Recently in Random Thoughts Category

Yesterday, I reorganised the page with the already published Avarthrel stories. It kind of inspired me to look at some of the past work I’ve done, and it seems… quite curious so far, indeed.

These stories are the first thing that I’ve written as any kind of a serious writing. As such, they are a bit rough, but each story shows some signs of new things I’ve learned. So, I think it’s good time to analyse what I’ve learned so far, and, in turn, look at what I’m doing right in the new stories. Read on for the full story!

Here's one odd perspective to my writing. For some odd reason or other, sooner or later, no matter how adventurously I start, I end up writing about plain ordinary life of the characters. It can be a good thing, because that's actually what I want to write, but I'm not entirely so sure that it is what the people want to read.

Let me recap: Jenyr's Company went to investigate a forgotten temple, went through a mind-numbingly pointless trek through seas, went to take back a besieged city... and now they're kind of stuck where they are.

And oh boy, will the fun ever stop: Sooner or later, Faira's getting married to, of all people, an elven duke, and right now spends time in Anchorfall running a pawn shop and sorting out, er, little things. Gnedrnygr's a magician, and magicians can spend decades sitting by a stack of books. Facyr's dreams have come true and he's happily guarding the city with his newfound soulmate and wife Cassandra. And the giant crises that threaten the country have gone, gone, gone! Great opportunity for covering life in a pseudo-mediaeval world. Not-so-great opportunity for fantasy genre in general!

So what can I do right now? I can't think of a big crisis to shake things up, so I have to deal with little crises. Let's see what I have in store for the future: Facyr's and Cassandra's new life as a married couple -- and as city guards. Faira's new business venture, a good investment for the future, and some gambling luck. And, um... well, I have a whole bunch of little stories on little people on not so epic events.

The point is, since these are small events, they don't really expand all that well into short stories. And that hinders me. I have always had the tendency to write short stories -- my stories just seem to grow naturally into the short story or novella size. Perhaps one day, I'll even finish that novel. But here, I have a bunch of small stories that just don't work as short stories. I seem to have had this irrational contempt, I verily dare say, for flash fiction. I certainly seem to have the material for them -- why the heck am I not writing them more!

I recently did a Flash a Day thing to, among other things, shake my thoughts loose. I don't think I'll be doing a Flash a Day soon, more like "More or less pre-prepared flash fiction story published every day for one week" -- but I really, really need to start thinking of writing more of the flash fiction stories, because I think they can help me dislodge some of the ideas that are too small to grow into the scale of short stories. I also think I'll not do the "limit to one page" thing; I'm, after all, writing this stuff on a crappy lappy and LaTeX right now.

But the big point is -- I hope to write more flash fiction soon! I really need to rethink the whole thing... again.

I really need an editor.

I have this obsession about not touching anything that is already published: Established facts in the fiction become established because they don't get changed. Yet, I've had to touch a few of my stories lately retroactively.

And then, I see that I don't really know a whole lot about fiction writing yet. I really, really need more practice. The truth is, I make mistakes that in retrospect seem completely amateurish, but I just couldn't see at the time; I'd really need someone else to look at my texts to see if there's actual big or small problems. When rereading the same stuff for the thousandth time, my eyes bump right over the obvious flaws.

I still find a ton of stuff from my writing that I'm very very concerned about. Not to spoil anything (not that I encourage anyone to find out about the mystery), but I had to change some word usages in already published stuff yesterday and today. Reason? English isn't a logical language. =)

Anyway, I still have high hopes. I just hope everyone realises that this stuff is, in the most emphatical sense imaginable, written by an amateur. =)

It's entirely regrettable, sad and awful that a known scam publisher PublishAmerica has decided to pick on people smaller than them. Apparently, one user at Absolute Write was threatened by them. Apparently, things have gone rather awful.

Now, PA is a scammy publisher. I oppose them for various reasons - they're misrepresenting themselves as a publisher rather than a vanity press, if they're trying to be a publisher they're doing a shoddy job at quality control, and, apparently, they snatch more than fair share of author's rights.

Which brings me to this topic - my own small, feeble attempt at annoying PA. However, I'm full well aware this may not work. After all, I'm far out of their jurisdiction, and I'm not exactly famous enough to be seen on radar...

So - my big beef with PA is that they apparently ask the authors to sign away their copyrights. No real publisher does that these days. The authors are supposed to have the copyrights, the publishers just buy the rights to sell the book. Right? Right? I'm a big fan of Creative Commons, free software, Open Source - I'm aware of all these weird little entanglements these copyright issues create.

