Isaac Asimov
born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
(circa January 2, 1920 — April 6, 1992)
painting by Rowena Morrill
[reblogged from visual laurel:
Happy Birthday Isaac Asimov]
I may be a little late here, but if memory serves, although January 2nd would have been Isaac Asimov’s birth date of record, it seems to me he told some tale about the actual records being confused due to his family’s emigration from Russia. Whatever else, Asimov was always interesting.
Isaac Asimov was a hugely important influence for me. I loved his books when I first stumbled on “Foundation” in my high school library; Ike took me by the hand and helped me find my way through the worlds of science fiction.
As a reader I loved his bare bones accessible writing style. Devoid of superfluous descriptive padding, his plots were crisp and he wrote just what he needed to bring the story to life.
The good Dr. Asimov’s exploration of robotics throughout his powerful stories was breathtaking, but his non-fiction was excellent, too, because he was brilliant at explaining things so that anyone could understand. (I rather think Malcolm Gladwell is like Asimov without the fiction.) And I have to say, between Asimov’s stories and non-fiction alike, I learned more science from him than I did from any teacher I ever had in school. My grade nine physics teacher was a dead loss at getting through to me; and I’m certain the only reason I passed was because he didn’t want to have to try again.
Much as I loved science fiction, as a writer, I’ve never dared write in this genre because I’ve always felt I lacked the requisite grounding in science, and always thought the only SF I’d want to write would be hard science fiction. (That may change in future.) When I and my friend, Canadian Trekkies Association co-founder Susan Schmidt, published our very first Star Trek and science fiction Fanzine Canektion in the 1970’s, she tackled the science fiction writing while I handled reviews, art and design. I actually mailed a copy off to the good doctor, and was gobsmacked to receive a personal thank you note on a postcard (with a wonderful “Very impressive looking” quote). One of my greatest regrets was losing that postcard at my very first science fiction convention.
I was quite taken with the glimpses of Isaac Asimov the person through the humour in his Hugo Winners introductions. Yet the only book he wrote that was pretty nearly unreadable was the first volume of his autobiography, “In Memory Yet Green,” I paid big bucks for the hardcover version, but after the agony of struggling through it, I knew nothing would ever entice me to read it again so I gave it away. Fortunately he took a better crack at it in later life with “I, Asimov”
One of the best things about Asimov’s writing is that he wrote characters who were human beings. Better yet, it didn’t matter whether they were men, women or robots. The strong and interesting women characters that Asimov wrote — women like Dr. Susan Calvin, Edith Fellowes and Bayta Darell — certainly made a positive impression on me as a young woman. This was pretty radical for his time, especially when you consider that even today some male authors have difficulty writing plausible female characters. Asimov wrote women who existed in their own right; they weren’t just tossed in to be a damsel in distress, a femme fatale or love interest. They were real people. I’ve often been told my own characters live and breathe, and I think this is in no small part due to his example; he showed me how.
I never tire of Asimov’s stories, having read some over and over again, which is why I am saddened by the absence of his work on the shelves of public libraries today. This state of affairs means most of today’s young people will not have the opportunity to stumble across his books the way I did, simply because they aren’t there.
I expect this probably has as much to do with copyright as much as anything. Keep his work locked down tight so as to create an artificial scarcity that will drive the retail price up… a strategy I suspect the great man would not himself have approved. Such market fiddling tends to result in dissipation of a hard won reputation.
The movie version of “I, Robot” was quite a disappointment because the only thing the film makers used of his brilliant book was Asimov’s distinctive title. All I can say is that I am happy Hollywood has kept its fingers off most of his other works. “I, Robot” wasn’t a terrible film, Will Smith is always a joy; it did have a reasonable story, nice special effects and all… actually I might even have liked it if they hadn’t squandered Asimov’s iconic title on a story that bore no resemblance to his seminal collection of robot short stories. And of course the worst thing is that it means that there is now little or no chance of making a proper movie from the book. It would actually have been best as a series of films (or perhaps a mini series) to do the work justice. And that is just too bad.
