A rocking head cold is settling in. I may be able to beat this with a lot of sleep and low activity over the next couple of days. Of course, I’m getting up at 1:30 am Pacific time to spend most of the day flying home. So, erm…
Anyway, expect limited wit and erudition, and far less progress than hoped on Heart of the Beast and/or Writing Related Program Activities.
Posted: 5:56 pm Thu January 22 2009 | Comments(0) |
Last full day for Caption Contest Voting Poll
Living in a palimpsest — Me talking about the process implications of my new collaborative effort with Jeff VanderMeer.
Aaron DaMommio comments on my Dark Towns stories
In which I get a tangential but cool mention
War of All Against All: Writers vs Editors vs Publicists vs Reviewers vs Readers vs Evil Monkey — Bored of the easy life, Jeff VanderMeer launches a pre-emptive strike on everybody.
A dungless dung beetle — Now that’s a headline what am.
Lizards Evolve Rapidly to Survive Deadly Fire Ants — Man, that Intelligent Designer sure is clever, spoofing Evil-ution like this. Right up there with God burying them dinosaur bones to fool us all. (Thanks to
Detecting alien vegetation — Yo, sf writers. Pay attention to this Centauri Dreams article. It’s fascinating on several levels.
Earliest weapons-grade plutonium found in US dump — Cool stuff. As it were. (Thanks to
Language Appropriation: As the GOP rebuilds, some would-be party leaders are borrowing phrases from Barack Obama. — Interesting stuff from Newsweek.
Obama retakes oath to err on side of law — Well, now we know what Rush Limbaugh will be ranting about for the next eight years. Also, this morning in reading my blog roll I have discovered that we on the left have behaved “abominably” over the past 8 years. (Apparently the Right doesn’t have the mental acuity to contrast Daily Kos with, say, anyone conservative during the Clinton years. Either that or opposition to torture, wholesale Constitutional violations and unjust war is “abominable”.) I’ve also learned that conservatives are suddenly very concerned with the problems of concentrating too much power in the presidency. Ah, intellectual consistency, that eternal hallmark of Republican thought.
?otD: Who was that masked man?
1/22/2009
Body movement: 40 minute ride on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 4:23 am Thu January 22 2009 | Comments(1) |
So, with permission, I’m going to talk publicly about something which has been going on for a while. Jeff VanderMeer asked me some time back if I’d be interested in collaborating on an incomplete novel project of his called Heart of the Beast. We had some basic process discussions, cleared things with our respective agents, then he sent me a stack of material, which I promptly filed and did nothing with due to the pressure of other deadlines.
Finally Beast‘s time came roughly slouching round, and I pulled out a three ring binder, a small spiral notebook, and several dozen loose sheets of paper of varying sizes and colors. This has been utterly fascinating.
First of all, it’s like reading a literal palimpsest novel. The binder contains a more or less coherent draft of about a third of the plotted book. The small notebook and the loose sheets contain overarching plot notes, character notes, earlier and later drafts of specific scenes (including handwritten, typescript and laserprint), doodles, diagrams, arrows, reflections, notes-to-self, and random impositions of completely unrelated material. In some cases, I was able the read the same scene four or more times, from original jotted notes to extensive handwritten draft to early, marked-up typescript, to fairly mature draft on printout. The sheer physical experience of going through this has been marvelous. It’s a novel in a kaleidoscope, a hall of mirrors time-slicing Jeff’s thoughts and intentions over the span of many years. If it were somehow possible to publish a book in this form, the experience would be amazing. Unsurprisingly, the closest I’ve ever seen to this being done in a published book is the original Prime Books edition of VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen. (Which, incidentally, is one of my favorite books, ever.) And yes, I own a copy of that edition.
Secondly, all that material has done an incredible job of inserting Heart of the Beast into my own headspace. I generally write from fairly straightforward outlines, and draft almost exclusively in reading order. This is true even when I have intricate or out-of-sequence plots and structures. It’s just how my brain works. This material is pretty much the inverse of that, like a drunkard’s walk across a spiralled plot structure and one writer’s scattered thoughts over a number of years and iterations. Yet it’s building the story in the book place in my writing mind. Which means Jeff, and his notes, are teaching me a great deal that’s new to me about how to approach writing. Perhaps the most revealing are the self-critical marginalia. Comments on how certain sentences are crafted, or the way certain characters should be sharpened and interrelated. His interrogations of the connections between characters, events and setting, much of it invisible in backstory with respect to the proposed text, are fascinating and illuminating. It’s as if I picked up the gloves of a foreign craftsman, and have inherited some of his art in donning them.
Third, as a result of these factors, I find myself considering my own process far more carefully. The degree of preparation and forethought Jeff has put into this book is a completely different entrée into the text than my organic upwellings of story. Of necessity, I’ll be following his process into this collaboration. But I am very interested to see how much of this I can adapt to Sunspin when I reapproach that book after the Tourbillon revisions.
