Chapter Three: Done; Keyboard Woes; Prepping for NaNoWriMo

Reading: Great Fool: Zen Master Ryokan: Poems, Letters, and Other Writings (Ryuichi Abe & Peter Haskel, eds. & trans.)
Listening: YUI, "It's all too much"
Redraft: Book One, Ch. 4, v.30.0 (on hiatus until after NaNoWriMo 2009)

Looking back through my redraft printouts, I came to the unpleasant realization that it took me a full (read: neither the-better-part-of-a nor even a-day-less-than-a) month to rewrite Chapter Three. Granted, I could only make this realization upon actually completing the Chapter Three redraft at roughly 12:08 a.m. this morning--an accomplishment which fills me with equally inordinate levels of pride and exhaustion--but the cold, clear fact remains that this will likely be the last chapter of Book One I shall rewrite before diverting my creative attention to my project for NaNoWriMo 2009. That I still don't know precisely which story will comprise that project only underscores the need to prepare before I type out the first word on Nov. 1st.

*

Before I delve headlong into the month-long distraction that is NaNoWriMo, I thought I should pause for a somewhat elegiac note. Early last morning, I came to the sober conclusion that my Kinesis Contoured Keyboard, despite having provided what I believe was the best, most ergonomically sound typing experience of my $1000+ foray into the realm of ridiculously priced keyboards, would have to end up on the eBay chopping block. The reason, infuriatingly enough, lies in its American build quality: the tiny membrane switches at the top of the keyboard, which control hotkey essentials like the function keys and the print screen key--the latter of which I remapped to open My Computer at a key press--have either gone slightly non-responsive, or, in the case of the aforementioned print screen key, hyper-responsive, resulting in my email responses being incessantly interrupted by a never-ceasing torrent of My Computer windows. Seeing as this particular keyboard ranks among the most expensive to have ever crossed my desktop--the only 'board to top it is the Topre Realforce 91U that I'm typing on right now--its failure after a mere two years of ownership becomes particularly distressing. Coupled with the battleship-like build I've come to expect of my Japanese-made keyboards, along with my previous abortive ownership of the U.S.-made Das Keyboard Professional, my outlook on all U.S. keyboards has pretty much soured. A true shame, as no keyboard quite stacks up to the Kinesis Contoured's design. Only its implementation leaves much--too much--to be desired.

(Even as I type this entry, my RSI started to act up, and I was forced to switch to one of the Filco Tenkeyless models--ironically, the one that shares the same Cherry brown keyswitches as the Kinesis.)

(EDIT: and two hours after typing this post, I'm switching the Cherry-brown Filco for the Cherry-black. I swear, if the Kinesis Contoured came in a Cherry-black model, I'd plunk down another $300 just to give it a whirl, despite Kinesis's quality issues.)

*

I'll follow up shortly with my progress in whittling down the three potential NaNoWriMo candidates this year to the one that will, with any luck, grow to 50K words (or more) by Nov. 30th. That and an updated entry on my writing desk, as soon I get it tidied up enough so that it won't break the camera when I take the picture.

Slow Going, Check's In the Mail

Reading: China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Rereading: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Writing: Book One, Chapter 3, v.30.0

Nothing much new to report this week. It's been a little slow going on Chapter 3, as the flashback scene is taking some time to bend in the direct I need it to go. (The problem is a common one for me when it comes to writing scenes with a specific end goal in mind--getting from A to B sometimes takes a few twists, turns, and false starts.) Odds are I'll have to trim down the scene before the end, but first I'll have to finish it.

In other news, I received word that the ASCAP check has reached the dean, which means I should expect a payout soon. It's technically the first money I've made off of my writing, so I'll be sure to keep the stub (and probably scan in the check before cashing).

Goodfellows, Another Article, Chapter 3, New CG Project

Writing: Book One, Chapter 3, v.30.0
Watched: Monk, Season 7

This week marked my start as a post-graduate research fellow, and things seem to be much as I anticipated. One exception is my on-campus work space, which is lighter on the space (read: virtually nonexistent) that I was led to believe. Not really a problem, as it gives me a rather compelling argument to work from home more often than not, which really is more conducive to editing anyway. So in the end, the others at the office get dedicated work spaces, I--the homebody--get to stay home, and my supervisors still get the finished product they're after. In a way, it's not so different an arrangement from freelance editing, except that I have a dedicated client base built-in.

*

Crazy as it may sound, with Article Two only recently added to the publication queue, I'm entertaining notions of synthesizing the content from my previous articles with indigenous cultural issues inherent to my fellowship position. It would bridge the gap between my previous scholarship and my current job, and because it's Center-related, would be a boon for the department as well. I've got the go ahead, provided I take care of my editing / cite checking projects first.

So let this be a lesson for law students: when one is writing articles, like when one is eating potato chips, it's really, really hard to stop at just one. (Or two, apparently.)

*

Because I spent most of the week getting the hang of my new position, I really didn't make much progress on Chapter 3 until today, and most of that was due to a new approach that occurred to me (and, fortunately, I wrote down) around bedtime yesterday. That's one of the reasons you'll never catch me without some form of notepad and writing implement: you never know where inspiration might strike, and--at least if you have a short-term memory like mine--if you don't write it down right there and then, it's as good as gone.

