If you’ve been following what I’ve been blogging about FastPencil.com, you’re going to want to get a copy of my new book, FastPencil Your Book In 30 Days or Less! It takes you step-by-step through my trademark BookProgram process, within the context of FastPencil.com. And of course, I wrote it in FastPencil.com!

I don’t write fiction (at least, not intentionally). But if I did, I would use Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. It’s like a fractally refined version of Joel’s BookProgram. Randy, besides being an accomplished author, is a physicist/programmer. And he has written software to make it as easy as possible to apply his method to writing. (“Easy as possible” does not mean “easy.” Writing fiction is not easy. “If you want easy, buy cotton candy,” says Randy.) Anyway, until Friday at midnight PST, the software (which runs on Mac, PC, Linux) is $20. If the thought of writing fiction has ever crossed your mind, you owe it to yourself to buy this. Go here.

It just occurred to me: I’ve been telling people why they should write a book for a long time, and showing them how easy and quick it can be. I never thought about the flip side before.

So here are 7 reasons NOT to write a book:

1. You have no urge or desire to communicate with lots of people, no advice or news you want to share with others. Good for you! Nowhere is it written that you must tell others what you know, or that you have to have a message for the world.
2. Your career is just where you want it to be. You see your work life as being on track, and you are happy and fulfilled. You don’t need or want to establish yourself as an authority, or to convey to clients and others what makes you different. The Talmud says, “Who is rich? He who is content with his lot.”
3. You are about doing, not writing. You are engaged with life; narrating the journey does not attract you.
4. You have something to say, but you don’t want to build a business or a career around it. A blog suits you better, serving your needs without overwhelming you.
5. You’re a private person and don’t want the attention.
6. The thought of putting your ideas in a form that can be criticized by everyone nauseates you.
7. The idea of “leaving a legacy” for family, friends, or others is of no interest; you’d rather leave acts of kindness, memories, or money.

Can you think of others? Write to me: joel@joeltrainsauthors.com

Brian Clark of Copyblogger shared this quote:

When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons:

Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express.

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason:

They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience.

~Robert McKee

Your thoughts?

(via Stuart Silverstone; thanks!)
By COLSON WHITEHEAD

I recently published a novel, and now it’s time to get back to work. If
you’re anything like me, figuring out what to write next can be a real
hassle. A flashy and experimental brain-bender, or a pointillist examination
of the dissolution of a typical American family? Generation-spanning
door-stopper or claustrophobic psychological sketch? Buncha novellas with a
minor character in common? To make things easier, I modified my dartboard a
few years ago. Now, when I’m overwhelmed by the untold stories out there, I
head down to the basement, throw a dart and see where it lands. Try it for
yourself!

Encyclopedic Have you ever thought, There is a system that rules our
culture, and this system also determines interaction on the individual
level, and I have come up with a metaphor that describes both
manifestations, and can provide many examples? If so, you may be postmodern,
or postmodern-curious. E. M. Foster said, “Only connect,” and Lauryn Hill
seconded him, maintaining that “everything is everything.” They aren’t
postmodernists, but that’s the beauty of the postmodern ― it’s not what it
is, it’s what you say it is.

Realism Take this test. When you read “These dishes have been sitting in the
sink for days,” do you think (a) This is an indicator of my inner weather,
or (b) Why don’t they do the dishes? Does the phrase “I’m going as far away
from here as my broken transmission will get me, and then I’ll take it from
there” make you think (a) Somebody understands me, or (b) Why don’t they
stay and talk it out? What is more visually appealing, (a) a Pall Mall butt
floating in a coffee mug, or (b) those new Pop Art place mats in the Crate &
Barrel catalog? If you answered (a), do we have a genre for you.

Recommended for: The rumpled, drinky.

Ist Simply add -ist to any oddball or unlikely root word, and run with it.
You’d be surprised.

Ethnic Bildungsroman Your parents packed their bags and took a chance on a
dream called America. From Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, Bangladesh
and Beijing. Then you came along, with all your surly second-
generation-ness, and you wondered, Why do they eat that food, their accent
is so heavy, why can’t they leave me alone and let me play baseball? For you
are not like them, you Old World-eschewing, Otherness-contemplating,
bubble-gum-popping, shiksa-smooching, WASP bastion- charging, bootstrapping
young thing. You got moxie, kid, and just like Mary Tyler Moore, you’re
gonna make it after all.

Sample titles: “From Here, but Also Not”; “Annette Lipshitz for President.”

About A Little Known Historical Fact Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Find a little-known atrocity and claim squatter’s rights. Get in there so no
one can take your lynching, massacre or overlooked genocide away from you.
People like to be educated about tragedies that they’ve never shaken their
heads sadly over before. Getting them to say “I didn’t know about that” is a
surprisingly effective marketing tool. Practice speaking mellifluously ―
you’re going to be doing a lot of NPR.

Sample titles: “The Gridleysville Account”; “Shout! The Forgotten People.”

Fabulism Ladies with wings and men without mouths. Dancing trees and
talkative cows. If it’s for kids, it’s a fairy tale. If it’s for grown-ups,
it’s magic realism! Whether you’re 8 or 80, everybody loves magic. This is
the perfect genre for writers who may be tempted to throw out manuscript
pages when they get stuck ― with magic realism, you can just conjure up a
flaming tornado and whisk troublesome characters away. “Where’s Jasper?”
“Remember that legend I mentioned 25 pages ago, about the Flaming Tornado of
Red Creek?”

