Starwalker’s drones
I’ve been thinking a lot about the characters of the drones in Starwalker lately. They’ve been developing quietly (and sometimes not so quietly), and are the best fun to write. They’re a part of the story that has a habit of surprising me.
The first thing to note is that they were not part of my original plan for the story. I have a pinboard at home covered in notecards – for characters, plot points, major entities, etc – and they’re not on it. It’s been a while since I updated it, but their absence is a sign of how their role has always been a question for me.
They were added to the story as one of those things it makes sense for a futuristic starship to have, like engines and hull plating and artificial gravity. The drones to do the jobs on board that people don’t want to do, can’t or shouldn’t do because it’s dangerous for a squishy human, or are simply unable to do. They had to be of different sizes, to fulfil different roles:
- Tiny ones for crawling around ducts and pipes, getting into those hard-to-reach places (Bit and Byte)
- Big to do the heavy lifting and external work (Wide Load and Big Ass)
- Mid-sized for general maintenance and eclectic duties, from repairs to cleaning; from tidying up personal quarters to preparing and fetching food; and, more recently, emergency medical care (Waldo and Casper).
Because it would be silly to have only one of each (everyone loves a failsafe/failover), the Starwalker has two of each kind as standard. So, six drones in total. Easy, right?
Except it would be no fun if it was that simple. The drones are an extension of the ship’s AI; a part of how a ship runs and maintains itself. And because the Starwalker‘s AI is a little bit broken/special/tweaked, it makes sense that her mobile units would also be different from the norm.
Plus, I have a great fondness for characters like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. I had no wish to recreate him (this is one of the reasons why the drones don’t speak – others below), but he’s one of the inspirations for the metal boys in my story. Another is Wall-E.
So, I have drones and a kooky AI linked to them. An AI that has a human subconscious mind (that, to start with, she didn’t know about), wonky processing, and emotions. The drones are symptoms of her real mental situation, an externalisation of her subconscious.
They’re linked into her automatic processes but they are autonomous; they have enough programming to fulfil their duties without the AI holding their hand and making every calculation and decision for them. They’re not quite full AIs themselves, though. At their core, they are much simpler beasts.
They’re also the closest thing that the ship has to ‘hands’ and a physical body that can interact with the crew. However, I decided long ago that I didn’t want to give her a ‘robot body’. So having them not be her actual hands worked better for what I was aiming for: she doesn’t do things with her drones; she asks them to do things for her. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Over the year and a half I’ve been writing this story (wow, that long?), I’ve developed the drones and their role. Starry, the personality that’s growing out of the AI/human meld, is changing and they’re changing with her. They are still agents of her subconscious; her personality spills over into them, and they become expressions of facets of her. Waldo tries to look after Elliott, while Casper is more like her mischievous side. Byte threw himself at a bomb in a doomed attempt to protect the crew, and Bit is angrily upset over his missing brother (the parallel with Danika and her missing brother is not something I had planned, but let’s pretend I did, because it works out awesomely).
The two heavy drones are probably the least distinct so far; they always come as a pair. They’re the solid backbone of the drone lineup; the big brothers who grab your collar and lift you back onto your feet. They’ll still quietly do what drones shouldn’t really do, though, like paint the name that Starry wants on her hull but is too afraid to consciously order them to put there. They’re still developing, and I’m still shaking down their role on the ship, not to mention how they fit into Starry’s muddle of self-expression.
Lately, the boys have become more independent. Starry’s going through a trying time (and something of a crisis of confidence) and they’re showing the cracks in her mental composure. She isn’t controlling them as much as she was and their actions are becoming more extreme examples of what’s going on under her hood. When she gets herself back on a more healthy psychological footing, I’m not sure how much they’ll calm down – they’ll probably fall into line a bit, but I’m not sure if they’ll go back all the way to where they used to be. The issues she’s dealing with right now will plague her for a while, and so will the effects they’re having on her drones.
