a novel idea

I mentioned last month that I was already working on my idea for this November's novel (for NaNoWriMo), plus a bit of ambivalence about even doing the contest-writing-thing. I had hoped to be posting here often about how it was going or not going or whatever was transpiring. But that hasn't happened.

I guess this implies that I'm not doing anything with the idea, but it doesn't. It's just that I am not very motivated to blog about it or anything else for that matter. Don't worry, though. In another few months, I'll be all excited about the blogosphere again. I go through this cycle all the time.

The update for today: I am still going to use my previously discussed idea - not that I discussed the idea exactly, but rather that I had discussed that I had one. It continues to evolve, and I may have just finished the projected story arc for one of the mains. Maybe not. I have about 10 pages of notes and one diagram. I may even be about ready to start my first spreadsheet...scratch that, I just checked and I've already created one.

The book is still firmly in the sf camp and I don't see that changing. I dont' think it's going to be a light fluffy book. It may be fluffy (I think a lot of what I write is fluffy) but it will be darker. Bad things will happen, and probably to good people. Such is the way of it.

Whenever I write something (I suspect most writers feel some form of this), I make decisions about what to include and what to leave out and those decisions are often based on parameters of things like "wwjkrd?" (what would J.K. Rowling do?), where you can substitute in J.R.R. Tolkein, Nick Hornby or Robert Jordan into the formulaic question. I personally think of this as the "PG" rule - what to include or disclude to get a PG rating. Well, I don't think like that. I enjoy the "PG" stories from the above authors and honestly don't think they would be improved one iota by the addition of sex and nudity, or more violence or profanity. But that doesn't hold for all stories. If I think that a character should say "fuck you, asshole!", that's what I should write, not "leave me alone, meany". I'm not trying to say that all my characters should cuss or be jerks, just the ones that would cuss and are jerks. If I can't be honest with myself and my own characters, how can I ever think that I will come across as honest to a reader? i don't like reading fake writing - it's contrived and forced - so I shouldn't think that others would like to read it either. I have to please myself if I'm ever going to please a reader. I am fully aware of the ramifications of what I've just said and how it [closely] echoes my life outside of writing.

So in conclusion, I'll write a novel for NaNoWriMo this year or I won't. I'll blog about the experience or I won't. And if I'm disappointed with my work, it is insane for me to hink that other will not also be disappointed. I am tired of being disappointed.

Onward and upward it is. :)

A Dance with Dragons

I have seen the future...if not actually touched it. Amazon.de not withstanding, some people do get early copies, and those people are librarians. I'm of course talking about the long awaited fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons. I'm excited about this book, mostly because I had given up hope that it would actually ever be released.

Elizabeth did a happy dance when the UPS dude showed up with the box containing said book, and he was at least a little freaked out.

She showed it to me, and flipped through it to prove me that there were actually words on the pages, not to mention maps at the front. I was in a state of disbelief right up until that moment.

But, I'm not on the waiting list because there is no way that I can finish a book of the size in three weeks - and I don't want to be at a crucial point only to return it and then wait a few months before getting another shot at it. I am instead waiting for the audiobook version. Hey, Amazon says it ships Tuesday next, and Elizabeth is going to order a copy, and I am going to be number one on the list.

This is very nearly exciting as the release of the final Harry Potter book, and more exciting than the final book of the Wheel of Time series (no offense meant to Sanderson).

I thought it was the end

I pay attention to the weather a lot. I always have. I like the weather, it's so unpredictable, yet nothing has more time spent on predicting it. I like that.

When I was younger I wanted to be a meteorologist, this would have been eighth grade. I decided against it when I figured out that there were very few jobs in the field (not the big detractor) and that many of those positions involved spending some time standing in front of a camera (that's the big deal). I think this was right after I decided against being a writer, for a living that is, because there was no point - all the good stories had already been told. I knew that all the forms of conflict had been known for millenia and was influenced by someone who said that all a writer could hope to do was to put a spin on a story that had already been told, because there were no untold stories left. I thought that if I couldn't come up with anything new because there was nothing, that I might as well become a weather prognosticator. It is no small coincidence that this coincided with taking Earth Sciences from Mr. Stark. He had me at the front table sitting right in front of Christy Crichlow, who was hands down my biggest rival. I don't mean nemesis or anything negative, just that we were rivals - if someone was going to score higher on a particular unit than had ever been scored before (or at least that's what we were told), who was going to be, Christy or me? With the true-sight of retrospection that decades gives a man, I think that competing with Christy academically was probably the only way I knew how to flirt with her. That's all I remember, Christy was cute and smart, and I could really get into this whole heavy math, fluid dynamics thing that Mr. Stark was talking about.

To show the influence that this particular teacher had over me that year, I also wanted to be a vulcanologist and geologist that year, and probably other things I've forgotten in the intermittent 25 years. Interestingly enough, I did not want to be a science teacher, or any other kind of teacher at that point. Even then I was gifted with brief moments of insight and knew that as good a student as I was, that I could still cause headaches, so what must it be like to have a classroom full of kids who didn't even care as much as I did. I think this was the first year that I really began to dislike some of my fellow students solely based on the fact that they were making it harder for me to get a good education.

Anyway, my goal when I started writing this was to mention that two years ago in Keizer it was 85 degrees at 7:45 am when I was on my 4th of July walk - this year, it was 53 degrees at 7:38 am here in Coquille. What a difference proximity to the ocean makes. Oh, and it was heavily foggy today, which is not something I expected to see on July 4th.

Friday Review: So Beautiful or So What

A regular feature of sweaty bloggopotamus, Friday Reviews is a look at from one to a google plex things I've read, watched, heard, felt, tasted and/or smelled. While I hope these reviews to be of recent or interesting things, they will always be of things I love or hate or which have surpassed or sorely missed my expectations. In other words, its my two cents (which after adjusting for intellectual inflation and multiplying by the 'insight factor' and dividing by the quality of the review, is actually one cent - and that's on my better days).

So Beautiful or So What by Paul Simon

I've been a long time fan of Mr. Simon's music since my earliest memories of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and "Sounds of Silence". I dont' know if those were the first two that I ever heard, I think maybe "Cecilia" and "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" were the first two that I heard, but I didn't really like them. Okay, I don't know if those are the actual titles for any of the songs, but you know which ones I mean and I think those should be the titles.

I wasn't too busy in my hard rock/heavy metal phase to listen to Graceland, and while I've never gotten to see Simon live in concert, I did see Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Bumbershoot several years ago. They were phenomenal.

With the latest effort, I expected something I would like, probably even love. Well, that hasn't happened yet. I really like about half the album, and the other half I can't make up my mind on except for one or two that I don't like (Getting Ready for Christmas is the main one I don't like). On the whole, I recommend the album, but it's not Graceland. This is sad to me, because the high points of the album (The Afterlife, Rewrite, So Beautiful or So What) are as good as anything on Graceland.

I'll keep listening, but I think I can only give the whole album another try or two before I make a playlist of it that only includes the good stuff.

I give this album 3.5 out of 5 thumbs ups.