Doug Walsh's Blog, page 11

Friday Links #18 – Crash Into You

On the rare occasion that I think about the time I spent in graduate school, one of the first memories to surface concerns a friend’s roommate and the Dave Mathews Band. I wasn’t invited to the roommate’s wedding — I had only met him a few times and thought he was a bit of a jackass, the feeling may have been mutual — but here we are, eighteen years later, and I can tell you what his wedding song was. Now why would that be? Why would a twenty-something guy come to school on Monday, anxiously regaling a room of his peers with a story about the song a bride and groom danced to? And why would those in attendance remember it?

Because it was Crash into Me by the Dave Mathews Band.

You’ve got your ball, you got your chain.

Now I was never a fan of DMB — I didn’t even see them live when they played my college back in 1995 — but I do like that song. It’s got a soothing melody and I enjoy the guitar intro. And it’s impossible to not sing along with Dave’s crowing rooster voice when it comes on the radio. I can see why people like it. And, based on the opening line I included above, and phrases of general adoration sprinkled throughout, one might think, on the surface, that it’s romantic.

Hike up your skirt a little more, and show your world to me.

It’s not.

Through the window and I stare; you wear nothing but you wear it so well.

The song’s about a peeping-tom fantasizing about a woman as he watches her through the window. And judging by the outro, that may not have been all he was doing… I still remember to this day the shocked hilarity I felt that someone would choose such a song for their first dance. Did they never actually pay attention to the lyrics? Did the father-of-the-bride cut in before the fourth verse? Was it a clue as to how they met? I had so many questions.

I was reminded of this the other day, as I was pulling out of Service King and Crash into Me came on the radio. How fitting. I had just handed over my deductible to help cover the $4300 in damages I had done to my car by rear-ending a fellow attendee as I was leaving the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference two weeks ago. Nobody was hurt and both cars were drivable — the airbags didn’t even deploy — but I was extremely embarrassed come morning when the other driver was the first person I saw in line for coffee. I’m just thankful she wasn’t an agent I was about to pitch to.

And that’s how you bury the lede.

Bookish Links

“Frog And Toad”: An Amphibious Celebration of Same-Sex Love – Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” series is a favorite of my childhood and I wasted no time in buying copies for my niece when she was born. This enjoyable essay from Colin Stokes in The New Yorker discusses how progressive the series was in terms of platonic same-sex love and shares thoughts from Lobel’s daughter.
Girl on the Train Carries Paula Hawkins into List of World’s Richest Authors – I hadn’t read Girl on the Train yet, but it’s on my to-read list. Hopefully before the movie comes out this fall. What’s interesting about this list, to me, is not necessarily the range of figures, but how few of these authors I’ve read. I’ve read King and Rowling and maybe one or two from Grisham years ago, but none of the others.
The 7 Weirdest Sex Stories of the Ancient World – Put your modern predilections aside — especially any prudish ones you harbor — and enjoy this interesting dive into some of the more unusual sexual habits from the ancient world. This article was assembled by researcher Vicki Leon, author of the recent book The Joy of Sexus: Lust, Love, & Longing in the Ancient World.
20 Misused English Words that Make Smart People Look Silly – This article by Travis Bradberry covers a lot of the mistakes I see in blogs and comment sections (which I should know better than to read, but can’t help myself) and I admit I often get the lay/lie one wrong every now and then. What I want to know — and Bradberry doesn’t mention it — is how on Earth people started getting loose and lose mixed up?
Adjectives for Posture – We’ve all read a book where we wished the author would have put down the thesaurus every once in a while. Still, we don’t all have a vocabulary to rival Webster’s. For me, my weakness becomes apparent whenever I’m trying to describe character movement. This link has dozens of adjectives for posture, gait, and demeanor, among others.

Bonus Link

Most of Us Are Blissfully Ignorant About How Much Rancid Olive Oil We Use  – Of all the things I took home from our bicycle trip, an appreciation for higher quality olive oil is high on the list of favorites. So much of the mass-market olive oil in the USA is actually derived from crushing the olive pits, after the first-pressing was already extracted for the local European market. After spending six months in the olive-growing regions of the Mediterranean, and having olive oil at all meals — sometimes straight — we now only buy single-source, cold-pressed olive oil. Also, on a tour of an olive museum in Greece, I asked what “Light” olive oil was, compared to Virgin and Extra Virgin. The blend of horror and pity that came across the man’s face was fascinating. “There is no such thing,” he said, mumbling something about Americans as he turned away.

Post Image by Seattle Municipal Archives., used under Creative Commons.

The post Friday Links #18 – Crash Into You appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Precious Forgiveness: A Short Story

I wrote my first short story last month. It wasn’t something I ever gave much though to, but when simultaneous strategy guide projects colluded to prevent me from making any headway on my novel, I decided to try my hand at shorter fiction. Brevity and wit, as they say. Today I share my entry to a recent Writer’s Digest contest. There were two rules: 1) The story had to be 700 words or fewer, and 2) The story must begin with the sentence, “You don’t have enough points, sir.” I wasn’t one of the 5 finalists, hence this post, but I’m happy with how it came out. I look forward to writing more of them. Enjoy.

Precious Forgiveness

“You don’t have enough points, sir.”

Rudy smoothed the wrinkles of the brown paper bag against the display case and explained the math scrawled on the side. “See? I only needed a thousand more points and I just won twelve hundred playing skeeball.”

The man in the red vest clicked his gums and shook his head. “You need a lot more than that. Prices went up this summer.”

“What? You can’t do that. It’s not fair.”

“Blame it on Sandy; everything on the boardwalk is more expensive this year.”

It never occurred to Rudy that things would cost more after the hurricane. He had memorized the prices in the arcade last summer but a quick glance showed the man was right. The plastic spider rings that used to cost five points now cost ten; the candy necklaces went up to two hundred; and the salt water taffy now cost three thousand points. Rudy’s eyes bulged when he spotted the price tag on an Xbox. “I’ll never have enough,” he mumbled as he swept his rubber-banded bundles of tickets back into the sack.

Clutching the bag with both hands, Rudy trudged a familiar path to a cabinet in the rear of the arcade. The oak trim had buckled, mold grew along the base and a glass pane was cracked, but it survived the storm. More importantly, so did the items inside. A card tented in front of a pastel figurine showed the price: 350,000 points. Why did adults have to be so greedy?

A hand clapped his shoulder. “Is that the one you’ve been saving up for? Most kids your age want an iPad or a toy helicopter.”

Rudy shrugged.

“Well, look on the bright side. It’s only June, you’ve got all summer,” the man said before leaving to make change for another customer.

If only. Summers spent at the family beach house were history. He overheard his mother telling a friend that she was renting it out for the summer. She couldn’t afford not to anymore, not since Rudy’s dad died. Of course, she never told Rudy any of this; she never told him much of anything. A silent drive back to Philadelphia awaited him once she was done prepping it for the tenants.

Rudy sighed, pulled the remaining quarters from the pocket of his swim trunks, and retreated to the skeeball machines. The balls felt heavy in his hand and his aim was off. Three games later, he turned to leave.

