Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 260

Getting it Together

The alarm got me up about an hour and a half earlier this morning. It would probably have worked better if I hadn't hit "snooze" for at least half an hour and then turned it off entirely because it was disrupting my sleep. But hey, baby steps are still progress.

It seems like if I start getting one area of my life more in order, it seeps over into other areas of my life. I've been writing more steadily while getting my physical space organized, and yesterday I got some exercise. When I was sorting through some old magazines, I came across one with an article on getting in shape, and it talked about doing 300 minutes of cardio a week. My weekly exercise consists of a dance class, the occasional walk to the post office or library and maybe doing the Hokey Pokey with the kindergardeners. I'm going to start by aiming for 100 minutes a week. Not all of the dance class counts because it's mostly strength, not cardio, though more of jazz counts than ballet. Taking a short walk in the sunshine and fairly cool temperatures did manage to wake me up a bit yesterday. I'll try to do that more often.

I'm really, really close to the end of the book I'm working on, so I'm going to buckle down this week and try to finish it. Then next week I can start the prep work for the next book. The next thing is going to be kind of an experiment. The entire story takes place in one 24-hour period, so I'm going to attempt some method writing. I know I can't write a book in a day, but I'm going to see how fast I can get that first draft done so I can maybe capture that sense of speed, intensity and urgency in the book. By the end, I may be as tired and fried as my characters are, which may lend authenticity to it. I'll probably have to do a lot of revisions, but I'm hoping that writing the first draft quickly will give it a certain energy. But to do that, I'll need some tight planning, including an hour-by-hour timeline of events and figuring out all the characters in advance. I may be insane for much of the next month or so, but it could be fun. I do write pretty quickly, but I don't write for long stretches of time, maybe a few hours a day at most. I want to see if I've got the stamina to do more than that.

And then what I work on next will depend on a lot of things. I do have an idea I want to explore, but it's going to take a lot of research.

Well, So Much for Monday Morning

I managed to get a supremely late start on the day. I did stay up late reading last night, but not that late, and yet I just couldn't seem to wake up this morning. I even left the heat on last night, so it wasn't a case of not wanting to leave the warm bed. I just couldn't seem to wake up entirely, and it was a big shock when I finally looked at the clock. So now I feel like I'm running late on a day that tends to be busy.

The ongoing decluttering project got derailed a bit when my shredder died. I found out that you're supposed to let them rest, so that "just one more page" thing was a bad idea. I'll have to get a new one this week, but in the meantime, I can do some more sorting. I planned to do it today, but I have so much work that needs to be done and lost too much time to laziness.

I wasn't overly enthusiastic about the new Roger Ebert movie show. While the idea of using bloggers with various areas of expertise to talk about movies is good in concept, they should probably have tried to find people who were capable of reading from a prepared script without sounding so much like they're reading from a prepared script. Ebert's computer-generated robo-voice had more animation and spontaneity to it. My brain just clicks off when I feel like I'm being read to, so I missed half the show, even while watching it. What would be awesome would be going back to the original format, with Ebert's robo voice and a medium to channel Siskel from beyond the grave. Ebert's computer could give his review, and then the medium's eyes would flip back in her head and she'd intone in a spooky voice, "I disagree, Roger." During Siskel's otherworldly rebuttal, Ebert would be furiously typing away on his counterpoint. It would be the best movie review show ever!

And now to get caught up on my "morning" stuff so I can get on with my very late day. I'm totally setting an alarm tomorrow, so I'll have no excuse for not realizing what time it is, even if I don't stick my head above the covers.

The Shredding Addiction

I was so very productive yesterday. Not only did I write twenty pages, but I shredded about three shoeboxes worth of stuff and cleared/sorted all the papers from the bar in my living room, where the mail goes to die. And I did more book purging. Plus started clearing out old magazines from the rack by my sofa.

This decluttering thing is kind of addictive. I find myself saying, "Just one more thing!" And I may have to stop writing in the "library" for a while because I'll catch myself studying the bookcases to see which books I can get rid of. It's very distracting. Then every time I pass the shredder, I can't help but stop and run a few things through it, then that becomes "just one more." I ended up eating lunch nearly an hour late today because I got sidetracked by the shredder on the way to the kitchen.

I'm not sure anyone but me would notice a difference in the house, but I can tell the difference, and I feel physically lighter (though that doesn't seem to work for making that old pair of pants I tried on last night fit better). Today's target was the dining table. It wasn't bad, just a repository for things that didn't make it all the way to the kitchen, and now it will be nice and clear for breakfast Saturday morning.

