Spring is here and with the changing of the season comes a changing of my blogs central theme.

I want to be a science fiction writer, no doubt about it.  The problem is that right now that goal is not paying the bills.  This situation forces me to be a hard-headed realist.  My dream job is to be a writer, in the field of science fiction.  If the latter is out of my control, then certainly the first part isn’t.

Making Money on the Internet

There are many ways to make money from writing on the net, for example: copy writing and article submission to sites such as Constant Content.  While writing copy for others to use isn’t very exciting, it does pay the bills.  Similarly, writing articles for Google Adsense related websites is another means to make money writing for the web.

My only reservation is that I am just not sure how many times I can work a keyword into an article, over and over again and not sound like a robot.  Maybe the fun will be in achieving this without going totally bonkers.

From the sheer number of “scraper” sites on the web, someone, somewhere, must be making money with sites like this though.  Here is hoping that that someone can be me and not just Google.  At least when I make an Adsense site, it will be with my own content!

Anyway, for better or worse I have decided to give being an “internet marketer” a trial for a month and see what happens.  Accordingly I bought six domains this morning and will be developing them over the coming month.  The plan is to publish a frank report on the success or failure of the activity in this blog on the 31^st of March.  To get a fuller picture this deadline might have to be extended, but right now I can’t make a prediction.

If I can make even a small amount of regular cash from these activities it takes some pressure off and allows me to write stuff I am personally interested in with a clean conscience.  That is the plan anyway…

The Future for this Blog

Developing so many websites will necessarily cut down on my activity on this blog, but I still plan to post here two or three times a week.  In a strange way it might actually improve the content here as I plan to write a weekly post about the science in science fiction, as well as a personal post and maybe a creative writing based post too.

Becoming a science fiction writer is temporarily on hold…at least for a month.

Dave Felton.

February is at an end, Spring is almost upon us and it is time for an honest assessment of the story blog so far.

I know I have kept quiet about my goals for this month, but that is because if I failed horribly it would at least be a purely personal humiliation and also because I think that some goals have more energy if they are kept to oneself.

Goals of this Blog

My initial goals were:

1. One post a day
2. Make the post useful and relevant to writing, or show personal growth that is relevant to other aspiring writers
3. Check facts
4. Be honest
5. Try to make posts of 500+ words of decent English

For the most part these goals have been realised.

1. A few posts have been missed, due to ill health or other real world events, but mostly these gaps have been later filled in.
2. I hope that the posts I have made have been useful to others but only my readers can answer that one.  As visitor numbers to the site are still growing, I assume some of what is here has been found useful by others.
3. As far as I am aware the facts in the posts are correct and no one has contacted me to say otherwise.
4. I believe that all posts have been honest.  Although the site is “monetised” (Amazon, Adsense etc.), I have not and will not recommend a book or other product merely because it gives me an affiliate link.  Frankly, there are better ways to make money through writing and I will not “sell” my integrity that way.  Given the choice, I would probably prefer to have this site 100% ad-free, but following my hospitalisation this is not an option as I need to make money from writing.  If I ever make enough money from other writing activities to replace a living wage, rest assured that ads will be completely removed from this site.
5. The final goal originated from advice in the books of Stephen King and Dorothea Brande.  Basically this advice amounted to “make sure you write daily”.  I thought 500 words was a reasonable goal, if time was taken to also research the post.  Better to achieve a small goal, than to fail in a large one.

As it turns out this final point is the single most important aspect of this month’s activities.

Secrets of Successful Writing

Due to the success of the goal of writing a small fixed amount, I have actually been driven to write well over three thousand words a day.  Compared to my old level of output this is not much shy of a miracle.

Thank you Dorothea!

This level of activity has also enabled me to have a few articles published and has changed my attitude to writing professionally, along with the whole process of becoming a writer.  In the past, settling down to write has occasionally been difficult, but now it is a pleasure that I look forward to each day.

Writing Goals for Next Month

So, what are the goals for next month?

Well, my meta-goal remains to have my science fiction novel published.  Until this happens I will remain a “wannabe”.

However, back in the real world, I still need to make money from writing to provide a living wage.  There are many ways to make money from writing and I will be exploring and blogging about them next month.

Dave Felton.

Here is a test: walk into a real world bookstore, preferably a major chain like Waterstones, and stand by the door.  Look around carefully (hopefully avoiding being approached by the store detectives) and try to find the Science Fiction section without moving.

I will give you even odds that you cannot find it and I am not normally a betting man.

Of course, if you go into a specialty bookstore the case is different, but in a mainstream bookstore with active management of stock you are very unlikely to see a row of books marked Science Fiction (SF).  Why should this be so?  Have all science fiction writers suddenly acquired writers block, retired, died, or merely rebranded?

Rebranding of Science Fiction

Oh dear.  It seems that I might have hit on something.

Standing by that same doorway you may well be able to see “The Time Travellers Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, or “Next” by Michael Crichton or maybe even “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood.  All of these books have solid SF themes but avoid the label or any of the usual symbols associated with the genre.  Even a modern hero of British SF, Iain Bank’s, steadfastly refuses to be classed as a science fiction writer.

The problem with SF appears to be that in large part it is about future technology and mostly that future is already here.

The Victory of Science Fact

Want to write about super computers, nanotechnology, gene alteration, atomic energy or space exploration?  Many of these technologies are now well-developed and the research currently happening in those fields easily surpasses the wild imaginings of SF writers of earlier decades.  If you doubt this, go read Scientific American or any other significant technology-based magazine.

The only one of those fields that present or near future technology does not appear to have fully developed is space exploration.  The fact still remains that man has not been past the moon and space programs are currently suffering large cutbacks.  There is scope to write about something fantastic, but will an audience educated in Einsteinian physics buy it?  Probably not.

