I heard voices in my head last. They kept me awake.
It pissed me off, because I was exausted after getting very little sleep on both Saturday and Sunday night (which, I confess, were for somewhat self-inflicted reasons) I was really, really looking forward to having a good night's sleep.
It was weird, because it wasn't like a dream. It was nothing that I was participating in. I was more of an observer. And in some ways, it was as if I was an accidental eavesdropper, as the events just sort of played out inside my skull.
There was a murder investigation. A husband, dead. Someone was trying to pin it on his wife, who was pregnant and hormonal had psychic power and in a burst of careless anger, fried her husband's brain as efficiently as if she'd dropped it into a microwave.
Unsurprisngly, there was a lot of discussion going on, about the murder particularly, but about human rights issues as well. Certain groups were wondering why they didn't as a general rule, lock up psychics behind shielded walls when the became pregnant, to prevent them from lashing out at their husbands.
Of course, others argued that you couldn't lock someone up like that -- particularly a pregnant woman -- even if you were doing it to help prevent someone's death.
I just shouted at them all to shut up, but I don't think they heard me. I suspect that means that they don't exist, which I think is a good thing, because it means I don't have a bunch of little tiny people living inside of my brain.
On the downside, it might mean that I'm insane.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Friday, December 10, 2004
Happy DOOM Day
As much as I feel like I've overdone the blog posting today, I just can't let this slip by without a mention.
Today is the 11th birthday of the release of the Shareware version of DOOM.
I can not let this slip by because DOOM -- and particularly the shareware release -- is the game that turned me into a PC gamer and, in doing so, changed the course of my life forever.
Before DOOM - couldn't imagine playing computer games. After DOOM - couldn't imagine not playing video games.
I actually downloaded the DOOM shareware to show off my superior computer knowledge to a friend of mine. He'd just bought a copy of Wolfenstein 3D for his brother for Christmas and, while I'd never so much as touched Doom, I did know that it was developed by the same people who made Wolfenstein, and was supposed to be leaps and bounds more impressive.
So I downloaded the game, just to show him what a *real* computer game looked like.
And then I started playing it.
And in twenty seconds I was hooked, life changed forever.
Stupid Doom.
Thank you to everyone at id Software, past and present, who have brought titles like Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, and, of course, Doom3 into our lives. We're probably not a whole lot better for it, but I know we're a whole lot happier.
Today is the 11th birthday of the release of the Shareware version of DOOM.
I can not let this slip by because DOOM -- and particularly the shareware release -- is the game that turned me into a PC gamer and, in doing so, changed the course of my life forever.
Before DOOM - couldn't imagine playing computer games. After DOOM - couldn't imagine not playing video games.
I actually downloaded the DOOM shareware to show off my superior computer knowledge to a friend of mine. He'd just bought a copy of Wolfenstein 3D for his brother for Christmas and, while I'd never so much as touched Doom, I did know that it was developed by the same people who made Wolfenstein, and was supposed to be leaps and bounds more impressive.
So I downloaded the game, just to show him what a *real* computer game looked like.
And then I started playing it.
And in twenty seconds I was hooked, life changed forever.
Stupid Doom.
Thank you to everyone at id Software, past and present, who have brought titles like Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, and, of course, Doom3 into our lives. We're probably not a whole lot better for it, but I know we're a whole lot happier.
Year of the Stick
I'm currently working on a collection of Stick Figure Drama that will run from strip #1 to strip #28. These are being designed and printed so that I have something untraditional to hand out to friends and family members for Christmas.
However, I'm planning to overprint by a few copies that I'll use to test the market for selling a collection of this type.
So here's the deal. "Year of the Stick" will run somewhere between 64 and 72 pages (I don't have exact numbers right now, as it's still being designed) and covers the strips mentioned above -- #1 to #28; "Sometimes Love Dies" to "Sometimes Love Dies: Redux" (which hasn't been posted here yet). Plus, each strip will have an accompany commentary, including descriptions of that week's inspriation, trivia about the strip, or just drunk ramblings from yours truly.
I'm printing 50 copies, and as of this writing I'm not sure how many will be for sale -- probably between 10 and 15, which will make this a very, very, very limited edition. Price is only $9.99 -- not bad for a 60-ish-page limited edition comic strip collection. Y'all try to go buy a Far Side book for that much...
If you want to buy one, it's currently on a first-come, first-serve basis. Drop me an email at todd@caughtinthenet.org if you're interested. Heck, I'm feeling generous -- if you buy one of these intial copies, I'll even sign the thing for ya.
And if you miss out, don't panic. As I said, this is a market test, and if there seems to be enough interest, I'll go back for a second printing. Maybe a third and fourth as well, but something tells me it isn't quite going to come to that.
However, I'm planning to overprint by a few copies that I'll use to test the market for selling a collection of this type.
So here's the deal. "Year of the Stick" will run somewhere between 64 and 72 pages (I don't have exact numbers right now, as it's still being designed) and covers the strips mentioned above -- #1 to #28; "Sometimes Love Dies" to "Sometimes Love Dies: Redux" (which hasn't been posted here yet). Plus, each strip will have an accompany commentary, including descriptions of that week's inspriation, trivia about the strip, or just drunk ramblings from yours truly.
I'm printing 50 copies, and as of this writing I'm not sure how many will be for sale -- probably between 10 and 15, which will make this a very, very, very limited edition. Price is only $9.99 -- not bad for a 60-ish-page limited edition comic strip collection. Y'all try to go buy a Far Side book for that much...
If you want to buy one, it's currently on a first-come, first-serve basis. Drop me an email at todd@caughtinthenet.org if you're interested. Heck, I'm feeling generous -- if you buy one of these intial copies, I'll even sign the thing for ya.
And if you miss out, don't panic. As I said, this is a market test, and if there seems to be enough interest, I'll go back for a second printing. Maybe a third and fourth as well, but something tells me it isn't quite going to come to that.
C*nt.
I just finished today's post-NaNo work on my still unfinished novel. And what I want to know is this: Why doesn't the MS Word dictionary recognize the word "cunt"?
Ugly word? Sure. Nasty word? No doubt about it.
But it's a word. Like it or not.
Stupid Microsoft...
Ugly word? Sure. Nasty word? No doubt about it.
But it's a word. Like it or not.
Stupid Microsoft...
Gouranga
Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!
Ah...yeah. Thanks so much for the email, neateye. Whoever you are.
Monday, December 06, 2004
KING COVERS: Roadwork (1981)
It took me years before I finally read Roadwork. It's a shame, because it's a hell of a good book.
I think most of the reason it took so long is that when I first started reading King, it was because wrote horror, and horror was about monsters and vampires and things that go bump in the night, and those things were cool, because if you liked those things you seemed dark and edgy, and that was also cool.
Roadwork was about a guy going through a bit of a midlife crisis while the city tries to tear down his house. Which wasn't very dark and edgy and was, in fact, kind of boring and middle-aged.
I finally read it a couple years ago when going through the Bachman Books again (mostly as an excuse to reread Rage, which remains one of my all time favourite King novels) and I was incredibly affected by the story of Roadwork. As the story of a man who is desperate to hang on to the things he cares most about, and willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that, there's something for all of us to relate to, even as we watch him drive headlong to a conclusion that we know will not be a good one.
The original US release -- a paperback, as 4 out of 5 of the Bachman Books were -- has a preety standard, "No name author on the shelf of an airport bookstore" kind of look to it. Guy with gun in the background, house in foreground, impression of standoff given by the imagery. Does its job well enough, but nothing that screams brilliance.
The later US release went for a slightly more understated look, with a creepy, deathly road sign -- an effective image. It loses something for me, though, by attempting to be *too* creepy with all that green fog kinda stuff. Green fog isn't creepy. It's lame.
These covers, both from Sweden, were where I suspect the notion for the creepy, deathly road sign were stolen from. And, in my opinion, this is where they're far more effective. Simple, very eye-catching with the roadsign yellow against the stark black. I pick the version on the left as the top Roadwork cover design -- it edges out the other design from Sweden by having a better font choice.
This UK design borrows mildly from the initial Signet layout -- guy with gun, signs of a showdown, etc. The guy looks like he's wearing a trenchcoat though, which makes the character seem a bit too private dectective like for my tastes.
