Fingers Crossed!

So, the block finally broke and I got my writing hat on for a contest I’ve been talking about lately.  You know, I don’t actually have a writing hat but now I’m thinking I should.

Anyway, back to the contest!

It was hosted by Angel Illustrations and, as I’ve mentioned before, the rules were to write a short story, poem or descriptive piece based on what will become his new “signature image”.  As yet, the image is unfinished but I can tell it will be beautiful when completed – you can check out the full information of the competition here if you have a Facebook account.  …and, if you have time, feel free to check out my Author Page.  All support is greatly appreciated – your “likes” mean so much and somewhere a Noo-nee will get his wings.  Or a cookie.

So yes, I finally got rid of the writer’s block that had been plaguing me and hopefully I’ve done Angel’s new piece of artwork justice.  My submission was a short story and I’m keeping everything crossed right now, I may even plait my hair!  Talk about cutting it close though, I emailed my submission 2 hours before the deadline.

The close-cutting of deadlines won’t be a regular occurrence in my future career.  Honest.  …ish.

February 16, 2012
Writing
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If The Idea Fits…

Writer’s block.  Ask any writer and they’ll all give you a pained expression, knowing your pain if you’re experiencing this almost debilitating frustration.

So far, I’ve only ever experienced writer’s block twice.  Once a long time ago, so long in fact that I don’t remember what I was stuck on – I just remember the frustration involved.  The second is happening right now though and it’s really starting to bug me.

I’m working on, or trying to work on, a competition entry.  The subject isn’t difficult – you are to write a poem, short story of descriptive piece based on a piece of art.  I did have a feel of what I want to write, the art is really lovely and gave me an almost instant idea.  Yet whenever I tried to write it down I got totally blocked and even have a sentence that I ended with “something something” because my brain just shut down mid way through.  The piece of art is, as yet, unfinished and I’m wondering if that’s where my problem is coming from, trying to write a finished piece of prose based on an unfinished piece of art.  But I have a feeling that the problem is me.  The initial idea I had, I’ve decided against as it doesn’t seem to want to be written.  So I started a different approach and I now have 250 words and feel as if I’m “done”, which isn’t satisfactory as the competition wants 1-2 pages.

The problem now is that I had an idea a day ago, after racking my brain for days on end, but it feels more like an idea for a YA novel waiting to be written and not actually based off the picture at all.  I think all the brain racking is now just giving me plot ideas for new novels and nothing for the competition.

So how do I get past this block?  Part of me wants to just pack it in and not enter, but the prize is one that I’d really love and that’s what’s spurring me on.  Plus I’m stubborn and don’t like giving up on things.  But now I feel like I’m just trying to force the ideas to fit with the image, when really they don’t at all.

“I’ve often said that there’s no such thing as writer’s block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen–whether I’m working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book–it’s usually because I’m trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place.” – Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery, I totally agree.  But how to get past it, I again have no idea.

February 13, 2012
Writing
3 Comments

A Case Of The Noo-Nees

A while ago a friend linked me to a funny blog where the owner tells stories that have happened to her, with added cartoon drawings.  That helped my procrastination reach new heights.  But one of them stuck with me from a writers point of view, the Alot.

I don’t think I’ve ever been guilty of talking about the Alot rather than describing a lot of something, but now whenever I see someone else say alot (or even the proper, a lot) I end up smiling, or sometimes giggling, gaining me many weird looks if I’m not alone, thinking of the fuzzy Alot and what he might be doing 🙂

But something I’ve been doing lately (maybe even a lot!), much to my own frustration, is typing noone instead of no one.  Where these Noo-nees come from I have no idea, but my head imagines a bunch of sprite or pixing looking things, crawling all over the place.  Just like the Alot, the Noone is very versatile and people seem to always care about what the Noone thinks or does…

Noone is helping me today.  “Aww, thanks Noo-nee, you’re a great help!”

Noone has made fun of me today.  🙁

Noone likes me! (Yay!)

I hope Noone saw that.  (Noones like to see fun things!)

So now, as well as being able to talk more about Alots, you can tell people “Yes, Noones are very helpful!” when Noone helps them out.

February 2, 2012
Writing
9 Comments

Wallpapers and Writing

I subscribe to a few author Facebook Pages, but the one most often updated is Ilona Andrews.  Today she (or they, not sure who wrote it) mentioned her latest blog post, which talks about writing and inspiration; what to do if you feel stuck.  After reading it (you should too!), I found the wallpaper idea to be a really good one.  Although it’s a tip that I’ve never come across before, it definitely makes a lot of sense and is something I’ve no doubt I’ll try at some point in the future.

But unlike Ilona Andrews saying to hold the story in your head for a week or two, for me the key is not to wait that long – although I would if the words didn’t come.  But as a general rule for myself, as soon as my brain starts forming the first sentence I need to get it on paper, no matter how little of the story is formed in my mind.  Otherwise, I’ve found to my dismay, my brain keeps writing it in my head, word by word, and if I wait to mull it over some more then when I come to write it down it’s all gone.  My brain has done the writing, and the feeling, and is then reclining in it’s success that now no one else can see – least of all me!

So for me, I let the idea simmer and the random thoughts and plot points jumble around for a while to build up.  This could be a few days, normally no longer than a week, but the second that my brain starts thinking “It was a dark and stormy night…” (ok so my brain doesn’t ever think that!) I have to get it down on paper, or napkin, or post it note, or even the back of my hand otherwise *poof*!  It’s gone.

Of course, I still have the idea in my head and I always sit and try to write it down, editing over and over because it isn’t flowing right.  But I know the end result is always the same, a shadow of it’s former self and then I get annoyed at myself for not writing the words when they first came to me.

