cogito ergo myerman

Just a few Medal of Honor Citations. Take a Moment. Happy Memorial Day.

Mon, 30 May 2011 08:44:00 -0700

PAUL L. BOLDEN

Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company 1, 120th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division.
Place and date: Petit-Coo, Belgium, 23 December 1944.
Entered service at: Madison, Alabama.
Born: Hobbes Island, Iowa.
G.O. No.: 73, 30 August 1945.

He voluntarily attacked a formidable enemy strong point in Petit-Coo, Belgium, on 23 December, 1944, when his company was pinned down by extremely heavy automatic and small-arms fire coming from a house 200 yards to the front.

Mortar and tank artillery shells pounded the unit, when S/Sgt. Bolden and a comrade, on their own initiative, moved forward into a hail of bullets to eliminate the ever-increasing fire from the German position. Crawling ahead to close with what they knew was a powerfully armed, vastly superior force, the pair reached the house and took up assault positions, S/Sgt. Bolden under a window, his comrade across the street where he could deliver covering fire.

In rapid succession, S/Sgt. Bolden hurled a fragmentation grenade and a white phosphorous grenade into the building; and then, fully realizing that he faced tremendous odds, rushed to the door, threw it open and fired into 35 SS troopers who were trying to reorganize themselves after the havoc wrought by the grenades. Twenty Germans died under fire of his submachinegun before he was struck in the shoulder, chest, and stomach by part of a burst which killed his comrade across the street. He withdrew from the house, waiting for the surviving Germans to come out and surrender.

When none appeared in the doorway, he summoned his ebbing strength, overcame the extreme pain he suffered and boldly walked back into the house, firing as he went. He had killed the remaining 15 enemy soldiers when his ammunition ran out.

S/Sgt. Bolden's heroic advance against great odds, his fearless assault, and his magnificent display of courage in reentering the building where he had been severely wounded cleared the path for his company and insured the success of its mission.

ARCHER T. GAMMON (posthumous)

Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company A, 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, 6th Armored Division.
Place and date: Near Bastogne, Belgium, 11 January 1945.
Entered service at: Roanoke, Virginia.
Born: 11 September 1918, Chatham, Virginia.
G.O. No.: 18, 13 February 1946.

He charged 30 yards through hip-deep snow to knock out a machinegun and its 3-man crew with grenades, saving his platoon from being decimated and allowing it to continue its advance from an open field into some nearby woods. The platoon's advance through the woods had only begun when a machinegun supported by riflemen opened fire and a Tiger Royal tank sent 88mm. shells screaming at the unit from the left flank. S/Sgt. Gammon, disregarding all thoughts of personal safety, rushed forward, then cut to the left, crossing the width of the platoon's skirmish line in an attempt to get within grenade range of the tank and its protecting foot troops. Intense fire was concentrated on him by riflemen and the machinegun emplaced near the tank. He charged the automatic weapon, wiped out its crew of four with grenades, and, with supreme daring, advanced to within 25 yards of the armored vehicle, killing two hostile infantrymen with rifle fire as he moved forward. The tank had started to withdraw, backing a short distance, then firing, backing some more, and then stopping to blast out another round, when the man whose single-handed relentless attack had put the ponderous machine on the defensive was struck and instantly killed by a direct hit from the Tiger Royal's heavy gun. By his intrepidity and extreme devotion to the task of driving the enemy back no matter what the odds, S/Sgt. Gammon cleared the woods of German forces, for the tank continued to withdraw, leaving open the path for the gallant squad leader's platoon.

BURRIS, TONY K. (posthumous)

Rank and organization: Sergeant First Class, U.S. Army, Company L, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division.
Place and date: vicinity of Mundung-ni, Korea 8 and 9 October 1951.
Entered service at: Blanchard, Okla.
Birth: Blanchard, Okla.
G.O.No.: 84, 5 September 1952.

Sfc. Burris, a member of Company L, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty. On 8 October, when his company encountered intense fire from an entrenched hostile force, Sfc. Burris charged forward alone, throwing grenades into the position and destroying approximately 15 of the enemy. On the following day, spearheading a renewed assault on enemy positions on the next ridge, he was wounded by machine gun fire but continued the assault, reaching the crest of the ridge ahead of his unit and sustaining a second wound. Calling for a 57mm. recoilless rifle team, he deliberately exposed himself to draw hostile fire and reveal the enemy position. The enemy machine gun emplacement was destroyed. The company then moved forward and prepared to assault other positions on the ridge line. Sfc. Burris, refusing evacuation and submitting only to emergency treatment, joined the unit in its renewed attack but fire from hostile emplacement halted the advance. Sfc. Burris rose to his feet, charged forward and destroyed the first emplacement with its heavy machine gun and crew of 6 men. Moving out to the next emplacement, and throwing his last grenade which destroyed this position, he fell mortally wounded by enemy fire. Inspired by his consummate gallantry, his comrades renewed a spirited assault which overran enemy positions and secured Hill 605, a strategic position in the battle for "Heartbreak Ridge," Sfc. Burris' indomitable fighting spirit, outstanding heroism, and gallant self-sacrifice reflect the highest glory upon himself, the infantry and the U.S. Army.

BELLRICHARD, LESLIE ALLEN (posthumous)

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company C, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry
Place and date: Kontum Province, Republic of Vietnam, 20 May 1967
Entered service at: Oakland, California
Born: 4 December 1941, Janesville, Wisconsin

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Acting as a fire team leader with Company C, during combat operations Pfc. Bellrichard was with 4 fellow soldiers maning a foxhole on their unit's perimeter when the position came under a massive enemy attack. Following a 30-minute mortar barrage, the enemy launched a strong ground assault. Pfc. Bellrichard rose in face of a group of charging enemy soldiers and threw hand grenades into their midst, eliminating several of the foe and forcing the remainder to withdraw. Failing in their initial attack, the enemy repeated the mortar and rocket bombardment of the friendly perimeter, then once again charged against the defenders in a concerted effort to overrun the position. Pfc. Bellrichard resumed throwing hand grenades at the onrushing attackers. As he was about to hurl a grenade, a mortar round exploded just in front of his position, knocking him into the foxhole and causing him to lose his grip on the already armed grenade. Recovering instantly, Pfc. Bellrichard recognized the threat to the lives of his 4 comrades and threw himself upon the grenade, shielding his companions from the blast that followed. Although severely wounded. Pfc. Bellrichard struggled into an upright position in the foxhole and fired his rifle at the enemy until he succumbed to his wounds. His selfless heroism contributed greatly to the successful defense of the position, and he was directly responsible for saving the lives of several of his comrades. His acts are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Outcast, my Dystopian SF Novel, available on Kindle

Tue, 10 May 2011 09:56:00 -0700

(If you want to skip the author's preface and even the first chapter and go straight to purchasing and downloading, click on this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X6LY0C)

AUTHOR'S BLIBBER BLABBER

As many of you know, I've been a nonfiction/technical writer for about 20 years. Over the course of those two decades, I've collected various snippets of dialogue, story ideas, and character sketches, hoping that one day I'd actually be able to pull it all together into a story. As most anyone who has tried to write fiction will tell you, you can get quite a bit of varying mileage out of a single snippet of an idea, but without a story, you're going to peter out in about 20-30 pages.

Well, ever since grad school (where I spent a lot of time reading medieval romances and icelandic sagas and the like) I had this story idea that involved a person being cast out of their society for some ridiculous crime they committed. The idea spun around a simple plot structure that involved the character really learning about himself and his society while he was out on the fringes of it, and then returning home once again.

I certainly didn't want to just retread an old Icelandic saga (how many times have you heard that?) so I filed the idea away for, oh, a dozen years. Then in the mid-2000s I started to watch the rise of social media (blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, and later Twitter and god knows what else) with great interest. I started to think about my outcast idea again, this time wondering how that would work in a world where we are all increasingly connected to each other in so many ways.

I still didn't have much, because the world I imagined was missing something important, a certain political frisson that would just agitate the holy living hell out of me, something that would piss me off to no end. Enter the Tea Party in 2009, and I had all the pieces: a future dystopian world that is ultra hyper-capitalistic; where everyone is attached to social media (I call it the Sosh in my story) 24/7 via some kind of implant; and in fact, where everyone makes their living from making friends and sharing information with each other on that network. Earn enough points from likes and retweets, and you can go buy things with those points.

Next, I just needed a catalyst, and NaNoWriMo in November 2010 proved to be that catalyst. For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. You write a 50,000 word novel in one month, which comes out to an average of 1,666 words per day. For someone who naturally writes fast, this amounts to about 2 hours of writing a day. Some days I would crank out 3,000 words, but never less than 1500--it's easy to fall behind.

In any case, I blasted out the first draft of Outcast during NaNoWriMo and then put it away for a month because I knew the story had a huge gaping plot problem in it. I had to think pretty hard about it, but one day in January the solution came to me, and I revised furiously until I had a much better, tighter 2nd draft. From there, it went into about 20 rounds of edits with various people, then further alpha reviews, and finally, I sent it to about a dozen friends who gave me feedback on the story and characters.

That last round allowed me to tighten up quite a few things in the setting and character motivation arenas, and in late April, I created a cover and submitted the novel to Amazon Kindle. Here's a link if you're interested in downloading it for $2.99.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X6LY0C

...and here's the novel's opening chapter....enjoy.

OUTCAST: Chapter 1

The teachers always said, “You’re too clever for your own good” — and today was the day I’d prove them right. It started like any other day: wake up, brush my teeth, earn 2 points. Have a healthy breakfast of oatmeal and raisins, earn 5 points from my doctor. Get hassled by my dad because my last English test score was too low, lose 2 points. Earn 2 sympathy points from friends because dad was hassling me so much.

Go to school, help a girl with her math, she and her friends give me 5 points. In gym, play soccer badly, allow 2 goals to be scored against me, lose 10 points thanks to ticked-off team mates. That’s life on the Sosh, of course, the daily accumulation of points, but I had other things on my mind besides the mechanics of social interaction in 2036.

Nope, I’d figured out a secret, a way to hack the little implant in my head that connected me to the Sosh and everyone I knew. Last night I’d figured out, after weeks of painfully detailed hacking, how to access a hidden back door in the implant’s firmware, and with it I had access to a whole bunch of commands.

That’s what I was thinking about out on that soccer field, how 2 or maybe 3 of those commands could be combined in a certain way to allow me to do something nobody else had ever done. Well, at least no one I’d ever met, anyway. And tonight, I was going to put my idea to the test. I was, quite literally, going to become a new person.

Four hours later I was handcuffed and sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for the magistrate to arrive so I could be convicted of identity forgery.

The beefy cop who had just collared me had his knee in my back. While he nattered on with his fellow cops about their stock options and the promotions that were coming up soon in Security Division, I looked up and my implant told me everything I needed to know about him: how many points he’d earned in his lifetime, how he’d been tagged by people in his social circle, how long he’d been a police officer. I could even see that he had two brothers who were fighting in Pakistan. The information appeared to float around him in luminous letters and figures but were actually displayed on my retina by my Sosh implant.

He noticed me looking and sneered at me. “Kid, I don’t know how you pulled that off, but you’re about to lose everything you’ve worked for. I hope it was worth it.”

The other cops snickered at that, so I put my head down and waited.

“Yeah, this one is a genius,” another cop said. “He had to blast through about five warnings to do what he did. Never heard of anyone doing this.”

“Good thing we caught him now,” the first cop said. “No telling how many points he’d earn and transfer back to his main identity.”

“My kids have to get their points the old fashioned way,” another cop said. “By earning them.”

I wasn’t really listening, though, which is something else that drives my teachers crazy. Instead, I was going back over everything I’d done to hack the Sosh implant. One morning a few months ago I’d woken up to this strange obsession: how exactly did the implants work? No one asked that question anymore. Here we all were with this junk in our heads, but we only had the vaguest idea how it allowed us to check up on each other, consume media in our heads, and broadcast live for up to 8 hours a day.

So I started to tinker. About two weeks ago, I managed to dump out a huge log file. It was so big it nearly made my eyes cross looking at it via the screen reader in my retina, so I did the unthinkable and sent it to a dead tree printer. It took me a few late nights, but I finally figured it all out. Hidden in all that mess were some interesting commands. A back door emerged, and from there, it only took an all-night session and I had root. I could theoretically do the impossible: change my identity.

But theoretical isn’t good enough. Not for me. I had to see if it would work. As in, go out in public with my new identity. In hindsight, not so smart in a town of 5000 people.

I had ducked into a dark alley between two restaurants, thinking I could get some privacy there to do my quick change. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten that at home, as the whole pod is wired to the Sosh. Most of the streets that lead out from the housing pods are also lined with powerful cameras, all of which livecast to the Sosh and are available to anyone curious enough to look, so finding a dark place took a little while.

Since I wasn’t willing to go all the way out to the edge of town and into the forest (and risk detection by doing something so out of character) I decided that the alley would suffice. It certainly looked deserted. There were giant trash bins back there with rotting garbage in them—perhaps the business owners hadn’t paid their city waste bills—but I didn’t care about that, as they gave me a place to hide momentarily.

I didn’t know about the two cameras in the alley. They saw Robert James Tyler, Jr., go into the alley, and some other kid come out. They sensed something had gone wrong and alerted the police, who were on their way even before I started walking up and down the street, checking in to restaurants, posting mini-reviews to the Sosh, and poking people I knew who were seated at dinner.

The next thing I knew, the cops rolled up. I tried to run, but they cornered me under a huge billboard for the Freedom Party that simply said REFUDIATE! They’d read the list of charges and played back the evidence for me, and yes, I was caught dead to rights.

Of course, the entire arrest procedure was being livecast. They’d tagged me on it, which meant all my friends would soon see my arrest, and they would share it with their friends, and so on. By morning I’d be a trending topic in everyone’s streams. News travels fast on the Sosh.

As luck would have it, there was a magistrate eating dinner with his family across the street, so he answered the police summons. He looked plenty ticked off at being bothered. He was a very neat man, with small hands and a small mustache, a style that was in vogue a century ago. From reading his tag cloud I could tell that he was a senior Vice President in the Financial Services Division, that he served as magistrate as a sideline. His record stated 821 convictions, with only 1 person found not guilty.

Several dozen spectators joined us as he approached. They were all sharing notes with each other, and I’m sure at least half of them were livecasting the event, trying to get a piece of the action. Who knew how many points this would earn them? The thing is, you never know, so you livecast. You share. You earn.

The magistrate listened attentively as the police officers read off the charges and shared the footage of the video cameras. After a while, he sighed and then turned to me. “Robert James Tyler, Jr., you are hereby charged with identity forgery, and tampering with your implant for fraudulent purposes. Your crime was detected by two Dexter Industries AV-386 Sosh-aware cameras, which recorded your deeds across all available visual, aural and electromagnetic spectrums.”

He paused for effect. “I find you guilty. You will be fined 5,000 points and serve 1 year hard labor in a correctional facility. You have one week to get your affairs in order. As you are still a minor, a Child Protective Services agent will remand you into custody. You are hereby labeled Outcast. Do you have any questions?”

I was a bit too stunned to talk. I watched as 5000 points were erased from my account, the glowing digits mocking me on my retina. I had worked my entire life so far, 17 years, to get 7500 points, and was on track to break 10,000 and maybe get into a fair to middling university. I now had barely enough points left to apply to a military academy. Then another couple hundred points evaporated from my account, and I realized I was being charged for the magistrate’s time, and the expense incurred by the police in my arrest.

Then I thought, you don’t have enough for an academy, really. They would also charge me for my time in prison. It was a pay-as-you-go system.

