My Blog

Attacking Copyright

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One of the big arguments fanficcers like to make is that copyright is too restrictive and that the rules should be loosened up. Once something is published, they argue, it should belong to the world.

The fanfic take on copyright is one championed, oddly enough, by proponents of Google’s effort to digitize books into their database. The New York Times ran a piece a week or two ago in which Wired contributor Kevin Kelly argued in favor a digital library that would make all books available for free to people around the world. He believes that the original purpose of copyright was to give authors an incentive to keep working, but that now that intent has been warped to benefit the commercial interests of corporations. Books, Kelly argues, should now become public domain shortly after publication for any derivative use you can imagine. On this issue, he wrote, in part:

But the 1976 law, and various revisions and
extensions that followed it, made it extremely difficult to move a work
into the public commons, where human creations naturally belong and
were originally intended to reside. As more intellectual property
became owned by corporations rather than by individuals, those
corporations successfully lobbied Congress to keep extending the
once-brief protection enabled by copyright in order to prevent works
from returning to the public domain. With constant nudging, Congress
moved the expiration date from 14 years to 28 to 42 and then to 56.

While
corporations and legislators were moving the goal posts back,
technology was accelerating forward. In Internet time, even 14 years is
a long time for a monopoly; a monopoly that lasts a human lifetime is
essentially an eternity. So when Congress voted in 1998 to extend copyright an additional 70 years
beyond the life span of a creator—to a point where it could not
possibly serve its original purpose as an incentive to keep that
creator working–it was obvious to all that copyright now existed
primarily to protect a threatened business model. And because Congress
at the same time tacked a 20-year extension onto all existing
copyrights, nothing–no published creative works of any type–will fall
out of protection and return to the public domain until 2019. Almost
everything created today will not return to the commons until the next
century. Thus the stream of shared material that anyone can improve
(think “A Thousand and One Nights” or “Amazing Grace” or “Beauty and
the Beast”) will largely dry up.

Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly, took exception to this and I agree with her views. She said, in part:

Such a suggestion, frankly, disavows the amount of work—the
amount of time!—it actually takes to create a book, not to mention the
lack of financial reward that comes, even in this era of inflated
advances, during that sometimes lifetime-long process. Why shouldn’t
generations of Joyces or Morrisons or, more pointedly, Richard Yateses,
benefit from the work that the authors scraped by to produce? Believing
that your book could become a source of enlightenment for generations
is a great thing, of course. Knowing that it might provide some comfort
for your own great-great-grandchildren ain’t such a bad incentive
either.

[…]Yes, it’s hard to keep track of copyright, especially when
publishers (who, essentially, "lease" copyright from the author)
disappear and morph and merge, as they do […] But as books become digital files that
require few warehouse fees, and the whole notion of "out of print"
becomes moot, copyright should be similarly simplified: it should rest
with the author, or his descendants, for way longer than they both
shall live.

Your thoughts?

Appreciating Failure

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Blogger Steve Thompson reviews my old book UNSOLD TV PILOTS, which is actually an abridgement of my two volume UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS 1955-1989. He  lists and describes some of his favorite flops collected in my book:

GOOD AGAINST EVIL-1977- the late Dack Rambo starred as a writer who
falls for…wait for it…Satan’s girlfriend, then teams up with an
exorcist to get her back, righting wrongs and solving crimes along
their way.
HIGH RISK-1976-Victor Buono, BATMAN’s King Tut and Joanna
(ISIS) Cameron as two of a group of circus performers who use their
skills to solve crimes.
ALIAS SHERLOCK HOLMES-1976- Larry (JR)
Hagman as a delusional motorcycle cop who thinks he’s the world’s
greatest detective and, with the help of his female psychiatrist,
conveniently named Dr. Watson, solves crimes.

Blow Job Empowerment

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Author Meg Cabot doesn’t understand why some girls think that giving blowjobs is empowering.

In “The Notebook Girls,” the allegedly
“real” notebook kept by four teens who attended Stuyvesant High School
in New York City, we are repeatedly told how “empowering” blow jobs
are…which left me wondering, as always, what’s so empowering about
giving sexual pleasure without receiving any in return?

It’s a question she tackles in her new book QUEEN OF BABBLE.

(That’s to Sarah for the heads-up…no pun intended).