I only wish I could see a larger version of this cover from Japan, as it's doing something very, very right. The basic design -- with the photo, at the top, taking up only about a third of the whole cover, then just blackness below it, is a definite winner. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out what's going on in the photo. It looks, to my eye, like a road construction crew which, while appropriate, doesn't quite cut it. Which is unfortunate because once again, the Japanese designers have shown a very, very good eye.
And so we go from good to bad, with this cover from Spain, which is apparently about a guy who wants to guard his favourite strip of highway from...something. And is he wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform in that picture? Spain followed this cover up with...
...this one, which appears to imply that the fellow in the California Highway Patrol outfit is now road pizza. It's a better cover than the last one, certainly, but still missing something.
And now we go from bad to worse. I don't even know what to say about this cover from Belgium. Is that a...zombie?
I just...ah, I can't take anymore. Let's get this over with.
On the left we have a cover from Bulgaria which, near as I can tell, has nothing to do with the novel in question and appears to have had its design inspired by the cover of The Stand. On the right a cover from Italy which prompts me to simply say: "Just because it has the word ROAD in the title does not mean you have to show cars on the cover."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I've got to say about that.
I think most of the reason it took so long is that when I first started reading King, it was because wrote horror, and horror was about monsters and vampires and things that go bump in the night, and those things were cool, because if you liked those things you seemed dark and edgy, and that was also cool.
Roadwork was about a guy going through a bit of a midlife crisis while the city tries to tear down his house. Which wasn't very dark and edgy and was, in fact, kind of boring and middle-aged.
I finally read it a couple years ago when going through the Bachman Books again (mostly as an excuse to reread Rage, which remains one of my all time favourite King novels) and I was incredibly affected by the story of Roadwork. As the story of a man who is desperate to hang on to the things he cares most about, and willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that, there's something for all of us to relate to, even as we watch him drive headlong to a conclusion that we know will not be a good one.
The original US release -- a paperback, as 4 out of 5 of the Bachman Books were -- has a preety standard, "No name author on the shelf of an airport bookstore" kind of look to it. Guy with gun in the background, house in foreground, impression of standoff given by the imagery. Does its job well enough, but nothing that screams brilliance.
The later US release went for a slightly more understated look, with a creepy, deathly road sign -- an effective image. It loses something for me, though, by attempting to be *too* creepy with all that green fog kinda stuff. Green fog isn't creepy. It's lame.
These covers, both from Sweden, were where I suspect the notion for the creepy, deathly road sign were stolen from. And, in my opinion, this is where they're far more effective. Simple, very eye-catching with the roadsign yellow against the stark black. I pick the version on the left as the top Roadwork cover design -- it edges out the other design from Sweden by having a better font choice.
This UK design borrows mildly from the initial Signet layout -- guy with gun, signs of a showdown, etc. The guy looks like he's wearing a trenchcoat though, which makes the character seem a bit too private dectective like for my tastes.
I only wish I could see a larger version of this cover from Japan, as it's doing something very, very right. The basic design -- with the photo, at the top, taking up only about a third of the whole cover, then just blackness below it, is a definite winner. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out what's going on in the photo. It looks, to my eye, like a road construction crew which, while appropriate, doesn't quite cut it. Which is unfortunate because once again, the Japanese designers have shown a very, very good eye.
And so we go from good to bad, with this cover from Spain, which is apparently about a guy who wants to guard his favourite strip of highway from...something. And is he wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform in that picture? Spain followed this cover up with...
...this one, which appears to imply that the fellow in the California Highway Patrol outfit is now road pizza. It's a better cover than the last one, certainly, but still missing something.
And now we go from bad to worse. I don't even know what to say about this cover from Belgium. Is that a...zombie?
I just...ah, I can't take anymore. Let's get this over with.
On the left we have a cover from Bulgaria which, near as I can tell, has nothing to do with the novel in question and appears to have had its design inspired by the cover of The Stand. On the right a cover from Italy which prompts me to simply say: "Just because it has the word ROAD in the title does not mean you have to show cars on the cover."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I've got to say about that.
Second most embarassing moment in the history of Caught in the 'Net
Well, it's probably not, actually, but it's got to be in the top five, easily, and is, at the very least, a really excellent example of stupendously bad timing.
Because who should roll through town on the weekend following my column on Caught in the 'Net's most embarassing moment but the person who had a very integral role in that most embarassing moment -- the wife who I split up with less than a week after writing a Valentine's Day column professing my undying love for her.
She was staying with her parents and I had been invited over to visit, so I decided to pop by, without making any mental connection with the column I had written last week. Until, a little later in the evening, I noticed her pick up and start to flip through a copy of last week's Tribune Weekend. At which point I could only think: Oh...God...
We all had a good laugh, and I even managed to convince her that I wasn't obsessively writing about her every week. Yet, in another strange example of synchronicity, this week's Stick Figure Drama is also about the end of a marriage. Must be something about the holiday season that lifts my spirits and make sme think of happy families. And by "happy" I really mean "tragic and disfunctional".
That particular strip will be up later in the week. For now, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the side links to Stick Figure Drama cartoons were updated a few nights back, so you can catch up on a little light reading while you wait for the new edition.
Lastly, coming later tonight or, more likely, tomorrow, a new edition of King Covers, featuring a lesser known title with plenty of really, really crappy covers to choose from.
Because who should roll through town on the weekend following my column on Caught in the 'Net's most embarassing moment but the person who had a very integral role in that most embarassing moment -- the wife who I split up with less than a week after writing a Valentine's Day column professing my undying love for her.
She was staying with her parents and I had been invited over to visit, so I decided to pop by, without making any mental connection with the column I had written last week. Until, a little later in the evening, I noticed her pick up and start to flip through a copy of last week's Tribune Weekend. At which point I could only think: Oh...God...
We all had a good laugh, and I even managed to convince her that I wasn't obsessively writing about her every week. Yet, in another strange example of synchronicity, this week's Stick Figure Drama is also about the end of a marriage. Must be something about the holiday season that lifts my spirits and make sme think of happy families. And by "happy" I really mean "tragic and disfunctional".
That particular strip will be up later in the week. For now, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the side links to Stick Figure Drama cartoons were updated a few nights back, so you can catch up on a little light reading while you wait for the new edition.
Lastly, coming later tonight or, more likely, tomorrow, a new edition of King Covers, featuring a lesser known title with plenty of really, really crappy covers to choose from.
Monday, November 29, 2004
NaNo: Day Who the fuck cares because this shit is finally over
I am the proud owner of an unfinished but officially verified 50,000 word novel. This actually means a lot to me, as I somehow managed to cross that 50,000 word mark after giving up on this novel not once, but twice.
Seven days ago, I threw it away. I didn't think there was anything salvageable.
Then the part of me that knows better fought back, and I wrote 15,000 words in the last five days.
Like I said, the book isn't done yet, and probably won't be done until the end of December at the earliest, maybe the end of January if I have some trouble with it. I'm gonna try to stick with the daily writing, pushing out something between 1,000 and 1,500 words until I get to type the words "THE END". I've still got a few hurdles to overcome before I get there, but I think I'll make it.
It's been a lot of years since I sat down and spent any amount of time creating something this...unformed. I think a big part of why I was so tempted to give up was because I was scared, scared that I didn't know where the book was going, scared that I didn't know how to steer towards anything, scared that it all felt so out of control.
It's not fun feeling out of control.
But it's exhilerating. When the book went well, I felt a kind of excitement I haven't felt since the last time I wrote a novel by the seat of my pants. And what's surprising, is I don't think last year counts.
Last year I had too good an idea of where I was going. I may not have had an ending, but the middle -- the basic structure of the book -- was there before I started work on it. So it didn't feel like quite as pure a creative process as I went through this year.
No, what I'm reminded of this year was a book I wrote just out of high school called "The Voice of the Raven" -- great title, crappy book, and next to incomprehensible on its own, given that it was intended as part of some psychotic 10 part series.
But we're not talking quality here, are we? We're just talking about creativity, and how the massive random output I've had this month reminds me of a book I wrote twelve years ago, or so.
And how it reminds me of how many books I could have written in those intervening years.
And how it reminds of how fucking depressed that makes me feel.
Seven days ago, I threw it away. I didn't think there was anything salvageable.
Then the part of me that knows better fought back, and I wrote 15,000 words in the last five days.
