This book is essentially a transcript of a discussion between professional authors J.A. (Joe) Konrath and Barry Eisler.  Konrath has been self-publishing for several years and has made a very good living at it.  I think he would probably argue that he makes more self-publishing digital books than he would be earning through legacy publishers.  Eisler is known for turning down a $500,000 advance because he believed he could earn more money by self-publishing the same book.

The value of the book is in the advice and information it shares.  There is some entertainment value as well, in that the authors both have some amusing and funny things to day.  My biggest complaint with the book is that it felt like Eisler and Konrath complimented each other every few pages through the book.

They make it clear that legacy publishing is facing a number of challenges, most of its own making.  They are trying to prop up the sales of printed books by keeping eBook prices artificially high, and refusing to release the eBook until the paper book is ready to ship.  They’ve been reducing author royalties, taking longer to pay the authors, and pushing more of their costs on to agents (e.g., editing and cover art).  Titles don’t stay on store shelves long, and not all books get equal treatment at the retail level.

By comparison, authors who self-publish through Amazon.com fare much better.  They collect 70% royalties on each sale (instead of royalties in the 15% range from legacy publishers), and receive payment each quarter (versus semi-annually or longer for legacy publishers).  They have control over the content of their books, choose their own cover art, etc.

Another advantage of eBooks is that they remain on the virtual store shelves “forever”.  Brick and mortar bookstores can usually only stock what is selling well right now, and few can afford to keep many older titles on their shelves.  With eBooks and retailers like Amazon, all of an author’s works can remain for sale on the “shelf” indefinitely.  When a reader discovers one of an author’s books, there is a good chance they will purchase others from the author’s backlist of titles.

An argument often made for legacy publishing is that book publishers serve as “gatekeepers” for readers, separating the good books from the bad and ensuring the quality of the books they publish.  The argument says that self-publishing will lead to a flood of crappy, poorly written books, and that all authors will suffer.  Readers, Konrath and Eisler argue, are good gatekeepers.  They can separate the wheat from the chaff, and help others do the same through reviews, lists, recommendations, and word of mouth.  This is the same way people help each other find the “good” videos on YouTube. 

Konrath argues that legacy publishers haven’t been very good at separating successful from unsuccessful books.  One of his titles that the major publishers in New York rejected 12 years earlier went on to become a #15 bestseller on Amazon and earn him $17,500 in just 12 days.  And because it’s still on the virtual shelves there, it’s continuing to earn him money today.

The authors make it clear that although they are confident that digital books will outsell paper books (if they aren’t doing so already), they do not believe that paper books will ever go away.  Apple iPods and MP3s didn’t eliminate the CD. The CD didn’t eliminate cassettes.  Cassettes didn’t eliminate vinyl.  You can still find music being produced today in all those formats (except maybe cassette?), just as you’ll have no problem finding paper books 10 or 20 years from now. 

Konrath and Eisler say that self-publishing of eBooks isn’t about bringing an end to the paper book.  It’s about authors taking advantage of a new technology and distribution system that enables them to make higher royalties and reach readers without going through publishers.  It’s worked out well for them.  Konrath reported making $102,000 in the month of March 2013 alone – most from older legacy-published titles no longer in print.

Be The Monkey is an entertaining read overall, though it is a bit annoying how often Konrath and Eisler compliment one another.  For 99 cents, though, it’s hard to find much fault with it.

Having never been a pilot, or even in the military, I had not heard of this tradition.  I did a bit of research and found that it refers a song that contains the line “throw a nickel on the grass, save a fighter pilot’s a__”.  It’s an expression of respect and a wish of good luck for a fellow pilot.

Bob had always been great to me, and I honestly don’t think I appreciated him as much as I should have when he was alive.  He was an excellent storyteller.  He took a genuine interest in others, even those he barely knew.  He smiled often, and it was a smile that simultaneously looked mischievous and sweet.  His death hit me a lot harder than I expected it would, and I regretted not having spent more time with him.

I told myself that, at his grave site, I’d toss a nickel on the grass to honor him.  On the morning of the funeral, I forgot to put one in my pocket.  That’s probably just as well, as I think I’d have felt funny doing it in front of all those who attended the funeral.

About a month later, I took a large jar of coins to one of those Coinstar machines to exchange for a gift certificate.  I fed coin after coin into the machine.  Every so often, it spit one back out in a rejection tray that was just out of sight.  When I’d fed all the coins I had in the jar to the machine, I reached down into the “reject bin” and pulled out the ones the machine hadn’t taken.  I re-fed these into the machine.  It accepted some and rejected others.  When I’d gotten it to accept as many as it would, I put the rest in the jar and picked out a gift certificate.  On the way out of the store, I looked down in the jar and realized that all the coins the machine had rejected were nickels!  I took this as a sign.

