man bites world

Gosh, it sure seems drafty in here!

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Yay! I’m back at Man Bites World this morning, and Jeez it feels good to work on a first draft again. The only thing that would have made it better is if I’d exceeded my fifteen hundred word goal for the day instead of just meeting it, but hey, there was much reviewing of the story to be done, to remind myself where I was.

Also, although the current draft is about 32K words, I’m adding in scenes around the 6K mark. There’s a scene that needs to be in there, setting up one aspect of the plot and establishing a major character. I kept putting it off last time, and a third of the way in is much too late.

Unfortunately, every page I add to this section is another page before Cool Supporting Character appears, and I was told explicitly to bring her into the book as early as possible. It can’t be helped, though. I swear.

Also, there are a ton of things I’ve been meaning to write about here, including the torture memos and the President’s decision to hold back the photos, not to mention the progress health care reform is making. And TV. And movies. And holy cow: books.

I just can’t find the time to open the window and type it all in, though (and you’re probably all relieved, too). Someday, maybe, I’ll have time for more interesting posts.

Pop the cork on the champa–zzzzzzzz

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I just received confirmation from my editor that she received the (probably) final revision to Everyone Loves Blue Dog. Of course she’ll have to read it again to be sure it all works, but I should have the next couple months clear to tear into Man Bites World.

Yay!

Unfortunately, I have about 60,000 words to write before the end of July. That’s not impossible, but it does push at my limits, especially since I’ll also need to revise in that time (I always need to revise). We’ll see. Also, I’m tired. Have I mentioned lately that I’m tired? I say that all the time? Really? Well, it’s true.

And I got to meet Charles Stross last night at the Pike Place Brewery. Nice guy. Too bad I had a socialization fail. Ah, well.

Pizza tonight

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My son’s school is having a benefit pizza party tonight. Mom and boy are already there, hanging out at Volunteer Park or the library nearby, and I’ll be catching a bus over there later to join them. It sucks that they have to kill three hours between the end of school and the start of the party, but it didn’t make much sense to have him ride home on the school bus for an hour, demand food at home, then take a Metro bus in the other direction.

As for me, I’m making progress on Everyone Loves Blue Dog, but I can’t shake the feeling that I should have finished by now. I really really want this thing to be in my rear view mirror. Man Bites World is sitting fallow while I tinker and trim, and I am itching to get back to it. … Blue Dog is solved. It’s done. At this point, I’m just managing the reader’s experience, which is important (very important, I know) but it isn’t interesting.

Also, I’m tired. Tired enough to feel kinda sick. If we owned cell phones, I’d call my wife and beg off.

“… All perfect light and promises.”

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I’ve been having a good couple of days on the writing-front. Starting on Saturday, Man Bites World has been coming together in a way that really makes me happy. The characters, the plot, all of it suddenly broke into a sprint. Even the long, talky conversation was working for me.[1]

But of course I knew yet another set of notes were coming for Everyone Loves Blue Dog, and I knew that the better things were going for book 3, the more likely book 2 would interrupt.

Well, things must have been doing even better than I thought, because the secret writing gremlins have not only arranged for the next round of revisions to hit today[2], but I’m also told I’ll be getting the page proofs for Child of Fire later this week.

Momentum is for breaking, I guess.

Still, the last couple days have been so good that I’m expecting to hit my weekly goal early. If so, I can take Saturday morning off (and sleep in!). Blessed, blessed sleep.

[1] My editor was curious how I was going to portray one of the antagonists, a guy who is planning wholesale destruction but still considers the protagonist his good friend. I’m hoping “Just because I plan to euthanize the world doesn’t mean I want to be a dick about it” covers that ground pretty well.

[2]The revision recommendations on ELBD do not include cutting my dark(ish) ending. Plenty of other work to do, though. We’ll see how the next draft is received.