Instead we see age old SF themes, such as time travel, being weaved into a romance plot and entering the best seller lists as “chick-lit”.  Michael Crichton’s “Next”, despite its heavy use of genetic technology, is often billed as a “techno-thriller”.  And finally, Margaret Atwood was once offended that “Oryx and Crake” was referred to as a science fiction novel, although she later amended this statement.  If professional writers of this stature seek to avoid the SF label, then maybe science fiction really is a failing genre, at least for the moment.

So, for the time being, science fiction writers will have to remain unseen and undercover.  Slowly, silently, plotting, making their plans against us…

Regards,

Dave Felton – wannabe science fiction writer and endangered species member.

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Obviously (if you click the “Become a Writer” section) I am still having problems making this site work as I would like.  This is an almost personal slight as I am certain a true php/css professional could sort it out in about 30 seconds.  However, at some point you have to let things go and in my current slightly dazed state I have reached that point.  If I cannot fix it in the next few days I will find another way of listing these pages.  Searching the web for a solution has already taken up too much time.

Still, the capes and cowls website is now working fine, apart from one defective link.  My web-heading looks like it can come to temporary end!  Woohoo!

Happily, it is time to write some fiction again…

A few days ago I posted to say that I had an article about science fiction listed in one of the online directories and was pleased about that.  Well, I now have a second article up at GoArticles.com about fictional character development.  This is less of a big deal as I don’t think the articles are reviewed by a human, but I could be wrong.

Here is a taster of the article:

Creating Effective Characters

Do you wonder how to add depth and reader interest to the characters in your writing?

“Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience”, Robert Ludlum.

A good story creates an emotional bond between the characters on the page and the reader. Effective characterisation makes the reader care about what happens in the next scene and ensures those pages keep turning.

The whole article is called “Developing Effective Characters” and is aimed at a beginning author.

It is always nice to see your name on a website that you aren’t paying the hosting bills for!

Dave Felton.

Even as a kid I just didn’t understand the value of winning a game where there was no real world gain for a victory.  Winning a game because you had followed someone else’s instructions (from a book or personal instruction) seemed a bit hollow.  What I did understand however was that having someone practically go into paroxysms of ecstasy because they had beaten me with the assistance of some cheap prepared opening trap was frustrating.  I therefore resolved to learn more about the game and stop these displays.

It is the nature of chess that if you play enough you tend to get better.  By the time I reached 16 I was top board in the school chess team and had won a few minor regional competitions – all of it sort of by accident.

For various reasons this was my chess playing zenith. Other commitments meant that I did not play with regularity although I did make a small effort to address this by purchasing what was then a top of the line chess computer. Over the next few years even this fell into disuse due to a working week that was in excess of seventy hours.  Basically when I came home, intellectual exercise was near the bottom of my list of things to do.

Well, all this is over 20 years ago.  My memories of chess are positive and so I recently decided on impulse to buy a chess engine from Amazon while browsing.  Oh my!  How chess engines have advanced!  If I played against the engine on an unrestricted setting it would slowly crush me over and over again. Playing against it was such a shock I decided to go on the internet and research them.

Chess players in general are rated using the Elo system and it turned out that the engine I was trying to defeat had a rating (unofficial) of over 2900.  To put this in perspective, the current world champion is Viswanathan Anand and he is rated around the 2800 region (giving a precise rating is pointless as it changes frequently). Most top Chess Grand Masters (GM’s) have ratings in the 2800 range and certainly over 2600.

This monstrous playing strength of course explained my difficulties in defeating my new found chess companion. To make matters worse a short search on Google showed me that not only could I have downloaded a free and legal engine that was a stronger player than the one I had purchased (so much for impulse shopping!) but that these newer engines were playing in the region of 3200 Elo.  This Elo rating is truly amazing.

To help a none-chess player understand how impressive these ratings are:

A player facing an opponent a mere 50 Elo stronger might only be expected to win 43% of games.

A player facing an opponent 200 Elo stronger can expect to win a mere 25% of games

And finally,

A player facing an opponent 400+ Elo stronger can only expect to win roughly 8% of games played.

Remember a gap of 400+ Elo is a decent rough estimate of the current gap between the World Chess Champion (human) and the top chess engines.

So what is the point of all this?  Well, for a guy interested in the future implications of computer development and the human role in this process the vein is a rich one, especially in the area of near future SF writing.

For instance:  Can you imagine competing for a job in a cerebral environment when the best person in the world in that particular field can be out thought by a computer better than one in ten times?

Now it is true that there are those that will argue that chess is an extremely limited arena and is therefore easy for a programmer to deal with rules and variables etc. and thereby use the computers undisputed ability to number crunch and so extract a victory.  “Real life is different” so these folk say.

This argument can be basically summed up by stating that the world is massively more complex and the tasks required to live in it more diverse and so computer intelligence is no threat to humans except in limited areas of competition where the environment is simple and lends itself to reduction to a simple heuristic.  Further, that if computers do become better than humans in these simplistic areas then this can only be a good thing as it will relieve us of the boredom and drudgery of having to complete these tasks ourselves.

The only difficulty with this idea is that if you break everyday life down into a number of discrete tasks the performance of these many tasks becomes a memory/processing problem and is far from insurmountable in the longer term (due to Moore’s Law etc.).  We just need a better computer and that item will definitely come with time.

Well, whatever the future holds, I am back involved with chess and enjoying it for its own sake.  It is a real treat to play a game and win or lose be able to have GM strength engine go over the moves and check for blunders etc.  The availability of this quality of analysis is definitely rapidly improving my game and I can’t help but think that in the future when we will have not only more powerful computers, but hopefully artificial intelligence to assist us, this process will be even more effective.

May that day be soon!

Dave Felton