Coming back

I know I haven't written here in such a long time, but this will end soon, I can assure you. The thing is, I have been extremely busy writing TV scripts for the Romanian National Television. It turned out to be pretty fun, but it's over.
I'll be soon going to Denmark, to catch up a little bit on my reading and most definitely my writing. I will be gone there from the 8th to the 20th of Decembrer, and I hope that I will be able to produce at leat 100 pages of my new novel. It has to be ready by the end of the spring, adn writing TV scripts hasn't helped me at all. There are moments in which I have trouble remembering the main character's names, so I have to get back on track. Till then, I will try posting here more often.

Back soon

I will be back posting as usual very soon, so be aware. :P

Outsourcing NOW

As I was telling you in my last post, I am currently reading "The World is Flat", I am already halfway through it. It is a good book, if you ignore some repetitions that tend to disrupt a little of the flow in the book. Well, one of the main themes in the book refers to "outsourcing".
What does outsourcing mean? Well, it is a process through which companies in the US (and not only here) can transfer some of their workforce, especially services workforce to country where labor is cheaper. For example, if you call the Microsoft technical support, don't imagine you're calling America. Someone over in India will answer and give you all the answers to questions you have. And a lot of companies have decided to do this, given the fact that it cost three times less to pay an Indian call operator than an American one.
I was in Boston yesterday, buying tickets to go to Denmark later this month from Northwest Airlines. So, I go, like any normal human being to the ticket office and ask what are the availabilities for the dates I was interested in.
The woman looks at me and gracefully points to a row of phones, somewhere in the terminal. She told me that I should call their center, make the reservatio
n and then come back to her to purchase the ticket. Oh man, I am well behind all of these service advancements that are just happening. And I thought to myself: "Wouldn't it be easier if she had just punched three buttons to check what I need and then sell me the ticket?" Well, for them, apparently it pays off to do this.
Obviously, I go to the row of phones and make the call. I sensed from the first second the slight Indian accent the woman had on the phone, so I realized they were doing exactly what I had read about in the book. Of course, it took me over 30 minutes to decide on a flight before making the reservation, so I guess the call center pays off.
Air France, another carrier I usually use (because of their fabulous food on board) does not do this. They still use the archaic system with computers and Internet. Isn't this funny? What we thought yesterday as being breakthrough technology, today it just might seem as something way old. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Reading list

I have finished Caratrescu's Nostalgia a while ago, and I read three more books, and started a fourth since. The truth is that, sometime I REALLY don't know how to pick them.
The first one was a total flop, but I should have seen it coming, since it was written by the notorious Debbie Macomber, and it was named Dakota Born. What can you expect from a book set up in a small North Dakotan territory, filled with farmers and obedient wives? The amazing feat is, however, just how many good comments she received on Amazon.com. Check it out!
Second book was by my favorite author, John Saul. The guy is good, Nathanial was goosbumping and Brainchild was mind-shattering. Pretty good books, fast reads, enjoyed every second of it, took me three or four days to finish em all.
Book I just started, I'm into the second chapter, is finally a non-fiction. I haven't read one of those in quite a while. Of course you probably heard of the book, it's been out for a while, and it's been back as an updated and extended edition. The World is Flat is a pretty enjoyable book, however what bugs me at the moment is that the author, at least in the first chapter has used the term "the world is flat" in numerous cases, maybe to many for the sheer proof of explaining his case.
We'll see how it turns out to be, and a full book review will be posted here as soon as I'm finished with it.

