Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Renegades of Funk“ by Rage Against the Machine

There has been a lot of buzz around the blogosphere recently about Copyright, so I thought I’d throw a few of my own ideas into the mix.

Cory Doctorow recently issued a call for writers to write a reply to SF novelist Mark Helprin’s call in the NYT for copyright to be extended eternally. I think it’s obvious to most writers that this is a Bad Idea. For an illustration of why this is so, crafted better than I ever could, read Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson.

Personally I cannot imagine a world of eternal copyright (although it would drastically cut down on the number of Bad News Bears rip offs that come out year after year). Imagine if you could no longer write about feuding families and star-crossed lovers because Shakespeare already did that? Or shipwrecks? Or gunfights at high noon? This is extreme, but you see what I mean.

On another note, due to the advent of POD technologies, Simon & Schuster has modified their boilerplate contract so that the rights to a book they purchase never revert back to the author (even if the book goes off market, or doesn’t sell any copies). They’ll own your book. Think of it. They could take your book off the market, not sell it ANYWHERE (even Amazon), and you could NEVER get it back. Ridiculous. Read SFWA’s response to this policy here.

Lastly, I just thought I’d throw this out there because it’s interesting. Landi Guidetti was recently sued for copyright violation for downloading 4 songs over the USC network. One of Cory’s students interviewed him. It’s damn interesting. Have a look.

What are your thoughts on Copyright? As authors, this is near and dear to our hearts. We make our livings on it. But technology is gradually rendering it obsolete. Or is it? How do you think technology will affect us?

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Love in an Elevator“ by Aerosmith

So I finished The Neverending Story by Michael Ende*in record time on my vacation and found myself in O’Hare airport with nothing to read. The only thing even faintly sci-fi in the pitiful bookstore I visited was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I picked it up because it’s the story of a man and a boy walking across a post-apocalyptic America in search of the world’s last canned food. Two things about this appealed to me. Another member of my writing group, Andrew LeBlanc, is writing a screenplay called “High Nuclear Noon on the Radiation Range” which is a similar and yet disturbingly different idea, and Oprah actually picked it for her book club. Which, in theory, should give the rest of us genre writers hope.

It doesn’t.

Judging from the writing, McCarthy is one of those pretentious literary authors who believe that the english language is their bitch. Commas have been deemed irrevalent. Contractions like can’t and don’t have had their apostrophes amputated (but, interestingly enough, “it’s” still has its punctuation (I’ll riff on this in the comments if anyone prompts me)). Mercifully, dialogue is given its own line (but no quotes). Even the lowly sentence isn’t spared. Check out some of these gems…

Deep stone flutes where the water dripped and sang.

Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake.

Its bowels, its beating heart. (okay, I lied, there are SOME commas but they’re as rare as a virgin on Hollywood Boulevard.)

Now, I’m an English minor, and thus, I was forced to read such literary excrement as James Joyce’s Potrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Normal humans don’t like these books. In fact, both were self-published. Even my lit prof, whose job it is to like Joyce, claimed that Joyce’s third book, Finnegan’s Wake was basically unreadable. You need to reach a certain level of pretentiousness before you can get into these books, and thankfully I haven’t hit that point yet.

Now, I’m not saying that McCarthy’s book is horrible. It’s a pain to read because of the above issues, but it’s actually quite well written. My objection is that he’s trying to artificially make his book literary by using these parlour tricks. He’s saying, “Look at me, I’m so good that you can like the book even though it’s a pain to read.” There’s a certain segment of the literary community that will like the book simply because of these parlour tricks. In my opinion, the book gained absolutely nothing from these stylistic indulgences.

I’ve said this before about Joyce’s work, and I’ll say it again about McCarthy’s. A great writer should be able to write masterpieces without resorting to Stupid Pet Tricks. Sure, break the rules if it adds to the work. In The Road, they don’t. McCarthy’s tactic is a cheap trick to get attention from the literary community. Unfortunately, it seems to have worked.

*The Neverending Story, the novel, is much, much better than the movie. The movie only covered the first third of the book, and the rest of the book is truly awesome. For instance, Bastain ends up raising an army and attacking Atreyu. The Ivory Tower is burnt to the ground. Many of the books true life lessons are contained in the last part of the book. It’s for kids for sure, but adults will love it. Highly suggested reading.