Remembering the promise I’d made to myself but never kept, I took one of those nickels and drove immediately to the cemetery where Bob was buried.  His grave was alone in a new section of the cemetery.  For a man who always took such a genuine interest in others, seeing him alone like that was painful.  His headstone hadn’t even been delivered yet, so all that marked the site was a rectangular patch of dirt.  Had I not been there for the funeral, I would not have known where to find it.  I hadn’t felt that kind of sadness in years.  Fighting the tears in my eyes, and the lump in my throat, I tossed the nickel into the air above the grass next to his grave and said goodbye. 

Wherever you are, Bob, I hope that nickel provided the salvation the song promised.  You deserve it.

Past NaNoWriMo events have taught me several things:

• 2009:  I can sit down and organically write 50,000 words of fiction if I want to.  Before that I didn’t think I could.  Unfortunately, writing this way results in a meandering, boring bit of prose.
• 2010:  If I brainstorm in advance, and have a decent picture of where I want the story and characters to go, I can hit the 50,000 word goal more easily and produce something with a bit of a story to it.
• 2011:  Brainstorming down to the individual scene level makes writing a breeze for me, but if I go into too much detail I risk feeling like I’ve already written the story before I start.  That can be very de-motivating. 
• 2009-2011:  I have an extreme tendency to avoid putting my characters into conflict, which results in fiction that isn’t interesting.  Even my characters tend to side-step conflict that I do include, because it’s out of character for them or they’re too smart to have gotten involved in the first place.

This year’s experience taught me a lot.  I learned that if I don’t have a very clear idea when I start, writer’s block will hit frequently.  Not only that, but my confidence gets very shaken, and this makes it even harder to write.  You can see this in my stats for Nanowrimo 2012:

As the chart shows, I wrote nothing on days 1 and 2.  I only had the vaguest notion of what I wanted the story to be.  On the third, I still had no idea but pushed myself to write something, anything.  This worked well enough until about the 13th, where at 24,000 words I felt out of ideas.  For several days, I wrote absolutely nothing.  After a chat with a co-worker and friend near the 18th, I gained a few ideas and got to around 38,000 words over the next few days.  Finally, I hit what felt like the steel-reinforced brick-and-mortar lead-lined wall of writer’s block.  I pushed myself to write one more scene, hoping it would trigger something.  And it did, but not what I expected.

I’ve heard of writers having written dialogues with their characters during brainstorming sessions. At this point in my story, the characters broke down that imaginary “fourth wall” between us.  They started complaining about the book they were in, about me, and cursing at me for writing them into it.  One of them even shot himself.  (This all happening in a trance-like writing state I experienced.)  The remaining character in the scene turned to me and began interviewing ME.  He asked questions like:

• “So, we’ve been in my office about a dozen times since this book started.  What does it look like?”
• “How is the office decorated?”
• “Why don’t I have any family photos, or any photos, in my office?”
• “Why did I have this particular desk lamp?”
• “What does the artwork on the wall mean to me?”
• “You mentioned there’s a safe on the wall behind that painting.  What do I keep in it, and why”?”

This conversation went on for about 7,000 words.  Then the character who shot himself returned as a clone of his former self, and went through something similar with me.  Suddenly, I found myself at 50,000 words of what was most assuredly fiction.  I had completed the challenge! 

I learned from this experience that I do much better fleshing out a character by having one of these stream of consciousness interviews than I do from any other technique I’ve tried.  I will definitely have to do this again for the next novel I write.  I’ve also learned that conflict is my biggest problem.  If I’m ever going to write a book anyone will enjoy reading, I’ve got to get that issue fixed.  Fortunately, I have some good resources on the bookshelf that should help.

I’ve also learned that writing flows most easily for me when I get into a meditative trance-like state and let things flow organically.  I can see and hear the characters speak, and need only transcribe what they’re saying and doing.  But this trance-like state only works to a certain point.  If I don’t know the characters well, and don’t know what kinds of challenges I’m planning to throw at them, writer’s block will quickly ensue.

Before I make my next attempt to write a novel, I’m going to try the following:

• Enter that trance-like state and interview my potential characters to learn more about them before I put them in any situations.
• Using good resources like Story Engineering and Plotting: A Novelist’s Workout Guide, brainstorm at least the major events of the story, getting down to the scene level if I can.
• Take the time to examine those scenes to see where I can squeeze in additional, relevant conflict for the characters to deal with before they’re written.

I think if I can manage to do those three things, my next NaNoWriMo novel (or any work I write) will be much better and get me much closer to publishable.

