The Word Cloud

First Cloud blog. Please forgive if it's in any way clumsy.

This is not a blog about history. The 'heritage' in the title is here and now... all around us. This is a recurring theme for me at the moment but I'm prompted to write by Some Inconvenient Truths which you can find here if the link above has expired. http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/ - being new I don't know if you're on the Cloud, Scott but assuming you are... good blog.

I think we all accept the significance of moveable type and the Gutenberg Bible. That book was apparently published in the 1450s - a long time ago in our generation-long worldview. Its surely fair to say, though, that mass publication was still some time away dependent as it was on a mass (literate) audience. I'd venture further and say that our modern publishing 'industry' has more to thank compulsory education (c. 1850s?) than moveable type. That's 160 years ago. Waterstones (a subject of Scott's blog, in case you haven't looked yet) was established in 1982. 

Ok.

To me, the threads of human history look like heartbeats on a cardiotach - a big jump followed by some smaller jumps then a long flat bit - although without the regularity. A short period of massive change then a longer period of optimisation. The Ford Model T was a paradigm shift. All we've done since is optimise the engine and make the outside bit look cooler. Were the movers and shakers of America in 1908 preparing for a revolution in personal transport? Nope, they were spending the majority of the national transport budget on... train tracks. They got an uncomfortable shock.

(In my own worldview, we are in the 'quickening' a period where the heartbeats get quicker - much quicker to judge by what's happening around us at the moment.)

I'd be sad to see the likes of Waterstones disappear - just as I was when Woolworths fell gracelessly. It would be a great shame if my children stopped reading good old books in favour of a Kindle or other digital device. I am, I must confess, a little scared of the possibilities. Like most of us, I prefer the cosiness of what I already know - my comfort zone. 

However, the world is changing around us at an unprecedented pace. Yesterdays monoliths - the big publishers and retail outlets, for example - show signs of crumbling and with them their 'rules'. 

As a  novice writer I'm finding this website incredibly valuable. I'm learning (I hope) to write for publication. I'm learning the 'rules' of writing for publication. Book publication. But the business of publishing the printed page is a terribly wasteful process - I've seen the *massive* rolls of paper being transported daily to large presses. And the rules of the book publishing 'monolith' seem very unfair (as in stacked against me). Sure, I need a great editor but do I really need the book cover, the middle-man, the marketing, the book launches, the schmoozing? Particularly since its really my money thats paying for it if I write the story. Of course, I do. Thanks, in part to Waterstones.

Ok, I've rambled. Perhaps the nub of what I'm saying is that we are in a time of rapid change and with change comes loss - we have to let go of some nice things. If we are to accept change (as surely we must) we have to accept the loss... and move on. A book, when you strip it down to its pure basics, is just a story. And we've been telling stories for millenia. A digital book a la Kindle is stripped back to its basics - the story. And that's what we do, write stories. If Waterstones becomes a casualty of change I feel sure that's not down to the staff culture. I've always respected it as a retail outlet. They have a more visionary competitor in Amazon because Amazon are taking the story out of the High Street. 

I'd be sorry to see the book (or Waterstones) disappear. But I have to draw the conclusion that it probably will. Perhaps much quicker than we'd expect. 

So now I'm wondering more and more what that means to my craft. Part of the nature of rapid change is that it is rapid. And it wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.

Anyone care to throw out some ideas/scenarios on the theme of 'writing stories for the future'? 

 

Don't read this if you want the world to stay the same - it's another article trying to predict the future of UK bookselling. Predictably, the future seems unlikely to look much like the past.

But let's not get depressed. People will never stop reading. If the chain bookstores retreat, maybe the indies will spring up. Maybe we'll start to see department stores selling chick-lit next to shoes, action stories next to sportswear. Why not? Those sales have to go somewhere.

And if reading shifts onto e-readers and i-phones and all other vowel-object combinations (u-bend? a-bomb?) - well, hooray. Kids prefer reading screens to books already. Let's get em reading decent books instead of just watching kittens on U-tube. The new world is a-coming, we may as well greet it.