The man in the red vest stopped him on his way out. He held the figurine of a little boy on bended knee, proposing to a little girl. “I can get in trouble for this, but listen. We don’t count the tickets anymore, it takes too much time. We just weigh them.”

Rudy stared at the man, puzzled.

“And…” he said, raising his eyebrows, “sometimes tickets get wet—”

“And then they weigh more,” Rudy whispered, suddenly understanding.

The attendant winked. “Just don’t make it obvious.”

Rudy ran to the bathroom, unfolded his accordions of tickets and ran the inner rows under the faucet. He repeated the task for each bundle with the finesse of a master forger, ensuring the outer tickets stayed dry. Back at the prize counter, Rudy bounced anxiously while clutching the display case as the tickets were weighed. He had enough! Two summers worth of allowance had finally paid off.

Rudy sprinted down the boardwalk, burst through the screen door, and found his mother sitting alone at the kitchen table. She greeted him with a cold glare of disgust. “What?” she sneered.

He pulled the Precious Moments figure from the bag and slid it gently onto the table.

Her face slowly ballooned with life. She blinked rapidly and reached for the ceramic. “It’s, it’s…” she stammered, “but how?”

“I used my skeeball points.”

She sat the figure down and took Rudy’s face in her hands. “I didn’t know if I’d ever forgive you.”

“Is it the right one?”

Rudy’s mom nodded enthusiastically as her eyes moistened. “It is, it is. It’s just like the one your dad had given me.”

“I’m really sorry I broke it, mom. Let’s not fight anymore.”

You can read the five finalists in the short story contest here. Registration is required to vote.

Post Image by Brian M, used under Creative Commons.

The post Precious Forgiveness: A Short Story appeared first on Doug Walsh.

RTFCP: Read the @#$&@&% Copyright Page!

Do you ever read a book’s copyright page? I bet you don’t. After all, why would you? It’s just a bunch of legalese, the publisher’s address, some odd numerical sequences that only rare book collectors care about, and maybe a boilerplate assurance that the book is a work of fiction. The latter is included so that Aunt Dolores, no matter how much she may think the wicked step-mother is based on her, can’t sue the author for libel. But what if I told you reading the copyright page, particularly for older books, may hold the key to understanding some of the more obscure references contained within? Don’t believe me, maybe my buddy Holden can help you see the light.

The Catcher Opening

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told you anything pretty personal about them.

That right there, for those who may not be familiar, is the opening two sentences to The Catcher in the Rye, one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read this classic several times in my life and, without fail, every time I did so, I wondered what that reference to a magician had to do with anything.

If you’re chuckling at my naivete, congratulations. Please keep reading, and as always, keep your hands and feet to yourself while the blog is in motion.

I hadn’t read Catcher in at least eight years until picking it back up last week. And, like clockwork, I stumbled once again on that David Copperfield reference. Only problem, I was on an airplane and not about to buy in-flight WiFi just to figure it out. So, as I had done on every previous occasion, I continued reading and by the time I got home, completely forgot all about it.

That is, until a little dose of serendipity thrust it back into my consciousness.

David Copperfield’s Kind of Crap

My preoccupation with my shadow occupation (more about that in coming weeks, perhaps) led to me falling weeks behind in my weekly storycraft study. A big part of my education comes in the form of reading the transcripts of the weekly Story Grid podcast, a site I’ve mentioned several times before. Well, would you believe that Shawn Coyne, without making specific reference to Catcher, dropped the David Copperfield line in the very next episode I read? And in the same context.

Coyne had just finished describing a way to use a prologue to tease out some of the action to come later in the book. Then, in the next sentence, stated: “Then [the readers] settle in and then you can lay on the David Copperfield stuff at the beginning of the story to get you to the climactic point.”

That reference right there not only borrows Salinger’s verbiage, but in the same context. David Copperfield had become shorthand for lengthy, chronological backstory. But why?

A quick Google of the phrase “David Copperfield kind of crap” led to a detailed analysis of Salinger’s novel that acknowledged the David Copperfield reference. As it turns out, and which Coyne and other English major-types have probably always known, was that it was not a reference to the illusionist of the same name. No, it was a reference to a novel by Charles Dickens titled — you guessed it — David Copperfield.

The Dickens novel is a lengthy birth-to-maturity story about a boy named David Copperfield, who some believe to be an altar-ego of sorts of Charles Dickens (a belief no doubt aided by the mirrored initials). Anyway, Dickens’ novel is a linear story about the life of the title character. In other words, the lengthy year-by-year backstory that modern readers only tolerate in small doses.

Alas, I had my answer! But what about the illusionist?

My Facepalm Moment

Aside from A Christmas Carol and the many films and plays it has inspired, my only other familiarity with Dickens comes from a forced-reading of A Tale of Two Cities in high school. A brick of a book I didn’t even come close to finishing at the time. So I’m going to give myself a pass on not knowing the breadth of Dickens’ bibliography. Still, I should have at least known the reference had nothing to do with the magician.

As a child of the 1970s, I grew up at a time when David Copperfield (the magician) was a bit of a household name. I can’t recall any of his tricks or even what he looked like, but popular culture dictated we knew of him. Like the Kardashians, I’m not aware of anything they’ve ever done, or even what they look like, but I know they’re a thing.

Quick question: When was The Catcher in the Rye first published? If you asked me to guess I would have said mid-to-late 1960s. And I’d have been wrong.

Follow-up question: When was David Copperfield the magician most famous? I would guess the 1980s. And I’d only be partially correct, as his career spans decades.

Regardless the accuracy of my guesses, I should have realized, and perhaps in my gut I did, that Salinger was in no way referencing a magician who probably wasn’t even born yet!

Like I said, facepalm moment.

The Catcher in the Rye was first published as a novel in 1951. David Copperfield was born in 1956 (in a town in NJ just a few miles from where I was raised — and one whose high school was my track team’s chief rival). Furthermore, David Copperfield is not David Copperfield’s real name. A budding young illusionist by the name of David Kotkin took the Copperfield moniker at age 18. Why? He liked the name of the character in the Dickens novel (originally released as a serial during 1849-1850).

Back to the Front Matter

What does this have to do with reading copyright pages? Had I have bothered to read the copyright page before beginning the book, I would have had that number — 1951 — fresh in my mind as I began page one and I would have known, at the very least, that Salinger was in no way referencing a magician who was popular throughout the eighties and nineties. I still wouldn’t have gotten the Dickens reference, but I’d have been at least a little less confused.

I do most of my reading on a Kindle and Amazon, in their effort to get readers enjoying their books as fast as possible, designed the Kindle to open to the first page of the story. For the past year I have gotten in the habit of immediately using the “Go To” feature to start from the cover, so I can read all the front-matter and make sure I’m not missing any details. I would love to set this as a default preference, but alas I cannot.

So why didn’t I do that with Catcher? Because I actually had my twenty-year-old, dog-eared, paperback copy with me. And let me tell you, holding open a rigid paperback with one hand while trying to enjoy a cup of coffee in the other while on a turbulent airplane is no fun.

I realized the next day that I actually had the book on my Kindle as well. I’m currently 65% done reading it. I have no idea what page number that is.

