On Writing: John Steinbeck, the Grapes of Wrath, and my Dad’s Stories.

My Dad was born in 1921, and as a young kid, knowing that he grew up during the Great Depression had always fascinated me. During the Great Depression, times were tough for Dad’s family, I’m sure, but I would learn in Social Studies class that other families had it much worse during that time, particularly farmers, and especially in the United States. That is the setting of Steinbeck’s major novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”.

Of Mice and Men, Grapes, and my Dad…

Back in high school English class, we read “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck. At the time, I remember thinking how old the book seemed, in terms of the language the characters used, and also how much the character Lenny’s mental slowness frustrated me.

I think that in my young mind, I was invested enough in the story to feel empathy and frustration at the behaviour of the characters, but back then, I couldn’t really evaluate the story or the writing – I just reacted to what I experienced in the book.

I’ve read “Of Mice and Men” again a couple of times over the past three decades, most recently a year or two ago. As I did, I began to enjoy Steinbeck’s voice, style and depictions very much indeed. So I decided to finally crack open “The Grapes of Wrath”.

My Dad and the Great Depression

My Dad was born in 1921, and as a young kid, knowing that he grew up during the Great Depression had always fascinated me. I used to ask my Dad what it was like for him, growing up in Prince Rupert back in those days. He’d tell me stories, like the times when he and his brothers would go down to the docks and ask the fishermen to give them their leftover fish heads. Dad said that his Mum would cut the cheeks out of the fish heads and make the family a nice fish soup.

I’d ask him if his family were poor, and he’d say no, but they weren’t rich either. His Dad worked for the Prince Rupert Telephone Company, most often splicing cable, up on a telephone pole, soldering cable with a little blow torch. Times being what they were, he shared his job with another man, working different shifts. In a house with five kids (Dad, his three bothers, and one sister), and with their Father working only part-time, I’m sure the Love family of Prince Rupert had to tighten their belts a bit. Still, there were still lots of trees for the local Mills, and still lots of fish in the sea, even if the economy had gone to crap. Everyone in the Love family worked, kids and all. Dad always impressed upon me the importance of working for a living, and the value of a dollar.

The Grapes of Wrath

During the Great Depression, times were tough for Dad’s family, I’m sure, but I would learn in Social Studies class that other families had it much worse during that time, particularly farmers, and especially in the United States.

That is the setting of Steinbeck’s major novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”. The Joad family, Oklahoma sharecroppers for generations, are wiped out when the “dustbowl” (drought) wipes out their crops, and they become too far in debt to the bank. Their little farm, along with many others in their area, are taken over by the bank, and turned into industrial farmland. So, the whole clan (Grandparents, Parents, and brothers and sisters ranging from preteen to adult) head West with all their possessions strapped onto the back of a jury-rigged truck.

Along the many thousands of miles journey west to California, they enounter cold, heat, starvation, death, violence, kindness, cooperation, prejudice and eventually, some forms of redemption.

If you’ve seen the movie by John Ford, you’ve got a little taste of the story, but only a little. The novel is so much more than the movie. Steinbeck takes you into the hearts and minds of each of the family members in turn, over the course of a journey that must have only been a few months chronologically, but experientially was much more difficult than the miles traveled and the days spent.

Here are a few of the significant themes from this incredible novel:

  • The Mother is the provider of life, the supporter, nourisher and guide; the centre of everything. The sheer amount of work and responsibility that Ma takes on daily impressed me throughout the story. To a lesser but still significant  degree, Rose of Sharon represents the mother, being pregnant and on the edge of bringing new life into the clan.
  • Rose of Sharon and her Grandparents also represent the frailty – and sometimes the futility – of survival.
  • Tom Joad is the angry young man, fighting against injustice, and suffering because of how his fighting spirit and moral outrage places him potentially at odds with the capitalist farm owners.
  • Pa Joad and his brother represent the impotence and powerlessness of the old male generation – still able-bodied, but wracked with guilt or turoil from many challenges, and with their family authority essentially tossed aside and taken over by others. This represents how the former sharecroppers had their authority or rights taken over by larger interests.
  • Communism (or Socialism) vs. Capitalism.

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On Design: Visual Literacy in Interface Design

During my art education at Emily Carr College in the 80s, I took a unique opportunity to study visual literacy under the college’s Dean of Education, Tom Hudson. This research and study involved developing computer-based imagery research for Tom’s telecourse, “Mark and Image”.