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Under Pressure“ by Queen

I’m not going to cover more ground here on how to avoid getting scammed. There’s TONS of material about that on the web already. But, as you know, part of the mission statement of this blog is to bring those resource to you. So, on that note, I’ll mention three very importants bookmarks no writer should be without.

The first one, of course, is SFWA’s very own Writer Beware. The page is maintained by the folks over at SFWA and contains warnings about larcenous literary agents, predatory publishers, and um evil(?) editors (no relation to the Evil Editor who, aside from some snarkiness, is generally a good guy).

The site is highly recommended. Some must read sections are the Thumbs Down Agency List and the Thumbs Down Publisher List.

And that brings us to our second spot. It’s A.C. Crispin’s and Victoria Strauss’ Writer Beware blog. The blog was definitely the right format for Writer Beware. Many dubious agencies change their names frequently to avoid bad publicity. These two writers have actually succeeded in putting fraudulent publishers in jail, so you know they’re serious. The site should be called “Con Men Beware”.

I’ll just mention the final resource briefly as I’m nearly late for dinner with dad. Preditors & Editors has numerous services available to writers, from agency listings that contain a “recommend” and “not recommended” tag, to lists of attorneys, awards, and publishers. The site also holds an annual “best of” e-awards contest for best zine, best story, best editor–you know, the usual categories. If the awards mean anything other than that the recipient has a strong web presence is up for debate, but any exposure is good exposure, right?

Anyways, that’s it for now. Upcoming posts will deal will tackle Amazon head on… so stay tuned for the carnage!

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Big Bang Baby“ by The Stone Temple Pilots

First of all, I went back to the old theme temporarily. There were some technical difficulties with “Simply Green”.

There’s been a lot of excitement in astronomy recently. A new planet has been located around the red dwarf star “Gliese 581″. There is much awesomeness in the Gliese system. The star is a mere 20 light years away which means it’s conceivable that an astronaut could reach the planet and return within a human lifetime. Further, it’s not a gas giant like nearly all previously discovered planets. It’s a rocky planet, like Earth, and its orbit is within the “Goldilocks” zone where it’s not too hot or too cold for life as we know it to exist.

Nothing fires the imagination like the discovery of a planet that could support life, so I thought I might toss this out there. What do you think life would look like on this planet?

The planet is twice as large as the Earth, and five times as massive, so that means a large iron (or possbily uranium) core. Think intense magnetic field. Because the planet is far larger than the Earth, gravity would be five times as intense, which means no tall creatures like giraffe, elephants, or even us humans. Think snakes or iguanas. Blood is a problem. Your heart would have to be incredibly strong to pump blood to the head, even in a relatively flat creature like a snake. Spongy flesh like our brain is probably impossible, so maybe a flat brain spread over much of their bodies would have to be the norm. Algae would flourish in this kind of environment.

The system is also home to a “super Jupiter” that orbits so close to the sun that the planet loses tens of millions of tons of gas a year to its hungry parent. This would periodically bake our rocky planet in vast doses of reflected radiation. The only way for life to survive this would be if our planet had a “super-ozone”, or, more likely, is covered in a vast ocean. So think underwater life. This might explain the lack of radio waves (SETI has checked the system twice).

Since the sun is a red dwarf it is much smaller than our own Sun. Our newfound planet is therefore able to orbit much closer in without getting cooked. Its “year” is only 13 days, and we’re not sure if it “wobbles”, which is the source of our seasons. But they’d probably have weather. In fact, it would be intense. Remeber that “Super-Jupiter” we mentioned earlier? Well, it might generate massive tides on our ocean world. It might even set up a kind of “standing wave” that passes with regularity over the surface of the planet. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Well, those are a few thoughts about life would look like on Gliese’s planet. What do you think life would look like? Got a picture in your head? GOOD! Now go out and write a story about it!

Hey guys,

Music to write by: “Starlight“ by Muse

Welcome to the second in my two-part series focusing on Writing.com. As I have already addressed the positives, in this post you’ll get to see just how far into the seething abyss of hatred I can sink (well, maybe not seething, gurgling perhaps). If you think this post is a little one sided, feel free to read the more upbeat post here.

