In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the face and lips and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smiled and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door, I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.
Great stuff from David, as always. Personally, I’ll be putting my upcoming book up across all platforms, and leaving the others in the series there too, at least for some time. I might experiment with Kindle Unlimited while I’m busy writing book four!
Ooh, we’ve got some good stuff today. Let’s start at Pornokitsch, with Draft Posts:
We all become ‘authors’ as soon as we open a Word file, ‘artists’ as soon as we buy paint, ‘bloggers’ as soon as we register our domain name. By contemplating creation – simply by having an idea – we re-identify ourselves.
But then, we also leap to the other extreme. A creator isn’t ‘allowed’ to claim that identification until they have successfully created. You’re not really an author until you finish a book. (Or perhaps even publish one.) You’re not really an artist until you finish a painting. A blogger without posts is a poor example of the breed. This isn’t unfair: inspiration might be the easiest part of the project. Socially, we should celebrate the do-ers and which means focusing on the evidence of what they’ve done.
What if they just bought the entire British fiction publishing industry?
The point of this (obviously impossible) scenario, of course, is rethinking the value of the book, and taking the terrifying (and hopefully inaccurate) perspective that books qua books are toast. Instead, let’s think of what the value of fiction publishing would be to Apple: a cost-effective way of identifying, developing and testing creative concepts. Books as a massive means of consumer-testing. Think of book sales as upvotes and the fiction-reading population as a gigantic network of slush-pile readers.
According to YouGov Profiles, 18-34 ‘avid or regular’ readers are exactly the people that matter to our networks.
They significantly overindex for all of the following:
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and XBox Live/Video
Watching films, in general, on a streaming service
Watching films on a streaming service, once a week or more
Agreement with “I primarily listen to music through streaming services”
Agreement with “Live TV is a thing of the past”
Paying for music streaming
If you’re a content streamer, this is your most valuable audience. So why not keep monitoring what they read, and turn that stuff into video content?
Fun stuff, but feels like it’s kind of missing the point: if Apple ran the entire UK publishing industry they would, to a large extent, determine what UK readers were able to read. (Because, while the largely Amazon-based, word of mouth driven discovery of books is extremely alive and kicking, there’s still a heck of a lot of books that get sold simply because a trad publisher puts them out and they end up in bookstores). Basing future movie/TV production decisions on the reception to content that you’ve already implicitly curated seems… well, let’s be honest, nonsensical.
Batman, Superman, Spider-man are all t-shirt brands with comic book spinoffs. I think Harry Potter belongs in that pantheon as well: geek culture brands where the identification is now so embedded that they’re part of the visual vernacular. It isn’t just about a nerd franchise being in Primark, it is about a nerd franchise being in Primark and coverage in the Sun.
If anything, Harry Potter’s gone a step further and given us four lifestyle brands. Superhero logos say, generously, something about you. But the four Hogwarts houses have become a socially-accepted Meyers-Briggs self-classification.
We are constantly repositioning indie bookshops around their moral, not commercial, benefits, and Pullman et al.’s arguments seem to play into that vein. I’m not wild about it because, well, virtually every consumer study says that, whatever customers may say, price and convenience will trump morality at the till. But based on Currid-Halkett’s research, maybe this is actually the best route to survival? Turn independent bookshops into the exclusive playground of the virtuous wealthy, who are happy to pay full price for their Philip Pullman novels. Publishers and retailers can get name-brand designers to create tote bags (done!) and discreet-but-not-too-discreet stickers that say ‘locally purchased’, so those that paid £20, not £10, can get the virtuous and visible buzz they’ve paid for.
I can’t disagree. I haven’t bought a brand new book in a bookstore in five years: I love going to my local store and picking up five second-hand for a couple of dollars, but that’s it. It’s one of those awkward semi-hypocritical situations where I certainly don’t want to see my local brick and mortar book store disappear, but I’m definitely not going to start buying all of my books there. Come on virtuous wealthy, only you can save us now…? (Ugh.)
A snake-robot designer, a balloon scientist, a liquid-crystals technologist, an extradimensional physicist, a psychology geek, an electronic-materials wrangler, and a journalist walk into a room. The journalist turns to the assembled crowd and asks: Should we build houses on the ocean?…
Like a think-tank panel with the instincts of an improv troupe, the group sprang into an interrogative frenzy. “What are the specific economic benefits of increasing housing supply?” the liquid-crystals guy asked. “Isn’t the real problem that transportation infrastructure is so expensive?” the balloon scientist said. “How sure are we that living in densely built cities makes us happier?” the extradimensional physicist wondered.