Being expressions of Starry’s subconscious mind, I thought it was better not to give them voices. If they spoke, they would be more conscious, distinct entities, and lose a measure of the abstraction they currently have. Starry speaks for them, if necessary, and is responsible for translating their moods and actions into words (like the conscious mind! Get it?). Even with her datalinks, she doesn’t always fully understand what they’re up to, partially because she doesn’t look too closely into their systems and mostly because she tends to accept whatever the drone chooses to tell her. She hasn’t had a reason to delve any deeper… yet.
So, instead, they are more inclined to use body language with the crew. The drones’ actions emote enough for them to communicate, and I find it’s fun to have them express themselves in physical ways. I toyed with some kind of data readout/text display on them, but it hasn’t been necessary, so it hasn’t appeared yet.
Overall, they’re one of those nice surprises that stories can throw at you. The challenge of giving a ship ways to express herself is leading me into all sorts of interesting places, especially given the restrictions I’ve put on myself. These characters grew naturally out of the story and I love it when that stuff happens.
I adore my little drone boys; they’re great fun to write and handy tools for me to use. They’re going to be around for a while yet!
Starwalker breaks 2,000!
I went to check my web stats today, and had a lovely surprise (which was very welcome after the last couple of days!). In June, Starwalker had over 2,000 different visitors! How awesome is that?
The daily visit rate is hovering around the 200 mark, which is also pretty good (though not as good as it used to be).
Best of all, I visited Top Web Fiction, and found that Starwalker is currently sitting at the top of the science fiction category! Wow. (And number 5 overall.) That is humbling, considering the wealth of wonderful webfiction out there. Thanks to everyone who voted! You are awesome.
A nice end to my day. 🙂
Hacked: mine now
After much worrying, struggling with code and ftp, and much support from friends, the Starwalker site is now fully back under control. Phew!
I’m currently backing everything up, upgrading my various WordPress installations, and looking into further security measures that I can put in place. I don’t need to go through this again, thanks!
I’ve had a pounding headeache all day that seems to be defying painkillers, so it looks like I might not get to this week’s Starwalker post today. It’s all written, but I need to spend some mental energy on editing it before it goes up, and I’m not sure I have any left right now! If not tonight, I’ll get it up tomorrow.
I’m still getting a few errors cropping up on the Starwalker site, but they all seem to be fairly minor. I’ll clean them up when I can.
So far, the upgrades are all going smoothly. Let’s hope the rest of this process stays that way!
Thanks to everyone who has helped me through this. I’ve had so many offers of help, advice, and support. You’re all wonderful! Thank you!
Hacked: update
After much wrangling with servers and ftp last night, Starwalker is up and running, at least on the surface. It’s not completely healed, however.
The WordPress user database was trashed, and I can’t log in to the back end right now. It’s going to take some more work before I can actually get control of the site again.
The best part is, I can’t even comment on my own blog to tell anyone what’s going on. I always did put comments up when I was logged in and comments are locked unless I approve the commenter. The login is gone and I can’t approve my own comment, so I can’t update anything on there. Security ftw!
So I’m going to be heading home early today to try to sort it all out, and get the damned thing up and running again. In the meantime, I’m going to keep ploughing on at work and hope that the hackers don’t wake up and undo everything I fixed last night.
Wish me luck and coffee!
Hacked
To say that I have not had the best day today would be an understatement. After a frustrating and stressful start to my day at work, heavily laced with exhaustion and not-quite-strong-enough coffee, I got a message from one of my lovely Starwalker readers. I also got one from another reader when I got home.
Now, let me be clear. I love to get messages from my readers. It makes me a happy little writer… usually. When they are telling me that my website has been hacked, however, that is less fun.
I went to the Stawalker site feeling slightly ill and it was downhill from there. It was definitely hacked, showing a splashpage definitely nothing to do with me. I won’t say who did it or give you one of their sick little ‘look at all the sites we’ve defaced! Aren’t we cool!’ links, because the little fuckers shouldn’t have any more publicity than they’ve already had from me.
It’s not funny and it’s not clever. It’s malicious, it serves no purpose except to fuck up my day, and I hope they’re happy with themselves. Or go die in a fire; one of those.
