Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 52
April 12, 2018
Recalcitrant Muses and Sometimes Writing Misbehaves
This week I finished the redraft of Cursed Planet (previously 49er Planet). A redraft is pretending like the first version doesn’t exist and starting new…in this case from what I learned in the Novel Structure, Teams in Fiction, and Secondary Plots workshops respectively.
Did I mention after all that learning, I thought my head would explode?
I hit a certain point in the story and my muse declared that it wanted to cycle through the whole book. For me, cycling is usually going back through a chapter or two and shaking out the wrinkles in the story. It’s not revision–everything’s done in creation. I might add more description, take out a stub (an idea that came in that didn’t go anywhere), and continue shaping the story as it evolves. When I do a full cycle of the entire story, I’m about to finish it.
For this, I also did a reverse outline. It’s different than a normal outline because it’s done after the scene or most of the story is done. It also doesn’t focus on plot. I wanted to do it because I had some gaps and I wasn’t sure where I was going to fill them in. I also wanted to learn more about my secondary plots, since that was a new thing for me.
Muse jammed on the brakes. Whoa! Outline!
And it wanted nothing to do with one. You’d think I was taking muse to the vet. So something that really should have taken me a day or so took over a week.
Worse, I had to change the chapter numbers at least three times. I started out splitting one in half (one of the gaps), and I’d go through and label the next one as Chapter 12A. Then once I cycled to that one, it became Chapter 13 and the next one 13A. Then I found two previously unaccounted for chapters that I somehow managed to skip over in my numbering.
And then there was the chapter would not die.
As I was writing towards the ending, muse put in this chapter. But I didn’t quite know what to do with it, so I just noted the two character names and went to the next one. It nagged at me to be finished, and then when I went back to do it, muse was like “What do you want me to do with it?”
So I took it out.
Muse prods me.
Muse whispers: The chapter needs to be in there.
I put it back in. Muse looked at me and said, “What do you want me to do with it?”
This time, I thought about it for a while, turning it over and over. I don’t do the final validation scene until the whole book is pulled together. This chapter that wouldn’t die was the only thing holding the validation back. So whack. I chucked it, renumbered the last few chapters and did the validation.
So far, muse has wandered off to go sniff something else (it’s thinking it would like another workshop), so hopefully that chapter really is dead.
Muses be fickle.
April 11, 2018
Your other left, private, and military habits
Some things I learned in the military have really stuck with me. Others dropped off easily, and some resurface occasionally just to mess things up.
The one that has stuck with me is using my left hand though I’m right-handed. Right and left turns up a lot in the military. During training of marching, we would have to hold up our left hand so when the drill sergeant called for us to turn left, everyone actually turned left.
Sometimes someone would get it scrambled (me), and the drill sergeant would yell, “Your other left, private!”
Then there’s the salute. It’s done with the right hand. That means if you’re out walking about with a bag in your hand, it has to be in your left hand. Your right hand needs to be available if there’s officer so you can salute.
So in civilian life, I use both hands interchangeably. I’ll take garbage in my left hand outside. Sometimes I shift it to the right, but I find that my left is a little stronger.
Anyway, one day I was loading paper into the copier with my left hand and felt this little twinge. Didn’t think anything of it until later that evening…suddenly it REALLY hurt.
Every. time. I. moved.
Off to the doctor who told me I had golfer’s elbow (should be copier’s elbow, since no golfing was involved). I was making an effort not to move the arm too much because it was so painful. But I couldn’t not to.
Doctor asked me if I was left-handed.
I didn’t realize how much the military had changed this until then.:)
April 8, 2018
Who Knew There Was a Plant Pathologist?
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I went to the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival this weekend, at the Washington Convention Center.
The festival was focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), and more particularly on drawing girls into the sciences. And it was packed with lots of kids checking out the displays. This was a huge facility, and people kept coming and coming. There’s definite interest in science, despite what feels to me like we’ve veered away from it with big companies influencing the results of studies like in the food industry.
Some highlights:
Most popular section: NASA and space travel. This was more crowded than anywhere else. Maybe we’ve got some future scientists who will figure out how to get us off the planet with artificial gravity. Right now, to leave our gravity well, we have to put a lot of explosives under our space craft.
USDA’s job table was pretty cool. They had jobs like:
Plant Pathologist: They figure out causes and controls of plant diseases.
Remote Sensing Specialists: Analyzes satellite images
Marine Scientists: Researches problems facing Marine life
I was grabbing those up, and it also told me that I could check on some of the government job listings in the science areas for research.
Probably the most interesting was a visit to a table of a man who had been out in the Arctic three times. He had on display the boots he had to wear “Big Red,” which was the coat. The boots were very heavy–you’d get a good workout just from them. I was also able to put on “Big Red,” which was a goose down coat they wore. It also was quite heavy. Between those two, you’d get quite a workout!
Military was also there as well. This is from the Air Force:
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It was a lot of fun!
April 5, 2018
Star Trek and the Marine Corps
I’m in the process of using cycling writing throughout my nearly finished book, Cursed Planet. In the past, it’s been a pretty routine thing. Clean up typos and sentences that I thought made sense that now have me scratching my head trying to figure out what I was trying to do. Or removing what I call stubs–something that my creative side brought into the story and then, like a cat, got bored with it and abandoned it.
But there was an interesting article on Star Trek and how the new Marines Corps Commandant is a fan.
It’s a long ways from what it was when I was growing up, but a good, evolving change.