But also:
Just beyond the drones, I find Astro Teller. He is the leader of X, whose job title, captain of moonshots, is of a piece with his piratical, if perhaps self-conscious, charisma. He has a long black ponytail and silver goatee, and is wearing a long-sleeved T‑shirt, dark jeans, and large black Rollerblades. Fresh off an afternoon skate?, I ask. “Actually, I wear these around the office about 98 percent of the time,” he says. I glance at an X publicist to see whether he’s serious. Her expression says: Of course he is.
Astro? Astro? Anyway, it turns out it’s just a nickname. Keep reading for a fascinating deep dive into Project Loon, X’s quest to bring internet to the world with balloons.
The world’s biggest need wasn’t hardware but access. Cables and towers were too expensive to build in mountains and jungles, and earthbound towers don’t send signals widely enough to make sense for poor, sparsely populated areas. The cost of satellites made those, too, prohibitive for poor areas. DeVaul needed something inexpensive that could live in the airspace between existing towers and satellites. His answer: balloons. Really big balloons.
The idea struck more than a few people as ridiculous. “I thought I was going to be able to prove it impossible really quickly,” said Cliff L. Biffle, a computer scientist and Rapid Eval manager who has been at X for six years. “But I totally failed. It was really annoying.”
Today, industry and government are both upshifting gears, back into novelty, which means the public’s attitudes toward space travel and its inevitable accidents may return to what they were in NASA’s early, more adventurous days. After decades in a stable and predictable orbit, American spaceflight will return to new vehicles and, maybe, new destinations. The country is deciding which far-off world to point ships toward next, with the moon and Mars the most likely candidates. Private companies are doing the same, and preparing to take high rollers on suborbital romps. And with that leap into the unknown, Americans may become more tolerant of the loss of astronaut life. If they don’t, the government and private industry might not be able to make the leap at all.
Naturally, scientists are trying to create an artificial version. Sadly, so far the real deal is far too badass to be emulated:
The robots are certainly cool, but they’re nowhere near as versatile as the real deal. Shepherd’s material, for example, can change texture about as fast as an actual octopus, but it can only make one rough shape at a time. The animal, meanwhile, can produce far finer undulations in its skin, which are tuned to whatever it sees in its environment. For now, nothing we produce comes anywhere close.
Spolier alert: a really good one! I completed some pretty major restructuring on the WIP, adding a new POV character and major plot thread, tying that into two of the other threads, and rearranging half of the scenes in both act two and act three to fix the continuity. Phew!
“Daaaaamn!”
Not only that, I then went ahead and banged out around 5,200 fresh, shiny new words, taking the current total up to… *checks Scrivener stats*… 38,370. I’ve got thirteen more scenes to write, which I expect will come to another 20-25,000 words. If I can keep up this storming rate I should have a first draft to edit in early November.
As most readers will have deduced, my last post wasn’t actually about knitting. (To everyone else: I’m sorry. There’s no dan-harris shop at etsy.com in the pipeline, meeting all of your science-fiction themed knitwear needs.)
No, all that waffle about scarves was obviously about expanding my work-in-progress, Causal Nexus. Having decided to add a new PoV character and a new exciting plot thread–seriously exciting, thousands of people could die–I had the unenviable task of trying to weave those into a longstanding plot outline and mostly written manuscript.
Now, I’ve posted about Scrivener before. (Waaaaaaay back when.) It’s a wonderful, truly amazing application for outlining, drafting, compiling–damn near everything the writer needs.
But for some reason, I found it really tricky to go back, as it were, and do all the rejiggery-pokery that I needed to do within my Scrivener project. It was like the note cards were staring at me, furious at the mere suggestion that I might drag them into a different act.
STOP JUDGING ME
So instead I went the old-fashioned route. I printed off a copy of my outline onto actual real physical paper, and I got a pen–a nice one with a rubbery grip and a firm clicky top–and I sat on our back deck with a beer and scratched my head and stared at the pigeons but most importantly GOT IT DONE.
There’s something visceral and very stimulating about physically crossing things out, putting question marks next to possibly dubious plotting decisions and drawing arrows all over the place between sections tagged ‘MOVE THIS HERE DUMBASS’.
One hour later, I had myself a shiny new outline. Back into the office I went, and ten minutes I’d made all the changes in Scrivener too. Now I can go back to drafting, refreshed and reinvigorated after my vacation in pre-computer nineteenth century writing.
Now, if there’s an unfortunate side effect of my brand new character and ten new scenes it’s that instead of being two-thirds done with my first draft, I’m now only half done. But, in the words of the great Abraham Lincoln, spoken shortly after he defeated Napoleon in hand-to-hand combat at the climactic battle of the Crimean War:
It’s better to have written half of a great book than two-thirds of a fine one.
Imagine you’re knitting a scarf. You’re about two thirds of the way done, and it’s coming along nicely. You’ve got lots of stripes of different colours, and it’s going to be a good length–once around the neck and then a jaunty flip over the shoulder length–and you’re happy with it.
Pretty happy with it. Yeah. It’s going to be a good scarf.
