Check it out! Blast from the past. Two more to come.

http://www.alexfvance.com/fc-08-wri.....damental-story

In this episode, we hear a recording of the first writing panel taught by Alex Vance at the Further Confusion convention in January 2008 in the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California. 
In this panel, Alex discusses the Fundamental Story. Also known as the hero's journey. Lightly touching on Vladimir Propp's 'Morphology of the Folk Tale', the session quickly spirals out of control with a deconstruction of a bizarre hybrid of The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

Sadly, the recording failed after only half an hour due to a technical malfunction, but the portion that is recorded here, at least, should hopefully prove informative.

Available here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_li.....B88520D30429CA

Apologies for the ghastly audio; I've cleaned it up as best I could. I'd mic'ed myself up really poorly so the only usable audio source was the camera. Sorry!

Nightfox from Black Paw Publications was originally going to join us, but was indisposed due to scheduling issues -- but nonetheless, this turned out to be a very good panel.

I was joined by Dark Natasha and Rukis, both furry artists, so there was a fairly heavy slant toward comics rather than fiction. Nonetheless we were impressed with some very good and well-targeted questions from our fabulous and intimate audience!

Awesome, awesome trailer for an upcoming indie short animation featuring a handsome antlered hero:

http://vimeo.com/13681161

Meanwhile, from the same 'family' of amazing animators, the short 'Salesman Pete' is up on Vimeo!

http://vimeo.com/12184342

Presented by Yours F. Truly at Eurofurence 16 in Magdeburg, Germany in September 2010.

This workshop was a little dryer than the one about writers, artists, imagery and meaning, but more informative for writers and in much, much higher quality! Occasionally you'll hear the camera guys whispering, and there was quite a bit of noise outside in the first few minutes, but I think it came out quite good anyway.

It was a nicely intimate affair, where I put on my Editor hat to give the collected writers a glimpse into the world of story review, selection, editing from the other side of the glass.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alexfva.....8E1DB7977B5876

http://vimeo.com/14779568

Presented by Yours F. Truly at Eurofurence 16 in Magdeburg, Germany in September 2010.

In this workshop we discuss the notion of conveying meaning through imagery. The theory of semiotics is briskly breezed through, after which we look at some examples of evocative imagery in art and writing. Finally, we did a little mini Bullwer-Lytton contest, with some thoughtful and/or hilarious results!

Apologies for the darkness in the first half. The camera lost focus in the dark a few times, but really came into its element once the lights came back on.

This panel was a ton of fun to do, with a diverse and engaged audience, which included Elfasi, Watts Martin, Lupestripe and a fair few others I'm sure I forgot to name!

My paternal grandfather has been dead some twenty-two years now, so much of what I know of his life is second- and third-hand, and thoroughly anecdotal. I know this: he died of cancer, and he was a POW in Japan. And he saw the flash of the Hiroshima bomb.

He was around 18, a native of Indonesia (then under Dutch rule) when he was mobilized into the Dutch colonial army to defend the country against the Japanese invading forces. The colonial army, called KNIL, had at that point already capitulated, but due to the crippled communication infrastructure the draft hadn't yet been cancelled. Having never held a rifle, having just been inducted into basic training, my grandfather was put on a boat and shipped to a Japanese labour camp.

We don't know much about where he went or what he did there. He seldom spoke of it, and I was only knee-high at the time he was still healthy enough to talk much at all. He would later, on his deathbed, admit that if he were to recover, the one place in the world he'd like to see again was Japan. He said it seemd a beautiful place through the bars of his barracks, and he'd have liked to see it as a free man.

Toward the end of his imprisonment he was stationed in the Nagasaki shipyards labour camp, up until the end of July, 1945. Two weeks later, Fat Man would be dropped.

That's all I know. How he was repatriated, what his circumstances were when he saw the flash of the Hiroshima bomb... if I've heard anything on these topics at all it's such a mess of contradictory stories from different relatives it doesn't bear repeating. However, about a decade ago, I came across a book that at least painted some pictures for me.

The sister city of Nagasaki is in the Netherlands, a wealthy and large municipality that's been bucking to be named a 'city' for decades, and not too far from my secondary school. Through outlandish circumstances I (in no way affiliated with Amstelveen) was asked to be a member of the youth representation of Amstelveen when a large contingent of Nagasaki dignitaries, journalists, scholars and a set of school kids would pay a visit to Amstelveen. The reason I was asked is because I'm of Indonesian descent, and the triangle between Holland, Indonesia and Japan, focused on the second world war, was a significant topic planned for the visit.

You know that stereotype of Japanese people with cameras? It's true. Every single one of the Japanese attendees -- professors, politicians, everyone -- had a disposable yellow Kodak cardboard clickybox. When the Japanese kids laid a wreath on the Indonesian colonial monument, the Mayor of Nagasaki actually stood shoulder to shoulder with the press photographers so that his photos would look as good as the professionals'... I digress a bit.

