Archive for the ‘ebook’ Tag
The phrase “outside the box” may rate as one of the most over-used (if not actually abused) metaphors of our time. It’s all too often a glib admonition issued by a person passing the proverbial buck and expecting someone else to solve an intractable problem for them. If you’ve ever worked for a living in any capacity at all, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve heard it and heard the smug sarcasm that goes with it.
Used correctly, when faced with a situation in which others have failed to arrive at a solution to a problem, or when a creative person wants to pursue a new and innovative form of self-expression, the mental habit labeled “think outside the box” can be a powerful tool. It becomes a way to focus skills and imagination in a way that has the potential to create something new. I certainly have no problem hearing the phrase used in this context, being a fan of, and a participant in, the creative world myself. There’s definitely a place in the world for those who think outside the box. Or, more specifically, those who write outside the box.
Although the bulk of my writing has been in the science fiction genre, I haven’t exactly felt constrained by that single genre. Or even to the writing of fiction; my first book was the amateur astronomy-related memoir, Mr. Olcott’s Skies. I’ve also written short fiction of a darkly fantastical nature that might play well on a remake of The Twilight Zone, some of which can be found in 179 Degrees From Now. But I’m not sure any of this could honestly be referred to as writing outside the box. Rather, it’s more an indication that the box I’m sitting in has plenty of room in which to move around. After all, science fiction, fantasy, and astronomy are all, in their own ways, out there.
But I have now, beyond any realistic doubt, written outside that roomy box. Reached so far over the lid the damned thing tipped right over.
My most recent book, Toby, is neither sci-fi nor fantasy, and for sure has nothing to do with amateur astronomy. It’s a tale of a boy and his dog. Okay, so the main character has a few too many years on him to wear the label “boy” easily. And it isn’t his dog. Therein lies the tale. Or the tail, as the case may be. Like all the fiction I write, Toby started out as a handful of unrelated daydreams: images and scenes that just sort of coalesced in my imagination. Happens all the time, these daydreams. I’ve been an unrepentant woolgatherer all my life. Just ask any of my middle school teachers. In this most recent case, however, the usual elements of science fiction never materialized. This time it started with an ordinary guy confronting a large, growling dog, who it turns out isn’t growling at the guy. There’s this bear, you see. From that point, things get complicated.
Anyway, as sometimes happens, the daydream started to roll like a short film in my head, and all that stuff that builds up inside your brain due to life happening started mixing in. The guy was there for a reason, and so was the dog. The reason, once I puzzled it out, became the vague suggestion of a story. Closer examination led to questions about who they were, and why they were in that situation. Ideas rose into view. Some lent themselves well to the trail I needed to blaze, and others were best left to one side and forgotten. The meeting between man and dog turned into a journey, and once they were on the road, I quickly developed a clear sense of direction. To put it another way, the story developed a life of its own, an internal logic that directed its development. In other words, it told itself. I just worked the keyboard.
Okay, that doesn’t really happen, but that’s the way it feels, when it works just so.
All the way through the process of writing this short novel (or novella, depending on which definition based on word counts you prefer) I felt a growing sense of surprise and delight. Where was this all coming from? How was it that I was to be this tale’s author? It was, for me, a very different writing experience; fresh and new and exciting, writing of a sort I’d never even considered in the past. It was also a revelation of sorts, that I could write this way, that I could write outside of my comfortable and familiar box. There was a sense of greater possibilities than I’d considered before. I’ve written in the past of my writing process being something like exploring new lands and cutting trails through them for others to follow. Writing Toby was like traveling to a different continent and starting the process there.
The box is tipped over on its side now, and I’m sitting out on one of the flaps, quite comfortable and very pleased by how this all turned out. I wonder what else is outside the box, waiting for me? Well, while I ponder that one, meet Toby, a very good dog.
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books, as well as in paperback.
It’s been my goal, from the beginning, to keep these pieces on the short side, to make them quick and easy reads. This entry refused to cooperate, so it’s being posted in two parts.
When I pulled The Way of Leyra’an from the file, my intention was to go through it to check for typos and such, and clean it up for self-publication as soon as possible. While doing so, I continued my investigation of the so-called “indie” author movement. What I learned convinced me that simply cleaning the manuscript up and turning it loose probably wouldn’t do. I needed outside input on the story, its qualities and shortcomings. Professional editors had been impressed by the book, but that wasn’t exactly a critique. Hiring an editor was not an option. My employment situation had become precarious and I had good reason to believe I would soon be unemployed. (I was, unfortunately, proven correct in this.) I needed to set money aside, not spend it. I latched onto the concept of beta readers, and pondered how to make use of it. All the while, I read through The Way of Leyra’an, correcting errors and making notes as ideas came to mind.
