Going direct-to-web is more than an experiment. It’s a mission.
Nine years ago I began work on what would become my first direct-to-web novel, The Boy From Under, a crime thriller set in Langley, British Columbia. I have since taken the story offline, and will be republishing it after I complete work on my second D2W book, The Mural Gazer, which I plan to publish in a print edition this summer.
I launched myself into D2W because, like many writers, I was frustrated with the length of time it took to get my work published; with the trickledown process that left everyone up the chain earning money, while I had to pay off ‘reverse royalties’ before a penny would come my way; and by the challenges of getting my stories off bookstore shelves, into the hands of readers.
D2W as an adjunct to print editions seemed a promising concept, which might address those issues. I am still convinced of its potential, even though I have become increasingly aware of the daunting magnitude of the undertaking – not the technical difficulties, which are surmountable, but the steadfast loyalty of readers to books on printed pages, between covers.
That isn’t going to change any time soon, certainly not within my own lifetime. The iconic image of curling up with a book in a favourite armchair is not going to be supplanted by the notion of reading or listening to a novel on your mobile while jolting along on public transit between home and office. For the foreseeable future print will be the overwhelmingly popular choice of readers.
So why bother with direct-to-web at all? Why not let young up and comers crack open that niche market for a new generation of readers?
First and foremost, because literature is too important to a healthy, vital society not to secure its place in the online, digital world as soon as possible. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post, but getting books online has become an urgent priority for me because literature remains the most powerful mode I can think of for sharing ideas and feelings. It’s foundational to a society that explores its motives and challenges its actions.
Then there’s the creative possibilities D2W opens up. When I started down the direct-to-web path, I considered it purely from a publication and distribution point of view. Inevitably, however, it morphed into a mode of writing that excites me. The Mural Gazer was created dynamically. I know many authors will shudder at the thought, but I posted episodes as they were written – the online equivalent of an author writing his book in a department store window.
Over the years I have also come to appreciate the tremendous distribution and marketing opportunities of D2W. I can share The Mural Gazer with readers anywhere in the world as a text or audio book at almost no cost. Readers can access the book immediately when they see it promoted on social media. With a click they can open up the story on their mobile phones, laptops or desktop computers. After reading a few chapters, they can pay for the book online, too.
Finally (for now) there’s the matter of control, a decidedly two edged sword. I don’t really want to be a writer/publisher/promoter/bookseller because I value the knowhow of partners in the literary realm and would love to narrow my focus more on writing. For the time being, however, I have no choice. Until there are collaborative pathways from writing to publishing and selling, I will have to multitask as a D2W author.
A retired journalist and communications manager, I am in the tempting position of being able to take on that do-it-yourself book writing and publishing role. But I know it’s not a viable, sustainable model. What I envision are collectives, bringing the necessary skills together to see the dream of storytelling from conception through publication and sales in D2W and print formats made real.
That’s my goal for Books Unbound. I’m happy to share ownership.
I didn’t say it out loud, of course – not right away – and can’t determine to this day if the thought was true – I mean sincere in all its dimensions, down to the place where sole meets concrete reality. But it was the best I could come up with on the spot, and even though I didn’t voice the sentiment right off, she heard me. That’s the trick I believe: Think things before speaking. Sometimes keep them as thoughts forever because you’re bashful, perhaps. Or maybe because the person you’re interested in is perfect and you could only detract from that by wheedle-wording your way into their affections.
I had instinctively done an up and down of the sandals’ occupant – that checkout-scan we males of the species do when attracted by something potentially sexual in our peripheral vision. But it was her footwear – and I must confess, her feet –my roving eyes locked onto.
Her toenails were painted pink!
Not gaudily, in that slapdash way you sometimes see and feel embarrassed about – usually for bubblegum teens. The polish had been applied with artistry. Details like that say something, don’t they? She had a conception of self that was bold and subtle, I figured.
So maybe I was indulging just a little. But it’s okay to try and fathom why someone’s special isn’t it? And at first, we have to draw assumptions from observations as seemingly insignificant as pedicure, don’t we? You’re a liar if you say no. The forensics of love are based upon minute chips of evidence, hinting at theories made up as we go.
To me the convex surfaces of her nails were intriguing as conch shells turned inside-out. Can you imagine such a thing? My eyes stuck on the tops of her toes for a breath or two then – without my thinking, without conscious intent – zoomed in on her sandals, recording every facet of those elegant slippers.
Even as my eyes went about their rogue’s work, though, part of me realized there was nothing so very remarkable about Gloria’s sandals… aside from the fact that she was in them. I can think of a thousand movie stars and a thousand more princesses who would have turned up their noses, if asked to wriggle their dainty nether digits into such a pair of Walmart flip-flops. But on Gloria’s feet! Oh my!
