“New Blogger” vs. “Legacy Blogger”

"Good news"? Or another death-knell?

My friend Mary Scriver is struggling with the changes Google Blogger hath wrought. We've had some back-and-forth on the matter. Google is making some terrible errors, I think. This is my latest email to her, commiserating with her plight.

Hi Mary - 

This is one of those times when I wish I could mask-up, hop in the car and come over. There are tweaks to "New Blogger" that might work for you, but they do take some searching for. 

In the main, however, I am also deeply unhappy with the direction Google is taking with this new template. Google engineer Avery Pennarun nails it on the head with this comment: "Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly everything." 

In this case the engineers reworking Google's Blogspot have convinced themselves, not unreasonably, that easier accessibility via "smart" phone is a necessity for the great majority of internet users and thus a necessity for Blogspot bloggers as well. This is not unintelligent thinking. But it does not do a rigorous enough job of analyzing what Google Blogspot does best RIGHT NOW, and thus what they need to retain and reinforce to remain a viable platform in a roiling market of internet users. 

Blogger/Blogspot is, as most blogging platforms, a predominantly word-based platform. People compose and post more text to Blogspot than they do anything else. Thus it does not compete directly with Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or really any of the other social media. Pictures and videos and soundfiles can all be posted on Blogspot, but mostly the people using Blogger are writers. Were I a member of Blogspot's think-tank I would highlight that and keep that the focus of Blogger. Other means of communication -- videos, pictures, soundfiles -- should be encouraged, particularly via properties that Google has acquired. Hey, make it a priority to provide ease of access to YouTube, YouTube Music, Google Photo, etc. Data-mining these media interdependencies ought to yield rich results. But always always always assure that composing and posting words is the highest priority -- because that is the current user's highest priority, and it won't change with a radically reimagined user template. 

Returning to the field of phone use, I'd say ease of phone display is a must. Ease of composing and posting via phone, not so much. Most phone users have accounts with YouTube and Google Photo etc. Make sure the cross-platform use here is super-easy. But keep the focus of word composition where it is properly done -- on the home or office computer/laptop. "Legacy Blogger" very much outperforms "New Blogger" on that front. 

Anyway, I have "Left Feedback" with Google and received nary an AI-generated peep of acknowledgment. I notice the hard deadline for those of us who prefer Legacy Blogger keeps getting kicked down the road. Initially it was July, no? Now it is the end of September (correction: September 1). Hopefully this signifies some reconsideration occurring among the fine engineers in charge of Google Blogger. 

Best, WP/dpr 

Writer's 'n' Beans

You answer the door. It's your cousin Margaret, presenting you with a hot caserole dish for the Thanksgiving dinner. You smile, or wince, and accept the dish. “Baked beans?” you say, dreading the answer. She silently smiles — or smirks.

The family gathers around the table, the dishes are served, and everyone has to admit: those are damn fine beans. “In fact,” your husband offers, “I don't believe anyone does beans quite like our Margaret.”

“They're different this year,” says your mother. “Margaret, you've done something different with the beans.”

Again the smile/smirk. “Cardamom,” she says. “I try to do something different every year. This was the year for cardamom!” Happy laughter and smiles all around for cousin Margaret's incomparable baked beans.

Your cousin Margaret's beans are my metaphor in response to Dwight Garner's plea for our Important Novelists to step up production. I say, with one caveat, that a novel every ten years ought to be the writerly ideal, especially if the writer is really good at what she does. The list of Important Novelists whose yearly dish of baked beans wore out my welcome — incomparable though that dish may be — is a very long one, and recedes to a vanishing point as time goes on.

Garner trots out Dickens and Trollope as examples of what volubility can accomplish, but what about Thomas Hardy? Much has been made of the negative review that truncated Hardy's career as a novelist, but what if the poisonous toad who wrote it actually did Hardy a favour, making Hardy's the name that rings through the ages? If Hardy had managed a Dickensian output, would we still talk about him? Who wants to read 30 novels detailing the carnage that occurs when our flightiest romantic yearnings meet the hard whetstone of reality? No, three or four books of that nature will do just fine, thank you. And, let's face it, soul-crushing disappointment is what most Important Writers are all about. If you want to deluge the market with product, best to be cheerful and unassuming (like Trollope) or a sly crowd-pleaser (like Dickens).

Caveat: there are some Important Writers who apparently need to get three or four questionable books out of their system before they knock off something truly delicious and nutritious. T.C. Boyle comes to mind. Actually, so does Hardy. Really nobody should be actively discouraged from writing — or publishing. But even if you're an Oates or an Updike or an Atwood who can be relied upon for a delicious bowl of beans every Thanksgiving, don't take it too personally if the overwhelmed guests at the table forgo the pleasure of eating them.

