Thomas Watson's Blog, page 13

Just Go With It

The process of writing science fiction and fantasy seems to fascinate many people, including a few writers. They wonder where ideas come from and how one makes up names for things that don’t exist. They are simply baffled and amazed by the way those of us who practice the art of imagination can create entire histories and civilizations to serve the stories we tell. I feel much the same about sculpture, by the way. How anyone can look at a slab of rock and know where the arms and legs and eyes are hiding is a mystery to me.

Because we can do it at all, many people assume that we are in complete control of the process. Regrettably, that isn’t so, for my part at least. I’ve spent time in the company of enough writers over the years to get the sense that my experience is anything but unique. Oh, you usually have a pretty good idea of how to start it all out, and most of us have at least a sense for where we mean to end up. Somehow it doesn’t ever turn into a straightforward progression from Point A to Point B. As plot ideas begin to gel, and you develop the story and people living in it, an evolutionary process takes off and it’s not uncommon for it to take on something like a life of its own. A stray thought occurs, perhaps a thing a character might say or do, and the story line veers from the predicted path. You can back up and rewrite it all, of course, and try to stay on track, but all too often that idea (especially if it involves a character in the tale) simply will not go gently into that good night. “Nuthin’ doin’, bucko,” you seem to hear as you consider what to do about it. “Listen up. We are the story. We know what we’re talking about!” A smart writer takes heed, and generally concedes. The story begins to unfold in a different way, sometimes only a little bit altered, and sometimes transformed into something the writer didn’t really see coming. Masterpieces of genre fiction are created this way. So are nervous breakdowns.

I made a comment a while back on Facebook about having such an experience with my current work-in-progress. A friend responded with the reminder that I could play God and make the characters do whatever I wanted them to do. I’m sure he meant well by it. But the truth is that while the writer is sort of like a god in that universe he or she decides to bring into the light, the status is much more like a god of Greek mythology than the absolute ruler of the universe.  We are gods with a small “g” who can’t really expect complete obedience from troublesome mortals. If you’re a lower-case god or goddess and insist on creating Heroes, you’re just asking for trouble. There’s no sense in complaining about it.

Independence Day

Today marks the 236th time the United States has celebrated the grand decision to take control of its own fate. As I write these words I hear firecrackers exploding like faint echoes of the shots fired in the war our ancestors fought for independence. I can smell the aroma of backyard barbeques firing up – and I wish those people luck, because it’s been a rainy day Tucson. Some of the houses on the street display flags, taken in and then put back out as the weather changed. Typical activities for the 4th of July.

This has not been a typical 4th of July for me. I spent much of this cool, muggy day in the desert involved in something I’ve never done before. I worked to make people aware of the two books I self published this year. They call what I’m doing Independent Publishing, “Indie” publishing ‘for short.’ Many people see this as little different from vanity publishing, a cop-out of sorts for failed writers in denial. I’d point out that this isn’t so, but if you’re inclined to believe otherwise you probably aren’t going to take my word for it. I’ve embraced this publishing option, born of the digital age, and done so with a will all the same. Those who are doing as I do often see indie publishing as freedom from a troubled publishing industry, which certainly seems to be having its problems adjusting to the new age. Some express a strange delight when discussing the problems faced by the publishing industry; as if this is a case of what goes around comes around. I don’t see indie publishing that way, either. For me, this form of independence is neither a wannabe’s cop-out nor an act of revenge against a system that couldn’t find room for me. I’ve never been one to see denial as a viable ‘out,’ and for years I thought the word schadenfreude was a German insult. (And maybe it is, come to think of it.)

In putting those books out there I’ve made my own declaration of independence, one I will celebrate next year on March 21st, an easy date to remember since it happens to be my wedding anniversary as well. (And yes, that was deliberate, but be careful what you read into it.) There won’t be any fireworks, no echoes of ancient gunfire; that would scare the cats, after all. Just a glass of wine, perhaps among friends. But it will mark a sort of independence, all the same, and it has nothing to do with old school publishing. I never got past an editor’s desk when I first attempted to write and publish books. Traditional publishing never had a hold on me, and if that hold had developed I’m not at all sure I’d be fighting to free myself.

