From the Horse's Mouth

The Armpits Of The World

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:38:47 GMT

There are places in the world where no one comes. Ever.

I'm not thinking of remote areas of Antarctica or unclimbed summits in the Cordilleras de los Andes. Nor do I believe there are bits of jungle in deep, dark Ruanda that will never be seen by human eyes.

No, I'm thinking of the armpits of the world.

Most everyone passes them almost daily, those desolate wedges of land, nestled in the Y of a forking freeway or railroad. I suspect that the majority of passers-by doesn't spare them a look or thought. But to me these remotes, generally unused, almost unreachable wedges carry a deep, melancholy romanticism.

There is a confused tangle of freeway and railroad junctions just south of Amsterdam. That logistical labyrinth sports some of the most beautiful armpits. One of them is used by the City for storing dozens of huge empty wooden cable reels. They've even gone to the trouble of erecting a fence, as if anyone would ever want to come there, and if they did, be interested in a pathetic collection of sun-bleached, warped reels.

Another armpit has only a field of yellow dying grass. Every so often, a sad old horse, reminiscent of Eeyore, grazes there listlessly.

But most armpits are barren and empty; sad, unattractive places where no sensible person wants to come. Too noisy and polluted for picknicks; too remote for vandalism; too small for storage or development. As if the armpits themselves recognize their anatomical metaphor, the grass there is often longer and kinkier there than anywhere else.

But for some reason, these sad places of the world exert a wholly romantic pull on me. I think I'll take a tour next year of the world's armpits.

I'll have to remember to pack my ladyshave.

I've Got It Covered

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:29:30 GMT

Came home today to five consecutive moments of utter joy and excitement.

Moment of joy and excitement #1:
There was an envelope in my mailbox from Leading Edge Magazine, and that could, and did, mean only one thing: my contributor copy was here, containing my short story Diamond Sharks. And indeed, when I opened the envelope, the beautiful sea-blue cover appeared of issue 55.

Mojae #2:
Turning to the table of contents, I found that Diamond Sharks was the second story in the issue, and they'd come up with a lovely little one-sentence blurb for it.

Mojae #3:
Turning immediately to the story itself (of course), I discovered not one, not two, not three, but four gorgeous and perfect illustrations depicting key scenes in the story. Illustrator Michael Madder did an incredible job of capturing the atmosphere and essence of Oceana, the planet where the story takes place.

Mojae #4:
Staring at the illustrations, I realized I'd seen his style before, recently. Very recently. And closing the magazine, I discovered the best of the illustrations: a full-color picture of my main character, after his transformation, swimming the deep waters of Oceana with a wistful look on his face. (This also explained why the cover had this beautiful sea-blue color, obviously.)

Mojae #5:
And it took me an embarassingly long time to realize that this picture on the front of the magazine could easier be described as 'the cover illustration', which in turn meant that Diamond Sharks is the cover story!

Graduation Night

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:09:20 GMT

A moment of private cheer and happiness (and, admittedly a bit of gloating).

Not only is my wife bright, blonde, and beautiful, as of tonight she is also a certified masseuse. She passed her final exam earlier this evening. I'm almost as happy as she is herself. And proud, very proud.

Back to our champagne now...

Silly Subtitle #1

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:30:40 GMT

All foreign shows on Dutch TV are subtitled instead of dubbed (unlike in France or Germany, where, for instance, 'the actress who always does the voice of Courteney Cox' is a celebrity in her own right). Often, subtitlers get it wrong. Sometimes, they get it wrong in a funny way. Whenever I catch them at it, I'll try to remember to post here.

Yesterday morning, on one of his many cooking shows, Jamie Oliver was traipsing through a field to pick some nettles for his quiche. Squatting near a cluster of the yummy but stingy plants, he announced:

Now I'll just go ahead and pick it like a pansy...

And the subtitler, in a leap of creative interpretation, wrote:

Now I'll pick it very carefully...

