what makes it a book?

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Count On It!

As any number of unsolicited spam messages will assure you, length does matter. When it comes to writing, that means word count. Exactly how long your story is definitely slots your creative product.

Naturally, I have a problem with this …

Here’s the thing. I run the Reality Fiction Contests in good faith with my characters, promising the winner a book of their own as the grand prize. In both Contests to date, I had no idea who the winner was going to be right up to the last Episode in Series One, and the second last Episode in RealFic Too. So it’s not like I’ve got a master plan about what comes next.

Which came back to bite me the first time around when the winner of the first contest rejected her prize. I had to write another whole novel entirely to get around that one. (The Twitchy Gal, appearing on the Reality Fiction site later this year.) Fortunately, the winner of Reality Fiction Too, to be revealed in May, was much more agreeable. I was able to turn out a story featuring that character without any hitch. That story will run after the complete posting of the current Contest.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that story looks as if it’s going to be about 54,000 words in length. I just promise the winner a book, I don’t specify that it has to be a novel. So I figured, okay, here’s the first prize novella this time around. A much thinner book than the 300,000 plus word actual Contest.

To make certain of my terms, I looked up the accepted word length for a novella. There is no absolute rule. But the generally accepted criteria allow for anywhere from 7,500 words to 40,000 words.

As an interesting sidelight, that means Episodes One, Thirteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Eighteen, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Four, and Twenty-Five of Reality Fiction Too! were all secretly novellas.

But the winner’s book is 54,000 words long.

Great! I thought. I wrote the character a novel after all! So I checked up on the accepted word length for a novel …

Not less than 70,000 words.

You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see the problem here. A 54,000 word story is too long to be called a novella, but still too short to be a novel! So what the hell is it?

A novelette, perhaps? No such word. So what do you call a story in the 40,001 to 69,999 word range!!

Was I going to have to make up a word? I explored some possibilities. A short novel — therefore a shovel? A half novel! Or a hovel? How about slightly less than a novel? A slovel.

It wasn’t working for me. Although I do kind of like the idea of a novelletta.

Left in doubt, I did what every modern writer does when he doesn’t consider a subject worthy of genuine research. I consulted Wikipedia. Finding conflicting views, of course, but this entry does give me a sort of solace.

“Novelist Jane Smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel. (Duh! You think? Sorry — authorial intrusion.) However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words, while National Novel Writing Month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. (National Novel Writing Month?) There are no firm rules: for example the boundary between a novella and a novel is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise. But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer, lengths may also vary by sub-genre; many chapter books for children start at a length of about 16,000 words, and a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be over 100,000 words.

“The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories:

Classification Word count

Novel over 40,000 words

Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words

Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words

Short story under 7,500 words”

I double checked the Dictionary. Novelette, while a Nebula Category, still isn’t a word.

Now the problem with this perception of things is that any and every publisher’s website you check out will insist upon a novel being at least 70,000 if not 80,000 words long. So it doesn’t matter therefore if I decree my 54,000 word opus to be a novel or not, no publisher is going to take it seriously as such.

So I might as well call it what I want to and do with it what I want to anyway.

Coming in June! The New John H. Baillie Novelletta, Thirty-One Across! Look for it on a blog near you.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Scinti and Ponytail’s wedding wraps up on Friday! A unique interlude in the Reality Fiction mythos, featuring more characters than even the author can count. And don’t miss the Ptolemy Ptrio appearing all together again for the first time in RealFic history! All four of ‘em!

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY-ONE:     THE WEDDING

Dearly, Beloved

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

Art and Life Three

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

As I Am Entertained, Therefore I Am.

Part Three

Our Premise So Far: Due to its overwhelming presence in our lives, higher than at any other point in history, people today demonstrate a tendency to define themselves in terms of the media by which they are entertained. I decided that wasn’t necessarily such a bad idea, as art offers an exploration of the deepest reflection man has to offer on his world. But does subjecting yourself to endless marathons of The Simpsons or Sex In The City qualify as exposing yourself to art?

Now I’m in trouble. I got into this argument because I complained too many people were taking their entertainment content too seriously! Have I put myself in the reverse position from where I started out? Am I now saying your entertainment choices — and you, by extension — are inferior because they might not be up to my completely subjective opinion of what qualifies as worthwhile art or not?

This is why so many people hate philosophy. No matter how you argue things, you always eventually end up talking yourself into a corner.

I claimed at the beginning of this series that no one should be quick to judge another person based solely on their choice of favourite movies, books, or television programs. I still believe that. To get out of contradicting myself in the deeper exploration, it’s time for a reexamination of my key statement.