When I was growing up, fandom was just starting snowball. Star Trek was in reruns on KTLA (first Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea at 4:00 and Star Trek at 5:00).
We had a gym uniform for PT in school, white shirt, blue shorts. Some of the other students wrote on the back of their shirts their favorite sports teams. I did Star Trek. No one made fun of the sports team, but they did of me. There was one boy who openly sneered and said Little Rascals was so much better than Star Trek. (Little Rascals was also running on KTLA at the time. I’d watched it, but I never thought it was particularly good. I think it was more of a nostalgia thing for the adults who had grown up watching it).
Even my guitar teacher got in on it. Since this was L.A., it wasn’t hard to run into people who worked in the film industry. Her son had worked on the set of the show. Did she tell me how they filmed the show? Did she tell me what it was like for him to work with the various stars? Did she gossip about the stars?
No! She told me the sets were fake.
Of course I knew they were fake. Phhtt!
But it was like all this space stuff was just toooooo fake and really I shouldn’t bother.
Star Trek cons were just starting to really get popular then, too. I attended several of the ones called Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Conventions (I believe these are what is now Comic-Con, but don’t hold me to that). I remember walking to the hotel where my first con was held, and there was this man costumed as a a Klingon. Just…wow!
Qapla’!
And reporters would show up at these cons, too, evidently told by their editors to get a story to fill an empty space in the newspapers. The disdain the reporters had for the cons was pretty evident. They would look at all the average people standing in line, and home in on either the little boy costumed as Spock or the craziest looking adult fan, dressed sloppily, and festooned with buttons.
Then the picture would appear in the newspaper, identifying us as Trekkies with the implication that Star Trek was for children or crazy people.
Now it’s gotten a lot of respectability over the last fifty years since it premiered. Now a Marine senior leader is a fan.
How cool is that?
And for your viewing pleasure, a mashup of MacGyver and Star Trek The Next Generation.
April 4, 2018
Behind the Scenes: Star Trek’s Khan as a Viking?
One of the things I always liked to read is the behind the scenes of a TV show. Reading about how a show is made is fascinating. Sometimes it’s easy to wonder how shows come together at all, and yet some of the greatest chaos turns into something spectacular.
Like Star Trek’s “Space Seed” episode, which starred Ricardo Montalban. And it seems like just about everything has been written about Star Trek. Those sites that say “10 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek” are always things I know already. But this Me-TV article had one I didn’t know.
The first was that the now legendary character Khan was originally going to be a space pirate! Though space pirate sounds kind of cool (at least the fictional ones), it certainly doesn’t fit the actor. Stellar writing, stellar directing, and stellar acting made this into a classic episode.
While a script can be really good, bad direction or bad acting can botch the whole thing up. But Ricardo Montalban brought a delicious evilness to the role that makes it memorable even today.
April 3, 2018
Monkey River
Pap thinks the worst of his problems is getting stuck with a green officer from the King’s Militia. They’re out in the middle of nowhere, and officers hate nowhere.
Then Pap’s partner Ariana, a cartographer mage, discovers an entire fleet waiting on the river. To attack? Nowhere is suddenly becoming very dangerous.
A fantasy short story available from your favorite booksellers.
Granny Logic
It’s ‘take your granny on stakeout day’ for Erin King.
With a broken right foot, everything is hard for Erin. Going through doors, getting around town, investigating fraud. The case is already difficult enough, and now Erin needs a chauffeur. Her weight-lifting grandmother is ready to pitch in…and offer investigating tips. Erin doesn’t just have doubts about solving the case but surviving the stakeout.
A Granny PI mystery short story available from your favorite booksellers.
April 2, 2018
Theater Ship
Actress Catherine Mason is old enough that Hollywood no longer wants her, so she performs theater in space for the soldiers. But it’s dangerous duty for the actors. As they land on a military post, Catherine discovers the aliens are watching. She’s about to give the performance of her life, if not her life.
A science fiction short story available from your favorite booksellers.
Strands of Blackmail
Sometimes returning home brings back good memories, or bad ones.
For Shari Kendell, it’s finding answers to the questions her grandmother’s death left. Actors always live in their own world, but Shari is surprised and what she didn’t know. Who was blackmailing her grandmother, and why?
A Morro Bay mystery short story, available from your favorite booksellers.
April 1, 2018
Easter Eggs in Books
Hollywood’s pretty well-known for Easter eggs,. It’s something that’s put into a movie or a TV show that only a diehard fan will catch. Like these visits from the movie producer in a brief cameo. They did miss one though–Donald P. Bellisario shows up in the episode with Mariette Hartley. You can see him walking in the background in the hospital waiting area, near the end.
Some other examples I’ve run across:
In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s “Escape From Venice,” Admiral Nelson stays at the Hotel Dandelo. That’s the name of the cat from David Hedison’s film, The Fly.
In Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, there’s a scene where Captain Christopher Pike gets paged. Pike was a nod to Star Trek.
They can take the form of pretty much anything, especially if you’re familiar with the genre or the actors. But books have them, too.
Clive Cussler did one in his later novels. Dirk and Al run into a crusty old character with the strange name of…Clive Cussler! I know a lot of people thought it was hokey and silly, but it’s really kind of a fun nod to the fans of the books.
In fact, there was another action-type novel series where the writers were clearly a fan of Cussler’s, so that crusty character showed up in their first couple of books (not the later ones…).
Have you spotted any in your favorite books?
(And yes, I’ve used some in mine. They really are a lot of fun.)
