Alexandra Erin's
Refresh Monkeys and Usual Nuts

First note: I’m going to need to get new glasses. Soon.

I’ve had the same glasses for the past five years without incident. No eye exam in that time… yeah, I know that’s not a great idea, but see above in re: without incident. Well, now we have incident. I’ve had a growing problem over the past few… well, actually, it’s been creeping up on me for quite a while… where I haven’t been able to sit at the computer for as long as I used to be before being afflicted by headaches, blurred vision, and pained, tired eyes, or more subtly and simpy the desire to look at something else (which turns into the worse symptoms if I ignore it). Because it’s been growing so slowly over time, it took me until I was having a conversation about how often my eyes have been hurting lately for me to realize exactly what was going on here.

So, yeah. New glasses. In the mean time, it’s taking me about twice as long as it should to get anything done at the computer because I have to take frequent rest breaks. After identifying the problem, I’ve done stuff like decreasing resolution and increasing font size and playing with monitor brightness, but that’s only getting me so far.

Here’s the other thing. I’ve got people asking me when I’m going to start Star Harbor back up… and I’d love to do that, because I’ve invested a lot of myself and a lot of my time in the characters. But here’s the thing… it needs to be worth my while, because, well… I’ve invested a lot of myself and a lot of my time in the characters.

So, I’ve put a donation link on the new Star Harbor page… one separate from the donation link on this site… and for every $50 that’s donated, I’ll post a new Star Harbor chapter. There’s more details on that site. It’s my hope that, given the level of fan response for Star Harbor, this will take care of whatever expenses come out of my optometry needs.

I’ve had more than a few people ask me what I think of John Solomon’s blog, which I will neither name nor link to. Well, everything I would have to say about it can be summed up by my post Angelica The Critic and the punchline of this xkcd strip:

And that, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, is all I have to say about that.

You know, in the post two down from this one, I’m arguing that what is needed to have success (specifically in music, though by extension in any artistic medium) is both a viable product and a viable means of distribution. To put it another way: you need to have both something people want and a way for them to get it.

Thus, the failure of an individual effort cannot be automatically chalked up to the business model you follow, no matter how unconventional, as it’s possible you might have failed in another, proven model.

This is an important point to me, as every negative experience somebody has with self-published material (whether it’s as a consumer or producer of said material) seems to be followed by a discussion of why the model failed, which leads to a discussion of the model’s crippling flaws, which it must have, if the model itself failed. This often leads to the lack of “filters” in self-publishing being dredged up and labeled the most cripplingest of crippling flaws.

The “thinking” (such as it is) goes like this: when a work of art is put out by a major corporation such as a publishing house or a record label or a major film studio, this means it has been vetted at several stages by Some People Who Know What’s Best. It essentially has a seal of approval on it saying that it’s not crap.

Curiously, people whose livelihood comes from publishing houses, record labels, and major film studios are the most likely to believe this theory. The further removed that livelihood is from the actual production of artistic works, the more strongly they will believe this approval process is essential, but the artists who’ve spent years and made all the necessary sacrificices to get that seal on their work are also likely to believe in its value.

People outside the various entertainment industries, on the other hand, are likely to regard the output of such ad hoc vetting agencies (meaning the record labels, the major movie studios, and the publishing houses) as being hit-or-miss at best, and only continue to consume their output because it’s there and because there’s a chance it won’t be crap.

So now it’s occuring to me that the filters are actually weaker within The Industry (whichever industry we’re talking about at the moment) than within The Free/Independent Scene (whichever one we’re talking about.) How so?

Well, by the time you realize that the blockbuster movie, bestselling novel, or album you’re watching, reading, or listening to is largely comprised of unadulterated shit, you have already paid for it. Now, your first response might be to point to the existence of radio, music videos, and the like, which is where hit songs become popular and drive sales. Except, the music industry depends on those sales being of albums which contain two or three hits and approximately seven to ten songs they didn’t think would make it on the radio. It depends on this to such an extent that the overwhelming success of online music sales where consumers buy only the songs they want a la carte (or perhaps a la “cart”) is regarded by the industry as a terrible blow. They can’t sell you shit any more! And they’re losing money as a result.

