Author: iamaikencom

“I’d like to write,” came from several people during my 3 author events this week. I ought to have expected the comment and the related discussion. There was one woman at the most recent event I wanted to meet but she seemed just outside the circle of authors and book buyers, but her presence persisted and with each her movements, my eyes followed. She had reddish-orangy hair in tight braids that tumbled down past the completely askew rainbow tulle accent she wore at her waist. I may wish to call it a tutu, but I’d be wrong. And she was too sincere to stretch the concept to clown. Her smile and joy lit up that end of the promenade. I wanted to bathe in that light, but from afar.

During our brief meeting at the end of the day, she asked about writing. I answered plainly and I’ll paraphrase myself: “If you wanna write, then write. And when you write, know that the first works are shit, the next pile are bad. It takes work, practice and time to get to good.”

I said something that compared the first efforts to the drawing done by children. Those crayon dinosaurs and horses are barely recognizable as critters. And so what! Just keep going. Throw them out and keep going.

My father encountered the question often, but I had forgotten that. He said the exact opposite to people who asked him for advice. He was an ass. He described the heart ache, trials, and difficulties writers face. He accepted the duty to discourage writers, and even all artists. Then behind their backs, after they’ve left he’d say two things:

Number one: “They’ll thank me for that.”

Number two: “If they are writers, then they will write even in the face of adversity.”

Still an ass, by the way, even though I see a tiny germ of truth in his statement. 99% wrong is still wrong. Yes, writers write, even in the face of adversity and discouragement.

I’ll divert for a second, I spent most of my time at the event reading poetry falling in love the sparse words and settings I encountered. I’ll write about Leslie Williams’ work soon. What a treat. To my left, a woman wrote a romance book about a mermaid. And I write about small town heroes with a wry wit. My publisher made her mark publishing works from African writers and she is off to South Africa yet-again. While I was sitting at my table, reading, I visited with a lovely couple from Germany and we got to making jokes. Let’s admit that I learned geil from young hip Germans. But when I used to term with Dutch speaking coworkers, they thought I was telling them I was horny. The term changed over a generation from “horny” to “outstanding, excellent, wonderful”, wunderbar as it were.

The lesson from that is every voice is different. And only in those differences do we see the commonality in us all.

My father was a Harvard educated man who graduated with a degree in English in 1958. He promptly wrote books and worked for the Boston Globe as the arts and humanities editor. Like his father, he published a score of books and several movies. That makes me a third-generation novelist in the span of 100+ years. My parents taught me the rigors of narrative structure, essay structure, and encouraged reading (encourage might have equaled required).

Yet, I was a left-handed dyslexic kid who struggled with every word. My father stood sentinel over the realm of writers with his awards and committee positions. And my work could not be understood. Nobody could read my writing or penetrate my creative spelling. I saw my first “A” grade in my senior year of university, and no sooner.

Sure, I benefitted from years of at-home discussion about the written word. I was heavily tutored by both parents on writing. But I could not make myself understood when writing by hand on paper. Just another “C” grade with more red ink than my smudged black ink.

This allows me to tell a tale from both sides of dialectic.

Step 1. Doesn’t matter who you are, you have a story to tell. Tell a story.

Step 2: If you make someone cry, laugh, get horny, or feel anything, you’ve done well.  

Step 3: Story telling can fail. People can read or listen then feel confused. People may not feel what you intended. So the-fuck-what! Listen to more stories, read more work by others you enjoy, then return to step 1.

Your first works will be terrible. They will be muddled messes. So what. Delete, and start again. Or keep it, I don’t care. The point is move forward, just keep moving forward as you find your voice and discover the stories within you.

If you can read a story and tell it is great, figure out why you loved it. It took me a while to recognize I don’t love plots. Yeah, yeah, stories need them. But we’re human beings, a social creature. We remember characters and relationships. We remember places. What do you listen for in a story? What makes you return to a story? Discover that and write to that.

One of my favorite contemporary writers is Kate Quinn. After reading her first popular book, I went backwards in her career to read the earlier works. I felt thrilled to explore the growing skills this author developed. She got better and better with each publication. Yes.

