Climbing Plot Mountain

12:37pm: Hippo Birdie!
Best wishes for a lovely day, stillsostrange - I hope you get to spend it with all your favorite ghouls. *g*

9:24am: And yet more photos
I wanted to download all that was in my camera before this afternoon's client meeting, so here's another sempervivum photo, complete with rain drops--teeny rain drops, as this is a macro shot.

2:18pm: AKICILJ*
I'll take male bonding rituals for 100, Alex.

I know that Western military training of young men is steeped in the sort of blustering interaction that Western males, for the most part, seem automatically to fall into whenever three or more of them get together.

What I do not know, however, is if this is a cultural phenomenon or if it's something that, say, young Asian males also exhibit in groups. Anyone out there have evidence on either side of this question?

The military training portion of my statement is important for context, though I'm not sure it really matters to the question, so please don't feel you can't respond if your experience isn't military related.

(*That's All Knowledge Is Contained In LiveJournal, of course.)

***

This book is something like 400 pages long. I'm currently on page 211 of the rewrite, though that's misleading since there are lots of notes and highlighted things to fix embedded within it; I won't have an accurate page count until I clean all of that up, once the rewrite is done. At any rate, I am firmly in the middle of the book, in the second act of three, or however you might wish to measure such things. While there remains one crucial major change yet to be made, I am somewhat cheered by having this many pages behind me. The first part is where all the hard changes had to be made. *g* The part I'm in now is fixing echoes and tweaks.

***

Get a load of this really gorgeous German manor house: http://www.schloss-lohrbach.de/. Can't you see Canum looking out one of those third floor windows, watching the house's guards company drilling on the greensward below? (Yeah, this one's got a moat and Harlendon doesn't, but the form of the house is just so perfect otherwise.) You can click on the flag emblems below the image to change the language of the page and, incidentally, the image itself, which I personally find way cool. Check out the French version as well - an actual photo; yes, this is a real structure. ::covets::

***

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

9:22pm: More on the photo front
Sempervivums are smallish succulent plants with really spectacular flowers. They look like cacti, but have no spines. I've long been interested in these plants, and this spring when I found myself working the spring garden show one booth over from Stone Crop Nursery, specialists in sempervivums, I bought five different varieties.

With my son's help - he works construction, and has brought me several loads of rocks of various sizes - I've been able to get the plants into the ground (along with the cacti that are part of his collection) and the rocks placed so that we have landing pads for feet interspersed with the planting pockets. I built in some elevation change, too, since a garden ought not be a flat plane.

As if to say how pleased it is with its new home, one of the sempervivums promptly flowered:


You can see the rest at my Flickr page.

8:48am: Photos!
One of my greatest joys lately has been hiking and camping with my son and the dogs up in Shenandoah National Park. I love getting away from the traffic noise and congestion, up into fresh breezes and soaring elevations and nights cool enough to really relax into. I am ever fascinated by rocky outcrops and overlooks. And campfires—who doesn’t love campfires?

We’ve been able to take two weekend trips up into Shenandoah this spring, and I’ve finally managed to download the photos I took. I’ve posted some of the best to my Flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/8556491@N07/), but I’ll drop one in here as a teaser. Left to right, that’s my son with his beagle, Beenie, the son of the family we hike with, myself and my dog, Kay, and the mom of our hiking buddies, posed in front of a waterfall as we hiked down to Rapidan Camp/Camp Hoover.



***

The revision slog continues. I’ve pushed my way through two of the three major changes I wanted to make to Kith and am almost halfway through the book. I keep moving by promising myself that I’ll take a break, oh dog! a break, and read some stuff and watch mindless TV and wander around looking at pretty things until my brain cools off enough to maybe create some new words. There is life after Kith - there’s Satisfaction, the pirate story (Josh’s story, for those who joined me in struggling through novel_in_90) and there’s Bells, both of which have problems that need working out.

