Posts tagged: Writing

The Undergrounders Decide The Future of Publishing: Are You Ready to Buy eBooks?

August 25, 2010, by 22 comments

Due to what I’ll term a “catastrophic work day” I find myself at loose ends for a few minutes, and because I basically view my readership as a bunch of lab rats waiting for the cheese to drop, I’m conducting what we’ll loosely define as “market research.”

Twitch those whiskers, Undergrounders. It’s time to scamper along, leaving behind dark little pellets of hard market data.

Poll Topic: eBooks

It’s pretty much a given that eBooks will soon capture a sizable percentage of the publishing market. What isn’t clear is how that will happen (and in what markets).

Will author-published titles snap off a sizable chunk of the publishing market? Will publishing houses figure it out and preserve their place?

On the consumer end, friends who swore they’d never buy anything but paper now rave about their Kindles. Meanwhile, iPads and other tablets look like perfect reading devices, and I just read a science fiction novel on my Blackberry smartphone (my first on a phone). I won’t say it was the best reading experience I’ve ever enjoyed, but it was convenient and I read a book I might not have gotten to otherwise.

And that’s on a phone that’s 1/4 the size of an iPad.

Once ebook reading devices become more common, I think we might see an explosion in self-published ebooks, especially in marginal (niche) markets, where the publishers rarely market much and distribution clout doesn’t matter much.

But that’s me. What about you?

The Undergrounders Weigh In

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{democracy:14}

Comments, of course, are welcome.

It’s the Birthday of Richard Brautigan (Wrote Trout Fishing in America)

January 30, 2010, by 9 comments

As further proof of the Underground’s ongoing attempts to make the world a more literate place, we’re pleased to be reminded that today is the birthday of Richard Brautigan.

Brautigan wrote “Trout Fishing in America” – another book which really isn’t about fishing at all (but us fly fishermen tend to ignore those inconvenient facts). From the Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of Richard Brautigan, (books by this author) born in Tacoma, Washington (1935), best known for his 1967 book Trout Fishing in America, which has sold millions of copies around the world. It’s only 112 pages long, it’s abstract, it doesn’t have much of a plot, and characters in the story reappear in seemingly unrelated incidents.

An idyllic book, but Brautigan’s own childhood in the Pacific Northwest was from idyllic. His father abandoned his mother while she was pregnant with him, and his mother was an alcoholic and a heavy smoker. Brautigan had a string of stepfathers. He was extremely poor and often went without food.

On a chilly mid-December night when he was 20, a year and a half after he’d moved out of his mother’s house and into a Quaker boarding house, he filled his pockets with rocks, walked up to the Eugene Oregon police station inside City Hall, announced, “I am a criminal. I am going to break the law,” starting throwing rocks through the police station window, and asked police to put him behind bars. He was literally starving trying to be a writer, and he figured that if he went to jail he would at least get fed three meals a day.

Lighthearted stuff indeed.

Right now I’m reading a biography of Raymond Carver – another writer who struggled mightily and suffered from substance abuse.

Frankly, I’m starting to believe I’ve got it a little too good to make it as a writer; I’m considering adding some unhealthy addictions to my daily routine.

See you in rehab, Tom Chandler

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The Underground’s Post-Thanksgiving, err… Post

November 29, 2009, by 3 comments

The bird has been eaten and the relatives are seeing our driveway in their rear-view mirrors, and while holidays are always hectic, this might be the first in recent memory when fly fishing wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

That, of course, flies in the face of common sense; in what I’ll call one of the Upper Sacramento River’s Dirty Little Secrets, the October Caddis bite remains pretty good through the middle of December.

That means big fish on big dries, which is something I don’t take lightly.

Still, family get-togethers are rare things at the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, and with Little M now racing around the house on two legs, it’s clear a new World Order has taken over.

Thus, does life nudge us forward.

The Turkey Talks, We Cringe

My Thanksgiving sadness extends beyond the lack of river time; in a move sure to disappoint the legions of Undergrounders, I must admit slightly undercooking the turkey on our charcoal Weber, despite producing perfect birds on several prior occasions.

