Teel – Page 40 – Teel McClanahan

Solar energy thoughts re: scarcity

I’ve been doing some (very, very rough) calculations for the last hour or so, to get a concept of what sort of scale my thoughts should be working from as I brainstorm the “post-singularity” future. I was thinking about the idea of scarcity. Lou Dobbs was on the Daily Show & he kept insisting that America is fragile & America doesn’t have unlimited resources, and yadda yadda, Obama will literally destroy America before we have a chance to vote again… Anyway, the direction my brain went was toward the question of how much solar energy was hitting the Earth, and how much matter that amount of energy represents, in matter-and-energy-are-two-forms-of-the-same-thing terms. You know, the old E=mc² thing.

Based on my calculations, on average, pretending that all the energy from sunlight could be captured and then that all the energy could somehow be converted to “matter”… the amount of solar energy that falls on a square mile of the Earth in 12 hours of daylight (yeah, yeah) converts to about 1.5 tons of matter. Yes, this is Star Trek tech, the replicator, and we’re not actually near any practical application that could make use of it. And, yes, we’re almost as distant from being able to make use of 100% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth. And, of course, there would be inefficiencies in the system (ie: entropy exists), so it wouldn’t be all, all, all… ooh, but as long as we’re pretending:

If we had a solar-powered replicator that operated at 85% efficiency, one acre of solar collection (on Earth) could replicate about 3 meals a day.

Ooh: Just did another calculation. Disappointing, I suppose. If Skythia (the utopian city featured in Forget What You Can’t Remember) had no other energy/fuel/material source than solar, even if it was 100% efficient, it couldn’t support more than about 20,000 residents – and certainly a lot fewer than that, considering the high-energy and high-consumption activities they did there on a regular basis. Even if the “gravity lenses” that levitate the city were passive (ie: not consuming energy to keep the city afloat), the hundred thousand or more people I described as living there would be significantly too many! Lucky thing it definitely also uses magic and trade to supplement its existence… I guess. Maybe I’ll reduce its population in a future edition. Or maybe they also use some sort of nuclear power in addition to solar. Ooh: the definitely make use of satellites. Perhaps they have some large solar arrays in high polar orbits that beam energy down to Skythia. Because the solar energy that hits the Earth represents only about (4.5 x 10^-8) percent of the solar energy that the sun gives off.

On the other hand, when we have energy-to-matter tech, we’ll likely also have matter-to-energy tech as well, which means that the 4.4lbs/day of trash the EPA estimates the average American produces equates to around an acre’s worth of solar energy… and that the energy contained in the matter of about 10k Americans’ daily refuse is enough to power the Earth. Pretending it could be easily converted directly to energy. Hmm… Of course, by the time we reach that technology (25 years, Kurzweil?), a lot of other aspects of our lifestyle will have changed dramatically, too.

Oh, and as far as “America is fragile” – we’re just beginning to come out of a recession that wasn’t as bad as the one we had in the early 80’s, neither of which holds a candle to the global depression of the 30’s… none of which came close to breaking America. Not world wars, not the end of slavery (a foundational change in our economic structure), not the further social changes brought about with the introduction of birth control… America is not fragile. America could certainly survive (and I believe would be better off with) universal health care. The rest of the civilized world does. But that isn’t even what’s on the table, right now. No one in power is even coming close to actual Health Care Reform – all they’re doing is mucking about with Health Insurance Reform… These are not the changes that America is calling out for, and they’re nowhere near enough to “destroy America.” You’re crying wolf. I can only consider it a good thing, because hopefully all the people you’re riling up about this now will know better than to listen to you when real reform comes rolling down the pike in years to come.

