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.

Christmas Gifts.

Merry Christmas! First, some festive music. From the band that remains unashamedly one of my favorite ever.

I thought and thought about what I could post for you guys. I was going to post a short story, but wound up sending it out without thinking, so now I can’t. So I give you what I have, which is: the first chapter of The Nondescript, below the line. I hope you enjoy it, maybe a little.

Take care.

Santa Tracker

The Santa Tracker is one of the best offerings of the Internet. Sheer brilliance. I *love* it. Big fun, even for cynical old grumps.

The Bear, part three

It does my heart no small amount of good to know that Elizabeth Bear is puzzling over, and concerned with, and unhappy with, the exact same sort of writerly problems that I am. I also like that her daily schedule is remarkably similar to mine. It’s one of those silly things: You know writers are human as you are (certainly as human as I am, since I am a writer), but it’s the little affirmations that help.

On that note, I have a fever and am shivering, despite thick, thick sweater (and the fact that it’s not cold in here), so I’m going to drink hot tea, take a bath, go to bed. I don’t know that I’ll post again before the 25th. If I don’t, Merry Christmas, I love you all, and I’m glad I have such good friends to give and take with.

And on Christmas day, I’ll post what Christmas present I have for you.

Good night.

Novelistic Gibbery

Too sick right now to work on The Nondescript. I gave it a whirl for an hour or so, though. Recognizing that I was definitely too sick and muddy-minded to write on the computer, I got out my fountain pen and some paper and tried to write that way. I managed very little, and I’m not sure any of it is useful. It’s like I’m trying to write someone else’s book, through someone else’s hand, possibly while looking the other way. My head is a very useless thing right now.

So instead of writing, I will sit here and think about writing, out loud. Or out-typed, as it were.

Paradise City

I have no words. I am a giddy, jubilant fanboy right now.

The Dark Knight trailer!Really terrific. The still photos we had previously seen of the Joker didn’t do him any justice.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army Trailer! It looks like a mix of Pan’s Labyrinth, with the Lord of the Rings, with Hellboy. It’s an original story, not an adaptation, and it’s perfect Mike Mignolia, from what we’ve seen

*overloads*

*shuts down*

ADDENDUM: Because wonderfulness comes at us in threes, look! A sneak clip at Henry Selick’s (the man who did Nightmare Before Christmas, and James and the Giant Peach) adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Again, utterly gorgeous.

You’re all worthless and weak!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled life to offer you this stunning interpretation of a timeless and artistic song, blended with the finest in video artistry. Your life will never be the same. It will cause you to give away all your worldly possessions and move to a yurt just a short yak-hop away from…from…some damn place. Damn it. (Note: I am sick. I am therefore excused from coherency, witticisms, proper spelling, and anything else that I need to be excused from, up to and including life. plzkthxbai.)

5 Weird Facts…

Since you insist…

1. I have 7 toes on my left foot.

2. I once was pounding a pile of stuff with a hammer and ended up hammering my finger. The top part of my finger just split open and started spurting blood. I stared at it, completely fascinated, until my mom screamed and it dawned on me that it fucking hurt.

3. I would rather poke my eyes out than eat a mushroom.

4. I once captured a bat in my bathroom because hubby is totally creeped out by bats. I got him in a coffee can and was all “aaaawwww he’s cute!” and hubby about puked.

5. I made #1 up. It’s actually my right foot!

Ooof.

I wasn’t intending to blog today, because whenever Carrie blogs, I feel like her post should sit on top of the page for awhile. They’re such rare occurences. But I feel less guilty about that today, because her post is the interesting and compelling one today, and the conversation rolls there nicely. So I can do a little blog post here.

There’s been no writing done today. Yesterday, I filled up two legal-size sheets of blank paper with nearly-organized notes describing where I am now, all the way to the end of The Nondescript. I have amusing ideas, like “I can maybe finish this book by December 31st!” but they are not to be listened to. Nevertheless, January won’t be half over before I finish the book.  It’s a nice feeling. A lot of the really long plotlines got shifted into a potential book 2 and book 3, and I like that too. It means I can write this book nice and clean, but still have enough there for other books. It’s great.

My wife pointed out that, if I cannot start bringing in approximately $400 by July, (that’s monthly, mind you), then come August when my parents move back into town, it looks like they’ll be doing babysitting duties, possibly, and I have to head back out and get a job. I have piles of angst about this, for lots of reasons, none of which I’ll go into here. I won’t force you all to listen to another 5,000 word blog post. (NOt yet, anyway. I’m not done analyzing How I Wrote Then versus How I Write Now). Immediate result is that this morning, I sent our five or six short story submissions. It won’t help, but it made me feel better for a moment. Off and on, I wonder if I’d really managed to make a success out of God in the Machine, if it would have gone a ways toward offsetting that number. I have no idea.

Anyway.

