Max Gladstone's Blog, page 19

Words That Are My Enemy

Today, after finishing up what may be the final readthrough of Book Three pre-editor, I did my traditional search through the text for words I know I overused.  I got off easier on this book than usual, perhaps as a result of writing with focus rather than whenever I could squeeze a few hundred words in.  That said, in case you’re interested in writer process stuff, here’s today’s self-generated tasklist for ‘delete words I know I’m using too often.’

Purpling (I used it twice in the book, and that’s once too many.)
Intervening
Retreat (which should only be used if someone’s actually retreating, or if the notion of retreat is metaphorically valuable.  Or if someone’s being given two desserts.)
yawning (in the sense of distance—again, used it three times, which is two too many)
dark (dark dark dark dark dark!)
shadow (which I used much less in this book than usually)
sweat
world (you laugh, but when your characters start talking about metaphysics and global economics, this word gets worn out.)
froze (as in, ‘in fear’)
shook (especially in the context of shaking heads, but in the general oscillatory context as well)

I’m probably missing others, but that’s the immediate list.

Some more statistics for you: first draft of this book: 159,000 words give or take.  Third: 116,000.  Current (which is draft 7 or 8): 100,300.  Very pleased with what I’ve accomplished here.  And trust me, you won’t miss those extra words.  I don’t even know where they came from, and I wrote them all!

House Gladstone Insignia

Thanks to all who have written in or commented to congratulate me on the Mass Book Award nomination!  I’m still very excited, though turning focus to editing for the moment.  I have, after all, a deadline, and a deadline past that, and a bunch of other story seeds that are sort of floating in my head, waiting to grow crystal.

While thinking in that vein (just keep swimming!) I ran across the Game of Thrones House Insignia generator.  I do love the monochrome heraldry in GoT, and couldn’t help myself:

…which sums everything up, I think!

Massachusetts Book Award Finalist!

I just learned today that my book, Three Parts Dead, was chosen as a ‘Must Read Fiction Book for 2013′ by the Massachusetts Book Awards.  All the Must Read books get promoted in libraries throughout Massachusetts during spring and summer, and the ‘Must Read’ list is also the shortlist for the Massachusetts Book Award—which means I’m one of six fiction finalists!

This is a huge deal for me for a few reasons.  One, the slate is absurd.  Three Parts Dead is on there with The Song of Achilles, which won the freakin’ Orange Prize, and is an amazingly awesome book that you all should read now, for the love of Pete what are you doing still reading my blog?  Matthew Pearl’s The Technologists is on there.  So are William Landay’s Defending Jacob and Maryanne O’Hara’s Cascade and B.A. Shapiro’s The Art Forger.  In fact, if I’m counting right, the slate has three New York Times Bestsellers, one book by a New York Times Bestseller, a first novel Slate, the Globe, and People called one of the best of 2012, an Orange Prize winner… and my book.

This isn’t humblebragging.  This is serious “honor just to be nominated” territory.

Also exciting is the category under which Three Parts Dead was considered: Fiction.  Not science fiction or fantasy or urban fantasy or books with zombies.  Just, fiction.  It’s a nice, simple word, and the umbrella of its definition shelters three different breeds of literary thriller, a Trojan War romance, a novel of art and desire in the Great Depression, and my legal mystery theological second world contemporary 21st century industrial capitalism fantasy explosion.  I do love the genre section of the bookstore (especially when it’s nice and close to the front, as it is in Porter Square Books), but it’s cool that the Mass Book Award takes into account all books, regardless of immediate shelving.  Because we’re all in this together, and after reading the descriptions of these novels, I want to read ‘em all.

Pax East Megahaul!

Quick update before I disappear down the rabbit hole again, messieurs and mesdames.  (Did I even spell that right?  Who knows!  I don’t speak French.  Though I think I might try to learn using duolingo.  It’d be awesome to read The Count in the original language.  Or Arsene Lupin stories.  I’ve even heard that Flaubert is good in French!  [Silly literary confession—I really didn't like Madame Bovary when I read it back in the day.  Probably due for a reread, though maybe my problem was the translation.  Hence its mention here.])

Anyway, we rocked out at Pax East with a wide and wonderful clan, and I came away with a truly enormous haul of what I understand are referred to in common parlance as lewtz?

FLCL t-shirt.  The only anime I want a t-shirt for, and now I have one.  Hah! 
Qin: the Art of War and GM Screen.  I’ve been wanting to run a game with a bunch of Mo-ists running around during the Warring States period masterminding siege defense, and now I have a ruleset!  Also, my god the Qin books are absurdly well researched.
Microscope.  Fractal epic history world creation for maximum ridiculosity.  Very excited to try this.
3:16 Carnage Among the Stars.  Aliens + Sartre = space marines of existential dread!  I’m also excited to try this, if by ‘try this’ I mean ‘inflict this on players.’

Milady also ended up with a copy of Dread, which OH MY GOD I am terrified to play that game when she decides to run it.  Also, Dread’s writer, Epidiah Ravachol, has the coolest business cards I have ever seen: a card with a full SF roleplaying system on the back.  Has me thinking about redesigning my I-didn’t-think-they-were-lame-at-the-time business cards with the book cover on one side & my name on the other.  But how could I match that level of cool?  Hmmmmmm…  Might be time to explore flash fiction.  Or even better yet, a full short story split up between many business cards…  Muahaha.

