Work in Progress, Draft 2....

Is done!

This is a SF/F novel I've been working on all year.

Is it any good? Who knows? It's certainly better than my last two efforts.

For draft three, I'm just going to decide what point of view to use. I wrote it in first person, but I rewrote the first half of draft two in third-person. I'm going to read the whole thing and decide which half has more potential, and then I'll beat the other half into submission.

Then I will take a break to get some perspective on it, just in time for NaNoWriMo.

Writing and Coding, Part 3: Artistic Expression

All right, I'll admit it. I've been putting this part of the series off. This is a huge topic, and the more I've thought about it, the less I feel I can do it justice in the time I have to prepare and the space I have to expound on it here. So instead of doing an in-depth exploration, I'm going to provide a very high-level overview. Put on your running shoes. Artistic Expression Programming seems to be a creative, artistic endeavor in two ways. First, you have phenomena like perl poetry, where code is explicitly, consciously used as poetry. This is related to the school of thought that looks at programming's primary purpose being communicating algorithms to a person. Executing the code on a computer is secondary, a means of making sure you are correctly expressing the algorithm. Aesthetics: De Gustibus Non Disputandum Personally, I tend to having simple, regular syntax, even at the expense of having simple, regular semantics (although I like that to be simple also). This bias is evident in a couple of ways: First, I prefer Python to Ruby. Ruby's semantics are probably more regular (everything's an object vs everything's an object, but it may be a classic object and some things are sealed), but the few times I've attempted to learn Ruby, the syntax just seems a little irregular. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but enough that it's squelched what little motivation I've had so far to learn what is probably a fine language. But that's beside the point. What I'm trying to illustrate is that people judge programming languages partially according to criteria that is strictly non-utilitarian. Having simple syntax doesn't make any difference in how capable Python is at building, say, web apps. (As I type this, I'm mentally constructing an argument that it does, but in general, I stand by this statement.) Of course, the academic in me is wanting to step back and define terms now. What does aesthetics mean? Maybe it's time to step back, pull out some literary theory books, and see where this leads us. Is there anything more dull than someone who is both a literature- and computing-geek?

The Kindle and Big Brother

Mark Pilgrim has an great post that draws correlations between the Kindle's DRM and Orwell's 1984. The point here really isn't the Kindle. Amazon's e-book reader is just the latest example of such policies. (It may be breaking new ground, so to speak, in that it is an inherently connected device, and its DRM reflects that.) Right now I'm reading (paper book) Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. In that future world, privacy is virtually non-existent. DHS has monitoring devices in everything. Vinge explicitly says at one point that people had to adjust their quaint notions of privacy. (I don't have the book in front of me, so I don't know that he put it like that — quaint, and so on — but that was the impression that I got. Britain and other countries are moving quickly toward a surveillance society. I remember several years ago, I was helping to chaperon a study-abroad program in England, and we warned the students that they should be careful about such things. In a previous term, a student was caught trying to buy drugs when a video camera installed in an alley recorded him. I would imagine that the United States is moving in that direction. Certainly the current administration would like that. We already have cameras surveilling intersections for traffic violations. The sheer size of the US means that we probably won't be able to monitor everything. We'll have to find some scaled-down version of universal surveillance that only monitors high-risk areas. Until the computers can watch us for ourselves. Then we can monitor everything.

Paradigm Shift

Amazon's getting ready to release an e-book reader, Kindle. This sounds pretty cool. Too bad $400 is more than I want to sink into an reader. Robert Scoble points out that a lot of people aren't loving this device. Whether it succeeds or fails, however, I think this device is fascinating, for the same reason I find the the current writer's strike interesting. We have a traditional, risk adverse industry (publishing, music, TV, movies). A new, disruptive technology comes along (the Internet). Now, those industries have to figure out a new way to make money at what they do. Everything changes. This is an old story. The same thing happened at the invention of the printing press. Initially, the printers were the main ones making money. A publisher would buy a book from an author, and that was the end of the author's rights. The printer could publish the book. He could change the book. He could put his name on it. Somehow, we went from there to today's situation: authors are paid a more or less fair percentage of the sales of the book, they are credited, they have some say in what changes get made to the book before publishing. Today, we (publishers, studio executives, writers, and consumers) are trying to figure out how to make money at this. The old media probably aren't going away soon, but they are becoming less important. The new-fangled Internets are messing everything up. Will the solutions that we reach now be the final ones? (Final here means until the next disruptive technology comes along tomorrow.) Maybe not. That's what's interesting.

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(Tomorrow, back to the writing and coding series.)