So I'm hereby criticising PA for their history of trampling on peoples' rights.

But wait, there's more.

Ages ago, when I was still in school, someone (my parents, my teacher, I can't rememeber) apparently sent a writing of mine to a children's magazine called Kipinä that was published in Russian Soviet Karelia. (I can't remember anything at all about the magazine, except it was in Finnish for some reason and was apparently aimed at Karelians and Finns learning Russian. Or something like that.) Apparently, I won some sort of a prize for my little essay on photography, my big hobby at the time. (I can't really remember anything about the essay, except that I was boundlessly embarrassed by the ending: "...especially if the batteries are okay.")

So, hey, what am I?

Am I an acclaimed writer, a known critic of corporate copyright ownership, and at one point backed by repressive anti-American Communist government? Am I now criticising this All-American Company from the safe haven of a socialist country?

...or am I just a random nobody who's raising a valid point to keep up the discussion?

I hope I just shot myself down. I'm obviously not the best person to criticise this company. =)

Yet another interesting revelation about my prose:

I've been writing a new story. This one has completely different characters, and that's been challenging. However, I noted some easy similarities with this story and my earlier ones - which is why I need to change this new story to be a little bit less like my earlier ones.

Basically, the problem is this: My characters tend to be rather... how could I put it... typical. Basically, the protagonists are there to carry us from scene to scene. The primary motivation of the lead character is to test out something, which obviously is a good way to get a motivation for the story - hey, many good fantasy stories are all about those spooky old legends and people who work to uncover the real truth behind them. Then there's other characters who tend to be there just to comment dryly on the situation.

Basically, I noticed I was rewriting Bidding for a Good Day. In that story, there's Faira and her tendency to get in her head that a good old-fashioned weirdness has to be unraveled. Then there's Lex, who's just there for fun. And... um, in this new story we had a female lead who didn't tell the male lead that hey, there's this mysterious old tale that has to be figured out at last.

So I needed to start thinking of the motivations a little bit. Oops, I almost ran into the trap of making some carbon-copy characters - or wrote a story that's basically repeat of some other story I wrote, with a little bit different milieu and wayyy different end results. I guess I have to think of a little bit what to put there.

But otherwise, this story was going to be interesting and with these small revelations, I hope it will get really interesting, actually.

I've tried writing in my mother tongue. And it's not working. Something is very very wrong in my world. But then I noted that I kind of have the same problems when writing in English too.

Here's the thing: My dialogue sucks.

Fortunately, this is an issue that can be fixed. I've noted that all I need to do is to read what the heck I've written... and revise it. It's just that I really, really, really need to develop some sort of protection mechanism when I look at the dialogue I wrote: It's not necessarily the most beautiful thing in the world.

I guess there's a good chance I'll eventually be able to write good dialogue all the time, but now it seems that I really need revising and rewriting when I write in Finnish. Rusty skills, very rusty...

Here's some random tired late-night thinking on Microsoft Word. Or, rather, the way Word and word processing programs are used.

The big problem with modern word processing, to me, appears to be that the document styles, document usage, and document versions are being rolled into one. The Document is Everything. The Document Retains. The Document Remembers. The Document Forces.

I have written a doc in OpenOffice.org, but I'm facing the same problem as people who use Word will face. I don't see a solution to this problem because people are so used to Modern, Easier Word Processing.

Here's how things work in Real World: I have written a story. It goes to my beta reader. The beta reader is supposed to use specific character style marking and Insert Note command for their annotations. I even had to make a style guide for this supposedly simple procedure. He's a smart person. He'll figure it out.

Why the style guide? Because a few years before, I Just Sent Them The Damn File... and the user came up with all sorts of funky ways to make their text stand out. Colour the text red, blah blah blah.

What would the printers of yesteryear would have thought if each and every one of the editors would have come up with their own editorial marking styles? They would have been confused, that's what.

Now, I'm a writer of the text. I'm not supposed to be coming up with my own rock-solid annotation method on how to tell apart my own annotations and my beta reader's annotations.

But that's what these new and bold word processing packages force us to do.

Okay, this isn't a big problem. I archive the versions separately. I can read from the svn log that this one here was the copy my friend sent. I can figure out that the red stuff is his stuff, just like ages ago you could tell apart the people who wrote the margin annotations.

The big lesson is this: The new word processing systems don't have a rock-solid support for workflow. They do, however, give you a big honkin' toolkit for defining your own workflow. People who are unaware of how the particular system does their workflow end up in nasty surprises. The whole notion of workflow support comes from the users rather than the system itself.

