Loeb & Linux (& Updated Wordmeter)

Reading: The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan; Poetics, Aristotle
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.

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

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.

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.

*

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.

Aphorisms, Associates, Zones, & Teleologies (& Wordmeter)

Reading: The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
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.)

*

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.

*

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.

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

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.

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:

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.