I want to write. Well, of course, I do; but I don't mean programs and technical documentation, but novels. My New Years resolution is to finish the book that I started some time ago and get it published. Why this sudden change of mind? Just a few months ago I wanted to start a business based on WebIssues. I even managed to briefly bring the attention of the management of the company I work for to it. But their idea of investing very little in order to hopefully get some profit wouldn't make too much sense. My own vision wasn't downright rejected, but considering all the political aspects that rule a corporation like this, and my complete lack of influence on these things, I can't realistically expect that this is ever going to happen.
Obviously, making a living from writing is an even more insane idea. It's a very demanding market, and in Poland also quite a narrow one. It also requires a lot of pure luck, probably even more than running a successful business. Not to mention that writing a novel requires huge amounts of time. But the real problem is that I'm really starting to hate programming. Commercial or open source, it's tedious, repetitive and rarely creative. And writing is not a new idea. I wrote some stories as a child. In high school I started writing a book with two friends; it didn't last long, but it was a lot of fun. But this time it's different, because I already have most of the plot in my mind, so the ideas are there waiting to be put on paper.
I already mentioned the novel I'm writing once or twice, but perhaps this time I will shed some more light on it. The idea came to my mind in summer 2011, while I was reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but it was also influenced by Lev Grossman's The Magicians which I read shortly before. It's basically a cyberpunk story, taking place largely in two different virtual worlds, but it also has some elements of contemporary fantasy and techno-thriller. The main characters are a few students of a school for young hackers, which is called the Academy of Magic, because in a virtual world, the boundaries between hacking and magic are blurred for the uninitiated. As my younger brother described it, when I told him about the novel today, it's like a "rolled pancake" :). I admit that mixing genres is risky, but if I do it well, maybe something interesting will come out of this.
And by the way, yesterday was my son's first birthday :). I must publish some new photos soon because I haven't done that in a while.