Mostly, though, I just want some down time.

9:42am: The world moves on
Bartleby.com has reorganized its webpage.

At first blush, I was cautiously optimistic. Some of the ways of pulling up the references I usually use on that site appeared to have been relocated, but I thought the relocation would not be hard to get used to. (I do not need more distraction when I'm supposed to be working on gathering words in those few moments I can find to do so.)

This morning, however, I went looking for the dictionary (I needed - still need - to find out what the verb infinitive is for the word "harried) on Bartleby and came acropper. Roget's is still there - thank dog! - but the dictionary and several other reference volumes I'd occasionally turned to have gone the way of the dodo. Now I have to find another dictionary.

(Here's an observation on how dependent I'm becoming on having all of these references available at my fingertips: I do have a very good hardcopy dictionary here on my desk. It's currently beneath my hardcopy of Roget's, a Russian-English dictionary, The Sailor's Word-Book (bet you can guess why that's there, and just exactly how long it's been since I've needed to go that deep into the stack), Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations (ditto), a couple of notepads, some images of boots snipped from magazines by a friend (ter369) who's been deceased for about a year (and who I miss very much), Rediker's Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and another couple of smaller sailing-related references. The only thing lower on the pile, in fact, is my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. *g*)

However, comma, I have to say that the new version of Bartleby's has much to recommend it, so much so that I'll probably retain it as my home page. Take a look for yourself: http://bartleby.com/subjects/

You wanted to read Bulfinch's The Age of Fable? It's there. Gray's Anatomy? Likewise. Virgil's Aenead. Aesop's Fables. Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. Aristophanes. Agatha Christie. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (ah, I love that book). Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote. Dostoevsky, Eliot, Goethe, Hawthorn. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and Edward II. Poe, Moliere, Sand. Shakespeare. And that's just the fiction - and I mentioned maybe one in ten.

Now if they just had a dictionary....

2:18pm: I get to keep Canum socking Kale! You don't know how happy realizing that made me. *g*

Yes, I'm still slogging along through Kith and Kin. Following a fairly detailed critique of the novel earlier this year, I spent some time thinking about the shortcomings that had been pointed out. I concluded that there were three major changes I wanted to make, and it's those changes and the seismic ripples spreading out from them that I've been working on ever since. I doubt I'm unique in the level to which a single event is intertwined and affects other events in my work. Catching all those little changes, and smoothing over the patched parts, is taking so much more time than I'd hoped, but I think what comes out the other side will be a stronger book, so go me. (And thank you, Critiquer.)

As I managed to push my way through the second of the two major scene-changes, however, I figured out how to keep Canum finally giving Kale what he deserved. It had to be rewritten, yes, because its venue and timing changed, but as of earlier this morning Kale is sporting a lovely bruised face and Canum got some of his own back.

***

jonquil linked to a post by oliviacirce about a divide in SFF fandom that, amongst other things, talks about how discussions proliferate across the internet, occurring at many different levels and with potentially thousands of users all commenting on a single post that then cross-indexes in new and interesting non-linear ways. One can hardly read all the posts on a given topic - certainly not in real time, and even with significant delays sometimes those of us more heavily scheduled often have to prioritize what we read and what we have to hope someone else will summarize. Nevertheless, there's this fascinating (to me) way in which the original conversation so often reappears in references three or six or a dozen links down the chain, thus perpetuating and deepening the discussion. I - admittedly one of the more heavily scheduled people I know - am delighted that this is so, given that there's no chance in hell I'd catch up with the conversation if this didn't happen!

***

One of the things I am getting to do with this rewrite is deepen the universe of the books. I spent one entire half-braindead evening looking at pictures of horses. (I swear, it was pertinent research. It didn't hurt that they were really beautiful horses: http://lusitano-interagro.com/collection/verdugoOR.htm.) Places I hadn't described before are getting mortar and floorboards. This makes me happy...but it also is giving my continuity awareness brain cell fits, because more detail means more potential screw-ups.

