On the Double, Half the Trouble

I skipped last week without even meaning to. Writing the blog on the tablet just seemed like a hassle, so I figured I would do it later (when I was out of bed.) Then this led to that, the other intruded, and poof (or ta-da, or kaboom, whatever sound onomatopoeia seems appropriate)-- no blog. It slipped my mind so successfully, in fact, that I didn't even realize I'd skipped a week until around Wednesday (cue sad trombones.)

Sorry about that, folks.

I haven't had a particularly busy last few weeks, anyway. I restarted Novel Number Two (very tentative title) at the beginning of the month and have been slogging away at it. I am again finding that the Nano model of 2k a day come Hell or high water just isn't working, the same as last month. I am persevering anyway, sometimes only getting a page or two, sometimes getting nothing. In the last two weeks I've managed to write four chapters (out of close to forty planned.) I have no idea why this novel is so much more difficult for me to get going on, but...

The ultimate answer here is--it doesn't matter. I want to write this novel; I'm going to write this novel; the end. If it takes me six months or a year or whatever, so be it. I really would love to figure out what's slowing me down and correct it, and I will continue to devote some mental energy to doing just that, but the most important thing is that I keep pushing forward until I hit the finish line, irregardless of whether I am doing so in the most efficient way possible.

When I first tarted writing fiction, lo these many months ago, my goal was simple: finish a story. I've always had a hyperactive imagination, but plotting was an absolute mystery to me. It took me a few weeks to write 3k (and it wasn't a particularly inspiring first effort at that.) But I finished, I showed it to a few first readers, I edited and submitted, and i collected a stack of rejections. And I wrote the next one.

I believe finishing the second story was even more crucial than finishing the first. One of the things I learned from that first story was that I could write a complete story, featuring both characters and a plot. I learned from the second (and every subsequent one) that I could do this more-or-less at will. I've completed the majority of the stories I've written since then, although I've abandoned several that just weren't working as well. But I made sure to finish those first few, to establish the habit and to give myself confidence.

I'm in the same boat now. I'd actually started several novels prior to Nano last year, when I finished the zero draft of The First Novel (or Fnerge!--another tentative title.) One novel made it up to about 14k before I fizzled on it (and I might still return to it.) So I've had enough of unfinished novels. That sort of thing wrecks my confidence. So I am keeping my concentration firmly on this novel until I hit THE END.

My plan to do 2k a day five days a week is going right out the window (and has been all year.) I am going to still try to keep at the self-pubbing (on weekends,) but I am willing to let that slip as well. For the long-term health of my career as a writer, I have to learn how to produce quality novel-length fiction at a reasonable pace.

Plus, like many others have commented, novels are actually easier. At least in terms of effort per page, if not in terms of total time commitment. Short fiction takes a lot of work to pull off. I'm certainly not abandoning the form, but I want to be able to write at whatever length suits me, and write well. Which means practice. Which means I have to keep at the novelling. Ipso Facto Ergo Sum Lorium Axiom Non Serviam. Which translated from the Latin, means (roughly): I don't know any Latin.

Media breakdown - I finished listening to Halting State by Charles Stross. The second person multi-character POV was a little hard to get into, but he pulled it off, overall. I wouldn't say that the POV added anything essential, but it was an interesting change of pace. The near future media/connectivity/hacking and security focus was quite well done. The world-building and character interactions were the main draw; the actual "mystery" at the heart of the plot was rather hum-drum and mostly involved people standing around in rooms explaining things to other people. There were some fun action bits, though. I enjoyed the book and plan on reading Rule 34 (the semi-sequel.)

I've been enjoying the heck out of the recent episodes of The Walking Dead. The show is still as drama-queen focused as ever, but they've gotten pretty good at including a few juicy action bits every episode. Good stuff and probably my favorite current TV show. The upcoming second season of A Game of Thrones might change this, however.

Gadget Corner - I've been using the Android OS a lot more, now that I have two tablets. My older tablet is rooted, but not the newer one (Acer Iconia A500). I find them convenient, if a bit underpowered (in utility, not in actual processing) compared to my netbook (which mainly functions as a desktop.) Android is lacking in quality applications, plain and simple. Even worse, the OS encourages applications to be far more intrusive than I am comfortable with. I am becoming increasingly annoyed by this. I use Ubuntu

The one thing Android does better than Ubuntu is games. The repositories (Android Market and Amazon are the main ones I use) are much flashier as well, and somewhat easier to navigate. This is more than offset by the difficulty getting root, the lack of customization, the paucity of apps (no Openoffice or Audacity, Firefox is still in beta, and so on), and the OS's insistence on constantly trying to monitor me, and apps insistence on launching themselves and/or reporting back to wherever they report back to.

In other words--in terms of my privacy, Android is insecure; in terms of utility, Android is inadequate. Android feels very much like an OS that is more concerned with telling me what I can do than with allowing me to do what I wish. I'll say it again: I can't wait until I can use Ubuntu (or any other open-source Linux distro) on my tablets.

I hate having to hack on the OS just to get root. It's my hardware: I bought it; I own it. I should be able to get root as a matter of course. I should be able to set it up however I want, to do whatever I want, and to prohibit it from doing anything I don't want it to do. Seen in this light, the Android OS is an absolute failure.

And with that rant, I'm done for the week. See you all next time.

EDIT: I just had to switch over to my Ubuntu desktop computer to finish publishing this blog. It took me nearly as long to pub it as to write it on the tablet, and I was still getting screw-ups. Grrr... Android + Safari + Blogger = Suck.