Writing and Coding, Part 2: Self-Discovery

One reason people create things, art generally, but I'm arguing here that creation in itself of anything is an act of self-discovery. People say that writing is an act of self-discovery. Journaling is writing for no purpose other than self-discovery. But even writing that is meant for public consumption also often helps the writer learn about herself. Of course, the act of self-discovery—like creativity—is usually messy, and writers rarely let it out in public. I remember that for one class I wrote a lot of personal essays, a form that I really enjoy (hmm, a blog?). I would pick a topic to write on. I'd get started, heading in one direction. About half way through, I'd discover something about myself or about the topic I was writing on. Because of that revelation, the essay would take a sudden turn and head off in another direction. That was good; I counted on it, hoped for it. But it made more work for me, because then I would have to fix the first half, make the whole essay go in the direction the last half did. Part of the essay would be thrown away, but in the end, I'd learned something, and the essay was much better. I've heard about others who draft novels by throwing away the first, the second, and even the third drafts. That astounds me. Knowing how much work goes into a novel, I have trouble imagining throwing a draft away. On the other hand, it would probably make a better final product. I just wonder if more planning up front could take the place of making such drastic edits. So when I write for self-discovery, I don't know where the work is headed, and I have to be willing to cut drastically, even throw out whole drafts. How does this apply to programming? Supposedly, Richard Feynman had written on his chalkboard, "What I cannot create I do not understand." Part of the programming I do is to help me understand problems. I'm not by nature a detailed thinker. I prefer to stay in the clouds, thinking about things in an abstract way. Programming requires me to be specific, however, and to think problems through thoroughly. In solving a problem in code, I learn something about the problem and what it takes to solve it. In learning to solve a problem this way, I often work my way to a solution gradually. I open up a REPL (lisp read-eval-print loop) or Python interactive interpreter. I open up a text editor. I go back and forth between the two, feeling my way to a solution. Working this way is fun, but it is wasteful. As I'm doing it, I may attempt several solutions that have to be thrown away. And often, the code that results is a mess and has to be thrown away anyway. But at that point, I understand the problem and what it takes to solve it, and I can quickly write something much better. That process sounds like what I did with the personal essays. But I am learning something about myself on this? After all, I'm talking about self discovery in this posting, not problem understanding. It can be. I should probably write another post focusing on this assertion, arguing just it, but the act of creating anything teaches us about ourselves, if we're listening. How do we interact with the environment we're changing? How is our approach different than other people's? Why is this problem interesting, not that one?

Writing and Coding, Part 1

When I named this blog, part of the reason I chose this name was because I enjoy both writing and coding, and I wanted to talk about both. I didn't want to start two blogs, however, and later abandon both. I would rather just abandon one. (There are already a few abandoned blogs with my name on them. No sense adding to that number without reason.) The other reason is that I've always thought that there are similarities between the two activities, as well as big differences, and I wanted to explore these. A lot of people have written on these before or presented papers. This is just my take. This is a complicated, many-faceted topic, so it will take me several days to discuss this. Here's the plan:

• Writing and Coding, Part 2: Self-Discovery
• Writing and Coding, Part 3: Artistic Expression
• Writing and Coding, Part 4: Test-Driven Writing
• Writing and Coding, Part 5: Ambiguity
• Writing and Coding, Part 6: Conclusion

Expanding Short Stories

The other day, I mentioned that I was working on a short story I was calling "Voodoo Christmas." As I was fleshing out the concept, I realized a number of things. First, there are a lot of characters. Second, it's not so much about Christmas as it is about the year after Christmas, so there's also a long expanse of time involved. I've even considered it spanning a year. Third, it will just take a while to set up the plot, develop the characters, get things rolling, and tell the tale. Allow me to introduce the novella/novel Voodoo Christmas.

Stalled Novel

Well, my novel's spinning its wheels right now. More precisely, I'm spinning my wheels instead of working on my novel right now. I decided that I needed another wrinkle in the plot. I decided what it was, but I haven't been able to make myself work on it since then. Instead of working on that, I'm taking a break. I've had some ideas for short stories, and I'm working on those. I'm tentatively calling the first one "Voodoo Christmas." Should be fun. I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

Language Dreams

Continuing yesterday's quest to prove how strange I am, here is the story of another language-related dream. When I was in school, one of my areas was medieval literature. I took a lot of Middle English (ME) courses (Chaucer and others), as well as several Old English (OE) courses (*Beowulf*; no comment today on the upcoming movie). These courses, particularly the OE ones, are very time intensive. I became faster at translating OE the more I did it, but I never got enough practice to be very quick. I would spend hours a day translating a small passage for the next class. It consumed me. And at night, I couldn't escape. Invariably, once or twice during the semester I would dream about OE. It was always the same dream: A charcoal-gray background. Words in light gray with a slight halo. The words would speed by faster than I could read. Some of the words contained OE letters like thorns, eths, aesces. Other words were obviously ME. The two mashed together, interlocked with each other. And they kept coming. Faster than I could read, they scrolled by, they never stopped. It probably sounds like the dream had some emotional content, but it really didn't. There were just words without meaning or feeling. I don't know that these were bad dreams in themselves, but the fact that I had them both dismayed and amused me.

