Kinda says it all, doesn't it? ^___^
Mood: Utterly Exhausted
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Oct. 31st, NaNoWriMo, Exile, "Marriage"
Reading: Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card
Yes, Oct. 31st came and went, and I still don't have a 2nd draft of Book One. But I sucked it up, and started on Book Two promptly on Nov. 1st. I was making good time, too, until the proverbial shit hit the fan in one of my clinic courses, and I was forced to take a week's hiatus from noveling.
So I find myself behind the eight ball yet again.
I'm going to try to get as much as I can done this weekend--if I can coax a good 9000 words or so per day, I'll be back on track for the full 50K by Nov. 30. Gambaru!
Yes, Oct. 31st came and went, and I still don't have a 2nd draft of Book One. But I sucked it up, and started on Book Two promptly on Nov. 1st. I was making good time, too, until the proverbial shit hit the fan in one of my clinic courses, and I was forced to take a week's hiatus from noveling.
So I find myself behind the eight ball yet again.
I'm going to try to get as much as I can done this weekend--if I can coax a good 9000 words or so per day, I'll be back on track for the full 50K by Nov. 30. Gambaru!
*
The recent protests regarding the 52% to 48% passage of California's Prop 8 have pushed me to step up onto my soap box. I usually avoid venting my political views, but it seems that the distinctions that I find to be key to the issue are often overlooked or trodden upon by pundits on both sides.
To begin with, I side with the gay and lesbian viewpoints in that their civil unions should be granted the same rights under the law as traditional married couples. Simply put, it is constitutionally required under the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, and, even without the Constitution, the time-honored principles of equity, I think, would vindicate their request for equal standing.
Nevertheless, I believe the passage of Prop 8 was a good thing.
The key battleline that most people tend to overlook is one of semantics. The institution of "marriage" extends back into antiquity; it is a cultural touchstone that has shaped human society since the dawn of time, and will likely continue to do so indefinitely. At the same time, inextricably bound up in its cultural significance is its religious meaning--it's no coincidence that the vast majority of marriages take place in churches, and are conducted by religious officials. For a great segment of the multitude of religious perspectives out there, there is spiritual and theological significance bound up in the union of a man and a woman. In this way, the term "marriage" itself is, at its core, a religious one.
Therein lies the danger in the gay and lesbian activists who clamber for their "right" to "gay marriage." They couch their demands in arguments for equal protection, but in demanding that the government sanction their expansive conception of marriage, they seek to have the government impose their view of this quintessentially religious concept upon those whose religious views endorse the traditional viewpoint. That goes beyond the rights ensured by the 14th Amendment; it trods upon the 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion, by demanding that the government impose their conception of marriage upon the masses, or, at least, endorsing it over the traditional conception. Either way, the government finds itself in a position of intermingling matters of church with matters of state, something the founding fathers would find scandalous, and antithetical to the core values of our democracy.
Thus, I find myself in the position of affording gay civil unions equal status under the law as married couples, but insisting that any government recognition of the status of those civil unions restrict itself from treading upon the religious conception of marriage. Some may warn that drawing a distinction between "civil unions" and "marriages" is analogous to the "separate but equal" fallacy of the civil rights era. But I disagree. The inherent weakness of the "separate but equal" doctrine was that the separate institutions provided to whites and blacks simply were not equal--the problem, essentially, was logistical in nature. Here, the separation of the terms "civil union" and "marriage" is semantic: it allows the government to grant equal rights to gay and lesbian unions--rights they are constitutionally due--without taking the extra and unconstitutional step of endorsing the religious viewpoint underlying those unions at the expense of those who favor the traditional conception of marriage. It ensures that neither side of the debate has their constitutional rights abased.
This distinction between "civil union" and "marriage" need only be legal in nature. If U.S. culture grows to include gay and lesbian couples within the popular purview of "marriage," that is something for our culture itself to decide. But the legal distinction must be drawn, lest we, in our zeal to uphold the rights afforded by one amendment, despoil the rights espoused by another.
To begin with, I side with the gay and lesbian viewpoints in that their civil unions should be granted the same rights under the law as traditional married couples. Simply put, it is constitutionally required under the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, and, even without the Constitution, the time-honored principles of equity, I think, would vindicate their request for equal standing.
Nevertheless, I believe the passage of Prop 8 was a good thing.
The key battleline that most people tend to overlook is one of semantics. The institution of "marriage" extends back into antiquity; it is a cultural touchstone that has shaped human society since the dawn of time, and will likely continue to do so indefinitely. At the same time, inextricably bound up in its cultural significance is its religious meaning--it's no coincidence that the vast majority of marriages take place in churches, and are conducted by religious officials. For a great segment of the multitude of religious perspectives out there, there is spiritual and theological significance bound up in the union of a man and a woman. In this way, the term "marriage" itself is, at its core, a religious one.
Therein lies the danger in the gay and lesbian activists who clamber for their "right" to "gay marriage." They couch their demands in arguments for equal protection, but in demanding that the government sanction their expansive conception of marriage, they seek to have the government impose their view of this quintessentially religious concept upon those whose religious views endorse the traditional viewpoint. That goes beyond the rights ensured by the 14th Amendment; it trods upon the 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion, by demanding that the government impose their conception of marriage upon the masses, or, at least, endorsing it over the traditional conception. Either way, the government finds itself in a position of intermingling matters of church with matters of state, something the founding fathers would find scandalous, and antithetical to the core values of our democracy.
Thus, I find myself in the position of affording gay civil unions equal status under the law as married couples, but insisting that any government recognition of the status of those civil unions restrict itself from treading upon the religious conception of marriage. Some may warn that drawing a distinction between "civil unions" and "marriages" is analogous to the "separate but equal" fallacy of the civil rights era. But I disagree. The inherent weakness of the "separate but equal" doctrine was that the separate institutions provided to whites and blacks simply were not equal--the problem, essentially, was logistical in nature. Here, the separation of the terms "civil union" and "marriage" is semantic: it allows the government to grant equal rights to gay and lesbian unions--rights they are constitutionally due--without taking the extra and unconstitutional step of endorsing the religious viewpoint underlying those unions at the expense of those who favor the traditional conception of marriage. It ensures that neither side of the debate has their constitutional rights abased.
This distinction between "civil union" and "marriage" need only be legal in nature. If U.S. culture grows to include gay and lesbian couples within the popular purview of "marriage," that is something for our culture itself to decide. But the legal distinction must be drawn, lest we, in our zeal to uphold the rights afforded by one amendment, despoil the rights espoused by another.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
ノベルの2nd Draft: Communications Blackout
Thought I should make at least one post in September. Basically, I have just a little over a month left to complete the second draft of the novel by my self-imposed deadline (Oct. 31st!), all the while juggling my law school responsibilities at the same time. As a result, the going is . . . well, going to be tough, so I'm instituting an official blogging communications blackout until Oct. 31st or the 2nd draft is in hand, whichever may come first.
Here's hoping it's the latter--and peace until then.
Here's hoping it's the latter--and peace until then.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Expresso & Publication
Watching: Macross Frontier #19, The Middleman #10
Reading: A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin
No word count for today. Too busy gearing up for the start of the semester.
Reading: A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin
No word count for today. Too busy gearing up for the start of the semester.
*
About three years ago, when I first sent out a slew of short stories to various SF periodicals, I took the advice of Stephen King (and several other authors) and established a "rejection" folder, for all of the rejection letters I would receive. And soon enough, the letters arrived for me to start my collection. All of them are the standard form letter--the only minor exception being a letter from the Writers of the Future contest, which included a handwritten note consisting of three words: "send more soon!"
Well, my novel gobbled up my off year, and then law school came by, so I never did.
Flash forward to this summer. I had a law article burning a hole in my pocket--the fore-mentioned seminar paper focusing on doujinshi, fansubs, and fair use--but refrained from submitting it on the promise of my seminar professor, who promised that he would contact his students during the summer in case any of them wanted to further refine their papers for future publication. Well, come August, and I still hadn't heard anything from him. So, on a whim, I decided to send out the paper as-is.
A note on the Expresso website is called for here. Berkeley Press has a wonderful submission hub website, which allows you to easily submit your law articles to over 500 law journals with the click of a few buttons. The only limit on the number of submissions is the size of your wallet: Expresso charges $2 per electronic submission, minus the first, which they send for free. I checked off mostly IP law journals, and sent it off.
For the first week, I received two rejection emails, and one email noting that I had submitted to a journal that only accepted student-written pieces that were authored by its own students. (Chalk that one up to an overactive clicking thumb.) Another rejection followed a few days into week two. Feeling a bit desperate, I took a (figurative) axe to my paper in order to trim it down to the rather tight space requirements of my alma mater's law review, and sent the resulting frankenstein to one of our EICs.
Then, early this morning, I received a different sort of email from one of the Expresso law journals, entitled "Offer of Publication."
While the sight of that email left me positively giddy, never for a second did I forget that the battle is only beginning. Yes, with an offer in hand, I can be assured that my paper will be published in a scholarly journal, and that I now have a publication credit add to my resume (my only other published piece was in the high school literary magazine, hardly worth a line or two of precious resume real estate).
There are, however, considerations to be made. The accepting journal is relatively new, and, from my own investigations, doesn't seem to be represented on Westlaw or LexisNexis's online databases. As a result, I would much prefer to see my article published in a journal with greater name recognition and/or a wider sphere of distribution. So the tool of choice to exact a response from as-of-yet silent law journals is the "expedited review request."
Through Expresso, one can contact all of the law journals that one has submitted to, and inform them of your standing offer and its acceptance deadline. With that deadline in mind, you then request that the journal "expedite" its review of your article, so that you'll know whether they want it before you have to give your response to the initial offerer.
So, while publication is now all but certain, it's still a waiting game.
The acceptance deadline is September 8th.
I'll keep you posted.
Well, my novel gobbled up my off year, and then law school came by, so I never did.
Flash forward to this summer. I had a law article burning a hole in my pocket--the fore-mentioned seminar paper focusing on doujinshi, fansubs, and fair use--but refrained from submitting it on the promise of my seminar professor, who promised that he would contact his students during the summer in case any of them wanted to further refine their papers for future publication. Well, come August, and I still hadn't heard anything from him. So, on a whim, I decided to send out the paper as-is.
A note on the Expresso website is called for here. Berkeley Press has a wonderful submission hub website, which allows you to easily submit your law articles to over 500 law journals with the click of a few buttons. The only limit on the number of submissions is the size of your wallet: Expresso charges $2 per electronic submission, minus the first, which they send for free. I checked off mostly IP law journals, and sent it off.
For the first week, I received two rejection emails, and one email noting that I had submitted to a journal that only accepted student-written pieces that were authored by its own students. (Chalk that one up to an overactive clicking thumb.) Another rejection followed a few days into week two. Feeling a bit desperate, I took a (figurative) axe to my paper in order to trim it down to the rather tight space requirements of my alma mater's law review, and sent the resulting frankenstein to one of our EICs.
Then, early this morning, I received a different sort of email from one of the Expresso law journals, entitled "Offer of Publication."
While the sight of that email left me positively giddy, never for a second did I forget that the battle is only beginning. Yes, with an offer in hand, I can be assured that my paper will be published in a scholarly journal, and that I now have a publication credit add to my resume (my only other published piece was in the high school literary magazine, hardly worth a line or two of precious resume real estate).
There are, however, considerations to be made. The accepting journal is relatively new, and, from my own investigations, doesn't seem to be represented on Westlaw or LexisNexis's online databases. As a result, I would much prefer to see my article published in a journal with greater name recognition and/or a wider sphere of distribution. So the tool of choice to exact a response from as-of-yet silent law journals is the "expedited review request."
Through Expresso, one can contact all of the law journals that one has submitted to, and inform them of your standing offer and its acceptance deadline. With that deadline in mind, you then request that the journal "expedite" its review of your article, so that you'll know whether they want it before you have to give your response to the initial offerer.
So, while publication is now all but certain, it's still a waiting game.
The acceptance deadline is September 8th.
I'll keep you posted.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Cable
Watching: The Middleman, Episode 9
Reading: Bitterwood, James Maxey; A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin
Reading: Bitterwood, James Maxey; A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin
Today's Words: 205
Weekly Total (1 day): 205 words
Due to cable issues, I wasn't able to access the internet for the past few days, which was just as well, as I didn't get much (read: any) work done on the novel. I mean to make a strong push tomorrow and over the weekend, but today was lost to getting the cable back on line, and coaxing the muse back into place after a few days' respite.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
1st Week: ~ 600 WPD
Today's Words: 1051
Weekly Total (7 days): 4277 words
Weekly Total (7 days): 4277 words
So for this the first week since I've started day-by-day word counts, I've averaged a little over 600 words per day. A rocky start--especially considering that one day I wrote no more than 80--but one that's likely to improve over the coming weeks, even with law school about to begin again soon. I could have written a bit more today, but I've got to get in a few hours on work-related projects as well.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
894 Forward, 420 Back
Today's Words: 1314
Weekly Total (4 days): 2713 words
Weekly Total (4 days): 2713 words
1314 words/day is damned good for a nebosuke like me, but 420 of them had to be scrapped before the end. (That, and I realized that, in order to fix the problems that have been slowing me down as of late, I need to go back to the middle of Chapter 3 and rewriting my way back up.)
Oh well. Every crappy word written today is one less left for me to write tomorrow. Hopefully, soon enough, I'll have expended my quote of crap, and only the sweet, sweet ambrosia of good prose and sharp dialogue will remain.
Oh well. Every crappy word written today is one less left for me to write tomorrow. Hopefully, soon enough, I'll have expended my quote of crap, and only the sweet, sweet ambrosia of good prose and sharp dialogue will remain.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
New Formats and eBay
Watching: The Middleman, Episode 7
Reading: A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin
Reading: A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin
Yesterday's Words: 769
Today's Words: 549
Weekly Total (2 days): 1318 words
Today's Words: 549
Weekly Total (2 days): 1318 words
As you might have noticed, I've decided to abandon the wordmeter, at least insofar as redrafting is concerned. The steadily increasing blue bar is wonderful motivation for a writer to keep chugging along through the initial draft, but as the second (and third . . . and fourth . . .) drafts inevitably must entail some element of editing and rewriting, the trusty `meter no longer serves its inspirational purpose.
