Jay Lake: Writer

[process] Reality, realism and synchronicity

Sometime this past week (it’s all something of a blur now), I was having a conversation about realism in fiction. I think this was with @madge707. We weren’t talking about realism as a literary movement, but rather the more plain meaning of the word. Specifically, the balance between enough detail and too much detail.

As they say, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. It’s simply not possible. Someone with special knowledge is going to be a much more critical reader of fiction in their knowledge domain. The amount and precision of medical information I would have to put into a short story about doctors in order to satisfy a medically-trained reader is far greater and more demanding than what I would have to put in to satisfy a general reader. On the other hand, there are a lot of doctors and nurses and med techs and so forth out there, so this is probably worth getting right.

Another example of this is a short story I read some years ago, possibly in a Writers of the Future volume. In it, the protagonist is time traveling, and flips through a series of historical vignettes. At one point, the arrive atop a yurt in Genghis Khan’s horde, and climb down the central tent pole to take some action. This threw me out of the story, first of all because “yurt” is a Russian word, and to Mongolians, it’s a “ger”. Second of all, gers don’t have a central tent pole. They have a pair of offset poles supporting a central ring. Why do I know this? Because I’ve spent time in Outer Mongolia, including visiting and sleeping in actual Mongolian gers. However, this is a knowledge domain that I share with about seven of the people who ever read that story.

One of the challenges of being a writer is knowing where to set that dial. When does reality trump realism? Sometimes the actual details really are less believable than the fictional details.

The example that had generated the conversation was that @madge707 was working on a story about a San Francisco police detective. In the SFPD, detectives are titled as “inspectors”. Someone in her critique group at the conference was confused by this, not realizing this bit of San Francisco detail. So the question was, did she go for the reality, which was confusing, or the realism, which was erroneous. (Obviously, there are fairly simple ways to resolve this, it’s just an example.)

I provided a similar example from living in Portland. While Portland has a police department, just like virtually every other city or town in the United States, the Portland police department is formally known as the Portland Police Bureau. (The fire department is the Portland Fire Bureau, etc.) I’m not even sure most people in Portland realize this. It’s not prominently painted on the police cars or anything. Almost certainly no one outside Portland knows this unless they have special Portland knowledge. So, as I said to @madge707, if writing about crime in Portland, would it be confusing to refer to the Police Bureau, or the PPB? Because that would look odd to most American readers, who expect the term “Police Department”.

A couple of days later, I’m reading Mark Teppo‘s excellent and gripping novel Lightbreaker [ Powells | BN ] (which I have since left on an airplane, forty pages from the end, grrr) and what do I find but a reference to the Portland Police Department, being used by a character who is a cop from the Seattle Police Department. The reference is in initial caps, i.e., the proper name, which is of course, not correct. Something the character in question would absolutely know better than to do, insofar as real life goes.

I cracked up hard.

Ah, the magic of synchronicity.

Tags: Books, Conventions, Funny, Process, Writing

Posted: 5:44 am Wed May 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[food|cheese] The cheese spread at Paradise Lost II

On Saturday at Paradise Lost II in San Antonio this past weekend, we took up a collection to fund a cheese spread. @dratz, @itsaJuliasaurus, @gwenthing and I then hied ourselves over to pillage Central Market on Broadway. We did pretty well by it.

Unfortunately, due to the impending hunger of the crowd upon our return, I did not have time to photograph the spread in detail as is my wont. I did, however, keep the receipt. Forthwith, here is the photo and an accounting of the fruits of land and cattle therein.

From the top, clockwise:

Mortadella with pistachios
It’s my understanding that true mortadella is illegal to import into the U.S. The bologna from hell, basically. I like it grilled.

Sopressata citerio
The closest thing to a basic salami in this spread. A flavorful cured meat that isn’t particularly challenging to most carnivorous palates.

Proscuitto di Parma (30 months)
One of my perennial favorites, though not everyone enjoys the slight muskiness of this Italian ham.

Hot capicolla
As @psursi said, this is salami for grown-ups. Assuming that by “grown ups” you mean people who like their lips to tingle when they eat meat.

Jamon Iberico
A very rich, smooth Spanish ham with some similarities to proscuitto.

Affidelice au chablis
A blended triple creme with a chablis-soaked rind. Quite tasty and rich as expected.

Chimay
Not the grand cru cheese, but their regular cheese. A good inclusion for the less adventurous cheese eater, as it is creamy and smooth and doesn’t get into fistfights with one’s tastebuds.