Isaac Asimov touched my life in many positive ways, and he certainly influenced my decision to become a writer. I just wish I could have thanked him in person.
Image Credit
“Isaac Asimov on Throne” by Rowena Morrill –en:Image:AsimovOnThrone.png, uploaded to en:Wikipedia by en:user:Xiong 14:06, 2 April 2005. Via Wikimedia Commons under the:
GNU Free Documentation License Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Front-Cover Texts, no Back-Cover Texts and with Invariant Sections as indicated. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.”
All the planning in the world can’t prevent the unexpected from happening, and sometimes the unexpected throws up a detour. . . or several. While some good things have happened, I’ve had to face some incredibly difficult challenges in 2014. As a result, this past year has felt as though I’ve been running on a treadmill… no matter how fast I ran, I never seemed to get anywhere.
But in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara,
“Tomorrow is another day.”
And the beginning of a new year. 
Although I did accomplish some of the things I set out to do, I have not managed to reach many of the goals I set out for myself. Still, it has certainly been a learning experience.
One thing I can promise you is that 2015 will finally see the publication of “The Girl In The Blue Flame Cafe.” With luck, Libreleft Books will also manage to publish a non-fiction title or two. Fingers crossed (and nose to the grindstone.)
Wishing you all the best in 2015,
Regards,
. . . To the average onlooker, the city of Los Angeles represents glitz, glamour, and the celebrity lifestyle. But to seventeen-year-old Julie Jones, the city is a vast host of problems she’s longing to get away from. The latest? An unfortunate disagreement with her ex-boyfriend Mark—one that could land her in some serious hot water.
So rather than face the troubles that torment her, Julie decides to run away from her old life and start fresh somewhere new. But her parents aren’t on board with the plan, and she soon finds her bank accounts frozen and her wallet empty.
With just seventy-five dollars and a full tank of gas, the troubled teen is far too stubborn to turn around and head home. So what’s a girl to do?
What Julie doesn’t know is that her travels are about to take her somewhere unexpected—a place where she’ll be forced to come face to face with the ghosts of her past in order to secure her future.
A tale of redemption, hope, and freedom lost and found, 32 Seconds is a thought-provoking exploration into the human spirit and the nature of forgiveness.
If Johanna K. Pitcairn’s new novel “32 Seconds” appeals to you, or if you know someone who might like it, check it out … you’ll be helping support an Independent Author.
Regards,
Laurel
My lovely Rudolph card would not have been possible without Per Harald Olsen’s gorgeous Svalbardrein pho which he has released on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
“Happy Holidays” by Laurel L. Russwurm is likewise released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I’ve never written anything in the neighborhood of ten thousand words in a single day before. And yet that was the incredible feat I managed to accomplish on November 30th.
But it still wasn’t enough.
in the beginning
This year I had decided that I was going to finish NaNoWriMo 2014 with 50k. That’s what the folks at NaNoWriMo call a “win.”
And I very nearly did. But it seems the Flying Spaghetti Monster really had it in for me this time.
I knew going in that I wasn’t ready, a disadvantage from the start. And I didn’t actually decide what it was that I was going to write until the first of November. In the end, I decided that the best course of action would be to revisit last year’s “Unregrettable” project.
This book was inspired by my grandmother, who emigrated to Canada all alone in 1924. I never knew my grandmother; but I vaguely knew there was a story that she had been sent overseas to get her away her from an unsuitable young man. The idea for the book first came to mind when I was digitally cleaning up a scan of my grandmother’s passport photo. And of course, I’m a novelist, not a historian or a biographer, so one of my earliest decisions was to have my character settle in the city of Kitchener instead of the rural Carlsruhe area to make it crystal clear this would be a work of fiction.
