Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 199
July 9, 2013
"Bulletproof" Tropes
Supposedly, the new water heater cabinet door was going to be finished yesterday, so it's possible that the final work could be done today. Have I mentioned how much I'm ready to have this over with so I can go back to normal and stop spending my days sitting around waiting for people who might show up to either do or check on work? This is a silly little thing, but I really want to be able to go back to having breakfast while still wearing my nightgown instead of feeling like I should get dressed as soon as I get up, in case someone comes by early. And I want to be able to get back to sitting around the house in the kind of really comfortable casual clothes that I generally don't allow myself to be seen in public in.
I did get back to writing yesterday, but I didn't get much done because the scene I was writing suddenly veered in an unexpected direction. I think it's a good direction, but the fact that it veered meant I had no idea what happens next and couldn't finish the scene. Now I have to think about it. During the water heater and holiday hiatus, I realized that there's a good mythological model for part of the main plot of this story. I just want to find a way to put an interesting twist on it.
A couple of weeks ago, the Dear Author blog had a post about "bulletproof tropes," the tropes you love enough that you'll cut any books that have them some slack -- even a bad book with those tropes is better than a good book without them. If it's got that trope, it can't fail. I'm afraid I often have the reverse, the tropes I love so much that I get really irked when they're done badly, and I have high expectations for any book that has them.
One of those for me is the Friends Become Lovers story. I love the idea of it, but it's generally really badly executed. In romance novels especially, as soon as love enters the picture, they stop acting like friends and that side of their relationship disappears. Other genres where there's another main plot and the romantic relationships are a subplot do it a little better, but it's still a pretty rare plot line, perhaps because there's the idea that without angst and drama, it's boring. I've noticed in television discussion, if the woman on a show gets into a relationship with the "best friend" guy, the fans protest and claim they have no "chemistry." They prefer her with the angsty bad boy with whom she has a turbulent relationship laden with sexual tension. Then again, this is also something that's tricky in real life. I don't know that there are that many cases of people who have been friends without even considering anything else who then fall in love. Usually what looks like friends-to-lovers from the outside is really just a slowly building relationship in which there was a mutual initial attraction, but either due to circumstances or inclination they took it really slowly and built a solid friendship before adding romance or sex to the picture. I suppose one reason it does work better in other genre stories may be that if you're thrown into extreme circumstances, that might give you a different view of someone familiar whom you hadn't ever thought about in that way. At any rate, it's a story line I'm drawn to but almost inevitably disappointed by.
I don't know that I have any real "bulletproof" tropes because there have been things I hate even when they contain things I love, but I do have some things that I'm a sucker for and will forgive a lot if it does these things reasonably well.
One of these is time travel, but only some kinds of time travel. Not the kind of time travel romance that was really popular in the 1990s in which a busy modern woman gets sent back to medieval times, falls in love with a knight and decides to stay (as if). What I love are stories with complex timelines, so that things happen out of order and you get stuff like the son being the mentor to his much-younger father. However, you do have to be careful about it. I was rather creeped out by the bit in The Time Traveler's Wife in which he was hanging out with his wife when she was a child because that looked an awful lot like grooming or brainwashing. If someone's going to run into a lover when the lover is still a child, the adult may have the "oh, wow" moment and then try to avoid the kid to avoid influencing the child. A kid may not remember a brief encounter with a random stranger, so that's okay. Showing up for regular tea parties with a child you know will grow up to marry you is a little predatory, and you can never know if your future spouse marries you out of real love or because you've been such an influence.
I also love most stories involving people traveling to other "worlds," whether it's an alternate world like Narnia or a fairy-like realm. In some respects, I think it's related to the time travel thing. If you're going through a portal to a fantasy world, then you can have the fun part of medieval times without the ick that shows up in real history. This kind of story is very "monomyth," since the Joseph Campbell heroic journey is classically one to an otherworld. There's that sense of going into the "other" and returning changed or changing enough that you can't return. Though I have to like the characters (and thus, I didn't get past the first chapter of the Thomas Covenant series).
I'm a big fan of the ordinary guy hero -- not the type who may be toiling as an apprentice underwater basketweaver but who is really the long-lost heir or the destined, chosen one whose time has come, but rather the guy who doesn't have any particular destiny but who is in the right place at the right time (or wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it), gets caught up in events, and isn't the sort of person to turn his back when something needs to be done on behalf of other people. I think I'm drawn to the idea that you don't really know what you're capable of until you're tested, and the worst thing that happens to you can actually be the best thing for you if it allows you to achieve your potential. Our ordinary guy may have been a decent farmer, sailor, merchant, etc. I could even deal with him being a run-of-the-mill wizard. But then he gets caught up in events and his achievements raise him to a new level. If I see any hint of that sort of thing on the cover of a book, I'm generally sold. I think this is why Neverwhere is one of my favorite books. Not only is it a journey through another "world," but it's an ordinary guy who gets stuck there just because he was nice to someone in need, not because he was special or had special skills.
I suppose I should take a good look at my bookshelves to see what other patterns emerge, though I think that a lot of my favorites weren't always things I expected to like but that took me by surprise. There's not a particular trope there that draws me, but rather the individual characters and their particular situations.
I did get back to writing yesterday, but I didn't get much done because the scene I was writing suddenly veered in an unexpected direction. I think it's a good direction, but the fact that it veered meant I had no idea what happens next and couldn't finish the scene. Now I have to think about it. During the water heater and holiday hiatus, I realized that there's a good mythological model for part of the main plot of this story. I just want to find a way to put an interesting twist on it.
A couple of weeks ago, the Dear Author blog had a post about "bulletproof tropes," the tropes you love enough that you'll cut any books that have them some slack -- even a bad book with those tropes is better than a good book without them. If it's got that trope, it can't fail. I'm afraid I often have the reverse, the tropes I love so much that I get really irked when they're done badly, and I have high expectations for any book that has them.
One of those for me is the Friends Become Lovers story. I love the idea of it, but it's generally really badly executed. In romance novels especially, as soon as love enters the picture, they stop acting like friends and that side of their relationship disappears. Other genres where there's another main plot and the romantic relationships are a subplot do it a little better, but it's still a pretty rare plot line, perhaps because there's the idea that without angst and drama, it's boring. I've noticed in television discussion, if the woman on a show gets into a relationship with the "best friend" guy, the fans protest and claim they have no "chemistry." They prefer her with the angsty bad boy with whom she has a turbulent relationship laden with sexual tension. Then again, this is also something that's tricky in real life. I don't know that there are that many cases of people who have been friends without even considering anything else who then fall in love. Usually what looks like friends-to-lovers from the outside is really just a slowly building relationship in which there was a mutual initial attraction, but either due to circumstances or inclination they took it really slowly and built a solid friendship before adding romance or sex to the picture. I suppose one reason it does work better in other genre stories may be that if you're thrown into extreme circumstances, that might give you a different view of someone familiar whom you hadn't ever thought about in that way. At any rate, it's a story line I'm drawn to but almost inevitably disappointed by.
I don't know that I have any real "bulletproof" tropes because there have been things I hate even when they contain things I love, but I do have some things that I'm a sucker for and will forgive a lot if it does these things reasonably well.
One of these is time travel, but only some kinds of time travel. Not the kind of time travel romance that was really popular in the 1990s in which a busy modern woman gets sent back to medieval times, falls in love with a knight and decides to stay (as if). What I love are stories with complex timelines, so that things happen out of order and you get stuff like the son being the mentor to his much-younger father. However, you do have to be careful about it. I was rather creeped out by the bit in The Time Traveler's Wife in which he was hanging out with his wife when she was a child because that looked an awful lot like grooming or brainwashing. If someone's going to run into a lover when the lover is still a child, the adult may have the "oh, wow" moment and then try to avoid the kid to avoid influencing the child. A kid may not remember a brief encounter with a random stranger, so that's okay. Showing up for regular tea parties with a child you know will grow up to marry you is a little predatory, and you can never know if your future spouse marries you out of real love or because you've been such an influence.