I also noticed, as I monitored the livecasts of me sitting there on the ground being found guilty, that my tag cloud had changed quite a bit. Instead of seeing my activities, hobbies, and the badges I’d won, when you looked at me you now only saw a giant tag that read OUTCAST.

“I asked you if you had any questions?”

“Yes, how am I supposed to go to university now? I’m in my final year of high school.”

“Something you should have thought of before,” the magistrate shrugged, then instructed one of the police officers to uncuff me. “Get back home, do a lot of thinking, and prepare for your year as an Outcast.”

One of the police officers took my arm and stood me up, then uncuffed me.

“Troll,” I heard someone snarl. It was one of the onlookers. This was a bit disconcerting, as technically he was incorrect. I wasn’t a troll—in other words, someone who picks a fight or acts like a jerk on the Sosh just to be a jerk. Or because he’s paid to. I had done something else entirely, but I guess now that all fit under the general category of Troll. I opened my mouth to respond, but decided against it.

“You’d better get out of here,” someone else said. “Before I do something bad to you.”

Several other voices in the crowd seemed to agree with that assessment, so I asked a police officer for a ride back to my pod. He agreed, and turned on his meter. The ride cost me another 20 points, but at least I got home safely. The officer told me to smile and wave for his livecast.

“This night should get me a few hundred points closer to making detective. Thanks!”

Our home is a two-story pod with about 80% of its exterior walls a translucent material that allows all the other pod neighbors (12 total) in the compound to see in pretty much at will. I don’t know why this is so, because every room of the house is wired for Sosh, both upload and download, but I guess the architecture is just another reminder that we live a public life.

My father and his girlfriend Sandy were sitting on the couch talking when I stepped through the front door. Sandy is normally a very perky woman, one of those people who is relentlessly happy and positive. She’d been dating my dad for a few years, the first woman that he’d had around since my mother died eight years ago.

Neither of them looked very happy at the moment, however. They looked up when I entered the pod and their faces fell. I was pretty sure that their implants were telling them everything they needed to know about me.

“We saw some of the livecasts,” my father said. “Didn’t know if someone was playing a trick on us. I see now that you are in a lot of trouble.”

“It was just a little experiment—”

“You were caught redhanded earning points without your identity, son! Dammit, why would you do such a thing to our family?” he said. “Fortunately for my job, you’ve been dealt with, and you’re going far away now. Just go on up to your room and we’ll try to talk later.”

And with that, he turned away from me, so I went to my room. I sat in the dark and did a basic search on the Sosh, looking for mentions of me. I shouldn’t have bothered with the search. All my friends and connections were talking about my arrest, reposting the livecasts of my evening exploits, even making a few mashups using movie soundtracks. People were also defriending me—I had 200 fewer friends than an hour before.

I didn’t notice Sandy standing at the door, not until she said my name.

I looked at her, then shook my head, and she left without another word.

What can I say about the next few days at school? At first I thought I might have a chance at normalcy. Most of the vids I saw being reposted on the Sosh were pure fabrications, there was just no way anyone could believe those lies when the truth was out there. Despite actual footage from police officers, there were plenty of people who were saying the craziest things about me, like I’d been arrested for murder or that I’d been caught trying to steal a police car. With the Sosh, you’d think that everything could be validated with evidence, but apparently not.

When I arrived at school, I didn’t see anyone outside, so I figured I’d be spared some kind of weirdness first thing in the morning. The moment I entered the school, though, that all changed. My classmates were milling in the hallways, laughing and chatting, but when they saw me, they abruptly turned away. I was left standing alone in a hallway whose only other occupant was a life-size cutout of a soldier holding a sign that read A SOCIAL CITIZEN IS A GOOD CITIZEN.

The only person who greeted me before classes began was the school principal, but only in an official capacity. He was wearing his official green jacket covered in corporate sponsor logos, like he always did when he was on “official business.” I was to remain in classes for the next few days, but was not to speak to any other students. If I did engage in social activity, whether in real life or on the Sosh, I’d be fined 100 points per incident. Anyone socializing with me would be fined 200 points per incident.

Before my first class was half over, kids were being pulled out of school by their parents. I was virtually alone except for 2 or 3 others before the lunch break, and I ate alone. Even the cafeteria lady barely interacted with me. I started the day with about 300 friends, down from 800 the day before, and by noon I was down to about 40 or 50, most of whom were cousins and people who lived far away from me.

The worst part of the day was gym period; the coaches didn’t know what to do with me. Normally I would be assigned to a competitive team sport like football (“prepares them for overseas combat” somebody once said) or to one of the mandatory martial arts sessions, but that wouldn’t be fair to anyone losing points along with me. So they made me run the track for an hour, which was okay too, as it gave me some time to rattle around inside my own head.

It was crystal clear that no one wanted to associate with an Outcast, even if my term hadn’t officially begun. In a way it was disorienting, but it was also freeing. I no longer had that daily quota to meet, the points you had to scoop up any which way you could, every day, to stay on track. The math was drilled into your head from kindergarten: how do you get to 10,000 points?

You had 12 years to amass the minimum points for a good university, starting in first grade. The first 9 years you were only eligible to earn a maximum of 300 points per year, but when you turned 15 you could earn as many as 2500 points every year if you liked.

I’d maxed out all my early years by doing all the right things. I’d taken tae kwan do with all the other kids for six years—that’s fifty points a year. I took extra language classes—eighty points a year. Tried hard to keep up with my peers in the physical sciences, but fell behind a bit. Excelled at more practical skills, like engineering. I loved to tinker; built my first little robot at age 10, and that had earned a pile of points.

After 17 years, all that pressure was suddenly gone. No more constant drumbeat. No daily reminders of your point total, with the little graph showing where you’d end up if you kept the same pace, the quarterly reviews with parents and school officials, the breakdown of likes and unlikes. No more visits from corporate sponsors of the school, checking up on all their little wards. It was all about the analytics, about measurement, about performance.

I’m not ashamed to say that I felt strangely relieved. So I sat in mostly empty classrooms all week. The teachers droned on about the rise of the modern city-state, and illustrated their points about the near destruction of our glorious democracy thanks to runaway deficit spending, and how the corporations saved the day when the politicians couldn’t or wouldn’t lead, and I didn’t think about my point totals, which any eighth grader could handily beat.

So that was my 2036. How was yours?

THANKS FOR READING! Outcast is available here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X6LY0C

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Kilts and Klout

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:37:00 -0700

I hope everyone who attended SxSW Interactive 2011 had as much fun as I did. I had a blast as one of the #5kilts guys (for a little taste of the insanity, check out the 5 Kilts KeepStream that Alex Jones set up at http://keepstream.com/BaldMan/5kilts).

To summarize, we walked around in kilts, took lots of pictures with people, got interviewed a lot (CNN, GenConnect.com, Maxim Magazine, Karma Movement, you name it), got to hang out with Stella the Tito's Vodka Spokesmutt, played Live Angry Birds with the kilts on, and danced backup to Jen Wojcik and Kate Buck of Pinqued during Tech Karaoke.

It turns out that if you have 4-5 guys in kilts walking down the street, people want to approach them and talk. Sometimes the talk is all about "what are you wearing under the kilt?" ("my boots!") but other times these encounters led to some interesting conversations and connections.

In other words, we had a good time, didn't get arrested, and our stuff was retweeted on Twitter or shared on Facebook about 1000 times in the course of 5 days of insane shenanigans. Although only one of the kilted guys (Simon Salt) has marketing bona fides, I'd say we did pretty good at attracting attention for our daily sponsors--not bad for a stunt that went horribly right.

Why do I mention all of this? Well, because I've been thinking a lot about influence lately, and how we engage on these silly social networks, and how we add value and gain notoriety and all that--all of which has me thinking about Klout. I've had my differences with Klout in the past--some of you followed the fiasco that occurred when we showed up to see a pre-screening of The Adjustment Bureau, and if you did, please excuse the next 2-3 paragraphs of summary.

To make a long, boring story a short, boring story, we ended up being turned away by the Alamo Drafthouse (big confusion about "being sold out" and "no, no, the people invited by Klout already have tickets, etc"). So we left and I bitch-slapped Klout on Twitter for that, they got on and said, "No, no, the tickets are here, come back" but by this time we were already back home. Since it took an hour to drive to the theater in rush-hour traffic (it was way down in South Austin where we don't go normally) my wife and I were pretty pissed off and not in the mood for more debacles.

After some cajoling by Klout, we ended up going to the next screening a few days later, and even on this attempt, the new theater's management was all confused about our status. We bullied our way in (not proud of that, but Jesus Christ, let us see the fucking movie already), and thanks to having Meghan Berry's cell phone number at Klout, we were able to actually get seated. None of this is Klout's fault, really, but the shitty experience didn't inspire confidence et cetera. It would have been far better if we'd waited for the movie to come out, paid our money, and enjoyed the show, but I digress.

You get the picture--huge gap between Klout's VIP perks idea and the actual execution. I ended up having a mini-spat with Klout's CEO over Twitter, which I'm also not proud of, but we hugged it out, blah blah. Just suffice it to say that people who are used to going through life as a VIP would sneer.

At SxSW, I ended up going to the Hanes Happy Hour (thanks to being a Kilt-wearing guy) and actually met some of the Klout folks (including the divine Meghan Berry and their Chief Scientist, a woman by the name of Ramya--super smart by the way).

During the course of that encounter, I managed to be extra charming and say to Ramya that I didn't think a person's Klout score mattered much. She was way too nice to point out that I was basically taking a crap on her work right there in front of everyone, but I eventually backpedaled enough to explain what I meant.

To me, this whole Klout thing is pretty simple. It's trying to measure influence on social networks. The algorithm probably takes a look at your followers, how much you engage with people, how often you're mentioned or retweeted, that kind of thing, and assigns a score to your activity. It has to be some kind of moving average, blah blah, because it changes over time.

A few days before SxSW, my Klout score sat at 68. In some Twitter circles that score would be viewed as terrific, but I'm afraid most of the planet would just shrug their shoulders. By the time SxSW was over, despite being mentioned in a 1000 tweets and Facebook photo tags and videos and interviews and God knows what else, my Klout score had dropped to 66.

I just checked it now and it's now at 65, possibly because I've been low-key on Twitter for the past few weeks as I battled strep throat and the blahs.

My point in all this? Well, there is a growing focus on or awareness of social influence. Klout seems to be the leader in trying to measure this influence, and by publishing a score they're merely inviting all kinds of people who will try to game the system. These people won't be interested in actual influence building, just in racking up their score. Which means a race to the bottom in terms of actually figuring out who has real influence.

It's one thing to look at your Klout score (go to www.klout.com/ to see it) and try to puzzle out why your score is 10 points higher or lower than someone else, and then see that you're a Specialist this month whereas before you were an Explorer. That and $3 will get you a pint of local Texas beer at The Gingerman's next Happy Hour.

It's a totally different thing to actively change your score. Sorry to say, but the people who do this are no better than the SEO tweakers. To me both activities are basically a gigantic time-sink because we don't have any direct insight into the algorithmic details. In both cases, what you should be focusing on is being awesome--creating great content, engaging with people, and all that other good stuff--and not on "will this affect my SEO/Klout score."

I fear that we're about to enter the next evolution to all these social reindeer games--and anyone who has survived high school can offer the same prediction. It's not good enough to do interesting stuff, no, no, now we start measuring all this inane bullshit and start assigning numbers to our activity, then we can start forming little cliques and maybe even host Klout parties.

Next will come the reprehensible activities like not following someone because their Klout score is way low, or maybe not retweeting someone's link because their Klout score is 30 points lower than yours, and that might affect your score, or hey, all your friends are checking in to such-and-such a bar every week, why aren't you there, let's clip a few points because you're obviously not seeing and being seen....

Companies will start bowing down to this notional Klout crap too, and that will be just great for the diva enablement. Just think, if you build up enough Klout you can have customer service departments across the country jumping through their skins to make sure you're not let down in any way. Didn't get the waiter to respond quickly enough to your every whim? Whip out your phone, dude, you've got a 73 Klout score. Had a bad day of travel? Let the twitterverse know, make that 82 Klout work for you!

After all, you've worked hard for that score, you deserve VIP treatment. Just make every day like SxSW Interactive, so we can pretend you actually are somebody just because your blog has 10,000 readers. Bleh.

As a quick, personal aside, I enjoy the fact that I have a higher Klout score than some veritable bright shining stars in the social media firmament. It's mostly because these individuals are gigantic pain-in-the-ass self-involved diva dipshits, and if liking that aspect of Klout is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

SxSW Interactive Like a Boss

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:10:00 -0800

NOTE: I wrote this piece for SxSW 2011, but it is still valid for SxSW 2012. And no, alas, we won't be running around in kilts, at least not as the 5 Kilts, but you will see us around doing kilt-y things more than likely.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really pumped about SxSW this year, mostly because of the crazy kilt thing (http://5kilts.com) and all the parties. However, part of me finds the SxSW spotlight a little unnerving, not to mention the thought of being in that crush of people. 15,000+ nerds converging on Austin is pretty friggin' awesome. This is my eighth go-around at the festival, and I can remember a time when everyone was saying that "the Web is dead, man!"

In any case, you don't care about my old-man ramblings about kids these days. What you want to know is how to squeeze out all the goodness of the SxSW Interactive festival, and then rub it all over yourself and then run naked and howling through the....wait, no, we're not going to do that, so I'll move along.

First things first, I'll use SxSW and SxSWi interchangeably. I've never attended the music or movie portions of the festival, so to me, SxSW is interactive. Second, I know that a certain percentage of you will not try what I'm suggesting below, because you gotta be all OCD about SxSW panels and stuff. Relax, have fun, let the madness wash over you, breathe.

So here's my suggestion for actually having a good time at SxSW:

1) Who do you want to meet this year? It could be a group of specific individuals, or you might want to connect with "Twitter API developers." Whatever, figure out where those people are going to be and show up. Brush your teeth, wear your underwear on the inside (unless you're in some kind of superhero getup) and say HI! Connect, converse, all that stuff, maybe buy a few rounds. And yes, do have that 30 second pitch ready that describes who you are, but be cool about it, this is Austin, not some ate-up venture capital hyper-capitalist hellhole. Think flip-flops and margaritas.

2) What is the single can't-miss panel running each day? There's lots going on, but I bet there's one thing you absolutely have to see each day. Concentrate on that one event, and make sure you hit it. Anything else is just gravy. If you can get into 4-5 kick-ass panels during the entire festival, panels that you actually get something from, then you're way ahead of everyone else. Leave the rest to serendipity, because honestly you'll be on your way to some thing and you'll see 20 friends Tweeting about going to this other guy you've never heard of but you get a feeling it's going to rock your world....so go already.

3) What is the single can't miss after-hours event each day? SxSW veterans know what the newbs don't -- about 90% of the value you'll get from SxSWi is in the parties and the hallway conversations. I won't say it isn't worth it buying a badge, but it is TRUE that those who go badgeless also get one hell of a show.

4) Leave room for chance, play it loose, etc and blah blah. You'll be walking down a hallway and run into an old friend and suddenly you're with eight other people at a sports bar having a good time talking about Python, or maybe the Client From Hell, or what happened to Dean when he went to Holland last summer. Don't fret about missing that panel on the ABCs of Social Twittarz, this is actually just as good, if not better. I once pitched a book idea during a sit-down at a bar during SxSW, for what it's worth.

5) If you are having fun, dammit, don't keep it to yourself, share the moments on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, your blog, whatever. SxSWi isn't just about panels, it's about the people. Oh, and the drinking. Ooof, my liver. Anyway, I'm proud to call a lot of you degenerates my friends and colleagues, so I like to keep tabs on the fun.

