Sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in-between
Archive for April, 2010
Out with the ugh, in with new
Apr 26th
It’s time for another one of my semi-annual self-adjustment breaks. When I find I’m in a rut, or spending too much time indulging in time-wasting, unhealthy endeavors, it means it’s time to take a good, hard look at my life and discard the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary.
I’ve got a lot going on right now, all of it important. I’m trying to write a novel. I’m trying to finish upgrades on my house. I’m trying to be a good parent, a good husband, and a good friend. And I’m recovering from surgery to correct my deviated septum. (Long term prognosis: I’ll be able to breathe! Short term prognosis: Oh god, my face!)
So, I’m going to spend the month of May abstaining from several psychologically unhealthy habits.
First, I’m taking a news sabbatical. This especially applies to political news, which tends to suck me in and slaughter any spare moments I have in the day, moments better spent writing.
Second, I’m going to refrain from an activity I’ve been thinking of as “exhaustion surfing.” You know that nighttime moment, right around 10:30, when you think to yourself, “Self… You ought to be in bed, Self.” And then you stay up another hour surfing the web without any real direction or purpose, and gain absolutely nothing, not even mild entertainment, from the wasted time and lost sleep? Yeah… No more of that.
Third, I’m going to strictly limit what I do on the internet in daylight hours. The internet is a useful tool, but I’m not using it as one right now. I’m using it to distract and exhaust myself. So for the month of May, I will use it as a writing research assistant, and a communications medium. That’s not to say I will avoid all other uses of the web entirely — for instance, to watch a show on Hulu one must go to hulu.com — but what I won’t do is surf aimlessly. Too much of that is wasted time, night or day.
Finally, I’m going to read a book. I’ve gotten out of the habit, and reading is good for my writer brain. Failing to read is a bad habit all by itself, and it’s high time I broke this one.
Writing parallel novels
Apr 5th
The novel editing proceeds more or less on schedule, which means I’m still wondering what the hell I was thinking, but I guess that’s basically my natural state as a writer.
One of the challenges I had with this novel in its first draft is that one of the most important characters is off-screen for much of the story. Her scenes and activities are conveyed in summary form after the fact, interspersed throughout the novel. There wasn’t any help for this at the time. I had to get the story out from the main protagonist’s perspective first. But now that it’s done, all that summary is just a godawful drag on the story, and needs to go.
So I’ve been taking those summarized details, and expanding them into full scenes that shift the point of view to the secondary character. And as I do this, I’m converting the info dumps that exist in the first draft to drama that actually appears on the page. The protagonist’s chapters are beginning to shrink to manageable sizes while these new chapters grow.
In essence, I’m writing the novel again from the secondary character’s perspective. It will be shorter, with fewer overall chapters — right now the pattern seems to be working out to one secondary character chapter for every two primary — but it still feels like writing the novel again. And I’m finding that to be a good thing: I’ve recaptured the excitement of writing it in the first place.
It’s very liberating. I don’t feel any stress over ripping out huge swaths of talking heads and info dumps, because I’m going to make those into shown-not-told scenes for the secondary character. And I don’t feel any need to wax loquacious with the new chapters, because everything else is already in the first draft chapters. Can’t say for sure this will work out in the end, but so far so good.
Always check the calendar
Apr 2nd
Regarding yesterday’s post about my utter and complete reversal on every issue and goal in my life…
At least I didn’t rickroll anybody.
A (few) change(s) of heart
Apr 1st
After some serious, heartfelt consideration, I’m reversing my stances on a number of things in my life, ranging from the political to the personal.
First of all, I’m not going to write science fiction or fantasy anymore. I’ve tried, and tried, and tried, but I’m just not making headway, and I’m certainly not making enough money at it. I’ve still got the writing bug, but I could probably be more successful as a technical writer, perhaps with the occasional foray into literary drama. In fact, I’m fairly sure the science fiction elements of the novel I’ve been struggling with can be easily excised, and the resulting prose would be better for it.
Second, I’m through with Linux. Done. Fed up. Nothing ever works right, rebuilding the kernel takes up too much time, and the constant security threats are a nightmare to keep up with. It may be more expensive, but I’m going legit: Windows 7, here I come! I haven’t decided whether I’m going to go all-Microsoft all the time, but I’ve already bought a Windows-powered phone and switched my default search engine to Bing.
Perhaps the most startling change is that I’ve come to realize the error of my political ways. After reading some of Robert W. Welch Jr.’s works, I look back at my liberal history with — I’ll be frank, here — shame. The way we’ve destroyed capitalism in this country! The way we’ve hamstrung our own businesses! No wonder our economy has been so bad for so long. And don’t get me started on foreign policy. We ought to be forcing all those primitives and communists to embrace democracy, even at gunpoint. Our very lives depend on it.
Mark this date on your calendar as the day I saw the light.