The worst part was that I couldn’t do anything about it while I was at work. I couldn’t get into the back end of the WordPress installation at all (it didn’t exist, just their damned splashscreen) and the rest I can only access at home. There was no way for me to know how bad the damage was – had they completely wiped out the WordPress installation? Screwed over the database? Hacked a year and half’s worth of work to pieces, or just pasted on an annoying front end?
I had to wait until I could get home to investigate, and today was one of those days where I couldn’t leave early. So I was stressed out all afternoon, not knowing just how much of it is wrecked.
I got home to good and bad news. The WordPress installation was still there, just majorly hacked and disabled. I’m currently going through the painful process of re-uploading all the files to resurrect it properly. All the config is intact, and, blessedly, the database is fine. Everything seems to be there; I just have to dig it out. It’s painstaking but coming along.
The type of damage done doesn’t seem to be a WordPress hack, but a hack on the ftp account to my server. Which is worrying, considering that I haven’t used it in weeks, and don’t store those details in any browser histories. My web hosts seem sure that the leak came from my side but I am dubious; it sounds like ass-covering to me.
Grah. So now I’m spending my evening fighting with ftp to get the site up and running again. I’m partway there; with luck, I’ll get it finished in the next hour or so. Then I’ll be backing everything up (I don’t do this enough, I know, I know).
I’ll be doing some more security upgrades over the next little while. Fingers crossed, this shit won’t happen again. I certainly don’t need another day like today. I don’t think anyone does!
For my readers: thank you for your patience. I will hopefully get this week’s post up tomorrow night.
Hackers: I have nothing to say to you. Begone.
Monetising: Adverts
As a second part to my attempts to make a little out of my writing, I’ve branched out into hosting advertising spaces on my websites.
Thanks to the fabulous Project Wonderful, this is incredibly easy. Just a short time spent setting up the account on their website, a wait while they confirm the site is suitable, and then configuring the ad spaces (doesn’t take long and is very user-friendly), I now have ad boxes up on Starwalker and this blog right here.
The ad boxes are completely controllable, and I’ve only added one or two to each site; it’s counter-productive to have too many, and I hate cluttered websites. I think I’ve reached my limit in the amount of things I want to add to my sidebars!
The ads have been up for less than two weeks and already I’m seeing returns. Nothing huge – the ad payments are done in cents (and sometimes fractions of cents) – but it will all build up in time. For relatively little effort and no monetary outlay at all, it’s definitely worth it! PJ handle all the complex stuff for me; all I have to do is let it run and watch the cents tick upwards.
Definitely not enough to make a living from, but if I ever get my own adverts sorted out, I’ll be able to afford to display them through PJ using only my ad revenue. Handy!
Monetising: Donations
This subject has been on my list of things to sort out for a long time. Finally, I’m getting around to doing something about it.
Let me make one thing clear: I give my writing away for free happily and willingly, and always intend to do so to some extent. In truth, I am reluctant to ask for money on something I am offering for free.
However, there are people who would happily give money if the option was there. For e-book versions, for merchandise, and even just for visiting the website.
The first two of those options involve a lot of work (which is in progress!), but the latter is easy to set up. It’s also the trickiest for me to want to do. It seems cheeky to me! But I’ve come across a few discussions on this topic over the past months and it seems that I’m in the minority in that regard.
It’s not a case of asking for money; it’s giving the option to those who wish to contribute. Some readers like to be able to support the work they enjoy, and some writers like to support their fellow artists. The more I think about it, the more okay I am with that. If I had the funds, I might even do the same myself.
So this week, I bit the bullet and sorted out donations for my websites. It was actually shockingly easy! (Paypal really have made it a painless process – well done you guys!) There’s now a ‘Donate’ button in the sidebar on the Apocalypse Blog, Starwalker, and this site (look right, everyone!). Hopefully unobtrusive and inoffensive.
So, the avenue is now open. I don’t demand or expect anything, and if I’m honest, I’m still a little nervous about the whole thing (will people get annoyed and leave? will they suspect it’s the start of rabid commercialisation?). But let’s see how it goes!
My first step towards making money from the writing I do purely for the joy of it. Next: actually selling things to people! (Uh oh, I feel there’s a slippery slope coming!)
