Is Technology Making Writers Lazy?

Yes, yes it is.

Well, that's my opinion, at least.  Or possibly, technology is making lazy people write more.

My parents have this idea that because creating a professional looking manuscript is so easy now, people who would ordinarily be disuaded from sending their MSs to agents (or even bothering to complete them at all) are encouraged to keep going.   I think it's a valid theory.  I'm not saying that bad writers didn't exist before things like formatting and spell-checking were made easy, or that they didn't submit their work, but I can't imagine people who are too lazy to check simple facts, for example, setting the margins on their typewriters by hand or retyping an entire page because of one mistake.  I'm not certain, but I would guess that the publishers which require people to submit their manuscript in hardcopy by post get a lot less crap than those which accept email submissions.  I think with things the way they are today, there isn't as much of a system for weeding out those people whose hearts aren't really in it.

The self-publishing world is brimming with examples of these people.  They are people who want to be writers without actually having to do the work involved.  They vomit words onto their keyboards and see them appear on their screens, looking just the way they do in books and they think that this is what it takes to be a legitimate writer - and in no time, they can hold their books in their hands, flip through the pages, see it on a shelf.  All that's left is to sit back and wait for fame and fortune to come knocking.

I am not, for the record, bashing people who choose to self-publish.  Several great authors have gone this route, I myself have self-published one book and plan to have another out before the end of 2012 - and, of course, self-publishing has been around a lot longer than print-on-demand companies and the Internet.

Nor am I suggesting that technology is bad or that all writers should ditch their laptops, buy typewriters and do things the old-fashioned way.  Actually, the same technology that has the potential to create lazy writers makes things possible that otherwise wouldn't be.  Take, for example, Devereaux Court.  Imagine, living where we each do, trying to share the same information and opinions, to comment on articles, etc., using only paper and the postal system.  It would be an administrative nightmare, not to mention bad for the environment and kind of expensive - and yes, it may have something to do with laziness, maybe we wouldn't be willing to put in the time, but more likely, we simply wouldn't have the time to put in - especially not if we were all setting the margins of our typewriters by hand.  And then there are things like NaNoWriMo. 250,000 writers  from all over the world are expected to participate this year - Impossible, really, without the Internet, word processors, etc., etc.

So yes, I think technology is making some writers lazy.  I also think that those of us who can recognize how  lucky we are to have such massive resources available to us can use technology to achieve amazing things.

By the way, if all goes well, this article will be posted while I'm in Ireland and nowhere near a computer.

Remembering the Library

I miss libraries.  When I was a kid, going to the library (going, in fact, to this library) was a treat.  It was a place that seemed magical.  The library moved buildings when I was five, but what I remember about this particular library is that it had giant beanbag animal pillow-chairs (the one I thought of as mine was a ladybug) and one time, some kid tried to steal Babe, one of my favourite dolls* - and, of course,  it was full of books - an almost unfathomable number of books.

In high school, Rhiannon and I went to the library fairly frequently.  We would head downtown to hang out, and, after visiting the dollar store and otherwise empty mall, we usually ended up there.  Later in high school Vicky (my other sister) and I would to go to the new library** on Wednesdays.  We would rent books, movies, manga, CDs, everything we could, really, on every subject imaginable.  We would stay there for hours and often leave with back-breaking piles of reading material.

And of course there was always the research.  Search engines these days are like magic.  You type in a question and voila! a thousand, a hundred thousand, millions of answers just appear to you.  It's really amazing and I have to say that I feel lucky, as a writer, to have been born into a time when research is not half so labour intensive as it once was, when we can focus more on the story part of our stories - but there's magic in using books too.  There's something spectacular, when out of all the books piled on the table, you stumble across the exact piece of information you were looking for, the interesting fact that will alter the outcome of your book, that thing that's been missing.  There's something wonderful about the hushed, almost rain-like sounds of people around you turning pages.

