Apparently an “aspiring novelist’s letter” inspired a post over at Whatever yesterday- whoever that was, I bet they were -awesome-.

That aside, the post is an excellent comment on what is actually a significant problem: the prevalent idea that you must be willing to sacrifice everything in order to be a professional writer.

There are people who write sheerly for the enjoyment of it, but far and away the majority of people write to one day see themselves in print, and many dream of giving up their day job and being a full time writer themselves.

To these people the words of those who have “Made It”, the John Scalzi’s and Lawrence Block’s, mean a great deal – and there are a lot of writers out there who are writing books, blogs and articles aimed at these aspiring novelists.

A lot of these books are full of stories about the pain that it can take to become a writer. I think some people probably think they are doing a kindness by preparing others for the pain that there dreams may lead them through: but some of the stories are horrific. They tend to go something like this:

A friend of mine quit his job to become a writer. His first book sucked but he kept trying. He ran out of money but he got a subsistence job to live on and kept trying. His wife left him and took the kids, and his dog died and he was living under a bridge but he kept trying and then his twentieth book took off and now he’s living the dream!

Sure, this is an extreme example (but not -that- extreme, compared to some of the similar stories out there), but there are a lot of them. It has bled into sort of a global belief that in order to be a writer you have to be willing to sacrifice everything – kids, wife, house, your entire life. Only then are you dedicated enough to being a writer, to your dreams and your art, that you can fight your way through the struggle.

At an intellectual level, I don’t believe that. I believe that with hard consistent work and a supportive family you can one day live the dream without having to sacrifice all else that you love. But it is this sort of irrational belief that curls up in your stomach like one of Conan’s serpents and squeezes the confidence out of you, the courage from your heart, until at midnight you are sweating in your bed and staring at the ceiling and you realise that you really -don’t- want it enough to give up your family.

I had that moment. I’ll say it without reservation, there is -nothing- in this world that I want enough to give up my family. I get up in the morning, go to work and slog through anything they throw at my purely so I can go home and see my daughter’s smile and talk with my wife.

So a big thank you to Scalzi for saying what we already knew, but needed to hear someone else say.

I am reminded of an anecdote I read once, went something like this:

A man with a burning desire to play violin met a traveling violin master and begged the master to listen to him play.

“If you tell me I have potential”, he said, “I will devote my life to the violin, but I would never want to do that if I had no chance of success.”

He played and the Master sat, and afterwards said. “I am sorry, you do not have the fire.”

The man went away bitterly dejected.

Years later their paths crossed again and the man shook the Master’s hand and said, “Thankyou, I have become a successful businessman and am glad I didn’t waste my life. I am glad you were able to recognise that I had no talent.”

And the Master said, “I didn’t listen to you play.”

The man was shocked, “Why?” He asked, “Why would you have done that? I could have been great! I could have been a master myself by now!”

“Because,” said the Master, “I tell everyone they lack the fire. If you had the fire, what I said should have made no difference.”

I guess we need to remember that in the end, no matter what anyone else says, it’s down to us.

Go read Scalzi:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/29/what-you-have-to-give-up-to-write/

Finally.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/06/12/2043209/Game-DVD-Sales-Hurting-Music-Industry-More-Than-Downloads?from=rss

It is beyond my understanding how, even after so long, with so many people pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, the big media companies are still able to claim that every download is a lost sale and that illegal downloads are destroying music/movies/books/their-ability-to-make-billions-off-their-artists.

Well, that last one might be true.

The bottom line is, or at least should be, that not business model has any intrinsic ‘right’ to succeed. If the market changes, and it certainly has changed, and your business model no longer works to make you money then you need to adapt.

And yes, I am aware that convincing governments to pass laws making your business model sacrosanct and then having your customers arrested, charged in civil suits, and forced to give you money is in fact adapting. It might be better to adapt into something with a bit more long term survival.

If you keep biting the masses, eventually they’ll bite back.