Instead, I will be posting day-to-day reports of how many new words I've managed to eek out, and, when the redrafting takes a turn toward substantive edits, I might adapt the format to reflect the number of words I've looked over, fiddled with, and hopefully made better by the end of each day.
I'm finally into new territory in Chapter 6, which represents the beginning of the portion of the first draft that I've decided to chuck out wholesale and do over completely. It extends from Chapter 6 to 10, though Chapters 11 through (can't remember exact details, but I'm going to take a stab here and say:) 22 will require substantive redrafting to get it to mesh with what I've worked out. Chapters 23 through the end are the gravy chapters, the ones that worked well from the get-go, the ones that served as shining beacons of hope while I slogged through the dregs that were my original opening chapters, and the messy plottage (an amalgam of plot and pottage that I came up with just this very second) that currently is my middle act. Now, that certainly doesn't mean that they'll require some significant revisions before they're perused by eyes other than my own; it just means that doing so should be a hell of a lot more fun than rewriting chapters from scratch.
Oct. 31st is still the goal for the second draft, after all. And if I can get a draft clean enough for some first readers to read before I sacrifice my every waking moment to the Bar review gods next summer (because though I'm no longer a lawyer-to-be, per se, I'm still graduating this Spring, and a J.D. without bar membership is like a bookend without its partner: lonely, useless, and from certain angles just plain sad), so much the better.
Instead, I will be posting day-to-day reports of how many new words I've managed to eek out, and, when the redrafting takes a turn toward substantive edits, I might adapt the format to reflect the number of words I've looked over, fiddled with, and hopefully made better by the end of each day.
I'm finally into new territory in Chapter 6, which represents the beginning of the portion of the first draft that I've decided to chuck out wholesale and do over completely. It extends from Chapter 6 to 10, though Chapters 11 through (can't remember exact details, but I'm going to take a stab here and say:) 22 will require substantive redrafting to get it to mesh with what I've worked out. Chapters 23 through the end are the gravy chapters, the ones that worked well from the get-go, the ones that served as shining beacons of hope while I slogged through the dregs that were my original opening chapters, and the messy plottage (an amalgam of plot and pottage that I came up with just this very second) that currently is my middle act. Now, that certainly doesn't mean that they'll require some significant revisions before they're perused by eyes other than my own; it just means that doing so should be a hell of a lot more fun than rewriting chapters from scratch.
Oct. 31st is still the goal for the second draft, after all. And if I can get a draft clean enough for some first readers to read before I sacrifice my every waking moment to the Bar review gods next summer (because though I'm no longer a lawyer-to-be, per se, I'm still graduating this Spring, and a J.D. without bar membership is like a bookend without its partner: lonely, useless, and from certain angles just plain sad), so much the better.
*
A convoluted but funny eBay story, all my own:
About a year ago, I purchased a used Zaurus SL-C1000 for about $230 on eBay. (The Zaurus was discontinued in mid-2006, so eBay and a few select retailers with a remaining stockpile are the only buying options nowadays.) The Zaurus, for the uninitiated, was a Sharp-branded clamshell handheld device that ran a fully functional version of Linux, a device about as firmly wedged between the roles of laptop and PDA as possible, this side of an Asus EEE. I lovingly used it for notetaking for the Fall semester, and started to put up a post on this blog showing off its neat little features and compact form factor . . . until the little guy gave up the ghost.
Basically, it just died on me, right in the middle of class. I tapped the power button. Nothing. I pressed the reset button. Nada. I took the battery out and put it back in. Ziltch.
After cursing the tech gods--and the eBay user who'd sold me the device--I scoured the internet for an explanation. The most plausible painted a dire picture: apparently, using the wrong sort of AC adapter could very easily cause the Zaurus' power fuse to blow, which then would require some surgery and soddering to bring the device back to operational status.
Now I've gone into the bowels of my electronics before, and soddering is well within my admittedly limited mechanical prowess. But in order go in, sodder, and get out with minimal loss of life and frustration, I needed a schematic to point out the connection that had burned out.
Amazingly, the Internets failed me in this regard, as Google, Wikipedia, and several Zaurii-specific forums failed to provide me with so much as a snapshot of the dreaded power fuse. Desperate, I took the Zaurus apart anyway, and scrutinized its circuits for a burnt out fuse. Sadly, I couldn't find it.
Now hope spring eternal, so I decided to see if maybe--just maybe--the problem lay in the battery rather than the device itself, so I spent about $20 on a replacement battery. It came. It didn't work, though it helped me to deduce that the precise problem was that the Zaurus wasn't charging the battery.
So, I reasoned, the solution lay in finding an external charger for my batteries. One such charger was available, though it seemed to be selling somewhere between the ungodly sums of $60-$80, plus another $20 or so for shipping. Considering what the Zaurus cost me in the first place (and that a brand-new Zaurus originally retailed for about $399), that was more than I was willing to spend on the mere chance of rehabilitation.
I noticed that a similar charger was being sold on eBay--similar in its power output, but noticably different in its configuration. Not so different, however, that I wouldn't be able to modify the terminals to accomodate the Zaurus' battery, or at least so I believed. Best of all, this charger would only set me back $9, with the cost of shipping from Hong Kong included.
Long story short, the charger worked, and the Zaurus was once again alive, though reliant on an external device and the ocassional battery swap for life support. I discovered, however, that while the original battery could still hold a charge, it simply would not power on the Zaurus. I was forced, therefore, to buy another replacement battery to complete my swap-in, swap-out plan. Another $15 sacrificed to the eBay gods.
The battery arrived, and lo and behold, the HK manufacturers had modified it to better fit the Zaurus' compartment. However, when I plugged the battery in to the AC adapter, I discovered--against all logic--that the Zaurus was charging it! Almost a year after the device failed me, a single, $15 replacement battery had set everything to right. Happy ending, right?
Happy, yes. Ending . . . not just yet.
In the Zaurus' absence, I started looking to the discontinued line of Sony Clies as a potential replacement portable. (Some may recall that I once wielded a PEG-NR70V, a monstrously large Palm-based PDA with a ludicrously huge touchscreen, a lengthwise clamshell design . . . and an hour-and-a-half battery life. [Hey, it was the turn of the 21st century. With that list of features, you had to have seen that coming.] Well, back when I bought the Zaurus, I sacrificed the NR70V to the eBay gods to be able to afford it.) I used to have some buyer's remorse shortly after buying my initial Clie when the SJ series was released six months later, as the upper models of the line matched the features of my PDA (sans ludicrously huge screen and clamshell form factor) in a device that was roughly 2/3rds as large, and to add insult to injury, roughly 2/3rds the price. But I had always had my eye on the basic PEG-SL10, which originally retailed for $120, a monochrome model that ran on two AAA batteries. Of course, the Clies were abandoned by Sony back in 2004, and in today's world of smartphones and iPhones, the PDA is quickly becoming an exercise in obsolescence.
On a whim, I decided to check the Amazon marketplace, and discovered a refurbished SL10 available for $26, shipping included. I bought it, and quickly rediscovered why I loved the Palm OS. It did everything that I needed the Zaurus to do, and in the case of handling my novel's chapters without formatting degradation, it actually does it better.
So I put the Zaurus back up for auction, along with all the accessories I'd accumulated along the way. I set an aggressive buy-it-now price of well over $300, because Zaurii are even rarer on eBay than they had been a year ago, and lo and behold, someone bought it now! I'm still waiting on payment, but if the transaction goes through, I'll actually end up making a profit on the whole Zaurus ordeal, at least as far as the dollar figures are concerned.
eBay--and the Invisible Hand--can be funny sometimes.
About a year ago, I purchased a used Zaurus SL-C1000 for about $230 on eBay. (The Zaurus was discontinued in mid-2006, so eBay and a few select retailers with a remaining stockpile are the only buying options nowadays.) The Zaurus, for the uninitiated, was a Sharp-branded clamshell handheld device that ran a fully functional version of Linux, a device about as firmly wedged between the roles of laptop and PDA as possible, this side of an Asus EEE. I lovingly used it for notetaking for the Fall semester, and started to put up a post on this blog showing off its neat little features and compact form factor . . . until the little guy gave up the ghost.
Basically, it just died on me, right in the middle of class. I tapped the power button. Nothing. I pressed the reset button. Nada. I took the battery out and put it back in. Ziltch.
After cursing the tech gods--and the eBay user who'd sold me the device--I scoured the internet for an explanation. The most plausible painted a dire picture: apparently, using the wrong sort of AC adapter could very easily cause the Zaurus' power fuse to blow, which then would require some surgery and soddering to bring the device back to operational status.
Now I've gone into the bowels of my electronics before, and soddering is well within my admittedly limited mechanical prowess. But in order go in, sodder, and get out with minimal loss of life and frustration, I needed a schematic to point out the connection that had burned out.
Amazingly, the Internets failed me in this regard, as Google, Wikipedia, and several Zaurii-specific forums failed to provide me with so much as a snapshot of the dreaded power fuse. Desperate, I took the Zaurus apart anyway, and scrutinized its circuits for a burnt out fuse. Sadly, I couldn't find it.
Now hope spring eternal, so I decided to see if maybe--just maybe--the problem lay in the battery rather than the device itself, so I spent about $20 on a replacement battery. It came. It didn't work, though it helped me to deduce that the precise problem was that the Zaurus wasn't charging the battery.
So, I reasoned, the solution lay in finding an external charger for my batteries. One such charger was available, though it seemed to be selling somewhere between the ungodly sums of $60-$80, plus another $20 or so for shipping. Considering what the Zaurus cost me in the first place (and that a brand-new Zaurus originally retailed for about $399), that was more than I was willing to spend on the mere chance of rehabilitation.
I noticed that a similar charger was being sold on eBay--similar in its power output, but noticably different in its configuration. Not so different, however, that I wouldn't be able to modify the terminals to accomodate the Zaurus' battery, or at least so I believed. Best of all, this charger would only set me back $9, with the cost of shipping from Hong Kong included.
Long story short, the charger worked, and the Zaurus was once again alive, though reliant on an external device and the ocassional battery swap for life support. I discovered, however, that while the original battery could still hold a charge, it simply would not power on the Zaurus. I was forced, therefore, to buy another replacement battery to complete my swap-in, swap-out plan. Another $15 sacrificed to the eBay gods.
The battery arrived, and lo and behold, the HK manufacturers had modified it to better fit the Zaurus' compartment. However, when I plugged the battery in to the AC adapter, I discovered--against all logic--that the Zaurus was charging it! Almost a year after the device failed me, a single, $15 replacement battery had set everything to right. Happy ending, right?
Happy, yes. Ending . . . not just yet.
In the Zaurus' absence, I started looking to the discontinued line of Sony Clies as a potential replacement portable. (Some may recall that I once wielded a PEG-NR70V, a monstrously large Palm-based PDA with a ludicrously huge touchscreen, a lengthwise clamshell design . . . and an hour-and-a-half battery life. [Hey, it was the turn of the 21st century. With that list of features, you had to have seen that coming.] Well, back when I bought the Zaurus, I sacrificed the NR70V to the eBay gods to be able to afford it.) I used to have some buyer's remorse shortly after buying my initial Clie when the SJ series was released six months later, as the upper models of the line matched the features of my PDA (sans ludicrously huge screen and clamshell form factor) in a device that was roughly 2/3rds as large, and to add insult to injury, roughly 2/3rds the price. But I had always had my eye on the basic PEG-SL10, which originally retailed for $120, a monochrome model that ran on two AAA batteries. Of course, the Clies were abandoned by Sony back in 2004, and in today's world of smartphones and iPhones, the PDA is quickly becoming an exercise in obsolescence.
On a whim, I decided to check the Amazon marketplace, and discovered a refurbished SL10 available for $26, shipping included. I bought it, and quickly rediscovered why I loved the Palm OS. It did everything that I needed the Zaurus to do, and in the case of handling my novel's chapters without formatting degradation, it actually does it better.
So I put the Zaurus back up for auction, along with all the accessories I'd accumulated along the way. I set an aggressive buy-it-now price of well over $300, because Zaurii are even rarer on eBay than they had been a year ago, and lo and behold, someone bought it now! I'm still waiting on payment, but if the transaction goes through, I'll actually end up making a profit on the whole Zaurus ordeal, at least as far as the dollar figures are concerned.
eBay--and the Invisible Hand--can be funny sometimes.
Monday, July 28, 2008
BICHOK, Exile, Warbreaker
Redraft: Chapter 6 of 33
My progress on the redraft has been slow going as of late, in part due to a writer's blockish road hazard that required the scrapping and rewriting of the last scene of chapter 5, and in larger part due to a deadline for a prof's research assignment. It ended up taking far more time that I would have liked, but I managed to get it done by the deadline I'd promised, though it screwed up my neck something fierce to be planted in front of the computer for hours at a time. (Despite the magic of BICHOK--butt in chair, hands on keyboard--as advocated by the crew at Writing Excuses, my neck problems demand that I take periodic breaks from that position. Not taking those breaks inevitably ends with me flat on my back, as I rediscovered yesterday.) I still have another active project for the other prof, but I'm going to try to work in more redrafting time, at least a couple of hours each day.
October 31st won't wait forever, after all.
22632 / 139570
My progress on the redraft has been slow going as of late, in part due to a writer's blockish road hazard that required the scrapping and rewriting of the last scene of chapter 5, and in larger part due to a deadline for a prof's research assignment. It ended up taking far more time that I would have liked, but I managed to get it done by the deadline I'd promised, though it screwed up my neck something fierce to be planted in front of the computer for hours at a time. (Despite the magic of BICHOK--butt in chair, hands on keyboard--as advocated by the crew at Writing Excuses, my neck problems demand that I take periodic breaks from that position. Not taking those breaks inevitably ends with me flat on my back, as I rediscovered yesterday.) I still have another active project for the other prof, but I'm going to try to work in more redrafting time, at least a couple of hours each day.