I also love most stories involving people traveling to other "worlds," whether it's an alternate world like Narnia or a fairy-like realm. In some respects, I think it's related to the time travel thing. If you're going through a portal to a fantasy world, then you can have the fun part of medieval times without the ick that shows up in real history. This kind of story is very "monomyth," since the Joseph Campbell heroic journey is classically one to an otherworld. There's that sense of going into the "other" and returning changed or changing enough that you can't return. Though I have to like the characters (and thus, I didn't get past the first chapter of the Thomas Covenant series).
I'm a big fan of the ordinary guy hero -- not the type who may be toiling as an apprentice underwater basketweaver but who is really the long-lost heir or the destined, chosen one whose time has come, but rather the guy who doesn't have any particular destiny but who is in the right place at the right time (or wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it), gets caught up in events, and isn't the sort of person to turn his back when something needs to be done on behalf of other people. I think I'm drawn to the idea that you don't really know what you're capable of until you're tested, and the worst thing that happens to you can actually be the best thing for you if it allows you to achieve your potential. Our ordinary guy may have been a decent farmer, sailor, merchant, etc. I could even deal with him being a run-of-the-mill wizard. But then he gets caught up in events and his achievements raise him to a new level. If I see any hint of that sort of thing on the cover of a book, I'm generally sold. I think this is why Neverwhere is one of my favorite books. Not only is it a journey through another "world," but it's an ordinary guy who gets stuck there just because he was nice to someone in need, not because he was special or had special skills.
I suppose I should take a good look at my bookshelves to see what other patterns emerge, though I think that a lot of my favorites weren't always things I expected to like but that took me by surprise. There's not a particular trope there that draws me, but rather the individual characters and their particular situations.
July 8, 2013
Apocalyptic Events
I have hot water again! Showers are lovely! But it was a bit of an ordeal getting there. At about 2 Friday afternoon, I got a call from the board guy asking if I'd heard from the contractor, since he hadn't been able to reach him. I hadn't heard anything. He said he'd try again, but if he still couldn't reach him, he'd find someone else to finish the job. At around 3, the contractor called and said he had to finish up some things where he was, but he'd be here in 2-2 1/2 hours. I figured that meant 5-5:30. They showed up at 7:30, worked a little more than an hour, then said they had to go get another part and would get dinner while they were out. They returned after 10:30. They finally finished up at 2 in the morning. There's still a bit more finishing work to do when the new door is ready, so it's not all over yet. I'm hoping that will happen today so I can stop having to be prepared for people to show up at any moment throughout the day or night. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just during the day, but the workers tend to show up at night, and the board members drop by to check their work in the evening, so I can't even unwind at the end of the day, and there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut time when I can just relax and be sure no one will ring my doorbell.
I was a bit of a zombie on Saturday because after getting to bed at around 2:30 in the morning I was wide awake at 7:30 and my attempts at napping failed. Instead, I spent the afternoon sort of dozing in front of the TV. There was a Primeval marathon, and then I watched Pitch Perfect on HBO. That was the fun little movie about college a capella singing groups. I got the sense that there was an element of satire in there and we weren't supposed to take it entirely seriously, so I didn't worry about most of the usual plot tropes since the movie seemed to be winking at them. The music was good (if a bit overproduced, to the point it sounded nothing like music being performed live by that number of people). I had to crack up at the teen movie trope that the way to excel in any music or dance competition is to be really wild and crazy and use current music -- even though you're competing against other people your age who presumably listen to the same music. You'd think after all this time, people would have figured that out, so that it reversed and the way to excel would be to do stuff like Gregorian chant while everyone else was boring and ordinary and used current music. Though I will give this movie credit for having the big differentiator be 80s music mixed into the current stuff (even if it did make me feel old).
In the evening phase of being a sofa zombie, I watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which was an odd romantic dramedy. There's an asteroid on a collision course for earth, and all efforts to stop or divert it have failed, so the world will be ending soon. That just makes life worse for a sad-sack insurance salesman whose wife runs off the moment the news about imminent doom comes out and who can't get into the debauchery his friends are enjoying in their final days. When his apartment building comes under attack during a riot, he and his Manic Pixie Dream Girl neighbor flee together, and the two of them end up going on a road trip to find the high school girlfriend he thinks may be the love of his life that he let get away and to see if they can find a way to get her back to her family before the end. If you've ever seen a movie before, you can probably imagine everything that happens along the way. It's basically a slightly raunchier It Happened One Night, set against the impending apocalypse. I'm glad I watched it, but I can't imagine ever watching it again because the end of the world stuff is rather depressing and overpowers any humor or warm fuzzies from the rest of the story. I think my favorite sequence was when they come across a TGI Fridays clone restaurant that they're surprised is still open, with a staff that's going all-out in enjoying their final days (which pretty much looks the way they always tried to make TGI Fridays look in their commercials back in their heyday. I was very disappointed when I finally went to one and found that it was just a restaurant with staff who were required to be annoying). I think the movie would have worked a lot better, though, if the neighbor hadn't been such an obvious Manic Pixie Dream Girl and had been more of a real character, instead. A collection of adorable quirks is not the same as character development.
Now to see if I can apply the new ideas I came up with while doing additional reading and research when I was waiting for contractors. The break may have done me a favor, but I need to get back on track.
I was a bit of a zombie on Saturday because after getting to bed at around 2:30 in the morning I was wide awake at 7:30 and my attempts at napping failed. Instead, I spent the afternoon sort of dozing in front of the TV. There was a Primeval marathon, and then I watched Pitch Perfect on HBO. That was the fun little movie about college a capella singing groups. I got the sense that there was an element of satire in there and we weren't supposed to take it entirely seriously, so I didn't worry about most of the usual plot tropes since the movie seemed to be winking at them. The music was good (if a bit overproduced, to the point it sounded nothing like music being performed live by that number of people). I had to crack up at the teen movie trope that the way to excel in any music or dance competition is to be really wild and crazy and use current music -- even though you're competing against other people your age who presumably listen to the same music. You'd think after all this time, people would have figured that out, so that it reversed and the way to excel would be to do stuff like Gregorian chant while everyone else was boring and ordinary and used current music. Though I will give this movie credit for having the big differentiator be 80s music mixed into the current stuff (even if it did make me feel old).
In the evening phase of being a sofa zombie, I watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which was an odd romantic dramedy. There's an asteroid on a collision course for earth, and all efforts to stop or divert it have failed, so the world will be ending soon. That just makes life worse for a sad-sack insurance salesman whose wife runs off the moment the news about imminent doom comes out and who can't get into the debauchery his friends are enjoying in their final days. When his apartment building comes under attack during a riot, he and his Manic Pixie Dream Girl neighbor flee together, and the two of them end up going on a road trip to find the high school girlfriend he thinks may be the love of his life that he let get away and to see if they can find a way to get her back to her family before the end. If you've ever seen a movie before, you can probably imagine everything that happens along the way. It's basically a slightly raunchier It Happened One Night, set against the impending apocalypse. I'm glad I watched it, but I can't imagine ever watching it again because the end of the world stuff is rather depressing and overpowers any humor or warm fuzzies from the rest of the story. I think my favorite sequence was when they come across a TGI Fridays clone restaurant that they're surprised is still open, with a staff that's going all-out in enjoying their final days (which pretty much looks the way they always tried to make TGI Fridays look in their commercials back in their heyday. I was very disappointed when I finally went to one and found that it was just a restaurant with staff who were required to be annoying). I think the movie would have worked a lot better, though, if the neighbor hadn't been such an obvious Manic Pixie Dream Girl and had been more of a real character, instead. A collection of adorable quirks is not the same as character development.
Now to see if I can apply the new ideas I came up with while doing additional reading and research when I was waiting for contractors. The break may have done me a favor, but I need to get back on track.
July 5, 2013
Waiting for Water
I'm on day six with no hot water. I do have a water heater, but it's currently in a box in my neighbor's garage. Now I'm waiting to find out when the workers will come to finish the construction work and install the water heater. If I'm really, really lucky, I may be able to take a hot shower tonight. But the lack of hot water is turning out to be the least of the problems. It's only really an issue when I need to wash dishes or bathe. It's the waiting around for workers to show up that's suspending normal operations. I feel like I'm on constant alert for guests who might just drop by at any time. And then when they're around I can't help but be conscious of their presence. Even when I try to go upstairs and hide in my office, they're constantly opening the patio door to ask me questions or tell me things. And then there are the board members dropping in nightly to check on progress. So, while having hot water again will be heavenly, I'm even more looking forward to getting my normal life back. I want to be able to sleep late if I'm so inclined, not feel like I need to get dressed immediately, have a leisurely breakfast and start working on things that require concentration without worrying about being constantly interrupted.
