Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Literary & Genre Awards Watch

ITW, The International Thriller Writers association has announced the nominees for its 2009 Awards. That Jeffery Deaver's one seriously productive cat, isn't he? Two noms for Best Thriller of the year? That's a good get. BTW: I'm not an ITW member, but if you like thrillers as a genre, their website is worth checking out.

Who Is Scott?

Scott is...
  • a food dispenser for large feline life forms.
  • the genetic expression of mankind's desire to eventually become a scarecrow.
  • an evolutionary force for coffee's metamorphosis into words.

To Kindle or not to Kindle? Round II

I own thousands of books. Old-fashioned pasteboard, buckram, leather and paper. I love the written word in all its forms and the ebook is something I am very gradually coming to terms with over the Luddite impulses that have generally ruled my reading life.

As part of my ongoing internal wrestling match on the incipient eBook revolution, I've been researching the potential prizes and pitfalls of the current iteration of the phenomenon.  

The Defender... Awhile back, Newsweek Published this Op/Ed by Techie Geek Chic Jacob Weisberg In Defense Of the Kindle makes the argument that the Kindle - while clunky - is a step forward for struggling publishers and writers. He scores several good points regarding the inevitability of the e-book as a format and makes good mileage with his theme that "sure it stinks now, but do does every technology when it first comes out, be patient."

The ebook may well be inevitable. But is the Kindle?

A Kindle world is a world where your books are infinitely portable - as long as you don't lose your $400 Kindle reader. Your books don't belong to you, but you have a limited lease to read them, a very limited ability to loan them to others. I pick on the Kindle because it's the big fish and the easiest target, but this is a model that is propogating all over the place in various forms. The Sony eReader is much the same (also $400) a device that gives you access to a digital library of books that you can't really pass to the guy next to you on the airplane.  

Which brings us to our Challenger... Literary agent Michael Bourret wrote an interesting blog post at his agency's (DG) blog titled "Is Kindle a Danger To Ownership?" (He was apparently inspired by this article in the Christian Science Monitor.) Both Michael and CSM make a compelling case that our libraries are headed the way of our movies and music, down a road where the concept of "owning" a book you buy is a foreign concept and loaning a well-loved paperback to your friend is a thing of the past. Michael and CSM both point out that there is a middle ground, a path that does not take us down the Kindle road toward a third party claiming proprietary ownership of our libraries. A hybrid model where the purchase of a hardcopy comes with a free ebook version of the text is working for several publishers. A model that can reflect the current culture of a book as a possession, where the word-of-mouth can be accompanied by the load of a well-loved copy of the text. A loan that often leads to more sales for an author and a broadened fanbase.  

And then there's me... I'm still trying to make up my mind about the Kindle. To be honest, (aside from the price) the most significant drawback for me is the fact that you don't want to use an eReader in the bath tub or on a sandy beach. I like to read in circumstances that the eReaders of the world might consider "adverse conditions". My reading habits aside, I'm still torn on the whole thing. Like I said, the ebook might be inevitable, but the platform isn't necessarily. The idea of a world where we don't own the books we buy makes me intensely uncomfortable. As an avid collector of books, the very idea is anathema to me. I can come to terms with the idea that the ebook is an environmental necessity. That the forests of the world cannot support the creation of yet another mountain range of pulp paperbacks to match the ten or twenty the publishing industry has generated in the last hundred years or so. And with the written record of culture in the industrialized world growing exponentially, this is ever more true with each passing year.

Nevertheless, there are cross-platform formats available already which might mean we can avoid a Betamax-vs-VHS problem (and remember that the lesser of those two won that bout) between the Sony eReader and the Kindle and avert a future where the reader never feels that they own the book they hold in their hands. It's a future where recommending a new author or idea you just discovered to your friends necessitates either a broken law (or Terms of Use contract) or an immediate outlay of cash before they can see if you're right -- where such recommendations become less common thereby and word-of-mouth authors die on the vine.

In the snarl of Digital Rights Management and contracts and whathaveyou, the larger picture so often gets obscured... Whether it's ink or electrons, the growth or literary culture and the transmission of ideas depends largely upon the works belonging to the reader, not to the librarian.

---

Please let me know what you think of Kindle, the Sony eReader, and others as well as eBooks in general in the comments section.

From the "Science is only Fiction Until It Becomes Fact" file...

Ericsson unveils a virtual "Repo Man". I read a lot of Sci Fi when I was a kid. It amazes me a little to watch it all coming to life around me. It really is William Gibson's world, folks. We're just living in it...
"Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness..." ~Repo Man

Google -v- Microsoft (Round XXVII)

This just in from Wired Magazine... The much ballyhooed and groundbreaking (etc. etc.) Google Books copyright settlement hits a snag that looks suspiciously like a butterfly. eBooks is the new front in the Google-Microsoft wars? Great. Because what the transition from print to electronic books really needs is more chaos...

Monday, March 30, 2009

Would you like fries with your Twilight?

In a recent interview, Newsweek tried to deconstruct what made David Baldacci's books so damned buoyant despite the weight of negative opinions from the likes of the Newsweek and the New York Times.
"The suggestion that reading a thriller is a kind of civic obligation is questionable, to say the least, and there are plenty of people who dispute that reading potboilers encourages an engagement with more-demanding texts. [...] Baldacci offers a break—and people who care about books should care about him. Whether or not thrillers are crucial for democracy, they are certainly crucial for publishers. Where a more literary book might be considered a success if it sells 50,000 in hardcover, a novel by a writer like Baldacci can sell more than a million." www.newsweek.com/
This is an interesting article, not so much because it's about Baldacci but because even though the alleged premise of the article (as expressed in the subtitle) as a sort of populist defense of the thriller as a genre "David Baldacci's 16 books were all bestsellers. Why do people have such a problem with that?"

The interviewer makes a number of statements that make it clear she's not entirely on-board with her (assigned?) premise.

Baldacci isnt alone in ascending the bestseller lists while the literati stand aside in frustrated amaze. Literature maven Harold Bloom's dismay at the popularity of JK Rowling and her boy wizard is nearly legendary. Stephen King himself once infamously likened his books to the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large order of fries. Tasty and momentarily satisfying, but not good for you in the long run.

One gets the impression from some authors that they are embarassed at thier status as the MacDonalds of the bookworld. But what really tends to get me is the distancing of the literati from the very thing that is keeping the industry alive. As they stand aside and decry the blockbuster model that is keeping the presses rolling and the bookstores open, they live under the same tent that is held aloft by the Davinci Codes and Prisoner of Azkaban.