The music industry produces stuff that nobody wants to buy, and when left to their own devices, nobody buys it. So, where’s the true filter, then? It’s with the consumers. Though, with the ubiquitousness of the aptly-named mass media, movies, books, and music that few people would ever buy if left to their own devices can be “positioned” in order to be made more likely to succeed. In simple language, shit can be wrapped up in a shiny enough package that enough people will buy it to allow more shit to be produced.

So, filters? Not so much.

On the other hand, an independent work that becomes a big enough hit for your likelihood of stumbling across it to approach 100% has to be some form of good. Oh, you can find some crappy independent webcomic, garage band, etc. without trying very hard. But any particular one is not particularly likely to intersect with your path through life, unlike the pre-positioned Summer Blockbuster or the Hot New Author with the national marketing blitz.

You can go to Comic Genesis or Fan Fiction Dot Net (not linkng to them because I don’t recommend anybody actually go to either of those places) and find oodles of artists and authors who aren’t really going anywhere, though some of them may have their own followings within their own communities. Old Media diehards will point to sites like this as proof of the lack of filters in the indy scene, and the need for filters in media in general. The thing is, though: independent art is its own “slush pile”. It is its own approval process. Stuff that is good, stuff that does connect with people, will connect with people, so long as the opportunity to connect is present. It gains a following. It is filtered out from and placed above the rest by a process akin to natural selection.

Stuff that doesn’t connect? Doesn’t connect, and remains in obscurity. Unlike, say, attempted blockbuster movies, which remain in the public consciousness even if they bomb, simply because of the marketing presence behind them.

My last post touched on independent music. In the past I’ve given space on this blog to “big name” artists who’ve struck out onto the wilds of the internet, and to one truly independent band who caught my eye. In the mean time, of course, there are artists who’ve been quietly forging their own path for years, and one of them is S.J. Tucker, A.K.A. “s00j”, A.K.A. “The Helsinki Carpet Bomber”, A.K.A. “Skinny White Chick“.

I may have made one of those names up.

Her music would probably be classified (if it must be classified) as “folk.” Folk’s kind of an interesting category to consider, in that it’s traditionally made up of independent musicians, and yet it’s certainly not what one first thinks of when the talk turns to “indy”. My understanding is that Ms. Tucker considers her profession to be akin to “troubadour”, which is awesome. Four years and change ago, she released a CD and walked away from her day job, and has been playing festivals and making music ever since.

People have been pointing me in her direction since I started out doing my own thing, and I just never got around to listening to her until a short while ago when I received a copy of her CD Sirens from a mutual friend and fan. I gave it a go, and found that I liked it. How much did I like it? Enough to slip a mention of one of her songs into Tales of MU, in the form of “the song about the alligator” that Hazel taught to Two. This act of aggravated pluggery did not go unnoticed, and was met with swift and terrible retribution.

So, what’s her music like? It’s hard to describe. Imagine Shel Silverstein had a lovechild with some wild roving gypsy. Then go to her website and read the lyrics and listen to the audio samples, because that’s a terrible description.

Well, it’s 3:30 in the morning on Monday and I’m awake. Can’t dance, so might as well blog.

I found myself namechecked in the comments on a blog post about how impossible it is to make money by giving away your work for free. I already gave some of my thoughts in a comment on the post, but here’s some more.

While I disagree with his overall conclusion, the post contains some good rebuttals to the whole “information wants to be free” argument, in its most common permutation of “I want the information which represents music, movies, comics, and books that I like to cost me nothing as a consumer.”

The blogger, Steven Poole, also asks whether any unknown musicians have duplicated the successes of Radiohead and Trent Reznor in the whole free download/”pay what you can/will” scheme. Well, I doubt any newcomers have made as much money or moved as many notional units as either of those two entities, but this is really the wrong question to ask.

Did Radiohead do as well as Nine Inch Nails does today when Radiohead was new? Of course not. Same thing, the other way around. Everybody was an unknown once. The real question is, has any musician managed to go from unknown to… well, know… following such a non-traditional path.

