Ah well, I’ve only had it a couple of hours so it will take time to get used & it even if it hates my scary good -that should be scrawly joined - up writing.It would appear that the state of handwriting recognition on the Mac is parlous, With Vista beating it hands-down . 1 have to admit that makes me rather Sad. Given how many desegregationist mongolisms -Wow, that WAS Supposed to be ‘designers’! - prefer macs, I’m surprised.

It might seem a bit stupid for people who basically all speak English to translate an English transcription into Welsh so that other people who basically all speak English could listen to it in English and watch it in Welsh. In fact, such a thing would be a great boon to learners as it would allow us to hear in English but read in Welsh and start to join up the dots inbetween. (The next step on from that would be to have more material in Welsh with English subtitles.) Personally, I would like to see much more bilingual stuff online because it helps learners develop not just their vocab but also their sense of grammar, mutation and idiom.

Many of the TED lectures are both short - about 20 minutes - and fascinating. Great material for translation because they’re interesting in their own right and just the sort of thing that people love to watch. I believe you learn much more when you’re engaged, so such a resource would be very valuable.

But the Open Translation Project turns out not to be very open at all. Once you’ve registered, you have to request a transcript to translate, which will supposedly be sent to you within 1 - 2 business days. You can’t just download one that you fancy and get on with it, it has to be sent to you by someone from TED. And you have just 30 days to complete it - what happens if you don’t is not specified. I have so far seen no sign or mention of any online translation or collaborative working tools, so it looks like if you want to work with others you have to figure that out yourself. (I haven’t been accepted into the programme yet, so maybe that’s just stuff I am unable to see.)

Beyond that, as a new member of the translation project, I just received this email:

Dear Suw,

Thanks so much for registering to be a TED translator and requesting your first talk. We’re eager to get you started! But we have a few questions for you first. As you know, TED doesn’t require translators to have formal language or translation skills. We do however, ask that you be fluently bilingual. It’s so important that your language skills gives you the ability to faithfully translate the words of speakers, capturing not only the vocabulary, but also the tone, style and personality. TED speakers are at the edge of their fields, and therefore the edge of language. Being current, as well as fluent, is key.

So the following questions are for you, as much as us. They provide us a way to gauge your experience, knowledge and fluidity with both English and the language into which you’re translating. We require these answers for translators in languages that are new to TED, and for which we have neither in-house knowledge nor a stable of volunteer translators.

1) What language do you want to translate into?

2) Is this your native language? If not, how and where did you learn it?

4) How often do you speak this language? Do you use it professionally, personally, or both?

5) How often do you read in this language? Do you read news? Novels? Personal correspondence?

6) How often do you write in this language?

7) If English is not your first language, how and where did you learn it? How often do you speak, write and/or read English?

8.) Do you have other colleagues, family or friends who can assist you on the translation of tricky or culturally-specific words and phrases?

9) What is your profession?

10) Why do you want to translate for TED?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions, and for volunteering for the TED Open Translation Project!

The TED Team

That doesn’t seem very open to me. That seems very much like I’m going to be judged on my ability to speak and write Welsh, and that my acceptance into the project is going to depend on my capabilities rather than, say, my ability to gather a kick-ass team of Welsh speakers to collaboratively - and openly - translate. Furthermore, what does my profession have to do with my ability to translate? What does my motivation matter? And what happens if the TED Team don’t like my answers? Do I get summarily booted out?

I feel rather insulted by these questions, not just because they are intrusive, but because they see the translation process through an outdated and judgemental lense. As a learner of 10 years, I’m not too bad at Welsh, although I write it better than I speak it. I probably could not create a perfect translation of any but the simplest texts. But what I can do is create a flawed translation that others, whether more experienced learners or native speakers, can then polish up. This idea that making a start so that others can help finish up is a well established way of working collaboratively, and it can produce great results. It’s what Wikipedia relies upon, it’s what Pledgebank encourages. By showing the community that I have committed to an action, I’m more likely to find people willing to help me finish it.

TED’s approach to translation has been disappointing to say the least. They have used the word ‘open’ as a buzzword, a way to put a gloss on what is an old-school project that is snobbish, closed, and controlling. I know that someone is bound to leave a comment saying “but that is the only way to get high quality translations”, but that’s just not true. Communities of passionate people are capable of great things, and there are many passionate Welsh speakers online who could come together to do flawless work.

Question is, will TED let us?

It’s also been because I hit a bit of an impasse when I realised I had more backstory than story, and wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it. I haven’t felt particularly compelled to flesh out the story of the people of Hay and couldn’t really see why that would be interesting. It was only when I was talking to Kev over dinner the other night that I realised something I had, stupidly, failed to see.