The backlash against genre writers lives in a world that has forgotten that Shakespeare was the equivalent of a sitcom writer for his age. A quill-for-hire who transcended his genre to ascend the heights of historical figures whose very existence will be forever debated. So many of the great classics of our time were salvaged from the slushpile of history by a mixture of lucky happenstance and an author who didn't care what the critics of his or her time had to say and kept plugging away at the quill or typewriter or computer keyboard.

Will future generations see Baldacci as the Dostoevsky of our time? Perhaps not. Will Stephanie Meyer be looked upon by our literary heirs as the unheralded Jane Austen of our age? Not bloody likely. Nor will JK Rowling for that matter, though she might be our JM Barrie or EB White.

I'm constantly reminded as I read articles like the one in Newsweek what the always-pithy GK Chesterton said in an essay about detective fiction:
"By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece."
I was working at the bookstore when the two biggest phenomena of recent eras began and ran their course. What is often forgotten is that JK Rowling's bestseller status was built upon word of mouth. Advanced Reading Copies were sent to booksellers and the story captured their imaginations. The strange little kids fantasy novel broke out as the booksellers recommended it over and over again to teacher and parent alike. I should have held onto my ARC of Sorceror's Stone. I still have my reader's copy of Davinci Code -- which is ironic since I enjoyed Rowling's little book and didn't so much care one way or the other about DC. Nevertheless, I was there when it came down the pipe and read it before most people.

My personal feelings about both books aside, it was almost amusing to watch as the esteem of the booksellers and literati who frequented my store waned in the face of growing commercial success. You can't be good and popular at the same time. That's just the way it is!

Both narratives have problems which I will discuss at another time. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series has similar flaws in the execution of the ideas to the point where I would put them on a descending scale with Rowling at the top, Dan Brown in the middle and Meyer at the bottom. Yet all three caught the crest of the wave, defied the dismay of their critics and built empires bolstered by their many imitators.

Are they good? That's not for me to say. There are better out there, for certain. But that doesn't invalidate the opinions of the masses. I'm not about to argue for market-driven literary criticism, but the pooh-poohing that happens every time Baldacci, King, Brown, Rowling and Meyer put a new book in the stores ignores a very germane element of their stories that undercuts the criticism: They're obviously telling stories that resonate -- stories we want to hear. Manifest in their sales data and the adherence of their fans.

As he was lambasting Stephanie Meyer as a hack, even King took a moment to point out that the strength of her books is the resonance of the stories she tells. Davinci Code, Harry Potter, and pick-your-thriller by Baldacci (or anyone else) all have one thing in common... they are all crafted from archetypal stories that resonate from a time when such tales were told to stave off the darkness that edged in from the corners of the wilderness beyond our firelight. Some of them are the tales told by the children at a campfire in the backyard, but those stories are simply smaller echoes of the greater tales being related at the fires of the grownups.

In the Newsweek interview, Baldacci suggested that reading thrillers was a democratic institution, a blow struck for literacy. The Newsweek interviewer sniffed at the very idea, but he was right. He was right because the more we tell stories, the greater our hunger grows for more. Every book put into the hands of someone who might not otherwise be willing to read one is a victory for literacy. I don't care what imprint the book has on the spine or who the author is, when people are reading, literacy wins. And one way or another, a literate nation will take care of the industry that feeds its need.

This doesn't necessarily mean we will always throw the greatest literary heroes up the bookcharts, but the taller and stronger the tentpoles that bolster the industry, the better chance the unheralded geniuses have of getting into the tent at all.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Coffee Break

Physics Central asks: "How long would you have to yell to heat a cup of coffee?"



Answer: Zero minutes, of course. One should never heat a cup of coffee. Once the coffee is brewed, it should be enjoyed at the temperature at which it was brewed on a declining scale as it cools and new flavors are made available to the palate.

Trick question, but some really neat math. ("Really neat math" now there are three words I never thought I'd say.) Though... come to think of it, yelling at my coffee is not, like, an unknown occurrence.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing...

Note: Any rumors you might have heard as to the existence of "Free Kittens" are to be regarded with suspicion. "Free Kitten" is an oxymoron. When I spend my time in veterinary waiting rooms, you get reminiscences of novels past.

You have been warned. (The cats are doing just fine, btw... the little pickpockets) ~ Scott

---

I began writing my first novel in the fourth grade. Every writer says that, I suppose, but it's worth dwelling on these things on rainy days. Where was I? Oh! Right... The Fourth Grade. 

I can’t say for certain that it was the cause of me taking up the pen at this time, but it happened to be the point when dad began handing me Things To Read. Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain… dad's desert island list of great authors and titles. I didn’t like White Fang but I loved Treasure Island. I just couldn’t get into Dracula or Frankenstein, and didn’t much like Ivanhoe.

I had opinions and wasn’t afraid to express them (except for White Fang which I pretended to like because for some reason it seemed like I should) and dad guided me in the directions my tastes seemed to be leading. I can’t say this injection of classics to the juvenile paper I was shifting was the tipping point toward being a writer. I can say with 100% certainty that it’s the reason my boyhood reminiscences are often woven of wildly divergent and overlapping themes and reading levels. To this day, I never disdain to read a book that was "beneath" me and never feared to assay a book that was allegedly above me. Don't worry; if I don't know something, I'll raise my hand. That's what parents, encyclopedias and dictionaries are for, after all.

If I enjoy it, or think I might enjoy it, I read it. I don’t much care in what section of the bookstore or library it is shelved. Jack P. McGurk, Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, Henry Mulligan & Homer Snodgrass stood alongside Tom, Huck, Holmes & Watson in the misty byways of my imagination. These guys joined Allan Quartermaine & Henry Curtis, David Balfour & Jim Hawkins in a sort of prototype for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I’m sorry to say Mina Harker wasn’t there, but I don’t really like Epistolary fiction). This reading list – you might note – was very very Boy’s Life. It's only to be expected. Anne of Avonlea doesn't hold a lot of interest for a fourth grade boy (at least it didn't for me).

The television programs I watched and the movies I enjoyed were of the same stripe. I don’t personally believe that this is the Bad Thing that some make it out to be – I turned out just fine, after all with a fully-developed sense of myself in relation to the other gender. I’m personally convinced that one’s attitudes are only formed by one’s fictional choices when there are no countervailing parental attitudes to balance them out. But what do I know?