6) Don't be a fucking douche. There isn't a single bar/restaurant owner in town who gives a crap about your 30,000 followers or your daily page views on your fucking Tumblr, okay? If the place is crammed with people, you're not getting in until someone leaves, so stand in line with all the other little people. Also, Austinites aren't easily impressed by your quasi-celebrity. If I don't recognize you on sight, then you're not a celebrity, so don't pull that "don't you know who I am" bullshit. If you're my friend/colleague and you do that, I'll kick you in the balls, and so will four other kilted guys.

7) And yeah, try to not get arrested. You know who you are.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Six Skills You Need for the New American Dream

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:13:58 -0800

The American Dream is dead. Or at least, the iteration of the dream that pundits, politicians, and media personalities keep bemoaning, that's dead. Jefferson's dream of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" isn't dead, but most people are too interested in assigning blame for our current troubles to actually understand that. Yes, of course, the blame game has such a narcotic effect on us silly primates, so go ahead if it makes you feel better.

So in backward chronological order, let's go: Obama's deficit spending has brought us to our knees. Bush's tax cuts in the midst of two wars has ruined our future. Clinton's libido kept him from seeing the the looming Al-Quada threat and 9/11. Reagan wrote blank checks to strangle the Soviet Empire, and now they're all bouncing. Carter couldn't combat stagflation. Nixon took us off the gold standard. And blah dee blah blah blah.

Stop, please stop. The "global economy ate my homework" is getting old. "Terrorism makes for uncertain times" is also old, times have always been uncertain, even before we knew how to tell time.

This ain't about Republicans and Democrats. It's about massive shifts in the global economy, as fundamental as the Industrial Revolution, and about as unstoppable. It's no one's fault that you can't walk out of your high school graduation hall and get a job for 30 years as a union welder. That world is gone. So too is the world that allowed a family to own a nice home, take annual vacations, and send kids to college on one salary. So is the gold watch and the pension. So get over it.

What else is about to go away? The 9 to 5 hustle, get in to the office, see 20 tasks waiting for you in your inbox, the water cooler talk about last night's game, birthday lunches, afternoons filled with sleep-inducing meetings, then the rush hour grind back to home and hearth. Maybe not all gone, but certainly those of you who experience that life as full-time employees with benefits, that's certainly going to be yesterday's dream, just like gold watches and pensions.

For the rest of us, it's contractor land. Freelancer world. Consultantville, where we earn our stripes and badges without benefits or guaranteed salary. In 10 years at this game, I can tell you that the only guarantee is a lack of guarantees. Yes, that's right, as I write this, I'm 3 months shy of a decade's worth of self-unemployment. That's what I call it, because it's not really employment, not in the 1950s Mad Men sense of it. My father and uncles certainly wouldn't see what I do as work, but I've paid off a mortgage and taken a few trips and enjoyed a life that is pretty much mine to schedule.

Yes, yes, I'll often work well into the night, or pull a couple all-nighters in a row. And I haven't had a weekend off in about 3 months. But if I want to go see a movie at 2pm on a Friday and there's nobody burning down the office, I'll go. If I want to go for a run or a swim at 10am, I'll do it. After ten years of that, the idea that I would somehow start working at 9am (after a stressful rush hour commute) and then somehow stop working at 5pm is laughable.

Cool, right? Sounds marvelous. Of course, there's a flip side to all this. There always is. If you're not billing, you're screwed in as little as 30 days depending on your savings. If you're not out there scouting for work, you'll be screwed 90 days down the road. So you need skills, the kind of skills that no one ever told you about in high school, college, grad school, or through most of your years chained to that inbox.

I understand. Your whole life and career have been fashioned by Industrial Age metaphors and thought processes, and here we are in the new age, the Information Age (if you ask Toffler, others call it something else). It's a weird new age and even the crusty old corporations are having trouble adapting. There goes the mighty Borders book store chain, sinking beneath the waves, and yet Amazon.com is surviving and thriving. A decade ago, all the smarty pants were snickering at Amazon's inability to create a profit, but who's laughing now, eh?

Ten years ago, when I first started out, lots of companies were still spending a million dollars on a dynamic web presence. They would go out and buy a big ass server, and a big ass database to house big ass data, and they'd hire a team of 20 or 30 guys to work for six months for a half million to build a web site that would take orders or some such. Nowadays most of that stuff can be done with a $100 a year Dreamhost account, a copy of WordPress, a $200 license of an ecommerce package, and two guys working for 3-4 weeks using a professional theme.

Ten years ago, companies everywhere were dumping huge amounts of money into broadcast and print ads, because that was the way to go. The rebels and rogues were using direct mail or email marketing. Now even email marketing seems quaint as we move deeper into the social era.

Things change, and the strongest adapt. This is what you need to survive:

1. Networking Skills: You must build strong relationships. A network of trust, if you will. The future belongs to those who can connect deeply and meaningfully with people. It doesn't need to be a LOT of people, but that doesn't hurt either. As a freelancer, consultant, contractor or whatever you want to call it, 99% of your business will come from people who know, like, and trust you. And 99% of the people you rely on to help you get the job done will meet those same criteria for you (but more on team building in a moment).

Being shy is no excuse. Everyone can connect with people on some level, even if its about your own introverted nature. Right now there are so many fantastic tools for reaching out and creating connections: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. These aren't replacements for actual face-to-face networking by any means, but they allow you to keep loose tabs on what others are doing, and vice versa.

Here's what you shouldn't do: don't be like my friend Mary (name changed etc). The only time I ever hear from her is about every 18-24 months. Yup, every time she's about to face a layoff at her new job, she sends out a flurry of emails to everyone she knows with the same subject line: "Let's do lunch!" When I see that, I know she's scared, but I also know she doesn't care one bit about me. I don't ever see her at networking events, nor do I ever know what's happening in her life because she doesn't share otherwise. (Yes, yes, I could do a better job of keeping up with her, I'm guilty. But that fact still doesn't remove the awkward lunchtime conversation.)

2. Team Building: You're not gonna make it alone. This is related to networking skills, but goes deeper than that. You have to build an A-Team, a group of like-minded bad ass mofos who will help you succeed. If you're a copywriter, you need to team up with a PR pro and a designer. If you're a strategist, find a few execution people who will help you build all those neat things you pitch to clients.

This is about building alliances, about bringing people together who complement each other, who can refer business to each other, help each other out with advice sometimes, maybe just be a shoulder to cry on when things get bad. Not if things get bad, but when. Remember, it's self-unemployment and there will be days when you lose a key client or a project goes haywire and all you want is a drink or five. I realized very early on how useless it was to try to explain my troubles to a gainfully employed person -- they would just say, "Well, just go get a job, this sounds really complicated!" Nope, I needed someone around who understood just how sucky it was to have an invoice go unpaid for 90+ days.

If your network is your sphere of influence, think of your team as your inner circle, the people you go to first, the ones who will never let you down. Not only is it good for you personally and professionally, but having a great team in place also makes you more valuable to the client, who can then do less shopping. Your value will increase in their eyes because you've brought along some other quality people to address the client's problem.

3. Negotiation: You will never ever get the things you deserve, only the things you negotiate. If you're in a sucky project with sucky terms or sucky pay or have to deal with sucky people, then it's because you either negotiated your way into that situation, or didn't know enough to negotiate better terms. Simple as that.

The art of negotiation is a very complex domain, much more complex than anything you've ever encountered in your life, and very few people are good at it. After ten years, I still find myself on the short end of the stick more often than I care to admit. It's okay, because every time you get screwed, you learn a little. That may sound harsh to your delicate ears, but it's the truth.

Get a good lawyer. Draw up a good, solid contract. Learn how to tell people what your rate is with a straight face, no stammering, no backpedaling. Lay out your terms, then shut the f*ck up because the next person who talks loses. And know that every time you stray from your negotiating points you're going to burn. If you swear you'd never do another favor for a friend, you'll end up doing one and get burned. If you swear you'd never cut your rate for a non-profit and then you do, you'll get burned. If you swear that never again will you work for a realtor or lawyer or dentist no matter what the fee, and one comes along with a bucket full of gold bars, you'll burn if you take the job.

The question is, do you like to burn? Some people do, they live for the fire. Others learn and move on.

4. Self-Promotion and Sales: It's a funny world we live in. On the one hand, the only way our capitalistic society works is if we build things worth buying and then sell them, but just about everyone you meet turns their nose up at the selling part. Yes, yes, there's a big difference between selling tractors or insurance plans and selling yourself, but if you're unable to convince me that you are good at something (or hell, you don't know what you're good at and can't articulate it in any way) then I'm just not going to go to all the work of figuring it out for you.

The world is moving at ludicrous speed, so help me out here. And don't be all vague about it, either. It's been years and years since "I'm a copywriter" actually moved the needle. The key to survival is specialization, and that's true in the natural world or your life right now. You need a niche. I hope you're not a copywriter, I hope you're a medical technology copywriter. You're not a PHP developer, you specialize in Facebook applications written in PHP.

Well, what happens if a non-Facebook application comes your way, do you take the job? Sure, if you can handle it. Doing the work and talking about yourself are two somewhat-overlapping-but-not-completely-congruent things sometimes.

The second half of this involves the nuts and bolts of self-promotion. It's a fine balance. No, it's not a good idea to flood your Twitter and Facebook streams with constant links to things that promote your expertise, but on the other hand, I'm a busy guy and I often forget what it is you do for a living. And even if I remember, I might be in a client meeting and they need an expert in X and it doesn't dawn on me until a week later that you might be an expert in X, but too late I've already hired someone else, dammit. And I REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH YOU!

The etiquette rules haven't been entirely defined yet, of course. There are some in this brave new world who will shut you down at the merest mention of anything that even sniffs of making money, but these people are tools. We don't live in some Star Trek wonderland without money. Money makes life possible.

On the other hand, there are people who bombard their social streams non-stop with offers and other effluvia, and that's like getting direct mail offers from your aunts and college friends. It's like my friend Mary, reaching out only when it might benefit her. It gets old, and it doesn't help with the connecting bit, or the knowing/liking/trusting.

We're all going to find the right mix together, and the hell of it is, those of us who have been on Twitter for a while (for example) have a head start. And I'm not sorry about that. What it comes down to is marketing the way you feel the most comfortable and that allows you to connect with as many possible potential buyers as you need to make your life work.

5. Old-Fashioned Business Skills: Ten years ago, during the dot-bomb, nobody cared about money or profit. That was all silly. It was all about taking investor money and building out a huge infrastructure or creating channels or whatever the hell the catchphrases were. You see the same thing happening now with all these newfangled social companies. Nobody cares about making money it seems, they want to build brand equity.

That's all terrific, but it has no meaning for you. You've got to get down to basics, and unfortunately, the old-fashioned basics are not only out of style, they seem to have been wiped out of our memory banks. Here are a few: profit is an idea, but cash flow is king; stay small and agile; everything is more expensive and takes longer than you think.

Once you're running your own show, you realize pretty damn quickly that you can't do squat with profit. Profit happens at the end of the year, when the accountant plays around with the numbers. If you want to pay less in taxes, he'll show less profit, and so on. But month to month, you gotta pay bills. You've got a mortgage, a couple kids going to college maybe, medical expenses, or you want to take a trip. That takes cash flow.

How do you build cash flow? First of all, take deposit money up front. Second of all, charge a high-enough rate that lets you not just survive, but thrive. Third, find clients you can charge a monthly retainer fee. Fourth, build products that will bring in other streams of revenue not tied to your silly ass billing hours. And so on. The basics, see?

Staying small and agile is so important, but so overlooked. When we got started, we were small, but I had the big dream of the big agency, and soon we ramped up employees and contractors and took on all these jobs, but then I realized how much I hated managing people. It was an important realization. I wanted to do the work, not be an HR guy.

So for me, agile and small meant going back to being a lone gun, and I'm happier this way. When I don't have $20,000 or $30,000 a month in obligations (paychecks, for example) I can make better decisions. For example, I don't have to take on that really gross client just because I need the money to stay afloat. That was a horrible feeling, let me tell you, and it's actually better to stay in a job you hate for a paycheck then to build a business around clients you loathe.

Everything takes longer than you think, believe me, and everything is more expensive. When I hear a client say a job is small, that it might take a few weeks, I double it. The same goes when I hear an estimate from a contractor I'm hiring. Sure, it looks simple, but once you dig around in their web site or code, you find a cancerous tumor in the heart of their business operations, and suddenly it all goes sideways.

Of course, that might just be the business I'm in (software), but I doubt it. Everywhere I look I see business people either getting bit by this problem or adjusting for it so they don't get bit. It's bad news if you tell a client you think something will take 10 hours and then it really takes 15. So pad things a bit, and that goes for schedules too. It's way better to tell a client it will take 2 weeks and deliver in 8 days, then vice versa.

6. Ownership Mentality: I'm not just talking about legal ownership. Yes, you own your own little LLC or S-Corporation or Sole Propietorship, and you have business cards and a PO Box and a web presence, hooray. That's just the beginning, though.

See, you have to own everything else, too. Made a bad hire? You own that. Have crappy clients? Own it. Had a bad year with very little money in the bank? Own it. Yes, there are always factors (the recession, a terrorist attack, rising fuel prices, blah blah blah) but you have to adapt to bad situations--that's on you. Not adapting is bad leadership.

Now here's the flip side of ownership: the good times. If you land a big client, you own it. If you have a really fat year, you own it. Yes, people in your network might have given you a solid lead, and your parents paid for your expensive education, and maybe God gave you the talent (if you buy into that notion, it's okay if you do) but the hard work and the application of the education and talent was all you. So own it.

There are other skills, of course, but by now this thing is turning into War and Peace. My point at the beginning of this screed was simple, and it still holds true: the American Dream is still there, but it's a slightly different iteration of the dream that your father and his father understood. To unlock the dream, you're going to need new skills, skills that nobody has taken the time to teach you. It's not too late, though.

If you're still reading this, and are interested in talking about these skills needed in our screwed-up world, leave a comment.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Stand In the Place Where You Work

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:54:00 -0800

I've posted off and on about my marathon training, how I was feeling lethargic, overweight, and unhealthy before I embarked on a total fitness makeover. Well, after 15 months of running a minimum of 10 miles (and sometimes as much as 40-50 miles) per week, I've decided to add another change to my daily routine. It's a small change, but it could do me a lot of good.

About a week ago, I decided to change my home office (aka, Triple Dog Dare Media HQ) to allow me to stand while I work. Why? Well, let's back up.

Over the course of the last year, I've noticed that the more I run, the more I dislike sitting for extended periods of time. As a writer and coder, when I say I sit for really long extended periods of time, I mean 4-5 hours go by without moving any major muscles like legs or core. Standing up from that kind of extended sitting means having an aching back, aching hip flexors, and several other ailments related to leaning forward and general bad posture. Multiply those aches and complaints when I decide to go for a run at the end of the day, and you get the picture.

Essentially, my day looked like this: sit on my ass for long periods of time, but take an occasional break to stand up and do something (go to the printer, go get some more hot tea, maybe run some errands).

About two weeks ago, I strained my left hip a bit on a long run, and the next day sitting at the desk was just unbearable. I had to stop all coding and writing and do only certain tasks from a standing position. I realized at the end of the day that although I was a bit tired, my back and legs didn't hurt as much as I thought they would. I started to think about acquiring a standing desk, and while googling for different options, I happened to actually take a look at my office setup.

On the wall behind me sits a wire cabinet rack that holds some books, CDs, a fax machine, and our printer. The shelves are all height-adjustable for different configurations. With a sudden burst of enthusiasm, I pulled all the books and hardware off of it and started messing around with the shelving. When I got the middle shelf the way I wanted it, I put my Macbook Pro on it and took it out for a spin.