“Oh my!” as grandmother would cry when occasion warranted. Of course, her delight was usually over events as homey as cherry pie coming out of the oven, or particularly brilliant works of crayon art, not over anything so exotic as the footgear of a complete stranger. For grandmother agape wasn’t so much about miracles as discovering the miraculous in everyday things – about seeing through the veil of ordinary and triggering suspirations as emphatic as a last-gasp.
By the way, mentioning Gloria’s name right now makes everything from here-on-in non-sequitur. I didn’t know her name at this point in the story. True, I was cultivating an intimate relationship with the bone structure and musculature of her feet, the same way Toto might have got to know Dorothy before they ventured into Oz. But that’s not the same as knowing a body’s name, is it? Love works backwards. We fall into it then double back, tracking down the meanings and consequences of ’til death do us part.
I’ve broken sequence because I can’t bear talking about Gloria as ‘her’ or ‘she’. I have to give a name to those theoretical references. So I have christened her even though a name at that point would have been as naively symbolic as graffiti sprayed anonymously on whitewashed stucco, or rote declarations carved into the trunks of trees or the planks of park benches. At that point in our relationship her name would have been a catch-all of fantasies. A concatenation of dark eyes, long black hair… an aura you could best see through eyes half-closed.
In truth, if Gloria had dematerialized before I got a chance to talk to her – whisked out of her sandals by powers unknown into some sci-fi Nirvana beyond the frequencies of daytime TV – nothing would have seemed remarkable about her footwear left on the corner of Quadra and Hillside. Other than the fact the sandals were there – placed carefully on the cracked concrete as if the intersection were a portico into some alternative dimension, and she had been called away suddenly. Barefoot.
The thing about Gloria is she even stands with her shoes neatly placed, and she never just kicks her footgear off. She’s neat that way. Fastidious. It makes me laugh. And because of her, I place my work boots carefully on the mat inside the vestibule door, too – toes pointing toward the wall, heels knocked together. She’s aware of details like that, so it pains me to bring disorder into our lives, especially when it’s so easy to do things right.
There’s meaning to the precise placement feet on a sidewalk; someone needs to see that. Imagine yourself in the presence of a goddess. You’ve been schlepping your way through life down at the pit, a latter-day Sisyphus crunching stones into various grades of gravel, then suddenly she’s there, and you know sheis a goddess, that she already knows everything she needs to. What do you say to her? What’s your conversation starter?
In a way, Gloria was aware of every rhinestone glued to those bargain basement sandals of hers. Not individually, of course, but as elements of a sensory field, if you will. I wondered which tiny mirror I might have been reflected in, standing beside her, my bike held between us like a barrier. What did she think of this guy? Of his long hair and never-quite-matured beard, his knobby tired bike? She hadn’t even glanced my way – a sensible rebuke. But I did want her to appreciate the nobility of my feelings… that if the sun could be positioned just-so behind me, I would glow, too, with my own halo effect.
I glimpsed her profile, then surveyed the intersection for clues. Perhaps there were points of convergence, shards of data that proved we dwelt in overlapping dimensions. Which of the drab architectural features could I point to and say, There, that’s us. The San Remo Market Deli & Café? The Salvation Army Community & Family Centre, across Hillside? The Money Mart (real people fast cash) diagonally opposite? The Sally Ann thrift store on the west side of Quadra? The garbage receptacles, and bike racks at every corner to dispose of stuff we no longer valued and lock up the things we did?
We were none of that, and perhaps – without knowing it – denial was the point of convergence I had in mind.
“Nice sandals!” I said.
No kidding! I said it out loud. Breathlessly. Disguised as a brash joke, because any second now the light on Quadra would wink green and the little silhouette that says walk would let her get away, and I couldn’t let that happen without at least a memory of me – strange and deformed as it might seem – hankering after her. Things had spiralled into a place where an inkling of madness is the only reasonable state of mind – not stark raving lunacy, but a sort of emotional Pi, never quite defined, always panicked by another incremental digit of yearning.
If only we had it in us to feel that way about every living thing, we would truly be incarnations of our imagined gods.
The light changed. Gloria stepped off the sidewalk into the intersection. I walked beside her, thinking: This is it. It’s finished. She still hadn’t glanced at me. I studied her profile for signs. She wasn’t ready to offer any – and how could I blame her? But I took comfort in the fact that we were walking in the same direction – that the imagined pat of her sandals on the pavement didn’t seem hurried or doubtful. She was willing to abide my company to that extent at least.