October 31st won't wait forever, after all.
*
Visiting OSC's Hatrack website today, I noticed a banner that announced the November release of Ender in Exile, the long-awaited direct sequel to Ender's Game (i.e. the one that I wanted to read back in the ninth grade, but had to settle for the Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind triumvirate--which weren't bad, per se, but certainly a far cry from what I'd been longing for). I hope that OSC has successfully chanelled at least a spark of the old 80s-era Card magic, as I've grown increasingly convinced that he reached the apex of his writerly prowess before the turn of the 21st century. (One only need compare his earlier work--Hart's Hope, Songmaster, Ender's Game, etc.--with his most recent--Magic Street, Empire--to realize that his style has shifted noticably over the years, and not entirely for the better.)
Inevitably, however, returning to the Enderverse after three years (or, if one discounts the Enderless Shadow books, almost ten) will prove somewhat painful to me, I fear. Back when I first read Ender's Game, it was the gold standard against which all other fiction had to be measured, and found lacking. I really couldn't find anything to critique about it, even if I tried. I still occasionally go back to it, as a portrait artist might refer to the Mona Lisa, to give me insight into the way that a novel should be paced, how a story should flow from point to point.
As of late, however, I've begun to see certain flaws in the story--not so much a reflection of the writing or craft OSC employed, but a reflection, I think, of the potential flaws in the propensities of the author himself. Card has established a career on crafting intelligent, often times genius-level characters, and while he generally succeeds in humanizing them to the point of drawing a reader's empathy, some of the character traits he infuses them with I suspect are ones that he himself shares; and they are traits that serve, as far as I can tell, to alienate them from the reader. Perhaps that could be justified in Game; the whole plot turns on Ender's isolation from his peers, his loved ones, his superiors, and even, to a certain extent, the enemies he is destined to fight. That isolation closely parallels the estrangement many pubescents experience from the world and others around them, a link that may have in no small part contributed to the popularity of the novel, and its retroactive label as a "young adult" work. But I see strains of that alienation--something deep inside of me suspects its roots are in some nascent sense of elitism--pervade practically every character that Card has created since the new millennium. In this respect, there is a danger in borrowing too much from my first writerly shisho when modeling my own fiction.
Fortunately, I've come to know many more shisho in my time, all of whom bring with them their own distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses, both of which have helped me to respectively foster and compensate for my own. Flewelling--her consumate insights into human relationships and immersive world buidling. Sanderson--his immaculate plotting and astounding depth of his milieus. Jordan--perhaps one of the greatest milieu-smiths since Tolkien himself. And now George R.R. Martin--whose strength of prose I noted within the first page of the Prologue to A Game of Thrones, and whose character craft and turns of phrase I'm happily savoring at the moment. There are many more I've yet to look into: Vernor Vinge, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, James Maxey, to name just a few. The gifts I've received are legion; yet the gifts I still stand to gain outnumber them. I only hope I learn enough to produce works that might serve the same purpose for another in the future that theirs has served for me.
Inevitably, however, returning to the Enderverse after three years (or, if one discounts the Enderless Shadow books, almost ten) will prove somewhat painful to me, I fear. Back when I first read Ender's Game, it was the gold standard against which all other fiction had to be measured, and found lacking. I really couldn't find anything to critique about it, even if I tried. I still occasionally go back to it, as a portrait artist might refer to the Mona Lisa, to give me insight into the way that a novel should be paced, how a story should flow from point to point.
As of late, however, I've begun to see certain flaws in the story--not so much a reflection of the writing or craft OSC employed, but a reflection, I think, of the potential flaws in the propensities of the author himself. Card has established a career on crafting intelligent, often times genius-level characters, and while he generally succeeds in humanizing them to the point of drawing a reader's empathy, some of the character traits he infuses them with I suspect are ones that he himself shares; and they are traits that serve, as far as I can tell, to alienate them from the reader. Perhaps that could be justified in Game; the whole plot turns on Ender's isolation from his peers, his loved ones, his superiors, and even, to a certain extent, the enemies he is destined to fight. That isolation closely parallels the estrangement many pubescents experience from the world and others around them, a link that may have in no small part contributed to the popularity of the novel, and its retroactive label as a "young adult" work. But I see strains of that alienation--something deep inside of me suspects its roots are in some nascent sense of elitism--pervade practically every character that Card has created since the new millennium. In this respect, there is a danger in borrowing too much from my first writerly shisho when modeling my own fiction.
Fortunately, I've come to know many more shisho in my time, all of whom bring with them their own distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses, both of which have helped me to respectively foster and compensate for my own. Flewelling--her consumate insights into human relationships and immersive world buidling. Sanderson--his immaculate plotting and astounding depth of his milieus. Jordan--perhaps one of the greatest milieu-smiths since Tolkien himself. And now George R.R. Martin--whose strength of prose I noted within the first page of the Prologue to A Game of Thrones, and whose character craft and turns of phrase I'm happily savoring at the moment. There are many more I've yet to look into: Vernor Vinge, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, James Maxey, to name just a few. The gifts I've received are legion; yet the gifts I still stand to gain outnumber them. I only hope I learn enough to produce works that might serve the same purpose for another in the future that theirs has served for me.
*
On the subject of Brandon Sanderson, his online novel project Warbreaker provides fans and would-be writers alike a unique opportunity for insight into his editing processes, one that I hope may aid my own. He's graciously made available the first complete draft of the novel, along with each subsequent redraft all the way up to the current one--version 6.1. The novel will go through a few more rounds of edits that won't make it to the electronic page, and then be released in final form around the same time that A Memory of Light hits bookstores--sometime in the first quarter of 2009. Sanderson's hope is that if people like what they see on their computer screens, they won't hesistate to purchase the print volume when it becomes available.
I haven't read enough of the online drafts to be 100% sure, but given the lessons his drafts are likely to teach me about my own, I'd say I'll be one of those who gladly picks up the novel from the bookstore when it finally arrives.
I haven't read enough of the online drafts to be 100% sure, but given the lessons his drafts are likely to teach me about my own, I'd say I'll be one of those who gladly picks up the novel from the bookstore when it finally arrives.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Revolution, HHKB2, Das, Kensington
Watched: Slayers Revolution #4
Reading: A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
Slayers Revolution is like coming home for someone like me, who cut his otaku teeth on the original Slayers anime, more than ten years ago. (Astroboy, of course, was my very first. But its profound age puts it in a different class than the 1990s-era anime series that my otaku sense was weaned on.) I've always viewed Slayers NEXT as the pinnacle of the series, though I appreciated TRY's attempts to expand the milieu. It's too early for me to say whether Revolution will come to rival NEXT for Slayers supremacy, but after roughly ten years of Slayers withdrawal, it is certainly good to be back in the thick of things again.
I am, however, still awaiting the reappearance of my favorite character with bated breath. Fortunately, the preview for the fifth episode indicated that Xellos will be making an appearance next week. Otanoshimi ni!
Reading: A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
Slayers Revolution is like coming home for someone like me, who cut his otaku teeth on the original Slayers anime, more than ten years ago. (Astroboy, of course, was my very first. But its profound age puts it in a different class than the 1990s-era anime series that my otaku sense was weaned on.) I've always viewed Slayers NEXT as the pinnacle of the series, though I appreciated TRY's attempts to expand the milieu. It's too early for me to say whether Revolution will come to rival NEXT for Slayers supremacy, but after roughly ten years of Slayers withdrawal, it is certainly good to be back in the thick of things again.
I am, however, still awaiting the reappearance of my favorite character with bated breath. Fortunately, the preview for the fifth episode indicated that Xellos will be making an appearance next week. Otanoshimi ni!
*
With a vow that its purchase would herald the beginning of the end, as far as my keyboard collection goes, I bit the bullet and ordered a Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2 from beNippon a few weeks ago.
The diminuative, capacitive-switch keyboard didn't do much to impress me when I tried one out at Cleverly 2 in Akihabara. But to be fair, the display models looked to have been put through more than their fair share of abuse, and back then, I still considered the buckling spring keyboard to be the pinnacle of typing nirvana. Now, it's a toss-up between the Cherry brown tactiles in my Filco Majestouch, or the capacitive switches in the newly acquired HHKB2. The Filco, with its full layout, is still my mainstay keyboard of choice, while the HHKB2 is the one I'll turn to when it's time to type out my finals this 3L year. (Would it be too much to beseech the legal gods to allow would-be lawyers to type out their Bar essays this upcoming year? If not, then at least I know of one or two fountain pens that should serve me well, if I am forced to put pen to paper one last time.)
The third iteration of the Das Keyboard looked promising enough for me to pre-order it, with the belief that I would simply return it for the guaranteed refund if it failed to bunk the Filco from its pole position.
The keyboard utilizes Cherry blue tactile keyswitches, the very ones that I've heard many "clicky" keyboard enthusiasts on the geekhack.org forums describe as their favorite, besting even the renowned buckling spring switches in certain circles. My experience with the Das was mixed, however. The acoustic quality of the key clicks seemed hollow, perhaps due to the unique construction of the keyboard (I've heard reports that the previous iteration, the Das II, was far louder, and therefore, I assume, more acoustically satisfying). But worse than that, the clicks themselves seemed to throw off the natural typing tempo that I so easily maintain with the quieter cherry browns in the Filco. As a result, after a single day of experimentation, I packed up the Das and sent word back to the manufacturer for a refund.
I soon realized, however, that I would have to pay an exhorbitant amount of money to send the keyboard back, a shipping investment that the manufacturer would not reimburse. As a result, I decided to sell the practically new keyboard on eBay, assuming that I would probably be able to get a better rate of return from whatever the final bid ends up being--especially considering that, with the $99.99 preorders done with, the Das currently goes for a MSRP of $129. Better still, the winner of the auction will be the one who has to bite the shipping bullet.
All of this serves only to reinforce the consumer goods stereotype that I have come to recognize as being more of an ironclad rule than an overgeneralization: all other things being equal, a product made in Japan for the Japanese market will always be manufactured to a higher degree of quality and satisfaction than a nigh identical product made in the U.S. for the U.S. market.
The only exception to this rule--which may very well prove its veracity--follows below.
The diminuative, capacitive-switch keyboard didn't do much to impress me when I tried one out at Cleverly 2 in Akihabara. But to be fair, the display models looked to have been put through more than their fair share of abuse, and back then, I still considered the buckling spring keyboard to be the pinnacle of typing nirvana. Now, it's a toss-up between the Cherry brown tactiles in my Filco Majestouch, or the capacitive switches in the newly acquired HHKB2. The Filco, with its full layout, is still my mainstay keyboard of choice, while the HHKB2 is the one I'll turn to when it's time to type out my finals this 3L year. (Would it be too much to beseech the legal gods to allow would-be lawyers to type out their Bar essays this upcoming year? If not, then at least I know of one or two fountain pens that should serve me well, if I am forced to put pen to paper one last time.)
*
The third iteration of the Das Keyboard looked promising enough for me to pre-order it, with the belief that I would simply return it for the guaranteed refund if it failed to bunk the Filco from its pole position.
The keyboard utilizes Cherry blue tactile keyswitches, the very ones that I've heard many "clicky" keyboard enthusiasts on the geekhack.org forums describe as their favorite, besting even the renowned buckling spring switches in certain circles. My experience with the Das was mixed, however. The acoustic quality of the key clicks seemed hollow, perhaps due to the unique construction of the keyboard (I've heard reports that the previous iteration, the Das II, was far louder, and therefore, I assume, more acoustically satisfying). But worse than that, the clicks themselves seemed to throw off the natural typing tempo that I so easily maintain with the quieter cherry browns in the Filco. As a result, after a single day of experimentation, I packed up the Das and sent word back to the manufacturer for a refund.
I soon realized, however, that I would have to pay an exhorbitant amount of money to send the keyboard back, a shipping investment that the manufacturer would not reimburse. As a result, I decided to sell the practically new keyboard on eBay, assuming that I would probably be able to get a better rate of return from whatever the final bid ends up being--especially considering that, with the $99.99 preorders done with, the Das currently goes for a MSRP of $129. Better still, the winner of the auction will be the one who has to bite the shipping bullet.
All of this serves only to reinforce the consumer goods stereotype that I have come to recognize as being more of an ironclad rule than an overgeneralization: all other things being equal, a product made in Japan for the Japanese market will always be manufactured to a higher degree of quality and satisfaction than a nigh identical product made in the U.S. for the U.S. market.
The only exception to this rule--which may very well prove its veracity--follows below.
*
For years now, I've used a Microsoft Optical Trackball mouse as my pointing device of choice. It began in college, where desk space was at a premium, and once I switched to a trackball-type mouse, I couldn't go back to the more traditional style. However, I soon found that the thumb-reliant trackball setup exacerbated my carpel tunnel ailment, and I started a slow search for a worthy replacement.
I quickly discovered that the Kensington Expert Trackball mouse was widely regarded as the gold standard, as far as trackball-type mice go. Even on Japanese webisites, the finest--and most expensive--keyboards were always sold beside the Kensington.
Amazon provided a significant discount on the Kensington, though the wait for it to arrive via free super-saver shipping was excruciating. It does, however, live up to its expectations, and makes mousing tasks between the two screens I currently use noticably easier to boot.
I quickly discovered that the Kensington Expert Trackball mouse was widely regarded as the gold standard, as far as trackball-type mice go. Even on Japanese webisites, the finest--and most expensive--keyboards were always sold beside the Kensington.
Amazon provided a significant discount on the Kensington, though the wait for it to arrive via free super-saver shipping was excruciating. It does, however, live up to its expectations, and makes mousing tasks between the two screens I currently use noticably easier to boot.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Horrible (SPOILERS)
I began this post moments after watching the final part of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but decided to postpone publishing it until the 20th, to minimize unintentional spoilage.
