These are a few of my favorite things

There is beauty in this world, old and new, and while it may be argued that nature's paintbrush is more graceful than Man's chisel, I have a love for Things People Made.

In this post I'd like to talk about the appreciation of objects in their utility and elegance, the sensations they inspire and the impact they have on our lives. Materialistic? Certainly, but we're a tool-using species and a fascination with objects is what elevated us from the mud.

Tools, buildings, ornaments, furniture, clothing. These are the vestibules of humanity, artifacts through which anthropologists can glimpse the spirit of bygone civilizations, and by which we can judge the nature of modern-day cultures as well.

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This Wednesday, January 27th, saw the announcement of the iPad. As a media and print enthusiast, small-press publisher, typography and New Media nut (not to mention Machead) I was understandably excited and followed my usual tradition for such Apple events.

The keynote speech by Steve Jobs would start at 7PM my time so, coming home from work, I immediately sequestered myself in my home office (my boyfriend is the understanding sort), popped up four browser windows side-by-side and launched a different live blog feed in each of them, after which I spent the next two hours reading the reporters' quick posts  typed into their laptops and squinting at blurry photos they took on their phones during the event. I twittered furiously, and although I understand the lunacy about live-tweeting about an event I was 'witnessing' only second-hand, at least 'twittering' in this case isn't a metaphor for self-abuse.

As a media and print enthusiast [etc] I have many opinions about iPad. Many expectations were dashed, some surprises blew me away and it's a good thing the device won't be sold for another two months, because I'd like to be able to form a coherent opinion on it before I inevitably break down and buy one. Until then, however, my mind is on Things. And here, now, is a List Of My Favorite Things.

My iPhone 3G, purchased on the day it launched in my country during a midnight sale in Rotterdam where I was accompanied by two good friends and my younger brother + entourage -- and which, I might add, turned into quite the rocking late-night street-party -- is a Thing which I enjoy immensely. Other than Jimminy Willikins, no object spends as much time in my hand as my iPhone. I enjoy the physicality of its interface, the depth to which the interactivity model has been thought through. The sophisticated simplicity of the design, seamless, and its weight. It stands proudly in its cradle on my work desk.

On my desk right now is also a Moleskine notebook. I've never written in it, though I have ones at home that are worn and filled and bulging with stuff stuck into them. My penmanship has always been rather poor and my mother never prepared me better for my adult life than when she sent me to typing classes at age ten, but nevertheless I've always enjoyed the linearity of writing by hand and the way that process guides the mind.

So even though I'm nearly fully digital, I still love the Moleskine for its functional design. Small-signature binding so it lies flat when opened, rounded corners to prevent fox-ears, off-white paper and faint lines, a harmonica fold to stick loose items into, a bookmark ribbon and an elastic  to keep it closed. Useful, portable writing perfection, justly legendary, so when I found an old blank one at home I brought it to work and just left it on my desk as an ornament. I like it, why shouldn't I keep it around?

It's not all about looks, though. The very best pen I ever used wasn't a thing of beauty per se. It was a cheap translucent plastic home brand rollerball with blue-black ink that cost a euro and a half when it was still manufactured. Tastes vary of course, but for me, for my chickenscratch handwriting, it was perfection. The rollerball nib glided smoothly over the page with just enough friction to keep my letters succinct and in control. The ink spread richly, dried quickly and struck a gorgeous contrast against the cream paper, sustaining its beauty even years later.

My very favorite book, growing up, was my favorite not so much because of its subject (though it was a fascinating read), but rather because of its substance. The book in question was Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, and purported to continue where Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time left off. Through historical accounts and anecdotes Kaku illustrated the lives of some of the greatest thinkers in the history of science and guided the reader through the complex and abstract curiosities of theoretical physics. The sophisticated science was accessible because Kaku explored the life and mind of the thinker to illustrate the nature of the thought.

It was the book itself, the material object, that kept me going back to the library to fetch it. A library hardcover, converted through lamination from a softcover, it had a very satisfying thump to it when knocked or set down. Apparently this copy suffered some form of damage, and that's what gave it such allure. The pages were off-white, a soft ocher-cream, discolored at the edges with a more cinnamon tint. The lettering was well-balanced and crisp, and printed with an overabundance of magenta so that the print, while ostensibly black, always seemed a gorgeous and regal red out of the corner of my eye.

Best of all was the smell. I've never experienced its like. Whatever happened to this book suffused it with just the faintest scent of sulfur, like a freshly-struck match. Undetectable for the first few minutes of reading, I didn't even notice it until the second or third time I read the book, but once I realized I understood what it was that intoxicated me so. Even years later, the pages retained the scent.