Gamasutra – Features – What Are The Rewards Of ‘Free-To-Play’ MMOs?

Gamasutra has an interesting article here about free-to-play MMO’s and whether or not the micro-payments business model works.  It certainly seems to be working in some of the cases listed, but more interesting perhaps is the note at the end that companies can become comfortable (and need to, if they want to try this model) with bringing less money in and sending less money out.

This gives me great hope for the gaming market of the future, just as new platforms like the iPhone and Facebook have.  Each new platform has given licence to small groups to try something new.  They have to do it cheaply, they have to do it simply, they don’t have huge budgets and the limitations of the platforms don’t require them to.  They live this idea that if they spend less money they don’t need to bring in as much to be successful.

What you end up with is an awful lot of crap.  Check out facebook games, and the million-and-one “mafia” style iPhone games that rip each other off shamefully.  You also get an injection of new ideas, innovation and a lowered barrier-to-entry.  You get a spiritual return to the days of the commodore 64 and the amiga, where games were developed in a short amount of time by a single developer, or a small group of developers.

One of the great reducers of innovation is cost.  The big multi-million dollar blockbuster games are a big investment and if they go wrong, they can do substantial damage to even a large, well-funded company.  It’s no surprise really that the big game publishers resist innovation and want “the same, but different” in each release.  Innovation, where it happens at all, tends to become restricted to small changes over time.

As an example, The Sims has become one of the biggest earners in the game market ever, and it was only Will Wright’s track record and influence that ever allowed the game to be made; executives didn’t think there was any money in it and were scared by the departure from the ordinary that it presents.

So I am filled with hope anytime evidence arises to show success in turning back this particular clock, any time that games can be made cheaper, with less people and overhead, then there is potential for something more risky and potentially interesting and market-changing to occur.

Slashdot Technology Story | Google Set To Tackle eBook Market

As a long-term ebook reader myself, I have been both excited by Amazon’s entry into the market raising the profile and the usage of ebooks, and disappointed in Amazon’s heavy-handed tactics and DRM, a side of the retail giant that is quickly becomming “business as usual”.

So I for one welcome our google overlord’s entry into the ebook market.  By pushing a free standard and open access, hopefully we will see some decent kindle competition – because nothing breaks down unnecessary and greedy restrictions like open competition (come on Android come on!).

In a related note, the best ebook reader programs I have found so far are uBook (micro-book) for the pocket-pc, an excellent little program that worked very well on my old iPaq, and Bookshelf for the iPhone, which is the application I currently use and makes the most of your own file formats and the beautifully clear resolution of the iPhone screen.  Reading on the iPhone is convenient and a pleasure and I generally carry half a library in my pocket at all times.

Slashdot | Dot-Communism Is Already Here

There is an interesting note (followed by an interesting discussion) on Slashdot about the trends toward communal behaviour on the internet and the way this is putting paid to many 50’s-era “myths” about communism and its evils.

Personally I think the first few responders have got it right.  Just as in most cases, the absolutes on either side are as dangerous as the other.  Absolute capitalism leads to economic collapse, serious gaps between the mega-rich and the starving-poor and a level of selfish viciousness that is astonishing to behold.  Likewise, absolute communism breeds -exactly- the same problems as the system set up to empower the workers is itself perverted to serve the comfortable few.

Luckily, the world has very few absolutes.  I have been watching the American media a bit lately and am constantly amazed by some of the things said, particularly on channels such as Fox News.  I often am led to wonder whether the presenters on this channel actually believe the things they say, or are cynically manipulating a public more impressed with theatrics and personal attacks then actual reasoned debate and knowledge.  To this day I’m unsure which I’d prefer to be the truth.

Watching the constant attacks on president Obama, constantly calling him and his policies and ideas “socialist” has been a complete laugh.  There must be a segment of the population who obviously believe America to be a pure capitalist society.  Truth me people, it isn’t – and you’ll be thankful for it.