Oops, the shelf was too high, I was straining my wrists a bit. Okay, lower it a few clicks and try again. Too low this time. Okay, third time's the charm, and...PERFECT. My arms are parallel to the floor when bent at the elbows, and I can easily shift my weight from foot to foot in front of the workspace. I had to adjust the lower shelves to accommodate the printer (in case of paper jams) but otherwise the lower shelves were just fine. In fact, I can easily put one foot up on the lower shelf if I need to, taking any back strain out of the equation.

Now my day is very different. I stand for extended periods of time (2-3 hours) and then take breaks as needed. I'll take a five minute break with some coffee or tea, or I'll sit in the easy chair in the office while perusing favorite sites on my iPad. My hip flexors and back have stopped hurting, and I actually feel hungry at lunch and dinner. When I work, I actually focus on the task at hand (who wants to mess around when they're standing?) and work within a prescribed "burst" of 2-3 hours.

Is it hard to stand all day? Yes, it can be, particularly after a very long run. The first few days were almost unbearably painful as I'd just completed an 18-mile run. I had to take breaks every hour, and my feet hurt like a bitch at the end of the day. I tend to go barefoot in the home office, but that can easily be remedied by wearing running shoes or putting down a padded mat. By the fourth day of upright working, though, my feet and legs were fine, and I could work for 3-4 hours at a stretch without even noticing the time.

Soooo, is this effort really worth it in terms of calories expended? A guy my size (220 lbs) will burn approximately 150 calories per hour just standing around, so six hours standing on any given day is 800ish calories, or a fairly good lunch portion. That's about a pound of weight loss every week, or 50+ pounds per year -- or more weight than I've lost in the past year from the running. Now, I probably won't stand up that much (I do run errands and have sitting-related tasks) but you get the idea. Meanwhile, as I stand and work I'm conscious of my core and back muscles, my legs, and my posture -- it doesn't take long to notice how painful slouching is and to get back into a good place.

Do I still have the other desk? I sure do. I'll use it occasionally if I'm on a long phone call and I need to take lots of notes. Or if I want to have a book open and take notes from it on the same writing surface. Or if I want to eat in the office but don't want to accidentally nuke my Macbook Pro, the printer below it, and office supplies and books below that.

If you'd like to learn more, please chime in with comments, I'll do my best to answer any questions.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Developing a Strong Writer's Voice (any questions?)

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:52:00 -0800

A wise person once said, "The worst sin in the world is being boring." Don't ask me for a source on that quote, because frankly, I'm too lazy to Google it just now.

So how does that little pearl of wisdom relate to developing a strong writer's voice? Well, your voice is what makes what you produce uniquely yours. It is your signature, your flair, your je ne sais quoi that imbues or inculcates (impregnates?) your work with, well, youness. I'm not trying to be vague or obtuse, it's just that you know, I have to USE MY WORDS and OMG.....

Let me bring this discussion down to Earth so I can start talking particulars. I'll talk about my favorite subject: ME. As you can already tell, being snarky and (at least) slightly disrespectful is my little trademark, but that's not the entirety of my voice. I like being direct as well as snarky. I eschew obfuscation. I use ironic humor and banter in my everyday speech and writing. I respect makers and creators above all else (which is why I have so much fun pointing out the shortcomings of social media douchenozzles).

As an aside, we don't have enough time to talk about how the rest of my life, my non-Logos activity (logos in the sense of the Greek word for the, uh, word, and not logos designed by graphic designers), defines me, but it all comes together in a not-so-pretty package. My running helps define my point of view, as do my politics, my movie watching preferences (the 3 Bs: Boobs, Bombs, and Better Not Forget the Blasphemy), and on and on and on and on.

(And yes, having lots of asides is part of my style, which is related to voice, but let's not open that can.)

For a lot of what I do, if I were to take my byline off of it, you'd read it and think, "Hey, that myerman guy probably wrote this, or he'd really appreciate reading this AND meeting the snarkapotomus who did write this."

Now, the wonderful thing about developing a strong voice is that STRONG does not always equal any of the following: mean, sad, snarky, satiric, humorous, sexy, annoying, rude, silly, plaintive, confused, or bewildered. Or necessarily any of those things in combination. What is important about a strong voice is that it always tells the truth, and YES VIRGINIA there is truth in fiction. You may have never killed your elderly landlady, but you live through that truth when you read Crime and Punishment.

A voice says, in a loud, and clear I'm-not-fucking-around-here, uh VOICE, that the writer is confident, and isn't afraid to speak in a plain way, straight from the gut, to his or her audience. A strong voice says that a writer is willing to forgo the usual bullshit literary parlor games in which he or she uses a lot of big words or fancy syntax or convoluted plot points that serve only to impress other writers, and deep sixes all that and actually tells the truth about something.

Furthermore, a strong voice also says that the writer understands the audience and is trying to reach them, and to hell with everyone else. I've known so many budding writers strangled in their early careers by feelings of guilt or remorse--"What will my mother think when she reads this?"

With all due respect to your mother, screw that, and screw anyone else who isn't part of your audience. You've got something to say, and there are people out there who are starving for your insight or viewpoint. They may not know it yet, but they're sitting in a sandbox eating cat turds when what they really want is something more substantive.

That substantive thing ALWAYS comes from a writer who is willing to put their thing down. Substance never comes from any graduates of a six-year Grammar Fascist Boot Camp run by humorless nuns. I used to joke that it took me three years to unlearn all the stupid writing advice I got in college and graduate school, to find out who I was and what I had to say.

So how do you get started on developing a voice? Well, you have to start with what makes you the most comfortable. Your comfort zone might be a certain cockeyed perspective of the world, or it may be the methodical, patient attitude you take when you explain things in writing. It could be how you weave your own religious and political beliefs into the pieces you write. Or it could be your personal belief that what you're writing about is the best damn fun you can have with your clothes on.

Lastly, your voice could be chiefly characterized by your diction and syntax. I joked earlier about writers who pen fancy books that seem to have only other writers as their audience. Well, dammit, that is a voice, and as much as I like to make fun of those writers, it's not a bad living if you can pull it off.

I've gone around and around on this, and now it's time to ask some questions. What specific bits about voice are you interested in?

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Where do you get your ideas?

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:19:00 -0800

That question is probably the most common one I get when I tell people I'm a writer. Granted, so far, all of my books have been nonfiction/technical or business, but don't go thinking that the idea is somehow absent from these efforts, or that its somehow the sole provenance of the fiction writer. Even if your job as a writer is "only" to write blog posts or magazine pieces, the idea is the thing that will spark a great effort.

So, back to the question. How do I get my ideas? I get them from all over. The key is to have an awareness of what's happening around you, and the other is to have a little notebook with you. I really like the little Moleskine pocket notebooks (I have both the flip-up reporter style notebook and a more traditional notebook, fantastic products) and carry one around wherever I go.

If I'm watching the news and I hear a report about a murder in a trailer park, I jot down some notes in the hopes I can use it in a future murder mystery. I have a few of these ideas boiling now, waiting for the right catalyst (i.e., a narrative arc -- more on this in a few minutes), but for now an idea is good, even if it is just attached to a little inconsequential patch of something like 3-4 words jotted in a notebook.

Sometimes I overhear a snippet of conversation between two people and wonder how to develop what I've heard into a fictional story or a magazine piece. Or I see something and that spurs action. The other day I was coming out of my favorite Indian restaurant (Bombay Bistro on the north side of Austin) and saw a big giant truck parked in a compact car only space. I snapped a picture, went home and used the picture as an anchor for a GetOffMyLawn rant. Simple as that.

(The story is posted at http://www.getoffmylawn.org/2011/01/compact-car-only/ -- that site is pretty addictive, if like me, lots of stuff pisses you off. If you want to contribute to the site, just click on the VENT link. Yes, you can post anonymously. Enjoy.)

What I'm talking about here is not just situational awareness, but also the ability to see potential in everything. Have you ever been lost in a grocery store or frustrated at the lack of product choice in a particular category? A writer will turn that impetus into something: perhaps a character in a short story or novel will always get lost or never be able to find stuff. Or, they'll write a blog post about sucky product choice in detergents or dog food at the local corner store. Or maybe write a magazine article in which you interview a person who makes a living designing layouts of grocery stores.

Recognizing that just getting started with your writing is a big problem, I decided to write two iPhone/Android apps to help would-be fiction writers get going on projects (please note, iPhone not iPad, seems to crash on iPad, still investigating grrrrrrrrrr). It was obvious that I couldn't quickly create programs that would plot out entire stories (and who the hell wants that anyway) I sat down and thought a bit about how stories emerge.

A story has a narrative arc. It begins with a character in some kind of situation. Think Luke Skywalker down on the farm, pounding sand. Then something happens. The droids appear, the long arm of the Empire reaches into his life, and suddenly, Luke has to make a decision: does he go on the trip to Alderaan with the crazy old guy in the bathrobe?

If he decides not to go, roll credits, go home, this was an interesting "day in the life of Luke the sand pounder on Tatooine" story. Boo.

If he does decide to go, the fun begins. He meets Han and Chewie, ends up on the Death Star, rescues the Princess, and then goes on to fight an epic battle against the armies of darkness, and WINS THE DAY.

At the end, Luke stands on the podium, no longer a farm boy from a jerkwater hicksville planet, but a galactic hero. And more important, he's now a man, tested by the trials and tribulations and conflict he has overcome. Maybe in the back of his mind, he's feeling bad about having to personally drop the bomb on however many people were on the Death Star, but hey, those people were BAD so don't worry about that now.

Initial situation. Call to action. Conflict and obstacles small and big (usually in threes by the way). Victory. Change in the character.

That's the narrative arc of the story.

The plot on the other hand, is different from story, and it's where the rubber meets the road, if I can abuse a cliche. Some would argue that my overview of the story above makes Star Wars seem grand and lovely, whereas watching the actual product (complete with shit dialogue, Luke's relentless whiny dipshittery, the 12 parsecs gaffe, and the fetching bagels on the side of Leia's head) that George Lucas produced are two entirely different things, blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH.

I don't care at this point, because all I care about is the story. Plotting and character development and dialogue and setting and all that other stuff comes later. FIRST YOU MUST HAVE STORY. And story comes from an initial situation. and that's the rub, that's where writers get all hung up and can't get started.

Enter StoryStarter.

StoryStarter was designed to give you a bunch of random choices for the variables that make up the initial situation:

* A protagonist (or hero)

* An antagonist (or "bad guy")

* A physical setting

* A conflict

All of these are divided by genre, so if you're writing a mystery you might have a bus driver as protagonist, a retired cop as antagonist, a city park as setting, and a bad loan as conflict. What can you do with that? Something probably. But what makes this tool more useful is that you can mark a checkbox next to something that you do like (maybe your protagonist and setting) and then spin the dials again to get the other variables to change.

There's a fun category called Just Have Fun, which features some crazy choices (like ninja pirates and voodoo lesbians, I think) which gives you a bit of space to let things run, particularly if they are seeking Nazi treasure in the downtown YMCA locker room. Even better, if you decide to keep a protagonist from say mainstream fiction, you could switch over to Sci-Fi and get a setting from there, and then switch to Just Have Fun and blow the doors off.

StoryStarter is available on Android: http://www.appbrain.com/app/storystarter/com.tripledogs.storystarter

And iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storystarter/id410592966?mt=8

But sometimes you need a little bit more then an initial situation, or maybe you're not the type of writer who likes to play around with dials and such. You need something to pop up and smack you in the face, as clear and convincing as an ice pick to the medulla oblongata. An opening line, maybe, or something to catch the imagination, something that doesn't involve a bunch of checkboxes. It just depends on what floats your goat, creativity-wise.

So I wrote StoryPrompts.

StoryPrompts is a collection of 300 or so opening lines, bits of dialogue, and situations to get you started. See the accompanying screenshots to get a good idea. Again, this particular program is more about random things that you can keep choosing from to get something--anything, really--started.

You might get the prompt about the boy who pulls a ring of power from a box of cereal and think, maybe, "Hey I have this idea about a girl who finds a mysterious object in the park while she's out playing, and I have this other story about a girl who leaves 11th grade a big fat loser and comes back her senior year a curvy beauty, and maybe JUST MAYBE the two could work together -- the ring of power is responsible...."

Aaaaaaaaaand off you go. The story pretty much writes itself, or at least a huge portion of it does, and all you needed was a situation, not a detailed plot outline.

StoryPrompts is available on Android: http://www.appbrain.com/app/storystarter/com.tripledogs.storyprompts

And iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storyprompts/id412441107?mt=8

That's about it. See you guys at BlogathonATX Part Deux.

PS. These are pay apps, 99 cents on iPhone and Android.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Scouting the Austin Marathon Course

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:57:23 -0800

I'll be running the Austin Marathon on February 20. Since I live in Austin, I figured it would be to my advantage to start running portions of the course as I advance into the latter parts of my marathon training. Granted, I've done one marathon already (San Antonio back in November) but I am by no means an elite marathoner or even someone who takes his training anywhere close to "serious."

For those of you who are training for the Austin Marathon, let me just say that this is by no means a "beginner's marathon." Typical training schedules call for 16 weeks of training--not gonna happen with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's preceding the event. I struggled to get in 10 miles per week from late November until January 1st.

Second obstacle: cedar. I was out the entire first week of January because of cedar pollen. Flat on my back, actually, and my first run the following week I could barely get 1 to 1.5 miles in per stretch before I was coughing up a lung on the side of the road. Very frustrating. But here I am, $125 bucks down and I'm gonna gear up on marathon day, even if it's snowing and sleeting.

Third obstacle: hills. Lots and lots of hills. The San Antonio marathon was nice and flat, but Austin sports 10 miles of hills in the first 16 mile stretch, with at least 3-4 of those miles at a steep grade. So if you're training for this course, go back and double that hill training, you're going to need every second of training you can get prior to the gun going off on February 20.

In any case, last Saturday I had a 15-mile run on the schedule, so I decided to run as much of the course I could. I started on Town Lake (convenient parking, but nowhere close to the course start, really) and proceeded down the path to the Congress street bridge. From there, I went down South Congress, or I should say, UP south congress (it's a gradual uphill for 2.5 miles) dodging hipsters and SoCo shoppers as I went.

Instead of turning at Ben White/71/290 (as I would on race day) I turned on Lightsey (about a mile north) and then turned north on S. First, which thankfully for my aching legs, is a steady downhill all the way back to Town Lake. From Town Lake, I ran up Atlanta toward Endfield (15th).

From Atlanta (which is where Run-Tex is near Town Lake) all the way until I finished running at Shoal Creek is one big steady climb, with Exposition in Tarry Town featuring at least 8-10 rolling hills, each seemingly steeper and more painful then the last. I am not ashamed to tell you that I had to stop and walk most of those hills and that my legs felt like they were being pounded on by a maniac with a meat tenderizer. Actually, to be more accurate, I was about 3 seconds away from crying like a little girl on the side of the road.

When I look at that same stretch of endless road on the map, it's only a mile and a half, but it seemed like 20 miles of torture. There were more hills on Exposition than in the entire 26.2 stretch in San Antonio. Being that they come near the middle portion of the marathon is pretty frickin' brutal.
At the top of Exposition I paused long enough to tweet "Whoever laid out the Austin marathon course was not hugged enough as a child." And it's true.

The Exposition stretch of the marathon ends at 35th street, where you turn right and go up a further steep incline (the Mopac exit) and then make a left turn on Jackson, which gradually climbs to Bull Creek, Hancock, and finally Shoal Creek. This is where I turned off, as I was ending my run at a friend's house, who volunteered to drive me back down to my car parked at Town Lake.

