Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 11
November 15, 2021
October Newsletter: A Piece of My Mind
I rolled over angrily in bed.Enough of this! Enough of you, author-with-whom-I-disagree!I was going to give him a piece of my mind.I snatched for the cord of my light and pulled on it until it yielded the switch. Squinting, I rattled around the top of the bedside table, feeling for my notebook.American culture is a crazy old man shouting at the invisible people at the bus stop, I wrote.There, that was one piece of my mind, now safely on the page and out of my head.
Gold reflected on the eastern face
Of the panel block
This is a chronic problem for me. Partly, I think it’s because I’ve learned enough about writing to recognize the tricks of a lazy author. Another thing is that the Anglosphere has had a rough decade, and English-language literature has gone into an understandably dark place.But most of the problem is the state of my mind. Something came off of me when I was sick. I lost some sort of protective film between me and everything else. I can’t watch the news much. The same with most Hollywood movies, and even some music. They make me feel sick. Literally, my stomach knots. I’ve learned that if I feel bad, the problem must be serious, and I know that “serious” means “death.”
Grape leaves like yellow and red flags against a pale sky
Three years ago, I was in the car with Pavlina on our way back from an appointment with my oncologist. Pavlina was telling me about the man she’d sat next to while we waited to see the doctor. This man’s wife had cancer (perhaps the same sort as mine – I don’t remember) but she was in the US while he stayed in Bulgaria, looking for treatment options.Pavlina and I remembered that sort of shopping around for doctors, both for me and our daughter’s hip surgeries. Now here was this other family in a similar situation, so maybe could help this man and his wife. I should meet them and share my story.I couldn’t. I couldn’t even speak there in the car. I couldn’t breathe. A fist had closed around my throat. This woman and her husband were so like Pavlina and me. Except she was in the US, away from her family, wasting the little time was left, and it was just so sad. My hands had locked into cold claws in front of my face. A fist had closed inside my throat. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t help this woman. I couldn’t allow myself to feel this way.Even writing about it now, my guts twinge.Some good news: Pavlina did help that family, and I don’t break down like that any more. I have shared my story since then, and there have been a few people whom I’ve been able to help. Time has healed me, but also I’ve developed some techniques. The bedside notebook is one of them.
Clouds resting on a line of mountains.
I’m still missing that protective film. There is still that process that says, “you’re in danger!” and I still have to react. That’s the gremlin that woke up three weeks ago when I read a book I didn’t like.Back to the notebook: I can’t do this to myself. Yet another author has stopped talking and started screaming. Who’s left? Who is left who is willing to listen with generosity and compassion? You open yourself up to people late at night and they betray you.That’s how I pinned the gremlin to the paper. That’s the light I shined on it.If only you could feel safe to have these arguments.And that was it. The next page of my notebook has a reminder from the next day about watching a video that
sent me.
The leaves of the skunk trees rolling down the air,
Yellow against blue.
I wonder if it’s a bad thing that I’m missing that protective film. What if the film wasn’t between me and the world? What if was between me and my reactions? How many of us fail to notice when our guts roll and our eyes prick. What if we ignore the fist that closes inside us, and never remember to open it again? I’m glad I lost my insensitivity. I know the difference between my own panic and the nature of the world. Pouring my angry thoughts into a bedside journal, I can make sure that this poison doesn’t show up in my books. I can be the author who isn’t screaming.
The smell of rain and candlesmoke
In other news!
still continues to be out there. So does ”
” in the Alternate History anthology. Both of them have a few reviews on Amazon, which I’ve been told is good. I’m worrying a little about what’s going to published in 2022 (some nibbles on
, but no bites), but there’s only one cure for that: write.
continues apace. Sketches and world-building stuff should continue to turn up on my
(and later, on my other outlets). In the mean time, if you want to beta-read something, why not ask me to send you
?I now have one month of data from Patreon (and six patrons! Thank you!). It looks like the internet in general likes my artwork, but my patrons want more behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ll think about what that might look like, and figure out the best way to juggle art, writing, marketing stuff, my life, and
.I had a hiccup with my website which I think got fixed. You’re not still being told that thekingdomsofevil.com has an invalid security certificate, are you? Next, I need to shift to https, but first, I need to figure out how to back up the site.I appeared on a couple of things in October:
about fear and science fiction and
about “what if we never domesticated horses”? There are some good comments in the second link, so check them out and why not participate in the speculation? What do you think would happen sans horses?And in the future!On Saturday November 20th, I’ll be doing a virtual workshop for Amber Royer’s Saturday Nite Write. It’s about speculative evolution and it’s called
How to Build a Better Monster.
