Writing, snow, Harlan Ellison, etc

I’ve more or less vanished from the computer world, because I have too much work to do, and I don’t get enough done when I’m active on Mr. Internet in any form. The internet and writing (these days) each take a different set of gears.

So I’m off for a bit. In theory, I’m doing my five-pages-before-the-internet strategy for the day…but to be perfectly honest, I’m just off for a bit, five pages done or not. For one thing, I want to find the end of this long short story, and I won’t do that bouncing back and forth.

(Inexplicably, I’ve discovered today that this short story, which is a spookshow monster story…will probably not have any monsters in it, and will be more Alfred Hitchcock than spookshow. Go figure.)

The past three weeks, with steady internet use, my brain’s been gently buzzing and hyperactive, the way I get. It means my writing almost stops. My reading stops. And I’ve been struggling to finish this article for SF Signal for three weeks now, which I hate being overdue on.

(It’s not the internet’s fault, it’s just my head. If I were an alcoholic, it wouldn’t be the alcohol’s fault, it would be mine. But still. Gotta do what you gotta do to get the words done.)

I’ve got some serial work coming up that I don’t want to talk about too much yet. But I’ve got the first three episodes planned and a lot of backstory stuff, and I’m going to start writing those soon. But first, I’ve got to clear my plate. There’s eight short stories waiting for me, four articles and five reviews (all for SF Signal), and I’m really itching to get back into “Save Us” and see how Ryan’s doing in the hospital.

And I want to get a huge amount of this off my plate, before this summer when The Mysterious Serial project happens, and a Mysterious Book Project also happens. Both will take time and energy. I can’t wait for ‘em, but I want to be able to really devote to them.

I sure am being cryptic aren’t I? There’s probably no reason for it. It’s not like the entertainment press is reading this blog waiting for news. But it seems like bad taste to be non-cryptic at the moment. So. Er. There.

…

It has been snowing and blizzarding for two days now. Today, the snow has not stopped moving horizontally at high speeds. Mostly, I can’t see the road from my window. A guy just shoveled the sidewalk outside of my apartment, and the snow around him was up to his waist. Some drifts are rather higher. I’ve counted a dozen cars stuck in our parking lot today, trying to get in or get out.

Minnesota weather. Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it.

…

Okay. Going away now. I’ll pop back in with little updates on what’s getting done, just because I can. If you’re waiting for an e-mail from me (and some people are) then, well, sorry. It’ll be a bit. Can’t be helped.

…

A final thing before I go. People always talk about how caustic and angry Harlan Ellison is. and he is, to an extent. I guess I’ve been following him long enough and with enough interest to know that that’s not all there is to the man. And I thought an interesting thing which showed it was this.

we’ve all seen his Pay the writer clip. It was very popular during the 2007 Writer’s Strike (which we lost in an awful lotta ways, folks)

One thing I wish they’d included is the REST of that scene. You can see it if you’ve watched the amazing documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth. I really wish it was included in the above clip, because it’s a perfect commentary on the man. When he realizes he was over-the-top angry at the end of the first clip, you can see him pause a moment, and then say the following bit. It’s a terribly human moment.

Maybe it won’t change your opinion of him, and that’s okay.

here you go, what comes next:

…

There we go. See you in a bit.

A little quote

This was too good not to share. From my astronomy book.

“You may wonder why electrical repulsion doesn’t cause the positively charged protons in a nucleus to fly apart from one another. The answer is that an even stronger force, called the strong force, overcomes electrical repulsion and holds the nucleus together.”

…

I just like that the proper science-y term for it is “strong force.” That’s great. That’s like if they’d called that huge ball that all the planets orbit “big bright thing.”

You get the feeling that the strong force was probably named on a Friday afternoon, just before quitting time. “What do we call this then? Ah screw it. It’s a STRONG FORCE. I’m going home.”

My day, and what it looks like

This is a pretty boring post, I imagine. But here we go:

1) I have quite a lot of Astronomy reading to, er, read and possibly understand. I definitely need to get that done before tonight.

