Your Monday moment of zen.
Oregon landscape by the Child. © 2007, 2011, B. Lake
This work by B. Lake is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 8:44 am Mon December 19 2011 | Comments(0) |
Author Interview – Philip Athans
What’s the ‘value’ of a cancer treatment? — A discussion of cancer treatments and costs in the UK. (Via Curiosity Counts —
Ecosystems shift as climate changes — By 2100, nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems – forest, grassland or tundra, for example – will have moved from one type to another. More liberal bias in the facts.
This poll tells you everything that’s wrong with American politics
The GOP’s Long and Winding Road — Primary politics on the Right.
G.O.P. Monetary Madness — Paul Krugman on Ron Paul’s fiscal policy.
Newt Gingrich: Gay People Choose To Be Gay Like Priests Choose Celibacy — Playing the bigot card always seems to go over so well with conservatives. Are you proud of your Republican party?
?otd: Do clowns taste funny to you?
12/19/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 13.25 (solid plus napping)
Weight: 209.4
Currently (re)reading: Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
Posted: 8:43 am Mon December 19 2011 | Comments(0) |
In about six hours I come off the pump for the last time in this chemo series. I have a 30% chance of not ever needing to do this again. I am overwhelmed.
I will say more in time.
Posted: 8:41 am Sun December 18 2011 | Comments(7) |
Your Sunday moment of zen.
Self-portrait by the Child. © 2007, 2011, B. Lake
This work by B. Lake is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 8:39 am Sun December 18 2011 | Comments(0) |
A catalog of digital thoughts: Escapement — A reader reacts to my second clock punk novel, Escapement.
20 awesome gingerbread creations inspired by sci-fi films and TV — A gingerbread AT-AT? (Via my mom.)
As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks — I don’t know why scientists are wasting money gathering realworld data when GOP ideology has already told us the Truth.
Hints of Higgs from the Large Hadron Collider — APOD with a mighty cool photo of the LHC.
Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works — SOPA and you. (Via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}
danjite
They Call It the Reverse Gender Gap — And so…?
The Ghosts of Watergate — Ah, the politics of resentment.
Iowa newspaper backs Mitt Romney? Weird GOP race gets a little weirder. — The Des Moines Register endorsing Mitt Romney even though Romney has essentially ignored the state? It’s just the latest line in a bizarre GOP presidential primary season. I can sure see why conservative voters unhappy with Obama long for a return to Bush-era runaway expansion of Federal powers, massively costly foreign wars and record-setting deficits, but I can only laugh at their inability to find a sufficiently lunatic savior from among their pool of candidates.
?otd: Would you recommend cancer as a hobby?
12/18/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Hours slept: 10.5 (fitful)
Weight: n/a
Currently (re)reading: Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
Posted: 8:35 am Sun December 18 2011 | Comments(3) |
Well, I’m in day two of chemo session twelve. This is my twenty-fourth round of chemo in the past two years, and my last for now. As my doctor says, I’m not in remission, but I have been resected with no evidence of disease.
I’ll have another scan in mid-February, and we’ll see what we see at that point. For now, I am cancer-free. My oncologist thinks I have about a 70% of another metastasis, but as she says, those are just numbers. I’d like a clean year, if that’s possible, but the cancer has a mind of its own. I’m still pretty sure that this will get me in the end.
Speaking of things getting me in the end, the GI disruptions of the past few days were so mighty that even the chemo infusion, including the atropine injection, took hours to slow them down. Normally my lower GI shuts down at the first whiff of chemo. I think the next couple of weeks are going to be rough. I did get my Lomotil script upgraded to a higher pill count, finally, so I won’t run out at an inconvenient time.
Anyway, this is a day to lie quiet on the drip of the pump. Be well, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.
Posted: 10:34 am Sat December 17 2011 | Comments(0) |
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Oddly modified VW Beetle near Welches, OR. © 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.
Posted: 10:28 am Sat December 17 2011 | Comments(1) |
Conversations About Bigotry, Literature, and the World Fantasy Award
Novels and Short Stories… — kenscholes
I’ll be Holmes for Christmas, or Sherlock Holmes and the case of the missing holiday
The iPhone’s Many Narratives — A thousand pictures are worth how many words?
Inexplicable Particle: Why Even I’m a Higgs Bozo
Autism hidden in plain sight — As more children are diagnosed with autism, researchers are trying to find unrecognized cases of the disorder in adults. The search for the missing millions is just beginning.
Illinois Sheriff: 5 Were Killed in Murder-Suicide and Couple Found Dead in Massachusetts Mansion Died From Gunshot Wounds — More proud American citizens using their Second Amendment rights in defense of their essential liberties. If you’re gun owner, how many deaths is your gun worth to you? For me, your gun rights don’t trump a single death.
