Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The E-Reader vs. the Book: Aren't They on the Same Team?
That was the topic of conversation at the June meeting of the New York University Publishing Alumni. For most in attendance the answer to the aforementioned question was yes. While the majority did not own an e-reader and admitted that they had no desire to run right out and purchase one, the role e-readers will play in the future of the publishing industry is quite clear--e-readers are the future and stand to make it a positive one. Some pointed out the e-reader's potential to overhaul an outdated print model drowning in seller returns and a glut of unused and wasted product. What the e-book means for the bookseller, particularly the independent bookseller, remains to be seen. But it wasn't that long ago that vinyl was projected to go the way of the dinosaurs and yet the vinyl record is currently enjoying a renaissance with independent record stores the hip place to purchase both new and classic vinyl. There's no reason to believe the book and independent booksellers won't fare just as well. While the die-hard bibliophiles in the group were not completely sold on the e-reader, all agreed that whether in bound book or electronic form, content and the quality and production of that content is what our industry is all about. Besides mulling the future of publishing in the digital age, there was plenty of networking and industry advice in the conversation, two things very important to those still riding out the great recession and the cut backs and layoffs it brought. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for August 24.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
So I Took My Birthday Month Off...
Can you blame me? Turning 30 is a lot to take in, process, and recover from. So I decided to step away for the month of May and do some pondering--about life, my future, my writing, my relationships. Did I come to any great conclusions? Yes and no. As for my life and future, I've decided that I need a change of scenery and something of a career jump-start so I'm heading to New York in a couple of weeks. As for my writing, I don't think I can sum up the current situation of the written art form better than Garrison Keillor put it in this recent commentary. I suppose that by writing this blog I am, in a way, contributing to the downfall of writing as an art and the publishing industry as a whole, an industry I want so to be a part of, for as Keillor puts it: "That is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75." I have been a part of the "old era", as Keillor calls it. I mailed manuscripts and received rejection letters. Then I emailed files of manuscripts and received rejection letters (and emails). I have experienced the "aura of martyrdom" and rejection. I didn't get paid for what I wrote then, I don't get paid for what I write now. Instead of receiving rejection emails, I've received hate email from one reader, but I usually suffer from no readers. That is the worst rejection of all. In many ways, the old era and new era aren't that different.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
What's in Your Pocket? Poetry!
This is National Poetry Month. How have you been celebrating? Yes, April is almost over, but it's never too late to get in on the literary action. Case in point, today is Poem In Your Pocket Day. Unfold your poem from your pocket and share it with others. If you're "going green" and consider yourself technologically inclined, you can pull your iPhone from your back pocket and pull up the poem of the day at poets.org.
I'm going with Poem In Your Blog to start the day. Enjoy!
To Rumi
Sing to him who made you.
Fill yourself with morning gold,
This Lord’s Day morning.
Hear their bird’s sing—
Noah’s dove, Elisha’s raven, the cranes of Sesshu.
This music is your joy.
Let me stand in the awe of your harmony.
Your waters rush over me,
Baptism of the spirit and soul,
Quenching the fires of greed, hatred, ignorance—nirvana!
Now only righteous fire burns.
Like Moses and his bush—
Burns but I am not consumed.
It is your light within.
I'm going with Poem In Your Blog to start the day. Enjoy!
To Rumi
Sing to him who made you.
Fill yourself with morning gold,
This Lord’s Day morning.
Hear their bird’s sing—
Noah’s dove, Elisha’s raven, the cranes of Sesshu.
This music is your joy.
Let me stand in the awe of your harmony.
Your waters rush over me,
Baptism of the spirit and soul,
Quenching the fires of greed, hatred, ignorance—nirvana!
Now only righteous fire burns.
Like Moses and his bush—
Burns but I am not consumed.