As I am Entertained, therefore I am.

The crux of the matter is the passive structure of that concept. I am entertained. We’re trying to extend Rene Descartes’s famous “cogito ergo sum,” but we’re not saying “as I entertain, therefore I am.” I’ll leave that one to Martha Stewart.

No the point is, we’re talking about developing our personas through something that happens to us, rather than something we actively do. Beyond changing the station with the remote.

The content of any entertainment experience, artsy or otherwise, is what it is. People will like what they like. Certainly, producers constantly steering the available choices towards the lowest common denominator in the name of making a buck is not a healthy trend for the culture’s overall well being. But ultimately there is absolutely nothing wrong with sitting down with an episode of The Simpsons or even Sex In The City. There are too many other influences still at work to lay aim at the content of prime time television as being the sole progenitor of the increasingly crass and uncivil society we live in.

Entertainment content is as entertainment content does. The problem comes when people only accept what is thrown at them in a passive manner. Being defined solely by outside forces is no way to develop a solid set of existential credentials for your self.

Whatever your viewing, reading, or listening habits are, it is always necessary to think about what you watch, read, or hear, to build a legitimate individual persona. Unless you’re blindly happy being one of the faceless masses of our culture’s army of consumers. I don’t even want to think about getting into the issue of those who don’t want to think versus those who do, and how many there are in either camp at any given moment. A statement which makes me feel like I’m spinning in place again, but what the hell.

We cannot avoid being affected unwillingly by our environments, but we can always think about who we are within them. Change has to come from within. Working from there, we can make good or bad decisions about what we choose to draw from our endless hours of entertainment. Insights into life as drawn from The Simpsons and Sex In The City are just as legitimate as those drawn from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And we should all agree to lighten up a little when we choose to speak about our entertainment-derived decisions. Then such conversations can become a good deal more … well, entertaining again.

So what it comes down to is, no matter what you read, watch or listen to, you still gotta think before you are. Doh!

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

You are cordially invited

to the wedding of

The Ponytail Princess

to

Miss Scintillisha Evans-Holyrood

on the shores of Poor Mademoiselle Lake

beginning Friday, January 31st, 2014

(and yes, we know they’re both girls.)

A totally unique Reality Fiction Too! interlude.

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

I Am Entertained, Therefore - Part Two

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

As I Am Entertained, Therefore I Am.

Part Two

Thinkerbell

Our Premise So Far: Following up on Baudrillard’s System of Objects, modern western man takes the variety of choice in his consumption of material goods and entertainment as a basic right that serves to enhance his personal status and definition through his discrimination in making the selections he does. Question which movies or music he likes and you question his being. As a result some people take casual literary or film discussions far too seriously. To the point of becoming abusive.

This week’s question: Those insecure idiots aside, is it such a bad thing to define your essence through your choices in art?

Does your taste in books, movies, music and television shows define the person you become? Or does that taste develop as a result of the person you are?

I think mostly the second, but not without a touch of the first as well. 

As I mentioned last time, more hours per day can be spent entertaining yourself to death than could possibly have been conceived of even thirty years ago. Entertainment 24 hours a day 7 days a week has never been present in such wild abundance and variety before. Faced with such a wealth of selection, you have to be discriminating in what you choose to spend your time on. You don’t watch the first TV show you walk in on when there’s a hundred other stations, and you don’t pick up the first book you find in Chapters and only buy that one either.

No, you PVR your shows and get back to them when you damn well please, and you narrow your search for a good book down subject by section by alphabetical grouping by shelf until you find something worth reading. Assuming you didn’t have a list of titles already made when you walked into the store.

Most of these selections are based on what you’ve liked before. Depending on what you grew up watching or reading, you contrive certain tastes and dislikes. Who you are obviously influences your final selections.

But in one sense, you do start off with a finite field to choose from influencing your development in what is available to you when you first set off into the welcoming arms of the media. I obviously had a much more restrained range to choose from when I started reading in the nineteen sixties than a new reader does today. Today’s barrage of availability must make it trickier to find yourself. But once you’ve got the general idea, that experience heavily defines future choices. As I just said, who you are influences your selection. But by the time you pass your formative years, how much has your early exposure to media with the particular options available to you also influenced the person you have become?

I’d say it’s a cycle that feeds upon itself. Opting for comic books over the Bobbsey Twins when I was seven definitely defined a lot of what my teenage years were going to be like. (Not that I never read another Bobbsey Twins novel.) And inculcating a love for comics as a central tenet of my developmental being still plays a major role in what I will or will not enjoy in my entertainment choices today.