Stuck In The Middle With Franzen

'Tis the silly season for lovers of the printed (virtually or otherwise) word. It all began with the industry that's built itself up around Jonathan Franzen, of course. Time Magazine and a whole heap of others think he's Jesus with a Mac Book; others are sure he's the anti-Christ. This guy (linked via ALD) equates Franzen et al with "our bankers" -- to which I can only say, "Dude: time for a reality check." If there's a family sleeping in their car because Franzen spent five years writing Freedom, let me know at once.

It's either love or hate Franzen, isn't it? I haven't yet read the new book, but I kind of like his earlier stuff. I have very distinct visual memories from The Corrections, particularly of a younger Alfred in a white shirt, standing on a railroad trestle with a ball-peen hammer in hand. Franzen is, were I to resort to a reviewer-cliche, certainly an evocative writer.

Until it comes to sex: suddenly everything feels staged, and his characters have a distant, critical, authorial point of view I simply can't buy. Perhaps I should be the last to cast a stone, but I thought Enid's discussion of family financial strategy while fellating Alfred (complete with the Crumb-y onomatopoeia "glub") was a particularly vexatious low point in The Corrections -- and it occurs just pages after the scene on the trestle.

In the main, however, I do look forward to reading the new book -- as soon as it's available at the local library.

Elsewhere: I can't write in cafes -- especially not in my former place of employment, where everybody really does know my name. But malls? Give me a Bic and scribbler, and I'm off to the races.

Everyone's A Comedian: Coming To Terms With The "New New Criticism"

When Jerry Seinfeld announced, shortly after the close of his monumental sitcom, that he was honing material for a new stand-up routine, few people were surprised. He was still a young guy with a lot of drive; clearly a Johnny Carson fade-away was not in the cards. But it had been nearly a decade since Seinfeld had pulled together new stand-up material, and he had some work to do.

Comedian, the documentary that follows his progress back to the concert hall, captures an early foray into the beer circuit. It’s a not-bad set, but Seinfeld is clearly still finding his legs. Following the set, he joins a table of stand-up veterans, and solicits their thoughts.

It’s like throwing a raw steak into a room full of pit-bulls. These guys are only too happy to tell him exactly why his material isn’t funny. In fact, not only is his material not funny, he’s not funny — not anymore. They take him apart, piece by piece, while Seinfeld sips his drink and gives the occasional physical indicator suggesting he might actually be listening.

Given a scene like that, it’s not surprising when a veteran comic downshifts and starts driving below the speed limit. They just naturally reach that point in life when they actually want to join The Sammy Maudlin Show: a couch with a rotating but limited cast of glad-handers and chortling sycophants.



Just how far removed is the world of the published writer to that of the stand-up comic? If this country’s self-designated national newspapers are any indication, not so far. As a comic in all seriousness, allow me to suggest, if I may, the National Post embodies the round table at the back of the bar, while the Globe more closely resembles Maudlin’s klieg-lit comfy couch. Exceptions allowed for, of course, but that’s basically the book review biz north of 49.

We can parse over the benefits and drawbacks of each model — the author pretty much loses either way, by my reckoning — but somewhere in this mess is the audience. Writers write to be read, and God help ‘em if they want to be read by reviewers and critics, ‘cos those jokers want to be read, too, often quite desperately. The best thing for any writer is to stand up and read directly to their public — their intended community. Most audiences are willing to meet a writer halfway; if, under those conditions, the prose falls flat, the writer has a pretty sharp idea what needs to be attended to. Everybody wins.

As for Mr. Alexis’ contention, my sense is his central worry is over a particular community that was probably never there to begin with — a great cloud of witnesses; intelligent interlocutors eager to greet the new golden child of letters: Salman Maudlin, perhaps. Sorry, bub, but if that's the "community" you're after, you're destined for either the couch or the table.

Everybody gets to riff off the written word these days: Marchand, Metcalfe, even me. Blame it on television. Blame it on the po-mo novel gazing that has hog-tied academia. Blame it on teh interwebz. Sure, it’s a bit of a rabble sometimes. But what are you going to do?

These days everyone’s a comedian.

Link love: Here, here and here is the National Post, doing what it does best. For further contrast here are my thoughts on a book I recently enjoyed; here is the Globe's suspiciously enthusiastic take, and here is the Post's enthusiastic take-down. Here ("John Who?") and here ("Alexis is being disingenuous") are two considerate responses to André Alexis. Now go watch Comedian, even if — especially if — you thought you were done with Jerry Seinfeld.

