Scriniary

I’m doing an unofficial Nanowrimo this year (I’m elizabeths over there). Since I’ve been rewriting last year’s Nano novel, I’ll continue with that.

Turning a zeroth draft into a first draft takes me a lot longer than writing the zeroth draft in the first place because my brain is a lot more involved in later drafts, so the chances that I’ll get 50k this month are pretty slim — I could just transcribe blindly, but that would be cheating myself since it’s a waste of time to not do the obvious edits (anything from fixing grammar to adding whole new scenes) as I come across them.

I’d at least like to get the entire second part typed up, and the holes in part one filled in, however many words that takes.

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Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter are mainstream mysteries about a woman who investigates scientific fraud for the Canadian government.

Dead Water Creek was not bad, but the depictions of life in a science department did not mesh with my experience, and there were a fair number of unnecessary bits, like the protagonist’s mother being an alcoholic, and her resulting bad memories of the city. They had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The actual scientific mystery, involving salmon, was interesting, too, and believable.

Minor nit: All but one of the named female scientists in this book are bi or lesbian, and that one is debatable. Considering that that’s a stereotype of female scientists, and it had no effect on the plot (everyone could have been sleeping with everyone else if they were straight couples, or if the men were also bi or gay), it seemed like a weird choice. Though a nice change from all the other millions of books on the planet where everyone is straight.

Cold Dark Matter was *much* better than the first one, at least once I got to chapter 7 or 8, and once I accepted that it was about astronomers, but not astronomy. In some ways the plot was preposterous (too many hidden motivations seemed like coincidences), but if I focused on the mystery and ignored the investigator’s reasons for investigating, it was just fine.

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(I skipped Farmer Boy and stopped after These Happy Golden Years.)

I hadn’t reread these since I was a kid, when Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite books for ages. They’re as good as I remember them, though the racist attitude towards non-whites no longer sails over my head.

It’s interesting to watch how the books turn from the “what life was like then” of Little House in the Big Woods (which Laura wasn’t actually old enough to remember — I think the family left when she was 3, not 6) into actual stories in the later books.

I like the later books in the series better now than I did when I was 7 or so. I always liked running-around-the-frontier Laura much better than sewing-a-new-dress Laura. That said, why did Almanzo put up with Laura long enough to marry her? She wasn’t very nice to him at all. One wonders if there were no other eligible girls in town.

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This is a fabulous book — best one I’ve read all year, and that seems unlikely to change. My only complaint is that it ended.

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Picked up Michael A. Stackpole’s A Secret Atlas because I like the author’s podcast on writing (The Secrets), and I have a policy against taking writing advice from someone I’ve never read.

It’s a solid epic fantasy with some nice politics and interesting magic. The first in a trilogy, it’s far from self-contained, but it sets up a very interesting premise for the second book (far more interesting than the premise for the first).

My biggest complaint is that there are no women in A Secret Atlas. Well, there are a few — maybe three who appear often — and one (Nirati) is even a POV character, but they all exist to support the men. And Nirati has a…problematic character arc. I think the author’s purposes could have been served in a less misogynistic way.

The book I read after this one was similar in the number and roles of women, but in that case it didn’t bother me. That book was set in our world’s history. A Secret Atlas bothered me more, I think, because the lack of and use of the female characters seems to come from the author’s unexamined assumptions rather than because it’s based in a patriarchal era of history. Basically, I feel that if you’re going to make up a society, you’d better have good reasons for lack of equality between the sexes, or at least a lack of important and interesting women in your stories.

The second book in the series looks like it’ll add another woman who may be more independent. We’ll see.

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Some months ago I asked what Cormac McCarthy’s The Road did differently from other post-apocalyptic novels.

The answer is “Nothing.”

The Road follows a man and his son as they travel towards the coast, years after a disaster caused fires that burned nearly everything to ash. There’s hardly any food, water, or quote marks anywhere. The man and the boy walk and walk and sometimes something almost happens.

Despite that, I read the whole thing in only two or three sittings; I kept reading to see if the characters would survive.

