S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 107

Sub Op

If you are a devoted flash fic writer, this is definitely the market listing for you:

SpecLit, a "world of wonder in 100 words" is a weekly e-zine that specializes in delivery flash fiction of 100 words exactly, and define themselves as "suckers for plot. If it ain’t got plot, it ain’t a story. We want each piece to have the feeling of a beginning, a middle, and an end (or inciting incident, attempt(s) to fix it, and climax). All fiction must be original. There are lots of places for fanfic – this isn’t one of them. And finally, of course, it also has to be speculative – fantasy, science fiction, myth fairy tale, dark fantasy, etc… – but no erotica and no gore. A well-placed swear word, the recognition that we are sexual beings, and off-camera violence are all okay, but within limits, eh? Besides, with the focus on plot, there’s no time to get all graphic." Length: 100 words exactly, and according to the submissions guidelines "Titles do not count as part of the 100 words". Payment: 5¢/word. Query on reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

NaNoWriMo: Counts

Tomorrow you November novelists out there will hit the two-thirds month mark, which means time-wise you have about a week and a half to finish your 50K novel. Doesn't sound like a lot of time to complete a whole book, does it?

Perspective is a funny thing, and never more so than when you count things. That week-and-a-half you have left to finish your NaNo novel? Equals more time than you think. It's actually ten days, or 240 hours, or 144,000 minutes, or 8,640,000 seconds. Imagine if you could write one word every second; in the time you have left for NaNoWriMo you'd be able to finish 1,728,000 50K novels by November 30th (this assuming you did nothing but write a word each and every second for the next ten days.)

Fortunately you don't have to write 1,728,000 novels over the next ten days -- you have only to finish the one you've been working on all month. The other 1,727,999 novels can wait for another time. Don't you feel better now?

All kidding aside, I know how hard you NaNo'ers have been working, how tired you're probably feeling, and how much you dread/long for November 30th to arrive. It's okay to panic for a minute when you think about the time you have left, too. But just remember, every minute from now until November 30th is not just something you count; it's also a window. You can sit and stare at it, or you can open it and let the words stream in, and put them down on paper, and finish the book, and win NaNoWriMo. It is not impossible; you can do it. Count on yourself and you will.

InkJoy Redux

Last month I was pretty underwhelmed by Paper Mate's new line of InkJoy pens, but after reading Shawna's comment about how much better the stick variety were (versus the retractable type I tried) I resolved to give the product another chance. I found a big package of multi-colored stick InkJoy pens during a recent visit to Target and sat down with them last night for a test drive.

The biggest and most immediate difference with this set of InkJoy pens is that I didn't have to deal with removing a ball of goop on the business end, as there wasn't any goop (I imagine the molded plastic top caps keep the ink fresh.) There also seems to be a wider variety of colors in the stick version, including two shades of a green and an ink I've never before seen made available in a ballpoint pen: brown. No clips fell off (they were molded as part of the top caps) and I did not notice the smell of the ink as much this time, either.

A new problem with the stick variety of InkJoy was the tendency of the ink to blob; this happened most frequently on curves and was most noticeable with the lighter colors. If you want to use these pens for decorative purposes the blobbiness of the ink will likely be an issue.

The orange ink still seemed a bit too light in color to be practical for reading, as did the light green ink. The red still looks like a dark fuschia to me, too.

Also, while the ink flow from the stick InkJoy pens was easy and uninterrupted they wrote pretty much like every ballpoint pen I've ever used, so I'm still wondering what is supposed to be so revolutionary. The InkJoy stick pens were lighterweight than the retractable model, which actually made them a bit more uncomfortable for me to write with (weightier pens tend to provide more control for people like me with motor skill challenges.)

All things considered, I think for the average user these InkJoy stick pens will make a decent everyday writing instrument, but I wouldn't pay a lot for them. To me there just wasn't anything special about them to make them worth the investment of any extra $$$.