It is your light within.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Letters to God Needs Less Talk and More Action
One of the most popular search terms on the Internet in the last 48 hours has been “Letters to God.” If you’re a Yahoo! user you’ve seen it bouncing around in their Trending Now top 10. To cut through the noise of the web and land a Trending Now spot shows that a lot of people are curious as to what it is. Well, what it is is a film by the producer of Facing the Giants and Fireproof that can’t really decide what kind of film it wants to be. Is it a kid with cancer movie? Is it an adult redemption movie? Is it a Christian evangelistic tool? The answer is all of the above, or at least it tries but comes up short in all three categories.
In answer to the first question, the film was inspired by screenwriter and co-director Patrick Doughtie’s son who died of a rare form of brain cancer. A tragic occurrence yes, but this is not the first film to be based on the true story of a child battling a terminal illness or use a sick child to inspire adults to better themselves. The 1997 made-for-television movie A Child’s Wish and 2006’s The Ultimate Gift, based on Jim Stovall’s bestselling novel and starring such Hollywood heavy-weights as James Garner, Brian Dennehy, and Abigail Breslin both accomplished just that. And let’s not forget the film version of Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember in which a cancer-stricken girl saves a teenage bad boy. These films should have been required viewing for Doughtie and director/producer David Nixon before the cameras ever rolled on Letters to God.
The main problem is that Doughtie and Nixon have created an overly crowded cast of cliché characters and given them nothing to do. There’s the overbearing, Bible-quoting grandmother who means well. There’s the punkish, older teenage brother, Ben, dealing with feelings of guilt, envy, and annoyance towards his younger, sick sibling. There’s the typical harried, emotionally overwrought mom and the wise old neighbor/grandfather figure—a woefully underutilized Ralph Waite whose presence overcomes the weak script when he delivers his lines.
Tyler, the cancer-stricken boy, is all good. He daily pens his letters to God and puts them in the mailbox, their contents containing more prayers for others than for himself. He battles cancer without a hint of anger, frustration, or even childhood orneriness. All of that is lumped into his tomboy best friend, Samantha. Protagonist number two is the lost soul in need of redemption. Mailman Brady McDaniels has a multitude of issues and multiple layers. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t take the time to peel them away. He struggles with alcohol—a DUI arrest with his young son in the car was the last straw for his now ex-wife (this incident is shown in flashbacks within the film) who is seeking soul-custody of their son. Encountering Tyler and his letters to God gives Brady pause and is the catalyst for inward reflection and change. Beyond his battle with the bottle, Brady is an Army veteran who served in Iraq, but this is only revealed in conversations and what impact it has had on him (the root of his alcoholism perhaps?) is never explored. Brady refers to the bartender as his CO (commanding officer) and in a conversation with Tyler’s mom he tells her about coming home on leave from Iraq.
Conversation is what you’ll get plenty of in Letters to God and little else. Yes, the conversations are heartfelt—Brady praying with the minister, mom crying with Tyler, Brady confiding in his boss, grandma praying with Ben—but they never result in any action or build plot line. Brady’s interactions and connection with Tyler seem natural and logical, but how he jumps from neighborhood mailman to attending family hospital visits, helping to organize a party for Tyler, attending a family trip to Give Kids the World (an actual theme park in Orlando for sick kids, though you're never told that in the film), and influencing Tyler's mom to let him play soccer again is altogether mind boggling.
The ending is already known—Tyler’s cancer is terminal and Brady turns his life around. It is the ease by which all things come together in this film that rob it of any action and thereby deprives the audience of a truly compelling story, a realistic one anyways. Yes, everyone likes a happy ending, but if one of the purposes of this film is to be an evangelistic tool for the lost how does a film of unrealistic ease help them? No one helps Brady through his alcoholism; he just decides to quit. Ask an alcoholic how easy that is, or ask a returning veteran how hard it is to cope with civilian life. Ask some cancer patients and their families about being angry with God—and not being afraid to let it show! So in answer to those three questions I asked at the beginning, Letters to God is a Christian film, made by Christians, about a Christian family, and for a Christian audience. Its ability to be an outreach tool to the media-savvy unchurched is somewhat in doubt, which is a shame. The potential and story are there if only Nixon and Doughtie could have figured out how to tell it.
