Hello And Thanks For The Fish

With all the recent discussion about how grim things are in the publishing world and the uncertainty in the market with developing electronic formats, I thought it might be nice to say thanks.

Even though things are challenging, and governments do spend lots on vast sport stadiums, there are people in government at various levels who are working to support the arts. And publishers and editors who go beyond the call of duty for the sheer love of the written word.
I have plenty of writer friends who have received Federal and State government arts grants - either to travel to a conference, attend training or to support the completion of a particular project. I've always recognised this at a distance, and with a vague suspicion.

But earlier this week I attended the launch of the 2009 One Book Many Brisbanes anthology. This is a local Brisbane City Council (Brisbane is the capital of the state of Queensland) initiative that has been running for five years now. I was lucky enough to get a story in the 2009 anthology, and in the first OBMB anthology in 2005. This is how the BCC is supporting the development of local authors, and providing a way of recognising them.

I took the whole family to the launch - and the spread they provided put many a book launch to shame. My kids attacked like locusts and it was funny to see how many thrifty authors made the most of the free coffee, teas, cakes and savoury snacks.

The BCC is so behind this initiative that the Lord Mayor Campbell Newman came himself to launch the book and swan about with the local creative crop (our Lord Mayor has been short listed along with 25 others for the World's Best Mayor - bit of fun trivia).

Here is Campbell Newman, me and the kids (Sandra is taking the photo):


It was nice to actually feel like a valued author. At the time it really struck me how fantastic this whole program was - and how great that our local government was so committed to the development of creativity in Brisbane (BCC are looking to develop creativity across all areas -- science and technology as well).

This is the third time I have met Campbell Newman (one at the prior OBMB, the other at the launch of another Brisbane-based antho). He is a very personable fellow, and with our joint background in engineering (he was a Civil), we tend to gabble on quite easily.

My wife was highly amused to see us rabbiting on about the restoration of the old Brisbane town hall (as was his minder). See photo below:


















So thanks BCC! You can read all the stories from the 2009 OBMB (Including Yours Truly's) on-line here:

So what other government programs have helped you? What publishers or editors have gone out of their way to give you a boost?

The future present

Sarah's comment about ebooks being introduced as a concept before the technology was really ready reminded me of something from my info tech degree, Lo! these many years ago (right around 2000, actually).

Disintermediation.

Okay, that's a mouthful, and one of the uglier words ever coined. But what it means is providing a service that eliminates as many layers of middleman as possible between the provider and the customer. eBay is probably the original example, with CraigsList following not far behind. These are places where people who want to sell stuff can list it for a relatively small price, with contact info and payment details, and people who want to buy stuff can find it and buy direct from the provider - who is, in the case of eBay, also providing the payment handling.

It was going to be the Next Big Thing, but ultimately it was, like ebooks, an idea that was ahead of its time.

I think that time is now, at least for ebooks and disintermediation.

The publisher started life as the only middleman. They'd arrange the assorted complexities (which are a whole lot less complex now than they used to be), and ship the finished product to bookstores or they had their own direct mail order. Then distributors moved in, because it was easier to box up large quantities and let someone else sort them out. The chain bookstores put another layer in, with buyers who knew nothing and cared less about the readers in any given area. The whole edifice is so clunky it's falling on its face.

Amazon was the first crack in the wall. Suddenly instead of having to rely on whatever your local bookstores held, if you had Internet access, you could buy anything in print, and get it shipped damn near anywhere in the world. Chain bookstores haven't adjusted to that one - and may never adjust.

DRM and all, the ebook readers are the next big break. Now, there's a device that can carry thousands of books, and doesn't cause eye strain. Sure, you want to have it inside a ziplock baggie if you're reading in the bath (this is something I don't do, because the water goes cold while I finish the book. It's the same reason I do not keep reading material in the bathroom. It's kind of disconcerting to stand up and have the seat stick to your butt), but on the whole it's nearly as convenient as a paper book.

