Digital Art

Computers are everywhere. The net is everywhere. Software is eating the world.

This has forced us as a species to ask important questions about how we best exist in a digital/analogue hybrid world. No facet of humanity has been more disrupted or scrutinised by the web than our art. Some questions:

How do we control rights and rewards for the art we make online? Metallica has something to say about this, so does Stephen King

How high does the digital resolution of a picture, a film or a song have to be to accurately reflect the intentions of the artist?

Interestingly, writing as an art form is relatively unaffected by issues of resolution. Words can be understood just as well on low resolution screens, and the quality of the writing is largely subjective. It’s hard to measure objectively the purity of a piece of writing, whereas a picture on a screen, or a sound wave in your ears has a bunch of physics and metrics behind it which is now fed into the marketing of art (see here and here) and of equipment to consume the art (see here and here).

I don’t think these questions over digital art will be answered anytime soon, but I think they need to be at the front of your head if you are publishing online.

Writer’s block?

It’s tempting to search for the best conditions for productivity. The theory goes that we can escape writer’s block if we work at the right time of day, eat the right food, use the right app, listen to the right music (listen to no music?)… And the list goes on.

Unfortunately writer’s block is not a thing. It is all rubbish. An excuse.

Yes, sometimes you work better than others. But the hard truth is that you are completely alone when it comes to doing good work. It’s not about state of mind or a piece of software.

Instead, writer’s block is a convenient excuse not to expose yourself to criticism. The unfinished novel is never ready for scrutiny, and therefore is always perfect in your mind. And that’s where it remains.

Better to do lots of bad work on your way to a great story than to just shut up shop and blame writer’s block. I believe you just make a start, trusting that hard work (and criticism of poor work) leads to results in the long run. Because it does.

Smugglers of Earth – 2

(Note: This post follows on from “Smugglers of Earth – 1“)

Immediately the card leapt from Marlon’s hands and flew like a bullet down the Tor. Marlon jumped to his feet and peered out into the rain to watch the card fly through the stormy night. Seeing the arc of its flight, the hairs on Marlon’s neck stood on end. He loved the cards most of all.

As it neared the bottom of the hill the card turned smoothly and climbed straight upwards through the rain, leaving a trail of light in its wake. On a direct collision course with the clouds above, the storm roared and thundered anew. The card was completely unaffected by the tempest and held its course. It sped up, flying higher and higher aiming straight at the lightening and the thunder and the angry clouds. From the top of the hill it looked like a tiny missile heading towards an enormous alien mothership. This made Marlon scream as loud as he could, “Go you good thing! Go! Go! Go! Yeeehhaaaaaaaaa!!!!!” The card issued a deafening crack as it broke the sound barrier right before it hit the clouds. After that, all was silence. No more lightening, no more wind, no more rain. Only a single voice on top of the Tor. Marlon was still yelling with excitement.

Marlon kept whooping and shouting and cheering as he turned his head straight up towards the sky. He was so excited each time he threw a card, all he could do was shout like a chimp. Up above, the clouds dissolved before his eyes. The storm of the century had been neutralised by the card, as if someone threw a bucket of water on a camp fire. Looking up Marlon saw clear skies and the sight of the heavens took the scream from his mouth. Completely silent, he fell. The smuggler saw a perfect night sky. Like thick, creamy velvet he felt he could almost scoop up the blackness in between the stars. Dark galactic ice cream, he thought it would probably taste like licourice.

The Milky Way stretched out and twinkled forever. There were shooting stars blazing all around, and far to the east the rainbow colours of a nebula cloud glistened against the darkness. To the North, on the horizon a faint aurora pulsated.

Marlon kept his eyes on the skies for as long as he dared, a big smile stretched on his face. He knew that if he looked for too long after throwing a card, he risked going crazy, bewitched by the beauty. He had heard stories of men turning into skeletons, their skulls pointed up to the sky, smiling even as they starved to death just to stare at the beauty above. With effort, he pulled his head down, wiped away the water from his face and turned his eyes back to where he had been searching, at the bottom of the Tor on the plains.

With the help of the stars, Marlon could now see close to the horizon the place he was looking for. It was a slight rise in the plains, and at the base of the rise a small fire was burning. From the top of the Tor this was nothing more than a dot of light. It looked like another tiny star on the ground, except it was noticeably green in colour and flickering on the plains. Eyes straight ahead, the smuggler blew a kiss to the velvet sky above and started his descent of Nea Tor. Shooting stars rained all around him but the night remained silent. Silent that is, except for the old rain water which squelched in his boots with every step.

