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On Writing Rules: Watching Trish Watch The Da Vinci Code

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, August 5, 2010

One lazy Saturday a couple months ago I emerged from a couple hours of writing in the office to find Trish sitting on the couch in the living room watching The Da Vinci Code. She’d seen it before — I’m pretty sure I went to see it at the theater with her — and she’s read all the books in the series.

So I can’t say I was shocked to find her watching it. I was a little bit surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. After we watched it the first time, we’d discussed the movie, and it was pretty clear then that she thought the story was okay. Nothing phenomenal, but good enough to fill up a lazy Saturday afternoon.

I gave her a kiss on the cheek, popped into the kitchen for a refill of soda, and then it was absolutely my intention to head back to the office and dive back into my writing. I didn’t.

I tarried in the living room, listening to Gandalf explain elusive truths to the renowned academic and the highly-trained police officer. I sank down on the other couch, and listened to the whole thing. I kept glancing over at Trish to see if she was really enjoying this. Or maybe she’d fallen asleep! I kept hoping that was the explanation. But no. She was just watching the movie, waiting patiently for it to get back into the action.

Well…she was probably waiting patiently for me to go back to my office, too. I kept making a nuisance of myself, though. I growled at things the characters were saying. I laughed out loud. More than once I threw myself to my feet, anxious to launch into a tirade. For the most part, I restrained myself. It would have been satisfying…but I’d already put Trish through everything I had to say about this movie at least once.

And it wasn’t her fault. It’s not like she egregiously misrepresented easily-verifiable historical facts to prop up a flimsy plot that’s significantly less interesting than the actual historical account. So why should she suffer for it?

(Now you could pointedly ask why you should suffer for it, but I’m not even going to dignify that question with a response. Because I haven’t really got one. If you’re not interested in hearing me rant about Dan Brown, come back on Sunday for some handy tips on improving your writing workload with a little bit of computer programming.)

She finally had mercy, just before the big chase scene, and paused the movie so I could go ahead and rant. And I did, and she nodded along, listening patiently, and then when I got done she said, “But he’s not writing a history book. He’s writing fiction. What’s wrong with him making stuff up? You write fiction, and you make stuff up all the time.”

I sputtered to a stop at that point — not because I had no answer, but because the answer is a terribly technical one that mostly only matters to writers. (See? See? That’s why you should suffer for it!)

As it happened, several weeks later she was wondering aloud why aspects of Stephenie Meyer’s writing that irritated the snot out of her didn’t bother other Twilight fans she knew. I got the chance to smile knowingly and explain in excruciating detail that it was essentially the same issue. And if there’s one thing I enjoy more than an opportunity to smile knowingly, it’s an opportunity to explain something in excruciating detail.

Fair Play in Storytelling

There are two significant elements at play in both of those scenarios. One is taste, and I’ve got very little to say about that. Different readers expect different things from the stories they read, and when it comes to that there’s no right way or wrong way.

There are a lot of people who enjoy a Stephenie Meyer-style fantasy adventure (read “Victorian romance”). There are a lot of people who crave the fast-paced plot and bite-sized academia of a Dan Brown thriller.

I’ll make snide comments in parentheses, but there’s nothing wrong with liking that kind of writing, and there’s nothing wrong with writing it, either. Both of those authors have proven that they’re undeniably the right styles for them to be writing, even if it’s not something I want to read.

The other element in play, though, is fundamental storytelling, and that’s what got me so upset with Magneto’s spectacular misrepresentation of Constantinian biography. There are rules in writing that have nothing to do with style, and everything to do with respecting your readers, and those rules aren’t at all flexible. Good writers get them right.

Come back tomorrow for some discussion of fair play in storytelling, and an introduction to one of the most important writing rules: verisimilitude.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Sewing

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Domestic Doldrums

Unbeknownst to many, I am not domestically gifted. Now that I’ve told you that, however, my domestic ungiftedness will be beknownst to more people than ever before; so I could go back and delete that first sentence. Except that I really wanted to use the word “unbeknownst.” Thus, the statement stands as is.

Anyway, I don’t have a whole lot of talent when it comes to household stuff. I’m big on eating healthy, but I don’t get a thrill out of cooking. I could probably improve my skills in that area if I really wanted to — but why cook, when I could be writing instead?

Though I consider myself a clean person who’s better organized than average, I put off housework until I just can’t stand the chaos anymore. I alphabetize books, CDs, and DVDs…yet I don’t vacuum until the carpet threatens to start growing things.* I make the bed every morning when I get up, but I have to clamber over mountain ranges of clothing to do it.

What is woman, if not a fascinating collection of paradoxes?

But, in spite of it all, I do accomplish the occasional accomplishment of 1950s-style domestic bliss…and today, the accomplished accomplishment just happened to be mending something.

