Literature has responsibilities

"Literature has the responsibility of showing the disease of the society to the society."

"A writer imagines the pain and sufferings of others as his own and experiences them while writing."

"Writings do not end just on paper.  Besides beauty, the writings should search for truth.  It is only when an author opens all his five senses, will he be able to touch the pain in the society.  Literature should revolutionize and awaken those who are in slumber." 

"An author should be able to keep his pain and sufferings aside and touch the pulse of the society by realizing his responsibility."

More: http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=183894



Books by SpyWriter Jack King:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Website:


www.SpyWriter.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/spywriter2

Judge books, not authors

“A text must be something that can be read and evaluated without reference to the existence or otherwise of a person whose name and surname appear on the cover.” Because the author, “after writing a book, is no longer the same as he was before, and therefore is no longer the author of that book". “I believe that this ought not to be the exception but the rule, if literature really was a serious experience.” 

Rather than the study of individuals, the critic should study works or collectives: “I am more and more convinced that literature is made up of works, genres, schools, discussions, problems, collective work in order to solve certain problems, and not of the individual personalities of authors. Of course authors exist and are necessary, but the study of literature author by author seems to me to be less and less the right way forward."

-Italo Calvino



Conspiracy Theory or Truth? Find out in SpyWriter Jack King's:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Books by Jack King:


www.SpyWriter.com

Quick Writers

"New writers tend to think that editing merely means a brief read through for typos and spelling errors. That is the very last thing to do. The best writers re-write and re-write.

Too many [...] Authors are going into the world of letters with dreams of instant stardom. For them, it was more important to see their book published than to make sure it is a quality product. They are approaching writing the same way one would approach the selling of second hand shoes with an eye to quick profit and a big launch with a lot of deep pocket donors. They have no desire to go through the pains and hassles of a thorough editorial process.

Make sure you are not one of those writers."

From: http://m.allafrica.com/stories/201304221800.html/



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Books by Jack King:


www.SpyWriter.com

How readers choose books

"When it comes to choosing books to read, the majority of our decisions are based on heuristics of one sort or another, including:

cover design
typography
genre
author
title
imprint or publisher
friends’ recommendations
reviews
star ratings
whether it’s part of series
plot summary
endorsements from other authors
date it was published
quotes from the book
paper quality (for print books)
photo of the author
adverts
interviews with the author

The problem is, many of these heuristics are flawed.

Let’s get down and dirty with what really matters in a book: The words and whether they speak to us. The only real way we can choose between books is to begin to read them, and if publishers want us to fall in love with their books, they have to make at least the first chapter available for free online."

More: http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/03/28/book-discovery-give-me-blind-dates-with-books/



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Books by Jack King:


www.SpyWriter.com

Literary self-flagellation

"Self-flagellation by authors is a long and distinguished tradition, with Tolstoy (who dismissed Anna Karenina as sentimental, "serving no purpose" and "bad") and Kafka (for whom The Metamorphosis  was "imperfect almost to its very marrow") among its illustrious exemplars.

Yet the appearance of startling ruthlessness is deceptive, as it is a younger self and his or her efforts that are usually being punished, whether by criticism or self-parody. The implicit message is: these are mistakes I wouldn't make now."

Read More: http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/25/writers-bad-reviews-themselves-dublin-review



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Books by Jack King:


www.SpyWriter.com

What readers look for in writers

"Aspiring authors, take note. 

Nothing secures a literary legacy like an over-sized personality to match the work. On some level, we want our artists to behave badly, feuding with critics and wearing, perhaps, less clothing than appropriate in public. We want to believe that being a talented, successful writer isn’t just another job, like being a plumber or an accountant—it's a lifestyle, or maybe even a curse.

Ultimately, the actual writing of the book isn't what's interesting to most people. If you can type, you can put words on a page. What we look for in the dramatic lives of artists is a hint of the origin of genius. Who wants to hear that what it takes to write a generation-defining novel is eight hours a day of work for three years, plus an editor worth her weight in gold? And if you're going to write a best-seller, please, for the love of schadenfreude, don't be a model of health and decorum as well. That's just too much."

More: http://m.wfpl.org/?utm_referrer=#mobile/4509



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
A new Pope. A new Church. A new world:


www.SpyWriter.com

Would-be writers: No originality required.

A piece of advice for would-be writers:

"We ought to make the process of writing books seem less daunting to those who are starting out."

So, let us begin by scrapping the notion of originality...

"In a profession without rules, the one essential is that writers have to be magpies: bits of films, songs, other people's journalism, other people's books, conversations, someone they saw in the street are the flotsam and jetsam that are going to give shape and colour and inspiration to the story under construction. No writer in the history of the world is original, they all depend on other writers' work, or the narrative of a previous book, and that is the way it should be and always will be. First-time writers begin and give up because they think their work must be original. Nothing could be further from the truth. Can't think of a plot? Take a classic of literature or the theatre, rename the characters, move the location and bring it up to date."