Gloria strode on, back straight, black pantaloons fluttering in the breeze, pleated jacket conforming precisely to her slight, angular build. Did I imagine it, the faintest hint of a smile turning up her lips? I’m not sure, but the words rushed out of me anyway when I saw what I took to be a cue, as if I’d waiting to blurt my intentions for just-about-ever. “Maybe you won’t take it wrong if I walk with you a-ways?”
Creep! Is that what she was thinking? She stopped, looked straight at me, her head swivelling round like a security camera on a pole, eyes locking on. This is it, I thought. It’s finished.
Then she smiled and laughed out loud, and… Oh my God!
We plan on having kids someday, but there’s still lots of time to think about how I might answer, if one of the little rascals ever asks, when they’ve attained the age of reason, or at least a mature state of curiosity: “Hey, Dad, how did you and Mom first meet and fall in love?”
Perhaps if I framed it as a joke, I could admit to my temporary state of foot-fetishism at the corner of Hillside and Quadra while I was on my way to the pit and Gloria off to her studio. Or maybe I could fast-forward to our first date, on the evening of that first day, at Caffé Fantastico just a couple of blocks away from our point of departure… I paid; Gloria objected; we laughed at the clumsiness of it all… our perfectly memorable ineptitudes.
To be honest, I was amazed she showed up at all, or that I’d asked her to, when we parted ways that morning, me pedalling down Bay Street, heading for the pit; her, carrying on up Quadra. Gloria walks without making a sound, it’s like she rolls the soles of her feet through each step, feeling the ground beneath her, sensing its contours, its tilt, its flaws and fractures. Silence is what she leaves behind when she walks away from you or out of a room. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not an angel or anything, and I’m not a worshiper. But that silence she leaves in her wake? Your instinct is to fill it with thoughts of her.
The circular patio table we chose on the sidewalk outside Caffé Fantastico had a rippled glass top, so I could still make out Gloria’s feet after we sat down. They became a point of reference – their muscular arch, perfectly articulated toes and meticulously painted nails a sort of permissible zone of psychic gravity, which assured me the rest of her was still there, that she was real in an incomprehensible way… there’s a difference between comprehending someone and figuring them out, I think. Comprehending is like hugging your partner, knowing you’ll always be wondering how amazing she is; figuring her out is like taking her apart so you can adjust the mechanics of her soul – like tuning a bicycle.
A lot of my friends have got round to asking me – in one way or another – why I majored in philosophy at UVic. They don’t come right out and say: “Hey, you could be doing a hell of a lot better than crunching gravel down at the pit, if only you’d go into law or something, or maybe take a few more PSYCH courses, get a master’s? Get into counselling? Or teaching? Heck, why not try for a PhD in something or other; you’ve got the smarts.” And maybe they’re right; maybe I will someday. But all that misses the point – the vanishing point of our existence, you might say. I can’t map things out in a straight line, like I was crow flying from here to there, and happened to land on a lamppost in the epicentre of Nirvana. Life doesn’t move in straight lines or elegant curves that can be described by some sort of derived calculus.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I took philosophy so I could understand the meaning of Gloria’s feet, seen through the rippled glass of a patio table. Intimacy is the sudden awareness that your partner is too beautiful to take in at a glance, that you have to look away, take time to grow-yourself into it, expand your ability to appreciate every facet of her being… now there’s a word that takes me back to the Big Bang of prenatal existence.
There’s a theory I call bracketed infinity. Choose any points as your arbitrary beginning and end, and the information you would need to decode the significant events between will be infinite. We divvy up experiences as if life had a shutter speed and we can string moments together like the frames in a movie. But that’s not how things really work…
Get it?
Can’t say as I’ve figured it out yet myself, so you’re smarter than me if you have. All I know is, when I wake up beside Gloria, and we smile, my future, past and present areright now.
~ The End ~
Hope you enjoyed Feet First in Love There’s more in The Feel of Gravity collection.
Screen views of The Mural Gazer, a Direct-to-Web novel
What is D2W? The easiest way to answer that question is via a link to my Direct-to-Web novel The Mural Gazer. But before you click let me point out a couple of advantages D2W has already made available to you as reader and me as author:
First, I can share my novel with you in an instant, just about anywhere on the planet you can pull in an internet signal;
Second, you don’t need any dedicated technology to get into the story. Your laptop, mobile or desktop computer are your eReaders.
So back to definitions: A Direct-to-Web book is published as a website.
More specifically, it’s a website formatted as a book that reads like a print edition. If you’ve visited The Mural Gazer, you have seen its landing page, which introduces the story as would the front and back covers of a conventional book.