My current plan is to tackle this book starting more or less now. We intend a much shorter first draft than is my wont, probably not even 100,000 words, so I expect to be done well before the end of February. (I could be wrong, this process could send me on a loop away from my usual text-on-the-page pattern.) Then it will go back to Jeff, and I’ll move on to revising Tourbillon during March. April will be a month to catch up to short fiction, and then in May or June, I should be on to Sunspin, which will likely take me most of the rest of the year, since I’m looking at a 600,000-700,000 word first draft. All of this along with the diplomatic thrillers with my Dad, some collaborative work with
More dispatches from this process as it unfolds and I learn and learn. But for now, Mr. VanderMeer’s Beast awaits me.
Posted: 7:52 pm Wed January 21 2009 | Comments(1) |
As reported here by editor
Posted: 6:49 pm Wed January 21 2009 | Comments(0) |
I’ll be closing the Caption Contest Voting Poll in the next day or so — Vote if you haven’t yet.
A Romanian (I think) review of Trial of Flowers [ Powell's | Amazon ]
More crazy logistics from Dark Roasted Blend — Highly entertaining photos, for the most part.
Earth-mass Exoplanets and Their Uses — Centauri Dreams with more on exoplanets.
APOD with a stunning photo of a lenticular cloud
Inauguration Day From Space — (Thanks to
Why the Ideological Melting Pot Is Getting So Lumpy — I’m not sure I buy this thesis, partly because there’s some serious false equivalency going on in this article, but it’s still interesting. (Thanks to
Rejecting Bush Era, Reclaiming Values — The New York Times on Obama’s Inaugural speech. I heard it this way, too, as a strong and relatively detailed refutation of the disastrous missteps of the Bush administration and conservative rule in general.
?otD: Was the walrus Paul?
1/21/2009
Body movement: 40 minute ride on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Posted: 4:07 am Wed January 21 2009 | Comments(3) |
As it happens, I did get to watch the most important bits of the Inauguration yesterday, rather to my surprise. Roughly from the homophobic bigot’s self-abnegating invocation, which was the only false note, through the end of President Obama’s inaugural speech.
Three of of the sweetest words in the English language: “Former President Bush.”
Three even sweeter words: “President Barack Obama.”
Congratulations, America.
Posted: 2:58 am Wed January 21 2009 | Comments(0) |
Happy Inauguration Day, everyone. I’ll be at the Day Jobbe and so not watching or listening to Obama’s speech. For those of you who are doing so, enjoy it for me.
I find myself wondering if the incoming Obama administration will follow recent tradition and spread a bunch of bizarre lies about the previous administration prying the “O” keys off the White House computers and so forth. It’s a lovely political rite which our moral compassholders in the GOP trailblazed for us.
Also, conservatives: this is important. At 12:01 Eastern time today you’ll be required to surrender all your guns, gay-marry the nearest librul and join your local mosque. At least, that’s what I heard on talk radio, so it must be true.
Welcome to a new day, America. Let’s clean up the reeking mess Bush made of the country and the world.
Posted: 4:14 am Tue January 20 2009 | Comments(0) |
A reviewer seriously dislikes my introduction to Matt Hughes’ Template [ Amazon
From Joe Sherry, more on Alembical [ Paper Golem | Amazon ]
Interview with artist Lindsey Messecar — Including an illustration she did based on Green!
The Grants Pass ToC announcement — That was a fun story to write.
Cabestan Winch Tourbillion Vertical Watch — (Snurched from Dark Roasted Blend.)
?otD: What color was George Washington’s white horse?
1/20/2009
Body movement: 40 minute ride on stationary bike
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville; Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
Posted: 4:07 am Tue January 20 2009 | Comments(2) |
Woke up a tad early from a discomforted sleep, having dreamt that
Got up, mused on that for a moment, then got dressed and headed for the gym next door. Along the walkway between hotel and gym, I slipped on an ice patch and took a fall. Nothing seriously damaged, but lying on the icy concrete in twenty degree weather clutching my right knee had not been among my morning plans.
Van Eekhout, je t’accuse.
Posted: 3:39 am Tue January 20 2009 | Comments(0) |
Uneventful trip today. Precisely how I like ‘em. Got some good work done on the first leg. On the second leg was going to do more work, but I was seated next to a soldier coming home on leave from Iraq, and he was feeling chatty, so we talked all the way to Omaha. Here in town the Hertz random upgrade program hath delivered unto me a Ford Edge in a strange copper colored paint job , while hotel has very nicely put me in a half-suite again. Dinner with
Off to the Day Job office in the morning.
Posted: 6:02 pm Mon January 19 2009 | Comments(0) |