In other words, I failed charcoal huggers everywhere.

I could recycle the same excuses widely employed for fly fishing (too hot, too cold, too many people lifting the lid/wading the river, etc), but all I can say is the fire just didn’t burn hot enough long enough.

I hang my head in shame.

The Word Count

More startling is this admission: I haven’t written a word in days.

In some ways, that bothers me more than the lack of fly fishing. I’m a writer by trade, and the absence of a little daily keyboard abuse raises alarms of every kind.

Never fear Undergrounders; two nearly finished posts are waiting the in the wings, and you’ll see them shortly.

The world my be spinning faster than it did ten years ago (OK, maybe it just seems that way), but we’re still on this horse.

This week, I begin teaching four nights a week for three weeks – the kind of honest workload that I simply have no stomach for. Sadly, the die is cast, and for three weeks, I’ll fill the role of hardworking, responsible educator/online marketing consultant.

Naturally, any sentence including the word “responsible” chafes the hides of fly fishers the world over, especially given that I’m not only hankering to get a little fishing in, but would love to annihilate a few more clay pigeons with the Browning, and yes, practice a little more precision shooting before the nearby range closes for the winter.

In other words – like my dinner plate on Thanksgiving – my recreational plate is also full of half-cooked goodies.

See you in the classroom, Tom Chandler.

The Greatest Fly Fishing Writer Nobody’s Ever Heard Of?

April 26, 2009, by 6 comments

I’m sure we’ll receive a raft of emails from outraged fans of William Humphrey’s work, but the Washington Post’s book critic (Johnathan Yardley) singled out the late Mr. Humphrey as a “Great Writer That Got Away.”

Odds are you’ve never heard of William Humphrey, much less read one of his several books, an unhappy reminder that even the best of writers — and from the publication of his first book in 1953 until his death in 1997, Humphrey was indeed one of the best — have a terribly hard time finding the readers they deserve.

…

So to make up for that, here are two exercises in what Humphrey called “the literature of angling”: “The Spawning Run” (1970) and “My Moby Dick” (1978). They really are longish essays disguised as books, padded out with large type and lovely illustrations, both having fewer than 100 pages, all of which merely goes to show that small is, or can be, beautiful.

I admit it; I hadn’t read either of Humphrey’s essay books. Have the Undergrounders?

See you at the library, Tom Chandler.

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The Bamboo Birthday Gift (or, Not What You Think)

April 8, 2009, by 5 comments

When a fly fisherman says he got bamboo for his birthday, the mind races. Payne? Phillipson?

Or perhaps a modern craftsman? Reams? Thramer? Beasley? Shays? Raine?

Not exactly:

Do McGuane, Gierach have one of these?

We ask you: Do McGuane or Gierach have one of these?

Yes, my furred friends, the Underground now possesses what few others do: a bamboo keyboard (and a powerful attitude about it).

Clearly – and as fly fishermen everywhere know – bamboo transforms you into a better fly fisherman typist unbearable snob writer.

Do McGuane, Leeson or Gierach have one of these? Are their words flowing organically from its smooth, limber, almost sensuous keys? Or are they stuck writing on stiff, unyielding, too-fast, unnatural synthetic keyboards, their sentences short, quick, efficient – but lacking connection to the primal life force that beats within all of us?

Are they – to put it bluntly – simply muddling by on sheer talent?

Sure, plastic keyboards are great at pumping out words all fast and easy. And yeah, they’re light, so you can type on them all day. But for the sheer joy of writing, nothing compares to bamboo, and if you doubt that for even a second, I can scare up a couple hundred people who will state – in definitive terms (some using physics diagrams as a visual aid) – that bamboo users simply write better.

Emboldened by the varnished, straight-grained goodness beneath my fingers, I’m going a step further, suggesting I might even be better human being than the huddled plastic masses, most of whom probably deserve the carpal tunnel they’re developing from their synthetic keyboards.

Clearly, the scales have simultaneously fallen from my eyes and tipped in my favor. (See what I did there? The bamboo’s already working its magic.)