2) I need to stare at this Finnish magazine and this Czech magazine and try to parse out the languages enough to find what I need from them. (maybe you need a special sort of mind to find a problem like this fun, but I’ve got it.)

3) I need to find copies of some contracts I have floating around. I could probably use a “filing system.” Although then I would just lose the file.

4) My spookshow story has had two false starts so far. That’s enough of that. today, I start it and pursue it through to the end. Or at least, I get the story firing on all cylinders. Once it’s hot, I can keep it going even if it’s not all today. It’s those initial sparks that are sometimes the trick.

5) I have got to find an end to this SF Signal article which I’ve been writing for, seriously, ages now. I really didn’t want to rush it and produce slop for them, and I think it’s a good article. Now I just need to find an end to it, sometime between today and tomorrow night.

6) Seriously, this loose leaf mango black tea is fantastic. Fresh and unbroken and perfect. Each pot has been velvet smooth and delicious, and I may never stop drinking it. My wife is going to come home one of these days and find a small tea-scented puddle where I used to be. or possibly quite a large puddle.

7) I should probably take the trash out.

…

Puzzling over Finnish and Czech is interesting. I can parse out some languages a lot better than others. I can read Spanish pretty well, given a bit of time. (I used to understand it spoken too, and could say enough to get by, but alas, those skills have faded after too many years living in the Great White North). French, I can do likewise. Latin is easy, although this does me no good at all, since there are no magazines being published in Latin vulgate for some baffling reason.

Finnish is proving doable. I’m getting around. But I am completely lost in Czech.

I love languages, so I find parsing them out AND getting lost in one equally as interesting.

I can’t even begin to find a foothold in Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, or any variant thereon. It’s completely alien to me. I wish it weren’t, but I don’t mind all that much. It’s a challenge, and I’m interested. So one of these days, i’ll be able to bumble my way around in those languages too.

Okay, away, away with me. More tea and more word-based things, is what.

I hope you’re having a lovely warm weekend, wherever you are. It’s astonishingly cold here. No, colder. You step outside and it takes your breath away instantly and makes you cough.

Yep.

“A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.” — George Bernard Shaw

Emily Dickinson

“Any Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas,” is something I learned from Babylon 5 (season 5, “The Day of the Dead” episode, by Neil Gaiman). I’ve found, since then, that it’s true with almost all of her poems, although sometimes it takes an attempt or two to make the poem fit.

I adore Emily Dickinson. I adore not only her poetry, but the puzzling and story-like quality of her life (the fact that she wrote volumes and volumes of beautiful poetry, which she kept quietly on her shelves. In her life, she only published a handful of times, and then contentedly created brilliant art just for herself. That’s gorgeous).

Other poets, I can sometimes recognize by the poem, without being told who it is. Some of them are easy. You never have much of a doubt when you’re reading e.e. cummings, obviously. Robert Frost, I get right maybe seven out of ten times. But Emily Dickinson, I almost always get right. there’s a quality to the tone of her writing, and the rhythm, and frequently the subject matter, that says “Emily Dickinson” to me.

This is all brought on by having just seen a tattoo, over at Contrariwise.com, where they post literary tattoos. It was two lines of a poem, on someone’s shoulder. I read it and thought “Emily Dickinson…” and scrolled down, discovered I was right.

I like poetry. I adore poetry. I like how it unpacks. I get profoundly irritated when people who have zero interest in poetry make the assumption that it’s boring and easy, and then write maudlin, lousy poems. It’s the same irritation that gets to me with people who want to be writers (or sit around on the internet harraumphing about how they ARE writers), but who never read and take no pleasure in the language. Gimme a break.

…

This is all by way of a crusty wave good morning, before I head off to work on an article that may never end, and a short story I don’t have an ending to. (I don’t mind. One will turn up.)