FROM: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta3/tft/article.php?issue=20130308&page=23

Jack King is the author of Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.

Distrusting Literary Prizes

"why are prizes so mistrusted these days? There are many possible answers, but two make, out of this many, more sense.

Prizes have become banal. There is a prize, an award, for almost every thing. And every writer that wants to sell enough books to make a living out of it, must, at least, have been laureled once or twice. The excess of awards makes them less valuable, thus also taking value from the awardee, person and book. ...

Still, awards play an immensely important part in today’s literary panorama. They tell people what to read. ... They might teach what, but not why.

In addition, creative writing courses seem to be contributing to this overall lack of literary sensibility. By slowly replacing literature graduations – that focus, essentially, on reading – creative writing courses are manufacturing more writers than readers, and therefore unbalancing the scale dangerously. This leads to the necessity of more awards to inform people of what to read. And publishers, of course, say thank you very much. By trying to perpetrate one artistic form, creative writing courses are slowly slaughtering it."

More; http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/our-voices/battle-of-ideas/forget-the-booker-the-prize-every-author-really-wants-is-academic-validation-8213065.html



The Election. The Coup. The Black Vault. www.SPYWRITER.com

Inherited Creativity

So you want to write a novel? You must be born with it:

"Researchers from Yale in the US and Moscow State University in Russia launched the study to see whether there was a scientific reason why well-known writers have produced other writers. ...

"This work is unique in its objective to investigate the familiality and heritability of the trait of creative writing," the researchers write, "while controlling for general cognitive ability and for the general level of family functioning. Despite the lack of systematic research on the aetiology of writing in general and creative writing in particular, it is rather difficult not to acknowledge the familiality of creativity in writing, given the families of writers who have entertained and educated us over the years. These findings constitute the tip of an interesting iceberg, indicating that there may be some components of creative writing that are familial and heritable.

"It may be worth further studies to confirm that creative writers are indeed born, as well as made. When writers capitalise on these inborn propensities and expose these propensities to rich experiences, we, as readers, can enjoy books that not only form the foundation of cultural life but also impact the biology of the human brain."

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/want-to-be-a-writer-have-a-literary-parent-8200777.html



The Election. The Coup. The Black Vault. www.SPYWRITER.com

Judging Literature

Rumors circulate about the likely recipient of this year's literary nobel prize. But is judging literary work possible and apropriate?

"To any reasonable man or woman, the Nobel Prize in Literature seems rather innocuous.  But the Nobel Prize in Literature is not the truth.  The Nobel Prize in Literature is not fair to all concerned.  The Nobel Prize in Literature will not build goodwill nor better friendships.  The Nobel Prize in Literature is not beneficial to all concerned.  And therefore, the Nobel Prize in Literature fails the Four Way Test and cannot be considered an ethical institution.

Let me explain in more detail.  First and foremost, the Nobel Prize in Literature is not the truth.  When the Swedish Academy chooses an author to be a Nobel Laureate, they are effectively saying that this author has attained literary greatness. They are attempting to objectively rank a subjective art.  Unlike other literary awards such as the National Book Award, the Man-Booker Prize, or the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded for a body of work rather than a specific book.  Thus, it represents the world's most important instrument in codifying literary greatness.

This is why it is not the truth.  It is impossible to objectively rank literature, and any institution that purports to do so is, to an extent, lying."

From: http://westport.patch.com



WikiJustice: WikiLeaks meets Jack London's The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. www.SPYWRITER.com

Writers and morality

"Political correctness is now about to affect the behaviour of writers, with the American arm of HarperCollins introducing a "morality clause" that gives it the right to terminate a contract if "an author's conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals or if such behaviour would materially damage the work's reputation or sales".

Ironically - HarperCollins, one of the Big Five publishers, is part of the entertainment and media empire run by Rupert Murdoch of the phone hacking scandal...

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/literary-titles-are-staying-on-the-library-shelf-2556981.html



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Writers do it

Margaret Atwood did it.
Edgar Rice Burrows did it.
Willa Cather did it.
Joseph Conrad did it.
Alexandre Dumas did it.
T. S. Eliot did it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne did it.
Ernest Hemingway did it.
James Joyce did it.
Rudyard Kipling did it.
D. H. Lawrence did it.
Anais Nin did it.
Edgar Allan Poe did it.
Ezra Pound did it.
Marcel Proust did it.
Beatrice Potter did it.
James Redfield did it.
George Bernard Shaw did it.
Upton Sinclair did it.
Gertrude Stein did it.
Henry David Thoreau did it.
Leo Tolstoy did it.
Mark Twain did it.
Walt Whitman did it.
Virginia Woolf did it.

You, too, can self-publish your book.