Freebie Ten

Ten Things That Won't Cost You a Dime

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Anki is a "program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn. Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless" (OS: Win 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista/7)

Efficient Diary is a "completely free while still beautiful, easy-to-use and powerful electronic diary software package. With its unique and powerful flash full-text search technique, you can simply enter a word in the diary to quickly find the corresponding entries! The product has a strong edit function similar to that of MS-Word." [PBW notes: also comes in portable version you can run from a stick drive] (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Google Blogger Sitemap Generator is a "small standalone utility that will allow you to enter your Google Blogger URL, select the number of entries that you want adding to your Sitemap and then generate the URL required for your Sitemap" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8)

My Visual Database allows you to "create a fully functional user interface in minutes without writing any code. The result of your design will be full-fledged Windows application, ready to work on any computer. My Visual Database allows several users to work with the same database simultaneously" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Pixia is a "painting tool and retouch software made exclusively for full color graphics. Pixia supports layers, masks and many other graphic editing functions. You can use your own customized brush tips and even use an image file as a brush tip to create unique effects. Pixia's user-friendly interface is suitable for beginners as well as experts. Pixia supports the most common editing techniques and presents a user friendly interface" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

SmoothDraw is an "easy natural painting and digital free-hand drawing software that can produce high quality pictures. Support many kinds of brushes (pen, pencil, dry media, airbrush, bristle brush, image hose, etc.), retouch tools, layers, image adjustment, and many effects... Works great with tablets and Tablet PC" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7; requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.)

Speedy Painter is a "simple and lightweight painting software. It is written in C++ and uses the OpenGL graphics library. It supports Wacom digitizers to vary size and opacity of brush strokes according to pen pressure" (OS: Windows Vista/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

StrokesPlus is a "completely free mouse gesture recognition utility for Windows which allows you to create powerful mouse gestures that save you time. With rocker support, modifiers, and the robust Lua engine built right in, there's virtually no limit to what you can automate. Traditionally, you begin a mouse gesture by holding down the right mouse button and drawing something, like the letter R for example, then release the right mouse button. This triggers the application to process your drawing and perform the specified action. The most common actions are maximizing/minimizing windows, navigating back/forward, or automated logging into a certain website. However, StrokesPlus takes it to the next level, giving you ultimate control over exactly what happens when your action executes" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Task List Guru is a "free task list organizer ideal for personal task management and small project management. You can organize not just tasks, but also task lists, notes and reminders. Task List Guru has a hierarchical task list tree with icons that allows you to organize all your todo lists and notes in a structure with icons. You can choose from 48 different colorful icons for your to-do lists - this makes using this organizer fun" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

WowBase allows you to "create your own database quickly and easily. The main feature of the program — records are not in the form of rows, and in the form of cards. This method of editing the records you have not tried! There is quite a different attitude to the records: now this is not one thin strip of thousands, and a separate independent object that can be manipulated. You can even copy a few records and send them via instant message or e-mail to a colleague that he added them to his table. Very simple interface and minimal facilities needed for editing tables" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8)

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Elsewhere This Weekend

Over at the Toriana blog I'm giving away one of my handmade quilted and beaded totes, along with a couple of signed ARCs you might be interested in winning:



Deadline to enter the giveaway is midnight EST tomorrow, so do stop in if you get a chance this weekend.

Ice Art

This very short video makes art out of things being encased in ice (has some background music, for those of you at work):

Frozen from kveten on Vimeo.

NaNoWriMo: Push

Tomorrow you novelists of November will reach the halfway point of NaNoWriMo. Fifteen days done, fifteen more to go. You may have reached the midway wordcount of 25K, too. Some of you will have written more; others less. A couple of you serious and audacious procrastinators out there have just begun writing your story this week.

Most writers will tell you that stories stall most often in the middle, and there is a reason for this. Beginnings are generally new and thrilling, while endings are usually triumphant and satisfying. Middles stretch out between the two and must be crossed in order to go from one state to the other. In the middle it's too late to start the story over but also too soon to end it. This is why the middle of a story can feel like a desert or ocean through which you trudge or slog without really getting anywhere. It's also in the middle where I think most writers tend to give up on a story -- the chuck it in a drawer and forget about it zone.

Writing is lovely fun, so much so that we sometimes forget that it's also work. The middle of your story can be a mental sweatshop where you may not have any fun at all. So how do you get through it?

One word: Push. Okay, it's actually an acronym for four more words: Persist, Use, See and Hush.

Persist by writing on, sticking with your story and refusing to give up. Right now the middle you're slogging through may feel like a giant Sargasso Sea of story, but it will not last forever -- eventually you will write through it and make your way toward your ending.

