Random Goodness
First up, a very handy list of “5 Sayings You Can Probably Use Without Getting Fired” from Carol Richtsmeier at Bellringers.
Word of warning: Ritchie’s #1 thing might not work for you if you can’t summon your inner Southerner strongly enough to pull it off. But for those of us from the South/Southwest, she really does hit the nail on the head with that one.
And here’s something completely different: novels written on cell phones and intended to be read on cell phones. It’s all the rage in Japan, and is even reinvigorating the flagging Japanese book publishing industry.
- Charles Muir at Core Brand
- Peter Brantley at O’Reilly Radar
- Yukari Iwatani Kane at the Wall Street Journal
What I want to draw your attention to is the way the form of these cell phone novels affects their content. From the WSJ article:
Many mobile novels are influenced by comic books the young writers grew up reading. That means lots of dialogue and really short paragraphs that fit nicely on a small screen. Huge empty spaces between sentences can convey that the characters are deep in thought.
Also, there seems to be a strong connection between the popularity of mobile novels and the instant, often non-judgmental feedback made possible by their technology:
Mobile-novel writers like getting instant feedback from readers. That encourages them to keep going or even to change stories to suit readers. Of course, the close interaction between reader and writer can sometimes be too much. A 27-year-old woman, who wrote a sad love story called “What the Angel Gave Me” under the pen name Chaco, became so popular two years ago that she was getting 25,000 unique online visitors a day. Chaco, who won’t disclose her real name, says she felt pressured to update her novel and respond to comments every day to keep readers happy.
Can you imagine getting 25,000 different people to read your work? And to have many of those people be so inspired by your work that they want to write to you about it?