• If you’re trying to succeed as a writer, your guiding principle should be “Profitable is Good.”  Actions you take should ideally contribute to your overall profit.  If you spend $7 a month to host a web site, and that web site generates $10 in sales, it’s profitable.
• Just as important as generating a profit is being sensible about what you do.  You shouldn’t risk your retirement money or rent money, for example, to fund the printing of a book.  For instance, you might use Amazon’s CreateSpace program to print copies on demand, or sell it as an e-Book.
• Success in the world of digital publishing is a moving target.  Techniques that work today may not work tomorrow, or in two years.
• When in doubt about what to do, generate new content.  Everything you write serves as a promotional piece for everything you’ve already written.  Readers who buy one book you’ve written and enjoyed it will be more inclined to buy others.
• Every book or short story you publish should contain a 1-2 page list of all the other items you’ve written (or at least as many as fit on 1-2 pages).  This should appear near the front of your book, so that someone downloading a sample of your book will see this information in the sample.
• Digital sales count for 20-30% of a typical book’s sales today.
• Digital self-publishing is a boon to authors.  Traditional publishers paid about 8-10% of a book’s cover price to the author, about 6-9 months after the sale was made.  Digital publishing through organizations like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo pay about 70% of the cover price in 60 days after the sale.
• You shouldn’t adopt the narrow view that you’re “writing a story”.  Think of it as “developing an intellectual property”.  Think about other ways you could distribute the content (audio books, podcasts, related short stories, etc.).  For your particular content, these could be more profitable venues for you.
• When you choose or create cover artwork, remember that your cover should look good at sizes ranging from postage stamps (as seen in a typical online book listing) all the way to iPad Retina Displays.
• Be sure to hire a good editor and proofreader to look over your work before publishing it.
• In your e-Books, be sure to include a revision number, build number, or other value,  This way, when a reader reports that they’ve found typos or errors in your work, you can identify the correct draft to look at.

In addition to the industry and self-publishing information, Stackpole also shared important information about building an online presence:

• Remember that different potential readers for your work may not all use a given social media tool.  For example, those who are avid Facebook users may not follow Twitter.  Get your message out to a variety of outlets to reach the most people.
• It’s important to think about your online image.  You want to come across as positive, confident, successful, hard-working, persevering, and friendly to your readers.  If you’re struggling with characterization, for instance, don’t share that.  Do not show yourself “warts and all” to your readers.  This is a recipe for disaster.
• When critics arise, you should generally not respond to them.  There are too many ways it can go badly for you.  For example, you might write a scathing retort to a mean-spirited comment on your blog, only to find that the commenter was a young child.  Suddenly, you’ve become the author who “beat up” little Janie online.  Not a reputation you want to foster.
• Everything you post online doesn’t have to be a story or book.  What is important, though, is that it be entertaining or informative to a reader.  A blog post about how you spent the day trying to overcome writer’s block is probably not entertaining.  Telling a story about how your grandmother used to cheer you up when you got stuck by baking you cookies may be entertaining.
• Think of your blogging, tweeting, etc., as building an audience.  You want your audience to see you as a good person who works hard, overcomes problems, and treats others well.  Share some of who you are with them but not everything.  It’s like developing yourself as a brand.

When it comes to digital publishing, one of Mike’s strongest pieces of advice was that there is no reason whatsoever not to digitally self-publish your work… even if you’re trying to sell it to a publisher.  If you succeed in selling it, you can always take the book off the market.  If you don’t succeed in selling it, you may at least be earning something from it

There were about 193 pictures on it, which I’ve uploaded to Google+ in the hope that the owner of the memory stick, or someone who knows them, will find the pictures.  That way the pictures might find their way back to the person who took them.

If Picasa is right, they were taken in March 2006 on a Sony DSC-T5 camera, which looks like this:

It’s difficult to say who actually owned the camera.  This woman appears most often in the photos:

This man also appears several times in the photos:

This woman also appears in a few of the photos:

If you know anyone pictured here, please send them the link to the Google+ album above so that they can retrieve their photos.

In 2009, the story I chose to tell was one that I found myself initially excited about.  I sat down in September and October and began working out the characters in the story, the major conflicts the characters faced, some information about their world, and a very vague story line.  When November 1 rolled around, I began writing furiously.  Well before November 30, I had over 50,000 words written.  When I looked back over what I had written, I realized that what I didn’t have was a coherent story.  I had plot ideas I dropped in as I wrote, then later forgot about or abandoned.  I had situations I had set up to happen that, when I got them, didn’t feel right anymore and went in a completely different direction.  It was a mess.

In 2010, I started a different story based on the same character as 2009′s story.  This time, I started out with Dramatica Pro, and did a better job fleshing out the characters, their interactions, the conflicts, etc.  Before I sat down on November 1, I had created in Scrivener for Mac OS X a file containing every major scene I could envision for the story.  Each time I sat down to write, I filled in one of those scenes.  Before I’d completed all of them, I had hit my 50,000 words.  Exhausted from the effort, I stopped before finishing it.  I’m hoping to gather the strength to go back and revise it in the future.