Focus on the future

A fundamental part of achieving anything you want to achieve = the work is up front, and the reward is way off in the future. Unseen. We plan for success rather than guarantee it. This is frightening.

Satisfaction and success is mostly unseen and unfelt for the whole time you are working hard. This makes it very hard to keep working if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, or if you don’t believe that something good will come of it down the line. Faith is required. Faith in yourself, in the process and in the work resulting in something good.

For creative writing (and most art I suppose) this is especially important to recognise. It takes a lot of consistency and regular work to create something, and a lot of unknowns weigh down on you before you reach any kind of destination with a piece of writing.

Like a character in a Fantasy story – rather than being lured by sirens to shipwreck on the rocky coast, we need to keep our heads turned toward the horizon and our course true.

Chip away at the stone.

Drafting

Whether you are creating your art “For Position Only” or you are furiously scribbling what you are inspired to add to your novel – Drafting is essential, inevitable, undeniable in the creative process.

Drafting is like gravity. You cannot be anything or create anything meaningful without first having a draft and then grinding it down to a polished article. Start somewhere, show people, and go from there. Keep shipping stuff as best you can, even if it is the unfinished article. The shipping is the important part. You will get better.

And yet….

And yet it is tempting to hide behind the unfinished masterpiece. It’s not ready yet. The report is not good enough, the book is not finished, the song still needs work. Nothing is shipped. Nothing is gained.

Draft like your life depends on it. Because it just might.

Decision

If you want to get good at anything, you need to commit real time and effort. 10, 000 hours and all that. It also helps any endeavor to have clarity and purpose. With that in mind, I am dropping the other interests from this blog – no more tech, music, movies, finance – though these are still my favourite things and will affect anything I do by osmosis – this blog is now a platform for my creative writing.

I have always wanted to write and the response i have gotten from my first installment (see here) has been great so far, which is encouraging. I am determined to keep up the practice, and hence the re-focus of my blog.

Time to build an asset and a skill.

Smugglers of Earth – 1

The start of a beautiful thing is often something bleak.

Dominating the otherwise flat land of Colm Naiir was a tall hill called Nea Tor. It rose steeply from the plains like a breaching whale. It was so big some called it a mountain, but instead of snow it was capped by a massive slab of rock. In the sunshine this looked like a large limpet on the snout of the whale. Now at night, in the storm of the century, it was invisible. Everywhere was howling wind, pouring water, driving rain, black and cold. It had been like this for the last four hours. Every few seconds or so a lightening bolt would light up the sky revealing the long sheets of rain pelting the Tor. If you had sharp eyes and you were looking in just the right place on the rock when lightening struck, you might also have seen a silhouette, a small dark figure standing at the very peak. A smuggler.

Marlon’s jacket collar was folded up around his neck and face, so high that it was impossible to see his nose. A smuggler’s trench coat made of thick leather, the jacket was over five feet long hanging down his legs, with never ending pockets on the inside and tribal patterns punctured into the leather on the outside. In the dry it was incredibly warm but it was not waterproof without a spell, and Marlon had run out of spells before he started climbing the Tor. All he had left in his pockets was a small pack of cards, which were soaked. Marlon’s dark brown eyes were trying to scan the landscape below him. The rain and wind pressed into his bones and plastered his hair across his face. From the limpet he would have had a view for many miles on a clear day, but with the storm of the century throwing buckets of water in his face, the task of finding what he was looking for was hopeless. He sighed and bowed his head. So. Much. Rain. His neck and his spine and his legs had a torrent of water flowing over them from his head to his feet. Lightening cracked above his head making him dip down onto his knees. The wind was picking up strength and it now hurt his face to look up from his collar.

Hunched on his knees he made up his mind and reached into the deep smuggler’s pockets of his coat. He pulled a playing card out. Immediately, the card began to shine in his hands in the night. Marlon searched his memory for the correct words. He had learned them in the same place he had gotten his jacket. That was a while ago, but after some thought he found that he still remembered. “Stars, show your fire. Let light see my black and deep desires.” A single voice in a storm on top of a mountain.