Supersized Sensationalism

STATUS: Under, in, and around the weather

Music: Heavy Fuel by Dire Straits

Sensationalist documentaries are all the thing these days and, like many people, I enjoy watching them. Michael Moore, of course, is the dominant producer in this field with Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, etc., but there are others, like Morgan Spurlock and his Supersize Me! documentary on fast food, that also catch the zeitgeist.

I enjoy watching these movies as much as the next person. They're slick, at least somewhat informative and they make you think. Although they don't always make people think as they should. Because these movies tend to reinforces the zeitgeist of their target audience, that same audience tends not to think much beyond what has been suggested in the movie.

Now, I'm not going to go political here, and explore Michael Moore's movies. That kind of discuss would be for another time and place (incidentally, I tend to support the ideas of his movies, even if/when I believe I can see the motivational logic of the other side). But I'd like to take a far simpler, and less controversial example. Namely, Supersize Me! by Morgan Spurlock.

In Supersize Me! Spurlock goes on a very sensationalized eating routine to explore the effects of eating fast food. He eats 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) at McDonalds. Rules are that all food he eats for the month must be sold at McDonalds, he must have everything on the menu over the course of the month, and he must supersize the meal if asked. Without going through the details, the results from this 5000 calories/day experiment were weight gane of 24.5 lbs in the month, increase body fat, and a host of related health issues. Definitely suggesting fast food is bad for you.

Only, does it?

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't really question this movie much until I watched a Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode on fast food recently. There was an especially interesting psychological experiment highlighting how people perceive food from fast food restaurants as worse than food from normal restaurants even, as in the example in their show, when the food is exactly the same (briefly: food from Taco Bell and KFC were passed off as food from a Bistro, people responded favourable to the 'Bistro' food, but not when they knew it was fast food).

So, returning to Supersize Me! I think Spurlock is addressing an important point. But I don't think it's the one he has intended. To me, the real point revolves around eating at restaurants in general and that we are very bad at estimating how much we're eating when we eat out. But to demonstrate this I'd like to see the full experiment completed. What's needed is 30 days eating only at a 'normal', non-fast food, non-specialist restaurant to compare to the results of eating at a fast food restaurant.

A restaurant that serves all three meals. Rules:

1) a 'non-specialist', middle-class family restaurant that serves a variety of food
2) 3 full meals a day from the restaurant for 30 days
3) only food from the restaurant is eaten for the month
4) if options are offered, they must be accepted (i.e. starters, desert, coffee, etc.)

My personal suspicions are that any person attempting this would gain a similar amount of weight and weight-related issues, just as with fast food. After all, 'good food' is often as caloric (or even more so) than fast food. And they're always getting you to buy starters or deserts (we rarely do, but they always ask). So I suspect Mr. Spurlock would be in for another unhealth month if he tried his experiment at a 'normal' restaurant.

And perhaps people would come to understand that the real reason not to eat fast food 3 times a day is that it's deceptively expensive! We believe it's cheap because we're constantly told that. But, while you might be able to feed a family of four with a fast food supper on $20 (if you get a meal deal), you could easily feed a normal family of four for an entire day on $20, all three meals. So the real problem with fast food is that people forget it's is eating at a restaurant. Most normal families would not eat at a restaurant for three meals a day. It would be too expensive. Same with fast food.

Insight and longevity

Hospital Joy this Week

STATUS: distracted by the olympics

Music:  I of Crimson Blood by Amorphis

This was another week of hospital visits, which always seem to take longer than expected (sometimes much longer). Tuesday it was an MRI visit that lasted 1.5 hours and, due to a bad lower back and sensitive feet, was agonizing for the last 10 minutes of the scan. The second trip was to see the consultant about the MRI results. This trip ended up lasting >3 hours, including an unexpected x-ray and some lost paperwork.

Now don't get me wrong, I think the British Nation Health Service (NHS) is great. Once you finally get to a doctor, they generally take great care to listen to you and explain their views (with the rare exception of the occassional GP). If I have any complaints, it's that the support staff often seem to be going through the motions.There are nurses who are very friendly and do their best to help in any way, and their are the type of nurses who make the news for such appallingly bad care that patients can suffer (in some cases, die).