Like I said, the book isn't done yet, and probably won't be done until the end of December at the earliest, maybe the end of January if I have some trouble with it. I'm gonna try to stick with the daily writing, pushing out something between 1,000 and 1,500 words until I get to type the words "THE END". I've still got a few hurdles to overcome before I get there, but I think I'll make it.
It's been a lot of years since I sat down and spent any amount of time creating something this...unformed. I think a big part of why I was so tempted to give up was because I was scared, scared that I didn't know where the book was going, scared that I didn't know how to steer towards anything, scared that it all felt so out of control.
It's not fun feeling out of control.
But it's exhilerating. When the book went well, I felt a kind of excitement I haven't felt since the last time I wrote a novel by the seat of my pants. And what's surprising, is I don't think last year counts.
Last year I had too good an idea of where I was going. I may not have had an ending, but the middle -- the basic structure of the book -- was there before I started work on it. So it didn't feel like quite as pure a creative process as I went through this year.
No, what I'm reminded of this year was a book I wrote just out of high school called "The Voice of the Raven" -- great title, crappy book, and next to incomprehensible on its own, given that it was intended as part of some psychotic 10 part series.
But we're not talking quality here, are we? We're just talking about creativity, and how the massive random output I've had this month reminds me of a book I wrote twelve years ago, or so.
And how it reminds me of how many books I could have written in those intervening years.
And how it reminds of how fucking depressed that makes me feel.
Friday, November 19, 2004
NaNo: Day Nineteen
My novel is out of control. And I think it's nobody's fault but my own.
When I started, I had a beginning, and a direction for about the next 20 pages. And I had a pretty good -- to abou 75% or so -- idea of what the ending was going to be.
Middle? I dunno. We'll figure it out when we get there.
Those first 20 pages? Well, the initial idea was that those would be the backstory, setting up the character and his history and explaining a bit about how he got to be where he was today. After those 20 pages, we could dig into the real meat of the story.
I'm at page 55 and still working on backstory. At some story "backstory" became "story". Or at least the first half of the "story".
I've got about a chapter and half until that first half is finished, I think, if everything goes more or less the way it seems to be. That'll be, based on previous chapters, somewhere between 15 to 30 pages, putting the first half of the book somewhere in the area of 70 to 85 pages and 40,000 to 50,000 words. Not too shabby.
Except I'm just as confused right now about the second half as I was regarding the first half 30 or 40 pages ago.
I have a rough idea of what's going to happen, but that's mostly because I know the ending that I'm headed towards. Page by page, sentence by sentence, I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm going to do with the second half of my book.
Nothing worth worrying about right now, though, I guess. I've still got the first half to finish. And if all goes well, that'll get me to my 50,000 words for NaNo, leaving me to worry about the second half in December.
When I started, I had a beginning, and a direction for about the next 20 pages. And I had a pretty good -- to abou 75% or so -- idea of what the ending was going to be.
Middle? I dunno. We'll figure it out when we get there.
Those first 20 pages? Well, the initial idea was that those would be the backstory, setting up the character and his history and explaining a bit about how he got to be where he was today. After those 20 pages, we could dig into the real meat of the story.
I'm at page 55 and still working on backstory. At some story "backstory" became "story". Or at least the first half of the "story".
I've got about a chapter and half until that first half is finished, I think, if everything goes more or less the way it seems to be. That'll be, based on previous chapters, somewhere between 15 to 30 pages, putting the first half of the book somewhere in the area of 70 to 85 pages and 40,000 to 50,000 words. Not too shabby.
Except I'm just as confused right now about the second half as I was regarding the first half 30 or 40 pages ago.
I have a rough idea of what's going to happen, but that's mostly because I know the ending that I'm headed towards. Page by page, sentence by sentence, I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm going to do with the second half of my book.
Nothing worth worrying about right now, though, I guess. I've still got the first half to finish. And if all goes well, that'll get me to my 50,000 words for NaNo, leaving me to worry about the second half in December.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
I think I'm in love
I downloaded Mozilla Firefox tonight. I think I'm in love with a browser for the first time since I laid my eyes on Netscape Navigator version 0.9. Firefox freaking rocks.
Someone mentioned it to me months ago and I kind of poo-poohed the suggestion. That's how locked into my Internet Explorer mindset I was. That was how powerful a grip Microsoft had over my mind, and over my soul.
Thank you, Firefox, for setting me free.
In a weird "just like old times" way, I've included a little promo link on the side of the blog so interested parties can snag their own copy of Firefox. It's odd because it's the first time I've done this since Netscape was king of the hill.
The more things change...blah blah blah.
Someone mentioned it to me months ago and I kind of poo-poohed the suggestion. That's how locked into my Internet Explorer mindset I was. That was how powerful a grip Microsoft had over my mind, and over my soul.
Thank you, Firefox, for setting me free.
In a weird "just like old times" way, I've included a little promo link on the side of the blog so interested parties can snag their own copy of Firefox. It's odd because it's the first time I've done this since Netscape was king of the hill.
The more things change...blah blah blah.
Friday, November 12, 2004
NaNo: Day Twelve
Saw this link while logging in to blogger today -- a blog listing people who are posting their NaNoWriMo novel on their blogs at http://nanoblogmo.blogspot.com/. It's a tempting thought, to blog your novel and post your nightly writings, get feedback and criticism and the like from readers all over, and I might give it a spin next year. I'd probably have to fire up a new blog just for the novel, though.
In writing news, the novel's gone fairly well in the last couple of days. I didn't get the chance to do any writing on Wednesday night, but I did double-duty last night to catch up on that missing day. The novel is now clocking in at just over 20,000 words, and it's really starting to feel like it's a long way from being done. I'm not sure if it's just turning out to be a long novel, or if I'm trying to pad my word count with extraneous words to make sure I manage my daily word count, but whatever it is I'm fairly sure the book, when finished, will be closer to 75,000 or 100,000 words.
Which, if everything goes well, I'll continue to work on well into December, if necessary.
In other news, I started down the road of learning CSS at work today, and if a few headaches at the start, my brain started to wrap around the idea and it's surprisingly functional and logical. Wish it hadn't taken so long. May actually play at redesigning the ol' blog layout over the Xmas holidays if I get bored.
I also watched a film I'd been waiting 14 years to see, but I'll save my thoughts on that for a night when I'm feeling less tired and don't have 1,600 words of a novel to still get through.
In writing news, the novel's gone fairly well in the last couple of days. I didn't get the chance to do any writing on Wednesday night, but I did double-duty last night to catch up on that missing day. The novel is now clocking in at just over 20,000 words, and it's really starting to feel like it's a long way from being done. I'm not sure if it's just turning out to be a long novel, or if I'm trying to pad my word count with extraneous words to make sure I manage my daily word count, but whatever it is I'm fairly sure the book, when finished, will be closer to 75,000 or 100,000 words.
Which, if everything goes well, I'll continue to work on well into December, if necessary.
In other news, I started down the road of learning CSS at work today, and if a few headaches at the start, my brain started to wrap around the idea and it's surprisingly functional and logical. Wish it hadn't taken so long. May actually play at redesigning the ol' blog layout over the Xmas holidays if I get bored.
I also watched a film I'd been waiting 14 years to see, but I'll save my thoughts on that for a night when I'm feeling less tired and don't have 1,600 words of a novel to still get through.
Monday, November 08, 2004
NaNo: Day Eight
Since getting back from Bella Coola, and scrapping the rapidly collapsing end to Chapter One, the novel's been back on track again. The last two days have gone relatively smoothly (though last night, I didn't really find myself "in the zone" until I'd just about hit the 1600 words -- I ended up continuing through for another 300 words, just because it was flowing so well).
I've come to think that my biggest problem with the end of Chapter One is that it involves a car accident, and I've already a car accident once in the past, for a story that didn't have a plot and never actually got one and never went anywhere and is currently unfinished. So now that I'm writing another car accident -- years later and, presumable, as a much better writer -- I feel like I have to surpass that previous car accident scene that I liked so much.
I'm trying to outright myself. And failing.
So I think, come Wednesday or Thursday, while I'm away from work, I'll play at trying to copy and paste chunks of that previous car accident, that I've always loved and never really been able to use anywhere, into my NaNo novel. If it doesn't work, no loss. If it does, I end up with an improved chapter *and* an excuse to finally use a scene I've loved for years but have never been able to find a home for.
