Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 374

No reading

One thing that has clearly suffered in all of this recent flurry of writing is my reading.  I simply haven't had time for any.  Normally, I read an issue of NEW SCIENTIST each week.  I'm 4 or 5 weeks behind there.  In addition, I'm almost always reading a book, be it fiction or nonfiction, but the last book that I completed was Caesar and Christ by Will Durant, and that was back in August.  It is unprecedented, since I've been keeping track of my reading, to go nearly 3 months without having finished a book.  But it is due almost entirely to the emphasis I've been putting on my writing.  And it's not that I don't want to read.  My days are long, and by the time I get into bed at night, my mind is not ready to focus on more reading.  The fact is that I do a fair amount of reading, just not the kind that I used to do.  I'm reading the stuff that I write, as well as the stuff that other people write–roughly 3 stories a week for the various groups of which I'm a member. That has been consuming all of the available time I have for reading. And the list of books that are in the queue is growing even as I grow restless:

All Clear by Connie Willis, which I've started, but have yet to finish
The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt, ditto
Echo by Jack McDevitt, which I can't properly start until I've finished The Devil's Eye
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
Robert A.Heinlein: In Dialog with His Century
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear

There are others that I can't think of at the moment. But the point is that the backlog is building and I can't make forward progress. For now, I'm looking at it as one of the sacrifices I make spending what time I can working on the novel. And I hope that when we're on vacation the last two weeks of the year, I can get caught up on a book or two.

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NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 19 – Passing my halfway point

I was just not well prepared this morning and I think it kind of showed.  I went to bed fairly early last night, but earlier I had been trying to work out some problems in Part 2 of the story.  I'd sketched out where the part started and where it would end and tried to figure out how to get from start to finish while keeping the reader interested in what was going on.  It made me rethink of some of the chapters I'd outlined, but I didn't have time to actually make changes to the outline.

I woke up at 4:30, bleary-eyed and still feeling slightly under the weather.  Originally, it was my intention to write the scene that I didn't get written yesterday. But this morning that scene didn't feel right at this point in the story.  And I hadn't outlined in any great detail any of the chapters beyond that scene yet, all I had was a paragraph of two on each  So I literally sat in front of my laptop for fifteen minutes, staring at a blank screen, uncertain what to write.  It's the first time that's happened to me this NaNoWriMo.  I finally decided to jump slightly ahead in the story to get things moving and that's what I went with.  I ended up writing two scenes, neither of which are great, but I got them down on paper as markers.  The writing started out slowly but I picked up some steam as I went along.  I managed to write 2,203 words, barely continuing my 19-day streak of besting my personal goal for each day.  It brought my 19-day word count to 46,542 words.

Since I am aiming for a 90.000 word first draft, today officially puts me at more than halfway done.  I have less novel to write than I have already written.  This is a good feeling because it means that I know I can achieve what's left to be written.  I've already written 46,000 words and I know what it's like to do that. All I need to do now is keep plugging along.  At this rate, I should finish up in another 18 or 19 days, which assuming the latter, puts me at December 8 for a complete first draft.

One thing is clear.  My outline for Part 2 needs some serious fleshing out for the ten chapters that remain.  I'll need to work on that today so I don't run into the same kind of problems tomorrow.  In the meantime, I feel like I need to do some kind of little celebration, rewarding myself for what I've managed to get done so far.  I've written half a novel!  Yay me!

Here are today's stats:

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To NYC for Real Writer Stuff

This weekend, we'll be taking the new car up to New York so that I can do Writerly Things there on Monday.  As an added bonus, we'll get to visit with some family on the way, and while we're there. On Monday, I have a full day of writerly events on my calendar.

First, I'm having lunch with an editor–the first time I've done that.  I was somewhat nervous about this until I learned there would be a few other writers joining us.  Later in the day, I'm attending a dinner with fellow Codexians who will be in town.  Also very much looking forward to meeting them in person.

