International Please Don't Pirate My Book Day

Today, in the world according to writer Chuck Wendig (of the mind-boggling Terribleminds blog), is International Please Don't Pirate My Book day.  That makes an adequate reason to do as he suggests and write about book piracy, or, as some suggest we should more accurately call it, Unauthorized Copy Sharing (so as not to make is sound all romantic and swashbuckling).  Chuck gives 25 different sides of the debate in his discussion, ranging from the impossibility of getting books in some markets (thus justifying pirating), to the fact that it makes the author feel like you don't think the work is worth paying for--yet another blow to our fragile writerly egos.

But here's the bottom line: whether the author is huge and the publishing company even bigger, or the author is independently published and sells two copies a month, stealing the book is a refusal to pay the people who did the work.  Make all the arguments you want about providing publicity and word of mouth so that after you steal it 24 other people will buy it because you raved so about it, and how you wouldn't even have read it if you'd had to pay (like that's supposed to make me feel better?), the bottom line is, if you don't pay for what you take, you are, well, a thief.  The fact that it's still there for someone else to buy doesn't change that.  It's called intellectual property and until and unless we completely redesign the system of how art is produced, the worker needs to be paid when you consume the work.

Usually people who think that books and music should be free don't produce them, or they'd know that while having lots of fans is nice, artists usually like to eat, too (and need a little extra money for the coffee it takes to fuel the endeavor).  You see, it takes time to write and edit and produce and market a book.  That's time you can't spend in a cubicle or digging ditches or whatever to pay the mortgage and buy groceries (and coffee.  Don't forget the coffee).

Now, I'm willing to acknowledge the grey areas that Chuck Wendig and all the interesting people who commented on his blog bring up.  But in the end, it still comes down to taking something you didn't pay for.  That's bad Karma.  Worse, when you get a book (or anything else) from a piracy site, someone IS making money from it.  It's just not the people who deserve it, the writer and illustrator and publisher who made an investment of time and/or money in the product you just skipped away with.  Instead, that money is going to someone who has made a whole business of defrauding the people who produce what they make their money on.  If you follow me.

So ultimately, the point of this post is just what the title says.  On the off chance that you have the opportunity, please don't steal my book.  If you really, really want it and you really, really can't afford to pay $2.99 for the ebook, leave me a message.  If you are convincing enough, I'll give you a coupon.

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Words to Watch For

I'm doing this post even though I know my readers are not the sorts to ever mix up words and use the wrong form of to/too/two or your/you're, because these things are pet peeves and I have to do something to make myself feel better about them.

I'm not going to go into the differences between the homonyms listed above, because everyone knows them if they just stop to think.  But there are a bunch of other words that seem to cause a lot of trouble, and drive me nuts.  Here's a partial list, with the correct uses attached.

Roll/role.  The former is something you have with dinner, or a means of locomotion.  The later is a part in a play, or a part to play.  At the moment, my role is that of teacher (properly, role has an accent circumflex--a pointy hat-thing--over the "o" but that's pretty well gone out in English, partly because our keyboards don't have one, at least not without some effort).

Affect/effect.  Affect is a verb, meaning to influence (there is a noun form but ignore that.  You don't need it unless you are writing literary criticism).  Effect is a noun, meaning a result.  That which affects me (like bad grammar) has an effect on me (it turns me into a cranky old lady).

Accept/except.  The only reason I can see for ever confusing these is that no one bothers to enunciate nowadays.  I would love to accept the award, except for the part about being perfect. 

Critic/critique.  I'm sure this was just a typo where I saw it.  The critic (a person) writes the critique (an analysis of the good and bad of something).  Critique can also be a verb: when I write my critique, I am critiquing the work.  Critic, on the other hand, can never be a verb.  The critic remains a force for evil in the writer's universe.  I mean, a source of helpful input.

You don't have any trouble with there/their/they're, right?

I will also refer my readers to this wonderful discussion of the non-word "alot."  It's not new, but it's wonderful.

