Barry Eisler on Publishing

Barry Eisler is an interesting fellow, but this blog post is mainly for my writer friends.

I can't claim to have read any of Barry's books yet - although I have bought two which are waiting on my Kindle to-be-read list - but he does have some interesting things to say about publishing and writing. These videos are from a Q&A session he did in Boston. Enjoy.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Lecture Part 1 from Grub Street on Vimeo.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 2 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 3 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - Day 27

Okay, I'm so close I can taste victory. What doesn't help is that I happened to write 1200 words on a different project today and yesterday I had a great idea for another story that I had to get the basic synopsis written down before I forgot it.

Regardless I have hit 42,000 words and this last week of writing indicates I can have NaNoWriMo conquered on my first outing. This is, of course, assuming my procrastination fairy doesn't arrive with a hilarious site filled with internet memes.

Hope everyone else is having fun with their writing. For those of you who are just plain old readers, I hope you've been laughing heartily at your writing pals. Remember to tempt them with time wasting activities from now until the 30th.


Words Written: 1,502 (per day average)
Total: 42,068
Remaining: 7,932 - very doable.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - Day 10: Writing is overrated!

So I'm travelling through this first fortnight of NaNoWriMo at a less than stellar pace. I've technically had most days free to write as much as I please. I'd imagined this would result in 10,000 word days and that I'd have that pesky 50,000 word total done before I go back to drudgery next week (or the day job, which ever term you prefer).

The reality has been much too horrid for me to bear. All of those professional authors who talked about how hard it was to hit writing targets were right. I guess that is why they are the professionals and I'm still the amateur, they must use better whips on the room full of monkeys.

Of course I have still been achieving the required writing goals, but the problem with having a day job is that it will suddenly rear its ugly head and swing me around in its mighty jaws as it seeks to devour me whole. Being on schedule might be a bad thing at this point. Maybe I should think more like a blogger or self-publishing slime-ball and just write rubbish: who actually needs the chapters to fit together?

Either way I'm enjoying writing every day, and I am actually achieving my primary goal of sitting around having fun. My secondary goal was to get into the habit of daily writing and getting sizable chunks written. That is my achilles heel as a writer, not finishing the larger projects. My writing itself is actually quite good - IMHO - and I'm continually working on aspects that need polish. As Stephen Leather said, writers do need to focus on becoming better writers.


Words Written: 1,698 (per day)
Total: 16,985
Remaining: 33,015

How has everyone else fared so far?

Creativity again

This follows on very nicely from my post on schools stifling creativity, the video of Sir Ken Robinson.

In fairness to John's teachers, he did marry Yoko, maybe John missed the point of life.

Sir Ken Robinson - Do schools kill creativity?

I have found memories of school. I fondly remember coming home from it each day. I remember English class: 'I want to write a story about robot spys.' 'Well you can't, we're writing about the Eureka Stockade.' Ahh, good times.

So today's blog is about how schools are designed and operated. If anyone has any idea how they are actually designed and operated I believe there is a highly underpaid position available for you to take up to improve the situation. Sir Ken Robinson presents an interesting polemic in the video below, essentially saying that creativity is beaten out of kids in order to make it easier to manage them in a class. What are your experiences?



Original site.

The only part I wholly disagree with is the bit about multitasking. The research on that is fundamentally flawed. That research has usually compared people who multitask all of the time with people who don't at all, i.e. they compared pot addicted college students who needed the study participation fee to buy beer with people who actually did stuff, usually housewives. Real multitasking is largely a myth. You can do several tasks at once but you will do them all poorly in comparison to focussing on them one at a time.

So did you have your creativity killed off by going to school like I did?