Cheating, Death – giveaway at Blog with Bite

Haven’t bought your own copy of my new zombie novel, Cheating, Death, yet? It’s only $4.99 as an eBook or $9.99 in paperback… and I gave away copies of the paperback to 5 lucky Goodreads readers this weekend. If you weren’t one of the winners, you have another chance to snag a free copy: Blog with Bite is giving away four more copies this week! [Blog with Bite: Cheating, Death Giveaway!] Entering can be as easy as leaving a comment or tweeting a link – and you can increase your chances just as easily; read the post for all the details. (Contest ends this Friday the 13th!)

In addition, I’ve done a Q&A about Cheating, Death at Blog with Bite. I think you might enjoy reading it – and if you like horror et cetera, you might like to take a stroll around the site & see some of the other books they’re reviewing and authors they’re interviewing. They’ve got an interesting dynamic for a book review site, where all the reviewers give their individual takes of the same book – so you get more than one point of view. (I’m looking forward to seeing what they have to say about mine!)

Remember, if you’re a book blogger who’d like to review Cheating, Death, just let me know and link me to your blog – I’ll be glad to send you a PDF right away. I might be able to swing another paperback or two (though I’ve already reached the number I’d set aside initially for reviewers) if you ask nicely. Or, if you prefer to listen to the book, the podcast version starts going out this Friday the 13th, as well. Look for it on Podiobooks.com and on the Modern Evil Podcast.

why, goals

I’ve always been interested in the answers to procedural whys. Why is it done this way, why not that way? I’ve also been interested in asking the deeper meaning whys, usually still about the way the world works and what it asks of me. Why do I have to do this at all? Why do people behave the way they do? I’ve rarely been good at answering why.

I’m still thinking about my life, my work, money and motivation and all the rest. I recalled reading several places lately talk about a dichotomy they perceive in reasons for writing, and knowing that it is a common conception – and a dichotomy usually brought up to paint one side as pretentious and tell them to get on the other side or they’re going to fail. See, there’s this idea that writers are in it to make money or they’re in it for the art (at least two bloggers in the last week spelled this “ahht” – just to be sure their readers understood they consider art-for-arts-sake pretentious and despicable). I keep reading people who believe that anyone who is writing “art” or who feel they “must” write, but who aren’t serious about doing whatever it takes (and here they usually have a plan or idea for how low one must go, how hard one must work, and exactly how to accomplish “whatever it takes”) to make money is in for the dreaded “rude awakening,” and they’d better start thinking like a businessman or else.

Of course every time I read such a thing, every time that dichotomy is presented, my initial reaction is something like “what if neither of those is my reason?” What if I don’t even know what my reason is? What if I’m not interested in or motivated by money? What if I think “serious” art and literature seems mostly pretentious and/or unreadable, too? What if the closest thing I have to an answer to why I write is that … I was going to write, anyway, I may as well sell it? Wait — that doesn’t answer the question! That’s why I’m running a publishing company & putting out & selling books, not why I write. I have no idea why I write! I just know I do.

I write. I’ll keep writing. I’ll write >1 book a year, even if I have to work a soul-crushing job, for however long I survive such a hopeless situation. Since switching to being a full-time creative, I now write 2-4 times as much (and paint >5 times as much) as I did when it was just in my off hours. (oh, and I podcast my writing twice a week, every week – which I never had time for before) I may be earning next-to-nothing (so far) doing this, but I haven’t found a job yet that was worth my life – though I have found that most other jobs would cost it. That may be reason enough, I suppose, for doing things the way we are – that if I have to stop doing this and rejoin “the workforce” I’ll soon die.

I don’t really “get” goals. Goals. I don’t get it. Add that to the list of things I don’t grasp. Ooh, there was this one time, for four or five years straight, where I tried to figure out “goals.” Eventually I hit a philosophical roadblock of breaking it all down until it was clear that “goals” and “values” and such were all totally arbitrary – usually unconsciously given to people by their families and their cultures, but almost never actually, meaningfully, reasonably and independently developed.