To prepare for the event, I'd interviewed my paternal grandmother and, through the mists of her mild dementia, I gleaned stories from which I could fashion what ultimately became quite a moving speech, which would later be quoted in some Nagasaki newspaper -- I was once sent a copy which I since lost, but it was all squiggly gobbledygook anyway.

After the speechifying, a woman from the Dutch Indies Comittee came and spoke to me because the story I'd told about my grandfather so closely resembled the accounts of her husband, who'd also been a POW in Japan. He'd later recorded his experiences in a series of articles published in a national newspaper, later still collected and published as a book, and wouldI like a copy? I would indeed. She sent it a week later, and I read it in a day.

Now, it's equally possible that my grandfather and this woman's husband knew each other, saw each other, or never met. I'll never know. But the story in the book was nothing short of harrowing.

This gentleman was still working at the Nagasaki docks when the bomb was dropped on the city. He and his mates were walking back to their barracks, along a road lined with cherry blossom trees, overlooking the city. He remembered blinking and seeing red, and when he opened his eyes, the ragged, paper-thin clothes on the prisoner in front of him were on fire. He remembered having no response at all until the sound hit like a massive thunderclap a second or two later. What had most likely happened was that he was just passing the trunk of a tree at the exact moment the plutonium core detonated, and he was protected from the initial light and heat blast simply by the luck of being in the tree's shadow.

The prisoners were quickly herded back into the barracks and effectively locked up there while the guards and soldiers went into the ruined city to help the evacutation and relief efforts. With very limited access to food and certainly no medical supplies, the conditions described in the book were horrifying. One of the burned prisoners complained of lions roaring in his ear, and when they inspected it, they found maggots crawling in his ear canal, grinding against his eardrum. They had no tools to remove them.

He described being unable to hate the guards for abandoning them even when the worse-off prisoners started dying. Some 40 000 of their countrymen had just been killed, some of them simply vaporized. The soldiers were concerned for their families, their friends, and their duty to their country. With 25 000 wounded, infrastructure shattered, there was no food to spare for prisoners, and certainly none of the precious antibiotics, disinfectants and painkillers that the Japanese victims so desperately needed.

The most formidable weapon of mass destruction ever created by mankind has only been used twice in its history, by the United States against Japan.

I once learned that the original targets for the nuclear strikes had been Tokyo and Kyoto, the capital city and the seat of the Emperor respectively, but that these were rejected because their destruction would be so devastating to the Japanese spirit that peaceful relations between the US and Japan would be unimaginable in future.

It reminded me of some morbid wisdom which I believe my grandfather gave to me when I was too young to understand, or to recall clearly now:

You can beat a man to within an inch of his life, steal his money and burn his house, and you could still one day be friends. Kill his child, and you have an enemy for life.

I won't deny that nukes are awesome, as Stephen Colbert demonstrates.

But stories like these are food for thought.

Holy shit, I completely forgot to announce it, didn't I?

A year in the making. 56 jam-packed pages of full-color, balls-out adventure. Available for pre-order now from FurPlanet, discounted to $19.95.

Three months after the events of the first book, the world seems to have calmed down. For those three months, things seem quiet, and everyone who survived what happened on the Corinthia gets to catch their breath… even if that means being hooked up to life support.
But there are shadows moving on the horizon. As our heroes struggled to survive, they brushed against powerful forces, and fate has a way of turning things back on you. Powerful forces like a multinational private military contractor that’s simply itching to expand their domestic urban pacification contract and privatize the police.
Tony and Imelda Caulfield, mother and son, find themselves locked in a cycle of murder, euthanasia, forgiveness and rage that transcends time, space, life and death. Malloy learns all too plainly that anything he touches withers, and anyone whose life he enters is worse off for it. And one lone cop on the wrong side of sixty tilts at windmills one last time.
Guns, conspiracies, betrayal, madness… and just that faintest glimmer of love, and hope of a normal life. This is Heathen City at its core.

This third volume will debut on September 1 in both the US and Europe. Alex Vance will premier the book at Eurofurence, while FurPlanet will represent it at Mephit Furmeet. For all pre-orders and all sales at those conventions, HC3 is discounted to $19.95 – and to help new readers get up to speed, we’re also offering a bundle with all three issues for $15 off!
Check out http://heathencity.furplanet.com!

Art courtesy of  zooshwolf,  phantastus,  angieness,  bluepanther,  spexwulf,  ssirrus,  alectorfencer,  charha  west,  fel,  edgewolf,  ayato,  chrisgoodwin,  krahnos,  xedgewolfx, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few...

