Yzabel / August 21, 2005

Et In Arcadia Nos – Part 3

[Part 3 out of 4. Read Part 1 and Part 2.]“Welcome to your new quarters, Lieutenant Vell’An. You and your men are now consigned here.”The sliding transparent door slammed shut between the two Rims, locking itself in the same split second. The tall officier turned in a quick movement, for Vall’Eran to meet him with a confident smile.”What the…” said Vell’An in a cold voice. “Open the door. This is an order!— Sorry, Lieutenant. Before you ask, if you decide to attempt anything, I’ll have to release this. You know, of course, that your bodies aren’t protected with nano-bots.”He flashed the small sealed vial marked with the red etiquette, in a move that he hoped looked threatening enough, and saw the surprise and anger in the officer’s grey eyes. Of course, the man had seen the laboratories, as well as the carefully aligned and shielded containers for the virus he was supposed to bring back to Ewell, once its development would be finished.”This is an act of treason. The Ministry will be informed!— We should reach Shigari Archipelago in about six hours”, Vall’Eran said. A certain feeling of satisfaction rose in him upon seeing the surprise on the Lieutenant’s face. “If I were you, I’d make sure to take a seat. It’s the first time we’re moving this flyland. There could be… accidents.— You’re completely mad! It’s not meant to—— Nano-tech can be put to many uses, you know. Not only to harm and destroy.”Read More

Yzabel / August 20, 2005

Orion’s Arm: A Science-Fiction World in the Making

Sisyphean posted an annoucement about this at Writers Blog Alliance, and after taking a peek at the webpage, I thought it’s a pretty interesting project, worth being advertised a little more.

Without further ado, let me thus introduce you to Orion’s Arm, a collaborative project aiming at creating a science-fiction universe, complete from breeds to timeline, while following currently accepted science matters.

Our goal is to create a dramatic far-future universe that is internally consistent and abides as much as possible with the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Thus matter cannot travel faster than light, matter and energy are conserved, no evolved humanoid aliens have been discovered, future ultratech social issues are likely to be very different to those of today, and so on. We embrace speculative ideas like drexlerian assemblers, mind uploads, posthuman intelligences, femtotech, magnetic monopoles, wormholes, as it is proposed that future sciences, technologies, and developments will make these possible. And we attempt a logical explanation for even the most fantastic-seeming elements in OA. We aim to paint a future that is plausible at every level, from the scientific to the social to the psychological.

While this may seem too scientific to one’s liking, for an author who’d like to write science-fiction, this approach can turn to be a very valuable one. Indeed, science-fiction is not just “something easy to write: you can invent anything”. Let’s not forget the word science in it, and that when creating our own little pocket universes, basing them off real scientific theories is a necessity, in order to make them more believable to our readers. I’m really not a scientific type, but grabbing a magazine here and there has taught me a few invaluable things to add in my stories.

It’s all about credibility—and seeing such a world being created is anyway a fascinating enough process in itself to at least take a few minutes and have a look at it.

Yzabel / August 20, 2005

Radio Blog: New Playlist

This one’s been up for more than one month. Time to change the playlist again.I’m in a bit of a nostalgic mood these days, as some of the songs may betray it.Read More

Yzabel / August 19, 2005

Why Keeping Several Blogs Can Be A Good Idea

A comment left by Silmy on the French version of my blog led me to think a little more about this question: why do we keep several blogs, and is this a good thing to do? Why not keep everything in the same place?To someone who’s not into blogging, or doesn’t have a lot of interest in it, it may seem a weird thing, not to mention a waste of time, to write in different blogs. This just creates more work for us, in a life that is already busy enough as it is. I used to think the same way, to be honest; I don’t mind taking one or two hours every day to write, because I really like doing it, but whether it’s a pleasure or not, there are days when time is short, period. So why?Here are a few reasons why I consider that it can be a good idea, after a while if not from the start, to keep several blogs instead of one.