Writing Blind

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Novelist John Connolly has an interesting post on researching his novels. But what intrigued me was this little nugget about how he writes:

I brought with me to the US the initial draft of The Unquiet.
I imagine it would be almost unintelligible to anyone who tried to read
it as a coherent narrative. My first draft tends to be a little rough.
There will be inconsistencies of dialogue and character. Some
characters will appear in the early stages only to disappear later,
their failure to manifest themselves once again left entirely
unexplained. Some things seem like good ideas at the start, but quickly
prove to be distractions from the main thrust of the book, and as soon
as that realisation hits me I tend to let those elements slide.

I don’t fret too much about how untidy the text may be (although,
in my darker moments, I wonder what might happen if I didn’t live to
finish the book and someone else, for whatever reason, decided to piece
together whatever was left behind. I wish them luck. I mean, I’ve
written it, and sometimes even I’m not entirely sure that I always look
forward to trying to put all of the pieces together). After all,
there’s nobody looking over my shoulder, and my main aim is to get the
plot and characters from A-Z, even if that means bypassing Q and R
entirely, and occasionally having to loop back to P just to reassure
myself that I have a vague notion of what I’m doing.

I’m guessing that John doesn’t write with an outline. I know a number of authors who write the same way he seems to…just going where ever the inspiration takes him.  I’m not going to knock it because clearly it’s worked great for him.  But I don’t think I could ever write that way. That doesn’t mean that I stick religiously to my outline, or that characters don’t come and go (I’ve had characters who were meant to die in Chapter One that I kept alive through the whole book), but I need it to keep me more or less pointed in the right direction. I would find writing a book, particularly a mystery, very difficult to do on-the-fly.

Has “Grey’s Anatomy” Jumped The Shark?

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I can usually ride along with the sillier aspects of GREY’S ANATOMY, much the same way I willingly suspend my disbelief and accept CSI techs getting DNA results back in 20 minutes, questioning witnesses, carrying guns, and driving chrome-plated Hummers.  But the season finale of GREY was just too much. 

An article in today’s LA Times analyzes the more outrageous aspects of the story.  Izzie, one of the regular characters, falls in love with Denny, a potential heart-transplant patient, and goes to outrageous lengths to make sure he receives a donor heart:

Izzie then deliberately cuts the pump lines of Denny’s heart’s left
ventricular-assisting device. Emergency cases get priority, and his
deteriorating condition will move him up the transplant list.  But Izzie’s disconnection of Denny’s assistance device (which initially
caused the heart to stop) ultimately leads to his kidney failure.  The other surgical interns learn what is happening, but they don’t report Izzie’s behavior to the supervising resident.

When
the truth comes out, the chief of surgery acknowledges that the
hospital’s accreditation may be in jeopardy, but he takes no action and
Izzie quits on her own. Because of his worsening heart failure, Denny receives the heart that was intended for the other recipient, but dies afterward.

All of this strained believability to the breaking point. Nobody was behaving in a realistic way in a realistic world…yet we aren’t being asked to believe it’s a fantasy world…we’re supposed to accept that it’s real. In other words, this isn’t James Bond, Harry Potter, or  the X-Men, where you know going in the rules of the real world simply don’t apply. The doctors in GREY are supposed to be real interns in a real hospital in the real world. But you’d never know watching the finale:

A prospective heart transplant patient would never sign a Do Not
Resuscitate order — surgeons would not operate on such a patient
because resuscitation may be necessary at any point. Second, if a heart assistance pump were disconnected, a loud alarm would sound.  Third,
interns could never monitor a sick heart patient for such a prolonged
period of time without intervention by at least a nurse, if not a more
senior physician. In the show, the interns watch Denny’s heart stop,
resuscitate him, give him emergency medication — all without
observation or intervention. In real life, such a stunt would be cause
for Izzie’s immediate arrest for attempted murder; the other interns
would likely be kicked out of the residency program.

The upshot, according to common sense and the LA Times:

In fact, the only truly believable scene is the correct use of
phenobarbital to put Dr. Meredith Grey’s dog to sleep because of
incurable bone cancer.

Back to the Future Vampire Fanfic

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Tales to Astonish has stumbled on some truly bizarro fanfic:

Does anyone else find Back to the Future fan fiction strange?

Would you find it stranger if all of the characters were vampires?

I would, but then again I write Matlock/Star Trek fanfic in my spare
time, where they’re all towering robots from a dark cybertronic
dimension.  Who am I to judge someone for having strange passions?

