Tony Noland's Blog, page 17
February 17, 2014
What being apart looks like
It's kind of appropriate that my name falls entirely in the lanthanides & actinides. My superhero/science fiction/grammar humor book is like a postcard from The Island Of Misfit Writers ("Having a great time - wish you were here.").
Much like "Verbosity's Vengeance", I expect that this bit of wit will be regarded as remarkably clever by ~0.0001% of the English-speaking world, although perhaps a hundred times as many will understand it right away (i.e. ~0.01%).
It begs the question of why I insist on telling jokes that cater to the narrow, narrow demographic overlap of (knows the significance of lanthanides & actinides on the periodic table) with (appreciates sadly lyrical metaphors). A screening test to select members of my "tribe"? Intellectual snobbery? Simple self-congratulatory showing off of education and erudition? Needy preening?
Grammar jokes, chemistry jokes... not exactly what appeals to the mass market, are they?
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Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
Much like "Verbosity's Vengeance", I expect that this bit of wit will be regarded as remarkably clever by ~0.0001% of the English-speaking world, although perhaps a hundred times as many will understand it right away (i.e. ~0.01%).
It begs the question of why I insist on telling jokes that cater to the narrow, narrow demographic overlap of (knows the significance of lanthanides & actinides on the periodic table) with (appreciates sadly lyrical metaphors). A screening test to select members of my "tribe"? Intellectual snobbery? Simple self-congratulatory showing off of education and erudition? Needy preening?
Grammar jokes, chemistry jokes... not exactly what appeals to the mass market, are they?
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
February 14, 2014
Writers write, talkers talk, bleeders bleed
On the one hand, there's this post by Gareth Powell, who draws a distinction between people who talk about writing, and who dream of being a writer, but who don't actually write anything. Writers write all the time; talkers just talk all the time.
On the other hand, there's this post from Emma Newman, who talks about the times of recharging necessary after periods of exceptionally high-volume outlays of energy. Output -- refractory period -- output -- refractory period -- output.
I've been burning the candle at both ends for months and months, dealing with lots of things that aren't related to writing. There are no breaks from it; as one thing winds down, another thing winds up to take its place. I'm expecting (hoping?) that things will settle down in a couple of months and writing can resume its place in a more balanced life. Another post tells me that this is irrelevant wimp talk. If I were serious about being a writer, I'd be writing anyway, chewing on the broken glass and stabbing myself with freshly sharpened pencils, forcing the blood to flow and ignoring the pain like a REAL man.
Er, a real writer.
I wonder sometimes if there is a gender-based perspective on the dichotomy of "Be self-aware and use self-care. It's a marathon, not a sprint." vs. "You're the one who wanted to be a writer! Shut up and take the pain!" If so, then I have to conclude that I'm actually a woman, which means I can stop shaving.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
On the other hand, there's this post from Emma Newman, who talks about the times of recharging necessary after periods of exceptionally high-volume outlays of energy. Output -- refractory period -- output -- refractory period -- output.
I've been burning the candle at both ends for months and months, dealing with lots of things that aren't related to writing. There are no breaks from it; as one thing winds down, another thing winds up to take its place. I'm expecting (hoping?) that things will settle down in a couple of months and writing can resume its place in a more balanced life. Another post tells me that this is irrelevant wimp talk. If I were serious about being a writer, I'd be writing anyway, chewing on the broken glass and stabbing myself with freshly sharpened pencils, forcing the blood to flow and ignoring the pain like a REAL man.
Er, a real writer.
I wonder sometimes if there is a gender-based perspective on the dichotomy of "Be self-aware and use self-care. It's a marathon, not a sprint." vs. "You're the one who wanted to be a writer! Shut up and take the pain!" If so, then I have to conclude that I'm actually a woman, which means I can stop shaving.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
February 11, 2014
The Three-Ring Binder of Doom
The novel I'm working on at the moment is a hardcopy in a three-ring binder. (n.b. The first version of the preceding sentence had the words "working on" in quotation marks, so as to more accurately reflect just how much work I'm getting done on it.)
I carry this binder from place to place in the same way Frodo carried the Ring of Doom. Like the Ring of Doom, it was pretty cool... at first. Invoking it, I would disappear, and the world around me became wild and magical. I could do things and go places I never could without it.
However, like the Ring of Doom, the longer I carry it, the more fraught with dangerous import it becomes. Lately, using it is terrifying. There are monsters abroad who want nothing more (and nothing else) than my destruction... or at least, that's the vision that's revealed to me when I invoke the Three-Ring Binder of Doom. Terror and horrors await within.
I carry this WIP with me, thinking about it, touching it, dreaming of it, but never, never actually working on it. I recoil from the thought of what nightmares the thing is made of, but I never let it out of my sight. I dare not use it, but I can't abandon it. It defines my existence, it's too important to me, it's too... precious.
My precious, precious novel. My preciousssss......
