C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

02/11/2011 • 3:52 PM 8

Writers: Self-publishing links

Patricia Benesh writes in the Huffington Post about the five questions you should ask yourself before going the self-publishing route.

At Self-publishing Central there’s a blog post about the journey to publication and finding peer support along the way.

Eoin Purcell‘s blog writes about the state of the traditional publishing industry and how it’s not all bad news. In fact, libraries are trending up.

And Jeff Bennington over at The Writing Bomb writes a compelling post evaluating Lightning Source versus Create Space. Do check that out!

Related Articles

Writers: Are you skeptical about self-publishing? (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers Top Ten: Why blogging about publishing is important (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers: How to Publish on Smashwords (by Guest blogger Rebecca Senese) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers: DIY vs traditional publishing (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: authors, blogs & blogging, Books, DIY, ebooks, self-publishing, Useful writing links, web reviews, Writers, writing tips, Business, Create Space, Create Space versus Lightning Source, Do it yourself, E-book, Huffington Post, Lightning Source, Publish, publishing, Publishing and Printing, self-publishing, writer, writing

02/10/2011 • 8:47 PM 1

Writers: Self-published book wins big on CBC’s Canada Reads

Cover of The Best Laid Plans

CBC’s Canada Reads winner is Terry Fallis,

**author of The Best Laid Plans.**

Congratulations to Mr. Fallis

for his well-deserved victory.

You know what’s really great about this story, right? Mr. Fallis submitted his manuscript to agents and publishers everywhere and was turned down flat.

Next, he podcasted his book.

Then he self-published his book.

That would have been the end of it, but when he won the Stephen Leacock award, finally McClelland & Stewart paid attention.

Now Best Laid Plans is celebrated.

(I wonder, are any of the publishers who passed up on the opportunity to publish the book questioning their judgment today? Of course not. That’s a rhetorical question.)

Shrill British paint guru Debbie Travis defended The Birth House (poorly). She might have fared better if she understood that (a) she should have read all of Best Laid Plans instead of dismissing it with such disdain, and (b) she might even have won if she wasn’t so damn cranky. When she dismissed other contestants’ objections as “ridiculous” I knew she already lost.

The Birth House might be a good book, but after Debbie Travis’s poor representation, I’m sure I’ll never give that one a chance. It’s kind of important to be likeable, even in debate. No, it’s not fair to the author, Ami McKay, (sorry Ms. McKay!) but it’s clear it’s more diatribe than novel.

Note to CBC Radio‘s Q host Jian Ghomeshi: Maybe she’s good for ratings but she’s no good for books. A judge who doesn’t read all of the books, and then has the temerity to condemn it without reading it all, shouldn’t be back on air.

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis wins Canada Reads (theglobeandmail.com)
Best Laid Plans tops Canada Reads (thestar.com)
Canada Reads names 2011 winner (cbc.ca)
Terry Fallis wins Canada Reads competition (arts.nationalpost.com)
How authors and other experts can use audio products (trafcom.typepad.com)
Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel out of competition (windsorstar.com)
Essex County by Jeff Lemire makes final five on Canada Reads list (windsorstar.com)

Filed under: authors, Books, Contest announcement, podcasts, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Rant, self-publishing, writing contests, Ami McKay, Best Laid Plans, Canada Reads, CBC, Debbie Travis, Jian, McClelland & Stewart, Terry Fallis, The Birth House

02/10/2011 • 5:21 AM 1

The Charles Bukowski Quote

Image via Wikipedia

From the novel, Hollywood:

The screenplay went well. Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

~Charles Bukowski, Hollywood, p. 88, 1989, HarperCollins

He’s an ordinary guy who transcends ordinary. His poetry inspired me to write poems (that he would hate.) His prose reminded me how easy writing should feel, even if I don’t share his ease at the keyboard all the time. He was a bewildered, unapologetic drunk. He didn’t write from his brain or his heart. Bukowski wrote from his balls. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, I recommend it (whether or not you enjoy the image of writing that seems to originate from the genitalia.)

Hollywood takes a delicious stab at Jack Kerouac for whom Bukowski obviously had no respect. It’ a fun read, especially when Norman Mailer shows up in a disguise so thin you can imagine Bukowski giving you a funny little wink.

Bukowski is the uncle you’re supposed to hate, but you can’t bring yourself to think he’s unredeemable. There is an innocence there, like a child unaware of social norms that define good behavior.

