Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 15

and probably i shouldn't write that app

One thing that taking 6 and then 3 weeks off from the dayjob, and spending it roaming various non-Australian continents without a computer, was that I took an honest, proper, thorough holiday. No dayjob, no writing, nothing but hanging with interesting people, traipsing around places I've always wanted to see, and reading. (Okay, okay, there was some writing, but it was mostly by way of jotted notes. I think we all know this much at least was inevitable.)

I must be rested, because not only have I been hitting my daily target on the novel lately, I've even had the mad, temptingly irresistible idea of writing an iPhone app. There are plenty of things I need to do first with all the time I don't have, and I have never written a single line of the code that iPhone apps are built on, and yet…

Clearly I'm too rested! But a couple of weeks back at the dayjob ought to take care of that.

The swans of Lucerne treated us to a fine display of not caring about us.

Narelle Harris has a post up today about connectivity, and the impact that has on our attention spans, and it's something I've been contemplating a lot lately, care of the trip. In Europe and the US I had no data, so couldn't check twitter or any of the blogosphere as often as I'd grown accustomed to; and while I missed the chattiness of it all, I loved the way that my mind stopped feeling frazzled and dazzled, and started to sink back into a slower pace of observation. My work is more efficient now than it has been for a long time.

Perhaps I need to schedule some techno-holidays into my weekly routine? (Ssh! Don't tell twitter!)

The Dying Lion of Lucerne is simultaneously restful and heartbreaking.

oh, the places i've seen!

Full travel stories (with pictures) will come in time, but by way of a quick run-down I have, in the past two and a half months: climbed mountains, hiked glaciers, seen movie stars at work (Bollywood and Hollywood), traipsed medieval city walls, read a Dr Suess poem at a wedding, dared the interior of mountains to see corkscrew waterfalls and limestone caverns, watched horses perform ballet born of battle, visited no less than 3 zoos, watched a marabou perform one of the most spectacular (and creepy) territorial dances in the animal kingdom, saw a baby sloth demonstrate his version of energetic behaviour, swum in the Adriatic, discovered exactly how agonising a pebble beach really is on the feet, seen a pangolin, witnessed my very first hummingbird, ate my first ever bagel, attended World Fantasy (during which there was much alcohol, traipsing around various room parties, Twister, swimming, and said first bagel; but very little actual panel attendance…), glimpsed the marvellously heart-rending New York City, and read books without worrying about the time (oh glorious indulgence!).

Oh, and I watched a frightening number of movies. Seriously. With the amount of time I've spent on planes in the past few months, there've been movies. Lots of movies. And most of them terrible. Let's not talk about it, shall we? I'll take that one for the team. (You're welcome.)

also i saw (more than one!) marmot in the wild. i don't think any of them had the plague.

day twelve (and I'm hungry)

So here I am in Salzburg, in a funky guesthouse with a self-service check in/out process, a Moroccan garden and common room, a donation-kitchen (to benefit Tibetan orphanages), free wifi (hence the update), and I'm staying in the Marco Polo room. Oh, and it's literally around the corner from Mozart's house.

Salzburg already gets points for quirk factor.

Switzerland was wondrous, the wedding went off without a hitch, and as a bonus I didn't get lost and die beside the Aletsch glacier. Yay! (Well, ok, technically I would never have been lost-lost, what with the glacier being right there, but still. My point remains. Whatever it was.)

More complete stories will have to wait until I'm back in Terra Australis, but in the meantime I'm hoping fun and shenanigans are being had in my absence.

you mean i don't need to pack bedding?

Tonight, at some ungodly hour that I can only assume will ensure I sleep well en route, I'm hopping a plane and kiting myself off to Europe.

This is very exciting, not least because do you know what Europe has? Europe has supermarkets! Europe has POWER POINTS! I have never been so lackadaisacal about trip preparations before, and it's squarely because I don't have to pack for every single eventuality which may or may not become life-threatening if I forget something and have to go without.

Okay, so I'm looking forward to other aspects of the trip, aside from having access to electricity, but really? ELECTRICITY. Oh, and a roof over my head while I'm sleeping. UNHEARD OF.

Ciao, peoples!

and then there was (temporary) silence

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The blog is currently mostly unattended, while I spend a bit of time traipsing around the not-all-that-wilds of Europe and the urban-wilds of America. So if you leave a comment, it may take longer than normal to be moderated or for me to respond.

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dear scrivener: i've come back. never leave me again.

Over the weekend, I moved the current draft of the faerie novel back into Scrivener.

I loved Scrivener almost from the moment I first purchased it. The corkboard feature alone pretty much sells it for me, especially with my preference for writing without an outline, stopping half-way through in a panic because none of it makes sense, rearranging scenes in a whole new pattern that makes only slightly more sense than before, forging ahead again, retreating, wandering off sideways, pausing for some world history, and so on. But about a year ago, I had to give up using it because I needed to be able to work on my manuscript anywhere, including cross-platform. I knew Scrivener for Windows was in the pipeline, but I also needed to work on computers on which I had no administration rights, and I couldn't rely on SfW releasing a portable version. So back into MS Word I trudged.1

But last week I discovered that the current version of Scrivener syncs with simplenote, or with an external folder.