At the same time, I pulled together some amateur astronomy material I’d written for, but never posted to, my favorite astronomy forum. With some work I was able to blend it all together into a short memoir of my experiences as a star gazer in my teens, and how I came to pick up the pastime again as an adult. The idea had occurred to use this small book to test the waters of self-publishing. It became Mr. Olcott’s Skies – An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession. While I revisited the novel and began to first revise and then completely rewrite it, I used the memoir to learn what I needed to know in order to actually make a book. You know, those little things like fonts and formatting, cover art and design, product descriptions and tables of contents. (Actually, this part was a journey unto itself, and I found myself exploring things that I’d never considered would be part of the publishingg experience. That’s worth an essay to itself, someday.) The experience proved valuable down the road.
Meanwhile, The Way of Leyra’an became another book altogether. Rereading and reworking it, I discovered a different, and longer, story in the material. Cleaning up or even just expanding the book wouldn’t do. This was a trilogy, no doubt about it. On the day that this thought occurred – I’d been working with the original manuscript for more than a month – I decided to take the original idea and just start over. The Way of Leyra’an had served its purpose, and it was time to write The Luck of Han’anga. As I gained momentum and a story began to evolve, I remembered how deeply I’ve always enjoyed the process of making words do what I needed them to do. I remembered how good it felt to write. Life seemed less bleak and purposeless.
One day, while working on this new novel and enjoying that feeling of having gotten a scene just right, there occurred one of those moments of absolute clarity that we all experience a few times in our lives. I understood something and knew this thing absolutely. The gloom of the previous years was well and thoroughly banished, the lack of purpose completely expunged because I was writing again, and doing so not only with the intention of publishing but in full knowledge that it would be published. In that moment of clarity I understood the nightmares and the black moods. When something defines you, when that something exists as the very core of your being, as writing has always done for me, it’s more than merely disappointing to leave it aside and walk away. It is, for some of us at least, impossible to do so without harm. The moods and bad dreams were a manifestation of the mental and emotional damage being done by my attempt to walk away from writing. The new world of self-publishing came along just in time, and I’m pleased to say no permanent damage was done.
These feelings of relief, of finally being back on the right track, were heightened with the publication of my very first book. Mr. Olcott’s Skies was released in March of 2012 and was well-received. By then I’d completed a draft of The Luck of Han’anga and found some beta readers, all of them people I knew well enough to expect they would provide honest criticism. They did; some of it made me cringe a bit, but when I read what they said and re-examined the book, I couldn’t argue the points. So I made revisions and tried to learn from it all, with my eyes already on the next book. My wife went though the final manuscript and checked it for errors, resulting in a very clean copy and a much stronger ending for Book One. I applied the knowledge I’d gained publishing the memoir and hit the publish button, and the first book of the War of the Second Iteration series went live on June 7, 2012.
By then I was well into the first draft of Book Two, and was having trouble figuring out how to end it in a way that would allow the next book to wrap up the trilogy. I actually sat down at one point and sketched out a sort of timeline to illustrate roughly the sequence of events I needed in order to reach the final scene, which was already fixed in my mind. To my surprise the overall story arc fell into not three but five sub-arcs. This was more than I’d bargained for, but I accepted what the story was telling me and forged ahead. I couldn’t help myself. There was no angst or hand-wringing involved; I was having too much fun.
And so it went, through books Two, Three, and Four. The story evolved as I wrote it, and each book built on those that came before. I needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the details and maintain continuity. By Book Four I was rereading material in the previous volumes, in self-defense. I’d had no idea what I was getting into and the climb, while manageable, was pretty steep. Then it came time to write Book Five, and it was like heading straight for a wall.
How do you end a story that’s gone on for so long? I’d done so, in a manner of speaking, four times by then. But in each of those cases there was a next book ahead to carry things forward. There was no going forward after this, and I felt oddly constrained as I wrote. (The fact that the year in which I wrote Book Five was a troubled time surely didn’t help.) I needed this to work, to be the grand payoff, and I’d never done anything quite like this before. Previous experience with individual books just didn’t seem to carry any weight. How to stop this train without turning it into a train wreck?