What I’ve done since March is to free myself from the disappointment of having missed out on something. Of not knowing what it would be like to have people read the books I wrote. As I’ve said in an earlier entry, I’d given up on all of this, and that was a terrible feeling. It would’ve been much worse, no doubt, if  years from now (many years, I hope!) I looked back the way I came only to contemplate the consequences of giving up on the thing I most wanted to do. That’s a fear from which I am now free, and that surely is a thing worth celebrating.

 

It’s Good To Be Back

While I worked away on book two of the War of the Second Iteration yesterday, I had one of those moments during which I was completely aware of how much I enjoy doing this sort of thing. The production side of indie publishing can be a bit of a pain (especially waiting for POD proof copies), but the actual writing, and the process of revision than pulls it all together, these are a source of deep satisfaction. I’d use the word “joy,” but for some reason it falls short of what I experience. I have these moments on a regular basis, especially when I hit a rough spot and then successfully think my way through it. It’s such an amazing feeling when that works!

Later in the evening, while enjoying a glass of wine, I found myself thinking of the years just before I decided to give the whole independent publishing thing a try. I’d been selling magazine articles and essays for years before going back to school to finish my degree, but could never seem to get a break on the book publishing scene. I kept trying, for more years than I like to admit. Came a time when it just wasn’t possible to justify the next attempt. I set writing aside and tried to go on to other things, by way of the degree process. There’s an old say about getting knocked down three time but getting up four. After a while, finding a way to avoid being knocked down in the first place seems more sensible. Unfortunately, the switch took me from one dead-end to another, with a resulting lack of employment into the bargain.

Giving up writing had more insidious effects, emotionally. I’m not going to write about those, not yet.

Then along came Kindle and its imitators, and the digital direct publishing so-called revolution. These matters had been going on for a few years before I paid much attention to them. Came the day a friend told me of her efforts to go the indie publish route, and of her initial experiences doing so. I’d heard of the Kindle, but was not aware people could now side-step the publishing industry and do their own thing. It sounded too good to be true, but I looked into it anyway, and discovered that the entire concept of “self publishing,” once upon a time an admission of defeat wrapped up in denial, was being transformed. That same friend suggested that I dig out one of the novels I had in the proverbial trunk, clean it up, and turn it loose to see what might become of it. (Thanks, Frankie! http://frankierobertson.wordpress.com/ ) I followed that advice, rewrote and revised one of those previous projects and now The Luck of Han’anga is out there.

It’s a kick to see a book out there and available to readers. It feels good. But far more gratifying still is this feeling of being a writer again, unfettered by the doubts that plagued me each time I boxed up a manuscript and put it in the mail. I may meet no greater success as an indie author, in the long run, but I will know for certain one way or the other. The books will be out there, finally. I won’t be sitting here growing older and wondering “What if…?” And in the mean time, I’m writing again. That just feels good!

A Patience Game

New amateur astronomers are often tripped up by their own expectations of what they will see through the eyepiece of a telescope. In stating this I’m surely not saying anything the majority of us don’t already know. Anyone who has had the experience of helping a newcomer has seen the consequences of unrealistic expectations. The disappointment can be as difficult to overcome as the expectations are easy to create. Telescope equipment advertising, observing guides, and magazines all persist on relying heavily on Hubble Telescope style images, and these images have come to dominate public perceptions of the Universe studied by astronomers. It’s only natural for the uninitiated, knowing no better, to expect something of the same sort through a backyard telescope. When the telescope fails to deliver, and all of them will fall short of Hubble, disappointment is equally natural.

The truth of the matter is that to human eyes, even aided by a good telescope, the Universe is a subtle place, and it takes time to fully understand and appreciate the beauty of that subtlety. You need to forget the colorful images while at the eyepiece. Then you need to spend time getting past first impressions. Going from one object to another in short order will give the impression that the Universe is a dull place, filled with things that look like wisps of smoke and puffs of dust. Those first glances can be misleading. Don’t trust them! Slow down. Figure on spending more time observing an object than it took to find it. A lot more, if a computer is finding things for you. Look at it straight on, then use averted vision, that trick that has you look slightly to one side. Did that dusty streak suddenly get longer? Or wider? Does the surface of the globular cluster seem to sparkle faintly when you don’t stare straight at it? Didn’t see anything like that? Try again. Try again on another night. Take notes or make sketches to remind yourself of what you saw before. This all takes practice, so the more often you are at the eyepiece and the longer you spend on an object, the better.