When I began writing it for last year’s NaNoWriMo, I found myself falling into the rabbit hole of research. I started out with the idea that I knew something about the time period in which this book is set, but the research I began doing last November quickly disabused me of this notion. The more I found out about the period, the bigger the project got, and I came to the realization that this story really needed to be more than a single novel. The beginning in the Weimar Republic would need at least a whole novel. And the research just kept getting more and more interesting.
So the plan this year was to turn Margarethe’s backstory — the events leading up to her emigration — into the first novel. Kind of like a prequel, or perhaps the first book of a trilogy. Of course I didn’t have an outline to start with, just some of the research I’d done last year, so although I knew some of the scenes I could write without one, I did this while working on the outline. [One things I have learned is that I can write anything, so long as I have an outline.] But it was slow going.
I can see clearly now
I’ve been run off my feet a lot this year, so even though I have needed glasses for quite a while, I had been procrastinating about getting new ones. Another big part of the problem was a reluctance to go back to my former optometrist. But the incessant squinting at computer screens at the beginning of NaNoWriMo was driving me mad, so when someone told me about a new optometrist he liked, I sacrificed some valuable writing time to get my eyes tested and pick out some new glasses,. The time away from writing was well worth it since it’s brilliant being able to see what I’m typing again.
Let It Snow
Snow, snow and more snow. In the old days, the era before Climate Change, we might have seen some snow in November. But it would be just a light dusting. A little crunching under your feet, but nothing requiring a shovel. But those days are gone. This year we had snow. We got days where shoveling once a day didn’t cut it. Yay. Of course, *now* it’s all been washed away again, likely to have a green Christmas…
The Leak
One of the big things I’ve had to deal with has been unscheduled renovations. One morning there was water leaking through the plaster ceiling into my front hallway. The first plumber convinced me (because I so wanted to believe him and get back to writing) that the leaking was side splash from the shower curtain not being quite closed. And it stopped– for a while. *sigh*
But then it started again. The good plumber said they would have to rip a hole in my ceiling to find the leak. And so they did. And wasn’t that a job! And apparently the leak(s) had been ongoing for a while, since I don’t get along with mold, I enlisted an awesome restoration contractor to handle the clean-up and resultant renovation. Which meant not just taking down the ceiling, but opening up walls. I have been happy with the professionalism and skill of my contractors, but it would have been much better for my NaNoWriMo project if it had happened in any other month.
Book Launch
Another writer I know was launching his debut novel, so I took a wee break to attend his “Rocky Mountain Locust” book launch at the Jazz Room in the Huether. As it turns out, my hubby was coming down with a cold, so we didn’t stay long enough for the cake. I am pleased to have the book in hardcover, since it seems to be encumbered in DRM for the ebook format.
Anniversary
I tend to ignore our anniversary and my birthday because both happen during NanoWriMo. This year we went out for a lovely anniversary dinner — which wasn’t. The restaurant served me an inedible steak and assured me “they were all like that” so we left. Peanut butter sandwiches… yay! (Now that November is over I find I am still angry at the venue so I expect I will send out that letter of complaint I wrote during November.)
Research
Of course pretty nearly everything I wrote was going to need research, because everything in my novel happens well before I was born, in a country I have never myself visited.
This period in Germany was actually a cultural golden age. Not only is it a fascinating period of history, but there is a wealth of media available. Many movies– some in the Public Domain! — from the Weimar Republic make it possible to get a real feel for the time and place.
For me as a movie buff, it is doubly interesting, because so many great movies were made there by movie pioneers like Frits Lang and Alfred Hitchcock.
Is “M” perhaps the first example of Film Noir?
the rabbit hole
I was very much aware of the dangers involved in researching this book. Because the reference material available isn’t limited to movies and textbooks, but novels, too.
Certainly the books of Irmgard Kuen are invaluable reference material. Her own story would make a phenomenal book or movie, but for my purposes, I decided it would be a good idea to read some of her novels since she was the voice of the Weimar Republic’s “Neu Frau” generation.