Oh, yeah: and you don't form plurals with an apostrophe.  Ever.  Possessives, yes.  Contractions, yes.  Plurals, no.  And, just to keep you on your toes: the possessive form of "it" is "its" rather than the more logically consistent "it's", which is a contraction of "it is."  Got it? 

Now, for the more controversial side of what I want to say.  If you are a writer, you want to get these and more right every time you write in public.  That means that when you post in a forum, or on your blog, or even Tweet (I don't follow Twitter, but if grammar and spelling are ignored there, I'm unlikely ever to start), you look it over before you hit "send" and you fix the spelling, put in the capitals and punctuation, and double-check that you're used the words you really meant to.  Because if your posts are poorly written, I'm going to make some assumptions about your book.  Maybe that's not fair, but it's the way I am.  And I'm not alone.

Editing: the next step

So last week I was chugging away at editing Murder in the PTA, and feeling a little sluggish about managing to get through only 20 pages a day.

Turns out that was the fast and easy part.

See, what I was doing last week was working with a print-out of the MS, fussing with words and sentences, but when it came to things that needed big changes or completely rewriting, I would scrawl "fix this!" or "needs rewriting," or my favorite, "UGH!" in the margin and move on.

Now it's payback time.  Sitting in front of the computer, typing in those changes, I'll cruise along pretty well for a page or two (though even when doing simple changes, I read the whole thing as I go to see if anything else wants tweaking, so it's not all that fast).  Then I hit one of those evil marginal notes.  "Fix this?  How?  What the heck am I supposed to do about it?  And how DO I make this plausible?  Can I cut it entirely?" I grind to a halt.  Stare at the screen.  Shuffle through my pages and pages of notes about what needs modifying.  Ask myself again why I even wanted to try to beat this thing into a readable book (the answer, for those who care, is that I love the characters and their home on Pissmawallops Island).

Then I start typing.  And I realize that however hard it is, this is the part of editing that returns me to creativity.

I also realize that sometimes editing 5 pages a day is good progress.

So now I'm going to go all philosophical on you about writing and editing.  We writer-types get a lot of positive feedback from writing rough drafts.  You sit down, take up pen or keyboard (yeah, still undecided about that), and let the words flow. Out come 1000 words, 1500, and you get a cookie for being a good little writer.

Editing is completely different.  Sometimes the greatest progress is represented by the fewest pages completed.  I may hit a chapter that's pretty good as is and I can zip through it, change a word here and a sentence there, and think I'm really cruising.  But I haven't actually done much.  It's when I hit the rough patches, the "fix this!!!" parts, that I have to really write.

Here's the philosophical part.  I used to be a trail-runner (long story about why I don't get to do that any more, never mind).  When running trails, particularly in hilly country, the first thing you have to do is dump your idea of what your pace is.  Yeah, sure, I'm an 8-minute mile runner.  On the flat.  But when grinding up a steep, rough trail, the pace drops.  Twelve-minute, 15-minute miles. . . it's good.  A completely respectable pace, because you're climbing like crazy and gravity is a very powerful force determined to keep you at the bottom of the hill.  So you change your mindset.  You put yourself in a place where a completely different definition of speed holds sway.  Heck, it's a completely different definition of running.  One that says that as long as you are moving forward at all, up that giant, rock-strewn mountain, you're fantastic.

That's what real revision is.  A place where maybe you take all day to make two or three pages work right.  And you are happy, because it took you only one day to turn two or three pages of dreck into sparkling, witty prose (or just readable prose.  Sometimes the goal has to be truly modest.  It can learn to sparkle on another day).  And you stand on your little pile of two or three pages, and you are the winner of the New York Marathon.

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For those who are wondering, I'm past that stage with Return to Skunk Corners, and hoping soon to get it back from my editors (you reading this, Lisa & Emily?) and put on the final polish.  Hope to have a cover to reveal soon, too!  Meanwhile. . . having fun with a little murder and mayhem, and starting a new kids' book to keep me out of trouble.


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