the rambles of my headspace

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

One of my great internet pleasures is browsing for random art files.  I keep a folder of random clippings that help provide inspiration for novels and short stories.  Generally I forget to keep track of the artist, for I am a fool.  Anyhoo, I just came across some really beautiful tentacle art by the clearly talented Michelle Farran.  Her gallery is definitely worth checking out.

My personal favorite would be this:

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

There’s an ad out at the moment, I’m pretty sure it’s by Heineken, that states “You are who you are when no one’s around.”

I am not sure how this is meant to detract from the fact that Heineken tastes like horse urine, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

It strikes me that this is a massively poisonous statement.

There’s a great movie named Roger Dodger in which Campbell Scott plays a copywriter.  He states that an ads first job is to make people unhappy, to make them thing they need something.  The line “You are who you are when no one’s around” purely exists to make people unhappy.  It gives the sense that you are pretending, a walking shell, you are surrounded by people, and your life is a lie.

It’s a line that taps into the powerful modernist myth of dualism, into the idea that there is a true self, a soul perhaps, that lurks beneath the facade of our daily lives.  It ties into this idea that if we could just do something, achieve something then we could push through to this better realm.  Religion uses the myth as the proverbial carrot to encourage “moral” behavior (I leave it up to you as to whether institutionalized hatred of certain groups is moral or not)–do this and you will be rewarded in the afterlife, the true life once the skein of this world is torn away.  In this case, the manufacturers are trying to use the myth to shift beer.  Own beer, and you will achieve some sort of fucking nirvana or something.

Now, of course, Heineken beer ads, all beer ads, pretty much all ads, are crap, are up to the same cheap psychological trick.  But here the baldness of the line clearly pushes me over the edge.

You are who you are all the damned time.

You are who you are when you lie to your boss, when you laugh at a joke you don’t think is funny, when you dance self-consciously, when you’re embarrassed because you laughed so loudly, when you dress to impress, when you take the cigarette you don’t want, when you don’t light the cigarette you really want to light.  Everything little thing you do, is you.

If we deny these things, bad things, good things, indifferent stupid damned things, then we deny ourselves more  than half the time.  This world is it.  This is what we have.  These moments when we’re around others are what we have.  When we look back on our work day, our whatever day, we can’t say half of it wasn’t us.  Who the hell was it?

Living divided, in denial of half ourselves is unhealthy.  It’s a psychological trauma done to society by Descartes and exacerbated beyond all belief by crass commercialism.

Seriously–it’s almost as bad as Heineken tastes.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

Another new story up at Daily Cabal today.  The few long-time followers of this blog may recognize it from the old LJ, and yes it is a reprise, which usually I try to avoid.  But the flu had me at a disadvantage this week and rather killed my creativity.  So, the best [imho] of the old ones is what’s gone up.  So apologies if it doesn’t have that new car smell, but hopefully you’ll enjoy anyway.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

[I'm on my fifth and (hopefully) final day of flue, so if any of this makes even less sense than usual, then that's my excuse]

Back when I was in college I was able to take a theater course.  As well of seeing many excellent off-broadway shows (the joys of taking such a course in NYC) I also got to learn a bunch of interesting theories and terms.  The one thing which has prooved itself most useful to my writing is the Brechtian “Alienation Effect.”

This generally sounds absurdly pompous, but it’s really quite simple.  It simply means that part of the performance (or story) reminds the audience (reader) that this is a performance, not reality.  It resists the suspension of disbelief.  The audience/reader is shocked out of the story for a moment, and intentionally.

Why would you want to do this?  You’ve worked so hard to make your story grab and immerse the reader, why then ruin it all by throwing them out of the story (alienating them - hence the name)?

Because, a story doesn’t just entertain.  It should entertain.  It has to enteain.  But it doesn’t just entertain.  It can also carry a message, have some political import.  But swept along in the tide of things, readers may miss the message.  And so you give them a quick jolt, you remind them, this is a story, and allow them to think more analytically about the events of the story as they occur.