Tell me if you want to attend.
The chestnut tree clutching an orange streetlight
And some stuff I liked
by P.G. Wodehouse – through cleverness and a wide network of informers, Jeeves manages to marry off one of his employer’s friends. For some reason, I was surprised by the episodic nature of these stories, but once I got over that, they were fun. Wodehouse was a master of the expected surprise, and shows how humor can test whether you’ve pulled it off. You only laugh if you both follow the twist and fail to see it coming. My only complaint is the overuse of “Jeeves is mad about a tasteless article of clothing” device.
Chapters from my Autobiography
by Mark Twain –Twain remembers being younger than he’ll ever be again. I sought Twain out because Terry Pratchett mentioned him as an influence, and wow! Yeah! I haven’t enjoyed a turn-of-the-century writer so much since Tolstoy. With maximum wit and style, Twain recounts stories from his life. These he weaves through excerpts from the childhood diary of his daughter Susy, who died at age 24. The autobiography becomes an act of mourning, of trying to make sense of two lives by looking at one through the eyes of another. Twain’s style is stream-of-consciousness (he was often dictating) but his mastery of the art of storytelling makes sure we never miss the thread or fail to laugh or cry. Here’s another author who has made his peace with the human condition. There are worse things to be than a joke.(I should also mention the narrator of the audiobook I listened to: Bronson Pinchot. Normally I don’t think about narrators much, but Pinchot’s Twain is so perfect, I can still hear it in my head.)
by Gerald Durrell – a boy immerses himself in practical natural history while his family create problems, then heroically solve them. I read this book one summer in middle school while visiting my grandparents in Montana, and this summer I read it to my 9-year-old daughter while we spent the summer in northern Greece. The two of us spread ourselves out in this gorgeous book and relaxed while the drama of the lives of various families washed over us. I seek to emulate Durrell’s ability to find humor in chaos, and my daughter collected jellyfish and stray kittens.
Madness from the Inconstant Moon
by Larry Niven – A collection of Niven’s best-known short works. My favorite was the one about the Warlock and the Barbarian, but it illustrates what frustrates me about Niven. He hasn’t come to terms with death. In “Madness from the Inconstant Moon,” for example, the set-up is excellent, but then what? I wish the characters did a better job of extracting meaning from their experiences. I do come back to Niven, though, for what I love about science fiction. He says “what if?” and then answers the question.
by Gerald Durrell –More adventures in natural history, including the human kind. Durrell recounts his trip to what is now northern Cameroon to collect animals for British zoos. He describes the people and the animals around him with equal humor, compassion, scientific interest, and space on the page, all of it illustrated beautifully by Ralph Thompson.
by James P. Hogan – Hogan seems to be the source all of the vague “I read once about…” speculative evolution ideas I’ve heard. This one is about toxic animals…but no spoilers. Ahem! I still think it’s a pretty silly idea, but Hogan works hard to make it plausible. There isn’t much of what you could call a plot, and while I liked the story of solving a scientific puzzle I think Inherit the Stars was better.
D ory Fantasmagory: Head in the Clouds
by Abby Hanlon – the origins of Mrs. Gobble Grakker! I read these books (to my daughters) out of order, so I enjoyed this one as a prequel. I take it as an object lesson in the inadvisability of using fiction as means of social engineering. And I love the part about “of course we all know that my sister’s doll was kidnapped by an evil witch…but what did I actually do with it? Or right, I left it outside.” That’s true.
by Greg Egan – The science fiction conceit is interesting, but the worldbuilding is thin, the characters thinner, and the story, is Communist propaganda. I do think Communism is a bad idea, but that’s not why The Book of All Skies upset me so much. It was the rage I felt coming off the story, the contempt Egan seems to feel for anyone who disagrees with him. In his other books, he digs into potential problems with his world-building, but here, he dismisses them with blithe sarcasm. In his rush to convince the reader of his property-less utopia, his writing becomes so sloppy that it comes off as insulting. His characters turn into sketches, the problems they solve a to-do list. Plot holes open, and the book ends abruptly with a hollow shout of “we will resist you!” bravado. The Book of All Skies is a shoddy piece of work, and does not reflect well on Egan’s beliefs. If he was serious about them, he would have argued them with more honesty.