Related Articles

Charles Bukowski: Craphound [Books] (gawker.com)
You: Charles Bukowski’s last ‘muse’ lives with US author’s ghost (france24.com)
A Book That Changed My Life (fishofgold.wordpress.com)

Filed under: authors, Books, Poetry, Writers, Arts, authors, Charles Bukowski, HarperCollins, Jack Kerouac, poetry

02/08/2011 • 11:03 PM 3

Writers: The short form is roaring back

Image by gharness via Flickr

I met The Fab Rebecca Senese (I think of her as TFRS at all times) at the Writers’ Union symposium. We went to Tims and went through that excited decompression phase. You know the one. It’s where you are packed with new information to mesh and meld with your old data and you talk fast to get it all out and solidify new, useful neuropathways.

She made an observation that really got my attention:

Amid the hubbub, TFRS said that e-books were a sure opportunity for the short form to make a strong comeback. Got a short flight or need a distraction over lunch? Read a short story or two. If you just want to gulp down a tale but don’t have time for a whole book, enjoy a novella after work.

Makes sense to me. I love short fiction. For instance, it’s a mystery to me why people say they love Ernest Hemingway‘s books, but I do like some of his short stories very much.

Short stories have been relegated to the back of the bus (read: unread literary journals.)

Until recently people have been buying books by weight, so publishers laughed at their puniness and demanded big doorstops they could sell. Length is an issue with paper, constrained as it is by the strictures of the printing press and bookstore manager’s expectations.

Novellas are ignored by many professional critics who often don’t take it seriously because they think the short punch packs less heft behind it. As if we all feel that way all the time.

A good short story takes talent to write and in some ways is a different skill set from the novel. (These critics must be those same twits who scoff at Twitter just because they can’t put together one clever coherent thought in less than 140 characters.)

Now with e-books, the answers to those objections are: Who needs publishers for that? What’s a professional critic and what is this “newspaper” thing you’re babbling about? And lit journals? What’s that? Is all this stuff available online?

Click this link to see Rebecca Senese’s short fiction.

Please do take a look.

Death of a Short Story (writeanything.wordpress.com)
The Art of A Short Story (writeanything.wordpress.com)
The Story Problem: 10 Thoughts on Academia’s Novel Crisis (themillions.com)
The Danger of Writing Flash Fiction (writinghood.com)
Writers: Are you skeptical about self-publishing? (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: authors, blogs & blogging, Books, ebooks, self-publishing, short stories, Twitter, Writers, Arts, book, E-book, Ernest Hemingway, fiction, Literature, Online Writing, Rebecca Senese, self-publishing, short stories, short story, Twitter, writer, Writers Resources

02/08/2011 • 1:11 AM 0

Book Distribution Company Bankruptcy

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One-hundred and twenty-five employees are out of a job at HB Fenn, a major Canadian book distributor. It’s cold in Toronto and those rents are killer. Best of luck to all those employees.

I’ve worked for a publisher as they began to collapse. I was working at Lester & Orpen Dennys just before they went under. It was okay for me. When I came in, I knew I was hired for a short-term job. I was one of the lucky ones in that I bounced on to another publishing job at Cannon Books. The people who stayed longer had to face looking for work in publishing just as everyone else at the company was looking for work. It must have been a terrible situation for some.

For those who missed the details: HB Fenn, declared bankruptcy late last week. Until recently they distributed more than 50,000 titles including MacMillan, Whitecap Books and American sci-fi heavyweight, Tor.

According to The National Post, this marks “the largest collapse of a Canadian publishing company since General Distribution Services/Stoddart Publishing went under in August 2002.”

Publishers have to try to get skids of books back but that may be very difficult while the company deals with paying off creditors. Authors will get it in the shorts as bookstores wait for cartons of books to arrive that never shall. This is a bad blow to Canadian book publishing, especially since, increasingly, publishers have less to offer but could still pride themselves on their bookstore access and distribution system.

HB Fenn once had controlling interest in the now-defunct Key Porter books, as well. Key Porter was once a major player in Canadian publishing.One company’s death would be enough of a bad sign. Two companies might be a bald symptom of the trend down we’ve been seeing.

NEXT POST: THE PROMISED BLOG-O-RAMA—ONE OF MANY TO COME—ABOUT THE WRITERS’ UNION OF CANADA SYMPOSIUM ON THE STATE OF PUBLISHING. (Yes, this post is a clue.)

