The police had slashed our tents; thrown away clothes, food, medical supplies; and arrested the protesters and the reinforcements that were ready to replace us. The police had thrown noxious chemicals and burning gas at us and shot us with rubber bullets. The police had showed their might and erected a flimsy fence to reinforce it. And as they were lying to the media about who did what and when, this sign went up.

Though their numbers had dwindled after Tuesday night’s police brutality, this sign captured the sentiment. The remaining occupiers stood in the street with a banner. They thanked me for coming. Everyone was angry. No one was daunted.

That was on Tuesday. By Wednesday at six the fences were torn down and the camp reestablished. Enough food was donated to feed everyone. A day later there was a library, school tent, and an agreement to have a general strike. My friend got six medical volunteers in a three-hour shift. Not hobos, not teenagers—People who know how to insert a catheter. Constantly there were meetings.

I have never in my life seen such a group of people so diverse, so motivated, so organized and so relentlessly determined. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, we are not quitting. We have been waiting. The time is now.

I say “us” and “we” though it’s unfair to say for I’m not among the campers. My tent wasn’t shredded. My laptop wasn’t “confiscated.” I didn’t have to sleep on the floor in a jail.

I say “us” because Occupy Oakland knows that the movement is much bigger than the campers. It is the farmers that provide the food, the bloggers and publicists  that share the news, the artists that make the t-shirts and photos, the designers and developers who build the website, the thousands who clashed with police on Tuesday. The campers represent us. They are our proxies.

Politicians count active constituents as representative of larger numbers of lazy voters. One email counts for a handful of miffed voters, a letter even more, a phone call counts for many, and you can bet if people are sleeping on your fucking lawn you can count on a crowd with torches and forks.

The campers sit for me. Tomorrow I stand for the protesters. Tomorrow there is no work. Tomorrow there is no shopping. Tomorrow, I strike.

Sincerely,

Furthermore, as observers like Chris Anderson (in “The Long Tail”) and social scientists like Sheena Iyengar (in her new book “The Art of Choosing”) have pointed out, when confronted with an overwhelming array of choices, most people do not graze more widely. Instead, if they aren’t utterly paralyzed by the prospect, their decisions become even more conservative, zeroing in on what everyone else is buying and grabbing for recognizable brands because making a fully informed decision is just too difficult and time-consuming. As a result, introducing massive amounts of consumer choice leads to situations in which the 10 most popular items command the vast majority of the market share, while thousands of lesser alternatives must divide the leftovers into many tiny portions.

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On Tickling the Muse

[Part I]

I enjoy writing. Sometimes I write a blog comment on some random blog because I am looking forward to stringing the words together. Connecting ideas like a Lego castle. I have to remind myself of this when my novel is broken down into chunks that look a great deal like homework assignments.

When you have writers block, it's about not being able to find the words to match your ego. Unfortunately, you need a hefty ego to write a novel. It's a huge fucking task and you need the possibility of greatness as a carrot on the end of the stick.

The problem becomes that we let the ego frame the questions we're asking. Instead of just telling a story or writing a sentence, we ask the pen to produce the most brilliant and witty thing ever written. No wonder we spend so much time staring at blank paper.

I have to remind myself that this is all just a game and I write the rules. The game is not "write the most amazing thing ever" because that would be a sucky boring game full of disappointment and everyone knows it. Instead I must see what little dance I can get the words to do. A much more fun game would be "Let's see if we can make the rhythm and cadence of the paragraph match the intensity of the characters' current emotional state" or "Let's see if we can make a really off the wall pop culture metaphor." How's about: "Let's see if we can find a way to make an allusion to Jorge Luis Borges." It's a puzzle with a practically infinite number of solutions. You can always solve it one way and come up with a more elegant solution later.

Of course this is easier said than done. I have a lot of "talking head" scenes, where I've come up with the dialogue but the descriptions are *weak. I would edit such a scene and it felt like playing "fill in the blanks" with description. This stifled my creativity as I had a preconceived notion about the length of each passage. I was asking myself the least creative questions ("What does the furniture look like?"), thinking inside the box. And when I am producing this kind of blanks and boxes drivel, it helps to remind myself of the game. I do this---I write---for fun. Despite any bitching about "writer's block" in some ways I can't help but play this game. If I'm going to write a sentence, I'm usually going to take the extra time to think of the best possible way to say it. I will not hesitate to ask myself if there's some way I can throw in a joke, a bold visual,a fresh metaphor---yay, even a pun. It may even be second nature, but I'd hate to say so because I know I lose points for allowing a cliché. Every tweet, every grocery list, every note in the margins will be scrutinized and scored, as fast and sure as any Yatzee roll. From here on out, I'm not allowing myself to think of writing as a chore. Sodoku is a chore. Farmville is a chore. Word search? A chore. Character, story, dialogue: Not chores---challenges. Some things to wrap my mind around. If some beauty happens, so much the better.