Whither Successful On-Line Fiction?

What might successful on-line fiction look like? Some thoughts:

It would be serialized. Like Dickens, or any of the penny-dreadfuls, on-line fiction would probably need to be serialized. Subscriptions, or feeds, could thus be enabled.

Each episode would be short. Technology does not seem to encourage lengthy perusal, or extended meditation. The reader could easily capture the day's episode on their iPhone, or what-have-you.

Each episode would attempt to chart and excite desire. This one has always seemed like a no-brainer, but it is usually the obvious that needs expressing.

More anon, as the possibilities occur. And, as ever, throw your own thoughts into the stew.

Roger Ebert

Chris Jones profiles Roger Ebert, for Esquire. Ethan Hill's photograph of Ebert is equally compelling. "The melancholia of everything completed," does not pertain to this man.

The Transformation of Roger Ebert

I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe — Roger Ebert, April 17, 2009

This is not that Roger.

After giving Alex Proya's Knowing a rave review, Ebert checks in on Rotten Tomatoes, and asks: "Is it just me? Or is it everybody else?" I haven't yet seen the movie, but I've been reading Ebert fairly closely since he returned to the printed (or virtual) word, so I'll venture forth and say, "It's mostly Ebert. But why should that matter?"

Since Ebert's return, I've found myself mostly at odds with his reviews, particularly the positive ones. Perhaps that's just me, but again I'd assert it's mostly Ebert. The various life crises that foist themselves upon us can't help but radically shift our perspective. I can recall the one time Ebert changed his thumb-stance: he'd originally panned Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven as lacking imagination, then changed his mind some months later, admitting that the circumstances he'd originally viewed the film in had negatively affected his point of view. Eastwood's film now qualified for his yearly top ten. Is it fair to suggest Ebert's health traumas might have a similar effect on how he now watches a movie, and which way his thumbs tilt?

Gene Siskel's take on watching films certainly took a radical shift when his health woes came to the fore. Shortly before he died he chose Babe: Pig In The City as the best film of the year — a controversial choice, to say the least. The "best"? Really?

I propose shifting the critical terms to "Favorite Film Of The Year." When I watched Babe: Pig In The City, it was six years after its release. My daughters and I were cozying up on the couch, while their mother was in India taking observer's notes on communities dealing with the trauma of that year's tsunami. Let me just say that when you watch this flick with your two children nestling close to your ribs, that is one hell of a fine film. Roosting like a big hairy bird with his two chicks on the family sofa, wondering what sort of "combat trauma" the mother might fly home with, I was deeply invested in the fate of the little pig with "an unprejudiced heart" as he faced unexpected viciousness and cruelty. Any adult father facing his own death would take enormous solace in a film of such delicious spectacle and straightforward profundity.

So does Pig In The City rate as my favorite from that year? Hard to say (in retrospect 1998 wasn't much of a year for movies) but I can understand why readers were rooting for a film with some adult sophistication to make the top of Gene's list. Anyone confronted with their mortal end, though, can be forgiven a little impatience with the games of adult sophistication.

So it is with Ebert. These days I find his blogging more compelling than his criticism. I think this is the forum where he speaks of what concerns him most — those aspects of humanity that (for better and for worse) have crept closest to his heart. From Dan-Dan The Yo-Yo Man to Ebert's favorite rice cooker to seemingly weightier matters, what he explores here might not change the way I see a movie, but it certainly encourages me to attend closely to my environment. And I've gradually come to realize that that was always the quality that appealed to me in his criticism and journalism.

Writin' Courses

Neal Stephenson's researcher offers her trade secrets in an exclusive Research For Writers class. Even if you've only read 100 pages of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, you know this class is worth the nickel. Via Boing-Boing.

Five Years of Sky-Writing

I nearly missed it, but my blogular salute to the late Patrick McGoohan and Ricardo Montalban marked the close of Whisky Prajer's fifth year in the blogosphere.

Right from the get-go I considered blogging to be little more than a form of sky-writing. I expected technological glitches to occur, and figured my words would likely disappear in some unanticipated internet shift. I did not expect the record to remain chiefly intact for five years and counting. How nice to still be alive and occasionally taken with thoughts that prompt expression. And how very nice to have the platform for it.

I still view it all as sky-writing, however. It certainly ain't painting on the walls of our cave. The apocalyptic in me expects to wake up some day and discover the slate wiped clean, without notice. With that in mind, this summer I collected a bunch of my favorite posts and started formatting them for print publication.