Use your story elements in the middle to have some fun (and yes, middles can be as much fun as beginnings or endings.) Take a story element and play with it -- find out a bit more about one of your characters, settings or conflicts. Use your elements to surprise you as well as your reader. There is something in the middle of the story you can use to liven it up; all you have to do is be willing to look for it and then put it to good use.

See beyond the middle of your story by focusing not on where you are but where you're headed. You may have forgotten that there is a finish line out there, just over the story horizon. The only way you're going to get to it is to write your way there, and to do that you have to keep writing.

After you've done all that, also be sure to Hush those doubts and demons that crop up in the middle of the story. They want to distract you and derail you, especially when you begin making some progress through your middle. The only way they can do that is if they can make you listen to them. Imagine taking a big roll of psychic duct tape and slapping a big piece of it over the mouth of every one of those middle-of-the-story jabberwockies in your head.

It's okay if the middle of your story isn't as dazzling as the beginning you've written, or as stunning as the ending you have planned. The middle is where you make it all work, and the writing of that is often riddled with difficulty, extra effort and creative worry. Last week we talked about trust, and this is one of those spots when you really have to trust in yourself and your story -- and then Push on.

Papaya!

Papaya! Art is all about creative abandon, which is why the company regularly produces some of the most unusual journals and notebooks I've found in art and book stores. To quote from their web site:

Everything we make is for the joy of creating and the thrill of sharing ~ Our credo of creative abandon means we believe in a no-apologies policy of answering our artistic impulses. Our promise to you is this: everything we make, we love.

I collect Papaya art journals and notebooks, as they are beautiful and there really is nothing else quite like them on the ready-made for writing market. Here's the latest batch I picked up during my last visit to the art store:



The Gnome Hat journal is 7" X 9" hardcover edition with 160 unlined pages, a ribbon page marker and lay-flat binding. This one works as a sketchbook or journal, and the cover illustration is lovely, mysterious and practically begs to have a story written about it. This is the kind of journal that makes a wonderful gift for an artistic pal but can also serve as a nice reward for yourself, too.

The Dream Catcher is a smaller 5" X 7" version of the Gnome Hat journal that features lined and unlined pages, so it would work well as a travel journal or photo book. I'm going to be a bit more literal and use mine as as dream journal.

Love Who You Are scribble and sketch set offers two 8" X 5" softcover journals, one lined and one unlined, to cover all your artistic bases, while the Light Tomorrow and Inventor mini books at 5-1/2" X 3-1/2" and 32 lined pages are the perfect pocket companions for any journaling or note-taking pursuit.

Pair any of these journals with a nice pen, pack of colored pencils, markers or travel watercolor set and you have a great gift for a creative friend. You can shop for Papaya products at their website, or look for their journals at your local fine art, scrapbooking supply or book stores.

Rec 3

Here's a pic of the last three books I've read:



I picked up the trade paperback of Jeal M. Auel's The Shelters of Stone at a neighbor's yard sale for fifty cents so definitely a bargain. I lent out my own copy a few years back and the borrower never returned it, so this was really a replacement buy. I also wanted to read it again before I order the final book to finish up the series (all I have left now to read is The Land of Painted Caves, book six.) This book really couldn't compete with my favorite, The Valley of Horses, but I thought the author did a good job moving the story along with it.

I paid full cover price ($28.95) for Bill Bryson's One Summer ~ America, 1927, a lively look at the historic folks and events of that particular season in our country. If you really like baseball and aviators and Presidents, you may find Bill will smash to bits most of your illusions about them. Still, he does so with his usual good-natured glee, and that in itself is admirable in its cheerful cheeky audacity and complete contempt for the history taught (past and present) to American kids. I also happen to think Bill Bryson is one of the finest writers of this century so doubtless I'm 100% biased.

Beautiful Sacrifice by Elizabeth Lowell was a remaindered hardcover I picked up for $5.98 at Barnes & Noble on my last trip into the city. This was a random buy; I was looking for something to read by an author I trust to deliver. The story was interesting, different, and well-written if somewhat outlandish and probably quite implausible. I've written a book with many elements like this one, only with Aztecs instead of Maya, so I felt right at home in the story and could personally appreciate the amount of research the author had to do to get it all right.

I'd recommend all three books as good reads for anyone who is interested in prehistorical fantasy, history, and/or romantic suspense.
What are the titles of the last three books you've read that you'd recommend to others? Let us know in comments.