GBS: Google Book Search

In the filing cabinet of my mind, the ongoing squabble over Google Book Search gets filed alongside credit default swaps and the election for state superintendent in a folder labeled Stuff That I Agree is Important, But That Makes Me Tired So Can I Just Learn About it Later, Please?

With Google’s settlement with U.S. authors and publishers, later has become now. If you want in-depth reporting, go here; but stay right here if you want the quick-and-dirty.

Here’s what the settlement means:

· Currently, Google shows snippets of out-of-print books. With this settlement, Google can allow people to preview up to 20% of those books.

· Want to see the whole book? Libraries that carry Google’s new institutional subscription can provide access to “free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books.”

This is a good thing . . . right? So why do I feel like I’m being hornswaggled?

If any of you out there in the blogosphere can explain what Google Book Search means for writers, readers, and publishers and can explain it in such a way that won’t make me want to jam pencils into my eyes (or yours), email me.

Ronald Tierney at The Mystery Company

I don't think we've plugged The Mystery Company in Carmel much on Book Choy, but it really is a neat place, not least of all because of the steady stream of authors going through the doors for booksignings. If you're at all into the genre, consider stopping by the bookstore tonight around 7 pm to see local author Ronald Tierney, promoting the latest in his series about an Indianapolis private eye.

For those of you what likes to do a background check, check out this 2007 interview with Tierney, courtesy of the Sons of Spade blog.

Sudden Fictions

Sudden fictions, microfiction, the short short story, whichever term you find most fitting there are few reading experiences quite like the under-750-words piece. (Some of my most recent non-fiction favorites come from Not Quite What I Was Planning", a collection of six-word autobiographies. For example, Chuck Klosterman: "Nobody cared, then they did. Why?") If, like me, you're perversely obsessed with the art, you might be interested in Alison Jester's class at the Indiana Writers Center.

From the IWC website:

The Short Short Story
Instructor: Alison Jester
Saturday, November 8
1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
$45 members/$50 non-members

Sometimes referred to as flash fiction, the short short story has become quite popular. But what are its qualities, besides consisting of about 750 words? We will explore the form; discuss short shorts that participants have brought to class; and write an exercise.

Presumably, the class will consist of more than Jester instructing, "Stop writing at 750 words." But if not, you heard it here first, and you can mail us the fifty-bucks.

MFA Series: To Res or Not to Res?

(Part 2 in our ongoing series designed to walk potential MFA students through the application process)

You can separate MFA programs into roughly two camps: residential and low-residency. Residential programs are centered on a campus. You move there, you live there, you ping around like an electron in a ring of writers. Low-res programs typically hold two residencies (kind of like a writers' conference) per year, after which students are matched up with a teacher. The student corresponds with the teacher through the course of the semester, sending off packets of writing and craft study essays and such.

Which one's right for you?

If you're open to moving, interested in getting teaching experience, and immersion in a community of writers is important to you, you might want to look at residential programs.

Potential downsides? Earning around 10-12k a year as a teaching assistant, and only getting a few stories or poems critiqued in each semester's workshop.

If you've got a career or a family or some other reason not to move, and you're interested in an intensive experience with an experienced teacher/writer, you might want to look at low-res programs.

Potential downsides? Limited opportunities for teaching experience, and the attendant financial aid. Your relatives will think you're in a correspondence course (It's NOT a damn correspondence course, Aunt June).

Of course, all of this is oversimplified and reductive and all that, but the purpose of this post is just to put both types of programs on your radar. And one last thing -- as someone whose degree is from a low-res program, and who now helps in a residential program, I can tell you that one type isn't better or more respected than the other. It's all about fit. Keep doing your research and keep asking questions to find the program that will be the best fit for you.

Lit'rary Glossary

Off to the Gathering of Writers today (where Robert Olen Butler may very well clasp his hands over my eyes and tell me to describe what I see. Uh, a sweaty-toothed madman?) but I thought I'd pass along this new glossary of literary terms. Here's a taste, and here's the rest. Poets, prepare to be pissed.

creative nonfiction: Prose that is true, except in the case of memoir.

memoir: From the Latin memoria, meaning “memory,” a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from the past, with the ultimate goal of blaming the writer’s parents for his current psychological challenges.

novel: A quaint, longer form that fell out of fashion with the advent of the memoir.

short story: An essay written to conceal the truth and protect the writer’s family.

novel-in-stories: A term invented solely to hoodwink the novel-reading public into inadvertently purchasing a collection of short fiction.

Manuscripts

Given that this blog is unofficially powered by the Butler MFA program, I don't think it too untoward to post something specifically for BU students.