Next week, I'll tackle the desk. I do still have filing to do, but I'm finding that getting rid of the stuff I don't need makes me more motivated to organize everything else.

The trick will be to develop some processes and new habits to keep things under control.

I'm also seeing that this mindset is spilling over into other areas of my life, like my procrastination tendencies. Even though I wanted to put it off (and I don't even know why I wanted to put it off, I just didn't want to deal with it), I forced myself to make my Worldcon hotel reservation the day reservations opened, and it turns out that the hotel I wanted sold out the next day, so just doing it paid off. I still need to work on that procrastination thing because I have a bad habit of putting off even things I want to do, that I know I'll need to do, sooner or later, and where there's a definite benefit to just doing it and a definite downside to waiting. But I think that's a separate issue from the decluttering.

On tap for the weekend: I think I'll create my own "Sci fi Friday" by watching last week's Primeval OnDemand, then Roger Ebert's new movie show starts on PBS tonight. Imagine, a movie show that's about the movies and not about the celebrities. After that, a writing blitz. Tomorrow night I've got a party to go to, and then Sunday night there's another episode of Downton Abbey, which is utterly addictive. And probably some shredding or magazine sorting, because I can't seem to help myself.

Decluttering Progress

I finally started making progress on my decluttering project. I found a book in the library that's been pretty helpful. Instead of giving one method as though that's the only way to go, it offers a lot of different tips with a series of stages, with the idea that you can pick the ones that work for you. My idea of starting by getting rid of the obviously unnecessary stuff falls in with their plan of stages that starts with getting rid of the things you know you don't need.

I even got a couple of bookshelves sorted, with a box of books to take to a used bookstore and a big bag of books to donate to the library book sale. I'd been worrying over the to-be-read pile and how I need to read and then get rid of those books, but even aside from the TBR pile, I have way too many books and need to make room for the ones I love and know I'll re-read. I took a hard look at one of the bookcases in my office and realized that while there are some often-reread favorites, about a quarter of the books on that shelf were books I've never re-read and likely won't. Some I barely even remembered.

The tough thing is that a lot of my friends are authors, and a lot of the books I have were written by friends. Those are tougher to get rid of, even if I know I won't re-read them. But most of those people will never come to my house to know that I purged their books. The next shelf to be purged will be more difficult, since it's a shelf specifically dedicated to books by people I know, including autographed copies. I have a lot of autographed books that I don't particularly like since I used to make it a policy to buy at least the first book by authors I know, and I went to as many booksignings as I could, to be supportive. But only a couple of those people ever ended up returning the favor, so I feel a lot less obligated now. I guess for the autographed books I don't want to keep, I could cut the personalized page out of the books before donating them.

And if any author friends are reading this, I'm obviously not talking about your books. Actually, I'm not still in touch with most of these authors, so anyone likely to be reading this probably isn't being donated.

Anyway, having those shelves neat, without books piled around, makes me feel good, and it's liberating to clear out things that I don't love.

One of the tips this book suggested was to sort in stages. First, clear off a cluttered area by sorting items into boxes, one to be filed or dealt with (any immediate action items set aside) and one to be shredded, with a trash bag handy for trash. Then you can go through the to be filed box and create files based on what you need to file. That was a big lightbulb moment. I'd been thinking, based on an earlier organizing book I'd read, that it needed to go the other way, creating files and then sorting directly into the files, with the idea that you should touch each piece of paper as few times as possible. That's probably more efficient, but trying to do it that way has been holding me back from starting. Once I get the existing "to be shredded" boxes dealt with, I'll tackle the desk. I think having a clear desk will be a real boost to the system and will motivate me for other sorting.

Today, though, is going to be a writing day. I got a late start because of a dentist appointment this morning, but now I have a big scene to write that I think will be a lot of fun.

The Hero's Journey: The Resurrection

We're almost at the end if the Hero's Journey, with just a couple of stages to go. We've reached the climax of the story, what Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer's Journey, calls The Resurrection. I'm not overly fond of this title because I think it sells the stage short. Really, this is a two-part stage including both death and resurrection. I suppose that death is implied in resurrection because it's kind of hard to resurrect without dying first, but the death part is just as important as -- or maybe even more important than -- the resurrection part. Most of the stage is about the death part, and the resurrection part may be only a moment. Before the hero can have ultimate triumph, he has to come face-to-face with potential disaster. In this part of the story, the hero faces the absolute worst that happens to him in the story, and then in most stories goes on to achieve the absolute best in the story.