Even when I lived on my own and had nothing to distract me at home, even if I had no research to do, I would still occasionally go to the library to write.  There's something about libraries - maybe it's being surrounded by all those books.  So much inspiration and so many words, just floating around.

There was no library where I lived in B.C., and for some reason, perhaps because I feared disappointment, I never went to the one in Jasper.  The library where I am now is ok.  It's a decent sized building and the staff are friendly and helpful (a rarety, in my experience), but I don't spend a lot of time there.  I don't know why; it's just one of those things, I guess.

I would love to go back to weekly library visits and hours-long research sessions in the library.  I think sometimes we let life get in the way of the things that make it life.  Like libraries.  
 


*I was about three when this happened, and when the girl's mother informed me that she had a similar doll at home, all I could think was, "Whatever, Lady, just don't let it happen again."

**It's been nearly 20 years and I still think of it as the new library

I Want One

I really want one of these laptop covers that looks like an old book. I think this is a bloody genious idea.

I only have two small complaints. One is that the title of these books is very cleverly the name of the company that makes them, which is Book Book - and if you don't know who the manufacturer is, it kind of leaves you with the impression that whoever designed them doesn't speak English as their first language. My second complaint, which is the bigger one, is that they cost $70-$90, which is a long way outside of my budget.

I'm thinking I'll make my own, if I can work out how; I think in the end I'd like it a lot better if it was one of a kind.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

eReaders - The End of Paper Books?

I've spent a lot of time over the last little while thinking about e-readers and whether or not they're going to eventually mean an end to paper books. I really hope not.

It's not that I don't want people to be environmentally conscious. I do and I recognise that every little bit helps, so even though switching to ebooks isn't going to have the same impact as, say, driving a fuel efficient car or walking to work every day, I don't think it's a bad idea to do something to help the environment, especially where trees are concerned. This seems to be a hot topic for debate at the moment, but so far, even where there is a clear support of the continuation of paper books, everything I've read suggests that, over all, for avid readers, ereaders are the environmentally conscious way to go. Two blogs with differing opinions on the subject, but which present essentially the same research are Daniel Goleman's (E-Reader Versus Book: The Eco-Math) and Earth Beat (The future of paper books ... and e-readers).

So, why, as an environmentally conscious writer, would I not want ereaders to replace traditional books? A few reasons.

The first and biggest reason is that I think our society depends far too much on technology. Just about everyone in North America remembers that wide-spread, three-day blackout and the rolling black and brown outs that followed it. In the realm of disasters, it ranked pretty low, but it wasn't nothing. Some people died as a result, because they had no air conditioning and the financial damages done to businesses due to products spoiling or stores having to stay closed for long periods of time, was immense. And that is a system that has been in place for many, many years. What makes us think that the Internet (something new enough that I remember when only rich people could afford it, something which, at the time, couldn't be accessed without a dedicated phone line and ten minutes of horrible beeping and gurgling) is any less likely to spontaneously go down? Or, Hell, if you believe the Internet is bullet proof, good luck using it if the power goes out again. Good luck charging your ereader, too. If we've converted all of our old books to efiles and, especially, if our new books were never (or hardly ever) actually in print, a technological breakdown would be crippling to the acquired and compiled knowledge of the entire world. Think the burning of the library at Alexandria. Having all of our knowledge stored in one place is a bad idea.

It's also a money thing. Right now, especially, people don't have a lot of money to spend on, well, anything. So while an ereader might save you money overall (from what I can tell, ebooks aren't that much cheaper than paper, but they are a bit), most people don't have the money to spend on an ereader up front, and if they do, and enough people switch, it's going to drive the price of traditional books up - which means that people who couldn't ever hope to afford an ereader now won't be able to afford paper books either. Any new technology does this at first, drives out the old technology while simultaneously being too expensive for many people to afford (I saw this first hand with the transition from tape-cassette to CD, Discmans to mp3 players and videos to DVDs), and yes, eventually, it does balance out, but in the meantime, it sucks for the people who are too poor to afford the new stuff and (because the new stuff is so widely available to those who can afford it) can't find the old stuff anywhere.