The classic remark was from a Chrysler dealer not long after the company started shutting down franchises and giving them to other people, sticking the owners with stock they couldn’t sell and massive debts they couldn’t support.  The story was horrifyingly sad, but it didn’t prevent us noticing the absurdity of what this man said:  “How could this happen in America? I thought we were a capitalist society!”

The place where this sort of thing can most easily happens is a more “capitalist” society!  In a purely capitalist society the market decides and there’s nothing stopping someone who is paying you from deciding to pay someone else instead to do your job.  If they can do it cheaper, better, or hell, if they just like the look of their face more than yours.  That’s what capitalism is all about, free market.  (Emphasis on free.)

It’s a pretty horrible way to live for 90% of the people, so society decides to restrain the free market in various ways.  We put regulation on the way companies dump waste (free market economics demand that companies dump waste as cheaply as possible, which prohibits environmentally safe options), the way they treat labour (minimum wage restrictions, unfair dismissal laws) and how they build their products (national safety standards).

We step further from the free market in our social services too – some countries more than others.  Welfare, public school systems, public health-care (Australians, Canadians and plenty of other countries have it) are all “socialist” ideas that mix nicely with a capitalist economic system.  Its the citizens paying for services available to everyone.

So every time you hear someone spit out “socialised medicine!” like its some sort of disease, realise that there is no “capitalism vs communism” anymore.  Theres just the world, and individual societies who are each determining how much of their money they are willing to give to the government in order that everyone in the country should benefit from new services.

Personally, I find it a constant astonishment that a country who is so willing to spend billions of dollars for no other reason than killing the people of other countries is so allergic to spending some of that money to keep their own people alive.  In the end, it’s health-care and education that will keep your country strong far longer than just guns and muscles. 

And please don’t forget that communism and totalitarianism are not the same thing.  It’s not only the communists who have to worry about governments controlling and oppressing their people.  We -all- do.

Well, I finally got around to watching the second episode of the third season of Chaser’s War On Everything, the current whipping boy of Australia’s Moral Guardians and Supreme Example Of All That Is Wrong With The Media Today.

To recap, Chaser performed a sketch entitled “Make a realistic wish foundation” which involves presenting pencil cases and a stick to children in a parody of the make a wish foundation. It ended with the now infamous line that prompted complaints, a two week ban and the censoring of all future repeats of the episode. “Why spend a lot of money on them, when they’re going to die anyway.”

I feel like a bit of disclosure is due at this point, I myself have spent some time in contact with disabled and dying children and my wife has devoted her career and a large amount of her life to them. Personally I think the make a wish foundation does a wonderful job of providing some small comfort to the children and their parents, who have to face continuing after their death. It is not a fun situation, it is very serious and painful.

I hate censorship and would be here defending them regardless of what they said. With all I said above I sat down with my wife and we watched the show fully prepared to be completely offended.

How surprised was I then that the skit was incredibly short, and made me giggle. It wasn’t roaring funny but neither was it this filthy searing insult to sick children everywhere. It was obviously an irreverent poke at a revered institution. I did wince at the end line, I do think it was in bad taste, but without the controversy I would have forgotten it minutes after it was over.

Sure it was bad taste, but it’s chaser. If you don’t like bad taste humour you’re watching the wrong show, and it’s not like all Australia doesn’t know what they’re like by now.

It’s well overblown, astonishingly so, and it’s disgusting that we have all spent so much time on this issue. It’s also insane how many comments on this issue begin “I haven’t seen the show but…” and then go on to denigrate and abuse them based purely on hearsay, from which you would almost be expecting them to be assaulting sick children in their beds.

To my mind they’ve done far worse in the past and have done nothing but upset the over sensative now. As George Carlin famously said, there is no subject so sacrosanct that you can’t joke about it. He punctuated this with a quite funny routine about rape that elicited much the same response.

That was about thirty years ago. Guess we haven’t come all that far after all have we.

Grow up Australia. If you don’t like it, turn off.