From there you can follow links to either Pullout, the opening scene, or the Episodes menu item, which takes you to the Mural Gazer’s table of contents. It’s the same type of decision you might make browsing a volume pulled from a bookstore shelf.
If you dive right into the story via the Pullout page, you will see an audio link at the top, which lets you listen to a reading. That’s handy if you happen to be riding on a subway or driving to work.
You can always jump to another page, or get back to where you were when reopening the novel on another device via the Episodes table of contents link.
Beneath the audio bar and at the foot of each page are links to the next episode. Every page links to its following episode, so you can read or listen to the entire novel as if you were turning the pages of a print edition.
That pretty well sums up the Direct-to-Web concept in terms of what you might expect from the design and layout of any book: accessible, convenient, portable and navigable.
There are a few extras, though.
You don’t need a light source to read a D2W thriller! You can be right out there in the dark and stormy night, scrolling through its pages in situ, while glancing over your shoulder for any ghouls that might be in pursuit!
The Mural Gazer can be readily shared via email and social media, so you can invite friends into your reading adventure. At the top of each page are social media and email icons that allow you to instantly send a link from the page you are reading to anyone on your contacts list. Books are meant to stimulate conversations.
Up in the menu bar there’s also a Contact tab, so D2W readers can connect with or follow authors if they want to share some ideas, ask a question or keep up with new releases. This feature is especially important if, like me, you are an author who sometimes chooses to write ‘dynamically’, inviting critique as the story unfolds in real time.
Not showing on this excerpt form the Mural Gazer are internal links. But say in the seventh paragraph of Pullout I wanted to give readers a snapshot view from the Malahat Summit on Vancouver Island, up Finlayson Arm? I could put a link into the text and take them there. Or I could link to a side story from the narrative, or provide supporting description for a word or phrase some readers might not be familiar with.
Of course, because the reader happens to have their internet device in front of them, they can do a quick Google snoop any time they choose to check out a scene or expand on a bit of information.
Finally, if you look at the widget area on both the Pullout and the Episodes table of contents pages, you will see a description of the book and a button that allows readers to ‘Buy-In’ to the story. Readers can get a sense of the story before – at any point – they choose to buy, and authors can choose just how far they want to allow readers to go before buying.
Eventually that space will also allow readers to purchase print and ePub editions of The Mural Gazer. D2W books complement their print editions, giving readers who like to read on screen the option – they don’t replace hard copy editions, which will long remain the preference of most book lovers.
The capabilities we’ve shared will be the subject of future posts in the Books Unbound series. The objective of Direct-to-Web publishing is to make it easier for readers to buy books and authors to share and sell them.
Sustainable Literature is the goal.
We’ll delve more deeply into the features of a D2W publication and how the reach and scope of literature can be broadened through the use of digital and online technologies in future posts. In the meantime, thank you for visiting what is, in fact, a Direct-to-Web book in the making: Books Unbound.
“You’re a writer! Trust the imaginative magic of your words!…” And respect the genius of your readers and listeners to envision your storytelling.
After two years of brain wracking and image bank trolling for eye-catching graphics to go with my website and social media posts, I suddenly stopped, and asked: Why?
Why invest all that time and energy trying to match the fantastical and soulful imagery of storytelling with stock pictures and more or less random internet pulls?
The obvious answer – an excuse actually – is that media like Facebook et al require pictures (preferably moving pictures) to earn views, clicks, shares, etc. And without the ‘reach’, ‘engagements’ and ‘likes’ a high-traffic site reels in, you won’t even get a glimpse of the golden goose called ‘monetization’.
That’s all true, I suppose. But only in the sense that a matador’s cape is the true goal of his distracted victims. Time for a rethink.
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“You’re a writer! Trust the imaginative magic of your words!” I clattered in a recent Facebook share. And – I should add – respect the genius of your readers and listeners to envision your storytelling.
I’m not alone on this slippery slope, I’m sure. Many writers see the internet in general and social media in particular as essential modes for sharing literature, and so they should. What I am warning against is being lured off course by the marketing lingo most of us have learned to talk these days.
Own the medium. Use it in a way that doesn’t compromise the true strength of literature as an arts discipline.
Words, sentences, alliteration, simile, metaphor… these are the brushes authors use to conjure images for an audience. The true gift of a story delivered in a book, or from a podium, or round a campfire is the miracle of words that readers or listeners transform into scenes, characters, feelings, conflicts, each in their own imagination.
Like no other art, literature engages audiences in the creative process.