Domestic Do-Re-Mi…

…Fa-sew. With a needle and thread, that is. (Please forgive me. I worked out at the gym this evening; there must be something wrong with my brain. Endorphins! Gotta love ’em. I know the Julie Andrews seamstress set-up is cheesy — I just couldn’t help myself.)

There is a room in our apartment that serves the following functions: business office, writing nook, art studio, amateur radio station, and storage facility. The room itself is really only large enough to fulfill one of those roles. This might explain why, though it is also a sewing room, it rarely gets used as such.

In my “sewing room” (which is really only a sewing shelf, but who’s counting?), I keep a pile of Things To Be Mended. The turnover rate in this pile is not high. I add something to it perhaps once every three months. I might mend two or three items per year.

But today, I got ambitious.

I mended three shirts. In one day. Dearest inklings, I so rock the world of household chores today.

*ahem* So. First, I mended my Alice in Wonderland T-shirt. (I couldn’t find mine on Amazon, but this one’s pretty cool too.) The hole was tiny and had started a runner. Easy enough. Next, I tackled (figuratively, you understand; why would anyone tackle a bit of mending?) one of my favorite tees, a little lilac number in vintage soft, stitched with flowers. That hole was a bit tricky, because the material is so delicate. But I managed, because I’m just awesome like that.

Then came the challenge: Ed’s red, black-trimmed work shirt. I asked him how it happened, but he says he doesn’t know. To me, it looks for all the world like someone gave the shirt a couple of quick, horizontal nicks with the tip of a box cutter.

I don’t know why anyone would be gallivanting with a box cutter through the showroom floor of a car dealership, but if that’s what actually happened, I’m sure Ed would remember it.

The red shirt! Right across the front, two holes in a straight line. I turned the shirt inside out, equipped my trusty needle with thread of a near-perfect shade of red, and bent to my task.

My goal was to knit the edges of the holes together, so as to avoid an inny pucker in the front of the shirt. With the image of aging, near-blind seamstresses in my mind, I held my work about an inch from my nose and squinted as I guided the needle through tinest loops encircling the holes. Some loops cooperated, some did not. But I figured I was catching enough of them to prevent them from transmogrifying into future runners.

With this first step behind me, I then criss-crossed the hole with stitches, gathering each far edge with the tip of my needle and marrying it to its counterpart. Bit by bit, the holes closed up, and I created only a millimeter’s worth of inny pucker in the process. I crowed in my triumph.

After tying off my final knot — as tiny a knot as possible — I turned the shirt rightside out again to inspect the final result of my efforts. Meh. It didn’t look as perfect as I’d envisioned; instead of immaculate smoothness of material, what greeted my critical eye was a definite, horizontal bump. But it was less of a bump than it would have been, had I gone at this project with unabashed abandon and less attention to detail.

All in all, I’m satisfied with my handiwork. I don’t recommend that Ed wear this shirt to work anymore — the mended spot is far too obvious for business wear — but it’ll do nicely for a casual everyday polo from now on.

In Which I Run Out of Relevant Alliterations…

…but I don’t think the “D” deficiency matters too much — I’m still going to bring it all around to the point. And the point, my dear inklings, is this: Often, working on your story is like mending a hole in a shirt. Please to be following my sewing train of thought…

We of the storytelling craft often use the term “thread” when we talk about the thematic elements that hold our tale together. It’s a perfect metaphor, because we do, indeed, weave those elements in and out of the plot, binding characters and events together into a unified whole. But problems arise during the weaving because — especially in early drafts — we use the wrong threads. What we create then is not a whole but a hole.

Or, betimes, several holes. Unfortunately, we’re holding the material of our story about an inch from our noses, which allows us to focus on what we’re doing but prevents us from seeing what we’ve done. Only when we take a step back — and maybe give the whole thing a mental inside- rightside-out flip — only then do we gain enough perspective to see where we guided our thread in the wrong direction.

It’s a painful perspective…because usually, it reveals the necessity of unravelling some threads we thought were in just the right place. Picking apart the seams of our story is never fun. On occasion, we even have to rip the seams out, and whole scenes and even vibrant characters end up in the scraps basket.

We might use them again. We might find a future story in which those scenes and characters fit perfectly, as though tailored to that future story’s exact measurements. But then again, the scraps pile is what it is. Some scenes and characters never rise from it again.

Sew, sew, sew…fixing plot holes requires detailed, exacting work. With single words, fitting phrases, and the trusty copy & paste function of our word processors, we painstakingly stitch the edges of our story back together. Sometimes, when we’re sitting there, straining to knit it all back together again, it seems as though the damage runs out of our control, threatening to mar even the sections of story that are actually sound. The key here is not to panic.