Therefore, how viable a basis does developing into the person you are due to your entertainment choices represent? Are we cheapening ourselves somehow, when we say “I’m the man I am today because I started watching Dr. Who when I was six years old!”? And still do, fifty years later? (A practically unique example, but still …)

Obviously your worth as a person can be measured by the depth of your perception of and interaction with the world. Who would argue that beneath the surface banality of so much media there are no examples of the most insightful art produced in the last century?  You have to dig for it, but isn’t that the point of becoming a discerning consumer? If it’s a matter of arguing that the quality of the person you are is dependent upon the quality of the material forming your perceptions, then books, movies, music and yes, even television can supply a perfectly nurturing environment within which to explore your better outlook.

So where does that leave us?

Your consumption of art within the entertainment world contributes to your development as an individual. This is not necessarily a bad thing as art can aspire to providing us with the greatest, comprehensive and most aesthetic explanations of our existence we have available to us. A valid field to draw from, indeed.

Hold it hold it hold it, though. Who let art into the discussion so sneakily? What about the guy who sits around on the couch all day watching reruns of The Simpsons? Or the woman hopelessly addicted to Sex in the City?

There’s a bit more thinking to be done here yet …

(to be continued)

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

As if this blog isn’t bad enough, Reality Fiction Too goes all Existential as well this week, in Episode Twenty, starting Friday. Will the characters discover that they really exist, fictionally, metafictionally, or at all? Or will they only find that everything to date has been some kind of big joke? (Other than the obvious.)

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

Art and Existence One

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

As I Am Entertained, Therefore I Am.

There are some people I will not discuss books or movies with.

There has to be an agreement up front. If I’m going to have this sort of discussion with a person, although this should be left unsaid, we have to agree that we’re talking about only books and movies. Not something life shattering, like religion or politics. And we agree to differ. It is no disaster if I don’t like your books, and equally no disaster if you don’t like my movies.

But an alarmingly large number of people don’t play by these rules. When dealing with these sorts, the best I seem to receive is having any disagreement I might express regarding their likes and dislikes utterly ignored, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. And at worst, I am shouted down, even though I never raise my voice myself, and accused of inherent perversity.

Come to think of it, the discussions I have with people concerning religion and politics practically never become so abusive as those concerning literature and film.

Why is that?

This is obviously an extension of dealing with those annoying people who always have to be right, regardless of the subject of discussion. But why?

Because they’re insecure. Fragile egos incapable of dealing with a concept that does not support their own self image. But why does the discussion of “entertainment” per se spread that syndrome so far and wide? Include music and television in that definition along with books and movies.

I think French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was one of the first thinkers on the right track towards addressing this phenomenon in his 1968 book, The System of Objects. Paraphrasing mercilessly, I say Baudrillard saw western society as becoming the most materialistic in the history of the planet. But even though we have so much, we do not define ourselves as satiated. We define ourselves by our need. Our need supersedes the actual acquisition of things. The point is, we’re so rich, we can always afford to buy something more. So it is the object we have not yet acquired that is important, not what we already have.

As you might imagine, this doesn’t lead to a great deal of satisfaction with life …

Further to the wealth in our society, it is not sufficient to our needs only to be supplied with an object to fill those desires. We must have choice! A variety of styles and examples of the same object, so the specific selection we make of a car, house, book, movie, song, or whatever says something about the person we are. We define ourselves as individuals within the social context by what our personal choices made regarding objects  in filling our insatiable need state in how one example of that object relates to another.

As George Carlin figured out around the same time, we’re all defined by our “stuff.”

My clothes are nicer than your clothes, my car is more expensive than your car, my house has been decorated in better taste than yours, etc., etc. So therefore it really isn’t a big leap from this to also thinking what movies I watch or books I read are also more important than yours. Because they’re all defining me, dammit! And I’m too insecure to accept any questioning of that definition.

Add to this mix the fact that entertainment, 24/7, has never been more available in greater variety to any society before than ours. More hours per day can be spent entertaining yourself to death than could possibly have been conceived of even thirty years ago. Any activity you spend so much time on naturally becomes then the foundation on which you define yourself most essentially. I watch, therefore I am. Except it’s even more than that. For the true media potato, in all his or her utter passivity, it is entirely true to say “I am Entertained, therefore I am.” So watch what you say about my choices, buster.

This is going to require more thought …

(to be continued)

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

The Alien Abduction Episode morphs into McKenzie Telstar’s apotheosis. More philosophy, this time with Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz and Hobson the Hangman. Get cosmic with RealFic Too!

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!