Since coming to the UK, I've been intimately involved with the medical system. Not only is my wife a Consultant, but I had cancer 1.5 years ago, meaning regular visits to Leeds for blood marker surveillance, ACL surgery a year ago leading to regular physiotherapy at the Harrogate hospital, and lately investigations regarding foot pain. Our daughter was also born in England. So we've experienced a lot of the NHS.

In fact, I'm beginning to believe that the orthopaedic and fractures unit, at least, thinks I've been around too much. The last two times I've been there they've misplaced my paperwork leading to delays of over an hour. Imagine an consultant appointment at 9am where I don't leave the hospital until after 12! I've also experience delays of over 3 hours in my oncology visits on occassion.

This all sounds bad, of course, and can be very frustrating. However, I know that in Canada, which also has a national health care system, the waits can be just as long, if not longer. I remember waiting a long time in the A&E after tearing my ACL. Likewise, in Israel, with a hybrid public health care system (i.e. you're forced to buy private insurance), I had a long wait after I tore my meniscus. Worse still, because of my previous knee injury, the menisectomy wasn't covered under the insurance I had been forced to buy (and we were forced to go into their private system for the surgery because the waiting time was too long and I'd planned to be out of the country before the public system could fit me in).

So, all in all, while a lot of my recent life has revolved around hospital visits--the good, the bad, and the ugly--I remain convinced that the UK has one of the best health care systems in the world and, if I need any health care, I'd rather it be here.

Insight and longevity.

Crazies on YouTube

 STATUS: WTF

Music: Stop by Ghost K

One of the hazards of being online so much is that occassionally (or even more often) I come across a claim so demonstrably false as to be laughable. For some reason, these bother me a lot and I can't rest until I've made some comment demonstrating their ludicrousness. So it was that today I came across the Youtube video: The Book of Revelation Is Happening NOW! You Must See This! The 7 Trumpets Are Blowing!

Possibly against my better judgement, I'll embed it here so you can judge for yourself.

The claim in the video is clearly that events since the beginning of WWII correspond to 'the 7 trumpets' of the book of revelations. What I'm going to do here is show that, whether you believe in the book of revelations or not, the claims are ludicrous.

Here we go (blue times are the beginning of each section in the video).

1:00  Trumpet 1

[7] The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

Beginning of WWII as the first trumpet: the video claims the war lasted exactly 7 years. The official dates for the war are Sept 1, 1939 to Aug 15, 1944 -- that's only 6 years. Yes, many events lead up to the war, but those could equally be claimed to have started as early as 1933, or even the end of WWI.

1:33  Trumpet 2

 [8] And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
[9] And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

The second trumpet as the end of WWII: the nuclear bombs were not dropped into the sea, they were detonated in the sky over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Furthermore, as horrific as the destruction of the Japanese cities were, clearly 1/3 of all sea life did not die from it. So this claim is also demonstrably false.

2:04  Trumpet 3 (falling star that poisoned the waters)

[10] And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

 Chernobyl? Where does the video creator get the idea that Chernobyl fell like a star from the sky? If anything, the disaster launched from the Earth into the sky, as the radiation spread. The actual text reads:

[11] And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

'Bitter' not 'poison' because wormwood is the name of a bitter plant that grows in Eurasia.

2:54  Trumpets 4-5 (darkness for 5 months)
 This section is highly interpretive, manipulating segments of these passages to use as the video producer sees fit. The relevant section reads:

Rev.8

[12] And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.
[13] And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

Rev.9

[1] And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
[2] And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
[3] And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
[4] And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
[5] And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
[6] And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
[7] And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

A) The actual invasion of Kuwait by Iraq last 3 days (Aug. 2-4, 1990) not 5 months. Even considering the entire occupation, the invasion would be 8 months. Furthermore, the Americans began their attack in Feb. 1991 (not Jan.) and reinstated the Kuwaiti leader Mar 15, 1991. Five months doesn't enter into this conflict anywhere.


