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Just a reminder, I'll be in Austin this Saturday, May 17, doing a book signing with J. M. McDermott and Rob Rogers at the Barnes and Noble on 5601 Brodie Lane, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. If you're around, stop by and say hi. I don't know which of my books the store will have, but I'll sign anything, including stuff I didn't write.
10:54AM - Rambling About "Protecting Writing Time"
In discussions about writing, and about being an aspiring writer, you'll see advice about protecting your writing time. This is mainly about finding a time you can devote to your writing, and trying as best you can to make it a regular thing. Because once you get in the habit of writing regularly it can become a hard habit to break. (If you do it for a long time, you get like me, where if you don't have anything to work on you get cranky and depressed.) In this sense, protecting your writing time means that you're protecting it from yourself, from your doubts, from the "I can't do this, I suck" voice in your head (get used to it, 'cause it never goes away), from the pressure of your life and your other commitments.
But in doing panels, and just hearing from people who write as a hobby or a vocation or both, I run into people who have friends or family members who will try to interrupt their writing time for reasons of their own. This is protecting your writing time from other people, and as a writer it's something you might have to watch out for.
And I'm not talking about people who have valid reasons to interrupt you (see above, other commitments).
Here's a classic example: When I was writing The Element of Fire, it was my first novel, I hadn't written a novel before, and hadn't been able to sell any short fiction. I got a lot of comments from people along the lines that everyone who thought she was a writer would obviously have a trunk full of failed novel attempts so obviously this was going to be a failed novel attempt. But the most obvious jab came from a roommate. I was in my room working on the book, and she came in to ask if I was going to some get-together with other friends. I said no, probably not, because I was working on the book and wanted to keep at it for a while. And she said, "Oh, you know you're never going to finish that."
(I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd say that to anybody about anything, but she was perfectly happy to say it to me, and not so much when I did finish the book and sell it.)
This is a situation everybody has to evaluate for themselves, but if it helps, it's not a unique situation.
If you're looking for a place to donate to help the people in Burma that were hit by the cyclone, MoveOn.org is recommending the International Burmese Monks Organization, one of the few relief organizations that can get aid into the country and distribute it.
I guess he's lucky they didn't burn him at the stake.
I had an absolutely fabulous day yesterday involving an exploding transformer somewhere nearby in the neighborhood and no power through most of the afternoon. It had been raining all day, so the house was very dark, gloomy, and mostly inactive. About the only thing that was working were the fancy imitation faux-old-timey phones, which under these circumstances sure do make up for their lack of features. I decided to conserve the laptop battery for emergencies (rather than use it to stare at the not-working router or admire my collection of downloaded Joe Flanigan jpgs) and did some writing on paper and reading. I also spent some quality time brushing the cats. About the time I was trying to decide if using the fireplace to heat water for tea on a warm humid day was a crazy idea, the power came back on.
Iron Man was fabulous! That was absolutely fantastic. And I'm glad everyone was saying to stay past the end of the credits. That just added to the awesomeness. I'd like to see this one again before it leaves the theater, but I also want to see The Forbidden Kingdom again, and the other summer movies.
From DearAuthor: Reba Belle vs. Amazon update. There's more info in the comments. (I haven't had an Amazon account in at least six or so years, and greatly enjoy buying online from other places.)
I finished reading The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold this weekend, and really enjoyed it.
Here's some rambling thoughts:
( some spoilers for the series, not too many for Passage ) I was also trying to think what my favorite Bujold book is. It's usually a toss-up between Mirror Dance and Memory. Both are Miles Vorkosigan books, but both are very different. Mirror Dance has nail-biting action, Memory has this long slow build, where all the threat is behind the scenes until Miles realizes it's out there, and starts tearing the scenes apart to unravel the conspiracy. Barrayar is also a huge favorite. But I think her fantasy The Curse of Chalion is one of the best. I can't re-read it like I can the others, because the main character goes through some very raw and painful stuff, but the world-building and the magic work so perfectly.
This is a basic description of point of view, and a bit about my preferences in using it, which is probably going to be old news for a lot of people reading here. But I find it frustrating when I run into readers or beginning writers who don't think about POV at all, so this is mainly for my benefit.
