JaniceMars Atvar, you remember Cory from Chicon.
Atvar Yes
Atvar Yes, I think I interviewed Cory the day after the Hugos
JaniceMars Okay, Cory. Thanks for joining us again at Cybling... as I recall you were a demon on the keyboard at Chicon, so I'm warning you folks...we'll have trouble keeping up.
doctorow Right!
doctorow Oh, I'm all about fast typing and no thinkin'!
JaniceMars Cory's here to tell us a little about his new book THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING SF and his other projects.
Atvar Yeah, cory was answering questions before I could type them in
JaniceMars First off Cory...why are Idiot's guides a good way to go...are they for idiots?
Atvar People thought he was psychic
doctorow The idea behind the Complete Idiot's Guides is that everyone is an idiot when it comes to some subject
Atvar That's me
SF_Explorer yep
SF_Explorer me too
JaniceMars LOL.
doctorow And even (or perhaps especially) the most competent of us in some area of endeavor is nervous about tackling new projects for fear of seeming a fool
* JaniceMars raises hand.
Atvar Is the book out yet?
doctorow Yup, it's been on stands since the summer, though the reviews have only just started appearing
JaniceMars So it was out during CHICON
doctorow Yes, and for some ***** reason, no one had any copies for sale
doctorow But the next con I go to, ConFusion in Michigan, will definitely have copies in the dealer's room
doctorow Hi, folks!
Alissa hello
Nightwind hi
JaniceMars Hi folks...we're chatting with Cory Doctorow...author of THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING SCIENCE FICTION.
JaniceMars Cory....about how much does one of these Idiot's Guides Cost?
doctorow Er, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction," co-written with Karl Schroeder
Atvar Is there a Quick Reference version as well?
doctorow $16.95
JaniceMars Sorry Cory.
doctorow There's a reference-card in the inside cover
doctorow No problem!
JaniceMars That's in my budget.
Atvar And, would a quick reference be only for Short Stories ?
doctorow You can order it through any of the online stores, or click through at www.cigsf.com to shoot me an extra nickel
doctorow Hi, Horus
Horus hi
JaniceMars You know, Atvar, I was at the sample chapter on Cory's website...
Atvar Heck, I'll shoot you for a nickel
JaniceMars and it speaks specifically to the short story.
JaniceMars Cory...you talk about "Killing Babies" in that chapter...
doctorow No, the quick reference is mostly rules of thumb for general writing-for-publication
doctorow Yes! One of my favorite subjects and most frequent sins of omission
JaniceMars could you tell us a little about what you mean when you say "Killing your Babies".
doctorow Killing Your Babies is workshop-speak for getting rid of what my high-school English teacher used to call "merely clever" material. That is, stuff you've thrown in just because it tickled you and gave you a chance to show off, but that doesn't advance the story
doctorow I am horrible at murdering my babies. That's the most frequent form of rewriting I have to do.
doctorow Too much in love with myself, frankly.
JaniceMars horrible? In that you have trouble doing it?
doctorow Exactly.
JaniceMars May be my problem too...in spades...why I never seem to get a story done.
doctorow It's a chronic failing among the glib. You turn a lovely phrase and can't bear to part with it
JaniceMars LOL.
doctorow The other big one for me is "Throat-Clearing" -- that is, writing a few pages of stuff just to get warmed up before you actually start the story
JaniceMars So.....
doctorow It's not uncommon for my rewrites to consist of chopping the first two pages and omitting a bunch of clever exposition
doctorow Hi, Johnathan
JaniceMars Okay...getting straight to the hook?
Atvar I like short stories since I have a short attention span. Do they require more work to write?