Take a deep breath. Step away from the story (hear that in a deep, booming voice). Don’t pick it up again until your pulse has calmed and your hands have stopped shaking. You can do this. It just takes a little time and a lot of patience — with yourself.

In the end, like my husband’s work shirt, your story might not be presentable enough for business use. But guess what? That’s okay. Maybe you just want to show it to friends and family — y’know, keep it handy for easy, comfortable use. Or maybe you want to take it to someone with more experience and say, “Here’s what I got — can you recommend some more detailed, less conspicuous stitching?”

Either way, gentle readers, we do what we can with the skills we’ve acquired at any given point in time. In the writing life, experience is everything. And if you stitch plot holes together, leaving the material of your story puckered and rough, all it means is that you’ve gained valuable experience for next time.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

*Some facts might have been stretched to increase the wittiness of this post.

(If you click that Alice link and buy that T-shirt — or anything else within the same browser session — I might eventually get enough cash out of the deal to buy another Alice tee for myself. It’s your call.) 🙂

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Getting It Right: How to Write a Grant Application

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, August 3, 2010

I’ve been investigating document types for a while now, and this week I’ve been talking about grant writing — the common name used for writing grant applications. It’s enough of a complicated process that it does have its own name (albeit a slightly confusing one).

It’s not that writing grant applications is puzzling. Virtually every grant out there comes with a clearly-defined set of requirements for the application, and many of them even provide (successful) sample applications. The tricky part is just sticking to the rules, and making your big idea fit into the narrow confines of their format.

Saying It Right

Your first job is to prepare the basic information for them, the body of your application which is charmingly referred to as “the narrative.” The narrative, as I said, can take many different forms depending on the grant in question, but in general you can expect something very similar to the business plan I talked about last week. (In fact, you can often copy significant portions of the business plan directly into the relevant sections of your grant application).

One thing nearly every grant application will require is an analysis of your proposed project in relation to the grant-provider’s mission. How are you going to put their money to use in support of the specific purpose that money is dedicated to? If you want to get this right, you need to provide concrete, quantifiable objectives you think you can achieve, and the better they match the grant’s purposes the better your chances of winning the award.

Everyone will tell you that. You could find a dozen website with that advice at a pretty simple Google search. And you can find the list of required sections attached to pretty much every grant application. So why did I feel a need to share write a blog post on the topic?

Because there’s a big difference between copying the appropriate sections from your business plan into the closest match on the grant application form, and then calling it a “narrative.” That charming bit of jargon serves a real purpose, and it explains in a handful of syllables exactly why grant writing is such hard work.

You’ve got to weave the prescribed pieces together into a smooth whole that tells a story. It’s not enough to provide clear and measurable values, it’s not enough to check off every box on the list. If you want to prepared a competitive application, you need to tell a compelling tale.

A grant application has a set of requirements, but that doesn’t make it easy. A business plan has seven prescribed sections, an appendix, and an executive summary, but a good one is still a work of art. For that matter, a haiku is five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables, and it can contain some incredibly potent poetry. If you don’t understand that format, though, it’s just an arbitrary arrangement of syllables.

Following the Rules

I know I already pointed this out yesterday, but I really wish I already had a blog post (or series) written on “How to Write a Query Letter,” because it’s astonishing how parallel the two processes are. And writers so often stumble with query letters because it’s not what they want to do. Novelists, by definition, enjoy writing long and twisty tales, so it’s no surprise that they get irked (and more than a little flummoxed) when you ask them to convey all the critical information about their work in a one-page (single-sided) business letter.

Business plans tend to evoke the same kind of reaction, too, because they ask an entrepreneur to boil down this grand vision, this compelling — maybe even world-changing — idea into discrete, measurable chunks of a pre-defined shape.

That’s Technical Writing, though, front to back — translating your information into the format most useful for your audience. As it happens, that’s something I’m really good at. And I know exactly why.

Manipulating Words in Confined Spaces (Technical Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopIt’s not my education. I had precisely one Technical Writing class in my entire college career, and I skipped at least  a third of the classes. It’s not really work experience, either, because I was already good at this stuff before I landed my first job. No, the real trick to it is something I picked up back in high school in an effort to impress smokin’ hotties.

I already told that story, huh? Well, that’s it. Poetry. The trick to becoming a fantastic Technical Writer is practicing poetry. And I’m not talking about this e e cummings nonsense. The whole point is to pick a rigorous set of rules, and learn how to say what you need to say within someone else’s framework.

So make a haiku, or learn how to write a sonnet in an afternoon, and if that’s not enough of a challenge, do one of these sestinas Courtney’s always talking about. Learn the fine art of verbal spatial manipulation, and document types will open up before you like so many flowers on a fine spring day.

