A friend e-mailed me last night, telling me of her misgivings about the writers retreat she’s committed herself to, especially now that one of its leaders has mentioned she’s looking forward to being a “midwifeâ.
Stories aren’t precious gossamer things sneezed out by fairies. I think that’s how we start making the work difficult and unapproachable for ourselves.
Im reading an excellent guide to sitcom writing right now* that does a great job of identifying all the elements of a good comedy. Im struck by two things:
- The authors make it all sound really fun, like you just cant wait to try it. So thats nothing like having to birth something, which is a process that seems more likely to create another generation of self-destructive, alcoholic, self-obsessed writers.
- Im reading cause I want to make this book a comedy rather than the Very Serious Thing it could be. Seeing a story as a new-born human life… thats way too precious to be enjoyable for the reader.
*I had to buy the guide as a stupid Kindle book to get it, but I don’t have a Kindle. I seriously considered getting one because of all the PDFs Im dealing with lately, but, once again, I decided I really don’t want to try and read from a thing that contains all kinds of books at once that I could flip between — I just want a book to be a single-purpose focusing device. More importantly, I can’t stand the way the screen on these things inverts as it flashes from page to page. Real books don’t flash at you!
Im not just being a cranky digitalphobe about this. Staring into a piece of tech has a particular effect on my brain that I don’t like, and isn’t compatible with what I want reading to be.
The solution? I spent far too much time figuring out how to crack the file (which I bought but is locked up in digital protection) so I could print it out as a real book. The most difficult thing about it was that the formatting of the e-book is unforgivably dreadful:

No matter how hard I tried, there was just no find-and-replace way to fix it. So I just printed it as-is.
Still, at least I can hold the resulting book in my hands, read it, and focus on it. I would return the Kindle mess on principle because of the careless way this commercial product was made, except that hardly seems fair to do that when Ive got the benefit of the content; I don’t want to deprive the authors of their deserved income. So Ill “keepâ it.
EDIT: I mentioned the formatting in my Amazon review, and one of the books authors contacted me. I offered to help fix the book, and he took me up on it. I do really enjoy that aspect of modern digital living: everyone in the global village lives on the same street, and sometimes you get to talk to some really interesting neighbours.