Is it any wonder I keep lists of people and horse and place descriptions?

**

Oh: for those who may remember last winter's and the previous winter's posts about ginger shortbread, let me take a quick moment to say this: Five Spice Powder, in shortbread, is intriguing. To me, at least. I'm taking some to work tomorrow, so we'll see just how widely that opinion might be held. *g* (The recipe originally was orange-spice shortbread. I didn't have any oranges to get peel from. Then it occurred to me that Five Spice Powder has both orange peel and cinnamon, as well as some other really cool spice flavors, so....)

3:23pm: My friend is a Geek Dad!
And she didn't even have to become a father to do it! *g* Go check out corrinalaw's latest post over on the Geek Dad site: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/05/how-to-find-the-right-message-board-to-nuture-your-geek-kid/.

***

Looks like I get to take the week, or most of the week, off. I got hit with acute appendicitis on Sunday evening and had the damned thing out very early Monday morning, and am now in recuperation mode. Ow, yes, but not as big an ow as I recovered from last summer; this one was laparoscopic.

The dogs are pleased. ::rolls eyes::

8:35pm: Your Opinion Here!
In this series I'm struggling with, one of the characters (Irie) is female but cross-dresses and manages to get away with the masquerade sufficiently that most of the others see her as male. (About a 14-year-old male, but male nevertheless.)

I've had a reader observe that the pronouns I'm using in dialogue and exposition do not match. Here's the situation: the POV character (Canum) knows Irie's gender. He does not want to give away the secret (which, btw, is not kept secret from the reader). When he speaks of Irie, then, he's either very careful not to use a pronoun or he uses the masculine pronoun. However, when he's thinking about or observing Irie, he uses the feminine pronoun.

How would you handle the pronoun issue and why?

There's probably a "right" answer, but as with so much in writing I'm looking for what will work the best, not what's necessarily "right." Feel free to chase this one out on a limb. *g*

12:56pm: State of the Me
Look, Ma – actual content!

I was talking with my crit partner, corrinalaw, recently about the revisions underway for Kith and Kin, and I realized something about what I’m going to laughingly call my Process. I take a look at a scene I need to revise. I think about the plot questions raised therein, about how the characters’ actions affect said plot…and then I take a step back from the question and instead query the characters themselves. Would A really make that decision? Would B react in that fashion to C’s exclamation?

I choose to look at this as a maturing of me as a writer – that I have enough maturity now to notice when I’m pushing the characters around as pawns instead of letting them tell their own story. It’s probably more noticeable with this book (this series of books) than other novels I might revise because the series Kith is a part of is really rather venerable; I’ve probably rewritten the book, from scratch, three or four times in the past 20 years. Yeah, that’s right. The series, as conceived, is at least that old. And in that time, let me tell you, I’ve grown as a writer and in my perception of what makes good writing.

(The series that Kith’s a part of…hmm. If this thing ever sells, I’m going to need a series title.)

***

The other thing I’m noticing lately is that my overbooked state is leading to focus problems—as in, stare at the sentences and paragraphs, stare at my notes about what needs to fixed, stare some more…. The only cure I’m finding for this is to quantify, in words, what the scene is supposed to be accomplishing, what my protag’s goal is in the scene, what the scene antag’s goal is in the scene. It has to be in words because otherwise my very, very visual-and-symbol oriented brain would just keep shunting symbols around in the front room of my mind and I’d never have a single word to put to paper.

This is also the state where I realize I need to write down all of the looming deadlines and expectations – again, in actual words – and start crossing things off as I accomplish them. It’s amazing how freeing those crossed-out entries can be. If I’m really overbooked, I’ll break down each obligation into its component parts to get the most bang from each tiny accomplishment. I’ll take all the help I can get when things get that bad.

***

And you know it’s bad when my brain wants to read the newspaper instead of think about the book.

