Writing Time

There's a time some evenings for writing. It's that time when I should be asleep, but can't. When the stacks of magazines, novels and non-fiction I've got lying around on my to-absorb list hold no interest. When my day job hasn't ripped every desire to type from my fingers. When it's time for me to write.

Except I have no bloody idea what I want to write about.

When I first started writing there was a list of things I wanted to achieve as a writer.

Get an academic article published.
Get a newspaper article published.
Get an article in a magazine (that people actually pay for).
Sell a piece of fiction.
Sell a short story.
Sell a script for a graphic novel/comic.

So far I've hit one of those, with another possibly in the works, but with seeming diminishing likelyhood. Neil Gaiman was published at 23, and writing Sandman at 29. Warren Ellis was writing for Marvel at 26.

I know it's a bit daft to compare oneself to other authors, but it's still terrifying. By writing in a drudge job, I'm completely removing any desire I have to work beyond what I have to. I have a half-dozen little side projects that never go anywhere due to lack of time and energy.

My job has sapped two of my only useful hobbies: photography and writing.

I want to tell stories.
I want to show pictures.

Bugger this emo shit. I want to write, and at least that's what I'm doing.

This may be a time of flux for writers, but that also makes it a time of interesting opportunity. The fact that ebooks are actually selling. That writers can release bits and pieces for free online, if they're sensible. Asimov's may be fading, but Escape Pod has a freaking huge number of listeners.

Freelancing has this romantic appeal, given the current situation. It gives the most promise for riding out the current shufflings of written media, as real jobs are few and far between. Plus the ability to flit from one subject to another is a glorious one. But no insurance. Shitty pay. Would you believe freelancing jobs are being outsourced?

I was recently checking out a freelancing website, which included a writing section. Standard deal, writers try and place a low bid on a contract. Reading their posts, basic language skills seemed nearly non-existent. Then I looked at how much was being paid. 50 cents for 200 words. $200 a week from 20,000 words. That's fucking ludicrous! Of course, it's near to a living wage in South Asia.

But not here.

The Death of Print Media, part II: Scifi Short Fiction

Continuing the theme of my previous post...

Scifi used to be based primarily around short fiction. Just think of the short stories of Asimov, Clarke, Dick and Moorecock. And it's a genre that is dying in the print form. Why? Because it turns out that the people running things are utter luddites. Rather than rehash a complete history of why this is, I'm just going to throw some basic links your way:

1) The VP of the Scifi and Fantasy Writers of America called people who publish their fiction free online "webscabs" and "Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch"

2) Scifi magazines are losing members at an astonishing rate

3) They are completely unable to do even the most basic things to bring themselves into the 21st Century

But the thing that really gets me? Analog, Interzone and Asimov don't accept digital submissions. What the hell? You're the most famous Scifi magazines on the market. The big names. The ones you want to be published in. And you won't even take e-submissions. These are the people who are meant to be showing us the future.

Not to mention they pay around 7¢ a word.

This is why science fiction is always left in the shadow of its golden past. There was a time when great writers were pushing out amazing ideas through these magazines. When one could earn a bit of money by doing it. When people were actually challenging the world around them through print.

And those people haven't moved. But they've become older and scared of the internet. Of free media. Of technology.

Scifi helped put people on the moon. Why the hell aren't they pushing for Mars? Scifi used to inspire people into exploration and invention. It used to drive us to the miraculous. We've lost that.

But son of a bitch if we aren't fighting for it again.

Tor is revamping their website into a social network of sorts. Webzines and Podcasts are paying up and coming new authors. Murr Lafferty and Scott Sigler are both putting out absolutely fantastic fiction for free online. As is Cory Doctorow.

I just cannot believe that the golden bastions of the future, the writers who put us into space and into the universe, are so terrifyingly stuck in their ways.

On newspapers in America

So, it appears no paper wants to run a piece unless it has "a local angle". Everything else is just grabbed off the wire.

That's some fine reporting there, America.

It's odd being here, watching the collapse of traditional media.

Newspapers are continually downsizing, and relying more on freelancers, when not copying and pasting Reuters/AP. The popular image of a buzzing newsroom is exactly that. We're standing here watching sudden massive decentralisation of news reporting. Cellphone cameras are rapidly encroaching on traditional photojournalism. The Internet seems to have caught most of news corporations completely unaware, even though people have been warning them for years (see here for a reason why. Admittedly that's for music, but the mindset is identical).

On the other hand, writing on the Internet is massively precarious in its own right. It's full of hucksters and con artists, startup companies destined to go bust. Dozens of sites looking for authors, and paying in "experience". Great, maybe I'll level up, and gain +3 to typing or something.

There's a scene in Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan in which Spider and his filthy assistants are going to do some digging for a story. He talks about how, when people say research, they mean reading through old press releases. God, I swear, every time I re-read Transmet I'm more and more convinced Warren Ellis is actually from the future and knows exactly what's fucking happening.

Part of me doesn't want to embrace the future (for all the fun it looks to be). Part of me thinks there would be nothing better than being in a newsroom, keyboards rapidly clacking, bad coffee everywhere, deadlines looming, and an editor shouting "I need pictures! Pictures of Spider-man!" Interviews, research, investigative journalism. That sort of thing.

Instead, we've now been gifted with print media that's so rapidly losing money that it runs stories about pop stars because it costs almost no money and requires no real writing. Why pay a staff member to research and write on real news, when you can bung together an article about someone's latest meltdown in 20 minutes and call it a day?

And where the hell are you meant to write on the Internet? Most sites have the credibility of a flyer handed out on street corners by the one eyed guy with no hair. Political extremes, rampant misogyny, 9/11 conspiracy nuts. They're all there. The only places actually worth getting your name attached to are harder to get into than a Nun's panties, or else are have a traditional print side anyway.

Hell, it's impossible to get a position at even a crappy local paper.

I wonder about other countries. New Zealand has the same problem that it has in many fields, too many grads for too few jobs. I really can't imagine there being enough journalism positions to satisfy the yearly graduate output from excellent student rags and crappy journalism 'techs. Hell, how hard fought over are the internships at the Listener?

Anybody know what it's like in the rest of the world? Australia/Canada/UK? Because they're totally the only ones that count.