The story itself eventually gave me the answer. As I wrote and figured out more of what the implacable foe was and could do, and led the characters through the discoveries they needed to make within the plot, the end shaped itself. And then it was written, beta read and revised – and the end of the process seemed to come on all of a sudden. I’m satisfied with how it turned out, and rather pleased to have pulled it off. Whether or not I truly succeeded, well, you’ll have to tell me!
When I hit the button and published Setha’im Prosh, it was a strangely anti-climactic experience. Yes, it was enormously gratifying, and yes, I feel a great pride in what I’ve accomplished, but… How is it possible this is really all said and done? This has been the center of things for more than five years. Where are all those characters I’ve come to know so well? It feels strange to walk around and not be wondering what tune Robert MacGregor should play on the bagpipes next, or what new tricks the Faceless have up their sleeves. The impulse to do such things has not abated, but this story is done. Where am I supposed to go from here?
Elsewhere, of course. Into another imaginary universe, of which I have no shortage, believe me. And I already know which one it will be.
It’s been my goal, from the beginning, to keep these pieces on the short side, to make them quick and easy reads. This entry refused to cooperate, so it’s being posted in two parts.
In early 2011, following certain revelations regarding an alleged revolution in self-publishing, I pulled an old manuscript out of an overstuffed file cabinet. The title of the book was The Way of Leyra’an. It was the first and only novel I’d written since completing a long-delayed B.S. in plant biology in 1998. Before my return to academia I’d written half a dozen novels (and rewritten all of them at least once), and enough short stories and magazine articles that I can no long remember the count. I’d sold some of the nonfiction, but not a single novel or short story. The sort of fall-back work I’d been doing while writing was wearing me out physically, so I went back to school to increase my range of options. As soon as the degree was done, I went back to writing fiction. Although it was easily the best thing I’d written to that point in my life, by that day in 2011 The Way of Leyra’an had spent the better part of a decade in that cabinet, and came very near to being my last work of fiction.
The first publisher to see it rejected it. This came as no surprise, since the odds are overwhelmingly against any given publisher saying “yes.” The rejection letter intrigued me, however, and encouraged me. It wasn’t a boilerplate response with a hastily scribbled signature at the bottom. It was an expression of regret. The editor liked the book! Unfortunately, he didn’t believe his company could find a viable market for it. They already had too much of that type of story in the pipeline. Bad luck regarding the marketability, but at least he liked the book! So I bundled The Way of Leyra’an up and sent it to the next publisher on my short list of those still accepting un-agented manuscripts – a list that has grown steadily shorter in the years that followed, or so I’m told. I waited and went about my business – working on student loans and getting accustomed to mortgage payments – and lo and behold, there came another rejection letter. It said essentially the same thing. Third time’s the charm, so they say. Whoever “they” are, they clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. The book bounced that time, too, with essentially the same letter coming along for the ride.
The message seemed clear – I needed to be better than every other aspiring writer, luckier than the rest, and have the psychic power to see into the future and avoid writing books that would be unmarketable by the time I finished them.
Knocked down three times, get up four, some would say. Persistence is easy to preach, but by that time I’d been knocked down and around by rejection letters for more than twenty years. I’d had enough. I didn’t send it out a fourth time. I packed it away, closed work-in-progress files on my computer, and quit. It was time to find other ways to spend my time when I wasn’t busy working to pay off those debts.
The consequences of this decision were not immediately apparent. In fact, for a few years it felt like I’d recovered from a long illness. I spent more time in the garden and returned to the world of amateur astronomy. The latter in particular soaked up a lot of creative energy, and the time I’d originally devoted to writing. It was (and is) an immensely enjoyable and rewarding hobby. But the feeling of emancipation didn’t last. At some point in 2007 I became aware that my basic attitude toward life had shifted in the wrong direction. I was more sarcastic and cynical, and more likely to see the negative side of things. A comment from my wife started the process of realizing I was headed for trouble. She said that I didn’t laugh as much as I used to, her way of asking what was wrong without making a complaint of it. Given the amount of humor that was a hallmark of our relationship, I was baffled and unsettled by the question – and I didn’t see it her way, which represented a hefty dose of denial on my part. Then I started to have the nightmare. It was a dark dream that repeated along variations on a theme, the central element being that I had gotten myself lost and, for some reason this was worse, couldn’t come up with a reason for being there. What purpose did it serve, I’d ask myself. And the answer would come: “None.” I’d then be seized by chest pains that lingered when I woke up in a cold sweat, leaving me to wonder if this time the heart attack was for real. It was never real. It was frightening nonetheless, and as the frequency of the nightmare increased, it started to wear me down.
