Posts Tagged ‘My Writing’

SF: Mind Meld– Changing SF

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I was asked, along with the rest of the authors in Seeds of Change to make sug­ges­tions for change in the field of sci­ence fic­tion.  Regular read­ers can prob­a­bly guess exactly what I said, but check it out and see what you think.   Not as rev­o­lu­tion­ary as I might have been in my youth, but still call­ing for big changes.

There are a lot of things I wouldn’t mind see­ing changed in sci­ence fic­tion, but they mostly revolve around grow­ing the audi­ence. I am most inter­ested in cre­at­ing ways for peo­ple who would like sci­ence fic­tion short fic­tion to learn that it even exists. At one time, the defunct mag­a­zine SF Age had nearly 175,000 in sales of a sin­gle issue. The largest cir­cu­la­tion of any mag­a­zine is barely over 20,000 today and has been falling for nearly a decade.

That’s prob­a­bly the last thing I’ll say on the issue of the mag­a­zines for a while.  I’m going to focus my energy on get­ting my work inside of them, instead of wor­ry­ing about sav­ing them.  It’s wasted energy at this point and has become just another way for me to focus on the wrong things.

New Roundbottom: Interview with a Steam Rat

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today, there’s a new Roundbottom image and story live over at clock​punk​.com.  This piece reveals a lot more about the world that Roundbottom lives in and some of the other peo­ple that pop­u­late it.

Also, um… if you wouldn’t mind, and if you like the site, could you link it on your blog per­haps to let oth­ers know that it’s active and being updated again? I would very much appre­ci­ate any eye­balls you can send my way.

A Call for First Readers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m look­ing for 3–4 indi­vid­u­als who would be will­ing to review the new Roundbottom posts before I make them live on the site.  I need fresh eyes that can catch bad sen­tences, stu­pid gram­mar, stu­pid any­thing really.  Without an edi­tor in the process, I worry about pub­lish­ing some really sub­par.  I’m less con­cerned with sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions, as this project is an exper­i­ment in dif­fer­ent meth­ods there–but any­one inter­ested in pro­vid­ing me feed­back, shoot me an email.  I’ll take the first few peo­ple inter­ested.  Thank you in advance.

Available for Order: Seeds of Change

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The lat­est anthol­ogy edited by John Joseph Adams, Seeds of Change, is avail­able for pre-​​order on Amazon now.    The table of con­tents includes Ken Macleod, Tobias S. Buckell, Jay Lake, and many more fine writ­ers.  It also includes my story, “Arties Aren’t Stupid,” one of my per­sonal favorites.

The ori­gin for this story came from read­ing about mad gar­den­ers in Britain cre­at­ing liv­ing graf­fiti with blendered moss and spray bot­tles.  I won­dered what would hap­pen if such peo­ple had in their hands some­thing a bit more pow­er­ful than a blender, and the story spun off of that concept.

I hope you’ll order a copy, if not for me, than for those other fine writ­ers.   I’ve read the anthol­ogy, and I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

I am Also On the Market for Writing Gigs

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I can string words together in a pleas­ing fashion

I’ve been writ­ing much here about how I am avail­able for free­lance web design, but I wanted to make it known that I am very inter­ested in pick­ing up free­lance writ­ing jobs as well, par­tic­u­larly within my areas of exper­tise.  I would espe­cially like to break into some free­lance blog­ging.  If any­one hears of jobs in this depart­ment, or knows of good resources where I can seek out said work, please drop me a line via email or in the comments.

Week One of the Freelancing (And Job Hunting) Life

This past week has gone very well.  I have now been longer with­out a  job than any time since I was six­teen.  But don’t think I haven’t been work­ing.  I am han­dling a num­ber of design projects at the moment (but I’m always look­ing for more).  About half of this week’s work was direct client work, and half of it was work I am doing as a sub­con­trac­tor for another design firm in the area.  The design firm work is at a lower rate than I charge myself, but I am try­ing to jus­tify that to myself with the acknowl­edg­ment that I have to spend less time get­ting that work.

