From comedian John Branyan (@jbranyancomedy).
I thought I would post a little list that gave me a giggle. I’ve only added one to the list, see if you can spot it and my sense of humour.
–Sent by Leon Ogroske, WRITERS’ Journal, www.writersjournal.com
Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: I can’t tell whether you mean ‘change a light bulb’ or ‘have sex in a light bulb.’ Can we reword it to remove the ambiguity?
Q: How many editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one. But first they have to rewire the entire building.
Q: How many managing editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: You were supposed to have changed that light bulb last week!
Q: How many art directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Does it HAVE to be a light bulb?
Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: The last time this question was asked, it involved art directors. Is the difference intentional? Should one or the other instance be changed? It seems inconsistent.
Q: How many marketing directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: It isn’t too late to make this neon instead, is it?
Q: How many proofreaders does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Proofreaders aren’t supposed to change light bulbs. They should just query them.
Q: How many writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: But why do we have to CHANGE it?
Q: How many publishers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw it in, and two to hold down the author.
Q: How many booksellers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one, and they’ll be glad to do it too, except no one shipped them any.
Q: How many editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: You’ve already screwed in too many light bulbs. Repetition!
Q: How many writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, and they like to give it a good twist at the end.
Q: How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Just one, but the light bulb has to endure a series of conflicts and challenges before it finally changes.
Q: How many reviewers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. They just stand back and critique while you do it.
Q: How many netgilantes does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Did he use an English word? Must be a writer! Let’s lynch him!!!!
Q: How many reviewers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one, but first they have to tell you why they didn’t like how you did it.
Q: How many Kindleboards authors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, followed by a 12-page, passionately-argued thread about how much the light bulb should cost.
Q: How many forum users does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, but in the following ten-page discussion, someone will invoke a comparison to Nazis.
Q: How many authors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one but you also need an editor, proof reader, cover artist, and an agent to be there at the same time.
Origin by J.A. Konrath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
People would assume that because I’m a writer I would have heard of Joe Konrath as a result of his excellent blog about writing and self-publishing. Well, I’d like to say that I found out about the world of self-publishing and writing via Joe after I’d become a fan of his books. I liked his mix of humour and darkly themed tales. I especially liked his novel Shaken, which had me buying anything else I could find of his.
Actually, come to think of it, Shaken may have been the first e-book that my wife and I bought.
Origin is less Jack Daniels and more horror, that is to say, it has less humour and is more about the thrills. Origin definitely keeps the pace up and is an enjoyable read. At about 60% finished (e-book remember) I had trouble putting this book down to do even important tasks, like take the dog out and make tea.
I’ve given 4 stars, but it is somewhere between a 3.5 and 4 star book. The mix of genres works most of the time, but at other times it feels like someone should be eaten by a monster, not making doe eyes. Definitely a book for horror fans, or anyone who likes thrills and can handle a little horror.
Found this video recently, it pays homage to Strunk and White in the form of a rap. For any writing fan out there: enjoy.
It’s my birthday today – no “you’re old” jokes, unless you want to be bombarded with “yo momma” jokes. I’ve had a great start to the day, having received a box of chocolates and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue label Scotch from my wife. I even managed to get a little writing done over breakfast.
A few weeks ago I posted a video from James Rollins on writing. This follows on from a post many months back that featured a video by James with Steve Berry talking about writing. So it only feels fair to present a video by Steve Berry talking about writing. Enjoy!
In internet terms I’m somewhat of a noob. I was late to Facebook, I held out on joining message boards and forums, I even had a personal campaign to avoid the vapidness of Twitter. Now, of course, I am happy to admit that I was wrong. Social media is awesome.
There are some down sides of course. I’m not a huge fan of the salespeople posing as real people on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and the various forums I frequent. There are only so many times per day that I need to be told that my penis is not big enough, that I could be making money on Twitter by being a douche, or that someone I’ve never conversed with has a book for sale.
What I love about social media is the friends I’ve made, the great conversations I’ve had and all the catching up I’ve managed to do with friends I don’t get to see regularly. I have just joined Linkedin and discovered a friend of mine has two start up companies (check them out: http://www.cockjox.com/ http://tidyclub.com/). How would I have found that out between now and the next time we catch up for a beer?
