The writing adventure

I have taken a 4 month sabbatical on writing to explore South East Asia solo on a motorcycle. While I am travelling, I am collecting material for more writing and I already have some brilliant ideas that are starting to take shape. Just being out of Australia for a week in Singapore has jump started a few of my stalled projects.

Here is a list of my current blogs:

• Buckaroo's Adventures - Documenting my solo motorcycle tour of south-east Asia.
• Author Journal - This blog, describing my continuing mission to seek out new publishers and new genres of writing, to go boldly where no writer has gone before.
• Bartitsu & Neo-Bartitsu - Recreating the lost art of the world's first mixed martial art of 1899 and reviving it for Steampunkers and Sherlock Holmes fans everywhere.
• Air, Steel, & Soul - Writing based on role playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games forming the basis for a high fantasy serial.
• Anonymuncles: Comment Monkey - Specially designed for rants on a variety of topics like politics, science, and religion, especially the stuff that is offensive and inflammatory.
• Courtly Love Letters - A set of love letters I have written for the ladies in my life that have made me feel things and taught me about myself (names withheld), some of which have been given to the intended recipients; others are anonymous and may never be read by the lady in question.

I have also signed up to Critters, which is an online writing critique group and have found it to be really valuable in learning about my own writing as well as others'. If you are a budding writer, I'd recommend taking a look at it to learn more and gain some exposure. You can just critique, or you can submit material for critique. I am planning on releasing some of my writing through this to be critiqued by experienced authors as well as experienced readers.

Short stories and rejections

It has been some time since an update and I have been taking this time to write. I have a notebook on me in some form almost everywhere I go and I jot ideas, snippets, people, and ideas down. Then, when I am fresh, I transfer these into my writing journal. Sometimes these can spin out pages of brain fart; other times I only get as far as the opening line of something spectacular and then refuse to touch it because that first line is so perfect anything else is just going to ruin it.

I have been submitting my first short story to various science fiction and fantasy publishers. I have not had anything negative in my rejection letters. To the contrary, there have been some very positive aspects to the rejections.

A writer is tempered by their rejections.

I resubmitted the story to the fifth publisher tonight. Maybe fifth time lucky?

I have also been working on the novels and other constructs. There are five good, solid short stories that have gone from my writing journal into their own folders with plots and characters being developed. I even went to take photographs of a specific area in Brisbane that will be the scene for a post-apocalyptic story about a man's legacy and the future of the human race.

Brisbane Writers Festival 2012 - 50 years

If you are going to have a keynote as prickly as Germaine Greer, you might have expected some controversy, perhaps expected... maybe even requested. Needless to say, Germaine did not fail to inspire and denigrate, and I say she did an excellent job at both. I continue to be overjoyed that we have such an asset and great thinker among Australians, and constantly amazed how often her 'Dr' is ignored. I have rarely seen Dr. Germaine Greer, as if she is already a cultural common, but perhaps it makes her less confrontational by removing the 'Dr'.

I ran into a flustered Nick Earls on Thursday, I think, with a young child stuck to his side, rushing through the State Library of Queensland bookshop that had spilled out onto the surrounds, leaving a bottleneck at the signing tables and flocks and flocks of little people spilling and spiralling in clumps and lines, following amicably or pack herded. We only had a brief chat, but I had to ask myself - do I call him Nick or Mr Earls (could he also be a Doctor?)? I had just finished Welcome to Normal, his recent short story collection and I let him know how much I had enjoyed it, especially as I now look at my own material for short story development. The child dazed, slipping from his grasp, Nick smiled at me, thanked me, nodded, and then, with minder at elbow, he allowed himself to be guided through the munchkin throng, piles of books clutched in their little arms.

Although I hated the noise, the sticky fingers, the darting little imps under foot, I loved seeing them there babbling about the books, excited with finding something awesome, arguing about the characters, whose favourites where whose. I don't have kids, but one day I hope to, and I would have delighted in taking them myself to such an event... and in this, I disagree with Germaine. The fun for me remains in meeting people and talking about their ideas, from which all good books come. Fun is the spark of 'What if?' that is vital to creativity and imagination, innovation and revolution.

Nick backs Germaine, to a point, especially in that nasty little statistic (massive, really!) - forty-seven percent (47%) of Queenslanders "cannot read a complex newspaper article or the instructions on a medicine bottle", referring to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) collection under the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. This gives a good layman description for the study from the ABS themselves.

But I wanted to take a look at this report with my own eyeballs. I always like to trace the source. Where is the 47%? I had difficulty finding it.

You could take it from the Media Release, which states that:

"Just over half (54%) of Australians aged 15 to 74 years were assessed as having the prose literacy skills needed to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work. Results were similar for document literacy with 53% and numeracy with 47% achieving this level."