I've switched from even trying to write to doing some more research reading, which turns out to be a good thing because I've already come up with a new character who will appear in the next scene and help drive the story where I need it to go. I'm also taking care of some mindless business-related tasks I've been putting off. I'm getting some office organizing done while waiting to hear from the workers. Yesterday, I found a CD I thought I'd lost, stuck in the middle of a pile of stuff.
I did most of my holiday stuff on the third, going to see Despicable Me 2, which was probably the funniest thing I've seen in years. I laughed so hard that I cried and ended up a little sore from laughing so hard. I really need minions. Then the adjacent town's fireworks display was that night, and I went with a friend. It turned out to be a relatively low-hassle fireworks experience. We arrived after 9 and still found decent parking. It was a bit of a walk to the park, but that meant we didn't have to sit in traffic to leave. Our view of the lower-level fireworks was somewhat obstructed from the vantage point we got, but we got a nice view of the high stuff. It looked like all the fireworks were coming out of the roof of a particular house, and the lower-level stuff looked like sparks shooting out of its roof. So I amused myself by imagining that to be the home of the local wizard or alchemist, who either just had a huge breakthrough or a huge disaster. Maybe the apprentice spilled something.
On the actual holiday, I made a Target run since I didn't think anyone would be showing up to work and it was my chance to leave the house, there was some napping, I made barbecued ribs, and I otherwise just hung out, read, watched TV and did some knitting.
Now I need to start summoning the workers so I can get this stuff done and over with. To ensure their arrival, I need to start doing something that would be really inconvenient to have interrupted.
I've switched from even trying to write to doing some more research reading, which turns out to be a good thing because I've already come up with a new character who will appear in the next scene and help drive the story where I need it to go. I'm also taking care of some mindless business-related tasks I've been putting off. I'm getting some office organizing done while waiting to hear from the workers. Yesterday, I found a CD I thought I'd lost, stuck in the middle of a pile of stuff.
I did most of my holiday stuff on the third, going to see Despicable Me 2, which was probably the funniest thing I've seen in years. I laughed so hard that I cried and ended up a little sore from laughing so hard. I really need minions. Then the adjacent town's fireworks display was that night, and I went with a friend. It turned out to be a relatively low-hassle fireworks experience. We arrived after 9 and still found decent parking. It was a bit of a walk to the park, but that meant we didn't have to sit in traffic to leave. Our view of the lower-level fireworks was somewhat obstructed from the vantage point we got, but we got a nice view of the high stuff. It looked like all the fireworks were coming out of the roof of a particular house, and the lower-level stuff looked like sparks shooting out of its roof. So I amused myself by imagining that to be the home of the local wizard or alchemist, who either just had a huge breakthrough or a huge disaster. Maybe the apprentice spilled something.
On the actual holiday, I made a Target run since I didn't think anyone would be showing up to work and it was my chance to leave the house, there was some napping, I made barbecued ribs, and I otherwise just hung out, read, watched TV and did some knitting.
Now I need to start summoning the workers so I can get this stuff done and over with. To ensure their arrival, I need to start doing something that would be really inconvenient to have interrupted.
July 3, 2013
Construction Progress
Well, the cabinet rebuild is mostly done. They were here until almost midnight. I guess the carpenter is like me -- once you get started, you don't mess around and you get it done. He kept saying that if they were bothering me, they could pack it up, but I figured it was better to let them finish because they were pretty close. He wanted to finish mudding out the drywall so it could dry and then he could finish everything today. Now I just have to see when the water heater will be delivered so that can be installed, and they're having to have a door made since the only doors they could find with those dimensions were interior closet doors, which could explain why the door went bad. He's already fixed the valve on the water supply line, which had broken, so I actually come out ahead in this with things better than they were. However, I may find myself on a committee because the board member was impressed with my historical knowledge of the community, since I knew what some of the past politics were, why the bricks in one part of the outside wall don't quite match (drunk driver and an SUV), and when they last did any painting.
I managed to wash my hair last night with the bucket and pitcher method, but I'm definitely feeling the lack of a hot shower after ballet last night.
I'm going to take the week off from a writing post because of being up so late last night and taking part of today as a holiday. Next week, when the construction is done, I can get back on track.
Now I need to go heat some water to wash dishes. I love my electric teakettle. I dug out my old stovetop kettle so I could heat more water at once, and I can boil two kettles worth of water (boil, empty, refill, boil again) in the electric kettle in the time it takes the stovetop kettle to reach a simmer.
And, yikes, there was just the sound of a really nasty collision in the intersection behind my house. Someone's horn is stuck on. I can't quite see it from my window so I don't know how bad it is. I wonder if I should call 911 or if someone on the scene already has. If I don't hear sirens in a couple of minutes (the fire station is two blocks away), I guess I'll call. And there go the sirens.
I managed to wash my hair last night with the bucket and pitcher method, but I'm definitely feeling the lack of a hot shower after ballet last night.
I'm going to take the week off from a writing post because of being up so late last night and taking part of today as a holiday. Next week, when the construction is done, I can get back on track.
Now I need to go heat some water to wash dishes. I love my electric teakettle. I dug out my old stovetop kettle so I could heat more water at once, and I can boil two kettles worth of water (boil, empty, refill, boil again) in the electric kettle in the time it takes the stovetop kettle to reach a simmer.
And, yikes, there was just the sound of a really nasty collision in the intersection behind my house. Someone's horn is stuck on. I can't quite see it from my window so I don't know how bad it is. I wonder if I should call 911 or if someone on the scene already has. If I don't hear sirens in a couple of minutes (the fire station is two blocks away), I guess I'll call. And there go the sirens.
July 2, 2013
SF TV in Book Form
It looks like I'll finally get something done on the Saga of the Water Heater Enclosure. Last night, a board member, his contractor friend and another board member who is also a contractor came over to look at it and agree that yes, it does need to be fixed. The non-contractor board member was talking about how the undamaged side was okay, but the contractors said no, it all had to go because it was probably breeding vast quantities of mold. They also agreed that the water heater was probably shot, based on the symptoms. I said I wanted to put in a new water heater when they put the water heater back in after the work, but the one I found that I liked was too big for the enclosure.
That was when the contractor board member, an older gentleman, made a potentially fatal error. He expressed shock that I was shopping for a water heater. I said (not necessarily in these words), "Well, duh, it's a vital piece of equipment and it costs a lot of money. Why wouldn't I research the purchase?" He then said something about getting the right color. He received what my friends would likely recognize as the Scary Smile as I patiently explained that the one I wanted had multiple program modes, so it could learn my water use patterns and save energy, and it had a vacation mode so that it didn't have to heat the water full-on while I was out of town. I think that was when he realized that I was a force to be reckoned with and asked for the specs on the water heater. I gave them off the top of my head, which the other contractor who was standing by the cabinet verified. He then said that he could go through his plumbing supplier so I wouldn't have to pay retail.
Maybe I should have let them know that I might have needed someone to take out and then install the water heater, but I could probably have done the carpentry work on my own, other than rebuilding the door frame. I know how to deal with drywall. Habitat for Humanity is great for life skills like that.
I got word this morning that they'd start work today. I don't know how long it'll take. It's a very small space. Getting the water heater out will probably take as much time as ripping out the old sheetrock and maybe even hammering in the new. Taping and mudding out will take a little longer. So I might have hot water by tomorrow night. In the meantime, I worked out a way to get a semi-shower using a large basin, a small pitcher and the electric teakettle. Is it weird that I'm kind of enjoying the creative problem solving aspect of this?