More About What Happened

Thu, 29 May 2008 20:07:32 GMT

Let's not forget that writing things continue to happen. For instance, my fellow Codexian Cat Rambo, in her incarnation as editor of Fantasy Magazine, has (very nicely) rejected "What happened while Don was watching the game".

This was close but not quite right for us. Send something else?

The answer, obviously, is Yes. Now all I need to do is write a new fantasy story...

A Perilous Perch

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:06:11 GMT

One of the joys of working as a trainer at Capgemini Academy is the frequency with which I'm expected to be on the receiving end of their courses. Just tonight I completed their 'Vision and Didactic skills' course, one of their requirements for Certified Trainer status and a rich source of theoretical knowledge (Behaviorism, Kolb, Leary) and practical applications ready-made for use in my own courses. I've been a trainer (on and off) for 13 years now, but this is the first time I've felt like I have the beginning of a firm grounding in didactic theory.

One of the lessons learned at the course, though, came from an unexpected source.

In one of the activities in the course, each of the participants was asked to give a brief presentation on a subject of one's choosing. Since we were expected to be creative and take risks, I decided to try an improv theatre game with my group. This game simply consists of having the group tell a story. The catch is that the story must be told one word at a time. So with my group of five, by the time the first participant gets to say a second word, four other words have come in between and the story has flown off on a tangent. It's a game of responding without rational thought, of letting go of one's preconceptions, and other worthwhile things, but it's also jolly good fun, as the English would say.

My 'students' had crowded around one end of the long table, making it hard for me to stand centered before them and manage the process (i.e. point rapid-fire at each of them in succession to keep the single words coming). So I chose to perch my right butt cheek on the edge of the (narrow) table a few feet from the first student, and lean in, thus achieving the center position I needed.

The story-telling commenced, got up to speed, and resulted in the kind of hilarous, surrealistic tale it always does. The end of the game, but not the end of the exercise.

The purpose of the exercise, of course, was not to produce a weird little story, but to provide a didactic learning experience for myself and the rest. So there was a feedback round attached to it. Some of the participants praised my enthusiasm and ease; others had trouble understanding what the deeper purpose of this game could be in a real-life course. Most of this feedback was expected and thus safe.

But then X* started in on me.

What didn't improve matters was that X was the least favorite of my fellow students. Nothing specific, she just rubbed me the wrong way somehow. That may explain why it took me over a month to accept the lesson I learned from her feedback. Because when I listened to X at the time, my first reaction was one of disbelief and outrage at the pettiness of her comment, and amazement at the way she ignored all the important points about my game only to nag about her pet peeve.

So what did X say about my presentation, I hear you ask?

She said, or rather almost exclaimed, with barely hidden outrage in her voice, that in her opinion a trainer should never, ever, ever have the nerve and impertinence to sit on the table, let alone lean in and hulk over one of the students like that!

Tonight, over a month after that first training day, I've finally realized that there's a lesson for me here, and that lesson is this. My very informal, easy-going, laid-back style of teaching, while it has served me well over the last decade and a half, rubs some people the wrong way. Big time.

And after that lesson finally got through my thick skull tonight, I was suddenly able to listen to X with much less prejudice, and ignore the muck of things that annoyed me, and filter out the gems of her worthwhile comments.

I'll have to do some mulling on this one. Back to you, Jim.

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or in this case, the guilty.

It's A Game Of Give And Take

Mon, 26 May 2008 13:36:17 GMT

Interviewed in this week's VARA TV Guide, renowned negotiator Alistair Crooke illustrates the principle of give and take in negotiations by quoting a remark a Hamas leader made to him:

The Americans demand that we cease all violent action, turn in our weapons, and recognize the State of Israel, before they will enter into negotiations with us. I ask you: if we meet all these demands, what will be left to negotiate about?

Not to endorse either Hamas or Crooke's efforts at diplomacy, but the man does have a point...

Ego Epiphany

Sun, 25 May 2008 20:27:10 GMT

Discovered last week: my name is on Wikipedia! How cool is that, in a nerdy, egotistical kind of way?