*

I suppose absence does make the heart grow fonder, because when I logged into the blog today, the CG result I'd posted looked a lot better than the last time I laid eyes on it. Coupled with the fact that I now have a scanner for penciled drawings, I might tackle another small but important task: CGing a new avatar pic for this blog and my other various presences on the internet. The current image, while a reasonable facsimile of my real visage, is not perfect, and it's always irked me that I've been forced to conscript another artist's work for my anime-styled image. (That this particular artist has apparently disappeared from the internet does nothing to assuage my wounded honor.) Within the next week or so, I will seek to rectify this situation. The result will, of course, replace my current image, once the deed is done.

Publication, Expedited Review, CGing

Playing: Professor Layton & the Diabolical Box (Nintendo DS)
Writing: Book One, Chapter 3, v.30.0
Drawing: Protagonist's profile image (hours wasted so far: over 10)
Watched: Monk, Seasons 1-6; Deji E no Bunpou

I received a publication offer from the Seton Hall University Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law this morning, and quickly set off a slew of "expedited review" requests for the other law journals on my list. This would normally be a simple matter, if I had used Berkeley's Expresso submission system; however, with a fee of $2 per submission, and with me submitting the article to over 100 law journals, I decided to go it alone this time and do my submissions manually, by email. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to send the expedite requests one at a time. In all, it took about two-and-a-half hours to send them all.

My goal in writing the article in question was roughly three-fold. First, I'd been tipped off to the ASCAP competition and cash award. Seeing as being paid for my writing is my desired career path, I figured that would be right up my alley. Second, I was disappointed that, by my own oversight, I allowed my first article to be published in an online-only journal. (In the long run, I did end up with a print copy of the issue with my article in it, but that's another story.) The moment I realized my mistake--which, come to think of it, was about a year ago--I vowed to write another article that would see itself print . . . literally. Third, it was a goal of mine in law school to publish an article that would appear as a search result in both Westlaw's and LexisNexis' law journal databases. The Denver SELJ isn't included in those databases--which, again, I didn't think to check up on until after I accepted the publication offer--so this subsequent article was my only remaining shot. Fortunately, the Seton JSEL is both a print journal, and one that is represented in both Westlaw and LexisNexis, so even if it's the only offer I receive, I'll still achieve the aforementioned goals.

The offer expires on Sept. 1, so if I don't hear back from any of the other journals before then, it looks like my second law article will find its home at the Seton Hall JSEL this fall.

*

I've managed to rework the first two chapters of Book One, but I realized last week that the third chapter will require some extensive reworking. I've learned that an optimal word-count-per-chapter for proper pacing is 1000-1500 words, a rule that I've confirmed with my own reading habits. (The rule can--and, in fact, should, I believe--be broken in the later, climatic chapters, but it rings especially true for the opening ones.) The first two chapters adhere loosely to these guidelines, but the third, in v.29.0, weighed in at 4600+. I didn't see a way to cut it down before, but on the latest reading, I could see how the necessary events and plot elements could be rearranged and condensed, so that what once required no less than three scenes could, potentially, be reduced to a single one.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to make much headway in this rewrite, not because of writer's block, but because I've been wrestling with a different creative muse--namely: CG.

I've always wanted to become competent enough an artist to render some scenes from my novels--perhaps even provide book cover art, if the opportunity for such an edition might arise. (Truth be told, I've also entertained the notion of rendering some of those novels in manga form, but the amount of skill and technique I'd need to acquire before that could become even remotely possible would probably take too many years on top of those I'd hoped to spend honing my writing skills. Ultimately, I'd say my only hope for seeing any of my stories in full manga form would be in the form of a licensing agreement with an interested publisher and mangaka. But if it's possible, I'll see it done before the end.) I recently upgraded my Wacom tablet to an Intuos4, so I decided to dedicate the weekend--and, as it turned out, the first half of this week--to acclimating myself to my tools and rendering a test illustration using the various CG techniques I picked up from watching a series called Degi E no Bunpou, a J-TV series that looked at the CGing techniques of several well-known Japanese artists.

I'm still waiting for a recently purchased scanner to arrive, so in the interim I attempted to create an illustration purely on the computer, sketching it out with the tablet, inking it, and then coloring it with Photoshop. The sketching process was relatively painless, and the inking process, while not without its own set of beginner's mistakes and setbacks, was mostly completed by Sunday. However, the coloring process has proven to be a daunting task, on several levels. First, my inexperience with Photoshop really shows through my attempts to replicate some of the techniques featured on Degi E. Second, my limited background in drawing (some classes in elementary school, and an introductory course in my last undergraduate semester) means that I probably lack the proficiency necessary to produce the results I'm seeking, even if I had mastered Photoshop's full potential. The ultimately result is that the illustration (which is really nothing more than a portrait of Book One's main character, for use on his character profile sheet) has taken at least 10 (or, less conservatively, 15+) hours so far, with a significant learning curve still to come. I'm hoping to have it presentable in the next few days, but I'm going to be transitioning back to the Book One rewrites whether it's done or not.

Perhaps I'll post a thumbnail here when it's done. (Or not.)

894 Forward, 420 Back

Today's Words: 1314
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.

New Formats and eBay

Watching: The Middleman, Episode 7
Reading: A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin

Yesterday's Words: 769
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.

*

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.

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

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.

*

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.

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.