Comments (0)

By Leslie, August 2, 2010 7:38 am

His examples range from curators at the Getty museum who when faced with an expertly executed fake statue failed initially to see it as a fake, to overwrought doctors trying to decide the fate of possible cardiac patients in a inner city hospital in Chicago. He walks us through the dilemma faced by police officers with milliseconds to decide if the dark object in a young man’s hand is a gun or a wallet.

It’s interesting stuff. And the parallels to the current crisis in the publishing industry were obvious.  According to Gladwell’s experts, the key factor between making the correct split second decision, the right blink, is the amount of good, no excellent, prior information and research you have internalized or a willingness to follow a set of triage instructions and not waver in the face of conflicting information. The cardiac physicians who used the apparently simple triage rules, ignoring the rest of the symptoms, had patients with better results. The art experts with years of experience trusted their first glances of the statue and identified the fake, but only because they backed it with deep knowledge.

Gladwell found when inexperienced people trusted their initial judgments, or blinks, preconceived results based on bias ruled. Decisions often went awry.

The publishing industry is in crisis and not just from the threat of ebook readers. Personal computers, the internet and easy access to just about anyone makes it seem like anyone can write and publish a book. Just do google search! Slush readers who twenty years ago would get a handful of manuscripts  a week to slog through for an editor or agent are receiving, in some cases, hundreds each day. Agent backlogs are months long.

How are these querys and first pages getting read? I bet they’re getting blinked. And in most cases the slush readers are likely experts and know what they are looking for. But some are getting blinked in an unknowable, inexpert way, as well. That’s just human nature and the internet firehose.

Since I am getting ready to query my first novel, this means that anything I can do to elevate myself above the slush pile is crtitical. You can work to gain access through contests and, pitch sessions at sites like SavvyAuthors or other writing sites. Producing squeaky clean pages and a tight query seems like a good starting point. Making sure my unique voice shines in my first pages, and the rest of my novel is one of my priorities, and improving my basic grammar and self-editing skills. I figure in a Blink world it’s all about not squandering any opportunity that drifts my way.

Comments (0)

By Leslie, April 13, 2010 11:32 am

I am a student. I have a string of degrees behind my name that proves that I am incapable of stopping until all the boxes are checked and every grade given and curve blown, by me.

When I began to write, I bought the Approved Books on the Subject and commenced a-studyin’.  Yawn.

One in particular I found yawn-worthy: the redoubtable Ms. Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer. OMG.

I am not a Lit Major, I dissected them. Really, come here I still have my scalpel.

Ms. Prose can and does spend PAGES on single sentences. I plunked this puppy closed and did not give it a passing glance, until last week. You see I’ve become obsessed with how my sentences sound.  I’ve been writing for nearly two years and NOW I get it.   ::HEAD SMACK::

Finally, the spaghetti of those ideas found enough framework in my mind to stick and make sense. More than make sense, make music. Blessings to you Ms. Prose, I bow to your greatness and am just plain happy that  my stupidly analytical brain finally could see the dance in the words. Back to studying; I’m like a pig in sh*t.

Comments (0)

By Leslie, March 13, 2010 9:49 pm

I just finished reading Before I Fall, the debut book by author Lauren Oliver .

Buy it, read it.

I was not convinced that a teen rehash of Groundhog day could rock my world. But I make a point of reading interesting and notable first books by new authors. It’s all part of the Leslie Effort to Deconstruct the Excellent Novel. Where excellent is defined by: what people like to read based on the words alone – or as close to that as I can get.

I read Fallen by Lauren Kate and felt she missed. I think simply because there was just not enough tension in the pages. Not enough happening between the ears of the characters. Ever read a book where doing the dishes seemed more interesting?

I do not want to write that book.

This is not a problem in Before I Fall. Holy Moly, Oliver pegged the tension-o-meter at 11. This book had me reading every word, dragged me along each Groundhog day twist and at the end, which I knew was going to end in a Punxsutawney Phil kind of moment; I sniffled.

Why? Tension, baby. Tension.  Oliver packs it in every sentence, every paragraph and every moment.  There were damn few sentences that left me not wanting to read the next.

So, when I finished the book I checked her out on the web. Looked at her blog..yada yada…Guess who is her agent? Uh huh…from the Donald Maass Agency…Mr. Tension. Figures.  LOL.