Prose, Not Verse

The other week someone asked the Hint Fiction account on Twitter what differentiates Hint Fiction from poetry. The reply was pretty simple:

What differentiates most free verse poetry from any prose story? The form itself. Hint Fiction is prose, not verse.

I'm sure there will be some who will argue this. I'll be the first person to admit that I don't know much about poetry, despite having taken a few poetry classes in college -- or I should say English classes that spent some great deal of time on poetry. Personally, I'm not a fan of poetry. I have really nothing against it; it just isn't something I like to read. If I come across a literary journal or some magazine and it has fiction and poetry, I will almost never read the poetry. Again, I have nothing against it. I know there is some really great poetry out there, that some writers do amazing things with verse, but it's just not my cup of tea, just as fiction is not many poets' cup of tea either.

And so free verse poetry? I'm sure there's more to it than simply appearing as verse. I've sometimes thought about taking a very short flash fiction piece, breaking it up into verse, and calling it a free verse poem. And I'm sure that's possible and has been done many times. But I also feel like it's cheating the form out of what it's supposed to be and what it can accomplish.

But anyway. The reason I mention this is because the question got me thinking. I've always considered "Corrections and Clarifications" to be my very first Hint Fiction piece, but it's really not. Because many years ago, back in 2002, I wrote a haiku hybrid.

To help set the stage, I was friends with Jack Fisher, the publisher and editor of the horror and dark fantasy magazine Flesh & Blood. I was also seeing this girl who -- to protect the guilty -- we'll call Wilma. Jack had told me a lot of funny stories about the crazy stuff writers put in their cover letters (something I would soon encounter once I was hired on to the magazine). So one night when I was at Wilma's place and we were on her computer for some reason (I think something was messed up with her e-mail) I thought it would be funny to send Jack a submission but sent as a crazy writer person. I glanced at Wilma who was holding this big stuffed red dog I'd gotten her as a gift, and wrote a quick three lines in the e-mail, titling it "Wilma" for some reason, and then writing something along the lines of "Thank you in advance for accepting my poem" and sent it.

A day or two later, I was chatting with Jack online and managed to ask if he'd gotten any crazy submissions. He had an idea what I was hinting at and said "Wilma?" I wrote back something like "Ha! Yeah, thought you'd appreciate that." And he replied something like "Funny thing is I actually really like it."

So he ended up accepting it for the magazine, though we agreed to change the title to something more suitable. Jack was even crazy enough to put my name on the cover (done by Chad Savage), which I didn't complain about at all:

Once I came on as Senior Editor at the magazine, the haiku hybrid became the basis for a little marketing idea I came up with that I called Easter Egg Haikus. Basically, in each issue we'd feature a haiku written by a well known horror or fantasy writer. We wouldn't include the writer's name on the cover or even on the table of contents. It would be a hidden treat, like what was all the rage on DVDs back then. Some of the writers included Douglas Clegg, Tim Lebbon, Steve Rasnic Tem, T. M. Wright and Ramsey Campbell. I think there were one or two others but I forget who they were now, and besides, Jack ended up deciding to shut down the magazine a year or two after I'd quit (my quitting had nothing to do with him shutting down the magazine, mind you, as he already had a lot of help; it was just time for it to end).

So anyway, despite the poem being in verse, I'd say it still hints at a larger, more complex story, huh?

"Plush"

Holding a stuffed dog That was not alive--- Until it ate her face off.

Now it seems like I have an extra copy of this issue. Who wants it? First person who says so in the comments section gets it.

The Decline Of Reading Speeds

People reading 10.7% slower when reading on a Kindle as opposed to a print book, and 6.2% slower when reading on an iPad, according to a study released Friday by the Nielsen Normalcy Group. The study tested 24 readers using a story by Ernest Hemingway (the report doesn’t say which story), “because his work is pleasant and engaging to read, and yet not so complicated that it would be above the heads of users.”

It also asked participants to rate thier satisfaction with the devies “on a 1–7 scale, with 7 being the best score. iPad, Kindle, and the printed book all scored fairly high at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6, respectively. The PC, however, scored an abysmal 3.6.”

The above is taken from Electric Literature’s twitter feed, which is a link from MobyLives. And it's quite interesting. The only e-reading device I use now is the Kindle app on my Android phone (currently I'm reading The Spot by David Means), and while I'm quite happy with the experience -- especially the fact that I have something to read wherever I go -- I notice that the speed of my reading does decrease somewhat. One thing I realized is that it's next to impossible to skim boring passages, at least on such a small screen that I use (nothing boring so far in the Means collection, but if I wanted to, that would be a different story). Maybe it'd be different on a Kindle or iPad, though not by much. This, of course, is the future of reading, and I think over time people will be able to adapt to it. The transition phase will take a while, at least for people (namely adults) who have come to embrace traditional paper books. Of course, with the lack of being able to skim boring passages, it will make readers even more aware of their reading choices and do a better job of skipping the poorly written books, and force writers to write better. Or so we can only hope.