I have sur­prised myself with inner strength and pro­fes­sion­al­ism that I didn’t know I had.   The expe­ri­ence is teach­ing me to be less afraid of ask­ing for things I want.  Shame melts away when you have the feel­ing that you have noth­ing to lose in doing some­thing.  There is a lot of fear of uncer­tainty in this pur­suit, but there isn’t that dread that comes with wor­ry­ing about your job.  You are your job.  You make your work.  It’s a direct level of con­trol of des­tiny that is refreshing.

I have worked harder in the past week than I have in years.  In a paid posi­tion, a lot of your time is spent doing tasks that are not the actual work.  But you still get paid for those hours just the same.  But as a free­lancer, you only bill for work on the project, so your days are longer.  You still have admin­is­tra­tive tasks that need to be done.  My finan­cial goals will never be set on hav­ing 40 hours a week of bill­able labor.  Because it would mean 65 hour weeks in reality.

The Health Care Issue

A large con­cern  is find­ing a way to get afford­able health insur­ance for myself and my wife.  We’re using COBRA right now (although I still haven’t received the paper­work, so it’s all out of pocket until such time as we can be reim­bursed).  The COBRA is dou­ble the cost of our insur­ance pre­vi­ously.  Sarah’s work plan would cost nearly the same to add both of us, on an infe­rior plan at that.   I’m will­ing to take any advice any­one has on this issue.   If I con­tinue to work as a free­lancer, and do not find a full time posi­tion some­where, then I will increas­ingly need to find a solu­tion to this prob­lem.   Going with­out insur­ance is not an option, given just the cost of our prescriptions.

What’s Next?

Learning to relax.  Learning that the work will still be there when I get back.  That is a les­son that I am going to have to drill into myself.   Finding more work is some­thing I feel con­stantly com­pelled to do right now.

Developing my plans and schemes into coher­ent busi­nesses.  I am draw­ing up plans to develop an actual design com­pany that will be my pub­lic face in the web world.  I am locat­ing other design firms in the area to offer my ser­vices.  I am writ­ing pro­pos­als and pitches for the pub­lish­ing indus­try that could be a big break for me if they go well.  I’m inves­ti­gat­ing the cost ben­e­fits of invest­ing in my own printer for photo prints, and seri­ously launch­ing my pho­to­graphic work for sale.  I think I have a lot of great work in my port­fo­lio now, and I would like to share it with oth­ers.  Getting paid for that would be a bonus.

Things look up right now.  I have a lot of plans, back-​​up plans, and busi­ness ideas.  I would love to have a 28 hour day to work on them, but if I bud­get my time right, I think this could end up being a very pos­i­tive life tran­si­tion.   The best part about it all is, I look for­ward to get­ting out of bed each morn­ing and tack­ling it all.

5 Reasons Why SF/​F Author Websites should be (more) standards-​​based

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am often asked to com­ment on the web designs of friends and asso­ciates. It’s a tricky sit­u­a­tion for me. Regardless of the visual design, which is usu­ally fine, often, I find prob­lems under­neath the hood that are dif­fi­cult to explain. What I find are sites designed with tables-​​based lay­outs, using older HTML tech­niques. Today, I’d like to make the case for why you should dis­card that old way of design and move to standards-​​compliant design.

1. Accessibility

A web design done with stan­dards in mind is broadly acces­si­ble. I have noticed that the SF/​F fan­dom is par­tic­u­larly accept­ing of those with hand­i­caps and dis­abil­i­ties, but many SF-​​related web­sites do not take these fans into con­sid­er­a­tion. A prop­erly designed web site takes makes allowances for the use of screen read­ers and other acces­si­bil­ity tools. Tables based designs make a mess of this. Accessibility is a small part of standards-​​based designs, based on the num­ber of peo­ple that it effects. But do you really want to run the risk of alien­at­ing any poten­tial fans?

A graphical depiction of a very simple css documentImage via Wikipedia

2. Ease of Maintenance

With css/​xhtml-​​based designs, the con­tent is sep­a­rated (mostly) from the pre­sen­ta­tion. Here’s what this means: say you have a new book com­ing out that you want to pro­mote. If your site is built with old tech­niques, updat­ing your design involves a com­plete tear­down and rebuild. However, if your site has been built with stan­dards, you could sim­ply replace the stylesheet and have an entirely new design that reflects your pri­mary project. In gen­eral, these web­sites are very easy to make changes for, as far as pre­sen­ta­tion is con­cerned. Don’t like that link color? Edit the CSS, and it’ll change across the site.