"Manuscripts" is the official lit mag of Butler University (School Motto: "Less armed robbery than you'd think!"). They're currently in the process of putting together the 2009 issue, which means they want YOUR poetry, prose, artwork and photography. Submission guidelines are here, and you can learn a little more about the magazine here.

When I was a student at Ball State, I was briefly on the staff for their lit mag, "Odyssey". The truth is it's no easy task gathering good submissions. You post flyers, you send emails, you put notices on chalkboards and write "SAVE" to keep the janitors away. The pressure grows. Mistakes are made, hostages are taken, and soon you find yourself on the wrong end of a SWAT team sniper rifle, ranting at a police negotiator that you want one goddamn poem that doesn't use rhyming couplets or metaphors comparing sunsets to a dead Grandmother.

So please, for the sake of the "Manuscripts" editorial staff, send in your submissions. Nobody wants this to get ugly.

Publishing Hows

Gannett publishing's local mechanism for the manufacture of hipster youth, Indy.com, has a great article up by Matt Gonzales on publishing:

Indy Men's Magazine senior editor Eric Furman is talking, but I'm not paying attention. I'm still stuck on something he said a few moments earlier. I interrupt him mid-sentence.

"So let me get this straight," I said, "You are the senior editor of a successful regional magazine, and a published author, and you're only 27?"

"Yes," he said.

I didn't need to hear this. I was still recovering from a minor nervous breakdown from the previous week after I'd realized that I'm actually older than most professional athletes. And now this guy, an accomplished writer at 27. Who am I kidding?

But then I remember something my sixth grade violin teacher told me: "Leave jealousy to the girls, kid." I swallowed my pride and continued my line of questioning.

"What kind of advice do you have for someone who wants to write and publish a book?" I asked Furman.

"Almost any writer will tell you this, but to just sit down and do it is the best thing you can do. Don't just say 'I have this great idea for a book.' "

I quickly wrote "GET NEW STRATEGY" in my reporter's stenography. It's good to know these things early.

Read the rest here.

The Poetry Project - Part One

A few posts back I promised to do some research into useful online poetry resources. It hasn't gone well, especially since by 'research' I meant 'drinking in front of the computer.' In which case, actually, it's been a rousing success, but no good posts have come out of it.

(I did scrawl a draft for this blog on a cocktail napkin, but the only words I can still make out are "electromagnetism" and "national sovereignty".)

While I can now point you to approximiately four-hundred-and-thirty-seven websites all running their own poetry contests (with minimal entry fees!), I did find a site that's worth checking out.

The Poetry Foundation is a great resource. They feature poetry, interviews, reviews, critical commentaries...in other words, they treat poetry as something worth thinking and talking about.

They're also the guys behind "Poetry" magazine, one of the more respectable poetry journals out there. Hard as I've looked, I can't find the place in their submission guidelines for my credit card number.

A Gathering of Writers and Readers

If you're wondering at the lack of posts this weekend, we at Book Choy like to observe government holidays. Also, we have slight drinking problems, and may have lost track of the last three days.

But no worries, my friends, because this post is being written just in time to tip you off to this Saturday's event at the Writers' Center of Indianapolis. "A Gathering of Writers and Readers: From Where You Dream" is a massive, all-day event that takes place October 18th, from 8:30am to 6:00pm. Among a slew of great classes, there will also be a keynote address by the always great Robert Olen Butler.

There's way too much info to post here, but please check out this link to read more. This promises to kick some ass.

Open Letter to Nobel Prize Jury Guy

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from
the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the
United States," said Horace Engdahl of Sweden, the permanent secretary of the
Nobel prize jury. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't
translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature
...That ignorance is restraining."

Okay, Horace of Sweden, if that is indeed your real planet. I have picked up your gauntlet, sir, and now I will make you eat it. Too insular? Excuse me, but have you ever heard of the World Wide Web? It’s a little phenomenon that Americans spend hours on each day instead of actually working. If you're having trouble connecting with Americans, maybe it’s because you haven’t friended us on Facebook. Try it. You’ll find we’re very friendable.

Also: when the world has something good to offer, America sucks it up. Simon Cowell was briefly British before he was Famous. “Ugly Betty” was imported I think from Venzuawelia. See? See how not insular we are? I totally love how your own ignorance did not restrain you from saying your dumb-ass quote.

But maybe it should have is my point there.

I believe the word you are looking for right now is “touché.”

(Would an insular ignoramous be defending his country multi-lingually?)

Now I am going to turn the tables on you, my friend. Are you telling me that Swedeners are reading OUR books? I mean, do you expect me to believe that you have a secret cave full of translators working 24/7 to translate The Bourne Supremacy into Swedenese? I supremely doubt that.