All of this is a long way around to telling you that I first put pencil to loose-leaf page at the point in my life when active imagination and play is still encouraged yet the real world has become real. As real as the world has ever been for me, anyway. A binder or notebook of clean paper is very much the same as a blank sketchbook to me: Meant To Be Filled. What are you waiting for, kid? Grab a #2 pencil and get crackin’!

The adolescent novel is a direct reflection of all the things you’ve read or seen on the screen up to that point. Everything that you’ve enjoyed and absorbed gets melded and regurgitated in some manner. The verbal equivalent of a Rorschach Inkblot. My literary alter-ego was named “Indiana Perkins” and all the rest of the characters were my schoolmates, focused through the lens of some pop-culture phenomenon ranging from The A Team to Goonies (heavy on the Goonies).

If I was in fourth grade now, I imagine it would be heavy on the Harry Potter. Thus is life.

Lest I take all the credit for this, it's time to confess that I had a co-author. A schoolmate signed on to co-write this piece. Gannon was more popular than I, and being a kid who was painfully shy, insular, unathletic and never “popular” in any real sense of the term. I was the kid that spent his life pretending to be someone else somewhere else -- not because where I was or what I was doing was bad but because it provided a buffer between me and a world that gave me panic attacks. Anyway, Gannon’s name on the cover page made what I/we were doing almost cool, or at least acceptable to the other kids. At the very least, it became a bit less weird. I was only too honored to share the byline (and frequently the blame).

The premise was that of a school trip to another city gone awry, hijacked midflight by terrorists who took our class hostage (Pan Am Flight 73 had a huge impact on us). In the ensuing story, the kids banded together (led by my character and my buddies) in a MacGuyver/A Team sequence of events which were spiced with a healthy dose of Mad Scientist Club for spice. I would credit Toy Soldiers, but it came long after this, no doubt germanated in the fertile imagination of some other kid.

It was fun. It got taken away at various times by various teachers (I never lost a comic book to a teacher, they took away my novel) and it didn't get finished until grade five, but I had a blast writing it. It also taught me more than any writing teacher before or since. I discovered authorial voice and writing my own novel taught me to really LOOK at the things I was reading and watching on TV and I began to understand how to structure a story and how to write dialogue.

My playtime shifted accordingly. My GI Joe men stopped being GI Joes and began taking on personas of my own creation, each with a back-story I created independent of what Hasbro might have put on the back of the box. They worked through full story arcs with complex twist endings and the tale frequently ended badly. They waged personal conflicts, sought revenge for past slights, investigated mysteries, got involved in Flemingesque dramas… and when I discovered Tolkien and Fritz Leiber, I even created medievalish costumes for them out of craft felt and pounded nails flat to make swords and daggers. Shakespearean tragedies and even a strange version of The Ring Cycle were acted out on the conrete floor of my parents' basement.

What that first novel did not teach me was how to collaborate. It should have, but it didn’t. I would like to tell you that ultimately I was far more into it than my coauthor and believed far more strongly that it was worthwhile. Both of those things are/were true but really it’s because I wanted to make things so complex that for other people it began to look like work rather than play.

Or so I guess, I don’t really know because I wasn’t yet self-aware enough to make enquiries.

My penchant for ignoring what was so obvious and prepackaged didn’t enamor me of the other children in any case. In my life I rarely had more than one friend at a time. Honestly this was owing about half to the tendency to live inside my own head to the exclusion of all else, and the rest was because I rarely got through half the explanation of what I was doing or wanted to do before the other kids lost interest.

I would give almost anything to have a copy of that novel. Alas that it has fallen into the dust of history, remembered only by me (and maybe Gannon) as yet another book that only I remember with characters and an author that only I know are missing from the pages of Books In Print.

---
Photo by Me ... from my collection of antique children's books

Thursday, March 26, 2009

They're on to us!!!

Red Alert! Red Alert! Red Alert!!

Our spies at the New York Times are reporting that the jock-strap crowd is finally catching on to our secret weapon!

It's almost nice to see that someone is finally noticing something writers, academics & philosophers (you know... nerds) have known for centuries. Think the introduction of coffee corresponding with the advent of the enlightenment was a coincidence?

Oh, I forgot. The (thoroughly caffeinated) nerds are the ones assigned to keep track of that kind of thing. We can make you stronger, faster, better than ever before! We have the tools, we have the technology... we have the espresso machines. Steve Austin wasn't really bionic. We just patched him up, handed him a Starbucks Card and sent him on his way, pocketing a cool ten million (minus the cost of bandaids and Steve''s Latte addiction).

Who knows where this epiphany might lead? The International Olympic Committee needs to hurry up and ban this "newly-discovered" performance-enhancing drug before all of our star athletes are sitting around in cafes, drinking lattes, talking and generally trying to make actual, measurable contributions to society.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Anniversary

Kristin & I just stepped across the invisible threshold between our ninth and tenth years of marriage. Yes... nine years ago today, we were racing around Omaha trying to get married, track down the missing rings (the jewelry store screwed up the order) and make it to our second wedding of the day. And we haven't slowed down since! All my love, my dearest Kristin! -Scott

Hangin' With the Prez

barack obama see more Political Pictures

Humpday Randomness

Speak the Speech J. Michael Staczynski of Babylon 5 fame has called for a conspiracy of likeminded individuals to bring the very-Shakespearean word "Anon" back into common parlance. This is a word I use already (one of many old words peppered through my vocabulary, I fear) and I want to take this opportunity to join J. Michael in encouraging its further dissemination. Anon: adverb 1. Immediately (arch. Chaucer, OED), 2. An indeterminate time after: "I shall see thee anon." 3. Presently or Immediately 4. In the famed "Baclony Scene" of romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare displays the slang form of "Anon" prevalent in his time as a word of delay or putting-off, roughly equivalent to the modern child saying "Just a minute..." when their parent wants them to set aside their video game to take out the garbage. Coffee-Tracker Swedish furniture store chain Ikea, generally known for instant furniture with funny names, also offers an assortment of foods in their cafe. They have to, the stores are so big, you would need porters to carry your provisions if they didn't provide them. Anyway, beyond the standard meatballs and Lutefisk they also have on offer a passable cup of Joe (Cup of Sven?) which now includes a service on their website that allows you to literally trace your bag of Ikea coffee back to the grower! Which is just freaking cool. Also, Ikea now has "Rib Night" on Wednesday nights. Which is somewhat random but who can argue with barbecue? Anon, everyone!