What's actually happening here is that the pace of change is such that an age difference as small as five years becomes a massive cultural gulf - but the people who think they're in charge are trying to hold back the flood and failing miserably.

Just as an example: I predate color TV. My brother - ten years younger than me - has never seen a house without a microwave, or at least, not one he can remember. Someone born ten years after him would have grown up with CDs and personal computers. Five years after that, and Internet access is the norm, and CD burners are common. Another five years, it's broadband everywhere, DVDs and DVD burners. Five years on, smart phones are the norm. (I, Luddite that I am, have a relatively dumb cell phone. When my ancient, much loved PDA eventually dies, I'll get a smart phone and combine the functions.)

eBook readers will probably be normal for babies born sometime in the next 5 years - you buy them a reader, and all their school books live on it. It should - assuming that someone manages to step into the yawning chasm that is the disconnect between authors and readers (the entire publishing system is somewhere at the bottom of the gaping hole, at least physically. Mentally, I think most of them are somewhere near De Nial.) - be the norm to have electronic books which are not DRM and are provided by publishers whose websites include goodies like "fillable" texts - this tech is already partly out there in Adobe's fillable forms - where students can answer worksheets in the book, have them marked by their teacher via a networked system, and the entire history of the the lesson and the student's attempts to answer are there.

All it takes is someone to step up and provide a reliable source of non-DRM eBooks. And someone else with marketing skills I haven't got to promote the living shit out of it - if the service does what people want and they can find it, they'll use it.

Revolution!

I know a little more about revolutions than normal people. My teen years were a festival of revolution and counter-revolution. To this day, I can’t hear the theme song to Green Acres without feeling unsettled and wondering who is in charge now. Green Acres? You say. Yes, indeed. You see, when the new revolution du jour took over the main television studios, the secondary – normally redistribution – studios in Porto were left to fend with what they had and avoid dead air. And what they had was ONE episode of Green Acres. So, before any announcement were made, we knew there had been a revolution and would sit around the TV, wondering what was going on and who it was who’d grabbed power this time.

(And before you decide to hum the theme song of Green Acres at me at cons, let me tell you it’s a very bad idea. So bad, in fact, my husband has stopped doing it. ‘Nough said.)

Meanwhile you’re wondering why I’m sitting here, telling you about my life. Well, I’ll explain. There is something leftover from this sort of thing. Something that longs for security – almost – at all costs and that dreads and hates unsettled futures. Something that had me in the car and buying a truckload of food an hour after the second plane hit the towers – because food in the pantry is security, you know? Something irrational and a bit feral. Something that makes me more than a little insane when I am out of contract for books, for instance. Something that perhaps hampers my career because the idea of going e-only or self-publishing anything makes me clench my hands on the seat like Athena in that flycar in Darkship Thieves.

Think of it as a psychological seismograph. I feel movements that will cause insecurity or turmoil long before most people do. And for the last five years, the publishing world has been driving me as insane as a cat on a hot tin roof.

I could feel the forces when no one else seemed to worry about them. Online buying; ebooks (I confess I expected these to take longer, mostly due to reader tech); self publishing made easy and perhaps profitable. I could feel the tremors no one else seemed to feel. I could see that bookstores were not stocking by and large what the reading public wanted. Oh, a segment of the reading public, sure. But readers are not theater goers (I don’t mean that literally. I know a lot of people read and go to movies. I’ve been known to.) There are no multitudes of them. You can’t do a “teen book” that appeals ONLY to teens and sell as much as a teen movie that appeals only to teens. Teen books, like Harry Potter, say, do best if they appeal from early readers onto elderly readers. Following the Hollywood model, where publishing – and especially distribution – pursued the new-new thing relentlessly was always part of it, but lately it had become obsessive. I could see that what I call the “name change dance” was turning readers off. (It was turning me off. It was no longer find a new author, make a friend for life. No. By the time I bought that book, my discovery was likely already unemployed or had changed names. Untraceable.)

Now the seismic shocks have become so obvious that everyone can feel them, except perhaps some publishing executives with hands over ears in the back room saying it's just the sound of running feet in the basement.