I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier.
And now, I'm off to tackle tonight's 1,600. Should be fun.
I've come to think that my biggest problem with the end of Chapter One is that it involves a car accident, and I've already a car accident once in the past, for a story that didn't have a plot and never actually got one and never went anywhere and is currently unfinished. So now that I'm writing another car accident -- years later and, presumable, as a much better writer -- I feel like I have to surpass that previous car accident scene that I liked so much.
I'm trying to outright myself. And failing.
So I think, come Wednesday or Thursday, while I'm away from work, I'll play at trying to copy and paste chunks of that previous car accident, that I've always loved and never really been able to use anywhere, into my NaNo novel. If it doesn't work, no loss. If it does, I end up with an improved chapter *and* an excuse to finally use a scene I've loved for years but have never been able to find a home for.
I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier.
And now, I'm off to tackle tonight's 1,600. Should be fun.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
NaNO: Day Six
I'm back from Bella Coola. What a long, ugly drive it was -- 11 hours out of the last 72. Blech.
I managed to NaNo on a borrowed laptop on Thursday night and got through my 1600 words for that day. I probably output a pitiful 400 last night before I was interupted by company and alcoholic beverages.
Today, in retrospect, I'm feeling like the 1,600 I did on Thursday were close to 1,550 really crappy words. The whole sequence I was writing has this feeling of being over-written and incredibly clunky. I'm not sure immediately how to fix it, and I think if I continue on from where I left it, it's only going to get worse. So I'm going to do the only thing I can think of doing at this point.
Move on to Chapter Two.
Knowing exactly how Chapter One ends, even though I'm apparently lacking the words to convey it, should make just giving up on that chapter for the moment and moving on beautifully easy. And hopefully moving on will help the quality of the work, as the area I'm going into now as not quite as plotted out as the end of Chapter One was -- I think the biggest problem I had was that I overthough that sequence, which led directly to the overwriting.
Should try to put out 2,000 words tonight too, to make up for last night's pitiful output.
And that's my update. I'm off to scratch out some words now. Wish me luck.
I managed to NaNo on a borrowed laptop on Thursday night and got through my 1600 words for that day. I probably output a pitiful 400 last night before I was interupted by company and alcoholic beverages.
Today, in retrospect, I'm feeling like the 1,600 I did on Thursday were close to 1,550 really crappy words. The whole sequence I was writing has this feeling of being over-written and incredibly clunky. I'm not sure immediately how to fix it, and I think if I continue on from where I left it, it's only going to get worse. So I'm going to do the only thing I can think of doing at this point.
Move on to Chapter Two.
Knowing exactly how Chapter One ends, even though I'm apparently lacking the words to convey it, should make just giving up on that chapter for the moment and moving on beautifully easy. And hopefully moving on will help the quality of the work, as the area I'm going into now as not quite as plotted out as the end of Chapter One was -- I think the biggest problem I had was that I overthough that sequence, which led directly to the overwriting.
Should try to put out 2,000 words tonight too, to make up for last night's pitiful output.
And that's my update. I'm off to scratch out some words now. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
NaNo: Day Three
I had the day off today, so I tackled my NaNo pages this afternoon instead of waiting until the evening, as I've still got my column to write this evening. And I sure didn't want to overwork myself in the evening.
I crossed the 1,600 word line today, but I think it's going to get whittled down to 1,500 or 1,450 after I wipe out the last paragraph I wrote today, which just doesn't work for me. I'm going to go back to it post-column and see if I can clean it up and make it better. It's exactly the point I want to end at today, but I just need a couple of hundred more words to make it work. Dammit.
I'm headed to Bella Coola for a few days tomorrow, but I'm bringing a laptop with me to make sure I don't miss any writing opportunities. 5,000 words would be hard to make up after being out of it for three days. Not that it would me that much, given that I had a 5,000 word head-start, but I'd rather save that head-start for when I'm really suffering some blocks. I think the next two or three days will continue fairly smoothly.
I crossed the 1,600 word line today, but I think it's going to get whittled down to 1,500 or 1,450 after I wipe out the last paragraph I wrote today, which just doesn't work for me. I'm going to go back to it post-column and see if I can clean it up and make it better. It's exactly the point I want to end at today, but I just need a couple of hundred more words to make it work. Dammit.
I'm headed to Bella Coola for a few days tomorrow, but I'm bringing a laptop with me to make sure I don't miss any writing opportunities. 5,000 words would be hard to make up after being out of it for three days. Not that it would me that much, given that I had a 5,000 word head-start, but I'd rather save that head-start for when I'm really suffering some blocks. I think the next two or three days will continue fairly smoothly.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
KING COVERS: Firestarter (1980)
Not one of my favourite books, certainly, though it did have all the right elements. People with pyschic powers, an evil off-shoot of the government attempting the capitilize on those psychics, lots and lots of things on fire.
I don't know exactly what it was about Firestarter that never quite worked for me, but it always seemed to be lacking something. It's a pretty brutal story, in some ways, and drifts about as far away from a happiness as a happy ending can get, which is something else I usually like in my novels, and...
And it's been so many years since I read this book, that I really can't remember much of it at all, least of all why it didn't make a lasting impression on me. All I know for sure is that it didn't. That just thway life goes sometimes.
We'll start the festivities tonight with the original Viking hardcover release, a strong contender for design superiority right out of the gate. A striking yet simple image that is burned -- pun not-so-terribly intended -- forever in my mind. When I think Firestarter, this is the image I will always thing of, as this is the image that graced the cover of the book for years, first in hardcover...
...and later in two differently coloured Signet paperback editions.
I think I like the black one better.
You know the one thing that does bug me about this design? From a purely tyopgraphical perspective, what the fuck is a hyphen doing in there? Seriously! Why are hyphenating your title? That looks retarded. Use a more condsensed font or something, and get it on one line!
Lazy typographer bastards...
This later Signet releases manage to maintain the basic look and feel of the earlier paperback cover -- flames, eyes -- while giving it a slight redesign. Unfortunately, it's a redesign that drifts a little too far into "boring" for my tastes.
Another Signet design takes a slightly different approach, though I guess there's only so much you can do with a story about a young girl who lights things on fire. We've got the young girl, and we've got the fire, so that's got all the story's bases covered. Plus we've got smoke! Or maybe clouds. Or, I guess, maybe fog. BUt that doesn't matter, because we've got a young girl and we've got fire!
England goes with proven success of the whole fire and eyeball thing, except they choose to use -- for reasons that their designer will likely take to their grave -- what appear to be photos. Crappy photos. Crappy superimposed photos.
All is not lost, though...
...as the British redeem themselves with this design -- the winning entry. A massive burst of fire fills almost half the book's cover, with a tiny sillouhette in the midst of it all, bringing hom not just the ideas of "fire" and "little girl" but also "lots and lots and lots and lots of fire" which is pretty important to the story, actually.
This cover from Estonia (!) takes a close second, with a rather intriguing and inventive choice of images -- brain scans and a zippo lighter. Unfortunately, I think this cover design would have failed in the U.S. as it likely would have required a few too many steps of putting two and two together before it would make any sense. And thus, a creative design suffers in the hands of the great unwashed. Or something to that effect.
As for this cover from France, I'm really not sure what's going on. A...dragon? A sword? I can't quite make out what it's a picture of, so maybe if it were clearer it would make more sense, but I'm not betting on it.
I absolutely love the look of these two Japenese covers. The simple black and white images are fantastic, and more than any other cover these two pictures capture the loneliess of Charlie McGee's life, on the run from a government agency that wants to harness her powers for their own use. Unfortunately, it's lacking the all-important fire imagery required for a proper cover to a book called "Firestarter". Which is too bad because, once again, these really are incredibly beautiful.
I don't know exactly what it was about Firestarter that never quite worked for me, but it always seemed to be lacking something. It's a pretty brutal story, in some ways, and drifts about as far away from a happiness as a happy ending can get, which is something else I usually like in my novels, and...
And it's been so many years since I read this book, that I really can't remember much of it at all, least of all why it didn't make a lasting impression on me. All I know for sure is that it didn't. That just thway life goes sometimes.
We'll start the festivities tonight with the original Viking hardcover release, a strong contender for design superiority right out of the gate. A striking yet simple image that is burned -- pun not-so-terribly intended -- forever in my mind. When I think Firestarter, this is the image I will always thing of, as this is the image that graced the cover of the book for years, first in hardcover...