That’s not to say I won’t complement my online stories with images from now on – the same way every book has its cover. But when I make the quest for visuals to cloth my stories paramount, I’m revealing my own lack of confidence in the evocative power of creative writing.
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From Flibber T. Gibbet The most mischievous elf in all Chemainus A soon-to-be-released adventure story set in MuralTown * Asterisk indicates a note below
Story Craig Spence / Illustrations Diana Durrand
Lincoln didn’t really want to go farther. He knew Nana West and Grandpa Grumps would be upset and angry when he made his way back to their house on Maple Street*. But he just couldn’t stop, and certainly didn’t have time to think. The yellow footprints hustled along at a gallop, barely visible on the crunching gravel of the E&N trail.*
“Slow down!” he complained.
But the pace quickened, as if the footprints were trying to lose him, either that or draw Lincoln on and tucker him out at the same time. He fell behind at one point, making his way up a steep grade, but rallied and caught up, hurtling down the other side.
Then, suddenly, the footprints veered off the trail, plunging into the bordering forest. Lincoln lost his footing, changing course so quickly on the loose gravel. He fell and skinned his knee. “Ow!” he cried out. But there wasn’t a moment to lose, rubbing the wound. Scrambling to his feet he peered between two boulders at the head of a trail, which disappeared beyond a stand of gigantic cedars.
For an instant Flibber T. Gibbet made a ghostly appearance, spinning wildly atop one of the boulders, taunting, cheering, daring Lincoln into the dense forest beyond the cedar pillars, then dashing ahead once again, become an infuriating set of tracks plunging into the bush.
Bushwhacked! If he could have spared the breath, Lincoln would have smiled at a remark Grampa Grumps might have made. But, gasping for air, warding off the clinging stinging blackberry canes, and trying to keep up with the manic elf, he was in no mood for joking.
Common sense warned him to stop. Give up the chase. “No way!” he rebelled, urging himself farther and farther up the Hermit’s Trail.
Suddenly, Flibber T. vanished into what seemed an impenetrable thicket. Lincoln dove in after him, warding off the clutching branches, leaves and thorns with his arms, crouching low to the ground, where glints of light penetrated through chinks in the dense vegetation. He’d only advanced a few steps when, without warning, he broke into a clearing. Dazzled for a moment, it was too late for him to react before he realized the ground had sloped away from under him. For a puzzled moment Lincoln pedalled desperately in midair, then pitched forward, tumbling down what he realized through his battering descent was a flight of stone steps.
“Yaagh!” he bellowed and thrashed all the way, amazed to find himself coming to rest on a stone terrace, looking up into the clear blue sky through an overarching canopy of trees. The teasing babble of a brook mocked from nearby.
The first thing that frightened Lincoln about the place he’d landed was… no pain? Bruised and sore as you’d expect to be, having landed with such a thump, he felt nothing. Sedated, he floated in a sort of dream, cushioned by the swaddling air, which seemed to sooth any sensations that might have made him wince or groan.
What is this place? he wondered.
He tried turning his head to get a better sense of his predicament… Tried again, but couldn’t move. No matter how hard he strained, his muscles wouldn’t respond. What’s happening! he pleaded, desperate to twitch a finger or even an eyelid… Imagine yourself a stone with a brain, able to see and hear and smell everything around you, but totally paralyzed, and you’ll get an idea of the state Lincoln found himself in.
What would you do? What could he do, but panic!
Notes
Lincoln has been lured from Mural #36 The Hermit, onto the E&N Railway Trail in Chemainus.
Flibber T. Gibbet leaves yellow footprints wherever he goes, but they can only be seen by people who believe in elves, and the vanish quickly ‘like invisible ink’.
The Mural Gazer is being published Direct-to-Web at MuralGazer.ca
Since December, 2019, I have been writing and publishing The Mural Gazer, a Direct-To-Web novel set in Chemainus B.C. I’ve posted 63 episodes to-date, and have 17 more to go. My best guess is I’ll be finished the ‘first draft’ of my online edition by the spring of 2022.
It’s been an amazing experience, and I’m emerging from it more convinced than ever that Direct-to-Web books have a place in our writing and publishing mix. But I know I’ll go about it differently when I launch my next title, and that a conversation about D2W with follow writers and publishers would prove invaluable.
So in the coming months I am going to review what’s been done, why and how, inviting people to join me in a critique of The Mural Gazer, not only as a literary work, but as a mode of writing, publishing and distributing ‘books’. Questions I’d like to address include:
Why is literature more important that ever in the 21st Century?
Why should it be necessary to expand the definition of a ‘book’ in the digital era to include D2W?