Is this good or bad? And what comes next?

Both and who knows? It will be good if publishing adapts, if publishers become brands, if they come up with creative models to shift their costs around so that it won’t matter if their print books aren’t selling and ebooks are. It could be very freeing, because readers could actually have a lot more control over what they get to read. And perhaps reading will become cool and hip and the profession of writing healthy again. It could be terrible if they don’t adapt quickly – remember most of them are giants – and fail, and nothing else grows fast enough to replace them. As readers we’ll end up having to wade through piles and piles of self-published slush to find a nugget of gold. And as writers... well... there will be no security at all.

Revolutions, after all, can be good or bad. (One of my after-effects is that I read about revolutions, compulsively.) Every revolution can be like the American revolution, the French, or even – shudder – the Russian. And the beginning is no guarantee of the end.

Right now, we’re in the middle of the revolution, and we can’t tell. Right now, we’re all sitting in front of the TV while that same episode of Green Acres plays again and again, and we’re wondering how it will all turn out and if we’ll be winners or enemies of the revolution. So we stay quiet, and we sit here, waiting, waiting. Sooner or later there will be an announcement. Will it be good for us? Or bad? Yeah, some of our colleagues are in the street, cheering on one or the other side, but they don’t know either, who’ll win out. They’re just betting their (professional) lives.

There’s a song by Chris De Bourgh I’m very fond of. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0zp9uX9B6I (Indulge me, I was kissed for the first time to a Chris de Bourgh song.) Lately I’ve been listening to it a lot. Listen to the beginning “Wake up, boys, there’s a light at the window/I can hear someone knocking on the door/there are voices in the street and the sound of running feet/And they whisper the word revolution. ” and “Like a whisper in the wind/revolution.” And then: “Is anything changed at all/sweet liberty/sweet liberty is in our hands/it’s a part of the plan/or is it a state of mind/horses and men/horses and men are on the field/They didn’t yield/Many have fallen here/Never forget/Never forget what they have done/The time will come/When it will change again.”

There will be victims. There are in each revolution. Something will be lost that’s never found again. Other things will be gained that might not become obvious for years, perhaps for decades. Our own view on what changed and whether its for the best or not will change.

Right now, none of us can tell how it will turn out. We don’t have crystal balls. We can however get paranoid and scared and hurt ourselves and others. We can run our mouths and percipitate the fall of the regime, not knowing what will follow. Or we can support the regime and end up against the wall when the revolutionaries win. Either way, there's no safety anywhere.

I tell myself no revolution that brings me free books on the kindle, which has allowed me to discover countless new authors, can be all bad. I know in my heart it can’t be all good. I worry that we’ll become a splintered public, supporting so many niche authors that none of them can be a bestseller or even make a living. Yet I like getting what I want when I want. I like the fact that quite small niche authors can make a living on line. I like the choice. And yet Alvin Toffler's prosumer sounds like a lovely idea, until you realize that the prosumers have to live from something.

What do each of you think he or she will gain from the revolution? What do each of you think he/she will lose? What will the brave new world look like? An endless array of kiosks selling everything from sweet Amish Romances to Alien Porn? Exploding spaceships to pacifist, feminist literature? Or just by virtue of bigger bandwidth, an endless array of porn and true crime mags?

Sweet Liberty, Sweet Liberty is in our hands... It’s part of the plan.
Green Acres is the place to be/Farm living is the life for me..........

Insecure Writers Take Heart - you are not alone!

My publisher emailed me the other day to say that advance copies of book one of King Rolen’s Kin had arrived on his desk and they looked terrific. Now any normal person would be dancing on the ceiling with news like this. My first thought was -- Gosh, I’d love to see a copy.

My next thought was -- It is real now. What if no one buys the books?

So why are writers so insecure?

Well, we pour our hearts into our books, then send them out into the world to be savaged by reviewers and placed on a bookshelf where they may never be bought.

We have little or no control over what happens to our ‘babies’.

