Spontaneous Derivation

There’s been a bit of fuss made over Seth Godin’s interview with HarperStudio about free content and how it can help publishing.¹

Oh, let’s go right ahead and say it: Seth Godin advocates the idea that spreading ideas is more important than money:

[Publishers are] in the business of leveraging the big ideas authors have. There are a hundred ways to do that, yet book publishers obsess about just one or two of them. Here’s the news flash: that’s not what authors care about. Authors don’t care about units sold. They care about ideas spread.

As you can imagine, this led to some hue and cry.² Many writers write for money. It’s how they make their living (in some cases, how they wish they could make all of their living). And heck. I feel that way too.

But there’s some context missing here that may not be obvious to writers of a more normal bent. And that’s Seth Godin is a blogger. Not just any blogger, for many writers blog these days; he’s a professional blogger, and also a highly successful one. His brand sells, and the way he made his brand was through his blog. And not only does it sell his blog (and its ad space), and his online writing, but also his offline writing, his books.

And he started out with nothing. No one knew who the hell Seth Godin was nor cared, until they discovered that his content was what they wanted and needed.

Now, there’s a conceit among bloggers that through hard work you can achieve anything³, a sort of American Dream of Blogging. But it’s also a matter of selection of subject, quality of writing and content, and as always, moving with the zeitgeist. Seth Godin hit quadruple aces on all three. Obviously some of this he controls, and some of it he does not.

Nevertheless, his brand was based on free content, freely given (albeit copyright held). What many writers forget is that, at one point, they also started out with free content, freely given (albeit copyright held, most of the time). For instance, your manuscript is submitted to agents and editors without them paying you if they don’t like it or need it—although there is a distinct difference since the audience is restricted to agents and editors. If a writer started as a fan fiction writer, they also gave out content for free.⁴ And when we’re still older, we give away stories and books to people so they know who we are.

The point is that we don’t give everything away completely gratis⁵. And as an addendum to that point, what we do give away, we give away because we’re brand-building (even submitting manuscripts is, in essence, brand-building with a more limited audience).

And that’s what Seth Godin is trying to say. You need to spread your ideas and your brand so that people know who you are, before you can make money. This is, incidentally, why marketing is so important in publishing, and indeed it’s why you go with a publisher in the first place if you’re not as efficient, whether through subject matter or luck or skill, as Seth is at brand-building.

What Seth is also suggesting is that a free content approach is more appropriate these days. When he compares books to music, people are correct in pointing out that this is apples to oranges; what they forget is that apples and oranges are both fruit. Books are information as much as music is; indeed, you could argue that books are more coherent information. People have far less patience and if they can sample a kind of information for free, they’re much more likely to buy future work from said author or musician. The interwebs will not wait for you. You must prove yourself.

At the same time, you need to be wise about balancing truly free content, free but paid-for content, and content that people pay for. Playing these against each other is how bloggers work and make money.

Now is where people will demand, “so when does it actually work?”

It’s worked for Seth Godin, obviously. It’s worked for Cory Doctorow. It’s even worked for John Scalzi. On a much, much smaller scale, it’s even worked for me⁶, and if I want to and have the time and the desire and the drive, I can actually build from there.

The thing to remember about bloggers who make money is that most of them are insane. That kind of drive, when you’re not getting paid and often for years⁷ , is the kind of drive you need to maybe make a blog that pays you; otherwise you don’t get anything, even with the zeitgeist.

Mind you, the writers who make money are also insane. I think, actually, you have to be pretty nuts to make money from words, because they take a lot of effort to come up with, especially good ones.⁸

Anyways: such is where Seth Godin is coming from. Money is nice, but ideas spread is necessary to get money, and ideas spread widely is necessary to make lots of money, and one way to do the latter is to give away content for free in our busy-ADD-internet-super-connected-with-pirates-anyways world.