The symbolic part of this death and resurrection thing has to do with the transformation of the hero. He's been going through changes during the story, and here is where he proves that he really has changed and that he will be a new man now. His old self dies, and then he's reborn. This may be a part of him returning to his ordinary world or entering a new ordinary world. He had to change to deal with the world of the story, and now he pulls together the good parts of that change with the good parts of his ordinary world self to create a new self. The movie Serenity has a good transformation style resurrection scene. Mal, who has been cynical and bitter but who has through the course of the movie been more willing to stick his neck out for a cause. He has the final confrontation with the Operative, is nearly defeated, but when he gets the upper hand, he doesn't kill his enemy. He just carries out his mission to broadcast the information and makes sure his enemy sees the truth, then walks away to go back to his crew. The violent and cynical Mal from the beginning of the movie would have killed him without a moment's pause -- might even have been more focused on that than on finishing the mission -- so we can see that he's been transformed.

In a sense, this is the final exam for the hero. This is when the story question is definitively answered, one way or another. The hero obviously didn't achieve ultimate success during the Ordeal earlier in the story, or the story would be over already. In some cases, this is because it's a two-part plan -- Step One: Find and steal the Holy Grail, Step Two: Get it home to heal the land. But that turns out to be the hard part because the people you stole it from want it back, and meanwhile, everyone else along the way also wants it. But in many other cases, the hero is getting a second chance to do what he wasn't able to complete during the Ordeal, only this time, it's do or die. Think of the movie version of Prince Caspian -- they attempted to stop the bad guys by attacking the castle, which failed. When the bad guys come to the good guys' hideout, things look desperate, but they must win.

This is often a showdown between the hero and the villain. In a way, it's a test of their respective worldviews or philosophies. The victor will prove that his approach is the best, usually that good is superior to evil. Or it may involve an internal showdown in which the hero is weighing two different philosophies or options, often his old way and the new way he's learned during the story. Think of the Harrison Ford character in the movie Witness, who has to weigh the nonviolence he's learned among the Amish against the more violent cop way of his past when his past catches up with him while he's hiding in Amish country. Or there's Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie. His initial attempt to destroy the Death Star, when he used the targeting technology, failed. When he put the technology aside in the final do-or-die moment and used the Force, he succeeded. It was a showdown between the Force and technology, and technology lost.

Another part of this stage is sacrifice. The hero has to be willing to lose it all in order to prevail, and that means having a real moment of truth, where he lays it all out on the line, even though he knows it means he could still lose. This is something seen in "deception" romantic comedies, in which one of the characters has been pretending to be something she's not, and then she reaches the point where she realizes she has to tell the truth, even if that means losing the person she loves. This would be the wedding scene in While You Were Sleeping, in which Sandra Bullock had pretended to be engaged to a man in a coma so she could be a part of his big, loving family. She seems to be getting what she wanted at the beginning of the movie when he comes out of the coma, thinks he has amnesia and doesn't remember her but falls for her, and she's going to marry the man she wanted at the beginning of the movie, except in the meantime she's fallen in love with his brother. She can't go through with the wedding and tells the truth to the family, even though she believes they'll never want to speak to her again. The hero may have to give up on a false goal, to give up on something he thought he wanted in order to get what he really needs. We also see this in a lot of romantic comedies, where the heroine's stated goal might have been a job or a promotion or even the wrong guy, and she has to give that up in order to get true love. It's usually not a direct trade-off -- she has to realize that what she thought she wanted was all wrong, even though at that time she believes she may have lost her chance at true love. She has to be willing to sacrifice even though it may not get her what she's realized she really wants.

The first part of this stage is the "death." Romance writers often refer to this as "the black moment," when all seems to be lost, and seems like there's no way things can work out. In supernatural stories where literal resurrection is possible, the hero may literally die. Otherwise, the hero may face death or see death around him. This moment in the movie Titanic is when Jack does die and Rose is alone on her makeshift raft, freezing to death and too weak to call out to the lifeboats. She has to plunge into the icy water to get a whistle off the body of a dead crew member to call for help, and that there's no guarantee that will work, so she's risking death for a chance at life. Or the death could be symbolic. It could be the ending of something, like a relationship or a job. In romantic comedies, the heroine may make it to the altar to marry the wrong man, seemingly ending all chances with the guy we know is right for her. The tricky -- and yet very important -- thing for a writer is to convince readers that the hero really could fail, that things might not work out, even if it's genre fiction and it's a convention of the genre that the crime will be solved, the murderer will be caught, evil will be vanquished or the hero and heroine will get together and live happily ever after. Even as the reader may know on some level that it will work out, you should be able to make her wonder if maybe this will be the one book that breaks the mold. This should be the part where pages are turning furiously.