It’s probably not a tactic to use in every story, or even to use often in a story its appropriate for, but it can be quite effective.  One way I’ve found to deploy it is to write in the 2nd-person, to use the word “you” so that the text abruptly addresses the reader.  (My attempt, is over at Farrago’s Wainscot–I’ll leave it to you to judge if it’s successful or not).

---

(As an aside on the word “you” I’d also say that this is why a lot of interactive fiction, and choose-your-own adventure fails.  They’re texts which should work to involve you more in the fiction, but the reader is constantly thrown out by the odd 2nd-person format.  I think one of the reasons the outstanding story/game “Slouching Towards Bedlam” works so well is its fastidious eschewing of the word “you”)

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

So I picked up Mieville’s latest, The City and The City, last week and chewed through it in about a week (it always startles me when I realize how much I could read in a year if I didn’t write).

I’m a huge Mieville fan.  The reading of Perdido Street Station was a watershed moment for me, and while it is not the only book to have strongly influenced my writing, it is the first one I can identify and the one that led me to seek out the others.  I had been biting my nails over The City and The City.  I went to the reading in NYC and got my hardcover signed.  I participated in the online chat hosted by Suvudo.

Despite every review I’d read, the first fifty pages or so pages of The City and The City through me.  This is not a fantasy book.  I knew that.  I’d read that.  But I still expected it.  And it’s just not.

This, I should point out clearly now, is not a flaw in the book, but in me.

But I definitely wrestled with the absence of the sense of wonder.  There is wonder here of course, but a very muted version, as opposed to Mieville’s normal, in-your-face oddities that tickle my brain just so.  But compared to The Weaver, to Slake Moths, to Raft Cities, to Mosquito Men… the relationship of the cities Bezel and Ul Qoma, which is an unusual and inventive one, leading to much narrative excitement, seems relatively mundane.

However, after a little perseverance, and an adjustment of my own views, I was finally able to appreciate the book on its own terms.  It is, as I’ve said, a fantasy novel.  It’s a mystery novel.  It’s a police procedural (which all the interviews/reviews have pointed out, and I should have known, I know, and yet…).  What’s more it’s a very good police procedural.

I don’t really read enough mystery to judge the novel against the convetions of the genre.  When I do read mysteries I tend towards noirs, and a noir this is not.  But I doubt this breaks down genre boundaries in the same way that the Bas-Lag triology did.  But on the basis of what is simply a good read and what is not: this is a good read.

Tyador Borlu is an rye, entertaining narrator; the mystery clicks along and an ever increasing pace; the stakes rise; the twists and reversals are all appropriate, all feel right.  Nothing is cheap here, nothing forced.  The one element of the not-quite-fantastic–the relationship between the cities of  Bezel and Ul Qoma, which I won’t spoil here–is never tacked on, but an important, integral part of the novel and the mystery.  This, as all mysteries should be, is a well-oiled machine, every part in its place, performing its task.

Is The City and The City as innovative as the Bas-Lag, series?  No.  Is it as wondrous?  No.  But it’s not trying to be.  It doesn’t need to be.  On it’s own terms, it is a very good read.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

This was snagged from Warren Ellis’ site today.

1. The BNP winning European parliament seats means they have a budget to employ staff and various sub-contractors.
2. These budgets and staff positions are subject to anti-discrimination laws, as they come from public funds.
3. Watch out for when these positions are advertised. If anyone sees them advertised, chuck the ads about on as many social networks, blogs etc as possible.
4. Man the Harpoons - If you fall outside of the BNP’s discriminatory membership criteria, due to being black, Jewish, whatever, apply. If you are white British and want to help out this plan anyway, just spread the idea about.
5. When you/they don’t get the job, take it to an employment tribunal.
6. ????
7. Profit.

Even if you’re not especially bothered about taking the BNP to an employment tribunal, spreading this idea about, and forcing them to consider it and raaage over how unfair to the poor ickle racialists it is, it’s still funny.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

When I was a teenager I was an enthusiastic roleplayer. I even once rolled a hundred-sided dice. (It was awesome - giant ball of failed percentage rolls). I loved it. I still do. The only reason I am no longer a roleplayer is a lack of time and opportunity.