(Also a very odd way to discover I was runner-up for a horror award in 2004...)

Emotional Geography

Sun, 18 May 2008 11:54:15 GMT

On its way to Leiden Lammenschans station, the slow train to Alphen passes a crossing. It's a fairly unappealing place, where the ugly housing developments of northern Leiden crowd up to an uninspired business district and an empty lot. At first, therefore, it was hard to explain the rush of satisfaction I felt when I passed the crossing that morning.

Only when I remembered a work night a few weeks back was I able to explain that rush. It had been a day of hard work to meet a project deadline. At about 8pm, deadline met and our work completed, my colleague and I had looked at each other and wordlessly agreed that it was time for a fancy dinner at our boss's expense. The Internet gave us the location of an Indonesian place in downtown Leiden, and we drove there in his convertible for what turned out to be an excellent rice table.

Over this railroad crossing.

And of course, this wasn't the only time a completely anonymous railroad crossing, street, square, or intersection had suddenly acquired an emotional charge as a result of an event in my personal life. It's happened to me countless times: after visiting a new friend in a neighborhood previously unfamiliar to me, that particular neighborhood acquires a strong but somehow unspecific positive charge. There is a table at Winkel Café that will always be special to me because I met Her there for the first time. But this effect is not limited to positive events. A bridge in eastern Amsterdam was the venue for an apocalyptic fight with my ex. And the A9 on ramp at Krommenie was witness to the totalling of my first car.

And so I envision a map of the world where proportions are not determined by the reality of sattelite images and surveyors, but by my own emotional landscape. A map where a table at Winkel Café takes up more space than the country of Hungary; where that bridge in eastern Amsterdam looks more ominous than Iraq; where my primary school, Het Wespennest, seems huger than Oxford and Harvard taken together.

And on that map, Amsterdam will finally appear as the center of the world I know it to be...

How To Write Eight Books A Day

Thu, 15 May 2008 13:41:11 GMT

It is a well-known fact that truth is stranger than fiction, but to paraphrase George Orwell, some truths are more strange than others.

For instance, there is a man in Paris who has written 86,000 books. Assuming extreme precociousness, and assuming he is around 45 at this time, that number amounts to about 8 books every day of his productive life.

This is even more amazing if you take into account that Philip Parker isn't actually a writer, but in fact a Professor of Marketing.

How did Prof. Parker accomplish this amazing feat? Not through especially fast writing, obviously. No, he has developed an automated method to collect public domain knowledge on any subject through Google, and collate that knowledge into book form. Through this method, he's created such fascinating tomes as:

The Economic Competitiveness of Groenlo*
Webster's Persian (Farsi) to English Crossword Puzzles: Level 5
The 2007-2012 Outlook for Lemon-Flavored Bottled Water in Japan

These and 85,997 other titles are available from the prolific "author's" website for prices ranging from the bizarre to the criminal.

I don't know if I should despise or admire this man.

* A tiny, insignificant village in Holland's extreme east, within sight of the German border.

Villa Diodati

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:48:54 GMT

Writing is, almost by definition, a lonely occupation.* Fortunately, that doesn't stop "us writers" from flocking together at the least provocation. Be it a signing, or a Con, or a workshop; any excuse is good enough to get together and act geeky. The latest occurance of this flocking behaviour was the second Villa Diodati Writers' Retreat and Workshop. And it was a marvellous experience.

As a result of meeting Luc Reid (my excellent roomie) at the 20th Writers of the Future Workshop 2004, I'm a member of the ever-expanding online Codex Writers' Group. Consisting mostly of American speculative fiction writers (or should that be "authors"?), Codex counts among its members several American expats, as well as half a dozen European natives like myself. Obviously, the European contingent of Codex has next to no opportunity to meet each other at stateside Cons, signings, or other events where Codexians flock. So last year the plan was hatched to get together on a somewhat regular basis on this side of the Atlantic. That plan grew into the semi-annual Villa Diodati Writers' Retreat and Workshop.