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
I carry this binder from place to place in the same way Frodo carried the Ring of Doom. Like the Ring of Doom, it was pretty cool... at first. Invoking it, I would disappear, and the world around me became wild and magical. I could do things and go places I never could without it.
However, like the Ring of Doom, the longer I carry it, the more fraught with dangerous import it becomes. Lately, using it is terrifying. There are monsters abroad who want nothing more (and nothing else) than my destruction... or at least, that's the vision that's revealed to me when I invoke the Three-Ring Binder of Doom. Terror and horrors await within.
I carry this WIP with me, thinking about it, touching it, dreaming of it, but never, never actually working on it. I recoil from the thought of what nightmares the thing is made of, but I never let it out of my sight. I dare not use it, but I can't abandon it. It defines my existence, it's too important to me, it's too... precious.
My precious, precious novel. My preciousssss......
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
February 3, 2014
Snow days
It's snowing heavily here, coming down at the rate of an inch an hour. It's thrown off the schedules of everyone, cancelling schools, closing businesses and (for me) postponing things I had planned for today. This unexpected disruption in my schedule prompts me to wonder about the writing that I'm not doing, that I've told myself I've put on hiatus for awhile. Yes, I'm focused on adjusting my life to my new job, but it feels like more than that. I'm feeling increasingly alienated from the writing life.
Was it really only last September that I published "Verbosity's Vengeance"? It feels like something done by someone else. Looking at the Amazon page for it, I try to recapture the anxiety over flat sales and plummeting sales ranks, but all I can come up with is tired sadness. It's hard to shake the feeling that the book exists only in my mind, an experience for me to learn from, not as a product to be promoted or purchased.
I pull out the first draft of my WIP and barely recognize it. It's page after page of turgid, fractured, meandering nonsense. The notes in the margins on how to fix it are mine; the handwriting is mine, so the notes must be, too. What's needed is a complete overhaul, not simple revisions. Where is the energy and enthusiasm for this work? Where is the joy? Is it still a work in progress if you don't want to do the work? And if the work seems to have no more point or purpose than shoveling water? What then?
It takes a lot of energy to be a writer, and even more to pretend to be a writer. As the snow falls and the cold settles over the world, I'm left to wonder if, having run out of that energy, I've also lost the ability (or the will) to recharge it.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
Was it really only last September that I published "Verbosity's Vengeance"? It feels like something done by someone else. Looking at the Amazon page for it, I try to recapture the anxiety over flat sales and plummeting sales ranks, but all I can come up with is tired sadness. It's hard to shake the feeling that the book exists only in my mind, an experience for me to learn from, not as a product to be promoted or purchased.
I pull out the first draft of my WIP and barely recognize it. It's page after page of turgid, fractured, meandering nonsense. The notes in the margins on how to fix it are mine; the handwriting is mine, so the notes must be, too. What's needed is a complete overhaul, not simple revisions. Where is the energy and enthusiasm for this work? Where is the joy? Is it still a work in progress if you don't want to do the work? And if the work seems to have no more point or purpose than shoveling water? What then?
It takes a lot of energy to be a writer, and even more to pretend to be a writer. As the snow falls and the cold settles over the world, I'm left to wonder if, having run out of that energy, I've also lost the ability (or the will) to recharge it.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
January 18, 2014
My current earworm
This has been running through my mind lately. Pretty hard to shake, so I'll share it with you.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
January 15, 2014
Everything falls apart
Since May of last year, I've been pulled hard in a half-dozen different directions. Something had to give, and Landless was it. I never declared an official hiatus, but blog posts have trickled down to nothing. I stopped writing limericks for Three Word Wednesday and I finally was forced to stop writing Friday Flash stories.
I'd guess that barely a dozen people noticed this change, and even fewer commented on it. That should tell me something about the significance of this space to other people. I'm still not sure what it says about the significance of this space to me.
Things are mostly unchanged with respect to the demands put on my time and attention. I'd hoped that this would have gotten better by now, but it hasn't. Maybe things will get better in a month or two, maybe not. In the meantime, blog posts like this will be like the irregular mugfuls of water guiltily poured onto half-dead, half-forgotten houseplants, kept alive more out of habit than out of love.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
I'd guess that barely a dozen people noticed this change, and even fewer commented on it. That should tell me something about the significance of this space to other people. I'm still not sure what it says about the significance of this space to me.
Things are mostly unchanged with respect to the demands put on my time and attention. I'd hoped that this would have gotten better by now, but it hasn't. Maybe things will get better in a month or two, maybe not. In the meantime, blog posts like this will be like the irregular mugfuls of water guiltily poured onto half-dead, half-forgotten houseplants, kept alive more out of habit than out of love.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
January 8, 2014
More on the Hugo award
Yesterday, I noted that the science fiction novel I wrote and published last year is eligible to win the Hugo. There's really no need to note that being eligible to win the Hugo for Best Novel doesn't mean the book has any meaningful chance of winning, or even of being nominated, but I include the observation for those of you who might start to think I'd gone even more delusional than my everyday standard.