Grammar Police

The other night I dreamed I was explaining grammatical rules to someone. Actually, I was explaining how there are rules, rules, and rules. There are rules that someone in the past made up and—if I abide by them at all—I pay attention to them only because other people would think poorly of me if I break them, and language is nothing if not conventional. Generally, all the big, bad grammar rules your teacher used to yell at you about fall into this category. Then there are rules that are good, have basis, and I follow them sometimes. After all, rules are made to be broken. Finally, there are real rules that, when you broken them, you're no longer talking English. If you're a native speaker, you've probably internalized these rules and breaking one just wouldn't occur to you. When I woke up from my dream, I was explaining this to someone, and I pointed out that it didn't matter if you explained, for instance, why the rule about split infinitives is bogus. Those who like rules are going to insist that all these rules must be followed at all costs. Some people just can't handle the freedom, I guess. (Of course, any discussion of faux grammar rules is incomplete without mentioning the phrase attributed to Winston Churchill (falsely): "This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put!" Unfortunately, this refers to ending a sentence with a preposition, not split infinitives.) Against my better judgment, I ask: does anyone else here dream about grammar? The resounding silence reinforces how strange I am,

Plot Twists

Today's Sunday, it's late, and I still have a lot to do today. So you get the reward. Here's a toy. I don't know how useful it is, but it is fun to play with. Plot Twist Generator

Novel Writing

I mentioned NaNoWriMo a couple of days ago. I'm sure that at the end of this, many people who actually managed to turn out 50,000 words of precious, absolutely brilliant, ground-breaking, Pulitzer-winning material just want to see it in print. Lots of people will do that for you—or pretend to—for a price. When you think about it, this is a situation ripe for someone to take advantage of. A writes a book. Convinced that it is the next Great American Novel, he or she sends it off to several publishers and agents. He doesn't hear anything for a while, but when he does, no one seems to share his opinion of his work. All say, "Sorry, not right for us." Finally, he finds an agent who guarantees results, but who wants a reading fee. That seems reasonable. Or he finds a publisher who charges him to publish the work, but points out that they will be in featured on Amazon and in a major national chain. Surely he'll recover the fee and be making more money than he ever dreamed of. I've written one novel so far, and I haven't gotten any published yet (I haven't tried, since it was crap). So my credentials on this are thin. But I do know this: writing is hard. All stages of the writing process are hard. Writing is hard, editing is hard, getting an agent is hard, getting a publisher is hard (which is why people hire agents to do it), marketing your book is hard (which is why publishers help). There are no shortcuts. Talent helps. Being willing to look hard at your work and to take criticism helps. But perseverance, stubbornness, and sweat are critical. The point? Be careful. You are probably fine, but many new writers aren't aware of what rubbish their work is, and many people are willing to feed them lies, take their money, and deliver nothing. Before you try to get published, do two things. First, ask yourself why you want to be published. Do you want to hold a printed book in your hand with your name on the spine? Fine, self-publishing or print on demand (POD) is probably fine. But if you want to be read by strangers or make money writing fiction, the traditional publishing industry—while it has its problems—is your best chance right now. And face it, most people write to be read, being published is just a means to that end. Second, do your homework. Visit Writers Beware. Hopefully, you'll be establishing a long-term business relationship with your agent. Make sure it's someone honest, someone good at their job, someone you can work with. Write well. Be safe.

What's in the Box?

That is the theme for my own personal media conglomerate. (I'm sure it says something that I don't have a lone TV station, radio station, or web site for my internal media. It's a conglomerate. At least, that's what the voices tell me.) Anyway, early in the book I'm working on, I wanted to up the ante for a scene, so I added a box. The box isn't opened. It's just a closed, locked box, about 5in by 6in by 1in, covered in dusty, musty smelling leather. Two characters steal it for someone else, without knowing what's in it. My plan was to have them steal the box to get the plot moving. Then they would turn it over to the person who wanted them to steal it, and the box would disappear. Unfortunately, the box refuses to disappear. It's a "gun." In playwriting, if you introduce a gun in act one, it has to fire in act three. The gun is just an example of the principle that everything you introduce at the beginning of a story is a promise. And by the end, you have to deliver on that promise. In my case, once I introduce the box so early in the story, it has to play some role before the end of the book, and someone has to open it. So I'm left with the box. I don't know what's in it, but it had damn well better be something good. Later, I'll tell you what my wife said was in the box. In the meantime, what do you think is in the box?

