I Love Google Maps

Wow, are those things perfect for research or what?! I’m contemplating a trip abroad in my novel, and since I just can’t jump on a plane to go do some research, I did the next best thing and hopped on to Google Maps, punched in what I want and *poof* there it is, a perfect satellite image of the entire city. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I love how you can do terrain maps, street maps, or the aerial photo maps.

Anyway, if you haven’t given it a shot, go for it. Even if you don’t use it for research, it’s fun to play with.

How Do They Come To You?

First of all, Mary knew I had my own blog. So there. Since writing related stuff isn’t near the top of my priority list right now, I figured I’d go back to my lame little non-writing-related blog to post non-writing-related stuff.

That said, I’ve got a new novel in the works. If you popped over to my blog, you’ll notice I mentioned it. If you didn’t, well then you suck and I’m not talking to you anyway. (Kidding!) 

When I entertained the notion of writing a novel for NaNo, I had a story in mind. The characters just kind of came along for the ride, and it didn’t go very far. I was fairly excited about the story, and had a vague notion of who was in it.

When I wrote my actual novel, it started with Claire. She showed up in my head and badgered me mercilessly until I wrote her novel. Of course, the story was there, too, and I was excited about it, but looking back, I realize that I was excited about Claire IN the story. Without the story, Claire might have done something else, I’m not sure. But without Claire, the story was nothing, because it was her story.

That’s what happened to Jericho Road. Yes, Natalie’s a nice girl and all, but I was excited about the story, period. Natalie was more of an afterthought, an insertion into the story, someone who would fit nicely and do a good job, but she was… weak.

Let me explain. She’s not a weak character. I think she’ll be a fine character, someday. But she just kind of stood on the edges of my imagination, asking, “Now what do I do?” Claire told me what she was doing and I dictated.

(This all makes me sound rather insane, doesn’t it??)

Jericho Road is a good story. Does Natalie have to be in it? Nope. It could be Natalie… or Jane or Beth or Marianne. And apparently, that doesn’t work for me. Which means I have to wait until Jane or Beth or Marianne shows up and tells me how Jericho Road is going to go… or Natalie has to be a little more assertive and tell me her story, whatever it may be.

Moving along to this one, I have Cairo Montgomery. She showed up in my head, pestering me. As I did with Claire, I listened a bit and then started to get really excited. Cairo is amazing, I could listen to her for days. In fact, I have. Weeks, even. Cairo’s story is awesome and I’m excited about the combination.

See, with Claire and with Cairo, there was no substituting anything. It had to be Claire in her story. And now, it has to be Cairo in her story. It’s their story.

All of this leads me to believe even more that none of my stories are really my stories. So what does that mean in terms of my responsibility to tell these stories? If these characters – these people – are so real and demanding, does that mean I am essentially murdering them by keeping them silent?

I realize that all sounds rather bizzare, so I hope you all have noisy, pushy characters so you understand just what I’m saying. I always thought it was the story that I had to write. And I thought I could put my characters in a story and write it. Now I don’t think that’s the case. I think that, for me, maybe it’s a matter of getting a specific character in a specific story at just the right time. It’s weird.

I wasn’t so confident about Jericho Road. I rather expected that I might fail, but I thought it was because of time constraints and responsibilities. Now I’m thinking I knew it just wasn’t right because I was trying to put Natalie in a story she didn’t belong in, and trying to put a character into Jericho Road that didn’t belong there. I love the story, so it’ll remain on the back burner until the right character shows up and claims it. I also rather like Natalie. Maybe in a few months or years, she’ll show up and announce her story.

Anyway, like with Claire, Cairo’s story has no title yet, and I suspect it will be generic when it does come, like The Cabin. The title seems like such a minor thing… I know some writers sneer and insist you must have a title before you begin… eh, screw the notion that you must do anything to be “right”, let’s move on to another topic.

I’m feeling really good about this book. So many things are paralleling (is that a word??) to how things went with Claire, and that makes me very, very happy. And very confident that the outcome will be similar – a finished book. (Let’s not discuss the editing stage. I consider it a finished book when I wrote “The End”, if not a polished, publishable book.)

So there you have it. While my writing is far less of a priority due to my life, I think it’s more a matter of having the right story.

The More You Know…

Did you know…

- That Carrie has her own independent blog?  (Well, I didn’t, until today when she showed me, because nobody tells me nothin’.)

