Val Dumond

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Articles on Writing, Grammar, and Publishing
by Val Dumond

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Val writes articles on grammar, the art and science of writing, and publishing, for budding writers and seasoned authors alike. These articles are not only informative and educational, they're entertaining - written as only Val can. Enjoy this latest of her articles:

What If...
by Val Dumond
© Copyright 2010

The best way to exercise your creative brain is to play the "What If" game. Ask yourself a question beginning with "What if..." and let your little gray cells do the rest. It's fun; it's healthy; it's what writers play with when putting together their stories.

Look back - way back, at the beginning of the 20th century. Books were unique to most homes. Oh, there may have been an occasional cookbook put together by Aunt Edie, and, of course, the family Bible, perhaps a primer or dictionary (or not). Only the academics were surrounded by books.

Mid-1900s might be called the heyday for books. Quality books, written by noted illustrious well-trained authors, filled many bookshelves around the world: Collette, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Hugo, Browning, Poe, Angelou, Faulkner, Wordsworth, Kipling, Twain, Wharton...

By the late 1900s, publishers began to open chain bookstores and to put out books aimed at tantalizing book buyers to fill their shelves with "temporary" books - works by first-time writers, famous names with few-if-any writing skills, scandalous exposés, and pulp fiction to lure the lurid. Book clubs flourished. Good grief, my own library grew into the hundreds.

Now, look around at the 21st century - a tenth of it already past.

Electronic technology has taken over! Oh the havoc it created and continues to create. Anyone with a few bucks can equip themselves with a computer and keyboard, type out a bunch of words, ship them off to a "publisher" (accompanied by a check to cover printing costs) and... there you are... higgledy piggledy, bob's your uncle... your book appears.

Sometimes it's online, sometimes in low quality book form, sometimes printed on little hand-held machines to carry about while running errands.

In today's world, anyone (and possibly everyone) can write a book: your life story, your funniest experience, your scariest dream, your views and opinions of life and the world, more cookbooks... anything goes.

Have you noticed? Everyone... just about everyone... has a story to tell, a story of their own. Lots of reasons are given for writing: either it's a story that will help others, a story that will scare others, an idea to share, or it's an account of a life-changing experience(s), or that creative "what if...".

Why do so many people write? Let me count the ways:

• To share experience(s)
• To record for posterity
• To scare the pants off readers
• To excite or entrance readers
• To get something off your mind
• To become famous
• To make a lot of money
• To become rich AND famous

Here's my "what if...":

What if all bookstores were abolished? What if everyone wrote their own story and had a bookshelf for their own book or books, and only their own? Would there be any incentive for writers to continue to put their words down? Would you continue to write? (Notice, I said "abolished", not "outlawed". If outlawed, bookstores would thrive underground, I'm sure.)

Experts are taking up discussions about the future of publishing, at least in this country. Will mega publishers fade into their profit margin and independent publishers take over? They already are.

Will the "Bs" (Borders and B&N) disappear? They already are cutting back extensively.

Will the Independent bookstores continue to grow in number? Yes, their numbers dipped when the "Bs" took over, but now they are increasing their numbers. The tide changed when the "Bs" chose to turn up their noses at "self-published" books - not realizing that before the onset of publishers in the mid-1800s, all books were "self-published".

Good heavens, the "Bs" would have turned down the Bibles so patiently hand-printed by monks before Guttenberg came to their rescue. Another "what if".

Will writers band together and support each other, rather than depend on some nefarious publisher, to do their distributing and marketing? I think so. Someone has even suggested that groups of writers pool their resources (and royalties) and set up their own bookstores. After all, without distribution and marketing, a book is just a bunch of paper on a shelf.

Take a moment and consider the "what if" of your writing temperament/habits/desires. If you knew (k-n-e-w) that your book would never see the light on a printing press, would you continue to write it.

The answer of a real author is YES!

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