***

We went camping this weekend up in Shenandoah National Park. I may be the only mother of my acquaintance who thinks this is an absolutely perfect way to spend Mother’s Day weekend. Tents, hiking boots, campfires. Wind whistling like an ocean through the treetops. Bears (okay, my son saw them this time, but last time we were up here it was my turn). And fresh air, and blue sky, and bird song, and a general respite from the constant pressure of noise that is the suburban landscape. Ah, heaven.

We’re going again over Father’s Day weekend. *g*

8:44pm: Not-Quite-UnBirthday
A most pleasant and pleasurable natal anniversary to cristalia! I hope the universe brings you good things today.

4:01pm: Cake!
And candles! And all manner of good things for jmeadows - just remember to share some with the ferrets!

Happy birthday!

(I used to think the world was made up of people whose birthdays were in October and November. Who knew?)

8:13am: Woot!
::sets loose an entire bucket of glitter balls::

Happy Birthday, katallen! Enjoy your day!

8:23am: Felicitations!
Happy birthday, jonquil, and may you have many pleasant returns of the day!

5:46pm: WTF, Amazon?
Take a look at this: http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html

If I understand correctly, it seems that Amazon has stripped the sales rankings from a wide swath of titles available on that site - and the unifying feature of those titles affected is that they relate to homosexuality. In the comment threads on the above page, there's indication that the erotica field has been struck, as well; that the striking of data extends to academic studies of homosexuality; and that, for some odd reason those titles that are categorized lesbian apparently have not been affected.

Further to which categories are being blanked: http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html

Comments being tracked on Twitter at #amazonfail.

Raise the roof, folks. Make sure no one tries this shit ever again.

***

ETA: jonquil's comments are worth reading, as usual: http://jonquil.livejournal.com/823622.html

4:37pm: Yet one more thing to stress over
Ye gods. First we have to write a good novel - not just good, but really good, really distinct in some fashion that's not really quantifiable. Then we have to leap waaaaaay up to the arbor where the agents hang out (and hope not to get too many sour ones!) and wait and wait and wait until we've given up for someone to decide our work is good enough to grace a bookstore's shelves (or Amazon's, at least). And now we find out that we must have a deft hand with the makeup brush...or at least know someone who does.

Get a load of this:

http://dev-amartin.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102821440

(Link goes to an NPR short clip about how the dust jacket's author photo affects the book's marketing--listen for the People Magazine quote about two thirds of the way through.)

Argh!

10:15am: Happy Birthday!
A very happy birthday to icedrake. May you see many pleasant returns of the day.

8:47am: Don't even go there
Let's just say that I've been advised, through hearsay, that staying silent on a particular topic is perceived as being part of the problem related to that topic - that only by speaking up against the problem can I be perceived as part of the solution.

I have an answer to that bit of advice: FAIL

Regardless of how I feel about the problem - which, you'll note, I have not addressed and am not going to address - the one thing guaranteed to dig my heels in and push me in the opposite direction is telling me I have to do something.

Really, if you want to change the way people behave toward one another, you could do better than to use the same tactics you're bitching about.

FAIL.

4:21pm: Urban renewal
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd engaged in a bit of urban renewal at my office. I figured it was time to post some pictures, and since I'm supposed to be doing other things right now I figure it's as good a time as any.

Voila:



The blue tape is what started all of this. The carpet, which is something like 14 years old, has begun bubbling badly where heavy objects wheeled across it have separated the carpet from the padding (if there is any) and the concrete slab below it. Where the bubbling was particularly bad, or where the carpet had actually torn and was tripping people, the maintenance guys were coming around, squirting glue through a slit in the carpet, and then holding the slit carpet edges together with the blue tape. We were advised we could remove the blue tape after a day or so. No one ever removed it. *g*

Then I got tired of looking at all the bubbling, and added more tape. My goal is that, when someone comes down the hall, they see the tape designs and not the bubbling carpet. And, you know, it works!

