16 replies to this topic

[Isaac]

As we approach the starting line, I wonder more and more what I'm going to do with this 50,000+ words I will try to write next month. I've thought about just putting the end product up on my web site under one of the Creative Commons licenses. At my level, I doubt I will produce anything of real quality next month, and the story I'm mulling over isn't something I'd want to send to a publisher, even if I wanted to go back and try to dress it up later.

What do you guys plan to do with your NaNoWriMo stories?

IF

[Steve]

Isaac, on Oct 16 2007, 09:22 PM, said:

What do you guys plan to do with your NaNoWriMo stories?

It depends on what I end up with this year

My manuscript for NaNoWriMo 2006 was a political thriller. It needs another pass or two, but I thought I'd serialize it on my blog. Having a (self-imposed) deadline for each chapter would help motivate the revisions and the end result would be something that I could either take the traditional route or self-publish.

For this, I think an attribution, non-commercial, no-derivatives Creative Commons license would work fine.

-Steve

[Isaac]

I like the idea of blogging each chapter. Thanks for sharing.

IF

[Marguerite]

Isaac, on Oct 18 2007, 10:36 PM, said:

I like the idea of blogging each chapter. Thanks for sharing.

IF

I've hesitated to weigh in, as I'm working on a new novel and not sure how much free time I'll have in November, so I decided to just write as much as I can rather than add the pressure of participating in NaNoWriMo. But is this a Storyist file? Would Steve be willing to set up a forum area for people to post all or part of their entries (perhaps after deleting the last frenzied 10k words)? Would it be practical? Would others want to expose their work?

Participation would be entirely voluntary, and I should think authors could and should specify if they want comments and what the terms of sharing would be.
Thoughts?
Marguerite

[Thoth]

Marguerite, on Oct 23 2007, 10:23 AM, said:

Would Steve be willing to set up a forum area for people to post all or part of their entries...?

Steve?

Marguerite, on Oct 23 2007, 10:23 AM, said:

Would it be practical?

There could be space issues. How much extra would Steve have to pay for an additional gigabyte or two? Would members be willing to support it with (voluntary) contributions?

Marguerite, on Oct 23 2007, 10:23 AM, said:

Would others want to expose their work?

Interesting question. But if they're going to make a NaNoWriMo entry then exposure probably isn't a problem. Still, would they consider posting here redundant or even counterproductive?

Just a thought.
-Thoth.

[Isaac]

Thoth, on Oct 23 2007, 11:32 AM, said:

There could be space issues. How much extra would Steve have to pay for an additional gigabyte or two? Would members be willing to support it with (voluntary) contributions?

An unformatted "page" is about 1000 bytes (including white space). If NaNoWriMo participants are targeting 50,000 words, or 200 pages, then you're talking about somewhere around 200KB per book, plus, say, 10% overhead for post meta data, formatting, etc. Should be trivial to store books from the handful of people on this board who might participate, if Steve thinks this is an appropriate forum for such things.

How would so much text affect the accuracy of the search tool?

IMHO, if people are just going to release their books to the public domain on this board, I'd be more interested in seeing their actual .story files than a chapter by chapter post. It would be far more educational for me to see how other authors use Storyist to organize their books than to see the net result.

Thoth, on Oct 23 2007, 11:32 AM, said:

Interesting question. But if they're going to make a NaNoWriMo entry then exposure probably isn't a problem. Still, would they consider posting here redundant or even counterproductive?

From what I read, the NaNoWriMo guys are only interested in helping you get a word count. If you want to upload your book, they ask you to replace all the words with gibberish, like all X's, and their robot will delete the book after counting the words. I prefer running my book through a smurf translator I wrote, but Steve could tell you more about that.

IF

[Thoth]

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

...you're talking about somewhere around 200KB per book..."

True. But no site I ever heard of sells chunks that small. A gigabyte is typically the minimum. But I could be wrong. I know nothing about Invision Zone's pricing policies.

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

How would so much text affect the accuracy of the search tool?

Slow it down? Produce more irrelevant hits? The usual, I suppose. Is this a concern of yours? What am I not seeing?

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

...I'd be more interested in seeing their actual .story files than a chapter by chapter post..."

Agreed.

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

I prefer running my book through a smurf translator I wrote...