B) while 8 months might be a long time for the sky to be darkened (by smoke from the oil wells, although they weren't lit until near the end of the conflict), the darkness hardly affected the whole world (or even a large region of it). Keep in mind that the entire sky is dark in the Arctic for almost 6 months / year, every year.

C) I guess Apache attack helicopters could look like very large locusts from a certain angle. But, the quote I found in book of revelations, King James edition, says this:

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

 Which is significantly different from the video producer's version. The rest goes...

[8] And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
[9] And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
[10] And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

in context, it seems a lot less like apaches are being described (hair of women?).

D) now it gets really crazy. Saddam wasn't the leader of the Apaches, George Bush Sr. was. Either way, the actual name of the leader in the King James version was Abaddon (Hebrew) or Apollyon (Greek). While 'Abaddon' is a form of the word for destruction, Saddam's name is Arabic and means 'One who confronts' or 'Powerful Commander'. Neither of these are necessarily synonymous with 'destroyer'.

5:34  Trumpet 6 (the four hoursemen)

[13] And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
[14] Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
[15] And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
[16] And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.
[17] And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.
[18] By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
[19] For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.
[20] And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
[21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

The version of revelations above (King James) didn't say the horsemen would gather at the Euphrates, it said they were bound at the Euphrates, and would be released from their bonds there, presumably to go throughout the world and destroy (otherwise, how to kill so many people?)

[14] Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

Furhermore:
A) who thinks tanks look like lions?
B) the producer seems to conveniently overlook the idea that there should be 200,000,000 soldiers just in the horsemen's army alone, and they killed 1/3 of men (not just combatants in the war).
C) either way, far less than 1/3 of soldiers were killed, especially on the Allies side, which should have been fighting against the horsemen's army, according to the video's producer.
D) once again, selective and incorrect interpretation of this passage:

[20] And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
[21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Sorceries and fornication are only two of the listed sins. In addition, Revelations doesn't state 'sexual immorality', as suggested in the video, it say 'fornication'. i.e. all unmarried sex (to fundamentalists, this is the same, to most of us, there are very big difference). Likewise, 'sorceries' could very easily mean science and technology to someone 2000 years ago, as much as witchcraft.

7:34 Trumpet 7
Not sure what to say for this one, as nothing's been stated. I guess the idea is that, if you believe the other 6 'trumpets', then you should be worried that the seventh will be blowing soon. However, since I've clearly shown the first six to be completely fabricated (and poorly), it appears we have nothing to worry about.

I always find it amusing that people believing this literally, feel they will be going to heaven. However, The Book of Revelations clearly states only 144,000 people get into heaven during the end days--out of almost 10 billion! That's less than 0.002% of all people on the planet.

Rev.14

[1] And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

 With over a billion Christians, and millions of fundamentalists world-wide, their chances seem about as good as mine.

Anyway, for your own studies, here is a link to the King James edition of The Book of Revelations that I used. Check the claims in the video against the real item for yourself.

Insight and longevity.

Extraterrestrials, Great Filters, and hope for the Future

STATUS: getting back to business

Music: Dreamline - Rush

Recently, I was reading Nick Bostrom's (Director, Future of Humanity Institute; Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford) article: Where are They? Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrials Life Finds Nothing and I found myself questioning some of the assumptions. What better place to voice my own views than in my blog. So, here we go.

Dr. Bostrom's reasoning behind the title essentially breaks down into a discussion of what's referred to as 'the Great Filter' and it's affect on our future. A Great Filter, is a concept that describes an incredibly difficult stage in in a process that is effectively a roadblock to the vast majority of species passing through it. For example, a stage in the development of a galactic civilization--a highly improbably developmental stage, a natural disaster, or autogenocide--that has a very high probability of ending the existence of most species that pass through it (by majority, it's meant >99.9999% -- not precisely, but you get the idea).

