MYOWS is a fairly new site (still in beta at time of writing) where you can upload your original work and manage it’s copyright protection.
How does it do that?
By uploading a piece of work you are agreeing it is yours and giving it a creation date (the date you uploaded it). You then get an online certificate proving the work is yours which can be made accessible to anyone, eg. a court or someone that has violated your own copyrights.
I suppose it’s like sending your lawyer a date-stamped, recorded envelope with your original work to remain unopened until such times that proof is needed. However, this is free and a lot easier.
There’s a wave of graphic/information geeks out there who are making seemingly boring data look attractive via the medium of flow-charts, graphs, pie-charts, etc.
Information is Beautiful is the best known site featuring loads of ‘Infographics’.
Charting The Beatles is a great one charting the lyrics and songs of The Beatles.
GraphJam contains loads of funny and inane ‘infographs’.
So it was only a matter of time before the multitudes and reems of writing books could be condensed into one simple flow-chart poster. Anna Hurley has done all the hard work over at her blog, plus the full size poster is for sale so you can stick it above your laptop and get on with things.
This isn’t a guide on how to write a novel from scratch, but how to edit it so it’s ready for publication. The future of agent rejection letters and emails may simply feature a print out of this poster.
I’m now off to add a dinosaur into my novel.
My initial goal this year was to start writing my second novel on January 1st…well, 3 months down the line I still haven’t actually broken ground on it but I have been researching and note taking and thinking and sketching like a madman.
I’m very close to starting, I can feel it. I’m also realising that my researching is turning into procrastination which isn’t a good thing. I need to feel comfortable before I start and that means having an idea where I’m going, which means I need a vague idea of the end. It doesn’t matter if this changes as I go but I don’t feel mentally prepared if I set off with no idea of the character’s motivations, goals or the point of the book. Like going on a journey without knowing the destination, do I turn right or left as I leave the front door?
I submitted a short story to Strange Horizons, an online speculative fiction magazine, and reading their thorough submission guidelines was an education.
They have a great section called ‘Stories We’ve Seen Too Often‘ which details up to 37 plots which they’ve seen too many times.
Some of them are blatant no-brainers such as ‘it’s all a dream‘ or ‘you meet all your loved ones in Heaven‘. Others stress that stories revolve around characters and their motivations, not technology, politics, scenery and other inanimate objects.
Worringly, rape and violence against women is mentioned more than once.
Here’s the second chapter of my novel, Railroaded. As with the first chapter, it’s a little over 4,000 words.
You can read the first chapter here.
Isaac slowly stirred and pulled the duvet over his head and revelled in the silence. Isaac had avoided the temperature controlled bed since Nicole had passed away, a guilty pleasure. Sleeping at a constant temperature had never fully agreed with him but it was a compromise as Nicole also wanted the media display playing in the background to help her get to sleep. This was something Isaac couldn’t abide, he required absolute silence to drift away so the display used to be switched off whilst the bed maintained a constant two degree’s above body temperature. Now everything was unplugged.
There was a good article on The Guardian, ‘Ten rules for writing fiction‘, coming on the back of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.
The first rule I’m going to make up is; Learn who Elmore Leonard is.
If you’ve done any research into writing tips and rules you’ll have come across quite a few of these, especially the first rule of writing; write.
The best ones are the specific ones; ‘don’t open with the weather’, ‘do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet’,'avoid detailed descriptions of characters’, ‘Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.’ and ‘Do give the work a name as quickly as possible’.
There are some I’ll blatantly ignore; ‘learn poems by heart’, ‘keep a diary’, ‘write slowly and by hand’ and ‘have fun’.
An interesting article on the Telegraph site, ‘Advertising is getting personal‘, about how companies are better utilising technology to track customers and offer them an improved service.
Of course, companies have always tried to do this but with more powerful technology at cheaper prices, the amount and type of information they can gather increases.
‘Railroaded’ uses this idea by having corporations track and measure their customers and employees to the minutest of detail with every object having a small microchip emitting data multiple times per second giving a real-time picture of almost everything from actual people and their personal interactions to a sweet wrapper or a pair of glasses.
Came across the ‘Power 2010‘ site via ‘Big Brother Watch‘. It previously gathered political ideas from the public, ideas people wanted to see implemented regardless of political leanings, eg. proportional representation, fixed parliament terms, etc. Watch the vid for a better explanation…
Power 2010 are now in Phase 2, which involves everyone voting on their favourite ideas. Power 2010 will then take the 5 most popular and try to convince everyone running for parliament in the General Election this year, to support all 5 reforms.
A step forward, that’s what I keep telling myself anyway.
An agent came back and asked to see the full manuscript of ‘Railroaded’, but then quickly rejected the whole thing.
I’ll ignore the obvious negative and take some positives; I grabbed the interest of a literary professional and, albeit briefly, viewed the slush pile from the outside.
She gave good feedback, some of it highlighting some points I was already conscious of and keen to avoid/focus on for Novel No.2. So having someone else comment on these aspects too means I must be ever so slightly thinking along the right lines.
I didn’t agree with everything but then that just means I haven’t communicated clearly enough. Also, for sanity’s sake, I can’t agree with everything otherwise I would just give up with ‘Railroaded’ and I’m not ready for that at the moment.
At university, a mate and I went round some London ad agencies with a portfolio of print and billboard ads we’d drawn up. One agency creative pairing was really nice and praised us, the other was OK but bland and the third tore us a new arsehole. I learnt so much and remember more fondly the agency creative that ripped us to shreds than the other two.
That didn’t happen here, she was very nice and friendly (agents DO have hearts!) but while this was the closest I’ve been yet it resulted in failure, I’ve got some valuable expert feedback, had some things confirmed which I thought I already knew and feel more confident going forward with this experience.
I’ve just read ‘English Short Stories 1900 to the Present‘ and by far my favourite short story in there was ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ by J.G.Ballard. A great little story where people live in isolation from each other and only have contact via tv screens and cameras, much like webcams basically.
A family eventually meet-up with disastrous consequences, highlighting human nature.
I can’t find a sample online so you’ll have to buy a book yourself, try this one.