From Dictionary.com: Point of view: the position of the narrator in relation to the story, as indicated by the narrator's outlook from which the events are depicted and by the attitude toward the characters.
Two common POVs are first person (the "I" POV, where the narrator is a character, telling the story as it happened to him or her) and third person omniscient, where the narrator shifts perspective from one character to another, often within the same scene.
I like third person limited best.
Quoting from the Wikipedia article on point of view: Third person limited is sometimes called the "over the shoulder" perspective; it shows the story as though the narrator could only describe events that could be perceived by a viewpoint character. ... However, some authors use an even narrower and more subjective perspective, as though the viewpoint character were narrating the story; this is dramatically very similar to the first person, allowing in-depth revelation of the protagonist's personality, but uses third-person grammar. ...
In third person limited the narrator is outside of the story and tells the story from only one character's view. The character's thoughts are revealed through the narrator. The reader learns the events of the narrative through the perceptions of the chosen character.
I like third person limited because it helps create the level of intimacy between reader and character that I want. First person might do that too, but I don't like to write it. I've only written one story in first person that I was happy with. (Thorns, the first short story I ever sold, to Realms of Fantasy back in 1995) I'm fine with reading books in first person POV, it's just not for me as a writer.
The big thing with point of view is that your viewpoint character can't know things unless she a) sees them herself or b) is told them by another character.
If your plot requires you to show the reader something that your viewpoint character (know hereafter as Sylvia) isn't present for, then you can switch to another viewpoint character for that scene or chapter. For example, chapter one is from Sylvia's perspective, chapter two from Fred's, etc. But Sylvia is still not going to know what happened to Fred in his chapter unless Sylvia was present or unless Fred or another character tells her. And even if Sylvia was present to see what happened to Fred, she still isn't going to know Fred's private thoughts, feelings, etc that were revealed to the reader from his viewpoint. Unless Sylvia is a telepath, she will have no more idea what Fred's thoughts are than you know what random passersby in the street are thinking. She can make guesses, which may be right or wrong, but that's it.
The basic mistake I seem to encounter most is that because the reader knows what the viewpoint characters have thought/done, the readers assumes that the viewpoint characters know it too. It doesn't work like that.
Obviously, in SF/F you can have telepathic or alien characters where you can play around with POV and do different things. And first person and third person limited are great for playing with unreliable narrators, where the viewpoint characters are either lying about the events they are experiencing or are perceiving events in a different way from the other characters.
I wanted to pass along this link from arcaedia: As reported in Publishers Weekly and elsewhere, President Bush's proposed 2009 budget eliminates all funding for RIF, which has provided more than 325 million books to underprivileged children since 1966.
I've been part of book drives for public schools who literally could not afford to have a library or to buy books for kids to practice reading, let alone fiction for them to read just for fun, in areas where the nearest public library was too far away to visit. Losing RIF is just going to make the situation so much worse.
You can support RIF by using their form here to send an email to your senators and house representatives (it'll fill their addresses in for you based on your zip code) or by making a donation.
I was looking for links about the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads (no reason, actually, I was just trying to remember the story) and found some interesting links along the way:
American Folklore tall tales, ghost stories, legendary women, heroes and villains, the devil, etc.
I just got back from doing a talk to the science fiction/fantasy literature class at Texas A&M University. City of Bones is one of the novels assigned to the class, so they had me come in for a discussion and questions. This is the fourth time I've done it and it's always a lot of fun. Though the class is in the Academic building, which is probably over a hundred years old and has strenuously, and to a large part successfully, resisted the application of central air conditioning. It was like that twenty years ago when I had classes there, and I expect it'll be like that twenty years from now.
I sent off another story to Black Gate yesterday. Crossing my fingers that they like it.
Wanted to link to this article on DearAuthor.com: The Story of Reba Belle: Rage Against the Machine Reader Reba Belle is subjected to abusive comments and harassment in the Amazon.com forums. When she complains about it and tries to rectify the situation, her account is suspended while the authors' accounts remain in good standing.
My allergies occasionally affect my hearing, which leads to things like listening to a TV commercial for the show "Bones" and hearing instead "Voles." Which would also be an interesting title for the show, but maybe not as evocative.
