Twenty Palaces

Randomness for 9/2

1) Blind soccer championships, 2010. Video.

2) Gail Simone wants the comics industry to open their eyes.

3) Paul Krugman notices that Trantor is less dense than the state of New Jersey. That doesn’t even include all those Jersey Devils.

4) Normally, I’m not someone who laughs a crotch-kicks, but this sketch gallery of Batman being hit in the balls is pretty funny, even if just for the facial expressions.

5) What it’s like to be captured by Somali pirates. I put this here mainly for myself, so I can read it later.

6) “You don’t have to read my book to be my friend.”

7) Getting out of jury duty via Facebook.

I try not to duplicate content on my blog and twitter feed

But I’m making an exception for this:

Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site, The Daily Caller, has been trying to make hay with the Journolist story (refresher for folks who don’t know the story: For a few years there was a private email list for left and center left professors, journalists, policy people, etc to discuss ideas in an informal, off-the-record manner. Recently, many of those emails have been made public, and conservatives have been Breitbarting quotes from them and trying to play it off as a conspiracy of the liberal media. At the forefront of the conspiracy-mongering have been Sarah Palin and The Daily Caller).

It’s driving traffic to TDC, so I guess they’re doing well with it. However, there’s nothing in the world worth the self-humiliation of posting this hilariously stupid editorial about the attractiveness of the Journolist members.

Nevermind the usual juvenile obsession with liberals as filled with resentment and rage. The amount of time the editorialist spends talking about high school cliques is enough to get him laughed off staff of any decent news site. I don’t expect it from The Daily Caller, though.

Here’s a quick tip: Andrew Sullivan doesn’t live in San Francisco. Yes, he’s a gay man, and yes, he’s gotten older over the years, just like all of us. I’m sorry you don’t think he’s sexy any more–I suggest checking out Rentboy.com. I understand you can find some sexy young men on that site. Thanks, though, for mentioning the San Francisco waterfront, though. I wonder where that reference comes from.

Here’s another: being left or center left does not make a person an atheist. Thought you should know.

Last tip, because I don’t know how many more you can absorb: You’re a grown man. For fuck’s sake, get over the high school thing already.

God, it’s a whole new level of “pathetic.”

Things that suck

Originally, I was going to write about this somewhere private where I know I could talk it over with a few people I’ve known a while… sort of run through the issues here, but to hell with that. I’m just going to put this out as part of my public face.

Right now, a lot of rotten crap has been going on. What’s the number one thing that sucks? Me.

My wife and son are still out of town dealing with the death of my mother-in-law. I’m here alone, feeling adrift without my family. I’m also stymied by some other problems that I can’t talk about because they aren’t mine. Add the petty time-wasting of my recent Qwest situation, the uncertainty of my day job, personal crap I don’t need to see on the internet and so on, and you have one writer who hasn’t been able to write.

Writers write, yeah? That’s what everyone says. I’ve been writing, too, but I end up cutting or deleting it by the end of the week. Then there are also days when I don’t write anything.

I know I have plot problems to solve, but my head is crowded with stress, worry, and petty resentments. Somehow I need to clear some space, but all of my usual recharging activities–reading, movies, games–are wildly time-consuming. When to I get the writing done? When do I solve the plot problem that’s staring me in the face?

Those look amazingly like questions, don’t they? They’re not. Not really. They’re just expressions of my personal dismay and confusion. I really do want to be a professional writer. I really do want to write. I really love the book I’m working on; I swear to Pikachu it could be awesome. What I don’t have but really, really need, is the mental toughness to fall into story space even when I’m depressed, distracted or upset.

In a bit, I’m going to close my internet for a few hours, and I’m going to be less active online for a while. I need to find that hook inside my mind where I can hang a story.

The Scalzi/Wheaton Benefit Anthology

Check this out. John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton are putting on a benefit anthology for the Lupus Foundation of America. They’re accepting stories for a contest–with the winning story included in the antho. Entries have to be between 400-2,000 words, will earn 10c a word if accepted and have to be based on the crazy illustration posted at the link above.

Me, I’m working on a little story to submit (in my Copious Free Time) but my son (who’s 8 years old) was inspired to write a little something himself. It’s not long enough to meet even half the minimum word count, otherwise I’d submit it for him. Instead, I’ll post it here.

