.com/
  12. https://joharasnakedance.com/
  13. https://www.125timeinharlem.org/
  14. https://savingdowns.org/
  15. https://drpcjaipur.org/
  1. HOME