Delice de Bourgogne
Another triple creme. If you’re not familiar with that kind of cheese, think of this as what Philly Cream Cheese gets to be if it eats its Wheaties and says its prayers and goes to cheese heaven when it dies.

Eiffel Tower cremeux triple creme
A third triple creme, because how much rich smoothness is too much?

Mimolette (12 months)
A hard, aged cheese that is rather bright orange, with a sprightly tang.

Manchego (4 months)
Young manchego runs a bit bitter and zingy, but without the oily, crumbly texture of aged manchego.

Sottocenere al tartuffo
My personal favorite cheese, a mellow Italian with truffle oil in the milk and truffle inclusions whose flavor has a complex finish much in the fashion of a good wine.

Valdeon bleu
A mixed milk Spanish blue that kicks ass, takes name and starts fights in your mouth. Not for the faint of heart, but awesome if you’re a blue cheese fan.

Epoisses
A cheese whose rind is an offense against nature, but once you get past the stinky feet smell, tastes like butter on steroids.

Barkids moon
A new cheese we tried on a flier. Didn’t impress me, seemed serviceable enough in a middle of the road way. Flavorful.

Cantal (6 months)
Somewhat parmigiana-like French cheese that was also new to me.

Plus duck rilettes, avocados, artichoke hearts, garlic stuffed olives, salad and bread. And wine. And beer. And more wine.

Photo © 2012, 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: Cheese, Conventions, Food, Photos, San Antonio, Texas

Posted: 5:22 am Wed May 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Wednesday moment of zen

Your Wednesday moment of zen.

Flower. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my ‘favorites’ file, hence the dates jumping about

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

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 5:18 am Wed May 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is identical cousins with Linkee-poo

Just What the (Bleep) Do I Think I’m Doing? – Redux — Richard Parks Is Wise on process.

The Oatmeal responds to a Forbes article criticizing the recent Tesla comic — This is freaking hilarious.

A really striking Absolut ad masquerading as a short film — This is a lot of fun. (Via willyumtx.)

Italy earthquake hits parmesan production — Cheese producers near quake’s epicentre fear for 300,000 parmesan wheels that crashed to the ground in warehouses. Epic cheese disaster! (Thanks to Scrivener’s Error.)

Gotthard Girl’s Pioneering Intestine — Headline of the week. Do you even care what the story is about? (A historical map of European railroads, btw.)

Can a Surfboard-Sized Watercraft Cross the Pacific on Wave Power Alone?

News flash: Congresscritters using slightly shorter words and sentences — Language Log deconstructs a current, somewhat idiotic political meme.

Career Prospects in the Pain Business — Interesting bit of political media theater. (Thanks to danjite.)

North Carolina Pastor: Pen In ‘All The Lesbians And Queers’ With An Electrified Fence, Wait For Them To ‘Die Out’ — Man, I can really feel the enlightening warmth of that Christian love for their fellow man from all the way over here on the West Coast.

NBC, Fox, CBS etc. Protest transparency requirement on Political Advertising — Yeah. Because why would any citizen ever want or need to know that stuff? I should think no matter what your politics, this seems like an issue.

It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider — According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all. But isn’t that the whole point of Fox News, to foster a cohort of angry, low information Republican voters?

The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights — Once you endorse counterfactual beliefs in any area (i.e., evolution denial), you enable them in every area. In historical terms, this may be the besetting sin of the conservative movement as it has developed in my lifetime. I can remember when conservatives were realists, but those days are long gone. (Thanks to shsilver.)

Bennett Backs Off Birther Threat, Apologizes To Arizona — I wonder what this is about? I mean, it’s not like Republicans have ever had any shame regarding even their most blatant distortions of truth. And btw, this guy was the Romney campaign chair for Arizona. Did you know that? Any guesses on how Your Liberal Media would have reacted to an Obama campaign chair threatening to keep Romney off a state ballot?

?otd: Patty Duke or Jerry Mathers?

5/23/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 55 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a (forgot)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo (except I’ve lost the darned book)

Tags: Cheese, Christianism, Cool, Food, Funny, gay, Language, Links, media, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, Tech, trains, Videos, Writing

Posted: 5:17 am Wed May 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[process] My copy editor comments in response

Kalimpura‘s copy editor and I have had a very nice email exchange arising in response to my recent post about copy edits and manuals of style. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] With their kind permission, I am reprinting excerpts from that email exchange here, as I found it pretty interesting.