But enough about the "my house hates me" woes (maybe my ghost is acting up). I have books to talk about! This week, I have two fun science fiction novels/novels relating to science fiction TV. One, I was really surprised to see in my library, Shada, the Douglas Adams Doctor Who story that was never finished, as novelized by Gareth Roberts (a current Doctor Who writer). This is from back in the day when a "story" was told in six half-hour episodes. They'd apparently started filming this, doing the location shooting for the first part that takes place in Cambridge, but then there was a strike that shut down production, so the episode was never finished. From the author's note at the back, I get the impression that the script wasn't entirely finished, either, that Adams, who was never known for being good with deadlines, hadn't quite reached the end, or else had done a "and then stuff happens, the good guys win, the end" type of rushed ending, with the hope of fixing it as they got closer to shooting that part. Since they never shot that part, he never finished it. The fun here is not so much that it's a Doctor Who story, but rather that it really feels like a new Douglas Adams book, more so than the Hitchhiker's book written by a different author. It's very much in his voice, and there are very Adams-like touches, like the ship with an annoying personality. There are also a few inside jokes for Who fans, like the description of a monster tearing through a wall like it was made of polystyrene. I'd imagine that a Douglas Adams fan might enjoy this even without being a Who fan, though obviously a Who fan would enjoy it more.
Still on a science fiction TV theme, I then read Redshirts by John Scalzi. An ensign newly assigned to the fleet's flagship notices something strange, like the way they seem to burn through junior crew members, with at least one dying a horrible and pointless death on every away mission. Then there's the "Box" into which material is fed, and it then pops out an analysis or solution with only minutes to spare, no matter what the deadline is. The science of that just doesn't make sense. The more veteran crewmembers avoid having anything to do with the senior officers and hide when it comes time to assign crew members to away missions. Then there's the one senior officer who seems to get injured or exposed to a deadly disease on almost every mission, only to miraculously survive and then be totally cured a week later. Our hero gets suspicious and starts looking into this, only to find that the truth is even weirder than he imagined. The story goes off onto a highly entertaining metafictional slant, something sort of like Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series meets Galaxy Quest meets Stranger than Fiction. It's laugh out loud funny in a lot of places, though one of the codas may have brought a tear to my eye. Recommended reading for Star Trek fans.
Although I enjoyed this approach to the concept, it did make me kind of want to see a realistic treatment of the Star Trek tropes -- what would really happen in a ship like the Enterprise, where the senior officers seem to have a strange case of Stockholm Syndrome that keeps them from accepting promotions that require transfers, where people are regularly coming down with strange diseases that make them behave oddly, and where the junior officers have a horribly low life expectancy? You'd think there would be investigations or mutinies, or is Captain Kirk some kind of charismatic supervillain who has the crew under his thrall so they don't notice these problems and live only to serve him? How does a captain maintain so much loyalty from his crew that they won't leave his command even to further their careers in spite of the fact that so many of his crew are treated as expendable and so many awful things happen to them?
That was when the contractor board member, an older gentleman, made a potentially fatal error. He expressed shock that I was shopping for a water heater. I said (not necessarily in these words), "Well, duh, it's a vital piece of equipment and it costs a lot of money. Why wouldn't I research the purchase?" He then said something about getting the right color. He received what my friends would likely recognize as the Scary Smile as I patiently explained that the one I wanted had multiple program modes, so it could learn my water use patterns and save energy, and it had a vacation mode so that it didn't have to heat the water full-on while I was out of town. I think that was when he realized that I was a force to be reckoned with and asked for the specs on the water heater. I gave them off the top of my head, which the other contractor who was standing by the cabinet verified. He then said that he could go through his plumbing supplier so I wouldn't have to pay retail.
Maybe I should have let them know that I might have needed someone to take out and then install the water heater, but I could probably have done the carpentry work on my own, other than rebuilding the door frame. I know how to deal with drywall. Habitat for Humanity is great for life skills like that.
I got word this morning that they'd start work today. I don't know how long it'll take. It's a very small space. Getting the water heater out will probably take as much time as ripping out the old sheetrock and maybe even hammering in the new. Taping and mudding out will take a little longer. So I might have hot water by tomorrow night. In the meantime, I worked out a way to get a semi-shower using a large basin, a small pitcher and the electric teakettle. Is it weird that I'm kind of enjoying the creative problem solving aspect of this?
But enough about the "my house hates me" woes (maybe my ghost is acting up). I have books to talk about! This week, I have two fun science fiction novels/novels relating to science fiction TV. One, I was really surprised to see in my library, Shada, the Douglas Adams Doctor Who story that was never finished, as novelized by Gareth Roberts (a current Doctor Who writer). This is from back in the day when a "story" was told in six half-hour episodes. They'd apparently started filming this, doing the location shooting for the first part that takes place in Cambridge, but then there was a strike that shut down production, so the episode was never finished. From the author's note at the back, I get the impression that the script wasn't entirely finished, either, that Adams, who was never known for being good with deadlines, hadn't quite reached the end, or else had done a "and then stuff happens, the good guys win, the end" type of rushed ending, with the hope of fixing it as they got closer to shooting that part. Since they never shot that part, he never finished it. The fun here is not so much that it's a Doctor Who story, but rather that it really feels like a new Douglas Adams book, more so than the Hitchhiker's book written by a different author. It's very much in his voice, and there are very Adams-like touches, like the ship with an annoying personality. There are also a few inside jokes for Who fans, like the description of a monster tearing through a wall like it was made of polystyrene. I'd imagine that a Douglas Adams fan might enjoy this even without being a Who fan, though obviously a Who fan would enjoy it more.
Still on a science fiction TV theme, I then read Redshirts by John Scalzi. An ensign newly assigned to the fleet's flagship notices something strange, like the way they seem to burn through junior crew members, with at least one dying a horrible and pointless death on every away mission. Then there's the "Box" into which material is fed, and it then pops out an analysis or solution with only minutes to spare, no matter what the deadline is. The science of that just doesn't make sense. The more veteran crewmembers avoid having anything to do with the senior officers and hide when it comes time to assign crew members to away missions. Then there's the one senior officer who seems to get injured or exposed to a deadly disease on almost every mission, only to miraculously survive and then be totally cured a week later. Our hero gets suspicious and starts looking into this, only to find that the truth is even weirder than he imagined. The story goes off onto a highly entertaining metafictional slant, something sort of like Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series meets Galaxy Quest meets Stranger than Fiction. It's laugh out loud funny in a lot of places, though one of the codas may have brought a tear to my eye. Recommended reading for Star Trek fans.
Although I enjoyed this approach to the concept, it did make me kind of want to see a realistic treatment of the Star Trek tropes -- what would really happen in a ship like the Enterprise, where the senior officers seem to have a strange case of Stockholm Syndrome that keeps them from accepting promotions that require transfers, where people are regularly coming down with strange diseases that make them behave oddly, and where the junior officers have a horribly low life expectancy? You'd think there would be investigations or mutinies, or is Captain Kirk some kind of charismatic supervillain who has the crew under his thrall so they don't notice these problems and live only to serve him? How does a captain maintain so much loyalty from his crew that they won't leave his command even to further their careers in spite of the fact that so many of his crew are treated as expendable and so many awful things happen to them?
July 1, 2013
Back in Hot Water
For those who actually like me writing about my hot water heater, you're in luck!
Saturday morning, I was out watering and chastising my plants ("I just watered you. How can you be dry already? Are you hoarding water and selling it on the black market to the Evil Alien Vines? That would explain a lot.") when I noticed that the paving stones and patio near the water heater were wet. The same thing that had happened a couple of weeks ago and that I thought was fixed was happening AGAIN. I turned from berating the plants to berating the water heater (which was strangely ineffective, though it did make me feel better).
Mind you, it's been about six weeks since the ceiling of the water heater enclosure collapsed and the contractor said it needed to be fixed. It's been two weeks since the last group of contractors came out to see it to put in a bid and the door actually pulled out of the wall when they went to open it. So I sent a nice note to the HOA administrator begging to know when this work will be done and explaining my situation. Under other circumstances, I'd have just called a plumber and had the water heater replaced this morning, with minor inconvenience to me. But I don't want to get a new water heater installed in a cabinet that's rotted out and that doesn't even have a door on it, only to have it taken out and then reinstalled. I'm not even sure a plumber would be willing to install a new water heater in a setting that's so badly out of compliance with building codes. I also don't want to sink hundreds of dollars into repairing a water heater that will be replaced soon, if it can even be repaired. I may have included a joke about asking the board members when would be a good time for me to come over to use their showers, but I held back the nuclear option threat of sending photos to the city code compliance officers and getting back in touch with my college friend who's now the chief investigative reporter at one of the local TV stations (they just love to do HOAs behaving badly stories).