At first, the climax of Part III seemed a bit incongruous with the tone set by the first two acts. Perhaps the musical medium and witty humor lulled me into a false sense of security, as far as the plot goes. But the pathos of the conclusion--its sheer cathartic power--seems to redefine the first two acts, tempering the silliness of the first act and the comedic and emotional crescendo of the second with a hauntingly chill resonance. The ultimate effect on the viewer is both, well, horrible and beautiful at the same time.
Joss Whedon has acquired a reputation for plots laden with gut-punching twists, doing the surprising so often that, ironically, it's become something of a calling card for his productions, and therefore, Whedonesquely predictable. Nevertheless, his mould-breaking writerly ways has got me to thinking about my own. I cannot get too comfortable with the usual formula; to be poignant, events must deviate from the predicted path in a way that the reader does not expect, but finds to be utterly inevitable, once all is said and done. The writer's task is to ensure that seeds are sown well early on, and watered and tended so that the plot will reach its full fruition by the conclusion. For me, that's often a backwards process; it's not until I get to the end that I know--at least for sure--whether a main character lives or dies, or exactly how the end result I'm striving for will be attained. As a result, after I write the end, I inevitably have to go back and reincorporate the underlying elements into the earlier portions of the story. The boon is that, in the process of reincorporation, I often discover other elements that need incorporation, elements that lend a richness and depth to the story that it lacked in the first telling.
At first, the climax of Part III seemed a bit incongruous with the tone set by the first two acts. Perhaps the musical medium and witty humor lulled me into a false sense of security, as far as the plot goes. But the pathos of the conclusion--its sheer cathartic power--seems to redefine the first two acts, tempering the silliness of the first act and the comedic and emotional crescendo of the second with a hauntingly chill resonance. The ultimate effect on the viewer is both, well, horrible and beautiful at the same time.
Joss Whedon has acquired a reputation for plots laden with gut-punching twists, doing the surprising so often that, ironically, it's become something of a calling card for his productions, and therefore, Whedonesquely predictable. Nevertheless, his mould-breaking writerly ways has got me to thinking about my own. I cannot get too comfortable with the usual formula; to be poignant, events must deviate from the predicted path in a way that the reader does not expect, but finds to be utterly inevitable, once all is said and done. The writer's task is to ensure that seeds are sown well early on, and watered and tended so that the plot will reach its full fruition by the conclusion. For me, that's often a backwards process; it's not until I get to the end that I know--at least for sure--whether a main character lives or dies, or exactly how the end result I'm striving for will be attained. As a result, after I write the end, I inevitably have to go back and reincorporate the underlying elements into the earlier portions of the story. The boon is that, in the process of reincorporation, I often discover other elements that need incorporation, elements that lend a richness and depth to the story that it lacked in the first telling.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
THIS WEEK ONLY: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
I typically gravitate toward writing longer, more substantial entries than this, but time is of the essence, and I'd like to help spread the word as much as I can.
Joss Whedon, creator of all things shiny (read: Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, etc.) is releasing, for FREE, during this week only, a three-part musical comedy featuring a wannabe mad scientist named Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), his superhero archnemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, and the girl who makes it all a love triangle, Penny (Felicia Day). Words really don't do it justice, so its best if you simply check it out, here:
As you can see from the site, Part I was just released yesterday. Part II comes on Thursday, July 17th. Part III on Saturday, July 19th. The episodes are also available for download on iTunes; simply search for "Dr. Horrible."
Everything disappears on the 20th, so check it out ASAP!
Joss Whedon, creator of all things shiny (read: Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, etc.) is releasing, for FREE, during this week only, a three-part musical comedy featuring a wannabe mad scientist named Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), his superhero archnemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, and the girl who makes it all a love triangle, Penny (Felicia Day). Words really don't do it justice, so its best if you simply check it out, here:
As you can see from the site, Part I was just released yesterday. Part II comes on Thursday, July 17th. Part III on Saturday, July 19th. The episodes are also available for download on iTunes; simply search for "Dr. Horrible."
Everything disappears on the 20th, so check it out ASAP!
Friday, July 4, 2008
Slayers & Monitor
On July 2, the Slayers anime series (one of my first, and a permanent fixture in my top ten list of anime) began its fourth season with Slayers Revolution, after more than ten years in hiatus. The original vocal cast returns, including the inestimable Megumi Hayashibara as the protagonist Lina Inverse, and while the animation style remains true to the series that came before, the quality has clearly been updated for 21st century standards.
It couldn't have come at a better time. The anime series that comprise my active watch list nowadays don't seem to satiate in the way they used to. The last great series I can recall was Fullmetal Alchemist, which was nearly three years ago; the others that have sprouted up to claim its place have lacked the depth of plot and character necessary to achieve a sufficient level of catharsis, and some popular series appear to garner their popularity even while troding upon the most time-honored principles of good storytelling. (I think of the absolute lack of peril to the godlike protagonist of Heroic Age as a prime example. No crisis, no interest, no story.)
It couldn't have come at a better time. The anime series that comprise my active watch list nowadays don't seem to satiate in the way they used to. The last great series I can recall was Fullmetal Alchemist, which was nearly three years ago; the others that have sprouted up to claim its place have lacked the depth of plot and character necessary to achieve a sufficient level of catharsis, and some popular series appear to garner their popularity even while troding upon the most time-honored principles of good storytelling. (I think of the absolute lack of peril to the godlike protagonist of Heroic Age as a prime example. No crisis, no interest, no story.)
*
Some readers may feel like paraphrasing C-3PO from Return of the Jedi, shortly after viewing this post: "I'm afraid Tensai's gone and done something rather rash."
Yes, I switched the layout of the desk since the last time I photographed it, but that wasn't the rash part.
The new Gateway FHD 2400 24" LCD monitor is. It's a widescreen, but I bought it for use in portrait aspect. Here's why:
It helps with web browsing, but when viewing documents in Word, the entire margin-to-margin page fits easily within the screen, and a single tap of the page down button actually does what it says--cycles down to show the next page, in entirety. Best of all, after an update to my Vaio's graphics chipset (and a little cursing, fist shaking, and configuring), I managed to increase the output resolution from 900x1440 to 1050x1680.
It was a bit more than I meant to spend, but freeing myself from the eyestrain of the previous 15" monitor was worth it.
Yes, I switched the layout of the desk since the last time I photographed it, but that wasn't the rash part.
The new Gateway FHD 2400 24" LCD monitor is. It's a widescreen, but I bought it for use in portrait aspect. Here's why:
It helps with web browsing, but when viewing documents in Word, the entire margin-to-margin page fits easily within the screen, and a single tap of the page down button actually does what it says--cycles down to show the next page, in entirety. Best of all, after an update to my Vaio's graphics chipset (and a little cursing, fist shaking, and configuring), I managed to increase the output resolution from 900x1440 to 1050x1680.
It was a bit more than I meant to spend, but freeing myself from the eyestrain of the previous 15" monitor was worth it.
Redirection, Retrograde, Hunt, Who, & Robots
Watched: The Stolen Earth, Doctor Who, Series 4, Episode 12; WALL-E
Reading: The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book 3)
Redraft: Chapter 6 of 31
As you can see from recent updates to the wordmeter, I wanted to push myself to commit to at least 1000 new words a day for the rest of the summer. It's a tactic Stephen King suggests in his On Writing, with a warning--from personal experience, no less--that not coming up with those words each and every day have a tendency to make a story go stale, so that you'll have to spend extra time trying to get back into the flow of things. As I've been floundering around, redrafting the preliminary chapters, I've learned on my own just how much King's warning rings true. Thus, damning all other demands on my time, I've resolved to commit to the 1000-words-per-diem requirement, at least for the duration of the summer.
Which may still be biting off more than I can chew, as you'll see below.
I should pause here to explain to the uninitiated: the Time Lord "regeneration" ploy is a wonderful device used to allow the smooth passage of the Doctor's mantle from one actor to the next. Essentially, it is said that his race, the Time Lords, are capable of spontaneous regeneration when mortally wounded--the old rule of thumb was up to 13 regenerations per individual, but that rule has been breached in the past--in which they are revived in a different body, complete with its own new set of character quirks. This has allowed ten different actors to take on the role and make it their own, and given the legions of fans a plethora of reasons to argue about which doctor is "their" doctor.
Therein lies the problem with using the crisis of a "regeneration" as the episode cliffhanger. First of all, the sequence in which the Doctor is wounded is one of the most hackneyed of melodramatic shots: the slow-motion, lovers-running-across-the-expanse into-each-other's-waiting-arms sequence, which inevitably ends with one or the other being shot or otherwise intercepted before the sequence can be completed. Second, the Daleks have established a nearly mind-numbing inability to act on their strident impulses to "Exterminate!" the Doctor in the past. (Seasons 1-2 are replete with examples.) Nevertheless, this lone soldier finds his trigger (assuming that the weapon has one to pull) just in time to graze the Doctor and initiate the cliffhanger scenario.
But worst of all, besides the fact that the Doctor's feelings for Rose might change with his next regeneration (which, at this point, after said love interest has been MIA for the better part of two seasons, has the emotional potency of tepid water), the central crisis seems to eminate from the assumption, on the viewer's part, that David Tennant will no longer be playing the Doctor after the regeneration--that is, that the current actor will be replaced by the eleventh. (That is the underlying crisis; however, I believe the writers will find some convoluted means by which to keep Tennant in the role, no doubt at the expense of further compromising an already broken plot mechanism.)
It is a sad state of affairs where one of the most popular shows on BBC1 has to rely upon a matter of casting rather than plot to captivate its viewers. It's reasons such as this that Doctor Who remains a very guilty pleasure of mine--though if it continues to degenerate, who knows--it may not even remain that for very long.
Reading: The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book 3)
Redraft: Chapter 6 of 31
20928 / 139570
As you can see from recent updates to the wordmeter, I wanted to push myself to commit to at least 1000 new words a day for the rest of the summer. It's a tactic Stephen King suggests in his On Writing, with a warning--from personal experience, no less--that not coming up with those words each and every day have a tendency to make a story go stale, so that you'll have to spend extra time trying to get back into the flow of things. As I've been floundering around, redrafting the preliminary chapters, I've learned on my own just how much King's warning rings true. Thus, damning all other demands on my time, I've resolved to commit to the 1000-words-per-diem requirement, at least for the duration of the summer.
Which may still be biting off more than I can chew, as you'll see below.
*
You see, as I've been making my way through Chapter 5 and now into the beginning of Chapter 6, I realize that I need a clearer vision of my story's milieu, and a firmer hold on the characters I'm introducing at this juncture. There is an elegance to the milieus and minor character development in my favorite books that is sorely lacking in mine, and I suspect the reason may be simple: I haven't thought things through well enough. It's a falling that links up with my weakness in developing settings, one that I'm slowly overcoming, though slowly be the operative word.
After wrestling with my 1000-word goal on Sunday for six to eight hours, I finally relented on Monday and returned to Chapters 3-4 for revamps. By early Tuesday morning, I had made some headway cleaning up the plot progression, and I felt compelled to write what I'd like to call a "retrograde" outline. Retrograde, in that it is being written after the complete text, instead of the reverse. I've only filled in summaries of the first two chapters, and the chapter titles for the other chapters, but already something seems to have fallen in place. I discovered a brand new plot element that I'll need to introduce in Chapter 1. I see a connection between two characters that heretofore had no link between them. I may not have written 1000 new words, but my efforts have broken through the inertia. To borrow an image from Robert Jordan: the Wheel turns, and the Pattern weaves what it will.
After wrestling with my 1000-word goal on Sunday for six to eight hours, I finally relented on Monday and returned to Chapters 3-4 for revamps. By early Tuesday morning, I had made some headway cleaning up the plot progression, and I felt compelled to write what I'd like to call a "retrograde" outline. Retrograde, in that it is being written after the complete text, instead of the reverse. I've only filled in summaries of the first two chapters, and the chapter titles for the other chapters, but already something seems to have fallen in place. I discovered a brand new plot element that I'll need to introduce in Chapter 1. I see a connection between two characters that heretofore had no link between them. I may not have written 1000 new words, but my efforts have broken through the inertia. To borrow an image from Robert Jordan: the Wheel turns, and the Pattern weaves what it will.
*
The second book in The Wheel of Time series is shorter and--I think--stronger than the first. I still stand by my belief that Jordan used the first to grow into the writer who eventually garnered such a devoted following, and a little bit of his journey remains in the first part of The Eye of the World, lodged there, perhaps unintentionally. But it taught me more in the past few weeks than a learner could reasonably expect from a mentor he will never meet in person, from a lesson begun only after the teacher had passed from this world. As Brandon Sanderson observes, there is an amazing depth of fore-planning at work in Jordan's epic; details that seem cryptic in The Eye come to the fore in latter volumes, I'm told. Now, I realize it is likely that some of those things were written before their ultimate significance could be cemented in Jordan's mind, just as others may have been intentional from start to finish. But his example has shown me the depth of vision I must aspire to--via design and serendipity alike--and my sight as a storyteller has grown deeper in the process.
*
I've been religiously watching the new Doctor Who ever since David Tennant took up his Time Lord mattle, despite the fact that the series has never achieved even the barest suspension of disbelief, at least to me. It's camp, but neo-camp, a kind of pulp audio-visual medium with the fit and finish of a modern dramedy series, but lacking any real internal consistency. The penulitmate episode in season 4, The Stolen Earth, is a great example. Without spoiling much, a great master plan is put into action, jeopardizing the Earth and twenty-something other "stolen" planets--and, ostensibly, the entire universe, once the plan reaches fruition--but the cliffhanger ending hinges on the fact that the Doctor is grazed by the "extermination" ray of a passing Dalek soldier, and about to undergo a regeneration.The second book in The Wheel of Time series is shorter and--I think--stronger than the first. I still stand by my belief that Jordan used the first to grow into the writer who eventually garnered such a devoted following, and a little bit of his journey remains in the first part of The Eye of the World, lodged there, perhaps unintentionally. But it taught me more in the past few weeks than a learner could reasonably expect from a mentor he will never meet in person, from a lesson begun only after the teacher had passed from this world. As Brandon Sanderson observes, there is an amazing depth of fore-planning at work in Jordan's epic; details that seem cryptic in The Eye come to the fore in latter volumes, I'm told. Now, I realize it is likely that some of those things were written before their ultimate significance could be cemented in Jordan's mind, just as others may have been intentional from start to finish. But his example has shown me the depth of vision I must aspire to--via design and serendipity alike--and my sight as a storyteller has grown deeper in the process.