Why do we need the idea of a Great Filter? Well, if there is no Great Filter then, with the vast number of planetary systems in the galaxy (not to mention the universe), and the long expanse of time, alien species--including the highly advanced--should be everywhere. But they're not. So why not? (This is known as the Fermi Paradox).

Dr. Bostrom offers several possible candidates for a Great Filter, most of which I agree with. He also catagorises them into Early Filters (in our past) and Late Filters (in our future).

Early Filters
1) development of life (early self-replicators) from inorganic material
2) evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes
3) evolution of multicellular life
4) evolution of sexual reproduction (I'm not sure this is a large evolutionary leap, even bacteria have sex)

Late Filters
1) natural disasters
2) technology-induced autogenocide (an existential catastrophe)

The relationship to alien bacteria comes when you think of the consequences of the Early vs. Late Great Filters in respect to finding life in the universe.

If the Great Filter is an early one, then we would expect there to be relatively little life in the universe. In fact, we would be a rare, or possibly the only, species lucky enough to have survived. In this case, our chance of finding other life 'out there' would be almost non-existent. However, our species should then have a future devoid of any extinction-level surprises.

If, however, the Great Filter is a late one, that is, still in our future, then we should expect to find simple life, and even up to our own tech-level, on other planets. In fact, on a great many planets. For astrobiologists this is a great scenario, but for our species, not so much. It would mean that we still have to face the Great Filter. Probably in our near future. And the odds of our survival as a species would be exceedingly low.

It's scary, but well-reasoned stuff and I'm not here to detract from the general idea. I did, however, want to offer a tempered alternative.

My own view of the development of life in general, and especially intelligent life (from the 1 data point we have) is that it proceeds through what I call an annealing process.

For clarification, to anneal is (the free dictionary):
1) to subject to a process of heating and slow cooling in order to toughen and reduce brittleness
2) to strengthen or harden

So I envision the road to intelligent life as a series of catastrophic shake-ups of the biosphere (heating=add energy) that allows the biosphere to 'cool' in a new direction, with the development of new species.

For example, normal evolutionary processes take care of the small details. Speciation occurs in conjunction with the basic geographical evolution of the planet, and the biosphere can, and will, bubble away happily for a eons as the species evolve down one path to fit the environment, eventually reaching a dynamic equilibrium with each other and the world. But in a single interation such as this, in a relatively unchanging system, the results are likely to tend to a local minimum (there will be many more local minima than the few global minima). Which is to say that life could get 'stuck' under certain conditions, and wouldn't evolve past a particular stage. Without a geological catastrophe, very little significant evolution would occur in that system.

But introduce a global ice age (snowball Earth? - 650 million years ago), or an asteroid collision (65 million years ago) and the existing species suddenly have dramatically new conditions to influence their evolution. They will evolve in new directions until another minimum is reached and another catastrophe necessary.

Each of these stages I consider to be a new annealling process. The original system is heated up, grossly disturbed, and will change until is settles down into a new minimum. So each time the annealing happens, there are massive changes to the remaining biosphere. Species die out, giving other species, like humans, a chance to evolve that they never would have otherwise had.

Maybe I'm just being pedantic but, to me, the idea of a single Great Filter seems to over simply the development of intelligence. It seems to suggest a fairly simple, straight path with probability roadblocks in the way:

prokaryote-->[%P]-->eukaryote-->[%P]-->multicellular-->[%P]-->animal-->[%P]-->human

But my own thoughts are that the process is more akin to a multidimensional evolutionary landscape where the system could very easily find itself 'stuck' in a local minima, unable to proceed further until a random, catastrophic variable is introduced.

(a) would represent the relatively straight path of each stage in the Great Filter idea, with the filter being either at the top or bottom of the developmental stage. Presumably there would be some kind of blockage at the bottom (b) is akin to an evolutionary landscape with many local minima. If the biosphere is represented as a ball rolling down the landscape, it could easily get stuck before reaching the bottom, requiring the system to be 'heated up' to get it moving again. This image is used only as an example of a process with multiple energy minima, and is from Protein aggregation in disease: a role for folding intermediates forming specific multimeric interations, Arthur Horwich, J Clin Invest. 2002; 110(9):1211-1232. Incidentally, the complexity of protein folding mimics the evolutionary landscape I'm intending to describe, even to the point where unfolded proteins require help to navigate the landscape and reach their folded states at the bottom.