The next time you read a book, especially anything you suspect is more than thirty years old, be sure to give the copyright page a quick glance. Note the oldest of the dates listed — the initial publication date — and take a moment to think about the worldly goings-on of that era before you begin. Had World War II started yet? Was the Cold War over? What were the social and sexual norms of the era? Was commercial air travel a reality? Did the Internet exist? We’re not going to always understand all the pop culture references included in the books we read, least of all those from books that predate our parents, but taking a moment to consider the era in which the author was writing can help us better understand the context of the story.

Post Image by SimonPix, used under Creative Commons.

The post RTFCP: Read the @#$&@&% Copyright Page! appeared first on Doug Walsh.

RTFTP: Read the @#$&@&% Copyright Page!

Do you ever read a book’s copyright page? I bet you don’t. After all, why would you? It’s just a bunch of legalese, the publisher’s address, some odd numerical sequences that only rare book collectors care about, and maybe a boilerplate assurance that the book is a work of fiction. The latter is included so that Aunt Dolores, no matter how much she may think the wicked step-mother is based on her, can’t sue the author for libel. But what if I told you reading the copyright page, particularly for older books, may hold the key to understanding some of the more obscure references contained within? Don’t believe me, maybe my buddy Holden can help you see the light.

The Catcher Opening

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told you anything pretty personal about them.

That right there, for those who may not be familiar, is the opening two sentences to The Catcher in the Rye, one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read this classic several times in my life and, without fail, every time I did so, I wondered what that reference to a magician had to do with anything.

If you’re chuckling at my naivete, congratulations. Please keep reading, and as always, keep your hands and feet to yourself while the blog is in motion.

I hadn’t read Catcher in at least eight years until picking it back up last week. And, like clockwork, I stumbled once again on that David Copperfield reference. Only problem, I was on an airplane and not about to buy in-flight WiFi just to figure it out. So, as I had done on every previous occasion, I continued reading and by the time I got home, completely forgot all about it.

That is, until a little dose of serendipity thrust it back into my consciousness.

David Copperfield’s Kind of Crap

My preoccupation with my shadow occupation (more about that in coming weeks, perhaps) led to me falling weeks behind in my weekly storycraft study. A big part of my education comes in the form of reading the transcripts of the weekly Story Grid podcast, a site I’ve mentioned several times before. Well, would you believe that Shawn Coyne, without making specific reference to Catcher, dropped the David Copperfield line in the very next episode I read? And in the same context.

Coyne had just finished describing a way to use a prologue to tease out some of the action to come later in the book. Then, in the next sentence, stated: “Then [the readers] settle in and then you can lay on the David Copperfield stuff at the beginning of the story to get you to the climactic point.”

That reference right there not only borrows Salinger’s verbiage, but in the same context. David Copperfield had become shorthand for lengthy, chronological backstory. But why?

A quick Google of the phrase “David Copperfield kind of crap” led to a detailed analysis of Salinger’s novel that acknowledged the David Copperfield reference. As it turns out, and which Coyne and other English major-types have probably always known, was that it was not a reference to the illusionist of the same name. No, it was a reference to a novel by Charles Dickens titled — you guessed it — David Copperfield.

The Dickens novel is a lengthy birth-to-maturity story about a boy named David Copperfield, who some believe to be an altar-ego of sorts of Charles Dickens (a belief no doubt aided by the mirrored initials). Anyway, Dickens’ novel is a linear story about the life of the title character. In other words, the lengthy year-by-year backstory that modern readers only tolerate in small doses.

Alas, I had my answer! But what about the illusionist?

My Facepalm Moment

Aside from A Christmas Carol and the many films and plays it has inspired, my only other familiarity with Dickens comes from a forced-reading of A Tale of Two Cities in high school. A brick of a book I didn’t even come close to finishing at the time. So I’m going to give myself a pass on not knowing the breadth of Dickens’ bibliography. Still, I should have at least known the reference had nothing to do with the magician.

As a child of the 1970s, I grew up at a time when David Copperfield (the magician) was a bit of a household name. I can’t recall any of his tricks or even what he looked like, but popular culture dictated we knew of him. Like the Kardashians, I’m not aware of anything they’ve ever done, or even what they look like, but I know they’re a thing.

Quick question: When was The Catcher in the Rye first published? If you asked me to guess I would have said mid-to-late 1960s. And I’d have been wrong.

Follow-up question: When was David Copperfield the magician most famous? I would guess the 1980s. And I’d only be partially correct, as his career spans decades.

Regardless the accuracy of my guesses, I should have realized, and perhaps in my gut I did, that Salinger was in no way referencing a magician who probably wasn’t even born yet!

Like I said, facepalm moment.

The Catcher in the Rye was first published as a novel in 1951. David Copperfield was born in 1956 (in a town in NJ just a few miles from where I was raised — and one whose high school was my track team’s chief rival). Furthermore, David Copperfield is not David Copperfield’s real name. A budding young illusionist by the name of David Kotkin took the Copperfield moniker at age 18. Why? He liked the name of the character in the Dickens novel (originally released as a serial during 1849-1850).

Back to the Front Matter

What does this have to do with reading copyright pages? Had I have bothered to read the copyright page before beginning the book, I would have had that number — 1951 — fresh in my mind as I began page one and I would have known, at the very least, that Salinger was in no way referencing a magician who was popular throughout the eighties and nineties. I still wouldn’t have gotten the Dickens reference, but I’d have been at least a little less confused.

I do most of my reading on a Kindle and Amazon, in their effort to get readers enjoying their books as fast as possible, designed the Kindle to open to the first page of the story. For the past year I have gotten in the habit of immediately using the “Go To” feature to start from the cover, so I can read all the front-matter and make sure I’m not missing any details. I would love to set this as a default preference, but alas I cannot.

So why didn’t I do that with Catcher? Because I actually had my twenty-year-old, dog-eared, paperback copy with me. And let me tell you, holding open a rigid paperback with one hand while trying to enjoy a cup of coffee in the other while on a turbulent airplane is no fun.

I realized the next day that I actually had the book on my Kindle as well. I’m currently 65% done reading it. I have no idea what page number that is.

The next time you read a book, especially anything you suspect is more than thirty years old, be sure to give the copyright page a quick glance. Note the oldest of the dates listed — the initial publication date — and take a moment to think about the worldly goings-on of that era before you begin. Had World War II started yet? Was the Cold War over? What were the social and sexual norms of the era? Was commercial air travel a reality? Did the Internet exist? We’re not going to always understand all the pop culture references included in the books we read, least of all those from books that predate our parents, but taking a moment to consider the era in which the author was writing can help us better understand the context of the story.

Post Image by SimonPix, used under Creative Commons.

The post RTFTP: Read the @#$&@&% Copyright Page! appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Friday Links #17 – Joining the Athenaeum

Since I’m stuck in a holding pattern, waiting on licensors to provide access to two games I’m supposed to be writing strategy guides for, this is a great time to share another round of writing links. Before we get to the links, let me tell you about a new cheaper alternative I found for writers seeking a co-working space. It’s called the Folio Athenaeum and though it functions as a members-only, private library, I find it to be a wonderful place to write on those days when I want to get out of the house, but don’t want the noise, distraction, and at-times unavoidable window glare of a coffee shop.

