Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad is awake in Seattle

Scrivener’s Error on the Justine Larbalestier cover controversy

Write like me? — Language Log on grammar twitch.

Egyptian Mummy Portraits

Your next boss — Deep cluelessness. Hahaha.

Rogue killer Ice Age walruses can really ruin your day — Heh…

Alaska Meltdown — Across our northernmost state, ponds and wetlands vital to wildlife are draining away as global warming melts underlying permafrost. Darn that liberal bias to reality.

?otD: Why shouldn’t you ever wrestle with a pig?

---

7/25/2009
Body movement: n/a (traveling)
This morning’s weigh-in: 222.0
Currently reading: The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks; Stupid Quest by C.S. Inman

Tags: Art, Culture, Funny, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, Writing

Posted: 7:16 am Sat July 25 2009 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen

Your Saturday moment of zen.

Photo taken by in Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Tags: Child, China, nature, Photos, zen

Posted: 7:02 am Sat July 25 2009 | Comments(1) |

[photos] Your Friday moment of zen

Your Friday moment of zen.

dressed as a piece of toast, photographed by me at Westerncon 60.

Tags: Conventions, Photos, zen

Posted: 4:21 am Fri July 24 2009 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad heads toward Seattle

I am reading and signing at University Books in Seattle — This evening, Friday, July 24 at 7 pm. For those of you who are fans of , she will be there. I’ll also be attending the Clarion West party later tonight.

A medium-warm review of Green [ Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Borders ]

Mari Kurisato on writers who twitter — Including me and .

Star Wars and Dune — Hmmm… (Snurched from Dark Roasted Blend.)

30 classic album covers in Lego — From the dept of people with too much time on their hands. Cool stuff. (Thanks to .)

An amazing tattoo — Yes, work safe. (Thanks to .)

Artificial Brain Ten Years Away From Reality — Hmm. Then will we all have prosthetic foreheads to wear upon our real heads?

10 reasons I know the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked — Hahahah! (Snurched from Bad Astronomy.)

Habitable Exomoons Should Be Detectable — Wow, just wow.

Evolution Could Explain Cancer Relapse Mystery — Evolution may explain why treated tumors sometimes spread more aggressively than untreated ones. Fascinating. (Resulting medical advances not valid if you are a Creationist or an IDiot.)

?otD: Who’s Attle, and why do I want to go see them?

---

7/24/2009
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride, 10 minutes of stretching and meditation
This morning’s weigh-in: 222.2
Currently reading: The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks; Stupid Quest by C.S. Inman

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Child, Conventions, Cool, Culture, Green, Links, Movies, music, Personal, reviews, Science, Seattle, weird, Writing

Posted: 4:16 am Fri July 24 2009 | Comments(1) |

[photos] Your Thursday moment of zen

Your Thursday moment of zen.

Photo of and the Niece, and photo editing/art, by . Used here with permission.

Tags: Child, family, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:02 am Thu July 23 2009 | Comments(0) |

[travel] Updatery

Off to Portland this afternoon. Up to Seattle tomorrow afternoon for the University Books reading and the Clarion West party. Back to Portland Saturday for some family stuff. arrives in Portland on Sunday.

You have been warned.

Tags: Calendula, Conventions, family, Personal, Portland, Seattle, Travel

Posted: 5:00 am Thu July 23 2009 | Comments(0) |

[politics] Everything you need to know about conservatism

Those rugged individualists in the GOP have spent the last decade trying to build an interventionist Daddy state to monitor and control all aspects of our lives, in the name of fighting terrorism and family values, (and, allegedly, original intent). Looking back on the unmitigated cultural and political disaster that is contemporary conservatism, for my money one of the most revealing comments was Republican Senator John Cornyn, who said:

None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead.

As conservative icon Patrick Henry, one of the original intenders, said:

Give me liberty or give me death.

Whom do you believe?

Tags: Politics

Posted: 4:57 am Thu July 23 2009 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad for a California Thursday

I am reading and signing at University Books in Seattle — Friday, July 24 at 7 pm. For those of you who are fans of , she will be there. I’ll also be attending the Clarion West party later that evening.