What are the features and benefits of Direct-to-Web writing and publishing?
What are the obstacles to books as websites?
What steps can be taken to overcome those obstacles?
How will writers and publishers incorporate D2W into their creative and business processes?
How do writers and publishers derive income through Direct-to-Web releases?
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I’m not used to thinking in these terms; I’m more of a hands-on type. But if Direct-to-Web is to be viewed as something more than a gimmick (and I think it has to be), questions like these must be answered. I hope you’ll join in the conversation. Please subscribe to my email list if you want to receive updates and notifications.
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I try to avoid the thought, ‘This isn’t so bad.’ Because that might lead me to the admission that ‘it’s kind of nice’, which I’m sure would be misinterpreted. The procedure is meant to be purely clinical. An elderly man, in a sterile room, having patches of his body shaved so the receptors of a heart monitor can be glued to his sagging torso. My sentiments are strictly in the ‘like-being-around-young-people’ category, but the specifics of our situation, the semblance of intimacy, make me nervous.
The nurse’s hands move with a precision that suggests there’s no room for error here. Scrape, scrape, the plastic razor removes the short and curlies from five points of contact: two on my chest, three on my upper abdomen. Then she rubs the ointment on, peels the parchment from each of the receptor’s pads, and sticks them onto me, so they hang there like leeches.
It’s hard, under the circumstances, to keep the conspiracy theories from manifesting. ‘What exactly might they be listening to, through this harness that’s fastened to my skin?’ Those suspicions intensify when I realize the metaphor of ‘leeches’ doesn’t quite describe the species that will be clinging to me for the next 24 hours. They’re more like tentacles of a five legged octopus, whose neurones connect to a little black box the size of a mobile phone I’m to carry around with me as the creature sucks data out of my body.
‘What can you learn about a person by listening so intently and unremittingly to the beating of his heart,’ I wonder.
When she’s done with the techie stuff, the nurse shows me a ‘Patient Diary’, which she will later insert into a plastic zip-lock envelop that has the warning ‘BIOHAZARD’ emblazoned on it in both official languages. I’m to insert the scribble of my diurnal, minute-by-minute notes into a pouch on the outside of the envelop, the heart monitor and harness into the zip-locked compartment behind, then hand my pulsed record in to the ‘ambassador’ at the hospital entrance, who will make sure it finds its way to where it needs to go.
My record keeping must be curt. There are three columns to the diary: one to log the time, another to name my activities, and a third to list any symptoms I might experience. Activities might include ‘walking the dog’, symptoms things like ‘shortness of breath’.
The example are appropriate, I will discover. You really don’t know how boring your life is until you are asked to record the minutia of your days. If they’d cited an example like, say, ‘Wing Suit Flying!” or ‘Formula 1 Racing!’, I would have felt even more inadequate than I did before this bloody stroke added a knife-edge to my existence. ‘Shortness of breath’ wouldn’t even come close to describing the heart pounding rush of zooming through the alps at 200 kph, skimming over jagged granite teeth within centimetres of my life.
“Every decision entails risk.” I can hear Herbert pontificating over a pint of Dark Matter on the Sawmill’s patio. “You might get run over, deciding to cross the road,” he would say. Then add, in that nuanced, pain-in-the-ass mode of his, “Even in a crosswalk.” With Herbert repetition is sort of like the rivets and welds that hold a ship together. His logic has structure, you get exhausted just thinking about how you might dismantle the unassailable integrity of it.
“But happenstance doesn’t add zest to my risk-taking!” I want to shout at him. He’d have some kind of answer for that. I can see him smiling smugly, casually taking another sip of his beer, while I try to calculate the significance of a ‘mini-stroke’ on the future tense of my life’s story. “I didn’t decide to have a stroke!” I would complain.”So how can you call that ‘risk-taking?”
I know Herbert would have an irrefutable answer. One that would make perfect sense, even though it might be… would almost certainly be… perfectly wrong. That’s the thing I like most about Herbert, his ability to reason to wrong conclusions from almost any point of view. He’s like Socrates on steroids, his brain a network of unassailable algorithms that yield their own truth because they are based on false, hidden premises and mysterious assumptions. He makes me feel sane.
When I got home from the hospital, I made my first Patient Diary entry, aware of the octopus clinging to my flesh, monitoring my heartbeats as I struggled to enter the time. Everything I do with my right hand is a struggle now, especially writing. That’s how I knew something was wrong in the first place. Leanne asked me to write down an email address she was reciting during a phone call, and my hand couldn’t form the letters. They came out all shaky and crooked, sloping down the page like a five year old’s script.