Newt Gingrich: 15 Things You Don’t Know About Him — I find Gringrich’s currently popularity with the GOP base inexplicable. He’s a serial adulator, the consummate Washington insider, a history professor and therefore one of the despised elites, and a Catholic, religion many evangelicals don’t even consider to be Christian. Beloved by the same people who despite elite professor and political insider Barack Obama, a man who’s still married to his first wife without a hint of scandal.
?otd: Have you ever eaten kimchi?
12/17/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Hours slept: 12.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently (re)reading: Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
Posted: 10:25 am Sat December 17 2011 | Comments(1) |
Greg van Eekhout (who has one of the coolest names, ever) is launching into writing the sequel to his novel The Osteomancer’s Son. He made an observation that:
I’ve never written a sequel or a continuation of a series, so this is new territory for me.
My response to this was:
I have been quite surprised by the change in my technique and internal thought processes brought about by writing second and third books in series (or at least in continuity). You will be too, I am confident.
This has got me thinking about those second and third books. Last year while I was drafting Kalimpura, the third book in the Green cycle, I made a passing observation on this topic [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]:
This is the second time I’ve written a third book in series. (Pinion being the other, of course.) As I believe I observed while writing Pinion, it’s a rather different experience that writing a standalone or initial book. So much of the worldbuilding, characterization and discovery is in place. I have to touch on bits of it so a reader who’s starting with this book won’t be lost, but I have it internalized. That means that writing this book is a different experience for me. I am far more focused on plot and inter-character dynamics because that other stuff is already in place and not crying for attention. And much as I had this experience with Pinion, I think it’s likely to make a somewhat different kind of book.
Now if I could only figure out how to deliberately leverage this phenomenon in future projects.
Well, since then I’ve outlined all three volumes of Sunspin in one go, deliberately designing them to work as a three-book project. Which is, or should be, me attempting to deliberately leverage this phenomenon in a future project.
In a nutshell, I think it does come down to what I said before. After a first book has been written, much of the worldbuilding, characterization and discovery are in place. Unless the plot of the second book is “our heroes sail over the horizon to discover new, alien worlds”, it’s probably operating from much the same geography, culture and politics as the first book did. That means one’s focus as a writer actually narrows rather than broadens. We don’t have to do everything in the punch list for book 2 (or 3, or 23). There’s still a bit of obligatory effort to bring new readers up to speed, but mostly we can assume that anyone reading book 2 knows what the Castle of Inordinate Doom is, and what happened to the Lord of Bright Shadows in book 1. That means we don’t have to set all that stuff up again.
Fine. So far, so obvious. But what does this do the writing process, to address Greg’s not-quite-a-question?
I think first of all we have to make different kinds of promises to the reader. Book 1, any book 1, is in part saying, “Hey, look at me!” They usually begin with something sharp and memorable, a clash of cymbals to grab the readers’ attention and say, “Hey, I’m worth the next few hours or days of your free time.” Book 2 is saying, “Welcome back, old friend.” Reader trust already exists, at least in principle, and while it needs to be sustained, it doesn’t need to be re-established from scratch. That allows a lot more room to maneuver in building the opening scenes, which can serve different purposes in a book 2 than in a book 1.
Likewise how the characters are introduced and what is done with them. Subtlety and depth come to the forefront, in favor of the broad strokes often used to establish a brand-new protagonist. A book 2 character has a shared history with the reader, an account balance of well-established words and deeds and emotions that can be drawn on. They enter the stage differently.
Finally, as alluded to above, the need not to explain so much is powerful. The tapestry is already woven from book 1. We can assume so much more, and only introduced those things which are changing, as well as those things to either elucidate or camouflage the changes. It shifts the art and craft of world building significantly, allow tighter focus on selected elements, given what can be assumed the reader has brought forward from book 1.
Emphasis and focus can make book 2 as different from book 1 as book 1 was from some discovery short story that originally introduced the character and setting. It’s a softer, subtler art. The character and plot loom larger in the writer’s mind, written as they are across the established setting and tone.
Greg, does this make it any easier?
Posted: 9:09 am Fri December 16 2011 | Comments(1) |
Today is chemo session twelve of twelve. As of Sunday, I’m done. Currently cancer-free, so no future treatments scheduled, either. I’ll still have the 2+ week cycle of side effects to deal with going into Christmas and New Year’s, but by early January I’ll be getting my well-being back.
By way of keeping me in line, my body saw fit to produce an explosive lower GI event while I was doing my morning exercise. There was about ten seconds’ lead time between my mental “uh oh” and the inevitable. This was not enough to get untangled from the bike, into the bathroom across the hall, and in the appropriate position on the throne. And I clogged the toilet. The aftermath involved a great deal more than the usual toilet brush.
Hey, universe. I get the message. Stay humble. Don’t get cocky. Use lots of warm, wet cloths.
Oh well, if it was easy, everyone would do it. See what I go through for your education?
In any case, I’m off in an hour or so for the last infusion. Wish me well.
Posted: 9:04 am Fri December 16 2011 | Comments(5) |