But you do not have to. Perhaps you cannot be bothered, and prefer someone else do it for you? You can find a publisher, even in this rough time for the industry. In order to stand out from the crowd of faceless writers vying for the attention of publishers you have to approach it just right. You can do it. You can find a publisher:

DITCH THE AGENT

Authors responsible for high cost of books

"In his forthcoming book [...] the American author Robert Levine has an excellent chapter on publishing in which he interrogates the forces driving the pricing of books, in both their paper and digital forms. And some of the explanations he gives are (to me at least) surprising. For example, it turns out that "publishers only spend $3.50 to print and distribute a hardback". (Let's say it's £3 in Britain.) So when, this autumn, you go into your local bookshop and spend £30 [...] you really are just putting a large amount of profit into the hands of [...] publisher, with some knocked off for the retailer. Right?

Well, yes and no. If you think of books primarily as physical objects, then off course they'll seem a rip-off, because printing and distributing them is cheap. But as Levine points out, what you're really paying for when you buy a book is something different. You are buying the "text itself". And why is that so expensive? Because the publisher will, in many cases, have paid the author a considerable sum for the right to sell it.".

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/04/price-publishing-ebooks

Ha.

Ha.

That "considerable sum", dear reader, amounts to somewhere between 4-8%.



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

When does a novelist retire?

"The fact is that authors seldom retire. Many don’t want to; others couldn’t afford to. So they keep going till death drags them from their desk or they lose their marbles, whichever fate strikes earlier. Unfortunately they may find that while they still have their marbles, they no longer have a public, those who used to buy their books having already suffered one of these fates, or having simply stopped reading new books – even new books from old authors. Losing their public, they are likely, quite understandably, to lose their publisher too. This may grieve, but not entirely surprise, them; it began to seem likely when they discovered a couple of books back that their new editor was a decade or two younger than their own middle-aged children.

“We used to live on royalties,” Anthony Burgess once said to me, “but now we live on advances.” This was true in his time, but now the advances are shrinking, and the royalties disappearing. So they go on working, but do so, if they are honest, in the knowledge that what they are writing in their old age is not near as good as the best of the books they wrote thirty or forty years ago. This is sad but not surprising. They no longer have either the physical or mental energy that used to drive them on. Moreover they have probably exhausted their material, and any new material they happen on may be thinner than the old stuff.

Occasionally they pick up a novel they wrote long ago, and read it with surprise, admiration, and then pain. And then they think: “Fielding and Jane Austen and all the Brontës were already dead at the age I was when I wrote that – and so they didn’t have to find matter for a new novel in their sixties, seventies, eighties…”

More: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/allanmassie/100061155/novelists-used-to-die-young-now-they-must-confront-and-write-throughout-their-old-age/



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

What literary biographies teach us

"The literary bio is an oddly enduring genre. People who read have always been interested in the story behind the stories, but you’d think that of all the people you might want to know more about, writers would probably be somewhere near the bottom of the list. After all, most of them don’t actually do very much but sit at a desk somewhere and write. That’s their job. And aside from what can be gleaned from autobiographies and memoirs (an entertaining but not very trustworthy genre that becomes even more doubtful when penned by people who have spent their lives making things up), an author’s rich inner life, crucible for the imaginative alchemy that transforms experience into art, has to be pieced together mainly from circumstantial evidence.

So what’s the take away? One of the reasons we read biography is for the life lessons they offer. While there are infinite paths to immortal literary fame, what helpful hints can be gleaned from the lives of the greats:

First, experience a traumatic episode early in your childhood or youth that you will then be able to draw upon for inspiration and raw material for the rest of your life.

Second, find yourself a self-denying partner who will support you and accept your eccentricities, moodiness, alcoholism and infidelities as expressions of your genius.

Finally, have a lot of kids and give up other hostages to fortune so that you will be compelled by financial necessity to keep writing."

More: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/bookreviews/article/1140789--dickens-tolstoy-j-g-ballard-and-kurt-vonnegut-were-literary-geniuses-in-these-bios-other-writers-try-to-capture-what-made-them-so-writerly



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Literary self-censorship

"The suppression of literature is an ancient tradition that probably started with the invention of writing and which thrives today all over the world. In the west we generally venerate those authors who stand up against acts of silencing by the authorities. But what are we to think when an author suppresses himself?

The easiest form of self-suppression is to have an idea and not write it, and we may well wish that more authors would exercise this prerogative. It gets more complicated once the book exists, however – even in unpublished manuscript form. Since we usually don't know about the successful suppressions, the most famous cases of authorial efforts at self-silencing are those of writers who attempted and failed to quash the publication of works they had written but did not wish to see the light of day."