The system of choice for my friends and I was Shadowrun 2^nd edition, and great blend of Gibson-inspired cyberpunk and old-school fantasy themes. I GM’d more often than not though I’m not convinced I was that good at it. I lack the ruthlessness of the true GM. But I did enjoy the storytelling, the act of creation that being a GM required.

Most of my early adventures followed a pretty familiar mold. Players are hired to complete random task. Players roll dice to get requisite info. Then we go through the act of breaking in somewhere (or whatever) security inevitably shows. Repeat with a few twists and turns, end in cataclysmic gunfight. They were tales of mounting violence, ending in orgies of bullets and fireballs.

Man, Shadowrun was awesome…

Then one day I used an adventure published by FASA (then owners of the Shadowrun franchise). I forget the name but it was written by Tom Dowd, who seemed to do most of the good Shadowrun supplements. Hopefully he is still writing things. The adventure centered around the kidnapping of a boy, the players forcing the kid into the role of pawn in a corporate game. The kidnapping itself was fraught with the usual dangers, and had a high excitement value. The adventure, I remember, was shockingly complete in the information it provided, everything a player could wish to know was covered, and the planning was tense, the execution thrilling.

Then the players entered a protracted period of waiting, of roleplaying, of getting to know this kid. And all the time they’re waiting for the final firefight, for the men to bust down the door and the guns to blaze.

And it never happened.

The game ends with the kids being discarded. No longer wanted. The players are left with this kid on their hands that no one (including his parents) wants any more. It ends with a moral dilemma. What to do? And it was the most powerful game I ever played using the Shadowrun system.

But the revelation of that game, that forcing someone into a moral dilemma, to make them choose from an array of bad choices, is more powerful than any action scene.

It’s a truth that made for a great Vampire: The Masquerade game when I was in college. It’s a truth that’s slowly seeping into video games–Fallout 3 and Mass Effect are powerful, powerful games, and they achieve their power, by forcing the player into those awkward situations. (I still regret some of the choices I’ve made in Fallout 3, but I wouldn’t go back to an earlier save and change them for the world).

It’s a truth I’m trying to put into my writing. Action scenes are fun and easy, and they will carry a story so far, but they’ll never quite match the power of watching a character that you have come to identify with wrestle with the simple question of, “what the hell do I do now?”

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

For the (so far 2) people who care, I just fixed it so comments should appear instantly without me having to approve them.  I’m fairly sure I am not in any way significant enough to attract spammers.

Knowing my luck, that has just thrown down the gauntlet to about 3000 spammers…

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

I’ve become a big fan of flash fiction.  Pieces of around 400 words (the Daily Cabal limit) are a great way to learn structure, to strengthen basic narrative skills, and to experiment with new ideas.

One thing I’ve been seeing more and more of, however, are pieces of 140 characters or less.  Now that, it seems, is a challenge.  So, having not tried it before, but due to the awesome-ness of @thaumatrope (people on twitter really should follow) I thought I’d stick a couple of first attempts up here, for the joys of public humiliation.

As ever with fiction on the blog, if it sucks, please let me know.

Attempt 1:

Werewolf howls at full moon - the night’s blind eye.  Thrown shoe catches her behind ear.  City life, she thinks, is a bitch.

Attempt 2:

I wake spewing paper.  Pages and pages of dense text regurgitated.  When I recover, I read.  All that’s printable–140 characters.

Attempt 3:

There are no fairies we’re told.  Yet they beckon us and we think ourselves wiser.  We follow and their goblin teeth teach us we are not.

Attempt 4:

Flight–a sudden gift.  She sails from the tower, from the witch’s clutches.  Free.  But what bravery has gifted her, gravity soon steals.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

As usual it takes me about two weeks after reading something to come up with an original thought, so I have completely lost the link to the article that caused all the subsequent thoughts, so I apologize for that.