I should pause here to explain to the uninitiated: the Time Lord "regeneration" ploy is a wonderful device used to allow the smooth passage of the Doctor's mantle from one actor to the next. Essentially, it is said that his race, the Time Lords, are capable of spontaneous regeneration when mortally wounded--the old rule of thumb was up to 13 regenerations per individual, but that rule has been breached in the past--in which they are revived in a different body, complete with its own new set of character quirks. This has allowed ten different actors to take on the role and make it their own, and given the legions of fans a plethora of reasons to argue about which doctor is "their" doctor.
Therein lies the problem with using the crisis of a "regeneration" as the episode cliffhanger. First of all, the sequence in which the Doctor is wounded is one of the most hackneyed of melodramatic shots: the slow-motion, lovers-running-across-the-expanse into-each-other's-waiting-arms sequence, which inevitably ends with one or the other being shot or otherwise intercepted before the sequence can be completed. Second, the Daleks have established a nearly mind-numbing inability to act on their strident impulses to "Exterminate!" the Doctor in the past. (Seasons 1-2 are replete with examples.) Nevertheless, this lone soldier finds his trigger (assuming that the weapon has one to pull) just in time to graze the Doctor and initiate the cliffhanger scenario.
But worst of all, besides the fact that the Doctor's feelings for Rose might change with his next regeneration (which, at this point, after said love interest has been MIA for the better part of two seasons, has the emotional potency of tepid water), the central crisis seems to eminate from the assumption, on the viewer's part, that David Tennant will no longer be playing the Doctor after the regeneration--that is, that the current actor will be replaced by the eleventh. (That is the underlying crisis; however, I believe the writers will find some convoluted means by which to keep Tennant in the role, no doubt at the expense of further compromising an already broken plot mechanism.)
It is a sad state of affairs where one of the most popular shows on BBC1 has to rely upon a matter of casting rather than plot to captivate its viewers. It's reasons such as this that Doctor Who remains a very guilty pleasure of mine--though if it continues to degenerate, who knows--it may not even remain that for very long.
*
The first time I laid eyes on the trailer for Pixar's WALL-E, I knew I'd have to see it during the opening weekend. I have always harbored an inexplicable affinity for robots, and so this animated movie seemed tailor made for me. (It also helped, hot on the heels of my Doctor Who rant, that Pixar has established a reputation for solid plotting along with its spectacular computer-generated visuals.) WALL-E skirts the wonderful balance that allows a movie to transcend audiences--delightful for kids, thought-provoking for adolescents, and satisfying for adults both young and old. Profundity and humor. Darkness and hope. And that thing which is often so purely distilled in dramatic representations of robots--which may be the reason they move me so: the unbridled luminescence of the human spirit, a light that we ourselves tend to forget. I was moved to tears more times that I'd care to admit during the movie, but they were tears of joy rather than sadness--bursts of kinship with thoughts and behaviors that make the experiences of our lives uniquely human.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Loeb & Linux (& Updated Wordmeter)
Reading: The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan; Poetics, Aristotle
Watching: The Big Bang Theory, Season 1
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
In college, I noticed a neat selection of tiny green- and red-bound volumes in the office of one of my philosophy professors, and one day in the midst of a discussion I asked him about it. They were volumes from the Loeb Classical Library, he said, a series of texts published by Harvard University Press featuring writers and works from the ancient world, with one particularly useful feature: the original text (in its original language) is printed on one side of a page, while its corresponding translation is printed on the opposite, so that when the book is open at any give place, the original text and the translation can be viewed side by side. Now I read neither Latin nor Greek, but I'd been searching at that point for a pocket-sized edition of my favorites from ancient philosophy, and so the Loeb series seemed to be a godsend. The downside, however, is that each book in the 500-or-so-volume series is about $24.00 retail, which means that buying the whole bloody thing would cost as much, or perhaps even a little bit more, than a basic car. (On top of that, no matter how crazy a person might be over ancient texts, who the hell would bother to read every single volume, anyway? Even I'm not that obsessed.)
So, I decided that I'd limit my sights to a single volume: one containing, among two others, Aristotle's Poetics. One of the earliest extant analyses of the storyteller's craft, I had the pleasure of reading selections from it in high school AP English (and creating an interesting riff as one of my class projects: the Poetics of Anime). I believe the other two essays--Longinus' On the Sublime and Demetrius' On Style--are written in a similar vein, so I look forward to reading them as well.
Watching: The Big Bang Theory, Season 1
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
19911 / 139570
In college, I noticed a neat selection of tiny green- and red-bound volumes in the office of one of my philosophy professors, and one day in the midst of a discussion I asked him about it. They were volumes from the Loeb Classical Library, he said, a series of texts published by Harvard University Press featuring writers and works from the ancient world, with one particularly useful feature: the original text (in its original language) is printed on one side of a page, while its corresponding translation is printed on the opposite, so that when the book is open at any give place, the original text and the translation can be viewed side by side. Now I read neither Latin nor Greek, but I'd been searching at that point for a pocket-sized edition of my favorites from ancient philosophy, and so the Loeb series seemed to be a godsend. The downside, however, is that each book in the 500-or-so-volume series is about $24.00 retail, which means that buying the whole bloody thing would cost as much, or perhaps even a little bit more, than a basic car. (On top of that, no matter how crazy a person might be over ancient texts, who the hell would bother to read every single volume, anyway? Even I'm not that obsessed.)
So, I decided that I'd limit my sights to a single volume: one containing, among two others, Aristotle's Poetics. One of the earliest extant analyses of the storyteller's craft, I had the pleasure of reading selections from it in high school AP English (and creating an interesting riff as one of my class projects: the Poetics of Anime). I believe the other two essays--Longinus' On the Sublime and Demetrius' On Style--are written in a similar vein, so I look forward to reading them as well.
*
Elysia--the ill-chosen name for my much-maligned HP Pavillion 5170 series laptop--ate one of its own system files yesterday, rendering XP unbootable. I'd long since given up on the computer--the last straw being when it blue screened while I was working on my application for law school, back in late 2005--and I had meant to dump it off on someone else for a few hundred bucks on eBay back then, but my mother decided to adopt it intead. She's been using it for email, typing notes, etc. for the past few years, but yesterday it wigged out and trapped her latest notetaking on its hard drive. The all-but-worthless repair function of the restore disks didn't work, surprise surpise, so I had to turn to a contingency I'd come across back in 2005--a Knoppix LiveCD.
Knoppix is a distribution of the Linux OS that is able to boot and run directly from the CD itself, allowing one to try out the OS without having to risk an install. One of the most useful features is that it automounts the computer's hard drives to its desktop, meaning that transfering files from the misbehaving computer to a flash drive is as easy as drag and drop. I had to download the latest distribution of Knoppix--which took about an hour or so, at 696 MB--and burn it to a CD-R, but after that everything worked out smoothly. The file was retrieved, sparing much fist shaking and nashing of teeth.
The whole ordeal has me thinking about Linux again; I'm a complete n00b in all of its arcane commands, but it's always been an object of fascination for me. Seeing as the fore-mentioned laptop is down and out until I either reinstall Windows or another OS, I thought it might be a good opportunity to give Ubuntu Linux a go.
Ubuntu has become one of the most popular distributions of Linux in recent years, and most of the buzz I've heard from those in the know is positive. It's free, and given the star-crossed nature of the hardware I'm planning to install it on, I've really got nothing to lose.
Knoppix is a distribution of the Linux OS that is able to boot and run directly from the CD itself, allowing one to try out the OS without having to risk an install. One of the most useful features is that it automounts the computer's hard drives to its desktop, meaning that transfering files from the misbehaving computer to a flash drive is as easy as drag and drop. I had to download the latest distribution of Knoppix--which took about an hour or so, at 696 MB--and burn it to a CD-R, but after that everything worked out smoothly. The file was retrieved, sparing much fist shaking and nashing of teeth.
The whole ordeal has me thinking about Linux again; I'm a complete n00b in all of its arcane commands, but it's always been an object of fascination for me. Seeing as the fore-mentioned laptop is down and out until I either reinstall Windows or another OS, I thought it might be a good opportunity to give Ubuntu Linux a go.
Ubuntu has become one of the most popular distributions of Linux in recent years, and most of the buzz I've heard from those in the know is positive. It's free, and given the star-crossed nature of the hardware I'm planning to install it on, I've really got nothing to lose.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Shadows, cont'd
Read: Shadows Return, Lynn Flewelling
Reading: The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book 2)
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
Found myself in the unusual quandary of having two books burning holes in my pockets at the same time yesterday, as I had cracked into the first few chapters of The Great Hunt as I waited for Shadows Return to be released. But my anticipation for Flewelling's latest won out, and in the end, there wasn't much of a conflict: I finished Shadows Return by the end of the day. (That it was shorter than the previous Nightrunner books was one reason; that it was well-written and plotted--though perhaps a bit more linear and less multi-layered than some of the previous books--was another.) I get the distinct impression that it was the first half of a book that grew too long in the telling, and therefore had to be split up into two in order meet publisher demands. The fact that the next book is projected for 2009 would seem to reinforce that suspicion. That is one thing that Flewelling seems deficient in; after being spellbound by her work in The Bone Doll's Twin, I was utterly gobsmacked by the terse and virtually cut-off ending to the book. She sheers the end a bit more smoothly in Return, but it still feels hasty.
Meanwhile, I've continued well past the middle point in The Great Hunt, and am continually impressed by Jordan's world building. I've come to realize that, with the years its spent percolating in my mind, my own novel has worked up quite a milieu of its own, but nevertheless, there is much I still have to learn, and I'm glad to have found several masters capable of teaching me what I need to know.
Reading: The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book 2)
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
17609 / 139570
Found myself in the unusual quandary of having two books burning holes in my pockets at the same time yesterday, as I had cracked into the first few chapters of The Great Hunt as I waited for Shadows Return to be released. But my anticipation for Flewelling's latest won out, and in the end, there wasn't much of a conflict: I finished Shadows Return by the end of the day. (That it was shorter than the previous Nightrunner books was one reason; that it was well-written and plotted--though perhaps a bit more linear and less multi-layered than some of the previous books--was another.) I get the distinct impression that it was the first half of a book that grew too long in the telling, and therefore had to be split up into two in order meet publisher demands. The fact that the next book is projected for 2009 would seem to reinforce that suspicion. That is one thing that Flewelling seems deficient in; after being spellbound by her work in The Bone Doll's Twin, I was utterly gobsmacked by the terse and virtually cut-off ending to the book. She sheers the end a bit more smoothly in Return, but it still feels hasty.
Meanwhile, I've continued well past the middle point in The Great Hunt, and am continually impressed by Jordan's world building. I've come to realize that, with the years its spent percolating in my mind, my own novel has worked up quite a milieu of its own, but nevertheless, there is much I still have to learn, and I'm glad to have found several masters capable of teaching me what I need to know.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Dragon, Shadows, & Fragments
Reading: The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book 2)
Robert Jordan passed away last September of a rare blood disease, with eleven of a planned twelve books written in his acclaimed The Wheel of Time series. I had never read them, and I might never have, had his wife not read Mistborn, and chosen Brandon Sanderson to finish what Mr. Jordan started.
Ever since I finished Elantris and Mistborn, I vowed to read everything that Sanderson ever penned, unless some future book disappoints me so completely as to sour me towards his writing forever. As The Well of Ascension proved that that day is far, far away (if it ever comes, God forbid), I realized that I'd never be able to read A Memory of Light without reading the other 11 books first. So, even as I picked up the books from Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series from Border's, I bought The Eye of the World (a rare $6.99 paperback in this brave new world filled with $7.99s) and figured it would be as good a read as any to bide my time until June 24th, when the fourth Nightrunner book would be released.
Well, simply put, it was.
It took Jordan the better part of the 800+ page book to get into his own, but by the end his was a terribly well-rendered world with distinct, memorable characters, and that wonderful sense of bigger things to come that lies at the core of every sprawling epic. I have heard opinions that Jordan's writing floundered a bit in the latter books, but the man's passion for his creation never waned; it is said he dictated the rough outline of what he foresaw for the last book from what would prove to be his deathbed. And knowing that Brandon Sanderson is the one who has been tasked with breathing life into that outline gives me great hope for what the ending of Jordan's epic might bring. He isn't the best at the craft, but he is a worthy mentor all the same, and the world is just a bit dimmer for his passing so early (for what are the mid-fifties in the 21st century but the prime years of one's adult life?), when he could have brought forth so much more wonderment and magic.
Though I could not have known the man or his works in life, I am glad that his The Wheel of Time series remains to light the path that he left behind.
Robert Jordan passed away last September of a rare blood disease, with eleven of a planned twelve books written in his acclaimed The Wheel of Time series. I had never read them, and I might never have, had his wife not read Mistborn, and chosen Brandon Sanderson to finish what Mr. Jordan started.
Ever since I finished Elantris and Mistborn, I vowed to read everything that Sanderson ever penned, unless some future book disappoints me so completely as to sour me towards his writing forever. As The Well of Ascension proved that that day is far, far away (if it ever comes, God forbid), I realized that I'd never be able to read A Memory of Light without reading the other 11 books first. So, even as I picked up the books from Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series from Border's, I bought The Eye of the World (a rare $6.99 paperback in this brave new world filled with $7.99s) and figured it would be as good a read as any to bide my time until June 24th, when the fourth Nightrunner book would be released.
Well, simply put, it was.