Anyway, you can join me on the links below. We can chat, I’ll be funny, quote some science and talk books.
Think of it this way, imagine school kids around the world actually writing something that is legible (A41A14A) because of NaNoWriMo. Imagine a November were you don’t receive a single tweet asking you to buy an author’s book, because they are too busy doing NaNoWriMo. Isn’t that worth a couple of bucks?
Dear Office of Letters and Light Superhero,
I have many things to tell you.
First off, THANK YOU. The fact that you’re getting this email means you’ve earned the superhero moniker by making a donation to one (or many) of our programs. Because of your support, NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program grew again this year; we had 250,000 adults and 80,000 kids and teens in more than 2,000 classrooms writing with us. Your contributions also helped 500 public libraries transform their spaces into community noveling zones.
You inspired so many stories, and unleashed a life-changing creative confidence in writers around the world.
This has been a big year for all of our programs. We launched the brand-new Camp NaNoWriMo, and rebuilt the entire NaNoWriMo site in order to keep it speedy during November’s monster traffic spike. For the first year ever, we had a year-round, full-time Young Writers Program Director to expand our free curriculum and resources for schools, and a year-round, full-time staff member dedicated to supporting our libraries and 500 volunteer-run chapters around the world.
All in all, November capped an ambitious, heartwarming, and expensive year for OLL.
And this is why I’ve turned on the bat signal. As of today, we still have $200,000 left to raise before we hit our organizational break-even point for the year. If we miss our fundraising goal, we won’t shut down, but we will have to cut back on all the programs you so generously supported this year.
I hesitated to bother you again with a fundraising appeal; you’ve already done so much for us. This moment, though, is such a crucial one for the future of our programs that I’m asking you to please consider making a donation to the Office of Letters and Light today.
If you’ve already given all you can this year, we understand, and we’re so grateful to you. But if you can make an additional donation, even a very small one, it will have a huge impact on the lives of the 400,000 writers we hope to inspire together in 2012.
Warm regards,
Chris
Executive Director
The Office of Letters and Light
Donate via credit card or PayPal through the OLL Donation StationSkip the thank-you gifts and donate directly through PayPalDonate by check or money order
Barry Eisler is an interesting fellow, but this blog post is mainly for my writer friends.
I can’t claim to have read any of Barry’s books yet – although I have bought two which are waiting on my Kindle to-be-read list – but he does have some interesting things to say about publishing and writing. These videos are from a Q&A session he did in Boston. Enjoy.
Yes, that is correct. I managed to write my 50,000 words this month, and with a whole hour to spare!
It reminds me of my undergaduate days, I don’t think I ever started an assignment until a day or two before the deadline, and I pumped out that assignment just before the deadline every time. Although it did also explain some of my less than excellent grades. I think the main thing is that I got to spend more time drinking and playing guitar than I would have if I had worked diligently. What good is a Bachelors degree if you don’t have a huge education debt and alcohol induced memory loss?
Fortunately I love writing, so I can do it any time, not just when I have a deadline.
Words Written: 1,740 (per day average)
Total: 52,204
Of course, my goals weren’t just to write 50,000 words this month. I also wanted to achieve a few other things. So how did I go?
1) Write daily.
Failed. But I did write most days of the week.
2) Get into good writing habits.
I think I’ve moved towards this. Regular writing, thinking about what I want to write and laying out scenes in my head prior to sitting down; all good habits. I got some good tips here.
3) Use writing as an excuse reason to stay up late and sleep in.
Success.
4) Put off household chores to write.
Success.
5) Get a large chunk of first novel written.
Success. I’m still a long way from finished with Overturned Stones. It is a thriller (synopsis below) and I now have the first third and the last third written. Another month and I should have a good first draft ready for rewrites.
I suppose that will be the next challenge on my path to becoming a novelist: rewriting. Whilst most of what I have written is pretty good, I did find some sections that are very bare on details. Some chapters are almost completely dialogue, with very little exposition. That may have been my intention initially, but I have a feeling that when read with fresh eyes it may not communicate all that I was hoping.
NaNoWriMo has been good fun. I’ll definitely be signing up again next year. Hopefully by then I’ll have a rewritten, edited, designed and ready to publish, manuscript.