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On Getting It Right: Grant Applications

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, August 2, 2010

Yesterday I told a story about my little girl learning to read. She hasn’t got the patience to read a whole block of text yet, though. She’ll start at the beginning, and if she doesn’t recognize the first word, she says, “I can’t read this page!” And that’s it. She pushes the book away and asks to do something else.

Even when she can read the first word (and the second, and the third…), she keeps looking at each new word with the same critical analysis. The moment she finds one she doesn’t know, she’s ready to give up.

It’s my job, then, to make sure I present her with words she can handle, and to give her a compelling reason to keep reading even when she wants to give up. That’s…well, that’s just eerily similar to the process a writer uses to apply for valuable grant money. So I guess I’m getting lots of good practice, because I’m extremely motivated in both pursuits.

What Are Grants?

Grants are non-loan cash awards that the government and charitable foundations provide to fund specific missions, whether that’s medical research in a critical field or support for the arts and education in struggling communities. Grants are available to help college kids afford tuition, to help PBS produce adorable cartoons about dinosaurs, and to help Cornell develop a network link a thousand times faster than even a fast internet connection today.

Grant awards can range from a couple hundred bucks to many millions of dollars. The National Endowment for the Arts offers grants from $5,000-$150,000, but they say the vast majority of their awards run less than $20,000. On the other hand, I’ve heard it said that fully half of the University of Oklahoma’s substantial annual operating expenses are paid with grant money. In every case, though, the money goes to the people who get the application right.

How Do You Get Them?

As I said before, the people providing the money — whether they’re government institutions or charitable foundations — always have a specific mission to perform, and limited funds to perform it with. As a result, every grant application has to compete with all the others demanding money from the same pool.

The judges of that competition are called grant selection committees. The National Endowment for the Arts uses artists and art professors, and foundations often use their boards of directors. No matter who they are, you can safely assume they’re overwhelmed with a deluge of desperate, hopeful requests — all of them written with passion, and virtually all of them destined for rejection.

If you’re a novelist, that last sentence probably made your heart ache just a little bit, because it’s a remarkably familiar type of despair. It’s the slush pile all over again, and the lessons we’ve learned from Nathan Bransford and Writer’s Digest put us in a strong position to understand and work in the grant writing process.

Because just like agents and submissions editors, grant selection committees are so inundated that they review every application looking for a justification to reject it. I’ve been told that if an application doesn’t make its case in 30 seconds, it’s rejected. I suspect the sad reality is that it has to keep making its case, every 30 seconds, over the course of a dozen pages. As soon as it falters, it’s in the trash.

Then What’s the Point?

So how do you overcome that? Why would you even try? The answer is the same that has us studying query letters in our free time, and most of the methods and best practices you’ll find out there are the same.

First things first, you’ve got to tell a compelling story. You’ve got to understand your audience, establish a compelling connection, and structure a message that keeps them engaged from start to end.

And, y’know, that doesn’t sound too hard, but there’s one last bit. You’ve got to do all those things (and keep it short!), and you’ve got to do them in a rigidly pre-structured format that changes from one grant selection committee to the next. How fun!

It’s a challenge, though — and one that offers real rewards to its victors. It’s a powerful application of fundamental Technical Writing principles, too, so it’s well worth discussing as an extreme example. I’ll share that with you tomorrow, looking at how to write a successful grant application.

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On Getting It Right: Oh Look, Annabelle! See Max?

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, August 1, 2010

When my daughter was born, everyone told me she was adorable. When she started smiling, everyone said she was charming. When she started crawling (early for her age), everyone said she was so smart! I kept waiting.

She was a wonderful baby, and I was awfully proud of her when she fell off the couch, cried for just a few seconds, and then tried her best to get right back up on it. I was proud when she learned how to growl like a dragon. I finally really connected with her, though, when she learned to talk.

It was magical (and no surprise there, because words are magical). She went straight for the sentences, too, and she’s never shied away from big words. Just the other day I jokingly told her to answer some question with the phrase, “at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light” and she parroted the words right back.

She’s three now. Three and a half. And last week I came home from work and she came running to greet me at the door with her usual, “Daddy! Daddydaddydaddydaddy!” Then she threw a big hug around my knees, and then stepped back and said, “Look!”

She was holding a book. It was one of those old Dick and Jane early readers, that we’d gotten from Trish’s mom, and Annabelle dragged me into the living room, waited while I sat down, then crawled up in my lap to read it to me.

She had two words at that point — “oh” and “look” which were enough to get her four pages into the story. The next word surprised me, though. “Jane.”

It’s the third word she’s ever supposed to learn to read, right out the gate, and it’s got a silent vowel. If you ask me, that’s wildly unfair. My protective instinct reared up, but I fought it down and told her, “Well, it’s pronounced Jane.” And showed her the letters to pay attention to, and told her there were special rules that made the “e” stay quiet.