This year, I was having a lot of trouble coming up with a story to tell.  A co-worker suggested creating an unusual situation and tossing some characters based on people I knew into it.  About 600 words into that tale, I realized I had no desire to continue.  I spent another few days trying to decide what I would write instead.  Then, I settled on an idea I’d thought about doing ages ago, based on reincarnation.  That idea had enough traction with me that I could plot out a story line and drop it into Scrivener for Windows.  An interesting thing began to happen, though.  The word count chart below shows it:

My NaNoWriMo Stats for 2011

Early in the month, I had trouble motivating myself.  It took a couple of weeks to understand the reason why.  The stories I had done in 2009 and 2010 were stories I started out caring about, and then lost interest in.  Somehow, that lack of interest translated into the ability to crank out a story anyway.  My output those years was a lot more consistent, and I was finished a few days early on each one.

This year’s story was different.  This was a story I cared about.  It’s one I’d wanted to write for years, but didn’t think I had the craft or the skills to do it.  It was a story I might actually want to publish.  That paralyzed me for a couple of weeks until I realized it.  Part of me knew that the 2009 and 2010 stories weren’t good, but that didn’t matter because I didn’t really care that much about them.  This year’s story, though, I wanted to do well.  And that desire to do it right caused me not to want to do it at all.  I began listening to that little voice in the back of my head telling me that I wasn’t ready yet, that my writing wasn’t good enough.  Once I realized that was the problem, it took some time and effort to tell myself “Hey, Hemingway himself always said the first draft of a story is crap.  If he felt that way about his work, it’s OK if I feel that way about mine.  Even if this story turns out to be bad, no one has to read it but me and I can take as long as I need to revise it.”  That helped.  It also helped to recall the words of Michael A. Stackpole, the New York Times bestselling novelist:  “You’re the author, suck it up and write!”  (I actually had that put onto a t-shirt to wear when I write, back in August.)  Once I got past that block, I began to crank out a lot more words.  I managed as many as 6,000-7,000 in a single day in some cases.  I ended up writing over 35,000 words in two weeks.

The professional novelists I’ve had the opportunity to learn from (Aaron Allston, Timothy Zahn, and Michael Stackpole) tell a similar story.  The author plans for a character to do a specific thing in a specific scene.  When they write the story up to that point, sometimes a character will (metaphorically) turn to the author and say “No.  I wouldn’t do that, not in a million years.  Here’s what I’d do instead…”  The author usually ends up listening to the character and writing the scene that way.  Twice during this story, I had that happen.  At one point, the main character has been acting very strangely.  It’s worrying him and his girlfriend.  I had planned for the girlfriend to hear about a trip he was planning to take and say something like “That’s the last straw.  You’ve totally lost it.  I’m leaving you.”  When I got to that point, she turned to the main character and said, “I’m worried about, and I’m going with you to help you settle this thing. You might need me.”  I was surprised.

A bit later in the story, the main character is confronted with a group of people who are doing something pretty nasty.  It runs counter to everything he believes in.  In my original outline, he was going to take the opportunity to kill them, so that it would destroy their evil little organization.  As I was writing that scene, I could see it in my head like a movie.  When we got to the “now I’m going to kill you all” part, the character turns to me and says “Are you nuts? I don’t kill people.  There’s a whole other way out of this mess.”  I watched the new scene unfold in my head and thought, “Wow… you’re right.  Not only is this more in character with you, but it actually sets things up so we can do some really cool stuff later.”  That one little detour made the story become more interesting to me, and the next 20,000 or so words flew by.

After the new year, I plan to pull this story out of mothballs and have a look at it.  I figure it will take several passes over it to turn it into a story I would actually show someone, but that’s my ultimate goal with this one.  That’s something new from last year.

Cleaver explains that the need to hear and share stories is one of the deepest human social needs.  We’ll even tell stories that put our safety and freedom at risk (such as when bank robbers can’t resist sharing tales of their exploits which eventually get them arrested).  A “story” in this sense is defined as a narrative that contains conflict, action, and resolution.  Conflict occurs when a character or characters in a story want something, but there is an obstacle in their way.  To get what they want, characters must take action.  The action they take reveals something about them.  In the end, they’ll get what they’re after or fail (which is “resolution”).  In fact, Cleaver says that “if the characters are having a good time, the reader is not.  If it’s going well, it’s going nowhere.”

Fixing a Story That’s Not Working

When you’re looking at a scene or story that just isn’t working, you should ask yourself these questions and make sure you have the answers:

• Who wants what?
• What’s the obstacle?
• What’s the character doing to overcome the obstacle?
• How does that turn out?

It’s not necessarily one character in a scene who wants something.  If characters have opposing “wants”, it can lead to a more interesting story.  For example, a detective in a mystery may want clues from a witness that would help unravel the case.  The witness may want to tell the detective what he saw, but fears doing so because it would expose an affair he was having.  While these two characters are verbally “battling” in the story, the reader learns more about both of them.  Revealing character, according to Cleaver, is the writer’s primary purpose at all times.