- And that *I* have my own independent blog? Well, I didn’t really have anything more than a test bed until today, when I realized I could bring all my long-winded gibberish posts over there, and post without feeling guilty about burying Carrie’s occasional post (apparently, she’s much more active on her blog than this one anyway).

- Somebody’s going to say that we are Now Divorced, but only in a bloggeral sense, because WE ARE NOT MARRIED AND NEVER WERE, thank you.

- I would quite like a cup of tea, and about a week in the middle of nowhere with nothing but some paper and some pens. Er, and a fountain of tea.

…

Anyway, I know Lori’s updated the Commune blogroll to reflect the blog changey thingie. So now you know. I can’t maintain a personal blog, and CarrPeeDiem, so I might just switch over there. Although it’s a hellluva lot harder to abbreviate “Tzinski” than it is to casually say “CPD” in conversation.

Now you have all my wordly links.

TILT

I need to finish the Nondescript, really, really badly. Not least because the Neon God just got smooshed by a huge, mind-boggling idea for a universe full of stories that suddenly built itself in my head last night. I barely slept. When I did sleep, I dreamt about it. I’ve been struggling to get down the shape of it all day. I am elated.

Anyway, I need to work. So I may be absent. (I always say that. We’ll see.)

Meanwhile, some wise advice.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

“All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand—are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It’s a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next (a point which Trollope made), hangovers apart. The difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol, or imagination. The meaning is that one had better go to his or her typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. It will be much the same.” 

Drip, drip, drip, the conclusion

“So what’s the problem?” I ask.

“Well, you see this bit here, on your bathtub? It’s what stops the water from overflowing from the tub.”

“Sure. The sink has one too. Most things do.”

“Right. Well, it looks like it got twisted upward, and the screw came a little loose, and water got into the plumber’s putty and ate through, and was leaking out of the pipe and downstairs. Easy fix.”

“Oh. Er. Good.”

And Mssr. Maintenance Man does not notice, in his busyness, the curious chargrined nature of the Master of the House, who has suddenly gotten much less chatty, and who is admitting only gently to the possibility that this was all his fault, since he figured out after first moving in that if he rotated that thing upward, he could get another two inches of water or so into his bath, which was very nice. But he is not going to tell anyone else about this, except for his wife, to whom he told the clever story of a vicious Giant who came in and fiddled with the tub while we were all away.

And the Master of the House forbids you to make fun of him for it, and hopes that it will come off as endearing, instead of twit-headed.

Drip, drip, drip.

“Hello, this is maintenance. I’ll need to come by your place tomorrow, for repairs.”

“Er. Why? I don’t have anything broken, that I know of.”

“You have a leak in your master bathroom’s plumbing.”

“What? I do. Er. How do you know?”

“It’s leaking through the ceiling into the empty apartment below you.”

“Oh. Right.”

So cheerfully, a man with tools is coming by in a couple of hours. He declared, entirely nonchalant about it, that he’d need to “get inside the wall,” which I guess I knew (I watch Holmes on Homes obsessively, after all) but was hoping against. So while I’m sitting in my soundproofed little closet office, writing away, he’ll be a wall away from me, working on making it rather less than a wall away from me, if you see what I mean. I have no idea what he’s going to do, or how long it’ll take.

While I’m killing time and waiting for him to show up, I have a screaming baby (he’s got to move out eventually), and a headache and none of the mental clarity, or at least operational ability to write. So you get a miscellaneous blog post, instead.

…

Let’s see. I hope I’ve plugged it here before, but Fast Forward TV is the finest television show, of sorts, on science fiction going. I spend more time watching what are really terrific interviews with all manner of really fine authors. In particular, I recently showed off their Dr. Brian Jacques interview to Lori and Kristine, because he’s a delight to watch and listen to. Even if you don’t enjoy the Redwall books (you don’t? you must be mad), then you can’t help but be utterly charmed by him.

Tom Schaad conducts the interviews, and he does a marvelous job of being intelligent and insightful all by himself, whether he’s asking questions of Neil Gaiman or Gene Wolfe, or inserting brief questions into the slow drawl of Bill Gibson as he slowly, slowly, talks about the world and gets it all right.

Go there. Watch all the interviews. Feel pretty good about being a writer. I don’t mind telling you that if I wind up on that show, long-watching and the intellect of Tom Schaad will result in me being too intimidated to answer questions usefully. But what a great place to be unable to answer questions. So it’s either an aspiration, or a fear.