What I discovered -- what caught me off-guard -- was a marked difference in style and content that, for the most part, did not translate well to the page. All those links to other websites, articles, illustrations remained firmly embedded in the internet, refusing to budge when introduced to the page. These links didn't merely inform the content but were frequently used to justify the content. Precious few of them work as footnotes. In other words, even a cheerful Luddite like yours truly is changed when engaging the new media.

So it goes, and so it likely should be. Every essayist wants their words to become a permanent fixture in the public record; every college kid wants to be the next Matthew Arnold. There's no reason why seriousness shouldn't be an element in the blogosphere, just as it is in Zen gardens -- and perhaps even sky-writing. And there's no reason why most of these expressions shouldn't evaporate with the waning of attention.

Thanks for dropping by and reading. And a sweeping tip o' the hat to Michael Blowhard, whose early words on the 2Blowhards persuaded me to give this medium a go. Here's hoping we all get another five years of this!

Another "Best of 2008" List

Boing-Boing lists their favorite books. The title that caught me off guard was Magic & Showmanship by Henning Nelms. The Boing-Boing summary: "Classic book about conjuring has many lessons for writers."

I had to read that twice before the penny dropped: "Of course!" BB, A

Paperback Writer Answers All Your Writin' Questions

It's been a while since I checked in on Lynn Viehl, the Paperback Writer. This Friday's post is recycled, but is a mother lode of excellent advice for fiction writer types. Ms. Viehl is that rarity in the publishing world: a successful fiction writer who makes a (very comfortable, by my standards) living at her craft. If she retains any dewy-eyed illusions about publishing, I've yet to spot them. But she does have an admirable and infectious "can-do" attitude which seems to have been strengthened by her "have-done" history.

Don't be shy: drop on by and see just what sticks to your ribs.

The Incredible 'Wow!'

Michael Blowhard gives Youthful Desires a big thumbs-up!

Darrell's an elegant and mischievous writer, he's an imaginative inventor of characters and narrative lines, and he's an inspired evoker of young-male experience ... The result is a small miracle of unpushy quirkiness and sweetness. Reading "Youthful Desires" is like hanging out -- and just for the pleasure of it -- with a longtime friend.

Did Kerouac feel this good after reading his NYTBR rave? I think not. Not just praise, but also Michael's usual thought-provocation in one dandy package, here.

But wait: there's more!

Stereotypes don’t apply here. These stories sting with contemporary dilemmas, ache with love broken by culture, tickle with small comforts. His short stories are not dashed off in incoherent moments of self-indulgence, but worked out over decades with much reflection ... Darrell’s gift is both his empathy for ordinary guys in tough trade-offs and his grip on the big problems that theologians take on. In my opinion, that’s the heart of ministry AND the heart of literature: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? What must we do to be saved?” -- Mary Scriver

It’s been a long time since I’ve read any fiction, and about as long since I’ve read anything not directly related to doing my job. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it seemed no longer had I opened the book - all of a sudden I was on page 99 -- Preacher Dan

If you folks have enjoyed reading his alter-ego's blog, you will enjoy his book. I encourage you all to buy it -- DarkoV

[H]e's a wonderful, funny, evocative writer, as we all knew, and that's true of his fiction as well ... reminded me of the late Breece D'J Pancake -- Philip Christman

My heartfelt thanks to one and all! Now, if I can just get my head through the door, I believe I'll tend to the laundry...

"Writin'" Books

Earlier this month I came back from the post office and tore open my Amazon package to find: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell. Ah, just in the nick of time! I’ve been working on The Novel. And I’ve stopped having fun.

I read Pressfield first. It’s a slender book, similar in build (if not substance) to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Chapters can be as long as three pages. More likely they’ll be shorter. To wit, here’s one entitled What I Know, in its entirety:

There’s a secret real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Such sentiments have a very limited currency with me, alas: I simply don’t find sitting down that difficult. I sat down five times to write this blog entry. I took five separate stabs at it, too. In those five attempts I wrote a pile of words that shall remain blessedly unseen by others, so I think I can say with some authority that sitting down and writing isn’t the difficulty for me. Writing something worthy of posting, however, has been a bit of a trick lately.

Pressfield has written some books I very much enjoy: Gates of Fire and Tides of War are terrifically compelling historical novels. The man is no stranger to research, but unlike other novelists who’ve tried their hand at historical fiction, Pressfield makes a keen distinction between the baby and the bathwater, and if these two novels are the norm for him, he consistently delivers the former to his readers.