There's a particular challenge to writing rich characters for comics, but there's fantastic opportunities too.  zooshwolf is more aware of the thought that goes into each character than any reader can be since only a fraction of what we discuss and review can actually be represented on the page.

Disposable characters in particular are difficult to convey because they're only on-screen for a few frames, and usually they're too busy moving the plot forward to expand ont heir personal histories and motivations. The same applies to their dialog; they only get a handful of lines and those typically need to propel the plot as well, leaving less room to define their character. I try to assign different speech patterns for different characters depending on their origin, personality and emotional state, but that's also tough to convey in only a few lines and its value must be weighed against the impact an unusual turn of phrase might have on the flow of the reader's experience.

Thankfully, the interplay between text and art and the placement of multiple characters synchronously allows much more to be inferred by the reader han is expressed by the page. It also harnesses the creativity and insight of both writer and artist, since a good artist (such a Zoosh and the many others I've been fortunate enough to work with over the years) does more than just draw what's in the script.

Allard Bellamy, the horse thug from Heathen City Vol. 1 I referenced in my last journal, originally had neither a name nor dialogue -- nor even a species. In the script he was one of 'three thugs'. Seeing him as a horse, in a leather jacket, jeans, and with his mane bound in a pony-tail, suddenly told a lot about this character. Caulfield employed mostly carnivores, with the exception of the muscular and dim-wittedly optimistic bull he referred to as 'Beef', though whether that's a nickname or a pejorative is left unclear -- and the exception of Allard.

In Heathen City Vol. 2, Tiber Ferrum alludes to the claustrophobia and other anxieties herbivores suffer in urban environments, though he may be referring specifically to 'hoofers', those rare throwbacks whose genes express anatomical features more common among their animal kindred than anthropoids of the same species. Tiber had hooves, Allard didn't, so maybe it's easier for regular anthropoid herbivore to deal with the stress of the urban landscape. Or maybe Allard's just that tough.

Further, the easiest way to define any two characters is to have them talk to each other about each other. The complexities interplay between language, intellect and emotion allows each party to say as much about themselves as they do about the other. Someone who puts down someone else's addle-brained ideas is intelligent, but a bully. Someone who ignores the bully's barb and persists in his assessments is rational, but unassertive. And so, in only a half-dozen frames and about as many lines of dialogue, the personalities and relationships between Allard, Wayne and the unnamed third member of the team sent up to Malloy's apartment are clearly understood by the time they make it to the door.

This same power allows a pact to be struck with the reader when you're writing a mystery, which is what Heathen City is. You make a habit of delivering rich characters through the techniques described above, so that when there's a character you explicitly don't want to describe, you can get away with that. You can load the character up with clues, visual and verbal, which make no sense without context, and if you do this right, the reader will accept it. The pact between reader and writer, in this case, is that the character clearly expresses traits and qualities that suggest there is more to him than can presently be understood, and that when the 'key' is delivered, he will make sense.

Meanwhile, as with any good mystery, the reader gets to enjoy the thrill of curiosity, finding the clues that let him formulate the questions he wants answered and developing hypotheses to evaluate and evolve with every new piece of information he receives. Take, for example, the various executives Tiber's office in HC2. As Zoosh is all too aware, every one of them has a name, a backstory and significant personality traits, and in some cases a relationship with one of the other attendees. In the panel where Tiber places his hands on the shiny table, and we see all of them arrayed, Zoosh has in fact captured the essence of everyone in that room -- the reader simply has no way of decoding what he's seeing.

In HC3 we'll meet one or two of those present in more attentive detail, and some of their posture, behavior and attitude will make a little more sense.

Pay attention, if you will, to the threateningly arrogant Irish wolf Connor Skromeda, if you have a copy of HC2 on hand.

Look at those pretty, pretty eyes...

:)


- Alex

(this blog post also appears at http://www.heathencity.com/2010/04/the-little-people, where it includes illustrations!)

As a rule of thumb, I feel that quality cinema, television, literature and comics distinguish themselves by ensuring that even the little people are engaging, however brief. They all have well-thought-out lives and activities, whether these actually make it to the screen or to the page or not. You feel that it's there.

When we first started distributing the six-page samplers for HC back in january '08, I was struck by the number of responses we got to the taser-totin' horse character that was in there. He was from a particularly dynamically-illustrated sequence where a set of Caulfield's thugs bust into Malloy's apartment. Maybe it was the cool look (there's something just so right about a leather-jacketed stud with his mane in a pony-tail) or the intensity of his posture, but a few people came away thinking he was a major player in the story.

The sequence was originally going to play out silent, with only a philosophical voice-over from Caulfield, but it was clear these little people deserved better. The horse got a name (Allard Bellamy) and the thugs each got enough lines to establish their personalities. Depending on the reader's disposition, Allard's either icy cool or a pretentious prick who deserved what he got -- but even then, I made sure we got a glimpse of him later on, to see just how severely his uppance had come, and let the reader ponder whether Allard really did deserve the fate that was dealt him.

In Vahnfox's story for HC2, "What It's All About" this happened with even more intensity. Originally this was going to be a straight-up heist story whose value derived from the cleverness and excitement of a break-in, with Malloy joined by some old friends from his criminal social circles. Vahnfox and I get on like a house on fire (minus the screaming bystanders) and our conversations would never stay focused on the job at hand very long, so as he created character sketches, I began to notice parallels between the art he was producing and the experiences we shared as people.



Both of us are older brothers, both of us had strong female figures in our lives, both of us had the same experience of competing with our younger siblings until we moved out of the house, and then forged a very strong, loving relationship with the snot-nosed brats we'd previously derided.

It started to feel like these guys were family. That they were different species didn't matter (in the Maranathaverse, anthropoid polyspecies' bifurcated tetraploid genome and the agency of the servant molecule permit species templates to be inherited recessively and express many generations down the line), rather it only accentuated what family is: a churning contrast between unity and disparity.

It was a perfect fit for Malloy, too, who started out as an exaggerated, cookie-cutter archetype of the manic, cool, alternately ballsy and melancholy Byronic hero, but who harbored deep and secret self-loathing, denying himself his profound yearning for peace and family, whether by blood or otherwise.

And that brings us to HC3, doesn't it?

In the third book, the story branches into dramatic new territory, both in terms of action and, for want of a better word, mindfuckery. As the stories developed it became clear that the book needed some anchor points, some means to ground the reader and remind them that, while the story often arches into the hyperreal, the principles of mortality, happiness and love all still apply, no matter how archetypal some of the characters may be. The book needed some regular people.

These guys only appear for a scant few pages, and we likely won't ever see 'em again, but it always amazes me how much creativity can come out of working with an artist. Check out the character designs attached, for Mark, Lucy and the Kids (they're not Mark & Lucy's kids!) and see how much they convey, even without words.

Mark and Lucy are married, but he's a rolly-polly, nerdy raccoon while she's a drop-dead-gorgeous, sophisticated woman. The simple fact of this dichotomy speaks volumes about their relationship, how there must be a regular sense of inadequacy on Mark's part, the feeling that he doesn't deserve her or that she can do so much better -- and that she might. Perhaps, in her social circles, Lucy endures some barbed mockery of her husband, which she can never quite fully put out of her mind and which bothers her far more than she'll admit even to her hubby.

But they're together, and have been for a while, and in HC3 they're just moving into a new house together. A nice one, a big one, and for a young couple like these two to move into a house like that implies, without it being mentioned in dialog even once, that they don't plan for it to be just the two of them living in that house for very long.

The Kids are a bit of a different story. This Scoobie gang of high school teens is clearly very diverse, recalling the unity/disparity contrast of the Miles family, but with a different basis: like all teenagers they're in the process of individuating themselves, apparently with few restraints. Tran, the short, stocky dalmatian has all the hallmarks of a goofy oaf, but in his chest beats the heart of a wolf. Fearless, confident and full of energy, he forms the heart of the group, among whom his attire, at least, paints him the most 'regular'.




West had a lot of fun with the character designs, and it shows! Lulu, the mouse girl, became a loligoth (when West told me that I actually had to look up the word -- way to make a guy feel old!) with layers upon layers of frilly clothing, and little plastic spiders dangling from her umbrella. She evokes a sense of directionless, timid yet passionate creativity; I imagine she's secretly really into arts and crafts, 'enhancing' her wardrobe with her own modifications. Her diary must be a spectacular tome covered in decorative affectations and glitter.

Bea, being tall and lanky is a natural beauty with an airy, slightly out-of-sync disposition. Often she innocently trails the tail-end of a conversation, her mind prone to wandering, but she can be a lot sharper than the others might expect from her. From the mouths of babes!

Rory, the buck, is the odd man out in a group of odd dudes and dudettes. He's handsome and cool and comes from money, so, really, Rory should be part of the school's social elite, who spit upon the freaks he hangs out with. However, he's intimidated by the expectations his peers and parents heap on him, and he's man enough to know what he does and doesn't like. In this group he's accepted and appreciated for who he is, rather than what his last name is or how he looks, and he likes that Tran tends to take the lead and introduce adventure and ambition. He was designed as a young buck, lean and good-looking, and since he has developing nubs on his head rather than full antlers, this excellently illustrates the precarious divide between his masculine potential and his present immaturity.

I love the Kids, and I love Mark and Lucy, just as I loved the Mileses. It pains me to see them used only so briefly, so incidentally, because I'd be more than happy to write entire issues devoted only to their adventures... and if the readers agree, then I guess the artists and I have done a good job!

- Alex F. Vance

Fuzzwolf of FurPlanet, primary distributor of BDB, had car trouble on the way to Furry Weekend Atlanta.

Since he's a great friend and has been a wonderful partner, on behalf of Bad Dog Books I'm pledging half the royalties of all books sold by FurPlanet at that con to help fund his repairs!

Sex and violence, like romance and suspense, are just ingredients. Not every meal requiresevery ingredient you enjoy, and some are actually damaged quite severely by the introduction of ingredients that have no place there. Mrs. Cropley's famous peanut butter & anchovis sandwiches are an example. On the other hand, sometimes strange combinations work amazingly well -- the first time I encountered mustard ice cream I just had to have a second helping.

With Heathen City #2 I wanted to deliver an extremely rich and diverse narrative and opened up many cans of wiggly, creepy little plot-worms. Exposing some of Malloy's activities prior to Owen's arrival. Showing the very beginning of Tony Caulfield's character, and his mother's, and then reveling in those carefree days when The Boys had the whole world at their feet -- and the introduction of Tiber Ferrum, swathed in mystery. I strove to weave a colorful tapestries with tons of blank spaces in it, spanning large expanses of time and intimating deep enigmas, speaking of bloodlines and creating patterns of behavior that indicated, through their contrast, the unexplored presence of substantial events between them.

However, this introduced a crucial flaw: distraction.

While I'm very satisfied with each story and tremendously proud of each arc's final form, especially the enormous creative influence and expression of the awesome artists who brought them to life, and while I feel that the structure of the arcs combined creates a framework wherein the stories that explicitly aren't told are almost as interesting as those that are, there was just too much going on for the reader to bond with the second book as much as they had with the first.

The through-line of the book was implied rather than expressed, and while I do love to make my readers work to figure out what they're looking at, the book as a whole didn't make it clear what the reader should care about and what they should take away at the end. Every story an sich was tight and had a clear arc, and they were thematically, emotionally and causally connected, but it needed just a bit more continuity for the reader to connect more fully with the characters.

I love the modular structure of the second book. It has obvious benefits for production, since illustrating a full comic is a taxing job for any artist, let alone when they have day jobs and studies and a way-too-dense script from a persnickety and overambitious writer. That Ayato was able to do it for the first book still astonishes me.

Writing shorter, denser scripts with a strong arc presents its own challenges and forces me to be economical, constantly compressing the plot, excising that which doesn't contribute enough, no matter how cool it might be on its own. Every beat, every gag is examined over and over to ensure it serves a functional purpose: establish peril, heighten suspense, misdirect attention, relieve tension -- and the stories are stronger for it.

I'm certain it's possible to combine the advantages of each approach, and I'm confident Heathen City Vol. 3 will demonstrate that. Modular stories by different artists for intense, highly-polished storylines with a mouthwatering variety of styles -- but still bound by continuity, tightly related, to preserve the reader's investment as they weave through the plotlines. Where HC2 might be discribed as an anthology, HC3 is an ensemble piece.

So this time around I even more closely evaluated the merit of each plot element, each scene and each character to strike a balance between the thrill of discovering new or previously-hinted-at aspects of this universe, and making sure the reader at all times knows what to care about, and carry that investment through to the end of the book.

And that means there wasn't a place for nice, juicy, indulgent sex scenes like those in the first two books except for just one, to establish a new character in the context of this morally ambiguous and hedonistic world. At the same time, the sex itself, the exchange of bodily fluids and the nature of procreation suggest a particularly maudlin preoccupation of this character that's only very gently hinted at.

There were two -- maybe three, at a stretch -- beats where I could have slipped a sexy interlude, and perhaps a year ago I might have done so simply because they would have been delectable scenes, but my assessment this time around was that their presence wouldn't benefit the story as much as their absence. They'd break the urgency and suspense, they'd trivialize the danger and emotional challenges the characters are facing.

Now, you know me. I think sex is just super and I love having it, and thinking about it, and seeing it and writing it, so this certainly doesn't mean I'm turning into a moral snob overnight. Heathen City is for me as much as it is for my audience and if I'm going to invest years of my life and thousands of my hard-earned Euros I'm going to make damn sure the result is a story thatI want to read more than anything else I could pick up at a con!

And I'm going to make sure, with every chance I get, to make my audience feel the same way.

- Alex Fucking Vance

The current Heathen City team has been slaving away for months to bring y'all the next volume this summer, and we're going to be showing some more cool stuff right soon. I've learned a lot from the production of, and responses to, the first and second book and this next one builds on the strengths of both.

Most recently it occurred to me that the book as a whole became a lot tighter if I cut a few pages from Ayato's segment and saved those for the next book, as that kept the focus firmly on the core characters and thematic throughline without distracting with other plotlines that wouldn't be resolved until the next volume anyway, when a curious realization dawned on me.

HC3 has almost no sex whatsoever. And what sex there is, is proper Sin City style film noir stuff. And it's straight, and short, and not at all intended to be arousing.

How did that happen?!

How am I gonna get people to buy this if all I have to offer is a set of contrasting but intertwining stories of betrayal, filicide and Oedipal reconciliation that chronicle the aftermath of the events on the Corinthia?

How are people going to respond to a vast cast of characters that include scary twins called Merry & Pippin, a paramilitary wolf bitch who knows how to take charge of a situation, a detective with a brutally old-fashioned, hands-on interrogation style, and a set of corporate mogul types who've either been brainwashed into making truly insane sacrifices for some higher purpose -- or know something we don't?

I mean, look at that sliver of the new cover art I've just uploaded. There's not even a hint of a dick in it! Just a faded, crumpled photograph and some dumb molecular formula knifed into a table-top.

People, I need your help! I ask you: does HC have a future without porn?

- Alex

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.

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.

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.

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 https://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 this site is added to the blacklist at your earliest convenience?

 buckhopper is about to start today's podcast recording, and I'm in attendance to represent John "Bad Juju" Stoat. Listen in at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fba-post-up-podcast (password: basketball). Promises to be good fun!

So,  buckhopper (known as T. Matt Latrans) started this thing called the FBA, the Furry Basketball Association. It's a fantasy thing, where he records podcasts in the guise of a sports reporter giving summaries of games, drafts, and whatnot.

I'm not a sports guy. Lack of 3D vision, coordination, and WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING DIGNITY conspired to keep my interests intellectual and carnal, rather than physical (note: I am not fat, FYI) so I was rather bemused at how much I enjoyed the podcasts.

I haven't listened to them all. The game continues to confuse me and I think I listened to them out of order so it really makes little sense to me, but I get this fantastic vibe from the project. It oozes enthusiasm and energy and fun, in a way that's actually surprisingly rare in this fandom of ours.

See, T-Matt is a dab hand at this business. He knows his game (and loves it) and he's an accomplished audio engineer, not to mention a rollickingly energetic presenter. He's opened his sandbox to many others who want to play, letting other folks create teams and characters and storylines, cultivating a wonderful sense of community.

Since I love the sound of my own voice, when he asked me to record a few lines for a snide British stoat character named, naturally, John Stoat, I was really into that, and immediately agreed. I did a few more, and yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a live recording via livestream.com.

Two things really impressed me. The chatroom that ran concurrent with T-Matt's recording was lively and fun, and since I hadn't been on anything resembling IRC in years, it was a rather lovely nostalgic experience, despite the fact that I didn't know anyone there. They called me Mr. Vance, which goes a long way to incurring my good will.

The second thing that impressed me, and the more substantial, was the immensely positive awesomeness T-Matt himself seemed to radiate. His banter was vivacious, his lines were presented with aplomb, but what really blew me away was the way he engaged the little community that attended, and got them to participate.

He invited volunteers to do voices for some pieces of his script, and where they were sometimes nervous or inexperienced or self-conscious, T-Matt was warm, helpful and encouraging. Effortlessly he put people at ease, diplomatically dancing around errors they might make to ensure they were having a good time, and that they could relax enough to give the performance he knew them to be capable of.

This is the sort of stuff that keeps me so enamored with this goofy little fandom of ours. Talented, enthusiastic and more than a little visionary folks like  buckhopper spending their precious free time and energy on cool, fun stuff to share with anybody who wants to play.

T-Matt, I tip my hat to you.

And the rest of you: I heartily encourage you to check out fba.furtopia.org, or twitter.com/furrybasketball -- maybe you can even explain some of this basketball shit to me :)

It seems the Not Writer series I've been posting caught some attention. The good people at https://www.fivesprockets.com who make the awesome online script writing/managing software I use for Heathen City asked if they could feature my humble li'l series on their guest blog.

How 'bout that!

http://www.fivesprockets.com/resour.....-writer-part-1

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?

Why do you want that?

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 ate 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

Like many authors, Roald Dahl had a special space in which he did his writing (you can take a fascinating tour here: http://ping.fm/hQuw0). 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 (http://ping.fm/f1kcr) 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 (http://ping.fm/uY2bH) 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!

- Alex F. Vance

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?

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 Chinese 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 contribute to 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.

- Alex F. Vance

"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.

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

"I have this cool idea for a story, but I won't have time to write it until after finals."

This is a perfectly legitimate thing to say if finals are next week, but not if they're in five months. Stress, health problems, uncertainty at work or at home, children -- all of these are legitimate distractions that require careful, prolonged attention and consequently prevent long, solid, intense investments in writing, that's absolutely true.

But there's more to writing than just those intense, satisfying, all-else-by-the-wayside engagements that make us feel like consummate creative titans.

A working adult has very few opportunities to spend four hours at a time doing anything without distractions. There's chores and shopping, there's a day job or study, there's social activities and an endless, structural cycle of little distractions. And there's a predictable incidence of conjunctural distractions as well. Illness, accidents to one's person or property, unexpected changes in employment or home situation -- and anything that can happen to you can happen to your friends or relatives, which may also impact the stability of your daily life substantially.

The Not Writer doesn't feel that he or she can perform under those conditions, and believes it best to wait till they're resolved. In fact, though they'd never articulate this even to themselves, it's almost as if Not Writers feel that writing a little bit under those conditions will actually inhibit their ability to do the inspired binge-writing they see as an ideal.

Like writer's block, many of these excuses are indeed legitimate. Again, serious, unexpected life changes or tragedy near to the heart have tremendous effect on our emotional state and our ability to function, and we're all responsible for making our own priorities.

But rare is the circumstance that prohibits us from feeding ourselves, or bathing, or dressing. We take walks, drive, read, watch TV, play games, hang out with friends -- often in short intervals, true, but those are things we rarely neglect no matter what else is going on in our lives.

To the Writer, writing is like bathing or cooking. The Writer doesn't often put it off entirely; when times are hard and stress is high, the Writer writes a little less per day or week, but rarely nothing.

The surest way to realize whether you're being a Not Writer is hearing yourself say "I don't have time to write." If you have time to say that, you have time to write.

Doesn't have to be a masterpiece, doesn't have to be part of the Epic Ten-Novel Saga you're 'working on'. A quick domestic scene, a little joke, a tragic monologue... there's always something in your mind that you can write and there's always a moment to do it in.

Institutionalize the habit of writing, ingrain it in your daily activities as you do eating, bathing, and masturbating. As little as a hundred words a day nets you a novella in a year -- and when the stars align and the spirit moves you, you can still binge-write a couple grand of brilliant prose.

- Alex F. Vance

[ This is the second part of a series dealing with the Not Writer, an abstract concept describing a creative person who possesses all the drives and qualities that could enable them to be a writer, but who doesn't produce much or at all. These posts highlight, explore, and propose perspectives and solutions for common experiences that often prevent Not Writers from being Writers. ]

Imagine the scene. Hip youngsters, well-read and literate all, lounging in a diner or cafe and discussing, over steamingly exquisite coffee, the pain of their writer's block. How their prose is stunted, their characters mute, the well of their inspiration dry and dusty. Sophisticated music plays in the background, providing a mellow undertone to their sophisticated, tragic discourse. Thelonius Monk, maybe, or Annie Lennox. M. C. Hammer, perhaps.

"Finally I have the time to write, and now my muse has left me!" they wail, and take another sip of espresso. Adjust their turtleneck. Sweep back their shoulder-length hair, and clean their trendy ebonny-rimmed glasses. "I hope this writer's block passes soon."

Mockery, to be sure, but let me be clear: writer's block is no myth, any more than impotence or claustrophobia. It can be the consequence of psychological stress and cause further stress on its own, it can have serious repercussions for one's personal pride and self-image, a vicious spiral of disappointment and despair.

Thankfully, in reality, it's surprisingly rare. The vast majority of cases of writer's block can actually be classified as a heady melange of laziness and trepidation, or perhaps intimidation. And that's a really happy fact, because there's an easy solution to it.

You ready?


SHUT UP AND WRITE.


Yeah, you probaly saw that coming. But before you complain that that's no help at all and doesn't get to the root of the problem, keep in mind that, unlike impotence or claustrophobia, only very, very few people actually suffer from real, honest writer's block. Most people who self-diagnose it actually suffer from mundane afflictions related to fear and lethargy -- and more importantly, those who do sincerely suffer from the condition may actually benefit from assuming that they don't.

As I said in part 1, I know how it is - how humiliating and discouraging it is to feel that the story just isn't gelling, that your ideas aren't beign properly expressed, that your characters don't come out as vibrantly as you imagine them and that you just can't for the life of you figure out how to resolve the plot corners you've painted your characters into.

That's not writer's block. It's just the wind and the rain.

Sure, it's nicer to go out and do your shopping when the sun's shining, but that's no reason to cloister yourself away indoors just because the sky is grey and the road's a little wet. It's not unsafe to drive, you won't freeze or dissolve, and you're out of Mountain Dew and toilet paper so slip into your wellies, strap on a southwester and go to the shops, there's a good lad.

If the prose isn't flowing like it should, then that's just too bad. Can't be sunny all the time, and there isn't a magic spell you can cast to fix it. You won't get through that by Not Writing, that's for sure.

You have a story on the brain that's been percolating there for a dog's age, you can taste its heady aroma, your mouth waters at its delights, but when you try to put the words down they're dull and plain and lack the lustre and sparkle you see in your mind's eye. It's that succulent meal that you want to deliver, not the drab gruel you see yourself writing, and it's very tempting to consider it (or yourself) a failure and head to the nearest café to drown your sorrows in caffeine-rich, hot black nectar.

Tough bones. Suck it up, and power on.

You'll get your mojo back eventually, and you'll get it back a damn sight faster if you write your way through the downturn. You can always go back and fix (or outright replace) the less-than-stellar portions you wrote. When you've completed the story you have to go back and do an edit pass anyway!

You don't even have to continue the story you find yourself blocked on. Everybody needs a break sometimes, and for a Writer there is no better way to take a break from writing one story than to write another one. Pick something simpler, something spontaneous and small and fun, perhaps far outside your usual sphere of interest.

Don't write for your audience or your own ambition. Odds are that's what got you tangled up in the first place, so give yourself some breathing room and just write a neat little story that satisfies all your secret little desires. Go ahead, you don't have to tell anyone.

Like the weather, Writer's Block will pass in its own time, sooner or later. You might as well get some Writing done while you're waiting, no?

- Alex F. Vance

I'm a writer, and I'm fairly proud of that. I take the craft seriously (most of the time), I've worked to hone my skills, I've studied. Much to learn, still, but that only makes it more fun. Many of my friends are writers too, and I know many writers who aren't friends but still awesome, and I take great delight in seeing people practicing the craft of storytelling with ever greater passion and sophistication.

When I'm asked for writing advice, however, I stop being an enthusiast and become a brutal drill sergeant. From my nostrils spews a venemous vapour called 'pessimism' and my eyes shoot lasers called 'terror'.

"Writing," I always say, "is a sordid beast that feeds on your pride and vomits only exhaustion and self-loathing. Writing," I always add, "leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, and hate..."

Well, you get the idea. I don't talk about 'finding one's voice' or 'research' or 'style'. These are important topics for writers, to say the least, but they're far more personal topics; many writers can solve them on their own and any individual piece of advice offers no guarantee of actually fitting a particular writer's sensibilities. There are of course some stand-bys that never miss their mark: "Read Strunk & White once every six months," or "Let your manuscript 'cool down' for at least three weeks after you finish it, before returning to edit," that sort of thing.

But that's advice for writers, and most people who ask me for advice are not writers. Read that sentence correctly, now: I don't mean that they aren't writers, I mean to say that they're Not Writers.

This isn't a disparagement, now. I don't by any means look down on Not Writers or dismiss them out of hand. Not Writers can sometimes write very well, paradoxically, and often study hard, being very eager to learn.

The difference between a Not Writer and a Writer is the difference between someone who *could* write and someone who *does*. A Not Writer is someone who experiences blocks and obstacles and timing issues and lets them prevent him or her from actually writing. A Not Writer may certainly be creative, insightful and capable of writing lyrical prose, but most of the time they're too busy Not Writing to get any Writing done. That's such a shame, such a waste, and that's the reason I so often deploy Tough Love upon those who ask for advice.

"My studies are really intense this semester, I can't focus on anything else right now," says the Not Writer. "I just can't seem to find any inspiration," he says, or "It just isn't gelling for me, I don't understand it."

The Not Writer enjoys conversing with other writers (many of whom, themselves, are Not Writers), seeks insights and techniques and delights in sharing stories of the writing experience and often clearly has an affinity for the craft, but at the end of the day he's spending all his scant free time Not Writing, and Drill Sergeant Alex Fucking Vance holds no truck with that bullshit.

Not to say I haven't been guilty of it myself, or even that I've outgrown it, though I'm twice as hard on myself as I am on others. I've often caught myself Not Writing and, some self-flagellation later, set myself straight. There are times when the words just flow, when the emotions and plot twists and characters spark from my fingers to the keyboard, and when that doesn't happen it feels unsatisfying and frustrating and humiliating. But a Writer mustn't put up with that nonsense.

In what will hopefully be a short series of posts, I'll try to highlight the most common reasons that keep creative, insightful people mired in Not Writerhood, and share my perspectives and solutions, all for the betterment of mankind.

Stay tuned.

- Alex F. Vance

While celebrated on the subsequent saturday, St. Homo's Day falls on the first Friday to fall on a prime-numbered date after the first full moon of summer.

This year, that means it's July 17th, so the celebrations may commence on Saturday the 18th.

How will *you* be celebrating St. Homo's Day?



(regrettably, any comments asking what St. Homo's Day is will be ignored - use your damn imagination, that's what it's for, bitches)