She didn’t mind. She looked really hard at the word, repeated, “Jane” a time or two, and then we got back to reading.

A little while later, in a different book, I taught her the word “Max,” and she was doing a really great job finding it within the text and remembering how to pronounce it…right up until we found a page with the word “makeover” on it, and she read that as “Max,” too.

And then I understood how the Dick and Jane books worked. From a time before phonetics, it was all about recognizing words. She was memorizing the shapes of words, and the beginning of “makeover” just looked too close to the beginning of “Max” for her. I pointed out the difference, and we moved right along.

It’s only been two weeks now, and she’s got eleven words in her treasury now, and adding more every day. It’s incredible. It’s magic.

Applying for a Grant

I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple weeks thinking about words, and the shape of words, and how we recognize the right ones when we see them. And that’s been a strange blend of two very different things on my mind: helping a three-year-old learn to read, and explaining advanced document templates here at Unstressed Syllables.

Last week’s study in Business Plans really brought the point home, though, because there’s a certain class of document that doesn’t get read a little piece at a time, and that only works if it’s in a clearly defined and easily recognizable shape. That applies to Business Plans, but even more so to grant applications.

Oh yeah. I’m sure it’s no surprise by now, but I’ve been researching those, too. Come back tomorrow for a look at what makes a good grant application.

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On Art: How to Join the Consortium

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, July 31, 2010

So there you have it. The Consortium, in all its glory. It took me a month of posts to make the case for it (and right at my 800-word limit just to share the executive summary of my business plan yesterday), but I hope among them all you’ve got a pretty good idea what my vision is at this point.

If not, check out our About page at the Consortium website. It’s got a plain-language description of what drives us, what we’re doing, and who we are.

Patrons, Hopefuls, and Fans

That last is the longest section, and by far the most interesting. The Consortium is all about the artists.

I’ve got access to some incredibly creative people — and if you’re one of them, chances are good I’ve already got plans for you. I haven’t necessarily brought it up with you, but you’d be pretty safe assuming I want to put you to work, whether you’re listed on the About page yet or not.

Honestly, I’m having some trouble finding the time to organize the resources I’ve got. But that doesn’t mean I’m turning anyone away. If you are anxious to get started now — if you’re willing and able to do a lot of hard work for an insanely driven boss who has no real hope of paying you any time in the near future…well, let me know. But consider yourself warned.

Obviously I need more than artists, too. I’m kinda overflowing with unbelievably talented people, but at the same time I’ve got a big deficit of something incredibly boring:

Money.

If you want to contribute financially, I guarantee I can find the time to organize that particular resource. We’ve got webhosts and accountants to pay (and some of those are considerably more expensive than others). There’s a remarkable amount of expensive red tape to get through to start a non-profit. You’d be amazed.

Even if you can’t contribute, though, you can help. We need fans to believe in us, to cheer us on, and to get the message out.

So go check out the site (if you haven’t already). Subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for our newsletter, so we can keep you posted on exciting developments. Leave comments on our blog posts so we’ll know we’ve got a real audience out there.

And, if we ever meet face-to-face, have a little patience if the Consortium comes up in conversation. We do tend to get a little carried away….

When it comes right down to it, that’s what we need most from you, too. Talk about us. Talk about our mission and message if you want, or just talk about our artists and our projects. Whatever you do, though, talk about us.

If you want to see the Consortium become a reality, spread the word. We’ll love you for it.

Your Apprenticeship Papers (Creative Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopIf you want to participate as an artist, though, I’m happy to have you. Send me an email (or say so in the comments). Tell me who you are as an artist, and what you’ve got to bring to the Consortium.

Does that sound a little demanding? I guess it could. The Consortium is going to be demanding, though. It’s all about driving artists to become better artists.
And one of the things you actually must learn, somewhere along your path, is to give yourself credit for the mastery you have achieved. Until you do, it’s really difficult to find the time you need to spend to keep getting better. As soon as you accept that you’re on a mastery path, though — patron or no — you’ll make the time to keep moving forward.

So start practicing now. Whether or not you want to volunteer for some unpaid work, you’ll benefit from having your apprenticeship papers in order. And share them in the comments! We’ve probably got no idea just how talented you are, and that’s something we need to know.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Art: Supporting the Artists to Support the Arts

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, July 30, 2010

The Consortium is an Oklahoma City-based non-profit organization that provides serious, talented artists with all the benefits of a traditional career path, so they can afford the time necessary to perfect their craft, and produce high-quality artwork for the public.