The Ugly Face Of Facebook

Social networking is a necessary evil. As writers, it's one of the best ways to help promote our work. It's also one of the worst ways to promote our work. Lately I've become rather bored with Facebook. I enjoy using Twitter so much more. With Twitter there's a simplicity that is almost unexplainable. Basically, you write what you want to write in 140 characters. You follow who you want to follow. That's about it.

But Facebook? Where oh where to begin? First you send a friend request, or you accept someone's friend request, and then if they are new to Facebook, the system wants you to suggest friends to them. Of course, you don't have to suggest friends to them at all. But if they're new to Facebook, the system will occasionally try to get you to help them find more friends, or want you to write on their wall, or whatever. And then there are the groups and fan pages (I'm sorry, the like pages), and events and games and a whole bunch more bullshit. People posting links to articles and videos, people posting status updates like "is currently writing" and then fifty people "like" that status for some strange reason because, I guess, "liking" a status is confirmation of some kind of excellence in status writing. Then you have the people -- and the people in question here are writers, because that's who I'm mostly "friends" with -- who then say they need to start a fan page for themselves, because they've almost reached their limit of 5,000 friends, so they're going to be posting their writing news over on their fan page so everyone should become a fan (or like) if they want to be kept abreast of the latest news. (I don't know if anyone has actually ever said "abreast" though I think they should use it more.) But the thing is? Almost none of these writers who have almost reached their limit of friends are actually getting friend requests from people (either readers or fans, and yes, there is a difference between the two). Instead they're sending out friend requests, hundreds and hundreds of friend requests, because not only is having your status "liked" a confirmation of some kind of excellence, but apparently so it the number of "friends" you have. Oh, and let's not get into how your live stream is clogged with updates on who has changed their profile picture or who has decided to like such-and-such a page or who has become friends with who.

I've bitched about Facebook before and I'll probably bitch about it again, but my basic issue is that the place has become a black hole. You can't escape it, not if you're a writer or some kind of artist. Because, again, it's a necessary evil. But I'm starting to loath it. I used to post both on Facebook and Twitter, but that became rather redundant and time consuming so I made it so all my tweets from Twitter went directly to Facebook. But a few weeks back I stopped doing that. Why? I'm not quite sure. Maybe because I don't want to contribute to the information overload happening on Facebook. At least on Twitter, people who want to follow me can follow me and can stop following me whenever they want. But on Facebook? There are a lot more options. If they don't want to see my updates, they can either a) hide my updates from the stream or b) unfriend me. And oftentimes, people don't even know how to hide updates, and they don't want to unfriend me, because if they're a writer too and it comes to my attention that they unfriended me, then maybe there will be hard feelings and blah blah blah. Yes, Facebook has become much too political, which is completely and utterly ridiculous.

Recently I considered not quitting Facebook but at least unfriending all my "friends" who aren't friends. Making it a true personal account, for just close family and friends. But then that would lead into problems that David Pogue most recently described in the New York Times and which summarizes the problem quite well:

As a tech columnist, I’m bombarded by friend requests — mostly perfect strangers — which puts me in an awkward bind. Do I accept them all, just to show I’m a good sport, thereby defeating the purpose of Facebook as a network of real friends? Or do I turn them down, hurting their feelings and making them think I’m an unfriendly jerk?

As writers, we're often forced to walk on eggshells. We don't want to do or say anything that might lose us potential readers and, consequently, potential sales. Because if we piss off one writer/reader/person, that writer/reader/person is most apt to tell one of their friends, who is most likely a writer/reader/person, and then that could create a domino effect.

So for now I'm sticking with Facebook, like I even have a choice. Awhile back Neil Gaiman said that the best way to use social networks is not to simply promote but to connect, so that's why on Facebook I won't just post updates when I have a story published or something to sell. I'll occasionally post something, just to be part of the ongoing conversation. Because it's like you're at a party, and there you are, standing in the corner. If you only speak when you have something to sell, people will ignore you. But if you speak to say this and that, something that has some connection with others, then when you do have something to sell, people will listen. Hopefully.

We Will Not Go Quietly Into The Night

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom ... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution ... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

Someday I wish to hear a real President give such a passionate and rousing speech. Until then, we'll always have Bill Pullman.

Viral Before There Was Viral

A first novel, a coming-of-age story set in the South. The author is utterly unknown, has no academic or media affiliations, no Web site, no blog, no Facebook page, no Twitter account. She is shy. What's a publisher and a publicist to do?

In this case, the publisher is J.B. Lippincott. There's no record of the publicist. The novel is To Kill a Mockingbird. The author: Harper Lee. And 50 years ago the answer was: not much.

Granted, the technology for Lee to "go viral" didn't exist, but it happened anyway. It was called "the grapevine," as in, "heard it through the."

As the rest of the Mary Murphy article goes to show, word of mouth is more powerful than any book tour or appearance on Oprah. At least, that was the case 50 years ago. But what about now? Occasionally, yes, a book will climb the bestseller list by simply word of mouth, and it's only then that the publisher starts to give it a big publicity push. Some books get a huge publicity push from the start and nothing ever really happens. Still, it's nice to think about a time when the Internet didn't exist, when people didn't friend you on Facebook just so they could then invite you to join their fan page. A time when a book was the only thing that mattered.