Something I've been listening to: Just Jack - Writer's Block

*which is weird because when I was young I always prided myself on writing descriptions but felt very insecure about my dialogue.

Burning the library in slow motion: how copyright extension has banished millions of books to the scrapheap of history Boing Boing. I came across this nice article by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing wherein he makes some interesting points on how current copyright laws have censored the majority of books.

the legal changes introduced in the years after Fahrenheit 451 did more than just extend terms. Congress eliminated the benign practice of the renewal requirement (which had guaranteed that 85% of works and 93% of books entered the public domain after 28 years because the authors and publishers simply didn't want or need a second copyright term.) And copyright, which had been an opt-in system (you had to comply with some very minor formalities to get a copyright) became an opt out system (you got a copyright automatically when you "fixed" the work in material form, whether you wanted it or not.) Suddenly the entire world of informal and non commercial culture -- from home movies that provide a wonderful lens into the private life of an era, to essays, posters, locally produced teaching materials -- was swept into copyright. And kept there for the life of the author plus 70 years. The effects were culturally catastrophic.

This issue brings to mind the hardest part, for me, of working in publishing---seeing how many books are destroyed and being powerless to stop it. You would think that out-of-print books are worth more, since the moment it is declared out of print it is limited edition, i.e. those that exist now may be the only copies left in the world. The book industry in the only one where retailers are allowed to return the product if it doesn't sell. But if they hold onto the book after it is out of print, the publisher will refuse the returns. Thus as soon as a book has been declared out-of-print book sellers nationwide box up every last company and return them to the publisher, who, having nowhere to sell them, has them demolished. Naturally, you are wondering why they don't just donante the books to libraries or other book-hungry institutions. The problem is again returns: they assume that a certain percentage of these would find their way back to the bookstores, who will return it for full price. On each of these books the publisher, author and distributor are then paying the bookstore for the book and making zero profit---a risk they're not willing to take. So every time a book goes out of print, it is also removed from the shelves and incinerated. Yay, capitalism!

While many will bravely take their birthday spankings, no secular ritual seems to incite more whining than that of the New Year's Resolution. Those who do not participate do so with scorn and derision, you can almost see the spit fly from their lips with their ready quip about why they are better than such a ritual. Others list their resolutions with the temerity of a spurned lover waiting by the phone. For a ritual that more of my friends participate in than Christmas Mass, I can't name anyone who actually likes New Year's Resolutions.

Well I like them.

Yes, I understand that the first of the year is a totally arbitrary date. So what? So is Christmas. If you want to set goals in June, no one is going to complain. The problem is that most of us don't. We hem and haw about how we don't have any time and then another years slips by and our dreams sit in a tin box with our VHS tapes and our old photos and the rest of the things we never touch. They become memories, archival.

Whether it is arbitrary or not, the turning of a calendar year is end and beginning of a cycle, as much as the turn of the day into night or Spring into Fall. For us humans, the winter is our time of greatest hardship. It is cold. Food is scarce. The landscape is barren. It is why in this season we gather and feast. It is why we worship and *decorate mighty trees that leap inexplicably higher year after year, without death touching their leaves. It is also the time when the sticker shock of that big increase hits you: wait, 2010 is the end of the decade? Didn't we just have the Millennium? Wasn't that, like, yesterday?

Thus it is natural for us to think about the struggles we've faced and, in turn, where our life is headed. If looking at all the shit we didn't get done last year doesn't make us want to strategize about what to get done next year then I don't know what will. We have made it through the dark heart of winter and spring promises new beginnings. You can have a say in what those beginnings will look like, or you can be one of those people who lets life happen to you.

I know, I know: now you are going to tell me that no one ever sticks with their New Year's Resolutions for more than a few weeks. But if indeed we are so undisciplined that we only choose novel-writing, house cleaning and smoothie drinking over chain smoking, hooker shopping and pimple popping for several weeks a year than perhaps we should welcome even that brief period of accomplishment. And every time we fall off the wagon we have to put our panties back on, take two Excedrin, and hop back on it. Or rather, climb awkwardly up its wretched timbre, ignoring the hangovers of our chosen vice, cursing the splinters that imperil our ascent to righteousness. There's no need to go all Amy Winehouse on our lives just because we suck at setting goals.

If anything, the problem with New Year's Resolutions is that we need to spend more time on them, not less. We would all have shinier skin and resumes if April showers brought May resolution evaluations. The longest day of summer should be celebrated as a massive deadline crossing, wherein we get as much done in that day as we can, before dividing what's left of our goals in half and throwing ourselves into renewed commitment. This occasion is marked by running through red tape, like winning a race, but we all get a turn. We may eat little white cakes with red check marks, and we are only allowed as many as there are achievements completed. When the fall trees lose their leaves, we should have a holiday for the slashing of our goals, a year-end-overstock-going-out-of-business sale for our annual To Do list. It would be celebrated by dressing like Used Car Salesmen and wishing people, “Act Now!”