So if this is hopeless and I have zero chance (or, to be precise, an infinitesimally non-zero chance), why bother to mention it?
Because I wrote and published a pretty good, Hugo-eligible novel, and that's worth commemorating. I'd like to have more reviews, but those that I have gotten have been good. No one has trashed it, either because of the writing or because the concept of a hero with grammar-and punctuation-based superpowers is too goofy. Sales have been slow, but they too are non-zero.
There are plenty of times that despair rises up high when I look at how I've fallen short of what I want to achieve as a writer. It's useful to remind myself that I wrote and published a pretty good, Hugo-eligible novel, a milestone in this tortured, meandering journey I'm on.
And the next book will be even better.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
So if this is hopeless and I have zero chance (or, to be precise, an infinitesimally non-zero chance), why bother to mention it?
Because I wrote and published a pretty good, Hugo-eligible novel, and that's worth commemorating. I'd like to have more reviews, but those that I have gotten have been good. No one has trashed it, either because of the writing or because the concept of a hero with grammar-and punctuation-based superpowers is too goofy. Sales have been slow, but they too are non-zero.
There are plenty of times that despair rises up high when I look at how I've fallen short of what I want to achieve as a writer. It's useful to remind myself that I wrote and published a pretty good, Hugo-eligible novel, a milestone in this tortured, meandering journey I'm on.
And the next book will be even better.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
January 7, 2014
My Hugo-eligible novel
As it happens, this is the first year I have an eligible work available for nomination for the Hugo Award, in the "Best Novel" category. As the attentive reader will have no doubt already surmised, the book is "Verbosity's Vengeance", published in September 2013.Anyone attending LONCON 3 (and therefore allowed to nominate) who feels that "Verbosity's Vengeance" is worth the attention, please feel free to throw it into the velociraptor pit. Instructions for nomination are here.
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Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
January 1, 2014
Resolutions for 2014
As I said last year (i.e. yesterday), New Year's Resolutions are a good way to set specific, actionable goals. Nebulous goals like "get in shape" or "write more" are harder to work toward. Specific goals give you concrete benchmarks. Here are my resolutions for 2014:
1. Run a 5K. This will be part of a general effort to lose some weight, exercise more, and generally rage against the dying of the light that seems to be wrapping itself around my middle-aged body.
2. Publish my next book. This WIP is now at the completed first draft stage, so it will need to be revised (multiple times), polished, beta read, edited & formatted.
3. Write the first draft of Book #3. Part of it is already written, so I need to finish the first draft. Anything after that will be gravy.
Check back with me in 12 months to see how I did on these.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
1. Run a 5K. This will be part of a general effort to lose some weight, exercise more, and generally rage against the dying of the light that seems to be wrapping itself around my middle-aged body.
2. Publish my next book. This WIP is now at the completed first draft stage, so it will need to be revised (multiple times), polished, beta read, edited & formatted.
3. Write the first draft of Book #3. Part of it is already written, so I need to finish the first draft. Anything after that will be gravy.
Check back with me in 12 months to see how I did on these.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
December 31, 2013
Why make resolutions?
I know people have mixed reactions toward New Year's Resolutions. Life coach gurus will tell you that the time to make a change in your life is not after some arbitrary date on the calender, but NOW. Resolve to do what you want to do starting TODAY.
Fair enough, but humans are culturally entrained to live by symbols and ceremonies. We crave communally recognized milestones to make the passage of time. Even though holidays, anniversaries and other significant dates are arbitrary, every society on Earth lives and governs itself by them.
Whether fixed (Christmas Day, the date on which you were born/married/ordained/etc.), movable (the first full moon of spring, the last home game of the season), or capricious (the day of your first kiss, the day she left, the night you picked up the gun and then put it down again), these arbitrary dividers between before and after help us make sense of our lives.
Or at least keep the memories in order.
So, take the time at the turning of the year to look back AND to look forward. Look back, because introspection in support of an examined life is rarely wasted effort. Look forward, because deciding what kind of a future you want of the live in helps you to make specific plans and preparations to getting it.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
Fair enough, but humans are culturally entrained to live by symbols and ceremonies. We crave communally recognized milestones to make the passage of time. Even though holidays, anniversaries and other significant dates are arbitrary, every society on Earth lives and governs itself by them.Whether fixed (Christmas Day, the date on which you were born/married/ordained/etc.), movable (the first full moon of spring, the last home game of the season), or capricious (the day of your first kiss, the day she left, the night you picked up the gun and then put it down again), these arbitrary dividers between before and after help us make sense of our lives.
Or at least keep the memories in order.
So, take the time at the turning of the year to look back AND to look forward. Look back, because introspection in support of an examined life is rarely wasted effort. Look forward, because deciding what kind of a future you want of the live in helps you to make specific plans and preparations to getting it.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.
