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Randomness for 1/13

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1) “That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child.” Quality parenting advice from Amy Chua. More from NPR. And NMA TV in Taiwan offers one of their video parodies.

2) An alternate ending for RETURN OF THE JEDI: Video. At least we could have avoided the Ewok party at the end. via Tor.com

3) I’ve seen a couple of reviews that deserved this treatment. Video. via James Nicoll

4) Should you work for free? A flowchart.

5) The cost of torrented books, with numbers. The problem is, you can never get people to believe that what they’re doing is causing harm in a way that matters, because they refuse to see themselves as bad people. They just can’t imagine themselves that way.

6) Top ten fonts for book designers.

7) What is it about social media that makes people write these ridiculous articles?

A brief interlude from work

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My wife and son have just left me here alone while he gets an eye check up. Wish we had vision insurance, but what can you do? The boy can’t see.

I just finished listening to Nancy Pearl on our local NPR affiliate, KUOW. She recommended Jo Walton’s new novel along with Gail Carriger’s SOULLESS. I sent them an email mentioning Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER, but Nancy Pearl brought up her name before they had a chance to read it on air.

They didn’t mention my books.

Which disappointed my wife, but I didn’t expect it. I don’t think the Twenty Palaces books are quite up her alley, to steal a cliche. Too dark, I think. Even if she had read them (and as a fan of hers, I wrote a personal note for the folks at Del Rey to send with her review copy–I even have a Nancy Pearl Action Figure but it’s an older, less flashy version) I’m not sure I would have passed her Rule of 50. Which is fine; no writer should expect that their book be loved by every reader everywhere. In fact, god forbid.

Anyway, the fam is out and Warren Olney has been turned off (I like his show, but his voice has a quality that’s hard to ignore) so I can dig in to the copy edit of Circle of Enemies. I lost the whole day yesterday dealing with my blown knee, but I’m less than 60 pages from the end, and I’d like to finish tonight.

Then, finally, I’ll be able to write a post or two about some of the things that have come up lately, like putting a direction behind the word “stand” and on the need to figure theft of your product when setting price points.

Back to it.

Things you can do with a camera

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Also, do you recognize the name Bragi Schut? No? Well, he’s the screenwriter who wrote SEASON OF THE WITCH, the new Nic Cage movie currently getting 5% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately for Mr. Schut, his name is on the movie, but much of what’s up there is someone else’s… stuff.

FYI: The spec script for SEASON OF THE WITCH won the 2003 Nicholl Fellowship, which is THE big wannabe screenwriter competition. The winner gets $30K to write a new script, plus a whole slew of Hollywood meetings. The problem is that once the script gets a lot of interest, it also gets a whole lot of people who want to change it, and those people aren’t going to defer to the original writer’s expertise. He’s just the dude that wrote it, after all.

Rumor is that this is pretty much what happened to DRAGONHEART. The writer teamed up with a director to put together a story idea. The writer wrote it. Producers loved it, some being reduced to tears when reading it.

Suddenly, it becomes this “big” project, much too big to be entrusted to the people who created it in the first place. The producer passes it off to a director who Doesn’t Get It, the whole thing is miscast, the dragon is introduced with a “Heeere’s Johnny!” bit of dialog, and they tried to make a pivotal scene “funny” by having starving villagers trip over a whole herd of pigs.

It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I write novels now. The people asking me to change this or that are good with story. From what I’ve heard, the whole third act of SEASON… is stuff the producers demanded.

Development kills.

There’s one more shooting day left for the Twenty Palaces book trailer. I’ll post pictures if I can.

Also, my son has gone back to his stop-motion animations. (Yay!)

Randomness for 1/12

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1) Commissioner Gordon is a Jerk.

2) What’s it like living in Playboy Mansion? Apparently, the answer is: rigidly schduled.

3) Drill Close to Reaching 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake.

4) Hoping for a big time Hollywood deal? Hah!

5) Muslims protect Christians.

6) Don’t buy your comics from this asshole.

7) “Inland tsunami” sweeps away cars in Toowoomba, Australia. Video part one. Video part two.

Email notifications ON!

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My son just sent me an email (meaning he wrote the message in my msn account and sent it to the msn account, which I picked up in webmail at the Starbucks) letting me know a fat package from Random House just arrived.

Hello, copy edit for Circle of Enemies. I will be home shortly to scribble on you.

Progress in all things, right? I’ll finish the first draft of the short story I’m struggling with first, then it’s time for home-made meatballs delivered in yummy sandwich form and every grammar insecurity I’ve ever had laid bare on the page by the copy editor’s sharpened pencil.

In unrelated news, the guy sitting across from me keeps picking his nose, scraping at gaps in his teeth and digging his ear. Blech.

So long, Borders

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According to PW, Borders has suspended payments to some publishers.

At this point it looks as though Borders has no way to avoid bankruptcy, and the big question is whether they will take a bunch of publishers down with them. Small presses are especially vulnerable here, and Borders has been very hard on the whole small press scene for years, using credit from returns to order books on a much faster schedule than they actually paid for books sold.