Related Articles

HB Fenn initiates bankruptcy (thestar.com)
H.B. Fenn book distributor files for bankruptcy (cbc.ca)
Key Porter Books confirms it is suspending operations (theglobeandmail.com)
Publishing house Key Porter Books ceases operations: report (theglobeandmail.com)
Key Porter shuts down (thestar.com)
Could Authors Be Liable to Consumers If an eBookstore Dies? (gigaom.com)
Writers: So-called experts & the digital revolution (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Books, publishing, book distribution, books, Business, HB Fenn, health of publishing industry, Key Porter Books, Lester & Orpen Dennys, Publish, Publishing and Printing, Toronto

02/07/2011 • 7:23 AM 8

Writers: How I edit

Image via Wikipedia

When I get a manuscript, I go through it carefully, of course, but there are many practicalities to keep in mind.

Most important commandment:

Make the author look good.

You want it to be correct and you want to preserve the writer’s voice and enhance the readability of the text. The author (if self-published) may wish to keep some idiosyncratic format (which is fine as long as it’s easily understood by the reader and consistent.) A publisher may have some requirements peculiar to that house. Some have preferred style guides, like the AP Style Guide or the Chicago Manual of Style or may prefer Canadian spelling to American spelling.

In the manuscript window I use the Track Changes feature in Word so the author sees every change I make, including my comments. The author then accepts or rejects each edit during the revision process.

I have some preferences, too. I avoid passive voice and too many adverbs where it’s reasonable to do so since those often indicate a weak verb choice. I strip out excess use of the comma. Commas used to be used more in text but now it’s generally accepted commas slow the reader. Semi-colons are used too much and are often used incorrectly (and almost always slow the reader.) Gratuitous exclamation points indicate drama where there is none. Excess dialogue tags (i.e. said, replied, said, replied) can also be stripped out. Run-on sentences must be broken up. Sentence length, paragraph length and order are more evaluations to make and may conflict with formatting considerations.

(There are numerous other considerations: factual issues, narrative arc, missed opportunities, missing scenes, orphaned characters etc.,… which I’m not going to delve into in this post.)

I also have a bunch of other pages ready in the background. They are typically these:

Google, Wikipedia, Canadian and American spelling dictionaries, Chicago Manual of Style (I have the hard copy, too), Ask.com, and my email window so I can quickly jump to query the author or publisher as necessary. I’ve also used a legal dictionary and a Spanish-English dictionary. Looks like I’ve attained my childhood dream of working on the bridge of the Enterprise.

I keep a legal pad beside me to make notes (and track my time so I know I’m staying on schedule for the day.)

Editing has changed a lot. Before the Internet, there was a lot more getting up and down to run to check a reference source. Now it’s all on my pixellated desktop. I take a break every hour to do air squats (it’s a 4 Hour Body exercise I like) and the rest of the exercise comes from running back and forth from the coffee maker to the bathroom. Ah, the glamor of being a book editor.

The take away is:

Your word processing program’s spell check isn’t enough.

NEXT POST:

MY REACTIONS TO AND REVIEWS OF THE WRITER’S UNION SYMPOSIUM ON THE STATE OF PUBLISHING.

Writers: Dump your preconceptions (and your word processor)

Image representing Dropbox as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Just a quick note to say I’m back from The Writers’ Union of Canada Toronto symposium on the state of publishing. I’ll be going through my notes and giving out reviews and information a bit at a time in coming days as I unpack my notes and cogitate. The conference was packed with information to act upon. Sorry for the tease, but I’m busy setting up a new browser (Opera) and a new file management system (Dropbox) tonight. (Both are free and come highly recommended by a guy you should bookmark, get to know, subscribe to and read assiduously: Ross Laird. More on that in a moment.)

I met some nice potential clients and made a couple of new friends. Since last year’s experience at two writers’ conferences I realize I’ve been impatient for people to catch up with my worldview. At one conference a publisher displayed a pathological resistance to e-book reality. At the next conference I met my first e-reader power user who pledged never to buy a p-book again. I’ve been harping on the change from vanity publishing to self-publishing and all that entails ever since. So it was that I became cynical about this weekend’s symposium. I was so used to the sound of my own voice saying “the future is now” — voice in the wilderness that I am — that I didn’t think anyone was catching up. In most ways, the Writers’ Union certainly has caught up and is forging ahead with the new publishing reality. (I’ll address how they haven’t changed in another post soon.)