Advice: You don't know EVERYTHING about your characters

I've seen a lot of people writing stuff, excruciatingly painfully explaining every single twitch that character had in the first few pages of that story. People, we do not need to know the entire biography of someone right when you open the story. Why? Well, first of all, because we do not care. We are not yet attached to that character emotionally, so it's definitely not interesting. There are few authors that can pull this off, and they have their methods.
Best was to describe characters is, first of all, gradually, over the entire length of the story, so the reader gets to know it and gets attached to it, and then, use a lot of dialogue and interaction. You can very well describe your character through dialogue, he can answer inspired questions put by other characters, so you don't need to foolishly explain everything to your readers.
That should be a ground rule. Your readers are not stupid. If you hint them something, they will probably understand what you meant without trying to give them every single bit of information you have stacked up. Also, don't have every single character of your fully developed in your mind in the beginning. Of course, if that happens, it doesn't mean it's wrong, but you will be amazed at how much your character can evolve while you're writing your story. Every twist and turn in the plot, will obviously affect your characters, and through that you will find out how they're shaped and how they react to different impediments. Test yourself, put a character through a few different actions that would obviously endanger it. Write down how he or she would react to that. After doing that, you'll have a much clearer picture on how brave your character is. You can do this for a bunch of other qualities you can think of.
I hope my advice will help you, and hoping to see some feedback here.
Start writing.

Flight

I have been pretty busy recently, writing more on more. The Glass Gazebo is going further and further at a pace I really enjoy writing in. Soon enough I will post here some other fragments of the stuff I'm writing. Pretty much the major characters of the novel are all set up, and I'm starting to get into the details of the minor ones, since they are important as well, right?
Oh well, now, I have some other personal stuff to tell you, if you're interested. Otherwise, just ignore this post. Just kidding.
I have been to Boston a couple of days ago, to set up a flight for Paris I am taking at the end of this month. Usually, I go to Boston by Ferry from Provincetown, it's a nice smooth ride, you don't get to see to much, but it's enjoyable and gets you there pretty fast. Pretty fast means a little more than an hour and a half, compared to the excruciatingly painful 3-4 hours that a bus needs to take to get there.
The interesting story starts now, the day before I got to Boston I took an afternoon nap at home. I still remember what I dreamt. It wasn't a very interesting dream, however it gave me a brilliant idea. In my dream I was flying from Provincetown to New york instead of going by Ferry. Even more exciting, the airport was right next to Long Wharf, where the ferry docks. I woke up, got on my bike and headed towards the airport. I was curious how much the plane fare was for Boston. I got there, and after finding out the price I bought a ticket for the first flight out the next day.
I do not remember exactly the name of the plane I was on, it was some type of Cessna, a plane, that, I suppose you already know that, has a very limited size. This one could carry up to a staggering 8 passengers plus the pilot. Of course the pilot's "cabin" wasn't separated from the rest of the seating area, so, if you were lucky enough to sit on the sit next to the captain, it would have been a very interesting flight, worth all the money spent on it. And so I was pretty lucky, since I got to sit there on my return flight, and kinda figure out what he was doing there.
I love planes, I always did, and I have had my fair share of flying. Including this last trip I have been on, I've been on 22 flights. It's not that much, but it's more than a lot of people I know have flown. Anyways, that's what I wanted to tell you, raegarding my personal life. Leave comments wherever you like and be sure to come back.

3 worst places to work in Provincetown

All right, since I am almost of townie here in P-town, I thought it would be nice to give you a little scoop on what places NOT to even dare approach if you're looking for a seasonal job in the town.
There are enough reasons for all of them so let's get started...

3 - - - - - -
On the third place I would have to say that you wouldn't want to work at the "Clem&Ursies" restaurant even if they begged you to? Why? Because the managers there don't really have a clue on how to run a business. Apart from the fact that people working already there have no sense of where they have to be at any given time, it appears that their managers don't know that either.
From my talks with the people there, they are overworked and underpaid, are not allowed to take the half off company meals off the premises, therefore they have to come in early to eat, otherwise they don't get the food discount. They are treated like trash, not even being granted a few hours free in case they are sick. Disgusting!!!