With this in mind, a Great Filter need not take the form described by Bostrom, as an extinction-level road block, reducing the number of intelligent lifeforms by killing them all off. Instead, the entire process itself could be viewed as a Great Filter with many long stops along the way, where only those reaching the bottom achieve intelligence and then move out of their gravity well to bring civilization to the universe.

So, I think my real issue with Dr. Bostrom's reasoning is that he suggests finding life, even ancient, dead, single-celled life on Mars, means that intelligent life would necessarily fourish in the galaxy (and therefore the Great Filter is ahead of us). I don't believe these can be equated. Getting from self-replicators to humans is not just a straight march of low probably steps, but a series of evolutionary minima that an ecosystem can get permanently stuck in without efficacious, sometimes catastrophic, factors acting on it. This also suggests that catastrophes are not life-ending, but only life rearranging, and are a necessary part of biophere evolution (and a way for getting through the filter). It could perhaps also suggest that, given enough time and catastrophes, most ecosystems should evolve intelligence. But clearly many, if not most, ecosystems would require vast time frames (it would, however, be interesting to know whether our own pattern of global extinctions would mimic that of another intelligent species).

Thus, without a snowball Earth (or some similar catastrophy) Earth may only be covered in bacteria or simply multicellular organisms. Without the asteriod 65 million years ago, dinosaurs might still rule the Earth. In both cases the great filter would be an 'Early' one, but the Earth would still be teeming with life. But none of it would be able to travel to the stars.

This could very well be the state of a great many planets. So, I for one, welcome any discovery of extraterrestrial life and I'm very hopeful of the future.

Insight and longevity

[stayed tuned for discussions of ways through a possible future filter]

The Road to Publication

STATUS: lethargy leave me!

Music: I'm Still Standing - Elton John 

I came to writing a bit late compared to many. I was working as a Biochemist after 12 years of university and a few post-doctoral posts, and I started writing because 1) I like creating stories, 2) I like books, and 3) I wanted to challenge myself, as I realized I had absolutely no idea how one went about producing a book. After a half-dozen years of concentrating on this new field (including starting a small press), it's very hard for me to remember what that was like.

Yet, having said that, I still find that the further I go into the field, the more I have to learn. Publishing some short fiction anthologies through Utility Fog Press was very valuable in teaching me some lessons on the editorial end of the business: why you don't submit in strange fonts and pink paper (it's happened), why you follow the submission guidelines to the letter--technical and genre--, and all the effort that goes into generating a quality book (cover image/design, front matter, interior layout, editing, copyediting, etc.). But there is so much more to learn when it comes to the authorial side.


Writing
When I began writing, I naively thought all their was to creating a story was to write. Don't get me wrong, writing is the main thing, and you can't produce a book if you don't write the story and many would-be authors fall down right at this stage.

Writing a story means learning both the technical craft of writing, and learning what makes a good story. Even more importantly, it encompasses the merging of those two. Because a good novel is more than the sum of it's parts. These two aspects must be woven together harmoniously, manipulating pace and theme, to generate the wonderous final product.

There are numerous good books out there that will teach you how to write well. And there are probably some good courses too. I tend to be of the group that favours self-teaching through writing books (pick authors or series that are respected) over the courses as my own experience tends to support the idea that courses tend to be 'feel-good' sessions that are primarily to take your money. Good things can come from courses and you may have other reasons for taking them also. For example, I wanted something to get me out of the house one day a week, and to meet other writers. A book could never do that. However, I feel that none of the recent university courses I've taken have justified their cost, from a learning viewpoint.

When I started, I understood it would not be easy to write a novel, but I had assumed that 'writing' as described above, was all that was needed.

Wrong.