He doesn’t have a title for it (see? he takes after me) and I didn’t do a thing to it except type it out. Here you go:

Hi, I’m Wil. I’m the leader of the leader of Warriors with Oversized Unicorn Kittens With Wings And Extra Extra Long Spears And Infamous Clown Sweaters. We have set up a base on the top of a volcano. The Orc Warriors With Lots Of Metal And Round Hammer-Things set up a base down in the valley. They don’t go up because it’s a long walk and we don’t go down because we’re scared of heights.

Then one day I decided to go down and overcome my fears. I closed my eyes and moved down. After one second, I opened my eyes and turned to meet John, leader of The Orc Warriors With Lots Of Metal And Round Hammer-Things.

He threw his hammer-thing at me. He missed.

“Ha ha!” I said. “I have got you now!” I threw my extra extra long spear. It missed, too.

“Awww!” I said, and we went back to our bases.

The end.

Yeah, the illustration shows an axe rather than a hammer-thing, but I chalk that up to a misperception in the heat of battle.

Hope you guys are having a great day.

Five Things for a Friday

1. After weeks of trying to figure out how to fit exercise into my schedule (“What do I give up?” and “When would I have the energy?” being the most important considerations) I suddenly realized that I could squeeze a long walk into my schedule after I finish my shift at my day job, but before I come home. This week I’ve been walking the bus route toward home for 30-40 minutes, and it’s working well. Soon I’ll bump that up to an hour. It means giving up some reading time at the bus stop, but it’s worth it.

2. My feet and leg pain is back. See number one above. I haven’t told my wife about it because it freaks her out, but it’ll soon be obvious because…

3. Our Mothers Day jaunt will be a trip to the park. Lots of walking. Lots of greenery. She loves long walks outside and considers them an essential part of her spiritual self-care. Unfortunately, our son only ventures outdoors after an hour of whining and misery. But we’re doing it, for her. I expect to be in a lot of pain, and to be stuck in the middle.

4. Also this weekend, a very good, very old friend will be in a nearby town. Will he be able to visit? Will I be able to go visit him? No clue.

5. I’m pretty much committed to making a book trailer for book three. Nothing much is going to happen to it at least until the fall, after Game of Cages (aka book 2) comes out. No rush. I will, however, be watching a ton of trailers in the meantime to see what I like and don’t like.

Surprising 6th item: The pre-writing for The Buried King is at the absolute worst part–I have all the characters set and what they want. I know how they’re going to try to get what they want. What I don’t have is a clear idea of how all the conflicts are going to play out.

Truthfully, I don’t need to know this exactly, but I have to have enough information to be sure that the protagonist is going to have conflict with each of the antagonists, and I need to know that each conflict is going to be different. I’m not there yet, which means I’m ready to start writing chapter one but I’m also not ready. Frustrating.

There was supposed to be a surprising seventh thing, too, but I can’t remember what.

More on food and obesity

I’ve never eaten at a Claim Jumpers restaurant, and thanks to this article I never will. That’s two days’ worth of calories they’re serving there. The baby back ribs are 8 times the calorie load of a KFC Double Down!

And that doesn’t include the sides.

As I mentioned in a previous post, posting calorie counts is a sensible thing to do, although the evidence that it has any effect is pretty iffy so far. Posting calorie counts like these ought to be law. The article makes it clear that doggie bags are expected, but do people know that they need to split the Whiskey-Apple Glazed Chicken into three separate meals (at least)?

Thing is, picking a restaurant or ordering from the menu is a tiny decision (except at fucking Claim Jumpers). By itself, no big deal. As a habit, it is a big deal.

But a lifetime is built out of all those tiny choices. Careers are built that way, and many people don’t look at these choices in a systematic way.

This ties in with the teaching article I posted about a while back: For a long time, people were convinced that very good teachers had this ineffable, unmeasurable thing called “talent”. They were “good teachers” and they seemed to spring from Zeus’s head fully formed. It’s only recently that researchers are making a strong push to truly analyze the behaviors of talented teachers to see what techniques they use. Once the behaviors are well understood, they can be taught to everyone.

Which ties into writing, too. I’ve posted before about how I think of writing “talent,” and I think it’s very much a teachable thing (at least to a certain degree).

All of these amount to making numerous tiny decisions: Which side to order? How to ask the students to pay attention? How to describe this characters? Each task comes with differing degrees of complexity, but there are smart choices to be made and unfortunate ones, and the unfortunate ones drag you down.