…

There. By the magic of the internet, it’s now twenty minutes later. I have a screaming baby on my lap, but no tea, so I’m not sure I’ve come out ahead of those twenty minutes at all.

…

I was utterly miserable staring at the Nondescript, which again seemed to be stretching on away from me. Then I fixed the problem, just that easily. I realized I was trying to expand little scenes that didn’t need it, and as a result, I was failing to move from point to point on my sheet of “scenes between now and the end of the novel,” and wasn’t getting anywhere. So I crunched up a scene (which was stumping me anyway, because I didn’t really have anything for it) and got on with my story. So now it’s rolling again. There’s still so much to do, but we’re about to find out who Charley is, and then we’ll meet Charley, and that really gets things properly accelerating toward my ending.

The other nice thing I’m noticing is that there are scenes missing and themes that are poorly constructed…but I’ve made notes of them in another sheet of paper, for my editing stage (not really a second draft, though I guess you can call it that. I really don’t second-draft much). It’s nice, I like having things mapped out for the edit stage. Add in those scenes, tighten up one theme and one character, and I think we’ll have a pretty decent book, if I do say so myself.

I’ve started writing The Neon God on paper, because I switched the Nondescript back to the computer (I think I mentioned that). Neon God is going okay. Not very fast, because I always stall out in the first chapter while I figure out 1) where the first chapter is going 2) where my entry point is 3) what I’m trying to say. So while I’m probably in no danger of cleaning up in the Penman Shipwreck, at least I’m getting some forward motion. That’s got to count for something. It’s just gotta…!

…

Word counts are the devil. I need to go into greater length on that topic, but it’s probably an article all by itself. Word counts are the absolute devil. Trust me.

…

Fried chicken for breakfast, although it doesn’t seem like it at first, is also the devil. And I don’t expect any sympathy here, probably just a chorus of “duh.”

…

That’s it. I’m out of stuff. Time for some tea, some breakfast, maybe an hour’s quiet before the kid gets woken up, and then maybe sometime this afternoon, I’ll try that writing lark for a bit.

…

How are you?

…And the sky full of stars

I’m not here, I’m in the Nondescript. Running headlong toward the end of the Nondescript, which I’m now writing on the computer. It needs to get done, and it can’t wait for me to handwrite it to completion, via the Penman Shipwreck.

So: I am typing the Nondescript rapidly. Making good progress. I am using DarkRoom, which I’ve had on this computer for some time, but haven’t been keen on until now. I fiddled and managed to widen the text, so that it’s not such a narrow column down the center of the screen. And I changed it to a nice shade of blue, instead of the green. I have no nostalgia for an old Apple II computer that I need bright green type for. It’s a wonderful writing environment. My mini-Napster player sits unobtrusively in the corner, and otherwise the screen is blank, but for the novel.

The novel goes very well.

I’m still in the Shipwreck, though. In another notebook, I’ve begun writing The Neon God, and am enjoying writing science fiction. This is going to be a good book, I think. I say that at the beginning of all books. I’ve just met Brother Simon Ellis Doyle, who I knew was a monk, but whose personality I had no idea would be like this. I am just about to meet the Reverend Mister Isaac, and my detective, and then the novel gets rolling. It’ll be fun.

I am reading Spook Country by William Gibson. And I am reading Changeling, by Roger Zelazny, one of the two Zelazny novels which I own, but have not read (I have been saving them, like little gifts to myself, because sadly, we will see no more Zelazny novels, and they should be rationed).

All of which is rather more than I came on to tell you. I came on to tell you that this is the greatest LoLCatz picture ever, and it made me very happy to see, and now I have to share it with the world. (It just makes me want to write a story.)

And now, it’s back into the 1940’s. We’re just about to find out who Charley is.

I’ll report in. Be seeing you.

Non-Reading

Occasionally, people send me articles because they think it’s amusing when I read something stupid and turn into Mr. Shouty and yell at the world quite a lot about the utter bunk that I’ve just read. You can imagine the nonsense I got when people started touting The Truth Behind Da Vinnie Code, by Dan Whodat. Those have faded, blessedly.

But I got this article, earlier this morning. An article on non-reading, talking about the subject with approval, which, as someone who advocates reading in the strongest sense, is one of those subjects that should make me shouty.