The street goes both ways is what I am saying, though I admit I have no idea if streets work that way in Sweden. Are you guys the ones with rivers in your streets, which you can ice skate down in the winter?

Maybe I sound angry, but let me assure you I am not. I am a generous man (not a restrained ignoramous) who is extremely friendable (would an isolated man have 195 "friends?").

And because of my generous friendableness, I am willing to reach across this particular aisle we call the Adriatic Sea (note to self: check Wikipedia) to your river-streeted empire with an offer: if you agree to read The Da Vinci Code – which is a super-quick read, you’ll love it – I will read the French book you have prized.

Only: could you ask your translators to put a psychic cat in it? And also some really sexy babe who at first resists the detective’s wily charms, only to fall in love with him after he gets shot by Voldemort?

Sincerely,

Keith, Concerned American

Flying Island

Last year, the Writers' Center of Indiana re-launched their literary magazine "Flying Island", and there was much rejoicing. Outside of the university scene, "Flying Island" is one of the only Indianapolis-based lit mags, and having the Writers' Center behind it lends it a certain amount of heft, both in terms of quality and size.

Besides fishing for a sizable cash kickback from the WCI, I tell you this as a way to bring up the fact that the deadline for the next issue is this month. Ocotber 31st, to be exact. Here's the lowdown on how to submit your spook-tacular work, from the WCI website:

Submissions are accepted via email:
flyingisland@indianawriters.org
or via the mail:
The Writers' Center of Indiana
P.O. Box 30407
Indianapolis, IN 46230-0407

Submit up to three Poems and /or up to two Short Stories or Personal Essays of no more than 2,500 words each. Be sure to include your title(s), name, address, phone number, email address (if applicable) and word count on the first page. Name and page number should appear on each subsequent page. Stories should be double-spaced in no smaller than 12pt font and typed on one side of the page. Previously published (traditionally or online) work will not be accepted. Include a SASE(self-addressed stamped envelope)with regular mail submissions to receive a response regarding your submission; work cannot be returned.

Flying Island is free to all Writers' Center Members. Additional copies can be purchased for $5.00 per issue + postage of $1.75 (if mailed).

(I think the "Flying Island" staff would appreciate if I pointed out that they probably aren't looking for 'spook-tacular' work at all, nor do they want 'boo-tiful' poems or 'hearse-torical fiction'. Halloween-themed submissions in general are probably looked down upon, to be honest.)

Frances Mayes

I don't know how I missed this, but I'll give credit where it's due. Yesterday, my fiancee sent me a notice from IUPUI about a visit from Frances Mayes. Mayes, author of "Under the Tuscan Sun" and several other books about her experiences there, will be giving a lecture at 7:00, entitled "Writing in Place: Travels With My Notebook". This will be followed shortly afterwards by a booksigning at 8:15, at the Barnes and Noble in the IUPUI student center.

More information, including the exact address for you Mapquesters, can be found here.

Freight Stories #3 is Up

(from Victoria's blog at Freight Stories)

"Every time we put out an issue, I think it's my favorite one yet. I think: how will we ever top this? I wallow in its excellence for about a minute before I get anxious about doing it all over again.Predictably, the next couple of months pass. We read submissions, make selections, and take or find photos. We also do the other jobs, the ones we get paid to do. We work on our own writing. Once in a while we sleep.

Then, suddenly, the quarter has passed and the next issue is upon us, and I freak out. Will we get it done on time? Will our authors be pleased? How can it possibly be as good as the last one, and the one before it? WHAT DID WE GET OURSELVES INTO?

And each time, as in most of life, everything works out. Some weird, unprecedented tech glitch pops up, and I think it's going to take forever to fix, and it doesn't, and the nerdy production stuff is actually easier than it was the time before, and we find an image that's just perfect for each story, and then that e-mail shows up in your inbox letting you know that we've gone and done it again. We start to get congratulatory e-mails from readers, messages that delight us no end, praising all the stories, and generally making us feel great about the work we're doing. And if we're really lucky, we even hear from the writers we've published.So pretty soon, the anxiety is going to set in. But for now, everybody roll around in No. 3 with me like little kids in a leaf pile."

(#3 features fiction from Tom Andrews, Kim Whitehead, Cathy Day, Jon Sealy, Susan Neville, Christopher Newgent, Jill Stukenberg, Jennifer Levin, and Patricia Henley)

Fiat Lux

I was doing research for this post about poet Thomas Lux, who will be at Butler October 8th for a reading, and I discovered that for god knows what reason there are more than a few trick-poetry sites. I'd click on a reasonable looking link, something like "legitimatepoetrysite.com", and next thing I knew I was on a site that was unnavigable thanks to pop-up ads and poor design.

