I was blacked out last Wednesday [well, I wasn't -- my web site was] in web solidarity against internet censorship, so my three readers had to go elsewhere for their information on house centipedes [seriously, it drives like 90% of my search engine traffic]. You already know about SOPA and PIPA and why they must be stopped, so I won’t bore you by restating. How incredible to watch last Wednesday as public awareness skyrocketed, prompting cosponsors to drop off and kill a bill in what was essentially a few hours. I work in public interest and let me tell you, things don’t work that way most of the time. It was definitely one of those “Uh-oh, you woke up the Internet” moments.

As an author, and one who hopes to one day make writing my sole source of income, I have a vested interest in copyright law. I believe in copyright, and I recognize that the whole idea of a creative industry is reliant on intellectual property law. More than being illegal, I view piracy as morally wrong – at least, when it’s an artist trying to earn a living from whom you are pirating. However, to put large corporations in charge of deciding what is or is not a violation of copyright is just totally ludicrous.

Corporations cannot be trusted with IP decisions. Has everyone forgotten when Disney tried to trademark “Seal Team Six,” the name of a Navy Seal division? Marvel and DC Comics co-own a trademark on the term “Superhero.” Whole industries have sprung up around buying photo copyrights and suing unknowing bloggers. Corporations have no belief in education, parody, satire, critique, or any other fair use. Their only interest is in protecting their valuable property.

As much as I care about copyright, and the right of the artist to compensation, I also believe in maintaining an open forum for discussion and a free exchange of ideas. As an author, I recognize that readers are going to share my work around – whether lending books, or even in some cases reproducing them. Hell, I don’t just recognize it, I hope for it. Not only because it potentially creates more fans to purchase my products, but because I believe in a world where people can share things like art and music with friends, without having to treat that act as a financial transaction.

Which brings us to Jonathan Coulton, and his thoughts on both the SOPA/PIPA issue and the US Government’s ensuing shut-down of Megaupload. Coulton [whose work on Portal alone was enough to make me a fan] points out that, really, the business model we’re defending has been around a relatively short time, and there is no God-given right to make money from making art:

It so happens that technological and societal blahbity bloos have conspired to create a situation where selling songs about monkeys and robots is a viable business, but for most of human history people have NOT paid for art. I don’t want this to happen again, and I would be very sad if this came to pass, but it’s not up to me to decide.
(via)

This is pretty on-the-nose, frankly. As sad as I would be to see my dreams of writing for a living go up in smoke [really, really sad - so keep that in mind before you pull the new Lady Gaga track down off Frostwire], it’s the nature of the business and the era we are all living through and shaping. I want to make a living doing what I love, but I don’t want it enough to justify a law that hamstrings free expression and the free exchange of ideas. Sony and Disney and Comcast might think their dollars are worth more than our collective minds. I just don’t happen to agree.

I had a terrific little Christmas with my family, as we do pretty much every year. We tend to overdo Christmas, considering all of the “kids” are now around 30. The five of us gather around the tree and open about a hundred thousand presents that we’ve bought one another. For the last three years, my Dad has developed his very own “Deal or No Deal” home game (my Dad really likes TV – a lot) where the grand prize is $2,500. I didn’t win the grand prize (none of us did) but I did win a pretty tidy little sum that takes the sting out of holiday spending. I also got a lot of very thoughtful gifts, one of them quite dangerous: a Playstation 3.

The danger, of course, is that I will spend the next 2-12 months doing little but shooting virtual men in the head. This could have disastrous consequences on my writing career, my day job, my weight, and my cardiovascular health. Video games are one addiction I have been prone to in the past – most of my memories of 2006 were made in Azeroth, a world to which I don’t think I can ever risk going back. So this gift will require a bit of self-control.

The next couple of weeks are going to be super-busy, video games or no video games. I’m headed to NYC for New Year’s Eve, not to stand around Times Square and pee in a Big Gulp cup with the tourists, but to run a 4-mile race at midnight in Central Park, with Liz and her sister. A little less than a week after that, we’re headed to Orlando for a Disney vacation with a few friends. Oh, and for more running. I’m running the Disney Half Marathon, and Liz is running that PLUS the full marathon the next morning. It’s hard to imagine how we are going to be capable of walking around theme parks after that, but we’ll get by.

So the priority for the next few days is to get as much work done on the new novel (still untitled, despite my best efforts to come up with something) and to lose some of the holiday weight I’ve been putting on at an alarming pace. Some running and some healthy eating (rather than the all-chocolate-and-baked-goods diet I’ve been on since late November) should do the trick. After running a 1:50 in the Philadelphia Half Marathon, I’d hate to be the tub of guts guy dropping out of the Disney Half because his boobies hurt.

The second month of revisions is one of those times I start to loathe a manuscript. The good news is, things are moving fast. I don’t think there will be a third month before this draft is ready for test readers.