  • People in general tend to “expect something”. If they do a search for business-related matters and find your blog through a keywords search, they want to read about business-related matters, not about family stories. They’ll visit a dogs-related blog to read about dogs, not crochet nor gardening. Although reading about “all and everything” is an interesting way to get to know a person, there are times when we just want to grab the info we’re looking for, without having to sift through ten pages and five categories first.
  • Remaining clear and focused is always a good thing for blogs. This applies to professional blogs mostly, although I suppose one could want this for a more personal blog as well. Avoiding to clutter it with too varied topics is an appropriate choice.
  • For AdSense (or other targeted ads) users, better have a blog to revolve around one theme, or at least very similar themes, for purposes of ads relevancy.
  • Different topics call for different settings. This may seem a little restrictive and sectarian, yet the fact is that in the world of websites, one doesn’t usually design a personal page the same way as a professional one. There often are “codes” to use, and it’s evidently easier to choose one of these codes if you don’t have to pick among thirty very different areas of topics.
  • You may want to heavily advertise one blog, while keeping another one in a more restricted sphere. You can’t do that with one blog only, in which case it’s an all-or-nothing matter.

There probably are other reasons than these, perhaps more personal ones as well, and this list is by all means no holy word. For someone who wants to take on a more professional way of blogging, or at least not spread oneself too thin, I however feel that it is an important point.Y Tags:

Yzabel / August 19, 2005

100 Blogs in 100 Days

Passing the word along: Duncan at The Blog Herald is holding a 100 blogs in 100 days projet. Starting Monday 22, he’ll be presenting one blog per day, during 100 days, in order to help promote less known blogs.

Email me at editor@blogherald.com with subject line of “100 blogs in 100 days” with your blogs details (name, url etc..). You also need to include up to, but no more than 100 words about your blog, what it does, what it’s about, or why the readers of the Blog Herald should visit it that will be published as part of the post. In return though I’ll be inviting Blog Herald readers to provide some feedback in the comments here on what they think about your blog.

Feel free to send your blog URL along—or to simply check The Blog Herald, which is an interesting read in itself anyway.blogging, 100blogs

Yzabel / August 18, 2005

Writing Exercises: A Follow-up

Following my ponderings about whether reading “books about writing” can be useful or not, here’s a short article on Ezine: Are Writing Exercises Effective?.There’s really a middle-ground to be found here.On the one hand, one cannot spend their time on such exercises, nor focus continuously on writing tips and “doing it like the Masters did”: when it comes to fiction, to novels, to imagination, creativity must remain on the foreground no matter what, else we may simply end up losing ourselves in too many attempts to reach perfection. We need to retain some spontaneity, as well as develop a “voice”.On the other hand, I’m standing my ground here: it’s not true that if we don’t produce THE perfect novel on the first attempt, then we’re failure as writers and should never touch a pen (a keyboard…) ever again.That’s where I place “writing exercises”—both reading and practicing them.Read More

Yzabel / August 17, 2005

The Need for Deadlines

I must be psychic somehow. I had been toying with this revelation for most of the day, slowly putting it into words, when, guess what, my RSS aggregator picked this post at To-Done. Well, it doesn’t matter: I still feel the need to write down all of this.Although it’s not as sudden an illumination as it could seem, when I started reading No Plot? No Problem! during what was left of my “lunch break”, I immediately felt in harmony with what the author, Christ Baty, was describing: the sheer need for deadlines, and, opposed to it, the tendency to procrastinate when we don’t have any. (Sidenote: the book is about writing a novel in one month—see NaNoWriMo for more details. The theory is that the busiest we are, the easiest it is to write like mad, because compared to the rest, writing time then feels like a treat. We’re more prone to just do it, instead of procrastinating.)That’s right, I’m of these people who need deadlines. I never perform my job as well as when I have a limited amount of time to do it. As stressing as they are, deadlines are what make me efficient, in most areas of my life. I don’t like them—to be honest, I hate them, they stress me to no end and even send me into panic fits at times when they’re made of a hundred little tasks rather than one or two big ones. However, the facts speak for themselves. I need them. I need my day to be compartimented. I need to get up in the morning and be able to tell myself “today, at work, I must do this, this, and that”. When I can’t have these thoughts, the day goes to waste almost immediately.I’m thus considering trying a little something: completely scheduling my day, from work itself to puny housework tasks, even though there aren’t any external circumstances that demand me to do so. It may seem weird, it may seem stupid, but I definitely need to focus more on my works as a writer, and if I keep on playing with my dog or cleaning the toilet instead of setting myself to write, I can’t have much done. Delaying is easy. Taking years to complete a novel is easy. The more time I have, the less I do. Setting myself to work with clear, timed goals: now this is harder, but also something that can and will work better for me.Weird, how easy and evident it all seems to me, now that it’s written here on my screen…deadline, writing

