Monday, October 31
So I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I didn't particularly intend to. It was just that, well, I was planning to start the next novel on November first (Not because of NaNo. Because it's my birthday.) And the New Novel is tentatively YA, which means that fifty thousand words is not half or a third of a finished novel but actually about right. And I never have successfully done NaNo, and it seemed a waste.
I still suspect that 1,700 words a day will be difficult to impossible, but I'm willing to give it the ol' college try.
Currently my novel looks like this:
Which is a big improvement over how it looked two weeks ago:
I'm really digging this "outline ahead of time" thing. No guarantees, but I'm hoping it will help me get through the "ohshit lost the story let's sulk for two months and then go back and throw out half the uncompleted draft" thing which plagued me so badly on the other two novels.
We shall see.
Wish me luck.
I still suspect that 1,700 words a day will be difficult to impossible, but I'm willing to give it the ol' college try.
Currently my novel looks like this:
Which is a big improvement over how it looked two weeks ago:
I'm really digging this "outline ahead of time" thing. No guarantees, but I'm hoping it will help me get through the "ohshit lost the story let's sulk for two months and then go back and throw out half the uncompleted draft" thing which plagued me so badly on the other two novels.
We shall see.
Wish me luck.
Monday, October 24
Did I ask for this?
In my day planner, did today's entry read: "Oct. 24. Get bugfuck cold and be sleeted on"? No, it did not.
And yet here we are.
Fuck you, winter weather.
In my day planner, did today's entry read: "Oct. 24. Get bugfuck cold and be sleeted on"? No, it did not.
And yet here we are.
Fuck you, winter weather.
Sunday, October 23
I found this question from athenais by way of papersky:
If you write fiction or poetry, how do you name your characters?
Which is... hrm... interesting.
I don't name my main characters. They name themselves. Which is how I ended up with a main called Joey, even though various people have complained that this gives them gender confusion and why don't I call her Josie instead? Well, I tried calling her Josie. She kicked me.
Quite a few of the strong supporting characters are the same. India and Patricia came with names. Thomas came with his name and the information that everyone uses the full version, except Joey, who calls him Tommy. He never objects. I guess she's allowed.
Yes, these people are real to me. Um... that's bad?
Minor characters, on the other hand, are a pain in the butt.
In my first book I went for that old standby of giving everyone hacker-esque descriptive names, which led to some lame names (Havenot, Chaos) and some cool names (Thirteen Jinx) and a lot of "meh" names (Lethe). In my second book there were a lot more people; I'd caught on that the world should not revolve around my MCs. I was also using a made-up universe instead of the Real World, so there were a lot of places to name. And don't even get me started on the technology and slang.
I got sick of it fast.
At first I was just using randomly cool noises that seemed to fit the people (Kalissa, Bothe), mixed with modern names like Joey and Thomas and Patricia. Then I ran out of cool noises and started randomly opening the dictionary and picking suitably obscure words (Tarpan, Siebel - yes, that was in the dictionary, though I may have swapped 'round the vowels. Can't remember.) But even though I had a really big dictionary this was clearly unsustainable. The Census Namer worked okay but didn't entirely satisfy; I needed a blend of real and fictional names. I tried various random name generators. Most sucked. I didn't want characters named Xglubbbaz.
So I wrote my own.
And that seemed to do the trick. I pull most of my minor character names from it now. Sometimes I have to go through a few pages for a picky character, and frequently I tweak what I get, but for grabbing a name for Corporal Red Shirt or Planet X, it's top.
That's my methods. My criterion for naming boil down to:
1) Pronouncable. Xglubbbaz is not exotic, it's dumb, and people won't remember it because it's so weird-looking.
2) Short and spellable. See Rule 1, but also, I have to type the damned thing. It's bad enough that I've stuck myself with a setting that requires so many repetitions of lieutenant - why make life harder yet?
3) Not too like other character's names. Left to myself, I would start every character's name with an A, K, J, or M, which makes them easy to confuse for my readers and for me.
4) Sounds right. This is the final, vague selection process, and I can't even begin to explain it, save to note that letters of the alphabet have characters for me. A's are sharp, alert, active; M's are solid and friendly; O's are also solid but a little dreamy; Z's are rebellious or flaky... and so on. So I see names and they suggest a certain person to me. No, I am not even trying to justify this, I'm flat-out weird, but a lot of writers seem to have this particular weirdness so I can at least claim company.
athenais also asks:
And if you write genre fiction, how do you decide on a naming scheme?
Urm... whazzat?
For my first book, as noted, I used nouns. This is a sort of naming scheme. Except I randomly broke out of it and gave people name-names and then thought first readers who complained about it were being overly picky.
In my second book I used a random jumble of names, some made-up, some not. No one has complained, but then, it's futuristic sf and you can get away with a bit more.
In this WIP I'm making an effort. Not much of one, I'll admit, but I'm trying to make sure that most of the male names end in N,L, or the occasional E, and female names end in A. Then I stare at them for a while and decide whether they sound right for the place.
Sort of a name scheme, I guess.
I don't know why, but this is not a concept that has a real hold on me. I didn't even recognize it as necessary for the early books and I'm struggling to recognize it in this one. In my defense I will note that the girl's names I can remember from my (small, rural) schooldays were Jeanie, Teaka, Ginger, Larissa, Shawana, Sunshine, Katy, Tyler, Tishina, Clarissa, and Sarah. My own name was chosen from a Randy Newman song that my mother liked and my childhood nickname from a Grateful Dead song that my father liked. I retain my "random noises" theory of naming, even if it's illusory.