If you do some simple maths (for example, 100 - 53 = 47), and then use the logical negation of the clause (that is, NOT), you could get:

Nearly half (46%) of Australians aged 15 to 74 years were assessed as NOT having the prose literacy skills needed to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work. Results were similar for document literacy with 47% (that magical 47%?) and numeracy with 53% NOT achieving this level.

Is this a fair interpretation of the summary information and media release?

Maybe, but the statistics really come from the summary and in the definitions. In the areas of prose literacy and document literacy, Australia had 46% and 47% respectively combining level 1 and level 2 competencies.

The report studied four key areas, although there are some interesting additional health skills being studied in the recent data capture. Two, prose and document literacy, are of interest in this discussion:

• Prose literacy: the ability to understand and use information from various kinds of narrative texts, including texts from newspapers, magazines and brochures.
• Document literacy: the knowledge and skills required to locate and use information contained in various formats including job applications, payroll forms, transportation schedules, maps, tables and charts.

The levels of competency are slightly different between the two areas, and I am going to replicate three levels here for consideration of the interpretation rather than re-interpret the levels. However, to put them into context, Statistics Canada, considers level 3 as the "minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy".

For prose literacy:

• Level 1 - Most of the tasks in this level require the respondent to read relatively short text to locate a single piece of information which is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question or directive. If plausible but incorrect information is present in the text, it tends not to be located near the correct information;
• Level 2 - Some tasks in this level require respondents to locate a single piece of information in the text; however, several distractors or plausible but incorrect pieces of information may be present, or low-level inferences may be required. Other tasks require the respondent to integrate two or more pieces of information or to compare and contrast easily identifiable information based on a criterion provided in the question or directive;
• Level 3 - Tasks in this level tend to require respondents to make literal or synonymous matches between the text and information given in the task, or to make matches that require low-level inferences. Other tasks ask respondents to integrate information from dense or lengthy text that contains no organisational aids such as headings. Respondents may also be asked to generate a response based on information that can be easily identified in the text. Distracting information is present, but is not located near the correct information.

To refresh us on the statistics here, 14.7% of Queenslanders have a prose literacy level of 1 (Australia overall is 16.7%) and 31.7% of Queenslanders have prose literacy at level 2 (Australia overall is 29.7%). There is a 46.4% here that incorporates both level 1 and level 2. I am assuming in translating the information to the general public, to make it more palatable, there is a reporting rounding error.

Just for reference, 38.1% of Queenslanders have a prose literacy level of 3 (Australia overall is 37.4%), which according to that Canadian study is the minimum level to deal with the live and work in the developed economies.

For document literacy:

• Level 1 - Tasks in this level tend to require the respondent either to locate a piece of information based on a literal match or to enter information from personal knowledge onto a document. Little, if any, distracting information is present;
• Level 2 - Tasks in this level are more varied than those in Level 1. Some require the respondents to match a single piece of information; however, several distractors may be present, or the match may require low-level inferences. Tasks in this level may also ask the respondent to cycle through information in a document or to integrate information from various parts of a document.
• Level 3 - Some tasks in this level require the respondent to integrate multiple pieces of information from one or more documents. Others ask respondents to cycle through rather complex tables or graphs which contain information that is irrelevant or inappropriate to the task.

Again, a refresh us on the statistics, 16.2% of Queenslanders have a prose literacy level of 1 (Australia overall is 18%) and 30.4% of Queenslanders have prose literacy at level 2 (Australia overall is 28.8%). There is a 46.6% (46.8% for Australia) here that incorporates both level 1 and level 2. Again, I can assume a reporting rounding error.

Also for reference, 36.6% of Queenslanders have a prose literacy level of 3 (Australia overall is 35.5%).

This could also be where that 47% number came from, but the key issue here is not where the numbers fell - we have those gathered by the study, and if we accept that the numbers are measuring what they are supposed to be measuring then the gold is actually in the Canadian (and OECD) report.

For literacy level 3 is the "minimum for persons to understand and use information contained in the increasingly difficult texts and tasks that characterise the emerging knowledge society and information economy". It is intended to correspond to upper secondary education, and usually acquired through 9 years of regulated teaching to advance from level 2 to level 3, from my non-professional reading of this.

So now we can acknowledge that Dr Greer got the statistics correctly interpreted, and Nick even made a comment on the smugness of non-Queenslanders in the assessment (go check your own numbers for those in other states), but the relevance is specifically in reference to the OECD consideration that if you want to build a knowledge economy and a culture of innovative, you need to have level 3 or above in literacy.

