1,000,000 websites back

Welcome to the SOPA special edition of my blog.

While I cannot do anything directly to prevent these laws passing (I am neither a Senator, Congressman or even an American) I am a citizen of a great little nation I call the United Countries of the Internet. My citizenship papers are the trails I leave on this blog, facebook, twitter and many other sites. As a proud member of this nation I feel it's only fair that I exercise my democratic right and let my voice be heard.

So, what is SOPA?

The premise of SOPA seems very fair; let's stop all of the people who are making pirated material available on the internet. In the interest of full disclosure I would like everyone to know that I have accessed pirated material from the internet. I don't do it often and I frequently buy things later if I like them but I am not innocent in this conversation. I am not, however, protesting the removal of my right to pirated material - I think that's totally fair. It's the other aspects of the SOPA that I disagree with.

So, what's wrong with SOPA?

SOPA does not merely wish to target sites that enable access to pirated material but any site which may have used any material that could be considered copywritten. Here's an example:

This picture is from my favourite Disney movie, The Great Mouse Detective. I might chose to use this if we're talking about the paths we take when we write and the origins of those paths (many of my stories, while not in the detective genre, involve murders and police investigations). I would add the photo to illustrate my blog and to perhaps jog some peoples memories as it is not one of the big Disney flicks. If SOPA goes through I am now fair game. Yes, I provided a citation for the picture but that was just another blog, not the Disney Corporation. In that way I just used their material without their knowledge (I did not ask first). Am I harming the Disney Corporation by doing this? I don't believe so but they may see my blog as bad publicity for them.

What will SOPA do to me?

Here's the kicker. The US government will have the authority to order Blogger to remove my blog. They can do this despite the fact that I am not American and this blog is not run out of America. This is what they are legislating - the right to remove anything from the entire internet they do not agree with regardless of it's origin. They will give Blogger five days to comply. They don't even have to prove that I am using copywritten material - they can remove my blog on a suspicion. It is then my duty to argue my case to them - I am declared guilty by a foreign country and must prove my innocence.

So, that's what all the fuss is about and that's why I'm angry. If you're reading this and you are American please contact your local politicians and tell them that they have no right to bear their legislation on foreign entities. If this legislation is passed I'd just love everyone out there to dob me in to the powers that be - I'd love to be test case to prove that America does not own the internet. Just to make sure I'm using enough copywritten material here's a picture from Toy Story 3.

If you want to know more click here for a great gif that explains the restrictions SOPA will impose on your favourite websites.

Road tripping and the loss of words

2 words forward

The road less traveled

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost

I have always looked fondly on the quote above; I've done some weird things in my time and I feel that they were good experiences. In the past few days I managed to do something quite weird again and I was once again rewarded. The weird part about it was that I did it backwards - last year for National Novel Writing Month I wrote an as yet untitled capitalist dystopia. In my novel my protagonist was on the run and he proceeded to skip the state. I knew when I was writing it where he had begun and where he ended but I chose not to name places to give the piece a floating feel. I did, however, this week take on a massive road trip which went the same way as my character's run, that's the backwards part; I wrote first and experienced later. The wonderful thing about this is that I'm in the process of a re-write which will now be coloured by my additional knowledge of the route my character took. We never stop learning about our pieces but it's always better when we still have time to incorporate that knowledge.

1 word back

I lost my words

So my road-trip resulted in me staying with two wonderful people who are now married. Yay! One of these people comes from Europe and her sister and a friend were also down from the home country. This is how I lost my words. I had forgotten how easily I had slipped into a pigeon English while I was overseas and communicating with locals but when I was surrounded by the lovely people from Europe I did it again - I lost my words. My sentences became shorter, my speech slower and my grammar jumbled in the same way that there's was. It was really weird. I've only been back a couple of days and I am still noticing a tendency to avoid abbreviations and I literally had to look for several seconds before I could remember the word abbreviations! I never realised how much I took my language skills for granted, nor how hard it must be for others to slip into my language (although I've been learning another language for a while now). My words will come back but I've learned that I can't take them for granted anymore because I know they can go, too. Now it's time to flex my vocab with some word games, else I'll lose them again!