As well-furnished as my home office is, if you spend as many years working remotely as I have, you learn to appreciate what the ritual of getting dressed, leaving the house, and going someplace else can do for your productivity. These mundane acts signal that it’s time to get down to work, that checking email and social media are unacceptable, and that I need not worry about emptying the dishwasher or going to the grocery store. I don some nicer clothes, turn off my phone, and devote my full attention to a date with the Muse. I may even splash on some cologne if she’s been particularly good to me lately.

These days our dates take place in the West Reading Room at Folio, at a square table beside a frosted window with a plush leather reading chair steps away. The room is silent, if not empty. The only other humans I see are the volunteers shelving new donations and a few other writers working on their own works-in-progress. The taps of fingers on keyboards is the only noise one hears. The fact that it’s a private library (annual membership is roughly the cost of a single month at a co-working space) with few people there at any given time means you can leave your laptop, papers, and research materials as it is should you need to get up for a bathroom, coffee, or phone break. There’s a relatively sound-proof room nearby for making phone calls. Talkers will be hushed.

Membership includes access to weekly events ranging from lectures to round-table civics discussions to chamber music recitals. Folio partners with local book publishers, bookstores, and other intellectually-stimulating organizations to ensure members receive free or discounted admission.

One of the things I enjoy best about Folio is that the books are shelved by topic rather than by the Dewey Decimal System. For example, the history books are grouped by their common theme. World War II books over here, books on the American Revolution over there. One area is devoted to US Presidents. The shelves on Teddy Roosevelt contains not only the massive biographies one would expect, but also books like The River of Doubt and The Big Burn.  One would often find these books shelved under adventure travel and American history or the environment, respectively. By including all types of books linked by a common subject matter, regardless of genre, the library becomes more conducive for browsing. It may be harder to find a specific book without a librarian’s help, but you’re more likely to stumble onto some hidden surprises.

Seattle is far from being the only city with an athenaeum (and Folio is one year old). And as public libraries get ever more digital — and noisy — I suspect athenaeums will grow in popularity. So check to see if your local city has one. A quick glance at this Wikipedia entry shows athenaeums in Philadelphia, Boston, and Melbourne, to name a few. If you’re looking for a quiet place to write, read, and engage in a more intellectually stimulating conversation, an athenaeum may be just what you’re looking for.

Bookish Links

Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year – “If you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.” Makes sense to me. This article by Kim Liao provides an eye-opening alternative view to the inevitable rejection we writers face. Her advice? Embrace it.
A Shameful Moment and What it Taught Me About Competition – Like most things in life, writing success is not a zero-sum game. Every book you sell does not diminish the number of books I might sell. If anything, the opposite occurs as new books hook new readers into a lifelong hobby. Andrea Dunlop shares a story about how she came to realize that we are not in competition.
Writer Dilemma: Private Life vs Public Figures – As expectations of privacy diminish day by day, writers have a choice to make regarding how accessible they wish to be to readers. This article by Jami Gold covers a number of choices writers must make when it comes to interaction with readers.
22 of the Best Single Sentences on Writing – From Nabokov to Vonnegut and King to Chekhov, this article presented as a simple list (no slideshows–yay!), contains 22 bite-size chunks of wisdom from the people who know best.
Amazon Announces Most Well-Read Cities in America – Scoreboard! Amazon compiled their sales data for all books, magazines, and newspapers sold in print and digital formats for cities with more than 500,000 residents and ranked the top 20 on a per-capita basis. The east coast didn’t fare too well. It should be noted that Minneapolis didn’t make the cut due to population, but would surely be in the top five otherwise as it’s always ranked alongside Seattle as one of the most bookish cities.

Virtual Weapons are Turning Teen Gamers into Serious Gamblers  – I’ve been an avid gamer my entire life, I’ve worked in the industry for 16 years now, and yet even I had no idea this was going on.This is a fascinating article about the billions — yes, billions — of dollars being waged in the form of rare weapon “skins” (rare, fancy paint jobs for in-game weaponry) during matches of the game CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive). This article will blow your mind.

Post Image by Angela N., used under Creative Commons.

The post Friday Links #17 – Joining the Athenaeum appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Is Your Antagonist One of the Good Guys?

If you study enough books on storycraft and frequently read author interviews, you’ll undoubtedly start to notice the content, like trade magazines, always returns to the same few pieces of writerly advice. After all, there’s only so many tips and tricks and best-practices to share. Still, the teachings often fail to penetrate my case-hardened skull until I see those same lessons taught in unexpected places, outside of the context in which they are expected. I recently encountered two unexpected lessons that can help with crafting a proper antagonist.

Lets Talk About Villains

The antagonist in my novel, Alessio, is a 19th century jilted art dealer from Malta. His morality has always been, shall we say, flexible when it came to his livelihood. But what he’s plotting by story’s end is downright evil. How does an ordinary person make the leap to evil without becoming a caricature?

Writers and editors alike will tell you that in order for your story’s antagonist to really matter to the reader, he has to believe what he’s doing is right, that it’s good and proper. No matter how heinous his crime, a bad guy never sees himself as a bad guy. He must not only be at-peace with his actions internally, but must believe them to be a justified course of action. Expert storytellers can do this so well we might even catch ourselves feeling a little sorry for the villain.

Awkwardddd…

Everybody Believes They’re the Good Guy

We see a lot of villainous behavior on television. Unfortunately, some of the most terrifying acts aren’t broadcast on HBO, but on CNN. It’s tempting to just label these perpetrators as villains or bad guys or terrorists, but the lesson from storytelling holds true. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Those of you on social media may have seen this video already, but it’s worth watching again. If you’re capable of setting the politics aside for a moment you’ll see that Amaryllis Fox, a former CIA agent, has a lesson for us novelists. Listen closely and you’ll see that her advice about terrorists and enemies-of-state isn’t about defending borders and going after the bad guys, but about understanding why they do the things they do. She and her fellow CIA agents do their job best when they take the time to understand the motives of those they are fighting. Note that she’s not making excuses for the behavior of killers or condoning their behavior — and neither should the protagonists in our stories. There’s a difference between excusing the behavior of a sociopath and understanding that, to them, their actions are as noble as they are required.

As a reader, the stories I enjoyed the most are those in which the author has taken the time to understand their antagonist’s motives and write him accordingly. He can’t be a walking cliche. The antagonist has honest reasons that make sense to him, even if they seem illogical and evil to everyone else. It’s worth repeating: they must at least make perfect sense to him. And, more important yet, they must help him make his point and achieve his goal. Evil for the sake of evil is just chaos. And that accomplishes nothing. I have a sticky note on the wall next to my desk, a note I scribbled from my studies that simply says: “The bad guy must make a point!”

What is the point your antagonist is making?

A Lesson from Bioshock Infinite

I was paging through some of the strategy guides I wrote as I was setting up my office not long ago and discovered that a number of quotes from the developers of Bioshock Infinite were sprinkled throughout the guidebook I wrote for that game. By chance, I happened to stumble upon this quote from Drew Holmes, the lead writer at the now-defunct studio, Irrational Games.