Dear Book:

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If I want to make the characters to do something crazy and cool, please do not fight me on it. I am not interested in hearing that my ideas don’t make sense or that the characters would never do that. I have a word count goal to make for the day.

Or not.

Sincerely,
your author

You know what helps my concentration? Distractions

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Let me be more specific: I’m sitting at a little table at Starbucks. One of the homeless guys from the neighborhood comes in and sits about three feet from me (it’s a small place) at about two-o’clock from me.

He’s wearing flip flops and his feet are filthy and covered with sores. He has two bags with him full of random crap, and he can’t seem to decide where to sit. He moves to a table, leaves his bag there when he moves to a comfy chair, spends about five minutes throwing wooden stirrers onto the chair opposite one at a time, then picks them up and throws them on the floor, then picks them up again and throws them onto a table.

Me, I’m deliberately not looking at him. Not when he’s standing at a corner scratching his back on the wall, not when he’s letting his feet dangle over the arm of the chair, not at all. He’s much too close to me for us to look at each other without engaging, and once that starts I’m never going to get anything done.

So I kept my eyes on my laptop screen. I kept my hands on the keyboard. And I met my goal for the day. Now I have to get a couple things done around the apartment and write enough to make yesterday’s goal, too. (eta: Done)

Book three and book two

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First, a link: We’ve already had Jane Austen meets Dracula. Then we had Jane Austen and Zombies.

Now, finally, to complete the trifecta, we have Pride and Predator, courtesy of, yes, Elton John. (Seen via Bookslut.)

Would you really rather live in a different world than this one?

And now to more/less serious things. This morning I really dug into Man Bites World and did a lot of good work. I finished well, well over my daily quota–far enough over, in fact, that I was thinking I might manage my weekly quota by Friday and could (gasp!) sleep in on Saturday morning.

Then I came home and found my editorial notes on Everyone Love Blue Dog waiting in my inbox.

Which means it’s time to put book three aside and get back to book two, momentum or no. And the notes are very good, too, just what you’d expect. (Side note: I’m told book two will be coming out in May 2010, tentatively)

And unfortunately, they’re just what I was afraid of, too. The biggest note is on the ending. It’s meant to be a tragedy–violent, thrilling, and terrible, in which the protagonist is backed into a situation where he has to fight people he doesn’t want to fight.

Should I change it so he doesn’t fight them? So they don’t die, but instead wake up later with amnesia? Let his partner live to come back in another book? And that minor character? And that one and that one, too?

Too many corpses is the verdict. I don’t know what to think about that. That final fight scene was the scene the whole book was aiming toward. It’s why the protagonist is wrestling with PTSD in book three and is desperate for some kind of redemption.

And these are books about a basically decent guy who’s been drafted into an organization of ruthless killers. Should we expect him to get a little murderer on him sometimes?

At the same time, I understand the concern. The ending is very dark. Very dark. Maybe it’s “I’ll never read anything by this asshole again” dark. I don’t read many books like that, so why did I write one?

Seriously, I read books that are harrowing but basically fun, so why am I talking to my wife about comparisons between the basic brutality of incredibly powerful utterly alien supernatural beings and the sociopaths on third world death squads?

This is something I need to figure out. What makes you pick up a book you would consider “dark.” A book that is harsh and unforgiving to its characters, where they face deadly situations and actually die. When, if ever, do you go looking for that?

Skip this post if you hate Valentines Day

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But first of all, I met today’s goal and made up the words I missed on Wednesday. The book is finally hitting its stride, thank Pikachu. Now, if only I hadn’t put in a bunch of exposition that was basically a repeat of 30 pages before…

I hate exposition.

Also: it’s Love Day. I got up at 4:30 to make Salad Eater the ginger pear scones she requested. I’d mixed the dry ingredients last night and wrapped her gift, too (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). No flowers this year. That was an expensive book.

Unfortunately, I left to write today’s pages before she woke up, so her Love Day gifts were sitting on the table waiting for her. It would have been nicer if I was there, but it didn’t happen.

