The Problem with Piracy
I just finished reading a fascinating article on the Guardian by novelist Lloyd Shepherd, who decided to confront people brazenly trying to pirate copies of his book online. The result from this confrontation is an enlightening one; the pirate was polite and wrote back a reasonable-sounding reply, apologizing for the way the world was — but he (or she) basically threw up his hands, claiming that because this was the way the world worked now, what could he do about it? It seemed to completely elude this person that it was his own action that he was responsible for, not the climate of the entire world. I’ve seen this sort of response before, and it really does make me angry. It makes me wonder, too, about how much culture versus individual lack of responsibility is to blame.
I’ve been burned by plagiarism myself, which is a similar literary crime. In the past, I used to publish my short stories on this website; I stopped after a high school teacher from somewhere in the midwest emailed me, explaining that a student had handed my work into the teacher’s creative writing class. Now that I am a teacher myself, I have encountered plagiarism as well — just this past week, actually, I had another bout of it. When I realized that the paper had been entirely lifted from free essay websites, I didn’t feel triumphant, or clever for figuring it out; I felt sad, and defeated. When a student plagiarizes, it shows that all the effort I went to in order to create an engaging and informative lesson may as well have been thrown in the trash. The student didn’t listen, and didn’t care about learning.
Set a Story Across Your Street
The neighborhood in which you live can be a wonderful story resource. While in the middle of writing, I’ll often pause to look out my window at the row of apartments across my street. When I saw a curtain move in the window, I was instantly riveted, curious about who lived over there, what they were doing, and what their lives were like. Did they, too, look out of their windows, spying (benignly) on their neighbors?
Then the curtain moved again, and a dog poked his head out. The little guy made me laugh; he had his paws up on the sill and was doing exactly what I was doing — looking curiously out, examining his world, wanting to know more about what was going on out there. That reminded me how the world just across your street can be surprisingly like your own — and it can be the perfect creative source for stories.
Photo of the Week
I always enjoy striking rural scenes, possibly because I see them so rarely in my own life. How about writing a country story this week?
I’ve received information about an interesting opportunity for writers, bloggers, and editors. If you’re looking for well-regarded classes about improving your writing or blogging, the New York Times online course catalog might be worth a look. Here’s the press release I was given.
Interested in issues related to writing, blogging, and editing? The New York Times Knowledge Network (NYT) has a number of online courses available for aspiring writers, bloggers, and editors of all ages seeking to develop and perfect their craft.
These courses are part of The USC and New York Times Knowledge Network online continuing education program (www.nytimes.com/usc), which offers students tailored, practical programs to enhance their professional paths, and the flexibility of online courses for both working and non-working adults. Courses feature USC faculty, in addition to New York Times journalists.
Make Weather Match Your Mood
The recent burst of warmth where I live has gotten me thinking about how weather can feature in your writing. Sure, on the surface nothing could sound more boring — who wants to read a book about the humidity level? But weather can actually heighten and intensify the emotions at the center of your story. Many great novels use storms or blazing heart, blizzards or flash floods, to reflect and parallel the drama going on in the story; this technique is called pathetic fallacy. As long as you don’t lean too heavily on the dark and stormy nights, it can beautifully enrich the scene you’re trying to create.
Think about creating a mood.
Great works of art all cultivate strong moods; it’s very difficult, and usually distracting, to have more than one mood on display at a time. Think about the set design of a play, the lighting and costumes in a horror movie, or all the details of a time-period-driven show like Downton Abbey. They’re all working in one direction, carefully chosen to create a certain mood, whether it’s a mood of spookiness or anger or dereliction or excitement. These pieces are chosen to complement the mood of the actual characters and their problems.
What’s the Deal with Dystopian?
Abandoned buildings, tough
urban landscapes…dystopian paradise.
