Welcome to Writesville

The Ever-Expanding Wikipedia

PoeWar.com has caught a bit of news about the highly popular Wikipedia – the Internet’s encyclopedia of knowledge that is created and edited by everyday people.

The Wikipedia is now expanding its reach by providing its massive collection of knowledge on print, CDs, and DVDs. It was a matter of time before they dominated other mediums.

I personally enjoy my research with the Wikipedia. There really isn’t any limit to what’s available through that resource, and I post references to them all the time.

Read Wikipedia May Soon Be Available In Print

Are the Number of Novel and Poetry Readers Declining?

John Hewitt, of PoeWar.com, has posed an interesting question regarding the decline in readers for novels and books of poetry: do you think this trend will continue?

Even better, why do you suppose the number of readers has been declining over the last decade or so?

After giving it some thought, I could only come up with one possible reason: the increase in interest of the digital world. Or, more specifically, audio books. I know it’s a stretch, but I have a feeling it may have a good deal to do with it.

The audio book industry has done nothing but pick up steam for the last few years. With many people trying to cut corners and save time, audio books make the perfect substitute. Wouldn’t you think? Why sit still and read for two hours (who has that kind of lounge time?), when you could be listening to your favorite book in, let’s say, your daily commute?

I’m sure there are other factors involved, but this one sticks out at me the most. Of course, I could be completely missing the point, or may be way off base here.

If you can think of any reasons to the above problem, let me know. I’d love to hear from you!

Three Strikes Kaavya and You’re Out

Since my last posting about this innocent-looking young woman, I haven’t really followed up with her story. I missed out on something fascinating, because things have turned out worse than I had thought possible.

Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, well, shame on me. But three times? Good grief. The shame is all yours now, Kaavya.

Not only did Kaavya get caught plagiarizing a single author, she’s been caught plagiarizing three.

The news is a bit old, but it’s still shocking to me. I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now, knowing that she just lost out on a $500,000 contract. She’s only 19. She’s got a full life ahead of her knowing what she did. I wonder if she actually feels bad?

I’d be hittin’ the drink if I knew I just let half of a million slip through my fingertips.

Read more about this at Writer’s Blog.

Mr. Prairie Home Companion Has Had It!

I like Garrison Keillor. Have you heard of him? He’s the host in the pretty popular A Prairie Home Companion. I’m not sure where else it’s aired, but I listen to it during the weekend on NPR. Pretty good stuff!

As funny and humble as he can be sometimes, it looks like he’s a bit fed up with whining writers.

“I have had it with writers who talk about how painful and harrowing and exhausting and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE it is for them to put words on paper and how they pace a hole in the carpet, anguish writ large on their marshmallow faces, and feel lucky to have written an entire sentence or two by the end of the day.”

In which he really boils it all down by this statement:

“It's the purest form of arrogance: Lest you don't notice what a brilliant artist I am, let me tell you how I agonize over my work. To which I say: Get a job.”

I’m not sure how serious he was when writing this; I’m sure there’s a bit of honesty in there. Otherwise, I kind of lifted my eyebrows a bit while reading it. I agree in a way, just because I don't really like whiners in general.

Now, let me get going. I’ve been working all day pounding out words, only to trash them. It was a painful, harrowing, and exhausting process. God help me… ;)

Read My opinion Garrison Keillor: Writers who whine about work are full of the wrong stuff.

John Hewitt’s Secrets Revealed

Wow. That’s about all I can say for this article (thesis is more like it). For those of you who have blogs related to writing (and other topics for that matter), you would do good to read what John has written. This is of course if you’re looking to expand your blog traffic, and revenue, which I’m always looking to do.

In the article, John analyzes the past 13 years related to his blogging/website/writing adventures. He also provides statistics as to what the most popular sub-topics are, and who his visitors are.

Now, mind you, I kind of scan-read the whole thing, as it’s lonnggg, but I got some great info out of it.