When creating complex and interesting villains, it’s important to try to view them as human beings with real motivation and goals. Comstock isn’t just the mustaches twirling bad guy — his actions are motivated by his background and his view on the world. Yes, they are warped and twisted, but in his mind his actions are justified. Few people view themselves as evil.

That’s a great visual. We’re not writing for silent films. We don’t have to rely on caricatures — the mustache-twirling bad guy — to ensure the reader knows our antagonist is up to no good. And we also have a hundred thousand words at our disposal. Why not use them to add depth and meaning to his actions?

I know full well why Alessio is taking the actions he has planned. And I know that he believes he has no other choice. It all makes perfect sense to him, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to commit the act he’s intending. The challenge is not only making these actions understandable to the reader (without being obvious), but to make sure that he’s not only making a point, but providing a counter to my protagonist. The goal of the antagonist is to force the protagonist to confront that which runs opposite to his nature.

Summer Plans

I’ve had to put the blog on the back-burner for the past few weeks and am going to do so for the remainder of the summer, dropping my posting schedule to just once every few weeks. I’m temporarily working full-time on two video game strategy guides which I need to have done by the end of July. Between working on the guides and trying to get outside and enjoy the great weather we’ve been having, I just don’t have a lot of time to devote to the blog. I’ll be back to posting weekly later this summer.

Speaking of the outdoors, however, my wife and I enjoyed a wonderfully challenging overnight hiking trip in the central Cascades two weeks ago, which you can read about on my travel blog, here. Lots of photos included.

Also, despite everything I just said above, I do have a teaser post coming up about my work in progress. I’ll be spending part of July prepping for the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference and look forward to sharing my log line, a relevant quote I find applicable, and perhaps even my three-sentence “elevator pitch”. If you plan on attending the PNWA Conference, be sure to let me know.

Till then, enjoy your week. And if you happen to be in Vancouver, BC and want to meet up in July, drop me a line. I’ll be in town for up to two weeks next month.

Post Image by Arden, used under Creative Commons.

The post Is Your Antagonist One of the Good Guys? appeared first on Doug Walsh.

5 Easy Steps to Prepare for Your New Computer Install

Once upon a time, life was easy. We owned things. Music. Movies. Video games. They were all things bought in actual, physical stores and taken home and placed on actual, physical shelves. Even software was something you could hold in your hands. It arrived on disks of various shapes and sizes and it was yours forever and ever, so long as you had the serial key. When it was time to buy a new computer, you simply inserted disk #1 and double-clicked the setup.exe file and installed your software just as you had before. It was no more difficult than inserting a well-worn copy of Forest Gump into a VCR and pressing play.

But things are different today. We purchase software directly from the developer. Instead of a box of disks, we receive an email with a link. The serial key is included in the email, safe and sound for now. The installation file is in your Downloads folder, safe and sound for now. And the installation goes well and the experience is efficient. And we are happy.

Then the years pass and our trusty, reliable computer comes due for an upgrade. We agonize briefly over specs and make a fleeting attempt to finally understand the difference between dual-core this and quad-core that. But we don’t really care. We make our purchase and feel no excitement, only dread. For we know what comes next.

I recently replaced not one, but two computers. Both were holdovers from 2009 that I placed in storage in early 2014 and no longer met the minimum technical requirements for my job as a writer of video game strategy guides (I work on my fiction with the cracked, pint-sized ultrabook I took around the world). And as I tracked down serial keys from accounts linked to email addresses I no longer used (not fun!) and worked to get all of the software I use installed on the first of my new computers, I realized there was a way to make this all much easier. And I was right! When time came to purchase a new laptop last week in preparation for an upcoming two-week business trip to Vancouver, I not only had it completely set up within two hours, but the process was effortless.

Whether or not you’re in the market for a new computer doesn’t matter. Organizing your software and files is just a good habit to get into. Here are some tips… but first some caveats.

1) I’m a Windows user. I’m sure it’s not a whole lot different for you Mac users, but I don’t know what the equivalent of the Downloads folder is called on Macs.

2) I know there are programs out there that allow you to essentially clone one computer onto a new one. I don’t like that approach. When I have a new computer, the last thing I want to do is inject it with all of the clutter, nervous ticks, and insecurities my old one had developed over the years. I prefer to start with a clean slate and install only what is necessary.

1) Sort and Rename Your Downloads

The first thing you should do is crack open your Downloads folder and take some time to root through it and place all of your software downloads into their own sub-folder (this is also a good time to delete most of the images and random PDFs that you don’t actually need to save). Call it something snappy like “Software Downloads” and then right-click-rename those individual files something simpler, such as the program’s name and the version number.

Some software, particularly Adobe products, will have two download files per program, with differing extensions. One acts as an unlocking key. You can’t install the program without both files so sort your files by date and look at the time stamp of your downloaded file if you’re unsure. Make sure you drag both files into your new Software Downloads folder if they are from the same company and downloaded within minutes of one another.

2) Collecting the Serial Keys

This part might take some time if you didn’t plan ahead. You’re going to need those serial keys to reinstall many of your programs. Go through your email receipts and try to locate the purchase email for each and every program you have in your Software Downloads folder. Make sure they have the serial key in the email. If you’re using Gmail or another web-based email service, create a folder in your inbox for “Software Receipts” and drag them all into that folder. If you’re using something like Outlook, then go ahead and save those individual emails to your Software Downloads folder where the programs are. Or, if you prefer, just create a spreadsheet with the program’s name in one column and the serial key in another. Copy an paste it in to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. Now save that spreadsheet to your Software Downloads folder. You don’t have to have everything in one place, but it does make it easier.

If you don’t have the purchase email for a program you use, log onto the company’s website and go through your orders to try and track down your purchase history. Some companies, like Microsoft and Adobe, make this very easy and not only have your purchase history but also have links and serial numbers for you to access should you need to re-download older software. Others, like ACDSee, a photo-management tool I use, only allow you a certain number of months to download the software, after which time they will try to get you to buy the newer version. This is why it’s important to save those downloaded programs — you never know when the company is going to deactivate the download link. Fortunately, and to their credit, I sent ACDSee a polite email explaining my situation and asked them to temporarily reactivate my download link for ACDSee Pro 9, which they did.

Remember, in today’s world, we own nothing. We merely rent for as long as we can figure out a way to keep a company from taking things back from us.

3) Clouds and Thumb-Drives

Since you never know exactly when your computer might need to be replaced — and whether or not your existing one will be working when that times comes — you should now copy everything in this Software Downloads folder onto a USB drive and duplicate it to Dropbox or whicever cloud-storage program you prefer. You may even have the Dropbox install files in that Software Downloads folder. That’s good! It will be faster to install from the USB drive when setting up your new computer (as opposed to waiting for everything to sync from a fresh Dropbox install) but having everything in the cloud also guards you against losing that USB drive and it can come in handy should you ever need to reinstall a program on a laptop while the USB drive is sleeping soundly back home in your sock drawer.