So, now I make sure to always have something nearby to write on – normally my phone – so when I wake up at 2:30am thinking “It was a dark and stormy night…” (ok really, I never think that!) then I can just jot it down and both my brain and I can recline with smug smiles on our faces.

…Brains totally have faces :/

January 30, 2012
Writing
1 Comment

Say NO to PIPA and SOPA

I know I’ve been going on about PIPA (Protect IP Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) a lot on both my Facebook page and Twitter account for the past month.  But the threats of both of these bills are no where near over.  For anyone who doesn’t know what’s happening, basically these two bills are under review by the US government which are heavily backed by the music and film industries.  Both bills are against online piracy yet both bills are seriously flawed in that their proposals won’t actually stop online piracy but they WILL allow censorship of the internet on sites such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Wikipedia…and every other site ever created.  People who post videos of themselves singing karaoke?  They would be breaking the law if either of these bills pass.  But not only the people who are in/posting the videos but YouTube also would be under threat and would be taken down for allowing the videos to be posted on there.

Ever written  a quote from a book or a movie online?  One line you really love and like to use a signature on forums, or just to say to cause amusement?  You would then be breaking the law if either of these bills pass.

Google, quite rightly, is joining in the online blackout protests today because as a search engine it lists EVERY site on the internet.  If it didn’t, it would be a pretty lousy search engine.  Under both SOPA and PIPA this would mean Google is breaking the law and would have to be taken down with the Google owners looking at 5 years in jail.

Oh yes, did I forget to mention that?  There is jail time involved in these bills as it would be a federal offense and the way they’re worded means that any one of you who have ever posted a link to a funny video, or a quote, or a link to a site would be facing up to 5 years in jail if that video, quote or site is deemed in breach of copyright, or even potentially breaching copyright.  Potentially – that’s an awfully big word to have in a bill, it opens up the playing field from just pirate sites to everything.

So, is anyone still thinking no big deal?  There was a case only last month involving Universal Music.  They decided that a site called Mega Upload was a piracy site (I will admit, I hadn’t heard of this site so I can’t speak to that accuracy), and was then blocked through a DNS takedown request (which is what would happen to anything considered “rogue” – no warning, no notice, just immediate takedown).  The most worrying part of this case is this though… A lot of well known artists including P-Diddy, Kanye West, Mary J Blige and Will.I.Am created a video praising the file sharing site Mega Upload, the video was shown on YouTube and YouTube was forced to remove it after receiving a takedown notice from Universal Music claiming that the video was “violating copyrights”.  Now, here’s the part where it gets interesting – there was NO copyright violations in the video at all!  Universal Music did not own any of the content in the video and yet they still successfully had it removed, ie: they censored the internet to stop anyone raising awareness about an issue they don’t want people to know about.  …and this is BEFORE either of these bills pass – if  they pass it won’t just be Universal who can to do this.  And this isn’t just an America  issue, it’s INTERNATIONAL.

America may be looking at passing these laws but it won’t just be America who suffers as a result because most of the sites we use every day are American sites.  These bills will crush new start up companies – if Facebook had tried to start up after either of these bills passed then it would have been shut down and people imprisoned long ago due to people posting pictures, videos and links that have potential to violate copyright.

These bills would devastate the internet, but be aware that while these bills are trying to be passed there are cases going on which feel very much like they’re trying to make examples in court to stack up in the bills favour.

This case was in England only a few days ago which has resulted in a UK student facing extradition to America to face piracy charges.  His crime?  He ran a site which functioned like Google, providing a list of links to torrent sites.  He hosted no torrents on his site, no illegal content and no content which infringed on copyright.  Under this ruling, Google would also be sentenced in the same manner as they too provide a list of links to torrent sites (as well as movie streaming sites, etc).  Without sounding paranoid, I do find it a bit too coincidental that this student is being extradited to the country which is trying to pass two bills which would allow him to be sent to prison without a fight.

So, take the time to think about this – what have you talked about on your blog, twitter or Facebook account or what have you linked to that could end up with not only you facing criminal charges (and extradition if you’re not from America, it seems) but with the forced takedown of twitter, Facebook or any other site you posted it on?  In this article alone I’ve mentioned a site which has been deemed “rogue” as well as linked to an article talking about the case which shows the now re-established video in it.  That, under the SOPA and PIPA bills, would be enough and means I would have to censor this post to remove any mention of those and anything else which has potential to lead to copyright infringement.

There are blackouts across the web today in protest of these bills.  Join the fight, take a stand and make your voice heard by signing the petitions against both PIPA and SOPA – tell congress that you don’t want to be censored, that you want free speech and freedom of choice on the internet, let the government know that you don’t want a nanny state who chooses for you what you can and can’t know.  Be informed and be heard.

Watch the video about what SOPA and PIPA mean for the future of the internet if they come to pass.  The video explains it much better than I did, and in much more detail, covering all of the problems with the bills (I only touched on very few of them).

Sign Google’s petition here (may be a different link for Google outside of the US)
Sign the “Fight for the future” stop American censorship page to send a message to your senator urging them to vote NO for both bills (only for US residents)
Sign “Vote for the net” here, to let your US officials know you won’t vote for anyone who backs these bills (only for US residents)

For anyone who isn’t in the US, take the time to find out more and see how you can help – as Wikipedia says today “Contact your local State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and any similar legislation. SOPA and PIPA will affect sites outside of the United States, and actions to sites inside the United States (like Wikipedia) will also affect non-American readers — like you. Calling your own government will also let them know you don’t want them to create their own bad anti-Internet legislation.”

This isn’t something that will just go away.  But if either of these bills pass, the sites you love could.

January 18, 2012
Natalie Natterings
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