I tried to buy one of her eBooks, but it turns out the publisher’s DRM made it impossible to actually open it. So I ended up ordering some of her books through local libraries.
I knew her novel Gilgi had been made into a movie, and so I looked around enough to try and find it, but alas, there don’t seem to be any copies left in existence. Not surprising since her books were banned by the Nazis, but it’s too bad, particularly for me, because that’s the book that most closely dramatizes the world my Margarethe inhabits in “Unregrettable”
Still, I was careful not to go too far so I’d make it to 50k.
Teeth
Through my life I’ve had some horrific dental experiences, so I am even worse about visiting the dentist than most people. Having missed a few regular checkups, naturally I got a toothache during November.
And my dentist tells me that if you go to the dentist when you’re in pain it’s already too late.
As it turned out, the diagnosis was even worse… three– count ’em three — teeth in a row with cavities, and one — or maybe all– would need root canals. As it turned out, the one I thought was the worst and asked to have fixed first wasn’t the one causing the pain, so I had to go back in the afternoon to get an emergency root canal on the one that was causing the agony. (If you’ve got a good dentist, always take his or her advice.) In all my tooth woes probably ate up two days with non-writing… and trust me, it’s easier to write brilliant novels without a toothache.
oops
Even with all that, I might have made it. And technically I did make it because I did write more than 50,000 words in November. The problem is that I misplaced somewhere between seven and ten thousand of them. 
The thing is, I knew about making backups. Boy, did I know, having once lost the only copy of a script that had been green lighted for production and having to reconstruct the whole thing in a weekend.
Apparently I inadvertently deleted a huge chunk of the manuscript and cleverly saved over it (in all three places.) So now I know saving isn’t enough; versioning software is a great idea. Next time.
So while I might technically have claimed a win, I didn’t have 50k in my manuscript to validate, and fudging that just would not have felt right. So I didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo this year. But I did get a lot accomplished, and I know that life happens, but I gave it my best shot anyway.
And that’s enough of a win for me.
I was an early adopter on Pinterest. I liked the service myself, not because I was looking for more social media, but because it allows me to aggregate links and sort them visually. I’m one of those people who navigate by landmarks, so having a visual cue reminds me which link goes to which article.
The problem is that the owners of Pinterest have been working to “improve” the site, often making it harder to use. Primarily adding more bells and whistles — that use more of my computers resources (internal memory). This makes it virtually impossible to use on my little underpowered netbook. (I can only have about 3 browser tabs open before it locks up.) So I usually do research on my big and powerful desktop computer, and the aggregate the links in Pinterest. I have an extensive link library I began to compile there during last years NaNoWriMo when I began my historical novel.
The problem is, Pinterest has recently crippled the service to anyone not signed in. This means I can’t just look at the site to find the link to the material I need, I have to sign in — and use more memory than I can afford — to access this. This is a huge problem for my own use of my own “pins.” But as someone who wants to share links to my own content, this means only people willing to sign in to Pinterest will be able to access my content. That’s a problem. I won’t be sharing Pinterest links anymore.
People concerned about personal privacy call that a registration wall. That’s a big part of why I stopped using Smashwords. I couldn’t use it for the purpose many authors use it — to give out free copies of ebooks — but if people have to pay Smashwords in personal information, the eBooks are not free at all. (Now I email review copies of ePubs, or people can anonymously download from TUEBL.)
And of course, there is Imgfave, another service that allows me to do much the same thing– without needing to be signed in to access my own (or anyone else’s) content. So that will do.
When we use someone else’s website, they get to make the rules, and we have to follow them. They can change how the site works, or what users are allowed to do, whenever they like. If we don’t like it, all we can really do is leave. (See: MySpace)
Pinterest is not alone in retaining control over how it chooses to allow us to use its website. The same is true of every other website that “generously” allows users to aggregate content or create content for its own greater glory (and profit). All we have to do is pay them in personal information and trust the faceless people making decisions not to change it to make it unusable for us.