One day, the world will look back at this moment with reverence, correctly seeing it as a turning point in the literature of fly fishing the world, when the most organic, smooth, flowing writer the world universe had ever seen typed the immortal words:

“It was a dark and stormy morning on the river.”

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A Pile O’ Books: When Reading and Fly Fishing Collide

June 5, 2008, by 9 comments

It’s a sad truth. When the fly fishing’s good, the reading is bad. And right now, the fishing’s getting very good.

The Trout Underground's book pile

The books stack up in inverse proportion to number of big mayflies fluttering around the river, and I’m left a torn man.

After all, I like muscular prose almost as much as I like muscular fish, and when I’m in a whiny mood, I’ll even suggest it’s unfair I have to choose between the two.

Still, reality almost always wins out (this isn’t politics after all), and I’ve accumulated a suitcase-sized pile of books and DVDs to read and review.

It occurs to me I might not be the only one.

Maybe the Undergrounders share my literary-induced pain — or could be asked to share the names of the books they’re dying to read (or even those they just did).

Fire away, Undergrounders.

See you on the river (or in the stacks), Tom Chandler.

The Weary Weekend Post at the Underground: Winter Writing Sucks

January 28, 2008, by 4 comments

There’s work to be done my friends, and this was a weekend for moving it from the “someday” pile to the “been there, done that” stack.

In truth, it was a good time for it; the storm settling over the mountain wasn’t cold and snowy as per forecasts. Instead, it was warm and wet, and while I’m happy to avoid another dance with Satan’s Snowblower, the ying to the no-snow yang was the Upper Sac flows headed up at the same time Wayne Eng said the fishing was going down.

OK. The Man Cave needed a few final touches (plastic deer head mounted on wall [check]; wader drying hooks up [check]…), and getting a few words on paper is never a bad thing, though my feelings about getting good stuff written in winter mirror those found in this stunningly well-written post from the Neil Creek Chronicles:

Writing is best accomplished in a minimal-stress, relaxed environment. Ideal settings include after a day of summer fishing, or a lazy afternoon spent daydreaming and typing.

Winter, however free of distractions it may seem, is NOT the stress-free, ideal setting for undamming the flow of creative juices. Especially if someone else is paying you for your knowledge, experience, and perceived writing ability.

Winter is a small, dark place of indeterminate length, a cramped, cold environment that limits the flow of the juices, so to speak.

There are more myths told about writing than there are lies told about fish, chief among them being you sit down with a bottle of cheap scotch and hammer it out.

Sometimes you have to hammer it out, but I’m here to tell you that leaden skies, long nights, and lots of artificial light aren’t exactly conducive to writing the great American novel.

Or even a confusing article about the Klamath Settlement, complete with a bewildering array of contradictory facts, claims and opinions.

I finally realized I was as likely to get that ugly article written as I was to let a Victoria’s Secret sale e-mail get deleted without a peek, so I gave up and worked on some lighter pieces, which you’ll find tucked into your inbox (or RSS Readers) next week.

Never let it be said I’m a quitter. Sure, I took the easy way out, but damnit, I didn’t quit.

Rutter Needs a Haircut

Of course, Ian & Charity Rutter know how to beat cabin fever; they hit the Holston River and chase trout from a drift boat.

Frankly, I think Ian’s taunting me personally with his post about a wide-open bite on dry flies, but I deftly turn the tables on him by pointing out what photographic evidence makes perfectly clear: Ian needs a haircut.

Take that, fish boy (can I rough ‘em up, or what).

In Other News

Looks like I wasn’t the only one trying to avoid adult responsibilities over the weekend; Singlebarbed ditched the IRS to tie flies, and the Day Tripper writes one of those insanely organized “things to do before next season” posts that confronts you with irrefutable evidence of your own sloth.

Damn him.

Surprises To Come

Despite the general weariness surrounding winter, I can safely say we’ve got a surprises coming up this week. Stay tuned.

See you in the looney bin, Tom Chandler.

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