The Mac computers I've owned, culminating in the current 24-inch iMac on my desk, were a heady blend of industrial grace and software sophistication. Glossy white or matte black plastic composites, black glass, brushed aluminum all carved into shapes that spoke of thought and insight and the thorough understanding of an under-appreciated and oft-mocked facet of the human psyche: emotional connections with things that aren't alive.

I'm not talking about such curiosities as moe, but rather the way that every experience and observation interacts with our state of mind, to the point where we endow the inanimate with emotion and value just as surely as we do people. A workman comes to value some tools highly as they serve their function well, a soldier appreciates his weapon and his uniform. There's no one source for this attachment, though the context of the object's relationship with its owner is certainly a large part of it. A wedding ring is a prime example; the thing is meant to be beautiful but the (hopefully) happy association makes it all the more spectacular.

We can complain about the materialism of modern society, the excess and the idolatry, but we mustn't forget how innate these qualities are. We value things as ugly or beautiful, clever or ridiculous, and we bond with some of them in silly or heartwarming ways. This is who we are, and I, for one, am not embarrassed.

Let's help Senator Conroy get Aussies off the Internet!

Dear Senator Conroy,

As the subject of internet safety is as hot a topic in the Netherlands, my home country, as it is in yours, I have closely followed the progress of your fabulous efforts to protect Australia's children from the exigencies of the modern World Wide Web. While I applaud how close you're coming to restricting the internet activities of your country's citizens, I have some serious concerns about the possible flaws in your plan. First and foremost: despite your laudable efforts, I have personally observed that there are still a few Australians on the internet, and I'd like to highlight some of the ways in which the exclusion of Australia from the datasphere could be more effectively achieved.

As you were born in England, Senator Conroy, I sincerely hope you see yourself as the 21st-century champion of your nation's colonial policy of 'convictism' in which the quality of the English population was markedly improved by dumping all the undesirables on the then-newfangled continent of Australia. The inconvenience this caused the Aboriginal People is a lamentable tragedy, and I'm pleased to see you're using more modern means to achieve the same goal without causing undue stress for others.

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However, I cannot voice my full support for your plan as it seems a bit on the wishy-washy side. As it's currently proposed, with the technology that's currently been prepared for the live field trial later this year, this plan of yours will do nothing to 'protect Australia's children', i.e. 'protect the world from cyber-savvy Australians'.

Before I go into details, though, let me first say I have absolutely no objection to your use of this program to also provide a service to the citizens you represent! Coming from such disadvantaged stock — criminals, musicians, civil engineers, sluts (I'm looking at you, Mary Wade) and some Irish — they're understandably threatened by complex subjects such as sex, euthanasia and drugs. The Australians are as horrified by the Netherlands' excesses in these matters as we are by the fact that Australians pronounce every sentence as if it's a question...?

There's no harm in solving both problems at once, I can't help but wonder if perhaps you've 'gone native' since you moved to Australia and have lost sight of the bigger picture. You've shown such strength, ignoring the protests of internet rights groups, protest marches, the recommendations of the ISPs who must ultimately implement your plan and the majority of your own senate, but I find myself disappointed that you fail to go that last mile that would truly achieve internet security from Australia.

When you claim that the internet filter has, in tests, proven to be "100% accurate" you're being blatantly deceptive. Of the internet filter technologies you tested last year, those that were able to effectively filter as much as four out of five harmful sites (requiring Australian internetters to click up to a dozen times to circumvent the filter and access the porn), the filters also blocked at maximum 60 000 out of every million other webpages. That means there's still 940 000 sites where Australians can continue to use words like arvo and fair dinkum and strewth. This does almost nothing to protect us!

You've booked more impressive results with the impact of the filters on internet speeds. One of the more promising technologies you tested out was able to slow the users' internet speed by 20% even when it wasn't filtering, with some others providing up to 86% slowdown during actual use! This is a measurable success, Senator Conroy, as this should effectively prevent Australians from uploading YouTube videos about surfing.

But does it stop them from social sites like FaceBook or LiveJournal, where the majority of the content is text-based? Even 24% of modern internet speeds would still enable your country's citizens to bother the rest of the world with opinions, information and meaningful dialogue.

