Have we made writing too easy?

A good friend drew my attention to the disappearing act of calligraphy this week, and the beautiful work of master calligrapher Paul Antonio captured by The Guardian. Coincidentally, I am part way through reading The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushashi, a martial text from circa 17th Century Japan, an era and a culture that considered calligraphy an essential art.

In our culture and era writing has been reduced to a purely functional act. Computers and printers have turned calligraphy into word processing. Content is king, and the physical act of writing is only a means to that end.

But clearly, the act of writing informs the nature of the content. Inscriptions carved in stone tend toward brevity. The era of vellum and quills produced much of our greatest poetry, Shakespeare included, beautiful language for beautiful materials. Academic studies have demonstrated the correlation between the amount of ink held in a dip pen, and the length of sentence used by writers like Dickens, who trained themselves to compose sentences of the right length to be completed with one charge of ink.

Calligraphy is difficult and full of limitations. Word processing is easier, and gives far more freedom, qualities generally accepted as good. But often it is the restriction imposed by a medium and the disciplines it enforces that bring out a writers greatest creativity. Poets fit their thoughts into poetic structure, novelists tell stories within genres, both to give their infinite imaginations a scaffolding to build within.

Have we lost something important in abandoning calligraphy, script, and even handwriting? I think perhaps we have.

The act of writing is really indistinguishable from the act of thinking. You may believe you have grasped an idea in your mind, but it is only when you attempt to write it down that you really test the idea. (Hence why I am writing this post, to test the idea about writing that I had in my head) The freedom of word processing allows writers to lay down words at such a speed and with so little investment that, unfortunately, it often seems that there was little thought involved with their devising.

Am I suggesting a return to the quill and velum? No. Although I’d be fascinated to see what effect on my writing working with older implements would have. A computer keyboard is a superior tool for writing. But perhaps we all need to find ways to turn writing back from a process into a craft, and by doing so reconnect the act of writing with the act of thinking.

Damien Walter is the coordinator for the Literature Network and a writer of weird and speculative fiction.

The End of the Print Age?

In anticipation of our keynote speech ‘The End of the Print Age?‘ to be given by award winning novelist Graham Joyce at the Writing Industries Conference 2010 (6th March, Loughborough University), we take a look at some of the changes ushering in the new digital age in publishing.

• Apple launch the iPad in late March and will provide an ebook store with content from most major publishers. Will iBooks do for books what iTunes has done for music?
• Amazon, the worlds biggest book retailer and makers of the successful Kindle e-reader, announce 70% royalties for authors selling their books directly through the Kindle store. With most publishers paying royalties of 10%, what effect will this have on the industry?
• The Eurpoean Union launch a continent wide online library. Will Europeana replace the humble public lending library?
• Sony Ericson predict there will be 50 billion mobile phones in the world by 2020. With many of these having high resolution colour screens, will mobile phones be the reading device of the future?
• Head of Penguin books says he is not scared of the transition from print to ebooks.

But despite these changes, the paperback book is still loved by millions of readers around the world. Is this the end of the print age? If so how will publishers and writers adapt to changing times and make the most of the opportunities that come with the digital age? Let us know your thoughts, and don’t miss Graham Joyce at the Writing Industries Conference.

http://writingindustries.com

Curry and Discipline

From January onwards the Literature Network will be featuring the writing of bloggers around the East Midlands region. Curry, discipline and caffeine may (or may not) be repeating themes.

• M C Rogerson on why revising is like curry. (But is it a nice mild Korma or an extra spicy Vindaloo?)
• Mark Robson on the discipline of writing.
• Harry Riley muses on the task of finding a publisher (or not, as the case may be).
• Does caffeine aid the creative process? Graham Edwards explores.
• Women poets don’t write reviews – allegedly.

To have your blog included please contact: damien@charnwood-arts.org.uk

Looking Ahead at Science Fiction

Damien Walter joins the Guardian Book Podcast to take a look ahead at Sceicne Fiction and Fantasy. Read more

Bookshops are not Churches. But.

Earlier this week the Guardian book website unleashed a tumult of anger and frustration against the UK’s largest bookseller, Waterstones. The thrust of Stuart Jeffries article was that with its increasing commercialisation (3-4-2 sales, celebrity biogs etc etc) Waterstones had gone from saviour to destroyer of bookselling in just over a decade.