The story’s main protagonists are a book and a cat. (Yes, yes, humour me.) I knew that, but I hadn’t really clocked that the most important character in the story is the cat, not the book as I had previously thought. It is he who is called to action, he who must fight the forces of evil, and he who must prevail in the final showdown in order to win… well, I won’t say what. If you’ve ready Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, you might recognise those as key stages of the hero’s journey.

When I wrote Tag, my one and hopefully only ever script, I followed the hero’s journey without even knowing it. It was only later, reading Hero with a Thousand Faces that I realised how cleanly my story fit the ‘monomyth’. It was, at the time, rather satisfying to realise that I had absorbed the archetypal mythical structure so well that I was reproducing it without thinking.

Looking now at Books of Hay and thinking that it’s already starting to fit the hero’s journey (in the way that an elephant fits in a Mini) is both comforting and depressing. On the one hand, if I wanted to follow the formula, it would be easy. I already have a call to adventure, a fragment of the road of trials, and a boon, and it would be a relatively simple thing to map out the rest of the formula and fill in the blanks.

On the other hand, it’s depressing to think of a story reduced to a formula, no matter how timeless that formula is. I don’t want to end up writing something that’s drab and predictable, but rejecting the formula and deliberately trying to write something that doesn’t fit is just as fraught with problems. Remember the last book you read or film you watched that tried too hard to be different? Annoying, wasn’t it?

Part of me wishes I’d never read Hero with a Thousand Faces. Then I’d be able to just write the story that is in my head and not have to worry about following/not following a predetermined plot. Although it’s handy to realise that I need to focus more on my ginger tom’s story, it’s going to be a bugger to not slip into predictable patterns.

Who should fill in the survey?
The questions are aimed at people who have responsibility either for your organisation’s website, or its PR, media, communications or marketing strategy. Your organisation doesn’t actually have to have a website in order for your responses to the survey to be valuable - indeed I have a whole bunch of questions aimed at organisations without a website at all. But if you have a website, and you’re not the person responsible for it, I’d be grateful if you could send a link to this blog post or the survey itself to the right person.

What sort of organisations are you looking for?
The phrases used by those in the know are “third sector” and “civil society associations”, but if you’re not sure if that means you, here are a few examples to help clarify:

• Registered charities, like Help the Aged
• Non-profit organisations, like the Open Rights groups
• Credit unions or mutuals, like the Mid-Cornwall Credit Union
• Co-operatives, like the Abbey Road Housing Co-operative Limited
• Trade unions, like the NUJ
• Faith-based organisations, like the Islamic Foundation
• Business or professional associations, like the Design Business Association
• Political parties, like the Green Party
• NGOs, like NESTA
• Community groups, like Guerilla Gardeners
• any other organisation, regardless of governance structure, that is focused on civil issues.

If you still aren’t sure if that means you, please fill the survey in anyway - you can define you own identity in the “other” field. And whilst we are focused on the UK, if you’re from outside of the UK and are doing really fab things with social tools, please do fill the survey in too.

The survey takes about 10 - 15 minutes to complete, and if something doesn’t make sense, you can always email me.

Please help spread the word
I don’t have much time to get the initial results from this survey, so I’d really appreciate it if you could forward links on to people in your network whom you think might be able to help.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments!

And this one too is brilliant (no visuals):

1. Mae’n dychrunu i ddysgwyr sy ddim yn rhugl
2. Does dim digon o siaradwyr rhugl sydd yn defnyddio’r we

Dydy’r ddau problem ddim yn hawdd i ddatrys. Mae ‘na fwy gwefannau ar gyfer dysgwyr nawr nag erioed, ond dw i’n meddwl fod ‘na rywstr i ddysgwyr i fynd o ddysgu i ddefnyddio. Mae gen i lawer o lyfrau sydd wedi cael eu sgwenu ar gyfer dysgwyr, ac maen nhw’n bendigedig. Ond dw i ddim yn gwybod os mae na wefannau fel ‘na ar gael, sydd defnyddio Cymraeg syml. Does ddim lawer o amser, felly dw i eisiau weld mwy o wefannau yn defnyddio RSS, podcasts a videocasts i rannu eu cynnwys. Dw i eisiau ‘Idiom y Dydd’ ac yn y blaen i ddod i fi.

Dw i’n meddwl fod broadband penetration yn dylanwad yr ail problem. Mae Ofcom yn dweud fod broadband penetration yn Nghymru yn dim ond 45%. Mwy o rifau o Ofcom:

A quarter of adults in Wales have watched video content online
Broadcasters operating in Wales are repackaging regional content for distribution over the internet; the BBC, S4C and ITV all offer online Wales-focused programmes. Around a quarter (24%) of adults in Wales have used the internet to watch TV or video content, rising to 36% in Cardiff. This compares with 30% across the UK as a whole. Use appears to correlate with broadband penetration.

