I've been thinking about branding and how it applies to the creative worker. For example, suppose you have a website that becomes famous; is that website now a 'brand' for you? Or for the website itself? And which is better?

Think about the authors and artists you know that have websites. For example, John Scalzi has a well-known blog called Whatever. However the blog is at whatever.scalzi.com, not whatever.com because whatever.com is owned by one of those carrion-eater domain name fences. He also has a movie commentary column on amctv.com. The brand here is John himself, not 'Whatever' or the AMC TV column 'Notes from the Monolith'. Yet the separate activities could be seen as separate things by people who don't already know about John because they appear in different places. And they certainly are separate 'brands' even if they work to bolster John's personal brand.

Let's now move on to a hypothetical: Someone who does a lot of different things wants to have a web presence for each of them. Should she mix them all together in a single site, despite the fact her audience might consist of people interested in one of the things and not the others? Or should she have completely separate sites with their own 'branding' for each thing and then cross-link a lot?

Take the poll. Comment. Let me know what you think!

Poll #1344859 Branding and the creative worker
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: Friends

Is personal branding is important for the creative worker?

Someone does a lot of different things. Should they have one 'brand' for themselves or separate brands for each thing?

Do you feel that you (check all that apply):

Over at Crooked Timber they're having an online seminar on Charlie Stross and his work. Lots of interesting reading for the politically aware SF fan!

In the post about 'Halting State' I was moved to comment about the literary value of the novel, resulting in the following (slightly edited here) extemporaneous review of the book:

I’m of the opinion that 'Halting State' is Charles Stross showing off. I mean this in a good way, of course. Let me explain.

Because 'Halting State' isn’t as accessible (or even as readable) as some of his other work, it is likely to only make the favorites list of those of us who appreciate the art and audacity of what Charlie has done. (Or those few who missed the writing strength, but found some part of it resonated especially well with them.) What do I mean by art and audacity?

Let me start with Audacity: Charlie set 'Halting State' in what is universally recognized as the most difficult time period to write Science Fiction about; the near future of what is clearly our own world. Few have pulled it off with good results. (Can we say Gibson, Brunner? There are others.) Moreover the near future of 'Halting State' is ‘right around the corner’. Speaking as someone who works in the mobile device industry I can tell you that all of the technology in 'Halting State' could be delivered in a couple of years, and might well be! (Note: The required network infrastructure won’t be well deployed by then and someone with real vision would have to fund the software development.)

Now, Art: The reason Charlie’s use of second person in 'Halting State' stands out so much is that almost no one does it. It is difficult to read for anyone used to first or third person and probably equally difficult to write. Moreover it isn’t well suited for character driven narrative because you are placing the reader, with her or his own opinions and life choices, into the mindset of the narrative character. This potentially leads to mental-modeling confusion and must be handled carefully.

So, in 'Halting State', Charlie simultaneously made two extremely difficult choices. And then he made them work in a story which not only was a ripping good tale, it also revealed something important about us and the future we may soon reside in.

Yeah, Charlie was showing off. Like a master tightrope walker doing two hard tricks at once, he was showing off to the other tightrope walkers (and wannabe tightrope walkers) in the audience. Saying, “See! It can be done!”

Go read this article on Space.com:

The Astra 5A commercial telecommunications satellite suffered an apparently sudden "technical anomaly" that has put an end to its in-orbit service life, and the spacecraft will be moved immediately into a graveyard orbit . . . SES has transferred much of the Astra 5A traffic to an Astra spacecraft at 23.5 degrees east, and Payer said substitute capacity was being located within the SES fleet for the remaining customers on Astra 5A.

I love the 'matter of fact' treatment of what is, quite frankly, just another engineering and business issue. Yet if that article had appeared more than twenty years ago as a short bit in a Hard SF novel or an Analog short story it would have made for wonderful scene setting.

So, tip to you aspiring SF writers out there: Come up with the most fantastical thing you can think of and then work it over to make it seem mundane. End result? Good writing...

All the writer types I know do some kind of gossipy updatery when they go out to commit words so I felt I should do the same.