And then the hero has a moment of truth or clarity -- an epiphany -- in which it all becomes clear. He knows what has to be done and realizes that he's willing to pay the price. That allows him to prevail. He comes out of the depths and triumphs in a moment of resurrection. Usually, this is an active moment for the hero, something the hero does. But sometimes this is when the groundwork the hero has laid earlier in the story comes to fruition. He may make the step of sacrifice -- often a self-sacrifice -- and that inspires someone else who has learned from or been encouraged by the hero earlier to take the final action that saves the day. This happens in Return of the Jedi, when Luke is close to beating his father, Darth Vader, in battle, and he realizes how close he is to turning into his father, which is just what the Emperor, the real villain, wants. Luke chooses to put down his weapon and refuses to give in to anger and hate. He'd rather die than turn to the dark side. The Emperor then attacks him and nearly kills him, and that's when Vader, inspired by his son's example, finally stands up to the Emperor and kills him, getting mortally wounded in the process.

In tragic stories, the "resurrection" may be posthumous for the hero. His actual death may change the situation in the aftermath, so it's in his spirit that things work out, like the way that the deaths of Romeo and Juliet cause their families to rethink their feud. The resurrection is the end of the feud that caused their deaths.

Action stories may have a rolling climax or series of climaxes with a lot of death/resurrection moments, like the way in horror movies the killer seems to have been killed, but he pops up again before really being killed (at least until the sequel). We see this in the original Terminator movie, where the Terminator seems to die, only to keep coming after our heroes as Kyle is seriously injured and then killed while trying to destroy the Terminator, and then Sarah almost reaches her limits before she makes the one last, desperate move to finally destroy the machine.

In a story that works on both physical and emotional levels there may be dual climaxes, a physical one and an emotional one. This often happens in stories that mix romance and some other plot. There will be the physical climax where they beat the bad guys, and in the aftermath of that, there will be the emotional climax where the couple works things out. Or the emotional "death" may come before the physical "death," so that the hero goes into the final showdown feeling he has nothing to lose, and then either the emotional resurrection comes, giving him the strength to achieve the physical resurrection, or the physical resurrection earns him the emotional resurrection.

This stage of the story is all about the emotional roller coaster. You want to build tension and create strong emotions as the reader fears for the worst, then create a catharsis of release when it becomes clear that things are going to work out. In a movie where this is done really well, the audience may cheer out loud. There will be some fist-pumping and shouts of "Yes!" In really emotional stories, this is when you want to move readers to tears -- first tears of sorrow when it looks like all is lost, and then those turn to tears of joy when everything works out. Even in a comedy, emotion is good here. In fact, I'm more likely to cry in a comedy than in a drama because the laughter during the bulk of the movie lowers my guard. Then in the "death" part, it really hits me and I cry. In the "resurrection" I'm usually laughing through tears. I've noticed that people seem to think that a book that has moved them to tears is automatically a good book, and this is when you want to bring out those tears.

Next: The end of the story.

Book to Movie: Cold Comfort Farm

Forcing myself to avoid 'shipping my own work had a really interesting result. I came up with an idea for a scene that should be wonderful (if I do it right when I write it) and that isn't something I would have come up with otherwise. Sometimes those things that feel like delaying tactics end up causing something good that I might not have imagined if I hadn't had the delay time. Writing seems to be about 90 percent thinking and 10 percent stringing words together.

I mentioned watching Cold Comfort Farm on HBO Friday. I re-read the Stella Gibbons novel it was based on Sunday evening, so now I can discuss both.

First, a brief synopsis: A young society woman's parents die, leaving her with no property, little money and no useful skills. She decides to live with relatives and writes to see who'll take her, but the only response that sounds promising comes from a cousin who makes a vague reference to some wrong done to her father, and as an atonement, they're willing to give her a home at Cold Comfort Farm. She arrives to find a crumbling farm full of unhappy people, and it all seems to come down to the family matriarch, who "saw something nasty in the woodshed" as a child and who uses that to control everyone else, with the threat that she'll go mad if she doesn't get her way. Our heroine decides to tidy the place up and sets out to help each member of the family find his or her dream.