1. Hat tip to Andrew Wheeler, since I was only peripherally aware of this. [↩]
2. Why yes, I do tend towards understatement. Why do you ask? [↩]
3. Indeed, like most bloggers who are extremely successful, Seth has been blogging for years [↩]
4. Ignoring the really illegal cases where they try to sell work not in the public domain and that they don’t have license to. [↩]
5. Ads. Paid-for but released for free content. Etc. [↩]
6. Caveat that I am very much aware of: in no way can I be considered at all either a successful writer or blogger, and if you want to point out that you are much better than me for being published in more real places than just Tor.com, and anyways I shouldn’t be using Tor.com as a resume due to my general lack of worth and weight in the field, I will simply bow my head and say: you are entirely correct, sir or madam; I am not as worthy or as good as you, and I did say “much, much smaller scale”. Yet even peasants can advise kings, if only because they have the time and are close enough to the ground to make some observations, which may or may not hold up, but nevertheless, some which may prove useful to our betters. [↩]
7. I’ll note that some people will say, “But there are bloggers that make money in months!” To which I note that such bloggers usually have a high level of experience in the area which they blog, which itself takes years to accomplish, so the story is incomplete if you simply look at their history as beginning when they first landed on Blogger or whatever. [↩]
8. Cue argument from folks who argue there are people who write bad words and still make money. I count ideas as part of writing, so unless you’re actually prepared to write a celebrity biography—and trust me, it’s sometimes really not worth it—or put your neck out and write anyways even if your words do not float like delicate swans in a lavendar-hued pool while the sun sets over the misty winter snow—I don’t think this is a great argument. [↩]

In October/November/December, you can see the NaNoWriMo guide link at the very top of the page.

The title’s not quite accurate, since the guide involves quite a few links, but they’re links I use. (Sometimes to procrastinate, granted, especially in the case of the generators.) Highlights include:

• The elusive and official Permission to Write Badly Certificate
• 10 NaNoWriMo Do’s and Don’ts
• Link to the only NaNoWriMo book I ever needed (and it’s free), NaNoWriMo for the New and Insane
• Writing speed test
• Neil Gaiman’s awesome pep talk last year
• Generators of everything

At all times, you can reach the page at http://www.spontaneousderivation.com/about/nanowrimo/ .

Hope this helps folks. Some of these links I remembered, but couldn’t find without some serious Googling and forum searching.

Update: Due to a really bad oncall week at the end of October stretching into November, I am officially too fried to do anything of real note. Plus oncall’s about to get worse.

While I’m fantasizing about Neil Gaiman thinking about next month, I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo again.

No idea what to do for it yet. I’m caught between “Something I don’t give a damn about” and “Something I give a slight damn about.”

Feel free to buddy me for NaNoWriMo; I don’t think I’ll quite get up to the hijinks I did last year. On November 1st, 2007, I did over 6k words alone, over 1000 words in the first hour after midnight PST. My motto was “4k to 8k per day”. Technically I reached the NaNoWriMo finish line on the 8th, with 52,130 words. Four days later I had 84,421 words and started a second book, although my most impressive day was over 13k words.

The test of truth: were they good words?

I tried my best. Both are trunk novels.

The reason I’m thinking of writing some words I don’t care about at all is so that I can stick them up on a website and say I didn’t lie but that seems self-defeating since they will, without question, be bad until they’ve been seriously refined. I’m not a one-draft author.

Anyways. Such are my thoughts while meds are fizzing in my head.

I slashed 858 words and added 969. The plot is on slightly less shaky ground now, although now there’s more things to take care of.

I’ve had to create a wiki to keep track of various things. Not something I’ve had to do before. Where will this all lead to? I have no idea, but then, I started with no ideas.

Some new text:

“Generally I believe that favor is on my side, since changing all the letterheads and records and of course our registration in the Aerial Commonwealth is rather an expense; you’d be surprised. Most people are.”

The next place to go is not yet truly decided for me. I thought it was one way, then I thought another way, and now I’ve changed my mind again. I suspect only in the rewrites will I be able to tell the difference. Le sigh.

Now at 3,721 words.

This should be recognizable to some:

In the hallway stood a tall boy dressed primly in an old-fashioned waistcoat and jacket, dark hair slicked back, his trousers creased sharply as if by the trouser presses of doom.

For some reason this amuses me:

“I would be happy to give ear to it, my dear lady, for it seems tonight is for secrets amongst conspirators for better causes in the world.”

Notable notes:

Out of 3,721 words, over 900 come from the dialogue of one character in four.

ETA: A graph!
ETA: A graph that shows I can count and stuff!
ETa: And count in the right direction!

Started a new thing; 1759 words last night. It’s currently called, not very creatively, Project #46.

Nope, I have no idea where this one will go. This one wasn’t even planned. Right now it’s just raw wordage. I’m assuming 50k for fun, rather than having a definite place to go.

Starting line:

Jillna wondered if she should claim to be the daughter of an ambassador, or perhaps the niece of a company executive.

Second to last paragraph, which is not what you think it is:

Chasra laughed. “This is too rich. You are such a farce. Just a word of advice—you better like eating humble pie, ’cause you’re gonna get ripped to pieces here.” Even Fern laughed, but a polite and small laugh into her hand.