Online Marketing for Busy Authors
by Fauzia Burke – a good collection of advice. I remember stopping on my way back from the pharmacy, pausing the audiobook, and jotting down the note: “who is my audience?” Later I went to the Pew Research website and found out I should try re-posting stuff on LinkedIn. That’s the sort of advice you get from Fauzia Burke. Nothing ground-breaking, but a list of the best practices of professional book marketers. I’m approaching the list as experiments I need to conduct. I do wonder how much marketing I should do as an author and how much I should leave to the professionals. Perhaps I’ll do the marketing I need to do in order to make enough money to hire a marketer 
Check back with me to see how these experiments work out.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary Phase
: A funny ramble. Part of the reason I like the Hitchhiker’s Guide books is how non-linear they are. It’s clear Adams was willing to go where his muse took him, although perhaps he wasn’t always happy about it. The radio play I actually like less than the audiobook (some of the jokes work better as internal rather than external dialogue) but oh my God, I love “Journey of the Sorcerer by the Eagles.” I’ve been listening to it on repeat for weeks.
by Susanna Clarke – a weighty, ponderous, beauty. In the past five years or so, I’ve retreated from new fiction, but Piranesi gives me hope I might be able to to come back. It is the best new novel I’ve read since The Martian. In an odd way, the two books are similar survival stories in an interestingly alien environment, which focus tightly on the main character’s conversation with himself. Where the Martian digs into science and engineering, however, Piranesi (literally) explores spirituality and personal transformation, the struggle make one’s life mean something. Any part of the story I describe would spoil it, so I’ll just say that although the setting looks dreamlike, it has strict rules, which the story respects. It’s good fantasy. I get the sense that Clarke spent a good long time polishing the book because she loved it. I do too.
Whew! That was a long ride. Thank’s for coming with me. Happy Halloween!
November 13, 2021
The Little Red-Hat
This one is dedicated to T. Mike Keesey. Does it work?
(step 1: English)
Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose granny loved her so much, that she bought the girl a red riding hood to wear.
(step 2: Bulgarian sentence structure and literal translation)
From then, that girl was called by “The Red Little-Hat.”
(step 3: articles, prepositions, and pronouns)
One day, mother-the on Red-the Little-Hat to-her told to go to house-the on granny to-her for to to-her give basket filled with good things for to drive granny-the to-her to feel self more-good.
(note, Bulgarian suffixes definite articles to the ends of words, and has a special prepositional or “to-me” form of every pronoun)
(step 3: verbs and gender)
“Remember-thou-!” said-she-fem mother-fem-the on Red-fem-the Hat-little-fem, “Walk-thou-! only on path-little-the-fem. Not-! to out-leave-thou from to-her.”
(Bulgarian has different imperatives for one or many recipients and the past tense used for stories modifies the verb based on the gender of the subject)
(step 4: bulgarian morphology)
Red-a-ta Hat-chits-a walk-i-l-a to forest-a-ta, where-to she meet-i-l-a big-0 evil-0 wolf-0.
“Hello, Red-ata Hat-chitsa,” said-al wolf-at. “On where go-vash?”
(N-ata is the ending for definite feminine nouns. N-chitsa and N-tse are cute forms. V-vash is for 2nd-person present verbs. What is the definite ending for masculine nouns? What about male-subject past verbs?)
(step 5: Bulgarian prepositions)
“Go-vam na house-ata na granny-ta to-me,” said-ala Red-ata Hat-chitsa. “Carry-ya tova basket-tsa na good-i thing-a za da to-her drive da feel-va self po-good.”
“I where live-e ti granny?” po-ask-al Wolf-at.
“Tya live-e e~e tam do old-at oak,” said-ala Red-ta Hat-chitsa.”
(V-ila is the past tense ending for female-subject verbs. V-vam or V-ya is for 1st person present and V-va for 3rd person present. N-i is plural, but neuter nouns have N-a. What are the prepositions?)