Having lost the link I can’t go point by point, and I’m not sure even if I could.  I think there were some good points in the arguments as well as bad, and I don’t want this to turn into a swipe at someone behind there back.  But one point that was definitely made and that I definitely take issue with was that the assertion it was OK for books to be purely escapist, and that tackling politics in novels was not necessarily a good thing, and could even spoil a book (the advocate for politics in fantasy novels in question was China Mieville, whose particular brand of politics is more contentious than most).

And the vast hole in the argument for pure escapism over political content was the author’s failure to realize that escapism is political too.

This, I think, can manifest in a couple of ways.  Firstly, the politics of the author can be so closely aligned with the readers that the reader simply doesn’t notice them.  So while the book may be political, it doesn’t challenge that particular readers worldview, doesn’t cause them to ask themselves any questions, and the politics passes them by.  These books, I suspect, as in the minority,

More difficult to spot, perhaps, are the books which do not directly deal with political matters.  Because the subject is not directly tackled it appears to be left alone.  But any novel supports a particular worldview.  Even the innocent phrases slipped into paragraphs can be loaded with political content–for example”men and women” is gender biased, with its assumption that men go first, yet it’s such a common phrase that few are going to see it and think about it (I’m not claiming to be unnaturally aware of political biases in text here, btw, anyone who knows me knows I blunder as much as the next woman or man).  But the politics is there in every text.  It’s whether we acknowledge it or not.

And that comes to the intent with which we read books.  It is certainly possible to read with the intent of escaping from our daily lives, to read with the intent of ignoring the political content of any book.  And those readers are likely to pick books that naturally fit their worldview most closely, that challenge them the least, that draw attention to their politics the least.  But again, this doesn’t mean that the books are apolitical.

And, of course, reading with the intent of ignoring the political content of a book, is a political decision too.  It’s essentially an acquiescence, an acknowledgment of a particular worldview, a decision to uphold it, to do nothing.  And that’s a legitimate decision, but it’s a political one.

And I probably should let things lie there, but one last thing bother me, which is, the feeling that one needs to escape seems to imply a dissatisfaction with the status quo.  The reader feels the need to escape something.  But rather than engage with whatever the problem is, they’re choosing to disengage, they’re acquiescing to the situation, allowing it to continue.  This is the conciliatory role Tolkein argued for fantasy (whether his own works are conciliatory or not I would debate, but he certainly argued that fantasy should fulfill that function) and it is the weakest position fiction can take.  It is to say that the sole purpose of fiction is to entertain.

Yes, fiction to be successful by ANY measure, must entertain, but that is also the least it must do.  That is the price of entry.  But it can do more much more.  And just because fiction challenges us, doesn’t mean that it cannot be entertaining as well.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

So, the new web site is up and running.  Excited about that.

I have a little time now as the novel is edited, out the door, agent-approved manuscript winging its way to poor unsuspecting editors, and so putting together a proper web-site has finally managed to make its way to the top of the priority list.

There are of course about a thousand Jonathan Woods out there, and www.jonathanwood.com is taken as are many other variations upon my name (you should totally check out jonathanwood.com though–it belongs to a Canadian graphic designer, his portfolio is very cool).  So the new url is www.cogsandneurons.com.  Everything crossposts to livejournal though, so that site is still functional.  But wordpress let me make a site that looks cooler so it’s the winner.

Still work to be done, of course.  A links section is sorely missing, but that’ll come soon.

Btw, all the graphics/textures on the site come from www.grungetextures.com so if you like them you can get them and others like them completely for free there.

But yeah, this is my new online home.  I am childishly excited about the whole thing, and to prove it’s superiority to the old blog, here is proof:

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

This is a test for the new web-site to see if things are cross-posting correctly.  Apologies for the inconvenience.

Originally published at Cogs & Neurons. You can comment here or there.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

...post about there being a new piece up at Daily Cabal.  Here is an excerpt to tempt you.

"I make for the roofs, climbing something that may be a drain pipe or a feeding tube for a piece of sentient stonework. My feet pound over slate and silica."