Other Tidbits from Immediate Fiction

Some other interesting points made in the book:

• Cleaver encourages writers to think about emotion as they write.  Writers are encouraged to “look for all the emotions that the character could possibly be feeling at one time.  If he could be feeling it, he should be feeling it.”
• Remember that no matter how strangely a character or person is behaving, what they’re doing makes perfect sense to them and would make sense to you if you understood how they see the world.  The key is to understand what would make you act that way and reflect that in the character.
• Readers experience a story through the characters, and share the experience the character is having.
• If you have exposition to share with the reader, spread it out across the scene rather than doing a “dreaded info dump”.
• When you’re trying to decide what a character will do in a situation, ask yourself what is more dramatic and what will reveal more character, and do that.
• Pretty much every writer’s first draft of a novel is bad.  The successful novelist is the one who sticks with that bad novel and keeps polishing it until it’s good.

Cleaver’s description of the writer’s subconscious is excellent:  “It’s like having a trusted friend who helps you with everything, whom you must depend on to get anything done, but who every so often without warning and for no reason decides to clobber you.”  When you’re on a roll, the subconscious is helping you keep in the flow.  But sometimes it pops up and tells you that your writing is awful, that you should quit, etc.

In addition to advice on writing fiction, Cleaver also covers overcoming writer’s block, the difference between scriptwriting and fiction writing, and marketing your work.

As you read through the book, the constant reminders to refer back to want, action, obstacle, resolution, and emotion feel incredibly redundant.  But these are important concepts Cleaver is trying to pound into the reader’s brain.  It’s written in a very conversational style, and manages to be both informative and fun to read.

In my opinion, this book should be on every fiction writer’s bookshelf.  It’s one I refer to again and again.

Installation of WhiteSmoke 2011

WhiteSmoke 2011 is delivered as a typical Setup.exe style Windows installer.  (There is no Macintosh version or Linux version, although they do have a web interface that is Mac compatible – and probably Linux compatible since it works with Firefox.)  It is one of the simplest and quickest installations I’ve seen.  I’d like to see more software vendors do this.

It prompts for the installation type, destination folder, and acceptance of the license agreement all on one screen. 

Click “Accept” and the software is installed a few seconds later. 

After installation, the software prompts for your email address, to ensure that you have a valid license.

It’s then up and running. 

WhiteSmoke’s “Writer” Tab

On its initial launch, WhiteSmoke displays the Writer tab, containing a writing sample with various style, punctuation, and grammar errors.  This sample is shown along with WhiteSmoke’s suggested corrections:

To the right of the editor, WhiteSmoke rates the overall writing quality on a scale of “Poor” to “Excellent.”  It then rates the sentence length, sentence structure, redundancy, voice, informal expressions, and word choice in the piece.  Below that, it provides a sentence count, word count, and character count.

As you can see in the sample, WhiteSmoke has highlighted three spelling errors, six grammar errors, and no style errors in this particular piece.  Each error is color-coded to help the writer quickly identify the obvious mistakes (suggestions written in red) from the suggestions (those written in green).

Anxious to see what WhiteSmoke could do, I fed it a couple of paragraphs from my article on writing software reviews:

Perhaps I’m not the target market for this software.  It rated my writing “almost excellent” and only suggested three changes.  The only thing it didn’t like was my sentence length.  Looking at WhiteSmoke’s suggestions, I have to agree that they all improve the paragraph.  Changing the paragraph as they suggest and asking them to check it the new version, I see that they still dislike my sentence length. This prompts me to adjust my sample again, to shorten the sentences:

I can’t argue with WhiteSmoke.  This revision is much better than my original draft.  Is it “excellent” writing now?  I don’t know.  It’s definitely better.

I decided to give WhiteSmoke something different to work with. I copied a fictional scene I’d written into the software, a few paragraphs at a time.  I then hit the “Check” button to see what WhiteSmoke thought of my work.  I was immediately greeted with:

So, I’m limited to 300 characters, or approximately 600 words.  That seems rather short for a product that bills itself as useful by creative writers.  A typical chapter from a novel is 2500 words.  Pasting 600 words into the software at a time is likely to get tedious over an entire 50,000 word novel.  Still, I deleted the text from the Writer tab and pasted about half as much back in.  This generated a different error:

The error also contains a misspelling (“ammount” instead of “amount).  I cut my text in half and re-pasted it.  This time WhiteSmoke accepted it.  I clicked “Check” and a few seconds later it had suggestions for me:

This was an interesting result.  While I do agree that the comma after “each other” is a good idea, I am appalled at the phrase I wrote after that “they saw they were all thinking the same thing”.  I suppose it is probably grammatically correct, but it’s a terrible choice of words.  More interesting is the suggestion below that.  In the line of dialogue where Jesse says “Me, honey” to the waitress, the software suggests that I change “Me” to “MeI” (which isn’t a word).  Curious to see if that was just a glitchy graphic, I clicked on the “MeI” correction to see what WhiteSmoke really meant.  Below is its auto-correction:

I guess it’s fortunate that WhiteSmoke doesn’t auto-correct all of your text, or errors like this would creep into it occasionally.  This is a very surprising mistake for “World-Leading English Writing Software” to make.