It is appallingly cold outside. but the sun is out and reflecting off the whole surface of the world, which is covered in a single sheet of ice, and the sky has the crystal-clear quality of a cold winter’s morning. I’m inside with hot tea and a sweater. So it’s awfully hard to hate the weather today. At least until someone makes me go out into it.

…

that’s it. I’m off to work.

(p.s., I know, lots of e-mails still not sent…and not today, because I accidentally signed out of my e-mail, and therefore can’t be back in until My Wife gets home and signs me in. Inconvenient, I know. On the other hand, by the time she gets home, maybe I’ll have got a big swath of writing done and be a more relaxed, affable person you might want to receive an e-mail from. Hey-o.)

iPad, uPad, we ALL Pad…along quietly despite the restraining order.

So, I spent a happy morning watching the unveiling of the iPad, the new Apple gadget. I like it. It’s what I want in an eBook reader, more than the Kindle/Sony/Nook world (which I described as “Imitation Book” in my SF Signal article that seemed to have uniformly ticked-off Twitter, much to my quiet delight.)

That said, as much as I love the gadget…

…my favorite piece of technology is my Extra Fine Nib Lamy Vista fountain pen, with blue-black glass bottle of ink from Parker, and a small converter piston cartridge. And this lovely hardback-with-page-ribbon Piccadilly notebook I’m writing in.

Sorry Apple. You can’t be that. (Of course, they aren’t trying to, so I have no complaints).

That’s really all I came to say. I’m sort of busy, but not a lot of it’s useful. Tonight, I’m going to work on this spookshow story some more.

I need to write every day. I need it to make me a more relaxed person, I need it to produce the huge backlog of fiction that’s in my head, I need it because I’m a writer and it’s what I do.

Of course, having kids and housework and things doesn’t make it any easier than having a full-on day job would. But you do what you can, and that’s good enough.

…

That’s it from me. I’m going to go have black tea-with-mango-leaves. Tomorrow, Lor’ willin an’ the creek dun rise, I’ll manage to make another post. I want to. I want to share Handy Science Answers with you, from my Handy Science Answer Book. I adore that thing.

…

P.S., wherever you are in the world…it’s, like, twenty-below zero outside and physically hurts exposed skin after more than ten seconds. If you are wearing anything less than two sweaters and are comfortable….do not you dare complain about the weather!!! huff huff huff

& now to drink hot tea.

Q&A

Q: Oy! Where’s the SF Signal article you wuz gonna have fer us on Monday?

A: It is…currently about 3,500 words long and growing. Definitely the longest thing I’ve done for them since I wittered on ceaselessly about every Star Trek thing in existence. Late Saturday night, I was writing and writing and it stretched on longer in front of me. I thought about doing a two-parter (and it may be published as such), but I need to write it through to the end first. If nothing else, so I know where to split it.

Q: Does this make you a flake?

A: I like to think of it as late-but-working-hard. Anyway, I was up extremely late working on it. That rules out flaking. And so does a good shampoo. I’m just saying.

Q: All right. So you’re caught up on short stories? You must be, if you’re blogging.

A: Not really, no.  Still toiling away. The one story, the one with the dead and trains and stuff in it, that one’s stalled while I do some historical research. I need about a day’s worth of reading on trains, World War II, France, and a couple of other details. And then it’s straight on ’til the end.

Q: Okay, then are you working on something else while that one stands still?

A: Yep. Just started on my spookshow story this morning. As my morning tea cools, April is going down into the basement. In a moment, she’s going to prick her finger.

Q: And what –

A: And I’m working on my homework which is never-ending. Though at least I’m not falling behind. Hey-o.

Q: And what –

A: And I’ve got a metric shit-ton of dishes and laundry to get done, although I may be exaggerating slightly for effect. And I really need to pack up even more books.

Q: But what –

A: If Atlas has to hold up the Heavens for all time (he doesn’t have THE EARTH on his shoulders as one is erroneously told; it’s the heavens) and Loki gets venom dripped in his eyes, then I suppose I’m cursed to spend all eternity packing and unpacking my books, endlessly hauling heavy boxes of them in and out of closets, forever…

Q: For god’s sakes…

A: Are we done?