2 - - - - - -
Second place is "Twisted Sister's" pizza place. Even if the pizza is amazing there, working in that joint will definitely kill you. Few people there actually make it through the season. The two owners there have a system, they hire about 15-20 people in the beginning of the summer, and gradually fire the ones that cannot keep up with what is going on there. You have to bake pizzas, serve ice creams, do the register, if possible all at the same time. In times when it is not busy the owners do not allow the employees to sit and relax, instead they use the following phrase: "find something to do". Apparently, cupboards there get to be cleaned an average of 50 times a day. Clean place, huh? Wage is awful as well. 8$ an hour, paid in CASH, which is ILLEGAL. Nobody seems to notice, though.

1 - - - - - -
Winner of the "worst place to work in Provincetown" award goes to Maria Bizzotto and her "Friends of Heart" "animal boutique". In fact, it is a pet store that sells products made in China at prices that tend to skyrocket. I don't even know how to start explaining how bad that place can be.
People that work there start at 8$ an hour, being promised a 10$/hour wage by the time they finish a week of training. There are people for whom training has lasted for more than a month.
Mrs. Bizotto is extremely rude to her employees, does not allow them to have friends in the store. An interesting story with someone working there was that some of his friends dropped by, not knowing about the rule. That person was shouted afterwords by Bizzotto, and been told that if that is to happen again, he might get fired.
People working the register at "Friends of Heart" are promised a 20% share of the sales in case they go over $600 in sales in a single day. What they are not told, until they find out by themselves is that, they get 20% of whatever they sold minus $600 dollars which is almost nothing.
Mrs. Bizzotto has the unhealthy tendency to spy on her employees when she is not present in the store. Separating the stockroom from the store itself there is a mirror. Apparently, that mirror is a "police-like" one way peephole, through which the Italian spies on her employees when she feels like it. People reported seeing her in the alleyways around the store carefully watching what was going on inside.

Oh, well, I'll be back next time with the three BEST place to work in Provincetown if you ever decided to come to our scenic part of the world.

Advice: Don't put too much of yourself into your writing

If there is one thing I learned while writing short stories and starting to write a novel is that putting too much of yourself into something you write doesn't always work and doesn't always appeal to your readers.
Yes, it's fine to distinguish one of your characters with your qualities, flaws and maybe something really exciting that has happened to you and you want to share with the world, but writing too much about yourself into a fiction piece will not work.
Why? Because, let's face it, you as an individual, unless you've been to war or experienced a truly traumatic event, will not have a story as interesting as a "fictional" character you can mold and turn into anything you like.
If you want to tell your life story, wait till you are famous and then publish it as non-fiction. Till then, let your characters be free, don't assimilate them with you.

I think I have a title

One of the best things you can do as an author, especially, an inexperienced one, when writing your first major piece is to find a title before. Of course, it doesn't have to be the one you'll use when you finish it, but something to get you started, to give you the definitive proof that you are headed somewhere.
I am, apparently headed somewhere with my novel, but didn't think of a title yet. This until yesterday. Another sneak preview I'm gonna give you regards two main themes in this book, probably one of the first two locations that I have imagined from the beginning. One that I am completely familiarized with by now, about which I sketched already entire scenes and charts of significance and another one that is just revealing itself to me. You will understand in a second why one of them can be the title of the novel and the other cannot.
"The Dump" will be one of the major "spacial" characters of the book, obviously when you will read it you will understand why. There's still some time till that happens. The second, that I think will be the title of the book is "The Glass Gazebo".
I already have in mind so many ideas about this fabulous place I have discovered that I cannot wait to share them with you.