In practical terms, it was like having a world-class personal tutor. We started off simply, using the limited personal computer resources available at the time. I remember using Koala Painter (with the KoalaPad and stylus) on a Commodore 64. I divided my screen into quadrants; the first of many “worksheets” which Tom had all his traditional-media drawing students do as well. Inside one of the quadrants, Tom instructed me to draw points and to arrange them spatially. “Feel the space between the points. Feel the space,” Tom’s voice told me. I smirked self-consciously, feeling too much like Luke Skywalker to Tom’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. But I was learning to watch and to listen. Tom’s guidance resonated with me and I kept at it, slowly beginning to learn about the space, pace, rhythm and texture of points, lines and shapes. We started in black and white, and moved into colour when we started looking at “primary” shapes and basic geometry.

I did dozens of screens like this on the C-64, and later, scores and scores more on the Amiga, where the spatial resolution and colour palette were significantly improved. However, it was still a pixely, chunky drawing medium, compared with paper, ink and charcoal. We learned that any deficiencies in resolution were quickly compensated for by the advantages of digital memory. “Cut and paste” and numerous other near-instant transformational capabilities provided by our little paint program provided us with almost unlimited possibilities for variations and explorations.

As for the drawing exercises themselves, it was a bit like learning a new kind of basic grammar, like learning musical notes, chords, and scales. I was actually learning a new vocabulary of visual elements; perceptual dynamics that underlie every man-made visual image. I learned later that the approach Tom took with his computer-based drawing students was based in the Bauhaus Basic Course, in principles taught by Wassily Kandinsky, and in aspects of visual perception documented by Rudolph Arnheim.

These were the same principles that Tom and his colleagues had infused into the British Art Education system back in the 1950s. So, I watched, I drew, and I studied, feeling part of a very fascinating modernist educational tradition.

Now, as I contemplate how my career has progressed and I continue to refine my skills in interface design, I must admit that those early teachings with Tom still have so much to offer me. His voice is still in my ear, and I need to keep listening…

See: “Visual Literacy in Software Design” (paper).

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On Narrative: A Story runs through it…

It’s amazing how pervasive the concept of “narrative” actually is. Now, wherever I look, I see a story being told, or something in front of my eyes that is trying to communicate with me. But Non-fiction has an inherent narrative of its own too… What About text in Interactive Environments? Does it contribute a narrative as well? Perhaps we’re back to Marshall McLuhan again…

It’s amazing how pervasive the concept of “narrative” actually is. Now, wherever I look, I see a story being told, or something in front of my eyes that is trying to communicate with me.

Obviously, a story, a narrative, is the basis of written fiction, and creating an effective and engaging narrative is more difficult than I had originally imagined when I set out to write “Owe Nothing” back in 2002.

Works of Fiction, obviously…

Works of fiction (and I’m thinking primarily of the “paperback novel” genre) have a common narrative structure which introduces characters and a situation, presents the characters with a problem to solve or a challenge to overcome, and after trials, successes and failures, brings their story to a close with some sort of resolution and reflection. All of this (if popularity to an outside audience is the author’s goal) should be emotionally or intellectually gratifying to the reader in some way, or provide some sort of entertaining escape.

“Voice” in fiction can be first-person (like any hard-boiled detective caper by Raymond Chandler), where the reader is effectively transplanted into the skull of the main character, seeing things (usually) exclusively through his/her eyes. Or itr may be third-person, where the narration of the story seems to come from a camera or invisible observer which is observing the thoughts and activities of all characters, everywhere.

But Non-fiction has an inherent narrative of its own too…

Non-fiction works also have their own kind of voices that “tells a story” of sorts as well. In instruction or technical manuals, both the first-person and the third-person voice shows up quite commonly.

First-person is used when your Instructor is talking to you, the Reader directly, or when the author is citing some personal experience that is relevant to a lesson or point of procedure.

Third-person, in my experience, is used when the manual (or in my most common experience, a user guide) has no one particular person named as the “author” per se, but is ostensibly written by a corporation for their customers. In that case, the voice that is narrating could be composed by multiple unknown, uncredited authors, blended together (“fingerprints removed”, if you will) by a technical writer.

What About text in Interactive Environments? Does it contribute a narrative as well?

