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.

*

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 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.

*

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!).

Lawyer, Heroes, WEWY, Davids

Read: The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii), The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32

I found a hardcover copy of Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer in the bargain stack at Barnes & Noble, which was the excuse I'd been waiting for to look into this titan of the mystery genre. Interestingly enough, I had acquired the audiobook version of the book about a year ago, but had never gotten around to listening to it. After reading the first few chapters in print, I finished it off with the audio version.

Connelly has the genre down cold; his straightforward prose is the kind of writing I'd hope to produce if I ever tackle a book in that vein. Moreover, as far as my law student knowledge goes, he seems to have the legal jargon and experience of a criminal defense attorney down pretty cold. I found myself craving more--and discovered that a sequel, bringing Lawyer's Michael Haller and Connelly's mainstay protagonist, Harry Bosch, together. Proving that it never rains but it pours, the release date is Oct. 14--the same day the third Mistborn novel will be released.

*

I managed to play No More Heroes for a few more hours last week, raising my assassin ranking from 10th to 9th and trading in my beam katana for a new model. It's a great game with an irrepressibly cool style, for a great price--so if you have a Wii and $30 in your pocket, there's really no excuse not to buy it.

*

The World Ends With You (Subarashii Kono Sekai, or "This Wonderful World" in Japanese) is Square Enix's non-FF entry into the DS market, with character designs from the designer of Kingdom Hearts, and a unique "pin"-based fighting system that has players potentially controlling two characters at once--the main on the touchscreen with touch controls, and the partner on the top screen with the keypads. Add a hip-hop/J-pop soundtrack and Square Enix's usual brand of plotline insanity, and you end up with a game that may be among the best on the DS. Playing the entire game through could take more than 20 hours--perhaps even more than 30 if played for completion. The control scheme takes some getting used to, but it's a must buy for any Square Enix fan, or any gamer who likes games that force you out of the usual box.

*

I usually ignore a season of American Idol after I've had a good laugh at the (un)talent showcased during the audition episodes. I don't subscribe to the judges taking pot shots at people for their appearance or social awkwardness, but I have no qualms about laughing my ass off at tone-deaf delusionals who are utterly convinced that theirs is a talent for the ages, and attempt to prove it by puffing up their egos to, quoting the Doctor, the exact size of Belgium. Occasionally a member of the top 10 catches my fancy to the point where I occasionally tune in to monitor their progress as the finalists are whittled down.

David Cook won my unwavering audience with his rendition of "Hello," which I still find to be his finest performance. Any singer who can take on a well-known song like that and utterly own it--blowing Lionel Richie's original rendition not only out of the water, but into outer space--earns my interest, and I was pleased to see him consistently prove that he has what it takes to be a great performing artist--a great voice and a great ear for music--with or without the American Idol crown.

David Archuletta impressed me as well, having as good (or better) a voice as Cook and proving, with his late-round triumphs in song selection, that he may have the better ear too. That Archuletta is only 17--a full eight years younger than Cook--only makes his accomplishments even more praiseworthy. But Archuletta is, for lack of a better term, a love songster, and no matter how well he sings his genre of songs, Cook will always win more style points for his rocker stylings.

*SPOILER: For those hoping to enjoy the American Idol Finale, please do not read any further until you have witnessed the results.*

Cowell was mostly right the night before: Archuletta dominated the final performance show, consistently out-picking and out-performing Cook in each of the three rounds. (In my opinion, though, the second round went to Cook for doing more with his song than Archuletta did with his.) But it seems that, in crowning Cook the winner of season 7, America agrees with my appraisal of the genres.

Rock beats love songs every time.

Wii, Mistborn, Revisions, NaNoWriMo

Read: Mistborn & The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
Playing: No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii)
Redrafting: Chapter 3 of 32

In the latest demonstration of the fact that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the luckiest member of my family, my mom won a Nintendo Wii at a school raffle last week. And, in a demonstration of the fact that it is good to have said luckier family members, that Wii is now a fixture in my room. (The living room TV has no AV ports to spare. Mine, as luck would have it, does.)