That sense of being without direction or purpose was corrosive. I wasn’t as much fun to be with or work with, and I lost any sense that the work I was doing was worth anything or was going to take me anywhere I wanted or needed to go. I was considering asking my doctor to refer me to someone qualified to throw me a lifeline. Depression? No doubt about that. Nothing made much sense, fewer and fewer things seemed worth doing, and I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Oh, life wasn’t uniformly bleak. There were good times that diverted me and provided some relief, but more and more often, especially in winter, I would awaken to a black mood and the firm conviction that none of this was worth a damn.
All the while, Amazon and its Kindle e-reader were turning the world of writing and publishing upside down. I’d heard of the Kindle; being book-oriented regardless of what else was going on, I could hardly miss it. I remember my amazement the first time I saw and held one. There’d been e-readers before, but they were big, clunky disasters. This thing was like a gadget out of Star Trek. I was fascinated, and I immediately wanted one, but I had no clue regarding the effect it was having on the world at large. So I couldn’t have predicted how e-books would ultimately influence my life.
That changed when my wife and I had lunch with a couple I’ve known for quite a few years, one of whom had recently published her first novel with a small press outfit. Over lunch this friend mentioned her plan to self-publish her next book. I’m afraid my mind translated “self-publish” into “vanity press,” since the two had been nearly synonymous for many years. I tried not to react openly to this, but she knew what I was thinking – it was such a predictable reaction. The explanation that followed acquainted me with e-book direct publishing and print-on-demand paperbacks, developments that had passed me by because I’d stopped paying much attention to the publishing world. It sounded way too good to be true, but I looked into it anyway. What I learned sounded promising, and next time we were with these friends I said as much. The suggestion was made then that I pull out an “old” manuscript and try self-publishing it to see what would happen. Of course, I pulled out my most recent attempt, The Way of Leyra’an.
What came next will be the subject of the second part of this essay.
If you give a daydream a long enough leash it will become a story. If you let go of the leash, it’ll run away from you and find someplace suitable to thrive and grow. If you’re a writer, you have no choice but to follow it to that place.
There’s rarely a clear-cut trail that leads you to where the stray daydream finally comes to rest. You have to blaze the trail for yourself, even if the daydream left you with only a vague idea of which way to go. The process of bushwhacking your way to the destination the daydream-story has created is called writing the first draft.
Most writers I know face their greatest challenges while revising and editing a book. Some go so far as to proclaim anything from distaste for, to outright hatred of, this aspect of writing. For me, it’s just the opposite. The first draft puts the grey in my beard. Once I’ve got the first draft done the real fun begins. The trail to what that daydream became is open. The route to the destination that is the story’s ending can now be followed and reshaped to reach its greatest potential. That’s the destination I have in mind when I begin the journey that becomes a book. Once I’ve cut the trail to this place, I can set up camp and go back along the trail to clean it up. After all, I do want others to follow me. This is more easily said than done, so I can understand to a degree why some people feel the way they do, but for me this particular challenge is what it’s all about. As my Kentucky great-grandmother liked to say, “It isn’t work if you enjoy it!”
But I have to get there first, and establishing the trail head itself is the biggest challenge involved with blazing that trail. It isn’t unusual for me to start a project, get a chapter or two into it, and realize I’m headed in the wrong direction. When that feeling of having gone astray begins to develop, and I recognize it all too well, there’s nothing for it. I back up and start over. I may incorporate some of what I’ve written somewhere along the line, mostly by keeping the ideas in play, but I might start completely from scratch. Even after I’ve worked out of a false start and gained momentum, I very often find that the real trail head was some ways off from where I thought I needed to begin. It’s not unusual for me to cut out the very first chapter of a book when preparing it for beta readers. Sometimes the biggest mess of all is the trail head itself, and a better one needs to be found. So let’s say we start the journey by strolling down the hillside, instead of jumping awkwardly off that rocky outcrop.