Will it go anywhere? Who knows? This could be described as “Mike and Psmith meets I, Robot,” and though that’s rather inaccurate it gets the basic idea across. Going somewhere is optional right now.

Some minor writing quarter-mile marks:

• This is actually the first time I’m writing with a female protagonist, and currently a mostly female main cast (with a more balanced set of minor and walk-on characters).
• This is the first scene I’ve ever written where more than two characters take an active role in a conversation. It’s about to become four. The best part is that they all sound different.
• More of the characterization is carried through dialogue and, in the case of the POV, thoughts. Almost every time I come across something I recognize as a “tell” rather than “show”, I shift it to conversation or drop it entirely.
• The point of view character actually has a personality and history from page one. It helps that I’m planning on multiple POV characters.
• My narrator I’ve made as invisible as possible and not such a pill. Interesting narrators are probably not my style unless they’re first person. This might be a problem with this project.
• I’ve killed the urge to write about Death and Destruction and Emo and settled on embedding personality quirks, faults, and fears into my characters rather as a nebulous infective atmosphere, because I’m not good at nebulous infective atmosphere. Unless you want to read the equivalent of Evanescence on downers.
• I’m writing humor. This may turn out badly. But at least the narrator isn’t trying to exude humor; the humor is currently involved in conversation and/or character thoughts. And right now the situation has gone slightly bizarre and needs no tells to indicate its bizarreness, because it all comes from the characters and their quirks/fears/faults and, in one case, bizarreness.

I have Nick Mamatas to thank for the dialogue, POV, narrator, and most of the rest, by the way. I have every expectation that I would still have been far less clueless without his critique on another piece of mine. Which points out to me the importance of workshops like Clarion and Viable Paradise, where critiques from pro writers are available.

I try not to care when starting a writing project. I don’t know why when I end up caring anyways. Right now, this is a small break from bigger rewrites I have in mind. I have learned my lesson: where I am at the state of my knowledge, serials that are not largely pre-written, for a high percent value of “largely,” are bad ideas.

Update: Added a few more openings as I ruminated after waking up again.

So I was thinking about beginnings, because I’m reading something for a critique, and the question of good beginnings always come up. Especially so in a critique; when I’m just reading, I can simply let go if something doesn’t interest me. Not so in a critique; still, I don’t necessarily have to think through why a beginning may not work, but I can’t help it. I also write fiction, and a good beginning is vital. Personally speaking, as a personal writing quirk, I need a good start to unroll the rest. The rest can temporarily suck; the beginning can’t.

Think, think, think. (And the meds, they keep me up right now.)

I looked back at the short stories I read recently, which is nice because short stories really depend on good openings from the get-go. I read a bunch of openings on my Kindle, from a variety of authors: Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Stross, Nancy Kress, Terry Pratchett, George R.R. Martin, David Anthony Durham, David Moles, Ted Chiang, John Scalzi, P.G. Wodehouse… I could go on. Why do they work so well?

I worked through the classifications. The common wisdom is to start with a bang, but… that’s not always the case.

• Not all of the good openings start with exciting action. I’ll call this “blockbuster movie excitement.”
• Not all of them even cascade into exciting blockbuster movie excitement in the first scene.
• Not all of them feature conversation from the first line (indeed, some don’t have conversation at all).
• Not all of them feature outwards motion; it can be inwards contemplation.
• Not all of them feature overt physical motion.
• Not all of them feature overt plot movement.

So what do they all have in common? I ended up with “intrigue,” which may just be a fancy way of saying “it depends”—or not.

The question becomes: what counts as intriguing? The answer appears to be: it must be significantly different. But different from what?

I suppose the “what” would be our humdrum reality. Something different from our day to day conversations of nothing much in particular, our day to day schedules of predictability. In our execution of our daily routines, we don’t notice details, we may not notice our environment in any other way than “it’s the same, so there’s nothing to pay attention to.” In the moments when we are not engaged, there’s nothing much happening. We may feel a sense of well-being, or we may feel depressed; rarely do we feel endangered or excited. Not so much a drab existence as much as one well-lived, where detachment is normal and arguably necessary; we’d get tired if we were engaged every moment. Think of it as meditation in motion.

So let’s take a look at how these openings are different from what we know from the everyday.

Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Inside Story”

Mentions the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the main character’s uncertainty in dealing with it, despite being hardened outlook-wise. Well. It’s Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. Really unusual.