I’ve never been very good at goals. I’m good at action, at doing things. Getting things done, I can do. Having goals and priorities… not consciously or intentionally, no. You may think it’s just a difference in phrasing for me to say, for example, “I didn’t set a goal of writing Cheating, Death. I decided it was time to write a zombie book, I thought about what I wanted to write for a while, then I sat down to write it and, two weeks later, it was done.” With art, I usually just start with a blank canvas and see where it takes me. With all my other books, I haven’t usually decided what they’re going to be about before I start; I just start writing and find out what the story is as I write it. Inasmuch as I have goals, they’re either immediately carried out or I procrastinate for a while first, and then immediately carry them out.

What’s my “5 year goal”? I was thinking about this a bit lately (I was extrapolating from a more current train of thought, to try to wedge the way I actually think into the “goals” thing that everyone else is so fond of), and came up with something like: After 5 years (by the end of 2014 or so), I hope to have 20 to 30 books in print (Cheating, Death was my 11th book) and to have created 300+ new pieces of artwork. (Which got me thinking about how I’m going to need to redesign wretchedcreature.com in the next year or two, to accommodate so many new pieces.) Not much other detail has come to me re: 5-year-goal, since then… but I don’t usually think in terms of goals. And this is really just an extrapolation of “I’d like to write 2 to 4 new books a year, and to try to create at least 5 new pieces of art every month.” Which is a set of goals I’ve created for public appearances – literally, I set down and drafted those so that when people asked, I would have something to say. It’s based on factors such as past experience with my own writing speed and professional artists’ statements about minimum production levels.

Speaking of which, I’m beginning to run into problems with overproduction. I have a huge inventory of blank canvas just waiting to become art, but a big factor in my procrastination is that I’m running out of wall space. I’m not selling as fast as I’m painting. I’d like to be painting more. I’d love to be able to be painting every day. I can’t. It’s unreasonable. Not only do I not have a dedicated space to paint in right now (ie: I paint in the living room, which is a high traffic area of the house), but if I did paint that much, I would be producing art significantly faster than I’m currently able to sell it. (Did I mention I just dropped all my art prices? Seriously – significantly lowered! Go! Look!) So part of why I picked 5 for my fake goal was that if I did manage to hit it (and if half or more of that was mini-paintings) I wouldn’t find myself up to my neck in art.

Of course, a solution to that problem is probably obvious to you business-minded folks. Obviously, if I would just sell more art, I wouldn’t have trouble storing new art. Gosh, why didn’t I think of that? It’s the same thing with the income problem I mentioned yesterday – if I would just sell more books, sell more art, et cetera, I wouldn’t have this problem. If I would just write more commercially, or if I would be more outgoing, get better at marketing and at publicity and at putting myself in front of people, and a dozen other things that give me panic attacks… yeah, maybe. Continue reading why, goals

statistics, perspective, perseverance

I’ve been seeing a bit more of statistics hitting the web lately, with regard to different independent authors’ successes at finding audiences and making money online. There is only a tiny percentage of people who are comfortable revealing such statistics, but as more and more authors begin to use the internet to get their words in front of people, the pool grows and -with it- the number of numbers available. I have considered, now and again, posting my own statistics. My numbers. My facts and figures. Sometimes I have given a few numbers. Here and there. I’m still considering it.

All these numbers, they’ve helped me get a bit of perspective on my own numbers. Working in a near-vacuum, it’s been very difficult to tell whether my numbers were good or bad. Whether they painted an average picture, or a below average one. Whether my struggle was a result of the medium, its newness, and the fractional nature of the cutting-edge (it is, by definition, not mainstream) – or whether my struggle has been a result of some failure on my part. The more numbers I see, the more clear it is to me that I am -at least in part- to blame.

(This may be my severe depression talking.)

I am aware I am not even trying to write fiction with mass-appeal. I’m not trying to write like other authors. I’m not trying to fit into any particular genre or genres. I do things with my books that no one sees, no one notices, no one thinks about (or if they do, no one mentions – and those I’ve asked are oblivious), and while I’m doing unseen things I require readers to carefully parse sentences and to consider meanings, just to get through the books. I use “big” words, uncommon words, and I use them in long sentences to express complex concepts. I am aware that I am not writing easy books, or books for everyone. It’s my fault I write this way. I’m to blame.

