Disclaimer: November 2008

I really wanted to put something creative together for this month.

Unfortunately, the Fully Booked contest has taken up virtually all of my time this weekend. See that little marker at the bottom of this post? That indicates that I'm writing this at a little past 1:30 in the morning. I mention this because I only just finished my submission less than an hour ago, and I'm now waiting for the printer to finish spitting out the four copies I need to tuck into an envelope and hand-deliver it halfway through the metropolis.

Chances are that it won't hold a candle to the other one million, seven hundred three thousand, six hundred and fourteen submissions. I'll probably never see my manuscripts or CD again, which is a bitter pill to swallow when you consider that my work is eighteen pages long. Fair enough -- at least I know that I'll still be able to beat any eventual winner in a wrestling match involving kiddie pools and fettuccine carbonara.

Of course, November also happens to be NaNoWriMo month, which means that I have a few contacts urging me to get my act together and scribble something for the novel-writers. I'll say this now, though: I have no plans of joining NaNoWriMo. Writing a novel is extremely different from writing a short story, and I'd rather stick with the latter over the former. There are too many hack novelists floating around nowadays, and not enough hack short fictionists.

I will make one concession, however: This month, I will attempt to write no less than ten short stories for this blog. Yes, that's right -- I will aim to put up a piece of fiction for each and every one of my posts this month. I make no guarantees as to the length or the quality of the writing, and I may pull something from the crank file every now and then... but if I'm physically incapable of putting together a novel with my busy schedule, then I might as well try for the next best thing. And, heck... you'd like to see me try, now wouldn't you?

Now that that's out of the way, let's go ahead to the basic tenets of this disclaimer. If you've seen any of my other disclaimer posts, then these should be immediately familiar -- but heck, let's go through them again:

1 - Every post on this blog is an original work that was written and developed by Sean. The basic exceptions are those items that belong to other authors, in which case I am careful to provide the correct acknowledgements and attributions. If the author has a web site that I deem safe to visit, then I will provide a link to that site. Otherwise, I actively try to give every creator out there the credit that is due to them.

2 - If your work is exhibited on this blog in an unauthorized manner, or if it is shown in a method that you deem offensive to the general public, you are free to contact me for negotiation. I am a perfectly reasonable person who is willing to listen to perfectly reasonable arguments. I am willing to comply with requests to remove the disputed item/s, or possibly provide compensation for their use so long as the agreement is fair.

3 - If you wish to use anything on this blog, you are welcome to contact me in a similar manner and ask for permission to use the work. I may ask for compensation (especially if the work will see a certain degree of exposure), but this will often be no more than a simple attribution and link to this web site.

4 - I hold a heavy anti-plagiarist stance. I look down upon people who take other people's works and try to pass them off as their own... much less people who do it to me. I expressly state that you should not take anything from this blog with the intent of submitting or publishing it under your name, nor should you attempt to use my works in a manner for which they were not intended. If you do this anyway, I will come after you with either a bunch of lawyers or a pack of pit bulls, and I personally don't know which of them will feel worse.

5 - I adhere to the tenets of the Creative Commons License, which can be found at the bottom of my right-hand sidebar here. Not only does it offer some means of protection in pseudo-legalese, but it also makes for good reading in the wee hours of the morning.

That's it, ladies and gents. Wish me luck.