Off the top of my head (but by no means an exhaustive list) web platforms that control your data can includes: Twitter, Facebook, G+, Pinterest, Imgfave, Instagram, dropbox, ScribD, NaNoWriMo, LibraryThing, GoodReads, MySpace, LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Imgur, Flickr, YouTube, Livestream, Wattpad, blogspot, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Livejournal etc.
If you want to control your own data, you need to host it yourself. And that certainly will sound like a scary proposition. But is it any scarier that ripping up that carpet and replacing it with the tiles you want instead? We have no qualms about Do-It-Yourself projects in the physical world, it is not so much different in a digital world. Probably the biggest difference is that there are sure to be many more how-to videos on You-Tube for doing digital DIY. You can very often talk to actual people who made the software you need online via Twitter or through email. (Ever tried to ask Facebook a question?)
blogging
I know WordPress software is licensed to share, so you can download it to your own computer and host your own blog yourself, on your own computer. It is so easy lots of small businesses do this. WordPress even allows you to port your blog hosted on its free site to your own computer any time you like.
(Which is a great way to make backups… not because I don’t trust WordPress to do so, but because like any corporate service provider, it may be compelled to remove some or all of your content on receipt of a DMCA notice (a legal process that merely requires an accusation of copyright infringement… no proof needed). If your original work is taken down in this way, you will need to prove yourself innocent and then upload your content again. Backups are always a good idea because digital data is fragile. I am not certain but I think you can host your own Tumblr as well.
If you are more interested in social media than blogging, there are a growing number of self hosting alternatives out there. If you like Facebook you might want to look at Friendica or Diaspora, if you like Twitter, you can host your own GNUsocial or StatusNet instance in the Fediverse. If you just want to be free of Twitter censorship, you can sign up for an account hosted by individual people, and there are a couple of big co-ops like Quitter and Gnusocial.de.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually trust Google’s “private” browser to be private. And of course if you want more freedom from being tracked, you might want to use Duckduckgo or StartPage or Ixquick to do your web searches…
The only way to be private online is by using encryption (and even then you need to follow best practices). LONG passwords are more secure than a clever one that is difficult to type or remember.)
If you want to be secure, for email use PGP (stands for “Pretty Good Privacy”) the best (free) software; and for everything else, use TOR (TOR project). Great resources can be found at KW Crypto
And of course, you have the same problems if you use software that you don’t actually own… so Free Software is the way to go.
[Note: normally I would link everything but I simply don’t have time just now. Maybe later.]
NaNoWriMo is the (now International) National Novel Writing Month. I’ve participated every year since I wrote my first novel.
But some traditional publishers and traditionally published authors look down their noses at NaNoWriMo. Some people trash NaNoWriMo as a way to drive traffic from the ever-increasing international NaNoWriMo community to their own websites. Some people trash NaNoWriMo because they’ve tried it, and failed. Some people trash NaNoWriMo because they’ve bought into the mythology woven by the big five. Some people trash NaNoWriMo because they fear the competition. Some people trash NaNoWriMo even though they haven’t figured it out. If something is beyond your ken, if you fail to grok it, if you simply can’t wrap your mind around it, you are not competent to judge it. So you shouldn’t.
Now, that doesn’t mean NaNoWriMo is perfect; like most things human beings do it is going to have the odd flaw. But the correct response to flaws is to identify them, and find constructive ways to fix them. There is a world of difference between trashing anything and constructive criticism. Like any organization, NaNoWriMo is run by an ever changing roster of human beings, so it is not going to be the same every year. It is also a volunteer driven enterprise; it would not be as well established as it is but for the hard work of many dedicated volunteers.
