Creative writing takes us places we have never been, invents new worlds, converts ideas and memories into things experienced in the mind’s eye. That’s the first half of the creative cycle; reading is the second. It’s the intent of authors and poets to incite creativity in the minds and hearts of readers.
Creative interaction has always been a driving passion for writers, and—fortunately—we live in an era when that fundamental, almost instinctive urge can be channelled into new formats, reaching new ‘audiences’. We can engage our readers (and listeners) before, during, and after the writing and publication of our ‘books’.
Let me share a couple of examples.
I’m rewriting a story titled Entrapments, which I rediscovered after it had sat on my MS shelf for some years. Right now, I’m getting to know the characters. In the mix: an aging prostitute, a journalist, an art critic, an artist, a petty crook… and so on. I’ll be reaching out online for ‘enactors’—people who have lived those personas or are very familiar with them. I want these contacts to feel engaged in the creative process and to enjoy the experience.
My most recently released novel, The Mural Gazer, was the second I have posted online as a work in progress, inviting readers to join me page by page as the story unfolded. My first online novel, The Boy From Under, is also available online. Both can be purchased in print via my Amazon.com author’s page.
Again, the purpose of creating literature online is to engage readers and writers as early as possible and to invite questions and commentary as the story emerges. Other possibilities and benefits?
Links can be inserted into an online story as supplementary information and graphics.
An audio edition of the story can be made available in the same space as the print edition.
Feedback from readers can be welcomed and responded to.
Literature can be shared instantly, at a lower price, and with reduced environmental costs.
Other books on an author’s shelf can be linked seamlessly…
The potential for writers to meet readers via new digital technologies excites me. It’s daunting, too. But in an era when young people in particular are being drawn more and more into the online universe, authors have to establish a niche—let’s call it ImagiNation!
It was like stepping into a time tunnel and heading back more than 50 years, walking down that long corridor; passing students chatting, laughing, hurrying heads-down between classes; then up the stairs and into Room 215, where he was expected to share his observations as an author and sometime poet.
He stepped over the threshold with a sense of foreboding. An eerie premonition that, despite the sameness of it all, everything had changed in the half century since he’d celebrated his graduation from St. Laurent High School back in 1969… and awakened the next morning to a splitting hangover.
My hair has greyed, skin wrinkled, reflexes slowed and primal urges waned, he thought. My kids have grown up, and I’ve become a grandfather… I’m history.
While the students settled in and Ms. Drury introduced him, he realized there’s nothing like making a presentation to a Grade 12 English class to remind you just how ancient you have become. How irrelevant!
Unlike indigenous peoples, North Americans of European extraction – the majority in Room 215 – don’t really have a tradition of cherishing the wisdom of their ‘elders’. To them senior citizens are alien creatures, apparitions from the world of rotary phones, black and white TV, Underwood typewriters, cursive script and cheap gasoline.
Generation Pre, he figured. As in ‘pre anything digital or online’.
A Google reference had informed him that he’d be addressing students of Generation Z, ‘our first true generation of digital natives,’ according to the write up. ‘Born into a technological world, information has been placed at their fingertips and social media use has become the norm.’ The article was titled ‘Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the Classroom: The Importance of Digital Learning’. It ran under a photo of a girl wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles, her hands reaching out to touch something he couldn’t see or even imagine.
He considered it an iconic portrayal, troubling with its certainty that two beings can exist in the same space, at the same time, and yet be on entirely different planets. My version of Room 215 might just as well be off Platform 2153/4, he thought. An utterly alternate reality.
Buck up! he rallied. Don’t be pathetic.
And so began his laboriously prepared presentation. Later, he would describe the episode to Maria as, Sort of like being a fly, droning around in a room, looking for a place to land. “I’m still laughing at myself.”
When she consoled him, he shook his head. “They were being honest, hon, not rude. And I learned more in that hour or so than I care to admit.”
“Like what?”
“That even when kids are smiling and nodding at my rambling, for them it’s like talking to someone who’s dialled the wrong number, long distance, from another world.”
“I’m with them on that one,” she joked, and they had a good laugh.
Thankfully the session had ended on a high note, he remembered. They had a brief conversation about how authors deal with rejection, which he morphed into an oblique commentary on his then-and-there. “I referred back to comments I’d made earlier about the writers’ vocation of ‘experiencing and expressing life’, and his belief in the personal importance of the literary cycle… “How that gives you the strength to push through and carry on,” he explained.
“Then, when Ms. Drury said thanks as I was packing up my books and papers, the students gave me a fulsome applause!”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just because you were leaving?”