This is a quick read, a read-in-one-sitting book, and it's laugh-out-loud funny, with a rather arch, satiric tone. It's definitely a spoof of the rustic romance kind of book, with the lusty, brooding young men and wild, untamed young women, earthy servant girls, and madwomen living locked in their rooms. One of the things that really cracked me up was the dedication note up front. The book is dedicated to someone who is apparently acclaimed as a great literary author, with a mention that Gibbons can't live up to his level of writing because she's just a journalist and used to having to write so that it can be easily understood. She did occasionally try to write in a more literary way, so she starred the passages that she thinks are particularly good. The starred passages are the most purple, florid, dense prose you'll read outside a Victorian novel. I didn't find any insight into this dedication in the Wikipedia entry, so I don't know if it was meant as an insult or an inside joke, but I still found it hilarious.

There is one really odd thing about this book, though: It's set in the near future. It was written in 1931-32 and published in 1932. There's no specific date given for the setting, but an event in 1946 is mentioned as having taken place in the past, and there's a reference to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper as being actors from twenty years ago, so you might not have heard of them. Air travel is so common that it's almost eliminated railroads in England. You only take the train to towns that are too insignificant to have airports. There's also air mail -- where airplanes drop off parcels as they fly over. People communicate with videophones. But these details are just thrown in, and they aren't too consistent. The heroine mostly communicates with telegrams in spite of the videophones. Air travel is ordinary, but people in the country don't even have cars yet. The future setting isn't really established with world building. It's like the book is essentially about the time it was written, with the occasional addition of a few random details from the future. In a couple of cases, there's a future projection that turns out to be pretty wrong, like the mention of a war in 1946 that one character fought in, with none of the rest of the young men knowing what war was like. The weird thing is that this future setting has absolutely nothing to do with the story. If you remove those few "future" details, you've got a book that seems to be set around the time it was written, and it totally works. The author lived into the late 80s, and I think I'd have been tempted to do a revised edition that eliminated that element and let it be an early 30s period novel.

Which is what they did in the film adaptation. They skipped the science fictiony elements and kept it as a 1930s story, and yet it's still one of the most faithful book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen. Almost everything is pretty much the way it's described in the book. It's practically a scene-by-scene adaptation, with only a few scenes cut or telescoped (the events of several scenes combined into one scene). There's only one outcome that's different. In a lot of cases, the dialogue is word-for-word from the book. They even use the florid, purple starred passages as examples of the heroine's attempt to write a novel.

The cast is all-star, all the usual British suspects. The star is a very, very young Kate Beckinsale, from back when she mostly did period pieces and long before she was a big-time action heroine (and when she had actual flesh on her bones). There's also Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Rufus Sewell, among others. Watching this movie is like playing Six Degrees of Masterpiece Theatre, with a side game of "so, this is where they started."

Highly recommended if you like movies set in the 30s, snarky comedies or transformation stories -- and that applies to both book and movie. I think I need keeper copies of both book and movie because they're the sort of thing that's a sure cure for a bad day.

'Shipping My Own Book

I know it's a holiday for a lot of people, but I'm observing the occasion by pursuing my dreams instead of by taking a day off, which I figure is appropriate. But I am in my version of "office casual" today in that I'm wearing the Fuzzy Pink Pajama Pants of Work. One bad thing about what I do is that there aren't really holidays. On the up side, I can take a holiday when I want one, but on the downside, the work still has to be done. Mondays are big work days for me because that's when I work on my weekly medical school freelance project, so if I want to take a Monday off, I have to do the project ahead of time. Meanwhile, I have a lot of writing work I want to do.

After a couple of days of writing bingeing, I spent Saturday reviewing my work because sometimes a writing binge can go off in strange directions. Sometimes those directions are good and offer unexpected insights. Sometimes they head off down odd rabbit trails, and it's better to stop and regroup before things get totally out of control. In this case, I had a rather shocking revelation: I had become a rabid 'shipper within my own book, which is kind of dangerous.

For those (Mom) who aren't on top of all the Internet terminology, "'shipper" is short for "relationshipper," which generally means someone who is a fan or proponent of a particular romantic pairing. My understanding (which could be wrong) is that this started in discussions of The X-Files, where the Relationshippers, later shortened to 'shippers, were the fans who wanted Mulder and Scully to fall in love and become romantically involved. The term later spread to other areas, and once it moved beyond a two-character series where the issue was relationship vs. non-relationship, it began to be applied to particular pairings within a cast of characters, such as which side of a romantic triangle should win.

