Stop SOPA/PIPA

As I write this, something remarkable is happening around the world. Mostly in the US, I suspect. English speaking students are trying to do homework the only way they know how — by visiting Wikipedia.org. Instead of the usual wealth of questionably curated content they’re used to, they’re being greeted by a blackout page that’s denying them the use of the site for 24 hours.

Wikipedia’s not the only site blacking out today; Google’s logo is blacked out, Reddit.com will be going down for 12 hours starting in several hours from the time this is written, and many other sites will be blacking out in various ways. The other site I write for, GeekBeat.TV, will also be observing the blackout.

I’ve been following a Twitter search for the last several hours, completely transfixed, that’s looking for tweets containing the terms “wtf wikipedia.” There are a LOT of them. It’s kind of awe-inspiring to see just how much awareness Wikipedia is raising with the blackout, and a little disturbing how much UNawareness there is out there.

SOPA/PIPA are important issues for any content creators to understand, even ones like myself who don’t live in the United States. It seems on the surface like people in other countries wouldn’t have anything to worry about, but if major sites got pulled and they’re sites we still use, that’s one small impact.

A bigger impact is that the very purpose of SOPA at least is to allow American companies to deal with sites they deem infringing but that they can’t legally touch specifically because they’re outside of American jurisdiction. Under SOPA, they could have made such sites appear to disappear from the Internet. (Could have, because the technical trickery that would have made that possible is no longer part of the bill, thankfully.)

It’s still very important to raise awareness of these issues because you can bet there will be more bills of this nature coming out in the States for consideration, and I’ll be surprised if similar things aren’t brought up in Canada and more countries too. Know about it and be watchful about online freedoms, and hopefully we won’t have to worry about it.

Google Maps: The Descriptive Writer's Secret Weapon

One of the things I like about writing in imagined worlds is the freedom you have to invent detail. It’s a place the reader isn’t familiar with, so it has to be described to them so they’ll understand what’s in your head.

Of course the flip side of that is you have to describe all that stuff so they’ll understand.

Writing in a familiar place is easier in that regard. You don’t want to waste a lot of the reader’s time telling them all the details about things they are familiar with. But even in a familiar setting there are details they need to know, and it’s your job as a writer to provide them.

This comes back to the old saw that you should ‘write what you know.’ What doesn’t occur to most people is that ‘what you know’ is not limited to what lives in your head. It can be what’s in front of your eyes, too.

The story I’m currently writing is set in a fictional world, but it’s a world that’s a lot like ours, except that it has suffered some sort of apocalyptic catastrophe and oh yeah, there are zombies. Aside from that though, it looks a lot like the real world, with cities that resemble ours, people that are like ours, a culture that was like ours until catastrophe struck.

I’m trying to go for a feeling of authenticity in the city descriptions, but there’s a problem. I’ve never lived in a large city. I’ve visited them, sure, but never spent enormous amounts of time in one. I live in a small town, so I can’t really just open my door, go to the coffee shop and write what’s in front of my eyes. That would work for a small town, but not a large urban center.

Enter Google Maps and StreetView!

While absolutely NOT a replacement for research or visiting areas in person, if possible, StreetView (or similar services from Microsoft and others) can give you instant access to the world, at least on a visual level.

There are certain scenes in The Fast and the Dead that I want to be distinctive, to have the feeling that they’re real places, that they really exist. The best way to accomplish this is to base them on places that actually do really exist.

Ideally you’d use a place you know or can go to, but if you can’t, or if you simply don’t know something suitable, pick a real-world area that evokes the feel you’re going for and find a suitable street. Virtually explore it until you find the perfect building to describe.

It’s unlikely you’ll find an exact, 1:1 match, unless you happen to be writing in a real location and you’re describing that specific location. That’s okay though. It means that what you describe will remain within the realm of things that come out of your head; you won’t be lifting your descriptions off of a photo and pasting them into your writing. You’re going to have to adapt the descriptions, accommodate the differences, invent or change additional details.

It’ll still require some work, but the realism and detail of your descriptions will thank you for it.

Google+ Hangouts and Editing

A lot of my planned working time was taken up unexpectedly tonight by a really fantastic Google+ hangout. Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer of Discovery.com) and several other astronomers were aiming a telescope at the sky and looking at the moon, at Saturn and several of its moons, and at several constellations in real-time online. It was fascinating, and inspiring.

It made me start to think about other uses for hangouts. I know writers have taken to doing writing hangouts, which I haven’t tried yet. Has anyone tried an editing hangout? It could be done as part fiction reading, part suggestion/critique/workshopping. It seems like that could be an interesting way to take advantage of the technology, as well as solve some of the issues I was having conceptually with editing in public.

I’ll have to put the idea out there on Google+ in particular, see what users there think. If you’re on Google+ and would be interested in something like that, add me to your circles and let me know.

2011 is Dead. Long Live 2012.

{EAV:fc7bc862bc0f7909}

As I write this, 2011 is drawing to a close and none too soon. A lot of things about this year have been pretty fantastic, most notably the founding of this site, but in many other ways this has been a year I’ll be happy to forget.

2012 is 45 minutes away, so I’m taking this chance to think about what I want to accomplish in the year ahead with some resolutions.

Reading

Photo by Adokos/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The first of my resolutions for 2012 is reading. I will once again participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, but I will not be setting a goal of 100 books this time. 30 books will be fine to start, and I can update that higher if I finish too early. It’s been months since I dared read a long book, and I miss them.

On the positive side, I DID finish my 100 book challenge for 2011! I had to read 9 books over the 30th and 31st of December to do it, and obviously they were very short books, but I did it legitimately and it feels pretty awesome.

Writing

Photo by Adokos/Flickr (Creative Commons)

I have two writing resolutions.

The first: I will take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again come November. And I will win again.

The second: I will take part in WIP500, a new challenge to write 183,000 words over the course of the year by writing a minimum of 500 words every day. (2012 is a leap year, for those who did the math and wondered how 500 times 365 equals 183,000.)

The nice thing about doing both is that WIP500 counts any words you write for NaNoWriMo, so if you manage to stick to at least 500 words a day on average right up to November and then go on to do your 1,667 a day for NaNoWriMo, you’ll finish WIP500 before you even finish NaNoWriMo, let alone before year’s end.

I have a bonus third not-quite-resolution that I need to investigate but hope to implement, which I’m stealing from Judith Graves, who in turn got it from Scott Myers. It’s a progress chart that will probably help a whole lot with my progress on finishing Prices.

Speaking of finishing Prices:

Publishing

My final resolution is to publish 4 things in the Amazon Kindle store and hopefully other fine eBook vendors like the Nook store and the Apple iBooks store.

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2012 is far better than 2011 was regardless of how well 2011 went for you.