Finally, Monday evening,  I'll be attending the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's annual authors and editors reception at Planet Hollywood and I'm very excited to attend for a number of reasons:

I'll get to see some people I've only met once or twice before
I'll get to meet in-person people I've met online
I'll get to see some people whom I admire greatly, but whom I have never met before
As a newly anointed "Active" member, I can establish the franchise
I imagine the drinks are pretty good

I'm looking forward to meeting people within the genre that I've never met before, and maybe, just maybe, getting a feel for what it is like to be a Real Writer.  I'm very excited about the whole thing.

I'm dragging my brother-in-law, Jason, with me since he's a fan of the genre, but also because in his line of work, I imagine he attends many events like this and he can be counted on to make sure I don' t do anything outlandish.  Also, he can help me navigate my way back to his house when it is all over, which is a good thing.  I may be too overawed to be trusted to do it alone.

A full report is coming next week, when it is all over.  (Although I can't promise I won't issue forth a few tweets while I'm there.)

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Frederik Pohl v. Mark Rich

Ever since Frederik Pohl started blogging about his experience reading Mark Rich's biography of Cyril Kornbluth, the hits on my review of said biography have gone up.  I thought the book was phenomenal and fascinating.  It's one of those rare books that I rated at 5-stars.  But in my review, I also said:

The book does not paint a pretty picture of Frederik Pohl, which came as a surprise to me, considering their collaboration history as well as what Pohl had to say about Kornbluth in his memoir.

Today, Fred posted about some correspondence he had with Mark Rich earlier in the week in which he proposes offering rebuttals to much of what Rich had to say about him, and in which Rich responded that he was pleased that Fred would be "correcting" any mistakes.

I find this both fascinating and sad.  I enjoyed Mark Rich's book and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the field of science fiction and in particular, as a guide to one of the most remarkable writers the field has ever seen.  At the time I read the book, I felt that it was well sourced, and Rich seemed to have compelling evidence backing the things in which he said.  But as I said in my review, the picture Rich painted of Pohl came as a surprise to me, and now Pohl is crying foul and as someone who admires Pohl's writing and Rich's book, I'm not sure where to come down on this.  The fact is: I wasn't there.  I don't know what happened.  Rich wasn't there either, but got his information from sources that were there.  Or from correspondence from those sources.  But Pohl was there and he knows what happened.

One might argue that as the last man standing from those halcyon days, Pohl almost got away with writing the history of that time the way he wanted it to be remembered, but that Mark Rich came along and called him on it.  I think this argument has merit, but at the same time, I feel sad that this is unfolding the way it is.  Mark Rich wrote a terrific book, but his attack on Pohl might come across as beating up on an old man.  Pohl, on the other hand, may have done some of the things Rich attributes to him, which would be sad and which would diminish the man (but not his work) in my eyes.  However, Pohl may not have done these things but find it difficult to defend himself from attacks where evidence to the contrary no longer exists.  It then becomes his word against Rich's word.

Ultimately, this is a sad, though perhaps not unexpected side-effect of an otherwise terrific book.  If there are errors, I hope that Pohl has a chance to correct them and I hope that Rich accepts those corrections gracefully, or refutes them with equal grace.  It is a delicate situation and I don't envy either party.

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NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 18

Today is the 3/5ths mark for NaNoWriMo.  Participants keeping pace should hit 30,000 words today.  I pounded out 2,355 words this morning, bringing my 18-day total to 44,519 words.  That is about the 9/10ths mark, and indeed, I'm now about 14,000 words a head of pace, or more than 8 days.  It is a good feeling, and if I can hit my average on Friday and Saturday, then I will pass the 50,000 word mark on Saturday morning, November 21.

The first half of the morning was a struggle for me.  I had a long work day yesterday, followed by a meeting of the Arlington Writers Group which is always fun.  But I was starting to feel sick the night before, and last night before bed, I had a sore, scratchy throat.  I virtually passed out when my head it the pillow and didn't wake up until my alarm went off at 5am–which is unusual.  Kelly suggested taking a break today if I was sick, but I was feeling okay and I wasn't going to let a sore throat get in the way.  I headed downstairs to get started on Chapter 19.  My plan for the chapter had been two scenes, but as it turned out, only one of them got written this morning.