Updated the appearances page on my web site. I'm going to be in Austin on Saturday, May 17, doing a book signing with J. M. McDermott and Rob Rogers at the Barnes and Noble on 5601 Brodie Lane, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Come see me there! I don't know how which of my books the store will have, but I'll sign anything, including stuff I didn't write.
I'm also going to be one of the group of instructors at the one-day writers workshop at ArmadilloCon 30, also in Austin, in August.
Looking forward to the The Forbidden Kingdom, Iron Man, the next Stargate movie which doesn't show up until July, and the next season of SGA. And there's another new Batman movie coming out this summer, right?
Dossouye by Charles Saunders, which is now out in POD edition. It's heroic fantasy, set in the same alternate-world Africa as Imaro, and the main character is a woman warrior named Dossouye. This character really grabbed me when I read one of the early stories in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons anthology, so I'm really looking forward to the book.
A friend gave me a subscription to Nutrition Action Healthletter, which is a little newsletter put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and I wanted to recommend it to anybody who's interested in food, health, not dying, etc.
It looks like they've got a couple articles online, but the one that really got me was "Chair Today, Gone Tomorrow" (which of course is not online) for people who have jobs that involve sitting down a lot. It's about a study on non-exercise activity, which can be standing, talking, dancing, shopping, wandering vaguely around the room while thinking, any movement that doesn't involve sitting or lying down, basically. The article points out that even if you exercise half an hour a day, you might still be sedentary for nearly 23.5 hours, which is not good. And that you can improve your health, burn calories, etc, by making sure you get up and move around your home or office frequently during the day. Some people just do this naturally, without having to think about it, but a lot of others don't. Even doing little things like standing up when the phone rings, etc, will help. The getting up is the important part. And it's really important for people in bad health who physically can't do heavy exercise.
This is very similar to what I've heard from a few really good exercise instructors over the years. They said people will get the idea that if they can't go to a gym and work out for an hour, or can't get through a whole exercise tape routine at home, then it's hopeless and they can't do anything. While the reality is that any amount of exercise will make you feel better, even if it's a few minutes of stretching or walking around your backyard.
In the interest of getting some breathing room in my desperately overcrowded storage closet:
I'll send a free autographed hardcover copy of Wheel of the Infinite to the first five people who comment on this post.
You have to be willing to email me your mailing address so I can ship the book to you.
I may be doing more giveaways of other books later, as I continue to inventory and sort the closet that looked a lot bigger before I filled it up with junk.
ETA: Whoa, that was quick! Giveaway is over! The winners are ileliberte, spudgirl, sageness, princejvstin, and yud.
Just read Jessica Reisman's story Flowertongue at Farrago's Wainscot (a free webzine) and really enjoyed it. A fantasy, set in the 1800s, with orchids.
We watched "Star Trek: New Voyages: World Enough and Time," the fan-produced film written by Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves, that's up for the Nebula. I really enjoyed it. The special effects were good, the story was great, and they had enough real actors mixed in with the amateurs to make me not mind the amateurs so much. The neat thing was that they had tried to make it very close to the original, as far as the lighting, make-up, costumes, sets, the way the shots were framed. So it's weirdly like watching original Trek, only with some different actors and with the writers being able to do anything they want and not be handicapped by 1960s network executives.
We also watched the previous episodes, which weren't nearly as good. The learning curve and the improvement from episode 0 to episode 3 is enormous, though, and it's kind of interesting just to see their giant leaps forward in production.
We also got to see the game BioShock on the XBox on a 52-inch high-def TV. That was freaking incredible. The game really did the TV justice, and vice verse. It's set in 1960, and takes place in an Art Deco underwater city, built by a wealthy industrialist with Ayn Rand-like principles. The art direction is gorgeous (as morfin said, "I don't remember when this came out in the theater.") and you're discovering the story of the city and what happened to it as the game goes along, so it's really engrossing. I couldn't actually play it, because I was afraid it would screw up my bad hand again, but our friend played it for us for about an hour while we said helpful things like "You're out of ammo!" and "Hit it with the wrench!" I can't play it on my computer, which is a good thing because a) it would kill my hand and b) hours of time vanishing.
It's bloomed, but not completely leafed out yet. You can't see it from this angle, but it goes back about three to four feet along the top of the arbor.
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