Albert E. Cowdrey’s “Queen for a Day”

Main character is in a really surly mood, and starts with growling, “Look at that goddamn king.” Kings are unusual, and we may be curious about his surly attitude towards this out-of-the-ordinary event.

Steven Utley’s “Sleepless Years”

Main character has been awake for a really long period of time, cannot sleep, and sleep has become his sole desire to the point of an obsession—and it’s been prevented by a menacing-sounding “them.” Not normal and the intimate use of first-person really embraces you into this weirdness.

Geoff Ryman’s “Days of Wonder”

It starts with description of a person; description is the hardest opening to pull off as interesting. Geoff does this by highlighting unusual details, and indeed, starts out with “Leveza was the wrong name for her.”

Stephen King’s “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates”

Stephen King is famous for starting with the normal and slowly accelerating into disturbing weirdness. Here we just have someone fresh from a shower picking up a phone, but already in the first paragraph there’s a mention of many relatives staying over—unusual in the Western world.

Scott Bradfield’s “Dazzle Joins the Screenwriter’s Guild”

Starts off with a mention of a script conference, less painful than the main character expected. There’s a promise of humor here, and that is usually enough to draw people in, at least temporarily.

Robert Reed’s “The Visionaries”

Not sure how to classify

Everyone is an unmitigated failure.

And then success comes, or it doesn’t.

except that it’s immediately intimate, and touches upon something we (in the West) hate to think about, or we (in the East) find interesting to think about.

Laurel Winter’s “Going Back in Time“

Demonstrating very clearly that the title of a story can strongly influence a good beginning, and starts off with a mention of the discovery of the possibility of going back into time.

Terry Bisson’s “Private Eye”

Starts with conversation that asks a question, seemingly normal, but requires an answer that also involves action: “Spare one of those?” An embrace of detail follows, along with a disturbing reference to the narrator’s self in the plural: “we notice these things.”

Carol Emshwiller’s “Whoever”

The narrator has forgotten who they are, but has decided on the first thing to do. Definitely engaging.

M. Rickert’s “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account”

Starts off with mention of commonplace executions. Not really a normal figment of life.

Tim Sullivan’s “Planetesimal Dawn”

The simple and effective technique of immediately introducing a life-and-death situation from the very first line.

Michael Swanwick’s “The Scarecrow’s Boy”

A boy running and crying, heading somewhere. Movement and unusual and engagement.

Gene Wolfe’s Pirate Freedom

Starts off with an unusual day for a confession to be made, which indicates some unusual situation, possibly bad—and confessions are engagements in and of themselves. Gene Wolfe also follows the “gradually accelerate into weirdness” rule, except he does it much more quickly. “I’m a murderer myself” from the narrator, a priest, six sentences in.

Gene Wolfe’s The Knight

A letter, and a command to someone to look at something first. This, while simple, engages. I haven’t decided whether it’s purely the command that does it, or whether there’s an intrinsic thread of voyeurism in most people.

Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids

Pratchett starts his books like movies: starting with something big and intimidating, usually impressive, always with a lightly teasing humor alongside, scoping inwards. He does the same thing here, and in a lot of his books.

Terry Pratchett’s Men At Arms

A more intimate beginning; he starts off with a letter from Corporal Carrot, which is full of amusement, since Carrot is innocently enthusiastic, resulting in intended unintended humor, if that makes sense, and does not use the comma correctly, which can be quite hilarious as it twists meaning. Again, humor draws you in—plus he’s talking about an important promotion.

George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones

He begins properly with a prologue. This is usually a bad sign, but not in his case. Starts off just after an engaging action (killing people) and enters another (escaping the dark of night), both in the same breath.

George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings

A comet bleeding into the sky. Okay, that’s very unusual, and also vivid.

David Anthony Durham’s Acacia: Book One: The War With the Mein

Starts with an assassin moving in secrecy. Well, there you go.

Will Shetterly’s Dogland

A slow opening, similar to “Days of Wonder” in its speed and coverage. It starts with a memory important to the narrator. Important is unusual; “Dogland” is unusual; and also perhaps voyeurism is involved.

Jeff VanderMeer’s “The Situation”

Surreal. “My Manager was extremely thin, made of plastic, with paper covering the plastic.” You’ll find it hard to beat beat that first line, or even the first paragraph, in terms of surreal. Delany could do it; most of us, not so much.

Avram Davidson’s “My Boy Friend’s Name is Jello”

A virus, sickness, and a very… interesting narrator who’s possibly a little ditzy from the medication.