One in ten adults in Wales have listened to radio online
Many radio stations offer listen-live functionality over the internet. One in ten (9%) in Wales have used the internet to listen to the radio; lower than the UK average (13%). Use is higher in England, with similar levels in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

15% of adults in Wales have used a social networking site
Fewer people in Wales use social networking sites than the UK average – 15% compared to 20%. Again this is related to the lower take-up of broadband in Wales.

Broadband take-up highest in Cardiff and Swansea
Internet access in Wales has not grown significantly since 2006 although broadband take-up rose from 43% to 45% over the period. Broadband penetration is higher across the larger southern urban areas (58% in Cardiff and 56% in Swansea), and lower in the smaller southern towns (34%). Broadband take-up in rural areas of Wales is similar to that in rural areas of Northern Ireland, but lower than in England and Scotland.

3G take-up in Wales highest in the UK
Reported take-up of 3G mobile services in Wales (20%) is higher than in England (18%), Scotland (14%), or Northern Ireland (17%).

Dw i ddim yn gywbod y rhifau am siaradwyr Cymraeg, ond byddan nhw’n lai. Felly, sut dan ni’n perswadio mwy o bobl Cymraeg i ddefnyddio’r we yn yr iaith Cymraeg? Faint o bobl ei defnyddio hi yn barod? Sut dan ni’n help cwmnïau i roi mwy arlein? Cwestiynau pwysig ac annodd.

Things have been utterly insane of late. It’s hard to know where to begin. Ada Lovelace Day was a smash hit, but I’ve barely had time to even think about how amazing it was, because Kevin and I have been house hunting. Kev took two weeks off work to find us somewhere new to live, and he did a damn fine job. We now have a spare room, more space and more of a sense that we’re going to enjoy the flat, rather than feel like we’re invading our landlady’s personal space. We boxed everything up, with much needed help from friends, and moved over the Easter weekend. We haven’t gone far, just to the Arsenal side of the train tracks, but our new neighbourhood is much nicer. We might be further away from the supermarkets and the gym, which is a bit of a pain, but we’re near two parks and there are a lot more nice restaurants and pubs nearby.

The move has also taken us away from the scene of Ahmet Paytak’s murder. He worked at our corner shop, and I must have seen him nearly every day for the few months that he’d been working there. Then one night, as he and his son were closing up, a couple of chaps on a motorbike decided to shoot him and his son, for reasons that remain unclear. Ahmet died, his son Husseyin was shot in the thigh. I felt such sadness for Ahmet’s family. He was a lovely chap, quite quiet and shy but always friendly. Then one day he went to work and never came home.

More positively, I have been insanely busy with work. Last year was an almost total wash-out where work was concerned. I was busy up until the wedding, but summer and autumn were dreadful. Partly it was because I tried to expand my business, instead of focusing down on what I’m good at; partly because I was utterly rubbish at marketing myself (I’m not a natural when it comes to sales and marketing); and partly because I think businesses were waiting for the economic shoe to drop. Now everyone knows how bad the situation is and the truth is that you can’t just put business off forever. Some stuff just has to be done, and thankfully that includes the sort of stuff I do.

This year is shaping up to be much better. Not only am I having a whale of a time with Book Oven, who have to get the award for Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With A Client, but I’m now working on a research project for Carnegie UK Trust on the role of social (and ‘new’) media in civil society. I’m going to be blogging more about that on Strange Attractor. That sees me busy through til mid-July, then off to Prague before collapsing in a heap.

I’ve been writing a lot more. Not the fiction recently, but over the last few months I’ve done long piece for .Net magazine, and more for The Guardian’s tech section. I’m doing better at researching and writing quickly: it’s taking about 2 days for me to research and write 800 words now, and I’m learning not to over-report which helps a lot. But I want to get much, much better at writing effectively this year, so expect more from me.

Now I’m on a plane to San Francisco, primarily to attend O’Reilly’s Social Web Foo Camp, but also to do a bit of research for the Carnegie project. When I get back, I’m looking forward to focusing on my main two projects and to spending more time relaxing with my husband. We’ve barely had a chance to catch our breath the last few months, but hopefully, now the move is over, we can chill out a little. Hopefully!!

The future of the social web
What might the future of the social web look like? What trends and developments in technology, demographics, etc. might influence how things could change? If you had to ask “What if…?”, which “if” would you ask?

Books and publishing
How do you write? What are the challenges to finishing a long-form piece? If you’re an agent or a publisher, what are the missing pieces in your publishing puzzle? What tasks or processes are clunky and awkward?

If you want to meet up with me to talk about either the social web or books, let me know.