My most recent blog post on my site - persistentwriter - is full of happy news for once, and also about my buddies on here and Twitter.

Take a peek (if you get chance) and let me know what you think dudes! I want to hear about all of your future plans / good news too!

I am bringing a camera to York and I will be reviewing and posting pics on my blog (with your permission of course). I promise i'll pick nice ones only, no drunken knicker flashing or anything!!

This is the link to the blog:

 http://persistentwriter.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/the-future-is-bright/

Today, at 11:00am I was made redundant.

I have been fighting to get back to work for over six months; before this time I was too weak and poorly. The company I worked for have been very generous but it still hurts. I gave them two healthy years of my life, regularly working thirteen plus hour days and weekends. This is not their fault, they have to think of what is best for the company and the clients. I am not good for either as I can only work part time.
They have offered to help with anything that I need to find another position and glowing references; I earned those.
My medical report from occupational health was pretty damning as I am still under investigation for my pain condition, though I am actually a lot better than I was.
There were tears though I was trying really hard to be professional, and they looked very upset.

I will miss my job.

What this means for now is, more time to write and plenty of time to think about life and the future. At the moment I am angry about the situtation my condition has put me in but I can't change anything, so I have to stay positive.

The future is still bright.......

The Future of Publishing

Basic premise: assuming civilisation continues along broadly the same course, there will be increasing numbers of people wishing to (a) fulfil themselves (b) via self-expression, many of them (c) choosing to write.

Consequently, there will be more and more people:

·         learning the rules (university courses, correspondence courses)

·         producing competent, even good, books

·         unable to find a publisher

·         joining on-line writing communities

Here is where it gets interesting. There seems to me an opening for such communities to arrange publishing-on-demand for good material.

Here is where it also gets tricky. Where you have an opening you have a problem. Who decides what is good material? Answer: the boss(es) of the site. This will inevitably cause plenty of backbiting, bitching and flouncing off, but not so much as if the decisions were made ‘democratically’ (= lining up your pals).

The crucial aspect would be the bottom line. MemberX might think he has written a wonderful book, but if very few people buy the published-on-demand result, it will fall by the wayside. On the other hand, MemberY might get good sales, spreading out to Amazon, and alerting conventional publishers and bookshops.

This would be a sort of Authonomy-with-teeth. Instead of fellow members pretending to like a book, they would prove it with money.

Conventional publishers and bookshops, fearing a shift of power, would be likely to monitor such developments, thereby giving ever increasing power to the writing community bosses.

To reiterate: this is based on the premise that more and more people will want to fulfil themselves via writing.

The situation provides, I think, quite an opening for an entrepreneur. I am not that entrepreneur but am willing to take a small rake-off for providing these ideas.

A hundred years ago, the road heading south out of a small market town in the East Midlands lay flanked with marsh.   The council began draining the land for developers to build factories, and a short while later life returned to the depressed white areas south of town, the promise of jobs bringing unfamiliar people, unfamiliar music and wonderful groceries that whispered of white sands and brighter skies.  Somehow it worked, the long-established blending with the newly-arrived into something original, something exciting.  There was little crime, and what there was people tolerated.  If your bicycle was stolen, you knew where to buy it back the next day.  If your car had a fancy badge in the radiator then, well…badges are meant to decorate people, surely, not radiators.

I started my career in that place, as an apprentice metal turner.  We made parts that went on outdoor machinery – fittings, piping, that kind of thing.  We didn’t have a quality department.  If the screw thread wasn’t right on a joint, well, folks’d just have to get a bigger wrench.  But we knew what we were there to do.  Our little factory had one goal and that was to make money.  It did, too, for a while.  I still remember the managing director coming out to the shop floor, hands trembling and face like ash, every time the big roundabout machine went down.  Whenever that thing was turning, we were making money, because every blessed item it produced we could sell.  The mistake they eventually made was to assume that they would always be able to sell it.

