Long Live the $10 Word or Dumbing Down Authors

All over the media, be it in hard copy or on the Internet, you see stories about the eminent demise of traditional publishing. With the ever-growing popularity of e-book readers like the Nook and even the iPad (yes, I, too, lust after one), people are saying that the print media is dying if not already dead. I don’t know about that, I do know that publishing is changing. What I lament is the dumbing down of books regardless of how they’re put into my hands.

I long for the days when writers were not only allowed to, but were expected to use the English language to its full potential. I read a blog the other day that speaks to this very issue. The blogger was saying that authors “should always” use a short word rather than a long word. He also asked why use a $10.00 word when a .05 cent word will do? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because not all of us want to write to the lowest common denominator. Maybe because most of us still believe that readers aren’t dumb.

When I was a youngster, I was told that if I use “big” words, no one would understand them. Why not? I asked. I was told that no one wanted to have to look words up in a dictionary. Why not? I again asked.

I thought everyone kept a list (mine is on my iPhone) of words that we have come across that we didn’t know the meaning of and have to look them up. Words like “crepuscular” (an adjective meaning relating to or resembling twilight) or “refulgence” (a noun meaning a radiant or resplendent quality or state, i.e., brilliance).

Granted, we probably might not want to use either crepuscular or refulgence, but the author of the blog post mentioned above suggested we not use the words, “accommodations” for rooms,“purchase” for buy, or “utilize” for use. The author went so far as to say these “big” words constituted “bad” writing and that they “muddled” prose. Oh my.

I’ve always thought that authors whether they’re writing fiction, non-fiction, blogs, tweets, or Facebook entries should strive to use the English language to its, and our readers, fullest potential. Apparently, I’m wrong. The blogger says that we authors should prefer the familiar word to the “fancy” word. What if the fancy word is the familiar word to us? His advice to dumb down is one I’ve heard before. I for one reject his advice. Long live $10 words!

If I believed that the blogger was speaking for the publishing world, I’d be lamenting its death with all the other naysayers.

A Bit of Luck

As I sit writing, my mind occasionally wanders. Most of the time, I catch it before it can go too far off course. There are times, however, when I find myself wondering what I’m doing spending my time writing books that I can’t get an agent for much less get a publisher for it.

It has occurred to me to wonder how much luck has do with a writing career. An author is in the right place at the right time, an author meets a friend of a friend who just happens to be an agent/editor, or an author is selling his self-published book out of the trunk of his car and a passerby buys one, loves it, and sends it to friend in NYC who happens to be looking for just that kind of book, or the lucky writer who found an agent who saw some spark in his writing and took a chance by representing him and finding a publisher who also saw that spark.

Meanwhile, the majority of writers toil away perfecting their craft and diligently keeping their hopes alive with the occasional success stories being told around a virtual camp fire about some unknown writer hitting it big. I was thinking the other day that nearly every profession has stories of someone become an “overnight” success after being discovered. I think that’s why we continue to write with little real hope of reaching the top of the best seller lists. That’s not the reason we write, to hit the top of the best sellers list, but it is part of the dream, isn’t it?

Today, we writers read about how fast publishing is changing, from e-books to Amazon becoming a publisher to how the iPad is going to change the book world. How are we to know whether our writing will find a place in the new world of publishing? It’s a scary place out there for writers today. I have to hope that the new modality will be a boon to the writer who hasn’t yet written her best seller and who only needs a bit of luck to go from toiling writer to best selling author.

Abandoning Writing

Have you ever become so frustrated with throwing yourself at the brick walls that constitute agents and publishers whilst yelling, “Let me in, let me in. I deserve to be on the other side of this wall. After all, I’ve done everything you’ve said to do,

• I’ve written a 86,000 word novel,
• my punctuation is excellent,
• my grammar impeccable,
• I’ve deleted nearly all the adverbs,
• I’ve even deleted conversation tags,
• my characters are interesting,
• they are three dimensional,
• my plot is interestingly complex,
• it is is not over done,
• my query letter was exactly what you asked for on your web site,
• my query letter had the hook, book, cook components in it.”