...and later in two differently coloured Signet paperback editions.
I think I like the black one better.
You know the one thing that does bug me about this design? From a purely tyopgraphical perspective, what the fuck is a hyphen doing in there? Seriously! Why are hyphenating your title? That looks retarded. Use a more condsensed font or something, and get it on one line!
Lazy typographer bastards...
This later Signet releases manage to maintain the basic look and feel of the earlier paperback cover -- flames, eyes -- while giving it a slight redesign. Unfortunately, it's a redesign that drifts a little too far into "boring" for my tastes.
Another Signet design takes a slightly different approach, though I guess there's only so much you can do with a story about a young girl who lights things on fire. We've got the young girl, and we've got the fire, so that's got all the story's bases covered. Plus we've got smoke! Or maybe clouds. Or, I guess, maybe fog. BUt that doesn't matter, because we've got a young girl and we've got fire!
England goes with proven success of the whole fire and eyeball thing, except they choose to use -- for reasons that their designer will likely take to their grave -- what appear to be photos. Crappy photos. Crappy superimposed photos.
All is not lost, though...
...as the British redeem themselves with this design -- the winning entry. A massive burst of fire fills almost half the book's cover, with a tiny sillouhette in the midst of it all, bringing hom not just the ideas of "fire" and "little girl" but also "lots and lots and lots and lots of fire" which is pretty important to the story, actually.
This cover from Estonia (!) takes a close second, with a rather intriguing and inventive choice of images -- brain scans and a zippo lighter. Unfortunately, I think this cover design would have failed in the U.S. as it likely would have required a few too many steps of putting two and two together before it would make any sense. And thus, a creative design suffers in the hands of the great unwashed. Or something to that effect.
As for this cover from France, I'm really not sure what's going on. A...dragon? A sword? I can't quite make out what it's a picture of, so maybe if it were clearer it would make more sense, but I'm not betting on it.
I absolutely love the look of these two Japenese covers. The simple black and white images are fantastic, and more than any other cover these two pictures capture the loneliess of Charlie McGee's life, on the run from a government agency that wants to harness her powers for their own use. Unfortunately, it's lacking the all-important fire imagery required for a proper cover to a book called "Firestarter". Which is too bad because, once again, these really are incredibly beautiful.
NaNo: Day Two
1,600 words yesterday, plus 2,200 words today, plus the 5,500-ish words that I was already starting with leaves me currently just shy of 9,000 words, almost 1/5 of my NaNo total.
I think, to be fair, I'm going to shoot for 55,000, or maybe even 60,000. Given that I cheated a little bit at the start, with those 5,500 words already there. I don't like cheating. Cheaters are bad. Cheaters are evil.
Cheating or not, though, the novel's rocking so far, and it's looking like my prediction for the length of chapter one (the lengthy backstory chapter) is going to be just about bang-on at 20 pages. I may have to break that into two chapters later, as it might prove to be significantly longer than any other chapter in the book, which I don't like. I'm all about consistency. And liquor. Consistency and liquor. That's me.
I'm expecting this first week to fly by without breaking a sweat or batting an eye. I'm sure I can pump out 1,600 tomorrow with my eyes closed, and the day after that should be just as easy. By Friday, I might start struggling a bit, depending on where I end up, and depending on how much more solid the direction I'm going becomes in the next day or two.
And what d'ya know...I'm finished my writing for the day, still have another two glasses of red wine to get through, and I'm pumped creatively. I think I'm gonna put together the long-delayed and probably-not-so-terribly-anticipated new edition of King Covers. Why? Because I love ya. That's why.
I think, to be fair, I'm going to shoot for 55,000, or maybe even 60,000. Given that I cheated a little bit at the start, with those 5,500 words already there. I don't like cheating. Cheaters are bad. Cheaters are evil.
Cheating or not, though, the novel's rocking so far, and it's looking like my prediction for the length of chapter one (the lengthy backstory chapter) is going to be just about bang-on at 20 pages. I may have to break that into two chapters later, as it might prove to be significantly longer than any other chapter in the book, which I don't like. I'm all about consistency. And liquor. Consistency and liquor. That's me.
I'm expecting this first week to fly by without breaking a sweat or batting an eye. I'm sure I can pump out 1,600 tomorrow with my eyes closed, and the day after that should be just as easy. By Friday, I might start struggling a bit, depending on where I end up, and depending on how much more solid the direction I'm going becomes in the next day or two.
And what d'ya know...I'm finished my writing for the day, still have another two glasses of red wine to get through, and I'm pumped creatively. I think I'm gonna put together the long-delayed and probably-not-so-terribly-anticipated new edition of King Covers. Why? Because I love ya. That's why.
Monday, November 01, 2004
NaNo: Day One
Today is the start of National Novel writing month. Today -- in roughly thirty minutes -- I'll open up MS Word and start struggling with my first 1600 words.
I have to confess. I'm already about 5,000 words into my NaNo novel, and it's not from working on it earlier today. I wrote about 10 pages on it earlier this year, though my intention wasn't to cheat -- honestly! -- my intention was simply to write a short story. When I reached page 10 and realized that I was still stuck on the character's back story, and that the back story was going to continue for at least another ten pages or so, I knew that I wasn't dealing with a short story any longer. I was dealing with a novel.
At which point I promptly dropped the project and set it aside as my NaNo novel.
I'm a little grateful to have those 5,000 words already down, as it will be a bit of a buffer in case I hit any nasty cases of writer's block, or for my 3-4 day work-related trip to Bella Coola later this week (where I may or may not be able to write, depending on whether I can wrestle my dad's laptop away from him for those few days).
Am I actually intending to keep some kind of a record of my NaNo progress here in the blog? Yes. Do I actually think I'll be successful? Well, that's another matter altogether, but it's still worth trying for, I think.
Having said that, though, non-NaNo-related blog postings might become fewer and further between. On the other hand, they may come more frequently, as what was intended to be a quick NaNo update becomes a longer, rambling blog-post.
If anything's almost guaranteed to suffer this month, it's the stick figure dramas and the King Cover reviews -- both of which are in dire need of an update (King Covers are badly needing some linkage over on the right hand side too, I think). If you see either a SFD or a King Covers post anytime in November, it can mean only one thing -- I have a writer's block that I haven't been able to get past, and I'm now working desperately to distract myself by doing *anything* other than thinking about it.
Off to write now. 1600 words today will be easy. Should be able to do it without breaking a sweat.
Of course, tomorrow's 1600 words will be a bit more difficult. And Wednesday's more difficult still.
Better get these 1600 taken care of while they're easy.
I have to confess. I'm already about 5,000 words into my NaNo novel, and it's not from working on it earlier today. I wrote about 10 pages on it earlier this year, though my intention wasn't to cheat -- honestly! -- my intention was simply to write a short story. When I reached page 10 and realized that I was still stuck on the character's back story, and that the back story was going to continue for at least another ten pages or so, I knew that I wasn't dealing with a short story any longer. I was dealing with a novel.
At which point I promptly dropped the project and set it aside as my NaNo novel.
I'm a little grateful to have those 5,000 words already down, as it will be a bit of a buffer in case I hit any nasty cases of writer's block, or for my 3-4 day work-related trip to Bella Coola later this week (where I may or may not be able to write, depending on whether I can wrestle my dad's laptop away from him for those few days).
Am I actually intending to keep some kind of a record of my NaNo progress here in the blog? Yes. Do I actually think I'll be successful? Well, that's another matter altogether, but it's still worth trying for, I think.
Having said that, though, non-NaNo-related blog postings might become fewer and further between. On the other hand, they may come more frequently, as what was intended to be a quick NaNo update becomes a longer, rambling blog-post.
If anything's almost guaranteed to suffer this month, it's the stick figure dramas and the King Cover reviews -- both of which are in dire need of an update (King Covers are badly needing some linkage over on the right hand side too, I think). If you see either a SFD or a King Covers post anytime in November, it can mean only one thing -- I have a writer's block that I haven't been able to get past, and I'm now working desperately to distract myself by doing *anything* other than thinking about it.
Off to write now. 1600 words today will be easy. Should be able to do it without breaking a sweat.
Of course, tomorrow's 1600 words will be a bit more difficult. And Wednesday's more difficult still.