It’s also a choice. I didn’t choose to be an author because I thought writing would be a good way to make a living, or because I thought I’d be good at cutting off a slice of the multi-billion-dollar worldwide publishing market. I chose to try to find a way to make money selling my books because I know I’m an author, and because I’d rather be doing something that comes naturally than struggling just to survive every day. (2007 was the soul-crushing, creativity-wrecking breaking point – I was still writing, but could barely manage to write more than a haiku’s length at once, and it was mostly about how painful working my corporate desk job was: I published it anyway, it’s Worth 1k.) … and though the struggle still exists (in fighting with a world that still expects me to pay the bills in months when people aren’t buying what I’m selling, and in fighting the traditional publishing world, and in fighting my own severe aversion to business and marketing), it is significantly less here, and distant. Continue reading statistics, perspective, perseverance

trick v. treat

I saw some tweets today, some people making comments about their preference re: tricks and re: treats. It’s Halloween-time, it’s understandable, and it occurred to me that this says something about people. About what sort of person they are.

Actually, at first it directed me to think about the fact that, as a child and as a youth, I was never exposed to the culture and reality of Halloween “tricks” – for me, and as far as I knew, the repeated phrase “trick or treat” was just part of the Halloween ritual. Especially as a child, I never thought about the meaning of the words – I just said what I was expected to say, when I was expected to say it, and was rewarded with candy. Later, as an adult, and only through cultural context and never through personal experience, I became aware that for other people, Halloween isn’t (just) about dressing up in a silly costume and practicing communism with candy – it’s about pranks, tricks, vandalism, et cetera. None of which has ever seemed like a good idea, or fun, to me.

Thinking about this today, and about the people who were saying that they’d always preferred tricks to treats, on Halloween, I saw immediately that it corresponded directly to the sort of people I don’t like. Inconsiderate people, assholes, people who think of themselves first and often others not-at-all. People for whom saying “trick or treat” taught them that it was morally and socially acceptable to extort what you want from people with threats of violence and vandalism and harassment. Who were probably taught, if not by their parents then by other youths of the same ilk, that it’s wholly appropriate to act out (and break the law) if, on 10/31, you ask a homeowner for candy and aren’t satisfied by the result.

I was taught to obey the law. To me, Halloween is about sharing, and community-building. When I first heard about people going to neighborhoods other than their own for “better candy”… even as a youth, I knew better – that’s clearly exploitation of the modern urban isolationist lack-of-community. Admittedly, I’m not much good at community myself, these days. I also don’t like wearing costumes, at all. And I mostly don’t like to participate in holidays. But that’s personal preference – and so is, I guess, having respect for other people, for their property, and for the law.

To me, one of the ideas of Halloween is that even though not everyone wants to or is able to participate (some houses stay dark and/or have no candy), there’s more than enough candy to go around. Everyone takes home a bag full of a wide variety of treats, and everyone gets to see all the different and interesting costumes and the happy families, and to connect with the people in their neighborhood. There’s no need to follow through on the ritually-threatened “tricks” to act out against non-participants; you’re going to have a good time and get candy without them. Obviously, this requires a critical mass of participants – but that’s why it’s supposed to be about the community! If you lived in a neighborhood where most of the people didn’t want to participate, and you were part of a community with those people, you would know it, and vice versa.

Communist activities like Halloween work only when there is a community of people who are connected to one another – isolationism and self-interest run contrariwise to them. Being community-minded leads to a harmonious event where everyone has a good time and is rewarded. Being self-interested and having a disregard for community leads to tricks, pranks, vandalism, and retaliation, which would only lead those being attacked for not participating toward further isolation from the community that attacked them.

I think this post changed tracks, somewhere. Thinking in words again, I guess.