Writers reading

Francine Prose wrote a wonderfully useful book called Reading Like a Writer. I read it a few years ago and I think it is time to dip into it again. Recently I have been experiencing the frightful pleasure of having my own writing read by writers. Shortly after the demise of my previous writing group, I was lucky enough to join in with a dedicated group of writers who are forcing me to raise my game. There are two poets, two novelists, and a creative non-fiction writer plus me. Every one of them is a careful, perceptive reader. What’s more, they all read like writers. So the feedback I’m getting at the moment is precise, constructive, and inspiring.

I fear that my own contributions are not nearly as helpful, though I try. Fortunately they all write well and are unlikely to be harmed by my weak observational feedback. I spot a word or two that I think might be replaced by a better one. I fact-check. I speculate on what an action or event commits a writer to. I test the believability of described facial expressions. I don’t imagine I’m helping all that much.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I find providing comment on the poems to be the hardest. That’s only surprising to me because there was a time when I thought of myself as (and probably was) a poet. More than 25 years ago now, of course. In those days I was passionate about poetry. The group I hung with as an undergrad would argue long into the night about the placement of a word or a line’s scansion. We didn’t wear black, but our writing was dark and driven.

These days I’ve got out of the habit of reading poetry. It’s one thing to read like a writer, but reading like a poet is even harder. I see it in the commentary from the poets in my current group. They can be so observant about the weight of a single word.

I’m feeling very lucky to be in with this group of writers. And hoping that I can one day be as useful to them as they are for me.

Rating reading

Over on LibraryThing I maintain a catalogue of what I read. As I finish each book, the first thing I do is add it to my catalogue and then I rate it. I’m not especially a fan of crude rating systems. But I have found, over time, that it can serve a use, at least personally.

LibraryThing uses a 5-star system and, I have recently discovered, half-stars are also possible. Although my rating gets added to the pool of ratings for the book in question, I tend not to pay too much attention to other ratings. My rating method is idiosyncratic, and I suspect the same is true for others. What the ratings do provide, however, is a trigger to remind myself what I thought of a book.

Looking back over, say, the last twenty-five books I have read, I can see patterns emerging. There may be three or four books in a row with fairly low ratings. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in my rating scheme. Sometimes a book with a very high rating will be followed by one with a very low rating. Then I begin to wonder whether the second book suffered unduly by comparison to its predecessor. I have on occasion adjusted a rating for a book that I thought I had been too hard on, or too lenient.

I will tend to give one star to almost any book. Sometimes this means that I have thoroughly not enjoyed the book. But there aren’t many books that I would bother reading to the end which would receive such a rating from me. So, sometimes one star just means that the book didn’t live up to what I think is the potential for that author. Two stars, by contrast, tend to be books that I may have enjoyed but which I probably wouldn’t recommend unless I knew someone’s reading taste very well. Here is where a genre series might find a home and provides the source for some of those one star ratings previously mentioned.

Three stars, for me, is a book that is competently written but not outstanding. There are some writers I read who nearly always end up with three stars. I’m never disappointed reading their work, but they never surprise me or take my breath away. I am not averse to recommending such a book to anyone.

Four stars stands out far about the usual fare. I tend to find myself talking about such a book and continuing to think about it long after I have finished reading it. Such books are not especially rare. I engage in a fair bit of pre-selection and perhaps this skews the curve. I also have a habit of wanting to think well of an author, so if she or he is at least reaching for something difficult to attain, I will tend to be generous. Looking back over the sixteen books since 2008 to which I have given four stars, I see a couple that on reflection I now think may be slightly over-rated by me. But I’ll let those stand because I want to remind myself of how I felt at the time.

I have read 166 books since I started keeping my catalogue. Only three have attained a five star rating from me: W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Jane Austen’s Emma. For these I have no hesitation. Each one is a great piece of literature. That doesn’t mean I don’t think discussion might ensue. It does, it should. Great literature needs to be argued, needs to be lived. I only wish that I could read more books that belong in this group.

I’m glad, however, that the Recent Reads feed from my catalogue that I show on this blog’s webpage does not include the rating I’ve given the book. I don’t think it would be informative. And if a book is worth talking about, I will tend to be talking (and writing) about it in any case. Perhaps I should be doing more of that in this blog. For example, I don’t think I have mentioned anywhere what a great pleasure it has been to read Lisa Moore’s short stories. High time.

I’m looking forward to what I read next.

"Click here"

A reputable search engine informs me that there are about 1,320,000,000 results when I search for the phrase “click here”. I confess to being astounded. I had been gently chiding a friend who had let this challenge to accessibility creep into his website. It turns out he is not alone.

As far back as 1999 the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 urged web content developers to avoid the use of “click here”:


Guideline 13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms.

13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2]
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context — either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse. For example, in HTML, write “Information about version 4.3” instead of “click here”. In addition to clear link text, content developers may further clarify the target of a link with an informative link title (e.g., in HTML, the “title” attribute).

It’s a little thing. Yet for me it is something that leaps out when I see it.

So why are there more than a billion instances of “click here” out there in the wild? I don’t know. But I think that friends don’t let friends introduce further instances.

Syndication – still a lot to learn

What I don’t know about the syndication of content could fill something, but just what I also don’t know because that’s one of those unknown unknowns. Recently I have been talking with a friend about certain statistics that might help guide her in making her blog better serve its purpose. I find I’m always a touch reluctant to venture outside my comfort zone. Nonetheless I set out this morning to explore one of the options available, namely FeedBurner, which is now well within the Google family.

I have now burned my feeds for the two blogs that I use. You can see a new “Subscribe in a reader” link at the top of this blog. That takes you to the FeedBurner feed. If you are a regular reader of this blog (I’m sure I have at least two – thanks, Mom!) I would encourage you to update the feed now.

As I understand it, the old feed continues to work but the new feed will provide me with much more statistical goodness. Eventually this may lead to such developments as search engine optimization which I’m sure has much to recommend it. Or at least a few more blog posts on technical topics I am struggling single-handedly (but with the aid of a well-optimized search engine) to learn.

Since I am unlikely to ever write anything here that would set the world on fire, I very much doubt I would need the above information to aid monetization (dread word!) of this content. But maybe my friend will become a prolific and well-read blogger. In which case I would at least like to be able to advise her soundly (even if that advice were to find a more competent adviser).

Just the essentials, please!

There are a lot of useful documents available on how to get an open source project up and running. This short briefing note from Ross Gardler at OSS Watch is excellent: Essential tools for running a community-led project. Ross has years of experience in such projects, notably those that are part of The Apache Software Foundation. He has boiled down some of that experience here into just the nuggets of pure gold (as I mix my metaphors egregiously).

One of the things that I think Ross gets completely right is his stance on communications. He writes:

A second communication channel should only be created when the traffic on your first channel is sufficiently high to justify the split.

Absolutely! Nothing more than is necessary. Best to just head over now and get Ross’ take on these things. And while you are there, why not visit some of the other fabulous resources that OSS Watch has to offer.