Our Business

The Consortium is founded on the systems of patronage and master craftsmanship that drove the artistic excellence of the high Renaissance. With an intensive focus on interdisciplinary study and collaborative work, Consortium artists both learn from and contribute to each other’s skills.

In service of their salaries, Consortium artists commit 40 hours per week to pursuit of their craft. Weekly progress reports in the form of publicly-accessible blogs not only provide accountability, they also provide a valuable educational service to the public – a glimpse into the day-to-day processes of professional artists.

While the bulk of our employees’ time is entirely self-directed, Consortium artists commit 20-40% of their time (1-2 days a week) to Consortium projects. That might mean an apprentice in the Writing school spending two days a week on proofreading and line-editing services, or a journeyman in the Photography school shooting illustrations for an album cover.

Because of the diversity of artistic talent available within the Consortium, we are excellently-positioned to take advantage of the changing marketplace for new media created by the proliferation of digital distribution. The Consortium will begin publishing professional-quality e-Books for the Kindle and iBookstore within 2010, and will grow to become a new media music label, video producer, and all-around art-house as we expand into new schools of art.

Our People

Founded by Aaron Pogue, a storyteller with extensive experience in creative and professional writing, the Consortium opened its doors in mid-2010 with a handful of dedicated artists working tirelessly as volunteers in support of the company’s mission. These founding members included writers, photographers, painters, graphic designers, and top-notch programmers.

The Consortium also has the support of a phenomenal board of directors, including an esteemed university professor, a successful entrepreneur, and an MBA working in corporate governance. With resources like these, the Consortium is prepared to face the real-world challenges of building and growing a project on this grand scale.

Our Funding

To acquire the services of the very best artists, the Consortium is committed to offering salaries competitive with “real jobs” – the bane of the artistic community. In order to insulate these salaries from the fickle financial straits common to many non-profits, and to protect Consortium artwork from the soulless commercialism endemic to contemporary American craft, the Consortium is funded through an endowment. 100% of the endowment’s annual yield goes to provide salaries, job benefits, and resources for Consortium artists.

Because of our funding system, the salaries and positions available to our artists are stable and reliable, and any artwork they produce is already fully funded at the time of publication – there’s no extra pressure for a given work to “earn out.” In fact, because of this, the Consortium releases every original work produced by our artists into the public domain, irrevocably and without restriction.

We rely for our funding primarily on a combination of charitable contributions to the endowment and arts grants that fund individual creative projects. The Consortium also anticipates modest income from digital sales of Consortium publications. (All proceeds from the sale of any Consortium public work return directly to the endowment.)

To whatever extent necessary, the Consortium may seek additional revenue by providing master-quality freelance services appropriate to the skills and crafts of our artists, ranging from sales of stock photography and freelance editing to book shepherding and professional web design. The dedication and training of our artists will allow us to provide superior services in less time.

Our Goals

We’re working aggressively to establish strong foundations and begin getting the message out. Our immediate goals are to acquire 501(c)(3) exemption status with the IRS, and to fund the publication of two or three novels before the end of 2010. Beyond that, we’re anxious to begin hiring artists full-time, and expanding our available schools of focus.

If you’d like to learn more about the Consortium, the artists donating their time and skills to make it a reality, or the products and services we currently offer, please visit our website at www.ConsortiumOKC.com.

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On Art: The Academy of the Arts

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, July 29, 2010

I’ve said several times that I started writing when I was twelve. While I was in eighth grade I finished a first novel, The Scorekeeper, which is tragically lost to the sands of time.

My next effort, though, is preserved in all its emo glory. The Poet Alexander is basically the 180,000-word story of my adolescence, chronicling my experience getting a first job, falling in love (and dealing with all the drama of high school romance), and navigating the treacherous social undercurrents of a tight-knit church youth group.

In other words, it’s probably not something you want to read. But I wrote it under the guise of a fantasy novel, so I spent considerable time developing the setting, figuring out the tangled political dynamics of the town, and creating interesting fantasy parallels for the tedious real-world obstacles I dealt with throughout those tumultuous years.

To that end, I invented a high school for him — the Academy of the Arts at Three Cities. I dreamed up a career path for him, too. In the end, though, it was all about a young man with a love of words trying to pay his bills with his writing

He traveled to a new town, made some new friends, acquired a job that provided room and board for minimal writing-related work, and spent all his time hanging out at the local art school. I spent most of three years writing that book, and looking back on it now, the plot is easily the book’s least interesting element.

The setting is good, the characters are…passable. The male characters, anyway. But the most interesting part of the story by far is the premise.

I only discovered that when I sat down to write up a plot synopsis for this blog post, too. I never realized before how perfectly that story described (when I was just fifteen) exactly what I wanted to do with my life — something I wouldn’t discover for myself until I was several months into my thirties.