The quote on the front cover of my edition says it’s a tale of the “miracle of goodness.” I’m not sure how the San Francisco Chronicle defines goodness; it seemed more a tale of the self-centeredness needed to survive against impossible odds. I suppose they mean the goodness of the child, who wants to help other survivors, rather than that of the father, who knows they can’t spare the food or supplies to help others. Even so, it comes across more as a miracle of naivety.

I didn’t dislike the book, but it’s not even close to being one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Still, I want to read McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, though I see that one also suffers from a dearth of punctuation. (Anyone want to explain to me the reasoning behind that? Some sort of metaphor for the emptiness of life, or the landscape?)

I really enjoyed this blogger’s take on the book: In a world where punctuation barely survives, though he’s harsher on the book than I am, and I very much disagree with him about the writing. The Road is a very well-written novel, and the style (aside from the punctuation) is perfect for the setting. I suppose I’m missing some thematic resonance provided by the lack of punctuation, but mostly it felt like the author showing off how cool he is.

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I am way behind on book reports, but have read lots of good things in the past couple months. I do plan to write them up.

Links

Via zanzjan, the stats behind redshirt deaths on Star Trek. The chart is excellent.

I was amused by this article on whether listening to audiobooks instead of reading is cheating. I prefer to read them, but if I listen on tape it goes on my books read list, and even though I mark them as audio, I don’t consider it cheating (at least the unabridged versions).

Life

Busy weekend: Irish festival, Simpsons movie, dinner at the Turkish restaurant.

The festival was fun, and much bigger than I’d expected. We saw a couple different bands — though considering how long we were there, it seems like we should have seen a lot more, missed all the dancing, and participated in the attempt to reclaim the world record for largest number of people doing an Irish jig at one time.

The stickers they handed out to help count people say “Guinness World’s Record Largest Irish Jig Attempt,” which sounds more like it’s for the largest number of people trying to jig. Which is pretty appropriate.

They had music workshops, but I didn’t go — wouldn’t have wanted to drag my flute around. I suppose I could have brought my whistle. One booth had really nice whistles for sale, but I refused to be tempted. (If I took up playing again, I’d get a low whistle, because the regular D whistle is too shrill. Assuming the low whistle didn’t hurt my hands like the flute does.)

The movie was better than I’d expected, especially given that I stopped watching the show years ago because it wasn’t funny anymore.

Dinner (stuffed eggplant) was great, but I’d expected that.

Writing

I have a short story to fix the ending of, only I haven’t quite decided what to do about it yet. The story was meant to do A, but as it stands, it does B up until the end, and then switches to A. It would be easy to make the ending do B, and that story would work, but it wasn’t the story I meant to write. I think I have to go back and fix the rest of the story so the whole thing does A. Not quite sure how to do that, which is why it’s still on my to-do list.

My novel is plodding along. The bad thing about having gotten one novel to submission-ready status is that now I know how long it takes, and that every day is just a tiny drop in a huge bucket. It’s quite unmotivating. I’m beginning to see the appeal of short stories.

I think, also, that the writing process I was using on this novel and the previous-currently-on-hold novel is not a great one for me, so I don’t plan to do it again.

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Back from a writer’s retreat with Merrie Haskell, Julie Winningham, and David Klecha, where we swam in the lake, played minigolf, and, yes, wrote. I wrote the story I’d developed a couple months ago (~2600 words; my short stories are short), which was exactly what I’d planned to do. Though I’d also planned that said story would not suck. I suspect putting it in a drawer and revising it later will help a lot. (At any rate, I’m not looking at it until I revise the story I got crits on a month ago. And before that, I want to work on the novel some more.)

Listened to a zillion episodes of writing podcasts in the car, mostly several I Should Be Writing, two Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, my entire backlog of the creative writing podcast from AmericanWriters.com, and two Writers Talking.

Connie Willis had a great analogy on one of the ISBW’s. You hear people complaining about how difficult it is to find time to write. Others point out that you don’t find it, you make it. Willis said you carve it out of rock.

In other news, after three years, I’ve realized that shaming myself into working by posting goals publicly does not actually work. Sitting down once a week and figuring out what I should work on in the upcoming seven days is useful, but I do that just fine without posting about it. So the goals section is going away. I know you’re all crushed. Try to get over it.

(What works is deadlines, but you don’t get deadlines until you’ve already sold things and have contracts, which means you’ve already written things, but you don’t write things without deadlines [see carving time from rock]….)