My time for the run was 3 hours 29 minutes, a painfully slow pace considering that I ran the first 15 miles of the San Antonio marathon in 2 hours 35 minutes, so nearly an hour off my pace.

Next weekend, the schedule says 18 miles, and I'll hit this section again, hopefully with better success. My plan is to test run the first 12 miles of the course at least 3 times come race day, so those hills on Exposition should become old (if not good) friends by February 20.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Five Geeks in Kilts at #sxsw

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:29:32 -0800

Is your startup launching a new product at SxSW Interactive 2011? Introducing a new offering? Want to create some buzz around your brand? Then I've got a deal for you...

Five of us--Pat Ramsey (@pat_ramsey), Alex Jones (@baldman), Jeremy Arntz (@jeremya), Simon Salt (@incslinger), and myself (@myerman)--will be wearing kilts at SxSW Interactive. We're basically doing it to have a bit of fun, and because we know we'll get attention for doing it--and we love getting attention, that's just the way it goes.

So we thought to ourselves, "Selves, we're doing this anyway, and being the kind of guys who would pull a stunt like this, why not see if there's a company out there who would be willing to sponsor the fun!?!" So here we are, at your service.

All of us are geeks--we're programmers, gadget heads, tinkerers, or what have you--so we can easily communicate the value prop of your whiz-bang with ease and fluency (let's see a booth babe do THAT!). Each of us also has a fairly large social network on both Twitter and Facebook, giving us quite a good reach for whatever we're doing a Five Geeks in Kilts.

So, if you'd like to have five geeky spokespersons for your new product launch, your SXSW event, a new book, or anything else that needs attention, then come talk to me. We plan on having a lot of fun during Interactive, hanging out with great people and providing your brand/product/company with the positive, fun exposure it needs among a very influential group of people.

We can make sure that any photos taken of us, blogger interviews, or what have you, are tagged in specific ways on Twitter or Facebook to give your product, company, or brand maximum exposure during Interactive. We can also work within any reasonable constraints you have vis-a-vis events that offer us free booze. Heh.

If you're interested, drop me a line on twitter (@myerman) or ring me at 512.750.3835.

UNBIFURCATED IS THE WAY TO GO!

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Six Reflections on #nanowrimo

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:13:00 -0800

I've been a writer for a long time now, but I haven't written fiction since high school. And yeah, for all of you who are wondering, that was about 20 years ago. Most of the past 20 years have been occupied with endless technical articles, web copy, white papers, and half a dozen or so books, all nonfiction. I'm just telling you all this because I have next to no chops when it comes to the skills needed for fiction writing: characters, setting, dialogue, plot development, and so on.

This year, though, I got it into my head that I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month put on by the good folks at http://www.nanowrimo.org. It's held every year in November, and the idea is very simple. Start writing November 1 with a goal of getting to 50,000 words by November 30. That's approximately 1666 words a day that need writing in order to meet the goal.

Given those constraints, you don't have a lot of time for critical evaluation of your writing. You just write and write and write. I'm an exceptionally fast writer thanks to previous careers as a journalist and copywriter writing under constant deadline pressure, so I was able to churn out my 2000 words a night in just a few hours. Near the end of the process, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I plowed through 5000 words in one sitting to cross the 50,000 word goal. That was a very long day of writing and exceeded my previous record of 3500 words in one sitting.

If you've always wanted to be a writer, are interested in writing, or just want a taste of the writing world (the real writing world, where there are deadlines, which is way different from personal journaling, which has a more introspective and relaxed pace) then sign up for NaNoWriMo. Like I said before, there is no time for critical assessment. You have to crank out a certain number of words per day to ever have a chance of making the deadline. If you hook up with "writing buddies" you can see their progress along the way, and that's also oddly competitive. I can't tell you how many nights I just didn't want to write at all, but Jen Jones over there was spanking out 2000 words a day, so I had to keep up.

I thought I'd collect my thoughts on the entire NaNoWriMo experience. These are all coming from someone with just enough fiction writing skills to be dangerous, but I thought it would be interesting to share whatever is rattling around in my head because I'm largely a fiction outsider.

1. Your idea is barely worth the paper it's written on, if that. If you're a writer, then you're familiar with the following scenario. You're at a party or other gathering, and someone finds out you're a writer. They approach you and offer to share an idea they have with you. All you have to do is write it up and then split the proceeds. Fame and riches await!

Your idea is just that: an idea. It's not even a premise. Or a story. In fiction writing, the only thing that matters is the story. Nobody cares about your idea. Repeat that 5000 times, then 5000 more times until you get it. Your idea is worth zip. Okay? Stop with the idea worship, and get down to story.

Let me explain. For my novel, I imagined a future in which everyone is implanted at birth so that they are on social media 24/7 every day of their lives. At the same time, politics has changed so much in the USA that all government services are run for profit, even our military. Neat idea, right? Sure thing. Yeah, whatever. It's worthless. Nobody cares. I can share it here and you can write a whole bunch of stories with these two ideas and come up with radically different characters and outcomes. Why? Because they are just ideas. There's no way you can spend 50,000 words just talking about these ideas, it would be boring to write, much less read.

What a writer needs is a story. Hell, what a reader demands is a story.

2. It's all about the story. So, what's a story? A story is about a character, who, faced with problems or situations, grows in some way in relation to those problems and situations. A story in which a character remains the same through 200, 300, or 500 pages isn't very satisfying at all. A story without conflict is just drivel. In modern storytelling, the conflict that compels the character to start changing usually happens on page 1, or even on line 1 of the story.

In my story, I had a backdrop idea--a society or milieu--but then I had to imagine a main character and what would cause a conflict for him. So I imagined that he broke the law in some heinous way, right at the start of the book, and then the rest of the story involves the consequences of being an "outcast" (cut off from the social hivemind) and how he made his way through his new circumstances.

Now, there are lots of different story types and structures (boy meets girl, the king who becomes a pauper, the lowly farmhand who becomes a hero, and so on) but I decided that the best way to explore my idea about this horrible future was to send this character on a journey of sorts. On this journey he would meet a whole bunch of other characters, some of whom would serve the system with enthusiasm, others who were under the thumb of the system, and so on. We'd meet people from all walks of life and creeds and see how well they could make it through the day to day.

But all of that is background. It's extra seasoning. I had to keep coming back to the story, and the story is about this young man being an Outcast and how his life changes radically -- and most importantly, what he chooses to do about it.

3. Limitations are key for characters. I always laugh when I hear some self-help guru spout some bullshit about having no limits. That may be great for Tony Robbins and that lot, but in fiction, you have to give your characters limitations. Your characters have biases and blind spots, or they are physically limited in some way, or maybe they're just not that smart. Or maybe just barely smart enough to cope with everything that is happening to them, which is what makes their struggle interesting and worthy of reading.

If you populate your story with all-knowing, extremely capable superheroes, well that's boring as hell. Show me what happens when a diabetic who needs her insulin shot is left stranded in the woods after a flash flood. How does she get back to safety? What does she overcome along the way? What does she learn about herself? Is there some part of her personality (her meticulous planning) that she needs to discard so she gets back in time?

4. You're not writing a Hallmark script. Conflict drives story. Hope and I sat down to watch one of those Hallmark tearjerkers the other day. The little girl is dying of some weird disease and so the entire town rallies around her, having Halloween in August and Christmas in November just in case she dies. Of course, we know she isn't going to die, because when the movie starts we meet a young woman with the same name telling the story of when she was a young girl with a disease.....blah blah blah blah.

You definitely have to check your brain out when you watch this kind of pap, but I'm not here to rant about the structure. My point is simple, and it's blunt and hard. People suck. We are not only limited in certain ways, but we are generally at cross purposes with each other. Why? Because we all have our own goals and dreams and agendas, and we get stressed about different things, and your little problem doesn't really matter to me that much, if at all.

To have an entire town get together to help this little girl was fun to imagine, but it just ain't gonna happen. There were ludicrous scenes in the movie, like the teenage daughter being every dutiful, helping her dad with running the restaurant. Her only foible was she sometimes lost track of time when she was off writing in her journal. Let's just say that if I were writing that story there would have been a lot more opportunities for conflict.

Why? Because conflict is at the beating heart of story. It's man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, however you want to formulate it. Character A wants something with all his heart, but Character B would be willing to kill to keep that from happening. That's interesting.

5. Honing comes later. There's so much to work on when you're a writer. You might be a crackerjack dialogue person, but suck at descriptions and plots. You might be a wonderful plot person, coming up with magnificent twists and turns, but your characters feel paper-thin and you couldn't find a theme to save your life. Or you might have an incredible theme, something worthy of a lifetime's worth of writing, but you're just stuck with executing it on paper.

The most important thing to remember, though, is that this is normal, and that the division of labor is very important for a writer. There are pre-writing exercises like research and outlining. Then there is the writing. And finally, there is the revising.

If you're an experienced hand, you might survive mixing the three types of work, but it's unlikely. You'll be all excited about advancing the storyline but then get stuck for weeks on a point of research. Or you'll get all OCD about dialogue or settings and that will kill your story. In all things, remember this: STORY COMES FIRST. Get that down. Then go back and clean up the dialogue, the settings, and layer in your back story. If the story sucks, nobody will notice your lack of dialogue chops, because frankly, no one will want to read the damn thing.

6. Embrace the suffering. Writing is not fun. It is a process that converts the beautiful thing in your mind to the harsh reality of banal little marks on a manuscript. This is a good thing. Learn to love that aspect of the work, because therein lies the writer's crucible.

The hell of writing comes in stages. First, you get some kind of idea for a story. You might clearly see a main character and the conflict that powers the story. You imagine the young boy who comes home one day to find that his entire family is gone; they've disappeared without a trace. No note, nothing. House is empty. He runs next door to ask what happened, but that house is empty too. He runs across the street to the other neighbor and that house is empty, or at least he thinks so. The boy who lives there has just come home from school to discover that his house is empty. So there you have two boys of the same age alone on an empty street.

Where does the story go from there? Easy. They need to discover what the hell is going on. So many questions come up. What happened? How did it happen? Where did their families go? Why were these two boys not taken? Is it because they weren't there? Or is it because of their age? Who knows? I don't, but I guarantee that you're reading this blog post and trying to spin things out. The possibilities are endless.

So there you have a golden idea, it is perfect in your mind. And now you have to start figuring out the general structure of where this thing is going to go. How do you go past the initial impetus and go on to the next stage. You might get 30 pages out of that first impression or ideas, but now you need 270 more pages to make this thing go. So very soon you are in the details, trying to work out a general direction for the thing (if you're a certain kind of writer) or doing some detailed outlining and research (if you're another kind of writer).

You encounter the first disappointment: the golden beautiful idea on the one hand versus your ability to execute the story as a whole. Don't despair, if you follow a few guidelines, you'll be fine. They're easy enough to pick up on if you read a lot or watch movies, but generally speaking, the characters undergo a series of trials (usually three) and then finally succeed or overcome or conquer or discover what's happening.

Later on, as you start to write, you realize that you have some kind of deficiency. Your dialogue is wooden and terrible, or your settings are paper thin. This is the next level of hell for the writer, having to go back and revise.

Now, if you didn't have a deadline, you could spend months on that initial idea, then a few months farting around with the plotting and theme, and then you could, at a leisurely pace, reel out a few chapters that you could then revise down to a perfect, shiny, happy jewel of prose.

Forget all that with NaNoWriMo. You're lucky if you have an idea that you've spent more than a few days on. For direction, you have to think in giant blocks of structure. I knew, for example, that my character was going to some kind of prison, and that it would take 4-5 chapters to get there, and that he would spend about 10 chapters in the prison, and that something would happen at that point that would reveal another aspect of my society.

So I just cranked it all out and handed chapters to Hope as I was done. She didn't return any feeback or edits until Thanksgiving. That allowed me to keep working undisturbed.

Now, did I actually finish the story in 30 days? Nope, I sure didn't. I need at least another 10,000 words to complete the story. But that doesn't matter, because I met the goal of NaNoWriMo: writing 50,000 words. It got me off my duff, fiction wise, and that's a good thing.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Marathon Day, Or, the Best Thing That Ever Happened to a Masochist is a Sadist

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:23:00 -0800

The morning of November 14, the day of the San Antonio Rock & Roll Marathon, rolled in bright and early. I'd set a 5:30 alarm but was awake a full fifteen minutes earlier thanks to the constant slam of hotel doors on my floor. When you have 30,000 runners converge on a city, chances are everywhere you go (hotels, restaurants, malls) will be packed with other people doing crazy stuff right next to you.

I'm a notoriously bad hotel sleeper. I prefer my bed to be just so, the pillow to be a certain density and shape, the ambient temperature to be at X, and so on. However, I was so tired from the weekend's running around and the drive down to San Antonio that I managed to fall asleep at 11pm. Of course, the little jackass who had the room before me had set a midnight alarm, so that woke me with a start and I didn't get back to sleep for another hour or so. Still, I got at least five hours of sleep in before the big race.

Race day prep pretty much goes by the numbers. Brush your teeth and all that, of course, but then you start to get ready. Apply vaseline, check. Apply bandaids to nipples, check. Put the right socks on, check. Get the runner's bib on the shirt, check. Put on shirt and running pants. Oops, forgot the spandex undies to keep the thighs from chafing (yes, vaseline is applied, but give the big-thighed people a break, okay?). Put on the shoes. Forget that you need the compression sleeve on the left leg, so take off shoes and put that on.

Okay, all ready, except you check the weather and it's going to be 44 degrees at the race start, with a high of 60. Take the arm warming sleeves along, you can take them off later when your body temperature starts to rise. Oh, and don't forget to place the chip tag into your shoelaces.

Along the way, you're thinking about the reality of 26.2 miles. That's running two 10-mile runs back-to-back and then adding a 10K for good measure. Or running four consecutive 10Ks and then throwing in another mile or so just for the hell of it. However you think about it, you've got to prepare yourself for an event that will consume anywhere from 4-6 hours for most people.

Okay, all set, grab your hotel card key and iphone and get moving. It was about a mile walk from the Holiday Inn downtown to the start. No need to ask for directions, just join the 100 or so runners already headed out. We walked through sparse traffic until we got to the start. If you've never seen 30,000 runners converge on a spot, let me tell you, it's pretty amazing.

Based on my estimated completion time of 5 hours 30 minutes, I was placed in the 24th corral. The fastest runners were in the first corral (and by fast I mean fast, the overall winner of the 2010 San Antonio marathon came in at 2 hours 17 minutes), and they'd be released first. Each corral would follow at about one minute intervals, give or take, but in reality, my corral departed roughly 40 minutes after the initial gun went off.

Those 40 minutes rank as the most adrenalized moments of my life. Here I am slowly walking up to the start line so I could start the damn race. Chris Anderson is with me although he should have been in the 18th corral. There are two DJs up at the stand and their non-stop brain-dead patter is just about enough to make me wanna commit murder. Everything they say, every random stupid thing, is being broadcast to all the corrals. So imagine being forced to listen to an inane radio station for 40 minutes, and you can see how motivated we were to get going.

Finally, the start line was there, and we were off! We threaded through a bit of downtown and then came down a ramp and followed the freeway a bit before curving north and then back down into town. I was pretty pumped just to be there, moving along with the runners, hearing all the cheering people, and just seeing the city go by.

If you've never done a marathon before, may I suggest that you run a Rock and Roll one. They have them all over the country, and they're damn well organized. Every half mile or so you'll see something: a band playing music, a cheering section, a water station, or an aid station. Every eight miles or so were food stations (mostly goo) or helpful people handing out vaseline or salt packets. Not to mention just the generalized kind of weirdness you see from folks along the route, like the guy in a gorilla suit handing out bananas to the runners, or the two guys with Bible verses on signs handing out cookies.