Immodestly named after the villa where Mary Shelley hatched Frankenstein and Polidori conceived of The Vampyre, the first installment of the workshop in October of 2007 was a resounding success. My wedding and honeymoon got in the way of my participation, but the reports on the first workshop by Deanna Carlyle, Nancy Fulda, John Olsen, Ruth Nestvold, Sara Genge, and Aliette de Bodard had me hooked. There was no way I was going to miss the second one.

So on Saturday 26 April, I drove down from Amsterdam to pick up Nancy, Ruth, and Sara at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and the four of us drove to the tiny village of Jaulzy. The other four participants John Olsen, Aliette de Bodard (who put together this installment of the workshop), Stephen Gaskell, and Jeffrey Spock were already holed up in the Gîte we'd rented.

First spot of good news was the village itself, a collection of a few dozen houses sprinkled against the slope of Aisne Valley, with a castle-like mansion, and an old church overlooking the village and the valley. Jaulzy, the church, and the magnificent blooming cherry tree, were pretty enough. Fortunately, they were not so interesting they'd distract us from what we were there for: writing!

Then there was the Gîte itself. Old, rustic, fairly spaceous, and with a big garden behind it, it was the perfect environment for relaxation, discussion, and consumption. Believe me, we had all three, and the latter deserves special mention. There were yummy cheeses, beers, wines, and other consumables brought by the participants from all corners of Europe, and there were delicious meals as well, cooked in the Gîte's kitchen by our more culinarily inclined members. John did something marvellous with duck breast on Saturday; Ruth made us sweat with very good chili on Sunday; and Jeff pleased our palates with his chicken and olive tagine on Monday.

All of this served as a "mere" backdrop though to the real "work" of writing, talking about writing, critiquing each other's writing, and generally having long, rambling, frequently hilarious conversations with other writers. And that's where the real value was.

We had a morning sessions on Sunday and Monday where we critiqued each other's stories. Everyone had uploaded one short story (or in my case, the first couple of chapters of a novel) a few weeks before the workshop, and everyone had had a chance to read them and make notes on what does and doesn't work for them. It was a delight to read them all and drink in the imaginative wealth of the others: Hindu Gods in London, monsters in post-war film-noir Paris, dreaminess in a Sky Castle, shadow voodoo in Alaska, ghosts in a Vietnamese temple, high-tech macramé mystery in the future States, and well-hung dwarves. (Plus my own werewolves in Amsterdam.) Reading them was great, and discussing what each writer might do to perfect them an excellent exercise. I got great feedback on my novel, from clarifying how many monsters are killed in the first scene, to expanding the loneliness and alienation theme into making it a road trip story, to considering YA (young adult) as the target market. I believe everyone came out of these sessions chomping at the bit to continue their work on the stories and implement some of the great tips they'd gotten.

Sunday afternoon was for brainstorming story ideas, and on Monday afternoon we had the Write-A-Thon: each of us beginning a new story based on the story ideas, first scenes, characters, and concepts we'd all thrown out after lunch. When we got together at six, I'd taken John's "desecrated cemetery at dawn" first scene, Jeff's word "downlode", and someones--I think Stephen's--concept of information stored in fingernails, and mixed them all into a story about the future of the Internet, and the man who holds that future in his hands.

And the nights were for the already mentioned delicious dinners, but also for sitting around the fireplace, having wine, and rambling. Rambling about writing, of course, about technique, and markets, and successes, and failures, but also about books, and music, and movies, and the world, and life. And the great thing was that our shared passion for writing spilled over into a feeling of mutual understanding, of kinship, that made conversation easy and safe, and friendship possible. It was impossible not to like these people, so I did the easy thing, and liked them.

After Ruth's efforts for the first workshop in Germany, and Aliette's organization of this one, the next Villa Diodati Workshop will be set up by Jeff in the south of France. I'm so going to be there!

* Save exceptions like I've remarked on in a previous post.

