That, Which

TorrentFreak has a very interesting interview with Paulo Coelho (author of such classics as The Alchemist) about how book ‘piracy’—instigated by the author himself via a special blog—has helped boost his sales into the 100 million range for the last year alone.

The first quote from Coelho is a gem. But I wonder about the extent to which new writers who are not (yet) novelists can take advantage of this approach, or adapt similarly content-sharing techniques, when they lack both a large existing fanbase and an already-popular vehicle via which to publicise their work.

My feeling is that it is too early for people in my position, with no public profile whatsoever, though the threshold might not be too high. In any case, thanks for sharing, Pirate Coelho!

Writing’s going well at the moment, which means that despite the dilemmas, I’m still getting words on the page.

Todays puzzle: New or old? (Duffy or Lulu?) When should I start a new story and when are my efforts best spent on an existing, but unfinished one? I went the the former option. In this case, the new story is a kind of sequel to the old one. (Yeah, a bit like Duffy and Lulu!) I’m not yet sure that it was the right choice, but like I said, it’s still words on the page.

That’s the seduction of writing. Some sentences, scenes or whole stories seem to spring fully-formed from my head. It’s such a sweet release to let them out; that, for me, is the best bit.

But then there’s all the sentences, scenes and stories that aren’t so easily born. Unfortunately, they make the majority of writing, and they’ve just got to be written. Otherwise, all you have is a stack of half-written gobbets lying on the hard drive or stuffed into an expanding file, like diced meat on the chopping board, waiting for a stew. No one can eat that raw meat, and no one can read those unfinished stories.

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New Scientist just put up on their website an article about sci-fi movies with the best science. I’m not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed that I’ve seen them all.

Here’s a tag line from each of New Scientist’s choices. Go on, take a guess!

• The ultimate trip.
• You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story.
• In space no one can hear you scream.
• There is no gene for the human spirit.
• There are some places man is not ready to go.

They are all pretty good choices, although for some more unusual alternatives have a read of the comments that follow the story.

It’s interesting that the science they focus on is that of space, genetics and the mind—these have been some of the true frontier-lands of science and technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. But what then of the many other exciting areas of science? I’m sure there are numerous movies which are not ostensibly sci-fi but which are still spot on with their science.

Thunder above, and I write words.

I write words about a fairy king who learns something of the whereabouts of his lost queen—but who fears terribly what there he might find.

Rain comes to me and I await the sudden dark, while winter comes to Fairy-land.

Wil Wheaton has a pretty interesting post about how it’s not better to be lucky than hardworking. He seems to make the argument that a few champions in high places beat any number of detractors in low places (I’m reading between the lines there), but that one’s own efforts count the most.

The post also satisfies its ostensible goal of giving a bunch of links to helpful writing resources, particularly for people interested in self-publishing.

To boot, Wheaton reveals that he too suffers from the that/which neurosis (which gives my blog it’s title, see?). It’s the silent killer, ladies and gentlemen, the silent killer.

As for my own hard work, I’m 900 words up on the previous count. Not so bad.

My wife Fiona asked me this evening why, when I spend all day at the computer at work, I still want to turn on the computer when I come home.

I said, with hardly a pause, that it’s because the computer and the Internet have become a part of the space in which I live, and I always know where I am. Being offline is like pretending Bristol doesn’t exist; but I always know where I am.

She said, and I agreed, that it’s kinda like the way I need to know what the weather is going to be tomorrow (so, you know, she understands me, mostly).

And, you know, I think it might be true…

I’m not sure whether to be pleased with this new realisation about how my brain works, amazed at the extent to which the abstract space of the Internet has invaded my sense of the world—or disturbed that I was able to pull such an answer to such a loaded question right out of my butt.

We went to the Empire and Commonwealth Museum today; after nearly three years in Bristol, it seemed like a good time to visit! For someone like myself who actually grew up in a Commonwealth country (Australia), it’s interesting to see how the Empire is now viewed from the Imperial side of things.

Of course, Australia is just a small part of the former British Empire, and a relative late-comer. Most of the exhibition focuses on Imperial Africa, North America and India. In particular, there is a special exhibition, “Breaking the Chains“, developed for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

I though the special exhibition was interesting, from a historical perspective, though fairly dry. In fact, the most emotive piece I saw was in the main museum: a metal collar attached to a smaller metal loop (a manacle or bracelet?) by 2m or so of chain. It’s an item that needs little introduction or interpretation: it’s essential purpose is awfully clear. It holds something of the fundamental wrongness, of the extremity of inhumanity, that is slavery.

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Not a bad week, all things considered: around 800 words on a variety of stories, but it’s all fiddly stuff so that represents more work than if it was entirely new stuff.

I’m having the most trouble with “Everything is Compounding”, which is proving to be the devil because I want the ending to be ambiguous. My attempts to fix it render the story too weak; it feels tacked-on, perhaps because it is.

On a side note, I’ve discovered the joys of having Mac OS X’s Speech service read back my text to me. The intonation is often not quite right, and sometimes terrible, but that doesn’t matter too much. It’s still handy for getting a fresh take on what I’ve written.

Nick Mamatas recently coined a term that seems to perfectly describe Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty as I reviewed it: “fantatwee — a portmanteau of twee and fantasy.”

Mamatas defines one of the major categories of ‘fantatwee’ as the unreconstructed fairy-tale. Now, Tchaikovsky, Petipa and Vsevolozhsky should probably be forgiven for failing, way back in 1889, to apply the techniques of postmodern literary criticism to Charles Perrault’s story. But The Sleeping Beauty isn’t just unreconstructed; to the original edifice they’ve added an extension with an en suite bedroom, patio, media room and wine cellar.

But, hey! The interest of many of The Sleeping Beauty’s audience nowadays is in recapturing the joy of ballet that they knew in childhood. ‘Fantatwee’ may be just what they are looking for.

I cut myself pretty badly the other day, worse than I’ve done in many a year. A sudden encounter with a brick wall took a chunk out of the skin of my right palm. It’s about the size of a 5 cent coin. Although it sounds bad, it didn’t hurt that much; possibly because my just-dislocated knee-cap was hogging my attention. But it has hurt since. A lot.

So, anyway, it occurs me that I can’t remember reading about this kind of thing in fiction.

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