In the past, in professions where people had little control over things like fishermen at sea or actors on the stage, they tended to be very superstitious. Here’s some info on theatrical superstitions. And here’s some insights into fisherman superstitions. One belief not mentioned on this page was the idea that those persons born with a caul (part of the amniotic sack) over their face, could not drown. My grandfather was born with a caul over his face. His mother put the caul between pages of the family bible and by the time I saw it 80 years later, it had absorbed the printing from the bible. Very spooky. It was like very fine vellum, and you could see through it.

According to Nathan Bransford, if you lack confidence in your writing, it might not be a bad thing. He quotes the Dunning-Kruger effect.

‘The basic theory is that when people are incompetent at something they tend to lack the ability to realize it and they overrate their abilities relative to others. Meanwhile, people who actually are good at something tend to underrate their abilities and may as a result suffer from lack of confidence.’

Which doesn’t surprise me, because the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. Which might be why I feel insecure ...

Here is a post about The Five Habits of Highly Neurotic Authors. It has some practical suggestions.

Which brings me to … what do you do on those days when your doubt your writing ability?

Who ate all the pies?

To quote from the article Amanda mentioned yesterday...

‘Turow began with authors' fears about piracy and lower income: 25% of net in "e" is less than a traditional 15% royalty. Newberg made her first point: "What are publishers doing to justify not giving authors 50%[*note]?"

Miller countered that "terms differ from publisher to publisher". Newberg shot back, "some terms are much better than others and we'll have to go public and some of you will look bad".'

Now, expressly stating that I am not implying in any way the people reported are paedophiles or anything like that... but am I alone in having the vile little image of some creepy individual saying ‘It has to be our little secret. If I tell anyone you'll be in _trouble_.'?

Shudder.

Let's just clarify something: there is NO ADVANTAGE that I can see for writers _or_ readers in secrecy about what writers earn or royalty percentages or numbers sold. It all needs daylight, openness and not threats and secrecy. It's NOT 15% - that's BEST rate offered on hardbacks - Most midlisters won't see that and few NYT best-sellers will average that.

Here are typical rates: newbie paperback 6% of cover price (up 100 000 copies hahahahaaaaa, and then increasing 8%) (and 4000-6000 copies would be what you might sell, unless there had for some reason been a mighty large laydown, with a lot of copies in a lot of stores. This is not something that the writer has any control over. In 1970, apparently that figure would have been... about 40 000 copies. Yes. Newbie income has been decimated.)

midlist PB 8%

Hardbacks start 10% for first 5K, 12.5% 5-10K, 15% 10K+. And 17K can see you on the NYT best-seller list.

Yes, some authors do sell a LOT of books. But the reality is that's only 5%... of the best-sellers - or perhaps 0.5% of the authors not in small press. Include small press and you can make that 0.001%

I'm a great believer in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment. Society's mirror - which lets other people see our conduct and pass approval (which is sweet to us) or disapproval (which makes us, a social animal, uncomfortable) - works. We also base our valuation of people to society on how much they are approved of. With society becoming larger and more amorphous this is often measured by the rewards that society gives to individuals (one of the reasons for the display of wealth and symbols thereof). Given the above, can anyone tell this dumb bunny here why secrecy might be of any benefit to either authors or readers?

If we love and respect an author we are pleased if they are well rewarded. I certainly don't have a problem hearing that Terry Pratchett is rich. I am, au contraire, delighted.
Or perhaps it fulfils a need to pretend that we're approved of -- whereas if society knew we were earning $4000 as an advance (quite typical for a newbie) for a book that took us a year to write, well, that says society doesn't value us much. Perhaps if you're into self-deception this works for you. I really don't think this is a major reason OR reflects in any real way what society thinks the author is worth.
So what does that leave? Well, I suppose authors who are overpaid (and yes, they exist - industry darlings who get enormous advances they never get near to earning) wouldn't like it much, and neither would those who overpaid them. But, pardon my insensitivity, I (and 99.9% of readers and authors) really couldn't give a toss about their inadequacy being exposed. I fail to see why it benefits the rest of the authors or readers.
The only other reason I can see is that if it was public knowledge, the next publisher would have no incentive to offer a better deal. On the other hand if everyone's deals and sales numbers were public knowledge... well, that becomes irrelevant.
Of course I am avoiding mentioning the three elephants in the room. Because they like to stomp authors who hold ‘our little secret' up to society's mirror.

