Matt O’ Rama

Cool workspaces

Ever since I first heard of the author Po Bronson’s shared Writer’s Grotto office space I’ve thought it would be extremely cool to set up a shared workspace. There’s a new thing coming up called Coworking that’s focussed on geeks that I would love to get into. The idea is that you get a space and outfit it with desks, chairs, couches, wifi internet access, a fridge, etc., and get people to work there instead of in coffee shops. You either pay for a day’s use of a desk or longer-term. The ideal place would have the same kind of cool vibe as a coffee shop without the random crowds and noise. Cheaper than paying for a regular office, plus with other people around doing stuff for inspiration, ideas, etc.

My dream is doing programming for myself, hence the creation of Mattorama Heavy Industries, and if I get the chance to make money doing that, I’m seriously considering setting something like this up. My only fear is having to deal so much with running the space that I don’t get to work on my own things but that’s probably the business equivalent of premature optimization, worrying about things that won’t end actually being a problem. I don’t think it would take much money to get started either, which is a bonus.

For more info, check out this NYTimes article on a space focussed on writers, and this blog post about ideal working environments. If you’re in Albuquerque and have think this is a good idea, please comment on this post. I’d love to hear there’s a ton of interest in this type of environment here in town.

Compact nonsense

Great Books In Half The Time

Weidenfeld and Nicolson have come up with ‘Compact Editions’. Tag line: Great Books in Half the Time.

in the first series of Compact Editions Anna Karenina, Moby-Dick along with David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Vanity Fair and Wives and Daughters will be ‘sympathetically edited’ down to fewer than 400 pages. But don’t fret – so sympathetic are these editors that they will keep the central plot, characters and historical background.

There’s not really much else I could say to add to what Jenny Diski says about this abominable practice. It’s one thing for someone to read the Cliff Notes of a book instead of the book but when publishers start “compacting” great books into less than half of what they once were, it’s unconscionable. Diski is completely right about this, a cut-down Moby Dick is not Moby Dick, it’s some other book written by someone who I assure you is nowhere near as talented as Melville. Why not just read the read the Wikipedia page and pretend you read the book? It’s the same practice. You haven’t read Moby Dick in either case so what do you care? It’s only giving people a safe way to lie about having read the book since in theory the words were all written down by the original author, just not in the same order, placement, or with the same impact. Yes, Moby Dick is a long book and it contains probably too much detail about whaling and whales but THAT’S PART OF THE BOOK! You can’t take that stuff out and pretend you read Moby Dick, you just can’t. You can’t drive halfway to your destination and then tell everybody you went there and it was great and wasn’t it awesome that you got to do it in half the time by avoiding the boring stuff, which is actually what made everybody else go there in first place? ARRRGGGH!

Charlie Stross on living as a writer

The writer’s lifestyle

So, to summarize: it’s badly paid, the hours are weird, the office environment can be claustrophobic, you can’t get the staff, you’re selling your wares to big corporations who can roll over in their sleep and crush you if you don’t make nice, nobody’s going to give you a champagne reception, a stretch limo or a signing tour, there’s lots of business admin stuff to deal with, and you still have to cram in a normal social life or you’ll go mad.

On the other hand: you’re doing exactly what you always wanted to do (or you’d get frustrated and go do something else). And what could be better than that?

This is why there’s the phrase “Everybody wants to be a writer but nobody wants to write”.

Zadie Smith on writing a Great Novel (or not)

Fail Better Zadie Smith from The Guardian

1. The tale of Clive
I want you to think of a young man called Clive. Clive is on a familiar literary mission: he wants to write the perfect novel. Clive has a lot going for him: he’s intelligent and well read; he’s made a study of contemporary fiction and can see clearly where his peers have gone wrong; he has read a good deal of rigorous literary theory – those elegant blueprints for novels not yet built – and is now ready to build his own unparalleled house of words. Maybe Clive even teaches novels, takes them apart and puts them back together. If writing is a craft, he has all the skills, every tool. Clive is ready. He clears out the spare room in his flat, invests in an ergonomic chair, and sits down in front of the blank possibility of the Microsoft Word program. Hovering above his desktop he sees the perfect outline of his platonic novel – all he need do is drag it from the ether into the real. He’s excited. He begins.

I’m even more glad I picked up Ms. Smith’s ‘On Beauty’ during my year-end Borders shopping spree now that I’ve read this.

Bruce Sterling is my god

This is Bruce Sterling’s State of the World “talk”. It’s Bruce talking and answering questions about how he sees the world starting 2007. Bruce is a science fiction writer by trade but he’s really a professional thinker (which really all sf writers should be but sadly aren’t, as evidenced by the cover of ASIMOV’S sf magazine this month which features an Icarus figure with metal wings for pete’s sake. Sometimes I want to shake sf writers and yell THIS ISN’T THE FIFTIES! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND INTO THE 21ST CENTURY! But I digress.). He travels all over and his personal HQ is in Serbia so he sees a lot more of the world than most people. He’s also an inveterate pulse-taker so he has his fingers on a lot of different areas. Even if you’re not an sf fan you should read what he has to say. You might get your mind blown. Every time I read something of his or hear a speech he’s given, it’s like a big old shock to my electrodes that breathes life into my piecemeal brain. I feel like I should be writing or building something again. 2006 was kind of a Sit Around And Be Lazy For No Reason year but I’m planning on making 2007 a Go Do Something year.
Thanks Bruce.