The Great Tea Debacle, 2007, comment archive

This is just a gathering-up of the comments from the Tea Debacle page that appeared on this site, but is about to be deleted. I wanted to save the comments. Do you people realize that there are around 45,000 words of commentary here? I mean…good grief.

Abby Road, conclusion

A small rat got loose inside the PetCo store, on the side of which my wife works in a grooming salon. She bolted away and was impossible to catch, being a small, young, fast rat. She wound up living in the store for a number of weeks, hiding under shelves. This sounds cute and fantasy-ish, but it’s not. It was a terrifying, and scarring experience for the young female rat, and it was a literally scarring experience too, because when she was eventually recaptured, she was missing half of her long tail. We never knew what had pinched it off, or bit it off (since dogs are allowed into PetCo), but regardless, this was how she stood when she was recaptured: twitchy, terrified of everything, missing half a tail, and impossible to sell. She was damaged goods, after all.

So, they put her up for adoption, and that’s when my wife called me and told me the story, and we brought her home. No one else was going to take her. She was too mentally and physically damaged.

We named her Abby.

It took weeks and months of careful and patient work, as well as a steady place in a quiet room, our bedroom, to loosen her up. She would run in her wheel eventually, rush to take food from your hand, move cardboard boxes around, splash around in the massive water dish we got for her, because she liked to splash around. We couldn’t actually hand-feed her, because she was very skittish and posessive, and she would grab at the food so enthusiastically, she would sometimes bite your finger. Never maliciously, but I have a dented scar on my left index finger where she got me one night, when I was careless.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because on April 15th, 2007, on this very blog, I posted cat pictures and then introduced you all to Abby, the newest member of our household, in the first post called “Abby Road,”

The reason I went looking for the original post was, unfortunately, simple: Earlier this morning, Abby died. I was curious how long we’d had her.

The death of some pets are easier than others. When we had pet mice, or pet goldfish, I’m still saddened by their passing, but not as entirely. As cold as it sounds — and as wrong as it may be, perhaps — they don’t have the individual and unique personalities that certain other animals do, such as rats, cats, dogs, parrots. When our other rats passed away, it was heartbreaking.

I guess Abby’s was a little worse, because it was unexpected. She was lethargic last night, when I fed her and gave her fresh water, but I figured it was just because she’d just woken up. Now, I wonder what it was. She was never the healthiest rat, and we knew she would never live on and on like some of the others did. But still.

It’s a very poor way of solving the problem my wife and I were discussing, which was what to do with the bedroom wall, which had a rat cage, a fish tank, and Abby’s cage. The first cage and the fish tank are empty, the fish tank on purpose, the cage from the passing of our three-legged rat, Calcifer. It solved the problem, because now threw two big rat cages away and have only to take down the fish tank, and that wall shall be empty. I would rather it was still full of one small, skittish rat with only half a tail.

Words of wisdom, part the third

Off and on for a couple of weeks now, I’ve been looking for a particular Neil Gaiman quote, in light of the Penman Shipwreck and our general discussions of handwriting. It was the quote which, many years ago (in 1999) first reminded me of the importance of handwriting and set me on the long path back to being able to handwrite fiction comfortably. It was what triggered everything I’ve thought about writing and technology after that, to be honest.

I hunted and hunted through his journal and couldn’t find it, using every possible combination of search terms I could think of. It was browsing through and passively looking for the quote which led to those other Neil Gaiman comments I’ve posted.

Anyway, I found it just now. The reason I couldn’t find it in his journal was that it wasn’t there. I thought it was. I had actually read it in a Locus interview, in ‘99, which is also available online. Harrumph.

Anyway, here you are, the definitive argument — one of them — for remembering your handwriting. (The first part, posted for context. The relevant bit is emboldened, for attention-grabbing.

‘Stardust has one brief moment of almost Tarantino-esque violence, a couple of gentle sex scenes, and the word ‘fuck’ printed very, very small once. But apart from that, it could have been written in 1920. The magic of writing, those things we do to convince ourselves we’re doing it the right way. Up until 1986, I wrote everything on a typewriter. From 1986, when I bought my first computer, I did everything on that, except maybe one short story handwritten. Then it came to Stardust and I thought, ‘OK, I want to write this in 1920.’ I went out and bought a fountain pen – curiously enough, the fountain pen I’m signing the book with, which has a lovely sort of arc of closure to it, a feeling of completeness. And I bought some big, leatherbound blank volumes, and I sat and wrote Stardust.

