I awoke today

I awoke today and abandoned writing. I knew in my waking state that I had no talent and no hope. I groaned and rose to meet another day. I drank my first coffee and ate a bagel.  I knew I was a writer now and would push my way through the irrelevancies and annoyances and defeats that are life. I floated now, buoyed only by the need to write and the tantalizing small respites of daily life.

-30-

I lie listening to rain on a roof at the end. Parts of my body ache and hurt. The sound of rain soothes and matches my heart. Life, as the large multitude of those wiser than I have noted, is a funny business. I am an untenable character in this, condemned to see holistically in a place where others do not. I see those walking through this forest of dark and light in all their wonderful complexity while others seem to see only narrow paths. I see dips and curves and sun and rain and warmth and cold that chills the soul. I wonder at this curse visited on me to see the whole.

Round Pegs and Square Holes

   

I am a misfit. There, I said it. I cannot recall a time in my life where I felt easy in this or any place. I observed, quietly. Slowly I learned to build a cone of invisibility about my heart and soul.  I wrote poetry when young. I stopped then began all over when old.  This review of English World War 1 poets  resonates - as it stresses that the misfitery of the poet's heart transcends mere circumstance.

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44522

Beginning (my incoherent mind)

The sun glinted on the river. The water’s surface was still, but Simon could see deep currents telling lies about its placid face. The sun felt warm, delighting the cool breeze that touched his body.  He could hear voices, calling, laughing, teasing on the other side.  A house looked out from a balcony, added precariously by a home owner, holding figures happily touching and playing with each other.

I can't decide what to do with this paragraph.  Another story, same character? Or one of the alternate versions of The Man who fell from the Sky'......Hmmmmm....... maybe that's it......hmmmmm

Metadata

Experienced authors know all about metadata. I was only vaguely aware of its use and importance. Mostly I grabbed a few keywords out of the jumbled mess that is my brain because the site or service insisted I fill in their metadata section. On Pinterest I discovered this succinct explication.

I will go back and redo my metadata now.

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2014/09/7-tips-for-metadata-magic-for-self-publishers/

Thinking in Pictures

While surfing around Facebook today, reading the American Left bashing the American Right and vice versa, I came across an interesting post.  One person had said something to the effect that language is necessary for thought.  I agreed until I read a response which noted that there are cases of individuals who think in pictures.

This got me to considering my poetry.  My poems are word translations of sensations.  At this very moment I am sitting in my home office on a chair that is ramshackle using a desk that was the cheapest of the cheap in 1992. A breeze and sounds are coming in the window and cooling my back and my mind.

soft sounds floated on breezes cool
caressing his back
a thousand little fingers reached through his shirt
he shivered deliciously at such delight

This little prosy poem is an attempt to translate the sensation into words and share it with others.  But I had no 'thoughts' as I felt this sensation - only the sensation. And only poetry can translate 'thinking in sensations' for others to experience.

The Man who fell from the Sky is a long form translation of sensations using words, photos, colours... whatever I can place in the eBook. This means most of the advice blogs from successful authors on how to write or market or package a book are useless, or nearly so, to me.  I am not a good story teller but I am a good sensation translator. Sigh.  A poet I guess with the impoverished lifestyle that comes with that affliction.

Multimedia eBooks and Traditional Publishing

Traditional publishers are attempting to integrate eBooks into their overall publishing program.

 I read Mike Shatzin's blog regularly where these efforts are frequently detailed. His July 23 post was focussed on Amazon and its costs and benefits to both authors and publishers (meaning mostly the big 5, with a nod to small publishers), but a throwaway comment by him on multimedia eBooks caused me to respond. Here is his summary of multimedia eBooks:

Edward, people have been looking for the multiple-media, transmedia, etc. formula for 30 years! Voyager Expanded Books was doing this in 1990. The consumers don't buy, at least not in any numbers. "Successes" have been isolated one-offs. I have been ridiculing the idea for three decades and haven't been proven wrong yet. Someday I may be, I suppose. But in the meantime I will stick to the notion that the straight reading form is extremely hard to improve upon from a commercial perspective. It is both what people actually want AND vastly cheaper to both produce and distribute (smaller file sizes). Good luck with your experimentation, but I hope you enjoy the process because "success" is very unlikely.

My point was that the attempts at multimedia were always ill-advised.  Multimedia meant for publishers producing a standard text only book, then adding in multimedia here and there to 'enhance' the text.  

My idea is that multimedia has to be integral to the experience. I had at this point in our brief exchange a minor epiphany.  Here is what I said:

Hi Mike :
I agree with you actually. I understand that your business is advising publishers, especially in the difficult world of eBooks and the disruption caused by the digital revolution. All I am saying is that multimedia books (with the exception of college textbooks), are not really 'books' at all. I think the chances of earning money are virtually nil - that multimedia eBooks are more akin to works of art than books to be read. I can imagine a world where the sort of agent who represents a painter also handles multimedia eBooks and you find them in art shows and galleries, not bookstores, electronic or bricks and mortar. The exception of textbooks is where I do not understand what is happening, or rather not happening. I teach History and freshman sophomore textbooks are already and have been for many years print versions of multimedia - photographs, textboxes, text, footnotes, links. Columbia University Press and the American Historical Society teamed up to produce multimedia eBooks, but they were stupidly expensive to produce and to sell, which I do not understand. One of my projects is to produce such a book, using Apple's free software. There you might see me, someday.

His short reply said it all:  Complex media can make complete sense for teaching purposes. They just don't have much mass commercial appeal.  

Mike Shatzkin has been in the book business for many, many years as was his father.  His bread and butter is advising traditional publishers on means to navigate the digitization of text only mass market books.  He and  his industry are blind to anything else. Perhaps he is correct that no decent living can be made from this, but I think he is blind to the future