The highlight so far: My goal for this book was to market it at under 100,000 words. When I finished the first rough draft, it was 120,000+ words, and I was left to figure out how to cut nearly a fifth of the narrative. By the time I finished my read-through, I realized I’d duplicated a few chapters and passages by virtue of my not-so-thorough understanding of Scrivener. Removing those passages knocked the overall length down to around 96,000. The only word for that: Huzzah.

Further revisions have me down to nearly 90,000 words, and I’m not quite halfway through yet. This is especially good because I think it will take 10-15 thousand words to fill in gaps I’m finding as I go. I expect the final first draft (which I share with test readers) to clock in around 96,000 words, give or take 3,000.

The bad part is, I was hoping to have this revision completed by the end of 2011. I even thought about wrapping a first draft as a gift for some of my test readers (the ones who read my work because they enjoy it, rather than as a favor to me). At the pace I’m moving, though, it looks like I’ll be wrapping up my first revision sometime in January. Not that I’m complaining.

My process, in a nutshell: I don’t like to start revisions until I’ve finished a first draft, and try (somewhat successfully) to avoid even looking back at earlier chapters while I’m writing. Yes, this means there’s some inconsistency with plot, location, names, and such. I’m okay with that – the important thing is forward momentum.

Once I’ve finished that first rough draft, I print it and read it through. Because of my first draft approach, there will be some gaps, some false starts, and some plot points that come in three different places, as I change my mind about where certain information should come to light. This is normal – but it must be cleaned up before the book goes to test readers, or their only feedback will be confusion. I mark all initial changes on paper as I read. Most are detailed corrections, but in places it’s just a paragraph or two circled and the word “revise.”

The next stage, which is where I find myself now, is transcribing those handwritten changes into the electronic manuscript. This stage is frustratingly slow, and I may in the future try to do my initial read-through electronically, but I just don’t feel natural reading on a computer screen, and my Kindle doesn’t lend itself to prolific markup.

Once I have a first clean draft, with a relatively linear plot and consistent names and places, I go to test readers. Once I get their comments, revisions can go in several directions – but of course it takes some time for them to read. While I’m waiting, I’ll start a new project. At of today, that’s what I’m looking forward to most.

Saturday I attended the monthly Philadelphia Writers Group meetup, which is always a terrific experience. If you’re a writer and you aren’t finding some opportunity to discuss your craft and your work with peers, you simply must remedy that – meetup.com is a good place to start looking.

A few of us went for drinks after the meeting, and the conversation turned to Occupy Philly. At the time of our November meeting the encampment on Dilworth Plaza outside City Hall was thousands strong. On Saturday it was gone, cleared away by police so construction crews can start tearing up Dilworth for a major renovation project. In that same month, everyone at the table agreed, Occupy managed to squander considerable popular support and goodwill and alienate most of Philadelphia.

In October I wrote a post about my participation in the Occupy movement. Others at our table had taken to the streets, and voiced their prior support. Yet by December we were all fed up, and everyone agreed on the reasons: Occupy Philly stopped being about a message we supported [my attempt at summary: to counter the Corporate power-grab in America and fix the system that privatizes profit and socializes loss] and became a petty squabble over Dilworth Plaza.

The consensus among our group is that protest is supposed to be uncomfortable. The whole point is that the protester cares enough about a cause to put up with that discomfort, to stand out on a street with a sign in the cold and the wind and the rain. A tent city is supposed to be about poverty and desperation. When the Occupy protesters started setting up heated three-room tents from REI, solar chargers for their iPads, and bike-pedal cappuccino machines, the message we call cared about was lost. More importantly, when they insisted free speech means they get to keep those things, and refused to give them up and move across the street, that original message was obliterated. If we seven felt that way, it seems safe to assume the majority of Philadelphians agree.

Do note that this is a criticism of the specific Occupy protest here in Philly, and while it may be applicable to groups in other cities it is not intended as a criticism of the nationwide movement, which I very much support.

There was some discussion that this might be the opportune time for people like us – who are not radicals, who mostly have day jobs, who are interested in significant reform to the existing system, not burning the mother fucker down completely – to start our own protests. No tents, no drum circles, no cappuccino – just everyday Americans who want to say that while we may be getting by okay, we still care about the 33% of our country who are being exploited or ignored, and the 1% who are benefiting. The trouble is, it’s hard for folks with day jobs to find time to put a movement together – which I suspect is how Occupy lost its way in the first place. What was interesting was that there was another consensus, that if the Occupy movement can get back to its original message, we are all ready to go back to the street.

As for the writers group itself, we had a lot more attendees than usual, likely because we were a “featured meetup” in November. Normally we have about 20-25 people in attendance, and this was twice that. Our usual organizer canceled at the last minute due to a family emergency and I was drafted into leading the discussion, which was fun but very tiring. I can enjoy being in a leadership role, particularly in the cause of creativity, but with so many new attendees asking questions and trying to introduce themselves, it’s a bit like being a politician. None of this is meant to complain, however – it’s energizing to see such a diverse group of individuals committed to their art. Which is why I go back each month.