On eccentric spelling issues:

I thought I’d share a little bit about how British/Canadian spellings can come across to a copy editor.

Basically, the first time I see words like “storey” and “colour,” I’m on alert wondering if the author just went English for a second or what else might be going on. It gets harder again, when later “flavor” and “harbor” might go by as is. (And I’m not even sure why, or if the author has a strong reason why “colour” and “neighbor” might inhabit the same sentence.) Textually, it can read like the narrative has mysteriously decided to affect a brief accent that is just as quickly dropped again. At this point, I am noting what the prevailing style is and if there perhaps might be some narrative logic to a quick switch in voice/dialect/geography—yet only for certain words.

I don’t greatly prefer American over British spelling, and have had no problem when enough of the latter crops up, then going back and reconciling grey, kerb, spiralling, harbour, draught, neighbour, til, and so forth–all in. Before the tipover point, I’m writing down hundreds of words and instances in my notes, work that’s often needless when it turns out the author just quickly tried out a dialect and backed off from it. Those hours never feel wasted, just part of the job.

I am thinking that where many, many readers (and editors) see/hear an inconsistent regionalism in what an author spells, the author might just be trying to encode a quick flavor of nostalgia, sprinkled where they most prefer it with a spelling device. That’s the point at which the author’s stet is so stylistically priceless.

In my case, when I do this, I am trying to convey a flavor with certain spellings. So, “storey”, “despatch” and “draught”, for example. It looks right for what I’m wanting to do in the book. I’m not deliberately being Anglophilic or otherwise, just working within a certain context that feels right to me.

They go on to say:

I’m glad you’re keen on preserving your intentions when they might be invisible to someone farther along in the process. With 900 books behind me, I’ve witnessed that most often textual quirk is not the result of care or deliberation, but accident and inattention, and now and then forgotten indecision. You do your best as a CE to come across as an aide-de-camp rather than an adversary, giving the author more YES/NO choices than they might first have had in mind. Maybe 1 percent of authors are as good about process and design as you are (no lie), which makes the mighty stet such a blessing for everyone involved in the making of the best book possible.

I appreciated the kind words, but that’s also an important point. The copy editor has to distinguish between auctorial intention and textual errors, generally with very little context to work from. In my response to them, I mentioned that I had developed a stylesheet for the Sunspin books, to address certain items of usage and so forth. My copy editor replied:

A style sheet specific to each title could be helpful for you and for the other hands and eyes involved in the next books, sure.

Noting points of usage and style is valuable, as is delineating the reason and pattern behind, say, the narrative “speaking” in “storey” and “draught” but not “dialled” and “programme,” for example. Sharing your overarching scheme helps immensely and aids the CE with the gist of your spelling gimmicks and similar storytelling choices.

On the other hand, if it’s just as much of a time sink to create a comprehensive style sheet as it is to click “reject change” later on, then I’d say put the time in at whatever point in the process you can best spare it: front or back.

I’m increasingly coming to believe that an author-generated stylesheet can be critical. Of course, I only know what a stylesheet is from experience with prior copy edits. I don’t believe I’m free to share those here, as they are Tor’s work product, but at the bottom of this post, I’ll append part of my Sunspin style sheet as an example, since at this point that’s still my own work product.

A bit later, I received a third email from my copy editor, adding another interesting comment.

[S]omething else that might be valuable if you’re continuing to write in genres that use sometimes exalted, formal, studious, or ceremonial speech between characters is to let the CE know that despite the tone, you’re purposely leaving out the “whom” or similar constructions in either the dialogue or running text. A careful CE is generally trying to extrapolate and fill in from a mosaic of other hints–if you have an issue that contrasts rather than coheres, that’s the sort of thing to flag.

I want to thank my copy editor for their frankness, and their willingness to be quoted herein. And also for the terrific copy edit.

Sunspin stylesheet notes follow. In addition to these explications of usage, I have lists of people and place names, as well as a list of starship names. I still need to create a list of nonstandard words in deliberate use.

Titles or ranks are capitalized when they are part of names or used in direct address in lieu of a name. They are uncapitalized when being referenced without the name or otherwise in indirect use. These include father, father superior, sergeant, lieutenant, lieutenant-commander, commander, captain, admiral, baron, count, earl, duke, prince and princess. The only exceptions are Before, Library, Interlocutrix, Patriarch and Imperator, which are always capitalized, even in their adjectival forms. (“Before” does not have an adjectival form.)