(Step 6: Bulgarian pronouns and particles)
“Why ne give-ash i sashto one bouquet na flower-tse?” po-ask-al wolf-at. Toi had-al plan da iz-eat-e i Red-ta Hat-chitsa i granny-ta i. “Can-esh da gi pick-esh ako iz-leave-esh se ot path-echkata.”
(what are the pronouns? Remember there are three forms: I, me, and to-me.)
(Step 6: bulgarian nouns)
I Cherven-ata Shap-chitsa go-vala ot pat-echkata za da gather-e tsveten-tseta.
(who went where and gathered what?)
(Step 6: Bulgarian verbs)
V sashto vreme, valkat hod-il v kashtata na baba na Cherventata Shapchitsa za da ya iz-yad-e.
(sashto vreme = same time, kashta = house. Who went where to do what?)
Toi ya izyal v edna glatka.
(edin = one, glatka = gulp)
November 7, 2021
The Sheep and the Horses
This is how a dialect continuum works: start out at, say, Lisbon, and travel through Galicia, Leon, Castille, and so on. With each stop, the language gets a little more different from Portuguese. Go far enough, and people are speaking Tuscan, then Occitan, then Romanian. There are a few discontinuities, but if you trace the right path, villages can usually understand their neighbors. There’s a nice graphic here.
That’s what I want to do with English.
You start out in your own village, where (by authorial decree) people speak the General American dialect of English. But after a week’s travel (don’t ask me in what direction yet, I haven’t made the maps), people talk in a distinctly funny way. They call sheep “wool-ewes” wear garments called “shirt-wads.” Words don’t always come where they should in a sentence. An old man lying on the side of the road might tell this story:
The Wool-ewe and the Ridin-eeos
A Wool-ewe, that had not wool, saw some ridin-eeos, one pullin a heavy cart, one bearin a muchel burden, one bearin a groom-man snilly. The wool-ewe quoth to the ridin-eeos, “my heart thrashes me to see a groom-man drivin ridin-eeos.” The ridin-eeos quoth, “Listen, wool-ewe. Our hearts thrash us to see this: a groom-man, the lord, winds up hisself’s warm shirt-wad of the wool-ewe’s wool. And the wool-ewe has none wool.” The wool-ewe a’heard that, and fled into the acre.
Odd, but not so hard to understand. Another week’s journey in the same direction, though, you find this:
The Woollio and thes Ridendios
An woollio, the ne wollhair hove, some ridendios saw, an heevy weyncrat pullend, an muchel bearburden bearend, an snilly gumaman bearend. The woollio to thes ridendios quoth, “my bloodheart me thrashes, gumaman ridendios drivin to see.” Thes ridendios quoth, “Lisne, woolio. Our bloodhearts us thrash this to see: gumaman, the loford, the woollio’s woolhair self’s warm shirtwad upawends. And the woollio nane woollhair haves.” The woollio that i’heard, and in the acre flew.
It’s good that you found such an old man to tell you this story, because you’ve passed out of your home country and into the neighboring land of Groomen. The old man you found at the border still speaks a dialect similar to yours, but if you go to the Groomish capital and ask a librarian, this is the story you’ll see:
Se Wallio on ses Rerenrus
Wallio, fe ne wallaer hof, ames rerenrus so, am hifi umcret pallar, am machel ornurf orar, am snillec wamaman orar. Se wallio ta ses rerenrus cof, “Mi bladurt me frastes, wamaman rerenrus rifar to si.” Ses rerenrus cof, “Hlisme, wallio. Ar bladurtes as frastes fis to si: wamaman, se hlofor, se wallios wallaer sulfs werm schirtael apenares. On se wallio nan wallaer hefes.” Se wallio, fe ihar, on im se ecar fle.
Perhaps, after passing through the intervening lands and learning something of their dialects, you might be able to understand Groomish (that’s not what the Groomishmen call it). Their language shares a common ancestor with yours about a thousand years ago, but a different sound changes and grammatical reshufflings have caused your language and theirs to diverge so greatly, they’re no longer mutually intelligible.
What will happen as you travel further?
(for more on the story of The Sheep and the Horses, see Schleicher’s fable)
October 29, 2021
Scifi, Horror, and Fear
Some other Flame Tree authors and I discuss horror and scifi. The conversation started going in a direction I didn’t like, but I shared an honest story, so I think mission accomplished.