Sing for poetry!

2 Words Forward

Singalong!

I was inspired by this article to look again at the place of music in the writing process. It's not the first time I've done it - one of my first short stories was written with my ipod on shuffle and the rule that I had to include something from each song in the text (The storyline was based on the first two songs I heard - Elvis Costello's 'Poor Fractured Atlas' and REM's 'Talk About The Passion'). In more recent times music has taken a bit of a back seat to my writing - I drive better now that I have a better idea of how to write and a better understanding of my plot-line at the outset. Yet, music is and I believe will always be a great way to kick yourself out of a rut. Stuck for the next twist? Put on music and mull on the ideas that come with the songs. Need a character name? Behind every song is a musician and some songs even have central characters. There's always a place for music and writing to coexist. What are we writing but a spoken song? What are they singing but a story?

1 Word Back

The poetry of language

I also came across this article (thanks to Ray Duell for posting it on facebook). Go ahead, read it. It will probably take some time as it's long and built to trip you up. I'll just go make a cuppa and come back when you're done ...
Done? Good.
Don't you hate the English language right now? How could it be so cruel as to spell the same sounds in so many different ways or to spell different sounds the same?
So, on behalf of the entire English speaking world I'm sorry. I'm sorry to everyone who tries to learn this as their second language because there is so much of it that doesn't make sense. I'm sorry to anyone trying to teach it because the rules have so many exceptions they can barely be called rules at all. I'm sorry to anyone whose first language is English and are trying to learn a second language: many of our rules don't apply anywhere else so you probably have the worst possible foundation for learning another language. I'm sorry to all of my fellow editors - I know how hard it is to remember all of those little twists and turns of our language and how many hours you spend sifting them out of a large document.
World, I'm just sorry about the whole thing. It's beautiful and magical but it's illogical and screwed up. Anyone for Esperanto?

Wave of the future!

2 Steps Forward

A Year of Action

Welcome to 2012. Now what? It's already the fourth of January and I've done nothing! I'm so pissed off with myself. Luckily a friend of mine put up a very useful list to remind me of the important things. What have I taken away from this article (apart from the fact that I ripped it off to use in my blog)? There are two things that struck me in the head at point blank like a frozen fish (gratuitous Monty Python reference). Firstly, voice. Your voice is your voice. My voice is my voice. I often write in another voice as practice but when I write a piece I want to use I write in my voice and I was surprised to find that this is not the way everyone writes. So the moral is to write as you because you're the only one with your voice. In a larger way the several sections covering procrastination won me over. This article makes me remember something very important - if you want to be a writer then write. It's so simple but so often forgotten as we avoid a snag in a plot or an unsatisfactory character and don't end up writing a damned thing. So, I said to myself, if you want to call yourself a writer then your writeriness will now be measured in words, not procrastination. I think tonight will be a writing night!

1 Word Back


20twelve

Numbers. If you spell it with a '3' you get a cool tv show that died too soon. Otherwise, in their normal guise, numbers are the forgotten characters of our writing. So what are the rules with numbers? Well, mostly numbers are left to stylistic choice. All of the following: 04/01/2012 (Aussie), 01/04/2012 (USA), January 4th 2012, 4th of January 2012 are acceptable. There are also variations on these that are fine - the important thing is to make sure that all numbers of the same type (ie. dates, times, general numerals) are consistent. There are, however, some guidelines for general numerals in Australia which can be found in the Style Manual. Amongst these are the suggestion that numbers under three digits be spelled out in letters, while those three digits or larger can be written in numerals. Once a number gets larger that hundreds of thousands they can be abbreviated to both letters and numbers (ie. 1.5 million, 2 billion). Of course there are also rules for the phrasing of money and currency and mathematical sums but these are for another time. In the meantime make sure you're following the same rules all the way through and you should be okay.