( Click here for the neepery. Feel free to ignore instead. )

Well, my last minute idea for a Writer's Retreat flew like a lead balloon. No surprise. But it does mean that I must retreat from, ahem, my idea for a retreat...

However several people did indicate they would be interested if I arranged something of the kind with adequate lead time. How does some weekend in September work? I have found two possibilities for relatively isolated cabins near a beach which are currently not booked for the entire month of September, meaning that we could pick our writer's weekend. Size limit would be four writers (or other creatives), including myself. Cost would be around $50 a night or less (depending on several factors.) We would be talking three nights, either Thursday through Sunday or Friday through Monday.

If you are interested, please respond here with which weekends work for you. If there is enough interest I will handle booking the cabin and other arrangements.

A limited number of spouses would be welcome (and would bring individual costs down), but one wonders if having loved ones underfoot would be conducive to the writing process. (We have to suffer for our art, don't we?)

In any case I am still going on a personal writing retreat this coming week. My parents have offered to locate their motorhome in an isolated camping area near their place (they live near Newport OR) and I will be using that for my home base while I attempt to commit as many bits to disk as possible.

I'm seriously thinking of renting a nice cabin near Sekiu Sunday through Wednesday next week to do some writing. I can afford the full cost, but it would help if two or three others wanted to come along and contribute a little (I'm thinking $50 a night.) The problem is short notice and bad timing (right before the 4th.)

Is anyone reading this post interested or do you know someone who would be? If there is minimal interest I (even one person) am going to reserve the cabin and hope that I can get a few others to sign up. If not, I am going with a cheaper option.

Note: This is just about writing or some other creative endeavor. No 'how to' sessions or fancy cheese lunches unless someone else wants to organize it. Meals can be co-operative or not. (There is a full kitchen.)

Me? I plan on walking on the beach and thinking a lot. Interspersed with frantic typing sessions and some scotch in the evenings.

Please respond soon if you would like to join me. I have to make up my mind what I am going to do within 24 hours or so...

I have been working on a secret project for a while now and it is nearing the time when I will let the first select few into the know. What follows is a snippet (previous snippet 1 and previous snippet 2):

Once there was a small rocky planet orbiting close to its primary; baked and dessicated by fires of that sun until it was more dry and dead than any bone could ever be. The planet is gone now, chewed up and re-formed by marvelous machinery both great and small; along with vastly more materials contributed by asteroids, moons, and the rings of a gas giant; hauled in from a billion kilometers away. The end result? An enormous device, much closer to the sun than that planet had been. Outside the photosphere, but near enough to be licked by prominences of flame thrown up from the occasional great storm on the star's surface.

As transcendent technologies go the thing is a bit underwhelming. Yet, from a non-transcendent point of view, the sheer scale of the device is stupefying, almost beyond comprehension.

Seen in context with the sun the device dwindles into invisibility. Move towards the star until it becomes a great fiery wall and you begin to see a slender silver thread, arcing around to gird the massive stellar body. Move close enough and the device becomes an enormous cylinder, seeming to stretch for infinity in either direction. Four kilometers in circumference, it is ribbed and scaled, with 500 meter black radiators sprouting from the shaded side like leaves from a bush and other, less easily comprehensible, equipment attached almost randomly about it like warts and growths on a living thing. Every few thousand kilometers along its length the shaded side sprouts a large, humped, protrusion a kilometer tall and twenty kilometers long.

The sun-side of the thing is very different; there the cylinder is slightly concave instead of convex, with a mirror finish to provide a reflector for the solar energies. At the focal point is a smaller black cylinder held to the main device by widely spaced pillars and circling around the sun ever so slightly closer than the main ring.

At this moment the device is quiescent. In a sense it is active already, of course. Without steadying from enormous magnetic fields and occasional jets of superheated gases it would quickly go unstable and crash into the sun. Not to mention the subtle adjustments required to keep it from flying apart or crumpling: No material, no matter how advanced, can enable a rigid structure of that size, much less hold the device together when it is actually in operation and unleashing the cyclopean energies it is designed for.

But until this moment the device has not begun to fill its purpose. Until this second, when it is turned on for the first time...