... and now, back to doing character development for my randomly-named characters.
If you write fiction or poetry, how do you name your characters?
Which is... hrm... interesting.
I don't name my main characters. They name themselves. Which is how I ended up with a main called Joey, even though various people have complained that this gives them gender confusion and why don't I call her Josie instead? Well, I tried calling her Josie. She kicked me.
Quite a few of the strong supporting characters are the same. India and Patricia came with names. Thomas came with his name and the information that everyone uses the full version, except Joey, who calls him Tommy. He never objects. I guess she's allowed.
Yes, these people are real to me. Um... that's bad?
Minor characters, on the other hand, are a pain in the butt.
In my first book I went for that old standby of giving everyone hacker-esque descriptive names, which led to some lame names (Havenot, Chaos) and some cool names (Thirteen Jinx) and a lot of "meh" names (Lethe). In my second book there were a lot more people; I'd caught on that the world should not revolve around my MCs. I was also using a made-up universe instead of the Real World, so there were a lot of places to name. And don't even get me started on the technology and slang.
I got sick of it fast.
At first I was just using randomly cool noises that seemed to fit the people (Kalissa, Bothe), mixed with modern names like Joey and Thomas and Patricia. Then I ran out of cool noises and started randomly opening the dictionary and picking suitably obscure words (Tarpan, Siebel - yes, that was in the dictionary, though I may have swapped 'round the vowels. Can't remember.) But even though I had a really big dictionary this was clearly unsustainable. The Census Namer worked okay but didn't entirely satisfy; I needed a blend of real and fictional names. I tried various random name generators. Most sucked. I didn't want characters named Xglubbbaz.
So I wrote my own.
And that seemed to do the trick. I pull most of my minor character names from it now. Sometimes I have to go through a few pages for a picky character, and frequently I tweak what I get, but for grabbing a name for Corporal Red Shirt or Planet X, it's top.
That's my methods. My criterion for naming boil down to:
1) Pronouncable. Xglubbbaz is not exotic, it's dumb, and people won't remember it because it's so weird-looking.
2) Short and spellable. See Rule 1, but also, I have to type the damned thing. It's bad enough that I've stuck myself with a setting that requires so many repetitions of lieutenant - why make life harder yet?
3) Not too like other character's names. Left to myself, I would start every character's name with an A, K, J, or M, which makes them easy to confuse for my readers and for me.
4) Sounds right. This is the final, vague selection process, and I can't even begin to explain it, save to note that letters of the alphabet have characters for me. A's are sharp, alert, active; M's are solid and friendly; O's are also solid but a little dreamy; Z's are rebellious or flaky... and so on. So I see names and they suggest a certain person to me. No, I am not even trying to justify this, I'm flat-out weird, but a lot of writers seem to have this particular weirdness so I can at least claim company.
athenais also asks:
And if you write genre fiction, how do you decide on a naming scheme?
Urm... whazzat?
For my first book, as noted, I used nouns. This is a sort of naming scheme. Except I randomly broke out of it and gave people name-names and then thought first readers who complained about it were being overly picky.
In my second book I used a random jumble of names, some made-up, some not. No one has complained, but then, it's futuristic sf and you can get away with a bit more.
In this WIP I'm making an effort. Not much of one, I'll admit, but I'm trying to make sure that most of the male names end in N,L, or the occasional E, and female names end in A. Then I stare at them for a while and decide whether they sound right for the place.
Sort of a name scheme, I guess.
I don't know why, but this is not a concept that has a real hold on me. I didn't even recognize it as necessary for the early books and I'm struggling to recognize it in this one. In my defense I will note that the girl's names I can remember from my (small, rural) schooldays were Jeanie, Teaka, Ginger, Larissa, Shawana, Sunshine, Katy, Tyler, Tishina, Clarissa, and Sarah. My own name was chosen from a Randy Newman song that my mother liked and my childhood nickname from a Grateful Dead song that my father liked. I retain my "random noises" theory of naming, even if it's illusory.
... and now, back to doing character development for my randomly-named characters.
Monday, October 10
An hour's work, and three stupid paragraphs to show for it. God, I hate synopsis-writing.
This, I ganked from Tambo. It's pretty.
.:Mercury:.
"Your personality often has two sides. You
have no trouble taking things in stride, but
you like a peaceful balance in your life. You
have a lot of creativity, especially when it
comes to the written word. You are a great
communicator and are very open to new ideas.
You also have a strong desire to learn."
. : : Which Astrological Planet are You? : : . [10 Gorgeous Pics!]
brought to you by Quizilla
More when I don't feel like falling on my face.
This, I ganked from Tambo. It's pretty.
.:Mercury:.
"Your personality often has two sides. You
have no trouble taking things in stride, but
you like a peaceful balance in your life. You
have a lot of creativity, especially when it
comes to the written word. You are a great
communicator and are very open to new ideas.
You also have a strong desire to learn."
. : : Which Astrological Planet are You? : : . [10 Gorgeous Pics!]
brought to you by Quizilla
More when I don't feel like falling on my face.
Sunday, October 09
And that's that.
The revision is finally finished.
The book is finished.