Historical Novel Sweeping. . . . Meticulously researched. . . . Something
about verandas. Welcome to the world of the historical novel. This is
different from a book About a Little Known Historical Fact in that you’re
taking a recognizable event or milieu, familiar from PBS documentaries and
Oscar-winning movies, and putting your own spin on it. If you get sick of
those tedious period details (gas-lamp, chamber-pot, chandler ― oy!),
consider cutting between the past and the present, where the narrator
discovers information about some ancestor’s role in things. Throw in a
real-life famous person ― Jimmy Hoffa, Emma Goldman, the Lindbergh baby ―
and watch the sparks fly.

Allegory This book is about the Black Death . . . or is it?

Sample titles: “The Forest”; “The Mound”; “The Illness”; “The Cubby”; “The
Lump.”

Domestic Why is Timmy spending so much time with his door closed? Did I hear
Janet sneaking out last night? Bert’s always working late these days, it’s
like I hardly see him. Jamie has started another affair ― she’s one of my
best friends but I don’t know what she’s thinking sometimes. I guess it all
began that fateful night when my car broke down.

Recommended for: People who stumble upon their muse in Aisle 8 of Whole
Foods.

Thriller Nothing wrong with putting a little food on the table, especially
in these times of economic uncertainty.

Recommended for: Those who know only five adjectives, but know them really
well.

Southern Novel of Black Misery Africans in America, cut your teeth on this
literary staple. Slip on your sepia-tinted goggles and investigate the
legacy of slavery that still reverberates to this day, the legacy of
Reconstruction that still reverberates to this day, and crackers. Invent
nutty transliterations of what you think slaves talked like. But hurry up ―
the hounds are a- gittin’ closer!

Sample titles: “I’ll Love You Till the Gravy Runs Out and Then I’m Gonna
Lick Out the Skillet”; “Sore Bunions on a Dusty Road.”

Southern Novel of White Misery, OR Southern Novel What race problem?

Sample titles: “The Birthing Stone”; “The Gettin’ Place.”

Social Realism You: A canny observer in a white suit and a fine cravat. The
Culture: Just waiting for someone to explain it to itself. When these two
krazy kidz get together, it’s zeitgeist! Dig in and tell people how they
really live today. Convince the reader that your ear is attuned to the
modern vernacular, that your nose sniffs the tang of changing mores, and
that your fingers are on the pulse of our time, somewhere around the neck,
to better choke the life out of it. Hold up a mirror to our society, or at
least to the lives of book critics who will write that your book “holds up a
mirror to our society.” You’re not done until you come up with at least one
spot-on description that enters the national vocabulary. Here are some
freebies to start you off: “cyber galoots,” “walking kabobs,” “electric
ninnies.” But please, please, please ― know when you’re too old to pull it
off.

Sample titles: “Yonder Lies the Glittery City”; “Sotto Voce.”

Remember, this is only a partial list ― there are literally dozens of kinds
of books out there waiting for the right writer to come along. Step right
up, and see what happens. It works for me.

Colson Whitehead’s novels include “The Intuitionist” (ist) and “John Henry
Days” (encyclopedic). His most recent book is “Sag Harbor.”
November 1, 2009
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/books/review/Whitehead-t.html

Viral Loop Chronicles Part 1: Forget Everything You’ve Heard About Book Publishing

BY Adam Penenberg47 minutes ago

Part 1: Today’s Author, Yesterday’s Business

Forget everything you’ve heard about book publishing.

For instance, recently at a party to celebrate the publication of my latest book, a number of people asked, “Is your publisher sending you on a tour to promote your book?”

Dicl;dsCKWDfce9qdck. Sorry, I was laughing so hard recounting this story that I hit my head on my keyboard. More

New HP service undigitizes books: HP believes this whole print-to-digital book conversion push is very much a two-way street — sometimes, for some things, you really want a hard copy. And for a company with roots in printing and ambitions in services, the next play was a natural: How about we offer custom book printing services? And so we see making its formal debut from HP Labs an initiative that puts powerful publishing abilities into the hands of the masses.

The service is called BookPrep, and it enables any publisher “to digitize any existing book and turn it into a virtual asset that can be sold over the Internet and printed on demand — either as is, or personalized by the consumer. … BookPrep automatically aligns and flattens scanned texts of current and out-of-print-books, cleans and brightens the fold and corners of the pages for consistent coloration, and outputs a professional and print-ready PDF eMaster. … BookPrep makes it possible to give consumers access to every book ever published as a high quality replica of the original that they can even personalize.” The appeal here is in the long tail, all the fodder for those with passionate niche interests residing in the estimated 90 million books that are out of print, millions of them out of copyright. The latest addition to the books available for on-demand printing is a collection of 500,000 rare or out-of-print titles from the University of Michigan Library. And while the cost of a custom run was once prohibitive, new technology will let HP price a 250-page book around $15.

Keeping promises is important to human relationships, including the one between an author and a reader. The title of your non-fiction book makes a promise: “Read this book, and get this result.” Sometimes it’s explicit: “Awaken the Giant Within–Wake up and take control of your life!” (Tony Robbins). Sometimes it’s implicit: ”Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association“; while you can’t really tell from the name, this widely accepted style manual has become a standard reference.

Sometimes the title is designed to make you curious: “A Bold, Fresh Piece of Humanity” is a Bill O’Reilly memoir. Here, the author’s name is what gets most people to pick up the book; the title doesn’t evoke any response other than, “Huh?”
A good approach is to have a provocative title, and a clarifying subtitle: “Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!” (Robert Kiyosaki)

The same consideration applies to chapter titles, and even to subchapter titles, if you use them.

If you keep the promise of your book’s title, your reader will judge the experience of reading the book to have been worthwhile–even if the book has other imperfections. If you don’t keep that promise, your prose may be scintillating and your anecdotes breathtaking, yet your book will leave the reader unsatisfied.

Think about your book’s title as a promise to your reader. Make it a good promise–and keep it.

What is it?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. More

FastPencil.com is getting behind NanoWriMo in a big way. Watch the site for interesting stuff!