Fortunately, they called me first thing this morning to say they were escalating. One of the board members is a contractor, and he's going to come over today to take a look at the water heater for me, and then they hope to try to get the work done this week or early next week. Playing damsel in distress seems to have worked so far. I can get hot water briefly by turning the water supply to the water heater back on long enough to take a shower, then run out and turn it back off. It still leaks, but it's not a waterfall, and the enclosure's already ruined. The one time that will be an issue will be after dance on Tuesday night, when I really don't want to run out in the dark to play with the water heater. I may gut it up and take a cold shower. I washed dishes last night by heating water in the teakettle and using that to fill a washing sink and a rinsing sink. I'll just pretend I'm camping. If it's delayed to next week, I suppose I could go visit my parents for a few days, but I'm a little afraid of leaving the water heater unattended in case something goes horribly wrong, and I have lots of church stuff this weekend. Stay tuned for further tales of the Week Without Hot Water.
In other news, I finished the latest knitting project last night, a shawl/scarf for use in overly air conditioned environments, especially at science fiction conventions.
I don't know how well you can see the pattern in the photo, as it's fairly subtle. I look forward to people's reactions when they figure out what it is when I wear it. I still need to block it and do some finishing work. And since I know I will be asked, this is the pattern from Knitty Magazine. I used heavier yarn and bigger needles (size 6 US) than called for because a trial attempt found that knitting with the tiny needles hurts my hands (I'm not great with really fine motor control, one reason I have terrible handwriting), I had a hard time finding yarn that fine that wasn't wool, and I wanted it to be bigger to be more of a shawl than a scarf. I learned a lot of new techniques in order to make this, but I now feel a real sense of accomplishment. The next project will be a blanket for Project Linus, using the first yarn I got for this and decided was wrong and a pattern they were giving away at the store where I got the yarn. It involves cables, so there's more fun stuff to try. I've learned that my church has a knitting group that meets on Sunday afternoons at a local coffee shop, and I may look into that, but I'm not sure how much I want to turn a solitary pursuit into a social thing. It might be good occasionally to get help or to learn of new charity efforts I could knit for.
Meanwhile, I've got about 5,000 words written on the new book. I took the weekend off and hope to get back into it today, though I do want to spiff up my house if neighbors are going to be wandering through to look at my water heater.
Saturday morning, I was out watering and chastising my plants ("I just watered you. How can you be dry already? Are you hoarding water and selling it on the black market to the Evil Alien Vines? That would explain a lot.") when I noticed that the paving stones and patio near the water heater were wet. The same thing that had happened a couple of weeks ago and that I thought was fixed was happening AGAIN. I turned from berating the plants to berating the water heater (which was strangely ineffective, though it did make me feel better).
Mind you, it's been about six weeks since the ceiling of the water heater enclosure collapsed and the contractor said it needed to be fixed. It's been two weeks since the last group of contractors came out to see it to put in a bid and the door actually pulled out of the wall when they went to open it. So I sent a nice note to the HOA administrator begging to know when this work will be done and explaining my situation. Under other circumstances, I'd have just called a plumber and had the water heater replaced this morning, with minor inconvenience to me. But I don't want to get a new water heater installed in a cabinet that's rotted out and that doesn't even have a door on it, only to have it taken out and then reinstalled. I'm not even sure a plumber would be willing to install a new water heater in a setting that's so badly out of compliance with building codes. I also don't want to sink hundreds of dollars into repairing a water heater that will be replaced soon, if it can even be repaired. I may have included a joke about asking the board members when would be a good time for me to come over to use their showers, but I held back the nuclear option threat of sending photos to the city code compliance officers and getting back in touch with my college friend who's now the chief investigative reporter at one of the local TV stations (they just love to do HOAs behaving badly stories).
Fortunately, they called me first thing this morning to say they were escalating. One of the board members is a contractor, and he's going to come over today to take a look at the water heater for me, and then they hope to try to get the work done this week or early next week. Playing damsel in distress seems to have worked so far. I can get hot water briefly by turning the water supply to the water heater back on long enough to take a shower, then run out and turn it back off. It still leaks, but it's not a waterfall, and the enclosure's already ruined. The one time that will be an issue will be after dance on Tuesday night, when I really don't want to run out in the dark to play with the water heater. I may gut it up and take a cold shower. I washed dishes last night by heating water in the teakettle and using that to fill a washing sink and a rinsing sink. I'll just pretend I'm camping. If it's delayed to next week, I suppose I could go visit my parents for a few days, but I'm a little afraid of leaving the water heater unattended in case something goes horribly wrong, and I have lots of church stuff this weekend. Stay tuned for further tales of the Week Without Hot Water.
In other news, I finished the latest knitting project last night, a shawl/scarf for use in overly air conditioned environments, especially at science fiction conventions.
I don't know how well you can see the pattern in the photo, as it's fairly subtle. I look forward to people's reactions when they figure out what it is when I wear it. I still need to block it and do some finishing work. And since I know I will be asked, this is the pattern from Knitty Magazine. I used heavier yarn and bigger needles (size 6 US) than called for because a trial attempt found that knitting with the tiny needles hurts my hands (I'm not great with really fine motor control, one reason I have terrible handwriting), I had a hard time finding yarn that fine that wasn't wool, and I wanted it to be bigger to be more of a shawl than a scarf. I learned a lot of new techniques in order to make this, but I now feel a real sense of accomplishment. The next project will be a blanket for Project Linus, using the first yarn I got for this and decided was wrong and a pattern they were giving away at the store where I got the yarn. It involves cables, so there's more fun stuff to try. I've learned that my church has a knitting group that meets on Sunday afternoons at a local coffee shop, and I may look into that, but I'm not sure how much I want to turn a solitary pursuit into a social thing. It might be good occasionally to get help or to learn of new charity efforts I could knit for.
Meanwhile, I've got about 5,000 words written on the new book. I took the weekend off and hope to get back into it today, though I do want to spiff up my house if neighbors are going to be wandering through to look at my water heater.
June 28, 2013
Geeky Summer TV
I launched into the new book yesterday, getting the first scene/the first 2,000 or so words done. Even better, the book seems to have taken over my brain already. I stayed in bed really late this morning in spite of waking up really early because entire scenes were flooding into my head, and when The Voices start talking like that, it's a good idea to listen. I think there will be a writing marathon today to try to capture everything that came to me last night. I'm remembering how much I love these characters. This may come across as blasphemy to some, but I may even like them more than Katie and Owen. They're a lot more complex and a little more messed-up while still being essentially good people who are trying to do the right thing.
In other news, I'm almost done with my latest knitting project, which I hope to reveal on Monday. It's really complicated and required learning a few new techniques, but the part I messed up on was the simple ribbing at the end. After doing a bunch of lace from a chart and then doing a pattern involving all sorts of bobbles and crossovers, I lost count on a simple knit three, purl one rib and had to undo almost an entire row -- and a row is 311 stitches. But now that the rib's properly established, it's a lot more brainless.
I've been getting all this knitting done because there's been a fair amount of geeky TV on lately, so let's catch up.