It took Jordan the better part of the 800+ page book to get into his own, but by the end his was a terribly well-rendered world with distinct, memorable characters, and that wonderful sense of bigger things to come that lies at the core of every sprawling epic. I have heard opinions that Jordan's writing floundered a bit in the latter books, but the man's passion for his creation never waned; it is said he dictated the rough outline of what he foresaw for the last book from what would prove to be his deathbed. And knowing that Brandon Sanderson is the one who has been tasked with breathing life into that outline gives me great hope for what the ending of Jordan's epic might bring. He isn't the best at the craft, but he is a worthy mentor all the same, and the world is just a bit dimmer for his passing so early (for what are the mid-fifties in the 21st century but the prime years of one's adult life?), when he could have brought forth so much more wonderment and magic.
Though I could not have known the man or his works in life, I am glad that his The Wheel of Time series remains to light the path that he left behind.
*
Today is the 24th, so very shortly I'll be delving back into Flewelling's world of Aurenfaie, warrior queens, and beautiful gods of death. Expect an update (or another post) once I'm through.
*
Finally, I thought it might be of interest to some that I've written this post on the ultra-tiny keyboard of my Asus EEE laptop. Why? Because my Vaio's going through a defragmentation at the moment, and doing nothing while the computer cleans itself--especially when there's another perfectly good computer waiting in the wings--is just plain silly.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Aphorisms, Associates, Zones, & Teleologies (& Wordmeter)
Reading: The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
"An artist is he who feels that the last word of creation hasn't been spoken yet: and that he was sent into the world to utter it."
Redraft: Chapter 5 of 32
17075 / 139570
"An artist is he who feels that the last word of creation hasn't been spoken yet: and that he was sent into the world to utter it."
-- Hermann Bahr, literary critic (1863-1934)
So reads an aphorism attributed to Mr. Bahr in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, one of the best collections of aphorisms I've come across. Instead of a hodgepodge of different aphorists cobbled together under rough headings (Love, Art, Death, etc.), Geary's organizes by the calling of the aporists, with a suitable index for subject-based searches. Bahr's quote is one of the best encapsulations of my perspective on creative writing: in many ways, it's as close to playing God as we creative types can get.
(You may note the link above contains an interesting referral code: talefromasoft-20. Yes, I've finally broken down and joined the Amazon Associates program. So if you do ever happen to find yourself interested in a product that I link to, please feel free to purchase it through the provided link; it costs you nothing, and I end up reaping a small percentage for it. Or, if you're feeling charitable, shop at Amazon through this link.)
(You may note the link above contains an interesting referral code: talefromasoft-20. Yes, I've finally broken down and joined the Amazon Associates program. So if you do ever happen to find yourself interested in a product that I link to, please feel free to purchase it through the provided link; it costs you nothing, and I end up reaping a small percentage for it. Or, if you're feeling charitable, shop at Amazon through this link.)
*
One of the subject blogs that I occasionally visit is Moleskinerie.com--essentially, a blog centering around that famous little black notebook, new and exciting iterations of it, and the various uses different people find for it. Moleskinerie linked to another blog called The Writer's Bag, on which I disovered an article about getting into the writing "zone."
Essentially, the "zone" is where you become so involved in the piece you're writing that time seems to stand still: one moment, you're setting down to write after lunch, and several pages later, you realize the sun's gone down, and your stomach is growling for some dinner. Despite being somewhat distraction-prone, I've eased myself into such a state a few times while writing my first draft (though not as often as I would have liked), and I last touched upon that zone while revamping the second half of Chapter 3. Since then, my other summer obligations proved too much of a distraction for me to find my way there again.
My solution? Well, I'm actually writing it right now. Putting down these words is a great segueway for me; once I have a rhythm here, it's rather easy to transpose that momentum to the fiction writing front. Another tried-and-true source of writerly momentum is reading a really good book; in fact, the zoneful progress on Chapter 3 was due in part to my reading the Nightrunner series at the time. Nothing seems to whet my appetite for my own imagined milieu like submerging myself in the milieu of another, and the better the experience, the more powerful the drive. In my estimation, Flewelling is something of a master when it comes to pacing, so much so that often times within a hundred pages of the book's end my plan actually backfired, in that I couldn't bear to tear myself away from the story to go and work on my own. Jordan's book has a more bucolic opening, which has at the same time allowed me to sip the story rather than chug it, but also kept me from reaching the zoneful state that I want to.
Which brings me back to this entry. If inspiration won't come to you, then you'd better be prepared to track it down yourself.
Essentially, the "zone" is where you become so involved in the piece you're writing that time seems to stand still: one moment, you're setting down to write after lunch, and several pages later, you realize the sun's gone down, and your stomach is growling for some dinner. Despite being somewhat distraction-prone, I've eased myself into such a state a few times while writing my first draft (though not as often as I would have liked), and I last touched upon that zone while revamping the second half of Chapter 3. Since then, my other summer obligations proved too much of a distraction for me to find my way there again.
My solution? Well, I'm actually writing it right now. Putting down these words is a great segueway for me; once I have a rhythm here, it's rather easy to transpose that momentum to the fiction writing front. Another tried-and-true source of writerly momentum is reading a really good book; in fact, the zoneful progress on Chapter 3 was due in part to my reading the Nightrunner series at the time. Nothing seems to whet my appetite for my own imagined milieu like submerging myself in the milieu of another, and the better the experience, the more powerful the drive. In my estimation, Flewelling is something of a master when it comes to pacing, so much so that often times within a hundred pages of the book's end my plan actually backfired, in that I couldn't bear to tear myself away from the story to go and work on my own. Jordan's book has a more bucolic opening, which has at the same time allowed me to sip the story rather than chug it, but also kept me from reaching the zoneful state that I want to.
Which brings me back to this entry. If inspiration won't come to you, then you'd better be prepared to track it down yourself.
*
While I'm in a reflective mood, I thought it might be a good time to mull over some of the reasons for my recent change of heart regarding the practice of law. I think of life changes as a change in teleologies: swapping one final end for another in the midst of one's journey. I've made a few admissions up to this point, but a few others should join them.
One, I've been hearing (and ignoring) a call toward fiction writing for a long time now. My law school experience has taught me that one should pursue the things that one is passionate about, rather than those things that one finds tolerable or mildly interesting. Mildly interesting is how I would describe my relationship with the law; I find its intricacies intreguing on an intellectual level, but it does not move me, spiritually or emotionally, in the way I've seen certain areas move others at the law school, professors and peers alike.
It would be one thing if nothing moved me; that would mean that I'm still searching, and some people have to search for their passions longer than others. But it is quite another when I find my attention drifting to storywriting in every unguarded moment, when I realize that I could writing for twelve hours a day (as some others gladly toil on their passions) and never consider it work (though at it's core, good writing always is). That is where your passion lies: where you would gladly do what others consider to be "work" every day for the rest of your life. Not because the task is easy--in fact, passion and ease strike me as two diametrically opposed concepts; it is in agon that our truest passions are full-born. Such conflict rarely arises in a life devoid of challenges--a life of ease.
Two, I forsook the path of a writer because I too greatly feared the archetype of the starving artist. Many who attempt to make a living as an artist fail in the attempt, if not for lack of artistic talent then for the inability to generate a proper income. In this light, I always viewed legal practice as a kind of safety net; even if my writerly pursuit refused to bear fruit, at least I'd still be able to pay the bills. In this, I neglected the biblical adage that one cannot serve two masters; one will inevitably spurn one, and adore the other. Beyond that, each master deserves his servant's undivided attention; in seeking to compartmentalize writing and practice alongside one another, I inevitably would have neglected both. It wouldn't have been fair to my clients if I labored on my writing in place of work product. Nor would it have been honorable to join a firm who welcomed me as a potential new partner, only to spurn their interest and investment the moment that writing alone proved itself viable. As I waited for the last of the OCI employers to make their decisions last fall, I wondered if I would have to place myself in the awkward position of turning down a summer offer not because I had already accepted another, but because my heart was no longer in it. (No refusal is quite the slap to the face as "No, thank you, but I no longer have the heart to become what you already are.") But perhaps the firms saw something in me that I myself didn't until many weeks later, as none of them chose to place me in that awkward position. (Now that I think about it, I did pray, prior to the OCIs, that I would receive no offers but the one that was right for me. Of course, at the time when I prayed it, I assumed that my rightful place lay among the firms I met with.)
Although it pains me to admit it, a third reason for my change in outlook is what I discerned laid among my motivations for pursuing a legal career in the first place. I am by nature a very insecure person (though I suppose such is true of everyone, to one extent or another), and so part of my reasons for seeking to become a lawyer lay in the prestige and accolades that come with establishing oneself as a pillar of the legal community. Such impetus does not a meaningful career make, and it horrified me to realize that, once I stripped this prize away, the remaining rewards of private legal practice seemed, at least to the bias of my eye, paltry indeed.
I note with regret that I have rarely taken much wisdom first hand from sermons in my time, despite a life-long faith in Christianity. Much of my personal theology was forged in silent communion with my Creator, so perhaps it should be no surprise that many of the lessons that strike other parishioners as epiphanies are often to me things heard at least once before. Nevertheless, in my recent decision the testimony of one pastor stood as a cautionary tale for me, one that barred a path that I, if not forewarned, might have taken, never realizing that it was a detour until many years down the road. He was once a lawyer himself, and a judge after that, before he was called to serve as a pastor. Once of the greatest vices he had to overcome was his own hubris, his pride in the vestments and authority of his position. They say that Wisdom teaches gently, though her lessons can only be gleaned by those who are willing to listen. Experience teaches those who cannot, and though she is a harsher instructor, she is equally effective. By that pastor's testimony, I like to think that my ears were perked up just enough to hear Wisdom's gentle whisperings, before Experience could step in to take her toll.
Pride and the other Seven Sins--and in truth, all of human emotion, both good and ill--are strangely conflicted things. The most timid and doubtful among us are, paradoxically, often times just as prideful as those who boast of their virtues like crows cawing in the chill of the night. To a great extent, it is the secret pride harbored within our hearts--the belief that we are better than others, and the associated desire to live up to those expectations--that impels us to keep silent sometimes when we alone know the answer, for fear that, once uttered, our convictions will be proven wrong. In this way does pride often abide strongest in those who seem the most abject; it is pride that shames them in the most casual of missteps, a belief that they should be far better that makes them obsess over the mistake. In the same way, pride itself is born of insecurity: intrinsic to the belief that one is better than another is the doubt, the fear that one in fact is not. Pride, then, is not an end in of itself, but a byproduct of a desperate, voracious need for validation.
It is the same for the other Seven: Sloth is born of a need for convictions; without them, one collapses in on oneself. Lust, in turn, is born of desperation for love. Greed, for sufficiency. Gluttony, for satiation. Envy, for fulfillment. Wrath, for understanding.
Even my newly chosen path is not devoid of dangers. Pride can enter the heart of any writer who muses that his prose could bring Shakespeare to his knees; envy festers at the heart of every author who covets the success, financial or otherwise, of the fortunate and gifted few like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. But passion--love for the craft itself, and the creations that spring forth from it--can conquer even the mightiest of the Seven, if one pursues it for a purpose greater than one's own.
For me, that purpose is inextricably bound with the great intention I perceive in every stitch of the manifold tapestry of existence, the gentle touch of the Creator imbued in every living moment. For others, it need not be couched in the same religious or metaphysical terms. But I suspect the underlying conviction is largely the same. As for me, as I cast my mind's eye over the sum total of creation, I know that I am but the tiniest cog in a monumental machine whose ultimate end I may never fully see. Nevertheless, there is a place appointed for me within the construct; there is a role that I must fulfill.
And I, a cog gifted with the power to decide whether to turn or not, choose to do so willingly.
One, I've been hearing (and ignoring) a call toward fiction writing for a long time now. My law school experience has taught me that one should pursue the things that one is passionate about, rather than those things that one finds tolerable or mildly interesting. Mildly interesting is how I would describe my relationship with the law; I find its intricacies intreguing on an intellectual level, but it does not move me, spiritually or emotionally, in the way I've seen certain areas move others at the law school, professors and peers alike.
It would be one thing if nothing moved me; that would mean that I'm still searching, and some people have to search for their passions longer than others. But it is quite another when I find my attention drifting to storywriting in every unguarded moment, when I realize that I could writing for twelve hours a day (as some others gladly toil on their passions) and never consider it work (though at it's core, good writing always is). That is where your passion lies: where you would gladly do what others consider to be "work" every day for the rest of your life. Not because the task is easy--in fact, passion and ease strike me as two diametrically opposed concepts; it is in agon that our truest passions are full-born. Such conflict rarely arises in a life devoid of challenges--a life of ease.
Two, I forsook the path of a writer because I too greatly feared the archetype of the starving artist. Many who attempt to make a living as an artist fail in the attempt, if not for lack of artistic talent then for the inability to generate a proper income. In this light, I always viewed legal practice as a kind of safety net; even if my writerly pursuit refused to bear fruit, at least I'd still be able to pay the bills. In this, I neglected the biblical adage that one cannot serve two masters; one will inevitably spurn one, and adore the other. Beyond that, each master deserves his servant's undivided attention; in seeking to compartmentalize writing and practice alongside one another, I inevitably would have neglected both. It wouldn't have been fair to my clients if I labored on my writing in place of work product. Nor would it have been honorable to join a firm who welcomed me as a potential new partner, only to spurn their interest and investment the moment that writing alone proved itself viable. As I waited for the last of the OCI employers to make their decisions last fall, I wondered if I would have to place myself in the awkward position of turning down a summer offer not because I had already accepted another, but because my heart was no longer in it. (No refusal is quite the slap to the face as "No, thank you, but I no longer have the heart to become what you already are.") But perhaps the firms saw something in me that I myself didn't until many weeks later, as none of them chose to place me in that awkward position. (Now that I think about it, I did pray, prior to the OCIs, that I would receive no offers but the one that was right for me. Of course, at the time when I prayed it, I assumed that my rightful place lay among the firms I met with.)