As for Borders itself, it was once a great place to buy books–the staff were knowledgeable and the selection excellent, and while Joshua Bilmes offers a clear narrative of Borders’s descent into crappiness (quick warning about that link: very interesting), he doesn’t mention that the stores tried to control sky-rocketing rents by locking in long-term leases… right before the economy collapsed. Now their expenses are high and the revenues are low, and who’s going to suffer?

Well, authors for one. And publishers for another. Readers, too, because if we have one major chain store, as Joshua Bilmes points out, there will be certain books that readers won’t even get to see. Months and months ago, James Nicoll asked who was the most powerful but unrecognized person in sf/f, and the answer was the sf/f buyer at B&N. Without Borders, his decisions will sustain or destroy even more writers’ careers.

Hey, I know people like to see this stuff as the “Death of Traditional Publishing.” Isn’t B&N also closing stores (in high-rent areas, during a strained economic recovery)? But that’s just not the case here. Borders has been struggling for years, mainly because their upper echelons have no idea that selling books isn’t like selling other products. The economic crash simply exposed these long-term problems.

What does that mean for you? Well, if Borders isn’t paying publishers for the books they sell, you might want to stop shopping there. I know I will.

Randomness for 1/02

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1) Five skiffy death sports you can host in your own home. Reader, I lol-ed.

2) “America sends its best hunks to save the Earth.”

3) Dwayne’s Photo, a little family-owned shop in Parsons, Kansas, is closing down. They were the last processor in the world who could handle Kodachrome film, which Kodak stopped manufacturing in 2009, and now their equipment is going to be sold for scrap.

4) When are we happy? When are we not happy? Video. This one is long, but very, very interesting.

5) How It’s Made: PASS-ta. Video.

6) Robots Speak Out Against Asimov’s First Law Of Robotics.

7) The Most Epic Use of Google Docs Ever (aka Google-doc-based animation). Video.

Randomness for 12/25

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1) Bronte Sisters Power Dolls! Video.

2) Burglar posts a photo of himself w/ stolen loot on his victim’s Facebook page. The cops were notified, but said burglary is such a low priority they wouldn’t bother with the case. Luckily for the victim, his dad writes for the Washington Post.

3) How A Christmas Story should have played out.

4) Rudolph (You Don’t Have To Put On The Red Light) Video.

5) The True Meaning of Christmas at Everything is Terrible. Video.

6) Santa Clause is Coming To Town, recut as a horror movie trailer. Video.

7) Comics writer Bob Haney’s version of Batman Saving Christmas.

F/u to previous post

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Now I want to tell the story of meeting my editor for the first time:

It was San Diego Comic Con, and I was on my first ever panel, which was held in the first few minutes of the first day. I’d never been to SDCC before and had little idea what to expect. Not to mention there was some unusual social interaction there that I didn’t have time to process. So I did my best, but I was a bit of a mess.

Then I looked out into the audience and saw my editor in an aisle seat, watching the panel. I’d already looked her up with Google Images (anything to procrastinate!) and recognized her instantly. Of course, seeing my editor out in the audience made me feel even more confident and calm.

Oh wait. I mean just the opposite.

Anyway, I flubbed a bit and rambled a bit more. I had some buddies in the audience (who had basically held my hand through the travel and badge-acquiring process) but I tried not to look too much at any of them.

Then, after the panel was over, I walked up to her and introduced myself. She lied and said I did well, and I felt kinda awkward.

Then one of my buddies (the one with the hammer) ran up to us and said, in a very loud voice, “Mr. Connolly! Mr. Connolly! Would you sign my girlfriend’s breasts?”

That’s what happened the first time I met my editor.

Apropos of a Twitter speech

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Writer/Director Kevin Smith left a long… rant? Let’s call it a speech–on Twitter about being what you want to be, rather than wanting to be it. He talked about spending time–years in many cases–believing in yourself and pushing until you reach your goals.

He makes a good point. There was a study in creativity not too long ago (Google won’t turn up the actual study) that asked people to exercise their creativity. Many folks who had boring jobs and didn’t think much of their own creativity scored quite low. Not a surprise, right?

But then the people giving the study asked them to answer the questions as though they were someone else. Someone creative, like a sculptor or other artist.

Once instructed to respond the way a creative person would, they began to give very creative answers. It wasn’t a lack of creativity, it was that they didn’t think of themselves as creative people, and so didn’t try hard to think creatively.

And this is true of many aspects of writing. One of the tricks I use all the time when I’m stuck is to ask myself “How would a professional writer fix this sentence?” (I know, don’t tell me, I know). Or “What would a best-selling/award-winning author have these characters do?”

You can substitute the name of an author you already admire, it can be some sort of platonic ideal, or you can picture yourself in some advanced, evolved state. I usually choose option 3. The fact is, this trick really helps. It opens me up to solutions that weren’t accessible before, because I was all wrapped up in who I think I am and what I think I’m capable of.

So, go Kevin Smith.