In a word, yes. In my opinion, every word on a web page, including the text in links, navigation buttons, mottos and tag lines, all provide context that reinforces the narrative at hand, so almost in effect becoming part of the narrative itself. (This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

The major difference with a visual medium (in this case, the user interface of a web site) is the use of graphic visual language that adds the extra dimension of inferred meaning or context to the wordy narrative.

Parsing photographs, words, icons, and interpreting (feeling) colours in a design is all part of “reading the page”. The designer of it has infused their own cultural symbols, values or expectations to some degree, so that the audience can relate to it more effectively.

Perhaps we’re back to Marshall McLuhan again…

If the cover of your favourite book, or the navigation controls on your favourite eBook Reader, have become strongly associated with the words in the text, then I’d say that the medium will have indeed become entwined in the message.

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Reflections on a multimedia career…

All through my post-secondary education (which was four frantic, sleep-deprived, incredible years at art college), I never knew exactly what I wanted to do in art and design.

Now, 21 years after graduating from the ECCAD four year program and receiving my diploma in fine arts, I look at the preponderance of digital media and information systems in the world around me, and I’m amazed at how much that culture and technology have converged, and have even seemed to become practically inseparable.

All through my post-secondary education (which was four frantic, sleep-deprived, incredible years at art college), I never knew exactly what I wanted to do in art and design.

After I learned I was accepted the the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1985 (and after I peeled myself off the ceiling), I started to do a few things. First, I panicked, thinking “Gawd – can I do this?”

But I got over that phase, and next I began to imagine what it would be like to be an art student. Unfortunately, nothing but stereotypical images of painting and drawing came to my mind.

Finally, I realized that I needed to prepare myself in a few ways. I needed to assemble my portfolio, and I needed to develop a little confidence. I took a life drawing course at a small studio on Granville Island, and blushed self-consciously while trying to avoid the eyes of the nude model. I scribbled, muttered to myself, and produced a bunch of weak and tentative scribbles that probably were thrown out later. As I was packing up, I looked to the model as she was just reaching for her robe, and she shot me a smile and a knowing look that both reassured me and told me that she knew just how green I was. I laughed on the inside, and walked home feeling some pride in having tried in my first life drawing class.

Fortunately, I passed my portfolio interview (and I still don’t know how I got through it), and began Foundation (first year) studies at Emily Carr.

One of the first places where things really clicked for me was in Foundation Computer class. Even though it was 1985, and we were using Commodore 64s (and in one class, I swear to god I had a Vic-20 with a datasette), I became fascinated by those little machines that were capable of turning key-presses into little glowing blocks of colour and shape. I remember trying to memorize MS Basic character string functions like “Chr$(32)”, and trying to understand how BASIC worked. A year later, the college bought dozens of Macs, Amigas and Atari ST PCs, and we all began using mice and creating real computer-based graphics and animation.

I also began to consider the schism within myself: artistic and instinctual on the one side (my Mother), and structural and technical on the other side (my Father). Early on, I did not know how to reconcile these two aspects of my personality, but I knew that they would co-exist, and eventually, I developed the idea that they would interact or influence each other in some way.

In the following years, I developed a keen interest in multimedia, animation and video, and began to learn how these technologies were gradually converging (read Stewart Brand’s book “The Media Lab”). I absorbed as much media theory as my instructor Gary Lee Nova provided, got technical help designing simple electronic circuits from Dennis Vance, and studied on my own a lot (relationships between art, science and technology, cybernetics).

More than any other teacher I’ve had, Dr. Tom Hudson was a massive influence on me throughout my art student years. Under Tom’s tutelage and inspiration, I learned about visual literacy, and undertook experiments in colour and drawing in the Bauhaus and British post-war traditions. The main difference was that all my “vis-lit” research for Tom was executed on a microcomputer, using a commercial paint program. We were actually exploring and developing work in computer-based visual literacy. This extracurricular research work was used in Tom’s educational television series “Mark and Image”, and also published in two of his academic articles for the British Journal of Art and Design Education. These events remain my academic high-water marks, and form the springboard of my interest and development as a digital designer.

By a couple of years after graduation, I was developing icons, layouts and animations for the user interface of what was to become North America’s first home-based banking system. From there, my interest in GUI design and web design was born. Since that time, I’ve enjoyed working with software designers on GUI design projects for TV, game consoles, PC and web-based applications. The essentials of visual literacy, colour, design, perception, and user expectations have all been developed and refined through those practical, real-world design projects.