* Alissa sits next to John to listen
doctorow That's a point of some contention, I guess.
doctorow On the one hand, every short story requires the whole-cloth invention of characters, worlds, etc,
doctorow But on the other, you certainly don't need as much depth on those things as you do in a novel.
doctorow For me, the thing about a short story is that you can hold the entire structure in your head while you work on it
JaniceMars Many authors (who now right novels exclusively) do say that there's as much investment for them in the Short forms and not as much $$.
doctorow You can grasp the entire narrative arc as you write each scene, and that does certainly ease the process of making a cohesive whole
Atvar Yeah, I was wondering about that first point you just mentioned. Sometimes you gotta reinvent the wheel for a short story
JaniceMars Do you go into the markets for Shorts in your book?
doctorow I don't know about that -- certainly writing a novel took far more out of me than a short.
doctorow I can do a short in a weekend -- the novel took months.
doctorow I do discuss the market for shorts in the book, but that's a real moving target. Since we started work on the book, about six of the dozen or so we talk about have changed in some dramatic fashion (closed, changed editors, etc)
JaniceMars Folks, if you have a question about...
doctorow Watch my site in a couple weeks or so for some pretty kickass news about that novel, BTW, as well as a collection of short stories (www.craphound.com)
doctorow Hi, Osafune
JaniceMars "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction," co-written with Karl Schroeder
Osafune hey doc
JaniceMars or Writing in general please feel free to ask.
Atvar Now, THAT'S a URL!
SF_Explorer will do, that was my question, wondering when I might get to read the novel.
Atvar I'm gonna make that my first bookmark on this new computer
Horus Do you think there is much money to be made from writing novels exclusively for the online market, much like what Stephen King has tried?
doctorow You don't need to reinvent the wheel for every short. Short stories are what Karl Schroeder calls "backless ladies" -- there's nothing beyond what the eye can see.
JaniceMars Ah. LOL...I like that. Backless ladies.
doctorow You'll be able to read the novel in probably 18 months or so, but there'll be online and print excerpts before that.
SF_Explorer sounds great, will be checking that out thanks
doctorow I think that the online market for all intellectual property is going to be the primary way that writers make their money in the fairly near-term future
doctorow Here's Karl's spiel on Backless Maidens
doctorow There is a story in the Arthurian cycle of a knight who was tempted by a beautiful maiden who would never turn her back on him. When she brought him to her house she cooked him a fine meal. But as she stood before the fireplace, he saw the light of the fire behind her eyes, and realized she would not turn her back to him because she *had* no back. She was the animated mask of a woman, and he was in great danger.
doctorow A science-fictional text is a "backless maiden," and one of our chief dangers as writers lies in not realizing it. There is no more to any fictional world than the words on the page. The world comes to life because of the inferences and associations readers make based on those words. So, the task of the SF writer is not to exhaustively describe. It is to find that set of images, metaphors, and scenarios that will inspire the reader to see more than
doctorow If you think about it, this kind of lets us off the hook. The reader is our active collaborator. Provided we give the right hints, the reader will create the world in all its stunning detail. So, it is not necessary for us to imagine everything that the reader might want to experience. The reader will fill in the blanks. It is the writer's responsibility to make sure that those dots are lined up properly, so that the reader doesn't end up imagining
JaniceMars I stopped at "imagining"... is there more to that quote?
doctorow The online distribution, sale and policing of intellectual property is my current obsession. I co-founded a company in June 1999 that is devoted to this (www.opencola.com)
doctorow imagining a world that doesn't go with the story the writer wanted to tell.
JaniceMars Okay thanks.
JaniceMars Another question about writing then I'm going to start asking about open cola, Cory.
JaniceMars Cory...last week Sawicki and Chepaitis mentioned that a story will often "tell" you what length it should be. They were kind of vague on what that meant, though. Does your Guide cover this? How to tell whether you have a Short or Novel on your mind?
JaniceMars Yo Wiz.
WizardVonOdd Howdy, 'J'!
doctorow Again, Karl covers this subject admirably in the chapter on Novels. The short story is a one-trick pony (Stephen King calls it "A kiss in the dark from a stranger") -- it has one punch line
doctorow Novels are braided out of many strands of stories and characters, and they come to a series of climaxes as they build to the final movement.