Two Down, Four To Go

Mon, 05 May 2008 08:29:11 GMT

Not bad. Six submissions on Thursday, two rejections over the weekend.

Late Thursday night, Podcastle rejected Conversation with a mechanical horse. No big surprise there.*
And on Sunday, nancyfulda over at Baen's Universe decided to pass on What happened while Don was watching the game. No big surprise there, either, and she writes the nicest rejections (especially now that I can imagine them in her voice; she attended the Villa Diodati workshop as well). WhwDwwtg--as it's fondly known--is now with Fantasy Magazine.

* Their submission guidelines clearly state:

Most of our weekly stories will fall between about 2,000 and 6,000 words. [...] Longer stories are difficult to fit into our upper time limit (defined rigorously as “The length of a morning commute”). We may run longer stories, but it will be a harder sell.

With Conversation weighing in at 10,000 words, there was little chance they'd pick it up. All I could hope for is that my remark about my own long commutes brought a smile to the editor's face.

Beaten Into Submission

Thu, 01 May 2008 12:43:10 GMT

One of the countless upsides of having been through the wonderful second Villa Diodati Writer's Workshop is another bout of writing motivation. So this morning I submitted:

What happened while Don was watching the game, recently rejected by The Town Drunk, to Baen's Universe, where fellow workshopper Nancy Fulda will have a chance to R-and-R (read and reject) it;
Queen of Diamonds, already on a 12-strike rejection streak, to The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest;
Dumb Son (the new title for Toby's Trophies) to Sniplits, a semi-pro podcast market;
and Beans and Marbles to EscapePod (podcast market for science fiction), Deep Red to Pseudopod (EscapePod's sister market for horror and suspense), and Conversation with a mechanical horse to Podcastle (the third sister, specializing in fantasy). (All three are reprint markets, so it may be a way to get some extra 'reader'ship and money out of these three stories I've previously sold.)

Wish me luck!

Picture This (or: A Puzzling Experience)

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:50:38 GMT

Cool thing to try on the web: Zumyn! What was once (about 15 years ago?) an original and innovative artform is now available for anyone with a large stock of digital photographs, a broadband connection, and some patience. Zumyn offers you the opportunity to create an enlarged version of any photograph you care to upload, constructed by puzzling together hundreds (or thousands, if you have them) thumbnails of other photographs. The results are, in a word, amazing.

For instance, check out the photograph this post opens with. It's a not-too-sharp version of me receiving my WotF 2004 award, right? Wrong! It's a mosaic of 578 photographs of the WotF 2004 week, my road trip through the southwestern States, and the WotF 2005 week. And how about the picture on the right? Is that the "you may kiss the bride" moment on my September wedding? Wrong again! This time, it's a composite of no less than 729 photographs of the Tenerife trip I proposed to her, the wedding itself, and our honeymoon.

After uploading the photo's, Zumyn takes only a couple of minutes to construct the mosaic. For entertainment, it saves a slideshow of the process, so you can see the site collage together your photographs and watch in amazement as your target image slowly emerges. And you can order enlarged prints of the final product, or even have a high-quality print on canvas framed and delivered!

How cool is that?

Time-Travel Plagiarism

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:54:34 GMT

Today I discovered that John Saul is a time-travelling, mind-reading plagiarist.

Commuting to my new job by public transport would take me twice the time driving does. Unfortunately, I don't have the company car anymore my previous employer gave me; my new employer offered me a car, but I was stupid enough to do the math on what it would cost me in taxes and other deductions. So since February, I've been driving my wife's car to work. (Try to picture in your mind a 6'7" body folding itself into a Suzuki Alto.) (And now try again without laughing.) Last week, the loud purr of its engine drowned in an increasingly deafening growl. As I could see with my own eyes that the Alto hadn't suddenly morphed into a muscle car, it had to be the exhaust. So today, I drove the Alto to the garage to get the exhaust fixed. And by the end of the afternoon, I walked back to the garage to pick it up.