I don’t have the answer for this off the top of my head, but I’d like to ask if anybody reading knows: did Jonathan Coulton grow to his current peak of fame before or after he decided to slap a Creative Commons on his stuff? I honestly don’t know. The impression I get is that he became famous because his works were floating around the internet all willy-nilly. Again, I don’t think he’s ever made as much money off a single volume of work as Radiohead or Mr. Reznor has, but he certainly seems to be self-sufficient, doesn’t he?

I’d also point out the existence of sites like CD Baby, which allow musicians to directly market their work, which first came to my attention via Echo Slightly’s advertising efforts. It’s not a free download site but there are extensive “try before you buy” samples. Has anybody grown to fame and fortune through CD Baby? Not that I’m aware of, but I’d once again like to point out the uselessness of looking for instant success as the only benchmark of overall success.

If it allows some artists to make the money that they require to continue producing art, I’d call it a successful model.

I’ll point out the phrase “some artists” here. Steven Poole says he doubts the “free internet” model will ever really catch on because so much of what’s written online is crap. True! Internet distribution models are frequently critiziced for this lack of “filters”, with frequent citation of Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”

Well, maybe so, but to look at the musical world again: if 90% of the bands on CD Baby never sell more than a couple copies to their friends and family, that doesn’t mean the model is a failure any more than the traditional route is a failure if 90%* of the musicians who dream of a conventional recording contract never make it.

(*And does anybody not think that’s an optimistically small percentage of failures?)

To bring this back around to writing/publishing, it is true the vast majority of people who are writing on the internet will never make appreciable amounts of money on their work. Most of them aren’t trying, but of those who are trying, I think we can safely assume that most of them won’t be making a living at it. Is that a failure of the model? If it’s the model’s fault, that assumes those same people would be making it if they had a different model.

The vast majority of people who are writing for traditional publication will also never make appreciable amounts of money on their work… most of them won’t make any, because they won’t ever be published, because see above in re: 90% of everything is crap.

Does this high failure rate indicate a flaw in the model? Obviously not.

Now, most of you know that I’m a big fan of people sharing their work regardless of any outside determinant of talent. We are each of us capable of determining for ourselves which 10% of everything is worthwhile, are we not? The stuff that’s likely to be agreed upon as crap according to widespread and fairly objective standards is not an impediment to the stuff that’s not… I know I say this a lot, but look at webcomics.

The good stuff gets attention. The poorly spelled MS Paint strips don’t. The only thing that’s in real danger of getting lost among the crap is other crap.

Not to jinx anything (since nothing has been finalized yet), but I’ve received what I consider to be a very favorable response re: my pitch for the wovel project.

As I explained in a post below, I don’t think the “gimmick” of the reader vote is really the magic key that unlocks the hard-to-tap internet audiences, though I definitely think it can work. In particular, it won’t work with just any sort of stories. I forwarded three different concepts for stories I felt would be uniquely suited to the branching format and the main one (the one I listed first and considered to be the strongest) has attracted some consideration from the woman running this little show.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m reluctant to say anything else before it’s finalized one way or the other.

Well, the inquiry I mentioned in my preceding post has received a response that I would characterize as tentatively positive. Apparently, my pitch was of sufficient interest… however, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and so Ms. Blake is now taking a few days to review my existing body of work. That could go either way, of course. Tales of MU is infamously hit-or-miss in its appeal.

You might justifiably wonder why I would bother with this, given the potential flaws with the “reader’s vote” method I pointed out in my last post, and given my well-known resistance to anything having to do with the conventional publishing world. Well, with regards to the latter, I’d point out that this is neither conventional writing nor conventional publishing. It’s a relatively small publishing company trying something new, and I’d like to get behind it. Also, just because I don’t think the pick-a-path method is a magic cure-all for internet fiction doesn’t mean I don’t believe it can work.

I’ll let you all know when I hear something more.

A blog post from Foreword Magazine was recently… foreworded… to me. I found the concept presented interesting enough to e-mail the poster and put myself forward for consideration. I have no idea how she’ll take that. This is a publication aimed at industry insiders, and I’m very much an outsider, and proud of it.

