www.andrewmackay.net:

The guys who did this deserve a day off… I’m thinking I do too… I’ll be back tomorrow!

On the other hand, a good story poorly written will sometimes make you cry. Or at least roll your eyes in frustration. Apologies to the guys I’m about to submit a good story idea poorly written to for critique. My bad!

well narrated, will sometimes cause you to spit out the drink you just sipped.

Really.

Have you ever noticed how one person being completely, totally enthusiastic about something can infect a whole group of people? I mean, one person… one person who’s really into it, who throws themselves behind an idea, who believes in it with their whole heart, and who loves it… that person can change the way a whole city of people feels about it.

Well, it’s up to me to do that, but for the whole internet. You heard me. The whole internet. Why? What could be so important?

12 days until preseason hockey begins.

28 days until the season begins… Toronto and Montreal.

I’m practically hyperventilating with excitement already.

We live in unprecedented times. The first computer I ever used (around 20 years ago) had a 1 mb hard drive. Today, in the palm of my hand, I hold a computer that has a 32 gb hard drive and responds to my fingers tapping at the screen.

Writers are not immune to this rapid advance. Take Google, for example. Google would like to take its vast resources and digitize books and sell them. No one else seems to have the money or time to invest in such a process. Nevertheless, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon have joined the Open Book Alliance, fighting against a Google-controlled library of digitized content.

Beyond the irony of Amazon saying anything (Kindle?), the whole thing stinks a little bit. I understand writers wanting to make sure that they don’t get ripped off any more than they already do for their hard work. I just can’t figure out how Yahoo and Microsoft have a dog in the fight. Their plight is fundamentally different from the authors. The authors have already got a product, Google wants to use it. Yahoo and Microsoft don’t have a product, Google has one. Google is going to use it. That’s not unfair, that’s business.

But, as writers, where do we stand? On the one hand… imagine your writing so widely available. On the other hand… who’s in charge?

Hard questions. Dickens and Shakespeare never had to deal with this sort of thing.

(edited for my inability to spell Shakespeare… duh)