..:: Written .:. Off ::..

My first musical disaster happened a long time ago while I was living with my parents. I woke up to find that my basement had flooded, ruining over 200+ albums that I had accumulated. All of my original Yes, Genesis, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Alice Copper were gone. Not to mention a load of others that were out of print.

I still lament over the loss of my record collection. Even back then, it would have cost me thousands to replace them. When I lost my records, CDs were already available. I ended up replacing all of my vinyl on CD.

This past weekend, I suffered another music disaster. My hard drive, containing no less than 12000 songs. At first, I didn’t panic. Most of the songs on that drive were copied from my CD collection, which remains intact. Still, there were still several albums that I purchased from iTunes that were lost on the drive.

I still remained calm. I have some of those albums backed up on CD and the rest were on my iPod. There are programs that allow you to pull files from your iPod and load them back to your computer.

One thing of note, Apple does NOT allow you to re-download your music. You download it once and that’s it. If you lose it, you are SOL. To be honest, this policy sucks. They have a record of everything that I downloaded, why not let me just pull the files down again?

The final part of the disaster struck yesterday when my iPod got wiped. I’m not sure how this happened. One minute, all of my songs were there and the next minute…gone.

So now, I don’t have any backups of those albums. Now I’m pissed.

Since Apple does will not allow me to download these albums again, I’ve vowed never to purchase digital music again. Sorry, but I’ll keep my hard copy CDs.

If music is going to become completely digital, then these companies need to come up with some kind of policy that allows customers to get their music back in case of a disaster. Even if I could get the last 6 months of purchases back, I would be happy.

So let this be a lesson to you:

1. Whenever you buy music online, make a hard copy or two.

2. Read the policies of that store before you buy.

3. Pray that CDs never go away…

I’ve learned many things about writing over the years. You can read every book about writing on the earth, but you really won’t learn anything unless you do it. Even though most writing books contain the same core principals, you will never figure out what works for you until you actually do some writing.

The funny thing is that the authors of these books will tell you one thing, then break the rules in their own books. I’ve caught several known authors giving advice in their own writing books, and then doing exactly what they said not to do in their novels. My classic example of this is Orson Scott Card. In his excellent book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, tells the young writer not to start a novel off with a prologue. The next book that I picked from Card started off with a prologue, of course.

Over time, you learn that breaking the rules is part of writing. It’s kind of liberating sometimes to use one of those dirty adverbs or to use some type of formatting that you were told to never use, but somehow just works. Sometimes breaking the rules will set you apart from the rest of those law-abiding writers out there.

I’m not saying to overdo it. I’m just saying that sometimes a well placed crime in your writing may do you some good.

Yikes! This blog is beginning to look like an obituary column. First Gary Gygax left us and now famed Author Arthur C. Clarke has passed on.

I’ve read a few of his books, including the 2001 series and the Rama books. Clarke is one of the more

You can read about Mr. Clarke here.

The stars aligned today and I was able to go to the bookstore-by myself.

Usually, I have my daughter with me when I go to the bookstore. This is usually a different experience than when I go by myself. Consider these metrics:

With Daughter:

99% Time spent in the kids section

1% Time spent trying to browse the Science Fiction and Fantasy section while my daughter dives in and out of every chair in the area

So you can understand my excitement at getting to go myself.

I drove past the Best Buy and laughed at the line of people standing outside in the blustery wind, waiting to get their hands on a Nintendo Wii. Honestly, does anyone need anything that bad?

I got to the bookstore and went straight to the Writing section (after browsing through the latest copy of Terrorizer, which I placed in front of the copies of AP Press that were labeled as the “Staff Pick of the Month.)

While checking out the writing section, I found a new book called “Write a Book in 30 Days“. The book is a work plan for writing your novel. You write inside the book and perform certain tasks each day for a month. At the end of 30 days, you are supposed to have your book written. Since I am always up for new methods, I considered buying it, but at the hefty price tag of $22.99, I wanted to browse through it before buying. After checking through it, I came to the conclusion that I already knew about most of the methods in the book. The book did seem useful, but I still stand by my belief that you should not rush a novel. Most of my best ideas developed over time.

After leaving the bookstore, I remembered reading about something called the Snowflake Method online. The snowflake method is another plan for writing a novel. I know some writers who have used this method in the past, but I never got confirmation as to whether it worked for them.