If you imagine electricity sparking from the sharp edges and a deep humming you would not be far wrong. You would, however, be quite unimaginative: Massive lightning bolts and great balls of plasma appear around the device anywhere there is enough gas to glow. If you were in a spacecraft nearby you would hear a ponderous thrumming even though you were separated from the device by a vacuum, as vast magnetic fields shake the frame of your ship. Gouts of gas spray along the length of the device as it adjusts into its running configuration.

The time has come. The switch is thrown. The gauntlet is cast. The device is in operation.

It is a time for beginnings and endings. A time for lost things to be found and found things to be lost. A time for monumental feats of ingenuity beyond the ken of mortal man. But, most importantly, it is a time for change...

I have been working on a secret project for a while now and it is nearing the time when I will let the first select few into the know. What follows is a snippet (previous snippet):

Wallace was sitting by himself with a cup of coffee in the cafeteria module when the Avatar came in. He happened to be looking directly at the door when it opened, so he was momentarily blinded by the flood of harsh light in which she was just a slim silhouette. A silhouette with a mushroom-shaped head that resolved itself into a pith helmet when she closed the door.

"Mr Hicks." The Avatar said in a warning tone, her pretty face drawn up in a delicate frown.

Suddenly remembering, and not wanting a repeat of the last time he forgot, Wallace leaped to his feet. Banging the table and knocking over his chair in the process. "Uh... Hello Avatar." He was still blinking from the bright daylight.

The Avatar smiled and sat down across from Wallace. She was dressed in a white linen safari suit, only slightly dusty, that perfectly matched the helmet she now took off and put on the table. Her features were Eurasian, but her eyes were a bright blue. As were her lips, nails, and short-cut hair. Wallace assumed the latter were artificially colored, he wasn't certain about the former.

"Be glad," She said. "that I don't make you kneel to me."

Wallace grimaced, but kept his mouth shut. Certainly all the drudges at the base, the people who weren't scientists, knelt to the ground whenever she passed near.

"I understand you've made some interesting progress."

Wallace wasn't certain what she meant. "I've finished the gene studies on the samples I've been given. And I've started to work on the cylinders Gomez is removing from the tombs."

"It is to those cylinders I refer. They are . . . a natural material I understand."

"Uh..." This put Wallace on firmer ground. "Yes, scat to be precise. Dried dung, apparently the dung of the Ancients. Carefully rolled into cylinders and stored in separate boxes."

"So, they buried their dead with little boxes of shit. You found genetic markers in this shit?"

"Lots of different things, it looks like the Ancients were definitely omnivores. But there were also some markers that matched the few samples we have been able to pull from Ancient bones. The, uh, scat was actually better preserved."

"I am especially interested in these boxes of shit." The Avatar leaned forward and looked up at Wallace with a baleful eye. "Someone, maybe the Ancients themselves, razed their cities, tore down almost every trace of their civilization. The only things left intact on this entire forsaken moon were these tombs. And all we find in them are bones, primitive stoneware, unadorned agricultural implements, and iron age weapons. And little boxes of shit. Many little boxes of shit. I want to know why it was so important to them!"

She stood up and put her helmet back on her head. "More than half a million years ago the Ancients had a very high technology. We've found traces of fiber optic cables, semiconductor chips, and other indications of this technology here and on the other moons. But we've found no writing, no storage medium of any kind. There must be some clue what happened. You, Gomez, and the rest are going to find that clue for me. I don't care what it takes. You will work harder, or you will face the consequences!

"I am the Avatar of the Goddess Isis, and my will is Hers. Do you understand?"

Wallace nodded dumbly. Sometimes, in the three weeks since he had woken here, he got to wondering if he wasn't stuck in some kind of virtuality game gone bad. Moonbat-crazy crap like this just reinforced that feeling. Still, virtuality games don't run on for weeks. And they can't actually hurt you, can they?

And the one thing Wallace knew for sure was that the petite woman across the table could drown him in an ocean of pain with a blink of those innocent blue eyes. That was one reality he didn't want to experience ever again.