The idea is one that I’ve seen others within the indy community put forward: a sort of collective “choose your own adventure”, where the audience votes on the direction the story takes. I’ve never had the enthusiasm some people have for this. The theory is that it helps the readers feel connected and it provides some necessary component of interactivity that’s necessary to engage people with the words on the screen. Well, first, I’m not sure I buy that as a necessity. People read words off paper without any interactivity or any more direct connection to the author. Second, I think the fact that people need to come up with a gimmick to let authors connect to audiences shows how badly a point is being missed. I go onto the comment thread on my stories and talk to my readers. I even argue with them. Memorably, I’ve cussed at them a few times. That? That’s connection. That’s interactivity. It keeps people coming back. Writing on the net is a form of performance art.

As a final objection, I’ll point out something that’s no secret to online audiences but which the Old Media trying to tiptoe into the waters might not know: The Internet Is Serious Business.

If every chapter of your story ends by providing a bifurcated path for readers to vote on, you run the very real risk that up to half your audience will be left feeling cheated and disconnected because of what those insufferable morons voted for. There’s already epic flamewars in internet fora over the direction taken by stories presented in every media… can you imagine how much worse the flare-ups will be if the medium gives the audience control? Imagine the carnage wrought by the conflict of the Harry/Hermione ’shippers vs. the Harry/Ginny ones.

Now imagine that instead of, “You idiot, how could you root for Ginny?”, it was “You idiot, how could you make Ginny win?”

*Note to Old Media Representatives: If you don’t know what a “shipper” is and think “carnage” is too strong a word, get off the internet and recommend your boss hires a fourteen year old to do this stuff for you. The Internet Is Serious Business.*

However, none of that is to say that this format won’t work, and I’m intrigued to see somebody with industry connections trying it. Another 1,000-3,000 a week wouldn’t be a huge deal, especially if I get plot seeds conveniently handed to me by the audience. Having an actual external deadline would make it even easier. So, as I said, I put my name forward. We’ll see where it goes. There’s no mention of compensation beyond exposure and walking away with rights to the finished story. We’ll see how it actually goes. The reprint rights are key for me.

So, after about a week of clockwork-like updates, I totally dropped the ball and ended up back doing nothing but Tales of MU again after the server upsets. The worst thing that comes out of things like server problems is the disruption to my routine… both my work routine and my daily routine. My sleep cycle’s pretty fragile at the best of times, and my ability to sit and write for four to eight hours a day is pretty dependent on my being awake and alert. A night of sleeping poorly makes it all too easy for me to conk out in the middle of the day for a nap, which eats two to four hours outright and leaves me groggy and ineffectual when I wake up… and wide awake at night, when I’m trying to sleep.

Well, after more than a week of trying to get back into the swing of things, I finally bit the bullet and bought some Dr. Pepper(You’re welcome, Ariella.) to drink during the mornings to get past my midday slump. I’m not in love with chemically managing my body’s cycle, but I’m long past the physical dependency and I’m a lot more comfortable adjusting my sleep schedule by boosting during the day than by taking sleep medication at night.

I just updated Tribe and after I finish this blog, I’m going to go after The 3 Seas. After that, probably Tales of MU and then I’ll see if Ariella has anything to say about this new chocolate cherry Dr. Pepper.

Man, after some serious trial and error, it seems that the number one source of unnecessary processor usage on Tales of MU was, of all things, the plugin I used to insert the “previous” and “next” links into the page. Yeah. That’s all it does. However, it did this by using a bunch of php calls to insert lines into a bunch of different files at different points during the page rendering process.

I never really looked at it that closely before because it seemed like such a simple, dinky little thing compared to things like the spam blocker and the caching module and so on… but of course, the plugin’s a hacky little shortcut to something any php coder should be able to do for themselves with no effort and somebody like me could do with a little effort. But… you know… effort. My one weakness! So I just slapped the plugin and called it good. I’m sure it’s fine for people whose blogs are ready by a couple dozen online friends or whatever, but clearly it was not meant for somebody with tens of thousands of hits in a day.

So, I’ve disabled it and now I’m working out how to put the nav links back in myself. Fun. Shouldn’t be too hard, though. Most Wordpress themes have them coded in already… I just picked a really basic one to modify and it was really basic.

I guess I should take this as a lesson, or something.