Posts filed under 'Observation & Musing'
It’s Friday. I’ve spent this week coding screens and line-editing my revised manuscript. Hopping from one to the other breaks the monotony of both. But come Friday afternoon … I run out of steam … and don’t really want to do either. I just get that “break out and do something completely different” weekend vibe.
Is the working week just long enough so that it runs out when we get to that point? Or are we just accustomed to running out of steam at the end of a working week, no matter how long it is? I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m self-employed and can determine my own working hours, but in fact, for most workers the working week is now actually 6 days long, and getting longer every year. At the start of the industrial revolution, before labour laws, 7 day working was not uncommon. So maybe we have it good, you might think. Well, consider homo erectus.
On the radio this week, I heard an author discussing his book, and found it interesting to hear that in our hunter-gather days, the working week was only two days long. Spend two days making arrows, hunting some beasts, and you have enough to feed & clothe you and family for another five days. All that free time started humanity’s artistic journey, scratching out cave paintings. We sometimes look back in embarrassment at our unenlightened cavemen ancestors. But today, Friday, I look back at his two day week and think … boy, did he have it sussed … where the hell did we go wrong in the meantime?
Have a good weekend y’all!
May 22nd, 2009
Look at the jibberish I just wrote in my day job:
public void doTransform(ITransformer Transformer) throws ParseException{
if(_join != null) _join.doTransform(Transformer);
Transformer.doSource(this);
_node.doTransform(Transformer);
if(_condition != null)
{
Transformer.doBeforeCondition(_condition);
_condition.doTransform(Transformer);
Transformer.doAfterCondition(_condition);
}
_next.doTransform(Transformer);
}
That’s the other side of what I do. Is it any wonder that I retreat to writing stories after hours? Makes me feel human again.
Actually, it’s not really jibberish. It’s just a language, called ‘Java’ instead of ‘English’. Its syntax and grammar are suited to communicating with a machine, rather than a person. I used to think that machines were less forgiving than people about incorrect syntax and grammar, but after hearing opinions on writing from beta readers, editors, and authors, it’s clear they can get more heated about grammar than a machine can.
Machines tell you where to get of if they don’t understand the meaning. And even if they do it, and get it wrong, they resort to the child-like refrain of “I only did what you told me to!”
With writers (and readers) it can be less clear what’s acceptable. For people it becomes about a third, softer issue called style. Sometimes those opinions become personal doctrines: “Though shalt remove all adverbs and adjectives.”
Programmers too can get doctrinal about choices in writing code. The bits that the machine really doesn’t care about become grounds for many a heated debate about coding style and readability: “Thou shalt have a comment line for every procedure.”
Languages differ, but people remain the same in any profession - the same in that they differ. The trick is to always look at it from the other side too. The other persons view. You don’t have to agree with them, but as a writer you are obliged to understand them. Surely no one would argue with that!
I think I need to sit down in a darkened room this weekend and write some prose for a while!
April 17th, 2009
Image by Redgum
A relative gave me a wonderful birthday present this week. She bought me a book of Seamus Heaney’s poetry. Inside was a personal inscription from the author who must have been told of my writing ambitions before signing it, because I never met him. I’d like to share it with you; I hope Mr. Heaney won’t mind.
For Brendan -
Keep your eye clear
As the bleb of the icicle -
and keep going -
Encouragement.
It can’t be bought, or sold, or wrapped, but is nonetheless a wonderful gift to give … and receive. Also, given recent posts about the changing form of the book, it is a reminder of the unique value of the printed book - it can be personalized.
Seamus also publicly celebrated his birthday this week. He will be 70 in a couple of weeks. I wish I could give him such a precious gift too, but all I have to offer in return is hope - hope that his encouragement will lead me to that place one day (when I am 70) where I too can present such potent encouragement to the hopeful young talent of the next generation.
March 31st, 2009
Previously, I bemoaned technology’s shrinking of attention spans and shrinking of the book form.
Size isn’t everything; there are greater threats for the book out there.