Overturned Stones Synopsis
You never expect to stand trial for the murder of your wife, let alone if you didn’t do it. When you find out that your wife may not be dead but rather kidnapped by human traffickers for sexual slavery, you could be forgiven for being a little annoyed. Proposing lead therapy for the traffickers in an effort to help them reform and free your wife isn’t appreciated, by the traffickers, the police, or potential future employers. Can one man, dubbed “The Husband” by the media, take down organised crime, avoid the police and traffickers, and keep his gun loaded? http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/tyson-adams
Okay, I’m so close I can taste victory. What doesn’t help is that I happened to write 1200 words on a different project today and yesterday I had a great idea for another story that I had to get the basic synopsis written down before I forgot it.
Regardless I have hit 42,000 words and this last week of writing indicates I can have NaNoWriMo conquered on my first outing. This is, of course, assuming my procrastination fairy doesn’t arrive with a hilarious site filled with internet memes.
Hope everyone else is having fun with their writing. For those of you who are just plain old readers, I hope you’ve been laughing heartily at your writing pals. Remember to tempt them with time wasting activities from now until the 30th.
Words Written: 1,502 (per day average)
Total: 42,068
Remaining: 7,932 – very doable.
All of the NaNoWriMo masochists are 60% of the way through challenge 2011. I have just disowned one of my writing buddies for having already passed the 45,000 word mark.
1667 words a day didn’t seem like that much of an effort at the beginning of the month. Now I’m realising it is quite a demanding effort to be consistently creative when you have a day job, travel for work, and a lazy streak wider than a truck. Being a professional writer is no easy task, I have even more respect for them than ever.
So with 12 days left to write ~23,000 words I’m still confident, but know there are some big writing days needed. Also I may just start taking the advice of many and just write and give up on that silly idea of making sure flow and research are complete. Not that I’m blaming the internet and its plethora of interesting information for my slow writing progress, that would be rather shallow of me. Instead it is proper to lay the blame at the feet of my dog, curse her and her need to sleep on my feet in such a cute way.
Words Written: 1,505 (per day average)
Total: 27,097
Remaining: 22,903
How has everyone else fared so far?
The month of writing madness has begun!
This is my first attempt/entry into NaNoWriMo (NaNo details here). I am a virgin who doesn’t know any better, a lamb to the slaughter, a bright eyed idealist…… Blog posts count towards the word total, right?
The story I am writing is tentatively entitled Overturned Stones. It is a thriller with humorous overtones to subdue the dark subject matter. I had previously started this particular project but had to bin it in June and redo the outline (stupid characters didn’t do what I wanted them to!): I’m new to novel writing, live and learn.
Outline: You never expect to stand trial for the murder of your wife, especially if you didn’t do it. When you find out that your wife may not be dead but rather kidnapped by human traffickers for sexual slavery, you could be forgiven for being a little annoyed. Proposing lead therapy for the traffickers in an effort to help them reform and free your wife isn’t appreciated, by the traffickers, the police, or potential future employers. Can one man, dubbed “The Husband” by the media, take down organised crime, avoid the police and traffickers, and keep his gun loaded?
My journey has begun with a nice lead in. Yesterday and Sunday I managed to write a few short stories, plenty of writing to pique the creative juices. Currently they are with my trusted critique providers and then edits before submission – I’m thinking Crime Noir, Wet Ink and I have another paranormal story that I’m still thinking about which publication would suit it.
Today my writing was done while Australian’s were stopped for a horse race. Given that all I care about is buying the glue and dog food after the race and not throwing money into a void prior, I was able to get a sizable chunk written.
Words Written: 1,771
Total: 1,771
Remaining: 48,229
Who else is slightly mad this year?
| Internet Pirate, Yar! |
I can remember back to when computers were nothing more than green text on a black background and made terrific boat anchors. Then suddenly they exploded, usually from a spilt drink or frustration in the 10 minutes it took for anything to load. Just as I was leaving high school the interwebz was suddenly all around us and promised to deliver us information, e-commerce, media and porn. This coincided with computers becoming faster, hard-drives becoming bigger and teenagers becoming hornier.