Happily, though, I see that you do have a solution for this. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will, in your plan, maintain a blacklist of sites deemed 'objectionable' and the looseness of the terminology you've consistently used in defining your plans fills me with confidence that this is where you'll compensate for the technical shortcomings I highlighted earlier. Having given no indication of how a 'public complaint' against a particular site will be reviewed, nor established any means by which the blacklisting of a site could be appealed, you've cleverly guaranteed the AMCA the ability to chip away at the information space with which Australia can interact, severing that digital umbilical one strand at a time.

My last concern, though, is about the length of time that it will take to completely isolate your country from the internet the rest of us use. Let me assure you, Senator Conroy, that I will do my part to expedite the process! As the writer of fiction for adults, I'll be sure to advertise on as many sites as I'm permitted to so that you can blacklist each of those for containing 'objectionable material'.

Further, I'll encourage everyone I know to engage in discussions about sexual health, drug dependency, unwanted pregnancy and the suffering of the terminally ill so that you have ample fuel to ensure that any site frequented by wholesome, upstanding citizens of the rest of the world can be protected from the involvement of Australians.

Your detractors have bandied the tag #nocleanfeed on Twitter, and created slanderous websites such as www.nocleanfeed.com to feebly protest the march of progress you're staunchly championing. To them I say:

#GetAussiesOffTheNet

With passionate, abiding affection,

Alex Fucking Vance

PS: I included the F-word in my name at the bottom of this letter; could you please ensure that my site is added to the blacklist at your earliest convenience?

The Book, the ‘Zine, the Net and their Authors

This article first appeared in FANG Vol. 1 in 2005.

There was once a time, just between the rise of the fast-food, fast-everything economy in the West in the seventies and the flourishing of the modern Internet in the ‘90s, when the distribution of one’s  art through amateur media was possible, although it wasn’t easy. The availability of small-press printing methods, not to mention photocopiers and stencil machines, made it possible for individuals to make magazines in moderate quantities – with the assumption, of course, that they’d fill this magazine with interesting material.

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Non-professional art and literature enthusiasts found in these technologies a great opportunity to distribute their work to an audience, if they had one, but the most interesting use of these technologies was the way they were employed by artists and writers amongst themselves.

Amateur journalists, political activists, scientists, artists, connoisseurs, writers – amateurs, all, in the original sense of the word: people with a love for a craft that have no hope of recognition or money or fame. Or rather, they have hope, but that isn’t why they practice their craft, be it reporting or drawing or writing,. It was these people who were suddenly given by the world at large the technology and infrastructure to, for the first time, overcome the boundaries of geography and form communities based on the sharing of their work.

The Amateur Press Association or APA was formed and was one of the expressions of the ‘commons’ principle which is now ever more making its way into the digital realm. A ‘commons’ is a resource of limited availability which must be managed or risk total depletion. Examples are the file-sharing networks so popular these days, Bittorrent, Emule and others, where a single user uploads a file to a small number of other users who, by virtue of the software they use, automatically distribute the portions they have received to other users.

APA’s functioned in a similar manner. An APA consisted of a limited number of artists or writers of like mind and disposition, typically between ten and forty, with a number of rules that governed membership. All members were obligated to produce a mininum number of works per time period, of a quality that honored that of other members’ works. Each member was obligated to manufacture one copy of their work for each of the APA’s members and mail these out to all of them and in return he or she would receive a copy of each of the other members’ works. Such a group could survive without leadership as long as the group’s members could enforce the rules.

Sometimes an APA would have a leader, typically the person who erected the group to begin with. In such cases, members would manufacture copies o their work, but rather than sending these individually to the other members, they would send them to the APA’s leader, who would then bind one copy of each submission together, give it a cover, and mail this magazine-like bundle of works out to the other members periodically. Such closed-circle publications were called APA ‘zines.

The term ‘zine which, since it contains an apostrophe in itself, I haven’t given quote marks, comes not from ‘magazine’ but from ‘fanzine’.  Fanzines were amateur magazines printed through modern means of reproduction such as the aforementioned photocopiers or stencil machines, run by amateurs and contributed to by amateurs. They operated in that blessed space within copyright law that is governed by common sense, a space which has been more and more marginalized here in the west, and while few now still function they were very similar to the doujinshi of Japan. These, like the fanzines of yesteryear, are magazines by amateurs dedicated to a television series, a film, a book or a fictional world where amateurs would write stories or articles and draw art or comics set within the setting of the series, book, or film, sometimes making use of that setting’s characters.

The difference between a fanzine and an APA is that a fanzine has editors who decide whether or not a submitted work is printed and that a fanzine is available to the general public. Anyone can buy one or subscribe to one, while an APA is available only to contributors.