And if you just want to meet up for a chinwag, then I’m holding a bit of a do on the evening of Tuesday 21st. I’ve tried to do an event thingy on Facebook, but again, ping me by email or @suw me on Twitter if you fancy coming. The location is to be decided - please leave a comment if you have any suggestions for somewhere nice and relatively quiet (big noisy venues aren’t my style; I like to be able to hold a conversation without shouting).

The ever-growing empire produces nothing but seems determined to control everything

If indeed a new era of global responsibility has come into being with measures that actually restrain banks and isolate tax havens, it may be time for the planet’s dominant economic powers to focus on the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet. Exactly 20 years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote the blueprint for the world wide web, the internet has become the host to a small number of dangerous WWMs - worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people’s rights, their property and the past.

Henry Porter is the most prominent WWM, but let’s start with an American site that is making a name for itself in straightforward misappropriation. Scribd.com offers free downloads of every kind of book, magazine, brochure, guide, research paper and pamphlet to 55 million readers every month. Many have been uploaded illegally. Last week the publishers of JK Rowling, Ken Follett and Aravind Adiga took action to remove books that had been illegally published on the site.

Scribd.com complied, but what is interesting is the company’s institutional lack of guilt when the piracy was exposed. Instead of admitting it and apologising, it issued a statement claiming Scribd possessed “industry-leading copyright management system which goes above and beyond requirements of Digital Millennium Copyright Act”.

That’s like a drunk driver protesting innocence because he’s covered by the best insurance company. What matters is the crime, the theft of someone else’s content, which has taken care, labour, money and expertise to publish.

The point is that even if Scribd removes books, it still allows individuals to advertise services for delivering pirated books by email, which must make it the enemy of every writer and publisher in the world. In effect it has turned copyright law on its head: instead of asking publishers for permission, it requires them to object if and when they become aware of a breach.

Henry Porter presents a far greater threat to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community. One case emerged last week when a letter from Billy Bragg, Robin Gibb and other songwriters was published in the Times explaining that Henry Porter was playing very rough with those who appeared on its subsidiary, YouTube. When the Performing Rights Society demanded more money for music videos streamed from the website, Henry Porter reacted by refusing to pay the requested 0.22p per play and took down the videos of the artists concerned.

It does this with impunity because it is dominant worldwide and knows the songwriters have nowhere else to go. Henry Porter is the portal to a massive audience: you comply with its terms or feel the weight of its boot on your windpipe.

Despite the aura of heroic young enterprise that still miraculously attaches to the web, what we are seeing is a much older and toxic capitalist model - the classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits. Despite its diversification, Henry Porter is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time. On the back of the labour of others it makes vast advertising revenues - in the final quarter of last year its revenues were $5.7bn, and it currently sits on a cash pile of $8.6bn. Its monopolistic tendencies took an extra twist this weekend with rumours that it may buy the micro-blogging site Twitter and its plans - contested by academics - to scan a vast library of books that are out of print but still in copyright.

One of the chief casualties of the web revolution is the newspaper business, which now finds itself laden with debt (not Henry Porter’s fault) and having to give its content free to the search engine in order to survive. Newspapers can of course remove their content but then their own advertising revenues and profiles decline. In effect they are being held captive and tormented by their executioner, who has the gall to insist that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Were newspapers to combine to take on Henry Porter they would be almost certainly in breach of competition law.

In 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.” A moment’s thought must tell us that he is still right: newspapers are the only means of holding local hospitals, schools, councils and the police to account, and on a national level they are absolutely essential for the good functioning of democracy.

If, at a time of profound challenges, newspapers fall out with Henry Porter, it could be pretty serious for British society, which is why I referred earlier to anti-civic forces. Of course the company founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998 - now reckoned to be the world’s most powerful brand - does not offer any substitute for the originators of content nor does it allow this to touch its corporate conscience. That is probably because one detects in Henry Porter something that is delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old.

This particular 11-year-old has known nothing but success and does not understand the risks, skill and failure involved in the creation of original content, nor the delicate relationships that exist outside its own desires and experience. There is a brattish, clever amorality about Henry Porter that allows it to censor the pages on its Chinese service without the slightest self doubt, store vast quantities of unnecessary information about every Henry Porter search, and menace the delicate instruments of democratic scrutiny. And, naturally, it did not exercise Henry Porter executives that Street View not only invaded the privacy of millions and made the job of burglars easier but somehow laid claim to Britain’s civic spaces. How gratifying to hear of the villagers of Broughton, Bucks, who prevented the Henry Porter van from taking pictures of their homes.

We could do worse than follow their example for this brat needs to be stopped in its tracks and taught about the responsibilities it owes to content providers and copyright holders.

The first thing we’ve focused on is how to proofread a manuscript for typos. The problem with reading a whole book all at once and looking for typos is that you can get so caught up in reading that your brain starts to skip the mistakes, seeing what it thinks should be there instead of what actually is. But what if you were presented with just one sentence at a time? You’d lack some context, it’s true, but you don’t really need a lot of context to know if “teh” is a misspelling of “the” or that “their” should be “there”.