Better get these 1600 taken care of while they're easy.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Nail-gun + Human Flesh = Bad
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man building a shed accidentally fired a nail into a major artery near his heart on Wednesday but survived after emergency surgery, medical officials said.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be an awful lot of nail-gun related injuries going on. People shooing themselves in the chest, shooting themselves in the head, shooting themselves in the foot.
People, it's a nail-gun. A NAIL...GUN. Not a nail-relaxing-muscle-massager. Could we all try to treat those nail-guns with a bit more care and not wave them around like they're toys? They're not toys. Unless there are toys that can slam metal spikes through your chest and into your aorta. And if there are, they shouldn't be available to the general public. For God's sake, the general public isn't even allowed to have lawn darts anymore.
More on the story here.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
In case you missed those subtle references the last few weeks...
...I'm going drinking tomorrow. I suppose there's nothing terribly out of the ordinary about my intention of consuming liquor -- I've been known to do that from time to time -- but this is a special occasion. Which I've mentioned, a time or, two in my column.
But, if you've missed those references, here is that special occasion.
Ten years of Caught in the 'Net.
Ten goddamn, motherfucking years of Caught in the 'Net.
Approximately 500 columns.
A longer run than many television shows (*most* television shows -- as was pointed out to me the other night).
Damn-near-exactly one-third of my life.
That's a long time.
I probably won't get a chance to blog between work and liquor tomorrow, so I'm going to take a few minutes now to get out some of my thoughts and feelings on the subject, because I think they need to get out. And I may not have the opportunity to do it in the column proper before year's end.
I was 21 years old when I started writing Caught in the 'Net. I was working for a little newspaper that was, at the time, called the Williams Lake Advocate. I'd been there for quite a few years, working in production in spite of the fact that I'd joined the paper hoping I could somehow use to follow my dream of being a writer.
It didn't work out that way, as I was far to shy at the time to properly conduct interviews, and when I tried to quit the job, disgraced by my own failure, I instead found myself designing ads and laying out a newspaper.
In those days, computers were fairly new to me. I needed someone to remind me, constantly, what it was I had to click on it order to start building the ads -- there were so many pretty little icons on the desktop, it was hard to remember what did which thing.
I bought my first computer not long after. I had actually been shopping for a word-processor, and the one that I was demoing had a little two or three line display that would show you what you were writing, and suppored floppy disks to save your work -- remember, I wanted to be a writer, not a computer geek, and all I wanted to get my hands on was a simple little typewriter replacement.
But when I returned the word-processor to the store that had allowed me to demo it overnight, I saw the most amazing thing -- a personal computer. They had just gotten it in the night before, and had it set-up and on display, the screen flashing through brilliant colour photos that couldn't help attract your attention. It looked far, far better than the simple three line screen on the word processor. And, of course, as a computer, it could be a word processor too, but also oh so much more.
I bought it, of course. It was a 386. It had 4MB of Ram (which I later upgraded to five), a 100MB hard drive, and the video card supported a whopping 256 colours, and it ran Windows 3.1.
And I fell in love with it almost overnight.
A few years later, swapped the machine for a 486-66 with 16MB of RAM, a 256MB hard drive, and -- the one piece of hardware that would seal my fate -- a 14.4K modem.
I used the modem, initially, to call the handful of local bulletin board systems that were running at the time, which satisifed my desire for digital conversation. And yet, there was a sense that there could be more -- that there *was* more, just waiting to be discovered.
That *more* was the Internet.
I first heard about the Internet on the news, probably in 1993. It was just beginning to outgrow its early military and university-based origins, slowly becoming something the generaly public might be interested in. I distinctly remember a news show quoting the e-mail address for the president of the United States -- president@whitehouse.gov.
And I remember looking at the address, mystified by the funny symbols, the odd punctuation. There was something about it that looked wholly digital, that looked somehow 21st century. This was the future. I wasn't sure how I knew it, and if asked at the time, I probably would have denied that I knew it, but it was there, burning in the back of my mind. And one thing was certain: I had to get on this thing they called the "Internet".
So I did.
I found an ad in the back of a computer magazine, promoting something called a FreeNet in Washington.
The idea of a FreeNet was that you could use your modem to dial in and access the Internet completely free of charge. It seems like a funny business model to me, and I'm not sure how they made any money (actually, they likely didn't, explaining the noticeable lack of FreeNets in the modern world) but I didn't care. It was going to get me online for the simple charge of...well, whatever the long distance turned out to be.
For the record, the long distance turned out to be in the area of $500.00 for that month. But it was worth it. My God, was it worth it.
My first experience with the Internet on that FreeNet was through a unix-based shell. There were no pretty pictures on the world wide web, no easy point-and-click interface. You logged into the system and used a series of text commands to steer your way around. It was awkward and clunky, and thank God I had a copy of Internet for Dummies handy to help me find my way around, but what I found -- first in Gopher, and then in Usenet, and later through an attempt to access the web through a text-based browser, wowed me.
As time went on and I read more about this mysterious Internet, I discovered that there were servers that allowed people to access the 'Net using programs that actually ran in Windows -- no more annoying text commands! Not long after I found another freenet service, this one offering exactly that kind of access, and I cheerfully signed up, happily paying the telephone company another $500 in long distance charges so that I could access the online world.
And the day I finally logged in through Windows...it was all over. I was hooked. I could feel the rush move through my body, tingling my brain, glazing my eyes over, bringing a faint but very real smile to my lips. There was more information out there than you could imagine, and it was suddenly oh-so-easy to get at. Point-and click. Point-and-fucking-click, man.
A few months after that, I got word that Internet service was going to be available locally, and I couldn't sign up fast enough. My addiction would have gladly forced me to continue spending $500 each month for 'Net access, but I was grateful to be able to shave off 95% of that bill. I knew I was going to need to buy groceries eventually.
At this point, I pitched the idea of an Internet column to the then editor of the paper, Bal Russell. I thought it would be a brilliant way to merge two of my passions -- writing and the Internet -- and actually get some words published in the paper for a change. I wanted to start the column right away, to get people ready for the Internet a few weeks before it actually arrived in Williams Lake, but Bal vetoed that, and told me that while he'd run the column, it would have to wait until Internet service actually existed in Williams Lake.
Waiting was hell. I spend weeks thinking about the first line for that first column, trying, desperately, to come up with just the right words to draw people into, first the column, and then the wonder, the magic, of the Internet in general.
Ten years ago, I wrote these words:
And that, my friends, is now officially a piece of history.
The column has gone through a lot of changes in ten years. When I started, my goal was to have it function as a kind of guide-book for people, helping them understand and get the most out of the Internet. I pointed people towards valuable software and wrote reviews of the coolest web sites. During the first year of the column, I held weekly IRC chats, where local readers could come and hang out, and ask question and get advice.
As the years went on, and Internet became increasingly more mainstream, the column didn't need to focus quite as much on being a guide-book. It began to change into more of an opinion-based column, while still focused on the Internet, allowing me to share my thoughts on everything from the Netscape / Internet Explorer rivalry, to the legal and moral issues of using a little program called Napster.
At its peak, it ran in five newspapers. It's been printed in two different papers in Williams Lake, it's run in Quesnel, it's run in Prince George, it's run in Sycamouse, and it even ran illegally in Merritt for a few weeks, when an editor breached copyright law and printed the sample columns I sent him without permission. Which, given the number of songs I've downloaded, is probably more than fair.
I've received fan mail (though never as much as I would have liked) and once inspired someone to mail-bomb me. I can't count the number times I've been out somewhere and had someone say to me, "Hey, you're that computer guy, aren't you?" And I have never once gotten tired of hearing a complete stranger tell me, "I really liked your column last week."
I've been through one girlfriend and then a break-up, and then another girlfriend and then a marriage and then a breakup, all during the run of this column. And outside of a Valentine's Day column that, in retrospect, ended up being more than just a little bit embarassing, almost none of that has had a noticeable impact on my writing from week to week.
The world moves and changes; there are ups and downs; but Caught in the 'Net remains solid.
I've sent column to my editor, not sure it was the best I could do. I've sent column after too many drinks, and have, occassionally, completely forgotten to send columns because I'd had even more drinks.
