Yesterday I saw my first roller derby match. The rules of the game are pretty simple. Two teams of five players skate around a small circuit with one attacking “jammer” from each team trying to score points by lapping opposing defenders. It took me a while to follow the intricacies of the game but as I got a handle on it I started to realise the game had a lot to teach me about writing.

Go hard or go home

I expected the skaters to ease into the match; maybe take a few laps to warm up and find their wheels. No. As soon as the whistle blew the jammers were speeding ahead pushing their way past defenders from the opposing team and scoring points.

And so it should be with your writing. Doesn’t matter what you’re writing, if you wait to grab the reader’s attention, you’re gone. Get in there early and deploy whatever tools you have at your disposal to engage the reader. Early points on the board matter.

Fall down

Speed-skating around a circuit not much bigger than a tennis court with nine other people just waiting to bump into you, means you’re going to fall down. The roller-derby girls know this and practice falling onto their knee guards instead of their hands. They fall to their knees and slide for a little bit as they slow down. It’s kind of poetic after a while.

Safe writing is boring writing. Everyone knows safe writing when they see it. It’s the sort of stuff you see on the social pages of newspapers and in government reports. It might be competent and occasionally, might even border on engaging. But how much did the writer learn along the way? Think about the last time you stretched your writing muscles and aimed a bit too high or went a bit too fast. Even when you were shovelling up the crap left behind, didn’t it feel kinda good going fast then falling down?

Get up again and keep on skating

After sliding on their knee guards for a while the roller derby girls get back up and keep on skating. I even saw one jammer fall to her knees, slide for a bit then get back up and keep scoring points.

Once you’ve monumentally stuffed up a piece of your writing so badly even your cat refuses to have shredded bits of the manuscript in its litter box get back up again. Too often writing suffers from an author’s failure to stretch their skills or their refusal to keep on pushing the boundaries when they stuff up. Push your writing hard, fall down, learn, get up. Repeat.

It’s okay to have nice things

What I wasn’t expecting at the roller derby were the costumes, the almost compulsory fish-net stockings, the mad hair-cuts and the dance routines. The whole evening was full of spectacle. Whether it was Amber “Eva Brawl” Lee tearing up the track, girls in outrageously short shorts or team managers in bright yellow suits, there was no shortage of entertaining things to engage with.

Cultivate some spectacle in your writing. Make it sing for you. Know your writing style and don’t be afraid to show off some of its best elements.

Stay close to your audience

There were about 2500 people watching the two matches with me. The farthest was probably 30m from the circuit but the closest “suicide” seats were right beside the skaters. The skaters sped by lap after lap only metres from the spectators. And after the games finishes they mingled with the audience, chatting and posing for photos. During the game the announcer declared a nearby pub as the official after-game venue for any audience members who wanted to join in the after-derby drinking.

A writer’s job is to be read. More and more, writers need to engage directly with their audience to help achieve that. Whether it’s through blogs or social media writers need to develop a platform to market themselves and their writing and increase their chance of being read and being published. But you’ve got to love the people you’re hanging around with. Authenticity is key.

Top picture: Gomisan

In no particular order, they are:

• content aggregators care much about Rupert Murdoch putting content behind a paywall,
• increasing the amount of media content in controlled spaces (ie the iPad) could significantly undermine Google’s business model,
• it will become easier to stop people breaking DRM and other copy-protection measures in the future, not harder, and
• the implication that radio stations, TV channels and other internet sites don’t read newspapers and re-use the content.

They’re all worth having a laugh at for various reasons. I’m surprised a technology writer doesn’t make more about how Google structures its search algorithim. I’m also surprised a technology writer thinks the golden age of copy protection is apparently ahead of us, not behind.

But the most interesting thing in Farrer’s piece is that citizen journalists, bloggers and tweeters have more to fear from News Ltd and other old media organisations locking up content than the other way around. Farrer makes the not unreasonable comment that if traditional news content was successfully locked away, tweeters, bloggers and citizen journos would have to go elsewhere for content to ‘riff’ off. It’s a big if but even if he was right in saying it could be done successfully, it doesn’t matter. News Ltd, Fairfax and other big media outlets should be more afraid of citizen journos having reduced opportunities to riff off their content than the other way round.