My route to the garage takes me past a lovely little second-hand bookstore, and of course I can't just walk by without at least a little bit of browsing. A spine in the English-language orange crate caught my eye and dropped my jaw. I grabbed the paperback and took a closer look. But my eyes hadn't cheated me: this bent-spine, torn-cover, ancient John Saul paperback had been published under the exact same title I had in mind for my original NaNoWriMo project. And not only has he stolen my title, he had managed to do so at leat 30 years before I thought of it, and without my ever having spoken the title out loud, except to my wife (who swears she hasn't told any time-travellers).

But I got even with him. I bought the paperback, and got great satisfaction from the knowledge that not a cent of the transaction would find its way into Saul's pockets. Heh heh heh!

Alan Parsons Had It Wrong

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:55:28 GMT

We all know Microsoft is evil. Never mind the tons of brilliant software they produce; the mere fact that they're as close to a monopoly on office software as makes no difference, proves their fundamental badness. And in their lovely little song "Nothing left to lose" (from the magnificent "Turn of a friendly card" album), the Alan Parsons Project already proclaimed that "Nothing's good that uses bad". But now Microsoft has gone and confused this clear and uncomplicated view of things by creating Live Writer, darn them!

Live Writer is, in a word, brilliant. As a matter of fact, if you're reading this entry because you came across it while maintaining your own LJ, I recommend you download it right now and start using it. Live Writer is to blogging what the Rolls was to getting from A to B. It's a very slick-looking client-sided blog editor, but leaving it at that short description is like saying the iPhone is for talking to people. I could rave about Live Writer for the single feature of being able to maintain a reusable list of hyperlinks, with a user-friendly way of adding that annoying "target='_blank' " parameter. No longer do I need to go through old entries to find that hyperlink I want to reuse in my new post; Live Writer offers them all in a neat little list.

But that's not all. Not by a long shot. It offers a beautiful user-friendly method of adding maps (of anywhere in the world) to your blog (for instance, a close-up areal photograph of the building where I'm currently writing this entry). It accesses your existing blog, and gives you the possibility to edit old entries, whether they were created in Live Writer or not (or delete that embarassing entry you wrote two years ago). It offers WYSIWYG editing, and a visual way of adding special formatting, like tables, or quoted, or an lj-cut.

Yes, most of this is available in the web-based LJ editor. But not nearly as slick as this, and as user-friendly, and just generally cool!

Writing news:

I wish there was some. But although I may not have written much, I did, today, submit "What happened while Don was watching the game" to The Town Drunk. Also, my story "Beans and marbles" is selling like crazy on AnthologyBuilder, maintaining one of the top positions in the fifty best-selling stories. And last and best: the last four days of April will see me attend the second annual (-ish) Villa Diodati Expat Speculative Fiction Writers Workshop. Finally a chance to meet a bunch of my online partners in crime from Codex, work on our writing, and generally hang out in this insanely picturesque Gîte de Jaulzy in northern France.

On Second Count...

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:10:11 GMT

Four stories? Yeah, well, but that was ten days ago. To my great cheer and perhaps even greater flabbergastation, those ten days were enough to rack up 9 additional sales of my stories on AnthologyBuilder.com.

It's a bizarre insight into my writer's mind to realize that selling stories on AnthologyBuilder is at least as exciting as landing my new job with Capgemini Academy...

Select Stories

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:33:40 GMT

Being out of the loop for a while has its advantages. One is that small things can accumulate into huge surprises. I mentioned a while back that AnthologyBuilder.com lists four of my stories. Today I discovered that within 4 weeks of going online, there have been 4 sales of my stories to anthology buyers! At this rate, I'll make... Heh. Never mind. I'm not on there for the money. But the thought that someone, somewhere, picked my stories for their anthology, tickles. In a good way.

Meanwhile, On The Other Side Of The World

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:12:56 GMT

Now I did mean to take a short break after completing my novel in November, but this has gone on long enough! Okay, I have been preoccupied with finding a new job, going on a vacation, and teaching myself MySQL and PHP, but in the meantime, writerly things have been happening, some of them without my knowledge, I discovered today to my great cheer.

