It's a new world for writing, reading

Well, to update folks, my November novel writing project is moving ahead. It’s nowhere near the goal of 50,000 words in a month yet, but it is inching forward.

To recap, I’m taking part in National Novel Writing Month —NaNoWriMo, it’s called —in which those of us who have taken up the pen (or keyboard) theoretically are supposed to buckle down, type like mad and churn out 50,000 somewhat readable, coherent words by Nov. 30. I’m a little behind, more in the 10,000-word range at the moment. However, I’m still working on it.

NaNoWriMo is an example of something folks can do thanks to today’s technology that wouldn’t have been possible not too many years ago. People in a community or an area who wanted to write could get together in writing groups, encourage each other, sample one another’s work and have a little fun. They still do. But, with the wondrous Internet, now people from around the world can do the same thing, just not in person. And NaNoWriMo is like a giant writing class filled with inspirational instructors and classmates.

Actually, the Internet can be a writer’s dream, or a nightmare. The nightmare comes about when you’re supposed to be writing, need to be writing, but the siren call of the Internet is too strong and you wind up thumbing through Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, reading stories on the AOL homepage about astounding creatures and spoiled celebrities, or just surfing the ’Net (if that expression’s not out of style yet). About two hours later, you realize you haven’t written anything, only clicked “Like” on pictures of grumpy cats and cute dachshunds.

On the dream side, however, you can find like-minded souls from around the globe longing to share their words and stories and can share advice, experiences, inspiration and encouragement. You can have someone in Baltimore able to critique the work you’ve done in Mountain Home in an instant, or join someone in St. Louis and Louisville in a special writing project. You can learn about habits, good and bad, of writers similar to yourself as well as famous writers.

One thing I love about the Internet is discovering new writers, and even old writers whose work has been out of print for years but is being revived online. There even are writers whose work appears largely online and in digital form. Since I got my Kindle for Christmas a couple of years ago, I’ve become a fan of several writers whose work I haven’t run across in bookstores.

I’ve found several old-time pulp writers online and revivals of their work, too. Not just the adventure and thriller writers, but the ones who wrote the kind of stuff you weren’t supposed to read as a kid. One who’s piqued my interest was a guy named Orrie Hitt. He wrote what your mama would call “trashy” books, lurid stories about down-on-their-luck schemers, wicked women, crooked businessmen and such doing things not spoken of in decent company. Yet, they also are stories of dreamers, of hard-working folks hoping to make a better life for themselves.

According to his bio, Orrie Hitt would sit down at the kitchen table with his typewriter, iced coffee and a carton of Winstons and pound out one of his novels in about two weeks, and he was able to put his daughters through college doing it. In the ’50s, when Hitt wrote, the “literary” authors were writing about the post-war middle class and the lives of the upper class. Hitt wrote about working-class people —waitresses, insurance salesmen, farmers, car dealers, factory workers, people struggling to just get by, subjects not touched on in the more literary circles.. He even featured women characters trying to get ahead in a man’s world. And those are the people who read them, who identified with those characters. Great literature, no, but it does reflect the times.

An example of writers of a more recent vintage I’ve found is Scott Nicholson, who writes mainly horror and suspense stories. Like Stephen King, he seems to know what’s in your refrigerator and can make even the most unreal things seem real. “Drummer Boy” is one of my favorites, a tale about a haunted cave from which emerge the ghosts of ragtag Civil War soldiers looking for others to join their number. It just so happens they’re coming out just as the nearby town is getting ready for a big Civil War battle reenactment.

Nicholson gives you lots of characters, lots of viewpoints that ultimately come together in a chilling climax. It’s fun reading. I’ve found a few others in the thriller genre, such as J.A. Konrath, and westerns, such as W.R. Benton, that I enjoy, too.

If you love to read, the Internet opens up a whole new world for you to discover. You’ll find some jewels, and you’ll find some stinkers, too. Largely, though, you can find a lot of people fulfilling their dreams — not necessarily of being a New York Times best-selling author, but being able to tell their stories and have people read what they’ve created. That’s the dream of everyone who puts pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard.