Christopher McKitterick's Blog, page 15

Writing Experiment: Day One Report

So far, so good!

I didn't open the internets until now. Started writing at about 9:30am (after breakfast and running a couple errands while pondering the writing), went until 12:30pm, and completed about 800 new words. Also got myself caught up on where I was, which means reading through my notes (mostly last night, but also a while today) and skimming through what I have in the novel so far which also means some revising for continuity). Starting tomorrow, I won't be doing nearly as much reading or revising, so should complete even more new writing.

Same plan for tomorrow. Wow, if I continue at this pace every day, every week, I'll finish my draft in just a couple of months... huh!

Who else is trying this?

Chris

Writing time - who has it?

We all have the time, suggests Cory Doctorow.

(By the way, we now have the hard drive containing the videos of his talk from last week, and I'll be editing and posting it soon.)

While he was here, we talked about how he finds time to write while whirling around the world more days than he's at home. Yet he gets more written than most people (besides Asimov, but who could?).

This is a big issue for me. At the start of this semester, with one of my courses now an online course, I thought I would make Mondays and possibly part of Tuesdays my "Writing-Only Days" (I even put those into my Google Calendar). I have a novel well under way and outlined, and I'm enthusiastic about writing it. Wow, I was going to get this sucker done before finals were in!

Not so fast.

I discovered that a new course requires a lot of focus. Not only is it a new course, but it's an online course, which requires TONS of regular interaction. Plus spring is when I do most of the reading for the Campbell Award; I was responsible for planning, promoting, organizing, and participating in the Doctorow talk; I've had to write a couple short pieces that have actual due dates; I'm planning talks at WorldCon, the Eaton Conference, and ConQuest; we're working on the upcoming Sturgeon Award Anthology; I have a million duties as CSSF Director; I have two other courses that require regular attention and classtime; and even I occasionally need a break from the keyboard. Heck, I'd even like to have a personal life - when the snow blanketed town, I really wanted to work on the Chevelle! But those days required EXTRA teaching time to make up online for missing in-class time.

Goodbye, "Writing-Only Days." I deleted those from my calendar a couple of weeks ago. That was discouraging and a little depressing.

I've just been unable to find the big blocks of time that I feel I need to get writing done. Momentum, focus, all that. I've always written that way, sometimes planning so well in advance that I can write entire short stories, novel chapters, and even the occasional novella in one sitting! Not so anymore.

Well, Doctorow says that we can train ourselves otherwise. He always tries to write at least a couple hundred words a day; other days he writes more, some days less. The point is that he writes whenever he finds the time, and gets done as much as he can. A few hundred words a day equals a novel a year. When I asked how he maintains momentum with such short, separated bursts, he answered, "With practice."

Later, as if to demonstrate, I witnessed this in action: While he was sitting in my office at work between events, he pulled out his laptop and wrote part of an article that was due soon. Just like that, during a 15-minute lull. What a role-model!

Fellow Lawrence spec-fic author Kij Johnson has been forced to use this same writing process since starting her career in academia, and now she writes first thing every morning before anything else. She has a novel due soon, and must continue to publish or order to make tenure, so she had just enough outside pressure to help her create a new habit.

These are two very different authors, each with very different writing, but it works for them both, with practice.

Time to start practicing.



I know that the hardest part for me is going to be letting go of checking in with my students first thing each morning, because there will always be emergencies to deal with, and there goes my focus. I need to start putting my writing career first: I have yet to encounter an emergency that was more important for an hour or two than my writing career as a whole. I can check in later.

(This is a challenge; it's hard just to write that publicly. But it's not as difficult as seeing another week go by during which my writing adds up to only some more notes.)

Tomorrow I start this! I'll report back from time to time to keep myself honest and to let y'all know how it's going. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks he needs big blocks of time to write... and then ends up not writing nearly as much as he needs or wants to. I hope to serve as yet another good example of creating good writing (or whatever your art is) habits!

EDIT: In his post, Pinched Writing, author and full-time teacher James Van Pelt describes how he manages to get a day's writing done in 15-minute blocks.

Chris

Old cars and love.

This is one of the most-charming family car stories ever. My cheeks are damp.

From Hagerty, my classic-vehicle insurance company: Joe and Beverly Smith were the proud owners of a 1948 Plymouth Convertible until they had to sell it when Joe was drafted to serve in the Korean War. As a 60th wedding anniversary gift, their son, Joel, found a '48 Plymouth through Craigslist, fixed it up, and gave it to them as a surprise. The car will now forever stay in the family and be passed down through generations:



Okay, back to work, but I had to drop in to share this.

Chris

Snowpocalypse 2013, V.2

View of the house from the (abandoned) street during Snowpocalypse V.2. Look at how the branches curve toward the earth, white gravity pressing from above. Gusts of wind peel lumps of icy snow from upper branches which cascade down, becoming a crunching avalanche. I went outside and took a bunch of photos, even a little video. It's so quiet, muffled, the only sounds are birds chirping, falling snow, and distant chainsaws.



Oh, and what appears to be a bush beside the tree? Branches. Also, the little "tree" on the left of the photo is actually a giant branch that landed thick-side down. I fear for the trees in the area.

It's lovely outside and all that, but if this means Cory Doctorow isn't able to get here for his talk on Thursday....

More behind the cut A closer shot of the house. Those branches are usually about 8 feet from the ground...


Snow-enshrouded branches looking toward the icy sky (sorry the photo-host rotated this 90 degrees):


View from the front porch toward the street. Yes, there's a street out there somewhere. Oh, and I trim those branches to no closer than 8 feet from the ground:
[image error]

Stay safe and warm out there!

Chris

Reminder: Cory Doctorow speaks at KU this Thursday!

Center for the Study of Science Fiction press release on the News page here.

Science-fiction author, journalist, technology activist, and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow presents this year's Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture:

"The Coming War on General Purpose Computing:
Every single political issue will end up rehashing the stupid Internet copyright fight."

When:
Thursday, February 28, 2013
7:30pm - 9:30pm

Where:
Alderson Auditorium
University of Kansas Student Union
Lawrence, KS 66045

Cost:
Free! Seating is limited, so arrive early to ensure a spot.

Jayhawk Ink bookstore will have copies of several of Doctorow's books available to purchase in Alderson Auditorium (as well as the bookstore on Level 2) and get signed by the author after the talk.

This is Doctorow's third visit to KU: first in 1999 when his story "Craphound" (his first published story) was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and next in 2009 when his novel Little Brother won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Don't miss hearing one of the most interesting thinkers of our time talk about some of our most-relevant issues! Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction and the KU Department of English.

Bio:
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines, and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil-liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards, and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Senior Lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

Doctorow's novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. His work has won the Locus, Sunburst, Ontario Library White Pine, Prometheus, Indienet, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial (for "Craphound"), and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest young-adult novel is Pirate Cinema, a story of mashup guerillas who declare war on the entertainment industry. His latest novel for adults is Rapture of the Nerds , written with Charles Stross and published in 2012. His New York Times Bestseller Little Brother was published in 2008. A sequel, Homeland, was just published. His latest short story collection is With a Little Help , available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2011, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century (with an introduction by Tim O'Reilly) and IDW published a collection of graphic stories inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now. The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, a PM Press Outspoken Authors chapbook, was also published in 2011.

He co-founded the open-source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, The Glenn Gould Foundation, and the Chabot Space & Science Center's SpaceTime project.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007/8/9/10 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.
Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

The Lecture Series:
The Gunn Lecture, endowed by Dr. Richard W. Gunn, James Gunn's brother, has featured several science-fiction scholars. Although it has also sponsored speakers on Shakespeare and Ralph Ellison, it often brings distinguished science-fiction scholars to the campus beginning with scholar Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane Professor at Duke University; and continuing with Bill Brown, Edgar Carson Waller Professor at the University of Chicago; China Miéville, British author of what has become known as the New Weird; and Nöel Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon's daughter and trustee of his literary estate, Professor of Critical Cultures, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, and juror on the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The Center also recently co-sponsored a visit from Michael Chabon, prize-winning author and editor.

Promotional materials:
KU Calendar news item here.
SFWA news item here.
Facebook event page here.
Google+ event page here.
Yelp event page here.

Press release on the CSSF News page here.

Posters in .pdf format (other formats on the News page):

Feel free to use these images and posters on your websites, share them around, remix them to help promote the talk, and so forth!

If you are unfamiliar with Doctorow's work and would like to get acquainted with it, here's a short reader (from the CSSF "Science, Technology, & Society" course) - all available free online:

Short story, “I, Robot.”
Short-short story, “Printcrime.”
Chapter 4 from the Campbell Award-winning novel, Little Brother.
    Want to read more Doctorow stories? Novels? See the recommended reading, below.
Essay, “I Can't Let You Do That, Dave: What it means to design our computers and devices to disobey us.”
Essay, “Disorganised but effective: The most profound social revolutions in human history have arisen whenever a technology comes along that lowers transaction costs for everyone.”
Essay, “Internet copyright law has to have public support if it's going to work.”
Essay, “A Vocabulary for Speaking about the Future.”

Want to read more Doctorow articles and essays? Here's some more recommended reading to become familiar with his work:

Doctorow's just-released novel, Homeland, (sequel to Little Brother), is already available for free download here.The novel, Little Brother, is available for free download in several formats here or plain HTML here. Doctorow also provides some great teaching materials for the book here. Won the Campbell Award.The very recent novel, Pirate Cinema, is available for free download here.The story, “Craphound,” his first short-story publication and a finalist for the Sturgeon Award.Go here for free downloads of some of his most-popular short stories. Go here for free downloads of the graphic-novelization of six of his most-popular short stories in .epub or .pdf formats for the book, Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now .Discussion about “Where Characters Come from,” published in Locus.Essay, “With a Little Help: Cory Doctorow kicks off a unique publishing experiment - and a monthly PW column” (full archive of his PW series here).Essay, “Just because something has value doesn't mean it has a price: If every last shred of incidental online value is given a price tag, we'll never harvest the full fruits of our ingenuity.”Go here for links to many more of Doctorow's online articles.Please help get the word out, and I hope to see you there!

Best,
Chris

Massive meteor or small asteroid crashes into Russia; another asteroid passes by later today.

First up, breaking news:

Early this morning, local time in the Ural region of Western Russia (just after midnight in these parts), near the cities of Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, a bus-sized meteor estimated to weigh about 10 tons streaked across the sky as bright as a welding-arc, entering the atmosphere at 33,000 mph and then fragmenting in a massive explosion that sent countless meteor and meteorite fragments fireballing to Earth.

The shockwave shattered windows over a wide area, damaging buildings and injuring more than 950 people in the cities of Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Sverdlovsk in the Russian Republic of Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan. At least one fragment of the huge meteor or small asteroid crashed into a Chelyabinsk zinc factory, severing the fiber-optic internet phone service. Check out this amazing video montage from several points of view:


It's not just YouTube that offers videos of the event (that's a search-query link); LiveLeak.com has a great collection of videos, too.

Here's the CNN story. Here's the Sky & Telescope Magazine story; and here's the Reuters story.

Witnesses report that the explosion was so loud it resembled an earthquake or thunder even at a great distance, and that huge trails of smoke streaked across the sky. Others reported blazing objects falling to Earth. Police in area around Chelyabinsk are on high alert, and have enacted the "Fortress" plan in order to protect vital infrastructure.

Some astronomers are saying that this small asteroid was a straggler from the annual Quadrantid meteor shower - talk about a big fireball! (Sorry I neglected to provide a heads-up about this shower, as it's usually one of the best, but work has buried me pretty much since before the semester started.)

This huge meteor or small asteroid has no relation to Asteroid 2012 DA14 (despite the title of the YouTube video, above), set to blast past Earth so close that it could hit some of our satellites. Follow the link above to Sky & Telescope Magazine's website to learn how to watch this asteroid skim past us tonight. It is as big as a building - 150 feet wide - so big that if it hit our atmosphere, it would release 2.4 megatons of energy, comparable to the 1908 Tunguska event, which released an estimated 3 to 20 megatons of energy. So Asteroid 2012 DA14 is not a world-killer, but today's far-smaller event in Russia gives us a taste of what it might be like to be in the vicinity of such a thing.

Space-based defenses, anyone?

Yikes,
Chris

Cory Doctorow to Present 2013 Gunn Lecture

Author, journalist, technology activist, and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow presents this year's Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture:

"The Coming War on General Purpose Computing:
Every single political issue will end up rehashing the stupid Internet copyright fight."

For immediate release (.doc version here)

When:
Thursday, February 28, 2013
7:30pm - 9:30pm

Where:
Alderson Auditorium
University of Kansas Student Union
Lawrence, KS 66045

Cost:
Free! Seating is limited, so arrive early to ensure a spot.

Jayhawk Ink bookstore will have copies of several of Doctorow's books available to purchase in Alderson Auditorium (as well as the bookstore on Level 2) and get signed by the author after the talk.

This is Doctorow's third visit to KU: first in 1999 when his story "Craphound" (his first published story) was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and next in 2009 when his novel Little Brother won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Don't miss hearing one of the most interesting thinkers of our time talk about some of our most-relevant issues!

Bio:

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines, and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil-liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards, and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Senior Lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

Doctorow's novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. His work has won the Locus, Sunburst, Ontario Library White Pine, Prometheus, Indienet, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial (for "Craphound"), and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest young-adult novel is Pirate Cinema, a story of mashup guerillas who declare war on the entertainment industry. His latest novel for adults is Rapture of the Nerds, written with Charles Stross and published in 2012. His New York Times Bestseller Little Brother was published in 2008. A sequel, Homeland, was just published. His latest short story collection is With a Little Help, available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2011, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century (with an introduction by Tim O'Reilly) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now. The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, a PM Press Outspoken Authors chapbook, was also published in 2011.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, The Glenn Gould Foundation, and the Chabot Space & Science Center's SpaceTime project.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007/8/9/10 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.

Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

The Lecture Series:

The Gunn Lecture, endowed by Dr. Richard W. Gunn, James Gunn's brother, has featured several science-fiction scholars. Although it has also sponsored speakers on Shakespeare and Ralph Ellison, it often brings distinguished science-fiction scholars to the campus beginning with scholar Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane Professor at Duke University; and continuing with Bill Brown, Edgar Carson Waller Professor at the University of Chicago; China Miéville, British author of what has become known as the New Weird; and Nöel Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon's daughter and trustee of his literary estate, Professor of Critical Cultures, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, and juror on the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The Center also recently co-sponsored a visit from Michael Chabon, prize-winning author and editor.

KU Calendar news item here.

Facebook Event page here.

xkcd's "What if?" series

This new xkcd series is frakkin' awesome, updated each Thursday. It's speculative-nonfiction humor writing, leaning heavily toward the Hard SF end of the spectrum.

First up: "What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?" Here's a hint:

Click the image to see the first installment of xkcd's "What if?"

Things don't get better from there. Or they get AWESOME, if you're a physics nerd.

Chris

Astro-Porn of the Day: Photo-blog from the International Space Station.

Colonel Chris Hadfield is a Canadian Astronaut currently living in space aboard the International Space Station. He has a Tumblr account and regularly posts images he takes out the window of the ISS. Just wow. His Tumblr is a great reason, all by itself, to get an account.

Here are a few examples:

Boston at night, glowing under a trace of fog:


Venezuelan valley framed by misty clouds - mysterious, beautiful, and surreal:


Full Moon rising. So near, and yet...


And here he is! Zero G allows for some great interview entrances:


Click any of the images to see Colonel Chris Hadfield's Tubmlr blog.

Chris

New desk arrangement

To try to enhance my metabolism when working long hours at my desk and to avoid sitting-still injuries, I decided to give the stand-up desk thing a try. Here's what it looks like right now:



Basically, I piled one desk on top of another, dropped both as low as they'll go, pushed a little table in front of the whole thing, and piled a laptop writing desk and mobile writing desk on top of that for my keyboard and mouse. Still a little high, so rather than just an anti-fatigue mat below my feet, I added two more anti-fatigue mats and a rug on top of that. Good height now!

So far, I'm noticing that my lower back and knees aren't so happy with it, but I'll get used to it... I hope.

Anyone out there tried a stand-up desk? Tips, tricks to share?

And I had to share this awesome Space Kitty Rocket-Pack from artist Jeff de Boer:


Click the image to see the artist's Space Stuff page.

He has tons of great retro-space art, among other neato-keen stuff!

Chris