So let's get up-to-date:

More sales, this time to AnthologyBuilder.com!

More rejections, too ('Toby's Trophies' by AHMM, 'Prisoner of war' by Interzone, 'What happened while Don was watching the game' by ASIM)!

More work to be done on my first novel... Perhaps another 20,000 words for an acceptable version.

And last but not least: still more sales!

50,000 And Change

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:26:03 GMT

lj-mood: proud Done! A little before 4pm this afternoon, I typed the last few words to bring my word count to 50,000. Another 20 minutes and I had the word count up to a number the NaNoWriMo web site interpreted as 50,070. (There's a strange discrepancy between my own word count and that of the site.)

With NaNoWriMo behind me, and my first novel completed, this is a good time for a random list of Things I've Learned In NaNoWriMo.

Writing an entire novel in a month is easy, provided you get fired just before the month starts.
I have no idea how I would have written it all if I hadn't had the month off.
1,500 words an hour is a very reasonable speed.
It was impossible to understand what I was getting myself into before I wrote my first novel.
With 20-20 hindsight, it's impossible to understand what kept me from writing it all those years.
Turning a short story into a novel just because it seems like the theme would make a good novel is really, really hard.
Writing a novel just because the idea, the plot, and the characters have been running around in my head for eight years is amazingly easy.

Now, as with good pea soup, it's going to need a period of slow simmering. I'm going to let it rest for a while and write a couple of shorts, before returning to the editing and rewriting.

I did it!

The Sound of Breaking Glass

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:20:17 GMT

Over the last couple of days, working on my NaNoWriMo project felt like work. So much like work, in fact, that I'm thousands of words behind on the easiest possible production schedule.

So tonight, instead of pounding out more words that feel like work, I dug into my store of old, abandoned and never started projects. And found one of the first novel ideas I've ever had, including plot notes, a few characters, and even a three-part prologue. Including a title: "The sound of breaking glass".

So I took my laptop to the living to work on the notes in the commercial breaks of "There's something about Mary", to see if I could work the idea into a viable novel, and to estimate whether I could make up for lost time and do a completely different project.

And suddenly I found myself falling in love with the characters, and imagining story lines and plot hooks, and before I knew it I was writing a scene, and then another one, and another one. And the excitement of writing flowed into my arms and my stomach, and instead of forcing myself to continue I had to force myself to take a break.

So I guess I am indeed switching projects more than a week into NaNoWriMo, from a novel that was hard to write to one that is hard not to write, though I'm pretty sure it has no commercial potential whatsoever. What publisher will want to buy a werewolf novel in this day and age?

But to hell with that. This is the story I've been wanting to write for almost a decade. It's bloody well time I did.

Diamonds Are A Guy's Best Friend

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:00:46 GMT

It has been more than two years since my last story sale. But I guess I did something right when I rewrote 'Diamond Sharks' according to the excellent suggestions of the Leading Edge Magazine developmental editing team. A little over a week after submitting the rewrite, I got their emailed response. The subject line was enough to double my heart rate: "Story Acceptance - 'Diamond Sharks'"!

Finally, another story sold. And with NaNoWriMo going on, it couldn't have come at a better time! Excuse me while I admire my happy smirk in the mirror...

So Far, So Good

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:36:54 GMT

Is it morbid to call getting fired serendipitous?

Last Friday, in the last of a series of discussions with my employer about my future with the company, we concluded that there is no such thing as my future with the company.

Having worked for him as a product manager (for a failed product), a project manager (for a project that is continuing to fail up to this day), an ISO certification manager (a resounding success), and the manager of the software development department (not a failure as such, but not quite a resounding success either), the fact of the matter is that we've run out of things I can usefully do for him.

His conclusion was that it was not in his interest to renew my contract after December 31st. My conclusion was that I could live with his, given that the current job market and my resume combine into good chances of finding something better fast. My conclusion was affirmed when he offered, and I accepted, the month of November off for job seeking. Ten minutes later, he had his favorite headhunter call me.

