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Ten (Non-fiction) Reads

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When I was writing screenplays I watched a lot of movies. Binges of them. Blackout binges.

When I’m working on interactive titles I tend to play games obsessively and read up on the latest failed attempts at interactive storytelling.

What’s been really enjoyable about turning toward the publishing industry over the past few months is that I’ve re-established a long-lost love affair with the New Books shelf at the local library. In doing so I’ve worked my way through a surprising number of books, and I’d like to pass along* the titles** of the ones that stuck with me.  [ Read more ]

The E-Reader Technology Question

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I’ve stumbled across a few posts recently about e-readers and how they compare to books. The overwhelming consensus is that e-readers aren’t there yet, but this rather obvious observation seems to be leading people to two completely wrong conclusions.

One group of people are concluding from the current technological shortfall that books will always be better than technology, therefore there will always be a need for books. Well, no…and yes.  [ Read more ]

The Coaching Encyclopedia

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I had no idea there was anything called a book coach. (Obviously this says something about my own impoverished imagination and lack of initiative, but for equally obvious reasons I would prefer not to dwell on those subjects.)

And I have to say, the questions being asked by the book coach at the other end of the above link are good questions. But I’m still stuck on the idea that book coaches even exist, and I can tell I’m not going to be able to shake free of this new obsession before this post ends.  [ Read more ]

Squidoo and the Identity-Theft Threat

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Speaking of trying to make a buck off of other people’s property, this is pretty impressive:

Rather than convincing companies to set up their own public profile pages for their brands to aggregate and manage online conversations, Squidoo is creating hundreds of unofficial ones (e.g. for Guinness) in the hopes that companies will come to them and cough up $400 per month for the right to develop the page on their terms. Once a company pays up and gains control over the relevant Squidoo lens, the left hand column will ‘belong’ to them.

Obviously Squidoo is smart enough not to use Guinness logos or other branding on the page, but what’s the real intent here? Rather than wait around for some user to put up a Guinness page, Squidoo is priming the pump in the hope that a discussion will get going that Guinness will then feel compelled to take ownership of. It’s a wonderful example of extortion by social-networking proxy, and I can see why somebody thought it was a good idea.  [ Read more ]

BNET: Exploit Your Customers or You’re a Wimp

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In a previous post I mentioned running across BNET.com, which is a division of CBS Interactive. Yesterday I went back to the site to see if it held any riches, and promptly stepped in this:

The elephant in the room at Advertising Week sessions in New York beginning today is the ongoing reluctance of companies to mine user preferences and other data many consumers are willing to share in exchange for more relevant products and services.

Wow.

I mean, I thought one of the reasons consumers were willing to share data is because they’ve been told that it won’t be used against them. (I mean over and above the fact that you have to share data in order to use many services or sites — which means it’s really a fee.)  [ Read more ]

Best Job Title Ever

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Sign me up!

(Although the job title certainly fits, I don’t believe all the wild talk that this is a bold move on the part of the New England Patriots.)

— Mark Barrett

Interactive Lather

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Yesterday a story that’s been running for seventy-two years finally came to a close:

Friday marked the final flicker of CBS’ “Guiding Light,” as that venerable daytime drama logged its farewell hour after 72 years on the air.

As the article points out, there’s a lot more competition for eyeballs than there used to be, and there are fewer and fewer consumers at home during the day. Of such societal shifts are final curtains made.

It also seems to me, however, that the essence of the soap opera remains deeply-rooted in our culture, even as the pre-packaged network television versions have been dropping like flies over the past decade. For what is the online gathering place — whether bulletin board, chatroom or social networking site — but a live-action, real-time soap opera?

The king of the hill these days isn’t General Hospital, it’s Facebook — a 24/7 rolling soap opera filled with bad blind dates, drunken escapades, desperate pleas for help, fake desperate pleas for help, loneliness, sexual intrigue, comedy and enough vanity to stock every dressing room the length of Broadway. Instead of SAG actors playing roles, the users are the cast, mixing truth with fiction as they build and morph their online personas into the feel-good characters they most want to be.

The entire production cycle is down to mere seconds. The production cost is the price of broadband. The actors, writers and directors are you. The show never goes off the air. And each user’s dialogue is immediately embraced by other live human beings, who in turn play out their parts against a backdrop of pop-culture myopia.

How could any fictional soap opera hope to compete with that?

— Mark Barrett

License to Lie

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I don’t know when I first heard the terms narrative nonfiction and creative nonfiction, but it wasn’t too long ago. Five years at most. I do, however, remember what my reaction was.

You’re kidding.

The joke was on me, however, because it turns out that people really aren’t kidding about these — what to call them? — terms? Genres? Amazing new art forms?

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t really see why these newfangled words are necessary from a functional point of view. (If this is really just about marketing the same old books to a new crop of easily-led readers, that’s something entirely different. It’s still not okay, but it’s entirely different.)

As hard as I try, I can’t really see the difference between what used to be called nonfiction and what is now being dressed up as narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction. Unless of course these new terms (that’s what I’m going to call them) are really an excuse for allowing nonfiction writers to cross the line into fiction writing.  [ Read more ]

Writing Blogs and M&M’s

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27 Writing blogs vying to make a Top 10 list. To my mind, the list itself is the treasure.

Here’s a favorite found nugget:

Stay away from the peanut M&M’s. You may think they’re harmless, but a handful turns into ten and you’re going to consume just enough calories between September and February to make you hate yourself in March. Remember, you’re spending lots of hours sitting on your ass. Your brain doesn’t burn calories at the same rate as your body. Eat accordingly.

Don’t I know this. You start with the little packet. You move up to the Tear & Share packet — but you don’t share. Then you see the medium-sized bag is on sale at the local market. Then you notice the large bag is also on sale for the same price. Then you’re pushing a wheelbarrow full of lose, custom-printed peanut M&M’s down the purgatory hallway of your dreams, slipping and sliding on the candies that fall out of the barrow until you finally lose your balance and plummet into a swirling cauldron of half-melted pills, only to wake up screaming with the caked-on taste of peanut-flavored chocolate foaming the inside of your mouth like spray-on insulation.

Which is when you finally admit you have a problem and switch to plain.

[Warning: if you are prone to seizures, narcolepsy or zoning out, don’t click here.]

— Mark Barrett