Show Me Literacy

My Home State is in the news. Last Wednesday, the Toys For Tots Literacy Foundation awarded Alferd Williams, 71 of Saint Joseph, Missouri the first-ever Alferd Williams Literacy Award. (Not to detract from the accomplishment or anything, but don't you think he was a shoe-in since it's named after him and all?) 

Alferd is one of those heartwarming tales people tend to think are the sole preserve of Hollywood: son of a sharecropper who finally got the chance to attend school at the age of 69. Finally a third-grader, Alferd is being recognized for putting himself through something that most of us either take for granted or wouldn't go through again if you paid us (or a mixture of both).

Literacy is something we hold too lightly in this country as it is, so I want to take any opportunity to give the focus on the people who are doing something about it. Toys For Tots, Edison Elementary School in St. Joe and their prizewinning pupil, Alferd Williams... way to go, one and all. That's seriously cool.

 Read more at the Toys For Tots foundation. A very worthy cause if you've a charitable thought cross your mind while you're there.


Map of Missouri photographed by Jeff Kopp and used under Creative Commons License

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Pitching Potter...

Pronoun Trouble

We don't say He's or She's when we're giving possession to him or her, do we? We don't say You's when we're giving something to you, either. (At least not in sections of the country removed from Appalachia or the Ozarks) So what causes anyone draw the conclusion that "it's" is the correct possessive form of "it"?

"It" is a pronoun. One of the blessed few English pronouns that is entirely free of gender, and as such it is deucedly useful if it is used correctly. To create possessive or plural forms of any pronoun, the word actually changes to another form of the word to impart the new meaning.


Thus, he has his problems and she has hers and you have yours. It most definitely does not have it's problems. As such, "it" changes form when it is made possessive or plural. "It" becomes "Its", which (despite appearances) is actually an entirely new word. It's not the old one with an apostrophe stapling an "s" onto its butt.

The apostrophe is only used to denote a contraction of "it" and "is". It has its problems; it's that simple.

Before the anti-snarks warm up their computers to scan for every grammatical error I've ever made, I should point out that I am not perfect and do not claim to be. My punctuation sometimes appalls and I've a strange affection for ellipses. Likewise, I'm not snarking about typos or the people who make them. Using "It's" when you mean "Its" is an example of using the wrong word entirely. They look and sound similar but aren't the same. That's the trouble with phonics.

And it's not snobbery; it's just me trying to be sure I fully grok what it is you want to say in all its wonder and nuance.

Monday, March 23, 2009

A Refresher

Before reading further, please read the "Terms of Use"
  • The words "Novel" & "Blog" appear in the subtitle as nouns, not adjectives. I'm writing one of each.
  • Novelty is in the eye of the beholder.
  • Safety goggles or really Cokebottle nerd glasses should be worn at all times.
  • If you should get any novelty in your eye, flush with water and seek medical help immediately.
  • Nothing found herein should be construed as the entire view of the author or anyone else living, dead or existing in an indeterminate state caused by fluctuations in space and time.
  • Improper application may cause excessive coffee drinking, insomnia, Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror and the urge to type into the wee hours of the morning.
Read at your own risk.

Admiring the Crime Scenery

You know that show? That popular one where they solve murders in less than forty minutes using science?

No, no, the other one... not that one, the other one... yeah, that one!

Anyway, I no longer watch television, but I'm willing to bet that it hasn't changed much. Every couple episodes at least - they walk into an otherwise clean-looking room, shine a blacklight on the walls and show you that you can't clean up a crime-scene good enough to foil the coppers! Science prevails.

One wonders why these over-abundant and allegedly hyper-intelligent serial killers don't watch these shows or read one of the ten-thousand books out there on how to get away with it, and think to pack along an enzymatic protein-destroying spray cleaner and UV Flashlight on this premeditated murder spree through such random and unrelated cities as Las Vegas, Miami and New York.

Wellllllllll... Mass Murderers and Psycho-Killers fret no more! The folks over at Dirt Devil have taken the liberty of doing the thinking for you! The innocuously-named "Dirt Devil SE3890 Purpose for Pets Portable Extractor" (obviously named by their legal department) has the portability you need, with an on-board LED UV lighting array to show you where those pesky blood stains are hiding!

Sometimes, I wish my brain didn't immediately jump to these conclusions when looking at this sort of thing, but hey! Someone has to do it or you'd all be bored.

Friday, March 20, 2009

I'm a Crastination Pro!

When I'm stuck for something to write about, sometimes I type random searches into Google just to see what crops up and order begins to emerge from the random patterns of the Internet... Chaos theory is very real for me or it might just be magic. Hard to say. 


ITEM #1 The Rum Cake Fairy Google Search: Rum Cake I have nothing funny to say about this other than to say that the person that wrote the business plan that got them the venture capital to back this enterprise must've been a freaking genius!

ITEM #2: Batman Arrested for wearing a mask! Google Search: Jester coffee supreme (Yeah, I didn't think I'd get anything either) It's a hard-knock life being a brooding super hero. For instance, did you know that it's illegal to wander around wearing a mask in public in Tampa Bay? This guy didn't either, which almost led to incarceration until Superman swooped in and... um... yeah, he got off on a technicality.

Sheesh! Next thing you know, they'll outlaw sending signals with a spotlight! Remember folks: When bat signals are outlawed, only outlaws will have bat signals...

ITEM #3: The art museum on the moon. Google Search: "Moon Museum" I actually knew about this and forgot about it until it cropped up in my wanderings.... You know how artists and bohemians move into an area and turn the warehouses into lofts and art galleries and eventually everyone wants to live there so the Yuppies move in and the artists go off to find new territory they've yet to conquer? Greenwich Village in New York, LODO in Denver, Belltown here in Seattle... the list is endless. Well I think they finally ran out of places because they're trying to do it on the moon.

I'm sure that any day now Starbucks will open a store on the Sea of Tranquility and the artists will be able to move on to making Mars the hip new spot in the solar system.

An open letter to Pope Benedict

Your Holiness,

The day you understand that your Lexan fishtank is a prophylactic against death and dutifully abstain from its use, then and only then may you lecture others for availing themselves of the same protection.

In the depths of AIDS-ravaged Africa, the latex prophylactic is a decision to shield one's self from death. The impediment to fathering a child is incidental at that point. Wives acquire HIV from their husbands, children from their mothers, husbands from their wives. If the rate of infection can be stemmed, and it takes a condom, what right have you to criticize those who would insulate themselves from the poor decisions of others?