Nostalgia

After finishing John Saul's "In the Dark of the Night", which for me has been an easy summer read I decided to stroll into one of Provincetown's libraries to get something more in-depth. After about an hour of flipping through numerous novels and non-ficition releases, I stumbled upon Mircea Cartarescu's Nostalgia.
Caratrescu is a prolific Romanian author, one of his latest books "De ce iubim femeile" (Why we love women) being a bestseller for three years in a row in the eastern European country.
This book, written only a couple of years after the Romanian revolution tells more than one story. It tends to be a non-fiction "fictionalized" novel, a style that isn't very often seen in American authors. The book is not only spellbinding but it is "unputdownable".
It is not characters or plot the keep the book together but a harmonic binding of dreams, games, inner feelings and fantasies.
Cartarescu mentions several times throughout "Nostalgia" that he does not write this for anyone else but himself. However, for any reader with a little experience, this book is absolutely amazing, even though you need a thesaurus next to you to be able to understand every single word.
I was recently talking to a published author here in Provincetown about recipes that work in non-fiction. What I have noticed is that Cartarescu does not use any of the ingredients that I have been taught in this book. So, this book will never appeal to the masses, but will definitely appeal to the intellectuals and to the dreamers, to the philosophers and ultimately writers.
I strongly recommend the book, you can find it on amazon.com here.

Writers and technology

Oh well, we've all been there, I suppose, the moment when you realize that your life and writing career would be nothing without your desktop or laptop. The moment when you wonder how the hell could people write 200 thousand word novels on paper.
Truth is that technology has made us lazy. First of all, us as a society, and second of all, us, writers. What do I mean? Well, right now it's so easy to research any subject you want to write about without ever leaving your desk, going out on the field, talking to people. Now it is so easy to edit your novel without using that big tome we call "thesaurus". There are hundreds of options, software for writers, software for editors, software for publishers etc. etc.
On the other hand, this is a good thing. Young, unknown writers can finally see their books published and test the market without having to go through the tedious process of submitting their works to major publishers.
***
In more personal reactions, I have been slacking off for the past few days, as my upcoming novel is regarded. I will resume work on that, as soon as I fix my notebook. Oh well, technology...

Coelho's hype

I was in one of Provincetown's bookshops the other day and I almost bought this book. But then I thought, why read Coelho again? Haven't I had enough reading his last books, didn't I feel enough pain reading Zahir?
I mean, let's face it Coelho is not the most brilliant author in the world, he writes book using a recipe, so, after you've read a few of his books, you kind of know what's gonna happen or what philosophical reasoning will be used in the next one.
Of course Coelho appeals to so many because it's not only easy to read and understand but his words seem to disperse some kind of reasoning beyond what you can usually read on the bestseller list.
I mean, just imagine how many 17 year old girls thought and still think that Coelho is the most brilliant writer ever, an incredible philosopher, maybe even better that Aristotle. Of course, this image is provided by the fact that he is able to hide very bad fiction behind really good wording.
But, unfortunately that's all there is to Coelho, he can fool some, he hasn't been able to fool others yet.
I am in the category in the middle. He did fool me in the beginning but right now, I've made the decisive step. I have not bought "The Witch of Portobello". And neither should you.

Advice for newbies

How hard is it to be published when you never wrote something before? That's a question I have been asked quite frequently in the past few weeks. The truth is, I usually tell them, that I have no clue.
There's something to do with imagination and intelligence, but there is a great deal related to sheer luck. Sometimes it's just NOT gonna be published. What my advice is for anyone trying to find its way into the publishing spectrum is "try as much as you can". Stephen King submitted two novels to publishers until "Carrie" was finally accepted. Rejection doesn't necessarily mean that you are not good, it might just mean that you are not writing what the publishers have to send to the market.
So, check the bestseller lists and see if any of the genres of literature there are appealing to you. If so, you're on the right path.

The good versus the really bad

Couple of weeks ago I decided to start entertaining myself with some easy reads, not the usual Kafka or Hemingway. So, I spent a couple of hours in the Barns and Noble in Boston on State St. till I found two novels that appealed to my senses.
First was named "Harvard Yard", written by William Martin, an author that places all his novel in the Boston - Cape Cod area. "Good", I said to myself, at least I have something to relate to. I live on the Cape. The book, however is excruciatingly painful. Bad is just a small word for it. Without trying to offend Mr. Martin, I couldn't read something like that. Even for a beach read this is way too complicated and not making any sense.
So, after I was 100 pages into Martin's novel, I decided to start Saul's book, given the fact that I had read many things by him before.
Oh well, as you can guess, we have a whole different situation this time. "In the Dark of the Night" is exciting, contemplative and pleasant. It's that kind of easy read that you enjoy, a real page-turner and virtually "unputdownable". Saul is a master of thriller and suspense, while Martin is a master of making his reader's fall asleep.
So, a very good recommendation from me is get any of Saul's 33 novels. I read about half of them, never have I been disappointed.
No, John did not pay me do write this. :)