Hmm.
But not a great scarf.
Is that really the length you want in a scarf? What sort of weather would you wear that in? Wouldn’t it be better if it was just a bit longer? Maybe twice around the neck, and tuck the ends into the front of your coat long. That’d keep you warm.
And how about those colours? They’re great colours, sure–you’ve got red and orange and green and blue and it sounds like it should clash but it really doesn’t.
However.
It could be… snazzier. Maybe–just maybe–you throw some magenta in there too. Or cyan. Or cerulean. (Polka dots? No.) But something that pops.
Now that would be a scarf.
The tricky part is, you can’t just add the new colour and the extra length at the end, oh no. You’ve got to weave it in. You’ve got to add a stripe in near the start, then another few in the middle, and again at the end, and it’s got to flow, seamlessly, as if the new colour had been there all along and the scarf was always going to be this long.
Just a quick one, via industry guru David Gaughran:
Iain Rob Wright has done something pretty amazing. He has created a pretty damn comprehensive course on self-publishing and marketing – over 50 hours of HD Video – and he has made it all free. Not the first bit free. Not free for a limited time. Not free if you also buy this, or agreed to be assailed by that.
The course is called ‘Self-Publishing Mastery’, hence the VERY CLEVER PUN above. I’ve signed up, mostly hoping for a quick and easy refresher on the state of the industry since I was last paying close attention. Having watched the first few sessions, the quality is very good, and Iain delivers the content in a straightforward and easy-to-understand manner. Also it turns out that yes, Amazon is still very much in business.
Worth a look for any aspiring author considering taking the plunge into self-publishing. Or lapsed authors emerging from hibernation, blinking blearily in the sunlight and asking passers-by what year it is.
Hello, stranger (ooh) It seems so good to see you back again How long has it been? (ooh, seems like a mighty long time) (shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh) It seems like a mighty long time
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh, indeed. It has been a mighty long time since I was last here. But now I’m–
“Oh my god we thought you were dead!”
Oh, hi! Well, no, I was just–
“Deep undercover inside the Yakuza?”
Not quite–
“Trapped in a well?”
Very pre-Batman Bruce Wayne, but no–
“Frozen in carbonite in Jabba’s Palace?”
I don’t think carbonite’s real–
“Letting life get in the way of writing, what with moving across the country twice, and changing jobs twice, and travelling a lot, and spending your precious leisure hours watching endless HGTV shows or playing video games instead of writing?”
No, that’s–oh. Yes. That last one.
Back in (gulp) November 2014, when I last posted, Mrs. Dan and I were still living in Washington, D.C. In early 2015 we moved to Kansas City for her new job, where we spent a thoroughly enjoyable two and a half years, made some wonderful friends, and ate several farmyards’ worth of barbecue. (Amazing. Do your tastebuds a favour and visit.)
Just three weeks ago we relocated again to Boston where Mrs. Dan is starting a PhD. Fancy! I’ve changed roles at work a couple of times too, which has been good and fun and challenging… and nothing you have any reason to be interested in.
WHERE IS THE NEXT BOOK, DAN. GIVE US THE BOOK. YOU CAN’T WRITE TWO OF THEM AND THEN JUST STOP.
(That’s actual footage of one of my more intense readers, by the way.)
With sincere apologies for the hiatus, I’m here to let you know that I’m back. Back again. Dan is back. Tell a friend. I’ve reinstalled Scrivener, reread ASCENSION POINT and VENUS RISING to remind myself where we’ve got to, figuratively dusted off the two-thirds written work-in-progress – CAUSAL NEXUS, coming to a digital bookshelf near you in early 2018! – and I’m back at it.
I’ll also be posting here more regularly with my usual mixture of superhero movie waffle and self-publishing thoughts – the latter as I try to catch up with what’s been happening in the industry in the last three years. (Are Amazon still in business? I should check.)
So busy. So, so busy. Still writing, albeit not as much as I want. Only 10-15K words still to come to complete a draft of Causal Nexus. Getting there. Bear with me. Stay strong, people!
Original image via Flickr Creative Commons courtesy of Sodanie Chea
Recently a Facebook friend shared a post with me regarding Indie Musicians versus Indie Authors. It appears our culture has a fascination and reverence for the Indie Musician whereas Indie Authors face an immediate stigma. We authors have to continually prove ourselves, whereas musicians don’t (at least not in the same way). My friend seemed perplexed, but to me it’s very simple.
We’re not even going to address the flood of “bad” books. Many writers rush to publish before they’re ready, don’t secure proper editing, etc. But I feel the issue is deeper and it reflects one of the many challenges authors face and always will.
People give automatic respect to a musician because not everyone can play an instrument or sing. Simple. It’s clear that artist can do something many cannot.
DAN HARRIS: 10% SCI, 90% FI 