JaniceMars Cool...thanks Cory.
doctorow Karl's novels are wonderful exemplars of this. He basically stops the action every chapter or so and diverges on a side-trail, a mini-short-story, that builds up the overall story
JaniceMars Cory...opencola. Interesting name. It's dedicated to online distribution, sale and policing of intellectual property?
doctorow Yup -- my partner, John Henson, calls this the "X2X marketplace."
JaniceMars Distribution we know, Sales we all have a handle on thought encryption etc can be tough or $$...
JaniceMars but policing?
doctorow The company is based on a few simple premises that as the cost of publication and distribution fall to zero, the cost of marketing rises to infinity (you have to compete with everything, since everything's available)
JaniceMars Right.
doctorow That encryption-based rights-protection is just copy-protection, and that copy-protection is perishable in the Internet world, where a cracked version of a file is just as easy to find as a protected one
JaniceMars True
doctorow That networks should be architected so that a file's availability is in proportion to its desirability -- that the more a file is requested, the more available it should become (the reverse is true right now, as Victoria's Secret discovered with their Webcast last year)
JaniceMars LOL. Yeah, crash city.
doctorow openCOLA offers solutions to all of these problems.
doctorow The first part, marketing, we solve with a giant, distributed collaborative filter -- essentially, a piece of technology that automatically figures out whose tastes resemble your own, and then lets you "watch over their shoulder" as they find cool stuff, while preserving their privacy and anonymity.
JaniceMars Okay, so you're monitoring hits without grabbing their goodies.
doctorow The second, rights-protection, we solve with a piece of open-source technology called eRights (www.erights.org), which allows us to disconnect users from the network if they engage in piracy
doctorow And the final, large file transfer, we solve with something called Swarmcast, which makes each recipient of a piece of a file into a rebroadcaster for that file, increasing a file's availability in direct proportion to its popularity
JaniceMars Cool. And all of this is freeware?
Horus but if each recipient is a rebroadcaster
SF_Explorer Once a pirate has the intellectual property in grasp though... Is it really possible to eliminate piracy?
doctorow Put 'em all together and you have a way to publish your stuff, have it found, get it to the audience, charge for it, and make sure it isn't being pirated
Horus what about people on a limited bandwidth?
Horus like a dialup?
doctorow It's all opensource -- some if it's free, too
doctorow Two good questions! One at a time, then
doctorow Slow connections are routed around -- just like the Internet finds the fastest path for its packets to travel on from a multiplicty of network routes, openCOLA negotiates the fastest route for each piece of a file being directed to you. (Remember, a 56k modem that's owned by a user of your ISP may have a faster connection to you than a T1 on the other side of the world)
Horus that is true
Horus people often confuse bandwidth with speed
Horus confuse
doctorow Piracy -- the most pernicious thing about piracy isn't the *possession* of bootlegged material, it's the trading and sale of that material.
SF_Explorer true
Horus yes
Horus i freely admit that i download warez
Horus but i dont pass them on
Horus if i like something,
Horus then i go out and buy it
Horus which i have always done
Horus i dont see THAT as piracy
Horus i see it as "try before you buy"
Horus i see passing on and making a profit as piracy
Horus im sure most people would agree
Horus as do most companies,
doctorow Since openCOLA can search multiple networks (including Napster, Gnutella, Freenet, the Web, Usenet, etc), if a user is bootlegging material from openCOLA into other networks, they can be disconnected from the source -- openCOLA -- and hence restricted from adding more material to the pool of available bootlegs.
Horus that the person who uses a dodgey copy if windows is not sought out
Horus its the distributors etc
Horus omg my typing sucks today
doctorow There's more nuanced tech here, of course -- we can also disconnect "legit" users who act as proxies to bootleggers, passing purchased material to pirates, etc.
