The World Moves Faster Nowadays

Used to be, I'd get two or three months into a project before flagging and doubting it. Now it's just been a couple of days since I did my plot outline for NaNoWriMo, and already I'm feeling less enthusiastic about it. One of the biggest problems is (once again) the reverse of my usual experience.

Usually, I come up with a strong opening scene and a basic plotline for the first 100 pages or so, Once I reach the end of that I start to have problems. This time, I've got the entire story outlined in my head, but I'm not sure how to start.

Even worse, I'm having a real problem figuring out what I want the viewpoint to be. The story would seem to demand third-person, past tense. The problem is, all of the stories I've written in the series so far have been first-person, present tense, and part of the reason I think they worked so well was the narrator's voice. If I lose that, will the storyline be interesting enough to make up for it?

Obviously, between now and then, I need to do some reading that features good viewpoint narration in third-person, to get it strong in my head again. I did it with Blue Falcon, oh so long ago. I just have to get my chops back.

Tuesday Is Backwards Day

So I've tried to write novels before. And I mean, like at least eight or nine times before. I've only ever finished one of those attempts (I did finish a crappy first draft on one of the others, but only because I got lost midway through and decided to tack on an abrupt ending just so I could say I finished it - the story ends, but I don't think you could say it was really done). One reason is that I get so excited by the concept that I start writing way too early in the process, excited to get started, and eventually I hit a wall. I have a vague idea of where I want to go and how to get there, but I can't seem to justify it given the characters and world as they have developed. I've followed the road, but the bridge is out. I've tried outlining, diagrams, character biographies, index cards, but they never feel right.

So now comes NaNoWriMo, which encourages writing without preparation, seat-of-the-pants wordflow. This is ideally suited to my approach, no?

So what do I do? Since I'm excited about writing the book, but not allowed to start writing pages yet, I've been putting together the most complete outline I've ever written. Character notes. Snippets of dialogue. Good Lord, gasp, even index cards, choke. And it looks like it's going to be a great yarn. Over-the-top apocalyptic action with lots of juicy character conflict (and, I'm hoping, loads of humor). I'm really getting pumped up here, which is exactly what Chris Baty warns against in his guide to NaNoWriMo, No Plot? No Problem!

As he puts it, "Past a certain point, novel planning just becomes another excuse to put off novel writing. You will never feel sufficiently ready to jump into your novel, and the more time you spend planning and researching, the more likely you'll feel pressure to pull off a masterwork that justifies all your prewriting work."

So a part of me is worried that I'll do exactly what he warns against, freeze up because I've built up such pressure from all the prep work I've been doing. But another part of me isn't worried, because this is a character I've already written several stories about. I know him and his world, and it's always a joy to go back there. I can't wait to start blowing stuff up.

Well, I Did It

I went and registered for NaNoWriMo. I've had an idea for a story nagging at me for something like 15 years now. I'd originally thought to write it as a screenplay, but I couldn't find the right hook to turn a bare concept into a fully fledged story. I've made several false starts at it over the years, but never really got a grip on it. When I decided to do it as my NaNoWriMo project, I finally found the hook I needed. I've got what I think is a really solid structure (of course, I've thought that before), and I'm itching to start writing.

NaNoWriMo starts on Nov. 1. Happy Birthday to me.

Frustration Gives Way to Depression

Well, the contest results are in, and not only did I not win, I did not place among the top thirteen (out of 92). This with a story that people in my writing group still talk about two years after I read it to them. I am about as fucking low right now as I can get. I need a serious injection of motivation soon.

Frustration Continues

Okay, so the results were pushed back to Oct. 5, except it's now Oct. 11 and still no results. This is maddening.

In other news, I may be getting a promotion soon. This may sound too much like counting chickens before they hatch and all that, but I figure there are two shortlisted candidates, and the other one (so far, at least) doesn't really want the job. so...

We'll see. But it would be sweet if it happened. Normal hours and a higher salary - I could live with that.

And just to show that I'm completely insane, I've been toying with writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. I haven't registered yet, but I'm playing with ideas. We'll see if I've got the guts.

Aaaaargh!!!

I entered "Frame by Frame" in this contest in July. At that time, the contest had been open for a couple of months and they only had 15 entries. The deadline was in less than a month (August 15th). So August 15th came and went, and a new notice appeared that the deadline was being extended to September 8th with winners to be announced on September 25th. Frustrating, but I could deal. So I've been itching and twitching for a week, anxiously awaiting the results, and finally, yesterday, the 25th arrives. I go to the site and find out...

that due to the number of high-quality submissions, the results will be delayed until October 5th.