Other shots of the same corner, which is basically an ell with my half-wall and desk at its apex:



Further shot down the same arm of the hallway.




That's my desk in front of the (very bright!) window.

2:50pm: --30--
505 pages. 126K words as measured in Standard Manuscript Format. Eight months, give or take.

Here, have a word cloud:

8:50am: This just in--
Richmond VA has snowpocalypse! Yes, Virginia, the weather gods have not abandoned us. We have an honest-to-goodness eight inch snow accumulation, the first of such quantity in probably ten years, and your correspondent is stoked--not least because it means state workers are off for the day, and I get to play with the dogs and write and read. Woo!

Kay is in seventh heaven. She's convinced that the snow was put there just for her to play in and insists on eating half her weight in white every time we go out...which is often. *g* (I got this dog because I wanted to bring more life into the house. Let's just say I succeeded.)

We do have branches down in the back yard, pines being the delicate things that they are, but those are going to wait for moving until I can get to them through the snow. I was very happy this morning to see that none of them fell on my shrubbery, only on the lawn or mulched areas.

The snow appears to have mostly stopped accumulating. Now the wind's doing its sculpting thing, howling through the pines. All in all, I'm glad I'm inside.

(N.B. - make that 11 inches.)

***

Last night, before bed, I wrote the last sentence of the climax scene in Break. That leaves only the summing up and laying of final trails into the next book, which I will attempt today in between dog tending chores and playing in the snow.

Guess I'd better get at it!

2:27pm: Heh
I just realized that I know what the cover for the novel known as Break will forever be in my head. *g* (Knowing full well that, if and when it ever gets picked up for publication, I'll have no say in cover illustrations.) (But it's so perfect, wails my inner child.)

***

You wanna see a cover made of awesome for a real novel, as in, one coming out in August of this year? Go check out stillsostrange's LJ and squee!

Everybody else wants the midriff thing. Me, I want the cloak.


***

If you guessed that the image for the cover for Break being in my head means the book is finished, well, not quite. But I am about to embark on the very scene that generated the image in my head, at about page 491, and once I can figure out how to structure it the thing should just about write itself, I've spent so much time and energy thinking about it. And then it will be downhill to the last bits (denouement, anyone?) and I will be DONE!

Don't let anyone ever tell you finishing a novel isn't hard work.

9:10am: 42!
If you don't already have xkcd on automatic distribution to your flist, this may just change your mind...if, that is, you're a certain kind of geek. *g*

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kindle.png

Douglas Adams is laughing so hard right now....

8:01am: The Funniest Word
I suspect that any time I might be asked to name what I think is the funniest word in the English language, I'm likely to come up with a different candidate. Today's comes courtesy of Best Life magazine:

"Then you have [name redacted, poor guy], a Southern gent raised to be discrete and diligent."

Hee! That almost balanced my annoyance at having to deal with a morning busload of chatty Cathys.

***

This being Wednesday, and Wednesdays being when Louisiana Flair, a local Cajun restaurant, offers beignets on their menu, I'm planning an excursion before getting down to work. I made orange syrup this weekend that I think will go exquisitely well with the beignets and brought some in today to share.

That's what the Clever Girls and Boys need to invent next: a scratch-n-sniff device you attach to your computer. Then you could share, too!

***


Yes, I'm still plowing through the tail end of Break. It may break me before we're done. Every once in a while I get a tantalizing hint that the book might have sneaked something really cool in amongst those 483 pages. I can only hope I can find those places, pull back the dross that covers them, and polish them so they can be at their best and most compelling.

Well, I can hope.

12:57pm: Make it hurt, damn it
Note to self from the middle of this novel's climax:

Chasing two armed men, you definitely go armed yourself, and while these may be lower-rank Orators they won’t be idiots--this is not a MUNCLE episode, and they are not stupid Thrushes. Give them credit for native intelligence and survival instincts!