Now, 21 years after graduating from the ECCAD four year program and receiving my diploma in fine arts, I look at the preponderance of digital media and information systems in the world around me, and I’m amazed at how much that culture and technology have converged, and have even seemed to become practically inseparable.

I think that good digital design is more important than ever, and being able to work in multiple media, multiple formats and multiple modes of thought (artistic, technical, exploratory, practical) seems to me to be more important than ever.

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On Research and Digging Deep: Setting the Tone for Believability

The raw material of a story or any creative work probably comes from at least two kinds of sources: the Subjective, and the Objective. Somewhere between these two seemingly opposite categories sits the Artist, who must decide how and when to engage either approach, and whether to use an unbalanced or balanced approach.

(This is a brief followup on the theme of researching for my next novel, “The Two Sisters”.)

I’ve probably stated this before in previous posts, but factual research is a big deal to me. I don’t claim to be the most tenacious digger of facts, but if, as a Reader, I can’t relate to some level of realism in a story or its characters, the author will easily lose me.

The raw material of a story or any creative work comes from two categories of sources: the Subjective and the Objective. Subjective material includes events, memories and things of with which you have a direct personal involvement and/or memory. They can also be fuzzy, under-defined, elusive or prone to contradiction – after all, they are your memories – and from my experience, human memory is fragile and subject to change without notice. But, still, it’s yours and you own it, and it’s there to be utilized.

Objective material means, to me, information that has been documented, and hopefully verified, by third parties, associations, papers or contains some testament as to its proof, like scientific research.

Somewhere between these two opposite categories sits the Artist, who must decide how and when to engage either side, and whether to use an unbalanced or balanced approach.

For example, I remember an article by James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, who advised writers that when creating a thriller novel the author must include enough realism to provide a solid base upon which the more fantastic elements of the story can stand. In other words, Fleming said that if you can initially establish believability and credibility in the known and possible elements of your story (the recognizable places, personalities and objects), the reader would be more likely to accept and engage in any unknown or seemingly impossible elements.

This kind of social realism is a core approach that I took in my first novel, Owe Nothing, where I tried to create a detailed, recognizable, and somewhat gritty  portrait of my home town of Vancouver, BC. I tried to kind of iconify settings such as rusted, rotting motels, junk-strewn alleys and fast food drive-thrus. I’ve read some novels which, in my opinion, have almost no scenic descriptions at all; everything is described in between a character’s ears, but almost nowhere else (“The Boys From Brazil”, I’m looking at you).

By contrast, thriller/detective authors like Ian Fleming, Dashiell Hammett and especially Raymond Chandler, have a way of bringing places to life and almost transforming them into characters in their own right. In “The Lady in the Lake”, Chandler makes you taste the dust inside the deserted lakeside cabins in a little town. In “Live and Let Die”, Fleming evokes the neon sights, blues and jazz music, speech patterns and emotions of Harlem in the mid-50s (at least from the perspective of a middle-aged Englishman). Rich settings like this help to involve the reader in the world to a greater degree, and to legitimize and contextualize the characters.

Subjective work can be more elusive and difficult to feel confident about. I have a major character in “The Two Sisters”, Rose, who in her teen years suffered a horrific personal assault – the kind that I’ve never experienced personally. To create this event for Rose, I had to dig down into a few scared, sad moments from my own youth (as well as read testimonies from other sources) and synthesize the character’s physical and emotional responses, layering them with the in-the-moment sights and sounds that add a level of irony, symbolism and drama, all while relating to larger plot line and themes of the story.

Often, the subjective and objective aspects are intermingled. In her later years, Rose becomes a long-term resident of a psychiatric hospital. I began to describe her appearance and behaviour quite easily, since I based her on my late mother, who was a 14 year resident of BC’s provincial mental health facility, Riverview Hospital.

However, describing the specific medication or intimate details of the day-to-day life of a Riverview resident are much more difficult, and require research to be accurate. Few people will ever try to refute your subjective personal experiences or opinions, but things that are objective, verifiable matters of record are certainly more vulnerable to scrutiny.

It’s the Author’s job to set the terms for believability and plausibility inside the worlds and the characters they create. I haven’t become skilled enough to let my characters push the bounds of believability within their own worlds (i.e. to bust through that invisible wall to the audience, as it were), and use the voice of an incredulous reader (“that doesn’t seem real to me”, etc.) but perhaps one day…

At the end of the day, no work can be perfect. I think that most readers are willing to forgive minor inconsistencies or errors, so long as they believe that the author has made their best effort to get the facts straight and to present an entertaining and believable story.