Writing.com only works because writers post their work online to get critiqued, but here’s where we run into one of the more thorny legal issues that any writer needs to be aware of. If you post your work at Writing.com, many editors won’t buy it. This is because when you publish your work at Writing.com, you have to grant them non-exclusive rights to publish your work (or they wouldn’t be able to display it). Thus, your First North American Serial Rights are considered sold. Why? Because they’re called First North American Serial Rights (also known as First World Serial Rights). Your story has already been published, albeit non-exclusively, at Writing.com, so you cannot sell “First” rights.

One of Writing.com’s moderators writes:

Does posting my work on a Web site like Writing.com affect my ability to sell the work later?

Yes. Anything posted to Writing.com may be considered “published.” By publishing on Writing.com, you have granted Writing.com free, unrestricted, and non-exclusive electronic (storage and display) rights to the uploaded content. This is necessary to protect Writing.com, and it is a perfectly reasonable requirement.

Now, clearly, you cannot turn around and sell exclusive electronic rights to another publisher, because exclusive rights would infringe upon the rights you’ve already granted to Writing.com. These rights cannot be taken back by deleting the item or limiting the access to it. But what about other rights?

You retain most of those, and can sell them – if you can find a buyer. You can also sell non-exclusive electronic rights and derivative rights – again, if you can find a buyer. You cannot sell “all rights” because – remember – you have given away “non-exclusive electronic rights,” and that is a subset of “all rights.”

The problem, of course, is “if you can find a buyer.” Many publishers insist on buying “all rights.” Most want “previously unpublished” work. But what you consider “published” and what they consider “published” may be two different things. And it’s always best to be honest, because you can destroy any chances of selling your work to them or to their colleagues in the publishing field if word gets out that you’re trying to pass off “published” work as “unpublished.” Worse yet, you could land yourself in legal hot water by trying to sell rights you no longer own.

She confesses that she’s not a lawyer, but she does cite several legal sources. The full article is highly recommended reading as it applies to ANY site where you publish your work (even your personal website).

Another downside is that the site is only really effective for the beginning writer. Why? Well, the site is full of bad writing (Except, of course, for your writing [I heart my readers]). Here’s why: Writers need to sell their work, and when they do, they are not supposed to have it posted elsewhere. When work is good enough to be sold, it comes off the site. Yes, I said it. Nothing that’s good enough to actually get published is on Writing.com. Now there are exceptions, chiefly among the writers that fudge on the legal issues as mentioned above, or with those too afraid of rejection to sub anything. I used to post my trunk stories and stories that had been published but weren’t for the reprint market for one reason or another at the site. Since I’ve gotten good enough to sell my reprint rights I’ve stopped posting even those.

You are much better off reading any of the professional, paying magazines that are available online for free. If you need critiques on your work, form a critique group (More on that in a future post). And, of course, if you REALLY want to read a bunch of crappy writing, you could volunteer to be a slush reader at any of your local fiction zines. In fact, Catherine Knutsson, associate editor of Shimmer Magazine recommended it at NorWesCon as a great way to see what kinds of mistakes writers make and what kind of plots editors see all the time (more on that in an upcoming post).

Because of the anonymous nature of Writing.com, networking opportunities are few and far between. Sure, a lot of people have made friends at Writing.com, but actual editors are few and far between. For networking, you’re much better off finding a highly trafficked writer’s forum, and posting comments on *cough* a couple of your favourite blogs.

The myth of an editor trolling Writing.com and “discovering” your work is a fallacy. Editors have far too much work in their slush piles. You are much more likely to be approached by a shyster than anyone legitimate.

Writing.com was great for me as a beginner, but now I’ve moved on. The simply fact is that I learn more from reading actual, published writing than writing from other beginners. For me, the positives don’t outweigh the (substantial) negatives. Other critique sites abound, but in your charming narrator’s opinion, your best bet for constructive feedback lies in forming a scathingly honest critique group with other writers in your genre (More on how to do that in a future post).

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little series. Everything I written is just my opinion, but hopefully these posts have given you the resources you need to make your own decision about the site. Let me know what you think!