What I did not do is figure out what “live recording meant.” Next time I’ll be there on Youtube to join the comments, and I’ll invite you as well 
But anyway, you can watch the video.
October 19, 2021
Podcast: What if No Horses?
Rohan, Nick, and I discuss the very rich alternate history scenario on their Back to the Past podcast:
What if horses had never been domesticated?
We barely scratched the surface. What does Eurasia look like with no cavalry, no steppe invasions, and no way to move quickly over land?
What stories are there to tell in this world?
October 18, 2021
Digeridoo the whippo
Digeridoo, the monument-building “whippomorph” who gives our heroes some problems to solve in the very first scene I wrote for Fellow Tetrapod.
Digeridoo’s version of India never collided with Asia, and the muddy mangrove swamps of the north Indian coast provided a habitat for early whales to evolve into burrowers. Although I call Digeridoo a “whippomorph,” in the book (because it’s a funny word), he is more precisely a stem-whale (and even more precisely a georgiacetine protocetid). His hips are dislocated from his spine, allowing him swing his hind limbs forward and use them to manipulate objects. Some other parts of his anatomy are probably wrong, and I hope to do a new picture to correct those mistakes soon.
Thank you to my patrons for supporting (and telling me how to fix) this picture and species design. Thanks also to Tim Morris, my professional speculative evolution consultant!
For more commentary, some personal musings, picture by Tim Morris, and how I plan to change this species’s design, see https://www.patreon.com/posts/whippomorph-57264302
October 13, 2021
September Newsletter: Making Wine
I came downstairs to find a mess in the bathroom.
My younger daughter was standing in front of the sink, over an open drawer. The towels there had become a beauty salon for her dolly, which was reclining with its hair immersed in a cup full of conditioner. Pearly mucus glistened on the counter top, the sink, the side of the cabinet.
My daughter, whom I’ll call Mikhaela on the internet, looked at me. Her mouth and eyes opened wide.
“But I’m just washing my doll!”
I stepped into the bathroom and the pads of my foot squished greasily.
“What the is this?” I yelled. “You cannot do this, Miki. You wasted all that conditioner.”
“But mom said I could wash my doll!”
“Clean it up. You have to clean it all up now.” I grabbed the mop handle, which I also needed as physical support. The floor was iced with beauty product.
“I did not need this,” I raged as I lurched into the kitchen to grab a sponge. “Don’t run, Miki! Walk. I come downstairs and I find another mess I have to clean up. No, use this, not toilet paper. Clean it up!”
My daughter was crying at this point, and part of me was glad. I wanted her to feel as bad as I felt.
Because I had just made a mess of my own.
Fishes feeding on the tentacles of an overturned jellyfish.
Another flaps listlessly in the water.
Why?
I got a very nice second-hand computer for my birthday, with the Linux Mint Cinnamon operating system. I loved it. Linux was fast, it was infinitely customizable, and when it wasn’t intuitive, there were enormous repositories of wisdom on the forums. I already mostly used LibraOffice and Google Drive for my work, so the move went smoothly. As smoothly, one might say, as a bare foot on a conditioner-slathered bathroom tile.
At the very moment that conditioner was being slathered, I was trying to install Wine. Wine is a program that creates a pretend Windows environment to fool programs that haven’t been made for Linux. The particular program I needed was Overdrive, which lets me download audiobooks from the library in my parents’ town back in the US. A book I’d put on hold was ready to borrow: Relentless.
It did not work. Wine opened, but it failed to find Overdrive. It didn’t find anything. I went through the step-by-step instructions again, and again it didn’t work. What the hell was Gecko and why wasn’t I getting a prompt about it? Had I just installed Wine twice? Three times? How much junk was piling up as I beat my head against this problem?
After an hour of increasing frustration and disillusionment, I thrust my now possibly wrecked computer away. Was I going to have to reformat and start over? Or limp along with an operating system filled with all the useless junk I’d just installed? I’d wanted to spend this time making the machine work better, damn it. And now it was worse.
The Norway maple rears into the angled amber spray of sunset light.
I came downstairs to find my daughter staring at me from the gooey bathroom, and I yelled at her.I yelled because I was frustrated my computer wasn’t working. And my computer wasn’t working because (I found out later) I had typed “add-architecture 1386” rather than “add-architecture i386” into the command-line terminal.
It’s hard to admit that you’ve done something stupid, but without understanding what you did, you can’t fix it.