That’s what we’ve built at Book Oven, and we’ve called it “Bite-Size Edits”. It presents you with a random snippet of text, with a sentence above and below for limited context, and if you spot a typo you can suggest a correction by editing the sentence and clicking “Suggest changes” (click on the images for a closer look or visit our complete How To).

You can also tell us that the snippet is OK as it is by clicking “No changes”, or that there’s something confusing about it by clicking “Skip”.

If our calculations are correct, it will take 100 people just 10 minutes to proofread a 100,000 word book, and we want to bring that collaborative power to bear on on the public domain. Thousands of texts have been uploaded to Project Gutenberg, but although they have been very carefully proofread some still have a small number of errors. Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg’s founder, called for help in removing these errors, so we’ve set up a version of Bite-Size Edits, which we’ve called the Gutenberg Rally, to focus just on texts from Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders (Gutenberg’s proofreading site).

If you’d like to pitch in, all you need to do is pick an invitation code from the list below and visit the Book Oven Gutenberg Rally site to create a new account. When you’ve successfully signed up, please leave a comment with the code you used and I’ll cross it off the list.
Now, just a little word of warning. The site is in alpha, which means that you will almost certainly find things that are broken! We have a feedback form that you can use to let us know and a forum to discuss things (which, is itself something that’s not entirely finished, as it’s not yet fully integrated - just sign in with the same username and password that you create when you join the main site). We’d love your feedback, so don’t spare the horses!

If you explore the site, you’ll find that you can start your own projects, upload your own text (.txt files only at the moment) and can send it to Bite-Size for the community to proof. Please feel free to experiment, but be aware we’re still ironing out bugs and that we have a lot more social functionality still to unveil!

So, for the love proof-reading, get cracking! Oh, but be warned. Bite-Size Edits has been described by one usability tester as “evilly addictive”. Don’t say we didn’t tell you…

(I’ve added some more codes, but obviously can’t update the list whilst I’m asleep! If you pick one that doesn’t work, list it in the comments and try another!)

Invite Codes
rP2Yyzap
PQ2zLtD9
Wkk1qoyT
ryVuSyb4
aH0Q2F33
gHSRAlfH
CJ8DeNI3
Z2wf1uQ8
9JQgITFO
4eYgwds
UI6xzP2B
QyTDo91K
xRIW1vzp
lj2k2hGp
nP1rsvGW
POjzub7O
oHNCOT7j
iPSyc1VX
xxGPeC9P
bvzcrrAN
FhtbAfjW
PGyzueaK
xKlqrfiz
w8t3I0dk
w9mIDDzx
I4r8p02p
J35c7VHU
W9RDRlzL
1kcNSiFA

I thought I’d post up the revised opening scene which I’ve tried to plump up a bit. I still laugh every time I read it, not because it’s particularly funny but because the “How to get published” presentation I went to a while back included the sage advice, Never start with the weather. Oops.

As usual, have at it in the comments.

Ernest Scrimshire pulled the nape of his jacket up over his head. He hesitated on the bookshop doorstep as the heavy oak door shut behind him, then plunged into the pelting rain. The remains of Hay Castle loomed up behind him and provided some shelter for a moment or two. The ruined Norman tower, covered in thick ivy, was a dark mass to his right. Behind him rose the Jacobean mansion, the blind windows of the eastern wing, blocked by rusting sheets of steel or left wide open for the bats to fly through, staring over his shoulder. The wing that had escaped the ravenous fire thirty years before housed the books, and its glory made the ravaged third all the more pitiful.

Ernest hesitated at the top of the steep steps that lead between neatly trimmed trimmed topiary down the embankment to the Castle Green. The stone was slick and dangerous, and he took a hold of the hand rail, still holding his jacket up with his other hand. It wasn’t far to home, but he’d be soaked to the skin before he got to the other side of the tiny walled green. It was barely 15 yards across but the rain was coming down like stair rods.

The lush grass, thick after a wet summer and long overdue a mow, soaked up the weather and mud spattered the bottoms of his trousers. The embankment ended in a stone walled ha ha. Bookshelves backed up against the ha ha and the wall opposite as if defending themselves against all that lay outside, or perhaps they were cowering away from the torrents that lashed them.

Ernest felt a pang of guilt as he hurried past the exposed and vulnerable books towards the tiny stone archway that lead out onto the street. Every time it rained, he wished he had found time to erect some sort of shelter for them, just something to keep the worst of the rain off. But every time it was dry he was busy with other things, with urgent things that couldn’t wait. Or couldn’t wait insofar as Griffith Loyd was concerned. Most things could wait for Ernest.