Oddly enough, his main motivation to grant me the whole month of November was NaNoWriMo. I'd told him about my intention to take part, and with his usual appreciation of personal passions, he'd immediately taken to the idea. Under the circumstances, he felt it would be in my best interest to allow me the time I needed to write a book in a month. He looked almost disappointed when I told him I'd use the time to find a job first, and write a book second.

This explains both the fact that I haven't written a word on Friday and Saturday (having used those days instead to recover from the shock of getting fired), and that I suddenly have a sea of time and a very easy production schedule for completing NaNoWriMo. Budgeting four hours of writing time a day, I need to produce an easy 500 words an hour. Today, which was a rather slow day of writing, I ended up with 2,100 words in a little under 2.5 hours.

I'm wondering: should I stick to this easy schedule, or should I challenge myself and aim for 100,000...?

Groundbreaking

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:05:47 GMT

It is confusing how participating in NaNoWriMo can be so deceptively easy and so gut wrenchingly hard at the same time. I've worked out a schedule based on the actual hours I have available this month, and getting to 50,000 words by the end of November means I'll have to pound out 600 words each and every one of those hours.

The easy part: I've just done my first evenings quota, and producing the 1,200 words required of me today took me a little under 56 minutes. At this rate, I could write a whole 100,000 word novel in a month.

The hard part: One of the "rules" of the game is that I can only write during November. I cannot go back and read, and certainly not edit anything I've produced. I'm all with the NaNoWriMo masterminds that this is a good rule to promote rapid production, but I can't believe how hard this part is.
Usually, I'm a constant tinkerer. I like to go back, re-read what I've written, re-write, edit, and otherwise modify on the fly. I do this so much, in fact, that it's fair to say I've never produced a complete first draft. By the time I'm through with a first version, I've already tinkered it into second or third draft status :-D
But now I have to forego the tinkering and stick with the key-pounding. I think it will take me the first weeks to get used to the idea of writing a truly crappy first draft - if I ever do get used to it.

But apart from all this Angst, I'm very excited to have embarked upon this completely unreasonable experiment. It may turn out to be a terrible first draft of an illegible novel, but at least, I'm fairly confident now, I'll have written the damn thing by the 30th!

Positive Feedback

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:04:35 GMT

A while back, I mentioned that Leading Edge Magazine wanted to put 'Diamond Sharks' through what they call a 'developmental editing process'. As editor Audrey Gonzales explained in her email, this meant their DE department would provide me with a list of editorial suggestions for the story, and encourage me to submit a rewrite based on their suggestions. Not quite a rewrite request, but close enough.

Three months followed of nothing happening. So much nothing, in fact, that I'd scheduled a query email for today.

But then, last night, as if Audrey sensed my intention to query, their DE suggestions arrived in my Inbox. And as I read them, I voiced my agreement with each subsequent suggestion so loudly I startled my wife. Not only have they pinpointed every weakness in the story and suggested excellent ways to turn those weaknesses into strengths, they've also found time for some ego-tickling compliments on the bits that do work.

The first scene is very engaging. It provides just enough information to make readers interested in what is going to happen next.

The meeting between Varma and Brian on Oceana is delightfully awkward.

We love the descriptions you provide of Oceana. They are vibrant and lush and are, perhaps, the greatest appeal to this story. Oceana is a very real location within the story.

Those are very nice, but the best bits are in the suggestions for improvement. Of course it's better to show his changed feelings for her in how he responds to her hug! Of course I should move that info dump out of that action scene! Of course Varma's character should be deepened here, and her desire to go to Oceana foreshadowed there! And the best part is: every single one of their suggestions can be incorporated in the story by changing or adding maybe a dozen words on average.

Except the problem with the underwater lighting. I'll have to think about that one.

So now I'm practically chomping at the bit to start the rewrite. It'll have to be next weekend, unfortunately, but no later. There's no way I'm waiting until after NaNoWriMo!