RedFest Guest Appearance
Through some local contacts, I’ve been asked to do a ‘writing corner’ at the Redland Spring Festival in September (RedFest). I’m not entirely sure of all the details yet, but I’ll have the space for a period of time. It has been heavily suggested that I do some kind of talk/info session about writing.
Wow. I do little talks for my writing groups fairly often these days, but this is (even more) public! And very intimidating. But very awesome.
What do I do the talk on? What do I wear? (Shut up, I’m a girl, y’know.) I should sort out business cards. Or bookmarks. Or something with my links/writing on to hand out. (Don’t want to miss an opportunity to pimp myself, after all.)
I’ll have to see if I can bribe my writing group folks to come along and keep me sane. And anyone else I can get to come! You! Are you in south-east Queensland? Then you have to come!
Can’t wait. I’m a little bit terrified. I think I should go lie down now.
Expounding
I’m not very good at updating this blog regularly. When things get busy, it’s usually the first to fall by the wayside! I tend to come along and splurge a few posts, and then focus on something else for a while.
I would like to change this. I’m not entirely sure how just yet, but I’m thinking about setting myself some time every week to write specifically for this blog.
I haven’t been creating the kind of chronicle for Starwalker that I did with the Apocalypse Blog. The journey of writing Starwalker is a rollercoaster – it’s crazy and fun and hard, and I’d like to capture some of that here. If only so I can look back and say ‘wow, I was nuts!’
I’ve also been giving talks about writing lately. I had a guest pull out of my writing group meeting this month, and put together some emergency notes so that we had something else to talk about! It was actually great fun (and I learned a lot!), but it would be nice if all this material I’m collecting didn’t just sit in a notebook somewhere.
I have plenty of stuff that I can write up. I have already started on the notes from my writing group (though assembling rambling notes into a coherent post is harder than it looks!), and will hopefully have something post-worthy in the next week. On top of that, there’s always the occasional vomit of information that has previously lived within the confines of my skull, like the recent posts on why and how to critique fiction.
Reviews. I would like to do more reviews, too. I often feel opinionated enough to write them, but finding time to do it is always the trick. Plus, I’ve promised at least one fellow writer that I would do one on their work! Sheesh. Get to it, slacker.
Perhaps I’ll try to post every other week, with a different type of post each week. That sounds terribly organised! Considering that I’m struggling to keep up with Starwalker most weeks, that is frequent enough to get me back into the habit of writing for this blog. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw in more posts as well!
So I have a plan. I have lots of things to write about. Now all I need is some time in my life, and I’m set! Watch this space, people – I will try to make it active and interesting!
How a Web Serial Helped me Write
This is a guest post that I did for the lovely Sharon T. Rose, over at Lilyfields, cross-posted here for your enjoyment. Many thanks to Sharon for letting me play in her sandbox!
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I have always struggled to find time to write. I know I’m not the only person who battles with this; full-time writers are a rare breed! I’m always studying or working full-time, juggling commitments and chores at home, and have some desire for a social life around the edges. Squeezing something like writing into a busy schedule isn’t easy; too often, it loses out to ‘more important’ things and gets sidelined.
Without a schedule for my writing time, I used to binge-write: splurge on one story while the iron was hot, get as far as a particularly tricky part, get distracted or waylaid, find I’ve lost momentum on the story, and move on to one of the many shiny new ideas that cropped up in the meantime. Rinse, repeat. I’ve started lots of stories and many of them continue to be tantalising beginnings, full of possibilities and tied shoelaces. But I’ve finished only two novels.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or NaNo to its friends) went a long way towards helping me gain the time and focus to really get my head down and write. It’s all about making time and getting it done, and it’s a wonderful excuse to put all distractions aside for a month and just write. It was exactly what I needed.
The first time I did NaNo, I aimed for the target (50,000 words) and stopped there, with much relief and self-congratulations. In my second NaNo, I aimed for the end of the story, and that became completed novel number two. Huzzah! I had found something that worked for me.