It's a short extract because the piece is only 400 words, and you can't extract much from that without having told the whole thing.

Just a quick note to say today brings another of my stories at Daily Cabal.  This story, like the last one, is part of an ongoing idea to come out with some sort of way to do updated sword & sorcery fic.  Not sure what the long-term future for the concept is, if it's just going to live as flash fic or what.  Part of me likes the idea of doing an old-fashioned serial.  But, yes, what's up at Daily Cabal is the latest iteration.  Enjoy.

So as -of-late, work madness has been much decreased and I've started to make decent headway with the post-agent revisions to teh novel.

Not sure if I've mentioned the structure of the thing before.  It follows three characters on three fairly separate tracks.  If you've read Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake then it's similar to that, though the stories are less  directly connected (if you haven't read Trial of Flowers then you really should.  It's fantastic.  I hadn't checked it out when I planned out teh novel, but once I had read it, I felt a lot less original about my structure, ah well).  I've pretty much re-written about 60%-70% of one of those plotlines.  My mistake when planning the thing out was to thing in terms of an A, B, and C plot (in order of priority) which really doesn't work when your structure of choice requires a clear third of your novel be dedicated to the plot.  Not making that mistake again... 

The other work has been largely tightening and trying to overcome my desire to wax lyrical on almost everything.  The previous draft was 138k, so I'm hoping to cut it down a bit, make it a little leaner.  Though of course, I've been bulking up that one third...  I've edited on paper and am only now typing up my edits from the first pass so I'm interested to see where I net out in terms of word count.  145k knowing my luck...

Once I've got all that done I'm going to have to thoroughly edit the heavily revised plot-line.  There's now a lot of first draft stuff in there, as opposed to 4th or 5th draft stuff in the rest of the novel.  So the prose is likely to need a fair amount of polishing.  The new stuff is definitely my big source of concern with this edit.  The refining process I'm much more confident.  It's nice to have got some distance, to be able to see where the issues are more clearly.  And with an actual chance of selling the thing, it's much easier to avoid the "ah, it's alright" pitfall in my head and actually address the issue.

And once that's done I get to read the whole bloody thing one last time, make sure everything still makes sense (one reason I've edited on paper is so I can see what cuts I've made and easily retype any bad cuts--track changes in unwieldy on my variant of Open Office), and then it'll be off.  I'm hoping to wrap it up by mid-June, and reward myself with The City and The City.  Huzzah.

Just finished reading the piece over at Tor.com about the Society for Geek Advancement and I have to say I was muchly impressed.  At first I was tempted to laugh about the whole thing.  Someone tried to say something nice about geeks and they got it WRONG.  Curse them!  But the mroe I think about it, the pissier I become.

I do no own a iphone, ipod, or indeed any other i-thing.  I don't even like Apples.  Anyone following along at home may have noticed that...
I cannot program for shit.  I used to know html.  I don't any more.
I am not hot.
I am not a rapper.
I am not cool.

That last one's kind of important.  I think that's really the definition of geekiness.  The rejection of the mainstream idea of cool.  Indeed, geeks can onjly exist because of the mainstream.  If geeks had mainstream acceptance then we wouldn't be geeks.  We'd be the mainstream.  People who liked Dancing With The Stars would be geeks.  And that would be wrong.

The desire for acceptance is of course strong.  High school scars take a long time to heal.  But the cries for mainstream acceptance, and that's really what that video is, seems like a form of self-hatred.  Indeed, whether the participants realized it or not, they've created a rallying point for people so desperate to escape what it is to be escape that they're willing to cut off a huge portion of the geek community to get it.  I may not speak klingon, but god bless the nerd that does.

We are misfits and outcasts and we should be proud of that.  We live by our own set of rules, not those handed to us by the mainstream.  We should accept that.  Then we can be happier people (as this piece of brilliance points out). 

This comes from the tail end of an article on the BBC web site about the current fighting in Pakistan.  Sticking it here because it feels important to remember.