I say again: aaaaaaaarrrghhh!!!

In other news, I sat down to work on my new novel for a couple of hours yesterday, which turned into spending an hour on the new novel and spending an hour or so reading bits of my old one, Blue Falcon. It has some good stuff in it, but I seriously, seriously flubbed the geography in one of the major set-pieces in the book. I have a sniper shooting some folks, then calling in artillery from 200 meters away, but I also mention him being on an adjacent hill, which would be more on the order of 2 kilometers away, I think. And it sucks because otherwise the scene is pretty well-done. But now I'll never be able to read the scene again without focusing on the mistake.

I Predicted This

After Gillette came out with the Mach 3 (three-bladed razor) and Schick responded with the Quattro (four-bladed razor), I predicted that it was just a matter of time until Gillette would fire back with a five-bladed razor. Guess what?

This makes me happy, not so much because I want a five-bladed razor, but because I want to see Schick come out with a six-blader. I have the perfect name for it: the Schick Sechs. What purer form of marketing could there be than naming your product "sex"?

Prison Break and Lost DVD's

I've been watching Fox's new show Prison Break for three weeks now, and I'm ambivalent. For those of you who don't know what it is, Prison Break is a new TV series about a man who gets himself thrown into a prison he helped design in order to break out of it. His brother is on Death Row, you see, for a crime he didn't commit, and he's due to be executed in a month. So while our hero works to break his brother out of prison, the brother's former girlfriend (a lawyer) is working on the outside to prove his innocence.

I thought the opener was exactly what it should be, stylish and intriguing, setting up lots of threads for future development. I thought the following week's episode (technically episode 3, although it was broadcast in week 2 - episodes 1 and 2 were shown together as a 2-hour premiere "event") developed the threads nicely and added some neat complications. And then episode 4 comes along.

I'm not a Republican, but my views are fairly conservative. So when the show suddenly brings in a crusading anti-death penalty lawyer and adds the concept that the victim of the murder Hero's Brother was framed for was killed by someone in the government becasue the victim was an environmental crusader, I start to worry. I don't need to get preached to by a TV show, especially one produced by Brett Ratner. As long as it's a story of one smart man carrying out a complicated plan to help his brother, I'm on board. It's only when the view widens out into tree-hugger La-la Land, where the heroes are crusading defense lawyers and convicts, and the villains are the government, the cops and Big Oil. Swear to God, if next week they introduce a gay vegan sidekick for the hero and show one of the bad guys wearing fur, I'm quitting the show, no matter how charismatic the star is.

In other news, I got the Lost Season One DVD's so I could get the entire season refreshed in my head before season two starts next week. Although I enjoyed watching the shows all together, I'm a little ambivalent about having bought the DVD's. After all, how many times am I going to watch the whole thing again?

Probably once a season, now that I think of it...

Playing God

I've been playing with Google Earth for a couple of days now, and I think it's totally revolutionary. Basically, it allows you to explore a globe covered with satellite-photography images. You can zoom in from outer space, all the way down to where you can see individual houses, and in some cases, individual cars and even people. You can tilt, pan, and rotate to your heart's content, and you can set it to display 3-D images of terrain features and even buildings, if they have the data set for that city.

The building features could use some improvement; it apparently only uses the dimensions of the base and the elevation to generate buildings, so odd-shaped structures like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or the Luxor pyramid in Las Vegas display as big rectangular blocks.

The photographs used are not always new. Both the Tulsa images and the Oklahoma City images are at least a year old, I'm guessing, juding from structures that hadn't been built yet when the pics were taken. And the quality is variable, so that you can see individual people in the shots of the Forbidden City in Beijing, but can barely make out the white blob that is my mother-in-law's truck in our driveway. And in some places, you can't even distinguish individual buildings.

But still, overall, it's an amazing experience to just revolve the entire planet with a small movement of your mouse, zoom out to see the entire country, then zoom in to look at individual buildings in moments. We've looked at our house, my mother's house, our old home in Clarksville, TN, my old house and high school in Oklahoma City, my old apartment building in Los Angeles, as well as the USC campus. Someday, I'm going to a fly-by of South Korea, maybe the Himalayas. This is one of those things that everyone I've showed it to has not just liked, but enthused about. In a year, it may be passe', or it may be just replace Mapquest as the tool of choice for finding a destination. Whatever it will be, it's a hell of a lot of fun right now.