Q: NO! I NEED TO ASK…

A: Yes?

Q: GOD YOU MAKE ME SO MAD!

A: That wasn’t a question, though.

Q: AGGGGGHHHH!

Door slams.

A: I guess we’re done here.

How to catch hypothermia

If you live in Minnesota at the moment, here is how to catch hypothermia:

Step 1: go outside in the freezing slushing rain-ice-snow that is coming down.

Step 2: Die of hypothermia.

I’ll stay indoors, thanks.

…

So, I finished the story “Dirty Window” yesterday. It took longer than I thought, because it mostly didn’t work. Got halfway through and it went clunk. I knew from the outset that there was a good chance it was a dud of a story. But halfway through, I knew which word came next and wrote that. And then the one after. And I just kept doing it until the story came out somewhere.

It’s not the story I thought I was writing. it makes more sense than what was in my head. And it’s a bit spooky. My opinions on it are mixed, so I’ll have to send it to a few people and see what they say.

Writing it taught me some useful lessons about writing, though (or reinforced things I already mostly knew). So it’s not a failure.

And anyway, I like how it sounds.

…

Mostly, I’m offline at the moment. I’ve got SO much writing to get done, that I want to get done. And i’ve got lots of homework, some of it piling up while I nip off and write. And somewhere in there, I intend to spend time with my family and, er, brave the rain and snow and ice or something. Watch television, probably.

So mostly, the computer is shut and sitting on a shelf while I’m busy. I know I’ll have to pop on tomorrow night, because I’m really trying to get the SF Signal articles into the system once a week, on Sundays nights.

After that, I may be back online. Depends on what I’ve got done. When I can get two more stories done, then I won’t be falling behind and sinking any more. Both the stories are a bit long, I think, so who knows what’ll happen.

Right. Tea’s up. Time to go write about trains, and soldiers, and the dead…

Inks & Facebooks & things

Sort of wandered off the blog for a few days. Mostly because I’m buuusy writing a lot of short fiction. It goes slowly, because this next story (“Dirty Window”) is tricky. It’s a Mobius Strip story, and it’s probably simplistic…but it’s hard work to write. Hopefully when it’s finished, it’s at least worth something.

I’ve also been sunk in homework. I’m enjoying Anthropology a great deal (this current Semester’s class, “Myth, Magic and World Religion” is particularly nifty) but it’s a lot of work. Especially since I’m studying astronomy and biology at the same time. I like astronomy, but I’m not that smart in those areas.

Also, I wandered off and played with Facebook for a few days.

I don’t mind Facebook, I guess. I don’t quite see how people can lose hours and hours of their days ON facebook. I suspect I’m not using it correctly. I’m using it as a sort of conversation-enabled Twitter, so I’m probably not getting The Full Experience. But I am getting to talk to some wonderful friends I don’t otherwise talk to all that much, so it’s nice for that.

…

Yesterday, we went to the Twin Cities. I took along my empty Lamy fountain pen, intent on going to the Paradise Pen Company which is a store in the Mall of America. Beautiful, posh-looking store. One gets the impression that every pen costs a hundred bucks. Not true at all. For one thing, I saw a display of lovely Safari Vista pens in many exciting colors, and they aren’t more than twenty-five bucks.

They had a little piston converter for my pen. And I bought a pot of blue-black Parker ink, with which I’ve now filled my pen. Converter was five bucks and reusable-until-it-breaks (which I doubt will happen anytime soon). Ink was ten bucks, and will last quite some time. I’m very happy.

They had a really nice bottle of Waterman ink which was a gorgeous turquoise color, and I really liked that. I think I’ll get that one, the next time I need ink. (My wife advised me to get blue, or black, for this first bottle. It was good advice. Get something functional now,a nd something fun later. Very smart. And it’s a gorgeous ink.)