Nobody sits at the piano and performs Beethoven’s 5^th Piano Concerto well until they have played it and the piano for thousands and thousands of hours. It takes work to mature from Chopsticks to The Emperor’s Concerto. Knowing that, give yourself license to be a complete and utter failure a hundred times, a thousand times.

It is just work baby. And yes, we all need help. I pay for editors and have done so for nearly 20 years. I impose on nearly every friendship to read my words. The worst feedback is: “Nice, that’s good.” I can’t suss my answer from that phrase: What did you feel? Did the story move? Where the characters real?

Writing can be evaluated with basic terms of success and failure. Failure teaches lessons better than success. Don’t flinch, look. Study. Explore.

One of my greatest joys is writing a scene that makes me cry while I write it. But better than that is making me cry while I read my own words aloud. My writing is only funny if I can also help you find a tear that needs to escape from the corner of your reader’s eye.

So go write until you make yourself laugh or cry or angry or lusty or whatever – all of it. Invest time and effort on your journey to good.

(for Sonja)

When speaking with a client this week, I mentioned that The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County will be released on the 10^th of September, he commented that I achieved a milestone. And he repeated it, then he corrected himself, saying, “That’s not a milestone, you met the objective.” I waved my hand in front of the camera wanted to interrupt. He saw me. “It is just a milestone isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“The objective is sales.” By that I mean revenue.

How true. The milestones hit involved writing a novel (done that several times). Finding a publisher, (success exactly one time). Getting through a year of preparations and marketing so that we can launch the book successfully. But we’ve all put money and time into the project. I love to write, but the rest of the effort qualifies as work, and it can be expensive. In modern publishing, I’ve hired my own marketing team. I pay for additional editor time. And while the publisher promotes in their way, the author (me) is expected to be an equal partner in that effort. Giveaways, travel, advertising on social media, building a social media persona, and paying editors and advisors. I don’t begrudge the costs, because no commercial endeavor is free of cost and free of risk.

On the first of July, I did nothing with social media. Now I have a robust mailing list, posts that reach out, and a goodly sized following on GoodReads. Elina, my marketing professional, worked every week to bring these ephemeral numbers up from zero. And we did it successfully.

What happens next? A novel drops in a Vermont forest on Tuesday 10 Sept 2024 will anyone buy it? Will anyone listen to me read it as an audio book.

I am, the entire team is, four days from “pubdate” and even yesterday in a meeting I said, we’re looking past that point. Let’s plan October, build a budget for 2025 and think about the short story series and book #2, “Stolen Mountain”. As much as I want to spin in circles with worry. There is nothing more I can do about effecting the sales during the first week.

Suddenly next Tuesday, I become a published novelist and start heading to public events and must start planning the release of novel #2. It is a job and it requires work and courage.

The most obvious conundrum of authors marketing books is that the two skills require rather different personalities. I write. I write all day long, nearly every workday. So did my father. So did his father. I never new my grandfather, so I can’t tell you about that. I did know my father.

My father would get up at a normal time, likely just late enough to avoid the chaos of kids in a kitchen and rushing to meet Joe the Bus Driver for Route #7 (yes, same bus, same bus driver, same bus route through my entire primary education years). Father paced his bedroom smoking a cigarette. Then he headed downstairs to type. Then he’d write for five or six hours, quitting after lunch. He took no phone calls. There was no email. In an office lined with book, he wrote books alone and in the quiet.

Thus, I sit. No cigarette, as in never. And No booze, as in as rare as birthdays.

I have a novel dropping in two weeks. I’d like it to sell a goodly number of copies. What do I need to do? I need to get social, as in social media. In the first days of July, I had no social media presence. As we come towards pub-date, my Meta accounts are able to reach out to 20,000 folks. I have a mailing list that approaches 5,500 folks (35% of whom open and read my email). On GoodReads, I have over 8,500 showing some interest in “The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County”. That is a chart that shows an upwards trend.

It took work, and training, and effort, and work, and training, and focus, and strategy and, well, work.

I don’t like the work. But I think I found a way to make it better. Read on. Better is better.