Although it pains me to admit it, a third reason for my change in outlook is what I discerned laid among my motivations for pursuing a legal career in the first place. I am by nature a very insecure person (though I suppose such is true of everyone, to one extent or another), and so part of my reasons for seeking to become a lawyer lay in the prestige and accolades that come with establishing oneself as a pillar of the legal community. Such impetus does not a meaningful career make, and it horrified me to realize that, once I stripped this prize away, the remaining rewards of private legal practice seemed, at least to the bias of my eye, paltry indeed.
I note with regret that I have rarely taken much wisdom first hand from sermons in my time, despite a life-long faith in Christianity. Much of my personal theology was forged in silent communion with my Creator, so perhaps it should be no surprise that many of the lessons that strike other parishioners as epiphanies are often to me things heard at least once before. Nevertheless, in my recent decision the testimony of one pastor stood as a cautionary tale for me, one that barred a path that I, if not forewarned, might have taken, never realizing that it was a detour until many years down the road. He was once a lawyer himself, and a judge after that, before he was called to serve as a pastor. Once of the greatest vices he had to overcome was his own hubris, his pride in the vestments and authority of his position. They say that Wisdom teaches gently, though her lessons can only be gleaned by those who are willing to listen. Experience teaches those who cannot, and though she is a harsher instructor, she is equally effective. By that pastor's testimony, I like to think that my ears were perked up just enough to hear Wisdom's gentle whisperings, before Experience could step in to take her toll.
Pride and the other Seven Sins--and in truth, all of human emotion, both good and ill--are strangely conflicted things. The most timid and doubtful among us are, paradoxically, often times just as prideful as those who boast of their virtues like crows cawing in the chill of the night. To a great extent, it is the secret pride harbored within our hearts--the belief that we are better than others, and the associated desire to live up to those expectations--that impels us to keep silent sometimes when we alone know the answer, for fear that, once uttered, our convictions will be proven wrong. In this way does pride often abide strongest in those who seem the most abject; it is pride that shames them in the most casual of missteps, a belief that they should be far better that makes them obsess over the mistake. In the same way, pride itself is born of insecurity: intrinsic to the belief that one is better than another is the doubt, the fear that one in fact is not. Pride, then, is not an end in of itself, but a byproduct of a desperate, voracious need for validation.
It is the same for the other Seven: Sloth is born of a need for convictions; without them, one collapses in on oneself. Lust, in turn, is born of desperation for love. Greed, for sufficiency. Gluttony, for satiation. Envy, for fulfillment. Wrath, for understanding.
Even my newly chosen path is not devoid of dangers. Pride can enter the heart of any writer who muses that his prose could bring Shakespeare to his knees; envy festers at the heart of every author who covets the success, financial or otherwise, of the fortunate and gifted few like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. But passion--love for the craft itself, and the creations that spring forth from it--can conquer even the mightiest of the Seven, if one pursues it for a purpose greater than one's own.
For me, that purpose is inextricably bound with the great intention I perceive in every stitch of the manifold tapestry of existence, the gentle touch of the Creator imbued in every living moment. For others, it need not be couched in the same religious or metaphysical terms. But I suspect the underlying conviction is largely the same. As for me, as I cast my mind's eye over the sum total of creation, I know that I am but the tiniest cog in a monumental machine whose ultimate end I may never fully see. Nevertheless, there is a place appointed for me within the construct; there is a role that I must fulfill.
And I, a cog gifted with the power to decide whether to turn or not, choose to do so willingly.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Nightrunner & Knives (Now With Pictures!) ^__^
Read: Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows, Stalking Darkness, & Traitor's Moon
Reading: Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, Book One)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32
After the poignant Tamir trilogy, I was only too happy to look into Lynn Flewelling's previous work, set in the same world as the trilogy, but several centuries in the future. The first two books in the "Nightrunner" series resolves a plot thread alluded to in the trilogy but never completely resolved--it couldn't have been, it turns out, as it had already been resolved in a story written several years before, but taking place roughly four hundred years later. The plot along the series descends into dark waters similar to those in the trilogy, but overall there is more an an adventure feel to the series. It feels--and is, by design--more open ended. The overarching plot arc of the trilogy centered on the coming of age of the central character, and her fulfilling her prophecized destiny; once she did so, the story was clearly at an end (though like every good entertainer, Flewelling leaves her reader wanting more).
In the Nightrunner series, the adventures of the Aurenfaie spy Serengil and his protege (and eventual lover) Alec are far less rigid. I was surprised at first to find that the series had been appropriated by many Amazon.com user lists involving "gay fantasy"--my first impression from that affiliation cast dark romance-novel aspersions on the series. However, upon reading the books, I discovered that, as in the Tamir trilogy, the main characters travail a good amount before friendships blossom into something more. On top of that, the relationship between the two mains develops behind the scenes between the second and third novels, and while it features in the third novel, it is done in a low-key manner that suborinates the relationship to the story rather than the other way around. I'm no slash fan (not on principle; simply not my cup of tea), but the relationship is well-rendered and easy to empathize with. As luck would have it, the fourth book in the series is due for publication on the 24th of this month, so I won't have to wait too long for the next installment in this worthwhile series.
Until then, the first book in Robert Jordan's ponderous The Wheel of Time series should be more than enough to carry me through.
Reading: Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, Book One)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32
16081 / 139570
After the poignant Tamir trilogy, I was only too happy to look into Lynn Flewelling's previous work, set in the same world as the trilogy, but several centuries in the future. The first two books in the "Nightrunner" series resolves a plot thread alluded to in the trilogy but never completely resolved--it couldn't have been, it turns out, as it had already been resolved in a story written several years before, but taking place roughly four hundred years later. The plot along the series descends into dark waters similar to those in the trilogy, but overall there is more an an adventure feel to the series. It feels--and is, by design--more open ended. The overarching plot arc of the trilogy centered on the coming of age of the central character, and her fulfilling her prophecized destiny; once she did so, the story was clearly at an end (though like every good entertainer, Flewelling leaves her reader wanting more).
In the Nightrunner series, the adventures of the Aurenfaie spy Serengil and his protege (and eventual lover) Alec are far less rigid. I was surprised at first to find that the series had been appropriated by many Amazon.com user lists involving "gay fantasy"--my first impression from that affiliation cast dark romance-novel aspersions on the series. However, upon reading the books, I discovered that, as in the Tamir trilogy, the main characters travail a good amount before friendships blossom into something more. On top of that, the relationship between the two mains develops behind the scenes between the second and third novels, and while it features in the third novel, it is done in a low-key manner that suborinates the relationship to the story rather than the other way around. I'm no slash fan (not on principle; simply not my cup of tea), but the relationship is well-rendered and easy to empathize with. As luck would have it, the fourth book in the series is due for publication on the 24th of this month, so I won't have to wait too long for the next installment in this worthwhile series.
Until then, the first book in Robert Jordan's ponderous The Wheel of Time series should be more than enough to carry me through.
*
From keyboards to desks to pens . . . my acquisitive nature has turned toward the kitchen in its latest escapades. I've been biding my time to select my own chef's knife, and after a prolonged consultation with various knife forums, I chose a Japanese brand that's known for giving people the most bang for the buck: the Tojiro DP series. It's a 8 1/4" chef's knife with a core of high-carbon steel encased on top and on the sides with a layer of chromium-laced stainless steel, to add both durability and the reactivity of the cutting edge, which is rated at an approximate hardness of 60 on the C. Rockwell scale, a good deal harder than most european-style knives. It's the same technique that's used on the well-known Shun series of knives (endorsed by none other than my cooking shishou, Alton Brown), sans the damascus patterning. Also, rather than a price tag between $150 and $200, I got the Tojiro DP from Korin.com for a measly $49.95.
I also found a 4 1/4" folding cook's knife (santoku-style blade) from A. G. Russell's:
Both are razor sharp, and I picked up a honing steel from Korin.com to keep them that way as long as possible. Might have to look into investing in a couple of whetting stones before the end of the year.
I also found a 4 1/4" folding cook's knife (santoku-style blade) from A. G. Russell's:
Both are razor sharp, and I picked up a honing steel from Korin.com to keep them that way as long as possible. Might have to look into investing in a couple of whetting stones before the end of the year.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wordmeter & Tamir
Read: Lynn Flewelling, The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, & The Oracle's Queen
Reading: Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows
Redraft: Chapter . . . 4 of 32 (There's a reason for this. See below.)
After two years, it's officially back:
The blue bar represents the number of words in my novel that have passed from first to second draft. The current word count represents the first three chapter's worth. The second number was the final word count of the first draft--without a doubt, the word count will shift as I bring the book from first to second draft.
(Incidentally, if you look at the picture of my desk in the last post, you'll see a large stack of paper on the shelf beside the laptop, bound by three very large rings. That's the manuscript as it was at the time.)
Between the last post and this one, I actually worked my way into the beginning of the new Chapter 5, but quickly fell into a quagmire. The set up I'd used in the first draft was holey to begin with, but I'd sloshed through it simply to get to the good parts, and also to get the bloody thing finished. With the redraft, it's time to pay the piper, and had to bash my head against the first bit of writer's block I've had since starting the redraft. It seems that my abilities have grown a bit since the last time the block and I met, because it only waylaid my progress for a single evening. The price of my solution, however, was rewriting much of my redraft, starting with middle of Chapter 2, and the whole of Chapters 3 and 4. I put the final period mark on the new Chapter 3 this weekend, and work had me occupied until this evening, so I'll set pen to paper (OK, fingers to keyboard) tonight. I'll post another wordmeter once Chapter 4 is squared away again.
As I've mentioned before, my goal is to have a second draft complete by this October, so I write a fresh 50,000 words' worth of the second book as a part of NaNoWriMo 2008 in November. Law school, work, and other non-noveling responsibilities be damned. I'm adding another goal to the pile, however: by the end of Summer 2009 (which will include the bar exam, happy happy joy joy), I'll have the first book in as good a shape as I can manage myself, and then it'll be time to call upon my early readers. (You know who you are; and if you want to be, just drop me a line.)
I've told only one other person so far, but these books are a part of a currently three- to four-book series, with two prequel novels also planned. Each will be stand-alone (though truth be told, for what I envision the 3rd book to be, that may not be easy), so hopefully, if I can get any one of the group published, the others will have a fighting chance as well.
Reading: Lynn Flewelling, Luck in the Shadows
Redraft: Chapter . . . 4 of 32 (There's a reason for this. See below.)
After two years, it's officially back:
13474 / 139570
The blue bar represents the number of words in my novel that have passed from first to second draft. The current word count represents the first three chapter's worth. The second number was the final word count of the first draft--without a doubt, the word count will shift as I bring the book from first to second draft.
(Incidentally, if you look at the picture of my desk in the last post, you'll see a large stack of paper on the shelf beside the laptop, bound by three very large rings. That's the manuscript as it was at the time.)
Between the last post and this one, I actually worked my way into the beginning of the new Chapter 5, but quickly fell into a quagmire. The set up I'd used in the first draft was holey to begin with, but I'd sloshed through it simply to get to the good parts, and also to get the bloody thing finished. With the redraft, it's time to pay the piper, and had to bash my head against the first bit of writer's block I've had since starting the redraft. It seems that my abilities have grown a bit since the last time the block and I met, because it only waylaid my progress for a single evening. The price of my solution, however, was rewriting much of my redraft, starting with middle of Chapter 2, and the whole of Chapters 3 and 4. I put the final period mark on the new Chapter 3 this weekend, and work had me occupied until this evening, so I'll set pen to paper (OK, fingers to keyboard) tonight. I'll post another wordmeter once Chapter 4 is squared away again.
As I've mentioned before, my goal is to have a second draft complete by this October, so I write a fresh 50,000 words' worth of the second book as a part of NaNoWriMo 2008 in November. Law school, work, and other non-noveling responsibilities be damned. I'm adding another goal to the pile, however: by the end of Summer 2009 (which will include the bar exam, happy happy joy joy), I'll have the first book in as good a shape as I can manage myself, and then it'll be time to call upon my early readers. (You know who you are; and if you want to be, just drop me a line.)
I've told only one other person so far, but these books are a part of a currently three- to four-book series, with two prequel novels also planned. Each will be stand-alone (though truth be told, for what I envision the 3rd book to be, that may not be easy), so hopefully, if I can get any one of the group published, the others will have a fighting chance as well.
*
After I vowed to reread a bunch of the best books that I read last year, I went back and read a book that I bought in 2006 but never got around to: The Bone Doll's Twin, by Lynn Flewelling. Three days later, I'd gone back to the bookstore, and finished the following two books in the "Tamir Triad," Hidden Warrior and The Oracle's Queen.
Bone Doll finds Flewelling at a transitional phase in her writing prowess, I think. The first few chapters are passable, interesting, with a well-fleshed out milieu, but lack the polished prose that I've come to expect of first-tier speculative fiction. By the middle of the book, she seems to find her stride, and, though I picked up the book with the intent of redeeming myself for my Mistborn binge and learning Stephen King's lesson about reading both in big gulps and little sips, I couldn't put the book down, and rocketed to buy the other two books the moment the store opened. Reading the other books back to back, it was an exhausting but transcendent experience, highly recommended to anyone, fantasy fan or otherwise.
The premise is an interesting one: "For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Erius, a usurper king, claimed his young half sister's throne. Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala's ancient rival Penimar drains the country's lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line has become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line--and from Illior's faithful, who spread the Oracle's words to a doubting populace.
"As noblewomen young and old perish mysterious, the king's nephew--his sister's only child--grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess's daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny. Only Tobin's noble father, two wizards of Illior, and an outlawed forest witch know the truth. Only they can protect young Tobin from a king's wrath, a mother's madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother's demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder . . ."
The trilogy sees Tobin-cum-Tamir grow from a frightened, isolated boy to the warrior queen she was destined to be, and is filled with memorable and wonderfully rounded characters. But the interaction between Tamir and Ki, the low-born knight's son chosen as her companion, is where the story truly shines. As boys they are the fastest friends, brothers in all but blood, but once her true self is revealed, the nature of their relationship necessarily changes along with it. A beautifully written tale, the only thing I can really cite against it is that the first book ends without real resolution, almost necessitating the purchase of the following book or two.