I drove past the place a few months ago.  The old building is long gone.  There’s no sign there was ever a factory there.  There had been a little stone bridge across the road, over a brook.  I used to walk out there at break time, a sandwich in one hand.  There had been an ants’ nest just the other side of the bridge, all the time I worked there.  I’d watch them moving materials and constructing their underground civic grandeur.  The bridge is still there, and the ant colony, quietly outliving the noisier manufacturer next door.

I’m still around too, though I’ve moved on now, and while I don’t expect to live forever, I certainly do intend to hang on as long as I possibly can.  I’m not a metal turner any more.  I write.  I know, I know, who doesn’t these days?  But I mean, I live off it.  Just.  You may even have heard of me if you have a long memory, but I won’t be offended if you haven’t.  There are so many of us scratching a living out of this disappearing trade.

If I tried to name one thing that has enabled me to survive this long, it would be the harsh lesson of my first employer’s demise.  Writing is a business, even in this age where words submerge us, from the media plaque on every living room wall to the personal feeds beaming into every head.  If you write for a living then you have one goal and it is not to make people happy or to make beautiful prose, it is to make money, now and in the future.

I still remember the feel of paper.  Somehow it helped, when we wrote long-hand on manuscript pages, even when we typed at our word processors and printed the pages to read.  It reminded us that we were manufacturing a product.  And in that sense at least, nothing has changed, although we have no more bookshops, the few surviving library buildings have become museums and the last surviving paperbacks are turning dark brown in a thousand basements.  We just have to work harder to remember, without something solid to hold.  Remember that we are manufacturing a product, that we have customers who will or will not buy it, that we need them to buy it, and buy the next one, if we are to put food on our table and clothes on our ageing frame.  Any time we spend making a product that nobody will buy is time we should have spent making a product we can sell.  There are only so many hours in the day and we must use that capacity wisely.  Gone are the days when we would sing that one must write from the heart, for oneself, knowing full well in that same saddened heart that this turkey was going to sell half as well as the last.  We could rejoice in our brilliance, the writer that nobody read.  Somehow, the discrepancy didn’t seem to matter, for in those days we had such a thing as an advance.

Now we write our words in our heads and see them at the back of our eyes.  When we are ready, we can release them in an instant to a wider world, where they may find their way in seconds to a million subscribers, implants delivering our work directly into their eyes and ears.  To write a story is one of the easiest things in the world, second only to publishing it.  Anyone can publish a novel, and often does.

Of course, I am preaching to the choir, I know that.  If you are reading this then it is because you subscribed to my column, and if you have read this far then you may well continue to subscribe.  Lucky me.

So you want to write.  Of course you do.  You want to make a living by writing.  Now why would anyone pay to read what you have to say, when they can read the output of two and a half billion writers for free?  I guess you’re still reading me, and still paying, so perhaps you already know the answer.

When I was a young man, towards the end of the dark age, I learned that there were two things people look for in a book – transcendence and themselves.  Today two and a half billion writers are out there for you to read, and they are all telling you about their day, their fantasy, their past or their transforming experience.  Theirs, not yours.  If I want you to carry on buying my column then I have to pay close attention to you.  I have to know something about who you are, what you believe, what you enjoy, what surprises you, who you agree with and what you have always wanted to do but never dared.  Then I can write you a story, you personally, or at least, as many of you as I can.  And if you want to earn a living at this trade too, that’s what you have to do with every piece you produce – offer your readers stories about people like them overcoming adversity and becoming greater as a result.

When I started writing all those decades ago, we had to guess what people would love and hate.  Now, I can just ask you, a few million of you at once.  And you can tell me in a few minutes.  As many of you as want to.  I can run a program to collate your responses and I can use what I learn to write the best story I can to suit your needs.  So now I can tell you the second purpose for my column this week, and that is to announce another story offer.  Just send me your answers to the questions above and wait twelve weeks to receive my next story.  I know, that’s a lifetime, but I promise it will be worth it.  If it isn’t, well, I know how easily you can take your business elsewhere.  For those of you who haven’t taken part before, I write fiction that is far longer than average, fifty pages or more, but don’t let that put you off.  My job is to pull you in so tight, you’ll forget about everything else.  And we can’t have you reaching for the spoiler function to get an instant précis, can we?

