The image is something I played around with last night, hope you enjoy.

The book I’m writing seems to have slowed to a pace (both the content and how often I write in it) that could put crystallized honey to shame.

But, I’ve figured it out. I am hiding out comfortably in character development and putting off the inevitable conflict/action. So I’m not going to let myself do that, instead, I’m jumping ahead to the conflict and stop gushing about nothing just to avoid making decisions. I wonder if there is such a thing as a novelist psychologist.

Secundus,

The future of the book is certainly iffy. It seems unlikely that we will devote chunks of space to the inefficient, less-accessible-than-data book. The Kindle is certainly the first legitimate substitution, considering that web pages are hard to read for any length of time, and that copyright fences/ the time it would take to transcribe generally keep books off the internet in any amassed form.

Ah, what can we say about the Kindle? I have judged it before it reach-ed my hands. I sort of see it as a 200 dollar entry fee to Barnes and Noble. I like the touch, feel, visual impact of lots of book. I like to have them around. I think of each one as a little treasure, especially as some of the authors I read are getting to be scarce or out of print. Their form does not feel outdated to me, and unlike CD cases, DVD cases that are more or less ugly to display, books have, to me, an indefatigable aesthetic quality. The Kindle kills the idea of having a wall of multi-colored, staggered, large, tall, skinny, thick, tiny, rectangle art. Neat, in that you can get any book you’d like from anywhere, but until they invent glowing, holographic Harry Potter newspapers, I’m holding out.

Tertius,

Many folk have been exploring the ways that books can adapt to a new media, crowd-sourced internet-centric word world. While I think these iterations only enhance but do not replace books, they are interesting thoughts as ways to bridge the static, corporeal book with the palimpsest web.

Case in point, Electric Literature, which facilitates single-sentence animations that convey the idea of a book without replicating it.