JaniceMars disconnect users from the network.... can I ask how you do this... is it similar to the way IRC networks block users? Computer by Computer or ISP by ISP?
doctorow Horus, while I tend to agree with you, I think you'll find that your position is at odds with the DMCA. openCOLA's pretty involved with the Electronic Frontiers Foundation -- they're working to strike down the most pernicious bits of that rotten law.
doctorow It's not dissimilar, except that you have to think about your openCOLA "account" -- your position in the network -- as having inherent value. If you "change identities" and rejoin the network, openCOLA won't be able to find you good stuff and pass it on to you -- instead, you'll be just looking at the "raw slush" of the Internet.
doctorow There's an investment you flush when you change identities (and there are, of course, tech measures that try to catch people who change identities, but complete control is impossible)
JaniceMars Okay...so with opencola you build a "reputation" with the purveyor...albeit an anonymous and private one...and if you jeopardize that "rep" you're back to square one?
doctorow Exactly! We call it a "reputation economy" and that's what my last novel's all about.
JaniceMars So, if you goof up online it's like re-doing high school hell over and over.
doctorow (Working with openCOLA has been a real source of inspiration for fictional projects -- my next novel, "Eastern Standard Tribe" is about timezones in a networked world)
doctorow Perfect analogy.
JaniceMars That's all the pushing I need to be good. LOL.
Horus )
SF_Explorer lol
SF_Explorer It's very interesting, I look forward to the novels.
JaniceMars I live in fear of high school nightmares. Well... i need to know more about Eastern Standard Tribe now.
doctorow This is pretty high-level, high-concept discussion of the tech -- there's lots more under the surface.
doctorow The premise is that the only thing computer networks can't "funge" -- divide unto invisibility -- is your circadian rhythm -- the sleep-schedule you keep.
JaniceMars funge?
doctorow As we move to a world where our "neighbors" and "neighborhoods" are defined by common interest, sleep-schedules will be more and more important to our experience of community.
doctorow "Funge" as in "fungibility"
doctorow fun·gi·ble (fnj-bl)
doctorow adj.
doctorow 1. Law. Returnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain.
doctorow 2. Interchangeable.
doctorow n.
doctorow Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Often used in the plural.
doctorow ------------------------------------------------------------------------
doctorow
Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fung (vice), to perform (in place of).
doctorow ------------------------------------------------------------------------
doctorow fungi·bili·ty n.
JaniceMars LOL. Okay...I'll sleep on that word... so folks will change their patterns to fit their "groups"?
doctorow Courtesy of dictionary.com
JaniceMars Or no.
doctorow That's the idea -- if your community of interest is a half-dozen timezones away, you may adhere to a sleep-schedule that it at odds with the local sunrise/set -- inhabit a different world from your physical neighbors. Sorta like Philip Jose Farmer's Dayworld, but the pressure isn't population, it's community.
JaniceMars Okay. I'm still trying to talk Europe into joining my timezone to no avail. Does the novel go into techniques, lol.
doctorow I'm a hardcore user of the WELL, an ancient online community. When I recently moved from Toronto to San Francisco (the majority of the WELL's denizens are on the West Coast), I discovered that the WELL's an amazingly different place on Pacific Time
doctorow Conversations take place in realtime -- you see messages and responses as they're being posted, while on the East Coast, you often find yourself reading through conversations that are long done.
JaniceMars Yep.
JaniceMars Well I'm disoriented now. I imagined you entrenched in snow as I am....when did you move to SF?
doctorow The techniques are pretty established now, if you're a business traveller, anyway. I was at a conference at Merv Griffin's Beverley Hills Hilton in the spring, and the room I had was outfitted for far-eastern travellers coping with jetlag. It was equipped with blackout curtains, high-lumen, full-spectrum lamps, sunrise clocks, white-noise generators and melatonin.
Horus i know the feeling
Horus im the only person on Darkmyst in the UK
Horus so i have to be awake at like, 2am for network meetings and stuff
doctorow Oh, I've been oozing westward for a while now, but I took an apartment here back in November
Horus its annoying with online games like Planetarion
www.planetarion.com
Horus server time is in CEST
Horus i have to convert to GMT
Horus even thought the server is now hosted at BarrysWorld in the UK
doctorow Horus, I've a friend here who's from Manchester, and for years he was the senior tech at a San Francisco firm. He kept Pacific time while living in GMT
Horus its madness!