I apologized to Miki for yelling at her, and she said “meow.” By that point, she was a cat.
***
In other news…
I found out that the RSS feed I’ve been using to get these newsletters into your inboxes will soon stop working. Don’t worry, I’m still going to keep posting newsletters on my website and Facebook and so on, but I got to thinking about how I’d like all my stuff in one place. A place where fans can see it?
Deep breath…
I’ve been working on my patreon page for weeks and it’s finally ready. It has three tiers, and the $1 one will give you early access to these newsletters, as well exclusive access to whatever else I create over the course of the month. It will also help me to create more, and not only in a I-can-quit-my-day-job way.
It’s just exciting for me to think about my future patrons. I already have a whole queue of new short stories and essays ready to post, and I’m making more. I’m even drawing again! I downloaded Krita and figured out how to make my wacom tablet work with Linux. Might I go back to the world of digital color??
Anyway, if you can’t pay, don’t worry. My newsletters will show up in all the right places after a delay. Some of my other work will show up for free eventually, as well. Patrons will get early access to everything, exclusive access to some short stories and art, and access to a private forum. There’s some other stuff at the higher tiers, including invitations to talk to me over Zoom and a never-before-seen serialized novel, The World’s Other Side.
You can find it all here.
Thank you in advance.
***
In other, other news
The Centuries Unlimited is still out with publishers, and Wealthgiver is resting while I work on Fellow Tetrapod beta. This time, I’m just plowing through from beginning to end, setting the events in the right order. I’m also doing research on zoology and office politics, with the professional help of artist and illustrator Tim Morris. Bouncing between us, the ideas are getting very big indeed. Here’s his rough-draft illustration of the intelligent whippomorph from this story sketch.
He enjoys raw fish and mechanical puzzles.
***
And what I liked in September
Shufu no Michi – a set of delightful little cartoons about an ex-yakuza mafioso who’s married a good woman and settled down as a house husband. There are some good housekeeping tips, too. My favorite part was the one Like that the Immortal Dragon got for his yogurt parfait on Instagram. It was from his wife.
Journey of the Sorcerer – also known as the Hitchhiker’s Guide Theme. This is excellent writing music. We need more scifi written to Eagles songs.
Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami – This was a suggestion from Paul Venet, and I read it on the beach. It’s a collection of transcribed conversations between the author and concert conductor Seiji Ozawa. Both talk about their love of music and their approach to creative work, as well as the experience of living abroad. I’m not a musician, and I didn’t get much even when I read along to the music (on Spotify). I did connected with some of the more abstract discussion of the “hungry heart” of the artist reaching toward mastery and the “stripping away layers” during performance. It’s good to consider what makes art good.
Slan by A.E. van Vogt – I don’t finish books if I don’t like them, and I don’t write reviews for books I haven’t finished. Therefor, this will probably be my most negative review. Slan‘s original problem is interesting enough (GM super-genius telepath children are in the care of baseline humans, who want them dead), but the solutions aren’t. The children always win because they’re super-genius telepaths. I did finish Slan because it never quite disappointed me enough to put it down.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie – a good sequel to How to Win Friends and Influence People. This one digs deeper, and focuses on you, the person living your life. It talks about the knots we get ourselves into, and how to loosen them. Carnegie relies heavily on anecdotes, both from his own life, the lives of his students, and from famous people. I appreciate that. For theory and practice, I recommend Chatter and How to Get Things Done.
Chatter by Ethan Kross – a neuroscientist’s approach to the problems caused by the voice in your head – I needed the advice this book has to give, as I spend much of my day chewing on my anger and swallowing it again. The tools Kross describes really did help. His theory makes sense, and his stories illustrate it well. I especially appreciate Kross’s own story, and how he was willing to tell it.
Dory Fantasmagory by Abby Hamilton – a little girl uses her imagination to solve the problems caused by her imagination. This is the first chapter book I’ve found that works for my younger daughter (who has lots of imaginary friends and likes bathroom words). A great “thank you” to my niece, who introduced me to this series.
The Bromeliad by Terry Pratchett – tiny people try to make their way in a big world. I re-read the first book in the series, then went on to finish the other three. I have to say I liked the first one best. In Truckers, the world-building, themes, and plot came together in a way they didn’t manage to in either Diggers and Wings. The places were it shines are about what people are like. The way they belief what they would prefer to be true. The need to coordinate, and how hard that is to do.