In its milder forms, 'shipping amounts to enjoying the interactions of a pair of characters, thinking that they might make a good couple and maybe even imagining how they might get together. It can escalate to committing fan fiction in which you create your own stories about them getting together or about them being an established couple, to lengthy debates with people who oppose that pairing or who prefer another pairing, to identifying personally with the pairing to the point of identifying yourself as on a "team". At more extreme levels, it can involve demonizing any character you perceive as a rival or threat to your chosen relationship, and there the fanfic tends to involve the rival being really awful (usually very much out of character), possibly even physically harming one member of the chosen pairing so that the True Love can come to the rescue. At some of the crazier levels, fans demonize the real-life significant others of the actors who play the characters, with the idea that the significant other is maybe stopping the pairing from happening onscreen out of a fear of the explosive chemistry with the other actor or sometimes even because the fans lose their grip on the difference between fantasy and reality and think that even the actors have to get together.

I don't have to worry about the extreme crazy here because there are no actors playing my characters (I don't even have mental casting), and I'm not getting into any flamewars on the Internet over which character should win, since there are very few people who've read any of this. But I did realize I'd committed the sin of starting to demonize the rival and had even written a scene that should be a major turning point in the book so that this character was completely out of character and being a real jerk in a way that made no sense whatsoever.

This isn't really a triangle. The main character is a woman and there are two men who might be considered romantic prospects for her. When I started working on this book, I had no idea which one -- if any -- she'd end up with, and I even kept that part vague in the series synopsis. But as I started writing, one of them really took the lead. It's another Owen situation, where a character just came to life and turned out to be fascinating in ways I didn't expect. Once I wrote a rather pivotal scene where he showed his true colors, I was Team Him all the way, and subsequently turned into a thirteen-year-old fangirl, writing scenes where he got to be super-nice and obviously the perfect match for the heroine, as well as scenes where the Other Guy was a total jerk who was mean to her.

What makes all this particularly tricky is the fact that Other Guy has done something that would make the heroine angry if she knew about it (and this was planned and set up from the beginning, before I went all 'shipper fangirly), though it was for a good reason and wasn't personal, so there is going to be a part where she's furious at him. What I have to do is really consider things from his point of view -- what he's feeling and what he might do. I think this will involve adding one scene and rewriting another, and that will probably make things fall together in a better way so I can move forward.

While it is perfectly natural for an author to favor one character over another and to plan for one character to get the girl and the other not to, I think it can be dangerous if the author gets too invested in a character or relationship, to the point of losing all objectivity. The right one should win on honest merit, not because the author resorted to demonizing the rival. "Mr. Wrong" doesn't have to mean "Jerk." The characters need to be allowed to be people instead of puppets to act out the author's fantasy life. I guess it's kind of like the Mary Sue situation, only instead of a character representing the author, to the point the author can't be objective about the character, it's a character representing the author's ideal mate or it's the author's idea of the ideal relationship.

Something Good, Something Nasty (in the woodshed)

First, in case recent events and the subsequent spate of "you awful, horrible, hateful people should be more civil in your discourse, you $*%*%%$" diatribes have depressed you, here's a news story that will restore your faith in humanity, courtesy of Japan: A mysterious wave of anonymous generosity. If you're like me and resist clicking on links, in short, there's been a recent wave of anonymous donations to organizations assisting needy children (like orphanages) in Japan, given in the name of a Japanese superhero who, in the story, was an orphan who grew up to give things to his former orphanage. And now there are copycats. It's becoming a trend. That's kind of awesome, that it becomes a cool thing to help orphans.

Second, a TV programming note: I think a few people here have mentioned liking the show Human Target. It was apparently pre-empted Wednesday by the Tucson memorial service (I forgot to set the recorder before going to choir), but according to the digital cable guide from Time Warner, it will be shown on Fox tonight, two hours worth, in the full Fox prime-time slot (7-9 Central). It wasn't even listed in today's newspaper, so it must have been a very last-minute change. I think this is worthy of a pizza tonight, and will be followed by a writing binge.

Speaking of writing binges, I did one last night and ended up with 23 pages. I'm down to about the last third of the book, and I suspect I'll do my usual thing of writing the last quarter of the book in one week, after taking months to write the beginning. I feel like I'm on a roll. I haven't done a Friday late-nighter in a while. Back when I had a regular job, that was when I got most of my writing done. I'd make dinner and watch The X-Files, then after that, I'd make a pot of tea and write until I either ran out of things to write or couldn't stay awake. It was something I looked forward to all week. It may also be a reason I'm still single, as I avoided going out on Friday nights (not that I had too many offers), and a few guys got themselves removed from consideration when they called during that time because, as they said, they knew I'd be home. I figured that counted as Missing The Point Entirely, which meant that they would ultimately be incompatible with me. The writing time is sacred.