Then there's the issue of the traditional in traditional books. It may sound a bit snobby and like it's not much of an argument, but there is something to be said for the feel of a paper book in your hands. There is something to be said for the idea of taking your book on a plane or a bus or to the beach or camping or hiking through the mountains and not having to worry about what happens if your batteries die. I don't know, the idea of reading The Paper Bag Princess to a kid on an ereader just doesn't work for me.

As for the solutions to the environmental implications of sticking with paper books, my suggestions to the publishing world at large include using recycled (preferably sustainable) paper and natural inks and printing books on demand, rather than printing huge quantities then warehousing them and eventually pulping the unwanted ones.

Obviously, this is a subject which readers and writers alike have strong opinions about and most of the articles I've read contain very evident biases (I read one article comparing various ereaders and paper books, which ranked most of the ereaders' readability as high and the readability of paper books as medium.) and I don't want to suggest that I think that ereaders in general are a bad idea, or that people shouldn't take steps to help the environment. In fact, I think they're a good idea, especially for people who want to read a book but don't necessarily want to own it (especially popular books which may not be in stock at a nearby library but are often overstocked at bookstores) or for people who spend a lot of time travelling and don't want to put fifteen books in the carry-on when they go on vacation. I think there are a lot of great uses for ereaders; I just don't want to see them replace paper books.

Le zzzzzz

I'm really tired right now, but I just wanted to post this quick before I run off to bed.

First, I wanted to mention something cool about Amazon. CreateSpace makes a point of telling their clients that their titles will not be available internationally, so today I started trying to figure out how to get my stuff to Canada. I figured I would have to sign up with another print-on-demand company, one that was based here. Luckily, before I got too involved with this process, I went to Amazon.ca on a whim and found my book there. It's also on Amazon's U.K. site, their German site, their French site and their Japanese site. This makes me super happy - almost happy enough to ignore the fact that Aigaion Girl is ranked lower than 1,000,000th on Amazon.com.

So, my plans for tomorrow include finishing my sell sheet (still not 100% sure what they're for) and buying paper to print a couple of sell sheets on and some pens. Then, on Monday, comes the scary part: going to my local library and trying to convince them that they need to hold a book release for me. I'm hoping to butter them up by giving them a free copy of the book and offering to sell and sign copies, etc. Tuesday is the other scary part; I'm going to go to the local Coles and see if I can convince them that they need to carry my book. I saw a guy there a few weeks ago that seemed to have gone a similar route for publishing. He was having a signing and they still have a few of his books in stock, so if I look professional enough, maybe I'll be able to convince them.

Anyway, those are my plans. I'm realizing now that this post isn't horribly coherent. I guess I should go to bed before trying to face the day... or something.

Biodegradable Clicky Pen

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been shopping quite a few times and until my most recent excursion, had been forgetting to buy pens. Pens are an important tool for me, especially now, with my laptop out of commission and a shared family computer which is almost always in use. I don't like to write long-hand in pencil; the graphite always smudges.

So, I was in Wal Mart, staring at a bunch of pens, almost all of them very cheaply made of very expensively priced. Then I came upon something cool by Papermate: a biodegradable pen. Not all of the components are biodegradable; the spring that allows it to click isn't and neither is the comfort grip - but, as the plasticless packaging points out, every little bit helps.

I've always loved Papermate, partially because of the soft coating on their classic ballpoints, partially because of the fact that their pens seem to write more smoothly and last longer than the majority of pens and largely due to the two little hearts that adorn the tops of their pens. In high school, during my first really big crush, I would stare at the top of my (borrowed) papermate pen and feel like whoever put those two surreptitious little hearts there must have some idea what I was feeling.

Anyway, I've gotten off track. I'm very pleased with my new biodegradable pen and I hope that these things will increase in popularity and, eventually, become the standard... and then, if only we can get post-consumer recycled paper to catch on, writing will be the the perfect profession.