There is much I can learn from Flewelling, so she now joins the pantheon of other authors whose works serve as much-needed lighthouses for me as I navigate my own work to its intended port of call. Because I still haven't had enough, I'm working through her Nightrunner series, which is thankfully set in the same world as the Tamir trilogy, though several centuries later. I'm currently on the first book, and have two more to tide me over until the fourth is released at the end of this month. After that (or in the interim between third book and fourth), I've broken down and purchased the first book of Rober Jordan's The Wheel of Time epic, The Eye of the World, and have queued George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series as well.
Bone Doll finds Flewelling at a transitional phase in her writing prowess, I think. The first few chapters are passable, interesting, with a well-fleshed out milieu, but lack the polished prose that I've come to expect of first-tier speculative fiction. By the middle of the book, she seems to find her stride, and, though I picked up the book with the intent of redeeming myself for my Mistborn binge and learning Stephen King's lesson about reading both in big gulps and little sips, I couldn't put the book down, and rocketed to buy the other two books the moment the store opened. Reading the other books back to back, it was an exhausting but transcendent experience, highly recommended to anyone, fantasy fan or otherwise.
The premise is an interesting one: "For three centuries a divine prophecy and a line of warrior queens protected Skala. But the people grew complacent and Erius, a usurper king, claimed his young half sister's throne. Now plague and drought stalk the land, war with Skala's ancient rival Penimar drains the country's lifeblood, and to be born female into the royal line has become a death sentence as the king fights to ensure the succession of his only heir, a son. For King Erius the greatest threat comes from his own line--and from Illior's faithful, who spread the Oracle's words to a doubting populace.
"As noblewomen young and old perish mysterious, the king's nephew--his sister's only child--grows toward manhood. But unbeknownst to the king or the boy, strange, haunted Tobin is the princess's daughter, given male form by a dark magic to protect her until she can claim her rightful destiny. Only Tobin's noble father, two wizards of Illior, and an outlawed forest witch know the truth. Only they can protect young Tobin from a king's wrath, a mother's madness, and the terrifying rage of her brother's demon spirit, determined to avenge his brutal murder . . ."
The trilogy sees Tobin-cum-Tamir grow from a frightened, isolated boy to the warrior queen she was destined to be, and is filled with memorable and wonderfully rounded characters. But the interaction between Tamir and Ki, the low-born knight's son chosen as her companion, is where the story truly shines. As boys they are the fastest friends, brothers in all but blood, but once her true self is revealed, the nature of their relationship necessarily changes along with it. A beautifully written tale, the only thing I can really cite against it is that the first book ends without real resolution, almost necessitating the purchase of the following book or two.
There is much I can learn from Flewelling, so she now joins the pantheon of other authors whose works serve as much-needed lighthouses for me as I navigate my own work to its intended port of call. Because I still haven't had enough, I'm working through her Nightrunner series, which is thankfully set in the same world as the Tamir trilogy, though several centuries later. I'm currently on the first book, and have two more to tide me over until the fourth is released at the end of this month. After that (or in the interim between third book and fourth), I've broken down and purchased the first book of Rober Jordan's The Wheel of Time epic, The Eye of the World, and have queued George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series as well.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Reprise: Pens & Desk, F-Word, The 3 "Re-"s
Watching: The F-Word, Seasons 1-3
Playing: The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32
Reread: On Writing, Stephen King
It's been more than a month since I posted pictures, and as I recently received what (hopefully) will be the last fountain pen I'll buy for quite some time, I thought it'd be a good time to check up on how much things have changed since then.
First, here's what the desk looks like now:
As you can see, I've doubled up on a few things, namely keyboards and monitors. After getting on rather well for a few weeks with the new Filco keyboard, my fingers were longing for the Kinesis Contoured again. The solution? I reattached the keyboard drawer from my previous desk and placed the Filco and trackball mouse on it. The Kinesis is the big black device situated in front of the monitors.
Because my main computer is a laptop, it can't by itself support the symmetrical dual screens that I've always wanted. The next best thing is to spread my desktop across the external monitor and the onboard laptop monitor. The two screens make strange bedfellows: the external is a 15-inch Samsung SyncMaster 151v, 1024x768 resolution, roughly six years old and a hand-me-down from my dad after I convinced him to upgrade to a new, more vibrant 19-incher. The Vaio's screen is an 11.1-inch LED-lit LCD, a whopping 1366x768 resolution crammed into that small real estate. That means that the dots-per-inch between the two monitors are noticeably dissimilar, so that text that looks just right on the external will seem microscopic on the other. I might try to replace the aging external with a larger and more lucid screen, but that's some time away, I think.
Along with the Pilot/Namiki Capless, the 2000 has won over most of the FP aficionados as far as non-traditional designs go. Originally designed in 1966 (the same year that a certain future-themed TV show began to boldly go) as the FP of the future, the design has changed very little in the forty-plus years this pen has been in production.
The pen uses an integrated piston filing system, so there's no mucking about with converters. The body is composed of Makrolon plastic with a wood finish, and the seam between the main body and the piston mechanism is invisible once the chamber is filled.
The tip is partially hooded by the metallic grip.
The nib is platinum-plated 14-karat gold, but has less flex to it than the Decimo. I decided to fill it with Noodler's Eel Blue. I realize I never gave a side-by-side writing comparison for the previous FPs, and I received a Pilot Prera (an intermediate FP roughly equal to the Lamy Vista in price and quality) since the last pen post, so here's a comparison of my four FPs:
From top to bottom: Lamy 2000 (Noodler's Eel Blue), Lamy Vista (Noodler's Baystate Blue), Pilot/Namiki Prera (Noodler's Eel Blue), and Pilot/Namiki Capless Decimo (Noodler's Bulletproof Black).
Playing: The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32
Reread: On Writing, Stephen King
It's been more than a month since I posted pictures, and as I recently received what (hopefully) will be the last fountain pen I'll buy for quite some time, I thought it'd be a good time to check up on how much things have changed since then.
First, here's what the desk looks like now:
As you can see, I've doubled up on a few things, namely keyboards and monitors. After getting on rather well for a few weeks with the new Filco keyboard, my fingers were longing for the Kinesis Contoured again. The solution? I reattached the keyboard drawer from my previous desk and placed the Filco and trackball mouse on it. The Kinesis is the big black device situated in front of the monitors.
Because my main computer is a laptop, it can't by itself support the symmetrical dual screens that I've always wanted. The next best thing is to spread my desktop across the external monitor and the onboard laptop monitor. The two screens make strange bedfellows: the external is a 15-inch Samsung SyncMaster 151v, 1024x768 resolution, roughly six years old and a hand-me-down from my dad after I convinced him to upgrade to a new, more vibrant 19-incher. The Vaio's screen is an 11.1-inch LED-lit LCD, a whopping 1366x768 resolution crammed into that small real estate. That means that the dots-per-inch between the two monitors are noticeably dissimilar, so that text that looks just right on the external will seem microscopic on the other. I might try to replace the aging external with a larger and more lucid screen, but that's some time away, I think.
*
I realized earlier in the month that I needed to cut back on the FPs, so I decided to draw the line on the FP I've been eyeing since the beginning: the Lamy 2000.
Along with the Pilot/Namiki Capless, the 2000 has won over most of the FP aficionados as far as non-traditional designs go. Originally designed in 1966 (the same year that a certain future-themed TV show began to boldly go) as the FP of the future, the design has changed very little in the forty-plus years this pen has been in production.
The pen uses an integrated piston filing system, so there's no mucking about with converters. The body is composed of Makrolon plastic with a wood finish, and the seam between the main body and the piston mechanism is invisible once the chamber is filled.
The tip is partially hooded by the metallic grip.
The nib is platinum-plated 14-karat gold, but has less flex to it than the Decimo. I decided to fill it with Noodler's Eel Blue. I realize I never gave a side-by-side writing comparison for the previous FPs, and I received a Pilot Prera (an intermediate FP roughly equal to the Lamy Vista in price and quality) since the last pen post, so here's a comparison of my four FPs:
From top to bottom: Lamy 2000 (Noodler's Eel Blue), Lamy Vista (Noodler's Baystate Blue), Pilot/Namiki Prera (Noodler's Eel Blue), and Pilot/Namiki Capless Decimo (Noodler's Bulletproof Black).*
I am addicted to cooking shows, though the current Food Network lineup (sans Good Eats and the cooking competitions) doesn't do it for me anymore. As a result, I've been watching shows from the BBC like Jamie at Home and Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word.
The F-Word is Ramsay's current flagship program in the UK, featuring a smorgasbord of competition (groups of amateur chefs trying to win a chance to work for / run Ramsay's restaurant for a single service), random food issues (from the production of foie gras to the reasons why people shouldn't throw used cooking oil down the drain), and the season-long ordeal of Ramsay and family picking, raising, and then slaughtering and cooking a group of turkeys (season 1), pigs (season 2), and lambs (season 3). It's strange how much one can pick up from just watching culinary professionals do what they do, though it's always sobering to remember that as much as the mind may pick up from watching, one's cooking skills only improve with actual cooking time. (Though a bit of book knowledge often goes a long way.)
The F-Word is Ramsay's current flagship program in the UK, featuring a smorgasbord of competition (groups of amateur chefs trying to win a chance to work for / run Ramsay's restaurant for a single service), random food issues (from the production of foie gras to the reasons why people shouldn't throw used cooking oil down the drain), and the season-long ordeal of Ramsay and family picking, raising, and then slaughtering and cooking a group of turkeys (season 1), pigs (season 2), and lambs (season 3). It's strange how much one can pick up from just watching culinary professionals do what they do, though it's always sobering to remember that as much as the mind may pick up from watching, one's cooking skills only improve with actual cooking time. (Though a bit of book knowledge often goes a long way.)
*
The first "Re-" is for Redraft. As you can see, I'm still on Chapter 4 this week (though, truth be told, I was just barely finishing Chapter 3 when I posted last week). I'm beginning to hit the wall in that I've begun to write into the point where I'm going to have to drastically revamp the plot, so I'm repeating the painful process of writing a section for the first time. I wholeheartedly subscribe to Ernest Hemingway's time-honored adage, at least as far as my own writing is concerned: "The first draft of anything is crap." (OK--Hemingway said "shit," but I never liked the word apart from its use as an exclamation ("Oh, shit!"), and I think "crap" sounds better to boot.) I think I might need to resort to working out a new outline for chapters 4 through 10 in order to get back on track.
The second "Re-" is Reread. I recently reread Stephen King's On Writing, or at least the portions about writing. I think the best books stand up well to multiple readings, and King's is no exception. I've decided to reread some of the best books that I've read in the past few years--The Name of the Wind, The Thirteenth Tale, Old School, The Princess and the Hound--this time not as a reader, but as a writer, picking each apart to see what writerly skills I can divine from each. Essentially, I want to figure out exactly what it was that fascinated me in the first place. I'll report on each one as I complete them, starting with On Writing.
On Writing should really join other classic fiction writing books like Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. It does two things equally well at alternating times: pass on the gems King gleaned from telling stories and unveil King's own life story. In a way, the two are inextricably bound; where does one separate the writer from the man? (I'm certainly the person least ideally poised to answer that question. I'm not even sure it can be done.)
One of the greatest lessons that King has taught me is to write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. That piece of advice contemplates Hemingway's--you write the first draft purely for yourself, to experience the story firsthand. The last thing you should be worrying about at that fledgling stage is what others might think if their eyes happened upon the paragraph you've just finished penning or typing. As I've learned through personal experience, that's one of the surest paths toward writer's block. You write with the door closed to symbolically cordon the world out--when you're still pathfinding your tale, you're the only audience that matters.
Writing the second draft with the door opens means that you should redraft with your readers in mind--in particular, what King calls the "Ideal Reader." For King, that reader is a real person, or at least his mental version of her: Tabitha King, his wife. But I think it needn't be. Essentially, the Ideal Reader is simply the reader you envision to be the one you'd want to enjoy your tale.
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The second "Re-" is Reread. I recently reread Stephen King's On Writing, or at least the portions about writing. I think the best books stand up well to multiple readings, and King's is no exception. I've decided to reread some of the best books that I've read in the past few years--The Name of the Wind, The Thirteenth Tale, Old School, The Princess and the Hound--this time not as a reader, but as a writer, picking each apart to see what writerly skills I can divine from each. Essentially, I want to figure out exactly what it was that fascinated me in the first place. I'll report on each one as I complete them, starting with On Writing.
On Writing should really join other classic fiction writing books like Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. It does two things equally well at alternating times: pass on the gems King gleaned from telling stories and unveil King's own life story. In a way, the two are inextricably bound; where does one separate the writer from the man? (I'm certainly the person least ideally poised to answer that question. I'm not even sure it can be done.)
One of the greatest lessons that King has taught me is to write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. That piece of advice contemplates Hemingway's--you write the first draft purely for yourself, to experience the story firsthand. The last thing you should be worrying about at that fledgling stage is what others might think if their eyes happened upon the paragraph you've just finished penning or typing. As I've learned through personal experience, that's one of the surest paths toward writer's block. You write with the door closed to symbolically cordon the world out--when you're still pathfinding your tale, you're the only audience that matters.
Writing the second draft with the door opens means that you should redraft with your readers in mind--in particular, what King calls the "Ideal Reader." For King, that reader is a real person, or at least his mental version of her: Tabitha King, his wife. But I think it needn't be. Essentially, the Ideal Reader is simply the reader you envision to be the one you'd want to enjoy your tale.
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The third and final "Re-" is Research. As in I've just been assigned to pull every federal district court case featuring the National Parks Service as a plaintiff or defendant from the last eight years. That, as a rough estimate, could amount to more than 400 cases, each of which I'll have to summarize and organize in a memo for my Prof by next week. Fortunately, I won't be printing the cases out, as the Prof said that a collection of the cases in electronic form would be good enough (and it ought to be--I'd rather not contemplate the irony of the Environmental Law Program killing reams of trees to print out 400 cases featuring the National Parks Service. If every scholar did that, the Service would be out of business--there'd be no parks to serve, because there'd be no trees to put in them!).
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