He ignored the quip.
“I suspect it was in recognition of a determined effort by someone hopelessly out of his depth. Appreciation for his refusal to give up – like cheering on a water buffalo who’s blundered in a pit of quicksand.
“I do believe they were telling me to keep trying.”
Not that they’d want me to book another performance before the end of their last year in high school, he thought. But perhaps to inflict myself on the Generation Alphas, who will soon be occupying their seats in Room 215… or is it 2153/4?
“I have to say, daunting as it remains, the thought of having another go appeals to me,” he admitted to Maria. “And I sort of hope I’m invited!”
They hugged, then got on with the business of preparing dinner.
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.
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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Ptero was going about his business one evening, searching for nuts, berries and tasty insects to eat, when – whoosh – Bubo, the owl swept down and snatched him up in her talons.
He struggled and squirmed, but she held him fast in her powerful grip, and he knew he could not survive long. He had to think quickly if he was ever to see his nest again.
‘Bubo!’ he gasped. ‘Bubo, why would you bother eating a scrawny little squirrel like me. Winter has just ended, and I’m not much more than a skeleton right now. Let me go, and I promise to return to the very branch you snatched me from in three month’s time. Then I will be plump and delicious, and make a mouthful… er, a beakful.’
Because squirrels always keep their word, Bubo agreed to Ptero’s request, and returned on the appointed evening to find his prey, plump and well-fed, on the same branch where they’d first met. Bubo swooped down and carried him off again.
‘Bubo,’ Ptero pleaded this time. ‘Why would you tear me to pieces and eat me up now, when it is the season I am preparing to make many meals for you?’
‘Explain yourself, and be quick about it, for I am hungry,’ Bubo demanded.
‘It’s springtime, and I must mate. Soon there will be many of me scampering amongst the branches for you to catch and eat. Three more months, and I promise to return so you can me carry off a third time. But by then there will be many more like me for you to feast on.’
To Bubo this made good sense, so he returned Ptero to their favourite branch. ‘I shall see you in three months my little friend, then – sadly – I will have to gobble you up, for that is my nature,’ she said as she flew off.
So Ptero met a mate, and they had a family, and after the three months past he returned for Bubo to catch again.
‘What am I to say now,’ Ptero fretted, shivering with fright. He thought, and thought, but no new ideas came to him before Bubo glided silently overhead and snatched him up a third time.
‘So Ptero,’ the owl said as they flew away, ‘what reason are you going to give me tonight to keep me from my dinner?’
Ptero had nothing to offer, so he went limp in Bubo’s talons, closed his eyes, and prepared for his grisly fate.
‘Before I devour you, let me ask a question,’ Bubo said.
Eager to postpone what was surely coming, even for a heartbeat – and I can tell you, a squirrel’s heart beats very quickly when he is afraid – Ptero replied, ‘Please ask, and I will do my best to answer.’
‘What time of year is it, my scrumptious little friend?’
Now, to Ptero this seemed a silly question. But he pretended to be puzzled, and took as many wing beats as he possibly could to answer. ‘It is the season of long days and warm weather,’ he said at last.
‘Indeed,’ Bubo agreed. ‘It is also the season of abundance, is it not, when an owl can catch more food on a single night’s hunt than she could eat in a week.’
‘True,’ Ptero agreed.
‘And what season will arrive in three month’s time?’
‘Why that would be the season of falling leaves and withering fruit.’
‘So what might a wise owl do – and there is no such thing as an owl who-hoo-hoo isn’t wise – what might a wise owl do with a bit of prey, if her stomach and larder were already full, but winter was on its way?’
Ptero hesitated, fearful of making a guess. But he finally screwed up enough courage to say, ‘He might return a little squirrel to its branch and come back again in three month’s time, when his larder and belly will both be empty?’
‘Ah!’ Bubo hooted happily. ‘Excellent idea. Why, if you weren’t shaped like a plump little rodent, I might mistake you for one of my kind.’
And so for many seasons Ptero and Bubo have been getting together for their pleasant flights, and neither has figured out in all that time why one should eat the other. You could even say they’ve become good friends.
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For authors who want to accompany their online stories with reasonably good quality audio, but who don’t want to go through the expense or bother of building an in-home sound studio, or learning the intricacies of complicated recording equipment and programs, this simple, very portable sound studio can be a workable alternative.
All you need is: a mobile phone that can display text and and do audio recordings at the same time; a blanket, and a comfy chair.
For most, this idea will cost nothing to implement, and will only take a few minutes to learn. So Click the play button above, and watch this six minute how-to video. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me.