I've just got the bill for my 3 cats and 3 dogs month in quarantine - $7000. - 6 animals one month - average it out about $35 a day...

Which when I look at the $7500 advance that I will get for the current book (I contracted this a while ago and I am a co-author and only getting a share of the money. My advances now are higher, but still around 50 cents a copy I sell (Hardcover+pb + e-sales I find the final figure averages around $1 per copy sold - and that's because I get a reasonable e %. People do worse) And I always earn - and Baen pay - royalties) and the time it has taken me to write it (which is long for me, but normal for many) ... that's $35 a day. Based on the previous books this will sell, eventually, about 30-35 000 copies, and I will earn a little extra. But for now... that's it.
Or if I take my yearly income and divide it by hours worked $6.00-$9.00 an hour. I earn enough to scrape along on by working a LOT of hours.

So there we are, society.

For this book this author is worth the same as dog-kennelling for one by that measure. Or about 5 paperbacks (in the US), or 1.3 hardbacks a day.

Is this realistic?

Does something have to re-adjust? Is it the amount books cost, the amount e-books will sell for, the transparency of the system, or...

Is this what we value our authors at? 6% of cover price? (because they also have expenses, like... dogfood. You can't say that is all profit, any more than the other 94% is all profit) What do we value the rest of the process at? Given the distribution of the money, what can be cut? More of that 6%?

Are we prepared to have very, very few full time authors and the rest with second jobs or supported by partners (which both are not good for my writing, to be blunt)?

Do we want new authors fed into the system? (Because that costs, and will need to be subsidised by something. Or we have to be prepared to place near zero value on them.)

Do we readers want to choose what we like and that to finally decide what becomes a best-seller, rather than have someone who takes marketing and distribution decisions decide what we might like and can be allowed to choose from?

What do you think?

Who ate all the pies?

[* 50% in this case refers to of the publisher's net. Which translates 50% of the profit after the publisher takes their costs and expenses out. The author does not get 50% of the net. His gross is 50% of the publisher's free and clear pure profit - out of which he has to pay his agent, taxes, expenses. What's left (if anything) is his share of the profit. If you want real 50% then the author would have to add his expenses in too, and the remainder would be equally split. Oddly, I don't think this will happen ;-)]

The Inmates are Obviously Running the Asylum

(Before I get to today's post, I want to take a moment to thank all the men and women who have given their lives in the service of their country. Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the U.S. I tip my hat and offer my sincerest thanks and prayers to those who have served, those who are currently serving and to their families and loved ones. Thank you.)

Anyone who has a Kindle, or who has been following the never-ending saga of the Agency Model proposed by certain publishers, knows that Amazon and Penguin Books have finally come to an agreement. The terms of this agreement haven't been released. All we know for sure is that Penguin books published since April 1st are finally appearing in the Kindle store. Oh, we know one more thing -- a number of these books have prices that aren't just surprising, they are absolutely unbelievable.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is now available as an e-book. Now, my first question about this is that it is advertised as the "Centennial Ed. HC) edition. Well, last time I looked, a book on the kindle was made up of nothing but a bunch of electrons and was not -- could not -- be hard cover. But it gets worse. The Kindle version is listed at $27.99. Yes, that's right, $27.99. Now, I have to wonder what Penguin Publishing was thinking when they set this price since the school & library binding version is $14.88, the tpb is $15.82, mmp is $9.99, the audio version is $23.07.