I couldn’t resist something as unbelievably inane as  "BACK TO THE FUTURE vampire fanfic"…so I had to take a look:

I’m Flaming Trails, the web-mistress.
You’ve probably guessed from the title of this web page that this isn’t your standard BTTF fan fiction fare. It isn’t.
I don’t generally write the more "normal" fan fiction. My areas of
expertise are vampire versions of Doc Brown; worlds that don’t contain
Clara, Jules, or Verne; intense angst; and humor stories that would
make poor Doc wake up screaming.

Me, I’m Flaming Entrails, and my area of expertise is writing "Desperate Housewives Time Travel Lesbian Porn" that would make poor Eva Langoria wake up screaming.

(Thanks to Andy for the heads-up!)

Tod Finds Self-Published POD Gem

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My brother Tod Goldberg has reviewed DANCING ON THE FLY ASH, a self-published P.O.D. book, in his Las Vegas City Life column:

It’s a sad state of affairs, however, that the one book spawned from a
blog that actually succeeds has gone virtually unnoticed: Dancing On Fly Ash by Matt Bell and Josh Maday.

The
differences between Bell and Maday and their blog brethren is they are
actually fiction writers, unlike Cutler, who slept with a lot of
people, and Cox, who is a fine journalist but not a fine fiction writer
(it’s not a trait that is easily shared), and their blog (found at
dancingonflyash.com) is a daily splash of flash creativity: Each day,
in 100 words or less, either Bell or Maday writes a complete short
story. Dancing On Fly Ash collects the best 62 of these entries
and the result is both exciting and frustrating — exciting in that the
best of these short-short-short stories packs the emotional wallop of a
novel and frustrating because several stories beg for more than the
form allows.

The stories veer from the dramatic to the poignant to the absurd, the best of which contain all three styles.

Naturally, the authors were thrilled by the review:

This is the first review for our book, so I can’t help but be excited,
especially since it’s mostly positive.  It’s so hard to get a
self-published book reviewed in the first place, much less by an author
of Goldberg’s stature.  We’re very thankful to him for his
encouragement and support.

Another Great Idea for a TV Series

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I got this email today:

I am just beginning my venture into the world of television.  More specifically, I am trying to find out how
to go about presenting my idea for a television series.  I think it’s a
terrific idea and have mentioned it to several friends, co-workers, and
family members for feedback.  They all agree it sounds like something
they would really be interested in watching.  My question is HOW do I
get started in something like this?
 
I’ve had this idea for a few years, and there is nothing on TV
similar to it.  I just have no idea how, where, and to whom to present
my ideas.  I am a good writer as well, but I have never written
anything "dialogue-related", such as a play or TV series.

I politely replied by directing her to two of my previous posts here on the same topic. But I could have answered her question by rewriting her note:

I am just beginning my venture into the world of automotive design.  More specifically, I am trying to find out how
to go about presenting my idea for a new car.  I think it’s a
terrific design and have shown it to several friends, co-workers, and
family members for feedback.  They all agree it looks like a car they’d be really interested in owning.  My question is HOW do I
get started in something like this?
 
I’ve had this idea for a few years, and there is nothing on the road that’s similar to it.  I just have no idea how, where, and to whom to present
my ideas.  I am a good artist as well, but I have never designed
anything "automotive-related", such as a motorcycle or truck.

No one in their right mind would ever write a note like that to a car designer. It would be insane. So why would you send it to a TV writer? Because TV isn’t car design. It doesn’t involve complex engineering and manufacturing.

Think again.

One season of an hour-long TV series costs $50 million to produce. It takes a crew of several hundred to make it happen…and the resources of a studio (aka a factory for producing TV shows and movies). No one is going to gamble that much money, or entrust that much responsibility, to someone who has never done anything "dialogue-related."

There’s no short-cut to creating a TV series, designing a car, becoming a doctor, or becoming a great chef. It takes knowledge. It takes skill. It takes work. It takes experience.  Simple as that. You start at the bottom, learn the basics, and work your way up.

Making a Living

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I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn’t worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn’t. He liked the idea of writing a book…actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There’s no question that I make most of my living in television…but I believe it’s important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories… most of the time while I’m simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn’t come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other — but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I’m not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that’s interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don’t even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it’s in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am… a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.