I've written good ones, bad ones, and far, far too many that were just kind of okay. I even went through a period -- probably five years ago -- when I felt like I was cheating anyone who read the column, because I wasn't putting enough into.
I almost quit the column then. It had somehow stopped being a labour of love, and had, instead, become a chore.
God knows how it turned into a labour of love again, but it did. And I'm glad.
This last year has been an absolute blast for me. Throwing caution to the wind, and writing anything I wanted, whether it connected to the Internet or not, has been a surprisingly freeing experience, and I feel as if I've done some of my best writing -- in any medium -- during these last 300 days. And that makes me, very, very happy.
If I were to die on January 1, 2005, I could go with one fewer regret, knowing that I had put my all into this column, and did everything with it that I could think of and had time to do in that last year.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, depending on how you look at it) I'm not dying on January 1, 2005, which is what is making this whole thing so goddamn difficult.
I announced last January that I was going to retire the column at the end of 2004, when it reached its 10th anniversary. I decided this for a number of reasons.
The first and most obvious was this: When I realized that the end of 2004 was going to mark the 10th anniversary of the column, I did the math and realized that I'd been writing it for one-third of my life. And if I were to do it for another ten years, then I would reach the point where I had done it for half of my life.
And the little voice in my head, that's desperately afraid of getting old and eventually dying, said this: "Don't ever, ever, ever do anything for half your life."
On top of that, there had been a feeling for the last few years that perhaps the column had run its course. It started as a How-To guide, became a vehicle for my opinion, and then finally turned into a series of ramblings with vague connections to the Internet.
It had been a good run, I thought, but its time was over.
That is still something I feel. The Internet has, in many ways, become like the telephone. It's a tool we use every day, and it's lost a lot of its cool factor. We don't so much "go on" in the Internet as much as the Internet as always kind of there, in the background, waiting to be used.
No one needs a weekly column about the telephone anymore.
On the other hand, there are still television columnists, and maybe that's a more accurate comparison for the Internet. And as long as there's an Internet, there will be issues that some one, and particularly me, will want to sound off about.
People often tell me that they can't believe I've found something new to write about every week for ten years. I usually just smile and try to explain that when you're dealing with a global network, as diverse as the Internet is, most weeks it's not a question of what you're going to write about, but what you're not going to write about.
I'm desperately afraid of ending this column. Can you tell?
After ten years, it's not a responsibility, it's not a nuisance. It's not a joy either. It's just...part of my life. I do it ever week. Wednesday night, there's two hours set aside to browse the 'Net, looking for any late-breaking news I might have missed, followed by madly typing up 300-400 words as I stare out the window at the setting sun (or a pitch-black sky, depending on the season).
I don't know what I'm going to do with those two hours now.
I've had a few people e-mail me, asking me not to end it, telling me they'll miss it, and I appreicate those words, but it's hardly been an outpouring of support for the column. If there was one, I'd probably use that as a perfectly reasonable excuse to not end it.
Instead, at I'm staring at the next two months, realizing that at the end of December I'm going to have to express all of these feelings with some kind of great, wonderful, profound goodbye.
I could change my mind if I wanted to, I know. I'm sure I have that authority. I've never spoken, explicitly, with my editor about the end of the column, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I decided to keep it running.
But at the same time, there remains that overwhelming feeling like it's over. The column has done what it set out to do, and has done it for far longer than I ever would have imagined. And closing doors is not something that we should ever be afraid of, because it's something that always leads to opening a new one, and starting out on some great new journey of discovery.
Maybe I *should* go with what my gut says, and let this door close, as terrifying as it might be, wondering what's behind the next door.
Whatever I decide to do, these ten yeras have been great for me. I will take so many fantastic memories with me from this, memories that wouldn't have existed without this column.
And to all of you -- whether you've read ten columns, or 100, or 500 -- you're the ones who've made this worthwhile. It's a funny relationship between a writer and his audience. In theatre (as I learned earlier this year) the relationship is far more intimate. You get to see and hear how people react to what you say and do. With this, there are two days and more than a few miles between when I write my words and when you read them, and as much as I know you're out there, it's still a strangely lonely experience doing the actual writing.
But the point is that I *do* know you're there. Every time I get an email from someone, or someone stops me on the street to tell me they loved last week's column, or someone smiles at me in a bar and says, "Hey, you're that computer guy," and then they shake my hand, I am reminded that my words do have an audience.
So to you, that audience, I say thank you. Thank you for being there, for listening to what I had to say, whether you liked it or not, whether it made any sense or not. You are the vital second half of this strange thing that writing is, and you have always ensured that I wasn't standing alone in a room, screaming at the top of my lungs, at no one except myself.
But, if you've missed those references, here is that special occasion.
Ten years of Caught in the 'Net.
Ten goddamn, motherfucking years of Caught in the 'Net.
Approximately 500 columns.
A longer run than many television shows (*most* television shows -- as was pointed out to me the other night).
Damn-near-exactly one-third of my life.
That's a long time.
I probably won't get a chance to blog between work and liquor tomorrow, so I'm going to take a few minutes now to get out some of my thoughts and feelings on the subject, because I think they need to get out. And I may not have the opportunity to do it in the column proper before year's end.
I was 21 years old when I started writing Caught in the 'Net. I was working for a little newspaper that was, at the time, called the Williams Lake Advocate. I'd been there for quite a few years, working in production in spite of the fact that I'd joined the paper hoping I could somehow use to follow my dream of being a writer.
It didn't work out that way, as I was far to shy at the time to properly conduct interviews, and when I tried to quit the job, disgraced by my own failure, I instead found myself designing ads and laying out a newspaper.
In those days, computers were fairly new to me. I needed someone to remind me, constantly, what it was I had to click on it order to start building the ads -- there were so many pretty little icons on the desktop, it was hard to remember what did which thing.
I bought my first computer not long after. I had actually been shopping for a word-processor, and the one that I was demoing had a little two or three line display that would show you what you were writing, and suppored floppy disks to save your work -- remember, I wanted to be a writer, not a computer geek, and all I wanted to get my hands on was a simple little typewriter replacement.
But when I returned the word-processor to the store that had allowed me to demo it overnight, I saw the most amazing thing -- a personal computer. They had just gotten it in the night before, and had it set-up and on display, the screen flashing through brilliant colour photos that couldn't help attract your attention. It looked far, far better than the simple three line screen on the word processor. And, of course, as a computer, it could be a word processor too, but also oh so much more.
I bought it, of course. It was a 386. It had 4MB of Ram (which I later upgraded to five), a 100MB hard drive, and the video card supported a whopping 256 colours, and it ran Windows 3.1.
And I fell in love with it almost overnight.
A few years later, swapped the machine for a 486-66 with 16MB of RAM, a 256MB hard drive, and -- the one piece of hardware that would seal my fate -- a 14.4K modem.
I used the modem, initially, to call the handful of local bulletin board systems that were running at the time, which satisifed my desire for digital conversation. And yet, there was a sense that there could be more -- that there *was* more, just waiting to be discovered.
That *more* was the Internet.
I first heard about the Internet on the news, probably in 1993. It was just beginning to outgrow its early military and university-based origins, slowly becoming something the generaly public might be interested in. I distinctly remember a news show quoting the e-mail address for the president of the United States -- president@whitehouse.gov.
And I remember looking at the address, mystified by the funny symbols, the odd punctuation. There was something about it that looked wholly digital, that looked somehow 21st century. This was the future. I wasn't sure how I knew it, and if asked at the time, I probably would have denied that I knew it, but it was there, burning in the back of my mind. And one thing was certain: I had to get on this thing they called the "Internet".
So I did.
I found an ad in the back of a computer magazine, promoting something called a FreeNet in Washington.
The idea of a FreeNet was that you could use your modem to dial in and access the Internet completely free of charge. It seems like a funny business model to me, and I'm not sure how they made any money (actually, they likely didn't, explaining the noticeable lack of FreeNets in the modern world) but I didn't care. It was going to get me online for the simple charge of...well, whatever the long distance turned out to be.
For the record, the long distance turned out to be in the area of $500.00 for that month. But it was worth it. My God, was it worth it.
My first experience with the Internet on that FreeNet was through a unix-based shell. There were no pretty pictures on the world wide web, no easy point-and-click interface. You logged into the system and used a series of text commands to steer your way around. It was awkward and clunky, and thank God I had a copy of Internet for Dummies handy to help me find my way around, but what I found -- first in Gopher, and then in Usenet, and later through an attempt to access the web through a text-based browser, wowed me.