Have any of you used the Snowflake method?

Do you have your own method of novel writing that works?

If you got the joke in the title of this article, then you are probably one of the countless people mourning the loss of Gary E. Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and the fore-father of role-playing games. Gary’s influence can be seen in both pen and paper and online role-playing games even to this day.

The first time that I played D&D was ages ago (27 ages actually) with a few friends. We played the module Keep on the Borderlands, and to my recollection, we barely knew what we were doing. That didn’t stop role-playing from becoming the game of choice in my group of friends for the next 28 years. I dropped out of role-playing about 8 years ago when I was bit by the writing bug, but some of my friends stil play on weekly basis.

Even though I don’t play anymore, those early adventures (The Tomb of Horrors, The Temple of Elemental Evil) still influence and inspire me to this day. While many people disparge D&D as a game for nerds, I challenge anyone to show me a game that let’s exercise your creativity and imagination to the extent that role-playing does. Monopoly just doesn’t hold a candle.

So, let’s raise a horn of ale to ole Gary, who has begun his next adventure into that great dungeon in the sky.

Cheers!

Gadgets are everywhere. Some are useful, while others just plain useless, like this Toaster Notepad. Last year, while Christmas shopping, I came across the Fly Fusion pen, a pen/computer that records what you write and gives you the ability to transfer it to a computer. The idea really appealed to me, but the Fly Fusion pen seemed to be geared toward kids, and frankly, the pen is big and looks uncomfortable to use.

After doing some research, I came upon another pen computer called, The Pulse by Live Scribe. The Pulse is smaller and geared toward professionals and college students. While the Pulse is not yet available, some of the features that it includes make it much more appealing than the Fly Fusion. For one, you can record audio while taking notes. Afterwards, you can tap on a section of your notes and the pen will play back the audio that it recorded during that time.

The Pulse requires that you use dotted paper (as does the Fly Fusion). There is a camera built into the tip of the pen that records your strokes. When you are finished, you plug the pen into your computer and transfer it to the Livescribe’s desktop software. From there, you can transfer what you wrote into MS Word. The Pulse will also transfer drawings.

The dotted paper will be sold through Livescribe in the form of both notebooks and leather bound journals. One nice feature is that you can print the paper out yourself if you don’t want keep buying notebooks.

Being someone who likes to write in notebook, but hates transferring what I wrote into my word processor, the idea of a pentop computer sounds great. I plan on buying a Pulse when it’s ready to ship. After putting it through it’s paces, I will post a review.

So, what do you think? Would you consider using a pen computer?

I was in bed eating pork rinds and watching “Yo Gabba Gabba”, when I heard a tapping.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The tapping came from under my bed.

I laid there for a moment, wondering if I was going slightly bat-shit. Maybe it was the tacos that had earlier. Maybe it was the over indulgence in psychedelic children’s programming. Whatever it was, I clearly heard a distinct tapping coming from under my bed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I ignored the colorful characters dancing on my TV and ventured a look under my bed. To my complete surprise, staring back at me, was my blog.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me. You put me here!”

“I did?” I said, genuinely disturbed. I didn’t recall hiding my blog away, but somehow, there was a shred of truth in what it said.

“You did. You tied my up, and hid me away. After all of the time that we spent together, this is how you treat me?”

I pulled my blog out from under the bed and sat it on the chair next to my bed. I dusted it off, and even considered pinging it. But I held off for a moment.

“I guess an apology is in order,” I said. “But you have to admit, you weren’t doing to much to inspire me. I think that we just grew apart.”

The blog looked at me and shrugged, “True, but you were writing mostly shit towards the end there. I should have helped you out a bit more. Given you more direction. But hey, I’m only a blog, you know. Only so much I can do.”

Silence.

“So, what’s been going on?” The blog asked.

“Oh, you know, just the usual. Working and stuff. I started writing a new book!”

“Really? What’s it about?”

“It’s a science-fiction satire. Really funny stuff.”

“Sounds great,” The blog said. I could tell that it was waiting for something.

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Maybe…nah, you wouldn’t be interested. Not after what I abandoned you.”

The blog straighted up and said, “What? What’s your idea?”

“Well, maybe I can rename you. Get you some new clothes or something. Maybe we can start it up again!”

“Hmmm…I’d have to think about it…and you’d have to promise not to lock me away again if you get bored of me.”