Contract

Got the contract for DaiKaiju! and sent it back, so now things are more or less official. Now I just have to wait for that humongo check to arrive.

Hikaru No Go

I've been reading Shonen Jump magazine since it began publishing in the U.S. and I enjoy every strip in there, which surprises me, because there's one strip in particular that I was sure I wouldn't like when I heard of it.

It's called Hikaru No Go (Hikaru's Go), and(here's a big surprise) it's about a boy named Hikaru who plays Go. That's right, the (originally Chinese, I think) game with the white and black stones. This in the same magazine that publishes Dragonball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh. Try to imagine this in America: you buy the latest issue of Superman, and the back-up is about a kid who plays chess. Gag me, right?

Well, as it turns out, you don't have to play Go in order to enjoy the story. In fact, there's a certain Zen pleasure in not understanding the McGuffin. It's like a textbook example of how to create the perfect Japanese boy's adventure, regardless of subject. Take a happy-go-lucky main character, who discovers he has a destiny and has to develop the serious intent to pursue it. Give him a secret talent that sets him head-and-shoulders above anyone else, if he could only develop the skill to go along with it. Add a scowling rival, who has been pursuing the same goal as our hero for a long time and has the skills, but not the secret talent. (at some point, this rival will become our hero's best friend/ally).

The thing I really like about Hikaru No Go is seeing the challenges that surround every game he plays. The drama doesn't come from hte stones on the board, but from the people facing each other. Hikaru and his opponents come to the board with very different goals and outlooks, and every game represents a bigger issue in Hikaru's life. It's masterfully done, and the artwork is gorgeous and full of appeal. Try it.

The Half-Blood Prince

Okay, I'm way behind the curve on this, but I might as well throw in my two cents. I liked Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Unlike Robert Jordan's current books, or the Clancy novel I read, J.K. Rowling continues to build on her strengths without letting her weaknesses take over.

Oh yeah, the weaknesses are still there. I'm still not thrilled with the way magic seems to follow no real rules (the school curriculum notwithstanding). Take charms, for instance (ok, I've never really discussed this before, so it may seem like a big rant out of the blue, but I'll try to keep it short). I don't like the way charms are written. With the Patronus charm, you have to maintain a certain mental state to make it work. With other charms, you have to flick your wand a certain way. And we're constantly reading descriptions of classes in which the students repeat the incantations and flick their wands for hours, with no results. But in Half-Blood Prince, Harry decides to cast a certain charm from simply reading a name out of a book, and gets it perfect on the first try. Just by saying the name once after reading it. How does one invent a spell if all it takes is a random name, perhaps combined with a wand flick or mental image? The whole Wizarding World concept is just as half-baked.

And in one sense, I'll be really glad to see the series end so that I won't have to take another year of Complicated Plots That Start At The Beginning of School And Miraculously Wrap Up At The End Of The Term, Just In Time For Summer Break And Another Dursley Visit (who, by the way, I'm also getting tired of).

So why keep reading? I love her characterizations. I really pull for Harry and his friends. I like the way she's built a huge extended cast to make the school and its environs seem like a real place. I like the way she has continued to give the villains depth and character, so that even as we wish for them to be defeated, we can understand why they do what they do, and even empathize to an extent.

And I like the rhythms of her books, and the way she makes each year pass: some find her detailed descriptions of classes and the fixed rituals of each term repetitive (which they are, to an extent - I think even she's getting tired of the Sorting Hat). But at the same time, it's like life, the way each year is different, yet certain touchstones remain the same. I think she's got a nice touch with it.

Can't wait for the next one.

Contests

Entered "Frame by Frame" in the SpecFic Contest, and I just printed off a new story to enter in Wrtiers of the Future. This is not a goof like "In Deep Shit," but an honest-to-goodness serious science-fiction story. I was just about at the point when I thought I'd burned all the seriousness out of myself; everything I wrote seemed to come out funny, and I was living for those moments when I'd get a big laugh at a punchline at my writer's group meetings. Then this story came reeling out one night. I cried when I wrote it, and The Wife cried when she read it, so I guess you could say it's not so much a comedy.