My subconscious has had a weird link to the real world. Yesterday morning, I woke up thinking about the movie Cold Comfort Farm (all together now: "I saw something nasty in the woodshed!") and was mentally comparing it to the book. I can get the book from the library, but it's been ages since I saw the movie, and I wanted to remind myself about the movie. Then I discovered last night that it was on one of the HBO channels this morning. So, I got up this morning, made scones and tea, and spent my morning watching the movie. Now I need to request the book from the library. That book should make a good future blog post subject because there are some very odd things about it that don't show up in the movie, and that's probably for the best (here's a hint: the book is actually kind of science fiction).

Stirring the Subconscious

I'm about ready for the cold snap to end. Not that it would be considered a real cold snap in many parts of the world, but for us, it is a little unusual to go for nearly a week barely getting above freezing. I say I like cold weather, but what I mean by "cold weather" is daytime highs in the 50s (F) or so -- not so cold that I can't be out in it for an extended period of time, but cool enough to wear a sweater and to feel like I've been out in the cold and to make it feel really good to come inside and have a hot cup of tea. But not so cold that I have to turn on the central heat. Then I can curl up under a blanket and enjoy reading/writing/watching TV. Preferably gray and drizzly. And then in maybe the 40s or upper 30s at night so the electric blanket to warm the bed feels good but I don't have to turn on the central heat. So I guess my ideal "winter" would be autumn in much of the rest of the northern hemisphere. This 20 degrees stuff can go.

I'm making real progress on the book now. I've passed the rewriting phase and am moving forward. I do need to do some thinking, since I'm not precisely sure what should happen next and when a certain big event I have planned should come.

I have discovered that there are some side effects to being in a big creative phase. One of them is that it seems to give me particularly intense, vivid dreams. Or else, I'm more likely to remember my dreams in great detail. I suspect my subconscious is going nuts. Here's a sampling:

There's a little boy who's fascinated with the idea of "man eaters," like sharks or tigers, and he's very disappointed that the only thing in his town that would want to eat him is his neighbor's dog, Buster. And even Buster isn't really a man eater. He's actually pretty friendly, but it's fun to pretend that he's a vicious man-eating dog. Meanwhile, there's this strange plant growing in the back yard ... (I think this may turn into a short story.)

My homeowners' associated put a giant, inflatable Pillsbury Dough Boy in the lawn beside my house. Fortunately, it's placed in the one spot where I don't have windows on that side of the house, so I don't have to look at it. It has something to do with the Super Bowl that will be in our area, and since people would have to pass by our corner to visit the Dallas Cowboys headquarters, advertisers were willing to pay for the placement. (The parts about the Super Bowl and the Dallas Cowboys are true. I haven't yet noticed a Dough Boy, but it would be in a spot I can't see from inside my house, so maybe I'd better check ...)

I'm housesitting or subleasing an apartment in a city. Instead of the "garden apartments" we have here with exterior stairways and doors, it's the kind where you unlock a front door, then there's an interior stairway, and the apartment doors open onto interior landings. The walls facing the interior stairway are all glass, so as you climb the stairs, you can see into everyone's living rooms. (In the dream, I thought this was a cool feature, but in reality it horrifies me.) There's snow outside, and I write a few pages, then go walk in the snow to think. I'm starting to practically clear the sidewalk from walking on it so much. Then I discover that the person whose apartment it is has left behind her pets, a parrot and a couple of white rats. I discover this when the parrot loudly demands food. It tries to tell me where to find the pet food, but it only directs me toward the treats, and I'm pretty sure the parrot isn't supposed to get chocolate (on the up side, I now know where the chocolate is). Fortunately, it turns out that the owner has really just moved in with her boyfriend in another apartment in the same building, so she's able to come by and feed the pets.

Then last night there was a strange bit of self-awareness, as I was having a conversation in the dream with someone about how great it was to live by a lake, since I really like water and boats. I once dated a guy largely because he had a sailboat, and I love being in a ski-type boat, but I haven't done that sort of thing in a long time. And I also was glad to live in an older house, since I've always wanted to, because I love the architectural details. Except the house in the dream was the house I have now, sort of. Most of the interior was the same, though the external arrangement was different, and that see-through wall thing came up, but on my neighbor's house, so I could see what she was watching on TV.