Revision
Once I finished a few novels (the first year was stellar and I finished three novels in that period--and acquired numerous repetitive stress injuries which still plague me to this day), I realized there was another stage to the process of producing a novel. It quickly became clear that my stories needed to be reworked. I don't just mean edited, adverbs cut, and check for continuity. I mean settings realized more vividly, character relations fleshed out, themes woven into the story. In other words, a full revision.

I started this process thinking of it mostly as an edit. I soon realized it was much more daunting. In fact, it's pretty much another compete stage in the journey to publication and, arguably, almost and entirely new skill set (or so it feels at times). To be honest, I think I'm only starting to get to grips with this stage now (although I did only start about a year ago).

In many ways, revising a story can be the most difficult part. This is largely due to the question: where do I stop? As an editor, this is undoubtely easier to answer because you can see the story from the outside. But the author has all their plans and dreams for the story and may have trouble realizing them in the framework of what they've written. This is a problem I had with my first novel--which currently sits on the shelf after half of it was revised. And the decision must be made to accept the story that developed, rework it for years, or put it aside and start a new story. Which leads me to the next lesson...

Finishing
Regardless of what you decide to do with the story (accept, rework, put aside), it should always be finished. This doesn't mean reworking until it meets your ideal, because sometimes the story developed in a way in which that just won't happen. What it means is that you should finish each stage: writing, revising, polishing, so that the story could be sent off, if you desired.

It's important to realize that this is not just for tying up loose ends, or some other kind of bookkeeping or post-knotching, but rather, it's so you get into the habit of finishing projects.

Some professions have jobs that are quick and easily finished, and it doesn't even make sense to stop them partway in: clerical jobs, service jobs, dataentry, street-sweaping, financial advicing, post-delivery, you get the idea. Writing is not like that. It takes effort and desire to sit and write ever day, developing lives and stories and pushing through the clunky bits, and figuring out how a character does something and then writing it in a way that doesn't bore the reader. In addition, the story in a novel can be made to go on forever. Even when you decide to finish the story, revision can be done for years or even decades and the story still may not reach the desired peak.

Therefore, a writer must have the personal discipline to push through to the end of the story. And, they must be able to do this numerous times during revision. And, they must have the discpline to finally stop, at the end, when they are not capable of making the story any better.

To some this may sound trivial and if it is for you, than I envy you. Personally, I find this the most difficult part of the entire process.


Submitting
Even once the story is finished and polished, there is more to learn and many fall down at this stage, underestimating it's importance. Yes, I mean submitting to an agent. And yes, it is another important skill set for the modern writer.

Agents are the new gatekeepers, by which I mean that in the modern publishing world, no traditional publishers will accept unsolicited (i.e. not represented by an agent) manuscripts. I think it's important to realize that this new reality has not come into being just to make your life more difficult, but rather because there are so many would-be authors out there now that another level of screening is necessary. Enter the agent.

Aside: interestingly, in some places there are now book agents, which are professionals that sell your manuscript to agents. That's right, yet another gatekeeper in the making and possibly in ten years new authors will all have such book agents.

Submitting your manuscript to an agent reqires more writing: query letter, synopsis, summary. Each one has it's own style, is important in it's own way, and requires a particular skill to do well. Yet another thing to learn on the road to authorship.

Self Promotion
Finally, even when you succeed at all the previous stages, the modern author is now largely responsible for promotion. The big publishers just don't have the financial resources to push your book. Their responsibility largely ends at distribution. They get you in the door, you have to move the books off the shelves.

This means: building a web site, managing social networking like facebook and twitter, visiting conventions, book signings in bookstores... and finding time to write the next book. In addition, you'll likely have to do this around your day job, because modern authors generally don't earn enough to live off. Author is one of the few professions who's average salary hasn't increased appreciably in the last 30 years (and the current average is propped up by sales of celebrity books and the relatively few blockbusters).

So there you have it. Many of the big things I've learned about being an author and writing a novel over the last six years. And I'm sure there's much more to learn. But first I have to start getting the manuscripts out there. 'Finishing' is the keyword for this year. So watch this space.

Insight and longevity