I heard a while ago that if you're stuck with the blank page syndrome, the easiest way to get out of it is to write about stuff you like. If effect, blogging. A bit closer to writing fiction, you get fanfic. In the end, with a reasonable plot, you can easily write endlessly about "cool stuff", and not only get away with it, but be paid for doing so. Nowadays, the distance between pulp fiction and seriously considered commercial successes is very thin.
Something that does inspire me to write is something that many creators experiences, which is essentially being an "armchair critic", and getting beyond it. At some point, you can tell exactly what you like in various books. This is a way to find your own style, though it ends up being a mix of many other things, like Tarantino. For my part, I end up seeking for books that says essentially what I want to say, lifting from the the burden of writing it myself, simply to find that that nobody says it.
I find that too often fiction books are products of their times, and have little value beyond that. The best fiction books I've read tend to be "timeless", meaning that while being contemporary they end up talking about the human condition. Also, I prefer books that are stylistically original, even when it's done to mask a writer's limitations (as it is my case).
As you can guess by now, my subject matter is what appears to be a fictitious story about programmers. Yep, not original at all, and wholly expected from me. But like each time I'd read fiction books about "hackers" and such, I'd be outraged at how much the authors would get it wrong, not at all about the technical stuff, but about the characters themselves. Too easily authors would draw almost entirely from their (at times limited) first-hand experience, and lack the ability to go beyond the stereotypes of "the hacker community".
Over time, this "hacker culture" is not the focal point of the vast majority of software development. After all, if it weren't from a few inkling to computers, most programmers are actually quite normal people. Beyond that, focusing on programming on its own loses the focus on the incredible changes that telecommunications systems will have on our everyday life. The only few stories I've read that took it seriously were from Japan (Mega Man Battle Network and DennÅ Coil).
And that's even still missing the bigger clash that is happening between freedom of expression and economic censorship. While we may currently live almost in a communication utopia with blogging and YouTube, there are extremely powerful economic entities that want to control media for their own sake. This may not sound like much, but I wouldn't be surprised if soon an infrastructure that prevent anonymous communication is set up, effectively allowing for censorship. We very well understand ideological and political censorship, but we still have yet well understood how much that "hacking mentality" clashes directly with economic censorship. Maybe that's why most people don't yet understand this new form of censorship.
Combining seamless Internet connectedness and the loss of anonymous communication makes it possible to write a story entrenched in the "hacking culture" while at the same time make it about the day-to-day struggle of anybody else. When reckless creativity comes at the rescue of a repressive world.
Of course I have other story ideas, but this one is the easiest. Well, I still have to learn another language and do a lot of research, still because the details are more already fleshed out it's going to be much easier to write, even if clumsy. For now, the daily blog posting and the research will be sufficient.
Published on July 3, 2012 at 22:18 EDT
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