words

Jo Walton posted these links on her LiveJournal

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In two linked posts, NY Times Bestselling author Jennifer Crusie posts a NaNoWriMo-riffic rough draft, and two days later posts about her process for analyzing the scene for revision.

Jo Walton and other smart people discuss it here on her LJ. I’m in there talking, too.

Personally, I do something very like this when I have a scene that doesn’t work but I can’t figure out why. I don’t normally think in terms of antagonists and beats, though. I usually examine scenes by the character goals, the resources it needs/introduces, and the work it’s supposed to do.

I hadn’t considered the concept of “frames” before–I think I’m going to steal that one. As for identifying the antagonists, well, in the Twenty Palaces books, pretty much everyone is an antagonist. It’s identifying the non-antagonists that gives me headaches.

In which I go to a party

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A party of sorts, at least. Tonight after work I’ll be heading to 15th Ave Coffee and Tea for Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER party. Details! I won’t know anyone there, which is usually a red flag for Socialization Fail, but who knows? Maybe this time my internal (conversation) editor will be a mere whisper.

If you live in the Seattle area and like steampunk/zombie/Seattle-apocalypse books, come buy a book and give me a hello. I look like this.

In other news, progress on Man Bites World continues. I really like this book, but this has to be the most ragged first draft I’ve written since well, my previous book. It has a small(er) cast of characters (which will be a huge relief to my agent and editor, I’m sure) and the story is more personal. All good. I just need to freaking finish it and get it out of my life.

Randomness for 11/12

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1) Detroit: failed city/urban planning petri dish. via James Nicoll

2) New ocean forming in Africa.

3) Superfreakonomics and horseshit. via Paul Krugman

4) Elegant wedding reception breaks down into moving brawl. ‘The fighting ruined the reception and some of the guests and wedding party members headed to their hotel nearby where the fighting erupted all over again in the parking lot of the Marriott Residence Inn which is located at 4312 Boy Scout Boulevard. A woman put the groom’s 74 year old grandmother, Mary Wright in a choke hold.

Wright told 10 Connects that she was trying to calm down the crowd and tell them not to fight on such a special occasion. She says that’s when her attacker said “I’m going to have to choke you out.”‘

5) 50,000 lost soldiers found, 2,500 years after they were lost.

6) Google auto-complete reveals class and education differences. “Someone once told me that there is nowhere we are more honest than the search box.” via Ezra Klein

7) TV cook accidentally does science. Here’s your big surprise for the day: eating decent food improves schooling. I know! Shock!

8) White privilege even extends to virtual environments. Fer Chrissakes.

Attention history buffs:

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FORTUNE’S FAVORITE: Sir Charles Douglas and the Breaking of the Line just came out. It was written by a friend of mine, Chris Valin, and represents the expansion of his master’s thesis about his own ancestor, a Royal Naval captain who played a major role in the Relief of Quebec, the Battle of Valcour Island, and the “breaking of the line” at the Battle of the Saints.

It’s being published by a well-regarded small press specializing in nautical history and historical fiction, Fireship Press, who also publishes Alaric Bond. I’m really excited for him.

Does this sound dirty?

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Because I’m going to link to myself.

I’ve spoken before about Wordplay.com, and how much I learned there about writing and storytelling. Well, after a friend posted a note there about my PW Best of 2009 listing, (I’ve linked to that list enough times, haven’t I? I don’t want to seem like I’m self-promoting feverishly) a couple of regulars had questions about novel-writing and publishing.

What could I do but answer? The thread is here, but it’ll age off the main message board after a while, so I’ll try to update this link when the thread hits the archives. They’re long answers, too, with a lot of detail I don’t normally write about, and with all that detail collected into one place.

Anyway, I post this not just so people can read it, if they’re interested, but so that people with more experience than I have can post contrasting experiences, or point out where I’m wrong, or even add to the general knowledge base. It’s a terrific site, with an interesting mix of professional screenwriters and serious amateurs, and I’m sure any additional information that folks can add would be more than welcome, I’m sure.

Reviews of Child of Fire, part 4

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As usual, links and excerpts behind the cut:

Continue reading

Randomness for 11/3

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1) Gore Vidal can go fuck himself.

“So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”

via bookslut

2) Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dogfighting and brain damage. I don’t think I’m going to be able to watch football in the same way again. Actually, I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.

3) On a slightly lighter note: America pays more for its health care, in convenient chart form. The interesting thing about this is that people say Medicare spending is unsustainable, and also that they don’t pay enough for doctors et al to keep their doors open. Aside from the fact that those two are pretty much contradictory, it’s instructive to see how much more money Medicare spends than foreign payors.

4) Now for something upbeat: Writer Carrie Vaughn: The Best Advice I Ever Got. How perfect the timing of this is for me!

5) And then there’s this: Supernatural collective nouns. via tnh’s particles.

MONK writer meets his readers

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“Is Monk ever going to get any?”

“You mean have sex?”

“Yes,” she said. She’d actually asked me the same question during the question-and-answer session but I guess my answer didn’t satisfy her.

“Well, the show is over, so no, I don’t think so.”

“What about in your books?”

I shook my head. “I just don’t see it.”

“I do,” she said. “Vividly.”

E-Book Stuff

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I missed this when it first blew up last week (thanks a lot, missing LJ-feeds!), but apparently there was an online dustup about the fact that Kindle owners can have more than one Kindle (or iPhone) on a single account. There’s no requirement that the machines all belong to the same person, or that they all live at the same address, either. This lets people who download a book onto their Kindle share it with friends.

Apparently, this came up in a NYTimes article, and some authors went on a name-and-shame campaign against the reader named in the article because the article made it seem that she was bending the rules. Dear Author covers the situation pretty well, and makes some good points about e-books and book-sharing.

Me, I think it’s great that Kindle readers can share. That brings me closer (but not to) the point that I’d be willing to get one. People: Share my books with your friends and I will be happy!

Oh, and writers shouldn’t call readers “thieves.” Duh.

On that note, John Scalzi points out that Amazon.com has a new patent that would track e-book piracy by altering the text of the book in unique ways–essentially substituting synonyms for words in the book.

Scalzi, quite sensibly, calls bullshit on that. Jane at Dear Author likes the idea better, although she seems to be promoting an idea similar to but not identical to what Scalzi’s talking about.

For me, I hate it. I have zero faith in a computer’s ability to substitute synonyms sensibly. In fact, readers would probably be astute enough to spot the switches.

And it reminds me of certain horror stories, such as the English author who who discovered that the editors who published their book in the U.S. were concerned enough that American readers would be confused by British terminology (“They went back to his flat.”) that they did wholesale search-and-replace. At which point one of the characters delivered a line of dialog “apartmently.” Ungood.

I’m with Scalzi on this one (and I hope that “apartmently” story is apocryphal).

Urban Fantasy series on Genreville

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Genreville is doing a series of Urban Fantasy interviews. The first two (out of more than a dozen) are posted. Seanan McGuire is first, followed by Charles De Lint. Check it out.