I suppose any smurf who smurfity-smurfed his smurf is my kind of smurf. But SMURF! Smurf smurfs s%#@f smurf sm...oh the smurf with it.

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

...but Steve could tell you more about that.

What two consenting smurfs do in the privacy of their own smurf is none of my smurfing business.

Feelin' smurfy,
-Smurf...er...Thoth.

[Marguerite]

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

An unformatted "page" is about 1000 bytes (including white space). If NaNoWriMo participants are targeting 50,000 words, or 200 pages, then you're talking about somewhere around 200KB per book, plus, say, 10% overhead for post meta data, formatting, etc. Should be trivial to store books from the handful of people on this board who might participate, if Steve thinks this is an appropriate forum for such things.

When I made the suggestion, I hadn't intended to ask Steve to pay for more space. My 110,000-word novel is less than a megabyte in Word, although it would be larger in Storyist because of the various types of section sheet, images, and the like. If it meant adding storage rather than using some otherwise empty space, that would mean a no-go, from my point of view.

Isaac, on Oct 25 2007, 01:41 AM, said:

IMHO, if people are just going to release their books to the public domain on this board, I'd be more interested in seeing their actual .story files than a chapter by chapter post. It would be far more educational for me to see how other authors use Storyist to organize their books than to see the net result.

Yes, I meant for people to share .story files, if they felt so inclined. I suppose the author could decide whether to include his/her text or simply upload the structure with dummy text. The latter would presumably also reduce the size of the file, so long as people didn't replace every one of their 50,000+ words.

In a sense, the Storyist community is more restricted than releasing something on the Web--although, of course, anything on the Web is public domain. But I suppose if one of us writes a bestseller, it would dramatically increase traffic to the Storyist public areas--and perhaps publicity for Storyist!

I don't really care either way: it was just a suggestion.
Best,
Marguerite

[Thoth]

Marguerite, on Oct 25 2007, 10:25 AM, said:

... of course, anything on the Web is public domain...

Sorry, Marguerite, but I can't let this slide. It might get you or someone else into trouble.

Under the current absurdly-restrictive copyright laws, there is a great deal of Web content out there that is definitely not in the public domain.

To add to the complexity (and I am not accusing anybody of anything) because the Web transcends national boarders, what is perfectly legal to download in one country (e.g., Japan) is illegal to download in another (i.e., USA). A man had recently been prosecuted in the US because a line-drawn Japanese child porn comic was found on his computer.

There are worse and far more bizarre examples. These days many revolve around the music industry. Many have to do with the length of a copyright, or a copyright extension, not always being internationally recognized. And the penalties are getting more and more severe. (Remember the woman in the US who uploaded 3 CDs to a music site and was recently fined hundreds of thousands of dollars? Far more than the copyright owners could have hoped to have made on that music, some say.)

So please remember: Just because it's on the Web doesn't mean it's free. And just because it's free doesn't mean it's legal.

This has been a public service announcement
by your friendly neighborhood
Thoth.

[Steve]

Isaac, on Oct 24 2007, 10:41 PM, said:

From what I read, the NaNoWriMo guys are only interested in helping you get a word count. If you want to upload your book, they ask you to replace all the words with gibberish, like all X's, and their robot will delete the book after counting the words. I prefer running my book through a smurf translator I wrote, but Steve could tell you more about that.

Obfuscating your word count submission is not required. They offer it as an option for folks who are concerned about someone seeing their manuscript and stealing their work.

I never do obfuscate my manuscript. All their server does is run "wc" and never stores the data anywhere.

-Steve

[Steve]

Isaac, on Oct 24 2007, 10:41 PM, said:

I prefer running my book through a smurf translator I wrote, but Steve could tell you more about that.

Oops, missed this.

Isaac was helping me track a performance bug and sent me a copy of his story file with most of the nouns and verbs smurfed.

It was laugh-out-loud funny and made my day--and it helped me find the bug right away.

-Steve

[Steve]

Marguerite, on Oct 25 2007, 07:25 AM, said:

When I made the suggestion, I hadn't intended to ask Steve to pay for more space. My 110,000-word novel is less than a megabyte in Word, although it would be larger in Storyist because of the various types of section sheet, images, and the like. If it meant adding storage rather than using some otherwise empty space, that would mean a no-go, from my point of view.
Yes, I meant for people to share .story files, if they felt so inclined. I suppose the author could decide whether to include his/her text or simply upload the structure with dummy text. The latter would presumably also reduce the size of the file, so long as people didn't replace every one of their 50,000+ words.