The roots of the AIDS crisis in Africa are deep and will require more than one solution. Poverty and personal behavior play their roles. There are many laudable long-term solutions to the crisis, none of which will be possible if we do not stem the rate of infection now.

We have, right now, on option available that has proven to reduce infection rates and give all of us the time we so desperately need to find real solutions to the other parts of the equation.

Shame on you sir. The damage your careless words caused cannot be measured among the faithful of your flock, it can only be mitigated. Look to the plank in your own eye ere you poke your finger into the eye of another who is just trying to survive the day.

Sincerely, etc.
Scott
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? " Matthew 7:3

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Thursday Thoughts on Intergalactic Hitchhiking


"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. " - Douglas Adams
According to the official Douglas Adams blog, celebrated children's author Eoin Colfer has written a new installment to the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which will be appropriately entitled "And Another Thing..."

As a long time fan, I'm not sure how I feel about that, though I love Eoin's writing and I'm willing to give it a shot. I do wonder if he's going to be building it upon the foundation of the story Douglas was in the middle of when he died.

Posthumous additions to a writer's oeuvre are always a dicey issue. Either it's something the writer didn't think was worth publishing at the time or a hired gun trying to remake the writer's work in their own image. Sometimes it's just correspondence and biography, but more often than not it fails to live up to the genius that spawned it.

You may remember that the aforementioned work-in-progress found on Douglas's laptop was packaged with some letters and speeches he'd given during his life and published in its unfinished form as "Salmon of Doubt". As is so often the case with these things, it showed flashes of the genius we missed, but failed to sate the appetite.

Which brings us to Eoin. He's been hired to continue the Hitchhiker's Saga. Which will be quite a trick since when last we left our trepid heroes (no I didn't mistype, trepidity was part of their charm) at the culmination of "Mostly Harmless" they had just died. Not that this is necessarily a deal breaker in the Douglas Adams universe.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep an open mind... if only because of the trust I have for Eoin. Here he is talking about it on his blog:

 

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Scottie Potter and the Endless Influenza

Whether it's the pallor in that candlelit video post or simply because my posts have been less than voluble of late, people are starting to cotton to the fact that I've been ill.

This flu (or whatever the heck it is) has swept through the college where I work, wreaking havoc in the student body and most especially the faculty and staff who think they're getting over it only to be struck down yet again.

You would think antibodies would be good for something.

It's been so bad that my desk now has a red file marked "Pestilence" where I keep all the tracking information pertinent to this plague year. Because such things might be of value to future historians charting the downfall of our civilization.

I've actually been fortunate insomuch as I managed to stave it off until last week despite my wife and all my coworkers being struck down. Give credit to the coffee. My immune system's a little hyperactive. Alas, I've been off the coffee for three straight days, and I'm hating it. Looking back at my journal, it seems I spent this exact same week last year doing much the same thing. What's up with that? Should I ask for this week off in advance next year?

C'est la vie.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Kindle-ing

How much trouble can one website's piece of proprietary technology cause? Amazon's Kindle might be going for the record previously held by Napster.

Jon Hendricks, the founder of Discovery Communications Inc has lodged a claim against Amazon over the Kindle's ecryption technology. Hendricks claims to have filed a patent for an e-Reader with an encryption/decryption protocol that is close enough to that used by the Kindle to warrant a claim of infingement.

The patent in question - US Patent # 7,298,851 - was issued 20 November 2007 with a filing date of 21 September 1999. While I am by no means ignorant of the mechanics of computers, I'm not a patent attorney, or a cryptanalyst. So parsing the technical details of this is a bit beyond me. If you are either of those things, let me know. I'd love to hear a professional take on this. I'll buy you a cup of coffee.

The stories I have read thus far in major media outlets do not make clear why his patent is dated the same month Kindle debuted (Novemer 2007). Since my wife is an engineer, I am all too aware of the long lead-times incumbent in the debut of any new product. This means the Kindle's existence, including the hardware and (presumably) the encryption software would have been in-place long before they began rolling off the assembly line. (We'll ignore for the moment my surprise that Discovery was apparently thinking of the eBooks as their next venture.)

We have all basically accepted that, eventually, the eBook will be the new paradigm for publishing. When and how are the only concerns yet to be addressed. Much though I love the feel of a physcial book of pasteboard, buckram and paper, I too look forward on some level to a day when a library will look suspiciously like a hard drive from which you download your daily reading.

The battle now isn't over whether we will enter a world of wholly-electronic books. It's about when. How the rights will be paid and controlled. And what parts of the old system shall have to be sacrificed to make way for the new one. And whose technology will dominate that new market. How the authors and publishers will be able to make a living from this new marketplace. Readers who need to be convinced that a book you cannot touch is worth every bit as much as one that you can. That the ideas and the content are what constitutes the value as opposed to the physical object of paper and paste.

Nevertheless, the battle of the moment is who owns the technology. But what's at stake is the idea of what is a book? And what is that worth to you? Print isn't dead, and I'm not sure any of us will live to see it's utter demise, but it is in transition from one phase to the next. And the future is as wide open as the lawyers will allow it to be...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Lighting a Candle