Here is another interesting result from later in the sample:

WhiteSmoke believes that “Frank glared.” is an incomplete sentence. Perhaps WhiteSmoke is upset because I didn’t explain what Frank was glaring at? I try a revision:

I will admit that I am not a grammar expert, but I’m pretty confident that’s a complete sentence. We have a subject (Frank), a very (glared), and a direct object (him).

In the Writing Review section, there is a “Show my activity report” button.  I clicked this to see what WhiteSmoke would tell me.  It displayed the following report:

The “Error summary” section is interesting.  It’s a much better summary of what’s wrong with the piece than the Writing Review box.  Perhaps more interesting is the heading of that window, which indicates that WhiteSmoke had to go out to the Internet to get this report (the “http:” is a dead giveaway).  Does that mean WhiteSmoke can’t function without an Internet connection?  I wondered.  I disconnected my network cable and hit the activity report button again:

As I suspected, WhiteSmoke was unable to provide an activity report.  That made me wonder if it could provide ANY results without a network connection.  I asked it to re-check my sample passage.  The software appeared to be “thinking about” my text for a few seconds, then re-displayed it with no corrections and without updating the Writing Review box.  It also didn’t generate any errors.  The WhiteSmoke FAQ explains:

While I can appreciate that the WhiteSmoke people are improving their product behind the scenes, and that they don’t want me to have to download a massive database, this does limit the utility of the software.  There are many times I want to sit down and write that an Internet connection isn’t available.  Having no access to the software at those times would be a problem.  This also raises another question.  Presumably, in order to analyze the text I’ve provided it, WhiteSmoke must transmit that text to their web server.  Is this transmission done through an encrypted connection?  If not, while I’m sitting in a coffee shop working on a confidential business proposal (using WhiteSmoke to get things “just right”), my words are being shot across the airwaves (and the Internet) in plain, easily-readable text!  That’s not cool.  (WhiteSmoke does suggest that this product is intended for CEOs and novelists, so that’s certainly a possible scenario.)

A WhiteSmoke Security Concern

To confirm my suspicion, I installed WireShark on my test system.  (WireShark is a program that captures the Internet traffic in and out of your PC.  It shows you exactly what went out, and what came in.)  Sure enough, I easily found the text in my sample:

I’ll admit that I could be overreacting here.  For a school paper, encryption probably isn’t a big deal.  For typical work emails (which often flow over the Internet unencrypted anyway), it’s fine.  For short stories or fan fiction you might be writing for web publication, who cares if the text is flowing across the Internet unencrypted?  WhiteSmoke has marketed this software (in the recent past) to businesspeople and novelists.  I would imagine that a CEO who is using WhiteSmoke to clean up the text in a confidential proposal might be concerned to know that her competitors could be capturing the details of that proposal off the wire or out of the air.  My advice would be avoid using WhiteSmoke to check any sensitive documents, trade secret paperwork, etc., that you might be working with.

WhiteSmoke Translation Tab

While it’s not something I would expect from an English-language writing tool, WhiteSmoke includes the ability to translate English text into other languages.  Specifically, it appears to support translation to and from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.  Having lived in Brazil long enough to learn Portuguese, I decided to test the software’s translation capability on a paragraph from my essay-writing article.  Here’s how it came back:

If you don’t speak Portuguese, you’ll have to take my word for it that this is actually a decent translation.  I don’t understand why the software doesn’t properly capitalize the sentences in the example.   That seems like a bug, albeit a minor one.

Something I consider a bigger issue, though, is that you can’t select the translated text and copy it.  The software doesn’t allow it.  You don’t get an error or warning.  You just can’t select it.

If you click the “Human Translation” button, a web browser window opens, and you’re taken to the OneHourTranslation web site.  OneHourTranslation will have a human being who speaks Portuguese look at your sample and provide any necessary corrections – at a price:

If my sample text was important enough, I could have it reviewed and corrected for $5.38.  In a business context, this would be a very valuable feature.

WhiteSmoke Dictionary Tab

WhiteSmoke’s Dictionary tab allows you to translate single words to another language, or investigate the meaning of a particular word.  It displays results from the Wordnet English Dictionary, Wordnet English Thesaurus, and Wikipedia.

All things considered, it’s a nice feature.  However, there are plenty of online dictionaries (like those used by WhiteSmoke), and you don’t necessarily need WhiteSmoke for this feature.

The Dictionary translation feature produces results like this:

For those who speak other languages, or are trying to understand something written with foreign words and phrases, this is useful.  (But there are similar translation facilities online from Google and others, so it’s not necessary to buy this software to get that capability.)