Okay, maybe this is just a fluke and Penguin hasn't completely lost its corporate mind. So let's look at some others. The Help by Kathryn Stockett has been out for almost a year and a half. That means it is out in paperback at $10.20. The Kindle version -- $12.99. According to Kindle Nation Daily, this is $3.00 more than it had been offered in the Kindle store prior to the Agency Model blowup. (Check out the KND post. It has a lot of good information not only about the possibility Penguin is giving Apple preferential pricing but also how we, as consumers, can let our voices be heard.)

Jim Butcher's Changes, which is offered as a hard cover at $10.95 by Amazon is being sold as an e-book by Penguin for $12.99. This is $3.00 more than the paperback price announced for the same book. (In fairness, I'll note here that the pb won't be out until next year.)

One more example: Sue Grafton's U is for Undertow has been out since December. I can buy the hard cover from Amazon for $18.45 -- less than that if I buy from one of the Amazon associates and not Amazon itself. Yet, if I want the Kindle version, I'll have to pay $14.99. This is almost twice as much as they will be selling the pb version when it comes out later this year.

To be fair, this oddity in pricing isn't reflected in every Kindle book being released by Penguin. Sarah's No Will But His is listed at $9.99 for the Kindle and the tpb is being sold for $10.20. That is reasonable for an e-book being released at the same time (relatively speaking) as the tpb or hard cover.

If you think Penguin is only trying to slow down the sale of e-books, think again. In my opinion, to kill those sales, check out this article. Penguin's David Shanks says this about e-books: "more than 90%" of the business was still in paper. "We need to protect as long as we can the apparatus that sells physical books." While I agree that we need to promote bookstores and find a way to let them remain in business -- especially the independents -- you can't put the genie of e-books back into bottle, no matter what the publishers want.

To me, this paragraph sums it all up: In the end, while Prichard spoke of ours being "one of the most exciting times," Galassi [Jonathan Galassi from Farrar, Straus and Giroux] spoke of it being a "scary time".

Unfortunately, it is scary for all of us, and for authors in particular, because of the way publishers are burying their heads in the sand and, on the whole, refusing to adapt to new demands and desires from their readers, new technology and changing times.

So, what is your tipping point on prices for e-books. How much will you pay and why?

Why I Write (or not) -- by Tedd Roberts

(Let's give a big welcome to our guest blogger, Tedd Roberts. After reading his post, tell us why you write. What drives you and how do you balance it with the rest of real life? -- Amanda)

I read my first SF book nearly 45 years ago. At the grand age of 6 I had a book I dearly loved, entitled "Our Sun." For a grade-schooler it was fairly typical, large dimensions, nice pictures, not too many pages. However, for a first grader it was unusual. There were a lot of *words* on those pages, and was well beyond Early Reader quality. You may have guessed that it wasn't *meant* to be science fiction, but it was science, and so much of what was in it was speculation of what we would find when humans ventured to those other mysterious planets in our solar system, that it fired my imagination in much the same way as SF.

Over the years I read voraciously, to the point of having read *all* of the SF books in the school libraries and got first dibs on new books even before the librarian had a chance to check them out. ["Time Enough for Love" and "I Will Fear No Evil" *must* be okay for kids because Heinlein wrote all those nice juveniles!] At college I loved the fact that the campus bookstores had great SF paperback selections.

From an early age I just *knew* that I could write those stories. Just ask my parents and sister - they'll tell you how I tried! Then, just over 10 years ago I found myself recuperating from a near fatal illness. I spent 6 months in a hospital bed, and found that I had time to write (and the combination of medications and disrupted sleep schedules provided such vivid dreams on which to base my stories). During that time and over the next few years as I tried to find ways to occupy my mind during long-distance travel, I wrote well over 100,000 words toward novels. Yes, plural. I should have finished at least *one* Great American SF Novel if only I had been writing just one. Alas I was trying to write three totally disconnected novels, and was less than halfway done with each one.

Fast forward the rest of the ten years and I have since refined my style and better learned how to approach writing. Right now it's mostly short stories, and I am building up at least one novel-length story as a series of shorts. I've scrapped most of what I wrote in the early days but have kept the outlines. They still are demanding that I write them, it's just that I've changed my approach to the plot as I've studied and practiced my writing.