4) Sync Your Windows and Chrome Settings

Your mileage may vary, but if you’re using Windows 10 and Google Chrome for your browser, then make sure you are logged in to both Microsoft’s platform and Google’s so that you can sync your settings. If you’re an Android user then you likely already know how wonderful it is to have all of your Google content and Chrome settings automatically sync’d between your phone and computer, but I had no idea Microsoft was now making this possible with operating system settings.

I set up my new laptop the other day and logged into Microsoft through the sign-in screen on Windows 10. The computer asked me to wait for a moment while it did something. I looked away, back to my desktop PC to busy myself with some reading. When I turned back, I saw that my just-out-of-the-box laptop not only had the same wallpaper as my desktop, but it had configured the Task Bar and icons just how I like it (auto-hidden on the right-hand edge of the screen which is not typical).

5) Prioritize Your Installs

Congratulations on your new computer purchase, now you get the fun of getting it set up just the way you’re used to. And if you followed the tips above, this is going to take hours less than you might think. Nevertheless, there’s still a method to the madness. Here’s a list of all of the programs that I just installed on my new computers, in the order I installed them, with some notes.

Google Chrome: My first step was to sync my browser with my Google account.

Dropbox: I wanted all of my Dropbox files downloading to my new laptop while I was busy installing everything else. PS: Copy your oft-used files to Dropbox, everything else to a thumb-drive.

Spotify: Might as well have some tunes playing while you work.

Microsoft Office: I purchased an Office 365 subscription earlier this year which includes installs on up to 5 computers.

Photoshop Elements: So long as you have your Adobe ID login credentials, you’ll have access to your old Adobe software.

Adobe Acrobat: My old copy of Acrobat X still does everything I need it to and can be re-downloaded at will with my Adobe ID.

Scrivener: Might need to wait for Dropbox to finish syncing in order to use it, but it had to be installed.

ACDSee: Make sure to save any program files you download as ACDSee deactivates the download link after several months.

GeForce Experience: Make sure your Geforce drivers are up to date, if applicable.

Steam: For the games, silly.

ElGato HD Capture: For capturing video game footage.

Garmin Express: For syncing my GPS devices with Strava.

ExtractNow: Not everybody uses .zip files and ExtractNow is free and can open anything.

FileZilla: My publisher has moved away from FTP (in favor of Box) but it still pays to have a FTP client handy.

Thanks to a little bit of planning ahead, I had my new laptop set up with clean installs of every program I use and all of my files and preferred settings in the time it took for Dropbox to finish syncing. The headache of tracking down serial numbers and re-downloading programs was negated. I merely double-clicked a dozen or so files, copied-and-pasted serial keys into a corresponding number of forms, and then arranged the icons as I like them. Which brings me to…

Miscellaneous Extras

I like a clean desktop experience and prefer to have all of my programs in the Quick Launch portion of the Task Bar. This is a little trickier with Windows 10, as I found out. If you’re upgrading directly from the classic Windows 7 experience to newfangled Windows 10, then here’s a couple of tips you might find useful.

1) Unpin everything from the Start Menu. In fact, go ahead and uninstall most of the junk there. Unless you really want all of those Live Apps running, get rid of them. The only things I like to have pinned to the Start Menu are accessory apps like Snipping Tool, Calculator, Notepad and Sticky Notes. Things I use, but not enough to warrant a place in the Quick Launch.

2) This link will instruct you step-by-step in setting up the Quick Launch on the Task Bar. I don’t want to have to first go to the Start Menu to launch pinned apps. I want them all in miniature on the Quick Launch. Just as I’ve had since Windows 98. That link shows you how.

3) You can’t easily drag-and-drop links to the Quick Launch anymore. Because, errm, change. Well, you can, but it often ends up as a dead shortcut link. Fortunately, you can use the right-click “Send To” function to send any program to the Quick Launch. This article explains how to set this up. It’s a little tricky, but you only have to do it once. And it works perfectly.

The post 5 Easy Steps to Prepare for Your New Computer Install appeared first on Doug Walsh.

The Bicycle Love and Lost Writing Contest

I just entered a writing contest I may or may not be eligible for. I’m not really sure. The grand prize isn’t much — a hundred bucks and a copy of a book I’ll probably buy anyway — but the prompt was really interesting, and I came up with an angle pretty quickly, so I decided to give it a go. Since I’m trying to wrap up work on a strategy guide (with yet another potentially starting in early June) I’m going to cheat for this week’s post and simply share my 500-word entry with you. I don’t think that’s against the rules. I’m not sure if I care.

DOOM

Oh, but before I share my contest entry with you, I wanted to also mention my latest strategy guide. What a treat it was to come back from our two years away and jump right back into video game strategy guide authoring with such an amazing game as the new DOOM (book link here). Unfortunately, I only got to write the multiplayer portion of the guide — we were under an unusually tight deadline and two other authors handled the single player campaign — but if you’re going to be playing this game, then you really want to pick up the book. The level design for the single player campaign (which I’m playing through now on my shiny new PC) is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Honestly. I’ve been gaming since the days of the Atari 2600 and the level design in DOOM is brilliant. It’s the perfect blend of old-school, high-speed action with Metroid-like spelunking and an upgrade system popular in modern-era games. And it looks positively fantastic. It’s rare that I buy and play a game I already wrote the strategy guide for (Gears of War aside) but I’m squeezing in an hour or two of DOOM every night since it released last Friday. I can’t get enough.

On to the contest…

Bicycles I Have Loved and/or Lost

Rules: In honor of National Bike Month, tell us about a bicycle that has meant a lot to you in your life. Whether it is the first one you learned to ride on, the one you took across country, or the one that was stolen and you still cannot get over — all bikers have a memorable story on two wheels. Submissions must be less than 500 words and received by May 30th, 2016.

My entry is below. If you’d like to enter the contest as well, you can do so by clicking here.

CONTEST ENTRY

I held the seaman’s rope in one hand and steadied my bicycle with the other. The deck of the Hatsu Crystal loomed eighty feet above. The gap between the dock and the container ship meant a surefire swim should my knot come undone. Panic washed over me. I looked skyward, tried to yell, but my embarrassment clogged my throat. I sheepishly waved the Filipino crewman down to the dock. Best to leave the knot-tying to the sailors.

The man smiled at me, took the dangling end of the rope, and in a flash of twists and folds and tucks, had it secured to the top tube of my bike. My precious bike laid on its side, leashed while the knot-tying savant sprinted the gangway, skipping stairs as he went. The bike looked sick. And scared. Unable to move on its own accord, but tethered for its own protection, like a dog about to be put to sleep.

Movement. The rope came taught and the bike slowly rose onto its wheels, as if by magic.

Liftoff.

I watched as she took flight, being jerked by a pair of crewmen high above. It was there, standing in a harbor in Greece, bound for Malaysia, when I realized how much I loved that green beast of burden. We had come so far together. I owed my life’s greatest adventure to the strength of her steel, the comfort of her leather, the grip of her rubber.

Twenty feet above sea level.

Through blistering cold, hail, snow, and too much wind, she carried me across the northern United States and Canada. Through swarms of gnats and visible humidity, she rolled along the hills of those old Appalachians. If my constant cascade of sweat bothered her, she kept it to herself.

Forty feet above sea level.

