A Plethora of Other Arty-Farty Types

The festivals of Edinburgh are gearing up and the city is starting to bloat with visitors and tourists, mingling with acrobats, actors, comedians, writers and a plethora of other arty-farty types. I have my tickets ready and will report back over the coming weeks on my highs and lows of the festival.

Publishing is in a state of meltdown. Tech is changing the industry faster the it is able to keep up. This is probably the worst time ever for a new writer (such as myself) to try and make it with a big publisher (I'm trying, really I am). The publishers are unwilling to enter into lengthy expensive contracts with unproven talent and yet a new model for ebooks has not yet arrived. Publishers are trying to keep up with the demand of readers wanting works quicker and in different formats, but so far they seem to be at loggerheads. So bad has it got that some writers are quitting, which is a real shame. This week M. D. Lachlan (Mark Barrowcliffe) wrote a polite opposite view over at The Speculative Scotsman. I have to say, I agree for the most part with him. I'm a quick writer and I thrive on deadlines. If the last year has taught me anything, it's that I have both the ability and stamina to write and to move my projects along. I just haven't got a publisher (yet) willing to take that chance on me.
The views above were then amplified by both the Guardian and the Independent. Their respective websites carried articles about an established authors inability to sell ebooks (but get free advertising) due to the sheer amount of work being produced and the death throws of the printed medium.

Over at the blog Dee Scribe, there is helpful advice for writers maintaining some kind of network. This is something I plan to concentrate on over the next year. I need to get the writer "Adam J. Shardlow" better known and during the festival is probably the best time to do this. I just need to be a little more assertive at meeting people.

As part of my task of meeting other writers in Edinburgh I plan to visit the Inky Fingers Minifest at some point over the weekend. They are completely free events, so if you get the chance, pop down.

I've been using Twitter for several years now and I didn't realise how many #hashtags for writing there now were. I really should learn some and make use of them. PublishingTalk has a handy list.

Some very lucky students at Napier University get to be taught by a real Doctor Who writer. Wish I could gate crash and meet Robert Shearman. I'll just have to be content with the second half of the new series.

Not writing related, but I wonder if my brother DC Benny has seen the Dark Spartan in action. I believe the real life (and maybe suicidal) superhero prowls his patch.

A Little More Explicit

Two of my beta reader have got back to me now, so I'm going to start making a few changes to 'Stigma'. These will be mainly areas of the story where I need to perhaps be a little more explicit with an idea or concept. I want to get this complete by the end of next week so I can get a first version out to my agent. Once it is out I plan to pick up a new project that I have mentally titled 'Waters Deep.' This is what I'll work on for the next six months, so expect lots of watery, flood-ey, sea-ey based links here.

In the mean time I've been working on short story that seems to have died and which I'll file away until I'm in a better place to write it, a humour piece entitled 'The Pros and Cons of being a writer,' which I hope to place with a website soon and a short film based on holiday videos made last year in NYC and my love of Woody Allen. You can see the video below:

A couple of good links I've found recently for writing. The first is the Electronic Literature Volume 2 (I assume there is a vol. 1, somewhere) which has a selection of new form writings where the electronic and written word intersect. I find this interesting because, as we move towards ebooks overtaking actual real world items, the barriers between the written word, film, music and visuals are going to fall down. I haven't seen any ebooks yet that makes use of such experimental forms, but I bet someone is working on them as I type.

The second link is to Ambiance. This is an audio service that allows you to listen to the music of every day life. When deep in writing I find I can only listen to music without lyrics and therefore listen to a lot of jazz, blues and experimental sounds. Ambiance might be useful for when I want to visual a scene and want some kind of audio trigger. I'll try water for 'Waters Deep,' and let you know how it works.

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McSweeney's 29 by Various - I must admit I'm a sucker for cool jacket design and beautifully tooled, well finished books. This is the main reason I like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (which still has no subscription service in the UK that doesn't include paying more in airfare than the actual books). Most of the works in McSweeney's 29 left me a bit a cold. I think they're a bit too American for my taste and some of the references are lost on me (I have a vague idea who Hilary Duff is, but have never seen Lizzie McGuire, which I think is a US kids show). However, Roddy Doyle's piece 'The Painting,' is well structured and seems effortless even when it obviously isn't, and Brian Baise's opening work is a good meditation on misplaced anger. The rest however didn't really do anything for me.