As time went on and I read more about this mysterious Internet, I discovered that there were servers that allowed people to access the 'Net using programs that actually ran in Windows -- no more annoying text commands! Not long after I found another freenet service, this one offering exactly that kind of access, and I cheerfully signed up, happily paying the telephone company another $500 in long distance charges so that I could access the online world.
And the day I finally logged in through Windows...it was all over. I was hooked. I could feel the rush move through my body, tingling my brain, glazing my eyes over, bringing a faint but very real smile to my lips. There was more information out there than you could imagine, and it was suddenly oh-so-easy to get at. Point-and click. Point-and-fucking-click, man.
A few months after that, I got word that Internet service was going to be available locally, and I couldn't sign up fast enough. My addiction would have gladly forced me to continue spending $500 each month for 'Net access, but I was grateful to be able to shave off 95% of that bill. I knew I was going to need to buy groceries eventually.
At this point, I pitched the idea of an Internet column to the then editor of the paper, Bal Russell. I thought it would be a brilliant way to merge two of my passions -- writing and the Internet -- and actually get some words published in the paper for a change. I wanted to start the column right away, to get people ready for the Internet a few weeks before it actually arrived in Williams Lake, but Bal vetoed that, and told me that while he'd run the column, it would have to wait until Internet service actually existed in Williams Lake.
Waiting was hell. I spend weeks thinking about the first line for that first column, trying, desperately, to come up with just the right words to draw people into, first the column, and then the wonder, the magic, of the Internet in general.
Ten years ago, I wrote these words:
You've probably heard of it before — the Information Superhighway. These days it's hard to watch the news, read the paper, go to the movies, or do just about anything without hearing about it, and how much its changing the face of communication forever.
It's real name is the Internet, and if you're like a lot of people you're probably wondering how to "get connected."
It's a lot easier than you might think.
And that, my friends, is now officially a piece of history.
The column has gone through a lot of changes in ten years. When I started, my goal was to have it function as a kind of guide-book for people, helping them understand and get the most out of the Internet. I pointed people towards valuable software and wrote reviews of the coolest web sites. During the first year of the column, I held weekly IRC chats, where local readers could come and hang out, and ask question and get advice.
As the years went on, and Internet became increasingly more mainstream, the column didn't need to focus quite as much on being a guide-book. It began to change into more of an opinion-based column, while still focused on the Internet, allowing me to share my thoughts on everything from the Netscape / Internet Explorer rivalry, to the legal and moral issues of using a little program called Napster.
At its peak, it ran in five newspapers. It's been printed in two different papers in Williams Lake, it's run in Quesnel, it's run in Prince George, it's run in Sycamouse, and it even ran illegally in Merritt for a few weeks, when an editor breached copyright law and printed the sample columns I sent him without permission. Which, given the number of songs I've downloaded, is probably more than fair.
I've received fan mail (though never as much as I would have liked) and once inspired someone to mail-bomb me. I can't count the number times I've been out somewhere and had someone say to me, "Hey, you're that computer guy, aren't you?" And I have never once gotten tired of hearing a complete stranger tell me, "I really liked your column last week."
I've been through one girlfriend and then a break-up, and then another girlfriend and then a marriage and then a breakup, all during the run of this column. And outside of a Valentine's Day column that, in retrospect, ended up being more than just a little bit embarassing, almost none of that has had a noticeable impact on my writing from week to week.
The world moves and changes; there are ups and downs; but Caught in the 'Net remains solid.
I've sent column to my editor, not sure it was the best I could do. I've sent column after too many drinks, and have, occassionally, completely forgotten to send columns because I'd had even more drinks.
I've written good ones, bad ones, and far, far too many that were just kind of okay. I even went through a period -- probably five years ago -- when I felt like I was cheating anyone who read the column, because I wasn't putting enough into.
I almost quit the column then. It had somehow stopped being a labour of love, and had, instead, become a chore.
God knows how it turned into a labour of love again, but it did. And I'm glad.
This last year has been an absolute blast for me. Throwing caution to the wind, and writing anything I wanted, whether it connected to the Internet or not, has been a surprisingly freeing experience, and I feel as if I've done some of my best writing -- in any medium -- during these last 300 days. And that makes me, very, very happy.
If I were to die on January 1, 2005, I could go with one fewer regret, knowing that I had put my all into this column, and did everything with it that I could think of and had time to do in that last year.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, depending on how you look at it) I'm not dying on January 1, 2005, which is what is making this whole thing so goddamn difficult.
I announced last January that I was going to retire the column at the end of 2004, when it reached its 10th anniversary. I decided this for a number of reasons.
The first and most obvious was this: When I realized that the end of 2004 was going to mark the 10th anniversary of the column, I did the math and realized that I'd been writing it for one-third of my life. And if I were to do it for another ten years, then I would reach the point where I had done it for half of my life.
And the little voice in my head, that's desperately afraid of getting old and eventually dying, said this: "Don't ever, ever, ever do anything for half your life."
On top of that, there had been a feeling for the last few years that perhaps the column had run its course. It started as a How-To guide, became a vehicle for my opinion, and then finally turned into a series of ramblings with vague connections to the Internet.
It had been a good run, I thought, but its time was over.
That is still something I feel. The Internet has, in many ways, become like the telephone. It's a tool we use every day, and it's lost a lot of its cool factor. We don't so much "go on" in the Internet as much as the Internet as always kind of there, in the background, waiting to be used.
No one needs a weekly column about the telephone anymore.
On the other hand, there are still television columnists, and maybe that's a more accurate comparison for the Internet. And as long as there's an Internet, there will be issues that some one, and particularly me, will want to sound off about.
People often tell me that they can't believe I've found something new to write about every week for ten years. I usually just smile and try to explain that when you're dealing with a global network, as diverse as the Internet is, most weeks it's not a question of what you're going to write about, but what you're not going to write about.
I'm desperately afraid of ending this column. Can you tell?
After ten years, it's not a responsibility, it's not a nuisance. It's not a joy either. It's just...part of my life. I do it ever week. Wednesday night, there's two hours set aside to browse the 'Net, looking for any late-breaking news I might have missed, followed by madly typing up 300-400 words as I stare out the window at the setting sun (or a pitch-black sky, depending on the season).
I don't know what I'm going to do with those two hours now.
I've had a few people e-mail me, asking me not to end it, telling me they'll miss it, and I appreicate those words, but it's hardly been an outpouring of support for the column. If there was one, I'd probably use that as a perfectly reasonable excuse to not end it.
Instead, at I'm staring at the next two months, realizing that at the end of December I'm going to have to express all of these feelings with some kind of great, wonderful, profound goodbye.
I could change my mind if I wanted to, I know. I'm sure I have that authority. I've never spoken, explicitly, with my editor about the end of the column, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I decided to keep it running.
But at the same time, there remains that overwhelming feeling like it's over. The column has done what it set out to do, and has done it for far longer than I ever would have imagined. And closing doors is not something that we should ever be afraid of, because it's something that always leads to opening a new one, and starting out on some great new journey of discovery.
Maybe I *should* go with what my gut says, and let this door close, as terrifying as it might be, wondering what's behind the next door.
Whatever I decide to do, these ten yeras have been great for me. I will take so many fantastic memories with me from this, memories that wouldn't have existed without this column.
And to all of you -- whether you've read ten columns, or 100, or 500 -- you're the ones who've made this worthwhile. It's a funny relationship between a writer and his audience. In theatre (as I learned earlier this year) the relationship is far more intimate. You get to see and hear how people react to what you say and do. With this, there are two days and more than a few miles between when I write my words and when you read them, and as much as I know you're out there, it's still a strangely lonely experience doing the actual writing.
But the point is that I *do* know you're there. Every time I get an email from someone, or someone stops me on the street to tell me they loved last week's column, or someone smiles at me in a bar and says, "Hey, you're that computer guy," and then they shake my hand, I am reminded that my words do have an audience.
So to you, that audience, I say thank you. Thank you for being there, for listening to what I had to say, whether you liked it or not, whether it made any sense or not. You are the vital second half of this strange thing that writing is, and you have always ensured that I wasn't standing alone in a room, screaming at the top of my lungs, at no one except myself.
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