To boil it back down to the main point, and as a writer, somewhat depressingly, nearly half of all Australians do not have this competency. Where the blame resides is for someone else to consider. But I would agree with Germaine and Nick that the statistics are concerning. We shall have to wait for the next set of statistics to start looking at potential trends.

For me, I would consider this:

The sunburned country; the lucky country; the literate country - pick two!

Other highlights at the festival included talking to Chris Cleave and Martin (Ed) Chatterton, as well as the launch of the Australian Writer's Marketplace.

The session with Chris had six of us sitting around a table and asking questions from technical aspects of writing, voice, structure, and use of common cultural items. I found a lot of the discussion in the room guided me to a little revelation that stories are stories, no matter what genre they happen to be told in. My characters in my science fiction novels would be just as much characters in a western or a romance, or a hard boiled detective novel. This story can be told in many ways and it might be that the original story concept is not actually the story that needs to be told.

The discussion also touched on marketing in different countries and timeliness of releases, to look forward into the future to identify the cultural pressure points that will exist and target a novel or a release of fiction toward coinciding with the questions the public will have at the time the event occurs. Chris's example is from his forthcoming novel dealing with veterans and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2013.

The session with Martin had less than 20 of us in a room with technical difficulties of Keynote to PowerPoint, but finally, a wall of books extracted from a travel bag, "Oh, yeah? I've published nearly 40 books!" The guy must know what he is talking about, and his jolly manner, despite writing a recent crime novel (A Dark Place to Die) was genuinely infectious. I suspect this is because Martin is not grown up himself yet, which is why I liked him so much.

In Martin's session we wrote a first paragraph to learn how to grab the reader from those first words, and as mentioned, we had some technical difficulties, the material in the slides included copies of his submissions in three case studies of his books. I found this information incredibly useful to get an eyeball on a real submission, and some trails of what paths could happen.

All in all, I really enjoyed the Brisbane Writers Festival - 50 years old - but I did feel it was very distributed across the area and it was difficult to tell who were general public and who were interested in the festival. There are bound to be pros and cons for this approach, but it would have been nice to engage more - perhaps that is just me being anti-social. I will definitely go back next year.

Introducing Incursio

I have been busy writing my way into a more marketable book, which sits in the Space Opera genre while retaining traditional science fiction with elements of military SF.

Behold, I present you with the Incursio One Synopsis.

Having progressed over the last few weeks through a defined process, I have created copious amounts of written words (not all of it good) that links with this story. The synopsis is structured according to the 3 Act literary structure and is supported by mind maps of plots and subplots, tables of characters wants and motives, as well as scene summaries that themselves are pages long.

I have learnt how to manipulate objects and rituals with the building of believable characters. The characterisation I have specifically focused on in this novel, as I have had frequent complaints that my characters are not as full as they could be.

Although the synopsis does not mention it specifically, the fact that it is numbered "One" should indicate that it is just the first of a series.

I have been working on this story for nearly 10 years, gathering the research, pulling in all the little details, thrashing out the chronology and the intents of the main actors, assessing where the pieces of humanity would fall when the end came. I have attempted to draft novels from this story, which spans about 100 years, without success - where do I start? which characters are special? where is a logical story that will fit in the pages of a book?

One of my early drafts started in World War 1, and I have entire chapters of various military scenarios against an alien invader matched with similar on the alien invaders parts, with different motivations, war gamed in my head until I found that in essence, humans are screwed if something comes after us... but I had to try to find something that was realistic enough for me to suspend my own disbelief while realistically finding a solution that might work.

Families will need to be involved to maintain cohesive and logical flow of story over long durations, perhaps even dynasties, companies, or organisations that become characterised, like the Weyland-Yutani corporation. There is certainly more story in this concept.

Take a look at the synopsis and let me know what you think.

Writing Engine - Part 1

Many years ago, slaving through a degree, a friend of mine endeavoured to build an artificial intelligence to create music. Surely a noble endeavour, I had yet to be sold on it being possible. It's all very well to toss concepts into the proverbial melting pot and "see what happens". But this is hardly the best way to get results. Like primitive alchemy, or some cultish belief that if they build it then it will do something, the AI musician never turned out a note that I heard as music.

It certainly turned out notes, but noise output is not music. Music has a structure, a logic, even an underlying beauty and symmetry.

It got me to thinking way back then about the early Apraphulians computer made of pulleys and knotted rope that unravelled to generate an automated play of cutouts, including scene changes and backdrop movement. Which led me to check the source.

I am appalled to admit this, but ... I have been duped by an April Fool (Apra-phul) joke. Oh, I feel so dirty in the scientific sense.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the history, the concept could be implemented with words!

I started then on my initial considerations back in about 1999 for what I am terming a Writing Engine. Some of the linguistic and computer science studies overlap into what is termed a Rational Engine.

