Wednesday, April 4, 2007

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood"

I find myself at a rather curious juncture, and need help reaching a decision.

Heliumpunk is rapidly becoming an obsession, expanding like a gas to fill the available volume -- which in this case is the time I normally allocate for devising and writing these blog entries that so many of you love. My time being a finite quality, there will be days when I have to choose between blogging and heliumpunking. The easy solution, of course, is to turn the literary progress into a blog entry, and thus kill two birds with one stone.

Pros:
  • I can keep my commitment to this blog while still honoring the creative impulse (which is why I started this blog in the first place)
  • I can work out some of the rougher details in real time
  • If I make an egregious error of science or logic I'm sure it will be rapidly caught and just as rapidly corrected
  • I can get instant feedback from my readers
  • By posting tidbits of the world, I can generate publicity and a readerbase befoire the thing ever gets published

Cons:
  • Some readers will get sick of the constant heliumpunk entries. Perversely, some will get annoyed that I don't post more of them.
  • Am I risking my intellectual property by doing this? I'd hate to render my stuff "unpublishable" because I put it up on the web. (IP and copyright lawyers, please contact me.)
  • I can get instant feedback from my readers. Yes, this can be a negative -- if you've ever taken a "creative writing" class you know exactly what I mean.
  • There are risks that it may become a novel by committee (see above point)
  • My work might be stolen, or co-opted, or a particularly obsessive reader might claim literary credit or monetary compensation for ideas/characters/etc that end up in the book
Also, I need to see if Plok is cool with all this. If not, then this entire post is rendered moot.

So basically... if you know anything about IP or copyright law, or have firsthand experience in this matter, please let me know your thoughts on this.

Oh yes, one more thing: I've decided to abbreviate heliumpunk as He@. For an explanation as to why the Circle-A is a symbol for punk, go here.

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