Also, I had the pleasure of introducing Milady (who was a kickass Marathon player back in the day) to Golden Eye 64, which she missed somehow.  And we all played JS Joust and had an amazing time.  And burgers with Milady, the redoubtable @Rocketvan, and the inimitable @Mattjmichaelson.  And basically the whole weekend has left me pumped and breathless and excited, and I hope y’all are having a good time too.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Because we all need him from time to time, especially in late March in New England.  (Though the snowflakes now, I must admit, are beautiful.)

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Editing. Not Much Else to Report.

Spent all day slowly re-reading my manuscript.  Language is much better than I expected, but the process is draining.

Finished Moby Dick last night.  Wonderful book.  More thoughts on it later.

Then read about a quarter of The Thin Man in one sitting.  There’s virtue in both long and short books, I think.

Doctor Qui

Last night a friend sent me this video, for which I offer immense thanks.

I’d watch the hell out of Doctor Who: Belgian Jazz edition.  Moffat, are you paying attention?

Probably not, but I can only wish.

(As a result of this video, my editing accompaniment for much of this morning was Jean Luc Ponty’s Live at Chene Park album.  Wonderful listen.)

Silk Mass

Because my life is awesome, the following package arrived in the mail on Friday.

For those of you without images for some reason, that’s:

Mass Effect 3, which I’ve opened but won’t get a chance to seriously devour before my book deadline at the end of the month.
Life Along the Silk Road, by Susan Whitfield, director of the International Dunhuang Project, the project dedicated to cataloguing the Dunhuang Manuscripts, about which more later I promise but trust me it’s awesome.  Basically, Whitfield is one of (if not the) best qualified people (/person) on the planet to write this book, which is a series of short biographies of the life and times of different types of characters who wandered the Silk Road over a few hundred year span of history.  SO excited to read this!
Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization, by Richard Foltz, which if that title doesn’t make you salivate, well, you’re probably a more normal person than I am and that’s okay, you don’t need to feel bad.  But OH MY I can’t wait to burn through this.  There’s a chapter on each of about twelve different religions, analyzing their spread and codevelopment across the road.  Incredible!

In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not really planning a book set on the Silk Road right now.  I haven’t traveled the region enough (though one day…)—it’s just one of the most fascinating historical areas of the world, and it’s so hard for most Westerners to study.  ’Lost’ civilizations galore!  Nestorian Christianity as an important religious and philosophical force!  International commerce linking China to the west!  Intrigue!  Scheming!  Revolution!  Genghis Khan!  The Tang Dynasty!  The spread of Buddhism!  I spent a few years desperately wanting to become a Silk Road scholar, until I finally realized that even with (at the time) quite excellent Chinese I still could barely manage the primary source reading, and on top of Chinese I’d need about five modern languages at a similar level and somewhere between five and seven ancient languages, a few of which are insanely obscure (I’m looking at you, Sogdien).  Ten years or so of pure language study was a daunting prospect, psychologically and financially speaking.  Basically, the Silk Road is INCREDIBLY COOL and I have absurd heaping gobs of respect for Silk Road scholars, and insane gratitude for the ones who publish in English so I can reap the benefits of their linguistic kung fu badassitude.  Only mid 19th century China rivals Silk Road studies for sheer mindblowingness in my eyes, and that has more to do with the sheer WTF-ery of the Taiping Tianguo .

So yes.  I get cool mail.

Dutchman Rienzi Mariner

A chat between myself and a friend, represented by exchanged links. Guess the topic!

Missing the Point of Moby Dick

Before I started reading Moby Dick, I thought I knew what this book was about.  Captain Ahab swears vengeance on the sea monster that robbed him of his leg.  The crew of the Pequod searches for the whale, finds him, and it turns out that overweaning lust for vengeance is a poor trait in a sea captain.

Not only is this the story I’d been told about Moby Dick, it’s the story that’s been adapted from Moby Dick.  When the story’s retold into other genres, especially science fiction, the vengeance quest is the center—that’s how it works in Wrath of Khan and First Contact and Nova, for example, and Railsea is full of good-natured ribbing on mole-train captains and their vendettas against unfeeling giants of the deep.

I’m reading Moby Dick now and while Ahab’s an important part of the story, I’m struck by how small a part he is, and how little the book’s actually about revenge.  For every one chapter about Ahab there are six or seven about the Pequod being a normal whaler, and for each such slice-of-life chapter, there’s another four or five about whales, their beauty, biology, history, mythology, the lies told about them, the way they move, the way they die.  While Ahab’s psychodrama is cool, and Queequeg and Ishmael have an epic bromance, the book’s more about this vast world of whales and whalers and whaling.  Ishmael’s experience of whaling seems less about man struggling with nature and more about man’s most direct and overpowering encounter with nature.

(For all Melville saw, the things he didn’t see are more interesting—I think we’re supposed to see Stubb as a charming jokester, which makes his off-the-cuff racism pretty overwhelming.  It also never seems to cross his mind that all this hunting might actually endanger the whales as a species.  I don’t know much about historical thoughts on extinction though.  When did we first start to think that species might die out from human action?)

Anyway, I’d love to see a science fictional story with a whaling to revenge mix closer to the novel’s—where the captain’s quest for vengeance is even smaller and stranger set next to the immensity and majesty of his quarry, where the quarry’s closer to the center of the book.  Making the whale a MacGuffin seems to miss the point.