One of my early writing engines coded in C++ used Generative Grammar and an artificial intelligence text mining approached to the network produced by words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. It could generate words in appropriate grammatical structures, and using windows of varying types, strings of sentences. Context and real meaning remained out of reach, unless hard-coded using an ancient information technology skill called "smoke and mirrors".

Semantic networks were still mostly theoretical and completely impractical at the time.

This concept would likely have gone completely untouched if I had not had a brain fart a few months ago. I don't know what triggered it, but, as some of my friends can testify, I had to smash out stuff on a white board that still now sits with scrawl all over it and numbered boundary curves with a legend on it.

I now have a structure for a 21st century version of what I had been intending to build. I am also teaching myself how to code mobile applications in Android. There are several good bodies of work that has taken place over the last 12 years, advancing key areas I needed to make the idea work.

So, this blog will assist as a sounding board, and perhaps provide some impetus to other similar projects that MUST be out there.

Byron Bay Writers' Festival

Forcing through the aggressive traffic from 3pm onwards on Thursday from my side of Brisbane. Managed to hit the entrance traffic from the Gold Coast at 5pm. In for dinner at nearly 7pm. Damned cold, but the log fire is nice. Hit bed early at 10pm to wake and be refreshed for my first day at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival.

My program consisted of meeting some interesting characters, who were, indeed, playing themselves. My sessions were about things like new languages to explain new concepts, the crafting of short stories, and how various authors have brought history to life through their creations. I listened to crime fiction authors and memoir authors and could translate a lot of the material to assist me.

I took copious notes and have several stories generating for later putting onto page.

There was a discussion regarding how language can play a role in innovation of science and economy. There was some good discussion about the use of the Industrial Revolution model of economics in current day and age, that is, where resources and capital are (in effect) infinite and therefore the capitalist expansion can continue indefinitely.

I found it somewhat disturbing that there was so much talk about getting a global economy correct now there was an understanding of the finite resources we have on the planet. My only question was regarding the involvement of off-world mineral mining and its impact on this new limited-resources concept. My concern is that they will get a "finite resource" model working just when we open up the solar system to resource harvesting/mining.

Does this suggest we should keep the Industrial Revolution model of economy for when off-world resource mining is (in effect) infinite?

I got to talk to lots of authors, like Tom Keneally, Jessica Watson, Nick Earls, Shane Maloney, Kel Robertson (with a sex change), Sulari Gentill and spent ten minutes talking to Michael Kirby and Fran Kelly about various things.

Compared to many other writer festivals I have been at, this one seemed specifically political. It was good to be around left-wing thinkers again. They have been seriously lacking in Brisbane recently.

I was most inspired by Sulari Gentill, who (ashamedly) I had never heard of before I went to the festival. I accidentally managed to sit in on several of her sessions and found her humour and smile infectious. She spoke about becoming a writer and how it had changed her life. She was also happy to talk to someone like me and share some of her insights.

The common threads I could see were the knowledge of something lacking inside yourself - this hole can only be filled by telling stories for me (and sharing them with others). If you don't embrace this writer, you fill it by finding hobbies that take up your mind-space. My hobbies have been widespread, numerous, sometimes brief, but all focused on gaining experiences to write about.

My entire aerospace career was undertaken to learn more about the field I wanted to write in - Science Fiction.

Sulari Gentill convinced me I am doing the correct thing. One day I'll have to thank her for inspiring me.

Writing, not posting

Just a quick update while I am between things.

I have placed the Battle of Korunai on hold for a few months, but this is nothing new. It happens from time to time, and some of the recent chapters have needed to sit and distill for a while. I found two chapters I had severed from the current draft and some of it can be salvaged to tell parts of a section I needed to write. This fills in more than half a chapter, but needs a good solid review.

Short stories seem to be something I have never really considered before other than writing exercises. I am starting to pull them out from various locations and archive folders. I have even started one as a writing exercise in mythic structure, but the patterns generated by the character are starting to really work, so I have spun them off into their own capture mechanism.

These were initially intended to dovetail with one of my cyberpunk novels. I painted the background with that brush, but there is no reason to think they are in the same universe... although they could be.

My character is a hardened private investigator on the mean streets of Brisbane 2030, investigating insurance claims, missing items and data theft. I have started creating cases for her and one is almost complete (and good). They are between 4000 and 10000 words, but have four distinct parts and adhere to a strict mythic structure.

I am thinking in a few weeks I will need to find a writers group - I have had one recommended to me - and see if I can get some review on my work... then submit it somewhere and try to publish it.

I am also working on some blog posts, but have yet to complete anything (apologies). Give me time to write!