It also takes patience. Persisting in the face of initial disappointment takes patience, as does climbing the learning curve you face as a beginning astronomer. It takes loads of patience to sit there and wait for a calm moment that reveals details on Mars, or in a crater on the Moon. Even more to realized there’s truth to descriptions of stars in open clusters being arranged in strings or chains. And it takes patience to let time be your teacher. This will all take time.

But then, isn’t always the case for a thing worth doing?

Fiction, At Last

It’s a different sort of thrill, publishing a work of fiction.

I started the independent publish venture with the short memoir Mr. Olcott’s Skies because the size of the project lent itself well to the learning curve. I was able to complete the writing in a relatively short time, and the word count was small enough that it seemed likely I could get through the process of formatting and producing an eBook (and print on demand) before I was a lot older. All of this worked out, and seeing the book for sale, watching it sell, and getting feedback from readers have all been gratifying experiences. It was a proof of concept, in a manner of speaking, one that allowed me to take the next step with a bit more confidence.

That next step was the publication of my first novel: The Luck of Han’anga. Publishing fiction of any sort became a goal very early in my life, but through the long years has remained unrealized. As I worked toward that goal, I wrote other sorts of things. Articles and essays I wrote found enough outlets to lead me on in the hope of better things that never quite came to pass. (Book length nonfiction was another matter, mostly because what I wanted to write was not seen as marketable.) But fiction, short or long, while often greeted with encouragement by editors, never quite crossed line into the light of day. I know what it feels like to be published, to see my work in print. To see a certain kind of work in print. But there was always something missing.

I stopped writing fiction completely for while, starting at about the turn of the Millennium. I also scaled back on the nonfiction, though that never stopped completely due to involvement in a couple of online discussion and review sites, most notably the Cloudy Nights astronomy forum. Oh, the ideas for fiction were still there, and every now and then I’d start to write something, but there would be no momentum. The belief would settle in that I was wasting my time, that I’d never sell the piece, and the effort would sputter out and come to nothing. This was not a pleasant episode in my life. I am by my nature a writer. It approaches being a compulsion. When I returned to the world of amateur astronomy (at about the same time I gave up writing fiction) and started a journal of astronomical observations, each night’s efforts resulted in lengthy personal experience essays. I couldn’t help it. That’s just how it works.

I also have a rather active imagination that is bent in a science fictional direction. I wasn’t writing the stuff, but it was still there, a strange sort of burden on the mind that is very difficult to describe.

They say there’s nothing worse than an itch you can’t scratch. When the itch is inside your head it becomes something more than frustrating.

While I was keeping myself busy with other matters, but slowly coming unraveled because of that itch, there was a revolution. I almost missed it. The last time I worked in a bookstore there were no viable ereaders on the market, and I quit that job at about the same time that I stopped writing in a serious way. Late in the first decade of this still rather new century a friend told me over lunch of something called “indie publishing.” I’d heard of the Kindle ereader, but had given it little thought. I was unaware until told that day that you could self publish directly to the ereader market. I never went in for vanity publishing in the past, and remain uninterested in such an approach. But this “indie” stuff sounded different. So I took a closer look, and what I found re-motivated me to a degree that I was soon writing again in earnest.

The first result was Mr. Olcott’s Skies, and it was an exciting thing to see that up and for sale for various ereaders. Gratifying as it was, there was still that feeling of something missing. That feeling has been banished, at long last and over the past twenty four hours, as The Luck of Han’anga went “live” for Amazon’s Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. By the time I finished the first draft of this blog entry the novel had even sold a few copies. I finally know what that feels like, and after all these years the reaction, the thrill and the emotion, eludes complete description. Let’s just say it feels very good.

Now to take a deep breath, and write the next one.

http://underdesertstars.wordpress.com/the-luck-of-hananga/

Old Scope and the 2012 Transit of Venus

The 2004 solar transit of Venus pretty much passed me by. The job I had at the time left no opportunity to do more than take a short walk across campus and join the crowd gathered outside the Flandrau Science Center. It wasn’t an event, it was a glimpse, and left little impression on me.

