(no subject)
As I sit and continue to try and hammer out a new book to submit, I realize I have nothing but respect for pre-internet authors. Not that I didn't always admire them (or at least some more than others), but as I turn to the internet for the umpteenth time in order to fact-check some tiny detail or to correct my spelling on a word that Word doesn't automatically correct, I'm blown away by how much LONGER this would've taken had I had to go elsewhere to find my information. Need to know if the trunk is in the front or the back of a Porsche Carrera? No problem. Punch it in, you get your answer in seconds. Pre-internet? Guess I'd have to go find a stack of car magazines, or call a Porsche dealership...
Time was I used to write in libraries. It made the most sense, if I needed to look something up, then it was right there. But now, while I still wouldn't mind writing in a library (if only for the whole, getting out of the house thing), it's not the necessity it once was. While I'm not saying the internet is fully right all the time, the wealth of info at your fingertips, and being able to verify it from more than one source, makes it fairly reliable.
Does this mean that one of the first 'rules' of writing, write what you know, is no longer so rigid? I mean, I don't HAVE to have been to Las Vegas to use it as a setting now. Thanks to Google maps/Earth etc., I can actually fake my way through it now. Of course, it still helps to have the intimate knowledge of your setting, but well, I can't set everything in Toronto, my memories of Montreal are a wee bit hazy, and Waterloo is just not going to cut it as an exotic setting. So yay for the internet.
This also makes me think that now there really is no excuse for wrong facts in books. Since every detail can be checked and rechecked, it should all be right. That adds a layer of pressure that I don't think was always there before. Sometimes, editorially mistakes could be let go if it still made sense in the overall plot. But now, the reader can jump on and find out if something they suspect isn't right.
Of course, I'm not really saying anything new here, I know that. I just don't think it had really hit me full force before. I'm a little slow on the information highway sometimes :)
Time was I used to write in libraries. It made the most sense, if I needed to look something up, then it was right there. But now, while I still wouldn't mind writing in a library (if only for the whole, getting out of the house thing), it's not the necessity it once was. While I'm not saying the internet is fully right all the time, the wealth of info at your fingertips, and being able to verify it from more than one source, makes it fairly reliable.
Does this mean that one of the first 'rules' of writing, write what you know, is no longer so rigid? I mean, I don't HAVE to have been to Las Vegas to use it as a setting now. Thanks to Google maps/Earth etc., I can actually fake my way through it now. Of course, it still helps to have the intimate knowledge of your setting, but well, I can't set everything in Toronto, my memories of Montreal are a wee bit hazy, and Waterloo is just not going to cut it as an exotic setting. So yay for the internet.
This also makes me think that now there really is no excuse for wrong facts in books. Since every detail can be checked and rechecked, it should all be right. That adds a layer of pressure that I don't think was always there before. Sometimes, editorially mistakes could be let go if it still made sense in the overall plot. But now, the reader can jump on and find out if something they suspect isn't right.
Of course, I'm not really saying anything new here, I know that. I just don't think it had really hit me full force before. I'm a little slow on the information highway sometimes :)