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Today is my birthday

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Well, really it’s my not-birthday (ob repetitive explanation: My wife and I share a Bday, which sucks, so I bumped mine back a month). But that doesn’t matter, right? It’s just a date, and I’m supposed to celebrate the new year.

You don’t have to ask. I’m 46.

Anyway, I was up way, way too early to write, and write I did. After having almost zero idea how I was going to end A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark yesterday I bumped against the frontier of my synopsis and started brainstorming ideas. Within an hour, I had the end all worked out, and as I was smoothing it out this morning (connecting the plot points clearly, I mean) I had several more good ideas.

That’s all recorded, and at this point it’s a race to the end of the draft. I’ve already made today’s long-goal; hopefully I’ll be able to do another thousand words or so before I go home.

There will be no cake tonight. I don’t like it, and neither does anyone else in the family. We’ll be having melon-free fruit salad, instead, which is the tradition for my bday. What other efforts will be made on my behalf I do not know. I just hope I get a nap.

Anyway, I get a little more time to goof around online, then it’s back to the word mines. Have a great Friday and Happy Canada Day, you wonderful Canadians.

Boy yesterday’s post seemed cranky, didn’t it?

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I didn’t think I was being all cranky, but it geez.

Anyway, I’m not online much because of the book-writing. Both yesterday and today were big days for me. Doing 2.5K words is a modest goal for many writers, but for me it’s nearly unthinkable. Hitting that mark two days in a row, with extra time to revise an old short story? That’s practically a breakthrough. I may have transformed myself into a totally different person. I’d better oversleep tomorrow and waste the whole day on Twitter or my wife and son might not recognize me.

Anyway, it’s not even one o’clock, and I’m done for the day. ::thumbs up::

No real post today

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I’ve been more scarce that usual lately, I know. I spending that time writing, so hopefully people are okay with it.

The post I would have written here is actually up on the Suvudu.com site. It’s about the Harry Potter movies, and it’s very very serious. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be showing up on the main Suvudu site, and I’m not going to sit here trying to figure out how it works when I could be working.

As for me, post-vacation leg pain has dropped to the usual levels and I’m planning a couple of nice long walks today. Unfortunately, it’s cloudy and 54 degrees outside. Fucking Seattle.

“They’re so funny. They use the subjunctive when they ought to use the nupative.”

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Let’s make this a quick list of items of interest, okay?

First of all: Hey New Yorkers! I’m going to be in New York City next week, visiting Manhattan with my wife and son. Yes, I’m also going to meet up with my agent (first time face to face) and my editor (not first time). And others, too, if things go well.

Publishing people! Who use the subjunctive correctly! And who probably also know how to use the nupative, even though that doesn’t even exist, except in last night’s dream about condescending NY grammar fundamentalists. (See subject header)

Anyway, I’m also planning to attend the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series on June 15th. I don’t know either of the authors who’ll be reading there, but that just makes it more exciting.

Are you in New York? I’d like to meet there, and maybe do something after. I look like this. If you see me there, don’t hesitate to introduce yourself.

Second: I mentioned this on Twitter last week, but haven’t here; Twenty Palaces, the prequel to Child of Fire, is 100% done! Well, unless Del Rey buys it and my editor has notes. And except for the copy edits. And galleys. And another polish, if I want to give it one, (and I always do).

Still: One. Hundred. Percent. Done. I’m back at work on A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark (aka: The Auntie Mame Files). I like this book, although I suspect it’s going to be a stand alone. We’ll see.

Third: On the advice of a friend, I’ve started polishing up some old short stories to self-publish them. I mean, why not? Several have been published before and several will need substantial rewriting, but it will be nice to have something new to put out into the world.

Fourth: Look what came in the mail over the weekend?

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It had this in it:

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I’m going to assume he meant “this book,” to mean “the book for Harry Connolly.” Seems obvious, right?

I sorta expect a significant proportion of this text to be right out of his LiveJournal, but with luck I’ll pick up some extra tips for writing short work for small checks, rather than doing these months-long projects on spec, which sucks.

Fourth: Is it completely ridiculous for me to record all the Bookscan numbers I get from Amazon.com into a spreadsheet? I mean, I can’t even keep my characters’ names straight, but I’m fastidious about this?

Fifth: I still have a lot to do before I head to NY. Good thing I finished those Dungeon Quest books (by Joe Daly). Now that the hilarity is over, I can get some shit done.

Helpless in the face of luxury

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(I’m posting this to share my experience, not to solicit advice. If others want to share their experiences, too, I’d love it, but no advice, please.)

“It’s called willpower,” Colson Whitehead says in this PW article about… well, about many things, only one of which is the need some writers have of hiding themselves away in a hostage pit because they can’t handle distraction.

I’m one of those writers, and I freely admit that it embarrasses me. When the writing gets really difficult, I find it very difficult to focus on the problems and opportunities there, and all too easy to check my emails, or Twitter, or my LiveJournal friends list.

It used to be that I could hide at Starbucks. They charged for wi-fi and I’m too cheap to pay for my procrastination… then they backed down and offered it for free. Soon I was checking my emails, just in case something important came in, and are there new posts on LJ? Oh, what crazy shit has so-and-so said about books this time? An article on health care reform! It’s my duty as a citizen to stay up-to-date on politics, and besides I can read it while this funny video loads.

And don’t forget that I need things to blog about other than the usual I’m-tired-my-butt-itches crap. Links for the Randomness posts! Op-eds to disagree with! Movies to pick apart!

Except that I didn’t really need any of that. What I needed was time and quiet space to work. I don’t need a physically quiet space, but I do need one where my jump-around brain won’t latch onto something interesting and easy, like my Twitter timeline or the book I’m reading.