But at the same time I've learned another important thing about my own writing mode: how - and when - not to write. You see, I'm a scientist, a research and academic professional, for whom scientific writing is my career. Unlike Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan I can't dash off 100 books of nonfiction and expect people to actually buy them. My field isn't like that, and I don't have the Asimov/Sagan arrogance of considering myself an expert in everything. Also unlike the scientists portrayed in the novels of "Doc" Travis Taylor or Dr. Gregory Benford, I can't cogitate on a problem for a few days, then sit down and write a 50 page paper in half as many hours and send it off to Science or Nature and expect it to be published as-is. Nor am I near retirement like Dirk Wyle, the Pharmacology Professor-turned-author who began writing mysteries as his academic duties wound down.

Scientific writing is a painstaking process. In my field it consists of about 1-2 years of data collection, then a three month process of analysis, preparation of graphs and figures, writing, editing, revising the figures, re-running the analyses, rewriting the text, then finally submission - usually late on a Friday when I had been *certain* the manuscript was complete the previous Monday. After about a month in review, the editorial and peer comments come back, and the whole process of editing and revision starts over, usually taking another month. Since professors are expected to publish 3-5 articles a year, that means there's another article or two in preparation at the same time and it's a never ending process.

But the real problem is the mindset. Scientific papers require a detail-oriented approach. Facts, measurements, statistics. The language is stilted, passive and formulaic. Contrast this with writing scientific grant proposals. Proposals require the same facts, but the approach is one of persuasion. As a proposer I must convince my peers that not only do I understand all of the known facts, but that only *I* have the means to discover the (appropriate) new facts.

A totally different mindset is required for review. Sooner or later my penance for being a published scientist or funded researcher is to participate in peer review. Whether manuscript or grant proposal review, the reviewer has to put themselves simultaneously into the roles of reader and author, understand the facts, find the flaws, and most importantly: provide coherent feedback so that the editor/funding agency can make a decision, and so that the author/proposer can revise if appropriate. There are certainly many scientific authors who are poor reviewers, just as there are poor authors who are excellent reviewers. It is a different approach to writing even if the topics are the same.

So, for a scientific professional that wants to be a fiction author, there has to be a mental switch. As a reader I do *not* want a physiology dissertation in my fiction, and while a certain amount of persuasion or critique are valuable, I want my fiction to entertain. On the other hand, there are purists in the scientific publishing world that insist that *any* infringement by popular or colloquial style is unscientific, and has no place in professional publications. For an author/proposer/reviewer, it is even more imperative to separate the different mindsets. For me, I have to have a switch that says "*now* is the time to write that story." Furthermore, as long as that switch is set, I *cannot* work on any of my professional scientific writing, and I cannot let go of my story idea until I get all or most of it down in a way that captures the essence of my inspiration. It is why I have recently concentrated on short stories, blogs and popular science essays. For when that switch is set to fiction or popular mode, I *have* to finish what I am writing before I switch back. Each story costs me a couple of days, and I write from about noon to about 2-3 AM until I am finished.

As I gain skill I suppose I will learn to write chapters and scenes while the switch is in Fiction mode, and come back to write the next one a few weeks later when I can afford to set aside the scientist for a day or so. The only problem with doing so now is that unless I am fully in fiction mode, the scientific author in me wants to go back and keep revising the prior chapters even though the novel is not finished.

It is past midnight as I write this. The concepts I am writing about have been nagging me for two days until I could no longer resist, and the mental switch was set to Blog mode. Now that I am nearly done, I feel the mindset reverting back to Scientist mode much like a scholarly Dr. Jekyll to my literary Mr. Hyde. Until researchers such as myself perfect a direct brain-to-machine linkage to get these stories quickly out of daydream and into print, I will continue to keep my different modes of writing separate, lest I find myself submitting short stories to Nature, and scientific papers to Analog.