Off our bedroom, we have a really large walk-in closet. Well, maybe not really-large. By my standards, if a closet is walk-in, then it’s pretty big. I haven’t measured it. It has been, up until just today, a disaster. Piles of clothes that I haven’t had time to sort through (what we wear, what needs to be washed, what to throw away, what to give away, etc,) and it was full of boxes and baby stuff. I have, until this moment, spent an exhausting and sweaty day cleaning it and boxing stuff up and getting everything ready. I did some measurements and utilized the design skills that too much time watching HGTV and Discovery Home have given me, and I am going to turn it from a cramped closet…into a gorgeous library, full of bookshelves and everything. It’ll be gorgeous, if I do it right. I wish I had a “BEFORE” picture to show you, but I didn’t take one. I will post an “AFTER” picture, though. If I really do it right, I bet I can squeeze a little desk in the corner, and while it won’t be the same as having an office, it will be a desk to write at. It will be private. The closet has a door. It will make a wonderful place to write. And, being right off the bedroom — which is where Zach’s crib is, until August-ish — it means I can keep an ear out for him. I can even write at night without bothering anyone. I am hugely looking forward to it. I hope to finish it tomorrow. I’ll post pictures when done, as I said. Or maybe video. We shall see.

Lunch is done, and I am starving, so now I’ll go eat.

(just a note)

In a little while, I am going to delete the Great Tea Debacle page from the top bar. All the information is available on Castle Debacle. When deleted, the comments will vanish into the ether. So if you said anything stunning and witty and wise that you want to save, give it a read-through and save it up. I’ll give it a last-ditch shot, before deleting, to see if I can’t make the page into just another post on the blog and let it live on in the archives. But I am doubtful.

Don’t worry. It won’t be deleted ’till after Christmas. You have some time. This is just a head’s up.

We now return to our regularly scheduled discussion on exclamation points!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just finished reading James Patterson’s The Quickie last evening. I loved the book! Except for one small detail!

If you’ve ever read my posts or emails, you know I’m a big fan of exclamation points and smilies and other fun languagy things. I love it, I use it, I’m a huge fan… in casual writing. In writing-writing, not so much.

The Quickie was an excellent book! The plot was fast-paced! There was a twist and turn on every page! The chapters were 3-4 pages long and that really helped it move fast! There was a lot of action! There were a lot of moments I didn’t expect! And, as you can guess, there were LOTS and LOTS of exclamation marks!!!

I don’t mind them in dialogue. “Wait!” Has a whole different feel than “Wait.”

My eye ignores them in dialogue. They work in dialogue. (Okay, one. You don’t need six of them and all caps to let me know the character is yelling, mmmmkay?)

In The Quickie, it was so bad that every exclamation mark in narrative completely yanked me out of the story. I was getting pissed! The story was awesome, and it went in a million different directions – ones I would not have predicted, which is exactly what I want in a book. What I do not want in a book is a tension filled scene where the main character is fighting for her life, her hands are handcuffed, she’s trapped in a van and the bad guy gets out so she’s trying to escape, and then:

The van started rolling toward the edge!

Seriously. Not. Necessary.

The good news is that it has definitely opened my eyes to using anything but periods anywhere outside of dialogue. Can they be used well? Of course. But there better be a damn good reason for them, and there damn well better not be one on every freaking page.

(FYI, I also thought the line: KREACHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! was a bit ridiculous, too…)

Bottom line, I would have had zero complaints about this book. It twisted and turned and the main character was sympathetic and human and flawed and believable. But the sheer volume of exclamation points really bothered me. It seemed like a cheap tactic from an amateur writer, which James Patterson certainly is not. (Perhaps the co-author wrote all those lines?) The words delivered the tension, not the punctuation. In fact, the exclamation marks did nothing but pull me out of the story. Luckily the story was good enough to pull me back in. Had it been any weaker, I would NOT have finished it.

Post Mortem – A dissertation on reversion.

I have made no secret about the fact that, since the beginning of November, my method of writing, thinking, reading, have all changed dramatically. It was a sudden shift; or at least, the actual lurch itself was sudden, but I suppose that below the surface, the tectonic plates were ever so slowly rubbing against each other as time went by.

At any rate, the interesting thing is that as time goes by, things slip into the vision of hindsight, and I enjoy analyzing that as much as I enjoy poking at the future and trying to figure out what’s coming next. The hindsight is easier to analyze, of course: “it is easiest to prod the afterbirth and declare that something has been born,” to quote A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (Go read that book right now. It has been reissued with a beautiful cover. Have I ever recommended a bad book for you to read? No. Now go.)

One of the things which I came to realize, as I studied the way my previous novel – Where Sea Meets Sky, my Roman novel – failed was that I could contrast it against my current novel – The Nondescript, my carnival novel, of sorts – and was delighted to discover that by comparison, I could see where the one failed and the other succeeded; where the one was miserable and the other enjoyable. Where the one flew through paragraphs and chapters, and the other slogged through words and sentences. Some of them, I can see as being pertinent to me as a human being and a writer. Others are less certain and less grand, and I suspect are only relevant to show the differences between a Roman novel, and a carnival novel.