The prefix “go” when applied to an officer’s rank (i.e., Go-Captain Alvarez) is specific to the Navisparliamentary service, and is reserved for those officers trained and certified for starship command. Note that some starship captains do not have a “go” prefix. These are either captains from outside the Navisparliamentary service (i.e., Captain Kinman), or more rarely, Navisparliamentary officers in a command role without the formal certification. The “go” prefix may be omitted in casual address, much as lieutenant colonels are often referred to simply as “colonel”.

The suffix “praetor” when applied to an officer’s rank (i.e., Lieutenant-Praetor Shinka) is specific to the Imperatorial Guards (also sometimes referred to as the Household Guards — the two terms are interchangeable). “Praetor” is reserved for those officers permitted to carry weapons in the Imperator’s presence, or to command troops carrying weapons in the Imperator’s presence. The “praetor” prefix may be omitted in casual address, much as lieutenant colonels are often referred to simply as “colonel”.

Starships are always formally referred to with their pair count, so “Third Rectification {58 pairs}” in narrative or written references, but “Third Rectification, fifty-eight pairs” in dialog. This formal reference should be used the first time a starship’s name is introduced in narrative or dialog, but can be omitted in immediately subsequent uses. If the starship is not referred to for a while, the reintroduction of the name should again be with the formal reference on initial occurrence.

Note that both Third Rectification and Joyous Strength have varying pair counts within the manuscript of Calamity of So Long a Life. This is because of the new pair master built at NSN.411-e. AA. Characters unaware of the return of the two starships will refer to them by their previous pair counts, Third Rectification {58 pairs} and Joyous Strength {21 pairs}. Characters who have become aware of their returns will refer to them as Third Rectification {59 pairs} and Joyous Strength {22 pairs}. This creates an apparent inconsistency in the text, as for much of the book, not everyone is aware of their return, so both references are being used. However, any given character will be consistent according to their knowledge of the situation.

Polite address for persons without title or rank is “Ser” or “Sera”. This corresponds to “Sir” or “Ma’am”, and also to “Mr.” or “Mrs./Ms./Miss”. However, in a very few cases the older, archaic forms of address are used, exclusively by Befores, and usually under stress or in a moment of thoughtlessness. Likewise, a common expletive is “hells”, except for the Befores who will often use the older, singular form. (I.e., “what the hells?” vs “what the hell?”)

This culture does not make a strong distinction between the name of a star and the name of the primary inhabited planet in any given solar system. Hence “Salton” for both the star and the planet. Often the star will have a different name or survey number for technical or scientific use, but in Calamity of So Long a Life this rarely occurs explicitly in the text.

In starship operations, generally speaking a “cruise” is a voyage between destinations which or may not include multiple distinct transits between pair masters. A “transit” is more specifically the process of traveling between any two pair masters. This language is not used with precision, and so there may be occasional inconsistencies depending on the speaker, dialect or stylistic concerns of the text.

Tags: Books, Kalimpura, Process, Publishing, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 3:25 am Tue May 22 2012 | Comments(1) |

[personal] Miscellaneous miscellany

Yesterday was a long, good day. Day Jobbery went well, even better than normal. We had a terrific Open Dinner here in Austin, with @dratz, @itsaJuliasaurus (a/k/a Mrs. @dratz), stillsostrange, @StevenBrust, Skyler White, D—, old Austin Slug Tribe friends Jn4 and CH, jess_ka, E—, sophielandon and Mr. sophielandon. I got to talk with everyone but E—, to whom I regretfully didn’t even manage to say good-bye.

Afterwards, we rolled back to chez @dratz where I wound up interviewing @StevenBrust and Skyler White on camera.

This was a cold interview, from my perspective, in that I hadn’t known I’d be conducting it until about a minute before the interview started, and I’d done none of my usual interview preparation. Nonetheless, Steve and Skyler were gracious and cooperative interview subjects. Oddly, I went to bed feeling a bad attack of imposter syndrome post-interview. That’s mostly a measure of how tired I was, given my usual bullet-resistant writerly ego.

Now I’m heading back to Portland, rather underslept and feeling more than a bit behind on my writing. The latter is not in fact true, this is just my psychotically persistent writerself talking, so I’ll be fine. After lunch with mlerules, I’ll be working Day Jobbery this afternoon, then photographing the_child‘s lacrosse team, and spending the evening with her. More Day Jobbery tomorrow and (hopefully) lunch with kenscholes. Then off to Detroit on Thursday.

I do owe a couple of blog posts, time and mental focus permitting. Among other things, I want to document last Saturday’s cheesefest at Paradise Lost II.