The United States stated aim is to eliminate Al Qaeda from the region, kill or arrest its senior leadership, defeat the Taleban and help establish sustainable democracies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It also wants to ensure that Islamic extremists do not take control of Pakistan and its stock pile of nuclear weapons. But its policies since 9/11 have done little to promote these aims.

Most Pakistani analysts see the US as a fickle ally. They point out that its policies in the region have been myopic and based on vengeance.

The analysts maintain that waging a war in Iraq diverted precious resources away from what was the real conflict, in Afghanistan. They say this allowed the Taleban and Al Qaeda to reassemble and strengthen their ranks.

The current US administration admits some of these 'mistakes' and has now put Pakistan-Afghanistan on the top of its agenda. But the analysts fear this maybe a case of too little too late, and that the situation may already be lost.

Just found a nice review of Shuffle which was in January's issue of Chizine. Which is nice.

“Shuffle,” by Jonathan Wood, is the surreal story of a presumed New York detective who is supposed to be solving a woman’s murder in a small town. All this is happening while the man is carrying around the corpse of his wife in the trunk of his car, and trying to figure out if he is going crazy or if the entire town is trying to hoodwink him in some complicated way. Think Kafka without the cockroach.

Which reminds me that I forgot to point people at last week's addition to the Daily Cabal, which was Fish Food. Had fun writing this one, because basically I ripped on poor old H.P.Lovecraft and the whole mythos thing. Mostly because normally I steal from it in a hideous way. Anyway, if anyone has a few minutes, I'm always interested to hear what people think of these. Because Daily Cabal has no official editorial policy it's always difficult to know if these things are any good or if I'm just bombarding the interwebs with utter crap.

Walking through NYC on the way to work, or on my lunch breaks I've been struck by how many ads for TV stations I've seen.  Not shows, but the actual stations.  Which I think is a pretty good sign of how screwed they are right now, with audiences migrating away.

Personally, I barely watch my TV.  It's there for my Xbox and my DVD player.  My schedule is such that I can hardly ever sit down and watch a show at a regular time.  Do I watch TV shows, though?  Yes.  Anyone following me on twitter has seen me refuse to shut up about Legend of the Seeker, as ashamed as that makes me (it's dire, philosophically offensive, and I loves it).  I watch TV because I have Hulu.  So does everyone else.  I have the shows TV makers are putting on-line themselves.  I have Netflix.  I don't need to turn on my TV, there is more than enough entertainment provided for free at times that fit my schedule. 

With the rise of the digital there is the rise of personalization.  Widgets, gadgets, thingamajigs, desktop backgrounds, playlists, everything is customizable.  The same is going to be true of TV.  The days of a defined schedule are fading.  DVR is working on it too.  People re-arranging schedules, watching things they want, when they want.

I just can't see the current model of TV as a sustainable one.  It's got to adapt, become customizable, personal.  Personally I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a model somewhat like Hulu, with each station having their own library of shows from which people can order their selection.  A rating system to suggest shows to you, wouldn't be a bad idea either.  The schedule model will still be preserved, with new shows added at certain times on certain days, so you can still get the water cooler effect the next day as the die-hards discuss the new episode.

Of course all this has to be funded somehow.  And a big reason TV channels are advertising, is to attract advertisers themselves.  Right now when I watch a 45-50 minute show on Hulu I'll probably see 6 to 8 ads.  That's probably 2-3 minutes--barely a single ad break on TV, where I'm likely to see 12-15 minutes of ads over the course of the show, some 20%-30% of my time.  And most ads suck.  Again, DVR also eliminates ads, with people simply fast-forwarding through.  It's going to take a long time for the traditional ad break to die.  I suspect it never will.  But I imagine we're going to see a lot more product placement as time goes by.  It's a shame really, but people are never going to want to be advertised to (a basic fact which I, working in a breed of advertising, fail to see manifest in way too many clients heads).  And so, if people skip the ads to get to the content, the ads are going to have to be worked into the content.

Anyway, that's my glimpse into the crystal ball for today.