Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad feels vernal

I will be at PDX GEAR Con — A new steampunk con for Portland, this coming July.

Google Books Settlement rejected — Maybe a step in the right direction. Scrivener’s Error comments.

Where No Map Has Gone Before: A History of Science Fiction — I believe I linked to this graphic before, but in this case, Strange Maps has provided a nifty exegesis.

Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth ‘Crying In Rage’ — An NPR blog post on a strange topic, indeed.

What Is Consciousness? — This is a fairly nifty little piece from Information Is Beautiful.

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says — Speaking as an atheist, I have trouble believing in this.

What Are the Economic Consequences of the Japanese Disaster?

[UK] Government faces calls to overhaul visa rules for foreign performers — And I thought the US immigration was nuts. (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)

Wisconsin’s Radical Break — A bit of labor history for you. Interesting to see documentation about how much conservatives have changed in their demonization of both government and labor.

Meeting the challenges of explaining health reform — This bit is classic: The Kaiser Family Foundation had a great “data note” recently establishing just how little the American people know about reform. (The lack of knowledge apparently did not correlate with the intensity of political feeling). That would be the Palinite/Tea Party end of the conservative movement in a nutshell.

How Democrats, Republicans compare — Comparison shopping and blind tests. Heh. (Thanks to danjite.)

?otD: Springing into action today? Or are you falling back antipodealistically?

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3/23/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,600 words on Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 253.0
Currently reading: A Bard’s Eye View, ed. Michael A. Ventrella; Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts

Tags: Conventions, Culture, healthcre, Japan, Links, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Religion, Science, steampunk

Posted: 5:20 am Wed March 23 2011 | Comments(0) |

[conventions|repost] Reminder of JayCon XI

In celebration of my natal anniversary, JayCon XI, my 11th annual 37th birthday party, is Saturday, June 4th, 2011 from 2 to 5 pm at the Flying Pie in SE Portland. We’re partying because I was born, and because I have beat cancer again and again.

If you can read this, you’re invited. Prior JayCon experience not required.

Flying Pie Pizzeria
7804 SE Stark Street
Portland, 97215
(503) 254-2016

http://www.flying-pie.com/

[ Google Maps ]

As is traditional for JayCon, Paul M. Carpentier is specifically not invited.

Tags: Cancer, Conventions, health, JayCon, Personal, Portland, Repost

Posted: 5:28 am Tue March 22 2011 | Comments(0) |

[awards|repost] Hugo pimpage

Hugo nominations are nearly closed out. For the record, here is a selected list of my own favorite work of this past year, should you be inclined to review it for award consideration in your own nominating process.

Novels
Pinion, Tor Books
Third volume in the Mainspring cycle, action-adventure in the clockwork Earth.

Novellas
The Baby Killers, PS Publishing
Alternate history politics, magic and spycraft, wherein I try to address the steampunk aesthetic at all levels of the work.

“The Bull Dancers”, Audible.com (audio presentation as part of METAtropolis: Cascadia)
Sequel to my piece in METAtropolis, about the ultimate fate of Green cities in a world beset by a soft apocalypse.

The Specific Gravity of Grief, Fairwood Press
My intensely personal study of a genre writer riddled with cancer. Arguably more appropriate for “Best Related Book”.

Novelettes
“Coming for Green”, The Sky That Wraps, Subterranean Press
An exploration of the Green universe from the perspective of a much put-upon secondary character.

Short Stories
“The Starship Mechanic” with Ken Scholes, tor.com
Our joint project from a writer-in-the-window session at Borderlands Books, about an alien lost on Earth.

“From the Countries of Her Dreams” with Shannon Page, Fantasy Magazine
A side tale from the Green universe from another perspective.

“The Speed of Time“, tor.com
Structurally experimental view of the end of the universe.

“If This Were a Romance” with Shannon Page, Love and Rockets, DAW Books
Exactly what it says on the tin. A romance set on a generation ship.

“Torquing Vacuum”, Clarkesworld
Backstory on three important characters from my Sunspin space opera project.

Best Related Book
The Specific Gravity of Grief, Fairwood Press
My intensely personal study of a genre writer riddled with cancer.

Also, I am eligible for nomination as Best Fan Writer for this blog, and as Best Editor, Short Form, for METAtropolis: Cascadia.

Tags: Awards, Baby, Books, Calendula, Grief, Pinion, Repost, stories, Writing

Posted: 5:26 am Tue March 22 2011 | Comments(1) |

[photos] Your Tuesday moment of zen

Your Tuesday moment of zen.

Hydrant, Crissy Field, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: California, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:23 am Tue March 22 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is horrified to discover morning comes every day

Tales for Canterbury — I am a contributor to a NZ charity antho in support of the recent earthquake there, with a reprint of my short story “Eggs For Breakfast”.