In a sane world, I could type my text. It'd say "Author's margin notes", "Author's redaction", "Beta Reader X's margin note", etc., wherever such things would actually appear. The Beta Reader would need, without explanation, where to type their own comments to make them appear as Beta Reader X's margin notes.

Now, the Author has to deduce that "this red text here was added by the Reader X, because he was the only one who says he didn't get the copy of the Style Guide."

God, this sounds like some corporate bullshit about changed TPS cover sheets or something. In a sane world, people who write just write. The TPS cover sheets get added entirely elsewhere.

Heck, I'm in so much coffee that I don't know if I already posted about this. But this is how things are...

Last week, I noticed what really was wrong with Hidden Horrors of Megyntia.

I knew something was wrong. People just didn't tell me that was wrong. then someone pointed at it and - oh gosh - that was so obvious.

My problem with fiction, now that I really see it, is that I have statements.

"Goblins," Gnedrnygr growled. "And not at all friendly ones either", he said as the green-skinned things swarmed to sight. There were about twenty of them.

And this is how I'd rewrite this crap today:

"Well, heck", Gnedrnygr said. "This is what we get for keeping one step ahead of the Luck Goddess." The wizard raised his staff, and readied for battle.

In the flickering torch light, they saw goblins rush out of the dark doorways to the sides. Facyr drew his sword, and looked around warily; about twenty of the foul-smelling, annoyingly screeching creatures confronted them. As the creatures closed on them, Facyr grimaced when the reeking creatures came forth and wondered, once again, that old question of his - what actually drove these creatures defend their homes so fiercely...

Okay, perhaps not exactly like that, but the points are clear:

1. Putting adjectives and descriptors to the text as a list isn't good. Plain facts are boring. The facts need to justify their existence.
2. Getting a little bit inside of the heads of the characters is good. Not too much, but describing things a little bit better than
3. I heard the Good Idea that "Xxxx growled" is bad. "Xxxx said" is okay.
4. sigh Gnedrnygr is stating the obvious, and that's not a characteristic I'd reserve for his character (even when he could conceivably do that).

The first point is the major lesson I learned, and so is the second.

Statements of facts are something I do well on boring nonfiction text. However, I realised that doesn't work at all on fiction. Stating facts is boring. Stating facts in a way that makes sense in that exact part of the story is much better.

Getting in the character's head is a bit fun too, because it's easier to convey that way how the character really is like.

Um, I have a bit of a headache. Time to write more of this stuff later!

Here's a random news post that explains just about what's wrong with the world today.

"Elderly harmonica player arrested for performing copyrighted songs at bar..."

Here's the great point on why I'm so inclined to write and draw, rather than focusing on other forms of art. Aside of the obvious fact that the other forms of art are more difficult.

Copyright paranoia. Plain and simple.

I write because that means less copyright hassle.

I was once an avid photographer. Now I'm no longer doing that actively, because there are risks.

I can't photograph people. People have rights. I can no longer photograph buildings. Architects have rights. I can't photograph animals - phorographing pets needs owner's permission, apparently zoo owners have rights too.

I suppose I should go to the woods and snap pictures of real wild animals. Nature, it appears, isn't copyrighted, and it's apparently allowed to photograph even on private land as long as photography doesn't damage the surroundings...

And music? Music is really messed up. All music ever made has been composed. You can't make any more music without exposing yourself to liability. Sure you can compose stuff, but wait until someone else's lawyer comes around.

And don't even think of making movies. All of the copyright problems of photography, music, and sound recording rolled into one giant ball of trouble.

So why do I write? I believe creative written word is the most resistant thing we have here. Even when you can be influenced by someone's work, crying for plagiarism needs strong proof, which at the same time extremely simple to prove. And why would anyone "plagiarise" anyway? Written word is the most versatile of the mediums, bounded only by the imagination of the author and the limits of philosophy.

Some people believe the society is at the brink of collapsing. In digital media, we have deliberately added planned obsolescence, built right into the system. Current content providers are deliberately trying to keep art from the hands of the consumers. Yet, if you look at things, you see that written word is what has persisted over millennia. Ebooks with their DRM won't catch on; libraries, full of their plain old ordinary paper pages, will stand for millennia.

So this is why I write. This is why I draw stuff. This is why I oppose DRM. This is why I'm worried. In distant future, it may be that no one remembers what happened in 2000-2010, except that they made some good books.

And heck, what I said was probably said better by someone else. But this is just me, telling how I feel about the issues. I happen to agree with whoever posted this stuff before, a bit more eloquently. I'm not plagiarising it, just agreeing with it. =)