The scene in question started out slow and for the first half of the writing session, I had more or less resigned myself to under a thousand words for today.  It's okay, I told myself, I'm slightly under the weather, and besides, I'm so far ahead I can take a breather.  The big thing was getting up and making the effort this morning.  And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind, when I saw a twist to the scene I was writing that would be a fascinating one to explore, one which would add to the drama of the story line without breaking the spine of the plot.  So I headed down that twisted pathway and I ended up wrapping up the scene with over 2,300 words.  The big question now is where to fit in the second scene that was supposed to be part of this chapter.  I could still include it.  It was going to be a shorter scene, anyway, and has a twist in it that ties back to an earlier chapter (16, I think–I don't have it in front of me).  I still haven't decided.

My outline for part 2 was fleshed out in detail through chapter 19.  The remaining chapters in the outline are just brief paragraphs and so at some point today, I'm hoping to expand those to the level of detail that's worked for me so far through this process, and carry them through the end of Part 2.  And there's a small chance that I will write that extra scene at lunch today so that I can begin fresh on Chapter 20 tomorrow morning.

My confidence is high on "winning" NaNoWriMo.  So much so that yesterday, I purchased the 2010 NaNoWriMo winner's t-shirt from the online store.  My confidence is growing on my ability to complete the first draft of the novel by mid-December.  The biggest hurdle coming up for me is to continue pressing forward without NaNoWriMo's daily milestone looming over me.

Here are the stats for today:

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NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 17

I had the most fun this morning that I've had so far working on the novel.  My goal was to write Chapter 18, which I'd outlined as a fun chapter to write, and that turned out to be the case.  In fact, despite starting promptly at 5am, I couldn't bring myself to stop and it was only after I'd gotten down a remarkable 2,809 words did I bring the chapter to a close and finally push away from my desk as the clock struck 7am.  It brings my 17-day total to 41,164 words which is incredible even by my standards.  I feel like I am "in the zone", pitching a no-hitter through the middle innings.  And like a no hitter, there's a chance that I lose my cool and things will fall apart, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

This morning's chapter led up to the first sex scene in the book, and before my friends begin salivating, let me say that it is what I would call a very "Asimovian" sex scene: the act takes place off stage and is absolutely necessary for the plot.  But it was a lot of fun writing the flirting and banter that leads up to it.  In my outline, I had worked things out slightly differently (the scene involved a call girl) but as the scene progressed, I realized that no call girl was necessary and the two characters who met for the first time at the beginning of the chapter had enough chemistry for what I needed to take place at the end of the chapter.  And it adds an additional plot complication, which is always nice to have.

I'm still on track to hit 50,000 words on Sunday, but I'm confident about making that now and it is no longer my focus.  My focus now is entirely on that 90,000 word mark, and being able to say by mid-December that I once wrote the entire first draft of a novel.  Maybe nothing will come of it, but I'm beginning to feel very good about where this is going.

Here are the (remarkable) stats for today:

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Method writing

There are many different schools of acting, perhaps the most famous being that of method acting in which the actor immerses herself in the role she is playing and tries to feel the emotion of the character to bring out a better, more genuine overall performance.  For a while now, I've wondered if there is an equivalent for fiction writers, something that we might call, say "method writing."

When I am writing a character, I tend to know what emotion it is I am trying to convey but in most instances, I don't have to feel that emotion myself.  Instead, I know I'm on the right track when the words zoom onto the page without effort and upon rereading the scene, I can feel the emotion that a reader might experience.  These are my Yes! moments, so called because I will typically finish up the scene, push my chair back from my desk, pump my fist and hiss "YES" aloud to the empty room.  Rereading these scenes can sometimes bring me to the bring of tears (a climactic scene toward the end of my recently completed Story #7 did just that.)