Related: http://ejohnlovebooks.com/2010/08/research-photos-from-riverview/

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Research: Photos and Feelings of Riverview Hospital

My second novel, tentatively named “The Two Sisters”, deals with some aspects of mental illness and alcoholism, through the lives of two sisters, Connie and Rose.

Rose has a history of mental illness, as well as substance abuse issues, and when my main character, Jack (her nephew) encounters her for the first time, Rose is fairly heavily medicated and tied into a wheelchair so she doesn’t fall out. Rose is a long-term resident at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, a slightly fictionalized version of the real hospital, which is located in Coquitlam, BC.

My second novel, tentatively named “The Two Sisters”, deals with some aspects of mental illness and alcoholism, through the lives of two sisters, Connie and Rose.

Rose has a history of mental illness, as well as substance abuse issues, and when my main character, Jack (her nephew) encounters her for the first time, Rose is fairly heavily medicated and tied into a wheelchair so she doesn’t fall out. Rose is a long-term resident at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, a slightly fictionalized version of the real hospital, which is located in Coquitlam, BC.

Writing Convincingly About Mental Illness

I won’t write about something unless I have at least a little experience with it, and I try to do enough research to fill in any remaining credibility gaps. That’s my explanation for studying and sharing the photographs at the links below. But that’s just the external research part: my claim to street cred regarding Rose’s mental illness and being at Riverview Hospital comes through my mother, Angela Huntley Love (nee Clarke), who was a long-term resident at Riverview for 14 years. A good deal of my portrayal of Rose’s initial appearance and behaviour was based on my poor Mum. My wish is to use the events and emotions from my many visits at Riverview with Mum to evoke some of the sadness, joy and confused feelings that I experienced.

Riverview Hospital seems to be often in a state of transformation. This is probably a reflection of our gradually changing approach towards mental health care and the mentally ill in general. I hope it will continue to change for the better, in order to better serve those people who need it. In my only moderately informed opinion, there are still too many folks on the street who need mental health care.

Photos of Riverview

Here are a number of photo galleries I’ve found of Riverview Hospital complex. Some of them are quite beautiful, displaying the trees, flowers, lawns and sunny days that you’ll find on the grounds during the spring or summer months.  There are also quite a few photos that show the disturbing amount of degradation that old age and lack of maintenance have wrought on the closed buildings. West Lawn in particular, is the most haunting. It was already closed in the 1980s when I started visiting my Mother at Riverview.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobkh/sets/72157594534559416/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ephotography29/3258999854/

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/the-bh/1067953811/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoes_on_wires/4448755346/

The darker photos in these collections reflect, to me, the downsizing, decentralization and relocation of hundreds of patients during the 80s and 90s.

Showing these darker images is not intended to stigmatize mental illness in any way, but instead to show how our major institution has changed over time. The images also helped me to connect with feelings of despair, sadness or loss that I once felt for my Mother. That is real too.

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Meditating on Now, the Past, and Raw Material…

Sometimes, a good moment in the present helps you to reflect better on the past, or plan for the future. In my case, a yearly summer vacation to a lovely ocean-side spot near Parksville, BC provided a welcome chance to unwind and reflect.

I also started reading Craig Ferguson’s biography, “American on Purpose”, and even after just a few chapters, the man’s wit, silliness, and achingly honest description of his family and his life have inspired me. Craig’s description of his parents in particular, and the almost glamorous impression they left with him was strikingly familiar to me. He describes his father’s handsome, slender appearance in one instance, and in another instance after his father has become drunk, his biting sarcasm or bitter authority.

This depiction of two-sided grace resonates strongly with my own memories of my parents. Probably everyone wants to remember their parents in a positive way if they can. Children (at least the youngest ones) tend to idolize at least one parent, and place them high on the idolatry scale. I think this must be related to bonding and learning by example. It can be heartbreaking and devastating to find out just how weak-willed, vulnerable or unworthy a parent can be. As kids, it can be hard to  watch our parents (or any significant adults in our lives) act badly or make all-too-human mistakes.

Like Craig Ferguson’s Dad, my Dad was tall, good-looking and smelled of Brylcreem. Like Craig Ferguson’s Mum, my Mum was a physically beautiful woman whose image haunts me. I’m convinced that my Dad was an extremely intelligent man, who was often frustrated by the idiocies he saw perpetrated around him, and possibly convinced that he was smarter than most of the people around him. I don’t doubt that he was right either. Dad was proud, smart, and independently-minded.