Other helpful reviews: The News and Observer and Christianity Today
In answer to the first question, the film was inspired by screenwriter and co-director Patrick Doughtie’s son who died of a rare form of brain cancer. A tragic occurrence yes, but this is not the first film to be based on the true story of a child battling a terminal illness or use a sick child to inspire adults to better themselves. The 1997 made-for-television movie A Child’s Wish and 2006’s The Ultimate Gift, based on Jim Stovall’s bestselling novel and starring such Hollywood heavy-weights as James Garner, Brian Dennehy, and Abigail Breslin both accomplished just that. And let’s not forget the film version of Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember in which a cancer-stricken girl saves a teenage bad boy. These films should have been required viewing for Doughtie and director/producer David Nixon before the cameras ever rolled on Letters to God.
The main problem is that Doughtie and Nixon have created an overly crowded cast of cliché characters and given them nothing to do. There’s the overbearing, Bible-quoting grandmother who means well. There’s the punkish, older teenage brother, Ben, dealing with feelings of guilt, envy, and annoyance towards his younger, sick sibling. There’s the typical harried, emotionally overwrought mom and the wise old neighbor/grandfather figure—a woefully underutilized Ralph Waite whose presence overcomes the weak script when he delivers his lines.
Tyler, the cancer-stricken boy, is all good. He daily pens his letters to God and puts them in the mailbox, their contents containing more prayers for others than for himself. He battles cancer without a hint of anger, frustration, or even childhood orneriness. All of that is lumped into his tomboy best friend, Samantha. Protagonist number two is the lost soul in need of redemption. Mailman Brady McDaniels has a multitude of issues and multiple layers. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t take the time to peel them away. He struggles with alcohol—a DUI arrest with his young son in the car was the last straw for his now ex-wife (this incident is shown in flashbacks within the film) who is seeking soul-custody of their son. Encountering Tyler and his letters to God gives Brady pause and is the catalyst for inward reflection and change. Beyond his battle with the bottle, Brady is an Army veteran who served in Iraq, but this is only revealed in conversations and what impact it has had on him (the root of his alcoholism perhaps?) is never explored. Brady refers to the bartender as his CO (commanding officer) and in a conversation with Tyler’s mom he tells her about coming home on leave from Iraq.
Conversation is what you’ll get plenty of in Letters to God and little else. Yes, the conversations are heartfelt—Brady praying with the minister, mom crying with Tyler, Brady confiding in his boss, grandma praying with Ben—but they never result in any action or build plot line. Brady’s interactions and connection with Tyler seem natural and logical, but how he jumps from neighborhood mailman to attending family hospital visits, helping to organize a party for Tyler, attending a family trip to Give Kids the World (an actual theme park in Orlando for sick kids, though you're never told that in the film), and influencing Tyler's mom to let him play soccer again is altogether mind boggling.
The ending is already known—Tyler’s cancer is terminal and Brady turns his life around. It is the ease by which all things come together in this film that rob it of any action and thereby deprives the audience of a truly compelling story, a realistic one anyways. Yes, everyone likes a happy ending, but if one of the purposes of this film is to be an evangelistic tool for the lost how does a film of unrealistic ease help them? No one helps Brady through his alcoholism; he just decides to quit. Ask an alcoholic how easy that is, or ask a returning veteran how hard it is to cope with civilian life. Ask some cancer patients and their families about being angry with God—and not being afraid to let it show! So in answer to those three questions I asked at the beginning, Letters to God is a Christian film, made by Christians, about a Christian family, and for a Christian audience. Its ability to be an outreach tool to the media-savvy unchurched is somewhat in doubt, which is a shame. The potential and story are there if only Nixon and Doughtie could have figured out how to tell it.