What the fuck! No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my hand and fingers to manipulate the pencil in a way that looked anything like normal. I pretended not to have heard her, left the room, threw the incriminating envelope into the garbage.
‘Drove home’ I scrawled under ‘Activity’; ‘3:20 PM’, under ‘Time’; I had nothing to report under ‘Symptoms’. I could have said ‘Depressed’, but that’s not the kind of information they were looking for. I could have added that it felt like my right arm was dying, that the weight of it tired me out if I insisted on actually using it. That, even if I let it hang limp from my shoulder like meat on a hook, just the sensation of its dead weight fatigued me. But there wasn’t room for that kind of descriptiveness in the symptoms column, so I left it blank.
Leanne got mad at me when I finally told her what had happened. After the chicken-scratch episode, I phoned my doctor’s office and was instructed to get my ass to a hospital and not to drive. I wanted to have some idea what was happening to me before I told Leanne, because she can’t stand uncertainty, has to fill in all the blanks and gaps with plausible explanations, followed up by the likely actions we need to take to deal with her scenarios. I’d have to stop my compulsive snacking, improve my posture, spend less time at the computer and watching TV, walk the dog vigorously twice a day, get rid of my belly fat and body flab… plus do what the doctors told me to.
She lectured me all the way from Chemainus to Duncan on our first trip to the hospital. Scolded about my slovenly habits and secretive attitudes. When she asked if I needed a drive to get the heart harness fitted, I said I’d be okay. “No need for you to sit around the hospital waiting for me,” I advised.
No matter how you slice it, the brain looks like a stalk of broccoli. I’d never seen my brain before, and if you showed me my CT and MRI scans, without any accompanying information, I wouldn’t recognize the folded cortex as my own. But it’s me all right. More me than the photos fading in our family albums, or imprinted in the circuitry of my friends’ mobile phones. Everything I know, or am capable of ever knowing or believing, is right there, in those pictures.
Everything!
Seeing images of my brain, collected by clunking, squawking, beeping, flashing machines, operated by technicians, who didn’t know me from Adam before I stepped into their clinical chambers, and would forget me almost before my moment of departure, confused me. It was like stepping into a house of mirrors…
No that’s not it. More like becoming an insect skittering about in my own neural network, able to see the inside of my own eyeball, then scurry up axions and hop synaptic gaps, until I burrowed my way into buzzing, vaulted chamber of my own brain and could sense the chaotic wonder of its electricity.
No! That’s not it either! It was as though I’d become an electron, aware of every other electron in the universe, and of the fact that I wasn’t an electron at all, but a something indefinable, an essence, a substance at the very core of living energy and matter, that could not be classified as either, or seen through the eyepiece of a microscope, or captured by the whirling cameras of a CT scanner.
If I wasn’t an atheist, I would have classified the experience of truly seeing my own brain as ‘religious’. And perhaps I’m not an atheist, after all, but a spiritual being who wonders, not at a god out there in a place called heaven, but at the ineffable miracle of every living moment.
My favourite place to read is an armchair, in the northeast corner of our living room, which has one window facing out on our suburban street, another with a peekaboo view of Stuart Channel and the Salish Sea.
Most often I have a hardcover or paperback opened in front of me, either held up in my hands or propped on my lap. It’s a comfortable portrait, most would recognize instantly, and most readers would sanction.
It fits our notion of what a book and, by extension, literature should be.
The Mural Gazer Direct to Web novel invites readers to ‘Buy-In’, an example of rethinking the concept of a ‘book’.
The flaw in that picture, however, is the word ‘most’. If most of the people show up most of the time for an activity that happens most every day, it won’t be long before most people aren’t showing up at all.
Literature is too important to allow incremental slippage. Books Unbound is not about denigrating what remains the most popular literary medium, a position printed books will occupy for a long time to come.
It’s about imagining new ways of writing and sharing, ways that broadcast storyteller’s voices and, by extension, the reach of literature.
Our stories have to unfold in places where readers go. To me that means books that are dynamic, interactive and versatile, presented to ‘audiences’ on social media, websites, in video readings and book trailers, episodically in eMagazines, and…
In ways that promote literature in its vital role as the art form that challenges readers to experience their worlds from new, diverse perspectives.
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Well into retirement age, it’s time for me to ask what I want to achieve in this final phase of my literary career? What it means to be a 21st Century writer? It’s never been an easy vocation; and that truism has never been more applicable than it is on the cusp of this New Year.
I began my working career as a reporter, hammering out stories on an Underwood typewriter; I’m writing this introspective on my laptop, standing up in my dining room, occasionally interrupted by the ‘Ding!’ of another email landing in my in-box; I could just as easily be thumb-writing in ‘Notes’ on my iPhone, in the middle of a busy intersection or at a socially distanced café.