3. SEO Implications

A standards-​​based design takes search engine opti­miza­tion into account straight away. Proper page struc­ture, even if it is not per­ceived by humans using browsers, will be picked up by index­ing ser­vices. Building your site with stan­dards in mind does not auto­mat­i­cally mean higher rank­ings, but it cer­tainly helps.

4. Less Bandwidth Intense

Standards-​​based designs are lean and quick. CSS is down­loaded once, whereas in the old way, the pre­sen­ta­tion would be down­loaded over and over again. Your file sizes are all-​​around smaller, which means a faster web­site, and hap­pier visitors.

5. Your web­site is like the cover of a book.

A standards-​​based design can look good or it can look bad. But more often than not, they look pretty good. Your web­site is like a book cover. Whether you know it or not, poten­tial read­ers are eval­u­at­ing whether or not to pick up your work based on your web­site. They may not even know it–it may just be sub­con­cious. But good design facil­i­tates the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion, and you are in the busi­ness of sell­ing that. Your web­site should reflect a level of pro­fes­sion­al­ism at least on par to the cover design of your books. Don’t com­mit a sin on the level of the SFWA web­site, please.

Afterword

Despite all this, I am not a stan­dard­sista. Sometimes to sat­isfy the desires of your client, you need to bend the stan­dards a lit­tle, and I still sleep okay when I have to do so. Like any­thing, you can go over­board with the idea of standards-​​based design. But in gen­eral, the above are some very good rea­sons for hir­ing a pro­fes­sional designer who is famil­iar with stan­dards to pro­vide your site–or if you are a do-​​it-​​yourself-​​er, pick­ing up some books on XHTML and CSS. This is the part where I plug me. You already know I do web design, but if you’re inter­ested in learn­ing more about my client process, visit my free­lance infor­ma­tion page.

The Addictive Properties of Creative Work

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

As I enter a phase of high pro­duc­tiv­ity, I am reminded of the par­al­lels I detect between the way I inter­act with my cre­ativ­ity and the effect of addic­tive drugs (as I have read, any­way. I’ve never taken any, unless you count xanax.)

Acts of cre­ativ­ity bring on an emo­tional and energy high while I am in the act, but after the work is done, that high dis­solves rapidly and often becomes a full on energy crash. Novelists call it the post-​​book blues, I think? I get the post-​​Flickr upload blues. I won­der if chem­i­cally, the act of cre­ation oper­ates in a sim­i­lar effect–or is it really just the zen state that we enter when we act with­out thought, when we are in the “zone” that has the high/​crash/​addictive prop­er­ties. It’s a bit of a chicken-​​or-​​egg prob­lem in that context.

I find that the best way to keep from crash­ing after a project is to roll imme­di­ately into a new one. Finish a pho­to­shoot, process it, upload it, bask in the awe­some com­ments of my blog read­ers, and at least do 20–30 min­utes on the next thing. The bask­ing part, the pos­i­tive feed­back, is part of the addic­tive­ness as well, and the part I don’t man­age as well. It stretches out the high, I think, and car­ries the good feel­ings from the cre­ation onward longer. After I post new pic­tures, I have a hard time leav­ing the com­puter, and not refresh­ing Flickr and check­ing my email 10 times an hour. I find myself crav­ing that injec­tion of warmth, and as it peters off, as all things do, then I get cranky and low. I’m try­ing to value feed­back a lit­tle less, but given that my self-​​esteem is tied in some ways to the exter­nal per­cep­tion of me, it’s not an easy thing to do. “Awesome image/​story/​website” are the phrases that boost my self-​​confidence more than almost any­thing else. I’m try­ing to change that, but that’s another sub­ject entirely.

Do any of you have this prob­lem of the post-​​work crash? How do you deal with it? What are your cop­ing strategies?