I leaned her against a castle in Scotland and pedaled her across London Bridge and along the shores of Normandy. I parked her outside countless convenience stores, in too many hotel closets, and in the shade of too few cathedrals and museums.

Sixty feet above sea level.

I gave her a new drivetrain before leaving for Europe. For my birthday, in Paris, I gave her new tires and a thorough bath. I padded the rails of her luggage racks with plastic tubing in Morocco. For thirteen thousand miles, she never wavered. Sure, she broke a spoke when I got a little too rough with her. And she flatted more than a few times on the glass-strewn streets of Turkey, but her abilities were never in doubt. She was as reliable a bike as any ever built. And not just a prized possession, but a partner. A part of who I am.

I watched her disappear over the railing of the deck, into the arms of strangers. It was only then that I realized I had been holding my breath. My racing heart slowed as I let out a lengthy sigh.

We were safe.

The post The Bicycle Love and Lost Writing Contest appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Friday Links #16

My new computer arrives today which is both wonderful and frustrating. I’ve wanted to get a gaming PC from Falcon Northwest for over fifteen years and today, finally, one arrives. I didn’t opt for the custom auto-quality paint job that matches our Juke’s red and pearl color scheme (a $400 upgrade that will have to wait until next time), nor did I go for the massive, full tower Mach V, but the mid-size Talon instead. Nevertheless, the components I selected put the machine near the top of the technological arms race, at least in the ~$2500 price range. It will likely be outdated within four months*. And so it goes…

My current desktop PC is an aging behemoth Alienware Aurora, a machine that gave me over 6 good years (two of them in storage) without problem until recently. I had upgraded the graphics card along the way but that was it. I took it from Windows XP to Windows 7 and then, against the recommendation from a friend who worked at Microsoft, I upgraded it again to Windows 10. I pushed it too hard and the whole thing blew. Windows 10 was too demanding for my old beast of burden and I had to put her down. Every day was a fight.

This post will likely be the last task I perform on it.

I won’t be sad to see it go, not anymore. I came home from a day of mushroom hunting on Wednesday (found six morels… we were a little early in the season) to find the machine failing to boot up. When it finally did, the screen was covered in an array of pink lines. They shifted to green, then back to pink. It’s not supposed to do that. That it didn’t do this in Safe Mode led me to conclude it was the video card. So yesterday I replaced the GTX 660 Ti that was still letting me play most new games at high, if not max settings, with a fifty-buck GT class video card that would not at all be suitable for my work in video games.

But the problem was solved. And cheaply too. Until a rock kicked up on the highway and cracked the windshield of our new car during my drive home from Best Buy. The deductible for a new windshield is, yep, another $50. The damn thing couldn’t just wait a couple days to keel over? Murphy’s Law and all of that…

So today I will sit here in my house on an 85-degree, sunny day, waiting on the UPS guy to bring my new PC and then I will slowly get everything I need downloaded and installed and transferred and configured. And then I will play DOOM on ultra-high settings. And I will revel in it.

The new PC isn’t the only thing arriving today. My contributor’s copies for the DOOM Official Strategy Guide should arrive today as well. Myself and two other authors tackled the strategy guide for DOOM back in March, with me handling the multiplayer component of the book. I sneaked in a few hours with the single player mode and cannot wait to play the rest. It’s the perfect blend of old-school frenetic action and modern day conveniences and features that eliminate most of the frustration that was inherent during the 90s. Fans of Doom and Doom 2 will not be disappointed. You can see an overly violent and gory trailer for the game here.

Yes, writing books detailing how to master games like this is what I do for a living.

*Or sooner. There was no way I was going to add an additional thousand dollars to the price tag for a Geforce Titan graphics card, but I was pretty happy to opt for the GTX 980 Ti, a huge improvement over my current graphics card, and essentially the next-best thing to a Titan for those who aren’t independently wealthy. Nvidia unveiled their new 1000-series cards earlier this week. Figures.

Bookish Links

25 Books Guaranteed to Make You a Better Writer – I’ll be honest and admit to not having heard of most of these. That said, I can’t recommend Zinsser’s On Writing Well enough to non-fiction writers. It’s terrifically helpful. That it appears on this list is all the proof I need to take the list seriously. Then again, it does leave out McKee’s Story and Pressfield’s War of Art so maybe it’s not that great after all. It’s also one of those annoying slideshow posts, so consider yourself warned.
Business Musings: Getting in Touch – Kristine Kathryn Rusch tells an instructive story about the need to be accessible. Authors, new and veteran, may not only be costing themselves business by playing too-hard-to-reach, but frustrating those who aim to help them. I read this a few weeks ago and immediately realized I had forgotten to put a Contact form on my website.
5 Things Better Call Saul Can Teach Us About Writing – One of the great things about the current age of television is that the quality of the writing has increased dramatically with the popularity of the long-form series. I haven’t seen Better Call Saul yet (it’s on our list) but shows like House of Cards and Breaking Bad allow us writers to “read” and study the craft more quickly by viewing these shows when we just don’t have time or desire to read. This article by Cris Freese shows you what to look for when studying these shows.
Further Thoughts on the Closing of BookTrope – BookTrope, that publishing service that aimed to match designers, authors, editors, and marketers together in perfect harmony, working towards a profitable future, has closed. Jennifer Lesher, a BookTrope author, offers some measured thoughts on the matter.
What is Contemporary Fiction? – Depending on who you talk to, you might here that every book, no matter how experimental, still falls into a genre. But not every story is “genre fiction,” meaning it doesn’t neatly fall into one of those categories such as Thriller, Romance, Mystery, Western, etc. This is why terms like “Contemporary Fiction” and “Mainstream Fiction” are so popular, replacing the catch-all label of “Fiction”. This article on the Daily Kos helps explain the differences.

Bonus Link!

Runner’s High: Athletes Who Use Marijuana to Improve Training  – This article from The Guardian discusses the performance benefits of marijuana in ultra running with quotes from Chris barnicle, the self-proclaimed “World’s Fastest Stoner”. Athletes and scientists are suggesting that marijuana can reduce pain, fatigue, and anxiety during long runs. As a resident of a state where marijuana is legal, this article does have me tempted to pick up some edibles for our upcoming fast-packing adventures. If it can help with the knee pain hikers/runners experience on long-distance trail runs, then I might just have to give it a try.

Post Image by Eric Kilby, used under Creative Commons.

The post Friday Links #16 appeared first on Doug Walsh.

Strava and the Mountain Bikers Who (ab)Use It

Mountain biking was one of the things I missed most while we were traveling. And a new full-suspension bike was among the first items I purchased upon our return home, right after a car, mattress, and table and chairs. Like most activities that people feel passionate about, the mountain biking community has had its fair share of conflicts over the years. Riders would butt heads about the merits of pedaling up hills versus shuttling; flame wars have raged for a decade over the ideal wheel size; and old-school curmudgeons continue to rail against everything from trail design to dropper seat posts and one-by drivetrains. These petty arguments could easily be ignored by simply logging off and going for a ride. But there’s a new controversy surrounding my favorite sport and one that, if you believe the rare headline, threatens to eliminate the thing we care most about. It’s called Strava.