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Links

• Lolcat-style science — My favorites are Michelson (I lived in a dorm named for him, my senior year) and the minerals.
• limyaael on science fiction and fantasy hybrids — Some good points. I learned last year that dealing with reader expectations in a setting that mixes the two is really hard (and that’s why the theater book is on hold).
• Owls of North America — Because you want to know what a great horned owl sounds like. One of the kids playing nocturnal animal sound bingo last night thought the screech owl was a horse. Barred owl’s a lot easier.

Goals for the past week
Crit novel(s)
Write/revise chunks 1 & 2.

Not as much progress as I would have liked, because I put in extra time at work and lost yesterday to reading. But Part I is in much better shape than it was a week ago, so progress has been made.

Goals for the coming week
Outline and start drafting a story
Continue work on parts 1 & 2
Critting

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Adventures in food labelling

Found at the grocery store:

Ready-to-Eat peaches — First, they still have to be washed, so technically they aren’t ready to eat. Second, what would constitute non-ready-to-eat peaches? Green ones? Blossoms? A potted peach tree (just add water)?

Canned tuna — After the ingredients list (tuna, broth, water), it helpfully warns, “Contains: Fish.” Yes. I should hope so. Perhaps they want to emphasize that it’s dolphin-safe.

Garden status

We ate our grape tomato this week. It was very tasty. If we’re lucky, the green tomatoes will ripen sometime this year (then we’ll have ready-to-eat tomatoes). We also had a couple very small heads of romaine (~ 5 leaves each), which actually looks like lettuce now. Our herbs and hot peppers have not yet achieved ready-to-eat status, though the basil is ok if we only want a couple leaves at a time.

I built a thread trellis for my morning glories, as the fence boards are too wide for them to climb. I should have bought flowers that bloom at night, though. I’m unlikely to see the morning glories very often.

Harry Potter

Reread the first 6 Harry Potter books. I timed it badly and left myself with two weeks to anticipate book 7.

Book 5 has really improved since the last time I read it, or maybe remembering that I didn’t like it lowered my expectations enough that it seemed better. Or maybe it was because I’d just finished 4, which is still my least favorite because of the gaping plot hole.

We saw the movie Order of the Phoenix yesterday — it was not good. Umbridge was spot on, but so many other characters did things that were out of character (or at least not supported by anything in the movie) that it was rather frustrating, sort of like watching shorthand. At times the dialogue-heavy scenes were boring.

Orson Scott Card has an interesting essay on Snape. He has some good points, although many of his arguments depend on figuring out what Rowling was thinking as she wrote the books, which I think requires too many assumptions about how she works and how skilled an author she has been at different times.

(I’m still fence-sitting on whether Snape’s good or evil. After reading book 6 the first time, I leaned towards good; after rereading all the books, I’m leaning towards evil. From a storytelling perspective, redemption might work better. If it were me, I’d think that’s too obvious.)

Random question: Where do British wizards go to school before they’re 11? It seems they must all be home-schooled: they don’t know enough about Muggles to have gone to Muggle schools, and unless there are a lot of wizard kids who don’t go to Hogwarts, there aren’t any wizard elementary schools.

Misc.

I finally got a library card, only 10 months after moving here. I’ve been spoiled — this is the first place I’ve lived as an adult where I have to drive to the library because it’s too far to walk.

Yesterday I went shopping and got my early birthday present from my boyfriend: a slipcover for the couch. It looks much nicer than the lack-of-cover we had before. Very thoughtful of him to get that for me. :)

Links

GalaxyZoo seeks people to categorize photos of spiral and elliptical galaxies because “the human brain is far better than a computer at recognising the patterns that divide ellipticals from spirals.” After you sign up, do a tutorial, and take a test, you look at photos and determine what they are. [Links to articles about it.]

PSA: Do not listen to your MP3 player outside during a storm.

Goals for the past week
Crit. Novel. Or. Else.
Write/revise chunks 1 & 2.

So far I’m staying enough ahead on the writing to make up for taking time out to revise. I have a goal date in mind, but it’s hard to estimate how long revising will take.

Goals for the coming week
Same as last week.

Filed by scriniary at 2:53 pm under weekly_progress_reports
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