Starting back to work on Flip is not easy. I wrote a couple of scenes pretty easily, but they were basically transitional scenes. I'm coming up on a real meat-and-potatoes action sequence, a "production number" as my old screenplay teacher used to call it, and I'm seriously frightened of starting. The book already has about a million logical holes in it, and I'm terrified that I'll never solve them and the whole book will just be crap. But I'm afraid to try to go back and solve some of those problems until I've finished the first draft. It's one of those Ourobouros dilemmas, a snake feeding on its own tail, and it's the kind of thing that caused my previous paralysis on the book. I thought I'd solved it, but now it looks like I just pushed it back a few pages. Now it's back.

I've got to break through this thing and get moving. Maybe I should ask for help.

Conestoga

Spent the weekend at Conestoga, our local sci-fi con (yes, I said 'sci-fi' - wanna' make something of it?). Made some good connections, I think, and got to meet some personal heroes like Howard Waldrop and George R. R. Martin and Warren Spector. Now I've got to turn this enthusiasm into productive work on Flip.

Getting Back to Work

Well, it's not as if I haven't been working lately. I wrote a short story just a couple of weeks ago as a matter of fact. But I had a novel that I'd been deeply into, when I realized I'd taken a horrible wrong turn in the plotline. So I decided to back up about fifty pages and have another run at it.

Total blockage. Someone in my writer's group suggested putting it in a drawer for six months. I thought, "I'll try one month. I really need to get this finished." One months later, I wrote about a page and put it down again. Two months later, nothing. Now it's going on nine or ten months; every time I would think about going back to it, I would get another short story idea. "I'll just do this one more story, and then back to the novel, promise." That was five or six short stories ago.

And then last week, I saw one of the members of my writing group looking over notes for a book project she was working on. They were very extensive, pages and pages devoted to this or that character, and I began to feel guilty. And I thought, "I should try that again. Do some more structural work, some character exercises, get back into the rhythm." (The novel I was working was one I'd planned to plot out carefuly, but I got excited and jumped the gun, writing an opening that just forced me to keep pushing deeper into the story, until suddenly I was too far in without a map. I wandered around a while yelling, "Help, I'm lost," but that didn't work.

So I searched around and tried a couple of structural things and found one that seems to be yielding some initial results. We'll see how far I get this time.

Getting Used to It

Okay, I'm feeling a little better about the new computer now that I've had a chance to work with it a little bit more. I'm getting the settings tweaked to fit my preferences and exploring some of the new software. One thing I'm doing that I should have done a long time ago is putting together a spreadsheet to track my story submissions. I've read other writers mention this on their blogs, and I thought, "Why am I not doing this?" But I put it off because I don't really like Microsoft Works and I wasn't ready to buy a better spreadsheet program.

However, the new computer comes with Quattro Pro, so I've taken the plunge. Only problem now is, I don't have Quattro Pro on the office computer, so it doesn't look as if I'll be able to work with the spreadsheet there without laying out money for another copy.

Saw "Batman Begins" over the weekend. Aside from Christian Bale's odd-shaped head, this is the best version of Batman on-screen ever, bar none. But yeah, there's something seriously wrong with his head.

Got One

Okay, the new computer is now mine, and it's underwhelming so far, to say the least. I had actually gotten Windows 98 tweaked out to where I really liked how it ran, and now I'm having to learn Win XP. Despite the fact that my processor is over 6 times faster, and my RAM over three times bigger, everything seems to run much more slowly on the new machine. I'm sure as I delete the bloatware and trial programs that the machine is clogged with, I'll become more satisfied with the new computer's performance, but so far, it's a pain. Plus I'm having to transfer so many files from the old machine to the new, so it'll be a while before I'm fully up to speed. On the other hand, it's a welcome opportunity to ditch some old files that I didn't want to part with, but that I wasn't really using. And I'm sure I'll be enhancing the look of the system for a while. Get back with me in a week and maybe I'll be less frustrated.

In other news, I didn't win the Pitch Black books Storn Cook fiction contest, and "Frame by Frame" was rejected by another magazine (Aeon Speculative Fiction). But the editors at DaiKaiju want my story "Out of His League" to run in an e-anthology, so there you go. My first official fiction sale. It'll only pay about $7.50, but hey, it's a start.

Denied!