“Video killed the radio show” and the Internet had a significant impact on fanzines and in particular APA’s because now there were even better reproduction technologies available to the public. In particular, the reproduction of information in the form of digital data has no monetary cost, takes almost no time and no effort on the part of the originator and the quality of the work can be much higher than the blotchy, crude-paper reproductions that APA’s and fanzines typically were. Why pay for good money to reproduce your works and mail them out to others when you can simply put up a website and let anybody read it from there? Why accept the limitations of membership for an APA when you can read anyone’s work form their website?

The Internet offered a far cheaper, faster and more flexible way for communities of amateurs to form and as its use became more widespread, especially with the advent of the now ubiquitous World Wide Web, fewer and fewer APA contributors saw any reason to continue contributing to a slow and expensive community. Fanzines weren’t affected as severely, some of them transforming to strive for higher production values and became far more like magazines – but on the whole, fanzines were supplanted by fansites.

Time has worn on. APA’s have all but died out, fanzines have been decimated, many of them struggling for survival. The Internet is abuzz with healthy, thriving communities, webrings and chat rooms and countless other means by which enthusiasts and amateurs are distributing their work and more and more Internet users are becoming jaded and bored with the truly limitless material that is available to them and the fact that, like so much in the real world, ninety percent of it is rubbish.

Books weren’t marginalized by the Internet any more than film replaced theatre or video killed cinemas and television stations. This is because people have material desires as well as intangible ones, when it comes to things like art and writing and movies; a DivX movie downloaded from KazaA is the same movie that’s playing in your local theatre, it’s more convenient because it’s right here, in your room, there isn’t anyone talking and you can pause it to go to the bathroom. Not to mention that it’s free. But having to pick up your friends and drive to the cinema, make sure you’re on time, stand in line to buy your ticket and to buy some drinks and snacks – even aside from the huge screen and the vastly better sound system (usually), merely these inconveniences add to the experience of going to see a movie.

Convenience can deflate an experience, while the right kinds of inconvenience can enhance it, making the experience more rare and more exciting as well as more valuable simply because you had to work harder for it. Having to turn a page in a book or magazine instead of scrolling down means it takes a heartbeat longer to continue reading, extending that delicious thrill of curiosity just a little longer.

Conversely, some material aspects of old-fashioned media are better than their mechanical or digital counterpart. Pictures look better on high-quality paper with good inks than they do on a computer monitor and they look better on a well-designed page than on a screen cluttered with not just a website, but toolbars and menu bars and other open windows. A book is light and you can make notes in it, should you be so inclined, with any old pen or pencil and you can read it in places where electronics are unavailable, impractical or undesirable. If you’re going on a camping trip to enjoy the great outdoors and escape from hurried city life for a change, then five gets you ten that you’ll prefer taking a book to read by the campfire than a PDA with a battery pack.

Now that the initial excitement about the Global Village and the enormous possibilities of the electronic society have been gradually fading, a renewed sense of material appreciation has been evolving. Book sales have increased and despite the clamorings to the contrary of the music industry, so have CD sales – not to mention vinyl. The modern man and woman are realizing that while the digital world is enormously useful it has different material properties .

Video and film, for instance. Video, be it DV or Hi8 is much more practical, can be used with more compact, less mechanically fragile cameras and is far easier and cheaper to reproduce and distribute. Early video, admittedly, lacked the light and color response of the more expensive types of  celluloid-based film, but it also lacked the irritating frame stutter, producing much smoother images. But people didn’t want smoother images. They were accustomed to the flicker of cinema screens and this had become such a part of the film experience that modern day films, be they digitally recorded like the sensationally beautiful Vidocq or even fully-digital films like Shrek and Finding Nemo, eschew the smooth image that digital technologies allow them and artificially simulate the stuttering image artifacts audiences know and love.

Similarly, even if there should be a device whose reflectivity and contrast should exactly match that of paper and it were about the same size as a book and had an infinitely long battery life and could render all of a book’s pages on its screen, or two screens, displaying the next pages at the push of a button, indeed, able to contain or access every book in the world for the user to select – even so it wouldn’t live up to what makes a good old-fashioned book such a delight, not to this editor and not, most likely, to you, gentle reader.

We like books because we have to flip the pages and because keeping them scuffle-free is an effort that reflects how much we love them, we like not having every book in one device and instead having to have a separate book for every novel.

So what you now hold in your hand, gentle reader, is the furry fiction community’s humble response to this re-emancipation of the analogue, this desire to find a balance between the old and the new and value each appropriately. While it’s certainly true that a substantial part of FANG’s modest proceeds go toward the fees of the authors whose work is printed, FANG isn’t a paperback edition of what would effectively be a pay-site where your subscription money goes toward the artists who contribute to it. The lion’s share of this book’s price went to the printing of it.

FANG is more expensive to produce, per copy, because it isn’t printed in volume. Rather, it employs a more modern model of production involving the use of digital printing technologies which, for the first time since the invention of the printing press, make the printing of two different books just as expensive as printing two the same books. Traditional printing presses, making use of metal or paper printing plates, need a substantial initial investment before a copy can be printed, but after that, each copy only adds a very small increment to the total production costs. For example, one could print two hundred copies of a book at only twice the price of printing twenty.

This means that anyone can print a paperback, and anyone could invite furry authors to submit their work for paid inclusion in an anthology published in this fashion. Everyone had the technology and opportunity at their very fingertips, but no-one was doing anything.

This did not sit well with the editor. And when things don’t sit well with this editor, he wants them fixed – which makes him a good editor. He will politely bully authors into improving their work and if he spots a spelling or grammar error so simple that it would take more effort to mail the author and get him to change it, he’ll fix it himself.

The dearth of furry fiction publications in paperback format was one such problem he decided could be most easily fixed by doing it himself. Between the availability of digital printing technology, his street cred as the author of the long-running series (and near-future paperback) gay crime serial Maranatha and the patience, honesty and professionalism he’s built up over years of teaching and some theatre before that – he had everything at his disposal to make FANG happen.

And so the quality control of the APA, the public availability of the fanzine and the luxury of printed books have been combined into this publication, which will hopefully scratch an itch with many a fur whose enjoyment of the community’s fiction has been hampered by the glare of the screen or the noise of the printer.

The APA may be largely dead and the fanzine may be struggling for survival, but this format has far less competition from the Internet, because its limitations are a feature, which the readers desire. It is this editor’s humble hope that it will continue to be a source of enjoyment for its readers and a source of pride for its authors for many, many issues to come.

All a Matter of Perspective

I've been quite unfair, in this series (of which this installment is the last) in sketching a Jekyll & Hyde scenario of the Writer vs the Not Writer, because we're all a bit of both. At different times, for different reasons. There's a sliding scale between one and the other, see. The goal of these articles is to make you reflect, honestly and fairly and without emotional burden, where on the scale you fall, and whether you're comfortable with that, and what is required from you to change your position.

How many hours do you spend writing in a given week? A given month? How many words do you write in those hours? Would you want to spend more hours writing, and write more words during them?

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There's nothing wrong with being a Dabbler, who cranks out the odd snippet of story of a blue Monday for the lark of it, nothing at all. A Dabbler is a Writer when he Dabbles and a Not Writer when he Doesn't -- but still a Writer some of the time, and isn't that a fine thing to be? The problem is when a Dabbler dreams himself a Novelist and finds that his habits won't produce a novel in a realistic time-frame and of satisfying quality.

So what should he change: his habits or his goals?

Most of us wouldn't mind firm pecs and visible abs, or a wasp-waist and perky boobs (and in some cases, curiously, both) and almost all of us could have that if we ate what the books told us to eat and nothing else and spent an hour at the gym really working ourselves to the bone every day for three years. Some of us do it, and some of us don't. We look at the dream, assess the value it has for us, then look at the actions required to attain it and the effort they cost us, and we compromise. We all have lots of different dreams, after all, so is this one worth that much effort?

We can't write all the time, we'd never get anything else done. Every prophet in his house, to each its season, and all that malarkey. Now is the time to do the dishes, now is the time to study, and now is the time simply to snooze and relax for a bit. There are only so many hours in the day and we must each decide how ours are best spent.

We have obligations, voluntary and necessary, financial and familial, that require us to commit a great number of those hours. Such is the way of adult life, but even then, the responsibility to mediate between commitments and liberties is entirely ours. And it's up to us to define the value of time, as well.

Is twenty minutes' standing commute to work in the morning a time when I can write? And on the way home? Can I get in the writing groove if I know I can be interrupted at any second? If my muse fails me, should I just leave her to rest for a few weeks or months until she loves me again?

I've made fun of these questions, but they bear serious thought. If you only write sporadically, can you fulfill your dream of having A Novel published? Not likely, mate, but that isn't the end of the world.