Labor’s blog-watch plan hits Whirlpool of dissent | theage.com.au

Senator Stephen Conroy is an idiot.

His plans are foolish and will damage this country economically and democratically, lessening our freedoms, raising our fear levels and generally turning us all into paranoid twits.

The worst part of all, the completely unforgivable part, is that the mandatory filtering will not actually work to curb child pornography distribution, which, as many studies have pointed out (and been completely ignored) are traditionally traded in a peer-to-peer fashion, over chat and filesharing networks, rather than the small fraction that are websites.

And now he’s monitoring blogs that disagree with him?  I suspect the Minister for Communications is planning on being the Minister for Truth – doesn’t he realise he’s 25 years too late?

I could, and have, go on about this issue at length and in detail, but there are others doing it just as succinctly as I could ever hope to.  Go see them, and resist these attacks on your freedom.

http://filtermenot.googlepages.com/home

http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/

http://www.efa.org.au/

http://www.ausbdsm.org/nocensorship/

Also remember that some things that Stephen (The Nanny) Conroy dislikes, disapproves of, and would consider “unwanted material” are not “illegal”.  There is a difference.  Fetishes are not illegal, just distasteful to fundamentalist Christians.  Distasteful to fundamentalist Christians is, in my view, more of a reason to spread something around then filter it out.  Most of the people enjoying these things are hurting no-one – unless they want to be hurt – whilst these religious right hurt us all when they try and shape our country in their own image.

“I think it’s disgusting” is never a reason to ban something.  “It’s taking away their freedom” -is-.

After all that, I forgot what triggered my latent rage in the first place, it was this:

Max Mutchnick: Where Did You Get Them?

There’s an example of disgusting discrimination.  (and a quite funny writer) I admit, I would love to see stuff like this completely stamped out, whether it be because of sexual preference or race.  I just don’t think anyone is making sense as to how it should be done at the moment, and I don’t think shocking people with the phrase “We are all racists” is adding much of value to the discussion.

It’s a shame really, I suspect there was a lot more of value in that race essay then what I read, but I couldn’t get past my anger at being tarred like that.  That probably says more about me than them.

Theres been a lot of noise lately about racism in fiction, and a particularly notorious live-journel discussion that devolved, apparently, into a violation of privacy party.  Scalzi has talked about it, a lot of others have talked about it, I got bored quickly and didn’t read it.

I do follow Scalzi’s blog however, which means I was inflicted with essays written by friends of his who were involved in the idea.  I think they were supposed to be thoughtful essays on race in fiction and in the world.  What they actually were was insulting, and I have to admit I didn’t read the whole thing.  I actually don’t get worked up about race; it would be stupid for me to.  I grew up middle class and white, regardless of where I live (unless I moved, say, to a poor bitter black community in America who decided to take out their issues on me) I am unlikely to be touched by racism.  I got off scott free, I get it.

I also agree with some of what they said.  It’s true that lots of people suffer for other reasons.  They are fat, unattractive, stupid, female, there are lots of other people that are discriminated against other than for race, and its true that suffering one of those discriminations does not mean you understand the pain of racism.  Sexism and Racism, for instance, are different, equal in magnitude (or not, as you believe), but not “same”.

Then they start with the “everyone is a racist” generalisations and my back was immediately up.  I think, to be generous to them, that what they were saying was that everyone, through their upbringing, has a certain set of prejudices that they can’t help having and that colour their world view.  This is true.  It’s not, however, what they said.  They said “everyone is a racist”, and whilst it makes great shock-copy, the word “racist” has decades upon decades of negative connotations piled on top of it like a big steaming insult sundae.

Let me explain what I think.  Remembering that i’m middle class, professional, white and male, so as far as the political correctness hitlist, i’ve grown up as public enemy number one (which I can assure you is a new, modern form of discrimination which has it’s own level of pain.  Certainly not “can’t ride the bus” pain, but it’s not negligible either).  So knowing that, you should feel free to abuse me, shout, scream, hate and generally point the finger, with or without actually understanding my point of view.  Society says it’s ok for you to do so, so go ahead.