I have been working on a secret project for a while now and it is nearing the time when I will let the first select few into the know. What follows is a snippet:

It was an intensely dark night; clear, moonless, and the Flag not yet risen. The handlers were working by the lights on their boats and navigating by the stars, while their dolphins required no light at all to herd the fish into the pens. The men and cetaceans wove through the water in a complex choreography, signaling to each other with shouts and excited chittering. The sea, what they could see of it, was a gentle rolling field of glossy black, smelling of fish and iodine. Disturbed only by the boats and the leaping dolphins.

Suddenly a light blossomed in the sky, brighter than even a moon or the Flag, if not so bright as the sun itself. All work came to a halt as the men gaped and the boats continued aimlessly. Even some of the dolphins left their work and rose to look in curiosity. Then there was much shouting and cursing as two of the boats collided and everyone got back to work, though still looking up at the bright new star and gossiping among themselves as to what it could be.

By the time the Flag rose, it's gauzy fabric draped across the sky to the east the new star was halfway to the horizon, as bright as ever. With the sound of laboring engines an airship passed over the boats, heading west. The star's light outlining it in silver, running lights and portholes marking the rest of it's bulk. Low to the water, it obscured half the sky for a moment and then shadowed them from the new star as it continued on; leaving the boats in a darkness less then before the star had brightened into being, but somehow blacker and more sinister.

Just about six months ago Anita and I stopped at Third Place Books on our way home from something I now forget. I got myself a coffee and my grandson a hot chocolate while Anita went and found a book she had been lusting after: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final episode of J. K. Rowling's famous series.

I teased her about it a little, mostly because the book had been a media sensation and Anita wasn't much on media sensations. She thought I was yanking her chain because it was a kid's book and, much of the way home, proceeded to disabuse me of the notion. Being naturally contrary I took the opposite position for a while, but she did intrigue me a little with her description of how the books became steadily darker and more sinister and not so much children's fare as simply good Fantasy. She explained that they were far better than the (as I had to admit) otherwise quite good movies.

Only a couple of days later she finished reading it and, that night, she made me promise I would give the Harry Potter sequence a chance. I was more than willing to follow through right then, but the first few books in the series were ensconced somewhere in one of the book boxes filling an entire side of our storage unit; not exactly close to hand. Being me, not long after that I completely forgot about the whole thing. . .

. . . until during my recent move, so soon after Anita's death, I found myself packing up the last couple of Harry Potter books, along with one from the middle of the seven. I remembered my promise then, and it started itching at me. I looked up 'Harry Potter' on Wikipedia and was amazed to find a wealth of information about the books, all cross linked and full of spoilers. (Follow the link, you will be surprised at how complete and well-written the articles are.) Clearly the fan-base for Potter included many smart (and mature) people.

Those first few books still lost in the depths of my storage unit, I looked in the 'Young Adult' section the next time I was at a used book store and walked out six bucks poorer, with a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in my hand. This was about a month ago.

Tonight I closed the covers on the final book with a deep sense of satisfaction. Taken as a whole the books were not the best extended novel I have ever read. (If I re-read The Lord of the Rings again this summer it will be the seventeenth time. Yes, I have kept count. No, I can't imagine reading the Harry Potter books even a fraction as many times.) But I don't think I have read anything longer than a hundred thousand words in recent memory which I found quite so captivating.

Harboring my own ambitions of writerhood, I found myself analyzing as I read Rowling's work. Why was this holding my attention so well? What in it worked? And what didn't?

Quite honestly there is a lot there that doesn't work. The settings and props are too fantastical by half; sometimes enough to break suspension of disbelief and drop you sputtering right out of the story. The characters are often dumb as rocks. You want to shout at them. Make them step outside themselves and pay attention for just a moment.

And right there is one of the things Rowling gets right: You care about the characters. Most of them seem real, with flaws and strengths that bump them out into three dimensions. Clearly she cares about the characters as well, otherwise why spend so much time developing minor characters into believability? Unsurprisingly the only truly cardboard characters of the lot are the ones lost to evil. Apparently Rowling found them much less interesting.

And then there is the writing itself. We are not talking high literature here; rather a workaday prose whose greatest strength is its clarity. Most of the time the words simply do not get in the way of the story. Certainly there are times Rowling gets a bit too clever, as described above, but most of the time you are simply reading the story instead of chuckling over a ingenious usage here or unpacking a hidden meaning there.