More interesting than the article itself however were the hundreds of comments left in response. Many continued the attack, and just as many came to the defence of Waterstones. But almost all conveyed the sense that there was something missing from bookselling. Commentors gave hints at what that something might be. We want quiet places to read and contemplate. We want steaming hot pots of water and infusions of fragrant teas. We want educated, erudite staff with whom we can discuss not just books but the broad range of knowledge we learn from them. Most of all, we want a sense of community, of connection with other like minded souls in search of meaning.

We want a church.

I’m certainly not the first person to observe that art has taken the place of religion in modern culture. People turn to art for the kind of comfort and insight they once sought from organised religion, particularly people from the urban professional classes for whom books are of such cultural importance. But while galleries, concert halls, theatres and other cultural institutions have geared themselves towards satisfying the (for lack of a better word) spiritual expectations of their audiences, the bookshop has gone in entirely the opposite direction. Galleries have positioned themselves as quiet, white spaces in the chaos of modern life. Bookshops are packed full of advertising and cross merchandising. Major performance venues bring people together for communal, shared experiences. Bookshops offer author events that suffer from a lack of ambition and are rarely well promoted. Bookshops have become a feature of shopping malls, but are conspicuously missing from the major arts and cultural centres developed in the last decade.

To me these problems are all symptomatic of a fundamental crisis at the heart of both book-selling and publishing. Books and reading, among the most fundamental cornerstones of our cultural (and hence spiritual) life, have in recent years been allowed to slide into existing as a purely commercial industry. In every other area of our cultural life, visual arts, theatre, TV, etc etc, we acknowledge the need for public subsidy to mitigate the less pleasant outcomes of commercialism. But because of their relatively strong commercial basis (theatre would long since have disappeared outside London without subsidy) bookshops and publishers have not made a case (and perhaps have never tried) to get support from the state.

Would Waterstones be better able to fulfil our cultural needs beyond selling books if it received subsidy to do so? Would independent bookshops flourish if they could access grants to support their existence?

Is it time that bookshops and publishers made the case for public subsidy?

Originally published on damiengwalter.com

Damien Walter is a writer of weird and speculative fiction and the coordinator of the Literature Network.

Will you take part with NaNoWriMo?

November has become a special month for writers world wide. In case you have not heard, 1st November marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. Started in 1999 in the home of all things progressive, San Francisco, NaNoWriMo has grown to an international phenomenon involving over 119,000 participants in 2008.

The rules of NaNoWriMo are simple. Participants aim to write a 50,000 word novel between 1st – 30th November (making an average word rate of 1,600 words a day). Winners receive nothing more than the honour of crossing the finishing line, and a gnatty badge for your blog or website. Its entirely possible to fake your resuts and claim victory without writing a word, but really, what would be the point?

Some more cynical readers might ask what the point is of the whole project. As the NaNoWriMo organisers make clear, the aim is not to write a bestselling novel and sell it for a six figure advance (although with 21,270 NaNo novels written last year alone its likely that December is a painful month for literary agents world wide) . Instead, the focus is on participation. How many of us dream of stories in our heads, but between the pressures of work, family and the rest of modern life how many of us believe we do not have the time to write them down? NaNoWriMo is there to show that if you really want to write you CAN find the time. Ten minutes over breakfast. Half an hour on the bus or train to work. Moments stolen in the workplace instead of pointlessly surfing Facebook or Twitter. An hour in the evening instead of Eastenders and The Bill. Its amazing how much you can achieve when you give yourself a goal.

Should professional novelists fear competition from the NaNoWriMo hordes? A handful of NaNoWriMo novels (heavily revised and edited we assume) have been published in the last decade, and almost certainly one or two will become bestsellers or award winners in time. But while NaNoWriMo highlights the wonderful growth in our society that allows millions of people to express themselves in writing, it also shows what a challenge it is to write a novel that has meaning for millions of people.

You can join up for this years NaNoWriMo on the official website, where you can also find details of groups taking part in the East Midlands region and beyond. And if you are in Leicester, you can find listings for support meetings here.

Damien Walter is a writer of weird and speculative fiction and coordinator of the Literature Network. You can follow his NaNoWriMo progress this year at damiengwalter.com

Are we now Post Sci-Fi?

Sci-fi has made many predictions about the future, but did any of them forecast that in the early years of the 21st century everyone would be watching … sci-fi? Our TV screens are filled with Dr Who, Lost and nowFlashForward. Each summer brings more blockbusters in the Lord of the Rings and Star Trek vein, and a flood of superhero franchises. In comics and video games, sci-fi is the norm. It’s not just part of mainstream culture, it is arguably the dominant cultural expression of the early 21st century.

Read more on the Guardian book blog

What are writers good for?

There are many ways writers can help people, and we should not wait for permission to make them happen. Read more