Writer at Large

To be honest, I am completely out of patience with people who complain when they must pay for something that they believe, for whatever reason, that ought to receive for free. The contexts of this are many, but it has surfaced again and I figured it was finally time to say something about it.

If content creators—whoever they are, whether they provide blogs, videos, books, music, video games, or programming code—wish to provide access to their creations for free, that is entirely up to them. There are some interesting and reasonable arguments for doing this, but it is quite another for consumers of this content to expect and demand it. Do they expect to provide whatever services they perform for a living at no cost?

Boys and girls, it would be great if all games and content were free, but this is not yet the twenty-fourth century. People have mortgages or rent to pay and groceries to buy. The companies that provide the games you play have employees to pay and servers to keep running. None of these are free services.

Artists of any type are no different. Certainly, I can offer my fiction on the web at no significant cost. Any praise you might reap upon me, while much appreciated, does not keep my electricity on. Expecting all artists and organizations to provide you content for free simply because some do (and did you note how much of that "free" content is supported by bundles and bundles of often-intrusive advertising?

I really, really want someone to explain to me why I should provide them with access to my creations for free. I won't lead the witness here, although I have many more questions I'd like the ask. I just would like to understand.

I find myself at one of those crossroads again.

This is not one of the great age-related milestones. Nor is it even all that large in scale in terms of Big Life Decisions. But it does reflect what I’ve discovered has been a recurring theme in my life.

Pretty much everyone is familiar with these lines from Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

It’s so often easier, particularly in these confused and perilous economic times, to make the “safe” choice. You know the one: the one that ensures that the mortgage keeps getting paid. (I do wonder these days—a lot—just how “safe” that choice really is.)

Yes, it can be argued that it’s possible to do both, pay the bills and feed the muse. But there is the reality that there are only so many waking hours in the day, hours that get eaten up by working, commuting, choring, and so on.

What brings this all on you might ask?

I just finished completing an online course in Flash animation. It’s something I also wanted to learn, but never took the time because it really wasn’t all that pertinent to my job and there were always other things to be done. (If you’re at all curious, here is one of my class projects. It was the one I had the most fun with!)

Having done that, I am seriously considering enrolling in the Advanced course. Then, that annoying little voice spoke up and reminded me that I really should complete my PMI enrollment and take the PMP exam so I can be a certified Project Management Professional. <cue appropriate impressive-sounding bass tones here> (Yes, that is probably every bit as boring as it sounds, but could be potentially useful in any future job search.) I could so both, but that’s a whole lot of work on top of a full-time job.

The point of this was not to whine or otherwise bemoan taking on a potentially heavy workload. I know that there are plenty of others who have done—and are doing—far more just to survive. It was just that even giving voice to that possible decision re-raised the long-standing issue for me.

Which will I choose? I don’t know yet. Maybe one. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Total words: 53,306 (official NaNoWriMo count)
Average words per day: 1,777

It looked like it was going to end with a word count of 50,566, but then the muse would not shut up yesterday (3,194 words).

Yes, I “won”. The story itself is far from finished. At the 53,000-word mark, I think it’s probably about one-third completed.

This year was a bit less difficult than 2006, but seemed nowhere near the flowing ease of the 2007. (It’s interesting how memory fades. I went back and re-read those reports from 2007 and saw that I was struggling there too, but persistence won out.)

My next task is to put the scenes in the proper order so that later drafts will make a bit more sense. I also want to write up more complete notes on each of the main characters—particularly those who did not exist when I first started the story.

It’s been an interesting writing adventure this year.

Fourth week down and two days to go . . .

• Total word count: 49,513
• No new characters introduced this week. Okay . . . no new major characters. I gave some of the characters in the background first names so they weren’t just anonymous drones, but that doesn’t really count.
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,865. Nicely above average, thank you. I had set myself a stretch goal of 1,800 words a day and was pleased to not only meet, but exceed it this week.
• The muse cooperated for the most part this week. It hasn’t been as smooth of sailing as 2007 was, but definitely much less painful than 2006. (Never again!) I still don’t think I’ve quite found the voice for this novel, but I think it will sort itself out shortly.

And why didn’t I just push through and crank out those last 487 words and finish two days early? Because it was late, I was tired, and I knew I still had two more days to go. (And also I there were scenes I still wanted to try to write between now and the 30th.)

See you in two days . . .

And on Week 3, this is what NaNoWriMo did to me . . .

• Total word count: 36,458
• I introduced another character this week. I also realized that there are two of them that I know I need, but have done little more than introduce them. One of them needs to connect up with the main character, but I have yet to devise a believable manner of doing so that doesn’t smack of cliché.
• The muse has been kind, particularly during the latter part of the week. I’ve learned that she gets nervous when I take her away from the work and then starts spouting off ideas. Good muse! Biscuit!
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,759. This is back up from last week and just about dead on where I want it to be. I’m shooting for a minimum of 1,700 words each day, with a push toward 1,800 words if I can manage it.

And one last note . . . true to form, the muse has already determined the last scene in the book, as well as a scene in the sequel. (I had not originally planned on a sequel to this book, but the muse had her own ideas on the matter. And I do like how she tied it into another book of mine [yet to be written].)

One week and a small number of days to go . . .

On the second week of NaNo, my muse she said to me . . .

• Total word count: 24,142
• I have introduced a new character that will help immensely in dealing with one of the main thematic issues in the story.
• The week continued to be almost exclusively sequential storytelling, from the beginning toward the end. I can see, however, that starting to slip away. But words is words. There’s nothing in the rules that said they had to be in the right order.
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,685. This is slightly down from last week, that’s chiefly due to a lesser word count than expected on Saturday. Thank goodness I was (and still am!) slightly ahead.

The muse tended to stay fairly focused this week, (that lower count on Saturday was not her fault), but I can see her attention wondering. I have a bad feeling that Week Three is going to be, for me, nearly everyone else’s Week Two.

That’s all the procrastination for now. Until next week . . .

Let’s see . . .

• Total word count: 12,345 (yes, really)
• I have a title: Soul of the Machine.
• I have some main characters who are doing things, or starting to do things.
• Average daily word count for the week: 1,764

I have to admit, although it’s taken a swift kick in the adverbs to get the muse going some days (she usually decides to poke her head in around word 1,200 or so), it has been going a  bit better than I originally anticipated. Am I going to end up with a readable, interesting story out of all this?

Ask me again on December 1^st.