Racism starts, in my opinion, when someone looks at someone else and says: They are different to me, they look different, therefore we must not be the same.  That is the very beginning of racism.  It becomes the modern ideal of racism when the second party is a minority, in that they do not have the power (militarily, physically, emotionally, culturally, educationally or even intellectually) to resist the will of the first people being placed upon them.  Therefore a white says “black people are less civilized than white people, and they need us to conquer them and rule over them, as they are fundamentally incapable of ruling themselves.  This was the official position of government in England during the Victorian era, used to justify expansionist policies in Africa and India.

I don’t believe the phrase “Black people are lazy” could ever be true.  It is a generalisation for a start.  What I believe is that a black person “can be lazy”.  So you can have lazy black people, white people, asian people and martian people.  You can also have a lazy culture – and certainly many cultures would likely appear lazy to one wholly posessed by the protestant work ethic for instance.  But even within cultures, there are people who go against the grain.  Generalisations fail because people aren’t general.

Which is why the minute someone says “Everyone is a racist”, I immediately think “Epic Fail.”.  It’s a generalisation and a stupid one.  When people think of the phrase “we are all racists” now, with all the history the word has built up, they don’t think it means “we all have a certain level of prejudice related to our environment and childhood” which is true, they think it means “we all perform acts that oppress those of a different race to ourselves due to a lingering hatred and desire for our own racial supremacy” or some such rubbish.  Which is so patently untrue that it could be a politician’s sound-bite.

What is interesting is the author of this essay, whilst claiming we are all prejudice, makes statements designed to be statements of fact.  You cannot make an objective claim that we are all biased.  (The following statement is true.  The previous statement is false.)  And her bias shows here.

I’m an Australian.  Even more to the point, i’m a Tasmanian.  Teachers in school years ago used to say we are “a multi-cultural” nation, which is a politically correct saying a nation of mongrels.  You just don’t find that many “pure breeds” around the place, we’re creating our own race of raceless people in a lot of ways.  There are many cultures, beliefs and colours represented, but they don’t necessarily follow established traditional lines.  Personally, I hail from scottish, english and maori descent (that I know of) and probably other besides.  That is to say, despite the fact that my skin is the pale lily-white of the scottish poor and english convict, i’m actually 1/8th (or something) black.  My wife is in a similar position, but descendant from the aboriginal people – her grandmother is one of the Tasmanian aboriginal elders.  My daughter’s birth registration recognises her as being of aboriginal descent.

Tasmania is a state that knows a little something about racism.  Just ask a full-blooded Tasmanian aboriginal about it (you can’t, they’re all dead.), and yet i’ve never known anyone to be discriminated against in modern times because of it.  Certainly aboriginals have a harder time, particularly on the mainland, for similar reasons that I have heard black americans do – lack of education, born to poverty, crime, abuse.  These are problems that exist within the modern aboriginal culture, problems that society are trying to fix, problems that have no simple fix.  (Problems that our previous government used to perform some of the most incredible institutional racism of our time, but I digress)

The point is that, for the most part, these are problems of ‘traditional’ racism for us.  That movie kind of racism, where a black man can’t get a job cause they dont take kindly to his type round here.  Aboriginals aren’t uneducated because they are prevented from going to school.  They’re uneducated because a vicious cycle in their culture prevents them from seeing the benefit in making the effort.  Some do and escape the cycle, and it is important that all assistance possible be given them. 

Part of the problem of modern race disadvantages is the fact that you can’t help people who don’t help themselves.  Whilst real hateful people still exist and may always exist who will hurt these people simply because of their, the idea that people of all races are equal is one that is gaining ascendance amongst modern people.  I have met several truly racist people in my life but they are the exception, not the rule, and I take decided offence at the implication that we are all racist.