The reason NaNoWriMo is so successful is that it can be anything to anyone, because NaNoWriMo enables the establishment of supportive communities in which people can exercise their creativity in safety. Some people do NaNoWriMo to see if they can do it, or just to see what writing a novel is like. Some people do NaNoWriMo just because it’s fun. Some people do NaNoWriMo to write other things, like short stories or non-fiction or to revise the novel they wrote last year, but NaNoWriMo embraces them as “NaNoWriMo Outlaws” because NaNoWriMo embraces everyone who needs it for whatever reason. And some people do NaNoWriMo as an aid to writing novels professionally.
If you get something out of participating in NaNoWriMo, it’s worth doing. If it doesn’t, don’t do it.
Vanessa Ricci-Thode autographs “Dragon Whisperer”
NaNoWriMo helped make my debut novel possible, so no matter where it goes, no matter where I go, it will always have a special place in my heart. One of the best things about NaNo, (for some wierd reason, participants tend to call the event “NaNo” and refer to ourselves as “WriMos”) is that it helps focus us on writing. When you are just trying it on, or if you’re a self publishing novelist, this alone can be incredibly valuable. For me, even if I am totally unprepared (which seems to happen more often than not), and even if I know that competing calls on my time, and personal obligations may mean that I probably won’t “win” by writing 50,000 words of a novel, I’m still inclined to participate every year. Because I get something out of it.
This year I’ve decided I will be redoing my unfinished project from last year. It’s my first attempt at a historical novel, but it went off the rails last year since the research was so compelling it became clear my project was just too big for a single novel. So I’m starting over. Later on, some of the things that I wrote last year will probably be incorporated in one of the novels, but that won’t happen until the first draft’s editing phase.
Jazz Age Laurel … my Hallowe’en costume was inspired by the era in which my novel Unregrettable trilogy is set.
Last night was my local region’s Hallowe’en kick-off party, which is one of the few events that don’t feature actual writing. (Traditionally the other two non-writing events are the Half-Way Party and the After Party. For the most part, every thing else is a write-in.) I was lucky enough to win the best of the raffle prizes– a copy of “Dragon Whisperer,” a book written by Vanessa Ricci-Thode, one of my local NaNoWriMo group’s Municipal Liaisons.
Of course, I can’t wait to read it… which would be a wonderful way to procrastinate instead of working on my NaNoWriMo project. [As a group, writers are some of the most prolific procrastinators in the world!] But today’s procrastination effort is this blog post, so Dragon Whisperer will have to wait its chance
So here’s wishing all my fellow WriMos get what they need from NaNo this year… good luck!
And now it’s time to go write a few thousand words…
Sometimes I find such annoying messages in my Facebook feed:
When this happens, I usually send a direct message to the person who posted it, because I assume that if they shared it with me, they actually want me to see it– whatever “it” might be. Maybe it’s just another cute cat picture, but you never know if it might be the cure for cancer.
Sometimes when I go to re-share something someone else shared, I get a message warning me some of my readers might not see it… because the person who posted its privacy settings might exclude my Facebook friends or group mates. Maybe their privacy settings only allows their friends — amd not friends of friends — to see what they post. Or maybe it was initially posted to a closed group. Whatever the reason might be, I just don’t share it. Having such non=posts in a timeline does neither of us any good.
If the post originated with you, probably your privacy settings exclude me from seeing your attachment.
After I tell the person who posted it, if neither of us can see it, it probably means somebody complained about it… (maybe it was a breastfeeding image) and FB agreed your post violated community standards AND censored it, or someone made a copyright claim and DMCAed it.
Possibly the most annoying thing is that Facebook drops these messages we can’t see in our timelines. When you realize FB only shares some of what our FB friends post in our timelines, it seems ridiculous that these locked down messages always appear. But there is good reason for that: Facebook wants us to complain to our friends so they will make their privacy settings more open.
Oddly enough, I agree with FB that we should have wide open privacy settings on Facebook, because when we do, it’s easier to remember that nothing posted on Facebook is private.
That’s Facebook for you.