Sometimes, though, I know the emotion I want to achieve but I can't seem to get there no matter what I put the character through.  In these cases no amount of emotional pining on my part will move things forward.  I get into this "I'm a writer sitting here at a comfortable desk and have no connection whatsoever to my character who is freezing to death on a Martian plain" kind of mode and this is where I think method writing (if such a think existed) would come in handy.  Instead, I resort to music–the only time I resort to music during my writing–to carry me through.

Early in the year, I wrote a story called, "In the Cloud" (my first readers will know which story I'm referring to, as will my fellow Arlington Writers Group members).  At the climax of the story is a scene where the main character is close to death, where she is hallucinating and where she makes a made dash across the surface of the Martian moon, Phobos.  There is an intensity to the scene which culminates in a sudden brightening of lights–she thinks that the aliens she's been searching for have returned–and in that moment of light, where she is frozen in time, casting a stark shadow against the dusty rock, there is an emotional realization upon the part of the character (and, one would hope, the reader) about what is actually happening here.  I must have tried four or five ways of writing that scene without the impact I was looking for.  Nothing seemed to work.  I decided I was simply not a method writer.

And that's when I remember how music can sometimes move me emotionally.  I thought about songs that involved lights of some kind and Coldplay's "Fix You" immediately came to mind.  I remember putting on my headset and playing the song on repeat a dozen times or more.  The pacing of the song was just what I was looking for and I tried to rewrite the scene paced to the song, ratcheting up the level of anxiety, slowly at first, until things become confused in the middle, and finally when she's out there on the plain, timing the lights she sees to the abrupt change in tempo at the end of the song when the lyrics say, "Light will guide you home…"  The scene seemed to work much better after that, although for me, I visualize it with that song playing in the background, working up to that pivotal moment.

So I wonder, is there such a thing as method writing?  If so, I certainly don't use the method, but I wonder if there are writers out there who do (or are willing to admit they do).  And if so, I wonder if there are corresponding examples of science fiction stories written in this fashion.  Does anyone know?

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NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 16

This was the toughest morning so far.  I wasn't enthusiastic about writing Chapter 17 which probably meant that I needed to reconsider it on the outline. When I got downstairs, I had virtually decide to skip the chapter for the day and write the more exciting Chapter 18. But I found myself coming back to what I had outlined for Chapter 17 and decided to give it a shot, altering it as I went along to fit my mood.  I turned out 2 scenes, the first of which gave some good background on one of the antagonists of the story, and did so in a way that makes her actions seem much more reasonable.  Or so I hope.  The second scene evolved into something even more special.  It's a shorter scene but it sets up some nice stuff a few chapters down the line.

I got off to a slow start and had gotten through only 1000 words after the first hour.  Nevertheless, I pressed on and I ended the session with my 16th consecutive day beating my personal goal.  I wrote 2,247 words bringing my 16-day total to 39,355 words and putting me nearly 13,000 words ahead of pace. That's outstanding considering that at one point early in session I was worried I might not even break 1000 words.

Tomorrow should be better, but I'l take today as a success as well.  Last year, while I successfully competed NaNoWriMo, the beginning of the third week was where my regular schedule broke down.  I stopped getting up early, started skipping days, and scattering my sessions at lunch or in the evenings.  That hasn't happened here.  Two days into the third week and I've been up before 5am both days.  And that has every sign of continuing through mid-December.

Here are the stats for today:

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NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 15

Today marks the official halfway point for NaNoWriMo.  The challenges lasts for the month of November and November 15 is halfway through the month. Ideally, if you are keeping to pace, you should be at about 25,000 words by the end of the day today.  For the 15th consecutive day I have exceeded both the NaNoWriMo suggested pace and my own target.  I wrote Chapter 16 this morning, the first chapter in Part 2 of the novel.  I got through 2,327 words in just an hour and a half, which is pretty remarkable for me.  It brings my 15-day total to 37,107 words, more than 12,000 word ahead of NaNoWriMo pace.