The 2012 transit of Venus, the last for more than one hundred years took place this past Tuesday, and since I am currently between jobs I took full advantage of my freedom to observe the event from the start. I set up the Old Scope with a home-made white light solar filter (Baader film, if you’re interested), the whole thing perched on a light-weight equatorial mount set out on the back porch. A foam board shield attached to the telescope shaded my face at the eyepiece, and a carefully propped umbrella protected the mount and my legs. None of this changed the fact that it was early June, in Tucson (Arizona), which is to say that shade or no shade, it was damned hot. The porch thermometer read somewhere over 100°F (about 38°C) in the shade. I wasn’t in the shade, except for that provided by my Makeshift Solar Observatory. The air around me was, to put it mildly, toasty.

I hide in the shade of the porch until a few minutes before first contact, then braved the sun and hot breezes and perched myself on the observing chair. I put an 8mm TMB planetary eyepiece in the diagonal, focused the Sun as well as could be that time of day (rather shimmery image at times) and was immediately impressed by the sunspots sprinkled across the face of old Sol. I checked my watch and was glad to see things were about to start, as I was already wilting in the heat.

Not long after I forgot the weather for a while. An ever-so-shallow notch had appeared in the limb of the sun. First contact. As I watched it very slowly, but steadily, became deeper and rounder, until the shape of a sphere was clearly suggested. I drank water. I poured water (carefully) over my head, and I kept watching. The suggestion of a sphere became stronger as the black spot began to curve back on itself. Eventually a small black bead was visible, not quite detached from the black beyond the white limb of the Sun. It seemed to hang there, tugging gently on that blackness, then suddenly the connection was broken and there was a sliver of white around that side of the bead. There was Venus, and second contact was now a recent memory. I watched, amazed, as the planet ever so slowly made its way across the face of the Sun.

From that point my observations were intermittent. The heat took its toll. I went inside, sat in front of a fan, and absorbed about a quart of iced tea. When I felt refreshed, I went back out and watched some more. Back and forth, iced tea and a fan, and the transit of Venus, until the Sun had set into the neighbor’s trees and was lost to me. I dismantled the Makeshift Solar Observatory and called it quits. I was thoroughly satisfied by the experience. I was also well-done.

A shower, then, and something else cold to drink, though not iced tea this time.

Clear Skies!

Amateur astronomers often use the phrase “Clear skies!” when closing a letter or an online post. The meaning of the sentiment is obvious to anyone who knows anything at all about stargazing. Without clear skies, you can’t really do much in the way of astronomical observing. Short of setting up a radio telescope, I mean. (And that has been done by amateurs.) But it takes more than a clear sky for astronomy to happen. Other things need to line up just so.

For one thing, the “seeing conditions” need to be pretty good as well. When amateur astronomers talk about “seeing,” they’re concerned with the steadiness of the atmosphere. The ocean of air under which we live never holds still, and at times is downright jittery. You can see this without a telescope. Look up at night and watch the stars twinkle. That’s called scintillation, and as pretty as it may seem to the casual sky-glancer, it isn’t a well-loved phenomenon among astronomers. Telescopes magnify everything, including that jittery glitter you sometimes see at night, which goes from a pretty sparkle on high to a glaring blob of bright mush in the eyepiece of a telescope. When the seeing is bad the sky can be absolutely cloud free and the amateur astronomer will still have limited options.

Wind can be a hardship as well, complicating everything from getting a good view to using a star chart and taking notes. Breezes are fine, especially in mosquito season, but a good stiff wind battering the tube of a 203mm Newtonian reflector does not make for a fine night out, if your goal was stargazing. I can always do without wind, when I have a telescope set up.

And of course, there are the closely related matters of having the time and energy to take advantage of a clear night sky, when all other things are equal. Handling expensive eyepieces while in a hurry, or yawning, is not recommended.

Like so many matters of “real life,” then, it’s best not to take the wish for “clear skies” too literally. There’s more to it than a lack of cloud cover. Think of it as the amateur astronomer’s way of wishing you good luck. Something like saying “break a leg” to a performer, only a little bit more subtle.