You don’t make a journey like this alone, of course. Right from the start there’s going to be a character or two at the trail head with you. The characters that inhabit the daydream are, at this point, mere sketches. I know I need a man here, or a woman there, along with a situation that allows me to set their identities and begin the process of character building. I start out with a fair idea of who these companions are, and what they’re about, but as I cut my way through the wilderness and get to know them better, I often find out I’m wrong. They change with the journey, and that’s as it should be. Experience should show, and the best characters in fiction are always those who are at least a little different in the end from who and what they were in the beginning. Sometimes you learn more about them than you wanted to know, but in the end, the story is the stronger for it.
You don’t come at this task barehanded, of course. You need the proper tools to cut through the undergrowth and then clear the trail. The daydream spun itself out of who and what you are in the first place, and you are the sum total of all your experiences. Everything I’ve ever done, seen, heard, and felt; everything I touch or taste; every pain and exaltation, and all the people I’ve met and either cared about or despised; every book I’ve read – especially the books – all come ready to hand as the trail grows ever longer. Even the research I do is based on what I already know, which provides the frame of reference for the questions the story raises as I work my way to the trail’s end. And yes, I sometimes find myself shaping the right tool for the job and giving it the sharpest possible edge even while I work.
Now and then, from some high place along the way, I can see something of what’s ahead. That’s useful when it happens, so I always take notes! It often looks strangely familiar, even though I’ve never really passed this way before. But then, it was my own daydream, after all.
It’s a milestone. It’s also something that was quite likely inevitable, and in time may well become permanent. Now that it’s come, however, I find myself with mixed feelings about it.
Mr. Olcott’s Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession is no longer my number one seller. My novel The Luck of Han’anga has overtaken it. It’s by just a couple of copies, for the moment, but I’m so accustomed to the memoir outselling the first book of the sci-fi series that the realization that this is no longer the case feels rather odd.
Before any thought of self-published ever occurred to me, I gathered together material to use as a series of astronomy-related essays, intended for posting on the Cloudy Nights amateur astronomy forum. The project was never completed. As I was cleaning up the novel that eventually became The Luck of Han’anga, I realized that I had enough of this material to publish a small book of early astronomy memories. Doing so would provide valuable experience, and if I screwed up I would do so on a relatively small stage. Damage control, it seemed, would be easy, from what I knew of such things at that time. So when I turned The Luck of Han’anga over to beta readers, I began to work on the memoir in earnest, with the idea of using it as a sort of experiment, or a toe stuck in the proverbial waters. During the writing, it took on a life of its own, becoming much more than a test. On March 21st, 2011, I uploaded the book to Kindle Direct Press and Smashwords. It was quite the learning experience, indeed, and it did smooth the way for The Luck of Han’anga, which followed in June of that same year. By then, I’d seen a gratifying number of copies of the memoir sold, but fully expected the novel to go past the memoir in fairly short order.
That’s not what happened. Instead, the memoir sold steadily, and maintained the lead its head start gave it over the novel. It even held on to that lead when the next two novels were released, driving sales of the first novel in the series. Feedback from readers, along the way, both surprised me and helped explain what was happening. This little “experiment” was selling outside the intended niche market. While most of those who discovered Mr. Olcott’s Skies were in fact fellow amateur astronomers, a fair number had no such interests. Some of the non-astronomers were people who had encountered me in various social media venues. Others I can’t account for so easily. Either way, a couple of bucks – for the eBook version – apparently sounded like a small price to pay to satisfy their curiosity, so they gave it a try and found themselves reading a book that reminded them of quieter times in their own lives. It’s a book that apparently takes readers back to memories of their own childhood adventures. To say that this is gratifying would be an understatement.
For more than two years, Mr. Olcott’s Skies led the pack. A small slice of life set in words, an attempt to learn self-publishing, aimed at a niche market and going happily wide of that mark, this little experiment has been one of the real joys of my self-published journey. In our household it came to be known as The Little Book That Could – a reference to an old and revered children’s book. This year, The Luck of Han’anga finally started to eat away at that lead. As the gap began to close, I found myself rooting for the little guy. Perhaps that was foolish, but I couldn’t help myself. Every time a copy sold, I found myself grinning. Still in the lead! Way to go, Little Book That Could!