Young adult and teen lit tends to follow trends, and now that vampire-mania has died down just a tad, I think we’re in the midst of a dystopian craze. It seems like every cool book for young readers coming out these days is all about some dark and frightening vision of the future, when kids are forced to hunt each other (Hunger Games) or get plastic surgery to look good (Uglies and Pretties), or something equally disturbing. It’s gotten me wondering what readers, and teen readers in particular, love about dystopian fiction. I know I was always fascinated with it myself; I re-read the personal favorite Z for Zachariah, about a post-nuclear world, probably ten times. Let’s not forget greats like Ender’s Game or classics like 1984. So what’s the deal? Why does dystopian fiction push our buttons?
Photo of the Week
Here’s a beautiful and mysterious view of Sri Lanka for this week’s photo. I’m not sure why the fishermen are on stilts, but it’s worth a little research — or a little creative imagining!
Concentration Aids: Ambient Sound
I like to regularly turn my attention to the concrete aspects of the writing trade; you can find past reviews and reflections in my writing tools category. This week I’d like to offer some great writing tools for ambient sound. Writers seem to be all over the map in their opinions about what to listen to, if anything, while writing. I know writers who wear sound-canceling headphones while writing, insisting on only the deepest silence. I know writers who listen to loud crashing music. And I know writers who listen to quiet music, music without lyrics, or less rhythmic concentration aids. Personally, I find a completely blank silence to be almost as distracting as loud music or people talking. I like to feel like I’m observing the world, listening to the normal sounds of existence: rain on the window (a personal fave for a pensive mood), low traffic noise, even the hum of a refrigerator. What do you choose to hear when you write?
There are many ambient-noise tools out there for people like me, and I’ve reviewed several of them in the past. There’s the simple, highly effective Rainymood.com, which offers a long, high-quality audio loop of rain sound. There’s the versatile Naturespace, which has a whole library of ambient nature tracks. Naturespace was originally for the iphone, but now you can also purchase audio files to play on your desktop computer; I love their rain and wind audioscapes.
Kundun: a biopic with four
different actors playing the Dalai Lama.
Regular readers of Writerly Life have heard the lifelong interest I’ve had in Buddhism. Whatever your religious inclinations, Buddhism has much that is fascinating to say about the nature of the self and our interdependence in the world. And one particular tenet of Buddhist doctrine has gotten me thinking about my writing. Buddhists teach that there is no one continuous, whole self; instead, we are a kaleidoscope of different, dependent selves, each one a kind of domino falling from the previous’s touch. This metaphor is particularly sharp in movies, when different actors are used to portray one character at different ages. And if the Buddhists are right, then we are all like those actors, very different people being pulled together to create an assemblage of one person.
What does this have to do with writing?
This can be a useful metaphor to think about when constructing characters in fiction as well. Is your character really the same person that he was when he was a child? Is he the same as when he was a teenager? Events that happen along the way change us profoundly; the choices we make determine the people we become. Sometimes those people are very different than the people we began as; the gulf between ourselves then and ourselves now is the stuff of drama and fiction.
After the jump: playing with versions of your character.
Replace one indulgence
with one creative habit.
At the end of a hard day, we all indulge ourselves. It might be a bit of harmless reality TV, or some schlocky romance novel-reading. It might be a surf through our favorite blogs and pop culture websites. It might be a leisurely gourmet meal, or a roll of cookie dough. I’m not judging! We all make choices about the way we’re going to reward ourselves for our work, or indulge ourselves in our more tired moments.
But do we need every one of our usual indulgences?
For a little creative self-improvement this week, I’m encouraging you to think about choosing one indulgence to eliminate. My father always says, “You can have anything you want — you just can’t have everything you want,” and I think that’s a sound piece of advice. If you want to be able to finish a story every few weeks, or get some real work on your novel done, then you’re going to have to make choices and set priorities. Is that hour of reality television really crucial to your sanity, or can you devote that time to a little writing instead? Television is a particular weakness of mine, especially since all the world’s TV is largely available on Netflix these days, but my goal is to cut at least an hour of it a week away in exchange for some writing time.
After the jump: the transaction you make when you indulge yourself.