”I think it really changed the way I wrote it. You think about the sentence more before you write it. On a computer, it’s almost like throwing down a blob of clay and then molding it a bit. But I can’t do that with a fountain pen, so I think about it a little more. And I wanted a first and second draft, which is again something that seems to be fading. A couple of years ago, when I was editing The Sandman: Book of Dreams, I noticed that what 10 years earlier would have been 3,000-word short stories were coming in at over 6,000 words. And it was as if people writing them on computers let them bloat. If you have a choice between two things, you do both of them. With Stardust, I wanted to go back to the thing I was taught when I started writing short stories: Write them as if you’re paying them by the word. It’s 60,000 words, which is what books used to be. Obviously, the book has certain drawbacks and disadvantages. You can’t use it as a doorstop. You probably couldn’t seriously injure a burglar with it, and a stack of falling Stardust will not kill anybody.

 It is excerpted from this interview, which is enjoyable, aside from being done in the peculiar Locus way of removing the questions and leaving the answers strung together.

Words of wisdom, part 2

Further words of wisdom from the depths of Neil Gaiman’s blog. Especially during the Penman Shipwreck, these bits catch my eye, and so I offer them up for whomever wants them.

Hello Neil,

I find myself in a quandary of sorts and wonder if you have any advice or insights you may be able to offer a young-ish, aspiring writer of fiction for the screen. For at least two years now, my working practice has proceeded more or less as follows:

1. Get an idea.
2. Scrutinise the idea with unhealthy intensity for any traces of plagiarism, clich�, deus ex machina, etc.
3. Sit down to write the first draft
4. Write less than a page, delete the whole thing, convince myself the idea is worthless, and abandon it altogether.
5. Repeat.

Something about seeing the ideas in my head committed to paper makes me balk, no matter how I try to force myself to just finish something – anything. Does this sound familiar to you at all, perhaps from your earliest days as an artist? I wonder if it all boils down to something as obvious as the fear of being misunderstood. If so, what can I do to enable myself to Just Get On With It?

Thanks for anything you might be able to throw my way.

- David

Well, you have a couple of options. One of which — the easiest — is simply not to worry about writing and use the time to do something else instead: golf, for example, or macrame, or the breeding of prize gerbils. The other option is to write. What you’re doing currently is Not Writing. If you do want to write, then what you have to do is Not Do That Stuff You’re Talking About in 1-5 above, and write instead.

You might want to try handwriting, or even, if you can find a typewriter anywhere, typing. It’s harder to delete stuff if you’re making marks on paper as you go. And make a rule that you can’t go back and change things or fix things until you’ve finished whatever you’re on. You could try giving yourself a wordcount, too — a thousand or so words a day is probably good to start off with. Finish it, even if it’s crap (especially if it’s crap). Then go onto the next.

Ted Hughes once said words to the effect that the progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system. Bear that in mind. And good luck.

Chain of bookshelves

What could be more fun for the creepy bibliophile in all of us? Below are links to pictures of my bookshelves. We only have two, at the moment, which are devoted to books. There are two more, across the room, which do have books on them, but mostly it consists of comic books, dictionaries, peculiar reference books, and piles of papers in no particular order. And while that might sound interesting to look at too…the problem is, they aren’t in any sort of layout where you could see anything but piles and you would just get a sense of “Pete could use to organize once in awhile,” and telling me that wouldn’t do any good.

Furthermore…on these two shelves, my wife and I (mostly me…the vast majority of these books are ones I read. My wife reads less than I do these days, being busy and tired) put up the books that I knew I liked, or planned to read soon. I’ve read most of them. Most of them, I’ve read dozens of times over.

We have twelve, or more, big boxes full of books cataloged and stored away in a dark, dry room, because if we put up our entire book collection, we would need at least six more shelves just like these two, and I bet you we’d still wind up with leftovers. This is why I keep trying to find a way to build something into a library. (When I am rich and famous, and we build our own house, not only will I have a terrific study, but we shall have a beautiful library with mahogony shelves built into the walls, hard wood floors, reading lamps and plush chairs, and a hidden sound system tuned to a classical music station. And maybe a fireplace. And tall, thin frosted windows here and there.)