What’s that?  You thought I’d say more about how to succeed as a professional writer?  Now, you didn't think I was going to tell you all the answers this week, did you?  You’ll be needing a reason to buy this column next week.  Want to know what makes the infotainment networks prefer your material to everyone else’s?  Same time, same channel feed, same subscription.  Oh, and same fee.

JMH

19 October 2035

It's part of my real job to be reasonably on the ball about new trends and developments in media and communications. Now and again I find something that overlaps with my unreal job as a writer. So here's a couple of things I found today that might be of interest to all those who've been gobbling up Harry's blogs about ebooks and the like.

But these make ebooks look like the Domesday Book.

First of all, there's something called The Institute for the Future of the Book.
Bob Stein of the institute is quoted as referring to "the future of the book as a meeting place, based around what it can offer to fans and people that want to participate."

Maybe he'll enter this month's Word Cloud Competition.

Participation, along with collaboration is a huge trend? thing? topic? - whatever, when it comes to talking about new media. So here's something new for writers: ThumbScribes - "a platform for collaboratively creating fiction." Here you can log on and "create content" with friends or complete strangers via the medium or channel of your choice.

Is this the shining new future? Or simply a sideshow of Digital Consequences?

 

Hello fellow writers,

Please find my website on following link :
http://www.filedby.com/author/s_p_h_patel/939868/

Also the direct link is www.blacksandcastle.com (Doors to open soon).

S.P.H. Patel.

Well, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to need your help.

I'm going to enter the Pratchett Competition, or at least give it a bloody good go!

I'm not sure if my concept is any good - it's not humourous for a start - but hell, if I went around thinking like that I'd get nothing done.

So how can you lot help, eh? By making me bloody well WORK, that's how! I've got around 6 months - I figure that's 3 months getting the story down and 3 months editing / polishing. That's one hell of a tall order, especially with work and a toddler in tow. Luckily I get my 6 weeks off in the summer - I intend to take full advantage of that as much as I can; if I have a basic story written by September, I'll be well chuffed! - so questions about 'how much have you got done', whilst badgering, are good for me. Make me shake that money maker...

Not sure what to call the piece yet - 'The Deviant Strain' sounds at once naff and something Japanese businessmen get friendly young ladies after their yen to do in their spare time - but it's about the consequences of genetic engineering in humans (basically, what if we lived in a world where eugenics, social engineering and germline engineering was accepted as a Good Thing?). It's a bit of a hot potato subject, but I'm hoping it'll suffice.

So - first 1700 ish words to follow -  first draft and all, so, you know,  don't expect miracles... ;p XD

ONE

 

Rain spattered against the grimy pane in intermittent bursts, coloured by the neon sign that advertised the strip club opposite. No such sign adorned Angel's surgery; you either knew it was there, or you didn't. She had no need to advertise.

Business was good. A steady stream of 'gangers, wireheads and streetcrawlers kept the wolf from the door, and so Angel had closed early, looking forward to a lost night in front of the box, her feet up, whisky in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

She leaned back into the plush cushions of her favourite easy chair and sighed, blowing smoke as she did so. Nothing of particular interest was on the plasma, just the usual selection of game shows, news propaganda and televised executions. She flicked through the channels until she found something she liked the look of – some kind of old sit-com from the days before the ice – and settled down to watch.

Her reverie was broken by someone pounding upon her back door.

“Fuck off,” she hissed under her breath, burying herself deeper into her nest of cushions. “I'm not in.”

The pounding continued.

An angry sigh erupted from her. She set down a half-empty glass of the finest black-market whisky 20 Eurodollars would buy and straightened herself up. “I said, I'm not in!”

The pounding took on a frantic edge.

Angel growled under her breath and pushed her feet into heavy boots (shit-kickers, her father always insisted on calling them. “If you're going to deal with thugs, then make sure you've got yer shit-kickers on,” he said, before showing her how a decent left hook should be thrown. Good old Papa...) before standing up. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, winding the whip-thin dreadlocks around themselves until they formed a ball at the base of her neck and stalked over to the videocom. She stabbed the keypad and the small screen awoke, its grainy lines coalescing to show a figure huddled outside the door.

“I'm not open,” she barked.

The figure unfolded himself and looked directly into the camera. “Ange... sweetheart – please. Open up.”

A face she once thought handsome peered up at the camera and smiled, the rain running in rivulets down it, dripping off his nose and chin.

“Fuck off, Roman.” She turned away from the com.

“No – please!” There was no mistaking the pleading edge to his voice. “I... I really need your help. Just take a look. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking for.”

Angel closed her eyes and sought the happy place her yoga instructor kept banging on about, but still it eluded her. She sighed.

“Give me one good reason, Roman – just one.”

From outside the camera's influence, Roman hauled something into view.

“Because if you don't, he'll die?” He posed it as a question, but even in fuzzy monochrome, Angel could see the man her former gang-mate supported was bleeding heavily.

“Shit...” She sighed again. Her finger hovered over the button that would unlock the door an allow him in.

“Angel...”

“Yeah, okay; keep your balls on,” she snapped, and finally stabbed at the keypad. It gave a flatulent buzz, and the bolts that held the door closed slid back.

“You are a total peach, you know that?” Roman grinned and blew her a kiss through the com. He caught the door and pulled it open before the bolts could slide back again.

“Arsehole,” Angel replied, mainly to herself.

o0o

On the street, her name was Angel. This wasn't down to any divine pretensions - it could easily have been 'that Irish Bitch' or 'the Fucking Ghoul' - but everyone in certain circles knew that when shit hit the fan and half your insides were hanging out, you needed an Angel.

Roman wasn't his real name, either, but hey, it worked. He dragged the injured man in through the door, straightened up and treated Angel to his most winning smile.

She was not convinced.

“I don't know what you're playing at,” she began, “but if you think you can come around here, in the middle of the feckin' night-”

“It's eight o' clock,” he interrupted.

“Whatever!” Angel snarled and continued her rant. “In the middle of the night and bring some stupid blunt you've accidentally capped and expect me to fix him up before anyone notices, you're sorely mista-”

Roman caught Angel's cheeks between hands slick with blood and kissed her. “Spare me the lecture, Aoife – I don't need it.”

“Get the fuck off me!” Angel pushed him backwards, slapping his hands from her face. She then paused and reached up to touch her face. Even through her anger, Roman saw her sudden consternation.

The neon light outside flickered from red to green, bathing the hallway in an eerie light. The pool of blood seeping from the man on the floor grew, touching the soles of her boots.

“Damn,” she whispered, and ran a bloody hand across her forehead, leaving a crimson streak. “Damn. Okay. What happened?”

Roman shrugged. “I'm not sure. He was dumped on my doorstep about an hour ago. He had this attached to him.” He dug around in his pocket for a moment and produced a tatty, handwritten note.

“For payment.” Angel looked back to Roman. “Payment for what?”

“Haven't got a clue. But whoever dumped him, they've fucked him up pretty bad.”

Angel crouched down by the bleeding man. He was out cold – probably for the best, Roman thought – and without touching him, assessed his condition. She blew a low whistle. “You're not wrong. Looks like half his head is missing.” She looked back up at Roman. “By rights, this blunt should be dead. Who is he?”

“Dunno.”

“So you've brought a complete stranger to me on the strength of some poxy note?” She stood up, and there was no mistaking the tight edge of fury to her voice now. “What are you, retarded?”

“No... I just didn't know where else to go.” Roman shifted uncomfortably. “There's something else, too.”

Angel rolled her eyes and planted her hands on her hips, but said nothing.

Wordlessly, Roman laid the blunt out and lifted up a filthy shirt to reveal a nicely muscled torso.

“So? He works out,” Angel said. “What of it? You've come to show me a good set of abs?”

“No, idiot. Look closer. What's missing?”

Her lips pursed, a sure indication of her rising irritation with him, and she hunkered down again to inspect the injured man's torso. The pout soon turned into a frown, quickly followed by a look of fear.

“No navel,” she whispered.

“No navel indeed,” Roman echoed. “Now do you see why I brought him here?”

Angel snapped her head up and flew at him. “You about bastard!” she spat. “You've brought a fucking 'bom here? To me? Do you realise just how dangerous that is? Mary, Mother of God - you're mental!”

That she blasphemed was all Roman needed to know about her terror. He knew, because he felt it, too.”

“I couldn't just let him die on the street, Aoife...”

“Stop calling me that!” she ran both her hands through her hair. “Anthony... I don't think you realise the gravity of the situation. You've brought an Abomination – a freak of nature that our dear government insists don't exist at all – to my surgery. At eight o' clock in the evening. With all of bloody Southern Conurbation out on the streets.” Each point was punctuated by a stab of her finger against his chest. “You do realise that 'boms don't get out of whatever facility they are grown in without help, don't you?” She glared at him. “Whoever did this, did it to fuck you up royally. And so, in bringing him in to me, you've fucked me up royally, too.”

Roman grinned a little sheepishly before recovering himself. “If it's any consolation, the shot to his head would have destroyed any regular tracking implant...”

He trailed off under her white-hot scrutiny.

“I didn't know what else to do, okay?” he admitted. “Like you, I thought he was just another blunt; another junkie. But then I saw the mess his head was in, and that he was a 'bom, and, well, I panicked a bit.”

“You panicked.”

“Yeah.”

“And so you thought you'd spread it around a bit?”

“What? No! I was going to tip him in the river, but then I saw the note.” He held up the blood stained piece of paper again. “'For payment'. So I figured he might have something, you know, worth taking...”

Angel grinned, but not out of kindness nor amusement.

“Oh, I see. You thought me might have some decent metal on him, huh?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Something worth flogging? But you know that without a living body playing as host, decent tech decays... and so you need me to extract this shit for you, whilst he's alive, and store it properly.” She gave him a disgusted look. “And they say I'm the ghoul. You'd put Scrooge to shame, you know that?”

“That's a bit rich, coming from you,” Roman shot back defensively. “Your whole operation revolves around tech extraction-”

“I fit and fix tech,” Angel near-shouted. “I do not scavenge half-dead 'boms in the hope of making a quick buck!”

“Oh, that's right – you've got your oath, haven't you?” Roman sneered. “Oh – but you don't, because you crashed out of med school the moment they discovered you were a devo. Or was it more to do with you discovering the undiluted ecstasy of the prescription drugs cabinet?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Angel screamed back.

“Sweet little Angel, the streetcrawler's saviour...” Roman fluttered his eyelashes and cradled his chin in his hands, pantomiming innocence.

A groan from the floor stopped Angel's punch in mid flight.

“He's awake,” she whispered, her fury all but forgotten. “Crap, he's awake!” She scrabbled frantically at his neck, her fingers seeking a pulse. “Okay, calm down... lie still... try not to move... Roman! Get his legs – no time to get the gurney. We've got to get this guy to surgery now.”

 

 

I would just like to say thank you to all the people that commented on my blog "It's a hard descision" I am grateful for all the advice given throughout an I have taken it all on board. I agree with all of you that maybe, unless my writing is succesful enough, that I should have a second job or at least something to fall back on. I have decided also to look for jobs in areas that I would be best suited in, journalism, literery agent, publisher ect. Thank you all again for your great advice, I hope that my descisions will have a good impact on my future. Thanks!