My non-fiction words for the day are written. (Though frankly, when you’re writing about possible uses for developing technology, I think it’s more in the realm of science fiction. See, my youth wasn’t wasted after all!)

On to fiction. It’s kind of my reward for the duller stuff, even if writing can be tedious no matter what.

I think it’s something that we writers don’t talk about with any great clarity, and I think we should. Getting good at anything requires daily tedious practice. It’s not all about when the words are flowing and we feel godlike in our ability to express ourselves. Those moments are awesome, but that’s not how we get better at what we do. It’s when it’s a slog to meet the word count. It’s when we re-write a sentence five times before we feel like we’ve conveyed our exact meaning. That’s when we are getting better.

I read a book recently called “Talent is Overrated” that talked about stellar performance, and the make or break in almost any endeavor was not about the moments when it was good and wonderful, but when you were willing to tolerate the repetitive and tedious. I keep that in mind a lot when I write. Yes, I love to write (obviously), but I don’t love it all the time.

I was thinking about this also when I read an article talking against having word count goals when working on fiction. Now, I’ve never completed a single project that did not have a daily word count goal. I’m in favor of them. If I write when the Spirit moves me, in general I neither write much nor well. The author was arguing that if you’re meeting those word count goals, maybe you’re just vomiting out drivel and that’s hardly going to make for good writing.

I guess my argument is, “What the heck do you think editing is for?”

I’m on a bus traveling down to the airport to catch a plane home.  I have a lot on my mind about the trip, and to distract myself, I’ve been working.

I often joke my office is my purse.   Okay, that’s not really a joke.   I’ve been reading a book to get ideas for a course I’m developing, checking my email (the bus has wi-fi) and generally just doing a lot of the things I ordinarily do as part of my morning’s work.

I’d gotten a netbook with an eye to the fact I travel a few times a year and wanted something not too expensive and easily portable. So far, I’m liking travelling with a netbook.  The good battery and the compact machine make it nice for crowded travel.  The fact that it’s light to carry and fits in a purse doesn’t hurt, either.

I think my next “big” computer is going to be a desktop I’ll sync with my netbook.  The desktop will deliver lots of computing power cheap, for when I need that.  Then I can do 90% of my work on my portable machine.   As a writer whose work is often web-based, I just don’t need the computing power you’d require for video editing or high-end gaming.

A certain very popular publishing company of women’s romance novels has decided to offer a new line of vanity publishing.   This link goes to Writers Beware, which might give you a clue to my opinion on the matter.  You pay to get your novel published and possibly edited if you’re paying at the higher tier.  No, you don’t have the full force of the marketing department behind the book.  Neither are you going to be able to count on the big chains stocking the book.

Vanity publishing has been around a long time.   As a business model, it’s great for the publisher.  The author almost never breaks even.

I’m fine with a business turning a profit, what with being a small business owner and a greedy capitalist meeself, and all. What I’m against is an unethical product that preys on emotional weakness, which this vanity publishing scam does.

I had an interesting epiphany in a Border’s a couple of weeks ago. I’m a very small-time writer. I do technical writing, SEO-type stuff… Any fiction writer who manages to make a living at it would probably call me a bottom feeder, and fair enough. But, this perspective does give me a “marketing mind” in a way that the stereotype of the writer from the coffee shop might not have. It got me to thinking in the YA section of that store. There was a Twilight display with books and merchandise and another dedicated to Harry Potter. I started looking at the newer titles in the section. Right now the trend in YA is dark fantasy and stuff with a Goth feel.

“This is all just product,” I thought, as I was looking around.  Product follows trend in the entertainment world, and fiction is most certainly the entertainment business.

I think we’re trained that there’s something holy or elevated about books. In a way that’s true. The printing press spread ideas in a way that had been impossible before. The fact that a book is an expression of a human mind is pretty damn awesome. But not every thought we think is necessarily a priceless diamond. Often it’s just a drop of water. It’s when it’s taken in a wave that the water becomes an impressive force.

We’re also trained to think there’s something holy or elevated about art for art’s sake.  Does art have value?  Yes.  Again, art is an expression of what is not only uniquely human about us, but is often a deep expression of the times in which we live, the joys we celebrate and the pain we mourn.  But just because it is an expression of our mind doesn’t mean that art always expresses well.

We have always had to look for gems amongst the garbage when it comes to actual art. That’s not new. Dickens was a hack to the Victorians, remember. So was Shakespeare. Do we remember all the playwrights from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries? Of course not. Have you ever read some random fiction from Victorian times? Some of it was pretty awful. Most of it was “mix as before” that the publishers hoped would make them a pile of money.

The problem is that this vanity publishing scheme is not going to give writers who otherwise had no chance a real chance at publishing a novel.     Unless you’re really great at selling, you’ll never recoup your production costs, much less your time costs of writing the damn thing in the first place!   If you’re really great at selling, you have a better chance at the traditional method of publication, where you’ll be paid more anyway.  This, like all vanity publishing, preys on people with a handful of dreams and a hatful of ignorance.

Addendum: L’esprit d’escalier gives an excellent analysis of why this business model sucks.   As Ms. Brown so eloquently puts it, “Writers sign the back of the check!”

I have wanted a truly portable  computer since I was about 12.  When laptops got lighter than ten pounds, I used to fantasize about getting one, but didn’t for a long time until the price on a mid-grade laptop dropped to what I was spending on a desktop.

I was in my late thirties before I finally sucked it up and bought a laptop.  Now the one I bought was okay, really, for its time.  But it weighs about six and a half pounds, has a crappy battery (an hour if I am very lucky) and it runs hot enough that I really can’t use it without an external notebook cooler.  I can use it on an airplane, but I don’t like to.  I do use it on the train, but I’m lugging at least ten pounds worth of material and taking it out to use is a bit of a production.

That laptop is starting to show the Blue Screen of Death at about weekly intervals, which means it’s about to go to that Great Computer in the Sky in the next few months.  I want to hold off on getting a new laptop for several reasons, and have been in Serious Gadget Lust for a netbook since I first saw one.  Because of the gadget lust, I didn’t trust my justification for getting a cheap machine that is not a true replacement for a full-powered laptop.

When I got accused by the World’s Worst Overthinker of overthinking the matter (I think I bored him to tears analyzing it out loud), I just went ahead and bought the damn thing — an Acer AspireOne.  It’s the cheapest netbook on the market.

This is what I have been waiting for all my life.  I can put the freaking thing in my purse.  I get more than three hours on a battery.  How much more I don’t know.  It’s 3:35 and counting right now and I still have half power left.  I can reasonably take this to the park and write.  I wouldn’t have to be a contortionist to get it out of an overstuffed bag on an airplane.   I don’t have to lug around the heavy notebook cooler.  I don’t need something that can run World of Warcraft.  I need something that can handle writing a book.  I need something that can read a financial spreadsheet.  I need something that I can use on the Internet to get email and bid on jobs.

Oh, and I’m writing this piece right now on it