In a sense, the Storyist community is more restricted than releasing something on the Web--although, of course, anything on the Web is public domain. But I suppose if one of us writes a bestseller, it would dramatically increase traffic to the Storyist public areas--and perhaps publicity for Storyist!

I don't really care either way: it was just a suggestion.
Best,
Marguerite

Sorry for jumping in late on this one. I'd be happy to set up an area for uploads. Space shouldn't be an issue. You can post anything you write or own the copyright of.

Regarding the copyright: It stays with the author until she transfers it (say by signing a contract for a big advance ). You don't give it away by posting it on the web. You should put the copyright notice at the top of the excerpt you are posting to let others know it is yours.

-Steve

[Isaac]

Steve, on Oct 25 2007, 09:49 AM, said:

Oops, missed this.

Isaac was helping me track a performance bug and sent me a copy of his story file with most of the nouns and verbs smurfed.

It was laugh-out-loud funny and made my day--and it helped me find the bug right away.

-Steve

If anyone is interested, I might be persuaded to post the script. I'm not sure if it's compatible with the latest .story file format, though.

IF

[Marguerite]

Thoth, on Oct 25 2007, 10:55 AM, said:

Sorry, Marguerite, but I can't let this slide. It might get you or someone else into trouble.

Under the current absurdly-restrictive copyright laws, there is a great deal of Web content out there that is definitely not in the public domain.

This has been a public service announcement
by your friendly neighborhood
Thoth.

Thanks for the correction, Thoth. I didn't mean that by posting a story, you put in the public domain in the legal sense. I meant that once a person posts a story, even in a somewhat restricted community like Storyist, it is accessible in ways that the original author may not be able to control and might not endorse if given a choice. So the author should consider carefully how s/he is going to protect his/her work.

This all came up because Isaac said that he didn't intend to publish his work but was considering various means of making it available to others. If he had been considering publishing it, I wouldn't have suggested his posting the entire novel anywhere. At best, he might want to podcast it or, as Steve suggested, post it one chapter at a time to discourage others from downloading it wholesale. But if he wanted feedback or just to make the .story file available as an example of how other people use Storyist, then a place on the forums would be one alternative.

Of course, copyright remains with the author, as Steve also notes, even when the book is on the Web. And a smart author will remind people of that. But in deciding whether to share your work, in whole or in part, the open nature of the Web has to be a factor. The other examples you cited are evidence of that.
Best,
Marguerite

[Marguerite]

Steve, on Oct 25 2007, 11:58 AM, said:

Sorry for jumping in late on this one. I'd be happy to set up an area for uploads. Space shouldn't be an issue. You can post anything you write or own the copyright of.
Steve

Thanks! It seems to me it would be interesting to see what people write, but I guess it depends on how many would-be contributors there are.
I appreciate your being willing to consider the idea, though.
Marguerite

[pjl]

I'll be popping into the forums a lot more when NaNoWriMo starts, and my website (at least part of it) is nearly done too, where I'll be posting Chapter by chapter the novel. http://fictionmonster.com/lazarine

After reading about several writer's who penned a novel in 3 days flat...and seeing as I"m in-between jobs at the moment, I'm gonna try and do the full thing in 3 days. That's 17,500 words a day. I fully don't expect to accomplish this by the way, but it'll be fun trying.

As to what to do with the finished novel, I think I'll be CC'ing mine, maybe putting together a PDF with a nice cover for download. If there's any interest beyond that, I'd probably LULU the book and see how it does.

Lots of options this year, it's going to be fun

[Isaac]

pjl, on Oct 27 2007, 07:53 PM, said:

After reading about several writer's who penned a novel in 3 days flat...and seeing as I"m in-between jobs at the moment, I'm gonna try and do the full thing in 3 days. That's 17,500 words a day. I fully don't expect to accomplish this by the way, but it'll be fun trying.

Seventeen thousand five hundred words a day?! Wow, that almost sounds like a throw down.

I only hope I can get near my 1667 words a day next month. *shouts* Go to bed kids! Daddy's gotta write.

IF