I was blacked out last Wednesday [well, I wasn't -- my web site was] in web solidarity against internet censorship, so my three readers had to go elsewhere for their information on house centipedes [seriously, it drives like 90% of my search engine traffic]. You already know about SOPA and PIPA and why they must be stopped, so I won’t bore you by restating. How incredible to watch last Wednesday as public awareness skyrocketed, prompting cosponsors to drop off and kill a bill in what was essentially a few hours. I work in public interest and let me tell you, things don’t work that way most of the time. It was definitely one of those “Uh-oh, you woke up the Internet” moments.

As an author, and one who hopes to one day make writing my sole source of income, I have a vested interest in copyright law. I believe in copyright, and I recognize that the whole idea of a creative industry is reliant on intellectual property law. More than being illegal, I view piracy as morally wrong – at least, when it’s an artist trying to earn a living from whom you are pirating. However, to put large corporations in charge of deciding what is or is not a violation of copyright is just totally ludicrous.

Corporations cannot be trusted with IP decisions. Has everyone forgotten when Disney tried to trademark “Seal Team Six,” the name of a Navy Seal division? Marvel and DC Comics co-own a trademark on the term “Superhero.” Whole industries have sprung up around buying photo copyrights and suing unknowing bloggers. Corporations have no belief in education, parody, satire, critique, or any other fair use. Their only interest is in protecting their valuable property.

As much as I care about copyright, and the right of the artist to compensation, I also believe in maintaining an open forum for discussion and a free exchange of ideas. As an author, I recognize that readers are going to share my work around – whether lending books, or even in some cases reproducing them. Hell, I don’t just recognize it, I hope for it. Not only because it potentially creates more fans to purchase my products, but because I believe in a world where people can share things like art and music with friends, without having to treat that act as a financial transaction.

Which brings us to Jonathan Coulton, and his thoughts on both the SOPA/PIPA issue and the US Government’s ensuing shut-down of Megaupload. Coulton [whose work on Portal alone was enough to make me a fan] points out that, really, the business model we’re defending has been around a relatively short time, and there is no God-given right to make money from making art:

It so happens that technological and societal blahbity bloos have conspired to create a situation where selling songs about monkeys and robots is a viable business, but for most of human history people have NOT paid for art. I don’t want this to happen again, and I would be very sad if this came to pass, but it’s not up to me to decide.
(via)

This is pretty on-the-nose, frankly. As sad as I would be to see my dreams of writing for a living go up in smoke [really, really sad - so keep that in mind before you pull the new Lady Gaga track down off Frostwire], it’s the nature of the business and the era we are all living through and shaping. I want to make a living doing what I love, but I don’t want it enough to justify a law that hamstrings free expression and the free exchange of ideas. Sony and Disney and Comcast might think their dollars are worth more than our collective minds. I just don’t happen to agree.

I had a terrific little Christmas with my family, as we do pretty much every year. We tend to overdo Christmas, considering all of the “kids” are now around 30. The five of us gather around the tree and open about a hundred thousand presents that we’ve bought one another. For the last three years, my Dad has developed his very own “Deal or No Deal” home game (my Dad really likes TV – a lot) where the grand prize is $2,500. I didn’t win the grand prize (none of us did) but I did win a pretty tidy little sum that takes the sting out of holiday spending. I also got a lot of very thoughtful gifts, one of them quite dangerous: a Playstation 3.

The danger, of course, is that I will spend the next 2-12 months doing little but shooting virtual men in the head. This could have disastrous consequences on my writing career, my day job, my weight, and my cardiovascular health. Video games are one addiction I have been prone to in the past – most of my memories of 2006 were made in Azeroth, a world to which I don’t think I can ever risk going back. So this gift will require a bit of self-control.

The next couple of weeks are going to be super-busy, video games or no video games. I’m headed to NYC for New Year’s Eve, not to stand around Times Square and pee in a Big Gulp cup with the tourists, but to run a 4-mile race at midnight in Central Park, with Liz and her sister. A little less than a week after that, we’re headed to Orlando for a Disney vacation with a few friends. Oh, and for more running. I’m running the Disney Half Marathon, and Liz is running that PLUS the full marathon the next morning. It’s hard to imagine how we are going to be capable of walking around theme parks after that, but we’ll get by.

So the priority for the next few days is to get as much work done on the new novel (still untitled, despite my best efforts to come up with something) and to lose some of the holiday weight I’ve been putting on at an alarming pace. Some running and some healthy eating (rather than the all-chocolate-and-baked-goods diet I’ve been on since late November) should do the trick. After running a 1:50 in the Philadelphia Half Marathon, I’d hate to be the tub of guts guy dropping out of the Disney Half because his boobies hurt.

The second month of revisions is one of those times I start to loathe a manuscript. The good news is, things are moving fast. I don’t think there will be a third month before this draft is ready for test readers.

The highlight so far: My goal for this book was to market it at under 100,000 words. When I finished the first rough draft, it was 120,000+ words, and I was left to figure out how to cut nearly a fifth of the narrative. By the time I finished my read-through, I realized I’d duplicated a few chapters and passages by virtue of my not-so-thorough understanding of Scrivener. Removing those passages knocked the overall length down to around 96,000. The only word for that: Huzzah.

Further revisions have me down to nearly 90,000 words, and I’m not quite halfway through yet. This is especially good because I think it will take 10-15 thousand words to fill in gaps I’m finding as I go. I expect the final first draft (which I share with test readers) to clock in around 96,000 words, give or take 3,000.

The bad part is, I was hoping to have this revision completed by the end of 2011. I even thought about wrapping a first draft as a gift for some of my test readers (the ones who read my work because they enjoy it, rather than as a favor to me). At the pace I’m moving, though, it looks like I’ll be wrapping up my first revision sometime in January. Not that I’m complaining.

My process, in a nutshell: I don’t like to start revisions until I’ve finished a first draft, and try (somewhat successfully) to avoid even looking back at earlier chapters while I’m writing. Yes, this means there’s some inconsistency with plot, location, names, and such. I’m okay with that – the important thing is forward momentum.

Once I’ve finished that first rough draft, I print it and read it through. Because of my first draft approach, there will be some gaps, some false starts, and some plot points that come in three different places, as I change my mind about where certain information should come to light. This is normal – but it must be cleaned up before the book goes to test readers, or their only feedback will be confusion. I mark all initial changes on paper as I read. Most are detailed corrections, but in places it’s just a paragraph or two circled and the word “revise.”

The next stage, which is where I find myself now, is transcribing those handwritten changes into the electronic manuscript. This stage is frustratingly slow, and I may in the future try to do my initial read-through electronically, but I just don’t feel natural reading on a computer screen, and my Kindle doesn’t lend itself to prolific markup.

Once I have a first clean draft, with a relatively linear plot and consistent names and places, I go to test readers. Once I get their comments, revisions can go in several directions – but of course it takes some time for them to read. While I’m waiting, I’ll start a new project. At of today, that’s what I’m looking forward to most.

“No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful
Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAmFTmCs3IY

Hey, fuck you, Rick Perry! Fuck you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAJNntoRgA