Sunday, September 22, 2002
Lovely weekend. It is *such* a good strategy to go home when your parents have just come back from an ocean vacation. We had *oodles* of seafood, every day, and on top of that the brother got to Roanoke and managed to find a frame, so we were able to give Mom and Dad their anniversary present yesterday. In case it hasn't been mentioned, this was the present the bro and I put together last weekend while they were away (the last spate of car trouble...) by going through all their old pictures and pasting the best of them to a piece of matting, which is what we've been working on framing for a week. Fun but hard. Do you have *any idea* how many pictures people can take in twenty-five years?
But we got it done, and they loved it, especially Mom, who got a bad attack of the sniffles. And we were rewarded. With more seafood. Yeah!
I should be able to skip cafeteria food for at *least* a day.
And my car has a nice new battery and a patched tire and a new tank of gas, and so, except for the three papers due in the next two days, all in the world is sweetness and light. And I'm procrastinating the papers. So really all is sweetness and light straight up.
But we got it done, and they loved it, especially Mom, who got a bad attack of the sniffles. And we were rewarded. With more seafood. Yeah!
I should be able to skip cafeteria food for at *least* a day.
And my car has a nice new battery and a patched tire and a new tank of gas, and so, except for the three papers due in the next two days, all in the world is sweetness and light. And I'm procrastinating the papers. So really all is sweetness and light straight up.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Arg. I *hate* cars.
I only had two hours of work and one-and-a-half of class yesterday (of course, work was moving pigs, and if that doesn't strike terror into your heart you've never moved pigs) so I should have been able to get home early. Right? Wrong. First I went into town to shop for a frame for my parents' anniversary present.
Now, driving in Asheville, under ordinary circumstances, is No Fun if you don't know where you're going. Asheville is sort of the antithesis of a planned city, the infamous home of one-way streets, seven-way intersections, streets that suddenly become other streets while you're on them, loops, sudden turns, strange traffic lights, and bad parking setups. There's a sign on Patton Avenue that more or less sums it up. "To Clingman's Avenue" it says, but instead of an arrow pointing in some direction, it's got an arrow that roughly resembles an a.
Seeing people backing up in traffic doesn't even merit a blink.
That's under normal conditions. Yesterday they had the central square blocked off for a street festival, just to make things interesting.
Needless to say, I did *not* get a frame, but instead drove around looking for a nonexistant shop on an invisible one-way street. Eventually I gave up and drove home. I stopped on the way to call my father and tell him I was coming.
"That battery giving you any trouble?" he said.
"No, it's fine," I said. Hung up. Turned the key.
Guess.
So I went into the gas station and said that my battery was dead, and could he possibly give me a jump?
"No," he said.
"No?"
"No." The silence got sort of desperate. Eventually he said, grudgingly, "there's another station about a mile back. Maybe someone there could help you."
Lovely. I trudged out to my car to sniffle, but luckily - and I swear to God, I will never say anything mean about rednecks again - there was a redneck guy in the next parking lot over waiting on a load of wood who saw me with my hood up and came over. So I got the chivalry treatment and a jump from his pickup, while I stood by looking grateful and pathetic. See? Humans are all right after all.
After that I just had three hours of driving, praying that the battery wouldn't die and the tire wouldn't go flat and I wouldn't stall out at any lights and be unable to start it again. I drove the last fifty miles or so on an empty light because I was too afraid to stop for gas, in case I couldn't start it. Not the most stress-free ride of my life....
Incidentally, why is it the people with the "God Bless America" bumper stickers and the flags on their antennas are the most likely to be the people who drive at 40 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, right up to the point that you finally hit a broken yellow line and try to pass them, and *then* they speed up? I finished that drive feeling *anything* but patriotic.
I only had two hours of work and one-and-a-half of class yesterday (of course, work was moving pigs, and if that doesn't strike terror into your heart you've never moved pigs) so I should have been able to get home early. Right? Wrong. First I went into town to shop for a frame for my parents' anniversary present.
Now, driving in Asheville, under ordinary circumstances, is No Fun if you don't know where you're going. Asheville is sort of the antithesis of a planned city, the infamous home of one-way streets, seven-way intersections, streets that suddenly become other streets while you're on them, loops, sudden turns, strange traffic lights, and bad parking setups. There's a sign on Patton Avenue that more or less sums it up. "To Clingman's Avenue" it says, but instead of an arrow pointing in some direction, it's got an arrow that roughly resembles an a.
Seeing people backing up in traffic doesn't even merit a blink.
That's under normal conditions. Yesterday they had the central square blocked off for a street festival, just to make things interesting.
Needless to say, I did *not* get a frame, but instead drove around looking for a nonexistant shop on an invisible one-way street. Eventually I gave up and drove home. I stopped on the way to call my father and tell him I was coming.
"That battery giving you any trouble?" he said.
"No, it's fine," I said. Hung up. Turned the key.
Guess.
So I went into the gas station and said that my battery was dead, and could he possibly give me a jump?
"No," he said.
"No?"
"No." The silence got sort of desperate. Eventually he said, grudgingly, "there's another station about a mile back. Maybe someone there could help you."
Lovely. I trudged out to my car to sniffle, but luckily - and I swear to God, I will never say anything mean about rednecks again - there was a redneck guy in the next parking lot over waiting on a load of wood who saw me with my hood up and came over. So I got the chivalry treatment and a jump from his pickup, while I stood by looking grateful and pathetic. See? Humans are all right after all.
After that I just had three hours of driving, praying that the battery wouldn't die and the tire wouldn't go flat and I wouldn't stall out at any lights and be unable to start it again. I drove the last fifty miles or so on an empty light because I was too afraid to stop for gas, in case I couldn't start it. Not the most stress-free ride of my life....
Incidentally, why is it the people with the "God Bless America" bumper stickers and the flags on their antennas are the most likely to be the people who drive at 40 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, right up to the point that you finally hit a broken yellow line and try to pass them, and *then* they speed up? I finished that drive feeling *anything* but patriotic.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Ah. Another fine day of coming trudging back to my computer (nickname: My Life) smelling of pigshit, plopping down, and preparing to avoid three pages of Shakespeare paper, four pages of Descartes' philosophy paper, and at least a thousand words of science fiction novel. Isn't it lovely to have variety in a life?
I also did today what I should have done a week or so ago - went down to Auto Shop and did my damsel in distress act in hopes that the boys would be struck with testosterone poisoning and fall over themselves to help me. Well, actually, I sort of wandered in and said "Uh, my car's got a flat I want you to fix but it's too flat to move, any suggestions?" and they said, "Sure, take the air pig," and I did. Just as well. My damsel in distress act doesn't hold up well under pressure.
So now my tire's fixed, *and* the purse that I left lying around in the classroom was picked up and turned in by a kind, honest soul (I love this campus) and isn't going anywhere now, thanks to copious quantites of superglue. So it's been a pretty good day.
Oh, and work this afternoon? Postholes. I am the fence queen. It was okay, though, because I was working with cool people and we had some very strange conversations. Time flies when you're comparing concert stories.
I also did today what I should have done a week or so ago - went down to Auto Shop and did my damsel in distress act in hopes that the boys would be struck with testosterone poisoning and fall over themselves to help me. Well, actually, I sort of wandered in and said "Uh, my car's got a flat I want you to fix but it's too flat to move, any suggestions?" and they said, "Sure, take the air pig," and I did. Just as well. My damsel in distress act doesn't hold up well under pressure.
So now my tire's fixed, *and* the purse that I left lying around in the classroom was picked up and turned in by a kind, honest soul (I love this campus) and isn't going anywhere now, thanks to copious quantites of superglue. So it's been a pretty good day.
Oh, and work this afternoon? Postholes. I am the fence queen. It was okay, though, because I was working with cool people and we had some very strange conversations. Time flies when you're comparing concert stories.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
I had a rough weekend. Cars are evil. And that's all I have to say about that, lest I start the sobbing thing again.
It's been a rough week all around, really - two papers (finished by the skin of my teeth), the usual press of reading, and the usual press of work with complementary rain. Yesterday we were digging postholes until it got too wet, and then we started hauling cornstalks. Now, this wouldn't be so bad except that the folks who pulled the corn hadn't bothered shaking off the root balls. Once the rain started... well, they were *heavy*. And awkward. And sharp in strange places. By the time I was done I looked like I'd been mud-wrestling with a dozen samurai.
After that we lost the truck, briefly, but we found it again. That was lucky. My boss gets annoyed when we mislay equipment and, besides, my favorite jacket was in there.
I had a funny conversation with one of my co-workers. We were digging postholes and I was going on, in my usual scintillating way, about animal health and care and the way that a lot of the stuff we do in this country, like dehorning animals over six months of age without the presence of a vet or anesthetic, is illegal in civilized countries. (And if you think the US is civilized, you haven't talked to a Brit of late.)
"Why do we dehorn calves anyway?" she said.
"Oh," I said, tamping away at the post, "so they don't kill each other when they fight."
"But they wouldn't do that!"
"Yes they would," I said, mildly surprised.
We went around on this for a while, she insisting that animals wouldn't "do that" to each other, me trying patiently to explain that yes, they would. The way I see it, they aren't really vicious. They just don't have any sympathy, or empathy, no way to connect *their* pain (this hurts when I do it) to anyone else's pain (therefore, it must hurt when I do *this* to her) except in the most rudimentary of fashions. And they don't, as far as I can tell, understand death at all. So, yes, we detusk and dehorn them so they won't damage each other when they fight.
"But there's lots of people who're worse, and who don't have any sympathy or empathy or anything," she said.
"Yes," I said, rather blankly.
It seems to me now that we were talking along different train tracks. She was used to thinking of animals in a Disney, wonders-of-the-animal world fashion, and went instinctively on the defensive when I started in on that, because she thought I was going by the industrial, animals-as-machines model. I wasn't. I like animals better than people, generally. I just don't see them as either furry humans *or* machines; I think both ways are somewhat demeaning to the animal.
I forget that I'm not normal. Silly child. Hit me with a fish.
It's been a rough week all around, really - two papers (finished by the skin of my teeth), the usual press of reading, and the usual press of work with complementary rain. Yesterday we were digging postholes until it got too wet, and then we started hauling cornstalks. Now, this wouldn't be so bad except that the folks who pulled the corn hadn't bothered shaking off the root balls. Once the rain started... well, they were *heavy*. And awkward. And sharp in strange places. By the time I was done I looked like I'd been mud-wrestling with a dozen samurai.
After that we lost the truck, briefly, but we found it again. That was lucky. My boss gets annoyed when we mislay equipment and, besides, my favorite jacket was in there.
I had a funny conversation with one of my co-workers. We were digging postholes and I was going on, in my usual scintillating way, about animal health and care and the way that a lot of the stuff we do in this country, like dehorning animals over six months of age without the presence of a vet or anesthetic, is illegal in civilized countries. (And if you think the US is civilized, you haven't talked to a Brit of late.)
"Why do we dehorn calves anyway?" she said.
"Oh," I said, tamping away at the post, "so they don't kill each other when they fight."
"But they wouldn't do that!"
"Yes they would," I said, mildly surprised.
We went around on this for a while, she insisting that animals wouldn't "do that" to each other, me trying patiently to explain that yes, they would. The way I see it, they aren't really vicious. They just don't have any sympathy, or empathy, no way to connect *their* pain (this hurts when I do it) to anyone else's pain (therefore, it must hurt when I do *this* to her) except in the most rudimentary of fashions. And they don't, as far as I can tell, understand death at all. So, yes, we detusk and dehorn them so they won't damage each other when they fight.
"But there's lots of people who're worse, and who don't have any sympathy or empathy or anything," she said.
"Yes," I said, rather blankly.
It seems to me now that we were talking along different train tracks. She was used to thinking of animals in a Disney, wonders-of-the-animal world fashion, and went instinctively on the defensive when I started in on that, because she thought I was going by the industrial, animals-as-machines model. I wasn't. I like animals better than people, generally. I just don't see them as either furry humans *or* machines; I think both ways are somewhat demeaning to the animal.
I forget that I'm not normal. Silly child. Hit me with a fish.
Friday, September 13, 2002
Whoa. Long time no post.
My excuse for this is I'm back at school and working hard. Eighteen hours of class and sixteen hours of work a week, plus 70 hours of community service to get done before I graduate. Also, my car has a flat and my contact lense cracked open in my eye and I have a list of things that *must* be done that's about as long as my arm.
Also, I'm lazy.
But I will try and get back in the habit of doing this. The whole reason I started blogging was because I'd never been good at keeping a journal, and I wanted to be, damn it. I am *not* giving up. (Yet.)
The only major news (aside from back-to-school) is that the Novel is finally finished. Because I was a readmit I had to show up early to register and so ended up hanging around with nothing to do for about four days before school started. I determined that I was going to finish revising the damned thing before I started school. Ended up with a bad back, a painful wrist, and a near-permanent headache: but I *did* it. 298 printed pages. Incidentally, "laser printer" is now at the *top* of the when-I-have-money list. It took my poor Inkjet seven hours and two computer crashes.
I mailed it to DAW books and have been trying not to bite my fingernails off ever since, or at least to do so quietly and in private.
I gave myself a week or two to recuperate and have so been working on the *second* novel since Sunday. The current count is at 6900. Not bad. Not good either, but not bad. I've located a really nifty program called Z-Write which does a really good job with chapters, abortive drafts, glossaries, and all the assorted clutter I collect when I write. Nice to have it all in a single document.
I'm going to describe Saturday's proceedings, since I may well want to reference them later:
1) Dug out my background materials. This was two abortive drafts (I collect abortive story drafts. I just can't seem to help it), seven minor character sketches, several scribbled notebook pages worth of background, and six or seven index cards of scenes I'd scribbled down, generally when I was working on the first novel.
2) Sat and looked at them for a while.
3) Organized my scribbling notebook. This is what's referred to, in the writing business, as "cat-vacuuming".
4) Picked up my scribbling notebook and brainstormed, primarily on the villains, who weren't making it into the scene stuff as much as I'd like. Decided on a setting for their "base", which showed up in the last scenes, and then outlined their operations and the sort of people I was looking at, then outlining, from this, the character of the head of the organization. Then I brainstormed on what had happened to my characters in the year between this and the last book, and listed some potential subplots.
5) By this point I had some good ideas for scenes, so I wrote those on index cards. Then I tossed in some events I hadn't really scened but knew were going to happen, and wrote them down, too.
6) Organized the index cards into a timeline. This was harder than it looked. The novel is primarily straightforward (unlike the last one, which lived and breathed flashbacks), at least, for the moment, but I had to struggle to figure out where and when things happened. I still have two "floating" scenes that could happen at any point, but at least I don't have ten any more.
7) Pegged the timeline of cards up on a corkboard. Looked at it for a bit, settling the major holes between one set of happenings and another into my head. No miracle solutions occurred, so I let them vegetate in there.
8) Went to dinner.
The point of all this business with cards is to overcome my major writing problem (well, one of them), which is plotting. I don't plot. I converse. If I had my way every book would be one never-ending conversation, with maybe a few events tossed in here and there, in a sketchy way, to keep the characters in with something to talk about. However, never-ending conversations don't really *work* as stories, so I've had to learn to plot. The way I did it last time through was to write a lot of really bad stuff in an effort to bridge the spaces between cool conversations, which is why I spent a year on bad drafts and another year on revisions. It wasn't so much that I wrote a novel. It was more like an archeological expedition. I'm hoping that, by plotting the story out beforehand, I can minimize the amount of stuff I end up throwing out.
(Stats for the last novel:
Finished length: 81,000 words (computer count)
Abortive drafts and cut scenes: roughly 254,000 words.
See?
And, yes, I'm a packrat. I save everything I write, even if it's something I'm cutting. So sue me.)
So far it's working. I'd thought up a scene or two by the time I'd finished dinner, and having the board right out there helps: I tend to peg a card or two up every few days, shift things around, note down ideas that come to me as I'm writing, generally meddle. It's nice, and it's working a lot better than outlining, which didn't work well for me at all.
And now it's time to change my pants. I'm on the pig crew, mornings, and we were doing castrations today. Guys are now free to cross their legs and cringe. Just don't do it while you're actually castrating the pigs - I can testify, from watching a male co-worker this morning, that it's a bloody awkward position to work from.
My excuse for this is I'm back at school and working hard. Eighteen hours of class and sixteen hours of work a week, plus 70 hours of community service to get done before I graduate. Also, my car has a flat and my contact lense cracked open in my eye and I have a list of things that *must* be done that's about as long as my arm.
Also, I'm lazy.
But I will try and get back in the habit of doing this. The whole reason I started blogging was because I'd never been good at keeping a journal, and I wanted to be, damn it. I am *not* giving up. (Yet.)
The only major news (aside from back-to-school) is that the Novel is finally finished. Because I was a readmit I had to show up early to register and so ended up hanging around with nothing to do for about four days before school started. I determined that I was going to finish revising the damned thing before I started school. Ended up with a bad back, a painful wrist, and a near-permanent headache: but I *did* it. 298 printed pages. Incidentally, "laser printer" is now at the *top* of the when-I-have-money list. It took my poor Inkjet seven hours and two computer crashes.
I mailed it to DAW books and have been trying not to bite my fingernails off ever since, or at least to do so quietly and in private.
I gave myself a week or two to recuperate and have so been working on the *second* novel since Sunday. The current count is at 6900. Not bad. Not good either, but not bad. I've located a really nifty program called Z-Write which does a really good job with chapters, abortive drafts, glossaries, and all the assorted clutter I collect when I write. Nice to have it all in a single document.
I'm going to describe Saturday's proceedings, since I may well want to reference them later:
1) Dug out my background materials. This was two abortive drafts (I collect abortive story drafts. I just can't seem to help it), seven minor character sketches, several scribbled notebook pages worth of background, and six or seven index cards of scenes I'd scribbled down, generally when I was working on the first novel.
2) Sat and looked at them for a while.
3) Organized my scribbling notebook. This is what's referred to, in the writing business, as "cat-vacuuming".
4) Picked up my scribbling notebook and brainstormed, primarily on the villains, who weren't making it into the scene stuff as much as I'd like. Decided on a setting for their "base", which showed up in the last scenes, and then outlined their operations and the sort of people I was looking at, then outlining, from this, the character of the head of the organization. Then I brainstormed on what had happened to my characters in the year between this and the last book, and listed some potential subplots.
5) By this point I had some good ideas for scenes, so I wrote those on index cards. Then I tossed in some events I hadn't really scened but knew were going to happen, and wrote them down, too.
6) Organized the index cards into a timeline. This was harder than it looked. The novel is primarily straightforward (unlike the last one, which lived and breathed flashbacks), at least, for the moment, but I had to struggle to figure out where and when things happened. I still have two "floating" scenes that could happen at any point, but at least I don't have ten any more.
7) Pegged the timeline of cards up on a corkboard. Looked at it for a bit, settling the major holes between one set of happenings and another into my head. No miracle solutions occurred, so I let them vegetate in there.
8) Went to dinner.
The point of all this business with cards is to overcome my major writing problem (well, one of them), which is plotting. I don't plot. I converse. If I had my way every book would be one never-ending conversation, with maybe a few events tossed in here and there, in a sketchy way, to keep the characters in with something to talk about. However, never-ending conversations don't really *work* as stories, so I've had to learn to plot. The way I did it last time through was to write a lot of really bad stuff in an effort to bridge the spaces between cool conversations, which is why I spent a year on bad drafts and another year on revisions. It wasn't so much that I wrote a novel. It was more like an archeological expedition. I'm hoping that, by plotting the story out beforehand, I can minimize the amount of stuff I end up throwing out.
(Stats for the last novel:
Finished length: 81,000 words (computer count)
Abortive drafts and cut scenes: roughly 254,000 words.
See?
And, yes, I'm a packrat. I save everything I write, even if it's something I'm cutting. So sue me.)
So far it's working. I'd thought up a scene or two by the time I'd finished dinner, and having the board right out there helps: I tend to peg a card or two up every few days, shift things around, note down ideas that come to me as I'm writing, generally meddle. It's nice, and it's working a lot better than outlining, which didn't work well for me at all.
And now it's time to change my pants. I'm on the pig crew, mornings, and we were doing castrations today. Guys are now free to cross their legs and cringe. Just don't do it while you're actually castrating the pigs - I can testify, from watching a male co-worker this morning, that it's a bloody awkward position to work from.