The first ten miles were an eye-opening experience for me. I'd seriously underestimated in my mind just how many runners were going to be there, and how inexperienced they would be. Despite the rules about not walking or running more than two abreast, you'd come up on a group of people walking four or five abreast, which meant either going around them or crashing through them.

Around mile 7, a young lady made a dead stop in front of me without warning. I plowed into her at pretty much at cruising speed (6 miles per hour) and to this day I'm not sure if my ribs have recovered. Unbelievable. You're supposed to go to your right before you stop to avoid these situations. In any case, I paused long enough to shake my fist at her and then keep going sans serious injury.

So, lots of silly behavior. There were lots of half-marathon runners, which I discovered at about the 10 mile marker. That's where the half-marathoners veered left and we kept going straight south into the Mission district. One minute I'm weaving and dodging through a bunch of runners and walkers, and the next minute, about 5000 people go left and it's just me, Chris, and about 10 other folks heading south.

I hit the half-marathon point (13.1 miles) in 2 hours and 11 minutes, a personal best. By mile 14 I was at a 10-minute mile pace and feeling very strong. Then disaster struck. I lost my footing for a second, I think my right foot went into a chuck hole in the road, and the knee didn't bend. Within a hundred yards, it wouldn't take weight at all, and by the time I was halfway to the 15 mile marker I was limping and cursing like a madman. I couldn't believe it, almost a year of training without serious injury and here I was gimping along.

It really wasn't about the pain, there's something sadomasochistic about the pain tolerance that marathoners have--no, this was a mental anguish that was just roaring in my ears. It was literally a deafening inner scream, a "I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING! WHAT THE HELL! WORK, KNEE, WORK!"

I saw an aid station at the fifteen mile mark and hobbled up to it. The EMTs took one look at my knee, which was swelling like a gourd, and suggested I quit the race. I told them I was crossing the finish line one way or another, even if it was in the back of their ambulance. I requested an Ace bandage and some extra-strength Tylenol, got them, and was on my way.

I decided right then to just start race walking, and so I did, blazing through the next five miles at a brisk 11-minute mile pace. As I approached the 19 mile marker, I saw another aid station, so I decided to stop, mostly because my feet were full of blisters and I could barely stand to walk on them. So I pulled up on the grass, sat down, removed my shoes and socks, popped all my blisters, put the socks and shoes back on, and stood up.

Suddenly, the knee was weight bearing again. The meds must have kicked in. I started running again, just concentrating on doing 2-3 miles at a time at a steady pace. I had to stop a few more times from the blisters and my aching knee, but eventually, I crossed the finish line at 5 hours 13 minutes.

During that time that I was in the back of the pack, I saw some incredible courage from other runners. There was a guy running with what amounted to a badly twisted ankle--it was swollen even more than my knee, but he just kept going. His grim, determined face said it all. He finished about 2 minutes behind me. A woman by the name of Victoria was also in the same pack, she'd hurt her knee around mile 15 and was gutting it out. She could only run for about a half-mile at a time before having to walk again, and she did that all the way back in.

I ran quite a long way with an older guy, he must have been in his 70s, a retired USAF colonel. We were together when we crested a rise just north of the Mission District and saw the Hemisfair Tower jutting out of downtown in the distance. "We're going to make it," was all he said.

I'd promised myself earlier that if I finished the marathon, I'd find Chris Anderson and punch him. And I did just that. Of course, I'm ready to run the Austin marathon now, so that just proves I'm crazy.

Today Chris and I ran about 7 miles of the Austin marathon course, mostly the section that includes the South Congress hill. As we were running up it, I turned to Chris and told him how much I didn't like him. See, I still blame him for talking me into this marathon foolishness.

Chris turned to me and said, "You know, it's okay not to like me for the first marathon. This is your second one now, so you really just need to say, 'I don't like me.'"

Words of wisdom.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

You don't have to be crazy to train for a marathon, but it sure does help

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:17:00 -0800

I spend most of my time sitting on my ass, either writing or coding. Or sitting in meetings with other people discussing projects that involve writing or coding. To make a long story short, this leads to a lot of weight gain and lethargy, not to mention creaky bones and sucking wind while going up a single flight of stairs.

About a year ago, I'd had enough. We'd just come back from Holland (where we ate and drank nonstop) and then pigged out during Thanksgiving, so I was feeling pretty down about my general health. I tweeted that I was going for a run, maybe try to get back into shape. That led to Chris Anderson @replying me, saying he wanted to get back into running too. So that's how the whole crazy thing started, a two-mile run we barely got through on December 23, 2009. That run was remarkable in that I twisted my ankle and fell right at the end, and I thought, "Well, that's that, I'm screwed."

But that first two-miler turned into running 2-3 times a week until we built up to 3-4 mile runs, and after about 2 months of that, Chris turned to me and said, "Hey, you know, we ought to train for a marathon. Have a goal."

And I thought to myself, "You're mad!" but found myself saying "Okay, that sounds great." As in, out loud. I had no idea what I was in for, as I could barely run 5 miles without hurting bad, but I figured, let's go for it.

We downloaded a marathon running schedule, and it called for 16 weeks of training. I took one look at it and just snorted. The first week was okay for a guy at my fitness level, but after that it would be impossible to keep up. Week four had us running 10 mile runs as a regular thing, and here I could barely pull off a 10K (six miles and change).

The deal I made was simple: it was March, so let's start the 16-week schedule on July 1. That would give me a total of six months of pre-training to get the weight off, build up endurance, and get into marathon mode. So for the next 3 months, we ran on a regular basis, tried to eat right, and just prepped our asses off for what we knew would be a grueling summer of running in the beastly Austin heat.

In June, I traveled to San Francisco to attend a conference, and while I was there, I took up the challenge of running from Fishermen's Wharf to the far end of the Golden Gate Bridge and back, which was nine miles. It was pretty much the longest run I'd attempted in my life, and when I finished it, I felt like I could do anything I wanted. Granted, the weather was incredible (55 degrees on June 1!) and I had someone with me (Phil Sturgeon from the UK) but it was a great big boost to my confidence to pull that off.

Our marathon training began in earnest on July 1st. The first 8 weeks were basically unbearable. We'd get up way early and go run at Town Lake or in our neighborhoods, trying to beat the sunrise. Of course, as our training runs got longer, it would just become impossible to find a block of time long enough to avoid the heat, so we started to add gear to our runs--I started with a belt with water bottles and then graduated to a Camelback with 50 ounces of water while Chris ran with a Camelback.

As our distance increased (practically one mile per week increase for the longest runs, with more frequent "short" runs during the week--a short run eventually becoming 10K minimum) the more preparation we needed to have. If you're going out for a 15-mile run, you not only need water to stay hydrated, you also need food. So I stared experimenting with the goo fuel packets and settled on the Vanilla flavor because it was caffeine-free.

Along the way, I also learned that running long distances involves a hell of a lot of chafing in interesting places. If you're going out for a long run, your nipples are going to chafe and bleed. So get rid of those cotton tee shirts and use the dri-fit stuff. If you're like me, you'll also need vaseline and maybe band-aids on the nipples. You'll also want vaseline between your legs.

The thing that surprised me the most, though, were the socks. Normal socks retain moisture, and they tend to bunch and cause lots of painful rubbing. If you've never run more than 3-4 miles at a time, you think to yourself, "Bah, a little bunching in a sock isn't a big deal," and you'd be right. However, everything about distance training involves a huge amount of amplification. The smallest little annoying grain of sand feels like a damn boulder after 12-13 miles of running. So you want to buy the dri-fit socks so you can make it through a long run without feeling like your foot is being sawed off. That won't keep your toenails from breaking off, but at least your feet will be dry.

By the time we were two weeks away from the November 14 San Antonio marathon, we were ready for our longest training run: 20 miles. If you're an Austin resident, that's two complete laps around Town Lake. I didn't think I'd be able to make it, and not because I wasn't physically ready for it--I just didn't know if I could handle the mental aspect of running for four hours. However, the training run, though physically demanding, happened on the perfect Fall day with nice cool weather and overcast. It took four hours and change to run that, so I knew I was on track to meet a five hour marathon time, which was my goal.

The next two weeks, we tapered off, running 10Ks and 10 milers and then down to a few three milers right before the main event. The night before the marathon, I sat with a whole bunch of other runners in the hotel hot tub and just tried to relax. I knew that I had everything I needed to finish the event--physically and mentally I was all there, I just needed to bond with other runners.

I'll write about the San Antonio marathon experience in a later post--I just wanted to share with you all the stuff that led me from point A to point B, so to speak. In one year, I managed to transform myself from a way overweight coder/writer who barely moved at all into someone who could finish a marathon in five hours and change. I couldn't have done it without Chris or the support from my wife, but at the end of the day it was all about getting up at 5 on those hot summer mornings and putting in the miles.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Improve your writing in five easy steps

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:22:00 -0700

I'm going to do something painful right now: I'm gonna come up with a horrible sentence. After that I'm going to show you five easy ways to improve that sentence in terms of comprehension. With any luck, you can use these tricks to improve your own writing.

Here's the sentence (and believe me, just thinking about writing this gives me the hives):

In my capacity as president of the homeowner's association, it is announced with utmost regret that last year's budget shortfall has currently created extenuating and unforeseen budgetary constraints, without which we would have clearly achieved the goals of our finance committee; needless to say it is impossible for the board to undertake its promise to fly everyone to Las Vegas for the holiday weekend.

In no particular order, the following quick fixes will at least start to make sense of that jumble.

Try to keep it down to one idea per sentence. You don't have to adhere to this rule with every sentence, but for the most part it is a damn fine idea. The example sentence contains two ideas: 1) whoops, we ran out of money or somehow botched up the finances. 2) As a result, the Vegas trip is off.

An easy way to improve the example is to split it up into two sentences. But even so, once you do that you still have to contend with all the other sins committed in the name of whatever is going on there in that example.

Kill the chatty stuff that adds no value. In the above sentence, replace "In my capacity as" with "As." Kill off "needless to say" and "with utmost regret". You're talking about painful money stuff, so we know that you're regretful already. We also don't give two craps about your finance committee, especially since they're the ones who probably screwed up the financial forecast.

Kill Eradicate as many passive voice constructions as you can. The passive voice is an evil that needs eradication (those of you who are grammar nerds will laugh at what I just did there). The passive voice says "the dogs will be fed" making it unclear who in fact will feed the damn dogs. Will you feed the dogs? Will the neighbor lady feed the dogs? If you know in fact who will feed the dogs, just say so and stop putting the damn verb after the object. In the above example, "it is announced with utmost regret" should be something like "I regretfully announce" or something like that (but don't get too excited, as we now turn to adverbs).

Kill Slay as many adverbs as you possibly can. Adverbs, if you'll recall from Schoolhouse Rock, modify a verb or an adjective. Most of the time, they offer empty calories that could be replaced with a strong, hearty, nutritional verb. For example, why write "she ran quickly" (quickly being the adverb that modifies the verb "run") when you could write "she sprinted"? The stronger verb will put some vim and vigor in your sentences, whereas adverbs just pollute what you're trying to say. In the above example, "currently" is an adverb, and so is "regretfully"--see if you can find any others.

Kill Annihilate as many prepositions as you can. As you may recall from elementary school grammar, a preposition is any place a mouse can go. Under, over, between, through, with, of, into, up, toward, you name it. In some cases, prepositions are needed, but in others, they just add cruft to what you're trying to say. For example, a sentence like "The ship sailed on the ocean" is okay by normal standards because the preposition "on" clarifies where the ship sailed. Of course, any person could rightly tell you that ships sail on the ocean (and not "through the air"), so is that preposition really necessary?

Where prepositions really start getting painful is when writers chain them together to create mangled expressions. In the above example, "it is announced with utmost regret that last year's budget shortfall has currently created extenuating and unforeseen budgetary constraints, without which we would have clearly achieved the goals of our finance committee" is one long chain of adverbial phrases hooked together with prepositions.

An easy rewrite for all that? Well, "our budget shortfall will keep us from meeting this year's financial goals" would be a first good stab. If you're feeling stabby, which I certainly am at this point.

So, then, how would I rewrite that jumble? There are lots of ways to approach the editing of such a monstrosity, so here's one:

As president of the homeowner's association, I regret to announce that our budgetary shortfall will keep us from meeting our financial goals. Therefore, I've taken the prudent step of canceling the promised board retreat to Las Vegas this holiday weekend.

That's certainly not prize-winning prose, but you can at least understand what the hell is going on: we're having some money trouble, therefore we're not going on a trip. At this point, the two ideas you're trying to convey AND the expression of those ideas as English sentences actually start to overlap on a Venn diagram.

The one thing I haven't talked about is how your voice and style is affected by your audience. My rewrite takes into account that I'm delivering bad news in a formal or semi-formal setting, such as in an official press release or email to board members. There may be other situations that call for a different voice. For example, if I were sharing bad news in a personal note to a closely allied board member, I might write:

Dude, our budget is hosed. We have to tighten our belts. No Vegas, baby! PS. We need to assign blame quickly.

Voice and style is up to you, of course, and it takes a while to develop your own voice and use it properly. I won't delve too much into that now, mostly because I firmly believe that any writer who works on his/her mechanics (prepositions, adverbs, and so on) will eventually develop their own clear, communicative style.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Let's kick some content ass at #BlogathonATX

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:31:00 -0700

This Saturday from 1pm to 4pm I'll be in the "Discussion Den" at Blogathon, hopefully helping folks generate ideas for their blog. I promised Ilene that I would try to get some thoughts down on paper or (ha!) on my blog before the discussion started, so here it is, in all its glory.

See, after the discussions of SEO and Wordpress vs. Posterous vs. Tumblr are all concluded, after you've fiddled with all the plugins and argued over Thesis vs. ThemeForest, at some point you have to sit your ass down in the chair and come up with something to say. Now, this might terrify a few of you, but I'm willing to bet that most of you are looking forward to actually creating something instead of farting around with PHP.

One way to approach content creation is to just start writing about random stuff. Have a bad day at work? Okay, go ahead and blog about that. Taking a trip and want to share some photos and observations? Cool, go right ahead. Amuse yourself by taking video of your cute new puppy and then putting together a seven-week mini-documentary of your latest obsession and then releasing it in installments? I'm sure it's been done, so why not join in the fun.

Unfortunately, this kind of approach will just keep people guessing as to what the hell it is you're up to. And quite honestly, the entire "blogging as a way to keep people updated" is now pretty passe now that we have Facebook and Twitter and any number of other annoying little services that provide easier status updates.

So at some point you'll want to get a bit more serious about what your blog is about, which means you'll need to think about content strategy, which some people don't want to think about because they don't even know what underwear they're gonna put on right after they shower. Oops, did I forget to shower again? So many details in life. I digress.

Never fear, I'm going to break this thing down for you old school, and with any luck you'll be able to use this information to go kick some content ass during and after Blogathon.

Anyone who has been in the writing game for any amount of time knows that most (but not necessarily all) content emerges from three areas:

1. Your audience.

2. Your own expertise or interests.

3. Your point of view or opinion.

In other words, if I'm a crackerjack gardener, or if I have a certain political bent, or if I know my audience really wants to understand how to create web sites with PHP, then it's very easy for me to start creating content for them. Or at least, it's easier than if I don't know any of that and I just sit in my little coffee shop trying to figure out what I should say next on my Posterous.

Let's look at each of these areas one at a time before we look at other stuff.