Then when Santa's checking his list, we already know who's been naughty and who's been nice. And as the year's end encroaches, we can see that the birth of the New Year is a cause for celebration. Because, arbitrary or not, history is about to put a great big lock on the filing cabinet of 2009 and that knowledge puts a gravitas on those of us who haven't quite gotten our homework done. And isn't it appropriate that the lightness of the foundling 2010 should be counter-balanced with commitments to all we hope this year should grow up to become? Who we are in 2009 has just become Who We Once Were. And 2010 is completely open, can only be defined as Who We Will Be. For those of us who look back in regret, it is an official chance for renewal. Either way, the looking back and forward is healthy, and to be encouraged. For those who accomplished much, we celebrate but, the old year being deceased, we are not allowed the humbrage of resting on our laurels. Instead, we collect our laurels along with our unfinished lists in a mighty heap, for everyone has at least one to contribute. Then we eulogize ourselves, burying the old with a baptism of alcohol poisoning, feasting, excess, and yes, fire: our laurels and our To Do lists will make such a beautiful bonfire, and the ashes, ink and rose petals must be trampled under our dizzy dancing feet.

2 Songs for the New Year:

*Thus cutting down a Christmas Tree is a sacrilege, like killing a Jew to celebrate Easter.

My apartment is a disaster. There are dishes scattered about, paper strewn, twice-worn clothes in a heap. My ass has been reshaped into the form of the cushion, and it hurts. My shoulders are killing me. I'm sick of listening to music. "No! Take it back!" you say. For I am never sick of listening to music, as you, dear reader, probably know by now. But I have been sitting in this same spot, listening to music and staring at this novel for the last twelve hours. I had determined that a four-day weekend was plenty of time to finish the ten scenes that I haven't been able to find the time to write for the last ten months. OK, to be fair, I did write some of them. But writing scenes inspires a need to write more scenes, so no matter how much I wrote the conclusion of the novel seemed at least ten scenes away. Believe it or not, in those twelve hours I got very little writing done. Hardly a page. Instead, something even better happened. It was like a gift from my fairy godmother!

[caption id="attachment_156" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Where the writing happens, only much filthier"][/caption]

I had been miffed at myself of late. I had had plenty of good ideas for character, dialog, description (etc.) and not taken the time to get those ideas down. Then when I wanted to go write them later, of course the words didn't take shape quite as easily. I thought because I had been keeping up with entering the changes in my edited drafts, that I had most of the hand-written scenes entered. I was wrong. I was so wrong. Turns out those good ideas had been put to paper. I decided to go through every journal I have used since I started the novel and finally type in every last scrap of anything that I had hand-written but not entered into the draft yet. We are talking eight journals and assorted random pieces of paper. They were sentence fragments on legal pads, plotpoints in margins, conflict and dialog written sideways on notes from work meetings, whole scenes in journals I was sure would have nothing but diary entries cataloging various breakups...like the typical artist, my journals are as scatterbrained as my mind. All together, in those twelve hours I typed seventeen pages, or roughly 8,000 words. I didn't put them in their place in the story, just typed them straight through, separating them with useful headers. You'd think it would be better for me to have written those enigmatic ten scenes, since this stuff would get entered at some point regardless. You would think also that it would be better if there were several whole scenes rather than a ton of fragments. Au contraire! I say in a terrible French accent. Because the hardest part of writing is starting. It is much, much (much) easier to finish off a scene than put one word on a blank piece of paper. Now most of the scenes I need to write have already been started. I just have to fill in the gaps. Even the two monumental mind-fuck *scenes that are going to be the hardest to rewrite had some significant edits hidden away that I had forgotten about. Furthermore, this is tremendous validation that I actually did something in 2009 besides bite my nails, Blip, and fret over the aphids eating my tomatoes. And plenty of what was written didn't suck! That's key of course. I'm excited just to get this fresh content in because I am sick of looking at the same tired sentences I've been editing for ages. And those ten scenes smell a lot more like four scenes at the moment. Moving forward: First step, naturally, is to stick all those scenes in the appropriate place in the draft. That may take the rest of the weekend. Then I will reprint the draft and continue editing it. This time I'm going to leave big spaces where I think there should be more content. Not sure whether I will start from page one or pick up where I left off. Now to get off my ass and be unproductive! _______________ *They entail describing pretty much the entire history of humanity in a touching, infuriating, frenzied dream. Exactly like that scene from Adaptation, actually.