Prescient to this article is a hot debate that broke out on Litopia this week about copyright infringement on the internet. Copyright infringement could be the greatest single contributing factor to the demise of the book. The demise I talk of (as in Part 1) is the loss of cultural significance of the book and the loss of its artistic merit in general.
Here’s how it happens. Forgive me, but I’m going replicate one of my Litopia posts here, where it is openly accessible:
Copyright is the consequence of mass distribution technologies that began with the printing press. A world without copyright means the end of the profession of writer. Without copyright there is no legal mechanism to enable monetization of artistic effort. It leaves the world filled with only amateur artists, or with potential artists who opted never to create in the first place because the time demands are too great, and the bills have to be paid.
What this would mean for the quality of artistic output in general … I think you can guess.
This is why defending copyright is so important.
If writing a damned good book becomes no longer financially viable then fewer people will make the effort to hone their craft up to publication quality. Case in point: this week, I saw one lulu.com self-publisher advertising the book with a banner ad proudly stating that it “may be the worst novel ever!” Inept art now carries with it a badge of merit! Kudos for the marketing nouse in grabbing attention with that one, but trashing your own artistic merit as a starting point, proving that selling the book is more important than what’s between the covers, says more that I ever could about where all this is going.
In a world created by copyright pirates, fewer people still will bother writing at all. So fewer artists emerge, and the quality of available books diminish.
Alternative models of reimbursement won’t help the craft much either, because the book then becomes a vehicle to sell something other than itself. How many of us, of a certain age and older, have seen the instances of quality television programming decrease over the decades because TV programmes have transformed into something little more than scaffolding to support their advertising output?
Payment of artists is the measure of how a culture values art. If we’re no longer willing to pay for it, but just want it all for free, then what does that say about the place of art in our society?
There is no conclusion yet. The publishing industry is in such flux now that even Nostradamus himself would have difficulty seeing the outcome to all this. The conclusion will only reveal itself in its own good time - in the future. For the present, writers and publishers need to stay vigilant … and defend our beloved little story book form … lest we sleepwalk into a world where it is no more.
I hope all this talk of “art” doesn’t sound pretentious. Art and business always make uncomfortable bedfellows. But these things do matter, and if not - they should - and we need to remind ourselves and others why.
March 28th, 2009
Today is World Book Day (… albeitin the UK and Ireland only - what an oxymoron!)
With Amazon launching the Kindle 2, and sneaking Kindle ebook reader software onto the iPhone, it seems a good time to take the temperature of world opinion on the future of the book form that we celebrate so confidently this day.
Is the poor little book losing its cultural identity or - worse - its cultural significance?
In the same week that research showed social networking sites shortening children’s attention spans, Cory Doctorow warns that this aspect of the twitter generation could transform, if not destroy, the eBook.
What would The Lord of the Rings have become if Tolkien’s publisher’s son had said, “Yes, I love it Dad, and I think you should publish it … but I think he should rephrase it in 140 characters tweets that could fit on my iPhone screen.”
I fear the day when just such editorial demands will be made of authors. My feelings on the prevalent page-turning sentence fragment editorial thriller style is already documented, but how much more destructive will it be for the form when the dictates of the technology determine the style of the writing or - heaven-forbid - the form of the story? How can anything of significance or importance be constructed on such miniscule real-estate? Perhaps, as Doctorow hints, the internet and small-screen eReaders will cause a new renaissance of poetry.
Two years ago I started this blog and with it my journey towards the publishing world. The most important thing I have learned is that the publishing industry is changing - rapidly. Technological shifts combined with recessionary pressures are altering the publishing business of old. My publishing research coalesces my future approach to writing projects and even as I write this, it leaves me wondering am I getting this writing thing all wrong? Should I be reinventing myself as the world’s first haiku cyber-novelist instead?
Perhaps not.
The transformation of the book form may not be all bad. There is hope, but … I’m running out of the necessary cyber-spatial real-estate to complete my point. I’ve kept you here long enough and there are, no doubt, several important tweets demanding your attention at this very moment.
So tune in next time, brave reader, for the concluding bite-sized installment of “The Death of the Book”.
March 5th, 2009