The part with the conversation about the lake was almost entirely true. I actually started paying attention to the guy because he played the piano, but the sailboat sealed the deal. It also helped get us together because he took me out in it to show off, and then the wind died, and we had a lot of time to chat. He was a big part of the reason I moved to this area. I had been looking for TV reporting jobs, which was about as easy as trying to sell a book, but with less positive feedback. I met him when he was visiting a friend in the area where I was living, and the fact that I knew someone here who played the piano and owned a sailboat was what gave me the idea to buy a Dallas newspaper and see if there were any jobs in it that I could do. I called about one job and ended up getting it. The relationship didn't last long, but there was some sailing, and I haven't gone sailing since then. I hadn't thought about that in years. I do like boats, and I live very close to a lake (actually, I live within walking distance of a small lake, but there's currently no public access to it), but that's the sort of thing where you have to know someone who knows what they're doing. I can follow orders on a sailboat, but I wouldn't begin to try to sail one myself. Maybe that was a sign of some things I should look into, either finding a group for doing boating stuff or as something to incorporate into a vacation.

I'm sure there's some Freudian or Jungian explanation for the recurring imagery of the glass walls. One of my neighbors studied Jungian psychology. Too bad I can't look through her glass wall to see if she's home to discuss it.

Law and Order: Magic

I stayed after ballet and took the jazz class last night, and now I'm really feeling it. Normally, the post-dance pain doesn't hit until late Wednesday or Thursday morning, so I'm worried what I'll be like later in the day. I've been trying to do some stretching every so often, so we'll see if that keeps me from stiffening up too much. The jazz class involves some regular exercises, like push-ups and crunches, and those are probably good for me, but they contribute to the soreness. However, I feel very virtuous from having exercised that much. I didn't even come home and gobble down a lot of cookies and hot cocoa after class.

Meanwhile, I've made some tentative steps in my organization project. Both e-mail inboxes are below 900 messages each. And I decided that step one in physical organization should be dealing with the stack of "to be shredded" stuff. I'm bad about not getting around to shredding the junk mail (all the insurance and credit card offers), and then when I need to do a frantic living room cleaning, it all gets thrown in a box and stashed in the office. Emptying those boxes will clear space in the office. I figure that getting rid of the known trash will make it easier to sort through the other stuff and either file or trash it. It also gives me visible results, which are important at the start of a project like this.

Now, after the holiday interruption, I'm back to addressing questions about the Enchanted, Inc. universe. Unless there's one that I've forgotten in the great e-mail backlog, this is the last one I have on file that isn't spoilery for future books or a tiny matter that isn't meaty enough for a blog post. So, if there's something you're curious about regarding the world or characters of this series, ask away!

Today's question relates to a justice system within the magical world. For instance, the way that Philip's family company was stolen from him and he was turned into a frog to get him out of the way. How could something like this be handled in the magical world, and who would be responsible, the person who planned it or the person who did it?

I actually have a magical justice system (Katie refers to it as "Law and Order: Magic") worked out, though it hasn't come up yet in the published books. Ordinary law is pretty much useless for dealing with magical crimes or with crimes committed using magic. There is a code of conduct that is the law in the magical world, and there are bodies that enforce that law. Each region has a council that hears cases of violations of this code, with membership made up of leading magical citizens. The president of Magic, Spells and Illusions, Inc. has an automatic seat on this council but isn't necessarily in charge of it. Owen's foster parents used to be involved with this council before they retired.

There are also magical enforcers who track down violators of the magical code and take them into custody for trial. They have some special tools to allow them to deal with other magic users.

Some of the things this council and the enforcers do aren't exactly Constitutional, but the magical laws pre-date the Constitution, and most members of the magical community are of the opinion that the great privileges that come with magical powers should come with greater responsibilities. It's kind of like the way "elite" groups may be held to higher standards, like cheerleaders may have to abide by a stricter code of conduct than the usual school rules. Or the way a religion may forbid some things that aren't illegal and may discipline its members for violating elements of the faith that aren't illegal. You won't go to jail for using electricity, but if you're Amish and use electricity, you'll likely find yourself facing questions from the elders. Besides, try going to the ACLU and complaining that you've been illegally tried by a secret magical court.

There are spoilery plot reasons why this council hasn't yet dealt with Idris, but the council in general isn't all that effective. It's very political, with a lot of alliances and infighting, and you have to get them to agree on something before they take action. If an influential person insists that something isn't a problem, then nothing may get done. They don't really bother themselves with what they consider "petty" offenses, only focusing on things that might affect the overall position of the magical community. It would be like if the US Supreme Court had a direct enforcement arm, and they were responsible for all crime, from shoplifting to murder. You probably wouldn't get much other than the most serious crimes investigated and prosecuted, unless someone powerful had a pet issue. So far, Idris has mostly just been encouraging others to commit relatively petty crimes, so Merlin has been trying to treat it as a business competition issue and has taken matters into his own hands. However, there is much more afoot ...