If the circumstances of your life, your preferences, your habits and your values don't permit you to invest the time and energy to write a novel or to become a prolific short-fiction creator, then you really, really need to chill the fuck out. You don't have to stop writing altogether, just don't burden yourself with such expectations. Writers' block: same deal. If your wheels are stuck and skidding in a snowdrift, take her down into lower gear and ease back on the road. You'll feel better, and who knows, that might be just the thing to help you get back on the highway to novelizing.

However...

If your goal means a lot to you, and you don't want to quit, then you'd best get out and run on your own two feet, no matter the cold and ice and bears. Confront the Not Writer in you and tell him he needs to watch his fucking step -- or else. Practice discipline. Figure out ways to use the dead time in your day for writing, block out a half-hour every day (and more on weekends) to do some writing, and don't ever tolerate any excuses from anyone, least of all yourself.

You're exhausted? Tough shit, bitch. Go write the story of your exhaustion, even if it's only a page or so. Your sister's getting married? You'd best get up an hour earlier then, you maggot, if you want to get some writing done today. Forgot your laptop, and is your cellphone out of juice? Order a cup of coffee and ask the waitress or bus-boy if you could have a few pages from their notebook and a Bic pen. Watch them flush with excitement when you tell them you're a Writer, and see their eyes sparkle as you instantly become 15% more attractive -- and believe you me, that's a SCIENTIFIC FACT.

Every day is a battlefield between the part of you that is a Writer and the part that is a Not Writer, every day a fresh conflict. If you let the Not Writer win too many battles, you're a Not Writer. If you hold your own, you're a Dabbler -- but if you can look yourself in the mirror in the morning and know, honestly, that the Writer won the battle yesterday and the day before and will almost certainly win today and tomorrow as well, then baby, you're doing it right, and you know what you are.

And sooner or later you're going to find that you love it.

Not just the satisfaction of having the words just flow when the spirit moves you. Not just the thrill of finishing a piece and sharing it with others, tittering on tenterhooks while you wait impatiently for their praise. Not just the egoboo of mentioning offhandedly to a stranger at a party that you're a Writer (and gain +15 in charisma, as I mentioned). You'll love all of it.

The exercise of your intellect and imagination to craft the next scene of your story despite the fact that your muse has fled you. The strength you must muster to stave off sleep just twenty minutes so you can wrap up a juicy dialogue. Your ingenuity and fortitude, thumbtyping your magnum opus as you cling for dear life to a handrail in a derailing train and hit 'send' just as it careens, screeching, into the depths of oblivion so that even when the phone is smashed and your bones are pulped you can still pick your story right up where you left off as soon as your new Cyber-limbs have been grafted onto your brutalized, barely-sentient thorax.

There's no shame in having a few pounds 'round the tum you could stand to lose, none whatsoever, just don't expect people to swoon over you when you flex your unseemly bulges in public. There's no shame in Dabbling for the fun of it, just don't torment yourself with the illusion that you'll crank out a novel when you 'get a little more time' or 'figure out the trick of it'. There's no get-fit-quick pill, and there's no magic bullet for your inspiration.

This concludes this series on the Not Writer. Good luck, soldiers!

- Alex Fucking Vance

 

I Can't Write Under These Conditions

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Like many authors, Roald Dahl had a special space in which he did his writing. Dahl's cluttered and dilapidated hut bears all the hallmarks of such spaces: privacy, comfort and focus.

One problem with a creative mind, to put it diplomatically, is that it is a problem-solving machine which is very difficult to selectively turn off. Many of the interruptions we suffer while writing occur when we encounter unrelated problems that require attention. Another, more significant problem with a creative mind is that it requires a certain levity and chaos, making us easily distracted.

For both these reasons there's a lot to be said in favor of a special, personal space, if your living situation allows it. The other members of your household should ideally respect your ownership of your Hut and agree not to disturb you when you're in it, and you in turn should only go there if you truly intend to write, rather than abusing the privilege of privacy simply to avoid dealing with the monstrous people in your hizzouse. Not meaning to be sexist, males in particular seem to benefit from this practice, no doubt an evolutionary spandrel related to territoriality.

Even without a physical space, many writers still create virtual ones that offer similar clarity and focus. A separate user account on your computer which has no shortcuts to instant messaging software, no bookmarks and no files cluttering your desktop, for instance, is a good way to differentiate your 'writing time' from your 'my life is a disheartening maelstrom of desperate chaos' time.

For all the benefits of having a real or virtual writing space, there's a commensurate drawback: you can't always use your Hut when you really, really want to write.

While a Hut can certainly help you be a Writer while you have access to it, you might inadvertently create another opportunity to be a Not Writer whenever you're away from it, and for understandable reasons. You have an idea you're dying to deploy, but it'd be so much easier and better to deploy it when you're back in your Hut. Your notes and drafts are there, after all.