People are already paying less attention to traditional media, they’re digesting less traditional media and diversifying their sources when they do. They’re paying more attention to their Twitter feeds and Facebook updates than ever before because they feel that the content is relevant and that it matters. Locking conternt up further encourages more of that, not less. News Ltd and Fairfax et al should do everything they can to encourage bloggers and tweeters to hang off their every word.

To do otherwise risks speeding up a virtuous circle that has already begun and risks leaving old media out in the cold.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy is a great book. Random House not so good on the e-book basics though.

He makes a number of points in the article that are worth looking at one by one.

Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
His argument here seems to be that Apple is more interested in using the great technical features of the iPad to either restrict its use or find a way to make people pay for it.

The example he uses is the Marvel iPad comic app. The argument is the app – and by extension the iPad – is bad because, for example, you can’t lend someone else your comic. Put aside the fact that it’s really an anti-DRM rant (which I mostly agree with) he forgets one simple thing. The device actually makes it extraordinarily easy to lend someone your comic – hand them your iPad. It is in this way exactly as easy to lend someone a comic on your iPad as it is with a physical comic book.

And if Apple gets this right, they’ll help craft – or at least speed up – the development of a whole new computing and media model - tablet computing.

That leads nicely into the next argument…

Infantilizing hardware
Tonight I had leftover pizza for tea. I heated it in the microwave and then put it under the grill for a minute to crisp it up. I punched some buttons on the microwave and it did what it needed to do – help me consume my dinner. I don’t need to be able to take it apart, repait it and install Linux on it. I just need it to work – like my television, my bed and my table.

But Cory’s argument here seems to suggest that if I’m only using a device to consume something I’m somewhat less likely to survive in the brave new world of the 21st century than someone who can take a device apart and put it back  together.

I can enjoy consuming a book even if I don’t know how to pull the spine off, reorder the pages and put it back together again. It  should be okay that not everyone wants to take everything apart all the time.

Boing Boing is a site supported by ad revenue. I bet there’s a strong correlation between the rates for those adverts and the number of people simply consuming the site – page hits or unique visitors. I hope the number of people actively interacting with the site by adding comments also factors in there but I doubt simple consumers of the site take a back seat when it’s time to crunch the numbers.

Wal-Martization of the software channel
According to Wikipedia there are around 150,000  third-party applications in the App Store. If Apple was the only computer maker in a regulated market I’d be more likely to accept the claim that “the iStore lock-in doesn’t make life better for Apple’s customers or Apple’s developers.”

But again this is an anti-DRM argument, that’s not (or shouldn’t be) restricted to the iPad. Clearly developers and customers aren’t stupid. That’s why more than three billion downloads have been made from the App Store.

The Wal-Mart analogy is a bad one too – at least on one level. The development of the iPod Touch, the iPhone and now the iPad has not seen a massive takeover of an existing market, it’s fostering a massive expansion of a new, previously small market.

Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
It’s not the device’s fault if journalists and bloggers get sucked into the spin from Apple’s marketing team. Indeed, arguing that Rupert Murdoch is silly because he thinks putting up a pay-wall will save his newspaper empire in the long-run should not be confined to discussion about the iPad.

Gadgets come and gadgets go
I’ve got some sympathy for the argument that “the real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.” But that’s the real crux of the whole post. Until he gets to here, Cory seems to be arguing that the iPad can’t won’t and shouldn’t change things. But here, he pretty much gives up the ghost and you almost get the sense that he knows it will.

 

The GBS represents a new stage in the evolution of the publishing industry. It offers a glimpse of what bookstores might become in the mature Information Age: A hybrid library/storefront whose job is to preserve and monetize books. It will be difficult to balance the public good of libraries with the free market of the bookstore.

Check it out here.

A quick preview of some of Penguin’s plans for books on the iPad. Shiny!

It’s followed by a less shiny but more interesting talk from Penguin CEO John Makinson about how publishers will become more relevant, not less, and how they’ll be taking a giant leap into a distribution model that lets them play around with pricing and access a lot more consumer data. You can see that video over at PaidContent.org.