He hurried home, leaving the soggy books behind him. Sad and unloved, they stood in serried ranks along the shelves: outside, unprotected, at the mercy of the elements. As if the desultory prices they were on offer for, 30p for a paperback, 50p for a hard cover, wasn’t insult enough in a world where 50p barely bought half a loaf of bread.

The Literary Guide to the United States stood next to More For Jonathan and Indoor Plants, A Compendium, but should any brave souls take a shine to one of these illustrious titles and try to remove one from the shelf, they would find the covers stuck together, past rains and subsequent hot spells having bound them together as fast as any glue.

The poor large format books were relegated to the lower shelves, no longer lined up neatly, but piled in sorry heaps. The weaker, thinner paperbacks curled up in pain, their pages wrapped foetally around their spines, their deformity crushed into place by heavier hard covers. The muddy path that lead the book buyers around the green threatened to cast its muck over everything, except the mould had got there first. Mildew spots grew on every page, consuming the type and eating away at the paper.

No one would want one of these pathetic books in their house. They weren’t even fit for kindling in the town’s many fireplaces. Instead, they sat on their shelves, quietly rotting.

The wind swung to the north and a different cadre of books cringed away from the cruel rain.

I’ve always planned to release the story electronically under a Creative Commons license, but I’m thinking too that it might be fun to release via a print-on-demand too. I’ve started looking at the options, and I’d love to hear what people’s experiences have been with the different services. I’d do it pretty cheap - say a quid or two over their base cost - to see if people would then be willing to take a chance on it.

Assuming that it would top out at 100 pages, the different services looks like this:

Lulu
Paperback, B&W, perfect bound, 6″ x 9″, one off: £2.98, tax not mentioned, (shipping ~£3.75 to UK, according to a friend)

Blurb
Paperback, B&W, 5″ x 8″, one off: £3.50 + tax, (shipping £3.66 to UK)

Createspace (Amazon)
B&W, 6″ x 9″, one off: roughly £2.69 depending on exchange rate, tax not mentioned, (shipping has various options)

Cafepress
Paperback, B&W, perfect bound, 5″ x 8″, one off: roughly £7.16 + tax, (various shipping options)

WordClay, Authors Online, BookSurge all also have offerings, but none of them very simple or attractive.

To be honest, Lulu or Blurb certainly seems like the way to go. Their models are simple and their prices attractive. I like the idea of specialist software to design my book, rather than just fiddling about in a PDF and hoping for the best, but Blurb’s BookSmart really seems struggles to cope with my novella even at just 23,000 words. I hate to think what it would do with a full length novel.

Anyway, I’ve love to hear your experiences with PoD, so me me with ‘em in the comments!

I also spent some time looking at the outline of my novella in Scrivener, trying to figure out how best to order the scenes. Some of them have an obvious linear order, but others are back story and need to be positioned within the main timeline for best effect. It was then that I realised I now have more backstory than I have story. This means quite a bit more work. It won’t be enough just to flesh out existing scenes, I’m actually going to have to come up with more meat to go into the pot.

I’m quite happy though. I’ve already had a think about where I can elaborate and make things more interesting, but it does mean that chances of me getting this novella done any time soon are slim. Oh well, I may post another scene here for you to chew on in a little while.

Ernest Scrimshire pulled the nape of his jacket up over his head. He hesitated on the bookshop doorstep as the heavy oak door shut behind him, then plunged into the pelting rain. The remains of the castle loomed up behind him and provided some shelter for a moment or two, but soon he was at the top of the steep steps that lead down to the Castle Green. They were slick and dangerous, and he took a hold of the hand rail, still holding his jacket up with his other hand. It wasn’t far to home, but he’d be soaked to the skin before he got to the other side of the tiny, irregular walled green. It was barely 15 yards across but the rain was coming down like stair rods.

The lush grass, thick after a wet summer and long overdue a mow, soaked up the weather and soaked the bottoms of his trousers. Bookshelves backed up against the walls as if defending themselves against all that lay outside, or perhaps they were cowering away from the torrents that lashed them.

Ernest felt a pang of guilt as he hurried past the exposed and vulnerable books. Every time it rained, he wished he had found time to erect some sort of shelter for them, just something to keep the worst of the rain off them. But every time it was dry he was busy with other things, with urgent things that couldn’t wait. Or couldn’t wait insofar as Griffith Loyd was concerned, at least. Most things could wait for Ernest.

He hurried home, leaving the soggy books behind him. Sad and unloved, they stood in serried ranks along the shelves: outside, unprotected, at the mercy of the elements. As if the desultory prices they were on offer for, 30p for a paperback, 50p for a hard cover, wasn’t insult enough. And this in a world where 50p barely bought half a loaf of bread.