Nearly all the story is told in the tightest of tight third person narrative, with Potter as the viewpoint character. The exceptions are info-dump devices intended to bring the reader up to date as the story gets trickier and events start moving with more speed. This also works well, you find out things as Harry Potter does and, even when the foreshadowing gets intense, chances are you are barely ahead of the young wizard in figuring things out.

Which brings us to plot. The first four books are simple 'coming of age' mystery adventures, each slightly more complex than the last. Then the mysteries become far more intricate and the books suddenly slide sideways into character-driven narrative before slewing back around to adventure towards the end. This is not the usual Hero's Journey stuff either; there may be one viewpoint character, but there are too many real heros here for your standard monomyth. Each overcoming their natural shortcomings. Each making a part of the myth their own.

All of this doesn't work one-hundred percent of the time, but it works enough to hold your attention and keep you turning the pages until, by the end, you find yourself awed by the depth of the world Rowling has created. No, this isn't Tolkien. Hell, it isn't even Pratchett. But it is more than good enough.

Good enough for me to think Rowling deserves the fame and money Potter has brought her (even if I think Tolkien deserved it more). And good enough for me to thank Anita for extracting that promise from me on a hot July night...

What do you call it when a well-known pro genre writer churns out an unauthorized media-tie in novel and gives it away on the Internet? Somehow the word fanfic just doesn't cut it...

Download My Own Kind of Freedom and support another pixel stained technopeasant with some of your precious attention.

Seattle's Richard Hugo House has an ad in Craigslist seeking two Writers in Residence. (More on the Hugo House site.)

Basically they are providing subsidized rent in Seattle's Bell Town neighborhood in return for the writer doing a little teaching. (With regular office hours in a coffee shop, how Seattle is that?) Prospective writers should also have a project in mind that having subsidized rent would help them to complete; but they still need to pay some rent, the utilities, and cover other living costs.

Might be a nice opportunity for the right person...

Well, Jay Lake did it recently, so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and see how the ride is. This isn't quite as good or as short as Jay's effort. And the moral of the story isn't nearly so close to the surface. But it is a short-short with a pointy end...

---

Conditioning

The two boys trying to hack their way past a stubborn encryption interface were the final answer to that ancient argument of upbringing versus family; environment versus heredity; conditioning versus genetics.

Conditioning won, in a way flavored by by the genes. Well, that and a cocktail of mind-balancing neuro-chemicals pumped into their spinal fluid by a small device attached to the back of their skulls. That same device sprouted roots more slender than a hair, by at least two orders of magnitude. Roots that led to different areas of their brains and made them believe in things that were not there.

Things like the computer console one of them was using to hack into his great-grandfather's personal storage volume...

( Click to read the rest! )





This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

copyright 2008 by Jack William Bell

What if there was a scandal about performance enhancing drugs in literary circles?

What does it mean when someone changes the title and author of a famous Jane Austen novel, submits it to several publishers, and not only does it get rejected -- only one of them notices the plagiarism?

I've reached end of the the third week of the Clarion West Write-A-Thon and this one was a struggle!

My goal is 250 words a day or 1750 words a week. For week one I wrote 2002 words. Week two went even better and I reached 2228 words by dint of writing just about every day (all while working, helping organize/attending Seattle Mindcamp 4, and writing often in my blog; including an essay on why Mars should not be terraformed). I was doing really well and beginning to think I should have set myself a stretch goal of 2500 words a week. Then something happened...

I froze up this last Monday. I couldn't write a word. Not on my story in progress. Not on this blog. Nothing. Man, could I feel the pressure!

Somehow I found myself staring at my computer screen yesterday, needing to write 1565 words in one day and unable to type the first of them. So I punted! Rather than continuing on a story where I was inexplicably stuck (I knew what should happen next, really!) I just jumped ahead to the next thing on my list for the Write-A-Thon: A story workbook for a novella I have been planning for quite a while.

That was all it took. Suddenly the dam was broke and the words flowed out. I made my word count for the day and then some. So for week three I was up to 1841 words and, as of this morning, am already a third of the way for week four!