Also of note, a dream from a couple of nights ago. I was watching television (in my dream). It was a nature documentary about a family of manta rays that had adopted a kitten. That was all very sweet and adorbz until at one point in the documentary, the manta rays turned on their kitten. As they began slashing at the animal, taking bites out of it, I felt the stinging, tearing pain of each bite in my body. I got wrapped up in wondering how the documentary crew had managed to capture then broadcast the pain to me, the viewer. Interpretation of the meaning of this dream is left as an exercise for the reader.

At any rate, I’m off. Be well.

Photo © 2012 Donnie Reynolds and Waterloo Productions. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

Tags: Austin, Child, Detroit, dreams, friends, interviews, Photos, Portland, Process, Travel, work, Writing

Posted: 3:21 am Tue May 22 2012 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Tuesday moment of zen

Your Tuesday moment of zen.

Flower. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my ‘favorites’ file, hence the dates jumping about

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

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 3:18 am Tue May 22 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad heads west

New York’s Last Cross-Harbor Railway Chugs On as Alternative to Trucks

Gesture Controls Get a Huge Boost with New ‘Leap’ Interaction System

Fossil Ink Sacs Yield Jurassic Pigment—A First — Ink “strikingly” similar to that of modern cuttlefish, study says.

Quantum Dots May Be Safe to Use in Patients — The colorful, glowing crystals could prove to be useful as a surgical aid.

Can mammals outrun climate change? — For about 10 percent of species, the answer could be “no.” Of course, they wouldn’t need to if they’d just listen to Rush Limbaugh instead of paying attention to the realities of their environment.

Catholic dioceses, colleges sue over Obama mandate — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

On Christianity and marriage equality (part 4) — Christians who oppose equality are losing the argument. That’s why they’re so loud. Slacktivist Fred Clark with an excellent roundup of links about Christianist bigotry and responses to it.

Andrea Mitchell: Romney Has Been Getting A “Free Ride” From The Media — Of course he has. He’s a Republican. Your Liberal Media has for many years been strongly biased in favor of them. Look at the scholarship on the relative incidence of negative stories about George W. Bush and Al Gore during the 2000 election cycle (roughly 4:1 against Gore) for objective confirmation of this. The “liberal media” meme has been one of the most successful political lies in modern history.

?otd: Cascades or Coastals?

5/22/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (full day of work and socializing)
Body movement: n/a (airport walking to come)
Hours slept: 5.25 (fitful)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo

Tags: Christianism, climate, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, media, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech, trains

Posted: 3:17 am Tue May 22 2012 | Comments(0) |

[travel|food] Open Dinner, Austin, TX, today Monday, May 21st (repost)

This is a repost

I am calling an Open Dinner in Austin, Texas today, Monday, May 21st. We’ll meet at the Hyde Park & Grill at their original location on Duval Street, at 6:30 pm. Please let me know here in comments if you’ll be attending, as headcount can be something of an issue there.

See some, all or none of you there.

Tags: Austin, Food, Repost, Texas, Travel

Posted: 5:48 am Mon May 21 2012 | Comments(2) |

[conventions] Wrap up on Paradise Lost II, my week ahead

Paradise Lost II went well, my personal epiphanies aside. The conference ran well, critique was solid, and I enjoyed talks by John Joseph Adams and Steven Brust. We had a lovely cheese fest on Saturday, and a really terrific dinner Saturday night that included deep fried beets and a drop-in from my cousin N—. Park ranger stories were told, among other things.

We drove back to Austin from San Antonio yesterday. Thanks to the location of the FBI office there, as well as some trafficmancy by @Madge707, it took us three hours to get from downtown San Antonio to chez @dratz in Central Austin. Dinner with my Aunt V— ensured shortly thereafter at Hut’s Hamburgers. We wound up the evening with a rousing game of Gloom, and some talk time.

There may be photoblogging of the cheese, et cetera, later, but the photos are in @dratz‘s camera, so I don’t have them yet.

Today I am working Day Jobbery here in Austin, followed by tonight’s Open Dinner. Off to Portland tomorrow where I will see the_child for the first time in a week. Thursday I skive out of town again for World Steam Expo in Dearborn, MI.

More to come, as time and blog space permit. See some, all or none of you here and there about the country.

Tags: Austin, Child, Conventions, Detroit, family, Food, San Antonio, Texas, Travel, Writing

Posted: 5:47 am Mon May 21 2012 | Comments(2) |