I was unaware that blue-black was a color all on its own.

Also, I brought Zach in with me to buy the cartridge and ink, and he charmed the two nice ladies behind the ink counter, them both being mothers or grandmothers, and him being a cute little human.

Also, a elegantly coiffed man from, I think, the Ukraine, harrassed us from a booth in the Mall, offering to curl our straight hair, or straighten our curls, or something. Very odd. For one thing, at the moment, I haven’t got any bloody hair to straighten or curl. And when it does grow out, they don’t ask. I think they assume something’s nesting in it and it’d be best not to pay any attention.

What else. In the dollar store (where we buy bottles of water before roaming the Mall of America), a towering black man told us to go in front of him in line for no reason (we were hardly rushed). Then told us that life was too short to hurry. And then began singing something in Italian, in a beautiful soprano voice, for the whole dollar store to hear.

That’s why I love the Mall of America. It’s a whole self-contained world full of the best people, even the weird ones. I think that’s why I like cities in general. Life is more condensed there, and sometimes more interesting because of it.

Today’s exciting plans: grocery shopping. And after that, if my heart can stand it, some homework-based reading. And if I’m still conscious after all that excitement, I might work on “Dirty Window” and see if I can’t get it out of the way, so I can get on to the next longer story.

Have a lovely Wednesday, world.

Old Age, mostly

I think I’m going to need to go to the Optomotrist soon. This afternoon, I sat down and did the typing-up/second-draft of the long short story I’d handwritten a week ago. It was just about 6,000 words long.

(I’d like to note, with more than a measure of pride, that it’s the longest, best-structured, most-coherent short story I’ve written in feckin’ years. Even if the story turns out to be crap, I’m proud of that.)

Anyway, by the end of it, maybe an hour later, I had strained eyes and a headache that was heading toward a migraine. Hmpf.

Well, once dinner and pills take away the head-pains, I’ll get back to work. I’m supremely grumpy that being busy this week has kept me from doing the next SF Signal thing (next is a review, and then is an article, for the interested). And then I’ve got a pretty-short story to write called “Dirty Window.” And then, while that one is sitting around mouldering, waiting for a type-up/second-draft, I’ll move on to the next longer short story.

…

You know, it’s interesting, but something I think about off and on is Old Age, and How Not to Die.

Exciting stuff, right?

I look at people like Smilin’ Stan Lee (EXCELSIOR!), or William Shatner, and I’m really hugely inspired by them. According to Wikipedia, William Shatner is 78 years old. And Stan Lee is 87 years old.

They both look good. They’re both doing quite a lot of stuff, they’re healthy and active and busy busy busy and, in more ways than one…young.

What fascinates me is, I’ve known people who were younger than them, who just sort of fade away and die. My wife’s grandmother, for example, passed away last year. She was in her seventies somewhere, but she looked like she was well over a hundred years old. Lost her sight, her health, her mind, and so forth. You can probably think of your own examples, similar to that woman, or to Stan Lee.

Why does that happen? That’s what fascinates me.

I think there’s no huge mystery about it. I think it’s just being active and busy and ALIVE. My wife’s grandmother did very little, had no particular interests. She mostly amassed money, then aged, then died.

By contrast, if you look at Shatner, or Stan Lee…they’re writing, and doing TV shows and interviews and Twittering and lots of other stuff. William Shatner has a whole second career involving horses. Lots of people, past fifty, wouldn’t even get on a horse.

Some people live, I think, and some people linger. At any age. And I think you and I both know which one will keep you alive and looking triffic the longest.

That’s why I find them inspirational. I’d like to be eighty-seven years old and still vital and interesting and engaged and doing stuff. Even if I’m not particularly a party person, I would like to, come ninety years old, still be interested and capable of going to a party.

And that is my riveting thought for the night. Now I, and my migraine, are going to have some tea (black tea with cinammon, I think) and then send a long short story to some people, and then, well, we’ll see where the night takes me, won’t we?