But NaNo only happens once a year, and as my fellow Wrimos will attest, it’s somewhat exhausting. As fun as it is to write a novel in a month, I wanted something more sustainable, even if it took slightly longer to reach the end of the story. I wanted to maintain the discipline and momentum of NaNo without burning out. So how to apply that to everyday life?
NaNo encourages its Wrimos to put pen to paper every day, and I had discovered that my hour-long commute was an ideal time to write for me, shoehorned in between work and home. In the feverish post-NaNo celebrations, I started to toss around ideas for how keep that up, and the best one I came up with was to start a web serial. Specifically: a fictional blog in which the main character wrote a post every day, to make me write a post every day.
It was nuts. I had no idea if I could do it or not, but enthusiasm and determination distracted me with web hosting, domain registration, website setup, and advertising, and then shoved me over the cliff while I was still giddy. All of a sudden, I was sprinting down the cliff-face, strewing posts around me with feverish abandon and generally trying not to fall on my head. Thus, the Apocalypse Blog was born.
I set myself a goal and a schedule: a year-long story, posted (and edited) every day. With no time to lose, I barrelled right over obstacles (though my poor characters often had to go around the long way) and kept piling through my list of plot ideas. Hip-deep in the story, I wrote off-the-cuff about characters I was living right alongside. Stepping back and taking stock was for after it was finished!
It was the best fun. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but a big part of letting go to something like this is saying to yourself “that’s okay”. Just go with it and enjoy the ride. Put it out there and see what happens. Sometimes when I think about it, I still get a little giddy.
When the Apocalypse Blog kicked off, I had a week’s worth of buffer: I was always a week ahead in the posts I was writing, which gave me some flexibility. That lasted for the first four months, until I fell sick with pneumonia (don’t try this at home, folks). My lovely buffer was coughed away, and I wound up writing, editing and posting in the same day.
Sounds insane? It was. And yet, it worked, for the remaining eight months of the Apocalypse Blog’s life. I didn’t miss a day.
I often wonder why it worked so well for me. Part of it was being so involved in the story; after a while, it was hard not to write it. I wanted to know what happened next!
A big part of it was the extra pressure to deliver: I had committed to a post every day, so that’s what I did.
On top of that, I don’t like the idea of putting a half-finished piece of work out into the world; the failure would have been very public and disappointed all those who had joined me on the journey. I hate to break promises and knowing that I had readers waiting for the next post, the next revelation, the next arc of the plot, pushed me on. I had to get to the finish.
Best of all, I got feedback. Readers cared enough to send me emails and I wasn’t writing into a void any more. My writing mattered to more than just me, and there’s nothing more wonderful than knowing people want to read your work! I got reviews and ratings on various sites. I also discovered supportive communities of web fiction writers, always willing to give help and advice. All of that encouraged me to keep going, to keep up the pace, and to my surprise, I found I could.
Now, I have a completed story number three. It wound up as long as three traditional novels (over 340,000 words!) written over the course of a year, and I’m absurdly proud of it.
I couldn’t just let that be the end of it, though. A month after the Apocalypse Blog finished, I started a new project: Starwalker, another web serial and fictional blog. I’m posting weekly rather than every day (I couldn’t keep that up forever!), I still don’t have a buffer, and I’m still loving it.
Having that fixed schedule pushes me and makes me push myself. I make room for my writing because I have a commitment to deliver on; it’s no longer ‘just for me’ and losing out to other parts of my life. I’m not only writing more now than I ever have in the past, I’m also pleased with what I’m creating and having a great time doing it. In the process, I’ve discovered a new format that works for me.
Web serials are not for everyone. I know that the kind of pressure it offers isn’t to everyone’s liking – especially the bufferless seat-of-the-pants pressure that apparently works for me. Other writers I know prefer to have months of buffer built up, so that deadline is there but less stressful. Others like to have the whole thing finished first. It’s really up to you and what you want to get out of it.
There are lots of great reasons to start a web serial (and I have many more than I’ve shared here!); this is just one to consider. Have a problem with writing? Try something different and see what works for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and don’t be reluctant to push yourself.
If you go for it, who knows what you’ll be able to do?