Other helpful reviews: The News and Observer and Christianity Today
"To poorly paraphrase C.S. Lewis, there is no such thing as a 'Christian film,' just as there is no such thing as 'Christian cooking.' What we have are stories, and storytellers, and points of view. All I can do as a storyteller is focus on what I'm primarily concerned with and explore with earnestness and conviction the truth contained therein"--Scott Teems, Christian film director
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Forgiveness
It’s messy stuff, this forgiveness business. Christ himself proved this. While dying on a Roman cross, he cried out “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Did they know they were killing an innocent man? Yes. Did they know they were killing the Son of God and the Messiah they so desperately longed for? I don’t know for sure. The Sanhedrin and the Pharisees certainly know what he was. The Romans just wanted the problems in Judea to go away. As for the people? Let’s just say they wanted to believe the most convenient truth available.
Some 2,000 years later, people still want that, especially when it comes to forgiving those who have wronged us. I read once (I wish I could remember where) that you know you’re ready to forgive when you feel more sorry for the person that has wronged you than you do for yourself. There’s a lot of truth in that. It has been my experience that those who struggle to forgive others for whatever wrong has been committed against them are generally themselves habitual perpetrators of wrong against others. For example, they roll through life oblivious to those they run over, so fixated on themselves that when someone wrongs them, well, it’s just the end of the world! How can they ever forgive the ______ who did ______ to them? Perhaps their victims who are struggling with resentment and forgiveness could give them some pointers.
That’s the key to forgiveness. Christ commands that we forgive as we have been forgiven (Luke 6:37), but we should also forgive the “criminals” in our lives because we have been “criminals” in the lives of others. We may not even realize it, the pain we have caused another, but it’s a guarantee that we have. We are all human after all.
Some 2,000 years later, people still want that, especially when it comes to forgiving those who have wronged us. I read once (I wish I could remember where) that you know you’re ready to forgive when you feel more sorry for the person that has wronged you than you do for yourself. There’s a lot of truth in that. It has been my experience that those who struggle to forgive others for whatever wrong has been committed against them are generally themselves habitual perpetrators of wrong against others. For example, they roll through life oblivious to those they run over, so fixated on themselves that when someone wrongs them, well, it’s just the end of the world! How can they ever forgive the ______ who did ______ to them? Perhaps their victims who are struggling with resentment and forgiveness could give them some pointers.
That’s the key to forgiveness. Christ commands that we forgive as we have been forgiven (Luke 6:37), but we should also forgive the “criminals” in our lives because we have been “criminals” in the lives of others. We may not even realize it, the pain we have caused another, but it’s a guarantee that we have. We are all human after all.
Happy Easter!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Original "Yes We Can" Girl Wants You to Celebrate Women's History Month
If you stopped by yahoo.com at all this month, you may have noticed that a little animated girl dressed in denim with a red bandanna in her hair, carrying a lunch box pops out and walks in front of the Yahoo! logo. She stops next to the big “Y”, sets down her lunch box and flexes her bicep. Yes, she is in fact a little cartoon Rosie the Riveter. Click on her and you’re taken to Yahoo’s Women’s History 2010 page. March is in fact Women’s History Month, and March 8 was International Women’s Day, first recognized in 1911. While IWD has its roots in the suffragette movement and socialist parties in the U.S. and Europe, it has evolved into an education tool to spotlight the inequality in education, health care, and basic human rights that many women in the developing world face. IWD has also become a holiday akin to Mother's Day in many Asian nations, as children present gifts to their mothers and grandmothers.
The Yahoo! site spotlights women leaders in politics, the arts, sports, and the sciences, just to name a few. It also features links to other sites such as the official International Women’s Day website, which further details the history of IWD, and vday.org, a global campaign to end violence against women founded by Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues.