The Nugget You Need Tonight

Tech guru Ross Laird opened his first lecture with this:

SELF-PUBLISHING IS MAINSTREAM.

Note that he didn’t say it will be some day.

His message was strong: stop looking backward because the future of reading is on devices. Choosing self-publishing is to embrace a startling degree of freedom, fun, adventure, work and independence. Scary cool, huh? It was relief to hear someone articulate what I’ve been saying (although he’s more tech-oriented, glib and has slides.)

There is much to chew over from the symposium, but for tonight I’ll start you off with this link:

Read Ross Laird’s article on why you shouldn’t write on a word processor.

Tomorrow morning’s post:

How I Edit

I promise you’ll find this useful.

I’m deep into a heavy edit for a client this week but I’ll throw out some more gems I picked up at the symposium in coming days.

There is a lot of stuff happening all at once for me, this blog, my writing and my editing. It will take some time to get to it all.

Happy days.

It’s all scary cool.

Since You Asked: Writing Symposium Link (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Four Examples of Word Processing Software (brighthub.com)
The ultimate novel template for any word processor (davidhewson.com)
Literature and Latte – Links for Writers (literatureandlatte.com)
8 iPad Apps for Brilliant Writing (copyblogger.com)
Online word processors: Awesome and primitive (news.cnet.com)
Writers: Why self-publishing sucks (and what you can do about it) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Publishing: Change or Die (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Books, DIY, ebooks, Editing, getting it done, publishing, Rant, self-publishing, Useful writing links, Dropbox, Microsoft Word, Opera, publishing, stop using a word processor, Vanity press, Word processor, Writers Resources, writing symposium

02/04/2011 • 7:23 AM 16

Writers: Use a spill file as you edit

Image via Wikipedia

As you revise your writing, it can be difficult to let some passages go. Maybe a scene or chapter is just too long. Maybe one part of the narrative jigsaw puzzle sounds good but just isn’t working with everything else that works.

Editing yourself (before you hire an editor or send it on to beta readers) is difficult. You don’t want to lose gems, even when they aren’t working.

A spill file makes editing decisions easier. Open a blank document. As you go through your work, cut and paste passages that aren’t working into your spill file. It’s not just deleted and gone. It’s still there if you decide you want it back. Chances are that when you’re done, you won’t want it back.

The spill file is the writer’s wedding album: you make a big deal out of it and then hardly, if ever, look at it again.

But you’ll feel better, be more efficient and, if there is something to treasure in the spill file, you can easily bring it back into your story or start a new story from that nugget.

Writers: Take a penny, leave a penny (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers: Five editing tricks and tips (plus editing marks) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers: How to tell when your manuscript is ready (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Editing: How to take advice (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: authors, Books, Editing, Editors, getting it done, manuscript evaluation, publishing, writing tips, Cut copy and paste, edit, editing, Writing & Editing

02/03/2011 • 7:04 AM 1

Writers: Love in the time of Book Trailers

Filed under: authors, book trailer, Books, Intentionally Hilarious, publishing, amazon rankings, authors, book trailer, books, funny, funny video, writers

02/02/2011 • 2:54 PM 5

It’s official: Despite my weight loss, I’m an Editor-at-large

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In addition to my regular projects, I’m editing books for Five Rivers. This was posted on the Five Rivers Facebook Page today by the publisher, Lorina Stephens:

This year marks a pivotal year for Five Rivers, with four books due for release, and the possibility of an additional two, many from debut authors, some from recognized and beloved experts.

Because of increased editorial demands, we’ve sought out another editor for our team, and are pleased to present our Editor-at-large, Robert Chute.

Robert “Chazz” Chute graduated from The University of King’s College with an honours degree in Journalism. After working in daily newspapers, he graduated from the Banff Publishing Workshop (Books and Magazines) and moved to Toronto to work in book publishing.

He has been a proofreader and slush pile evaluator (Harlequin), a publicist and senior editor (The Canadian Book Information Centre) and a book sales rep (Lester & Orpen Dennys and Cannon Book Distributors.) During that time he was also a co-founder of The Point, The Newsletter of Newsletters and junior editor for Film Canada Yearbook. He also vetted fiction manuscripts for authors.

After 16 years working in the alternative health field, he writes the regular back page column for Massage & Bodywork Magazine for which he was recently nominated for a Maggie Award. These days Chazz is writing and polishing manuscripts again full-time. And now part of Five Rivers’ editorial team.

We are thrilled to add Chazz to our masthead.