Anticipation’s writing workshop is still looking for a few good writers — The deadline is nigh. Very nigh. If you’re going to Worldcon, check it out.

26to50 — A new Japanese-English science fiction site. Worth checking out.

Gay Johnny Texas Vegetables — What a great name for a rock band!

The truth will set you free — Atheist doorknockers? (Thanks to .)

Human Spear Likely Cause Of Death Of Neandertal — Fascinating. (Snurched from the Twitter feed of mattstaggs.)(

Reprogramming Satellites during Flight — Cool beans.

?otD: Who reads these stupid questions anyway?

---

7/23/2009
Body movement: 60 minute urban walk (Twin Peaks!), 10 minutes of stretching and meditation
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (forgot)
Currently reading: The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks; Stupid Quest by C.S. Inman

Tags: Child, Conventions, Culture, Funny, Green, Links, Personal, Publishing, Religion, Science, Seattle, Writing

Posted: 4:53 am Thu July 23 2009 | Comments(0) |

[process] A few notes on drafting Endurance

First of all, some baseline data on Endurance.

I produced 114,800 words of first draft copy in 50 elapsed hours over 35 calendar days, including 30 days of writing and 5 missed days due to illness, holiday or travel. This is an average drafting speed of a hair under 2,300 words per hour, and an average daily output of slightly over 3,800 words.

For comparison, that’s rather a bit faster than the speed at which I drafted Pinion, which is my only substantial other post-surgical first draft. I don’t count The Heart of the Beast because the process was so radically different, working as I was from Jeff VanderMeer’s notes and multiple overlapping partial drafts.

Of far more significance (to me, at least) is the highly abbreviated nature of the draft. My last two solo first drafts were Green and Pinion, and both clocked in about 200,000 words. Endurance doesn’t have any less plot than those other two books, at least so far as I can see. I seem to have compressed my writing process, possibly under the pressure of imminent chemotherapy — I didn’t start drafting Endurance until I was well into the process of diagnosing the current round of cancer. has observed that Endurance is rather light on descriptive text, ordinarily a great flourish of mine, and also that I’ve compressed some key scenes.

I’m not entirely sure I haven’t written a half-scale outline, in effect.

Nonetheless, the whole book is on the page. This time I’ll be revising as a putter-inner rather than a taker-outer, which will be fairly novel experience for me. My process evolves with each book, but this was an unexpected and surprising direction for me to have taken. We’ll see how the work holds up.

More thoughts as they come to me.

Tags: Books, Calendula, Endurance, Green, Pinion, Process, Writing

Posted: 3:31 pm Wed July 22 2009 | Comments(2) |

[cancer] Cautious Optimism

and I were at UCSF today to meet with a liver surgeon and an oncologist. We discussed the recent scan results with both doctors. In short, there is cause for cautious optimism.

Scan results indicate that the liver mass has not grown detectably in 60 days. At that growth rate, we can afford to be conservative about treatment.

However, the lung spot has grown from 5 mm to 7-8 mm. This is within the +/- 5 mm margin of error in the scanning process, so they are not too concerned. More to the point, no other lung spots were detected.

No lymph spots detected on this scan, which suggests the lymphatic issues from the May scan were a transient infection. (This was one possible theory at the time.)

The only discrepancy between the California and Oregon teams is that the read on my MRI by the Oregon radiologist was “indicative of metastatic disease” while the read on the same MRI data by the California radiologist was more benign. This may become significant in determining whether to stay the current course on chemo or carry forward with a “watch and wait” strategy.

The California team recommended no treatment at this time, with CT and PET scanning in October, after a three month wait, to recheck growth in liver and lungs. I am not assuming chemo is off for now until I see my Oregon oncologist next week and hear her take, but the stability of the liver mass seems encouraging.

Knowing that it’s not growing like wildfire inside of me eases my mind considerably. Knowing that the lung spot is isolated and not part of a widespread pattern eases my mind considerably. We’ll see what happens next week. I’m not allowing myself to be too buoyed by this yet, but it’s the first time since May that the medical news has gotten better. If this trend holds up next week, I’ll be a very happy boy.

Tags: Calendula, California, Cancer, health, Portland

Posted: 3:04 pm Wed July 22 2009 | Comments(11) |