My problems with Google

I finally resolved all the issues with the website domain. For the past few weeks I wasn't the most content person in the world, especially regarding Google. How? Well, let me explain.
I bought www.alexnick.com from Google, for a reasonable $10 per year. That includes Google Apps, a very nice set of applications that really enhance what you can do with a domain. Next step was to redirect alexnick.blogspot.com to that domain, right? Well, Google doesn't make it specifically clear HOW to do this. So, I called Godaddy.com twice, first a guy talked to me and tried to tell me that there is nothing wrong, that I just have to wait for a while so my domain gets activated and the DNS settings get settled (whatever that means).
After waiting for a couple of days a call again, this time I talked to a chick named Stephanie that seemed a little more knowledgeable that that guy, but ultimately wasn't.
In the end, I figured it out myself using Google Groups.
This leads to the conclusion of this post: "If you want something done well, do not rely on phone tech support.
Anyway, from now on just type www.alexnick.com and there I am.

Life experience

There are some experiences one can go through that will change one's entire life. It does not matter if they are good or bad, it does not matter if everything seems wrong, because at one point, maybe later on in life, you will realize that every single experience does matter a lot and can enhance your view on everything that surrounds you.
I have had a couple of non-inspirational days, in which I dod not write anything, I read a lot, but that's all I could do. After last night, however, I have so many new ideas for my new project, that I believe will turn into a very appreciated story. I showed my scribbles to a friends, the diagrams, the characters' timelines and dialogues I've set up till now and she said that she would definitely read it. It seems interesting and ultimately believebale.
I like to write from my own life experience and sometimes use actual dialogue.

And now for whoever is interested here is a sneak preview of a few lines of my upcoming novel:
"'What was wrong with you last night?'
'Nothing' he said, not even himself believing the words coming out of his mouth. But, well, he had to act strong. He decided the night before that he wouldn't care anymore. He cared enough. 'I don't really want to talk about it right now'
She smiled and gazed into his eyes.
'Jealousy kicked in?'
What the heck, he thought, I might as well say it.
'Maybe...'
'Just so you know, I'm not exclusive' she whispered, expecting his reaction. 'I really don't want you to take this seriously'
'Uhm, all right, OK, got it. It's not a problem for me.' He was a good liar. But it just didn't feel right.

Places that tickle my muse

It's interesting in the beginning of the writing process of something like what I'm about to do to get to know your characters and find out what they're made of - what they feel and who they are. I sometimes imagine that they are real people and not just figments of my imagination. However, never before have I felt more attached to a couple of character like I am to Chris and Anna. I really believe that this will be a journey filled with adventures and the final result will be more than pleasing.
I don't always find inspiration everywhere, there are some places that tickle my muse, like the little shack on Fisherman's wharf in Provincetown's old harbor or under the old trees in Cambridge's Harvard Yard. The key word is old. Even if I'm still young (or at least I like to think of myself as such) and I know how to use all the miracles of technology, I still feel the need to write on paper, my characters are better brought to life in my own handwriting, using my favorite golden pen.

Welcome

I begin here, with you, a voyage, a demanding and mind-shattering voyage that probably no author has done before. Through this blog you will be able to explore everything that goes behind writing, editing and finally publishing a novel. From start to finish.
Let me introduce myself. My pen name is Alex Nick, the "Provincetown Banner" says I have a "sheer imaginative force". I sure hope they are right, otherwise this would be a waste of time, right.
Well, anyway, I welcome you all to my blog and hope you'll enjoy what I will be writing in here.