Horus ouch
doctorow It really screwed up his social life.
Horus i can imagine
JaniceMars "Eastern Standard Tribe" when can we buy it?
doctorow BTW, openCOLA is rife with SF writers. There's me, there's Karl Schroeder, and there's Michael Skeet (the coauthor of a story in the December Asimov's called "I Love Paree), and Martha Soukup is the relocation expert in SF, and Ray Davis is one of our contract programmers.
Horus i think i may actually buy it when it comes out
doctorow Oh, I have to write it first!
Horus as the topic is one that interests me
Horus ahhh
Horus P
JaniceMars LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Cory!
SF_Explorer lol
doctorow I'm still outlining and edging up to the subject.
doctorow I'm working on a short story set in the world to clarify my thinking that I'll be sending to Eileen Gunn for the new ezine she's editing, "The Inifinite Matrix"
JaniceMars Okay so we may be able to get a taste there soon. Well then let's go back to what *IS* for sale right now. You're in a recent Asimov's or was that the Analog.
JaniceMars Just got the mags, but haven't cracked them yet.
doctorow Asimov's -- "I Love Paree" -- co-written with Michael Skeet, published in the December ish.
Horus Asimov rocks
doctorow It's our take on Heinlein's boot-camp novels
Horus im just finishing off Second Foundation atm
Horus fantastic trilogy
doctorow I'll have a story called "Power Punctuation!" in the next edition of Starlight
JaniceMars Okay. I'm behind again. And do you have something else short coming out soon that we should be looking for?
doctorow (Patrick Nielsen Hayden's amazing SF antho)
JaniceMars Ack! You're doing it again. LOL.
doctorow And I've got a story in the September ish of Interzone called "The Re-Branding of Billy Bailey"
JaniceMars Apparently you don't need to be sitting next to someone in order to anticipate questions.
doctorow And the current On Spec has a story of mine
JaniceMars Cory...back to "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction," co-written with Karl Schroeder
JaniceMars If I buy the book and read it and follow your directions, do you guarantee that I'll be published.
doctorow There's a bibliography online at http//www.craphound.com/fic/listing.html
doctorow Absolutely -- we even guarantee a Hugo!
JaniceMars LOLOLOLOL!
SF_Explorer put me down for a copy, lol
SF_Explorer what no Nebula?
JaniceMars Okay...you've sold me. I think there's enough on my debit card to get it. What was that URL you mentioned earlier that will get you an extra nickel when we buy the book?
doctorow Such a guarantee would be inappropriate, of course, but what the book *can* do for you is give you real, concrete advice on how to improve your writing and chart a course that will eventually lead to getting published
doctorow www.cigsf.com
JaniceMars And they take debit cards there?
JaniceMars Some don't you know.'
doctorow No Neb -- that would require getting orchestrated effort out of SFWA -- a near impossibility
doctorow Or rather, a TOTAL impossibility
doctorow (Until moving to SF, I was the Canadian Regional Director of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America)
JaniceMars Ah, and you gave that up when you moved to California.
doctorow Yup -- can't be Canadian Director if you're not in Canada!
JaniceMars And acquired some time to breathe, sleep and eat, I take it.
doctorow I've been back to Canada (Montreal) for all of 36h since early October, and for the five or so months leading up, I barely spent one day in three at home.
doctorow Breathe? Sleep? Eat? What are these things?
SF_Explorer A question earlier you mentioned forthcoming news of a short story collection? Something definitely in the works?
JaniceMars Ah, Montreal. Love their food, particularly since I'm always careful to say I'm from Chicago.
doctorow Yes, definitely. Still working out the details (including the title), but the publisher's said yes. No contract yet, so I don't want to say with whom.
SF_Explorer I would love to see your stories all in one place..
SF_Explorer Cool
doctorow They'll all be there -- the post-juvenile ones, anyway.