I may have swayed from my original points and i’m not sure i’m as coherant as I could be, but thats nothing strange in arguments about so passionate a topic I suppose.  In the end, I put it like this.

I have never oppressed anyone.
I will not apologise or feel guilty for the ease or hardship I have or have not had.
I have worked hard in my life.
I have helped others along the way.

Personally, I think white guilt is a crock, and am always happy to point out that those who did some of the most damage, short of the massacres, to racial relations in this country were “only trying to help” and honestly thought they had the Aboriginal’s best interests at heart.  I wont carry their guilt either.

Fresh off the not-press (actually a couple of days old now but anyway) is this fantastic essay by Clay Shirky.  It covers off the problems facing the newspapers today and points out the hard truths; that this is not a unique or new problem, that there is no guarantee that newspapers will, or even should, survive, that journalism and newspapers are not the same thing.

My favorite quote, “‘You’ll miss us when we’re gone’ has never been a good business model”.

The main points of the essay seem to be:

• People in the industry have known this was coming and purposefully ignored the pragmatists who warned that their preparations and ideas (micropayments, ad-supported, drm) were not working.
• We are in the middle of a revolutionary cycle, the likes of which existed in 1500 with the invention of the Gutenberg press.
• Revolutions are scary, social contracts and long-lived institutions die, but we cannot prevent them simply by putting our fingers in our ears and shouting “la la la”.
• Much of what was happening and considered “the way things work” were actually that way by coincidence and environment.  Changing the environment will change those things, like it or not.  This will go for music, movies and tv as well, however hard they fight it.
• We have no way to know what the future of these changes will bring.  We just have to wait and see.

This is a scary and exhilarating time to be alive and see the new world opening up, much, I imagine, as it was for the people living through the literacy and print revolution of the 1500’s.  I find myself particularly concerned by the changes as I straddle several lines both in the old world and the dawning one.  As a technologist and solutions architect, I find the changes invigorating and exciting.  The new technologies, the connectedness of our world.  The internet gives everyone their own platform, their own space, their own voice – and if that leads to a cacophony of babellian proportions then that is the sound the new world makes.

I am also a writer and have been for many years.  The internet gave me a platform, particularly when I was younger, for poetry and fiction.  It brings the industry within reach and allows collaboration and discussion with people all over the world.  It brings ebooks which the technologist and reader in me loves as I carry whole libraries around on my phone, so reams of reading material is always at my fingertips.

But also as a writer and reader I love books.  Not just the content, but the objects themselves, the feel, smell, look of them.  Despite owning hundreds upon hundreds of ebooks and reading on my phone, I also own a small library full of books, all perched on their shelves in my office, slowly transforming it into a library.  This revolution that is sweeping the world and changing it is threatening these books that I love.  Electronic books are cheaper to produce and distribute, free to duplicate and take up no physical space at all save the space the storage medium takes in your pocket.  There are many other benefits too that ebook-lovers will tout (instant word definitions, book search, instant purchase in the case of kindle).

Eventually these could destroy the market for physical books.  In the same way, ebooks being easy to copy undermines their value in the same was as it does for music, tv and movies.  It will be harder to make a living as an author, indeed, it may eventually become impossible, destroying the very possibility of achieving the dream I have held since I was a young child.  You cannot be a full-time author if the job itself no-longer exists.

What will happen then?  Will novels cease to be made?  I doubt it, but what they are, and the way they are made, may well change.  No-one will really know till it happens as revolutions are a time to experiment.

We just have to wait and see.  It’s frightening.  Many of us are torn by conflicting loyalties and desires.  Tomorrow’s world will be very different, and theres no-way of knowing how long it will take to get there.  Remember: It was Gutenberg’s revolution that made it even possible to have newspapers.  The idea that they are a necessity that cannot be allowed to die is a falsity.  Society existed before and will exist after newspapers – if there is something better, then people will use that, and newspapers will die.  Maybe, even before that something better.

The essay:

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky