Ink Slinger Geek

I had a good trip to Montreal. It would’ve been nice to have been able to stay longer and to have seen more of it, but I”m not complaining. Our readings went well, with decent crowds for both the morning and the afternoon sessions. The National Theatre School is awesome.

The Vagabond Trust will soon enter the late 20th century and launch a website. Details on that are sketchy right now, but we should know what we’re looking for after our next meeting. It could, and probably will, be something as simple as a blog, but I’m going to try to suggest other things that we could do with it so that we can expand our web presence. It’s possible that I’ve been listening to Cory Doctorow too much lately, but I keep getting reminded that obscurity is an author’s enemy, and the more of ourselves that we put out for the world to see, the better our chances that we’ll be noticed. Or maybe we’ll just have a simple resource for info about upcoming public appearances and publications. Either way, if you google vagabond trust now, this is the most relevant site in the search results, and that’s not that great.

I went to the launch last night at Westminster Books for Syllabus Nonymous. I only stayed long enough to hear the readers at the start, but it was pretty cool to hear what some other local writers were doing. The zine is $5, quarterly, and available at Westminster. I’ll be picking a copy up tomorrow on my way home from work. I would’ve bought one last night, but I went out for drinks, and figured I’d be better off not losing or ruining my copy before I got to read it.

I’m very excited about writing right now. I’ve been looking more closely at financial stuff for school, and CompuCollege may prove less viable for me, given my income. I need to make an appointment to see one of their financial advisers to be sure. Anyway, I mention this because it has prompted me to look into other school options, and I’m considering some writing workshops and low residency MFA programs. Most of these are out of my financial league too, but some of them, like the correspondence program in creative writing at Humber College, look pretty good for what I want to do.

I lost direction on my novel in progress a while back. I’ve mostly been working on short fiction (when I’ve been working at all, anyway) in the mean time. I think I’ve figured out how to get myself back on track. My problem was that I was being too vague with myself about the situation that the protagonists were facing, which lead to some scenes of where I just glossed over the problem and kind of just hoped that it would become more apparent later. This, of course, just made writing the book more difficult, and I got frustrated and stopped. Now I think I know what the problem is going to be, or at least what I need to do to figure out what the problem will be.

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So, the writing group that I’m in, the Vagabond Trust, is doing a pair of readings at the National Theatre School this Saturday, the 27th. Most of the writers will be presenting work from the groups expedition to the wilds of Newfoundland this past summer, and there’ll be a pretty bitchin’ slideshow about the trip as well. I stayed back in Freddy so I could pay my rent, so I’ll have to present other work (probably a short story and a novel excerpt).

If you happen to be in Montreal this Saturday, and have some free time, you should come by NTS, room 251 from 11:30 to 1, and/or from 3 to 4:30. If you can’t make it to the readings, but you know me or stalk me on the internet and want to hang out, grab a beer, murder me and make furniture out of my skeleton, I’ll have some free time in the evening, so let me know.

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I did about a page and a half on a short story yesterday. It’s a story about aliens who travel the galaxy for art’s sake. I’ve got a decent idea of where it’s going, but not necessarily how it’s going to get there.

I heard back from Futurismic today. They chose not to buy my story, but the rejection letter was nice. It’s a story about having to engage in a physically violent sport in order to win the right to read. I read this story at Wilser’s Room back in May with my writer’s group. I think it went over pretty well there. I like the story, anyway. I’ve got a couple other markets that I’d like to submit the story to, so I’ll have to sit down and figure out which one to try next. If nobody bites, I’ll try reworking the concept.

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So I’m trying to develop a better sense of discipline towards my writing. About three weeks ago I decided that I would try to write at least one page every day.

It’s been pretty hit or miss, so far. I’m writing most days, usually getting a touch over a page, although some days it’s more like half a page. There have been a couple of good days where I’ve cranked out three pages. Then, of course, there have been days where I have accomplished nothing.

I’m hesitant to claim any real success, but going over what I’ve written, I’ve got about 19 pages in 23 days. That’s pretty good, I think. It’s mostly work on the book, but I also started three short stories in there. Two of those stories I only started to make sure I didn’t lose the ideas for them, and I probably won’t finish them any time soon. On the other hand, I would like to get more short fiction done and submitted.

I did submit a short story to Futurismic about a month ago. According to their guidelines, they take 2 to 5 weeks to get back to authors, longer if the story is being strongly considered. I’m not holding my breath on the sale, but at least it’s out there.

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If you’ve never written to your member of parliament before, now might be a good time to try it. Last week, the minister of industry, Jim Prentice introduced Bill C-61, an act to amend the copyright act. If you’re a Canadian, and this bill becomes law, you’re very likely to become a criminal.

Prentice has been getting off on calling this bill a made-in-Canada solution to our copyright situation. It didn’t think it was possible for me to feel less patriotic (it’s not that I don’t like Canada, it’s just that when you get right down to it, all a country is to me is some lines on a map, and it’s hard to love lines if you just aren’t all that into geometry), but I think this has done it. If C-61 is an example of something that’s made in Canada, we should probably start boycotting our own products.

Of course, such a boycott would be ridiculous. Which may actually be a good reason to do it. Either way, there’s nothing particularly made in Canada about C-61. No, Prentice suckled this one from the teats of the American entertainment industry and spat it back out for us. Thanks, Jimmy.

C-61 will finally make it legal for you to record TV and radio, convert your analog content into digital content, and rip your CDs so you can put your music on your mp3 player. Unless you have to break any sort of digital lock (DRM, etc.) to do so. You won’t be allowed to unlock your cellphone. You won’t be allowed to use a DVD player that allows you to circumvent region encoding on your DVDs.

There are other problems with the bill. For example, there’s an exception in the bill that would allow someone who is blind to circumvent the DRM on an ebook so that he could have a text-to-speech program read the book to him. You could even do this on a blind person’s behalf. Sounds great! Except that it would be illegal to possess or distribute the tools that would actually allow you to do this.

I decided to do a little experiment. I own only one copy-protected CD. Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle. It’s a pretty good album, and I did acquire it legally. Because I own the album, I should be allowed, according to C-61, to rip the tracks and put them on my mp3 player. Except that this is a copy-protected CD. So I wouldn’t be allowed to rip it after all.

I did it anyway. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a linux user. The copy-protection on this CD only works in Windows or on a Mac. The program that I use to rip my CDs, K3B, allowed me to rip the CD. This program came with my distribution. So, under C-61, the linux distribution that I use may actually be illegal as well, because it contains a tool that would allow me to circumvent a digital lock. So I may actually be a criminal for choosing to use free and open source software instead of Windows.

Most of us will only become criminals for committing acts of piracy. It’s questionably still legal to download music in Canada right now because of the levy we pay on recordable media (blank CDs and the like). This will no longer be the case, but you can be damned sure that you won’t be allowed to stop paying that levy. So you’ll be a criminal when you download a song. You’ll be a criminal when you help the blind. You’ll be a criminal when you watch a DVD that you bought from outside of North America. You’ll be a criminal when you make a backup copy of a DVD that you buy. You’ll be a criminal when you copy & paste a paragraph from a DRM’d ebook.

And when we’re all criminals, what respect will we possibly have for the law?

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I’m planning to go back to school in the fall, to take the Information Systems Specialist+ program at CompuCollege. This will qualify me to do fun things, like play with networks, and tell you that your problem exists between your keyboard and your chair.

The prospect of spending 83 weeks in school isn’t exactly appealing, but I do like the idea of having a career that I might enjoy. And I don’t like the idea of charging you four bucks for a latte when I’m thirty. Although even if I start now, the program won’t be done by the time I turn thirty, so I’ll probably still be doing that on the side. Then I will know shame.

Tags: school // 4 Comments »

Yeah, I look at buses,
rubberneck when I hear one
as I walk to work
or the grocery store.

I like to look at buses,
at the people on them,
fuzzy outlines behind
the painted on advertisements.

I know that you ride buses,
and that’s why I like to watch them,
and when you hear this,
I’m going to start looking at cabs.

*****

I haven’t posted anything that I’ve been working on in a long time. I don’t often think of myself as a writer anymore. But every now and then I get in a mood where I think I should, and I’m in one of those moods now. Anyway, this came to me yesterday as I was walking home and a couple of buses passed me and I did look up at them (though not to stalk anyone - I’m not quite that creepy, I hope). I wrote it today. I don’t think it’s all that good, but it is finished so I might as well do something with it.

It’s NotaBle Acts time again. The deadline is the 23rd. I should really get started on it, although I don’t really know what I’m going to write for it.

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Or I would, if it didn’t also involve going to Azerbaijan. Although I’m sure it’s lovely there.

Regardless, hehehe, The Camel’s Toe.

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The TRS guys got to try out 4th edition D&D a little early. Their review is very positive about the game. At this point I still have some reservations about it, but overall I’m looking forward to trying out the new system.

I didn’t make an exact note of where in the episode the review is, but it’s somewhere between the 20 and 30 minute marks.
TRS Episode 56

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I wound up having no trouble with my webhosting, thanks to the miracles of auto-renewal and my wife’s Visa card. Fortunately tips were good at work last week (well, good for us, anyway, not good like a busy night at a bar or a nice restaurant), so I paid her back right away.

I upgraded the software that I use for my site, and changed the theme. I also added a twitter widget to the sidebar, because I spend too much time online.

I’ve also been going back to previous entries and cleaning up the tags and categories. Sorry if a bunch of crap comes through the rss feed as a result.

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