My friends, please allow me to introduce you to a blogger named John Green. John is a New York Times bestselling "Young Adult" author and another fighter in the effort to convince people to view each other with an empathy borne of seeing thier complexity. He is enormously popular and never fails to make the effort to guide his (mostly young) fan-base to involve themselves in charity and projects to reduce the amount that the world sucks rather than just sitting in their rooms complaining about it. Awhile back, I posted some musings about setting aside our preconceived notions about other -people and becoming aware of the self-imposed obstacles that keep us from seeing others as being as whole and complete as we are. I suggested that only by imagining others as whole and complete beings of a kind with ourselves despite being wholly independent and ultimately unpredictable, we could find a deeper empathy. (And from that deeper look into the soul of others, our writing and characterization could not help but get better thereby.) I was accused of being "too PC". Which is fine. There are certainly enough people in the world trying too hard to be correct at the expense of reality. I would like to emphasize that I'm actively trying to avoid that. Which brings me to why I was standing in my library with a lit candle last night. 15 years ago next month, 1,000,000 people were murdered in a small African country in a matter of 100 days. They were butchered for being from the wrong tribe. Because one tribe could not imagine the other as being as fully-human as they saw themselves. Imagine that. A city roughly twice the population of Seattle being murdered in a little over three months. For no better reason than the fact that they were Seattlites. You cannot get much closer to defining evil than a total lack of empathy for one's fellow man to the point where you no longer see them as worthy of life.
“There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today... they are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters.” -Simon Weisenthal
Weisenthal is right. We dare not forget. And the people of Rwanda feel forgotten. They feel that the world outside their country has failed to remember the lessons of the tragedy that erupted just fifteen years ago. They too feel that Weisenthal is correct. We dare not forget. Fifteen years on, Rwanda is a different country. A country that survived the worst imagineable atrocities and has begun to reconcile. And now it is our turn to tell them that we have not forgotten. To remind them that they are not alone. Hence the candle. Last night, John Green posted this video from his hotel room in Amsterdam (where he is on a book tour) to publicize the website candlesforrwanda.org.
The YouTube community, in conjunction with John & his brother Hank, along with the (of all people) Harry Potter Alliance are calling for 30-second videos of people holding candles and telling the people of Rwanda that we have not forgotten what happened. That we will not forget. An online candlight vigil for the victims of 15 years ago. This is an experiment of sorts. A chance for the world community to remind itself that the triumph of evil is imminent when good people do nothing. Remind ourselves of the horrible cost of turning up the music so we won't have to listen when the woman next door is being beaten. In light of our nation's tepid reaction to the crisis in Darfur, that's a tough sell, and it's going to take more than a candle to get it done. Thirty seconds of video tape, a quarter inch of candle, and a match. The videos will be posted on the website and some will be played in Rwanda during a ceremony to commemorate the tragedy. Reminders that the world noticed. That the world has not forgotten.
One candle won't change anything. One hundred won't either. One thousand is getting there. The amazing thing about a candle is that it can light another without diminishing itself. And that one can light another, and another. Until the whole world is alight without any one candle being dimmed by the simple act of lighting its neighbor.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Not Ghoulish Enough For You?

Heads up writers! Newsweek says we're not killing enough people. Or rather that we're not doing it with enough pathos and with a decent page count. 

Apparently the readers (well, the readers at newsweek anyway) want to see more slow, literary descents into the depths of the wasting illnesses.

Do you agree?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section! 

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Clive Cussler is having a bad day...

The NYT reports that Clive Cussler's been ordered to pay $13.9 million to defray the legal fees of the company behind the action/adventure bomb "Sahara"! Cussler sued the production company for failing to uphold the stipulation in his contract that he get final script approval. Crikey!

The naming of Scotts is a difficult matter... (updated!)

This site tells me that my first name is the 32nd most popular male name in the United States. There are an estimated 7 gagillion Scotts wandering around. Ok. That's an exaggeration. In the 2005 census there were about 790,000 of us.

That's not as impressive as 7.8 million Jameses or 4.7 million Johns, but Scotts don't have any Biblical figures doing the PR for us, so I think we've done pretty well for ourselves. In fact, almost every name above us has an historical connotation from the Bible (Michael 3.8 million), Royalty (Charles 2.2 million) or the occaisional duck (Donald 1.3 million, though Daffy is strangely absent from the list -- I suspect fowl play). The Garys (948,000), Jose's (894,000) and Scotts keep plugging along at respectable numbers with no publicity like a band that doesn't get any backing from their label and no one will admit to liking, but keeps putting up serious sales numbers anyway.

Basically, we're the Rush of male baby names.

In semi-related news: Just another Scott is now offering his wisdom 140 characters at a time. What a bargain!
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UPDATE: After some thought, the name of the account is now @pages2type


Monday, March 9, 2009

Portrait of the Playwright

Thanks Becky! I read the story, but almost missed this...


"On Monday in London, Stanley Wells, the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, unveiled what he claims is the only picture of William Shakespeare painted during the playwrights lifetime.


"As Time magazine explains: The picture has languished for centuries at Newbridge House, home base of the Cobbe family outside Dublin, where until recently no one suspected it might be a portrait of the Bard. 


"Then, three years ago, a member of the family that has owned the painting for generations, an art restorer named Alec Cobbe, noticed during a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Britain that a painting of Shakespeare then on loan from the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is believed to be a copy of an earlier one, strongly resembled a painting in his own family's art collection."

Random thoughts on a (snowy) Monday Morning...

In the Earbuds: "The Statue Got Me High" by They Might Be Giants
In the Mug: Organic Ethiopian Harrar (Valhalla again... they'll get that website back up eventually; they're currently moving to new digs) A light city, almost cinnamon roast with a rich aroma so thick you can almost cup it. A finish like a yong red wine.

It is 9 March, 2009 and the novel formerly known as Ex Libris is as polished as it's going to get. Time to send it out once more to find new in the inboxes of agents and editors. Sigh... it's the writer's equivalent of an "empty-nest". Time to make a new ki... um... novel. Or get another cat. (Hi mom!)

Fan Wikis I really need to give a shout out to fans with free time. Above I linked to They Might Be Giants' fan wiki (Appropriately called "This Might Be A Wiki". These decentralized fan-cyclopedias are all over the internet. Take a gander at the West Wing, Star Wars, Heroes and Harry Potter wikis. All of them containing content created, edited and maintained on a volunteer basis. In the context of our allegedly waning culture, Yeats is often trotted out re: "Things fall apart: the center cannot hold." It's amazing and more than a little amusing to see the alleged "Sub" cultures shedding their subcatagories and creating new poles to prop up that mythical center. Among the minutia and cataloging of details the world without couldn't care less about, these people are unifying and interacting on the cultural nexes that created these shared experiences. For every tidbit of rabid fandom there is an ongoing discussion of the shared experience itself. A shared understanding that There Is Meaning Here. Or maybe wikis are just the new water coolers.


Ben Franklin's little joke... An hour is child's play! Spring forward and lose two weeks' sleep! Daylight savings time is a topic I come back to at least twice a year. I hate it. With a passion. Apparently, it's probably not even as good for the planet/energy consumption as some of its proponents want you to think. We wake up an hour early once a year and an hour late once a year and (at my latitude) drive to and from work in the dark because someone keeps messing with the clock. I'm more than half convinced that Ben Franklin is watching us from wherever he ended up and saying "Geez, guys I was just kidding. Sheesh!" Once upon a time, DST had the sole salutary aspect that it coincided with the Vernal Equinox. My lost hour of sleep marked the first day of spring. I almost felt virtuous for the hour I had to take in a mug. Thanks to Bush's ill-advised tinkering with the calendar, it's still two weeks until the equinox. And Mother Nature doesn't like getting up early any more than I do. 