I have to admit, my first inclination was to shout at the whole internet: WHICH OF YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS, AND WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?

My second was to embark on an attempt to convert the pterosaur to the wonders of this software, even though he will have no earthly use for it in all his days. (He was very patient, and ooh'ed and aah'ed over the prettiness of the corkboard. I think mainly because he could see that was the best way to placate me and therefore escape.)

The worst thing is, I have the sneaking suspicion that this current version was released about a week or so after I moved back to Word. All this last year, labouring in Word, without a corkboard, when I didn't need to!

That'll teach me to read the release notes.2

Actually, I don't hate MS Word. I kind of like it, if I'm going to be honest. But it does like to get in your way a little bit, and every install requires me to ruthlessly and rigorously train it out of autocorrecting and autosuggesting and generally being a nuisance. But I do hate outlining in it. Hate, loathe, stab it with a fork.In my defence, they always pop up at me when I'm trying to do something else.

i didn't see you there…

Tonight I saw a cyclist hit by a car.

It was gloaming, and it had been raining so the sky was that louring, looming colour and the streets were glistening, throwing up just enough glare from headlights and streetlights to confuse the vision without actually illuminating anything.

One moment the cyclist was coasting through the roundabout; then the car tried to occupy the same space, at speed. There was a thump, the car slammed to a halt, and everybody froze.

There were pedestrians everywhere, and none of us moved. We all just stared at the car, trying to make sense of the noise, that thud meant the car had hit something but there was nothing visible to be hit. Because the poor cyclist was all but under the car's wheels.

While I waited for the ambulance to arrive, I learnt that her name was Joanne, and that she wanted to sit up.

There are risks in everything, even in silence. Especially in silence.

never trust an outliner

The other day I stumbled across a link, something along the lines of 25 ways to torment your characters, and in idly perusing this list I realised that one of the reasons I'm struggling with momentum on the faerie novel is because the characters' wants, needs and fears have evolved as part of the plot but I hadn't kept up. I need to check what's changed and what hasn't, and whether that leads to new plot.

And do you know what this means? This means I'm trudging (once again) through the dreaded Middle of the Book. Figuring shit out in the dark, with no idea how I'm going to get where I need to, or whether that's even where I still need to arrive.

And that's okay. I'm practiced at this, I know how to write a book without knowing the path.

What's not okay is that this time I wrote a synopsis. Isn't that the whole point of planning in advance? I trudged and slugged through months of trying to plan this novel in advance — one of my least favourite writing activities — specifically so I wouldn't have to feel lost in the middle and OUTLINERS, YOU LIED TO ME.

So, okay, it wasn't the world's most comprehensive synopsis. But I still maintain that's not the point.

And also, where the hell do I fit all this worldbuilding that dropped into my head while watching a show about Darwin's orchids? Huh?

in a win for all future mornings, i did not go back to bed. but it took eating easter chocolate.

Some days it takes every trick in the book to get up and sit down, even promising yourself that you don't have to write when you get there. (You're lying, and you know it. But you're counting on your inner perversity to carry that one through.)

Then there's days, like today, when you sleep through said every trick, and it takes more, it takes the panicked sting of adrenaline to get you going.

Then you find out your mother's flight has been cancelled. And she's arriving later. And you have time to spare now.

And you know this kind of 'reward' is only going to reinforce the bad behaviours.

whilesoever the second is true, it outweighs the first

Things that suck about being a writer:

You can never find (enough) time to write.
 
You can never find (enough) time to get anything done as thoroughly as you'd like.
 
You carry a vague and incessant guilt with you everywhere, for: stealing time to write; not writing every second you find you have spare; promising yourself you'd get three pages but only managing two, or one; neglecting the vacuuming; neglecting your friends; insert reason here.
 
You don't understand the phrase "time off".
 
People will think you're joking about not understanding the phrase "time off".
 
Remuneration. Even if you get some, chances are it's so small it redefines the term "pittance".
 
Remuneration. Even if it's not a (writer's version of a) pittance, nobody but you will see the years of work that went into earning that apparently-impressive amount which is, on a dollar per hour basis, a pittance.
 
You compare yourself to other people in unrealistic — not to mention unhealthy — ways.
 
You cannot, even if you do write fast, write fast enough.
 
Loved ones will urge you to put off today's writing "just this once", blithely unaware that they are not the only ones urging that on any given day. You will blame yourself for the discord caused by saying no to them.
 
You have those days when you doubt not just your stories, but your very self. Because you've taken such a huge gamble, and wandered so far out the branch beneath you has turned into a twig, those doubts are damn scary ones.
 
You watch writers get published and writers fail to get published, and there is no pattern, no clear line that puts the good ones in one camp and the mediocre in the other. This is both terrifying and comforting. But mostly terrifying.
 

Things that are awesome about being a writer:

You write. It's incomparable.
 

The funny thing, it's not like I've been toying lately with the idea of not writing. Far from it! Oh, I've had my flirtations with that thought, in my time, but not lately. Yet this is the list that poured out when I sat down to the blog today.

I guess I needed the reminder.