Best Novel
Mirror Space, Marianne de Pierres, Orbit

Best Novella
Horn, Peter M. Ball, Twelfth Planet Press
Wives, Paul Haines, Cour de Lion

Best Novelette
Sister, Sister, Strange Tales III, Angela Slatter, Tartarus Press
Inevitable, The New Space Opera 2, Sean Williams, Harper Collins

Best Graphic Story
Scarygirl, Nathan Jurevicius, Allen and Unwin

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
District 9
Moon

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Caprica Pilot, SyFy

Best Editor, Short Form
Jonathan Strahan
Ellen Datlow
Keith Stevenson

Best Editor, Long Form
Stephanie Smith
Zoe Walton
Bernadette Foley
David G Hartwell

Best Semiprozine
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

Best Fan Writer
Bill Wright, Interstellar Ramjet Scoop

Best Fanzine
A Writer Goes on a Journey

Best Fan Artist
Andrew McKiernan

John W. Campbell Award
Angela Slatter
Peter M Ball
Lezli Robyn

I know there are some international nominations in there but I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.

If you haven’t already, get out there and nominate!

The story so far, for those who’ve missed it: The Hugo Awards are coming to Australia courtesy of Aussiecon 4. Here’s our chance to help some of our best authors get their best work recognised by getting them nominated for an award.

It’s a pretty simple idea – get out there and nominate your favourite Aussie, writers, works, editors and fans.

But the numbers remain stacked against us.

As of January 1, there were 352 Australians registered and eligible to nominate for the Hugos. A healthy number, yes. But a very small one when compared to the 856 Americans eligible to nominate. And breaking those numbers down further says a bit more about why it’s important we get out there and nominate. Of those 856 Americans, 388 are “supporting” members – ie people who are unlikely to attend the convention but have paid a fee to get regular updates and to be eligible to vote in the Hugos. On top of that, add all the members of last year’s Worldcon, held in Montreal, who are also eligible to nominate and vote in the awards this year.

It’s perfectly understandable that US readers have less exposure than locals to great Australian speculative fiction. But if you think local works and authors deserve recognition; if you think it’s possible to make a difference and if you think it’s important to try then check out the Aussiecon 4 website for nomination details. And if you’re Facebook inclined, log in and join the conversation here.

People, it’s time we made the John W Campbell Award into more than just award for new writing talent from North America.

The John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer has been awarded 37 times since it started in 1973. Of those 37 awards, 36 have been awarded to authors from North America. One has gone to an author from the UK – Jeff Noon. Not once has it gone to an Australian, a Kiwi, a South African, a Japanese writer or anyone else. It has only ever been awarded to residents of three countries – the USA, Canada, and England.

Think of the great Australian genre authors starting their careers that we missed out on recognising: Margo Lanagan, Garth Nix, Sean Williams, Greg Egan, Isobelle Carmody and heaps of others.

This is not the fault of the organisers. They run a good award that has drawn attention to some great new talent. It’s our responsibility as a local community.

This photo, from Patick Nielsen Hayden, isn’t a picture of the award. It shows Jay Lake holding a pin Jay is distributing to all previous nominees. At a quick glance it looks like there’s only one (for Kirsten Bishop) of these exquisite creations in Australian hands (or on lapels).

Local writers aren’t even getting nominated. But with Worldcon coming to Melbourne, we’ve got a chance to make amends and focus some attention on some of our best new local writers.

My list of nominations for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer will include:

• Angela Slatter
• Peter M. Ball
• Lezli Robyn
• Jason Fischer

I’ve read a heap of work from each of these writers and I’m very confident they’ll all go a long way.

Nominations close March 13. You can find out more at the Aussiecon 4 website.

Photo by Patrick Nielsen Hayden used under Creative Commons licence.

Interviews and recommendations will be appearing on these blogs from tomorrow:
http://random-alex.livejournal.com/
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/
http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel
http://tansyrr.com/
http://editormum.livejournal.com/

Looking forward to seeing further discussion of what we should be nominating. Don’t forget, nominations close in a month.