WhiteSmoke Templates Tab

WhiteSmoke offers a number of pre-written templates on its Templates tab:

Here is their sample for “Personal Matters” entitled “Upset Regarding Loss of Job”:

Some of the templates are not, in my opinion, very well written.  Consider the “Letter of Condolence” from the software:

In particular, the phrase “Although I’ve never had the chance of meeting” sticks out to me.  It would sound better to say “Although I never had an opportunity to meet” to me.  For amusement’s sake, I copied this letter and fed it to the Writer tab (after a minor edit to replace the placeholder text) to see what it had to say:

One would think that WhiteSmoke’s templates would come through “squeaky clean” when checked by their writing tool.  Instead, the template is given a “fair” rating and cited for less-than-optimal word choice.   WhiteSmoke suggests adding commas after “stories” and “time.”  The first recommendation is simply wrong.  Adding a comma at that point would break the sentence in a strange place.  Changing the word “Know” to “Now” would be incorrect as well.  The comma after “time” is probably an improvement, but a better improvement would have been to break the compound sentence into two.

WhiteSmoke Settings

The WhiteSmoke settings allow you to customize some of the software’s settings.  The general tab allows you to enable or disable WhiteSmoke’s “Writer Everywhere floating button” and its email checking feature. 

The Shortcut Keys tab allows you to specify shortcuts to be used to activate the software:

The Info tab provides the software version and your unique User ID in their system.

The Connection tab allows you to specify an Internet proxy server and port:

The Content tab identifies the “writing styles” that WhiteSmoke has authorized you to use.

Although it appears to have changed, they used to offer different pricing for Creative Writing and Business styles.

The WhiteSmoke “Writer Everywhere” Feature

WhiteSmoke’s settings reference the “Writer Everywhere floating button”.  While it’s possible I somehow missed this feature, I didn’t see anything that looked like a floating button on my screen at any time during the review process.

I did, however, find that it’s possible to invoke WhiteSmoke Writer from other applications.  For example, I typed a sentence into Windows WordPad and hit F2.  WhiteSmoke grabbed the text from WordPad, pasted it into the Writer tab, and performed an immediate check.  However, if the document I was working on exceeded their 3,000-character limit, WhiteSmoke displayed its error message:

After selecting a couple of paragraphs from the document and hitting F2, WhiteSmoke could perform its checks and display the result.

I had mixed results with this feature.  It seemed to handle most applications properly.  For example, I opened a web page in Internet Explorer and typed a sample sentence into a text box:

After pressing F2 to bring up WhiteSmoke, I found that it could not capture the text from the box

The WhiteSmoke window appears on top of the browser window and cannot be moved to the back.  Further, you can’t make a second grammar-checking attempt until you close the WhiteSmoke window.

WhiteSmoke CAN be used with web browsers.  You just have to select the text you want to check first, then hit F2 to pick it up. 

When you click “Apply”, WhiteSmoke will replace the selected text in the browser with your newly-edited text (assuming what you selected is editable).

WhiteSmoke and Dual Monitors

My main computer at home has two monitors attached to it.  I’ve noticed that although dual-monitor setups are becoming increasingly common, and have been for many years, some software products don’t cope well with them.  You see things like drop-down menus appearing on the wrong monitor, graphics showing up on the opposite display, and things of that nature.  WhiteSmoke has the same issue.  When I launch it on my dual-monitor PC, one monitor displays the usual WhiteSmoke interface.  The other displays this:

This would appear to be a part of the WhiteSmoke Dictionary tab.  You can interact with the drop-down menus, but it doesn’t actually do translations.

I contacted WhiteSmoke support about this issue. They confirmed that there is a problem in dual-monitor setups and told me “the solution is not to use WhiteSmoke with dual monitors.”  They didn’t suggest that they were working on a fix. They just told me not to use it on a dual-monitor setup.  Not exactly great customer service.  Had I paid the $99 annual fee for the software, or the $299 “permanent” license fee, I would have been extremely upset with this response.  Since I got the software for nothing, it bothers me only slightly. 

Conclusion

Overall, WhiteSmoke is a decent writing tool.  In my experience with it, the suggestions it makes often help me improve the readability of my writing.  WhiteSmoke works with a variety of Windows applications, offers some interesting features like language translation, and seems to perform quickly.  However, I do have a number of issues with it that bear repeating:

• In at least one case, it suggested a misspelling.  That is unacceptable in a writing tool.
• In many cases, it suggested adding commas in places that would have made the sentence read poorly or were simply incorrect.
• It sometimes suggests wording changes which are either grammatically incorrect or “sound funny” to the reader.
• It doesn’t handle dual-monitor setups well.
• WhiteSmoke support responded quickly to my problem report, but the response seemed to indicate that they had no intention of correcting the problem.
• The 3000-character text limit makes it a nuisance to check longer passages like reports, white papers, book chapters, or documentation.

Because I received WhiteSmoke 2011 free of charge, I’m willing to overlook the issues above and continue using it until I find something better (or until it stops working).  However, had I paid their $99.95 annual fee or the $299.95 one-time payment, I would be really disappointed with the product.  Given what you’ve read here, you’ll have to make your own judgment about WhiteSmoke.