JaniceMars Juvies? I didn't know you wrote Juvies.
doctorow As well as some original fic that I'll be writing for the collection.
JaniceMars Is there a chapter in "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction," about writing for different age levels?
doctorow (No, the stuff I wrote when I was a juvenile -- physically, at least. I think my co-workers would say that I'm a juvenile yet)
JaniceMars LOL. I wouldn't say that. Kids can't type as fast as you can.
doctorow There's nothing much on kids' fic. But kids-lit is one of my favorite things in the world.
JaniceMars I enjoy reading it when my brain is on pre-cinder.
doctorow The writer I admire the most in the whole world at the moment is Daniel Pinkwater. I could re-read Pinkwater until the heat-death of the Universe.
JaniceMars Cory, I'm at http//www.cigsf.com/ and I can't see immediately how to buy the book.
doctorow And, of course, real kids' lit is good for adults, too.
JaniceMars Ah! I should hit the Barnes and Noble button...right?
doctorow See the three links at the top (In The US, in Canada, In the UK) -- that's how...
doctorow Right.
JaniceMars Danka.
doctorow Bitte.
JaniceMars SFE, Horus et al. We've kept Cory here for over an hour. I need you to ask...
JaniceMars any last questions you might have about the books, the stories, writing or coding, now.
Ryan Yes.
Ryan well... too late now.
doctorow I'm still here!
JaniceMars No...you have something Ryan?
JaniceMars Okay...about opencola... are you hiring?
Horus i have no more questions. thanks a lot for giving up your time to come to darkmyst
Ryan Nah. There's a creative writer I was speaking to before about the chats... She was interested. But she just came online..
doctorow Ha!
Horus ive learned quite a bit today )
SF_Explorer No other questions I can think of, although later on I will think of a million of them of course... Just would like to say thank you for giving of your time. I enjoyed it.
JaniceMars He says Ha! LOLOLOL.
SF_Explorer And will be watching your web site for news.
SF_Explorer )
doctorow Sorta. We're always looking for great engineers -- typically, C++/C/Java people with 10yrs experience in product development. jobs@opencola.com
doctorow Thanks, folks!
doctorow Here's a recap of the URLs
doctorow My site www.craphound.com
SF_Explorer good site!
doctorow My fiction bibliography www.craphound.com/fic/listing.html
JaniceMars Thank you Cory...it's what...10 o'clock in SF now? Time for another cup of coffee Strong, I should think. And since I've not cracked the Complete Idiot's Guide to Java, C, C++ yet...that leaves me out of your job requirements, lol.
doctorow The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction www.cigsf.com
doctorow Too bad...
doctorow It's 11 here.
JaniceMars Oh he's so good. Thanks...any other URLS?
doctorow Oh, plenty! I'm doing a lot of random nonfic for Mindjack magazine (www.mindjack.com)
doctorow openCOLA www.opencola.com
doctorow Karl Schroeder www.kschroeder.com
Ryan Chenoa, this is Doctorow.
doctorow (er, Karl)
doctorow Hi, Chenoa!
Chenoa hi
JaniceMars Chenoa... we'll be letting Cory get to lunch here.... do you have any questions for him rewriting, coding or "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction," co-written with Karl Schroeder?
Chenoa No I don't but possibly later another time I will thanks
JaniceMars Thank you Chenoa.
doctorow Okeydoke! Thanks for the chat, folks!
JaniceMars Folks, Vonda McIntyre will be here in about two hours. Let's thank Cory for taking time out this morning...
JaniceMars to join us and talk about his work!
Chenoa thank you
* JaniceMars applauds
SF_Explorer Thanks again.
doctorow I'll try and get back for Vonda -- but I've gotta go wrap up my xmas shopping.
doctorow Say hi to her for me if I miss it.
doctorow Ciao.
JaniceMars I will, and Cory..
JaniceMars Beth Gwinn says hi.
doctorow Oh, hey!
doctorow Say hi back.
JaniceMars I will.

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