Kindle - start a fire

Today, Amazon.com launched its newest innovation – a wireless reading device called the Kindle. As I write this, Charlie Rose is interviewing Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com about Kindle and Amazon in general. Bezos’ story is worth studying because his ability to take ideas that make sense from both the consumers’ and company’s viewpoint is what makes him so successful. Win-win.

As an author, the Kindle is exciting news. When epublishing first came on the scene, a part of the debate revolved around a reading device that would be acceptable to book lovers. You know the die-hard book lovers that enjoy the experience of curling up with a good book. Bezos gets this. He says:

I also relax into the author’s words, stories, and ideas. The physical book is so elegant that the artifact itself disappears into the background. The paper, glue, ink, and stitching that make up the book vanish, and what remains is the author’s world.

He gets it! The reason other ebook reading devices haven’t succeeded is because they got in the way of the experience of losing yourself in the author’s world.

Amazon has signed on all the major publishers, according to Bezos, to sell books electronically through Amazon. 88,000 books, newspapers and magazines are available for download. The device can hold the equivalent of 200 books and Amazon offers free storage. So you can keep a virtual private library on Amazon. The device includes a resident dictionary and free access to Wikipedia as well as the ability to highlight and write margin notes. And you have the ability to browse the store and download the first chapter of books for free so you can get a good feel for a particular author before committing yourself and your money.

Can you tell I’m excited! As a writer, just think about the possibilities. Rose and Bezos discussed serialization of books – having books published in serial format as the author writes them. You’d be able to incorporate reader feedback into the manuscript as you went along. Obviously there are benefits for the publishers as well or they wouldn’t be on board with this. One of them could be lower production costs that might open the door to publishers accepting more manuscripts.

The drawback? One is cost. The device costs almost $400 and books are $10 a piece. (But it does appear that you can download from sources other than Amazon – like Project Gutenberg which has 100,000 titles with 20,000 of them free.) If you purchase books frequently, the device can pay for itself within a year or two. Kindle might be a great option for those with money but what about those folks that rely on the library for their reading pleasure. For residents of my city, a library card is free. I rely on the library to introduce me to authors I haven’t read before and to help me keep up with all the new titles coming out.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes this brings to the publishing world and we writers struggling to get our foot in the door.

Pushing on

I've been getting pep-talk emails in my inbox from Nano celebs and gurus. The message is push through the doubts and time stealers. A message that hit home today.

Today I'm in mom-mode. Even though your kids reach adulthood (mine is early 30's), you still worry about them. So I started this morning sitting in the recliner brooding on my child's problems while watching Bear Grylls tell me how to survive if I'm ever stranded in Northern Australia - something I expect will probably happen in the next week or so. Not.

But then those messages from the Nano celebs and gurus started floating around in my head. Write! Write! Write!

Then I had a light blub moment - I can worry and write at the same time!

The protagonist of my Nano novel is a mom and she worries about her kids. Add that to the fact that I find it cathartic to weave bits of my life into my stories. It's part of that "write what you know" advice we always get. Making the story both universal and specific. By drawing on our personal experiences we can give our characters real emotions.

So two lessons learned for today - unless it's something completely disabling (like two broken arms) don't give into the tempation to let personal problems steal time from writing. And use what you're experiencing or have experienced to breathe life into the characters.

Nanowrimo!!

We're on day 3 of NaNo and I'm at 2,715 words - most of them written today.

I'm a "plotter" (versus a "pantser" - someone who writes by the seat of their pants without doing a lot of plotting). Typically I do several things to get to know my characters - character g/m/c grid, back story and 'interviews', etc as well as a pretty extensive outline. I've found that when I think about my plot points and what needs to happen in order to get the characters to that plot point, writing is easier. It keeps me focused. I also tend to edit as I go along - rather than just putting down a word, I'll stop and look in the word finder or other reference book or jump on the Internet to verify a piece of information. I find this easier than cranking out the story and then going back to clean it up. Just feels more efficient and better to me.

But to each his own.

At any rate, the goal of Nano is to write 50,000 words in a month. I'm finding that in order to crank out the words I'm writing scenes that I'll put together later - next month - rather than my usual approach of starting at the beginning and working my way through the end.

We'll see how this works out. At first I felt disoriented but seeing the word count crank up got me inspired so I'm ready to keep going.

Go Nano!