There's Primeval: New World on SyFy, a Canadian version of the British series, now finally showing in the US but, sadly, already cancelled in Canada after one season. I had to wait for SyFy to rerun the first couple of episodes because I assumed wrongly that it would be available OnDemand, like everything else on SyFy. When I caught up, I really liked it. One thing I like is that it's more on the CSI model, where it follows the events in a different location in the same universe, rather than being a remake of the original series where they try to map the characters onto the original cast. That means there's no Nerdboy. I know he was popular among the younger fangirls because he's allegedly cute (I much preferred the big-game-hunter research assistant from the first couple of seasons, though I ended up liking the actor even better when he got to be the comic relief in CHAOS), but as a character it seemed like they couldn't decide if he was Gilligan or The Professor. Half the time he was getting himself and sometimes others into trouble because he was a total idiot, but then they also tried to make him the brilliant inventor who came up with all the devices that saved the day, and by the end he was also some kind of romantic hero, and just ugh, really. But in this series, they all seem to be reasonably competent adult professionals who I can imagine actually doing this stuff. I like the team interactions. We haven't seen a lot of him, but I rather love the idea of the air force officer stuck in the X-Files/Project Blue Book kind of job who gets the surprise of his life when someone actually reports something relevant to him, and he has to use those protocols he's been sitting on while twiddling his thumbs in boredom.
Fortunately, Sinbad is OnDemand, so I can watch it on Sunday afternoons when I eat lunch and read the newspaper after church. I certainly wouldn't schedule my life around it or even bother recording it. It's supremely cheesy British fantasy fluff with just enough meat in it to be mildly intriguing. They've got a good set-up for a voyage kind of series, with the rag-tag group on the ship whose professional crew mostly died in a storm, and Our Hero is under a curse so that he'll die if he stays on land for more than a day. So they sail from port to port, having adventures before hightailing it back to the boat before sunrise. Unfortunately, this suffers the same ills as most of the recent British fantasy fare aimed mostly at teen-ish viewers, in that it comes across as way too contemporary. The characters in this vaguely medieval Middle East talk like modern Londoners, complete with slang and idioms. Sinbad wouldn't turn heads walking down any modern city street, since he wears cargo shorts and a t-shirt. The sense of modern was what kept me from being able to deal with Merlin, and it irked me with Robin Hood. With Robin Hood, one of the behind-the-scenes features even talked about how their costumes were designed so that kids could find clothes like that in the local High Street shops, so Robin Hood wore Ye Olde Hoodye. I guess they think that modern kids won't relate to anything that's not just like their own lives. Don't they realize that the allure of costume dramas is the costumes? What's the point of something set in a different time and place if I can buy the same things in the mall? Anyway, Sinbad must have caught my imagination on some level because I found myself dreaming an episode the other night. Or, at least, I was dreaming a fantasy story set on a boat.
I caught the first episode of Under the Dome, and while the plot intrigues me, I don't particularly care about any of the characters yet. I mostly spent the hour making snowglobe jokes, since Haven's Christmas episode a couple of years ago was inspired by the same source material, and it turned out to be a girl with powers who was turning the town into a snowglobe. Every time someone ran into the dome in this series, I'd hum a little "Silent Night." I think my main interest in this series will be mapping the King tropes.
It's not new, but my schedule has finally adjusted to allow me to watch Person of Interest, and I think I'm hooked. It would be nice if it were available OnDemand, though, since that's why I didn't watch it in the first place (it was on when I had a class, then wasn't OnDemand, so I didn't get hooked enough to want to record it, so I just didn't watch). I really like the characters (I'm kind of a sucker for the soft-spoken, unassuming badass), though I'm a bit lost on the big-picture story. I love the dog. But now that my dance classes have moved back to Tuesday nights and I no longer have major programming conflicts, guess where they're moving the show? Now I might be hooked enough to record it, though.
As for my question about blog content, I'm rather surprised that people are still intrigued by my daily life. I'm not intrigued by my own daily life. Maybe I'll make up one and start writing about it.
In other news, I'm almost done with my latest knitting project, which I hope to reveal on Monday. It's really complicated and required learning a few new techniques, but the part I messed up on was the simple ribbing at the end. After doing a bunch of lace from a chart and then doing a pattern involving all sorts of bobbles and crossovers, I lost count on a simple knit three, purl one rib and had to undo almost an entire row -- and a row is 311 stitches. But now that the rib's properly established, it's a lot more brainless.
I've been getting all this knitting done because there's been a fair amount of geeky TV on lately, so let's catch up.
There's Primeval: New World on SyFy, a Canadian version of the British series, now finally showing in the US but, sadly, already cancelled in Canada after one season. I had to wait for SyFy to rerun the first couple of episodes because I assumed wrongly that it would be available OnDemand, like everything else on SyFy. When I caught up, I really liked it. One thing I like is that it's more on the CSI model, where it follows the events in a different location in the same universe, rather than being a remake of the original series where they try to map the characters onto the original cast. That means there's no Nerdboy. I know he was popular among the younger fangirls because he's allegedly cute (I much preferred the big-game-hunter research assistant from the first couple of seasons, though I ended up liking the actor even better when he got to be the comic relief in CHAOS), but as a character it seemed like they couldn't decide if he was Gilligan or The Professor. Half the time he was getting himself and sometimes others into trouble because he was a total idiot, but then they also tried to make him the brilliant inventor who came up with all the devices that saved the day, and by the end he was also some kind of romantic hero, and just ugh, really. But in this series, they all seem to be reasonably competent adult professionals who I can imagine actually doing this stuff. I like the team interactions. We haven't seen a lot of him, but I rather love the idea of the air force officer stuck in the X-Files/Project Blue Book kind of job who gets the surprise of his life when someone actually reports something relevant to him, and he has to use those protocols he's been sitting on while twiddling his thumbs in boredom.
Fortunately, Sinbad is OnDemand, so I can watch it on Sunday afternoons when I eat lunch and read the newspaper after church. I certainly wouldn't schedule my life around it or even bother recording it. It's supremely cheesy British fantasy fluff with just enough meat in it to be mildly intriguing. They've got a good set-up for a voyage kind of series, with the rag-tag group on the ship whose professional crew mostly died in a storm, and Our Hero is under a curse so that he'll die if he stays on land for more than a day. So they sail from port to port, having adventures before hightailing it back to the boat before sunrise. Unfortunately, this suffers the same ills as most of the recent British fantasy fare aimed mostly at teen-ish viewers, in that it comes across as way too contemporary. The characters in this vaguely medieval Middle East talk like modern Londoners, complete with slang and idioms. Sinbad wouldn't turn heads walking down any modern city street, since he wears cargo shorts and a t-shirt. The sense of modern was what kept me from being able to deal with Merlin, and it irked me with Robin Hood. With Robin Hood, one of the behind-the-scenes features even talked about how their costumes were designed so that kids could find clothes like that in the local High Street shops, so Robin Hood wore Ye Olde Hoodye. I guess they think that modern kids won't relate to anything that's not just like their own lives. Don't they realize that the allure of costume dramas is the costumes? What's the point of something set in a different time and place if I can buy the same things in the mall? Anyway, Sinbad must have caught my imagination on some level because I found myself dreaming an episode the other night. Or, at least, I was dreaming a fantasy story set on a boat.
I caught the first episode of Under the Dome, and while the plot intrigues me, I don't particularly care about any of the characters yet. I mostly spent the hour making snowglobe jokes, since Haven's Christmas episode a couple of years ago was inspired by the same source material, and it turned out to be a girl with powers who was turning the town into a snowglobe. Every time someone ran into the dome in this series, I'd hum a little "Silent Night." I think my main interest in this series will be mapping the King tropes.
It's not new, but my schedule has finally adjusted to allow me to watch Person of Interest, and I think I'm hooked. It would be nice if it were available OnDemand, though, since that's why I didn't watch it in the first place (it was on when I had a class, then wasn't OnDemand, so I didn't get hooked enough to want to record it, so I just didn't watch). I really like the characters (I'm kind of a sucker for the soft-spoken, unassuming badass), though I'm a bit lost on the big-picture story. I love the dog. But now that my dance classes have moved back to Tuesday nights and I no longer have major programming conflicts, guess where they're moving the show? Now I might be hooked enough to record it, though.
As for my question about blog content, I'm rather surprised that people are still intrigued by my daily life. I'm not intrigued by my own daily life. Maybe I'll make up one and start writing about it.
June 27, 2013
What Do You Want to Read Here?