Last Crescent

          I went out this morning just before sunrise, telescope ready, expecting this to be the last morning of observing the waning Moon. Turns out yesterday morning was the last day, after all. The Moon was a delicate curl of bright light all of 20° above the horizon, set in a pale blue not quite sunrise sky. Sliding along the ecliptic, it had moved more to the north than down toward the horizon, but the… Sun is rising earlier and the sky was quite bright. Unfortunately that bright sky was infested with thin grey clouds that first robbed the lunar crescent of detail in the eyepiece, then stole the show as the rising sun lit them with sweeping strokes of apricot and gold. What can you do? After thinking I could make out Bailly and the western shore of the Ocean of Storms, I stepped back to take in the beauty of the sunrise and watched the silvery crescent fade into the blue, as the apricot clouds slowly turned white.

Dawn Patrol

The Dawn Patrol is proceeding as planned. So far there’s been one observing session that started between 2am and 3am (MST), and the rest have begun closer to 4am. I’m finding it much easier to rise an hour and a half earlier than normal, rather than to stay up until midnight or so, as I did a few days back. Except for a day that involved high winds in the wee hours of the morning, these Dawn Patrol sessions have involved pleasant and beautiful conditions. Little or no wind, and then just light breezes, combined with mild temperatures between 58°F and 65°F. (14°C and 18°C). The skies have been clear and the transparency good, and as the Moon has waned more and more stars are out and easily seen. And it is quiet, very quiet, in the cool pre-dawn hours. The sounds of the city around me are muted, and on this Sunday morning almost inaudible. No voices, no cars on the street, with only a mockingbird singing loudly in the light of the Moon. He is singing less, now, and starting later, as the light of the Moon fades. Now and then a White-winged Dove awakens early. These calls and songs do not banish the morning quiet so much as define it. The awareness of how quiet the world is at such an hour is accented when the Mockingbird’s last note fades.

This morning the lunar terminator was a complicated thing, in mountainous places rough and ragged, with bright arcs of brightly lit stone and black bays of inky shadow where the divide between day and night passes through cratered terrain. It’s easy to think of the lunar terminator as a simple dividing line between lunar night and day, and where it crosses the surface of maria this may come close to the truth. But more often than not the terminator is anything but simple. This morning served as a fine example to prove the point. Half lit craters with shining west facing walls to the north of Mare Frigoris, with the shadows within clinging as much to the north as to the west. Plato broad and dark and smooth, with no sign of craterlets using such modest aperture (102mm) under mediocre seeing conditions. The lunar Alps presented a crazy jumble of gleaming bright peaks in a black matrix made of the mingled shadows at their feet. Farther south the proximity of craters such as Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel created bulges of shadow reaching to the light of day, and bright broken curves of light where high crater rims and the tips of central peaks were bathed in the light of the setting sun. South to more heavily cratered terrain, where outlines grew more confusing, and the black bays of intruding shadow were smaller and rimmed with silver light.

Observing the Moon is always about tricks of the light. For this morning’s Dawn Patrol, it added up to quite a show.

Lunar Indulgence

It’s a thing I’ve always wanted to do, and life has handed me the opportunity to get it started and then see it through. Starting a day past New Moon I’ve been out each night to spend an hours or so observing the Moon with either a 60mm or a 102mm refractor – whichever seemed most expedient on a given night. (The larger telescope has seen the most use so far.) Each night, when the Moon has risen high enough for convenient observation, I put whichever telescope I’m using on an Orion AstroView EQ mount and go out. With the Moon in the eyepiece, I work my way down the lunar terminator from north to south, identifying craters, mountains, rilles, and other features as I go. I call this process a terminator slide. I’ve repeated the process every night, now, starting on April 22nd. (I missed on the 26th due to clouds.) I have revisited many familiar sights during this set of observations, and seen things on the Moon for the first time. One session each night of this lunation, weather permitting. It’s been something of an adventure.

And now the easy part is behind me. Each night the Moon rises above the horizon later, which means I go out ever later to make the next slide. Now that full Moon has passed (the much hyped Super Moon of 2012), I’m pushing midnight before I can get a good look at the Moon. Tonight, as I type these words, I’m waiting for midnight, a lunar witching hour. Past this point I will be on “dawn patrol,” for it will make more sense to get up early than to stay out late.

Amateur astronomers do the strangest things!