Here are some examples of self-censored writers and their works: http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/28/authors-censor-themselves-martin-amis?cat=books&type=article



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Confidence and ego key ingredients in publishing

What do writers have in common? Big egos. In order to create convincingly a writer must have confidence, but to publish one needs an ego. Yours truly does not lack in this respect:

"I write nothing down. I do not make notes. You will find nothing in my house that would indicate where my ideas come from. Drawing from personal experiences I am a firm believer in the old maxim, well expressed by Maxim Gorky, that that which we cannot remember is simply not worth remembering, little else writing down.

Where do the ideas come from? Again, this goes back to our experiences, to that which moves us, and which we need to come to terms with, to why do writers write at all? Beyond the simple need to satisfy our ego, many of us write not because we know the answer to what moves us, but because we seek the answer to the unanswerable, or where the answer is suppressed. Espionage is all about the illusion. Everything we think we know about it is either wrong, or planted by the services involved in it. I write with the aim to straighten that, which is purposely obscured. It is my guiding thought."

More about author Jack King: http://www.gmcknight.com/blog/2012/02/19/Jack-SpyWriter-King.aspx

Writers and their egos: http://spywriter.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/ego-a-writers-engine-2/



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Writers as performance artists

In today's world, where online presence and public appearances are often stipulated in publishing contracts, writers are, basically, performance artists. Does it impact their writing, and should it?

"Through the last century, the relationship between readers and writers was largely impersonal. The reader related in the first instance to a book, not to its writer; and writers, for their part, did not confront their audience directly in the manner of musicians, singers, actors and so on. This was ... one of the reasons why writers were able to take greater risks in hurling defiance at society at large.

The situation has changed dramatically in recent years. The internet ... has made it possible to subject writers to great pressure ... If this process continues unchecked, its impact on the freedom of thought and expression may be greater than any explicit policy of repression."

"literature is coming to be embedded within a wider culture of public spectacles and performances. This process, which got underway almost imperceptibly, has now achieved a momentum where it seems to be overtaking, and indeed overwhelming, writing itself as the primary end of a life in letters.

A frequently heard argument in favour of book festivals is that they provide a venue for writers to meet the reading public. Although appealing, this argument is based on a flawed premise in that it assumes that attendance is equivalent to approbation. Books, by their very nature often give offence and create outrage, and this is bound to be especially so in circumstances where there are deep anxieties about how certain groups are perceived and represented.

Performances are secondary and inessential to a writer’s work. Our books, which are our principal vehicles of expression, can reach people through impersonal mechanisms.

Public spectacles are a sideshow."

More: http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/Writings-not-writers/Article1-807658.aspx



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

America reads

"Poverty in no way stops anyone from being literate. You can see that in the immigrants who work they way up the ladder by reading books. Remember that author Ray Bradbury was too poor to go to college. So he sat most of the day in the public library and read as many books as time permitted.

And other authors in the literary world did the same. It doesn't take a lot of money to create a world of literacy in your environment. Literacy is an enriching experience as far as life and experience because it opens doors and inspires imagination."

Here are some of the most/least literate cities in America:

"The nation's capital has scored top literacy honors for the second year in a row, ranking No. 1 as the "most literate" city in America. But when it comes to literacy, not many people in Congress read all those laws from first to last page, because many prefer action novels based on factual possibilities, it has been said.

New York city is not the most literate in spite of the publishing industry centered in NYC for decades. For example, if you want to meet writers and see ads for writers from agents and publishers, there are associations and societies in New York City with so many literary contacts regarding publishers, that New York has become a hub for publishers and writers to connect.

San Francisco has numerous book clubs made up of both authors and readers. And San Francisco is listed pretty high on the list of literacy as number 6, compared to Sacramento, a two-hour Amtrak train ride east, as Sacramento was listed low on the scale of literacy at 45. Who reads more Sacramentans or San Francisco residents? Observe the difference in numbers. Is it being near the ocean that helps people relax over books, newspapers, or magazines?"

More: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11385961-usa-cities-ranked-as-the-most-and-least-literate



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Publishing Politics

Writers the world over can relate to this. Readers may not be aware that writers write what publishers publish, not the other way around. To be published writers must make compromises. Below is an ilustrative example.

"His own publishers asked him to leave out portions of the book considered too caustic ... it would be seen as unpatriotic. So now it's no longer in the book."

An interview with the writer:

Q: So censorship is dangling over a writer's head, stifling him? 

A: Sadly yes. There are things I want to write, but this [censorship] is at the back of my mind.

Q: Are publishers and writers stopping themselves from breaking new ground in that sense?

A: You bet. There are brilliant new writers out there, and I feel terrible because they know their story will not make it, if they write like that.

Q: Because of fear?

A: Sure. At the end of the day, I am a storyteller. And what is a storyteller without his audience?"

There is nothing quite so liberating as a publisher going bancrupt, as in the case of yours truly, allowing one to write what one wants, not what they want.

Snippets from: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/political-intolerance-limits-authors-nagarkar/221172-40-103.html



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com