I admitted to my life-time friend that I don’t even understand Instagram. I asked her “what is the point of looking at these pictures? What is it telling me to do?” She explained me to me, as she has done so often in our lives. She pointed out that I am not wired that way.

“You look at the picture. You find something of interest then you write something nice to say. You need to engage with others this way.” Then I write something short, in vernacular English, with icons to show that I am actually hip. I love cue cards! “Thank you”, “Please”, “May I”.

You don’t know me yet, but maybe you know someone like me.

“Why would I look at picture of book covers all day?” I have the same question about food. Or gatherings with people holding drinks next to a pool, a slide, a midway ride, or the afternoon tide. I love books and bookstores. I’ve seen a book and I’ve seen a bookstore. A little thumbie or smiley or something on the safe-to-use list is good.

Nobody needs to know that I look at pix thinking, “Don’t want to be there,” or “Yuck”, or “So much noise”. I live on a large, isolated place in Vermont, 100 acres/40hectare. I stand in my near yards seeing only the bits of Vermont we own.

I am not actually laughing-out-loud, wait, I am not even laughing, but I’ll “LOL” that. And I know to write: “Love to be there with you”, when in fact I am supremely happy at home. I don’t want to go there and do that, thank you. You go do that fun.

I can be trained! Yay for me and my friends who can explain me to me and such. I can go from zero to 50 in 60 days, 50K that is.

That work is not the same as writing a novel or writing any of my other stuff. That’s intense focus, with classical music. I eat at the same time each day. I eat the same breakfast day after day. Spousal unit makes me the same salad every day. Certainly not IG worthy!

Wanna know what writers enjoy doing? Writing.

Starting in September, I am going to endeavor to use my strengths to strengthen my marketing positions. Two fundamental axioms exist:

1. Writers write.
2. Readers read (or listen).

From September, I am going to write short stories that I will get edited and publish as both an audio and electronic media. For a bit, I’ll offer them free, then maybe start asking for a few pennies.

The thing about readers is that readers read.

What do readers want? Good stories to either read or listen to.

This aligns with the Willy Sutton economic model. While Willy allegedly said: “I rob banks because that’s where the money’s at,” I think it applies to readers too.

Readers read.

Writers write.

Let’s get together and call ourselves an institute (Sorry, Paul Simon).

I love great stories, great characters and good writing. In a bookstore, I can open a page, any page and read. I’ll know. You’ll know. On my mobile phone, I get a thumbnail of a book cover, the publisher’s distilled summary which the hosting website truncates with a “read more” that allows you to unfold the rest of the publisher’s words.  I am miserable at finding books to read from writers who write well via the most common digital platforms.

Read my work or not. I’ll keep writing.

Stay tuned for novel-adjacent short stories presented via my publisher Catalyst Press. I’ll write ‘em. The team will edit ‘em. Then I’ll record them, then you do you. Maybe you listen or read along.

Yes, I’ll keep playing the social media game (execute happy responses via cue cards). But please let me write a full sentence.

Aiken.

Recently, while writing in Microsoft word, I have been frustrated with the AI-based interventions while I write.  It is like a mosquito buzzing while I work. To make it fun, I did screen grabs of the errors that the grammar/spelling mistakes it wanted. No, not every sentence is past tense. And yes, AI you can refer to “stair” as a singular. I thought I captured building blocks for a funny series of block posts. It wasn’t funny. In the recent month, the AI-based interventions escalated.

In July 2024, I observed that Microsoft Word is getting slower and slower with its echo (time between keystroke and display). A few reboots, it is still bad. I whine to a colleague. He says go delete X,Y,Z from W folder.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX64\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\ai.exe

I did and it got better instantly. This was the evidence that what was forecasted to happen had already happened. The rumor was Microsoft would be capturing 100% of keystrokes in their applications and sending them to Microsoft as fodder for their AI engines. As an individual, my writing is protected by copyright. Now Microsoft is scraping all of my work as I type (a nice opportunity for rebellion, y’all). There is a second rumor that Microsoft is (or will be) taking screen captures and sending those back to their AI crap. Therefore, Microsoft is deliberately violating my privacy, your privacy, and violating our copyrights. While privacy is not protected by the United States Constitution, nor protected by many laws, copyright is.