And now it’s in second place, and that leaves me feeling a bit melancholy. Silly, really, since the book is still “in print,” and will be for as long as I have anything to say about it. (One of the true advantages to being self-published is that you can keep a book out there indefinitely, no matter how slowly it sells.) It will sell additional copies. There will be more readers sharing that starlit journey with me. It may even regain the lead. You never know! And yet, I’m sitting here feeling the way I do when the team I root for loses the World Series. Yes, there’s always “next year,” but still …
I once heard an author declare that the most bothersome question you could ask a writer of fiction was “Where do you get your ideas?” This happened at a science fiction convention sometime in the middle 1980s, during a panel discussion. The other authors present wore knowing smiles as they nodded in agreement. A long conversation followed, and an interesting one, that provided the audience with plenty to think about, but no real answers. In the time since I’ve resumed writing fiction, I think I finally understand why they failed to provide a definitive answer.
There really isn’t one.
Imagination is a thing poorly understood by science. The same is true of creativity in general. All human beings are capable of dreaming, and by that I don’t mean visions in your sleep, but dreams in the waking world, in which we ponder how things might be different, perhaps better, in our lives. Such dreams lead people to set goals and test limits, to see whether or not, or to what degree, their dreams can be made real. They have practical dreams, firmly set within a real-world frame of reference that entices them with the possibility of something potentially attainable. It seems doable, and so they get to work.
Artists, musicians, and writers go further. Their daydreams may have, upon realization within their respective media, practical consequences. After all, I’ve always dreamed of being a successful author. I still do. But that isn’t really the motivation. Rendering imagination, the daydream itself if you will, into a tangible form, drives the process. If you are of that inclination, you can’t avoid pursuing the vision, whatever it is. As a good friend was fond of saying about writing, some years ago, you can’t not do it. I learned the truth of this the hard way. I stopped writing fiction. I told the daydreams to leave me the hell alone. They refused to comply. It was an awkward and deeply unsettling episode in my life. Artists, musicians, and writers take it further, because the real ones have no choice.
So here I am, a writer with a head full of ideas and no clear way to tell you how they come into being. I daydream, and the daydreams become stories. Sounds pretty simple, but how does it work? And why? Why do I dream the dreams I do, about civilizations in the future, ships and swordsmen, hostile aliens, and worlds like our own – only different? Why does my imagination generate such things and not, for example, innovative business plans or experimental protocols? For that matter, why words and not music, or pictures? Why do I even have such a fertile imagination in the first place?
I can provide no solid answers to any of these questions, only the sort of speculation that comes from looking back across the years. I’ve always been this way. For the record, it really is a blessing, not a burden – which is not to say it’s always easy. As a youngster, before the idea of writing fiction ever occurred to me, I had a penchant for spinning yarns and windy stories. I’ve always related to the kid in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip because I lived in a similar imaginary world, and all too often the line between reality and imagination faded away. The consequences of that fade were sometimes awkward. It might be honest and accurate to say I was born with that style of imagination, that the root of it all is in some quirk of gene expression, but by itself that doesn’t explain the way the phenomenon manifests itself. The way my imagination works may be a consequence of the times in which I spent my childhood, the Sixties and early Seventies, when the race to the Moon was on and Cold War nuclear paranoia was palpable – even if you were too young to really understand the rhetoric. “What if,” was the big question on those days. The “what if” scenarios were not always pleasant.
I was also a skinny kid, and not terribly sociable. Being a bit of a misfit, the urge to escape was natural, and having a lurid imagination being fed by equally lurid speculations regarding space travel and nuclear war, you can easily guess the direction in which I escaped. I read mostly science fiction, adding fantasy somewhere in high school when I discovered Tolkien. The addiction to print was an early development, and the inclination to write in a similar vein just seemed to co-evolve. And maybe that really does explain it all.
Or not. As explanations go, it still feels incomplete. And even if it’s adequate for those reading these words, it says nothing about the creativity and imagination of others. It’s all surely variations on a theme, but others are writing those themes. This is just me.
These musings merely touch at the roots of a process that becomes, for me, a novel or a short story. Roots grow into places dark and fertile and strange. Maybe this is as deep as I should dig, for now.
It doesn’t take much of an effort to find weblog pieces and online discussions filled with curmudgeonly commentary on the possible elimination of “real” paper books. Books printed on paper, the curmudgeons fear, will soon be rendered extinct, unable to compete with the convenience of eBooks and magazines available on laptops, tablet computers, and dedicated ereaders. This looming apocalypse clearly arouses the disgust of many book lovers, with a few foolishly adopting the “cold dead hands” rhetoric for which NRA activists are known. Most are merely resigned to the changes in progress, shaking their heads (and sometimes fists) and grousing in fine curmudgeonly fashion that the world that follows this apocalypse will be inferior to the world they knew.