The one important aspect to being successful in the blogging world, in whatever topic you’re in, is time and persistence. This goes for just about everything. PoeWar.com (John’s site) is a wonderful example of this. Stick around long enough, write pretty good content on a regular basis, and you should see some of the same results. Heck, John’s site just got selected for the 2006 Writer’s Digest Best 101 Websites award. Maybe I can be on that list…sometime in the next 30 years!

Read Audience Analysis of PoeWar.com

Can We Have Some More Controversy, Please?

Well, since the April 18th post went up, my traffic has jumped quite a bit. After doing a bit of digging, I realized that it now seems miss Kaavya Viswanathan is being accused of plagiarism. Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Publicity now seems to go hand-in-hand with controversy. Popular authors, be warned!

This article that I’m referencing comes from an anonymous comment from that post. Thanks to whoever left it. It’s a very thorough piece that even compares the “alleged” plagiarized sentences between the two works.

I read the comparisons, and have to say that I’m a bit intrigued now. I see a bit of a resemblance (and maybe that’s enough – or not). It’s going to be a long battle as there were no blatant copies, at least from what I could tell.

I’m also interested to see what the ramifications are going to be. Will Kaavya lose that 500k contract? Will she gain millions, like James Frey did? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read the article and tell me whether you think plagiarism is involved.

UPDATE:  It looks like Kaavya has admitted to copying, however, it looks like she may not be completely off of the hook yet.

The Fibonacci Poem

Gregory, from GottaBook, has come up with a unique way to combine both the Fibonacci sequence, with the art of writing poems. The Fibonacci sequence, if you aren’t aware, is a pattern of numbers like:

1,1,2,3,5,8…

In other words, start with 0 and 1, and add them together. Each result is then added to the previous number. It’s a popular series of numbers that can be seen just about anywhere (in nature, in music, in art, etc). Now there are poems built on this sequence.

Right now, Gregory’s Phenomenon is traveling the web like a wild fire, especially after being posted at Slashdot.org. There are already 200+ comments, and plenty of poems to read. I even decided to give it a shot. I’ll leave you to enjoy my pitiful Fib poem:

Fear
Is
My tool
In writing.
I want to scare you,
Because it is so fun to do.

Read more about Fib poems here. Thanks to Writers Blog for posting this news.

Who Bought the Book? And Other Things…

Ok, first of all, I’m really interested to know who bought the Writing Fiction Step by Step book through Amazon yesterday. Email me, if you’re interested in working on the exercises together (critiquing mainly). It will be a great opportunity for some good feedback.

This goes for anyone else that might be interested in improving their fiction writing. If there’s enough of an interest, I may create another category specifically for exercises by other writers (similar to this one).

One last thing: I’m going to let the poll run for one more week. Thanks to those who have taken the time to vote. Feedback for the site is important to me, as the site is geared towards helping other aspiring writers (as well as myself). If you have anything that you’d like to suggest to improve Writesville, feel free to let me know via email or comments. Thanks!

Where’s My $500,000 Contract?

Once again, here’s another example of how age doesn’t really matter when it comes to writing novels and bestsellers. We talked about this a little while ago, in regards to Christopher Paolini and his bestselling trilogy, Eragon. You can read more about that here.

Now, there’s Kaavya Viswanathan (don’t ask me to pronounce the name), who has landed a $500,000 two-book contract, including movie rights that were just sold to DreamWorks.

Although her writing is vastly different than what I write, I still find some wonderful motivation through this brief article. Heck, I’d be happy with a nice $5,000 contract. I'm daydreaming now, so I'll let you go.

Read How 'Opal' will make teen famous

The Meaning of Success

Martha O’Connor, author of Bitch Posse, has an interesting post about what it really means to be successful (related to writing). I figured it would be a good reference, as I’ve rambled about this before (in a round about way).

Success is a special case for each individual. One person’s monetary gain might not necessarily mean success for another. Martha stated it better when she wrote:

“If quality is all about monetary success, then Britney Spears is a musical genius. If success=money, then Coldplay is actually the best band in the world right now. GUH.”

Kind of puts a little bit of this into perspective, doesn’t it? Anyway, take a gander if you get a chance; it’ll make you re-think what you’re really after. Well, at least a little.

Read Success or Sucks-Ass?