So I'm making it a Personal Mission to post some decent poetry websites over the next few weeks. The internet is a wonderful resource, except when it's not, in which case it's an awful, awful place.

But getting back to Thomas Lux. As I said, he'll be speaking at Butler this Wednesday, and to prep I thought I'd post links to a couple interviews.

These interviews for the Paula Gordon Show will fit nicely on your iPod, if you're on the run. For those of you with time to kill online, check out this conversation with the Cortland Review. Here's a sample from the latter:

I remember liking the sound of words and particularly funny sounding words even when I was very small. For example, I remember a kid once referring to a helicopter deliberately, I believe, as a "hegilopter." I remember that from when I was six or seven years old. I've always liked the sound of words. I liked playing with words. And I was always a reader. Like most writers, I read a great deal as a child, and still do, and at some point it just started—I just started fantasizing about trying to do it myself. Late in high school, I did start writing a little bit privately for myself. So I fantasized about it, say, by the time I was in high school, but I didn't know it was something that one could actually do, particularly—be a poet—because there was no such thing as a contemporary poet that I knew of, except possibly Robert Frost, and he was really ancient already when I was a kid. Every high school textbook ended in 1945 (the year before I was born) and there were no bookstores around where I lived. So I literally did not know that contemporary poetry existed until I got to college.

MFA Series: Starting Your Research

The days are getting shorter, the nights colder. Outside your house, one tree in the line of maples has turned a brilliant red, and soon it will ignite the others. This kind of weather brings you indoors, to pull out the winter blankets and wiggle underneath with a book, or a notepad.

A notepad? You’ve been writing. Maybe it’s an on-again, off-again relationship with your notepad, but you can’t let it go, and you want to write more, and better. Maybe you’ve been thinking, Well, what about these MFA programs?

Even if you're only mildly interested, you owe it to yourself to look into the MFA-sphere, and now's the time to start your research. Many programs set their deadline for January 1st, and while that might seem like a long time away, putting together your application packet can be kind of a mammoth enterprise.

But not to worry. Book Choy’s going to take you through the process, step by step. Stick with us, and you’ll keep to the right timeline. Step 1? Start your research, in print and on the web, here and here.

Famous Writers Club

If you haven't checked the handy calendar on the right, you might want to take a look at Mondays. While many of the events on our calendar are for spectators, the Famous Writers' Club asks you to take up your pen and write:

"This writers' group focuses on the exploration of beginning writers with an emphasis on reading to each other and writing together. It will take place every Monday morning from 9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. at the Writers' Center. To join, please contact Beth Mink at 317-523-5902."

Also, changing gears a little, remember how when you were a kid MAD Magazine was always so much better than Cracked? Man, I don't know what happened, but Cracked.com is probably the best way to waste time on the internet since MySpace. For your reading list, Cracked's list of Five Classic Novels That Bring the Funny.

Butler Keynotes, Writers Gather

(from Kelsey at Writers' Center of Indiana)

The Writers’ Center of Indiana presents A Gathering of Writers and Readers: From Where You Dream, October 18th, 2008 from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Cultural Complex Building, 812 East 67th Street, and the Indianapolis Art Center, 820 East 67th Street, Indianapolis. The keynote address will be given by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer, Robert Olen Butler on the process of writing fiction.

The cost of the event is $75, although students with I.D. are encouraged to attend, at a discounted price of $30. Anyone can register just call (317) 255-0710 or visit www.indianawriters.org. A mail-in registration form can also be found at our website.

Four sessions of concurrent classes and workshops will be held throughout the day, with a break for lunch. Each session will include four to five simultaneous break-out writing workshops taught by Indiana's best local published poets and writers. Instructors in fiction include Dan Barden, Nancy Baxter, Candace Denning, Terence Faherty, David M. Hassler, Alison Jester, Sarah Layden, Alicia Rasley, Barbara Shoup, and Joanna H. Woś. Poetry instructors include Marianne Boruch, Mitchell Douglas, Helen Frost, Eugene Gloria, Karen Kovacik, Norman Minnick, Mark Neeley, David Shumate, and Elizabeth Weber. Sessions on Creative Nonfiction will be presented by Jill Christman, Shasta Grant, Terry Kirts, Chloe Yelena Miller.

During lunch there will be a panel of Dan Barden, Bob Bledsoe, Jim Walker, and Barb Shoup discussing Writing Outside the Academy. A box lunch is included in the admission fee.

The concluding panel consists of Tom Chiarella (Esquire editor), Kirby Gann (managing editor of Sarabande Books, and agent Jeff Kleinman (of Folio Literary Management) speaking about Publishing.

It's going to be a full day of learning and camaraderie. Come and join us!