Rumpole and the Angel of Death by John Mortimer – a crotchety old barrister pleads for the defense, which is all he knows how to do. I listened to Rumpole way back in middle school, then forgot about him entirely until just this month. I’m going to have to go back to the others, but these more recent stories were especially fun. I get to see what Rumpole thinks of the EU, animal rights activists, and euthanasia enthusiasts. Of course, what he thinks is “you can’t prove they did anything wrong.”
Getting Things Done by David Allen – a terrifying whirlwind that organizes your office. Or if you prefer, “the Konmari method for calendar nerds.” The basic idea is that you are besieged by thoughts when you fail to “capture” them in a system that you trust to deal with them. The voice in your head saying “buy bananas” won’t shut up until you write “buy bananas” on your shopping list. But exactly what should that list look like? How you should use it? How does it connect with other organizational systems you have running? This book is very dense. I listened to Getting Things Done as an audiobook and the mood it put me in ranged from “frenetic” to “frantic.” I’m going to have to order the physical book and read through it slowly because there’s so much here. I’m looking forward to it.
Human Diversity by Charles Murray – how people differ, and why that’s okay. We dig deep into statistics here, as well as neurology, genetics, and economics. I appreciated the technical detail even though much of it went over my head (especially the statistics). It was all very useful to me as a science fiction author and builder of intelligent species and their societies. As with other books about contentious topics, I recommend reading the end first. It’s there that Murray speaks honestly about his own background, and his hopes and fears. I understand why it’s easy for him to be cynical about attempts to change people.
And that’s it! Enjoy a beautiful October, everyone, and I hope I get a chance to talk to you soon. On Patreon perhaps? Let’s see how that experiment goes.
Dan
Expert tip: you have to plug its USP into your laptop. Then it will work.
October 7, 2021
Join me on Patreon
Good news and bad news.
Feedburner, the RSS service I’m using to get my newsletters into your mailboxes, is being discontinued. I’ll still put my newsletter up every month on my website, facebook and tumblr, but you’ll have to go to those places to see it…
…unless you sign up for my Patreon. It’s a dollar a month, and you’ll get early access to my newsletters, exclusive access to a new short story or essay every month, and a link to my private discord server. There’s more in the higher support tiers, including a serialization of the never-before-seen alternate history book, The World’s Other Side.
I’m really excited about this. It motivates me to know that people want to read my work. Quantifying exactly how many people and how much they want to see it will help me prioritize. I already have a system going that reliably creates a new short story every few weeks and a book every year. With your support, I can do more.
You can find it all here.
Thank you in advance.
September 23, 2021
Spring’s Journal Thursday
Last spring, I started keeping a writing journal. Every morning after I finished writing, I would jot down my thoughts in a repeating google calendar event. Thoughts I didn’t care about got deleted. What’s left is what I consistently cared about every week. Here’s Thursday:
when you’re looking at the clock, get up
Do post-reader revisions on paper
Research in morning
Screwing up is a cure for burnout
Crack open the old scene to write new stuff
Start from nothing
During 3re draft, add
all snapped into place as I tried to merge old and new
POV makes decisions
POV transforms
Get emotional arc for scene
Trust inspiration
Zoom out and see bigger story
Make sure your new tunnel is aligned with the old one.
Limp, but process got me through it
Don’t just plow through
Find the image and develop it
No shallow work in the morning!
September 22, 2021
Spring’s journal Wednesday
Last spring, I started keeping a writing journal. Every morning after I finished writing, I would jot down my thoughts in a repeating google calendar event. Thoughts I didn’t care about got deleted. What’s left is what I consistently cared about every week. Here’s Wednesday:
One thing at a time
Start with blank page
You will rewrite ending every time
know why you’re making decisions.
Do what scares you
Focus on the craft not readers
Give myself instructions
Write outline of scene
pull it apart and snap it back together!
Your job is to add not rewrite
Once you have inertia, you can revise without the blank screen
Writing and deleting is a sign you’re tired
When you start second guessing, go to blank screen
Read ahead to make sure you’re aligned
See possibilities and problems for the general shape of scenes leading up to keystones
Passion then logic
A lot of pushing
But I’ll get it done