Fantasy Literature reviews Black Gate issue 14 — Including a very favorable mention of the collaborative story by Mike Jasper and me, “Devil on the Wind”.

METAtropolis: Cascadia reviewed in Turkish — I think they liked it, if Google’s language tools can be trusted.

Another Comment on the Eisler Decision — Dean Wesley Smith on an interesting development in publishing.

Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School — New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire. (Via willyumtx.)

Coercive Sterilization? Think of the Children! — Some peculiar and discomfiting reading.

A Clever End Run Around the Movie-Streaming Gremlins — A strangely retrograde approach to movie streaming. (Thanks to my Dad.)

Equatorial Rains on Titan — The sirens they bathe in streaming starlight, wrapped by wind and wave.

Three inventions that will change the world — Shirley, Goodness and Mercy?

A take on nuclear power — Tobias Buckell on the costs of various power generation schemes.

xkcd radiates — Bad Astronomy on xkcd on a rational assessment of the dangers of radiation from various sources.

After the earthquake: A long, hot summer — A fascinating description of Japan’s real problem regarding the power plants. (Via nojay.)

100 Years of Air Strikes — The world’s first aerial bombing mission took place 100 years ago, over Libya. (Via danjite.)

Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003 — Hmmm.

?otD: How tiny are your Gashlycrumbs?

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3/22/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (took the day off to recover)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Weight: 252.4
Currently reading: A Bard’s Eye View, ed. Michael A. Ventrella; Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts

Tags: Cool, Culture, Iraq, Japan, Libya, Links, Metatropolis, Personal, Publishing, reviews, Sale, Science, stories, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:22 am Tue March 22 2011 | Comments(3) |

[process] Part the fifth of Consumers and Producers

Here is the second-to-last installment of this little series. One more time, I’d like to thank everyone who’s involved themselves in the discussion so far. For reference, and if you’d like to catch up on the various comments:

Part 1 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 2 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 3 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 4 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

I have said I’m writing Sunspin in a manner similar to how I wrote years ago, long before I first achieved unconscious competence as a writer. What that actually means is that I started with a far more complex novel outline than ever before. It’s over 140 pages now, of which 50 pages is synoptic outline and the rest is background, continuity notes, lists of characters and places and starships, etc.

The synoptic outline is divided into three books, Calamity of So Long a Life, The Whips and Scorns of Time and Be All Our Sins Remembered. Each book is in turn divided into thirds within the outline. I’ve never before so explicitly addressed the three-act structure that is such a basic default of the Western storytelling tradition. But I had to do so, in order to manage this eleven-POV, +/-600,000 word monster of a project.

I’m writing each third-of-a-third of the book as its own project. Within each third-of-a-third, I’m again dividing into thirds, so now I’m tackling 20,000-30,000 word chunks. Novellas, in effect, well within my span of control in their own right.

Except they’re not novellas, because they don’t stand alone. Each chunk has to follow on what came before. Each has to foreshadow and otherwise establish what will come next. And I have to keep track of my eleven protagonists, who do not appear in a regular rotation, but rather weave in and out as I want to measure out story action and information to the reader. (See, down at the bottom I’m still writing as a Consumer.)

Furthermore, the synoptic outline is not divided into thirds-of-a-third-of-a-third, so as I approach each novella-sized chunk, I have to deconstruct that section of the outline and apportion the major plot and character developments so the internal pacing demands of that act of the book can be satisfied.

All of the above requires an enormous amount of overhead on my part for explicit structured thinking in Producer mode while I am still in the act of first drafting. I have to keep interrupting the flow of words on the page from my writing-as-a-Consumer mode to adjust and re-aim and refine. It’s the only way to get this thing right. Imagine the amplitude of an error made now when I am 500,000 words further into the text.

I’m not following the headlights anymore, I’m looking way the hell over the horizon.

Much as I did when I first started writing. Except back then ‘over the horizon’ was 500 or 600 words distant, when I very first began. Now it’s 500,000 or 600,000 words distant.

My Producer skills are being deployed to tear down my Consumer-driven craft skills and force my comfortable writing-as-a-Consumer self to deal directly with things that historically I either did unconsciously on first draft or retrofitted later on revision.

Will Sunspin be a better book for this process shift? I sure hope so. At the least, it will be a possible book for this process shift. I couldn’t have written this any other way.

I also confidently expect to be a much better writer for having gone through this experience. Every time I’ve stretched, I’ve improved. This is maybe the biggest stretch I’ve ever taken, but then my writing life is bigger than it used to be.

I certainly don’t plan to write anything longer than this in the future. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t take on an extended multivolume series if the story deserved it and the market demanded it. I just mean I likely won’t tackle such a huge tranche of work in one swell foop.

