Reading in the dark - My Life As a Lab Rat, Some Writing Advice, Notes to Tpau/43Duckies
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12:51 pm
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My Life As a Lab Rat, Some Writing Advice, Notes to Tpau/43Duckies
I always thought it would be interesting to rent myself out as a lab rat for projects which relate to disability and technology, and this week I am getting a number of opportunities to find out.
1. Yesterday I got to test a multimedia ebook being produced by someone at WGBH. The test ebook useed audio and video clips with description to illustrate math education concepts. The description was very well done, as the describer had a very different voice than anyone speaking in the audio/video clips, so you knew he was apart from the actual conversation/action. Still, being the extremely picky person I am, I got to make a number of suggestions, though most of them were along the lines of documentation items, like alerting users to changes in media players being used for different parts of the ebook.
I also got a nice bit of pizza money for doing the testing. When I got home, I ordered from Upham's, the best pizza place (I know of) in Dorchester, and then spent an hour watching the television remake of the made-for-t.v. movie based on Stephen King's It. In many ways, it was better than the original, but it was lacking one very particular thing: Tim Curry as Pennywise. I say this as a horror fan of many years, Tim Curry as a supernatural psycho clown created by Stephen King is one of the scariest things ever.
2. Tomorrow I get to be part of another grad student's thesis work. I'll get to have a vibrating device strapped to my arm and respond to the feedback it provides regarding information which its sensors pick up.
3. Another person, whom I have not actually met with yet, is looking for people with disabilities to tell him about how they perceive and navigate obstacles. The person who will be connecting us told me this much, and I thought, Like an exploratory robot! I never thought of myself as the Mars rover before! Now I'm really enjoying the idea. Yesterday on the way home I was walking along and thinking what sort of sensors would be useful to have in my feet. I'm probably lucky I wasn't hit by a truck.
Now I'm thinking about how to integrate all these experiences into a cyborg character for a SF story...
Speaking of stories and creating, last weekend at ReaderCon I had the opportunity to listen to Theresa Nealsen Hayden [sp?] speak on writing mistakes not to make. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak on writing, go!
Be wary of those who write advice about writing, check their references and writing credits. "There's a humungous amount of bad advice out there..." Many of these people wish to discourage you from writing so that they can persuade you that you require their help in improving your writing or your manuscript or your contacts.
"There are many people out there who are predators and you are lunch if you are a writer."
Slush: Most of what ends up in the slush pile is "worse than you could possibly imagine."
If you are thinking that all your book needs is more exposure or better advertising in order to sell, you are thinking about the wrong thing. What you should keep in mind when contemplating your book is the reader standing in front of a huge display of books, think Barnes and Noble or Borders (though I thought of when I was a teenager standing in front of one of these displays in my relatively small local pharmacy), asking, "What do I want to buy? What am I going to like?"
You are the reader's slave.
However you think publishing thinks, it doesn't. No body could invent publishing; "it is not one but many Gormengastine [laughter drowned out a word here] all of which interact and are interdependent, but all of which have their own internal logics, different from one to the other."
[end of excerpts, hopefully more later]
Tpau: Yes, pending such interview happens; I didn't take advantage of Bujold in person at the con, schedules were too crazy.
43D: Could you email me? Not sure of your active email addie.
Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Fairport Convention live from somewhere
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| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | July 16th, 2005 01:28 am (UTC) |
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Hi, it's Kristen. Do you know anyone who would be interested in being a lab rat of a more qualitative, story-telling personal sort? (If you didn't get my Jul. 10 email, email me at Kmw2109@columbia.edu, and let me know. Thanks! |
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