There's two inches of snow out there and more falling. Mom wants to go back to bed for two more weeks. So do I. But I have pages to write...

Have a good week everyone.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Daylight Wasting Time

On sleepless nights, by tempest tossed, 
I wait for the bleary day to start. 
My mug will catch the hours lost; 
Strong as death and as black as his heart. 


 - Scott



Saturday, March 7, 2009

Good News/Bad News

Red Room is getting some notice, which is nice... Red Room -- Facebook for Authors? And Borders is closing stores, which is not so nice... Borders Closes Chicago Flagship I worked for Borders for years. Joined up under the 'old guard' as they were generally known, when the company was like a giant group of loosely-affiliated independents. Those were the days. It's sad to see them floundering, not just because of what it means for my friends who still work there (though many of them fell during the recent round of quiet layoffs) but also for the brick & mortar bookselling as a whole.

Friday, March 6, 2009

In Media Res

Currently in the earbuds: "RE: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton
Currently in the mug: "Mandolin Blend" from Valhalla Coffee Roasters of Tacoma (My current favorite local roaster. Mid-weight and musky...)

Brief update: I'm up to my elbows in nouns and verbs as I strip adverbs from my manuscript and perform other "polishing" tasks prior to submission. I've taken this novel I wrote several years ago and attacked it, re-named it, and now I'm spending some quality time acquainting it with red pen and a pad of neon Post-It Notes. It is so thoroughly adorned with neon flags that it looks like an advancing army of new wave bands. The toughest part of writing for me is deciding where to begin the story. My introspective nature has to be subjugated and the story has to jump into the readers lap and grab them. This is compounded by the fact that an untested writer has to send in the first few chapters, or the first 50 pages to agents and publishers as proof that they can write. Too often it's all an agent sees except for the query letter. Which means that the beginning has to sing. It has to rock.

So it's getting polished.

 The Pacific Northwest Writer's Association sent me my membership information this week. I'm not sure why I was nervous about that, but I was. Probably because I'm still a bit taken aback by the 'handshaking' aspects of being an author. I will be attending the PNWA summer conference 30 July-2 August. The keynote address to be given by Terry Brooks was icing on the cake, really. Though it does make me feel a bit better for missing the opening weekend of another event I attend annually. It's going to be a long weekend.

I'm looking forward to it. Honest.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Questions to answer before I write... Part II

The continuation of Questions to answer before I type. (Parental guidance suggested.) In this episode, Scott continues answering the random questions of his readers. This leads to riffs on monkeys, birds, MacGyver, love, dating and booting in the junk (with a brief foray into corporate law). If it looks choppy, it's because I kept interrupting myself by laughing at the questions.

This Is An "Important" Sign

Can I get an "Amen"?

  fail owned pwned pictures

see more pwn and owned pictures

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Interview Yourself

There are so many blog quizzes flying around packed with seemingly unrelated questions and not really geared toward those of us who explore our world on a textual footing. (i.e. Essay Questions). This is mostly made up of the questions people ask me all the time (with their assumptions included). I came up with 21 of them off the top of my head. Feel free to add or subtract as it suits you. If you've a hankering for a more writerly meme to answer and pass along, then answer these 21 questions with your usual writerly thoroughness. All of these have the understood “And why?” attached to the end.

1. What do you write? (Poetry, Songs, Articles, Essays, Books, Screenplays, Plays, etc…) I write short novels, blogs, articles, short stories and the occasional spot of poetry

 2. When did you decide you were “A Writer”? I hear this question dickered over a lot. Are you "A Writer" and "When can you say you are a writer?" The problem is that people conflate "Author" with "Writer". The former connotes a certain amount of output and recognition and carries a certain cachet that "Writer" simply does not. Everyone who writes is a writer by definition. Furthermore, I would argue that since Author does double-duty as noun and verb, not everyone is an author because of the implication of intent. Anyway... Fourth grade. No fooling. I sat down one day with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and the rest is history. Honestly - I usually say I don't know why I decided to do this but that's a lie - it was a book I read that made it happen. Not a good book, a bad one. I read something I thought was crap and realized "Pfft! I can do that!" and set out to do it. I haven't stopped writing since. Even in art school, I wanted to be a writer.

3. What book did you read that most influenced your decision to take up writing? It was that kids book, which I hated. If I tell you which one, I run the risk of getting spammed with those who loved that book or author, along with all their reasons and so forth. Suffice to say it was a classic and I'm perfectly comfortable thinking certain classics are overrated. That being said, never forget that even a bad book can have a positive effect and reading is never a complete waste of time.

4. Do you actively seek out/avoid other writers? I don't actively seek out or avoid anyone. I've been lucky enough to accidentally acquire a huge and diverse group of friends, many of whom are writers (and authors) of one sort or another. I'm not really into book groups or reading circles though. Mostly it's that shyness thing...

5. Do you prefer to read writers who are stylistically like or unlike yourself? I don't personally feel like I write like anyone else insomuch as I don't strive to do so. I know people who do, I'm just not one of them. I read everything I get my hands on from blogs to books to cereal boxes. I'll read people's tattoos if they stand still long enough.

6. Do you listen to music while you write? Yes... sometimes. Unless I'm writing something heavily dialogue-centric, in which case I have to be sitting in relative silence. Lyrics can interfere with the magic voices talking to me as I put their words on the screen. (Is that weird?)

7. What is your favorite book? I don't have just one. There are plenty of books I re-read all the time: The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy, Neuromancer, The Hobbit, Catcher In the Rye, Treasure Island, American Gods, Neverwhere, Sherlock Holmes, Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorry & Thorn" trilogy, The Chronicles of Amber... and any number of short stories squirreled away in one anthology or another across the spectrum of genre and literature.

8. What is your favorite literary character? I usually say Falstaff, Corwin of Amber or Holmes. At the moment, though, it's Arthur Dent. I love the everyman, gobsmacked-by-events aspects of the character and how carefully Adams built that story around how strange and incredible the things going on around his protagonist. It suits my current mood. Ask me again next week and I'll tell you someone different.

9. Who is your favorite author or poet (living)? This is a stylistic decision for me rather than a "I can't wait to read their next book" decision. It was John Updike, but he passed recently so I shall have to choose anew. At the moment, it is a dead heat between Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon and Cormac McCarthy.