Still they ignore you.

Certainly no writer worth her salt would abandon writing, like some abandoned toy, after one rejection or, indeed, after a dozen rejections. But what about after the 20th? Or 30th? Or 50th? At what point, in the agent rejection game do you sit down and seriously consider what you want to do? Keep banging your head against the walls or move on.

At what point do you (or, indeed, will you) set your favorite writing pen (metaphorically speaking, of course) aside and say, I can’t (won’t) do this any more? Is that an option for you? How much frustration will it take for you to stop writing?

Have you ever thought about giving up? I mean really, really thought about not writing any more? What does that feel like? Does the thought of not writing any more make you queasy? Give you a headache?

Does the thought of not writing fill you with dread? Especially after you ask how you will fill the void created by not writing? What will you do with all those hours you now spend writing? Is it a freeing experience?

Do you tell yourself that you’ll have more time

• to read and perhaps reduce that towering pile of books you promised yourself to read,
• to spend with your family and friends,
• to watch the television programs your friends are into,
• to exercise,
• to just sit and enjoy the silence,
• and a thousand more things that you never really wanted to do before you quit writing.

Will you ever quit writing even if you never get published? Have you set a time specific? For instance, if I’m not published by the time I’m 40, I’ll quit. Have you added another year or two with each passing year? Will you still be saying, “If I’m not published by the time I’m 70, I’ll quit?” Does putting an age limit on it make the decision to quit writing easier or harder than saying I’ll continue to write until I’m published?

I wonder if the time comes in every non-published writer’s life when he asks, “Should I continue?” How many writers, some quite good, have we lost? How many writers have abandoned their dream of becoming a published author?

On Joining Twitter

A few years ago, I joined Twitter. A few months after that, I quit. Now, I’ve joined again. Call me fickle.

The first time I joined Twitter, I had no purpose for being there except a few friends were also on Twitter. To tell the truth, I got tired of the 140 character messages telling me what someone was doing, i.e., “I’m out of the shower and going to the kitchen.” This from someone I didn’t know much less cared that they had just showered. I find tweets like that BORING. Soon, however, I had way too many followers filling up my account with just that sort of information. I stopped going to Twitter.

Now I’m back. I’d been reading reports that Twitter was a great place for authors. I was willing to test that premise. I returned to Twitter with high hopes of connecting with other writers, and with agents, editors, and publishers. Twitter did not disappoint this time.

I started out reading the Tweets of agents. They were giving a wealth of information to authors at a remarkable pace. I quickly determined who I wanted to follow. Next I started looking for my favorite authors. I was pleasantly surprised to find several were tweeting away and disappointed that others were not.

I think in the phase of following people, you have to be somewhat obsessive. I would see who the agents and authors I admired were following, I would click on them, see what they had to say, and decide whether to follow them. If the answer was yes, then I’d check to see who they were following. Before you could say, “following,” I found myself following 50 people.

Next I found myself checking out other professionals and the media. I started following professional bloggers for their tips on blogging, I added Publishers Weekly to the list, and the Wall Street Journal.

I was now following 100 people and media sites. I quickly learned that everyone who followed me wasn’t doing so because they found my 140-character Tweets enlightening or even interesting. No, they were following me to add to their follower-count. The courteous thing to do, I learned, when someone follows you, you are supposed to follow them as well. It turns out that those who just want to add you as a statistic are the ones with thousands of followers and are following thousands of people. It was apparent from the 100 people I was following that keeping up with them was time consuming. There isn’t any way, I don’t think, that anyone can follow thousands of tweets never mind millions. You have to know that Ellen DeGeneris is not reading every tweet from the 5 million people following her.

There are many tricks of the Twitter trade to be learned, like using hash tags, i.e., #amwriting, or creating lists to make following certain categories, like agents or authors, easier.

Twitter, as it turns out, is a great place to learn about the art of writing, what agents really want, and what established writers do as well as authors aspiring to be published are doing.

If you are an author and you haven’t joined Twitter, give it a try. You might be surprised at what you find. Be forewarned, however, it is addictive. And it can be time consuming.