There are other books I really like, and the reason you don’t see them on the shelf is…they are off, they are on the table next to me (and by the couch, and by the bed, and by my desk) and are in various states of being read.

Without further ado, here’s the pictures. (They are big, the better to see them with.)

Left shelf

Right Shelf

Top of the shelves

There we go!

And…I pass this on to Ed. Ed! Take pictures of your books, in some form (even if it’s just opening up a box and photographing it. Or your shelves, if you have ‘em) and post them, so we can oggle at your books.

lolbabyz, the continuing saga

Ladies and germs, it’s time once again for baby pictures.

Yes, it is lolbabyz time.

i floatz like butteredfly an sting like bees rofl!

Not on hiatus

I’m not. I’m really not. It’s just busy, I’m writing, and I think that I’m still more sick than I originally believed. Getting going is really rough. I’m gently worried this is more than a cold.

Anyway!

Here is another Neil Gaiman piece, talking about writing. And it’s not hiatus filler. It’s just because, as we’ve seen before, it can be nice and heartening to see real authors talk about this sort of stuff. Here you go: Neil Gaiman On Writing.

Happy 2008!

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you all have a safe and happy new year. Good luck with your resolutions. None of mine have anything to do with writing, other than my lofty goal of spending more time with my hobbies. (Yes, writing has been demoted to hobby status in my life. Other things are just more important right now.) My other resolutions mostly deal with boring grown up stuff like budgeting and reducing debt.

Anyway. I hope you all have a blessed new year. May all your resolutions be attainable.

Words of wisdom

From the deepest depths of the archives of Neil Gaiman’s blog comes…your inspirational thought for the day. Or at least, your dose of reality. Meanwhile, I shall go write. Enjoy.

I got a question for you, how do you become friends with what you’ve written? Perfectionism is hard to overcome, well for me anyway, and I always see the flaws, the clumsyness and that sort of thing. Even when people who I trust in having an as objective opinion as possible say that they like it I don’t trust them. Not because I lack self-confidence, there are things I’ve written that I genuinly love, it’s just…When you see the flaws in something it’s hard to love it, if it’s your own work. I’m fine with it in other peoples work. So, am I making sense? Do you have this problem? And is there anything I can do to make it go away?

Well, it’s hard to be a fan of your own work (I’m not a fan of my writing). You’ll always see how far it was from what you had in mind when you sat down to write. (The only thing that seems to fix that is time. But time still won’t make you a fan of what you’ve written, and when it does — when you find yourself laughing at a joke you’ve forgotten that you wrote a long time ago — it normally just makes you worry that you used to have it but you probably don’t any more.)

If people you trust say they like it, they probably like it, but that doesn’t make you respect them any the more or like the story. (It’s one reason that editors buying stories is so important for beginning writers. Anyone can say they like it, but sending a cheque and then printing the story — that’s love.)

Also, once it’s written, the writer is just one more person with an opinion about the work. It’s certainly an informed opinion, but that doesn’t make your opinion more right than anyone else’s, I’m afraid, whether they like it or they don’t.

It’s best make art and not to worry. I’ll take the satisfaction of having built something that did what I hoped it would do over being in love with my own voice any day. It’s safer. Make good art that says sort of what you set out to say and then, when it’s good enough for jazz, go on to the next thing.

Writing triggers, part two

All right, class. Now, we’ve previously discussed writing triggers, and I had no intentions of following up the subject until I tried something out today and was delighted to find it entirely workable. So we shall follow a little further on the subject. Does everyone have a good cup of tea? Yes? Strawberry Slender Pur-eh, myself. A big pot of it.

Let’s talk.

In the post mentioned above, as well as other ones, I talked about becoming aware of your state of mind, not only during the actual writing process but during the rest of the course of your day. In “Writing Triggers,” the key point I discussed was being aware of the things which affect you, and then using them to good effect. It was being able to recognize that, Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny Lee Hooker were playing the sort of music that really fired me up and sent me off writing lots, that reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and Gene Wolfe, and so on were good things for my state of mind. Triggers, like we discussed.

In another post, “Silence, Patience, Grace,” I looked into the workings of my own brain and, once I had finished throwing up a little, the important point I realized was that my brain runs all the time, forever ticking and ticking as fast as it can go about anything which crosses its path. I discussed the realization that I need to slow down, to calm myself, to focus better. And it was true, and I worked very hard at it for a good week or so, which is usually how long my conscious attention span holds me onto any given topic (unless it’s writing, friends, tea, or deep sea marine biology). I discussed how I stopped listening to loud music and listened only to my local classical station, because it was calming and it required no influence or control on my part. How I settled, in essence, was what I talked about.