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You might be wondering, after my previous post, why I'm talking about my writing. Two reasons. First, I track the visitors to this site, and I can say authoritatively that no one really comes here. (If you do visit this site, thanks, I appreciate it. But it's pretty much just you and me.) So writing here is more like journaling or talking to myself than it is blogging. Second, from what I've said here, do you really know that much more than you did?

Novel, Draft One, Day Two

I had forgotten about this: writing a first draft is always an exercise in learning to ignore myself. I want to know if I'm in the process of crashing and burning, but at this point, my gut does a spectacularly poor job of evaluating my writing. My first drafts always suck. I'm much better at revising my drafts than I am at creating them. In general, life would be so much easier if I could just get things right the first time.

Novel, Draft One

I finished plotting, character development, and planning for my novel. I'll start writing the first draft on Sunday. Insert small, quiet party here.

Speculative Fiction

I just read Margaret Atwood's piece on the uses of science fiction. It's very good, and I want to comment on it more some other time. Right now, however, what caught my eye is her comments on what science fiction is. As a genre, science fiction is interesting. There are different ways of defining it and different ways of subdividing it (alternate history, space opera, etc.). Some people want to include fantasy or science fantasy in the mix; some want to leave out anything that's not strictly science. Some want to include only science as we know it; some want to broaden it to include any stories that use a science-like explanation for their fantastical elements. What made me pause in Atwood's piece was her definition of science fiction and speculative fiction. Here's what she says:

I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the terms are fluid. Some use speculative fiction as an umbrella covering science fiction and all its hyphenated forms - science fiction fantasy, and so forth - and others choose the reverse.

I've never heard anyone divide the genre up that way. I've generally heard what she calls *speculative fiction* referred to as *hard science fiction* or *mundane science fiction*. I'm sure that many others use *speculative fiction* in this way, but I don't remember ever seeing it myself before. Of course, the naming is complicated by science fiction's inferiority complex. Is it literature? Is it a backwater of poorly written dreck? This is another topic for yet another day. I tend to use *speculative fiction* myself. What attracts me to the genre is best captured by the word *speculative*. Whether using science (naturalistic explanations) or fantasy (supernatural explanations), it gives me a lot of room to explore interesting territories and to tell fascinating stories. Which term do you prefer or use?

Talking about Writing

The first week of September, my wife and I went to the beach with my extended family. We had a great time. While I was there, I took my laptop and worked on the novel I'm writing. Generally, I would try to slip out to the porch with a cup of coffee where I would write, sip coffee, stare at the ocean, and pretend to work. It was wonderful. One afternoon, my brother-in-law asked me what I was working on. I stammered around a bit, but I didn't have a good answer. Actually, I could have told him exactly what I was writing, but I prefer not to talk about works in progress (WIP). My wife knows this, and she jumped in and saved me. Eventually, I just told him it was a fantasy novel and let it go at that. He doesn't read fantasy himself, I don't think, so he is probably now thinking Lord of the Rings. (It's nothing like LOTR.) I have read other writers talk about how they don't like discussing their WIP, so I'm not alone in this. But when he asked, I really, really felt like I was by myself in the spotlight. I didn't want to give the answer, but I couldn't think what else to say. Part of my "logic" on this is gut-level superstition: if I talk about it, that would ruin the work in some obscure way. However, part of my reluctance is more rational: I write to express something, and if I talk about it, I might not need to write it anymore. Or maybe I'm just crazy. What do you think? How should I have answered my brother in law?

Writing, not Coding

I realize that I've been talking a lot about the coding that I would like to do. But the name of this blog is Writing/Coding, and I haven't talked at all about writing. That is ironic, since I've been writing for pleasure more than I have been coding. I always wanted to write a novel, and to write one well. Last year, I sat down to write a science fiction/fantasy (SF/F) novel. Immediately, I was struck by writer's block, striving to write something original. I knew consciously that my writer's block made no sense: it would be my first novel and utter crap, no matter how original it was. Because of that, I charted a new course: I would write the most derivative, cliché-ridden work possible, intentionally. I wrote more than 125,000 words (a novel is typically 80,000-100,000 words), and as it turns out, originality was not really the problem. Original or not, it was still utter crap. While individual scenes built and maintained tension, I never was able to carry that tension over a longer story arc. In the end, I decided I would have to start again almost from the beginning, and because the concept was unoriginal, I just wasn't motivated to continue that story. So I let it drop. This year, I resolved to write another novel, again SF/F. It took me a long time to decide on and develop an idea I was happy with, but finally I started writing in July or so. I've been developing an idea since then. I've worked on the universe and the characters, and now I'm developing the plot. Six days a week, I get up early and work for an hour to an hour and a half. It's going all right so far: I like the idea I am developing, and I'm reasonably happy with the execution thus far. And that's the news on the writing front.