I have decided that today I will begin writing words on the book. I saw the "movie" of the opening scene in my head a few times last night, and the last time it came with mental narration, which is a good sign. I still have some planning/plotting and research to do, but I think with that I'm at the point of procrastination perfectionism, where I'll never start if the plot has to be perfect before I go there. However, this week of additional plotting and planning has been beneficial because the opening scene is totally new and wouldn't have been there if I'd started writing on Monday. I'm finally getting to use a character I created in great detail for the first book and never found a place to use her (she's mentioned, but doesn't make a personal appearance). She's still a minor character who just appears in a couple of scenes, but I know a lot about her. There's even a possibility of her getting an expanded role if I do more books in this series.
I'm coming up on my ninth year of blogging (yikes! Where did the time go?), and since I'm winding down (for now) one series, getting ready to launch a new possible series a couple of years from now and trying to sell a new series, I figure it's time to re-evaluate what I'm doing. Judging by the comments, the audience has shifted over time, so it's not necessarily the same people (other than my personal friends) reading now who were reading back at the beginning. Or, if they are, they're being quiet about it. Which is cool.
So, this is your opportunity to tell me what you'd like me to write about. I guess I could do a fancy poll, but that usually takes more time to set up than it's worth. I think the last time I asked this question and did a poll, the topic that got the most interest was personal life stuff, which is funny because my personal life is pretty boring. I sit at home most of the time and occasionally go to dinner or a movie or hiking with friends, or else I go to choir practice and ballet class.
Are you interested in:
The process of writing and what I'm working on
Discussion of books I've read
A more in-depth re-read discussion of a book series or favorite books (like they do on tor.com)
A re-watch, episode-by-episode discussion of a TV series (again, like they do on tor.com)
TV discussion/reviews
Movie discussionreviews
Author interviews
The publishing industry
Writing/publishing how-tos
Those are just some ideas, but if you have other ideas of things you think I could address, speak up. I'd like to keep this blog somewhat relevant and interesting enough for fans to keep coming back while maybe also being interesting enough to draw people who aren't fans yet.
I'm coming up on my ninth year of blogging (yikes! Where did the time go?), and since I'm winding down (for now) one series, getting ready to launch a new possible series a couple of years from now and trying to sell a new series, I figure it's time to re-evaluate what I'm doing. Judging by the comments, the audience has shifted over time, so it's not necessarily the same people (other than my personal friends) reading now who were reading back at the beginning. Or, if they are, they're being quiet about it. Which is cool.
So, this is your opportunity to tell me what you'd like me to write about. I guess I could do a fancy poll, but that usually takes more time to set up than it's worth. I think the last time I asked this question and did a poll, the topic that got the most interest was personal life stuff, which is funny because my personal life is pretty boring. I sit at home most of the time and occasionally go to dinner or a movie or hiking with friends, or else I go to choir practice and ballet class.
Are you interested in:
The process of writing and what I'm working on
Discussion of books I've read
A more in-depth re-read discussion of a book series or favorite books (like they do on tor.com)
A re-watch, episode-by-episode discussion of a TV series (again, like they do on tor.com)
TV discussion/reviews
Movie discussionreviews
Author interviews
The publishing industry
Writing/publishing how-tos
Those are just some ideas, but if you have other ideas of things you think I could address, speak up. I'd like to keep this blog somewhat relevant and interesting enough for fans to keep coming back while maybe also being interesting enough to draw people who aren't fans yet.
June 26, 2013
Plotting the Details
Because I still have a lot of classes to make up from the month of ballet I missed due to illness last fall (followed by a couple of colds in the spring semester), I stayed after ballet last night for the jazz class. And now I'm barely mobile and very creaky because jazz is a lot more intense than ballet. But it's great exercise because the class starts with stuff like crunches and push-ups. I just don't know how great an idea it is to dance from 7:15 to 9:45. The jazz was fun, though, and keeping up with the choreography is good mental exercise. I didn't even feel terribly awkward. At times I even felt like I was really dancing rather than working my way through a series of steps. Now we'll see if I manage to drag myself to tonight's ballet class. I've been awfully sedentary lately, so I need the structured exercise. Plus, the heroine of the book I'm working on is a dancer, so I think this helps keep me in the right mindset. I would say that I wish my knees were twenty years younger, but then it was about twenty years ago that I had to have knee surgery, so my knees were actually worse then.
I think I've figured out my main problem with plotting this book: The plot is really just a framework to hang the characters' emotional arcs onto. I've got the emotional stuff all worked out in great detail, but then I get vague and hand-wavy about the external plot that leads to that emotional stuff happening. Normally, it's the other way around, where I come up with a plot and then figure out how it affects the characters emotionally. This is also a book that's a lot angstier than I tend to write because these are all difficult emotions that will require tough decisions and sacrifices. I think the humor will come through in the voice. In the first book of this potential series, the emotional stuff was mostly subtext and the dialogue was snappy, almost screwball comedy style, where they talked about everything but what they were really feeling. Which is why it took a lot of rewrites, as I started with them saying things outright, then gradually edited that into subtext lying underneath witty quips. I imagine I'll have to do the same here.
So, today's fun will involve forcing myself to really plot and to stop whenever I'm tempted to slide by with "and then something happens" rather than coming up with what actually happens. I still leave myself room to play and allow myself to change things in midstream if I come up with something better while I'm writing, but leaving things at "and then something happens" at this point is a recipe for being blocked when I get to that part of the book. On the up side, I'm starting to have individual scenes play out in my head. They're not all strung together and are random bits and pieces, but I like it when the "movie" starts playing in my mind. I've got the opening scene down pretty well and am figuring out what happens next out of several possible options. I may also have the "ticking clock" element, the reason why the characters have to resolve this problem now.
I think I've figured out my main problem with plotting this book: The plot is really just a framework to hang the characters' emotional arcs onto. I've got the emotional stuff all worked out in great detail, but then I get vague and hand-wavy about the external plot that leads to that emotional stuff happening. Normally, it's the other way around, where I come up with a plot and then figure out how it affects the characters emotionally. This is also a book that's a lot angstier than I tend to write because these are all difficult emotions that will require tough decisions and sacrifices. I think the humor will come through in the voice. In the first book of this potential series, the emotional stuff was mostly subtext and the dialogue was snappy, almost screwball comedy style, where they talked about everything but what they were really feeling. Which is why it took a lot of rewrites, as I started with them saying things outright, then gradually edited that into subtext lying underneath witty quips. I imagine I'll have to do the same here.
So, today's fun will involve forcing myself to really plot and to stop whenever I'm tempted to slide by with "and then something happens" rather than coming up with what actually happens. I still leave myself room to play and allow myself to change things in midstream if I come up with something better while I'm writing, but leaving things at "and then something happens" at this point is a recipe for being blocked when I get to that part of the book. On the up side, I'm starting to have individual scenes play out in my head. They're not all strung together and are random bits and pieces, but I like it when the "movie" starts playing in my mind. I've got the opening scene down pretty well and am figuring out what happens next out of several possible options. I may also have the "ticking clock" element, the reason why the characters have to resolve this problem now.
June 25, 2013
Book Report: Introvert Power
It looks like the price drop on the first four books is now also available on the Nook, so you can get the cheaper e-books in the flavor of your choice.
I think I've figured out the opening to the new book. It sort of drifted into my head last night as I was falling asleep. I don't know if it's quite ready to write yet, though. I still have some stuff to work out, as the book as a whole is rather misty and vague. But first, my big task will be to send out the contract for the new YA steampunk book. It took a while and a lot of back and forth to get that finalized. This is why publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
I forgot to mention in last week's roundup of reading that I'd read another Patricia McKillip book, The Book of Atrix Wolfe. I'm really trying to hold back from binging on all her books, all at once, because I like the idea of knowing there's still something out there. This one had elements of Cinderella (or more like Donkeyskin, in that she was a princess working as a servant in the castle of another king and wasn't particularly abused rather than being turned into an abused servant in her own home) mixed with wizards and the fey. I'm impressed by the way she manages to write new stories that somehow feel like lost traditional fairy tales. There's this whole classification system of fairy tale elements, and it's almost like she takes several of those elements and then mixes them together in a new tale that still feels old. Even if that's not what she does, it sounds like it could be a fun way to come up with a fantasy writing prompt. I shall have to try that next time I'm between books.