Yzabel / August 17, 2005

Et In Arcadia Nos – Part 2

[Part 2 out of 4. Read Part 1.]They should have listened to MARA, when she had warned them of the hard times to come, of the military coup in Varsa, of the declining Senate of the Llenane Confederation, too big and loose to keep a whole continent under its guidance any longer. They should have paid more attention to the alarming signs of the previous years, to the escalation of political incidents, when governments had begun to worry and slowly admit to themselves that the situation was getting out of hand, on the diplomatic level as well as on the economic one. They should have listened to her, indeed, when she had told the Council of Nations that they had to step in as moderators between Mornen and Llenan, before it was too late.The negotiations had lamentably backfired, the two other continents taking offense at Ewell’s repeated ingerence in their foreign affairs, and in the end, war had taken its claim on them all.In his office of the highest tower of the Core Research Center, Vall’Eran was replaying for the tenth time the latest holo-display he had received on the secured Ministry channel. Obeying the new orders would only send them spiralling even more quickly on the road to destruction. A nano-virus! Using the units to assist the medics wasn’t enough anymore. He had consecrated his life and work to this research in the hopes of helping medicine progress, of bettering life conditions for the Ewelli and for the rest of the world, once it could be adapted to the human race, and now they wanted him to turn his precious nano-bots into a weapon of mass destruction against Mornen and Llenan.”Eran, we need to talk.”Read More

Yzabel / August 16, 2005

The Writer’s Block

I used to believe that when I couldn’t write, I should just give up and go do something else. After a few years of working as a technical writer, I’ve however come to realize quickly that this is all well and good when you don’t write professionnally, or at least when you don’t have deadlines, but not in other circumstances. When a manual is due on a certain day, my boss doesn’t want to hear “I have writer’s block, I can’t write” (technical documents are never inspiring to me anyway, so this is a constant problem). What boss, come to think of it, would accept to hear an employee say “I’m not inspired today, I can’t answer the phone/type your letters/repair this database”?Answer: not even one.Since then, I’ve understood that the writer’s block, when it happens, is something I just need to swallow and do with. There are moments when doing something else for half a hour or a few minutes only will indeed trigger “inspiration” again, and some others when all of this is vain. In the latter case, I now try to force myself to write. Not necessarily on the problematic text, not necessarily aiming at perfect writing… just doing it. In a way, it’s like sports: I’ll moan that it’s hard and that I can’t make the effort, but after ten minutes lifting weights or running, things flow by themselves (well, for me, at least!).Read More

Yzabel / August 15, 2005

Tips on Starting a New Blog – Part 2

Here’s the second installment of my Tips on Starting a New Blog post.DesignThere aren’t many people who like to look at an ugly site, this is a fact—and it’s perhaps worth for blogs even more than for regular pages, as visitors will regularly come to check the new posts! Try to get at least a clear, readable and pleasant template here. Blog services as well as most standalone platforms will provide you with a handful of templates to choose from: Blogger does have a good twenty of them, while platforms such as WordPress can gather an even wider amount, developed freely by other users. After a while, it can be a good idea to set a test blog and learn and tweak templates a little, in order to come up with “your” own design, easily recognizable by your readers; for non-professional blogs, I however don’t consider it an absolute must-do from the start, and contents will here be more important to build a readership.For business blogs, things are a little different: better get someone to work on the design before launching the blog. Templates in this case are more important.Note: If testing new templates, do that on a test blog. At some point, your templates will contain wrong code, styles that display oddly, etc… With a test blog, your readers won’t stumble upon a broken, unreadable page.Read More