Yes, what I am writing is a story workbook, not a story. In fact, to some extent, it is the sausage makings for a story and not something anyone but myself should ever read. But it is creative writing and it is work I need to do for the novella, so I believe it counts. (Feel free to argue with me in the comments.)

Want to crank up the pressure on me beyond the endurance of mortal man? Go to my pledge page and donate to Clarion West now! It will unstop your sinks, slice your tomatoes paper thin, and suck the dust out of your downstairs neighbor's apartment right through your rug and floorboards. It will...

OK, maybe not. But it will give you the satisfaction of knowing you are a good person. And it will give me more incentive to write. (Remember to post a comment here and let me know that you have sponsored me.) Also I am bravely offering to let you critique the work in progress, if such is your fancy.

That's right! You can track me via my progress sheet and read the work in progress as I go, currently the short story "Sitting in the Shadows, Waiting for the Wind" and the story workbook for "Suzie Q, Clark Kent, and the Pirates of the Asteroids". (Sponsors only, please.)

Previous Write-A-Thon posts:

• Original announcement
• Week One
• No Week Two update, see Week Three

I finished the first week of the Clarion West Write-A-Thon and I have done pretty well so far. For week one I wrote 2002 words, which is 252 more than my goal! (This was mostly because I wrote a lot more in the last couple of days, allowing me to make up ground and then some.)

Remember, if you have sponsored me, you can track me via my progress sheet and read the work in progress as I go, currently the short story "Sitting in the Shadows, Waiting for the Wind".

And, if you haven't sponsored me, why the hell not? Go to my pledge page and donate to Clarion West now! It will grow more hair where you want it and remove hair where you don't. It will make you regular and enhance your sexual life. It will . . .

OK, maybe not. But it will give you the satisfaction of knowing you are a good person. And it will give me more incentive to write. (Remember to post a comment here and let me know that you have sponsored me. Also I am bravely offering to let you critique the work in progress, if such is your fancy.)

For what its worth, I'm pretty happy with the progress of the story so far. I've managed to introduce at least one thing each scene to ratchet up the tension and I've mostly avoided the exposition trap (a really hard one for me). I've also introduced quite a few mysteries, so the big question I have right now is whether or not I can end this thing with a worthy pay-off.

All this was while working, geeking out on the Internet, being a husband to Anita and a father analogue to my grandson, attending a Clarion West party, playing guitar, and driving down to Portland for JayCon VII. (Which was a hoot incidentally, although I did bail out and go back to my motel shortly after the karaoke started at the Tiki bar.)

I'm beginning to wonder if I can keep this pace up after Clarion West is over. If yes, and if I can continue to manage as much as 2000 words a week, that means I could complete one of my (unfinished) novels in a year. Now that would be cool!

I didn't want to post about it until they got my pledge page ready, but I am participating in the Clarion West Write-A-Thon.

What is a Write-A-Thon? Well, think 'walk-a-thon'. Only you pledge donations which you have to pay if I meet my writing goals. These donations are going to a good cause. (Clarion West, for those who don't know, is a kind of boot camp for budding Science Fiction writers.) As an extra advantage you also get the fun of making me grind out words to meet a goal.

Mind you, I didn't pick the hardest goal to meet: 250 words a day/1750 words a week. (I think that comes to a milli-Lake.) But still, that is 250 words of fiction more than I write most days. (I'm such a slacker, especially when you consider how much I want to write.)

So go to my pledge page and donate to Clarion West! It can be as little as a dollar a week (six bucks for the whole thing) or as much as you want to give.

As an extra motivation to you, I am posting my progress sheet so you can check up on me. I am also posting the work in progress so you can read it as I go. At this time I am working on a short story titled "Sitting in the Shadows, Waiting for the Wind". Feel free to comment here with critiques. You don't have to be nice, but try not to be mean...

So, have you pledged yet? Come on! Make me write!

Science Fiction Story of the Day (mentioned before here) is going offline after only a few months of operation:

The story a day idea has been canceled due to lack of interest. It is not worth the time it takes to find 30 SF stories each month for the four or five loyal readers of this site. I am sorry.

I wonder if he was counting RSS reader accesses or only browser hits?