Facts. Weird ones. Five of ‘em.

Ed tagged me. Eat your heart out, Ed.

1. I lived on St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands, twice. The first time, when I was a little younger than five. Then, my mom got pregnant with my sister. In the vicinity of Hurricane Hugo (not a nice hurricane), we moved to New Hampshire. Then, a little while later, we moved back. Between the two times, I spent a fair amount of my childhood more or less out of the country. It influenced how I looked at life from then on, when we moved back. Occasionally, it still does.

2. I am afraid of the dark, except for the times when I love it. I am afraid of it when my imagination tells me “And when you walk through this closet, this is where a little onion-eyed girl with too-sharp teeth comes out and hugs you, and her mouth opens too too wide as she grins up at you,” and then I wind up turning on all the lights in the house.

3. When I met Neil Gaiman, I stammered a moment, and then we had a discussion about fountain pens, and how it was a shame that the good ones had been made a long, long time ago, and how we needed to investigate Necromancy for pens. I no longer remember the exact words. I very much doubt he does. But there you go.

4. Nails drive me nuts. Cuticle nails, I mean. All four of our cats have meticulously tended to nails, because for some reason, I obsess over it. Obsessive-compulsive? Probably. Creepy, probably. Sigh.

5. I have lived in Minnesota for a grand total of eight years now, (between two different times here, four years or so each) and this is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. It is very strange. And nice. (Does this count as a different fact than number one? I don’t know. I’m not doing very good at this. pete = frazzled.)

And I nominate dearest Kristine, and dearest Lori, and they must go thee hither and thus, shall they list five things & there shall be much rejoycing.

There we go.

The Bear (reprise)

This is to point out the reason you should never listen to a writer who complains about his book.

I was in a black mood when I wrote my previous post, feeling that I had made hash out of my Roman novel, and had now made hash out of my 1940’s novel, and was an utter failure of a writer. I did dishes and stormed around the house and figured out how to write the next scene, and did that.

A little while later, I figured out what was wrong (I was thinking too much “story” when I need to forget that and just think “character,” which is the point of the whole novel).  That was at about six o’ clock this evening.

My wife got home from work at nine o’ clock. At nine, I had done a total of 8,500 words today. I did 5,000 words yesterday. So I’m at 13,000 words for the past two days, which means I’m practically caught up to where I was when I cut 16,000 words. AND these words are all better, and livelier and more fun. And I got to do a really terrific sequence in loving homage to old Combat Casey sort of pulp stories.

Never listen to a writer.

& now, happily and with sore hands (from typing), I go to bed. Good night, folks.

The Bear

There’s a phrase that’s applied variously to all sorts of different things, but which will for the moment be applied to writing, and the phrase goes: “It’s like wrestling a bear. Some days, you’re on top. Some days, the bear is.”

Either way, I think the key point of that phrase is, you’re too close to a big damn bear. But never mind.

Sigh. This is me grousing, because I hit a wall, wrote around it, did 5,000 really good and gleeful words, then today I did 3,000 words and banged into another. It can be worked around, but goddamn. Me and novels.

In other news, for my birthday, my wife suddenly got me a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, which I mistakenly believed to be the Nobel Prize winner from last year, but actually won sometime in the early ’80s. Apparently, it’s a movie now. I have no interest in the movie, but I’m thirty pages into the book and enjoying it no end. It’s simultaneously beautifully and thickly written, but I like it. It also solved my problem of trying to decide what to read next.

I also got a thick book which is a complete guide to all the Roman Emperors, with an appendix on all the Roman writers and what they did. It’s delightful and full of useful information, and dates, and maps, and so on.

If I’m sporadically around the ‘net, it’s because the passwords are still changed and I only get on briefly when my wife is home. And usually when she’s home, I am doing other things, so I am limited. As always, the best way to see that I respond it by e-mail. I’m still doing fairly okay with that.

And there’s my blog for the day. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go do another round with that big damn bear.

Terry Pratchett

So, I was having a good day. I wrote 5,000 words. (I also cut 16,000 words, but most of them are redeemable, so it’s okay). I finished reading another thick book. I wrote a letter. I played with my son.

And then I read this, on Paul Kidby’s web-site, which is the official-enough site of Terry Pratchett.

AN EMBUGGERANCE

Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news.  I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early
onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism.  For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I
expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers.  Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet )

PS  I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should
be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’.  I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as
will everybody else.  For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell.
I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I
would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

As he says, he’s not dead, and he’s really not. But still. It knocked the wind out of me really badly. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Glumness aside, it makes me want to hurry and write faster and faster and faster. We only have so much time, after all.

And I hope he has a lot, lot more.

& so, to a Baby Doctor’s Appointment.

Take care.