Avram Davidon’s “Or All the Seas with Oysters”

A man coming into a store, and engagingly greeted with a mighty “Hi, there!” And then an examination of the customer, enough to show his oddity in age (old).

Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light

A myth of vengeance in good writing. That works.

Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale”

Runner up for the surreality award: “Sheila split open and the air was filled with gumballs. Yellow gumballs. This was awful for Stan, just awful.”

P.G. Wodehouse’s Mike and Psmith

Promise of doom in the form of a father opening a school report that’s obviously disappointing.

Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

Addressing a caliph; promising a story. Promising a good story almost always works.

Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron

A magician (named; we have more engagement with characters with names, which makes sense) and a living breathing environment encapsulated in one sentence. Double strike bonus match!

Elizabeth Bear’s Ink and Steel

Begins with a death. Yup, that works.

Elizabeth Bear’s Hell and Earth

It kind of starts with cold and chill weather, but it’s really short and also serves as a contrast to a warm fire and warm environment, and then heads into Faeries stealing people. And there we go.

Terry Bisson’s “Bears Discover Fire”

The expectation in the title is strong, and we start with a flat on a highway.

Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield

Chapter 1: I Am Born. One of the most awesome chapter titles ever in literature. Speaks about whether the narrator is a hero, first person intimacy, promise of a story.

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

A twist on expectations, but also a reminder in the climate of these days: high school and surveillance. A forceful narrator that might remind readers of a previous generation of Holden Caufield. Also, “sucking chest wound of a human being.”

Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks

Begins with the most difficult of beginnings: description. But this is observation in detail, of a mall, with interesting comparisons—and, most importantly, movement in the form of people streaming through a mall like water in a canal. Buses moving, banners flying in the wind.

Kage Baker’s In the Garden of Iden

A promise of an interesting story.

Kate Elliott’s Spirit Gate

Flying (not in a commercial airliner). Win.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s “For Solo Cello, op.12″

Keys that drop and rattle on the floor; like cats, we are drawn to flashy movement. Followed immediately upon the next sentence by inherent tension and an amputated limb. And off we go.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Death Comes But Twice”

A letter, and an askance for forgiveness. I think letters are interesting in that they promise a story, whether part of a longer narrative or forming the entire narrative itself. Of course, if you start with a boring business letter with nothing interesting going on, this is not going to work, but letters lend themselves to interesting things.

Jeff Somers’s The Electric Church

Begins with a chapter title of “The Circle of Life in the System of Federated Nations”, which is interesting (indeed, The Electric Church is chock full of intriguing chapter titles; my favorite is “You Are Not a Bad Man. I Am a Bad Man.”), and the first sentence is “You screwed up, Mr. Cates.” Engaging.

John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.” Three punches. Scalzi’s openings are often punches (and sometimes alludes to punches literally).

John Scalzi’s The Last Colony

“Let me tell you of the worlds I’ve left behind.” This is how you pull off a chapter that covers previous ground in a series. I love the comparison of leaving behind Earth and being a small-town kid in the big scary city.

Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire

I’m not sure whether to start with “Sometimes, I worry that I’m not the hero everyone thinks I am.” It starts before the prologue. The prologue itself begins with “Ash fell from the sky.” And everything follows smoothly.

Jo Walton’s Farthing

Promise of a story that starts with someone furious. There we go.

David Moles’ “Finisterra”

“Bianca Nazario stands at the end of the world.” And then proceeds to describe the sky and death from flying. Hook, line, sinker.

Nancy Kress’s “The Fountain of Age”

“I had her in a ring.” An unusual image, moving on to the curious rite of remembrance.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Recovering Apollo 8

A mention of a wrong memory, subtly implying a story promise; vivid imagery follows.

Lucius Shepard’s “Stars Seen Through Stone”

This is pure flowing imagery that captures your imagination, starting from the mundane and quickly and smoothly accelerating, in one sentence, to mythic imagery.

Connie Willis’ “All Seated On the Ground”

Humor is her specialty: “I’d always said that if and when the aliens actually landed, it would be a let-down.” Moves on to a funny, engaging beginning that would result in an interesting non-fiction piece, and still fits as introduction to the fiction.

Of course, I could keep going. But the basic principle is: “Engage.” In as many ways as possible; promise a story, engage with strong emotions, engage with interesting detail, engage with surreal description, engage with action and motion, engage with tension. A double-barrel approach with engagement is useful. Engage, engage, engage.

That’s the only rule here.

Photography: Luz A. Villa

I’ve been busy with the guest-posting, yes:

Four Important Lessons I Learned From Writing Serials over at Fumbling Fiction.