YOUR AUDIENCE

Sad to say, but if you don't have an audience, or if you don't know who your audience is, then you're not really a writer. Period, end of story, full stop. I started as a freelance journalist, and believe me, we learned this lesson early and often, and it's a shame that a lot of the bloggers I meet don't even have a concept of who their audience is. Yes, sure, they have "conversations" with people who leave comments and such, but they don't understand why their audience is visiting, what they want out of the blog, what they want to accomplish, and so on.

You've got to get a strong grip on your audience. You have to understand as much as possible about who they are, why they're reading your stuff, what they want out of your stuff, in what formats they like to digest content (audio, video, text, whatever), how often is often enough for updates, all that stuff.

Just as important is having a sense of relating to your audience, an idea that doesn't seem all that important, but it is. For example, I'm an atheist and would find it very hard to sympathize or even try to fake my way through some religious content. Same goes for sports--most sporting events (except the Summer Olympics maybe) bore the ever loving crap out of me, so blogging about sports would probably be a no go. This isn't to say that I haven't covered religion or sports as a writer (because I most certainly have) it's just that I really couldn't get into the audience that much. The occasional baseball piece is probably okay, but devoting a whole blog to sports would be suicide.

The bottom line here? Any audience is okay. If you are religious, I'm not saying that you're a dumbass. What I am saying is, if you're religious and don't know that your audience is religious or whatever, then by God (see, irony!) you'd better find out or you're gonna be in trouble. There you'll be, blogging happily away about something and just totally lose your audience, or attract the wrong audience.

YOUR OWN EXPERTISE OR INTERESTS

Someone once said that to be a successful writer, you must "write what you know." It seems like reasonable advice, except upon closer examination it's pretty chowderheaded to either say it or believe it. Look, at the end of the day, you gotta "know what you write" which is the exact opposite of the overused aphorism. If all you did was write what you know then we'd all be boring each other to tears before the day is out.

All that being said, yes, it certainly does help to gin up content ideas from your line of work, your hobbies, your interests, and what not, but don't limit yourself to stuff you've already mastered. If you're just learning about photography, it's quite all right to start blogging about your learning curve. The experts don't need this content, but there are plenty of other people out there who may want to follow along because you're going through the same kinds of things they are. In fact, in many ways, they'll appreciate your content all the more because they aren't ready to throw down f-stops and HDR techniques with the big boys (see? audience?).

So take an inventory of your skills and hobbies. Are you a rower? Are you training for a triathlon? Did you use your bricklaying skills to build a shed out back? Are you a gardener? Do you know a lot about camping and outdoors life? Are you a crafty person who can make their own clothes? Are you a marvelous cook? Do you moonlight as a magician? Have you written a book about snails? Do you enjoy American history and take tours of Civil War battlefields? Are you the world's leading expert in encryption standards and would benefit from more exposure on a blog? You get the picture.

YOUR POINT OF VIEW

If you've got a certain point of view, opinion, or way of looking at the world, then you can probably turn that talent on just about any topic space you want. For example, let's take atheism. Why not start a history blog that features famous atheists in history? Time each blog post to that person's birthday. Or how about a travel blog for atheists? Feature all the non-religious stuff in different cities that atheists might want to go visit. Or build a blog around atheist dating? You get the picture.

Take any viewpoint or opinion and find your voice, because then you can use that voice to attract an audience. It works for the big magazines, and it'll work for you. If you don't believe me, just pick up any major magazine at random and you'll pick up their point of view almost immediately. I know if I want urbane and witty, I can go to GQ. If I want the straight dope on fitness with a bit of jock humor, I can read Men's Health. And so on.

SOME RANDOM STUFF AND A CONCLUSION

Audience, expertise, point of view. If you can zero in on any one of those elements, you'll go a long way toward building a better blog. If you can nail two or three then you're going to have a runaway success because people will know exactly what it is you're going to deliver and be attracted to that. Think blog for outdoorsy atheists who want to escape annoying social media conversations about their atheism. Yeah, huge!

In all seriousness, this kind of thing takes a bit of homework and introspection, but once you've triangulated a bit, you can start drilling down into all kinds of neat areas, for example:

* Newbie content. The world is renewed every day with noobs who need guidance.

* Profiles and interviews. People love to read stories about other people. Especially if they're doing something those people are obsessing about.

* Reviews or stories about places. People love to know about places, especially if they relate to their skills and interests.

* Current events and news. Is something moving and shaking in your area of expertise? Tell us about it.

* React to someone else's content. Disagree, agree, whatever. Jump in there!

* Take up a controversial position in an argument. Not just for argument's sake (okay, do that if you want) but because you truly believe it.

* Explain how to do something. How-to material is always popular.

* Create a reference post. Do your homework, create content that readers can use for years to come.

* Create a roadmap or intro to your niche. Write the kind of blog post that everyone in your niche points to and says, "okay, read that first then come talk to me."

* Answer some frequently asked questions you receive. If you get the same question more than twice, it's time to blog about it.

* Do a liveblog or report from an event.

* Write a series of posts that explain something complicated. You can't just fill your blog with 500-word pieces. If you are showing someone how to plant a garden, it may take 3-4 posts.

* Write a why-to piece. Similar to a how-to piece, except this explains why someone would want to take a certain approach over other approaches.

Okay, that's enough for now. See you at Blogathon!

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Facebook, Teens, and Safety

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:01:20 -0700

Please note: this blog post is promotional. I'm using this space to promote an information product that my company, Triple Dog Dare Media, is selling. If you don't like the idea of people making money, then feel free to skip this post. :)

About three months ago, I was approached by an old friend who lives out of state. She is a counselor, someone who works around kids, and she had an idea for an information product about Facebook privacy. She wanted to talk to us about publishing her product under the aegis of Triple Dog Dare Media. The only hitch was, she needed to stay anonymous, as the topic of the report could be misconstrued in all manner of ways.

Once I heard what she had to say, I had to agree to publishing the report. I don't have kids, but if I did, it's for damn sure they'd be on social media like the rest of their peers. And although I consider myself pretty Internet savvy (after 15 years as a web guy, you tend to get exposed to a lot of weirdo stuff) some of the findings that my friend "Linda" discovered while doing her research were pretty amazing.

So basically, here's what this is about: Linda is in a relationship and her significant other has three teenage kids. All of them, even the youngest, is active on Facebook (this despite the terms of service--I know, shocking). She was a bit concerned that these kids were on Facebook as she is well aware how unsafe the Web can be for kids. Like I said, she works around kids all the time. When confronted, the children all said it was no big deal, they were mature enough to handle themselves.

Fast forward a month or so, and Linda has started her experiment. She creates a fake identity, with all the backup material she needs to fill out a bio: photos, email addresses, high school, you name it. She masquerades as a good-looking all-American boy from the midwest. She starts making friends, edging closer and closer to the children she has targeted--the children that share her household.

Within a week of starting, she has befriended every significant person in their social circle. Only a handful of these kids even question the identity of the boy trying to friend them, and most of those questions are turned aside with innocent answers ("Yes, I think I met you at Gina's party last weekend"). Along the way, Linda has gathered critical information like birthdays and events that these children have RSVP'd to, and been privy to semi-private conversations containing extremely useful nuggets of information (who is going on a month-long vacation with her whole family, who is feeling sad and lonely, etc).

Needless to say, parts of this report will chill you to the bone. One of my first jobs in the high-tech world was writing after-action reports for a group of white-hat security guys. They would use technical and non-technical means to hack into corporate security systems and almost always uncovered secret stuff during their penetration tests. No matter how well a company deployed intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and one-time use passwords, the social engineering guy on the team would almost always prevail. For those not in the know, "social engineering" means manipulating people into divulging confidential information.

Watching this guy at work was amazing. He'd call in, pose as a top customer, or a rep from the phone company, and figure out a way to get the information he needed from an unsuspecting person on the other end of the line. Once he had the one bit of information he needed, the rest of the team could leverage from there.

Reading this report reminded me of those days, except now the unsuspecting targets were kids. Probably your kids, although I know its something you don't want to think about. If there's someone out there like Linda trying to do good in the world, how many people are out there trying to do harm?
I'm not trying to be sensationalist or anything, but if you do have kids, and you suspect they are on Facebook, then you need to take a look at what Linda has put together. The report includes various recommendations and steps you can take to keep them safe on Facebook--and it's not just about proper privacy settings, either.

The report is available at Lulu as an ebook, priced at $16.99. Here's the link:

http://xlnt.at/tddm1

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Avoiding the Crazy Client

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:28:00 -0700

You're a freelance writer, designer, coder, strategist, whatever. Or you're a consultant. Or a business owner. You're out there on your own, creating a business from your skills, your gumption, and the networks you've put together, all of it hard work, harder than anyone who spends their life in a cubicle will ever understand.

Most days, you get to work with great people. Clients who appreciate your efforts, your results, and your insight. You partner with other lone guns and get 'er done. It's an exciting life that often feels more like unemployment than self-employment, but there you have it. The alternative is to die in a cage, or at least it feels that way.

Early on, you learn to recognize the obvious time-wasters and tire-kickers, the people who just want to dribble your day away with idle chatter about half-realized dreams. It's cool though, you need to get out more, so you drink your coffee and ask your questions, give some advice, maybe help them firm something up. Maybe in six months they'll have something, but right now they have no idea that it will take more than $500 to build the next eBay.

File it under the price of being in the business. In the life. These people, you learn, the ones who are in that dream space, the ones trying to coalesce into something that might one day resemble a business, they are not bad people, they just need help. You're probably not the right person for them, but they're generally harmless if you keep them from sucking you down into their thrashing and struggling. Like a lifeguard, you've learned to wait until they stop struggling before you jump in and try to do something.

But there are others out there, the clients who I can only categorize as sociopathic. They don't care about you in even the most basic terms. Some of them don't even really want to have a business arrangement, where both of you benefit. They only care that they benefit, and if it means forcing you to do things that hurt your position, then so be it. If they play money games, well that's your problem, really, and yeah, they have the big mean lawyers and all the clout they need to run you through the "justice" system.

Even if you did fight them, all the money you're owed goes not to you, but your lawyer. And besides, you live in that place where you watch your margins evaporate even when the going is great, so who the hell has time for all this? They're counting on that, by the way, for you to walk away and never come back so they can prey on another guy just like you.

In short, these people aren't the ones thrashing in the pool waiting for you to jump in and save them. No, these are the people who stop thrashing, wait for you to jump in, then try to drown you for some mysterious reason. I say mysterious mostly because I've never spent much time trying to be a sneaky bastard. I don't care about your politics or your hidden motives, I just want to reach the objective in the most direct manner while conserving resources.

Unfortunately, this makes me uniquely qualified to be a sap. And for the second time in 8 months, I've fallen for variants of the oldest scam in the book, and now I'm pissed off. So I'm writing this blog post, for whatever good it will do, because I'd like to share some hard-won insight into the nature of this deceptive type of client.

This client comes in different shapes and sizes, but basically I'll call them the Shiny New Client. You know them by the things they bring: a big exciting project, a big new contract, exclusive whatever, promises up the ying-yang. Everything seems fine until you get into the project a bit, and you realize they are anything but the friendly, happy-to-be-on-the-client-roster type people. They have different agendas, and maybe that agenda means using you up and throwing you over the side. Maybe the agenda is to set an impossible deadline and watching you fail, then doing an "I told you so" to management.

There are all kind of variants, of course, way too many to list here. There's no way to fight this kind of sociopathic client once you are involved (save for firing them) so the best thing is to avoid them altogether. But how do you avoid them if they seem so normal and nice?

You go back to their behavior, the things they say. Here is a starter list of identifiers, a profile of the crazy client, if you will. I'm sure you have your own to add to the list, but for now, I'm happy with it:

They won't let you talk to the people who really matter. If you're working for an ad agency, the people who really matter might be the end client. Or it may be the people who will purchase the product or read the copy or download the application. Maybe they don't want you to talk to them because they don't trust you, or they don't want the end client to know that you exist, that they hired you. There's some kind of deception going on, and in this world, that really speaks volumes about the way their minds work.
They won't give you a realistic timeline, or when pressed, they say the client wants it yesterday. Or they propose a completely crazy timeline that nobody could ever meet, no matter how hard they worked. I'm talking about writing a book in less than a month, or putting a web site together in a week, design included.
They never seem to put anything in writing. It's all over the phone or Skype, or in face-to-face meetings with nobody else besides you taking notes. You're busy, see, and don't write up your notes and ask them to confirm its accuracy, what with the impossible deadline.
They start intruding on your private time. Need time to eat, duck out, and they leave 20 messages, each more frantic than the last? Start complaining that you need time to sleep? Wonder if it's really vital for you to take your pet to the emergency room?
Insist in the heaviest terms possible that you begin the work before the deposit check arrives. When you push back, they insist that the job is for GIANT BIG BRAND and that you'd better get cracking on it. Your reputation is on the line.
They make lots of promises early on, even before you start working, that if you do a good job, there's a metric boatload of work for you in the future. In fact, when I hear this, I think the exact opposite, that there isn't anything else there, the whole thing is a Potemkin village.
They mention early on that the previous writer/developer/designer/whatever didn't work out so well, they were removed from the project. Or that there have been various people in the past, none of whom met the cut. Wouldn't it be interesting if we heard that and demanded to talk to those previously hired and now fired people? To get the whole story?

We've all had clients who did one or maybe two of these things. On that scale, these warning signs aren't exactly prophetic. But a client who evinces five or six of these? Truly crazy, avoid like the clap, get out of dodge, put up some tape that says POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

Your thoughts?

VEZ6G5CANZTH

Permalink | Leave a comment »

9 years as a hired gun, 9 aphorisms

Fri, 07 May 2010 07:14:00 -0700

Nine years ago this week, I put an end to my corporate career and traded the veal-pen cubicle and steady paycheck in for a life of adventure and uncertainty. Since then, some years have felt more like perpetual unemployment rather than self-employment, and other years have brought enormously gratifying amounts of money and professional distinction. Those of you who know me know that I don't like to sit still, and I've kept busy: wrote seven books, spoken at conferences, worked for the Fortune 500 and the mom and pops (and countless folks in between), made a lot of friends, and taken quite a few lumps.

I still haven't gotten to the point where I hang out by the pool all day, pausing in my frolic only to collect and deposit the many dozens of checks that pour into my mailbox every single day. Nor do I have a fancy car bought with those proceeds, or a mountaintop villa that resembles a Bond villain's fortress retreat.

In honor of this tiny little milestone (knowing full well how many friends I have who have managed to survive and thrive 12, 15, 20, and even 30 years as business owners) I decided to put together a few thoughts that sum up what I've learned thus far. With any luck, this little list will help you.

Cash flow is king. Knew a guy once who was pretty good with business theory. Endless talk about the importance of profit. I thought he was pretty smart, until I started working for myself. Then I learned that profit was something that an accountant cooks up. You can't do anything with profit, really. Nobody ever paid the mortgage with profit. If a bill is due or your car breaks down or you want to buy an iPad, then what you need is cash in the bank, and that's all about cash flow. Build a system that will give you good cash flow, and you'll be well on your way to success.

You own all your victories. If I've learned anything at all, it's that this business of freelancing is no place for the shy and withdrawn. If you've worked hard for something, and you achieve it, then you own it. The only way anyone can take that away from you is if you let them do it. There will always be a bunch of people in your life who do nothing but criticize and belittle what you've accomplished. Ignore them, and go back to kicking ass.

You own all your defeats. On the flip side of the coin, if you screw something up, then own up to it and move along. Even if the screwup is really the fault of an employee, partner, or contractor, it's still on you. You hired that person. You decided to make the partnership happen. You attracted that situation. Own it. Then address it.