For lovers of books and reading, it will surely be a different world. But inferior? I don’t buy that. I’m eager to own my first ereader.
Now, like the curmudgeons bemoaning the sad fate of “real” books, I’m a heavy reader. I understand their love of reading. Books have been a major element of my life for as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t a proper Christmas unless one of the packages contained books, and when asked my preference for a birthday gift I usually had a title or two in mind. (If I didn’t, the adults in my life were very good at picking out volumes that pleased me.) So I can say with complete sincerity that I love books and reading. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the smell of books, and the sound of the pages turning. Most of all, I find the interaction between the words and my mind and imagination enormously gratifying – I always have. And in the joy I so often feel while reading, whether for entertainment or edification (or both at once), I have found an understanding of why my reaction to eBooks is acceptance, not resistance.
I love to read. Reading, not the book itself, is the thing. Flipping the pages, smelling the paper, feeling the weight – all of these things are sensations I associate with reading, but they are not the act of reading. The central matter is my mental and emotional interaction with the words, and through them the ideas and stories presented by the authors who arranged those words in the hope that someone might one day read them. Whether I’m adding to my knowledge of history or science, or escaping reality for a few minutes or hours, it’s the reading that does it for me. That’s the experience that counts. Once I’m into a book, the sounds and smells of bookishness are lost on me. It turns out that this happens as readily for me with an eBook as one made of paper. So whichever way the reading world turns in terms of delivery methods – and it’s pretty obvious where things are headed – my reading habit won’t be affected. In fact, the most likely effect will be an increase in the amount of reading I do. I’m not getting any younger, you see, and I feel an ache in hands and wrists when I hold a substantial volume, and it’s ever more common for me to set a book aside because arthritis is having its way with me, and not because I’ve run out of time to read. But all books weigh the same when in a digital format, and a good ereader weighs next to nothing.
The books I currently own will stay where they are; I won’t be replacing many volumes with digital counterparts. Except for a few frequently used references, I can’t see any point. But many new books, especially works of fiction, will come my way in a digital format. I’ve already used the Kindle and Nook reading apps on my laptop to discover new authors, and this process will only accelerate when I have a dedicated ereader. I see myself, in years to come, buying either paper books or eBooks, whatever suits the needs of the moment, and for as long as both exist.
But if paper ever does go the way of the dodo, I’ll still be reading. I’ll be reading eBooks.
Curmudgeons will no doubt read these words (assuming any of them read weblogs online, which come to think of it is rather unlikely) while frowning and shaking their heads. I’ll leave them to it. There’s no point arguing with those who espouse a lost cause, and eBooks are not going to be a “fad” as so many predicted when the Kindle first hit the market. As evidence of this, consider the UofA student union, in which I am typing this entry. Yesterday I strolled through the union and kept a count of people I noticed reading. Those reading something on a laptop only counted if I saw nothing animated on the screen, a small number. I found 58 people reading, and 33 of them were using ereaders of some sort; you really don’t need to do the math to know what those numbers reveal. Of greater interest to me was the fact that readers of print and eBook alike had the same fixed stares of readers everywhere when lost in a story. There was no visible difference between readers of books and eBooks; the experience seemed the same for them, either way. The current generation of eBooks has succeeded because, for those who desire the experience of reading, they ultimately provide exactly the same thing. Being hung up on the superficial aspects, paper crinkling and the scent of ink, often amounts to little more than grasping after rationalizations to hide a knee-jerk reaction to change.
Study history and you will soon learn that it’s the nature of human civilization to change. And when you understand the pervasive nature of social change you realize there are only two ways to react. You can embrace change, work it and direct it and try to mitigate its less savory aspects. Or you can dig in your heels, hit the brakes, and circle the wagons. But history also teaches us that those who simply try to prevent change are eventually swept away and rendered irrelevant. Those who argue against eBooks and ereaders, especially those who try to prove there’s actually something harmful in such things will, with their objections, soon be forgotten. Their point is already moot, as my informal count in the student union yesterday showed. Books in digital form, or whatever eBooks evolve into, will be the way people read in the near future. And since I plan to read in the future, I will read eBooks.
Under Desert Stars 