There was a Radiolab from a while back that talked about the bargains creative people have to make. It’s worth listening to, maybe while you’re doing dishes or something. For me, it’s helped me work out a new plan to increase my productivity: just like all those people who put A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE in their Netflix queue as something they’ll watch someday way out in the future while continually picking THE HANGOVER or DRIVE ANGRY for what they want to watch right now, it’s easy for me to plan virtue way in advance, but nearly impossible to grasp it in the moment. If I could be trusted to back up my own material manually, I’d crack the case of my laptop and pith my wi-fi connection. Since I can’t, I use Dropbox.

So I turn my laptop on the night before and set Mac Freedom for six hours. Maybe eight, but usually six.

That’s long enough for me to do my pages, then revise one of my old short stories for a self-pub collection I’m considering, and that’s it. I can reboot if I want to check my email at the library or whatever, or I can come straight home and wait for the timer to run out, at which point the household wi-fi handles all the backing up.

But that’s the best work around I can come up with at the moment. My brain has a hard time staying on task, and talking about willpower misses the point. If I’m hungry, tired, cold, or depressed, I can write. Adversity I can handle. What I have a hard time with, apparently, is fun, luxury, pleasure, and comfort. Those are the things that will ruin me.

Update: An article on the limits of willpower.

In which I work

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I’ve been a little unproductive lately. I’m not sure exactly why, but the pages have been difficult. Revisions have been difficult. Polishing has been difficult.

Yesterday I deliberately got a late start, set Freedom for 3 hours, and focused. It was good.

This morning I made sure to be up by 5 am. I set Freedom for the max: 8 hours. I hit the Starbucks and the library and tore into the notes (and polish) for Twenty Palaces.

And I finished more than half the book.

I dunno, you guys. Do you think the internet might by harming my productivity?

Progress on Twenty Palaces

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This morning I spent about half an hour on the phone with my agent going over her notes for Twenty Palaces aka “book zero” aka “the prequel.” They were mostly pretty straight forward and will not require much work to fix. One note, though, was a biggie. It gets at the heart of Ray’s actions and motivations in the last part of the book, and it’s yet another example of me failing at the craft because I wanted to make a point rather than keep to the characters.

Still, I took a long walk in the hot sun and I think I have a solid, sensible way to address it.

Now I just have to get to work. Good day.

Apparently, this is how I work:

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1. Shiny new idea!!! Must think about ways to make it good.

2. Think think think think.

3. I can’t stand the wait! Must start writing!

4. write write write

5. Holy crap, I’m just about at the end of the book and it’s only 34,000 words long? Why didn’t I think more before I started? If I don’t figure something out, I’m going to have to ditch all the work I’ve done on this shiny idea!

6. Think think think self-recrimination think think think.

7. Hey… what about [completely obvious thing]? Oh! Think think think think.

Spent the morning writing

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And you know what? It feels great.

I sorta expected my wife to push me to return to the convention today and make another go of it–socialize! network!–but no. Today has been work day, and I’m happy about it.

Anyway, regarding something said during a panel at Norwescon yesterday: Lou Anders was talking about ebooks, paper books, and pricing, and he said that one of the things keeping prices of paper books low was large print runs. If ebooks drive down sales of paper books, he’ll have to choose between a) smaller, more expensive print runs, which means higher prices, or b) the same old large runs of books, but with most of them stored in a warehouse and earning him a tax hit at the end of the year.

But I thought there was a c) that he was missing. If printers want to keep their businesses alive, they’re going to need to adapt to smaller print runs and downward price pressures. It seems like new technology would be the ticket here. (note: I know next to nothing about the current technology used by book printers, so clearly I’m typing this with my ass.)

I don’t mean printers in stores (although that would be tempting) because that takes forever. We’re a long way from having one or more of those in a store, handling large numbers of books at once.

But I suspect the price pressure from ebooks is going to hit printing presses especially hard. Is anyone familiar with the current state of their technology? So much has changed with printing at home in the last ten years (although obviously that’s very different) has book printing tech been changing too?

5 Things Make a Post

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1) I have three things left to do before I send Twenty Palaces to my agent: clean up some formatting issues like chapter headings, spellcheck, and check every instance of “him” in the script to see if I should have changed it to “me” when I went changed the book from a third person pov to a first person pov. So incredibly dull but I’m really catching some embarrassing errors, like “I jumped to his feet.” Oh well.

2) Here’s my Norwescon schedule:

Friday: Whatever I want.
Saturday: Whatever I want.
Sunday: Stay home and hang out with my son.

Hah! I’ll be there as a regular attendee, mainly to look around and see whatever this is to be seen. It’ll be my first convention, so I don’t expect to know anyone. If you’re going to be there and you see me, please feel free to say hello. I look like this. Also, I have a terrible memory for faces and names, so don’t be offended if it takes me a couple of seconds to “place” you.

3) Seattle is enduring the coldest April on record. I’m sorta sick of it.

4) Revisions on Twenty Palaces have taken control of my life. I can’t wait to send them off, if only so I can go back to responding to comments promptly (as opposed to passive-aggressively complaining on my blog, like this post) and reading books. Honestly, I can’t wait to spend some hours every day reading.

5) This NY Times article (only available if you haven’t used up your 20 articles/month) isn’t the first time I’ve heard that fidgeting has a powerful effect on weight gain and loss. I’ve been using my standing desk more often (thanks to the Topricin my wife just bought me) but I attribute most of the weight I’ve lost recently to the fact that I’m getting the sleep I need. I still have a long way to go, of course.