10. Who was your favorite author or poet (deceased)? Roger Zalazney for reasons both stylistic and sentimental. I learned clean prose and concise storytelling from this man in a time when much of the rest of what I was reading wasn't worth reporting here. He bore me through and back to literature of greater weight and content. Poet would be Tennyson.

11. What is your favorite poem? Pretty much since my dad died it has been "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Tennyson.

I sometimes hold it half a sin 
To put in words the grief I feel: 
For words, like Nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the Soul within. 
 But, for the unquiet heart and brain, 
A use in measured language lies; 
The sad mechanic exercise, 
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. 
 In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold; 
But that large grief which these enfold 
Is given outline and no more.

 That being said, I did read "Purple Cow" at the funeral and that goes gallumphing through my mind from time to time, wreaking havoc with Tennyson's measured language lies.

12. How structured is your writing? Not at all. I know what's going to happen in broad terms and I know what I want the book to convey in terms of a theme, but I frequently have no idea what will happen next or the route I will take to reach my desired ending. Characters tend to write themselves once you become familiar with them and it's occasionally surprising where I end up.

13. Is there a common or frequently-revisited theme to your writing(s)? The gulf between our impression of our heroes and the lives they really live or lived.

14. What is your favorite time of day to write? I used to be a 2:00 am writer almost exclusively. I have forced myself into a ritual of mornings at the coffee shop, followed by work, followed by cleaning up what I wrote that morning. It's been working for me for the most part and I feel lucky to see my pillow (and my wife) a bit more often than of old.

15. Where is your favorite place to write? The cafe, but I'll write anywhere.

16. How much of your personal history do you mine for your writing? I take a nip here or there, mostly an emotional overlay more than actual events. Though I must say that sitting at my keyboard, every situation faced by my characters is first filtered through the "What would I do in that situation" filter.

17. What do you hate about writing? The look people get on their faces when you tell them that's what you do for a living.

18. What do you like most about writing? The look people get on their faces when you tell them that's what you do for a living.

19. Who would you most like to write like (stylistically)? I would like to be a stylistic blend of Cormac McCarthy and Michael Chabon.

20. Why do you write? Because I have to. My brain gets overloaded if I don't write it all down and get it out of there.

21. Can “inaccurate” cinematic adaptations really “spoil” a book? No. In a book you can get inside a character's head -- tell the reader their deepest thoughts -- but this just doesn't come across well onscreen. Shakespeare got away with soliloquizing and it can be done onscreen just as it has been onstage, but not with every character lest you have bedlam. And even then, it is rarely accomplished with any real flair. The two mediums are so vastly different that just I don't see how it could possibly "ruin" anything. If anything it's more like reading a second book by the same author in which similar themes are discussed in different ways.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A Quotable Quandry

This morning's news headline at New York Times caught my eye. Blogs and media companies (Including giants like the NYT) are beginning to face battles over their use of information gleaned from other sites. Long excerpts (with and without attribution and a linkback) are being challenged by the originators of the content. 

That seems fair enough. Every day at the Writing Center we teach students that to lift from a published source without quotation marks and attribution is plagiarism. Substituting your adjectives into the sentences doesn't make the piece yours and you continue down the path of academic dishonesty. It seems to me that there's a line there that's pretty clear to you as you cross it.

Some of the people reading this may not remember this, but there was a time when news was something tangible. At the risk of getting all codgery on you (Damned kids! Get off my lawn!) when I started in the layout and pressroom of my local paper, newspapers were still assembled by hand. Long strips of copy were run out and hot wax was drizzled along the back so that the layout people made with the exacto knives and blueline and created a news collage. It was then photographed, turned into a lithographic plate and eventually a tangible object printed on crappy paper with ink that would get all over your hands and clothes.

I've heard a rumor that such things still exist.

The content was written by people operating under the benign-but-firm governance of The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. I haven't cracked the spiral spine of that venerable document in ages, but every journalism student owned the same three books -- bibles of the inkstained religion: The AP Stylebook, Strunk & White, and All The President's Men. None of which were written in preparation for the transition of news media into a digital realm.

The trouble with copyright laws is that they are so vague at exactly the moment you want them to be as specific as possible. There are no wordcounts or rules for online sharing. There are no laws governing how much you can quote or how and how much to attribute to the originator of the piece. This morning's NYT story mentions that a Times blog quoted extensively from a Wall Street Journal article and the attribution was "Thanks in advance" with a link back to the original story. And this was ok.

Can you imagine the New York Times doing the same thing in a physical newspaper? The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch lifting a story from the New York Times almost entirely with some context inserted and at the end... "Thanks in advance to the New York Times"? Without payment exchanging hands? Just a "link" back to the source document?

The digital world operates by different rules. No doubt about it. Witness JK Rowling's recent suit over the transfer of a popular website that she had championed into the physical realm. It was OK on the web, but putting the same words between covers wasn't.

I'm not saying I disagree with Rowling. Far from it. But you have to feel for Van Der Ark and his publisher. The courts are unpredictable and the laws they are enforcing are a mishmash of 19th century sensibilities and 21st century ideologies. The United States Supreme Court needs to step in and restore order. (And could they please take a gander at DRM's while they're at it? Thanks. That would be great...) Tell all of us where we stand. Where are the lines? What passport must I show to cross them?

Copyright and patent laws were created to allow people with ideas to profit thereby. The world around us was created or at least accelerated in no small part owing to those very laws. Those who generate work should be able to make a living from it.

In the maelstrom of the web, stories are torn apart, ripped from their context and authors, endlessly reworded, quoted without attribution, highlighted, gleaned for information and taped together into a wikipastiche.

One thing is obvious: the plagiarism rules colleges such as mine teach to the students do not hold outside the confines of academia. Would that it were so.

Monday, March 2, 2009

QWERTY Love: Typewriters Endure In a Digital Age

Heard it on NPR this morning. "Wallace Stegner felt electric typewriters and computers went too fast. He needed the mulling time of a manual, the slower ritual of rolling in the paper, poising fingers over the keys.." Obviously I'm not anti-computer, and I would never prepare a manuscript on my typewriter. But there's just something about the clack-clack-clack-DING! that lets me know without a doubt that I'm writing something. The rubber platen catching the page as I feed it into the machine, the force of the fingers against the key... writing used to be such a visceral experience, a worthy heir to Voltaire's quill. Sigh... ----- Photo by Me