The War of Art, however, does not deal with issues of discernment, nor does it mean to; it is a motivational piece. The copy I have has been blessed by Jay McInerney and (hello!) Robert McKee, and Esquire magazine calls it, “A vital gem ... a kick in the ass.” Though Pressfield dutifully addresses the writer as “she” in one chapter, then “he” in the next, I suspect men are more likely to buy it.

There must be writers who respond well to a kick in the ass. Me? Not so much. I wish I'd found a copy in a bookstore and perused it before buying. The book can be read from cover to cover in less than an hour, and to my eyes it’s not that far removed from The Artist’s Way — which I’ve read and followed, by the way, and find modestly helpful. But since I’ve raised the specter of The Artist’s Way, here’s a question that niggles at me: what is it about Hollywood that gets writers talkin' religion when they talk craft? Do they have baskets of money that verbally prompt these people to use language that's, well, just a tad flaky?

Julia Cameron and Steven Pressfield wax philosophic-lite when they reach out to uncork their would-be proteges. Reading them both, I get a little itchy and scratchy: “Hm. Sounds vaguely pagan,” I’ll think after reading Cameron (“Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity”). Or, “Oh, that there's Pantheism,” after reading Pressfield (“Everything that is, is God in one form or another”). Feel free to attribute my distancing to the well-honed knee-jerk reaction of an orthodox acolyte. But let me just state for the record: nothing raises my hackles faster than a Christian artist invoking God this, Jesus that and the Holy Spirit over all. Neo-Pagans can inspire my curiosity, and as for Pantheism I'll admit that most days leave me wondering if that’s not really The Way It Is. But when it comes to artistic instruction, I'd prefer it if my teachers considered me an atheist. Hard to say why that is, exactly; I guess religious talk of any sort is freighted with considerable proprietary emotion. Call this Resistance if you must, but is there any reason why we can’t avoid altogether the topic of religion when we’re figuring out how best to flex the artistic impulse?

Getting back to Resistance — I spent four years resisting Resistance: sitting down, turning on the computer and typing my way to the next stage in my novel. Most of that was not "happy" time, and once my first working draft was finished I vowed to leave it alone until I discovered some way to enjoy myself, dammit. I publicly read a selection from the first draft recently, and the generous response I received encouraged me to pick it up again. So I did. And I stopped having fun. Just what, exactly, is my problem?

Here’s Madison Smartt Bell:

Anyone who’s ever grappled with a longer narrative, something approaching the length of a novel, say, will have discovered (quite painfully, perhaps) that sheer intuition won’t carry the project all the way through ... Some writers can tolerate a very high level of detailed advance planning for a long work without losing their own interest and sense of discovery in actually writing it. Others are so differently constituted that they cannot tolerate any abstract advance planning at all and must proceed through novels as intuitively as they would through short stories (with the result that they suffer more and have to write a lot more drafts).

BINGO!! Yes, that was, and still is, me: limping along on my Achilles' heel, sheer intuition. Michael Ondaatje claims to work in this mode, and I suspect Jim Harrison is of similar temperament. But if I’m going to take another worthy stab at this project of mine, some planning and coloring within the lines is desperately in order.

At this point it might be reasonable of me to finally break down and purchase one or two books from Writer’s Digest. So far I’ve avoided them, not out of snobbery but of fiscal thrift: the few I’ve browsed through struck me as articles padded into book-length form. Thankfully, there are hosts of worthy articles available on the web. And, even more impressive, there’s a true professional who, on her blog, offers her own advice from considerable personal experience: Lynne Viehl. "36 novels in five genres"!? I'm paying attention, and I'm taking notes. Here Ms. Viehl provides 10 links of varying potential (I'll pass on the freeware, but the articles are certainly worth consideration). And here's an excellent interview with Ms. Viehl by the sadly-no-longer-blogging Mad Max Perkins. One nice exchange: Q: "I have to say: of all the people who responded to my 'Call to Authors,' questionnaire, your story struck me as the most upbeat. You seemed not to have met the same level of disappointment and frustration that a lot of the other authors spoke about. Were you sugar-coating?" A: "I've had my disappointments, but not many, and they made me work harder. I didn't know anything about the industry and I never met another writer until after I was published, so that may have something to do with it. My only expectation was simply to see my name on the cover of a book, and I've done that twenty-six times in five years."

Between Viehl’s professional picks and Bell’s articulate observations (mastering a blues scale on guitar is terrific decompression advice for anyone, by the way) my joy has returned, as has my energy for the project. And that’s how it shall remain ... (*cough*) God willing.