Time to collect my library books and go home.

It’s been a while since I talked about politics here

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I never even commented on Daschele’s withdrawal from the health care reform fight, even though the scandals he was facing seemed fairly minor and his loss hurt our chances of seeing decent health care reform in this country.

But I do want to post about two things, quickly. First, I hope everyone takes a couple minutes to read this op-ed in the Washington Post. It’s co-written by Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists in recent years who publicly warned of the financial crash that hit us months ago.

He’s calling for the government to nationalize the banks put failing banks into receivorship. It’s worked in the past, and if the government acquires and then sells troubled assets after they aren’t so troubled any more, it would not be such a financial hardship on the tax payers.

It would also free up credit for businesses who are struggling to replace capital and reduce the size of institutions that are “too big to fail.” We really shouldn’t have those any more, and a little breathing space to let us regulate those would be welcome.

Check it out.

Next, I have leap frog over the Republican refusal to join Obama and the Dems on the stimulus package, bipartisanship, GOP discipline (message- and otherwise) enforced by hardcore conservative interests willing to put up ambitious conservative politicians in the upcoming primaries and talk about Betsy McCaughey.

In 1994, McCaughey was part of the political hit job against the Clinton health care reform plan. She wrote an article in which she said she read the whole thing and gave her thoughts–and stated that the plan would allow the federal government to block you from seeing a doctor of your choice.

This was reported widely by Republican opponents and in the press, and helped fuel public opposition to the bill. Nevermind that it was an outright lie. Clinton’s plan stated exactly the opposite. Explicitly.

Now she’s back, claiming that the stimulus bill has secret provisions that allow the federal government to decide what treatments you can get.

It’s all BS, but it’s all over Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the other usual suspects. See here for a small link farm (really more of a pea patch) of bloggers pointing out the outright deceptions in her remarks.

How does that rate a comment when the whole stimulus bill fight didn’t? Her lies this time around are an attempt to stifle means testing for medical treatment. What works? What doesn’t? What works best? What’s uselessly expensive? See, McCaughey is on the board of a medical device company, and works for a think tank funded by the pharmaceutical industry. She knows that one in five dollars in this country is spent on health care, and that a frightening percentage of that money is wasted on unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

Very profitable unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

It sounds crazy to say it, but some people think that gathering data on what treatments work best–saving lives–and which don’t is controversial. They’re afraid that letting Americans see the numbers will cut into their profits. And they’re right.

Watch out.

In happier news, I met my daily goal again today. I have a book to give my wife for VDay, and when I leave to write in the morning, I plan to have it waiting on the table for her along with a nice, fresh scone.

Cya.

Ugh.

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The crappy thing about buying a jacket from a thrift shop like Value Village, even a nice one, is that you might stick your hand in the pocket and pull out an old, yellowed fingernail clipping. Bleh.

My desktop computer went insane mid-comment yesterday. All I could type was Greek letters, math symbols and other crap. After a wasted hour and an increasingly bitter certitude that my computer had given up the ghost six months after my extended Applecare had run out, I discovered that it’s (almost certainly) a broken keyboard. Which means I will be stimulating the economy on my lunch hour.

I am having trouble sleeping and waking early to do my daily pages. I’m way behind on my schedule for Man Bites World, and it’s really bugging me. Then again, I always have trouble sleeping and waking at this time of year. Must do better, must do better, must do better.

And then, this morning I was riding the bus reading a book I should be enjoying much more than I am, feeling grouchy and inadequate as I head to a job I don’t much like but really really need, the bus tops the hill behind my house and I get a sudden vision.

Today is a rare clear winter’s day, and because I missed my morning bus, I was riding to work just as the sun came up. And in the time it took the bus to make a left hand turn, I caught a glimpse of the Olympic Mountains on the other side of the Sound, their snow caps pink from the rising sun. And just a few degrees above them was the full moon.

And it was beautiful.