What is Strava?

Strava is an online website and app that allows runners and cyclists to share the GPS data from their activities with a community of users. Your workout data gets uploaded to an activity feed, not unlike Facebook’s news feed, and your Strava followers can see what you did, give you Kudos, and comment on your route. Premium members gain access to a host of additional features that help you track your progress over time. Users can compare their performance on various segments against all other users (and past performances) to see how they stack up. Those with the fastest times on a particular segment earn a “King of the Mountain” badge. Users are also awarded medals for having one of their personal fastest times on a segment or a trophy for being in the top ten of all users on a particular segment.

In essence, Strava is one part social media, one part workout diary, and one part pissing contest. An example.

I’ve used various online exercise tracking websites for over fifteen years and though Strava isn’t perfect (for example, it doesn’t differentiate between running roads versus trails, nor does it separate road cycling from mountain biking), it is currently the app-of-choice, if for no other reason than because it’s the one your friends all use. Its also gaining popularity among city planners for use in helping plan future bicycle lanes and paths for commuters.

I resisted using Strava until this year because I didn’t know any mountain bikers who used it. Now, after being gone for two years, it seems the majority of my friends use it. And I enjoy it. I like being able to see the routes some of the epic-minded cyclists I know put together (premium users can download the GPX data from one another), and I like that Strava is not only tracking my mileage and time running and cycling, but also tracking the mileage I accumulate on my individual pieces of gear. And yes, I also like seeing where I rank against other area mountain bikers.

Strava and the Secret Trail

It’s become all-too common to hear the holdouts bemoaning Strava on group rides these days. Some people just don’t believe in tracking your exercise, others are concerned that the group dynamic of a social ride will be threatened by someone trying for a faster time (as if people never before rode as fast as they could downhill anyway). Others just like to complain about things they don’t understand. Like anything, it comes down to the individual user and their focus that day. Some people want to always push themselves to go faster. Others just want to get outside and sweat a little.

Complaints about Strava within the mountain biking community have always been based on one’s own personal opinion or out of an unrealized fear of Strava being used against us in effort to eliminate trail access.

Unfortunately, people’s worst fears are starting to come true.

For starters, not all of the trails we build and ride are 100% legal. Many lie in a gray area when it comes to land management; some are on private property; and yet others are legal trails but closed to mountain bikers. People poach. All user groups do it: hikers, equestrians, motos, and mountain bikers. It’s not right, but it happens. It used to happen in relative silence. That was, until Strava.

Nowadays, in the age of over-sharing, land managers and officials can log onto Strava and study the heat maps to see exactly where mountain bikers are riding. Not only can they see which trails are being poached, but they can even see where trails are that they weren’t aware of. Rumors fly far and wide on this subject. I’ve heard mountain bikers say that Strava’ing user-built trails (the preferred euphemism for unofficial trails) helps demonstrate need for more trails to land managers and is therefore spun to be considered a good thing. I’ve heard others say that they were warned that a trail builder would break their legs if they Strava’d a secret trail. I’ve even heard of land managers threatening to issue a fine to cyclists whose Strava upload showed that they poached a hiker-only trail.

Rumors, all of them. But all with a scosh of believability. A part of me even wants to believe all three.

Speed Kills Trail Access

Land managers aren’t stupid: they generally seem to know where so-called secret trails are located. They know when mountain bikers are riding hiker-only trails. The tracks don’t lie. It’s also true that several of the official trails we have here close to my home were, at one-time, user-built trails that got so heavily used, they became official through popularity. Fortunately for those of us who care about growing the sport and gaining access to more of our amazing public lands, the number of people who poach trails are few. We all have our list of trails that we wish were open to mountain bikes, but most of us opt to grind our teeth in frustration instead of breaking the law. Mountain bikers have by and large learned over the past thirty years how to navigate the proper channels and how to work with the recreation system. New trails and partnerships are being announced all the time, particularly here in Washington.

“Strava opened the eyes of those blind to a reality

they should have long ago understood.”

While Strava may not live up to the naysayer’s worst fears in terms of revealing trails, it has recently done too good of a job of showing public officials and land managers how fast those trails are ridden.

In California, mountain bikers are fighting back efforts to close a trail system to mountain bikes after public officials saw the speeds being registered on Strava. Mountain bikers were hitting top-speeds in excess of 30 miles per hour on a multi-use trail. And hikers, equestrians, and land managers predictably freaked out.

This wasn’t Strava’s fault. Sure, Strava may have been the tool that provided the evidence of the speeds these trails were being ridden (Garmin Connect or another app could have been used just the same), but for as long as there have been mountain bikes, there have been people racing them downhill. You only need look back at the Clunker days in Marin County to know that. No, Strava isn’t the cause of people going fast. If Strava is guilty of anything, it’s of no longer allowing land managers to claim ignorance with regards to how trails are ridden. Strava opened the eyes of those blind to a reality they should have long ago understood. But if cyclists colliding with hikers and equestrians wasn’t a problem before the Strava data was made apparent, it shouldn’t be afterwards.

So they banned bikes on those trails out of concerns to the safety to hikers and other users. And mountain bikers are upset. Rightfully so. But aiming that anger at Strava and its users is just scapegoating. For every rider who Strava’d their high-speed descent of that trail, there were sure to be countless others who rode it just as fast who didn’t. Some got caught, others didn’t. Of course, the mountain biking community chooses to look at the Strava users as being the sole problem. When, in reality, I doubt it ever occurred to any of those riders that they were doing something that was either 1) a secret, or 2) prohibited.

The officials who voted to close those trails to bikes could have, at any time, have gone for a hike and seen mountain bikers descending trail at speed. They would have seen the reality of our sport. Yes, some of us ride fast. Perhaps too fast for some situations — and perhaps that should be discussed. But we’ve done it long before Strava came along, and we’d continue doing it if Strava deleted its leaderboards tomorrow.

Yes, it’s true that Strava has made it easier for land managers and those user groups against us (hikers, primarily) to exaggerate the threat we pose. But in addition to traveling at a speed perceived by some to be “too fast” those land managers should have asked to see the incident reports from crashes and injuries involving hikers and cyclists. If there weren’t any, if their fears were all just hypothetical, then the trails should have remained open.

Hopefully, in the future, land managers can base their decisions on more than the fear of what may happen and instead turn to the history of incidents, if such exists. Similarly, mountain bikers need to own up to the fact that we all descend fast enough to give non-bikers pause. The technology exists for land managers and public officials to know our speeds and where we ride (radar guns are now being used in Marin County, CA). Maybe we don’t need to make it easy for them by using apps like Strava. Maybe people should be responsible and mark their data as private (or not upload it at all) if they’re riding in a sensitive/secret/unofficial area.

Or maybe Strava should only record our efforts on uphills? Then it’d not only eliminate the over-sharing of downhill speeds, but maybe encourage shuttlers to pedal up hills.

Nah, that’s just silly talk. Every bit as silly as thinking cyclists and runners only go fast because of online leaderboards.

Post Image by Zach Dischner, used under Creative Commons.

The post Strava and the Mountain Bikers Who (ab)Use It appeared first on Doug Walsh.