Yesterday, while on the phone with my publisher, we discussed AI. She indicated that many publishers looked to embrace the technology to enhance their daily tasks such as: writing email, writing comments, and the like. Publisher are the artists advocate and defender of our copyrights. In fact, their job is to sell these rights for foreign sales, movie and TV deals, or what ever. It is capitalism and our intellectual property is our product. Their job: sell it and make us all money.

Hey, publishers if you embrace AI to write your documents and email, then you are paying for the destruction of the rights you are contractually obliged to protect. Wait… How’s that?

Let’s step back. How does AI write an email? The first body of email used as fodder in the large language model came from Enron email that landed in the public domain. Free to us. And tech companies did. It wasn’t enough. Limited scope of topics. Limited scope of writers/readers unified by a single corporate culture. Pretty sure that most people would not want their AI-generated email to sound like it came from Enron in the 1990s (Yes, Virginia, there was internet in the 1990s). Therefore, more data was needed for the development of large language models (LLM). LLM are simply repositories of words written by humans (mostly). The next best source for large volumes of data are published works that are out-of-copyright. Once you gobble that up, you recognize that language and style has changed since the 1930s. We need more writing samples. Since we (the tech industry) sits in the middle of the internet every website (copyrighted material) plus every ePub of a book (copyrighted material) plus every email that travels through Microsoft (or Google) servers.

Still not good enough. We need more data says the AI large language model. Our AI needs to be less shitty. Let’s get more data. Now it scrapes all things written in the worlds most populate word processor.

Therefore, when you ask for AI-generated text for a simple work email, you are in fact engaging in AI research and encouraging the violation of copyright. Same thing is happening in music (‘Hey, AI write me a breakup song in the style of Taylor Swift’).

There are times I see the benefits. I work daily with colleagues overseas. The AI-generated emails are often better than the write-natively-translate process that has been common. Cool, we communicate better. I can read-for-content in about six romance languages, but reading messages in my own English is easier.

Today, I spent the first hour of my workday on GoDaddy with the aim of un-breaking an email address. It took 7 phone calls and 2 chat sessions before I figured it out myself. The conversation devolved to ridiculous where I clearly had to battle against the common to find the deeply technical and obscure information that I needed. Every AI chat bot was just wrong. “Are you attempting to setup email on your phone or your computer” it asked at least three times in a row. Sadly, it was neither GoDaddy.

The words of my grandfather echo in my head. He had worked as a syndicated radio news guy during WWII on the NBC Red network. All of his peers and friends were swept up with television and landed jobs that gave them monster careers. My grandfather called TV a fad and opted to stick with radio.

I can not call AI a fad. It isn’t. There are billions invested in it. I embraced network technology in the 1980s as a young IT professional. I knew then that we were not heading towards a fad but something amazing. AI is the next bolt-on to our global internet. It is not a fad.

Some of what it does is funny. And some in scientific fields can happily celebrate huge successes with AI. The fundamental difference between AI for science and AI for creative endeavors is that from the git, science intended to live, breathe, and grow within the public domain. Creating AI models based on public data is legit.

The old rule was that if you paid for a service at Google or Microsoft for hosting your email and your office-like products (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), then you were protected from your host. When you used their products for free, they used your data as their fee. They harvested your work for their research and you got products and services gratis.

That rule is gone.

I did move my writing to OpenOffice/LibreOffice. That is awkward and likely not much better. My work will be scraped and fed into the AI hopper regardless of my rights, my expectations, my efforts. I don’t even know how to protect myself or advise other on how to protect yourself. Gee whiz, I turned off the AI that captures my keystrokes. But I save the documents on a drive that Microsoft controls on their operating system with backups on their OneDrive. They have 100% access regardless. Yes, of course, I could build a linux based system and start from there. I have no access to Adobe there. Oh, and Adobe, you think that artists using your tools have failed to notice Adobe’s efforts to encourage the use of Adobe’s AI tools. I do NOT wonder where and how it got its data? Oh, right from their own paying customers.

I feared my legacy would be identify this tech as a fad and step away. Instead, I look at this tech for what it is and scream. What is a podcast, but radio?

I bought a fountain pen.