Up with this we shall not put!

You'll do yourself a service by using your creative, problem-solving brain to consider, truthfully, whether you'd really benefit much from a Hut. How many hours a week could you realistically use it? How much time do you spend in your home? How much of that time can you really spend on yourself without impacting your domestic responsibilities? How much time do you spend traveling or visiting friends?

The 20th century saw the greatest increase of individual mobility in our species' history, and much of our technological evolution in the last two decades can be described as an effort to compensate for that. Web-based e-mail and messaging services, cell phones and myriad other innovations all try to bring to life the dream of doing anything "anytime, anywhere", and they don't cost an arm and a leg any more.

Brooklyn novelist Peter Brett wrote 100 000 words of his novel over two years' daily commute on the F line. If your phone supports e-mail (and has a reasonable data plan) you can write chunks of a story in e-mails to yourself, or if it has a proper data connection and web browser you could use Google Docs, both of which you can access from any computer with an internet connection.

Evernote is a massively useful weapon in the modern e-writer's arsenal as it offers powerful and flexible note-taking and editing software on a range of platforms, including cell phones and the web. The iPhone app, for instance, allows you to create text or voice notes, take pictures, and sync them directly with your account -- even with your GPS co-ordinates recorded, if you so choose.

For the old-school among us, the Moleskine notebook continues to enjoy love and loyalty from its adherents and, while the fanaticism is sometimes quite excessive, it's not entirely misplaced. Sturdy hard covers, rounded corners, an elastic band to keep it closed and small-signature binding so that when the notebook is opened it lays flat -- these are details that make the Moleskine a very practical 'device' for writing away from home.

Your Hut doesn't have to be a place, it can be a device, a system, a workflow. A sturdy notebook that fits comfortably in your pocket (be sure to ask the store clerk's permission before 'trying out' any of the notebooks they're selling, or you'll be in trouble). A cheap second-hand PDA or a smartphone with a good data plan and software that lets you keep your in-progress projects up to date everywhere with the least possible manual intervention.

Build a Hut you can take with you, and most importantly, develop a routine that makes your Hut work for you!

next up: Parting is such sweet sorrow...

I had it destroyed

I'm a New Media guy, and as such I'm heavily biased in matters digital. I feel that in the 21st century, in which a common telephone can have enough storage capacity to contain all the text in even the greatest public libraries on Earth, when you can have Internet access every moment of the day, when you can search through the totality of the datasphere in seconds, there's no reason at all why any text should ever be deleted.

When someone tells me "I couldn't make this story work, so I deleted it," I see fucking RED. Well, a little red. Carmine, I think, or somewhere between scarlet and vermilion.

This rage isn't even aimed at the Not Writer specifically, I know plenty of Writers who do it, and they shouldn't. Modern word-processing software, on the desktop and on-line, offers 'versioning' technology that allow easy roll-back of changes so that any section you removed can still be retrieved. With that in mind, it's actually more effort to permanently erase something than to simply store it somewhere out of sight and mind. So why do so many still insist on erasing material that doesn't please them?<!--more-->

The habit, I believe, stems from a desire for purity, a loathing of pollution. The Not Writer feels this more keenly than a Writer -- in fact, the Not Writer believes that this very trait, this particular brand of perfectionism, is what makes him a writer.

Not so, says I.

We would all love for our every written word to be a work of genius, for our every keystroke to contribute toward le mot juste, and the Writer, often, takes pains to maintain this illusion outwardly at least. But he knows, in his heart, that he's a liar. He knows that his studio isn't a pristine collection of magnificent canvases in a clean, airy space, but rather a dingy attic crammed with splotched and ruined scraps of sketchbook paper and cardboard and spiders.

There are no shortcuts, there is no straight path from a blank page to a brilliant story. There's an explosion of prose (an 'exprosion', as the Yellow Menace call it), after which the Writer steels his nerves and hacks away at this jungle with a blunt machete and a bloodthirsty rage. The Writer rinses and repeats.

This is another crucial difference between a Writer and a Not Writer: the Writer knows that he'll have to write ten words for every one that finally goes out. Outlines, notes, revisions, excisements -- none of these increase the word count, some of them actually diminish it, but all of them contribute, ultimately, to the quality of the work.

And what do you do with the offal? The machete-clippings and other trash? Into the furnace, say some, so you can keep your workspace clean -- bollocks to that, says I! Keep it. Tuck it away somewhere out of sight, sweep it under the carpet, just be sure you can find it if you need it.