It’s also the case that I recently realized the manner in which I’m writing Sunspin is a warm up for my book-in-waiting, Original Destiny, Manifest Sin. I plan to write that one next after I’m done with the current effort. I’ve said for years I wasn’t ready for that book, not skilled enough. While Sunspin is an ambitious, full life cycle project in its own right, oddly, it’s also a form of throat clearing for an even more structurally and thematically ambitious if much shorter project to come.

Back to my original topic, Sunspin has caused me to completely re-engage with my own habits and practices as both a Consumer and a Producer. This will definitely make me a better Producer. With luck, it will also make me a better Consumer. Most of all, I expect it to help me produce better Story.

Next up, the last of these posts in which I promise I shall return to my original point, and tie my process discussion more firmly into it.

Tags: Books, Calamity, cars, Green, Original Destiny, Process, Sins, Sunspin, Texas, Whips, Writing

Posted: 5:47 am Mon March 21 2011 | Comments(0) |

[personal|conventions] My time at ICFA

Well, that was quite a weekend at ICFA in Orlando. Though it was a working trip — two interviews, a reading, book signings, networking, writing — I also took more down time and relaxation than I’ve had in a long time.

Part of that is because the last couple of years haven’t much lent themselves to relaxing, even when down time is available. Also, most of my trips, even nominal vacations, involve going to conventions or conferences, and doing a fair amount of work there in the form of programming, workshops, networking and so forth.

ICFA is an academic conference, and the writers are there to interact with the academics, but we don’t have to meet the same expectations of a classic style of SF convention. We’re exhibits, in a sense. The conference is very well-run, contained in a single venue, and filled with old friends and new that I’m very happy to spend a lot of time with.

But mostly, for me, I was feeling healthy, being warm in the Florida sunlight, and really enjoying the people. Everyone from dear friends like Deanna Hoak and Farah Mendlesohn to familiar faces like Peter Straub and Joe Haldeman to interesting new acquaintances such as Karen Lord and Cecelia Holland.

It was just fun. I really want to thank Sydney Duncan for going well out of her way to encourage me to be there and enable my presence. And everyone at ICFA for their generosity, good spirits and best of all, their company. If time, health and finances permit, I’ll definitely be back next year.

Tags: Conventions, Florida, health, Personal, Travel, Writing

Posted: 5:36 am Mon March 21 2011 | Comments(1) |

[photos] Your Monday moment of zen

Your Monday moment of zen.

The Golden Gate Bridge from Crissy Field, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: California, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:33 am Mon March 21 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad wakes up once more down in Oregon

Parthenon Moon — APOD with a great moonrise. We saw this same effect in Orlando Saturday night, framed by palm trees.

A flying wing airliner — A Sunday fantasy from x planes.

A legacy from the 1800s leaves Tokyo facing blackouts — A decision made at the dawn of the electric age is complicating Japan’s efforts to keep the lights on. (Via danjite.)

The Big Dangers Still Faced at Fukushima — The issues that will determine the long-term impact of the nuclear crisis.

King crabs invade Antarctica — More liberal conspiracy from Mother Nature. Who you going to believe on global warming, Rush Limbaugh or that lying observational data?

How the No Fly Zone Can Succeed — WTF? I go away for the weekend and we start bombing another Islamic state?

?otD: Have you ever seen the Cascade volcanoes from the air?

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3/21/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA, no Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 4.5 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 256.2 (short sleep, lots of food and drinking?)
Currently reading: A Bard’s Eye View, ed. Michael A. Ventrella; Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts

Tags: Cool, Japan, Libya, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:32 am Mon March 21 2011 | Comments(0) |

[conventions] ICFA, days 3 and 4

Day 3:

Sleep. Walk. Write. Swim. Locus podcast with Joe Haldeman. Hang out. Drink. Dinner. Party.

Day 4:

Sleep. Walk. Pack. Breakfast. Locus interview. Hang out. Lunch. Head to airport.

Funny moment was when I went out to Mexican with Cecelia Holland, Ellen Klages and Liza Trombi. The first place we tried had drug deals going down in the parking lot. The second place we tried had karaoke music so loud the doors were vibrating. By the time we headed for the third place, Garibaldi’s, we were so punchy and hungry we were singing The Garibaldi Chorus in the car. At the restaurant, where the food was fairly good, when Cecelia ordered a cabernet, the server asked, “The red one?”

Also of personal note: Cecilia Holland and my aunt Vicki could be one another’s stunt doubles. And Chris Rowe appears to be the reincarnation of my grandfather. I’m checking in on that last one with Dad.

Flying home now. Going to be a long evening and a short night’s sleep. I’ve got a pretty good case of Con burn, so I’m not sure if any writing will take place today or not.

How was your weekend?

Tags: Conventions, Florida, Food, Funny, Travel, Writing

Posted: 12:04 pm Sun March 20 2011 | Comments(0) |