Scrivener Software

I would be remiss if I didn’t send a shout-out to the producers of Scrivener software.

I’ve been looking for a long time for a good application that would provide both a good writing environment and a means of keeping all the scenes, character outlines, research files, and other documents organized and provide methods for easily outlining and re-aranging material.

Scrivener does all that and more. I’ll likely show some screen shots of the software at work as November progresses.

Rules Clarification

I’m kind of a stickler for rules. Like the idea that a posted speed limit is the maximum allowable speed on given stretch or road rather than a suggestion for the rate of travel below which you are allowed to make obscene gestures to a slower driver in front of you.

So I’ve been kinda’ careful about how much pre-planning I’ve been doing for my novel before November 1st. In No Plot? No Problem! Chris Baty lays down the law that only one week is allowed for novel research prior to beginning the 30-day novel road trip. Yet so many NaNoWriMo participants seem to develop elaborate plot lines and character sketches (exhibited by the thousands of posts on the forums already in mid-October) that I knew I must have missed something. I did.

Dragonchilde (the forums moderator) answered the question about pre-WriMo planning like this:

"Planning isn't against the rules. No Plot? No Problem! is more about writing a book in a month, rather than NaNoWrimo - our rules are a bit different. It's a great guide nonetheless!"

So I checked the FAQ and here’s what I found:

“Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.”

Woo Hoo! Now when my characters are bugging me with details about their lives I’ll feel free to jot them down on the nearest napkin or coworkers forehead before I forget them.

What is the value of eLife?

How has wireless technology affected our society and each of us as individuals? Do Twitter, Facebook and other trendy communication platforms enhance our relationships with other or allow us to drift further into isolation with the illusion of increased socialization?

Imagine how different your own life would be if your only interactions with other human beings were though electronic media. Imagine further that your interaction with the entire planet was only via electronic media - that you never again smelled a freshly peeled orange or felt the warmth of the sun on your skin. How would your hopes, dreams, loves and fears be changed? What if such a life could mean immortality? Would you choose it?

These are some of the questions that the characters of The Moravec Threshold will face.

About the Title of the Book

The seed for this novel was planted in 1994 when I met Hans Moravec at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. He gave a speech about the state of the art in robotics and predicted that the memory and processing capacity of computers would someday outperform the computational abilities of the human brain. He suggested that future robotic deep space explorers would have the same independent deductive and interpretive abilities that humans have without the biological needs and limitations. Finally, in front of a roomful of world-renowned biologists, he predicted that the next major step in human evolution might involve the development of electronic offspring that would continue to evolve as purely electronic beings and that it would be that evolutionary leap that would allow us to colonize space.

As a scientist and a dreamer, I wonder now, as I did that night 15 years ago, when the first of us will upload the entirety of our memories, desires, dreams, biases and fears to electronic media where sophisticated software will carry out the same deductive calculations that we now call "thought." Certainly we have bounded, rather than crawled, closer to realizing that possibility over the past decade and I believe that the day is fast approaching when the first human e-clone will be born.

This story is about the dangers we face as we approach that event horizon unprepared, unchecked and unaware of the consequences or freeing a dualistic human consciousness from its own mortality. The characters in this story will face choices about the value of the biomedical and biotechnological advances they work to create. For some, it will become necessary to re-examine their own ideas about boundary between of life and death, the ethics of the modern medicine and the meaning of family.

In a 21st century world where technology is beginning to blur the boundaries between real and virtual lives, The Moravec Threshold will challenge your beliefs in everything.

Countdown to NaNoWriMo 2009

The Moravec Threshold is my NaNoWriMo 2009 project.

Since the contest requires writing more than 50,000 words on one manuscript in the month of November, I decided to focus on this novel since it's been pestering me to write it for a few months now. This BLOG will host excerpts from the text as it flings itself from my fingers along with photos from the month of literary abandon.