But the main book I want to discuss is a non-fiction book, Quiet by Susan Cain. It's a book on introversion that not only looks at the way society regards introverts but also at some of the science explaining aspects of introversion and the way American society is cheating itself by building itself around extroversion. Learning about introversion was one of the major lightbulb moments in my life. When we'd had "introvert" and "extrovert" as vocabulary words in school, they went with "Introvert" meaning quiet and shy and "extrovert" meaning talkative and outgoing. By that definition, I'd generally be considered an extrovert, depending on the situation. I'm an Army brat, so I'm good at adapting to new things and making new friends, and I'm very verbal. I come across as "bubbly" (one of the words most frequently used to describe me). But when I was a couple of years out of college, my boss sent me to a week-long summer seminar for university public affairs professionals held at Notre Dame. At the first session, they administered the Myers-Briggs assessment -- an official one, not just one of those Internet versions. I was really shocked when the results showed me as being a strong introvert, but then the lightbulb went off and everything clicked when they explained what that meant, that it was about where your focus was and where you got your energy. It explained so much about me and why I had so many times when I felt overloaded and needed to withdraw for a while. I'd been trying to live up to an extrovert label, but liking to talk has nothing to do with where you get your energy.
This book didn't offer much in the way of revelation on that front, but it did explain a few other things about me. For one thing, introverts tend to be highly reactive to stimuli -- we get a stronger response from less stimulation, while extroverts need more stimulation to get a similar response. That's part of why introverts find crowds and noise overwhelming. Even when I'm alone, I don't keep on music or the TV for background noise. My decor is fairly simple, focusing on soothing colors like blue or green, with white walls. It even explains my worship preferences -- what my church calls "modern worship" is full of stimulation, with constant wall-of-sound music, even as background to quiet moments, and with flashing slides on screens. I want to run screaming from the building. I much prefer the quieter traditional style where one thing happens at a time and the focus is on peace and reflection.
But most of the book is about the way American society has been driven and shaped by extroversion, to the point that introversion is often seen as a flaw that needs correcting. The people with the loudest voices are the ones being heard, so they're the ones arranging things for their own benefit. The problem is that a lot of it may be based on their preferences, but it's based on wrong assumptions about what works. Take, for instance, the open-plan office, which is an extrovert's dream. The theory is that if everyone works together in one big space, they'll be more productive and creative, with ideas flowing freely. The truth, according to actual research, is that open-plan offices result in lower productivity, higher absenteeism, lower job satisfaction, more turnover and more physical illness for everyone, introvert and extrovert. Extroverts may be energized by such an arrangement, but they don't actually do their jobs better. Or take group brainstorming, which is practically a gospel in the advertising world. It doesn't really work. Even extroverts come up with more and higher quality new ideas when brainstorming alone than with a group, and the bigger the group, the poorer the output. The most effective brainstorming is for everyone to come up with ideas on their own and then share and discuss them online where everyone is more likely to speak up and where all voices are judged more evenly rather than by who seems the loudest and most enthusiastic or forceful. I wanted to send those pages to everyone I have to deal with on any projects or committees and then to go back in time and share them with all my former co-workers and employers.
It's a very interesting book, and I think even extroverts should read it because they could learn a thing or two about dealing with people. There are also some amusing anecdotes as the author explores some bastions of extroversion, like a Tony Robbins seminar. That sequence alone made me think that if Tina Fey could take a non-fiction book on the sociology of interpersonal relationships among teenage girls and turn it into the movie Mean Girls, there had to be something she could do with this book to create a comedy about an introvert trying to function in an extroverted world.
Now to go ship off a contract and then settle down for some solo brainstorming.
I think I've figured out the opening to the new book. It sort of drifted into my head last night as I was falling asleep. I don't know if it's quite ready to write yet, though. I still have some stuff to work out, as the book as a whole is rather misty and vague. But first, my big task will be to send out the contract for the new YA steampunk book. It took a while and a lot of back and forth to get that finalized. This is why publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
I forgot to mention in last week's roundup of reading that I'd read another Patricia McKillip book, The Book of Atrix Wolfe. I'm really trying to hold back from binging on all her books, all at once, because I like the idea of knowing there's still something out there. This one had elements of Cinderella (or more like Donkeyskin, in that she was a princess working as a servant in the castle of another king and wasn't particularly abused rather than being turned into an abused servant in her own home) mixed with wizards and the fey. I'm impressed by the way she manages to write new stories that somehow feel like lost traditional fairy tales. There's this whole classification system of fairy tale elements, and it's almost like she takes several of those elements and then mixes them together in a new tale that still feels old. Even if that's not what she does, it sounds like it could be a fun way to come up with a fantasy writing prompt. I shall have to try that next time I'm between books.
But the main book I want to discuss is a non-fiction book, Quiet by Susan Cain. It's a book on introversion that not only looks at the way society regards introverts but also at some of the science explaining aspects of introversion and the way American society is cheating itself by building itself around extroversion. Learning about introversion was one of the major lightbulb moments in my life. When we'd had "introvert" and "extrovert" as vocabulary words in school, they went with "Introvert" meaning quiet and shy and "extrovert" meaning talkative and outgoing. By that definition, I'd generally be considered an extrovert, depending on the situation. I'm an Army brat, so I'm good at adapting to new things and making new friends, and I'm very verbal. I come across as "bubbly" (one of the words most frequently used to describe me). But when I was a couple of years out of college, my boss sent me to a week-long summer seminar for university public affairs professionals held at Notre Dame. At the first session, they administered the Myers-Briggs assessment -- an official one, not just one of those Internet versions. I was really shocked when the results showed me as being a strong introvert, but then the lightbulb went off and everything clicked when they explained what that meant, that it was about where your focus was and where you got your energy. It explained so much about me and why I had so many times when I felt overloaded and needed to withdraw for a while. I'd been trying to live up to an extrovert label, but liking to talk has nothing to do with where you get your energy.
This book didn't offer much in the way of revelation on that front, but it did explain a few other things about me. For one thing, introverts tend to be highly reactive to stimuli -- we get a stronger response from less stimulation, while extroverts need more stimulation to get a similar response. That's part of why introverts find crowds and noise overwhelming. Even when I'm alone, I don't keep on music or the TV for background noise. My decor is fairly simple, focusing on soothing colors like blue or green, with white walls. It even explains my worship preferences -- what my church calls "modern worship" is full of stimulation, with constant wall-of-sound music, even as background to quiet moments, and with flashing slides on screens. I want to run screaming from the building. I much prefer the quieter traditional style where one thing happens at a time and the focus is on peace and reflection.
But most of the book is about the way American society has been driven and shaped by extroversion, to the point that introversion is often seen as a flaw that needs correcting. The people with the loudest voices are the ones being heard, so they're the ones arranging things for their own benefit. The problem is that a lot of it may be based on their preferences, but it's based on wrong assumptions about what works. Take, for instance, the open-plan office, which is an extrovert's dream. The theory is that if everyone works together in one big space, they'll be more productive and creative, with ideas flowing freely. The truth, according to actual research, is that open-plan offices result in lower productivity, higher absenteeism, lower job satisfaction, more turnover and more physical illness for everyone, introvert and extrovert. Extroverts may be energized by such an arrangement, but they don't actually do their jobs better. Or take group brainstorming, which is practically a gospel in the advertising world. It doesn't really work. Even extroverts come up with more and higher quality new ideas when brainstorming alone than with a group, and the bigger the group, the poorer the output. The most effective brainstorming is for everyone to come up with ideas on their own and then share and discuss them online where everyone is more likely to speak up and where all voices are judged more evenly rather than by who seems the loudest and most enthusiastic or forceful. I wanted to send those pages to everyone I have to deal with on any projects or committees and then to go back in time and share them with all my former co-workers and employers.
It's a very interesting book, and I think even extroverts should read it because they could learn a thing or two about dealing with people. There are also some amusing anecdotes as the author explores some bastions of extroversion, like a Tony Robbins seminar. That sequence alone made me think that if Tina Fey could take a non-fiction book on the sociology of interpersonal relationships among teenage girls and turn it into the movie Mean Girls, there had to be something she could do with this book to create a comedy about an introvert trying to function in an extroverted world.
Now to go ship off a contract and then settle down for some solo brainstorming.