The Consortium

I’ve been talking all month about writing as a profession, and I promised way back at the start that I’d offer an alternative to copyright. That alternative is, in a way, patronage. In another way, it’s the Academy of the Arts. In another way, it’s something new altogether.

Whatever it is…I’m working on it.

If you read the series I used to start this week, you know I’ve been doing some research on business plans. That’s not a coincidence. Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you the Executive Summary from my business plan for the Consortium. Really, truly. The time is now.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

That title might be slightly misleading.  Mr. Koontz’s and Mr. Anderson’s writing is, indeed, the foundation upon which this particular article rests.  But there are several additional authors whose works would make great building blocks for the ideas I’ll endeavor to convey to you today.

I’ll mention some of them later.  But Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein — Book One: Prodigal Son gets my spotlight for now, since this tale of mystery, science, and insanity is what made me want to start building this blog post in the first place.

To Sit — Perchance To Read…

If you’re a writer (and I assume you are, since you’re reading…a blog…about writing), you’ve more than likely heard this question: “Where do you get your ideas?”  As many writers as there are in the world, that’s as many answers as there are to this question, and more. 

I’ve talked to you before about one of my sources for inspiration.  And, my dear inklings, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that another of my idea-triggers is reading the writings of others.

Reading is a wonderful thing, and I believe that most literate people take it for granted.  We glance at something; we know what it says.  We don’t even have to think about it, unless it’s a word like “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as the longest word in the English language.

Reading unlocks entire universes for our casual perusal or our in-depth examination.  Reading gives us the keys to doors marked Language and Culture — not to mention Power.  Reading lets us see into the minds and hearts of our fellows.  Reading feeds our souls.

And it does a lot more than that for us, but I don’t intend for this article to degenerate into propaganda for the lengthening of summer reading lists.  The point is that reading lets us intake the ideas of other human beings, and these ideas trigger new ideas in our own minds.  In this way, inspiration is self-perpetuating, passing from one human to the next.

Inspiration is a benign virus that invades imagination’s cells.  But instead of copying itself and replacing host DNA with its own, inspiration inserts an entirely new DNA called magic — thereby changing the host in wondrous ways and enabling the host to think up the most amazing concoctions of worlds and characters and landscapes.

This is how the ceilings of Sistine Chapels get painted.  This is how paradises get lost and regained.  This is how revolutions begin.  No wonder despots of history have tried to abolish books.  (Fahrenheit 451, anyone?)

Hosts, Monsters, and Lunatics

The inspiration virus is most contagious when one good author reads another; that’s when the bug bites hard.  When the carrier is Mary Shelley and the readers are Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson, the virus metamorphoses (’cause it does that, y’know) into a series entitled Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein.

Koontz, Anderson (of present-day Dune fame), and Frankenstein.  Just those names together are enough to make this reader go, “Oh yeah.”

Basically, and without spoilering the whole series for you, I summarize the premise thusly:  The Frankenstein legend is true.  Mary Shelley wrote about it, but she got a few things wrong.  Crazy Dr. Frankenstein is very much alive and well in modern-day New Orleans.  He’s at it again — or still at it, rather — creating man in his own image.  Sadly, crazy can be catching (kinda like inspiration, but more nefarious-like), so the good doctor’s creations all have a screw or ten loose.  Add a couple of serial killers and some homicide cops into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a story that Courtney puts into the UPDA category, yessireebob.

You can tell I’m loving this series, right?

Get Your Hands Dirty

Koontz and Anderson got themselves inspired — by an old tale that has been redone and rewritten and remade ad infinitum.  And guess what?  They’re not the only modern authors who are digging around in the root system, looking for long-buried treasure.  Seth Grahame-Smith has done it with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (the former of which I guffawed my way through, latter of which I greatly anticipate guffawing my way through ).

Steve Hockensmith has drawn upon both Austen and Grahame-Smith, penning Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.  There’s a Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  Huck Finn is…immortalized? dead-ized? in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim. And heavens to Betsy, there’s even an Android Karenina.  It would seem that no classic is safe from the twists of modern, humorous, and fantastical mashup.

And that, gentle readers, is exactly as it should be.  Inspiration does not belong to some elite, untouchable realm.  The joys of public domain belong to everyone.  Come one, come all!  Read the writings of our predecessors — and be a Frankenstein.  Re-write those stories in your own image.  Be lunatic about it.  Or, if re-writing classics isn’t to your creative tastes, let them plant other seeds in the oh-so-fertile soil of your imagination.  Something will grow.  You just gotta let it do its thing.  Y’know — germinate and whatnot.

Back to the other metaphor:  Let that inspiration virus spread, let the fever grip you…and when it finally breaks, you’ll have crafted something you thought would never exist.  I’m willing to bet on it.

