Watch out on copyright

Once in a while, everyone should write a three line poem with each line being the title of a song =P Although, how would that affect the copyright? I guess you'd need permission from each songwriter? I know in collage art that any piece of art that gets incorporated requires the permission of the original artist, and in music even a few notes strung together can be the subject of a million dollar lawsuit...

Therefore, I will not post my three line poem with titles from Bowie/Queen, Pat Benatar and Sting, just in case

I was really surprised by this story http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2012/07/blogging-authors-beware-you-can-get.html

Since Roni Loren took down the picture right away, did not claim it as her own, and did not seek to profit from it, I was quite surprised that she was still liable for money. 

So, yeah. Best not post anything made of song titles =P

The downside of computers

I haven't handwritten anything of significant length in 10,000 years. So I when I wrote a little note on a card today, my handwriting is even more ghastly than I remember.

Hobby growth

I have an interesting story about the friend from whom I bought my Windlass.

Jim and I were good friends in elementary. We had similar interests; martial arts, kung fu movies, comics, cartoons, model kits, etc. We drifted apart in high school because we went to different schools.

20 years later, we got in touch, and it's funny that our tastes have evolved in similar directions anyway. We're both more interested in Western than Asian swordsmanship at this point. Though, I dropped building models, and he went much farther.

Anyway, he's looking into taking Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) classes in Hong Kong, possibly next year. I wonder how many sessions we'd need before we have a fair idea of starting a club here (there isn't one yet). Probably, the most difficult part would be finding a large enough space--with long swords, each practitioner needs a 12-14 foot clear circle, so if we had just a small number of members, we'd need hundreds of square feet unless only a couple practice at one time.

A little bit of progress

I sent in my answers for the author questionnaire the other day. Filling it out made me consider the commercial aspect of writing a bit more.

It also made me think that my life and that of my close family is much more interesting when condensed down to short paragraphs.

Dreaming

Huh. Going through my archives of old stuff. Just glanced at the first scene of a story that dropped into my head as a dream 5 years ago. Not too bad...

Besides thinking about stories a great deal of the time (daydreaming whenever I'm in traffic, waiting for a TV show, jogging, hitting a punching bag, etc), I do get a lot of stories that just pop up in my dreams. Mincemeat was one of them, but it's hardly the first one.

Huh. I actually could do this as a novel.

Necro Post

I wanted to re-share this because it's such a great story, and also an important lesson for any writer.

You need to be able to move on to the next project and keep writing, no matter how much you've put into a manuscript. Marie Lu's success with Legend is the way bigger example of this, but it also applied to me. Mincemeat is my 5th completed manuscript. The 4th one was rejected by Kristin almost exactly the year before I queried her with Mincemeat.

I would have never gotten to this point if I kept on trying to fix up and polish and resubmit the first novel.

Writing Confession

The most unpleasant task that's directly part of writing for me is writing summaries. I don't mind revising/reworking, and writing itself is fun. But synopses and summaries, for some reason, are just annoying to do. I wonder why? I'm sure this is a common thing.