Awesome Stuff I Enjoy

This is yet another week that I haven't got much done writing-wise. I had planned on this week being FebruWriMo, with all the attendant NaNoWriMo type word-frenzyness. Frenziness. Whatever. Point being, that hasn't happened. I say "happened", as though their was some sort of mystical waiting-and-hoping process here. Truth is, I have not done the work, because I have chosen to spend my time on other pusrsuits. Mea culpa.

Just like last week, I'm not particularly keen on beating up on myself for my lapses. I've tried guilting myself into accomplishing more, and it doesn't work (for me anyway, might be a wonderful tool for you.) Instead, I'm going to spend some time talking about some of the awesomeness I've been consuming lately.

First up--Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I just stated listenin to this on audiobook yesterday. I'm only about a third in, so this isn't a full endorsement, but so far, so awesome. I have enjoyed Doctorow's short fiction in the past, most notoably on Starship Sofa (great podcast for SF fans, BTW). One thing I've picked up on about his work though is that his endings are often meh. I'm really hoping he works harder on the ending of this book, since it's novel length and all, because I'm really digging the story. Good stuff. I'm planning on checking out some of his other novels now, because I am liking this one so much.

In the same vein, I just finished listening to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton. This book was really good as well. The writing was not as polished, definitely reading like a first novel. The characters and plot were decent but nothing amazing. The 80's nostalgia was absolutely outstanding, and the whole reason to read what would be an otherwise average book. If you grew up playing Atari 2600 and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, this is the book for you. Plus, Wheaton does a great job with the reading, so I definitely recommend the audiobook version over the text version.

I'vebeen watching a ton of the old Mega Man cartoon with my son lately. For no comprehensible reason, he is absolutely in love with it. It took him all of two or three days to start singing along with the theme song, and the show is now the only thing he wants to watch. I find it to be a good dose of cheesy, retro fun. It's not really well-animated, the plots are thin, and on and on. It does feel true to the early entries in the videogames series, at least enough to satisisfy me. Despite it's flaws, I quite like it.

On the subject of robots, I just had the chance to watch Real Steel. As an exercise in Hollywood unreality, it was pitch-perfect. Except for the incredibly silly yet undeniably fun robot-boxing theme, it could have been any estranged-father/son-triumphantly-reconcile movie ever made. Totally forgettable, but worth watching exactly once to see the robots beat the tar out of each other. SF geeks who need quibbling details like control schemes that make sense, tech that is in any way plausible, or even such minor details as fully developed characters need not apply.

I've been spending a huge amount of time on another sort of robot, an Android, if you will. The tablet that gave me so much grief trying to do a blog on the soft keyboard the other day has proven itself to be a compelling gaming machine. I have had many late nights lately, lying in bed playing Triple Town, Base Defense HD, and various and sundry other games. Between the stuff that is available for free on the Android Market, and Amazon's free-app-of-the-day, I have yet to spend any money on software. But my tablet (Iconia A500) is very close to replacing my laptop, already. As the software development sector matures over the next few years, I don't see any reason it won't.

I do really wish I could dual-boot Ubuntu on my tablet. One thing I really don't like about Android is how much stuff the OS tries to hide from the end-user. The insistence of manufacturers on trying to keep consumers from having root access to their own machines in furtherence of this is annoying as well. I haven't rooted my A500 yet because the process looks like a pain, but I am sure I will sooner or later. I really wish Acer hadn't made it such a nuisance in the first place; that attitude is very customer-unfriendly. Even so, I do really like the tablet. Full-sized USB port for the win.

I can't think of anything else, so I guess I am done for the week. See you next time

A Few Further Thoughts on Tablets

Specifically 7" Android tablets. Even More specifically the Coby Kyros 7022. In a nutshell, I like it. For the price, I am perfectly happy with its utility. I would not have wanted to pay more than the slightly under $200 it costs, for what it does. But I also don't see more expensive tablets doing much of anything worth paying more for.

Basically, the niche tablets fall into now is that they are essentially low powered netbooks. The problem with this is that netbooks are already as low powered as is practical for most actual productive applications. But...

Tablets are really cool for surfing the web in bed. There portability makes them pretty nifty videogame machines, media devices, and that kind of stuff. I may get some use out of mine for reading PDFs as well, although I definitely prefer my ereader for actual book reading. Oh, and I just read a comic book on the tablet as well, and actually enjoyed it more than on my larger netbook screen. A 10' tablet, or even 12' (should one hit the market), might be better for that, however.

As kind of a back-up option for the netbook, the tablet is nice, too. I am typing this entry on mine. It's definitely clumsier than it would be on the netbook, even using a full sized USB keyboard, but it does get the job done.

The Kyros 7022 runs Android 2.3, BTW. I can see room for improvement, which presumably 3.0 and 3.1 have been. But again, a little clunky, but gets the job done.

The netbook I have is an Asus 1005p, BTW, and it is my main computer. It does enough, and is portable enough, and gets about 6-9 hours out of a charge. Since I don't do processor intensive stuff, it has been great for me so far. When I write I just hook it up to A USB mouse and keyboard and a bigger monitor (an LCD TV/DVD combo that serves triple duty in my household.)

This post has gotten long enough that my tablet is freaking out, so I'll stop here. Short post shorter - I like my new tablet, and think most people could get some use out of one, this brand or another. Especially writers who spend a lot of time online trying to learn new stuff.