I used to keep a folder on my computer (now synced online, natch) that I called the Mortuary. All my unfinished, hopeless story snippets, excised chapters, rejected character outlines and sci-fi tech ideas went in there. No organization, no systematic filenames, just a big roughly chronological jumble of files that I could, if needed, search through to remind myself of one idea I'd once had that I might actually be able to use now.

Stupendous is the number of plot points, characters, names and even whole paragraphs that I cannibalized from previously-discarded 'waste'. It's magnificent! Free creativity, and nobody can accuse me of plagiarism -- unless a vengeful Past Alex travels forward through time to sue me, of course. But his passport would be out of date, and under Dutch law I could therefore have him executed, so that's not too big a deal either.

So there's your contradictory perspective on words, to Not Writers and Writers alike. Like the Cybermen, the credo must be 'delete-delete-delete' to pare down your sprawling exprosion to a decent, tight little story -- but the definition of 'delete' must include 'save somewhere'. There's no such thing as writing too much, you can always revise and remove, and the waste stands a good chance of being usefully recycled some day.

next up: sometimes you wanna go...

Always a Bridesmaid

"I have it all worked out in my head."

This is where the divide between Not Writers and Writers is thinnest: Story Ideas.

Creativity, at its core, is a misnomer. We don't actually create anything new, because we're not capable of inventing anything we don't already comprehend: we can't conceive of something we can't conceive of. The actual definition of creativity, as we use it day to day, has more to do with synthesis. Scientists and artists alike innovate by making connections that others haven't thought of, and practice brilliance by figuring out how those connections really work.<!--more-->

A story idea is just that; you bundle up a bunch of stuff you already know (types of people, events, technology, politics, dramatic constructs) and realize that particular bundle feels really, really juicy. If you're into sci-fi, maybe you've conceived of a perspective on FTL- or time-tavel nobody else has done before. If you're into melodrama, maybe you've hit on a particularly poignant emotional crisis and if you're a mystery writer, maybe you've put together an especially stupefying murder plot.

That's what gets our 'creative' juices flowing. We feel the vibrations coming off this bundle of concepts, we marvel at the gleam of the interconnecting lattice, the whole thing thrums with potential and it's a thrill to refine and crystallize that rough rock into the jewel we know is in there.

For the Not Writer, that's all too often where the process ends.

Endless cycles of thought and imagination, talking about it to one's Inner Circle, but nothing goes to paper. And it's easy to unerstand why; you feel an obligation to produce a product that's worthy of the potential you know the idea has. You want it to be as good as it can be, so you don't want to write it any less than that.

Which of course means that you spend all your time Not Writing it.

The sad reality is that most of these bundles of inspiration are quite hollow, once you try to pick them apart. Like the many other disappointments of a grown-up's life, nobody enjoys confronting this when it happens to them, but the Not Writer shies away from that confrontation by staying within the comfort zone of the Idea Phase. The less you put to paper, the better it looks in your mind's eye.

The Writer knows the pain of this confrontation, but bears it stoically, and keeps his tears at bay. He knows that it may be hard, but it brings rewards, and he maintains a positive attitude toward the disappointment. Recognizing the flaws and inadequacies of the idea, after all, is the first step toward fixing them and improving the story, or recognizing that the cost/benefit ratio is such that the idea isn't worth the time.

If you have an idea, write it out!

In synopsis form at first, as a stream-of-consciousness, then break it down into a loosely structured set of notes or dive write in and start penning the first chapter in draft form. In the process you'll feel the excitement and power of the parts that have real value, and also the tinge of inadequacy of the parts that are too weak, too thin. With enough experience, you'll realize what you need in order to bolster the weaker aspects or, worst comes to worst, that the idea lacks so much that there's no story to be made of it in this form.

I love talking about ideas as much as the next guy and very often I'm a Not Writer, overindulging in the idea phase, postponing the outlining and actual writing as long as possible and justifying it to myself by saying that I'm letting the idea percolate and mature in my mind. Often that's true, often it's not, and often it takes me far too long to realize the difference.

When someone tells me their idea for a story, that's wonderful. It's lots of fun to explore a new concept, but unless I know they've a reputation for productivity, I tend to take statements like "This story can easily span three novels, when I write it all out," with a grain of salt.

It's a painful thing to see that a great idea looks like shit once it hits the page, but an idea in your head is no use to anybody else, and while that may satisfy a Not Writer, a Writer has to produce a real story every now and again.

- Alex F. Vance