Why Write an Essay?

An essay is an attempt to prove a point.  Perhaps you’re arguing against a change in your school’s rules, or trying to convince readers that Fringe is the best television show ever, or simply persuade your parents to let you borrow the car Saturday night.  Regardless of the point you’re making, a well-written essay can help you convince your reader to see things your way.

What Makes a Well-Written Essay?

What does a well-written essay look like?  One of my high school teachers provided this diagram:

What does this diagram mean?  It means that you begin to write your essay with an introduction which starts from a general subject area and narrows down to a specific point.  (That’s why the first shape is a triangle that comes to a point at the bottom.)  Once you’ve made that point, you provide three or more paragraphs that each contain an observation or fact that supports your point.  When you feel you’ve provided enough evidence to support your point, you re-state the point in your conclusion, briefly summarize your evidence, and end with a general statement about your general subject area.

Writing a Sample Essay

That’s a bit vague, so let’s look at a more specific example.  Let’s say I’m writing an essay to convince readers that chocolate ice cream is superior to strawberry ice cream.  That’s the “point” I need to get to in my essay’s introduction.  Next, I’ll need to provide evidence to support that argument.  I do some research online and in my local public library, learning about ice cream in general, how chocolate and strawberry ice cream are made, examining nutritional facts about each, etc.  Let’s say that my research has given me three good points to support my argument:

• According to About.com, chocolate contains flavonoids, which area antioxidants that can help reduce blood pressure and cholesterol.  That sounds like a good point to support the argument that chocolate is better.
• Wikipedia says that some people are allergic to strawberries.  Allergies to chocolate are rare, according to About.com.
• According to the International Ice Cream Association, chocolate is a more popular flavor than strawberry.  Vanilla is more popular than both, though, so I’m going to have to dismiss that point somehow.

In a “real” essay, I’d recommend finding some more persuasive points than these.  I’d also put extra effort into ensuring that these sources are reliable and accurate.  While Wikipedia and About.com are fairly accurate sites in general, it is possible that someone could find better evidence to dispute these points.  If I was writing this essay for a grade, I’d want the best sources I could find.

When I look at my three points, let’s say that I decide the “popularity” point is the least persuasive.  The allergy issue is a bit more powerful.  But the health benefits of chocolate are the point I think will really convince people.  I’m going to arrange my points in order from least persuasive to most persuasive.

Here’s how all this fits into the essay writing diagram:

My essay is practically written.  I know the point I’m making.  I can support it with at least three arguments.  I know how to conclude the essay.  So how might this essay look when it’s finished?  Try this:

Ice cream is one of the most popular desserts in America.  Ice cream makers offer it in a variety of flavors.  Strawberry and chocolate are two of the most popular ice cream flavors on the market.  Of these, chocolate is the better flavor.

I’m not the only one who thinks chocolate is better.  In a study done by the International Ice Cream Association, chocolate was far more popular with consumers than strawberry.  The study reports that 8.9% of people prefer chocolate ice cream, while only 5.3% prefer strawberry.  Clearly, many more people find chocolate to be the better ice cream flavor.

Chocolate isn’t just more popular, it’s safer to eat.  According to About.com, allergies to chocolate are extremely rare.  Allergies to strawberries are somewhat common.  Who wants to risk a serious allergic reaction just to eat ice cream?  Stick with chocolate.

If safety and popularity weren’t enough, chocolate is also good for you.  Chocolate contains antioxidants known as flavonoids, which studies have shown will reduce cholesterol and help lower your blood pressure.  Strawberries, though they may be good for you, can’t do that.

Chocolate ice cream is simply a better choice than strawberry.  It’s healthier.  It’s less likely to trigger an allergic reaction.  It’s also a lot more popular.    The next time you’re in the grocery to pick up some ice cream, remember to choose chocolate.  You’ll be glad you did.

That’s really all there is to writing an essay.  Choose a point, support it with facts, dismiss any likely arguments to each fact, and close by re-stating your point.

Linking Your Essay Together

There is one more thing you should do.  When you look at the diagram, you’ll notice there are “chain links” connecting the blocks.  These tell you that it’s important to transition from one paragraph to the next.

If you look at each of the paragraphs in my sample essay above, I did that.  At the end of the first paragraph, I closed with “chocolate is the better flavor”.  The next paragraph linked back to that, saying “I’m not the only one who thinks chocolate is better…”  The third paragraph started with a reference to the “popularity” of chocolate in the second paragraph.  The next one calls back to the two preceding paragraphs, saying “If safety [second supporting point] and popularity [first supporting point] weren’t enough…”

The end result is an essay that makes its point, backs it up with facts, flows nicely from one paragraph to the next, and reminds readers of the points it makes in its conclusion.  Don’t forget to re-read it, spell-check it, etc.