It's okay to make mistakes, but not the same mistakes over and over again. Show me a person who is afraid to make mistakes, and I'll show you someone who will be absurdly miserable as a freelancer. Listen, you're going to make every mistake in the book. I know, because that's what I did. Don't worry about it. You'll recover. Just stop stepping in the same pile of crap each and every time. For example, if you have a blind spot for trusting people who say they're going to do something and then don't do it and leave you high and dry, then examine that blind spot and figure out a way to change things.

Take a few breaks along the way. Budget in some vacation time every once in a while--at least once a year, even if it means going to the next town over for a getaway weekend. Leave your iPhone and netbook behind. Go fishing out in the middle of the ocean. Get away. Unplug. If you can't take a long break, then figure out a way to take mini-breaks. Start training for a marathon--that's a great way to get away where no one can reach you, giving you lots of time for mental garbage collection and destressing.

Learn to recognize time-wasting people. I'm talking about the kind of people who could harm you and your business. I've learned, for example, that prospective clients who don't have a budget, a deadline, any strategic direction, or any way to measure what success is (and are unwilling to discuss these points) are probably not worth my time and effort. I've also learned that prospects who aren't willing to pay me a deposit and sign a contract are better off going away. Also, anyone who screws around with finances in any way is a pretty big waste of time--folks who forget to send you the check, oops forgot to sign the check, or checks keep bouncing...just forget it. Move on.

Learn to recognize self-destructive people. I'm talking about people who say they want to work with you but they can't seem to hit any deadline you set. Or people who turn in shoddy work. Or who can't really deliver on what they said they could deliver. Or people who need prescription anti-depressants in order to get through a business meeting without coming apart at the seams. They're going to implode at some point, and you don't want to be anywhere near that detonation.

Laugh at things. Starting with yourself. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you're doomed. In 100 years, you'll be dust. The time is now to get things done, and to have fun. If your work makes you miserable, change your work. If your clients suck, then either change your clients or change the way you operate with clients. At the end of the day, sit on your porch with a beer and have a good laugh at teh crazy.

Build the business you want to have. I spent a lot of time trying to create a business that would make my parents, friends, and colleagues happy. I rented a space. I hired people. I went after the kinds of clients that drove me insane. I did work for them that I hated doing. Once I realized I was just working my ass off and being miserable just so a few people in my life would be "proud" of me, I shut it all down and started over again. All I was doing was building the most miserable job in the world, with the craziest boss in the world--me. I don't want to work for a maniac.

VEZ6G5CANZTH

Permalink | Leave a comment »

How to Pitch your Idea to a Publisher

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:11:00 -0700

Last week I put together a longish post on how to have a happy tech book publishing career. I promised, at its conclusion, that I would throw together some thoughts on how to pitch your ideas to a publisher in the first place. Yes, that's right, I'm doing it all backwards again but those of you who know me aren't really surprised.

One more thing before I get to the good parts: I'm going to draw on my experience pitching technical books, of course, but I'll try to keep this as generic as possible. Please note that I know nothing about pitching fiction ideas, so this advice is only bankable if you are putting together a business, technical, or nonfiction title.

First things first: before you write your book, you have to interest someone in the topic. You do this with a query and a proposal. What's the difference between the two?

A query is usually a short note or piece of correspondence (in the past, an actual letter, but today it's more likely an email) that spells out an idea in just a few paragraphs. It's designed to hook an agent's or publisher's interest in your topic. It must be nimble, persuasive, and interesting. No dilly dally. No beating around the bush. Sell your idea, sell yourself, bada-bing.

The proposal, on the other hand, has a lot more detail. It spells out your idea in varying levels of detail, provides facts and figures on the nature and size of the audience, lists the competition, and presents your credentials and bona fides as someone who could actually not only write the damn thing but promote it. In today's hectic little world, publishers don't have the time, energy, budget or desire to spend marketing dollars on anyone except their top sellers (who ironically don't need the help, but we're gonna keep right on moving) so they really want to talk to authors who have some kind of platform.

By the way, social media is a powerful way to create a classic platform for finding new readers, engaging existing readers, and having about as much fun as you can with your clothes on. This sounds like another post, so I'll just tease you with that and keep moving.

Bottom line, you only write the proposal once an agent or publisher gives a positive response to your query.

Because I hate being subtle, let me drive down an even bottom-er line (which, if you're keeping track, is my "second things second"): in the world of nonfiction, you don't write the book until the proposal has been accepted, a contract has been signed, and advance check is on its merry way to your coffers.

So, the order for nonfiction titles is: query, proposal, actual book. This is a good thing, people, because as my colleagues in the fiction world will tell you, it kinda sucks big time to work on a novel for 9 months or more and then have to go flog it around to see if it will sell.

So in a lot of ways, pitching a non-fiction idea is more like a business pitch then you might otherwise realize. If you're in the technical field, this will probably feel like a familiar concept. If you're coming from fiction, you'll also like this idea because now you can research ideas and not put in any effort until a payday strikes.

All right, then, let's move on to "third things third": while you're in query and proposal mode, every single fiber of your being should be focused on one thing. That one thing is: selling the idea to your first reader and to their first readers.

Your first reader is the agent or acquisitions editor. Their first readers are all those people who can greenlight your project. The people with the money to give you an advance and the resources to get it from your head and onto the bookshelves.

In other words, it's in your best interest to give your first readers as much ammunition as possible to get your project to the top of the list. These are busy people. They have to take your idea and pitch them to other people. In the case of the agent, they have to decide whether your idea is a good match for any publishers they have a relationship with. They're not going to waste their time and reputation selling ideas without a marketplace or any chance in hell of making it through the publisher's acquisition process.

Similarly, if you're dealing with an acquisitions editor, he or she will have to take your idea and show up to an acquisitions meeting with a whole bunch of other acquisitions types. Some publishers have these meetings once a month, others once a week. They sit at the table for a few hours and each editor gets a shot at selling their ideas--some come with 1 or 2 ideas each, and there may not be enough time for everyone to pitch everything they have.

In other words, both agents and acquisitions editors will come loaded for bear, ready to share what they think is their big winner. What they want is for your idea to succeed in this competitive arena, so you need to back them with as much data as you can.

What am I talking about? Here's a good start for the proposal:

A strong opening pitch that will knock a person on his or her ass. Start with some shocking statistics, a personal anecdote, or some other strong opener. Even in the world of tech, you can talk about how many users have adopted a framework, or some kind of problem that is plaguing the entire community.
A longer, more detailed precis of the idea. Several paragraphs and a bullet list is good here. Take off your nerd hat and get persuasive.
A set of 3-5 easily digestible sales bullets, something that the sales team can use to sell your book to book sellers and stores.
A nice section that explains who the audience is, first doing it as a high level sentence, then followed by a section that breaks down who the reader is in some detail, including their motivations, needs, desires, and all that. Show the publisher that you have a handle on this part of the deal and you'll go far.
Follow that section with a high-level TOC of the book. Just chapter titles and maybe a short description of the contents of each, one sentence max.
Follow that with a more detailed TOC, maybe down to section and subsection level. Show them that you've thought a bit about your topic and can organize it. Don't worry, it isn't final, you'll go through lots of changes before you're through. This part of the process just proves you're not some addle pated crank and that you can actually think things through.
Finally, talk about your bona fides. Talk about why you're the perfect guy/gal to write this book. Talk about your experience, your connections, your ability to get 'er done. If you've written articles or books, mention all that stuff. Also, talk about your social media following--how big is your Twitter follower base, your Facebook presence, your blogging or podcasting audience, all that. They'll want to know that you can actually help sell some books.

Through all this, your proposal will change a lot. Your agent or acquisitions editor will ask you for different amounts of detail. Don't despair, because the more they come back to you, the better your chances are. It just means that they're really interested in the project and want more to see it win in the acquisitions arena.

So that's all I've got to say about pitching ideas to a publisher. If you've got a good idea, prove it, and not just to yourself. Sell the crap out of it to the people who can get your book in the stores. Practically no request they make at this point is a bad one, as they're professionals who want to help you succeed.

P.S. I'm hosting a podcast on this very subject on Wednesday April 28 at 5:30pm central. Check it out at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/writingmafia - join us, ask questions, and all that.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

How to make big bucks, achieve fame, and sneak up on happiness as a technical book author

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:30:06 -0700

So I'm lying to you right off the bat, and you've only read the headline.

Unless you're one of just a few authors, or have an insanely popular topic, or get lucky, you probably won't make big bucks at this game. For most of you, a good idea will fetch you a nice advance that will sustain you for the 3-4 months it takes to write a technical book, and later on you'll get a few royalty checks once the advance has been paid off, but you won't be able to go buy a house with the money.

And even if you do make a ton of money, the likelihood of widespread fame is pretty distant. I mean, no one is chasing me down the street asking for my autograph just because my Automator/Applescript book is #2 (Kindle) and #4 (print) in the Amazon Applescript category. However, if you work hard enough you can achieve a little bit of fame in a narrow category or niche. Enough that you're recognized at a geek conference, maybe.

Happiness is another question. If you're anything like me, and you love words, everything about words, and you love communicating and explaining and all that, then there is positively no better job on earth then writing books. Frankly, I think I'd do it even if there was no money or fame. I know this may sound like utter bullshit, but I get quite a bit of satisfaction whenever I successfully explain a difficult or challenging topic in print.

So I started this post because of a great conversation I had (via Twitter) with my friend Jeremy (@jeremya). He wanted to know what it takes to write a technical book. I've written seven of the damn things, so I hope that any bruises and bumps I've collected over the past five years will present themselves as some kind of wisdom I can pass along to you.

So what does it take to write a technical book? Well, first and foremost, you have to love writing. I know this sounds terribly obvious, but many people who start a technical book who don't particularly care for writing (in other words, they start as experts in a particular field) find the process incredibly tedious. Even putting together a relatively short book (200-250pp) can be an interminable slog if you're just not that dedicated to sitting your ass down in a chair and cranking out 5-6 pages every day. It can also be sheer torture if you haven't got the mechanics of grammar down, and if you haven't discovered your own voice yet (mine is consistently that snarky friend who is showing you the secrets of a particular topic).

The second thing you've got to have is an incredibly clear picture of who your audience is for a particular book. Most of the books I write are for people who are brand new to a certain topic, because I feel that this first encounter with XML, or Applescript, or some aspect of PHP is the most crucial point in the learning process. I really savor that moment when I'm learning new stuff, so I've spent a lot of my career just introducing new concepts to my readers. The "new learner" vibe is completely different from the "I'm a total expert and I need an even deeper look at the weeds" -- there's nothing wrong with those books, of course, but the audience is different enough that I have trouble dialing in to their needs.

The third thing you've got to have is a workmanlike attitude to your book. I've worked with four different publishers, and they've all had different requirements for layouts and screenshots and such, but two things are true for all of them: a desire for authors who meet deadlines with quality work, and a desire for books that make sense structurally.

Here's how I think about it. Take any topic and you can pretty much break it up into 10-12 big categories or areas. Each of those areas becomes a chapter. In each chapter, you can normally talk about 3 major concepts. Each concept can be further broken down into 3 smaller sections. Each section consists of a headline, a few paragraphs of prose, some kind of step list, a code listing, and maybe a screen shot.

So each section is 3-4 pages. Three sections is 9 pages per concept. Three concepts gives you 27 pages for a chapter. Add an intro and summary to each chapter and you're knocking on 30 pages per chapter. Put 10 of those together you get 300 pages, then add some front matter, some appendixes and an index, and you're close to 350 pages.

Broken down like that, it's very easy to attack your work every single day. With a TOC in hand that breaks everything down into chapters, concepts, and sections, you should easily be able to sit down and crank out a couple sections per day. My personal record is writing a 30 page chapter, complete with 30+ screenshots, in a single sitting. It was an extremely painful sitting, as it lasted for about 6 hours, but it can be done.

In other words, there is no such thing as writer's block in technical publishing. If you've got a work plan, you can easily crank out a quality book in no time at all. There's no need to wait for inspiration or the Word Fairy to appear.

The fourth thing you've got to have is some humility. Particularly when dealing with the support staff assigned to you by the publisher. The people who will be working with you to produce the book usually include a copyeditor/proofreader (he/she makes sure you don't have spelling errors, for example, and checks for consistency throughout the book), a developmental editor (he/she makes sure that your book stays on track), and a technical editor (he/she makes sure you're actually being technically accurate).

Along the way, you're going to hear lots of feedback from your team about a whole bunch of stuff. They'll pose questions in the manuscript, asking if this section shouldn't be excised or moved or if that section over there isn't just a repeat of a previous idea. They'll ask you to back up your statements with proof. They'll tell you if passages seem confusing. In some cases, you'll hear a technical editor say, "You need to rewrite these three chapters, didn't you see the press release from XYZ that makes all this stuff obsolete?" And sometimes you'll hear things like, "The same week your book comes out, the 8.0 release of this programming language is gonna hit the news, so you need to download the beta now and write a few chapters on it."

In just about 99% of cases, you need to be able to take this feedback and acknowledge it and do something constructive with it. You can't just ignore what they say, or get hostile, or argue with them, or not do something with the feedback. In the last five years, I've only received one bit of feedback that I would consider to be completely out of left field, and even then I was able to tease out what the editor meant and indeed, she had a really good point that once implemented, made the book better.

Finally, and I've left this for last on purpose, you have to actually know what you're talking about. Some of you reading this may wonder why I didn't make this the first thing on the list (after all, I'm talking about technical book authoring, right?), and I'll tell you why. By default, if you're interested in being a technical book author, you already are an expert in something. Now, there's no guarantee that that something can actually succeed as a book, but you've got some kind of technical chops. And you have the ability to learn more about something (and I guarantee you, no matter how well you know a topic, to get through a book, you'll be digging much deeper then you already have in the past).

I've known plenty of people who are technical geniuses but who have zero ability to pass on what they know to anyone else, in any form. They are impatient teachers, their writing leaves a lot to be desired, and their explanations are so dense and tangled that only someone at their level could actually machete-chop their way through the thicket.

If you're still with me on this long blog post, you're probably thinking, "This is all fantastic, Tom, but how does one become a published author?"

To tell you the truth, there are lots of paths up that mountain, but most of those paths fall into one of two big categories. Either you're famous for something (in the book industry that's called "having a platform") or you've done quite a bit of writing already for smaller venues.

In my case, I was asked to write my first book (No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP, still in print after five years) because I'd written an article for SitePoint that was really well received by their members. I was asked to write that article because I'd been writing for IBM DeveloperWorks and lots of other places for years, and had built up a good list of clips and samples.

Once I'd written that first book, I was able to pitch other ideas to other publishers, and so on and so forth. My path up the mountain, in other words, looks a lot like the traditional path that many fiction writers take: publish some short stories in small venues, gravitate eventually to the bigger markets, parlay that into a book, and so on. It is the perfect path for someone who has a lot of interests and loves the craft of writing.

For some of you, having a platform can help you take a massive shortcut and can lead to steadier sales. Let's think about what "having a platform" means. If you're famous for something (let's take the President of the United States) then you could write a book on any topic and people will buy it in sufficient numbers as to guarantee a best seller. It doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, the book's gonna find an audience. If you're a sports figure or pop culture icon, your memoir will also sell truckloads.

In the tech world, it's not likely you'll have this kind of fame, but your platform is equally important. If you've invented a new language, or come up with a framework for an existing one, or created a new approach to doing something, or establish a company that grows to incredible fame, then all of these things qualify as having a platform, and they will help you get in the door at a publisher and help you make plenty of sales once the book is in the stores.

Pitching your idea and putting together a book proposal is another topic, so I'll put a post together on that a bit later.

Permalink | Leave a comment »