This morning's chapter laid out some of the problems and challenges that will plague the characters over the course of the next 2 years–which is the duration of time covered by Part 2 of the novel  There is an interesting progression here that I didn't really notice until this morning.  Part 1 covers a period of time of roughly 2 weeks; part 2 a period of roughly 2 years; and Part 3 covers a period of about 2 decades.  It will be interesting to see how this unfolds stylistically. There is a lot more going on in Part 2 than Part 1, but I'm trying to weave these things together in an interesting way.  I've got Chapters 16-19 outlined in detail and I hope to fill in the detail on Chapters 20-30 this evening.  Than it is just a matter of hitting about a chapter a day for the next 14 days.

At this point, it's looking like I'll hit 50,000 words on the morning of November 20, which is this coming Sunday.  That's perfect, really, since I'll be heading up to New York later that morning to attend a SFWA event on Monday.  I'm hoping to still get my writing in on Sunday and Monday, if only to keep my forward momentum.  But if I don't I'm not going to stress over it.

I'm on pace to finish up the month of November at somewhere around 74,000 words.  That leaves only about 16,000 words to finish up in December and at this point, it is looking more and more like I will have a completed first draft by December 7 or so.  I'm beginning to worry about Part 3 just a little because of the time span it covers, and how to convey this timespan in the course of the narrative, but I'm still working on ideas and I have a few which might work.  In the meantime, I'm trying to keep my focus on the task at hand, and I'm fairly pleased with what I got down this morning.

Here are the stats for today, the official halfway point:

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New car weekend

We bought a new car this weekend and after 14 years of driving my 1997 Saturn SL1 (which I bought new from Saturn of the Valley on October 22, 1996), I traded in that car as part of the deal.  The new car (pictured above) is a 2011 Kia Sorento.  The color, I am told by the folks as the dealership, is called "North Korean Green".

Last week we test drove three different cars and over the course of the week, I contacted the various dealerships to negotiate pricing.  As it turns out, Kia was by far the best car for the money.  We paid well under invoice for the car and the car included a nice convenience package with stuff like heated seats, tinted windows, a roof rail, a rear-facing camera and backup system, and several other nice little options.  The folks at Honda pressed me pretty hard to MAKE A DEAL.  What can they do to close the deal, they asked me repeatedly.  I told them they were close on price but could they match Kia's warranty and service:

10 years/100,000 miles
5 years of free roadside assistance
Free lifetime oil changes
Free lifetime tire replacement

No, Honda could not match that but they kept pressing anyway.  I finally told them so long and we decided that the Kia was what we wanted.

I went in on Saturday morning and met with Carlos, the salesman who showed us the car last week.  He sped me through the process of purchasing the vehicle.  I negotiated a good financing rate and after 2 hours at the dealership, I was driving home with the new car and leaving the old Saturn behind.

And can I just say: Buying from Fairfax Kia was a wonderful experience.  Our salesman never pressured us.  He gave us all of the rebates and discounts up front.  He was patient with us while we made our decision and he made the purchase almost effortless.  It was very different from my experience with Landmark Honda, where the salesman and managers were aggressive, virtually spamming me with email and who, although asking what they could do to MAKE THE DEAL, never seemed to listen to what I was saying.  If there is anyone nearby considering a Kia, go to Fairfax Kia and ask for Carlos.  He is outstanding.

And now a brief encomium for the Saturn.

I bought my Saturn brand new in the fall of 1996 after my previous car died suddenly and I never had a single complaint about the car or Saturn's service.  Had Saturn as a company survived, I would most certainly have considered buying another.  When I traded the car into the dealer on Saturday, it had 126,300 miles.  I never had a major mechanical issue with the car, but I could tell it was getting old and straining.  Part of the reason we decided to get a new car now was so that we didn't end up in a situation where one of our cars died and we had to rush into a decision.  Despite how much I like our new car, I will miss my old Saturn.  The picture above is how I last saw her, just before leaving the dealership.

But we are happy with our new car and we took it for a 300 mile round-trip drive today.  Here's the family in Staunton, VA with our newest member:

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