The Literary Guide to the United States stood next to More For Timothy and Indoor Plants, A Compendium, but should any brave souls take a shine to one of these illustrious titles and try to remove one from the shelves, they would find the covers stuck together, past rains and subsequent hot spells having bound them together as fast as any glue.

The poor large format books were relegated to the lower shelves, no longer lined up neatly, but piled in sorry heaps. The weaker, thinner paperbacks curled up in pain, their pages wrapped foetally around their spines, their deformity crushed into place by heavier hard covers. The muddy path that lead the book buyers around the green threatened to cast its muck over everything, except the mould had got there first. Mildew spots grew on every page, consuming the type and eating away at the paper.

No one would want one of these pathetic books in their house. They weren’t even fit for kindling in the town’s many fireplaces. Instead, they sat on their shelves, quietly rotting.

The wind swung to the north and a different cadre of books cringed away from the cruel rain.

Anyway, I’ve been mulling over the question of cliffhangers. Vince is pretty good at creating cliffhangers at the end of each chapter that make you want to keep reading, and of course, plenty of other authors are too. Cory has a really big one at the beginning of Little Brother than nagged at me the whole way through, as I was dying to find out what happened. I’m not really all that great at cliffhangers. In script writing, we learn to “get in late and get out early”, to make scenes tight and concise and to try and keep a sense of tension going. But in my prose, my scenes tend towards the opposite: I get in early and get out late. I let the whole thing unfold slowly, and the end of the scene has a comfortable “closed” feeling to it.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I had been operating on the assumption that I’ll have to go back and try to imbue some of my scenes with at least a hint of tension, but when I was talking with a friend of mine last week, she asked a really insightful question: Why? Er, um, yeah…

I guess it really comes down to the fear that what I’m writing will be, when all is said and done, a bit dull. I don’t mind if people think it’s silly, or daft, or strange, or awkward. Or even if people don’t understand it at all. But I would be gutted if they thought it was dull. Maybe I’m being premature, though, as I’ve still a lot to write and rewrite before the thing even reaches the “in first draft” stage.

Either way, I’d like to know what people think about cliffhangers. Like them? Hate them? Prefer books without them? See them as a trite trope, overused and difficult to execute well? Or are they essential to retaining a sense of tension and suspense?

I had nine nights during January where I was getting pins and needles almost every night, and not just once, but two or three times, and it’s been like that, off and on, ever since. Now, don’t underestimate these pins and needles - it’s like a non-painful type of pain. It wakes you right up, and it keeps you awake until they’re gone. I discovered that if I stretch my neck in a certain way (away from the affected hand) the pins and needles would vanish almost immediately, almost all the time. Good trick - it helps me not wake up too much when an attack comes on.

So yesterday I went back to the physio to see what he had to say about it. Apparently, the steroids wear off in about five or so weeks, so I mine worked for about nine, which isn’t bad but not all that great either. The physio is reluctant to give me more steroids, as you can only have three injections a year and if they only work for nine or so weeks, it won’t help long term. Instead he’s referring me to the surgeon for an assessment for, well, surgery.

I’ve already had a number of tests, which have taken the form of flexing my wrists in certain ways, and pushing hard on certain points in my neck and shoulders, and I come up negative for all of them. My physio did them all again yesterday, and despite the fact that I had concluded that it’s all in my neck, he said that the tests he did proved it wasn’t.

So the first thing the surgeon will do is a “conduction” test:

In a nerve conduction study, electrodes are placed on the hand and wrist. Small electric shocks are applied and the speed with which nerves transmit impulses is measured. In electromyography, a fine needle is inserted into a muscle; electrical activity viewed on a screen can determine the severity of damage to the median nerve.

Then they’ll decide whether surgery is a good idea or not.

Now, I used to be a big gung-ho about surgery, until I actually had some. Having a naughty mole removed (twice! (with pics)) made me think a bit harder about what surgery actually means, and now I’d really rather avoid it if at all possible.

I’m not actually suffering any pain or discomfort during the day. Occasionally I get a strange sensation in my hands, but it’s not pain, it’s more a physical feeling of something wrong. It’s hard to describe accurately, but you’d know it if you felt it.

I am, however, having a lot of back pain, and I have a long, long history of some quite serious back problems. I’ve had chiropractic treatment for years, and without it I would be in a right mess now, so my first instinct is to go back to that. I had been seeing someone in Islington, but like all these things, quality varies. I lost faith in her after she suggested that the pins and needles in my fingers could be diabetes, but failed to spot that it was more likely (given my general health) to be carpal tunnel.

So that means I need to find another. I’ve had a chiro and a physio recommended to me, but they are both out of London and it would be a bit of a trek for regular consultations. A London clinic recommended by someone I don’t know looks rather expensive, and I’m not exactly what you could call rolling in it right now. I’ve had acupuncture before and that worked well for certain types of problem. I’ve been told that for some people with RSI it can work, but to be honest, I’m willing to try it regardless, because having tiny needles stuck in you is better than having your wrists slit open.