I patted my blog on the head, crossed my fingers behind my back

and said,

“I promise.”

I started writing my second novel about a week ago with a skeleton outline that maps out the first few chapters. I have some idea where the story it headed, but I haven’t quite figured out the end of the book.

The story takes place in the same world that set my first book, but in a different area of the world. As I wrote, I kept hitting spots where I needed some history or descriptions that I hadn’t thought about yet. Yesterday, I forced myself to take a break from writing the story, and write some of the background, something which I normally hate doing.

I started with the initial location of the story, an old outpost at the very end of the highway. I asked myself about the history of the outpost and just wrote it out free form. The exercise helped in many ways. I know how it was built, who built it, in what sequence the buildings were constructed, and the layout of the facility. Most of this info will never make it into the story, but just knowing these little bits will allow me to add more depth as I write.

After that, I wrote the history of the organized militia that upholds the law. I wrote out everything from how they formed, their jurisdiction, their enemies, and their dress code.

All of this background writing took only about an hour or two of writing, but I’m already thinking differently about the story. Most of the info was in my head already, but in rough form. Writing it out allowed me to think about things in more detail than I ever would have.

The list below is an updated repost of my Nanowrimo tips. Every year that I fail at Nanowrimo, I learn something. Here are my tips:

NanoWriMo Tips

If you are considering doing National Novel Writing Month in November, here are some tips from a two-time failure. I may not have ever made 50,000 words but I did learn something along the way:

1. Try to do more than the required 1,666 words a day. It’s always good to have a buffer if you miss a few days. If you can get to 2000 words a day, you will have a nice buffer if you miss a day or two.

2. Make as many notes and outlines as possible during October so you don’t have to think too much out where your story is going. You don’t want to be on a roll only to get snagged by a plot point.

3. Pick a point of view that you comfortable with. It’s easier for me to write in the first person, so I usually use this POV during Nanowrimo.

4. Try to write at the same time everyday. This will help you get into the swing faster and will also build good writing habits in the future.

5. Tell your friends and family that you joined the contest.  Good supporters will cheer you on and yell at you if you’re not writing. Find some Nanowrimo buddies and stay in contact with them during the contest.

6. No editing. Don’t go back and edit anything until the month is over. Getting caught up in editing is certain doom. DOOM!

7. Create and account at the NanoWriMo site so you can upload you’re word count at the end of the day. There is something satisfying about seeing that little bar go up every day!

8. If you get really stuck, take a break, look at your outline and try to figure out different paths to take your story on.

9. The first week of Nanowrimo is easy, when you get into the second and third week, you start to feel the drag. Stay positive, and focused. Remind yourself what an accomplishment it is to get as far as you did, and keep writing.

Good luck!

In the last few weeks, I’ve read numerous articles about recording artists forgoing the traditional route for distributing their music, and doing it their own way.

The biggest story was about the band Radiohead, who decided to sell their new album online only without any record company support. A few days later, Nine Inch Nails announced that they were free from their record company, and would distribute their music themselves in the future. Even Madonna, whose contract with Warner is up, is hinted that she would distribute her music in a different way because of the “paradigm shift in the music industry”.

The press and peers of these musicians praise their actions. Fans love it too since, basically, the record industry is universally loathed.

Which brings me to my point:

Self-publishing is cool…if you are a musician.

Self-publishing is not cool…if you are a writer.

A writer who self-published (POD included) is considered by his/her peers to be a hack who could not..er…hack it in industry. This person obviously could not get a traditional publishing house to release their book, so they had to do it on their own. It is assumed that the book will be riddled with errors and such a piece of crap, that it’s not worth stocking on a shelf.

Sure, this is true of some self-published books, but guess what, for every poorly produced self-published book you can show me, I can show point you to a self-published band/musician whose work contains the same inconsistencies (bad recording/packaging/songwriting). I’ll even go a step further and say that a good portion of books that ARE published by the big houses are poorly written and contain errors.

The strangest thing about this whole self-publishing debate in the book world, is that it’s mostly fostered by our fellow writers. Most people who walk into a bookstore wouldn’t know the difference between a book published by a traditional publisher on a book created on Lulu.

If you want proof, log onto the Absolute Write forum and tell everyone how you are going to self-publish your book and see the responses that you get.

Something has to change…and it should start with us.