That’s why I spent a great deal of time studying other writers. I needed to get past my ideas what what worked/didn’t work and see through to the successful strategies.

With food, though, that’s extra hard. So many of the strategies I see are about changes people can’t make (such as moving to a walking-friendly neighborhood), can’t afford (join a gym, buy more veg), feel like punishment (did I mention the gym? And the veg?) and fly in the face of their own physical demands.

A lot of it seems to be anecdotal, too. Jared ate veggie sandwiches at Subway! Bill gave up all white food! I’d like to see a detailed, large-scale analysis of how people who succeeded in losing weight did it, without the moralizing.

Well, we didn’t go to watch the tsunami come in

Mainly because there was nothing happening. So instead, I published my son’s website.

He made it with his buddy, and it’s all their own (with one or two extremely minor assists from me). Check it out… if you dare!

Because it wouldn’t be a blog without complaining

I still feel like crap. My throat is still raw and I’m exhausted all the time. There are so many things around here that need to be done and I can’t keep up with them all, especially since I’m running myself ragged. If somebody doesn’t vacuum the living room carpet soon, it’s going to rise up and destroy us all.

I’m still doing my writing, because that involves sitting and being in a weird trance state. Raising a kid, though? I’m failing. Not that he minds doing whatever the hell he wants–most kids get to watch a lot of TV when they get sick. Mine pops in Three Stooges and Addams Family DVDs when I get sick.

Tired. Bed now, if I can get the kid to wash up.

Whoa. Also: Sheesh.

Things have been mighty busy this week. I’m way behind on my blog reading, and we all know how important it is for a writer past his deadline to read blogs, yes?

I’m making good progress on my latest revision to Man Bites World, though. Of course it’s taking me longer than I would like, but it’s also more straightforward that I’d originally thought. It’s amazing how different things look when you think them out, yeah?

Which means, naturally, that my galleys for Game of Cages arrived yesterday. Tomorrow will be galley day. Fun!

Also, (to expand on a comment I wrote yesterday) I’ve been seeing a lot of people treating the Macmillan/Amazon.com conflict as the first step in the collapse of “Big Publishers.” I’ve also seen a number of people say that writers will soon be able to break away from their publishers and Do It All For Themselves! Hire an editor, pay for cover art, pay for a copy edit, buy a program that lets people design their own books.

Interestingly, there are very very few established writers who are eager for this to happen. A couple, but very few. Most established, professional writers don’t want any part of this business model.

Take me, for example. Do you think I could do this kind of revision to commissioned cover art?. Hell, no. I don’t have the skills or the talent. I’d have to hire an expert, which I can’t afford.

Consider also: After my agent (a former editor at Penguin) gives me notes, I send my book to Betsy Mitchell, editor-in-chief at Del Rey. I get two rounds of fantastic notes before the copy chief and copy editor even gets near it.

If Betsy were freelance, do you think I could afford to hire her? Do you think she’d have a window in her schedule for me, Newbie McFace-PunchingBook? Hell no. She’d charge a fortune for her services, and the people who could afford to work with her would be the doctors, lawyers and stock brokers of the world–people with high-paying day jobs who could afford to shell out the bucks for their hobby.

Besides it seems to me that ebooks are not the poison pill that will kill Big Publishing. Not when BP does so much that “indie” authors–even indie authors with a pro track record–would never be able duplicate all the things a big-time publisher does.

Doesn’t anyone remember when POD publishing was going to be the death of traditional publishers? Did Stephen King jump ship and start his own press, with editors and publicity staff he paid out of his own pocket (to keep the profits for himself!). He could certainly afford it. James Patterson has three people at his publisher who work exclusively on him and his books–has he hired them away to Patterson Publishing to run his own shop? Has J.K. Rowling, who could afford to pay her staff in six figures, including the receptionist?

No, they haven’t. NY Publishers add value. Maybe people want books to be cheaper, and maybe they hate rejection letters, but that doesn’t mean the companies themselves are going to fail.

Back to work.

Dammit

I was so close to finishing my copy edit this morning. This evening, maybe. I also have to work up the dedication and acknowledgements.

Still. So close. Ah, well. I expect I’ll make a couple last decisions after work today and put it in the mail tomorrow, well before deadline.

Also, there’s nothing like a rigorous copy edit to make you question the strength of your relationship with your mother tongue. Apparently, I need to work a bit on the difference between “each other” and “one another”.