Final stats: 438 pages (using Courier), 101 thousand words by the word processor's count, 114K via publisher's count, which is far more words than I thought I'd be able to cut. Yay.
This is weird. I've been working on this thing for nearly three years, and to look at it and think, "the only way this gets revised again is if it gets published" is... odd.
Thinking of working on another book is also odd. It's gonna take a while to get out of Joey mode.
I want the query and synopsis done by the end of the week, and then the rest of October goes to worldbuilding and outlining Journey.
For those of you who are curious as to what I've blown the last three years of my life on, here's the opening.
Here's the infodumpy news blurb that goes right before that opening:
TIMESTAMP 36 Iota 468 10:01
SOURCE Interplanetary News Service
INVISION MODE Text-only
LOCATION Harmony Station (view map)
N. MARST: This is Nicholas Marst signing on from Harmony Station. As those of you with your video modes turned on can see, the Trake ambassador hasn’t yet arrived, but the ship is docking and we are expecting the alien to appear at any moment.
There’s not as massive a turnout for this set of talks as the ones on Earth, and many people are wondering why such an off-phase location was chosen for the third and final stage of the talks. Officially the symbolism of the location is being cited: despite being a barren system, Harmony’s six phases - five to colony planets - made it a locus of fighting throughout the war, and the station is only just reopening after its abandonment in the final Blood Sun battle over a year ago.
Unofficially, my sources are telling me that Harmony’s isolation was the reason it was chosen. With over seven million anti-peace protesters all over the Unity, and with the violence that plagued the first set of talks, Unity officials are looking to cut their losses. All of the military personnel had to pass xenophobia screening tests before boarding, civilian access is heavily restricted, and I’m informed that the security preparations have been colossal. Whether these precautions will prevent incidents at this set of talks remains to be seen....
And here's the best description of my main character (and her commanding officer) that I've written:
Patricia was Joey's physical opposite: tall where Joey was short, broad where Joey was narrow, fair where Joey was dark, imposing where Joey needed a swift kick somewhere soft to get proper respect. Not that people were generally disrespectful to Joey even after they'd stopped limping, but the thought was there.
God, I hope this gets published. Because I won't write a sequel unless it does, and the sequel is eating my brain....
The revision is finally finished.
The book is finished.
Final stats: 438 pages (using Courier), 101 thousand words by the word processor's count, 114K via publisher's count, which is far more words than I thought I'd be able to cut. Yay.
This is weird. I've been working on this thing for nearly three years, and to look at it and think, "the only way this gets revised again is if it gets published" is... odd.
Thinking of working on another book is also odd. It's gonna take a while to get out of Joey mode.
I want the query and synopsis done by the end of the week, and then the rest of October goes to worldbuilding and outlining Journey.
For those of you who are curious as to what I've blown the last three years of my life on, here's the opening.
Here's the infodumpy news blurb that goes right before that opening:
TIMESTAMP 36 Iota 468 10:01
SOURCE Interplanetary News Service
INVISION MODE Text-only
LOCATION Harmony Station (view map)
N. MARST: This is Nicholas Marst signing on from Harmony Station. As those of you with your video modes turned on can see, the Trake ambassador hasn’t yet arrived, but the ship is docking and we are expecting the alien to appear at any moment.
There’s not as massive a turnout for this set of talks as the ones on Earth, and many people are wondering why such an off-phase location was chosen for the third and final stage of the talks. Officially the symbolism of the location is being cited: despite being a barren system, Harmony’s six phases - five to colony planets - made it a locus of fighting throughout the war, and the station is only just reopening after its abandonment in the final Blood Sun battle over a year ago.
Unofficially, my sources are telling me that Harmony’s isolation was the reason it was chosen. With over seven million anti-peace protesters all over the Unity, and with the violence that plagued the first set of talks, Unity officials are looking to cut their losses. All of the military personnel had to pass xenophobia screening tests before boarding, civilian access is heavily restricted, and I’m informed that the security preparations have been colossal. Whether these precautions will prevent incidents at this set of talks remains to be seen....
And here's the best description of my main character (and her commanding officer) that I've written:
Patricia was Joey's physical opposite: tall where Joey was short, broad where Joey was narrow, fair where Joey was dark, imposing where Joey needed a swift kick somewhere soft to get proper respect. Not that people were generally disrespectful to Joey even after they'd stopped limping, but the thought was there.
God, I hope this gets published. Because I won't write a sequel unless it does, and the sequel is eating my brain....
Friday, October 07
I can tell it's autumn. The days are getting shorter, the weather's getting nastier, and the wolf spiders are moving indoors. Those things have some sort of fatal attraction for drains, I swear. It's gotten to where I can't look in a sink or bathtub without seeing two or three little spiders crouched on the bottom going "white porcelain desert steep sides ohshitI'mgonnadie AAAHHH! GIANT PINK SPIDER!"
I realize that by picking them up and putting them outside I'm not only creating a Giant Pink Spider From The Sky mythos but interfering with natural selection, insuring that I'll be digging this spider's brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, second cousins, and great-grandchildren out of drains for the rest of my life. But they're so cute, I can't just let them die. Guys, seriously, those drains? Bad news.
And speaking of fatal attraction, Dan has discovered there's drawbacks to working for your girlfriend's parents in a highly permissive environment. My mother and I were standing together at the computer yesterday, talking about something, when Dan came up and leaned on my shoulder and looked hangdog. When questioned later he admitted that he'd come up behind us and nearly pinched my mom's butt instead of mine.
He's still shellshocked, poor sod.
Type-In Revisions: 332 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,140
Notes: Nothing like getting to a X'ed out scene and instead of seeing copious notes or an outline there's just "replace this with something else". I must have been getting tired of revisions and figured I'd deal with it on the type-in. Thanks oodles, two-months-ago me.
I realize that by picking them up and putting them outside I'm not only creating a Giant Pink Spider From The Sky mythos but interfering with natural selection, insuring that I'll be digging this spider's brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, second cousins, and great-grandchildren out of drains for the rest of my life. But they're so cute, I can't just let them die. Guys, seriously, those drains? Bad news.
And speaking of fatal attraction, Dan has discovered there's drawbacks to working for your girlfriend's parents in a highly permissive environment. My mother and I were standing together at the computer yesterday, talking about something, when Dan came up and leaned on my shoulder and looked hangdog. When questioned later he admitted that he'd come up behind us and nearly pinched my mom's butt instead of mine.
He's still shellshocked, poor sod.
Type-In Revisions: 332 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,140
Notes: Nothing like getting to a X'ed out scene and instead of seeing copious notes or an outline there's just "replace this with something else". I must have been getting tired of revisions and figured I'd deal with it on the type-in. Thanks oodles, two-months-ago me.
Thursday, October 06
Oooh, memes. Memes call me. Especially this early in the morning.
Ganked from autopope:
Google for the first ten hits on "$YOUR_FIRST_NAME needs".
Kat needs all the support she could get. (Bad! Bad grammar! Where's my red pen! ... okay, maybe I'm editing too much these days.)
(Kit)-Kat Needs a Break on Trade mark Registration.
I love my kids, I love being the mom but every now and then, Kat needs to be Kat and be in a bad mood rather than happy suzy home maker.
Kat needs money to feed her heinous addiction to Gummy Worms. (Ew.)
Kat needs advice.
second kat needs to speak up too, i'm digging his voice, no homo. (This one confused the hell out of me until I realized it was from some kind of gangsta rap reviews site. Odd....)
When Kat needs to escape her nightmares, she seizes the opportunity to go out of town undercover to find the client's goddaughter's killer. (Kat Colorado mysteries? Huh. Never heard of 'em.)
BUt Kat needs to fix a few things.
Kat needs her friend's help when she enters a talent competition.
Kat needs your help finding homes for some of the least loved, sorriest, and most special needs animals in the Bay Area. (Which would almost work, if I lived in the Bay Area....)
Google is the coolest thing ever. And hey! Look ma, no porn! Not in the top ten results anyway....
Type-In Revisions: 323 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: *groggily* God, is it over yet?
Ganked from autopope:
Google for the first ten hits on "$YOUR_FIRST_NAME needs".
Kat needs all the support she could get. (Bad! Bad grammar! Where's my red pen! ... okay, maybe I'm editing too much these days.)
(Kit)-Kat Needs a Break on Trade mark Registration.
I love my kids, I love being the mom but every now and then, Kat needs to be Kat and be in a bad mood rather than happy suzy home maker.
Kat needs money to feed her heinous addiction to Gummy Worms. (Ew.)
Kat needs advice.
second kat needs to speak up too, i'm digging his voice, no homo. (This one confused the hell out of me until I realized it was from some kind of gangsta rap reviews site. Odd....)
When Kat needs to escape her nightmares, she seizes the opportunity to go out of town undercover to find the client's goddaughter's killer. (Kat Colorado mysteries? Huh. Never heard of 'em.)
BUt Kat needs to fix a few things.
Kat needs her friend's help when she enters a talent competition.
Kat needs your help finding homes for some of the least loved, sorriest, and most special needs animals in the Bay Area. (Which would almost work, if I lived in the Bay Area....)
Google is the coolest thing ever. And hey! Look ma, no porn! Not in the top ten results anyway....
Type-In Revisions: 323 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: *groggily* God, is it over yet?
Wednesday, October 05
... aka the "who are you people, and what are you doing on my blog?" post.
See, I started this blog in the summer of 2002 in a last-ditch attempt to record my Britain trip. I'd never done well with journals, but I thought, "Hey, if I have this illusion someone's reading it, maybe I'll do better this time." And I did. Even after I got back from Britain, I added the occasional post.
One of my friends from Culture-L found me, I think because I posted the URL there. Then a couple from the good ol' days on Brin-L and some from Forward Motion and one from Shadowmarch. Some people linked me. People would occasionally badger me to post more, which was nice, in an oh-God sort of way.
Then I met Dan in summer 2003, and he started linking me, and halfwitted found out about me and badgered me into adding an lj feed. A couple of Dan's friends started reading me. Then I moved up there for the summer and met people, and a lot of them friended me, and some of their friends friended me....
And now I have complete strangers reading my blog.
It's not that I mind. I've never posted private stuff here, just stories and musings, and I am after all a writer - I live for audience. I'm flattered. But confused. There's no longer any easy way for me to tell who's reading this thing - lj doesn't provide a breakdown, just straight numbers, and people who are linking in directly or through newsreaders are a complete cipher. All I know is that I'm getting around 100 hits a day on this blog, and while that's not a lot, it's enough to flabbergast me.
So, um, if you read this blog, would you comment on this post? And if you've a moment and you think I may not know, tell me where you came from and why you're here. It will lessen my confusion and feed my ego.
Type-In Revisions: 312 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: Dan says I'm getting obsessed with this story, and keeps bugging me to eat, sleep, go to work, make him bread, et cetera. Note to self: ignore Dan more effectively.
He may have a point about the food though. Man cannot live by bread alone, and Woman probably isn't getting by on Cheetos and mint chocolates either.
See, I started this blog in the summer of 2002 in a last-ditch attempt to record my Britain trip. I'd never done well with journals, but I thought, "Hey, if I have this illusion someone's reading it, maybe I'll do better this time." And I did. Even after I got back from Britain, I added the occasional post.
One of my friends from Culture-L found me, I think because I posted the URL there. Then a couple from the good ol' days on Brin-L and some from Forward Motion and one from Shadowmarch. Some people linked me. People would occasionally badger me to post more, which was nice, in an oh-God sort of way.
Then I met Dan in summer 2003, and he started linking me, and halfwitted found out about me and badgered me into adding an lj feed. A couple of Dan's friends started reading me. Then I moved up there for the summer and met people, and a lot of them friended me, and some of their friends friended me....
And now I have complete strangers reading my blog.
It's not that I mind. I've never posted private stuff here, just stories and musings, and I am after all a writer - I live for audience. I'm flattered. But confused. There's no longer any easy way for me to tell who's reading this thing - lj doesn't provide a breakdown, just straight numbers, and people who are linking in directly or through newsreaders are a complete cipher. All I know is that I'm getting around 100 hits a day on this blog, and while that's not a lot, it's enough to flabbergast me.
So, um, if you read this blog, would you comment on this post? And if you've a moment and you think I may not know, tell me where you came from and why you're here. It will lessen my confusion and feed my ego.
Type-In Revisions: 312 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: Dan says I'm getting obsessed with this story, and keeps bugging me to eat, sleep, go to work, make him bread, et cetera. Note to self: ignore Dan more effectively.
He may have a point about the food though. Man cannot live by bread alone, and Woman probably isn't getting by on Cheetos and mint chocolates either.
Tuesday, October 04
Ooooh, I love scientists who make their published work freely available even when the publication wants to charge me $30 for 2 pages of info. And there we have it. "Habitable Moons Around Extrasolar Giant Planets". Thanks also to quasipsyco for clarifying some things, because this was, after all, a scientific paper. If it doesn't make your head hurt they haven't done their job.
Hmm. Not sure this is entirely appropriate for this story. It would help if I could get my brain around the whole "resonant spin lock" concept.
*dull brainstorming follows*
The story, tentatively entitled Journey in Twilight at the moment, is of indeterminate length and structure; all I know is that it's narrated by three teenagers on three separate worlds. The damned thing may be YA, I'm not sure. We'll see.
Anyway, the background plot of the story involves the three of them using Magic Tech from the vast-and-mighty-empire-that-crashed-and-burned, stranding them on their respective rocks, to talk to each other. This is, you may note, a big vague. Deal. It's background plot, meant to add depth and richness to their respective stories and provide a muted bang of an ending.
I determined a month or so ago that Jamaal was not actually on a rock, but a really big spaceship, and now I'm trying to figure out whether Timmain and Rosail are in the same system or different ones. Same means the Magic Tech gets a little less, er, magic, but two planets in the habitable zone is stretching credibility. Two habitables orbiting a Jovian in the HZ is, I think, less stretchy, especially since one can have been terriformed by the Mighty Empire. But can I pull it off?
Rosa's world, the terriformed one, I want to be pretty Earthlike. The Mighty Empire had hella good tech, and as far as I can tell a day (read: rotation around Jovian) length of 24 hours, plus or minus a few, is believable. Barely. May go for a 30-hour day or so. 0.75 G is the tentative low point for long term human habitation. This is more of a problem. The big Jupiter/Saturn moons are showing about one-tenth of a gee, and I'm not sure what making them bigger or denser would do even if I made the Jovian big.
Timmain's world wasn't terriformed due to the presence of alien primitives, and I've already decided that his people are basically screwed, so tossing in 168-hour days and gees low enough to cause birth defects is icing on the cake... but I can't push it too far.
So the questions:
Is this even possible? If so, what would it be like? What would the sun look like? What would the Jovian look like (I found a cool pic of this, but would it just hang in the sky due to tidal locking, or would it move around like our moon?) How would they deal with the longer days? How would the natives and plant life deal with it, especially on Timmain's world?
... and so on. More hard thinking needed, I guess.
Type-In Revisions: 298 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: That's 2/3 of the book. Whee!
Hmm. Not sure this is entirely appropriate for this story. It would help if I could get my brain around the whole "resonant spin lock" concept.
*dull brainstorming follows*
The story, tentatively entitled Journey in Twilight at the moment, is of indeterminate length and structure; all I know is that it's narrated by three teenagers on three separate worlds. The damned thing may be YA, I'm not sure. We'll see.
Anyway, the background plot of the story involves the three of them using Magic Tech from the vast-and-mighty-empire-that-crashed-and-burned, stranding them on their respective rocks, to talk to each other. This is, you may note, a big vague. Deal. It's background plot, meant to add depth and richness to their respective stories and provide a muted bang of an ending.
I determined a month or so ago that Jamaal was not actually on a rock, but a really big spaceship, and now I'm trying to figure out whether Timmain and Rosail are in the same system or different ones. Same means the Magic Tech gets a little less, er, magic, but two planets in the habitable zone is stretching credibility. Two habitables orbiting a Jovian in the HZ is, I think, less stretchy, especially since one can have been terriformed by the Mighty Empire. But can I pull it off?
Rosa's world, the terriformed one, I want to be pretty Earthlike. The Mighty Empire had hella good tech, and as far as I can tell a day (read: rotation around Jovian) length of 24 hours, plus or minus a few, is believable. Barely. May go for a 30-hour day or so. 0.75 G is the tentative low point for long term human habitation. This is more of a problem. The big Jupiter/Saturn moons are showing about one-tenth of a gee, and I'm not sure what making them bigger or denser would do even if I made the Jovian big.
Timmain's world wasn't terriformed due to the presence of alien primitives, and I've already decided that his people are basically screwed, so tossing in 168-hour days and gees low enough to cause birth defects is icing on the cake... but I can't push it too far.
So the questions:
Is this even possible? If so, what would it be like? What would the sun look like? What would the Jovian look like (I found a cool pic of this, but would it just hang in the sky due to tidal locking, or would it move around like our moon?) How would they deal with the longer days? How would the natives and plant life deal with it, especially on Timmain's world?
... and so on. More hard thinking needed, I guess.
Type-In Revisions: 298 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,660
Notes: That's 2/3 of the book. Whee!
Monday, October 03
... oh, yeah, now you throw this at me, now when the necessary reference book is still in Canada.
Stupid story.
Er, anyone got any information on Jovian bodies with Earthlike moons orbiting them? Beyond "they're possible"? I'm looking in particular for the details of tide-locking and its effect on day length, and Google is failing me.
Type-In Revisions: 279 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,920
Notes: Dude. I'd forgotten how easy the second half was to revise.
Stupid story.
Er, anyone got any information on Jovian bodies with Earthlike moons orbiting them? Beyond "they're possible"? I'm looking in particular for the details of tide-locking and its effect on day length, and Google is failing me.
Type-In Revisions: 279 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 114,920
Notes: Dude. I'd forgotten how easy the second half was to revise.
Sunday, October 02
I have now seen Serenity - someone give me my geek pass. I liked it, except for one bit, and I think I can edit that bit out in my memory. Pretty sure Whedon only made it happen out of some vague sense that he had to, so I feel fine about doing that.
And I have a day off. A whole day. This is so remarkably cool.
And I beat my bro at miniature golf. Of course, everyone else beat me, but hey.
... uh, not much else to say, so memage (ganked from both matociquala and autopope):
Write down the first sentence or paragraph of every work of fiction you've currently got sitting in a file waiting for you to finish it.
Anagenesis
It was raining in downtown Washington, of course, but not with any real conviction: a limpid, bored rain, the kind of rain that comes between major showers when the sky is having a rest and can't be bothered working at the entire rain business.
This isn't precisely unfinished: it's my first novel, desk-drawered and waiting for me to rewrite it. Not revise. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that I'll be chucking the whole plot and writing a new one. The first line pretty well says it all: awkward, clever-pretentious, and completely devoid of plot.
The characters keep bugging me, though, so I can't abandon it yet. Someday, kids. Someday.
Harmony Station
What do you mean, a body?"
My WIP for a short time more, until I finish these fucking type-ins. I think it's much better; at least I got the plot in. I keep reading stuff about how you should never start a story with dialogue, but so far I am sailing by that with magnificent unconcern.
In a few years I'll probably hate it as much as I do Anagenenesis, but hey. That's progress.
A Certain Kind of Mind
He was without ears, without eyes, without a sense of time, floating and empty. It was the most restful thing to happen to Isaac in weeks.
Set in the same universe as Harmony, about 500 years earlier. I started this last year for the 3-day novel thing because I needed the break from Harmony and the idea was bugging me. Abandoned due to lack of, um, plot. I still hadn't entirely grasped, at the time, that a cool character and a good idea does not a story make.
I think it needs a second narrator, too. I'll go back to it someday.
Mundelle
Shutter-shot. The rolling green land stretching out before him; the little houses, prim and pristine as any earthbound suburb, the slight slope as they rolled away and upwards, and then the end, the great window that looked out on space through which the sun shone, hard and brilliant. Perfectly normal. And subtly... wrong. The grass, too green; psuedograss; the builders had intended to put real dirt in, but the war had blown open and made the habitat a necessity rather than a luxury. The light, too harsh; no filter could make it look quite the same as a few miles of solid atmosphere could. The sky—he tipped back his head—too blue. All done with mirrors, that. And, of course, if you looked hard enough you could see the other side of the habitat, the upside-down houses a bare four miles above your head hanging like suburban stalactites beyond the construct clouds.
It was a hell of a picture. Shutter-shot, skewed normality. What would you call it, though? "Futility"? Or maybe "In the Face of Fear"?
Oh, God. Set in Harmony's universe also, about 20 years earlier. This is titled "Abortive Draft 3", which means the last time I worked on it was probably New Zealand, which makes it late 2001. It suffers from too many cool characters, too little plot, and a distinct lack of good voice, which I was once again making up for by being pretentious and clever. Shamefully bad. There's a good story in there somewhere, though, and I'll write it someday.
People Like You
A lot of religions are supposed to have a hell, a place where evil people go. Flames are usually involved, for some bizarre reason, which suggests that whoever runs these hells doesn’t know people very well. If I were designing a hell there would be no flames whatsoever; in fact, there wouldn’t be much color at all. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling would all be white: uniformly, institutionally white, spotlessly white, unrelentingly white. The floors would be slightly slick and extremely uncomfortable to stand on, the chairs too few and apparently built for aliens. There would be an unending line of identical booths with identical equipment, and, most of all, there would be the sufferers of hell; a bored, desperate, exhausted, irritable mass of people forced into lines, with other people in blue and black uniforms manning the booths, equally bored, desperate, exhausted, and irritable. Every child would be screaming or whining or misbehaving, every parent would be snappish and ruthless, and every marriage would be in jeopardy; handhelds would be going off in a variety of conflicting, discordant tones; detectors would be beeping and wailing at irregular intervals; cheap dogabags would be loosing their sensor contact with handhelds and rolling around aimlessly, crushing toes and bumping into walls, pursued by desperate owners; the lines for the latrines will always be unending, the lines to the booths more so. The doors will be in clear sight, just beyond all the people and the booths, but there will never be a chance of getting to them through the people and the security, and the line will never, ever, move.
In short, a Federation spaceport.
Again in the Harmony universe, about 150 years earlier, and before I'd scrapped the ubiquitous "Federation" for "the Unity". Written in early 2002 while I was living in Wales - I remember writing this one on the laptop in my crappy little caravan on my lunch break and listening to the rain on the roof. (This was, after all, Wales.) What was it with me and these long-winded, pretentious descriptions?
Oh, yeah. I was trying to avoid having anything actually happen because I had no plot. Well, that explains it.
Like a Train
It was a solemn affair, this funeral, done in the grey flatness of a day in a spring that seemed like to never turn to summer. The mourners stood uncomfortably around the two coffins, the large one and the small, listening to the Catholic priest saying the ritual words and trying to pretend they could not hear the funeral that was going on just over the hill. The graveyard stretched out around them, flat and featureless, an empty plain of death.
Argh, more with the description. Do we really need to say that a funeral is solemn, Kat? No idea when this was written; years ago. The idea has evolved considerably since then. This is the one piece of pure fantasy I've got going, and it's proving very slippery.
And, finally...
A Journey in Twilight
It was a matter of peculiar puzzlement to the new parents, and the midwife who had attended the birth, and the elders who were consulted on the matter, and the entirity of the village of Mordun and, to the best of that humble town’s knowledge, the whole of the Mordun-El and the World, what ought to be done with a fourth son.
This is the next book I'll be writing, though I probably won't use this opener; it's not quite the right tone any more, and starting with the birth of the MC involves a bit more filler than I'm really happy with. But at least it's not description. I'm not sure when I wrote this one: 2003, maybe? I think I'd been rereading Jane Austen again. The sentence structure certainly suggests it.
And there you have it. Those of my books that have made it onto paper, however abortively. You can all now embarrass me for life by bringing them up, because most of the actual writing here is, frankly, crap.
I got better! Really.
Type-In Revisions: 252 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 116,220
Notes: I've finished the last of the major type-in scenes, so I can now officially hope that the reduced word count will stick. If it went down to 115K that would be great. But hey, I'll take what I can get.
And I have a day off. A whole day. This is so remarkably cool.
And I beat my bro at miniature golf. Of course, everyone else beat me, but hey.
... uh, not much else to say, so memage (ganked from both matociquala and autopope):
Write down the first sentence or paragraph of every work of fiction you've currently got sitting in a file waiting for you to finish it.
Anagenesis
It was raining in downtown Washington, of course, but not with any real conviction: a limpid, bored rain, the kind of rain that comes between major showers when the sky is having a rest and can't be bothered working at the entire rain business.
This isn't precisely unfinished: it's my first novel, desk-drawered and waiting for me to rewrite it. Not revise. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that I'll be chucking the whole plot and writing a new one. The first line pretty well says it all: awkward, clever-pretentious, and completely devoid of plot.
The characters keep bugging me, though, so I can't abandon it yet. Someday, kids. Someday.
Harmony Station
What do you mean, a body?"
My WIP for a short time more, until I finish these fucking type-ins. I think it's much better; at least I got the plot in. I keep reading stuff about how you should never start a story with dialogue, but so far I am sailing by that with magnificent unconcern.
In a few years I'll probably hate it as much as I do Anagenenesis, but hey. That's progress.
A Certain Kind of Mind
He was without ears, without eyes, without a sense of time, floating and empty. It was the most restful thing to happen to Isaac in weeks.
Set in the same universe as Harmony, about 500 years earlier. I started this last year for the 3-day novel thing because I needed the break from Harmony and the idea was bugging me. Abandoned due to lack of, um, plot. I still hadn't entirely grasped, at the time, that a cool character and a good idea does not a story make.
I think it needs a second narrator, too. I'll go back to it someday.
Mundelle
Shutter-shot. The rolling green land stretching out before him; the little houses, prim and pristine as any earthbound suburb, the slight slope as they rolled away and upwards, and then the end, the great window that looked out on space through which the sun shone, hard and brilliant. Perfectly normal. And subtly... wrong. The grass, too green; psuedograss; the builders had intended to put real dirt in, but the war had blown open and made the habitat a necessity rather than a luxury. The light, too harsh; no filter could make it look quite the same as a few miles of solid atmosphere could. The sky—he tipped back his head—too blue. All done with mirrors, that. And, of course, if you looked hard enough you could see the other side of the habitat, the upside-down houses a bare four miles above your head hanging like suburban stalactites beyond the construct clouds.
It was a hell of a picture. Shutter-shot, skewed normality. What would you call it, though? "Futility"? Or maybe "In the Face of Fear"?
Oh, God. Set in Harmony's universe also, about 20 years earlier. This is titled "Abortive Draft 3", which means the last time I worked on it was probably New Zealand, which makes it late 2001. It suffers from too many cool characters, too little plot, and a distinct lack of good voice, which I was once again making up for by being pretentious and clever. Shamefully bad. There's a good story in there somewhere, though, and I'll write it someday.
People Like You
A lot of religions are supposed to have a hell, a place where evil people go. Flames are usually involved, for some bizarre reason, which suggests that whoever runs these hells doesn’t know people very well. If I were designing a hell there would be no flames whatsoever; in fact, there wouldn’t be much color at all. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling would all be white: uniformly, institutionally white, spotlessly white, unrelentingly white. The floors would be slightly slick and extremely uncomfortable to stand on, the chairs too few and apparently built for aliens. There would be an unending line of identical booths with identical equipment, and, most of all, there would be the sufferers of hell; a bored, desperate, exhausted, irritable mass of people forced into lines, with other people in blue and black uniforms manning the booths, equally bored, desperate, exhausted, and irritable. Every child would be screaming or whining or misbehaving, every parent would be snappish and ruthless, and every marriage would be in jeopardy; handhelds would be going off in a variety of conflicting, discordant tones; detectors would be beeping and wailing at irregular intervals; cheap dogabags would be loosing their sensor contact with handhelds and rolling around aimlessly, crushing toes and bumping into walls, pursued by desperate owners; the lines for the latrines will always be unending, the lines to the booths more so. The doors will be in clear sight, just beyond all the people and the booths, but there will never be a chance of getting to them through the people and the security, and the line will never, ever, move.
In short, a Federation spaceport.
Again in the Harmony universe, about 150 years earlier, and before I'd scrapped the ubiquitous "Federation" for "the Unity". Written in early 2002 while I was living in Wales - I remember writing this one on the laptop in my crappy little caravan on my lunch break and listening to the rain on the roof. (This was, after all, Wales.) What was it with me and these long-winded, pretentious descriptions?
Oh, yeah. I was trying to avoid having anything actually happen because I had no plot. Well, that explains it.
Like a Train
It was a solemn affair, this funeral, done in the grey flatness of a day in a spring that seemed like to never turn to summer. The mourners stood uncomfortably around the two coffins, the large one and the small, listening to the Catholic priest saying the ritual words and trying to pretend they could not hear the funeral that was going on just over the hill. The graveyard stretched out around them, flat and featureless, an empty plain of death.
Argh, more with the description. Do we really need to say that a funeral is solemn, Kat? No idea when this was written; years ago. The idea has evolved considerably since then. This is the one piece of pure fantasy I've got going, and it's proving very slippery.
And, finally...
A Journey in Twilight
It was a matter of peculiar puzzlement to the new parents, and the midwife who had attended the birth, and the elders who were consulted on the matter, and the entirity of the village of Mordun and, to the best of that humble town’s knowledge, the whole of the Mordun-El and the World, what ought to be done with a fourth son.
This is the next book I'll be writing, though I probably won't use this opener; it's not quite the right tone any more, and starting with the birth of the MC involves a bit more filler than I'm really happy with. But at least it's not description. I'm not sure when I wrote this one: 2003, maybe? I think I'd been rereading Jane Austen again. The sentence structure certainly suggests it.
And there you have it. Those of my books that have made it onto paper, however abortively. You can all now embarrass me for life by bringing them up, because most of the actual writing here is, frankly, crap.
I got better! Really.
Type-In Revisions: 252 pages (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 116,220
Notes: I've finished the last of the major type-in scenes, so I can now officially hope that the reduced word count will stick. If it went down to 115K that would be great. But hey, I'll take what I can get.
Saturday, October 01
Just what I needed - something else to eat my time. But Puzzle Pirates is just... shiny. Essentially what they've done is take the standard old MUD, dress it up with some nifty graphics, and replace all the "smack this random monster about a billion times" bits with addictive Tetris-like puzzles.
My God! It's like a MUD without the mind-numbing boredom!
And they are cross-platform, for which (after the Eve Online disappointment) I will love them forever.
In other news, Jennifer Crusie has a blog. Is it not nifty?
Type-In Revisions: 229 (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 116,740
Notes: The page count is bad because I'm typing new scenes. Lots of pages with three-quarters of it Xed out and one paragraph marked "salvage." I'd forgotten I cut so much here.
My God! It's like a MUD without the mind-numbing boredom!
And they are cross-platform, for which (after the Eve Online disappointment) I will love them forever.
In other news, Jennifer Crusie has a blog. Is it not nifty?
Type-In Revisions: 229 (of 385)
Word Count, Original and Current: 118,040 / 116,740
Notes: The page count is bad because I'm typing new scenes. Lots of pages with three-quarters of it Xed out and one paragraph marked "salvage." I'd forgotten I cut so much here.
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