My Mum had multiple creative and artistic talents: singer, musician, actor. She also struggled with manic depression (bipolar disorder) and alcoholism, throughout her life. She had a light within her that I never really got a chance to see.

Both of them, at their best, loved to laugh and quote silly humour like poems by Ogden Nash, phrases from Groucho Marks, or sing along to silly songs with lyrics like “Boop Boop Diddim Daddum Waddum Choo! | And they swam and they swam right over the dam!”

Maybe life ground them down more and more as they went through middle age – maybe depression took over. Maybe the silly little joys just evaporated from lack of practice. Maybe happiness gradually gave way to depression, and light-heartedness just transformed into tension and pressure.

Perhaps “unrealized potential” is the term that describes my Mum and Dad best of all: feeling trapped in a life that seems to be preventing you from doing what you want, or getting to a point in your life where you feel like all your dreams have gone past you and all opportunities for success have been spent.

I think that with more care and more support in their lives, perhaps my parents might have been able to shed their alcoholism and self-destructive tendencies and might have had more of a chance to have a real life together. I often imagine a mythical Jim and Angela, healthy, smiling, talking together, traveling together and living together – living lives that are similar to the life I enjoy with my wife. I guess that means that I am happy. I wish they could have been happier too.

For me, the lesson I take from them is that one must make one’s own opportunities in life, and find or manufacture ones own happiness and fulfillment. The saddest people either forget this, or feel that they will never achieve it. The happiest, I think, are those who strive for it in spite of any obstacles. The best of us are those who help others to achieve their bliss in some way.

What I have left is a number of photos that prove that once upon a time, my folks were indeed happy and bright, and optimistic about the future.  Once, they ran a small household, went on driving trips through the western provinces, camped in a camper truck, and visited their relatives.

Maybe for some people, happiness appears to be a limited time affair. I’m not a recovering alcoholic like Craig Ferguson (thank god). The stats say that I should be. But, I do believe that Craig and I have something in common: a belief that happiness is tied to personal growth and health, and is a daily work in progress.

Anyway, nice book Craig. Truly.

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A Lovely Home, on the Sea…

Along with my dream of writing for a living (and being able to work from home on my own terms), I’ve recently adopted the dream of living on the sea. No, not near the sea, or next to the sea, or with a view of the sea – ON the sea…

(A little repost from “The Blog of Love”…)

Along with my dream of writing for a living (and being able to work from home on my own terms), I’ve recently adopted the dream of living on the sea. No, not near the sea, or next to the sea, or with a view of the sea – ON the sea…

Today, my wife and I checked out Open Houses in Vancouver’s lovely (and busy) Coal Harbour. We weren’t in some $400K high-rise condo though (although there are a lot of those to be found – we were down at sea level, looking at detached homes for under $200K. Real detached. In fact, they barely touch the earth. They were floating homes, or sea homes, moored down at the Coal Harbour Marina.

Read more here: http://ejohnlove.blogspot.com/2010/07/home-on-sea.html

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Repost: It’s Still About Story Telling: Writing in the ePublishing Age

I enjoyed this article by Nilofar Ansher. It deals with the way new media and technology play a role in moving the control of opinion away from from critics and specialists and into the hands of consumers.

In fact, consumers are ever-more becoming producers. I think this is the real shift: the audience is not only listening, they’re talking back.

I enjoyed this article by Nilofar Ansher. It deals with the way new media and technology play a role in moving the control of opinion away from from critics and specialists and into the hands of consumers.

In fact, consumers are ever-more becoming producers. I think this is the real shift: the audience is not only listening, they’re talking back.

http://trailofpapercuts.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/its-still-about-story-telling-writing-in-the-epublishing-age/

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What Independent Author Stacey Cochran learned from self-publishing

I found this article to be a very useful, first-hand account of the challenges and advantages of self-publishing.

I think that opinion tends to be divided between those who feel that eBooks are opening new opportunities for readers and writers, and those who feel that the eReader medium is still too immature and under-refined compared to paper books and traditional book publishing and book selling.

This fellow’s travails in self-publishing and book marketing provide a practical example of the pros and cons of being an independent author and book publisher.

http://blog.firebird-fiction.com/guest-post/guest-post-independent-author-stacey-cochran-on-what-hes-learned-about-self-publishing/

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