And that is when media piracy really took off.
Sure Napster popularised it a few years later and the music industry starting jumping up and down about it later again, but someone had forgotten to tell these people that the game had changed. I didn’t have to buy the entire Primus CD for the two songs I was actually going to listen to, now I could have a copy of those two songs on my computer, either downloaded from friends or copied off the CD.
I think we were all waiting for the music industry to catch up. At some point we were expecting all of our favourite songs to be available online for sale. But our computers were growing, so it wasn’t just music, we wanted our TV and movies as well. Why couldn’t we just grab a copy off the internet when we wanted? Where was the store that sold this stuff? And would they sell Debbie Does Dallas?
Well, sensing the growing change in consumer behaviour, the desire for an online store to sell entertainment, the music industry, movie industry and other media decided to band together and sue kids for millions of dollars each.
Brilliant! Rather than sell people stuff lets sue them! What a marketing and sales master stroke.
Instead of responding to consumer demands, the industries concerned decided they didn’t want to play. They thought that would be the end of that. Of course in a free market economy you have to expect the market to dictate terms, not anyone else. Piracy became embedded.
Now of course it isn’t the media industry’s fault that their products were being pirated, it was them damn pesky kids with their computas and iGizmos and and theys gots no respects for da rulz……… The e-generation were blamed for the down-turn in music sales and for massive losses to the music and movie industry. I like the assumption that every download must equal a lost sale, talk about a non-sequitur.
None of these arguments, discussion or history are really relevant though. I’m going to coin a new term SCREEN-GAZING which is the e-version of navel-gazing, because all of this piracy discussion is essentially nothing more than screen-gazing. Lets have a look at the real data that needs to be discussed.
The survey interviewed 1,700 music consumers age 13-60 and found that music is important to social networkers: 39% have embedded music in their personal profiles.
70% said they embed music to show off their taste; half said music is a good way to reflect personality.
Some other survey findings:
- Some 53% of people actively surf social networking sites to find music.
- 30% said they went on to buy or download music that they had discovered on a social network site (for MySpace, the proportion is 36%).
- On popular sites the numbers of people who use sites to find music increase – for MySpace and Bebo, 75% and 72%, respectively, and 66% for YouTube.
- 46% say they wish it were easier to purchase music they had discovered on social networking sites – for example via a “buy now” button on the site.
- The number of those saying they illegally download music tracks has increased, from 40% in 2005 and 36% in 2006 to 43% in 2007.
- Only 33% cited the risk of being prosecuted as a deterrent against illegal downloading, compared with 42% in 2006.
- Nearly one in five respondents – 18% – claimed an intention to download more unauthorized tracks, up from 8% in 2006.
- After a dramatic 40% increase in the number of legal downloaders between 2005 and 2006, only 16% growth occurred in the number of legal downloaders from 2006 to 2007.
- 22% of legal downloaders admitted that they had not paid for a track in the last six months.
- 84% agreed that digital downloads of older music should be cheaper; 48% said they would be prepared to pay more for newly released music.
So basically iTunes had been on the map for 4 years by the time this survey was performed, downloading had been around for a decade. Big congratulations to the industry for making those inroads into making music accessible. Almost half of the kids would like easier access to music to buy, and most thought it was too expensive.
Another survey shows that downloads of media were decreasing. So clearly the impact of actually selling media to people that they want was a good thing for lowering pirating. Just the industry hasn’t reached enough of the market yet.
How do you dissuade people from illegal downloads? The traditional approach for punishing pirates would be imprisonment, pilloring, flogging, enslavement, branding, keel hauling, and/or hanging. Given how well that worked in ridding the world of pirates maybe we should consider other methods.
Someone was really bright and had a look at what parental guidance did to downloading.
Who would have thought that parenting had a role in being a law abiding citizen?
What does all of this mean? Well pretty much media – be that ebooks, movies, music, TV shows – need to be easily accessible and priced appropriately. There also needs to be some responsibility taken by everyone to make sure that people expect to pay for media. This can’t be draconian, it has to be encouraged, and part of that encouragement comes from the ease of access and prices that people can afford. And now I hold my breath. Wake me after I pass out waiting for a solution rather than another blame game.
Tyson Adams 