reasons i suck

Talk about terrible titles…

Standard

David Hines recently recommended a book called Meditations on Violence: a Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, and of course I snapped it up.

I’ve barely started it, but one of the early points the author makes is that too many people are willing to discount their own personal experience because it does not jibe with what a self-appointed expert tells them. One of the author’s fellow prison guards, a man who had a great deal of practical experience in fighting, did exactly this during a class of martial arts techniques.

My first reaction was: People don’t really do this, do th– And then I thought about Absolute Write.

The AW forums have see a regular traffic of newbie writers asking permission to do the most basic things. “Can I have an protagonist do unlikable things?” “Can I have an unhappy ending?” “Can I write this book in third-person present tense?” “Can I write a love story where the couple breaks up at the end?”

Frankly, that stuff drove me crazy. I wanted to say “Pick up a book! Read it! Does it work? Can you make it work? Why are you asking permission?”

And it would turn out that some person on some message board somewhere said books need happy endings, or maybe an agent wrote a blog post expressing their personal dislike of present tense. And none of that should dictate what a person can or should do.

Of course, the hard part in all of this is examining my own assumptions.

As an aside: today is the first day all week that I hit my daily word count goal. Yeesh. Tomorrow will be better, I hope.

“George R.R. Martin is not working for you.”

Standard

I’ve been thinking about Neil Gaiman’s post on this subject for a little while, and prompted by Jim Hines’ discussion of it (and Gaiman’s followup), I thought I’d toss in my two cents, which no one asked for.

Continue reading

You know what I hate?

Standard

You know what I hate? Tasting my own blood.

Yeah, I went to the dentist today. No fillings or drillings were required, but the scraping and gouging still made my gums bleed.

In other news, I am making slow progress on Man Bites World. Not surprising. It’s part of my process (apparently) to start slowly and pick up steam.

I’m happy with the scenes I’m writing, at least.

Gosh, it sure seems drafty in here!

Standard

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

Standard

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.

Bad day

Standard

Yesterday was a bad day, despite a bunch of good things happening.

It started with me at work on … Blue Dog (still). I had hopes of wrapping it up, but I was working very carefully over a sequence of pages that haven’t been as strong as it could be. Okay. I guess I’ve become a little obsessive about it, but I really want to do this right so I can be done with it. Probably I’m giving it too much time, but if it makes the book better…?

But that wasn’t what messed up my day.

Late in the morning, I had a conversation with the assoc. copy chief at Del Rey about last minute questions about the galleys for Child of Fire (Amazon.com or Indiebound.org).

No problem! I thought. I’d scanned all the galley pages I’d marked up before I sent them back, just in case. How clever I felt! Nevermind that my corrections must have been unclear somehow. I was ready.

Except, not. The questions weren’t about the notations I’d made on the galley. They were additional mistakes caught by the proofreader.

God, this stuff is mortifying. How many times have I read this damn book? Shouldn’t I have noticed the phrase “in the front” appearing in back-to-back sentences? Shouldn’t I have noticed that a character does not need to walk up to a door twice? Shouldn’t I remember that a very important item is not in the character’s pocket because not fifteen pages before he was grinding his teeth in frustration that another character was keeping it from him?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for every note. Improvement is improvement, and I want the book to be as good as possible. But I feel honestly ashamed that I never noticed these problems myself.

Luckily (for you guys), immediately after the call my wife and I ran out the door for a very nice lunch with an old friend I don’t see as often as I should. When my son got home from school later, we had a great time together. All of that gave me time and perspective to truly absorb the copy chief’s wrap up to our conversation: “This is a perfectly normal list of corrections we’re talking about. I’ve worked on books with many worse than this.”

So, yeah. I was too busy to post this yesterday, which means you get this lesser degree of whining. And I have it in perspective now, and I’m ready to finally finally kill off this second book.

Still humiliating, though.

Only an hour

Standard

Ah, well. I only got an hour of free time for my writing today. No big. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

But for you, dear Reader, I have a link: Morningstar.

What is that, you wonder? It’s a free online game of the point-and-click narrative variety. It’s also remarkably well done–the visuals are excellent, the voice acting (there’s a lot of voice acting) very strong (although you can mute the sound) and you can even save the game part way through.

The story is simple: You’re second-in-command on the space ship Morningstar, and the opening of the game is a fantastic little cut scene of you and your ship crash landing on the surface of an alien world. The captain is injured and unable to move (but full of advice) and your engineer is dead. Can you salvage enough of your ship to make lift off? Why did you crash in the first place, and what happened to the other ship lying wrecked across the sand. Finally, how can you prevent it happening again when you try to leave?

It’s a surprisingly long game, with a lot of detail, and the story takes you much further down the rabbit hole than you expect. And of course, it’s all about the puzzles. How do you get this control panel to work? Where are all the pieces of the hull-repairing glue dispenser? What are you going to do about the ruined CO2 filter?

You click on items to pick them up, combine them, and use them with objects in the environment. Best of all, the objects are used in ways that are thoroughly sensible–not always a given in this sort of game. The captain gives you hints about the next step in the mission, but there’s a walkthrough, too, just in case. And the visuals are excellent. Hell, even if you just watch the pre-title animation sequence, you’ll be impressed.

It’s great fun. One of the best c&p games I’ve played in a long, long time. Enjoy.

First, a funny thing

Standard

On my last post, ethelmay dropped a link in the comments of my LiveJournal for this video by debut author Lara Zielin. You’re going to be seeing this link all over the web, so you might as well watch it now.

Besides, she’s funny and she has verve. Like.

What am I doing posting again so soon after I said in my previous post that was going to a thing at my son’s school. Well, I felt worn down and flushed, and I told my wife I was feeling sick. Out I went to catch the bus home early.

While I was standing at the bus stop, I remembered that, as a kid, I was sick on the first day of school every year. My nervousness about going back to the hall of bullies always manifested as illness.

It’s denial. I’m good at denial. It helps me behave like a sane person, but it also sneaks up on me and makes me miserable.

It’s good to be aware.

Pizza tonight

Standard

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.

Yesterday

Standard

Here’s a quick tally of yesterday’s strangeness (not all of it bad):

Woke early. Worked on …Blue Dog for a while, then rushed home.

Went out just after lunch to see BATTLE FOR TERRA. My son nearly fell asleep on the bus.

We all stopped in at a comics shop for Free Comics Day. The first comics we saw were very, very adult. We had to make our way to the back to pick up books the boy wanted.

At the movie theater, I had to take the elevator. This particular shopping center (Pacific Place) is four stories with a wide open mezzanine structure. The escalators trigger my fear of heights, and for some reason I was extremely vulnerable yesterday.

Loved the movie. See previous post.

At the boy’s insistence, we sat down to eat at Johnnie Rockets, which was even worse than I remembered. The meal was interrupted partway through by an PA announcement that they were evacuating the building.. I stayed behind to settle the bill, then met my wife and son outside. So much for visiting the bookstore in the basement.

On the bus ride home, I noticed something strange just before we came to our stop. A woman was standing by the door to her townhouse, pushing a man away. She would then turn to unlock her door, and he came up close to her again. She appeared to be fending him off.

My wife said “That didn’t look good.” We all got off the bus and I immediately went over there, but they had both gone inside. When I turned around, I saw that my wife had flagged down a police car. We explained what we saw, and he promised to look into it.

Was she about to be raped? Why was the building evacuated? I don’t think we’re ever going to find out.