It’s well worth your time, with a plethora of educational materials and interesting facts. So click on little Rosie and have a happy and meaningful Women’s History Month!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Uncommon Sense
Have you ever heard the saying, "Common sense is no longer common"? All you have to do is watch your local news broadcast to know it's true. As one week ends and another begins, here's a slice of news snippets from our common-sense-challenged world. Hopefully, the news next week will be brighter, or at least smarter, but I somehow doubt that.
A recent British study shows that women on the pill may live longer. The role the pill plays in suppressing life-shortening diseases is still unclear, but “it may also be that women on the pill are somehow healthier than those that aren't.” Could the fact they are not having children have something to do with it? Hmm.
The Florida Black Chamber of Commerce and four black-owned public relations firms that sought the federally funded Census awareness contract to promote the census to black Floridians are suing the state of Florida and Governor Charlie Crist for discrimination because a white-owned firm was awarded the contract. They’re also suing the winning bidder and its subcontractors. Not hiring someone because they’re black is discrimination, hiring someone because they are black is fair labor practices, and suing the white-owned company that got the job is good sportsmanship. Ummm…okay.
Pinellas School Board chairwoman Janet Clark is under fire for referring to chronically misbehaving students as “hoodlums,” stating, “so much time is [being] taken up with addressing hoodlums, with kids who don't want to be in school.” Janet, Janet, Janet. They’re not “hoodlums”; they’re “behaviorally challenged”. Get it right, for Pete’s sake! Fellow board member Mary Brown cleared up all the labeling confusion, "They might be disruptive. They might be in gangs. They might be many things, but they are not hoodlums.” After all, no one would ever think that a gang member, aka gangster, is a hood, aka a hoodlum! See what happens when you don’t know your word origins!
A man was sentenced to 15 months in prison and his girlfriend was given five years probation for nearly starving their dog to death. The 9-month-old boxer weighed only 32 pounds when it was seized by authorities. In their defense, the couple said they didn't have the money to take the dog to a veterinarian and that they were treating it twice a day for a mysterious skin disease. Everyone knows skin allergies can reduce a dog to a rack of bones, but apparently you have to take the dog to a vet to diagnose the problem as starvation! Good to know!
A recent British study shows that women on the pill may live longer. The role the pill plays in suppressing life-shortening diseases is still unclear, but “it may also be that women on the pill are somehow healthier than those that aren't.” Could the fact they are not having children have something to do with it? Hmm.
The Florida Black Chamber of Commerce and four black-owned public relations firms that sought the federally funded Census awareness contract to promote the census to black Floridians are suing the state of Florida and Governor Charlie Crist for discrimination because a white-owned firm was awarded the contract. They’re also suing the winning bidder and its subcontractors. Not hiring someone because they’re black is discrimination, hiring someone because they are black is fair labor practices, and suing the white-owned company that got the job is good sportsmanship. Ummm…okay.
Pinellas School Board chairwoman Janet Clark is under fire for referring to chronically misbehaving students as “hoodlums,” stating, “so much time is [being] taken up with addressing hoodlums, with kids who don't want to be in school.” Janet, Janet, Janet. They’re not “hoodlums”; they’re “behaviorally challenged”. Get it right, for Pete’s sake! Fellow board member Mary Brown cleared up all the labeling confusion, "They might be disruptive. They might be in gangs. They might be many things, but they are not hoodlums.” After all, no one would ever think that a gang member, aka gangster, is a hood, aka a hoodlum! See what happens when you don’t know your word origins!
A man was sentenced to 15 months in prison and his girlfriend was given five years probation for nearly starving their dog to death. The 9-month-old boxer weighed only 32 pounds when it was seized by authorities. In their defense, the couple said they didn't have the money to take the dog to a veterinarian and that they were treating it twice a day for a mysterious skin disease. Everyone knows skin allergies can reduce a dog to a rack of bones, but apparently you have to take the dog to a vet to diagnose the problem as starvation! Good to know!
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