Bring on the lightning.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

(Click a link.  Lightning won’t strike your computer, I promise.  All you gotta do is buy something, and I’ll get a few pennies with which to pay Igor’s wages.)

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Document Types: How to Write a Sales Plan

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

This week I’m diving into document types with a case study in sales pitches and business plans. Yesterday I talked about the purpose of a business proposal and gave you a brief glimpse at the people who will be reading it.

Today I’m supposed to tell you how to actually write one. The good news is that the template is pretty straightforward — a single standard font throughout, minimal document metadata, and nothing much more complicated than a Table of Contents in terms of page elements. And pretty much everything you need to say is prescribed, in standard, required sections.

The bad news is that, even with all that organization done for you, filling in the blanks is a lot of work. Then again, everything about starting a business is a lot of work, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

And when it comes down to it, document templates aren’t really supposed to make writing projects easy, they’re supposed to make the setup easy. As I said yesterday, when I went searching for a good business plan template, it made my setup remarkably simple.

Filling in the Blanks

These are the sections an investor expects to find in a standard business plan:

  • Executive Summary
  • Market Analysis
  • Company Description
  • Organization and Management
  • Marketing and Sales Management
  • Service or Product Line
  • Funding Request
  • Financials
  • Appendix

Each section serves a specific purpose. And while the content changes from project to project, nearly every business benefits by presenting its information in this style.

The Market Analysis describes the market your business hopes to compete in. It should address the competition in the field, customers’ expectations for the delivery and service of similar products, and any notable regulations that would dictate how companies do business in this market.

The Company Description explains in high-level terms what you do. Building on the foundation provided by the Market Analysis, the Company Description  should clearly establish a market need that your company is capable of satisfying. Explain what makes your company a viable alternative (whether it’s better service, better products, better prices, or just better marketing).

Organization and Management tells the reader who you’ve got working for you, what makes them great resources, and how you plan to put them to use. This includes an analysis of your board of directors and your management structure (or founding members), as well as a description of your company’s legal status. This section is one of the most critical in establishing your company as a legitimate enterprise with the resources to achieve its goals.

Marketing and Sales Management investigates just how you’re going to find customers within that Market you analyzed earlier. This includes your plan for getting your message out, as well as how you’re going to position your business competitively and how you’re going to getting your products or services to the customers once a sales is made.

Service or Product Line seems a little late to the discussion, but this section presents what it is you actually have to sell. This should be your real sales pitch, too. You’re not just focusing on what you have to sell — you’re convincing the reader that real people are interested in buying your product.

The Funding Request makes a case for a specific amount of funding you’ll need to start your business. It should include what you’ll need for the next year, what you’ll need over the next five years, and a description of what you would do with that funding if you had it. It’s absolutely crucial here that you go back to your audience analysis and write this section with a strong focus on how it will read to the potential investor (and thinking hard about what they’re looking for in it).

Then your Financials section backs up the Funding Request with hard numbers, showing an analysis of the historical financial data related to your market and prospective financial data (describing how things will look in the future if you get some or all of your requested funding). This section is often composed almost entirely of charts and graphs — and you’re on your own, for those.

And last (as it should be), there’s an Appendix, which contains extra information you’ll provide on an as-needed basis — things like resumes of your key board members and managers, a credit report, and legal documents like licenses related to your ability to conduct business. You won’t share that with nearly as many people as the main body of your business plan, but it’s handy to have it ready.

When all that’s done, you get to write the very first item in the list: the Executive Summary. That’s a one- or two-page narrative that provides an overview of information included in all the other sections. It’s your opportunity, in just a few hundred words, to describe your business.

Describe Your Business (TW Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopIf you’ve made it this far into the business plan series, you’ve got to have something big you want to put on paper. Maybe you don’t realize it consciously, but I’m certain that if you’re here now, you’ve got a project that deserves a detailed business plan.

A business plan can do more than secure funding — it can help you formalize a vague idea (or daydream), and decide for yourself if it’s something you want to pursue, or something you’d prefer to forget about altogether. And if you’re not interested enough to even fill out a business plan, you’re probably better off forgetting.

Try it out. Check out the business plan template in your version of Word (if you’ve got access to Word) or use this one I found on Google Docs. Then start at the top, and do your best to fill it out, whether it’s a description of your ad-supported blog or your dream of opening an haute-cuisine restaurant on that abandoned lot you pass on your way to work.

Or if you’re part of my Thursday crowd, maybe your dream is to be a professional novelist. More and more, that’s an entrepreneurial endeavor all its own. So figure out the Market Analysis for your genre and your Service or Produce Line, and if you’ve got the patience, even put your Financials into words.

And then if you’re really brave, share it with us. At least tell us that you did it, though. I’d love to know how your experience goes.

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