Conclusion: The world has changed. If we writers don’t adapt to the blizzard of social and technological innovation that’s whipping round us, we will lose our vital role as voices in the storm. In a future post I want to go into more detail about just how vital the role of literature is, and how sorry a loss it will be, if we fail to rise to the challenges of the times, but for now I’m going to map out how I want to go about adapting to our new reality, not the why of it.
I’ll begin with my oft-repeated, favourite saying: Writing isn’t about writing. It’s about delving into meaningful experiences and sharing those adventures with appreciative audiences. And it’s not about ‘books’ in any clearly defined sense of the word, it’s about insinuating our ways into the minds of audiences.
Please note the use of the world ‘audience’ instead of ‘readers’ in that last paragraph. Ultimately literature comes down to books in some form or another, of course. But my minimalist definition of a book is: A code of squiggles and dots on a series of pages or screens; or a vocalization of those squiggles and dots into words and sentences, which any creature other than a human would interpret as the grunting and growling of an animal suffering terminal indigestion.
The allure of literature, its special place in the arts pantheon, is its symbolic delivery. Every reader or listener has to make up the presented story in his or her own imagination. Until then, books are inert lumps of masticated wood and ink on library and bookstore shelves, or confusing assemblages of wires and circuits in peoples briefcases and pockets. Reading and its derivatives are creative acts as much as the art of writing.
Alas, getting people to choose reading over the plethora of other media available to them has become an increasingly hard sell, especially if you define literature as a subset of entertainment. Think about it! A hundred and fifty years ago there were no radios, no televisions, computers, video games, the Internet, virtual realities, movie theatres – and so on. Candle light story-telling, live theatre, and parlour music or pub songs were the free-time activities people turned to, and books the only transportable repositories of thought and entertainment.
That unique portability has long-since been overwhelmed by powerful broadcast media, and I believe authors and publishers are increasingly going to have to seek out niche audiences, and find affordable, widely dispersed channels for sharing literature in this crazed new world. Books are going to have to connect seamlessly to digital media and keep up with the fast paced bursts of attention modern audiences give new ideas.
Learning how to effectively use new media has become part of my creative process, and I hope to share my successes and pratfalls as I go. I don’t see digital technology as a replacement for ‘books’, but as an essential adjunct. My upcoming edition of The Boy From Under is my third run at what I have dubbed Direct-to-Web publishing, the first edition (now offline) was my inaugural run. My second effort is a novel in progress, The Mural Gazer.
I’ll celebrate if, late in life, I can become a crotchety advocate of new media as the neural network for modern fiction and creative writing… Heck! I’ll celebrate even if my only achievement is to get literary types to stop using Underwood typewriters and quill pens as their trademark symbols in this frenetic here-and-now!
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Words are such fascinating things! So versatile. So nuanced. So ultimately… meaningless? That thought comes to mind as I attempt a review of my 50-plus years as a writer. I occasionally analyze what has become for me a habit, and as I begin a rewrite of my novel The Boy From Under, I feel it’s time for a look through the microscope and see where this impulse lives in my DNA.
There are two views through this microscope of mine: the pro and the con.
As a pro, I have achieved states of being I would never have experienced otherwise. I have surprised myself with inspired moments, and done my best to share emotional and intellectual highs and lows with readers. I’ve felt the verbal pyromaniac’s joy at igniting imaginations. I have made words work for me, pulling long trains of philosophical reasoning up steep hills and down dangerous grades. I have had meaningful fun.
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As a con, I have dragged my reluctant carcass to its work station, as if I had a ball and chain attached to my ankle. The urgent clatter of my keyboard has drowned out any real sense of celebration, as I hurried to file another story, making sure the facts fit whoever’s case I was trying to make. I have become lost in wildernesses of uninspired words drivelling toward ‘The End’ or, in forgotten journalistic jargon, -30-.
What I’m getting at, here, is writing for me as a way of life. Whether I’m up or down, I have no choice, I have to write, and in my more introspective moments, I do what I’m doing now: write about writing. I hope you won’t hurt yourself laughing, but the following image is a partial visualization of what I’m writing this moment. I sometimes sketch my thoughts before setting them to words, a reminder of why I chose literature rather than the visual arts as my goto discipline…
The point I’m trying to make, sharing that ‘idea map’, is: There should be way more spinning round in my head as I’m writing than I can possibly include in a story or article. My choices should be excruciatingly and wonderfully difficult. There should be plenty left over for future instalments!