The most important thing which came out of that blog post and the following thought and work on my own brain was not so much a major personality shift — would that I could pull those off voluntarily — but was rather, my own ability to consciously spot the times when I was going too fast and frazzled, and also the times when I was going too slow and tired, too exhausted to even want to write the character crossing the room and lighting a cigarette simply because it was too many words and too much work. I recognized those states of mind, and that became important.

Ode to Jeanne

Okay, it’s not an ode, it’s an apology. I have your Debacle prize sitting here, I will mail it tomorrow. I hope you’ll forgive my lateness in sending your package. The end of November brought much illness, and then I got caught up in all the Christmas stuff and never got around to sending your package. So I do apologize, and it will go postal tomorrow!

Christmas itinerary

This is what I did with my Christmas:

Up early, but not because of Zach. Zach sleeps wonderfully through the night most of the time (six nights out of seven, he goes to bed at 10 and gets up the next morning at 7, when I get up anyway). Showered, shaved, other exciting paltry things.

At ten in the morning, I took a ham over to Jeremy’s place (Jeremy being my bestest friend, down the hall). We got it cooking in his oven. I ambled back home, so he and his fiance could finish getting ready (apparently, I was the only one awake and moving that early).

Played Mario Galaxy for a little while, and fed Zach, and watched a TV show called Sharks Under Glass, about the work that’s being done on sharks in the aquariums around the U.S. It declared itself to be hosted by Heidi Klum, but she never appeared. Instead, it was narrated by a deep-voiced man. But it was full of High-Definitions sharks, so I don’t care.

At noon, my wife and son and I headed over to their place again. We all played Rock Band. I really enjoy that game. I’m not a bad drummer, I don’t think, but Jeremy’s fiance puts me to shame.

Played a couple of songs, and then I went into the hot hot hot kitchen and started making my proper Christmas dish which was a huge pot of sausage Jambalaya. I made a great deal more than I should have. We had a load of leftovers (I am eating some now. “For breakfast?” you say in horror? “For breakfast,” I reply happily, but fearing the ominous rumblings of heartburn on the horizon).

After waiting for my sister to try and burn MY home down (grumblegrumble), we all built large plates of food and ate. There was a lot of food, all of it from scratch. Green bean casserole,  potatoes au gratin, jambalaya, a mayo-chicken-noodle salad of some sort, dinner bread, honey ham, and probably something else I’m forgetting. It was all delicious. We all ate far, far too much. Jeremy and I, in an effort to try everything, each had two heaping plates, and then we moaned and whined the rest of the afternoon. We were all too full for dessert, which consisted of homemade Key Lime pie, Chocolate pie of some sort, and pumpkin pie.

While eating, we watched The Simpsons Movie on Blu-Ray disk (“so it’ll be even HIGHER definition…cartoons….like with blacker black lines?” “Shut up, Pete.”). The movie was about two hours long which means that in my life, I have now seen a grand total of about three hours worth of The Simpsons.

Afterward, we played a board game called “Apples to Apples,” in which nobody liked any card that Jeremy or I put down, because the rest of the room was populated with women who have secret telepathic communication rays that they use to cheat and despise us men, and I am not bitter because I lost both games.

Afterward, afterward, we played more Rock Band. Lots of good music in that game. And, because I was full and slow about my wits, and Jeremy was pushy, I stood there in my friend’s living room and while he played guitar and his fiance played drums, I…sang. It happened. I sang “Detroit Rock City,” by KISS, which I picked because I know all the words anyway. And it was a good thing, because though the words scroll across the screen, they are small and fast-moving and I couldn’t read ‘em.

It was fun, actually. I also sang “In Bloom,” by Nirvana, and “Dani California,” by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Oh, and “Paranoid,” by some cover band that really, really wanted to be Black Sabbath with Ozzy. There is a Beastie Boys song on the playlist, but I couldn’t get anyone else to stand in the living room and obnoxiously rap it. Hmph.

Pie was eventually had. Zach was fussy and we eventually headed home. He was sick, Zach was, because he’s home with me all day long every day, and I was sick this past week. But he’s okay today. Or at least, he’s not shouting at anybody.