I inaugurated the Wii with the one exclusive game that I've had my eye on for quite some time: No More Heroes, by Ubisoft. It's an action game with some interesting gameplay mechanics, a semi-otaku main character, and major style points for presentation. It also is one of the few games for Nintendo's hardware to sport a MA-17 rating.

Top all that off with the fact that it was on sale at Gamestop for $29.99, and you end up with quite a nice deal.

Not that I've been able to play much of it this week.

*

Instead, I picked up Mistborn from where I dropped it (read: lost it) in my room about two years ago. It was the second book by the precocious Brandon Sanderson, a new power in the Fantasy industry whose debut novel Elantris impressed me mightily. While Elantris was a stand-alone novel, Mistborn was heralded as the first in a trilogy, which I looked forward to, especially since my first novel is essentially part of what may end up as a tetralogy or quintology. Sanderson has a strong grasp of character and plot, but what impressed me the most was his ability to create a tightly woven milieu with its own internal logic and cohesion. Since the beginning, my weakest attribute as a writer has been setting, in which milieu plays an integral part, especially in speculative fiction. Studying at the feet of masters has been one of the greatest sources of improvement for me, so reading Sanderson's latest works have been a wonderful crash course on the subject.

Of course, I never read a novel for didactic quality alone.

His novels are also just plain fun. The plots are fresh and largely unpredictable (a positive aspect for me, since I can generally predict the plot of any given hour-long TV drama within the first 20 minutes), but nevertheless inevitable in a way that satisfies the reader. He can turn a phrase when he wants to, but he doesn't have quite so lyrical a grasp of language as some of the others I turn to for a good read.

In any event, I finished Mistborn over the weekend, and then, realizing from the copyright that it had been published in 2006, wondered if the second book in the series had already been released.

It had. In 2007.

So I rushed down to Borders (Barnes and Noble didn't have any copies; the paperback is due out in June 3) and grabbed a copy (when it comes to a really good book, who can wait for Amazon.com's free shipping?), and read it in just about a day. Which, in retrospect, was a bad thing, since the third and final book in the trilogy isn't due for release until October 14th.

Rationing was never my strong suit.

*

But, on the bright side, a strong influx of good narrative prose often gets the creative juices flowing on my part, so I've broken through the "revising" part of my redraft and have started working on the substantive, well, redrafting--that is, throwing out crap chapters and rewriting them from scratch. In the process of writing the first draft, I knew that the initial chapters would need some serious attention in the redrafting stage, but I ignored the whinny voice in my head because my goal was to have a completed (read: crap) draft come hell or high water. Now that I've got that, it's time to get a completed (read: passable) redraft for possible first reader feedback. (Possible, because if I still feel that the redraft isn't up to snuff, then it'll face a redraft of its own.)

I've also set the tentative goal of having the redraft of the novel completed by the end of summer, or at least before November, which is the traditional NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Lunatic wordsmith that I am, I've decided to draft at least the first 50,000 words of the second novel in the series as my part of the NaNoWriMo frenzy. (There are numerous sound industry arguments against writing the sequel to a novel that has yet to--and, therefore, likely will not--be published. To those arguments, I say: I have to do what I have to do, and if that means writing out a multi-book story arc to its conclusion before moving on to another, perhaps more marketable stand-alone, then so be it. Besides, one of my goals as a writer is to never publish a novel that requires the reader to be familiar with my previous work. I seek--and only time will tell if I can be consistent on this count--to have every book in a series work as a stand-alone novel in its own right, even if some of these "stand alones" may end up with something of a cliffhanger ending.)

And yes, my NaNoWriMo participation will take place during my 3L year at law school. If nothing else, law school drills time management and multitasking into your brain like few other graduate schools, so I don't think I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Well, that's enough blogging for one week. Back to the redraft.

Barely an Admiral

Gleaned this test from the podcast "Make It So." My score was 939 (or 93.9% correct)--what's yours?