She Can Cry All She Wants But That Doesn’t Mean She Has A Case

I am not a lawyer but I do work in a publishing house that has jumped through legal hurdles to publish a Harry Potter related book so I would like to comment on the ways this lawsuit should fail. Many of the fans are arguing that a dictionary is just cutting and pasting from her books and selling it as his own. Rowling herself on the stand called it “outright theft.” Creating a dictionary involves more than cutting and pasting. The editorial process of indexing and organizing each word is lengthy and not to be trivialized. Furthermore, if you take the time to visit the website (www.hp-lexicon.com) you will see that the content is original. For example, (from the site).

“banshee - Rating Unknown (PA7, GF21, FB) A Dark creature with the appearance of a woman with floor-length black hair and a skeletal, green-tinged face. Its screams will kill. Seamus Finnigan is particularly afraid of banshees (PA7). The Bandon Banshee was supposedly defeated by Gilderoy Lockhart (CS6) but was actually defeated by a witch with a hairy chin (see CS16). The singer Celestina Warbeck performs with a backing group of banshees (DP).”

Clearly this is not copied from the text of the book but a wholly original definition of the word “banshee”. I suspect they will have to double-check that some of it isn’t lifted from Merriam Webster but it’s obviously not from the book. If there some portions that are too similar, Vander Ark, who runs the site, would obviously change them. He himself cried on the stand. After all, he has devoted a lot of commitment to this project because he is a fan. The lawsuit is not saying, “some of this needs to be changed.” They are saying he has no right to publish such a book, regardless of the wording. Rowling claimed on the stand that one reason she is suing over this particular derivative is it is sloppily written. “‘Alohomora,’ a spell that opens doors in Harry Potter’s word, does not come from ‘aloha,’ the Hawaiian salutation, she said on the stand. Rather it derives from a West African term meaning favorable to thieves, she said.” But that’s the beauty of capitalism: she can write her own version, and do it better! There is no law against writing poorly. The copywrite law is to protect from someone else selling a book that steals sales of your book, for example, condensing it or changing the names and selling what is essentially the same product cheaper. Obviously, this book wouldn’t take sales away from any of the existing HP books. It may take sales away from the Encyclopedia that she hasn’t written yet–there’s the rub! It took many years for the Harry Potter Lexicon to evolve to the place it is at today, with the help of numerous writers. Thus it may be as good, at least from an organizational perspective, as Rowling’s own Encyclopedia. Dictionaries, after all, don’t call for much in the way of creativity and one can hardly expect her to spend eight to ten years writing it. I don’t believe that she would be making such a fuss unless she thought it to be an actual threat to her own encyclopedia. But that book hasn’t been written. She is trying to apply the copy write of her existing book to the sales she thinks she will lose on her forthcoming book. While this is unlikely, I can see her up at night worrying that her book won’t be as comprehensive as the Lexicon that already exists. Which, when you come down to it, means that she has gotten used to having no competition and feels that she should not have to compete when it comes to characters she created. Unfortunately for her, the U.S. (I believe the Lexicon is an American site, though I may be wrong) system loves competition. Yes, she created those stories. But if someone else wants to write another book based on her characters, they can. If someone wants to analyze the stories, they can. If someone wants to make a reference book, they can. And isn’t it better that way? When you step out of the situation and look at it with a clear head, why shouldn’t fans be able to create works that are derivative and complementary to the originals? They won’t draw sales away from the original books. If anything, they will give readers something to cling to once the series is over. The fan-written sequel to Mrs Brisby and the Rats of NIMH was not nearly as good as the original but it in no way diminishes the classic it is based on. Does the estate of Dr. Seuss suffer if I write a dictionary of the delightfully silly words from his books? Does Stephen King suffer if you publish an index of all the characters that have died in his books? Of course not. But no! I can hear the fans crying what if she wants to write that book! He has stolen her right to write the book! Hogwash. There is no copy write protection from a book that doesn’t exist yet. And thank goodness: now Rowling claims she is so distressed that she fears will never be able to write it. So she would have her book or no book, and possibly no book anyway. What a perfect example of how fickle writers are. It is a good thing the laws are set up as they are; this way maybe we will get something. And maybe we’ll get two books! Or three! And if Rowling can muscle up the strength to face the competition she will undoubtedly write it better and more critically. Rowling’s lawyers have been getting more and more aggressive lately. She has passed over many opportunities to sue and I believe this makes her feel like she can have her pick of the litter because she passed up all those other chances to litigate. Personally, I have always been a fan of Rowling (as a person, not just her books) but her claims that this case has forced her into some kind of dramatic writer’s block disgust me. I suppose she’ll have to take to drugs like all the other great plagued writers out there. Or maybe stop surrounding herself with lawyers and yes-men that coddle her. If only writers could sue their way out of writer’s block we’d be swimming in literature!