Readers and writers blog

. . . These days, everybody’s written a book.

I’ve heard that a lot, and I’ll bet you have, too. The Internet has been the latest technological advance to quicken this truism. Before that, it was the personal computer, the word processor, the typewriter, the advent of the ballpoint pen and cheap paper, and they were probably saying it in Johannes Gutenberg’s day.

What with that movable type these days, everybody’s written a book.

Like a disconcerting number of truisms, it isn’t true. Sure, everybody wants to write a book, everybody says they ought to write a book, but not everybody does. Not everybody can.

But for those willing to try, the Internet and websites like our own R&W Blog do offer a new tool, the e-book-in-progress — for example, that of our latest featured writer, Joseph Cigan, called Sniper in the Mist.

Now there’s nothing new about a work-in-progress — WIPs always have been sent to other authors and readers for their reactions and advice — but the Internet gives an e-book-in-progress a potentially much larger audience.¹

This is the fifth straight blog entry I’ve written about this subject, and I guess the word ‘harping’ comes to mind. We haven’t had much response to the series other than a comment from another writer we’re featuring, Steve Karmazenuk, author of The Unearthing.²

But as we’ve said before, this is why this website-weblog went up in the first place, and we’ve signed on for the ride.

Another truism that is true: Writing a book isn’t easy.

(I notice I’m using a lot of italic. I must be intense on this subject. Well, I guess I am.)

As a newspaper reporter, I averaged at least 10 column inches a day — that’s about 350 words — five days a week for about 1,750 words a week, 50 weeks a year for about 87,000 words a year, 20 years for a total of about 1.7 million words, and that’s not counting the headline and editing words I wrote for another 18 years as an editor. And yet, I had a hard time writing a book — a book in areas familiar to me, reportage and autobiography — of a mere 102,000 words.

My book looks like it was written by a reporter, or at least a columnist — chapters that are short, subjects that change abruptly. But let me tell you, fitting those short chapters together in the way I wanted — I can describe it only as a spherical poem not just about my life and the lives of people I knew or met but about life itself — was one hell of a hard job. It took five years. In a truck.

Cigan faces his own difficulties. For one thing, although he’s written music reviews for Amazon.com and other short works, he’s a first-time novelist. And while he’s written, rewritten and edited his chapters probably more than he would like to think about, he continues to worry about his book’s organization.

“Finally, my greatest concern is that the entire story is too rambling and without a clear arc,” he told us in an email earlier this month. “I know that ultimately I will have to reorganize some of the material.”

Well, other than the effort of editing and reorganizing, which can be considerable, making changes in an e-book is simple. E-publishing, unlike print-on-paper publishing, allows changes at the speed of electricity.

As for Joseph’s editorial concerns, we can’t say. Because, like you, we haven’t seen the whole book. We do know that his Chapter 6, our latest installment, contains some beautiful writing.

If you’re wondering about the picture at the top of this entry, it is a spinning bullet, a projectile subject to the chapter’s title, “The Magnus effect,” and becomes a metaphor for many other things.

The guy can write.

Also today:

– We present the latest chapter in Steve Karmazenuk’s The Unearthing, an ‘Interlude: Rain of Tears’ in which members of a future scientific survey team bid farewell to the leader of their expedition, murdered by an unknown gunman.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTES:

1. In fact, thanks to an article posted on her Facebook page by fellow blogger P.L. Frederick, author of Small & Big, the e-book-in-progress is becoming more common on the Internet than even we thought.

2. And some nice remarks about our site’s look and style from a couple of fellow bloggers.