My chiro down in Dorset, who’s very good but too far away for regular visits, has told me that carpal tunnel syndrome isn’t something that she can fix. That may be the case, but I’d like to rule chiro out through experimentation. My spine needs attention anyway so I’ll benefit from getting it all sorted out and put back in the right place. And if I still suffer the pins and needles, I’ll move on to acupuncture. Surgery has to be a last resort.

But it’s important to say that this is not like the mole, where there was a danger it would turn cancerous and where it was important to move swiftly and excise every last bad cell. If I had another mole go bad, I would not hesitate to get it removed. There are some things that alternative therapies such as chiropractic can do, and there are things that they can’t. Right now, I don’t know which category my RSI falls into, so I’m just going to have to find out.

Now, it was only the other day that I realised how many things I’ve deferred on the grounds of being single. I have films I’ve bought that have gone unwatched. I’ve never bothered to take my driving test. Boxes full of unused junk lie around the flat. All things undone because I didn’t have anyone to do them with or do them for.

Yet… writing tends to be a solitary, selfish endeavour. It occupies the mind, it takes time and devotion and I suspect if there was a someone else, I would end up neglecting either them or the writing. And as illustrated above, I’m not sure if I can *not* write. Especially because all those worries and anxieties and petty neuroses that prey on the mind during the mundanity of day-to-day existence, they can’t compete with the excitement of conjuring up a new story.

So, yes, sometimes I do rue being single on Valentine’s Day, but not when I’ve got a new story to write.

Having spent most of my life living on my own, I can totally understand this line of reasoning. When you’re on your own, you can please yourself - if you wake up at 3am with an amazing idea, you can turn on the light and write it down and not have to worry if you’re disturbing anyone. You can stay up til all hours writing. You can devote yourself to your words without worrying if someone else is feeling neglected.

I noticed just how true this was whilst Kevin was away. I started writing my current story on 25th October 2008 (and so much for finishing it in a month!), whilst Kev was in the US, and it was relatively easy to get back into the rhythm of it. I tried to hand-write four pages every day, and whilst I wasn’t hugely disciplined, I managed it more often than I didn’t.

When Kevin returned, it suddenly got a lot harder to find the time to write. Obviously I spend 9 or 10 hours every day not in Kevin’s company, but I find it hard to write during the day, except on weekends. “Work” encompasses a lot of things, but it doesn’t yet include writing fiction. I hope one day it will, but right now it’s something I have to find time for in the evenings.

But it felt rude to sit and write whilst Kev was in the room. Our flat is so small that once can’t really go off and hide in another room to concentrate, and even if it wasn’t I wouldn’t want to do that anyway. I love spending time with Kevin - that’s why I married him! - and I don’t want to start hiding myself away from him in order to write.

When you really look at it, though, the “problem” is just a construct. Kevin and I spend plenty of time of an evening just doing whatever it is that we do on our computers. We sit together, either at the dining table or on the sofa, and we do stuff. What’s the difference between sitting next to him and processing email, and sitting next to him and writing? Functionally, nothing. So really it’s just a matter of me becoming comfortable with the idea of writing whilst in the same room as someone else.

It helps that Kevin loves writing too, so sometimes we allocate time to sit and write and that puts me in the right frame of mind. But for the rest of the time, I’m just learning to decide to be in the right frame of mind and get on with it.

I suppose that it could be difficult if one were with a person who didn’t have their own interests, but I can’t imagine I’d put up with a relationship like that for long anyway.

If you want to do something about this, please write to your MEP and support the Open Rights Group so that they can continue to campaign on your behalf.

neilhimself: woken up by assistant at 5.30 in the morning. Not quite sure why. All rather bleary, to do with someone trying to call. argh. — 13:47:53

neilhimself: oh. forget about it. — 13:50:32

neilhimself: About to drink second cup of tea without Marmalade this morning. Also, I just won the Newbury Medal for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. — 15:45:44

neilhimself: Newbery, not Newbury. Also FUCK!!!! I won the FUCKING NEWBERY THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME. I thank you. — 15:46:42

I thought I’d have a look and see if there was anything fun on Google News about it, and I stumbled across an article by the Associated Press, (I’ve linked to it even though I’m sure it will at some point be corrected), which appeared to be about an entirely different book.

I do wonder what an interesting book that would be, though: a story about a family so hard, so callous that they indoctrinate their children by making them participate in the slaughter of an assassin. No wonder Bod ran away to the graveyard. Being brought up by a vampire would be a life of sweet innocence compared to the horror of parent-child bonding over a still-warm corpse.