I finally succumbed to the new computer fever. I have not been able to make the shell thing work; in fact, it's only made the fever worse, since most of the shells and other skinnable programs work either exclusively or best with Win XP. Add to that the fact that I'm driving a rent-a-car with more cargo space while the Batmobile is being repaired, and the fact that the computer I almost bought last time is on sale again, and well... it's hard to resist. It's only been The Wife's disapproval which has held me off this long.

So I went in yesterday to look at it again, and while I was there, I decided to apply for the credit to buy it. If I couldn't get the credit, I wasn't meant to have it.

I got the credit.

Still, I couldn't quite commit. So I left and mentioned I might come back. I finally broke down and went after work today. "I think I'm going to get it," I said to the same salesman I spoke to yesterday.

They were sold out.

But they have more due in tomorrow, so The Wife can't completely exhale in relief yet.

Working the Bag

So for much of the 90 days I was doing P90X, I was looking forward to going back to heavy lifting: bench presses and squats. But I find that since I've put up the punching bag, I really like that most of all. I looked up a few articles on-line that basically all said the same thing: hit the bag for three-minute rounds, just like a boxing match. So that's what I've been doing: three three-minute rounds, with one-minute of rest between.

The first round is just getting into the rhythm. I mainly do straight jabs and crosses, nothing fancy. I'm working up a good sweat by the time that's done. The minute of rest feels like a long time, but I make myself wait it out. The second round, I mainly do hooks and uppercuts. Because I'm still not a skilled puncher, and because the bag's light, hooks set the bag spinning like crazy, so I have to switch hands to counter-spin it. I've got a couple of sandbag-type wrist weights in the bottom of the bag, so uppercuts are met with really stiff resistance. By the the end of the second round, sweat is flying and I'm panting so hard that I can smell the drool spewing out with every breath. The second rest period is the same length as the first, but it feels much shorter.

The third round I go mainly for long combinations, four, five, six punches. As I concentrate on stringing together quick combinations, I find myself barely slapping the bag. I have to remind myself to hit hard, and a few seconds later, I have to remind myself again. My shoulders and arms are running out of gas, and my lungs aren't keeping up with the pace. The last thirty seconds, I try to keep up a sustained flurry of punches, but I haven't got the stamina to go full-tilt. I can either hit fast or hard, not both, and I have to pause for a second here and there to get my breath back.

It may sound like torture written out like this, but it's fast and intense and it's over quickly. In eleven minutes, I'm done and ready for something more relaxing. I've also used the bag for some other training moves. I rucked up with it the other day and ran/walked ten or eleven laps around my cul-de-sac with all 40-50 lbs. on my back. It's hard to sprint with that much weight on your back, but it was an interesting change from the normal slow-to-moderate running I normally do. I've also done torso twists while swinging the bag to work on my upper back and obliques. I'm trying to incorporate Art DeVany's ideas about short, intense workouts and play. One problem I've had in maintaining a fitness regimen is that I get bored after about three months or so of doing the same thing all the time. Incorporating the bag work with my weights has been an excellent addition so far, at least in terms of motivation; we'll see if I get any results from it (which to be honest, I probably won't if I only do it once a week as I have been, but it's summer and I'm busy).

Behind the Curve

So I've had Winamp forever, just because I thought it was cool to have a program I could pick the skin for, but I've never really gotten into the whole "music-ripping" thing, until just recently. The last couple of weeks, I've been ripping MP3's like crazy. I've got almost 100 songs now, totaling almost 6 hours of music, and I've only nibbled around the most esoteric edges of our CD collection, usually ripping fewer than 5 songs per CD. For instance, I haven't even touched the Oingo Boingo stuff yet, and I've got almost all of their albums. Just the Oingo Boingo sutff will probably total well over an hour, and that's just ripping the songs I really like. I've got the Dickies, but not the Ramones. I've got the Wonders ("That Thing You Do" soundtrack), but not the Beatles. There's been no rhyme or reason to what I've done so far, but I must admit, it's addictive.

It was Lileks who got me thinking about doing this lately. As an avowed Apple addict, he bought an iPod Shuffle when they came out, and likes to mention the odd musical juxtapositions this produces. What I'm finding, now that I've got enough songs to decently shuffle, is a sense of ongoing delight at not knowing what's coming next, but knowing it will be something I like. The one thing that's missing between this and listening to the radio is the sense of true surprise when you hear a song you've never heard before that just blows your socks off, but I don't mind trading that for no commercials, no asshole deejays, and no clunkers in the mix.