News
My latest Locus column, “Writing in the Age of Distraction” is up — a grab-bag of practical tips for getting the writing done in the internet era.
We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.
The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn’t help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.
But the Internet has been very good to me. It’s informed my creativity and aesthetics, it’s benefited me professionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I’d no sooner give it up than I’d give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice.
I think I’ve managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I’ve been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that’s rare. Most of the time, I’m on top of my workload and my muse. Here’s how I do it:
Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction
After a long hiatus, I’m back at my podcast, and to kick it off, I’m reading my 2005 novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, “A miraculous story of secrets, lies, magic and Internet connectivity.” It’s going to take a while — this is a looong book — and I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t re-read this book since it was published, and it’s been enough time that it’s like reading something someone else wrote, which is really cool and fun.
Here’s the Publishers’ Weekly summary:
“It’s only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow’s fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he’s the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being’or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist’s plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who’s now resurrected and bent on revenge.”
MP3 Link
The 2008 Hugo award nominations have opened — if you were a member of the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, or have bought a membership to the 2009 WorldCon in Montreal, you’re eligible to nominate. I’ll be sending in my nominations this week, and just in case you were wondering, here’s the stuff I wrote that’s eligible for this year’s ballot:
* Best novel: Little Brother, Tor, 2008
* Best related book: Content, Tachyon, 2008
* Best novella: True Names (with Benjamin Rosenbaum), published in Fast Forward, Pyr Books, 2008, edited by Lou Anders
* Best novelette: The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, Tor.com, July 2008
No matter what you plan on nominate, I urge you to send in your form! Hugo participation seems to dwindle every year. The present form’s just a PDF, but they’re promising a web-based one shortly (I’ll post again when it’s live).
Hugos
How cool is this? Craftster user BurningSchoolhouse made a plush version of me in my hot air balloon (see XKCD for more) as a Christmas present for her boyfriend. Color me tickled!
(Thanks, Jen H!)
Here’s a Happy Thanksgiving from the New York Times: they’ve named Little Brother one of the eight “Notable Children’s Books of 2008,” calling it, “a novel that is at once an entertaining thriller, a thoughtful polemic and a practical handbook of digital-age self-defense.”
Notable Children’s Books of 2008
(Thanks, Lori!)
A reminder that tomorrow is the UK launch and signing for Little Brother at Forbidden Planet in London — 1PM! You can also pre-order signed copies through the Forbidden Planet site. Hope to see you there!
Saturday 29, November, 1:00PM - 2:00PM
Forbidden Planet London Megastore,
179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR
Our Price: £6.99
Little Brother UK launch/signing at Forbidden Planet London, Nov 29
Damien G Walter’s written a smashing profile of me for The Guardian, pegged to the UK release of Little Brother (hope to see you all at the UK launch at Forbidden Planet on Saturday!).
“The job of a science fiction writer, historically, has been to understand how technology and social factors interact,” he says, “how technology is changing society. An activist’s job is to try to direct that change.”
This time his message is aimed at the teenage readers who wear the kind of skater jeans and T-shirt combination Doctorow is sporting today. “If you don’t read the Anarchist’s Cookbook when you are 16 you have no soul,” he says. “If you are still reading it when you are 36 you have no brain.” (He himself is 37, but if he’s abandoned anarchism, he’s clearly not settling into a conservative middle age.)
“My hope is that Little Brother is a verb and not a noun, that it’s a thing you do, not just a book you read,” he continues. “That’s where thinking about the future and influencing the future converge.”
Cory Doctorow: willing science fiction into fact
MAKE’s put my latest column, “Selectable Output Control,” online — it describes a proposal to the FCC to allow broadcasters to shut down parts of your home theater while you’re watching their channels, and the consequences for Makers.
Chances are, you haven’t heard of Selectable Output Control (SOC), a proposed digital TV technology that would allow broadcasters or copyright holders to tag their video with a list of receiver-outputs that were allowed to carry it. That’s because it’s an insane idea.
Picture this: you power up your home theater, an near-incomprehensible tangle of game-consoles, AV switchers, cable boxes, PVRs, DVD players, 5.1 speakers, amps — maybe a home theater PC or a projector, too. After some fiddling and locating the correct remote, you start to surf up the dial. All good. Then you hit MTV and the gorgeous, perfectly balanced sound stops. Why has it stopped? Because your cable-receiver has received a SOC flag from MTV disallowing high-end audio unless it has some obscure DRM that isn’t compatible with any of your gear (especially not your beautiful hand-built tube-amp). MTV doesn’t want you digitizing the songs that accompany the (increasingly rare) music videos they play, so if you want sound while watching MTV, you’ve got to turn on the tiny internal speakers that came with your TV.
You flip up the dial (get up again and turn off the internal speakers), and flip to HBO and your screen goes dark. That’s because HBO is showing a movie that has been flagged as “no analog” — which means that your beautiful, 42″ plasma display won’t work because you connected it via the composite analog video cables coming off the back of your AV switcher, rather than via the DRM-locked HDCP output. To watch the movie, you’ll need to move the entire shelving unit (remember to take down the family photos first, doofus, otherwise you risk shattering the glass if they tip over), disconnect the analog cables, find the HDCP cable that came with the TV (or was it the cable box?) in the garage, and rewire your set. When the kids want to play a couple hours of Paper Mario on the Wii, you’re going to need to move it again and reconnect things. (Coming soon to a Make issue: HOWTO put your home theater on wheels for easy rewiring).
Selectable Output Control
Christian Wohrl undertook a German fan-translation of my novel Little Brother, working on his daily train-commute. He’s just finished the work and posted “version 1″ on his site. The whole text is CC licensed, of course!
“Little Brother” auf Deutsch
(Thanks, Christian!)
My Locus column, Why I Copyfight has been translated into Russian by Private Reporter magazine!
Почему вообще имеет смысл говорить о реформе защиты авторских прав? Что на кону?
Всё.
До последнего времени вопросы авторского права относились исключительно к сфере промышленности. Если вы попадали под юрисдикцию закона о копирайте, это означало использование особых технических средств — печатного станка, кинокамеры, копира. Имела значение и стоимость этой аппаратуры: если что, вы просто добавляли от себя пару сотен баксов юристу, занимающемуся авторскими правами, и проблема решалась. Затраты на весь бизнес при этом увеличивались на пару процентов, не больше.
Когда непроизводственные субъекты (например, обычные люди, школы, группы прихожан и т.п.) имели дело с работами, защищенными авторским правом, не происходило ничего противозаконного: они читали книги, слушали музыку, пели под фортепиано или смотрели фильмы. Они все это обсуждали. Напевали в душе. Пересказывали (с вариациями) детям в качестве сказок на ночь. Цитировали. Разрисовывали стены в детских по мотивам этих сюжетов.
Почему я борюсь с копирайтом?
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