The Observation Unit

Huh.

I just figured out what the deep thematic structure of Dust is about.

Well, that only took four years.

I feel much better now.

I have just discovered Junior Brown, thanks to Pandora. (I just wish it would stop trying to turn this into the All Allison Krause Channel. SRSLY) I mean, I kind of vaguely knew about his existence, but I didn't know I loved him with a deep and abiding passion. Dude.

I also wrote 2001 words on Grail this afternoon, which is pretty damned good for a girl who spent three and a half hours at the gym this morning.

I also did the stop-in-the-middle-of-a-sentence thing, because, well, I want to write the next bit I have to write, and that will encourage me to get a move on in the morning.

Tomorrow night, on the other hand, I will be here:

November 14, 2009
8:00 PM The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County, Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, 305 West Saddle River, Upper Saddle River, Bergen County, NJ

batwrangler will be my wingman, because she is awesome, and will drive down with me so I don't die on the way home.

13011 / 100000 words. 13% done!

Mean things today: second-guessing your ancestors, jihads and crusades, fear of alien invasion.

1006 words on grail, 783 on some nonfiction. Not too bad, all things considered.

Today's auctorial crisis: Aw damn. After two books, I'm finally going to have to describe this ship from the outside.

My Utopian society is starting to convince me. I wonder what's wrong with it? Other than that it requires lobotomizing the citizens, of course.

I am funnier when I'm punchy.  Also, I am funnier than I used to be. I learned this doing readings from BtMB lately. That book takes itself very seriously. It is Portentuous. Despite having been rewritten again and again and again.

This book is not portentuous. Perhaps I have relaxed a bit over the years.

Why I hang around with my writing group: a brief transcript from today's deathmarch support chat:

I am just kind of throwing words at the page tonight, honestly. Disjointed scene bits as they occur. I'm discovering that I like Danilaw a lot--he's got the ability to extemporize political speeches like a trained skald and he's also pretty funny. For the guy in charge of the lobotomy crowd.

11016 / 100000 words. 11% done!

I am a tired Bear. And one who is contemplating working on this book review and my Storytellers Unplugged colun today before I open the novel.

Yeah, I think I will do that.

Balancing demands is a bit tricky sometimes.

Dear Cats:

While I appreciate that chasing each other around the house is an important part of your daily routine, please refrain from having bat-fights across the monkey's leg, or attempting to embroil her in your disputes. She does not have protective fur and needs all of her fingers to type with.

Also, the fingers with which she is typing are not toys.

Love,

Monkey

(P.S. I don't suppose either of you know how the sliding closet door managed to end up out of its tracks and fallen across the foot of the bed, do you?)

Criminal Minds 05x07, "The Performer," written by Holly Harold, directed by John Badham

That was a sort of sweet, touching, cute, lighearted episode of Criminal Minds. About vampirism. And Goth rock.

Where's my "somewhat incongruous" icon?


( He's got a gun. Keep moving.  )

Here, have a clip of Gavin Rossdale singing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" for Criminal Minds.

Climbed again. Five routes--three on the slab (two new and unrated, but 5.8 or so, I think--one had a tricky trick to it--and one 5.8 I've done before.) and that 5.8 from before. I also did a 5.6 that's reliably easy to practice my footwork on.

And now I have come home and my wrists are killing me, so I invented a drink.

I'm thinking of calling it a White Night, because it's a variant on the White Russian: cream, Chambord, and blueberry vodka.

Yes, I think I will make this again.

annnnnnnnnnnd I have now loafed the bread and set it to rise, roasted tomatillos and onions and chilis and garlic to make green chili to freeze, made and consumed ANOTHER pot of tea...

and written 1804 words, which brings me to the blessed number 10,010, or... a tenth of a book.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself.

And Word knows "shibboleth." Just for the record.

Mean things: the kids a re fighting, Danilaw is trying to be a good leader, Godwin's Law.

10010 / 100000 words. 10% done!

And now I will listen to Morning Edition, bake that bread, eat something, and go climbing.

813 words. 981 to goal.

Being reminded as I tap away this morning that some vast percentage of constructing a narrative is getting the transitions in the right places (even on a paragraph and sentence level) and the narrative energy and line of direction flowing. Getting the horses pulling in the right direction is only half of it. There have to be traces connecting them to the thing to be pulled.

Also, it's all about the goddamned verbs.

Thank you, to everyone who is or has served in the armed forces. I wish you well, and I wish for a day when you can all go home and raise cabbages.

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ dDy is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

“And all music is.”

             --Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973

So far today I have:

• taken the dog out and thrown his ball for him
• put away the massive tea shipment that arrived yesterday
• made tea
• drunk some of same
• slowly and mindfully eaten two thirds of a very good muffin (paying attention while eating good food: best meditation available!) (although I like to think other parts of me are enjoying the food even when the ego is checked out)
• washed a load of dishes
• kneaded two loaves of bread and put one in the freezer
• set the other one to rise

It's 7:35.

I am about to yoga, shower, dress, put my wrist braces on and write at least six pages.

I think I may need to sleep all afternoon, or the virtue around here just might rise to toxic levels. Or possibly that was all a catwax of epic proportions.

...but the cats are so shiny now. And if I hadn't made bread there would be nothing for supper!

I decided to hurl myself off overhangs today, on the theory that if I not getting lighter, I had bloody better well start getting stronger. So, two attempts at a 5.8 on the 45-foot wall (second time I made about 30 feet of it, but you know, the damned thing is so overhung that when you come off you don't get back on) and then I sent an overhung 5.7 I've done before. As a reward, I decided I was going to do something I had never tried, which I thought was probably too hard for me. A 5.8 in the front corner, with a little roof over it.

Reader, I sent it.

I expected it to be brutal and crimpy and awful at the bottom, but really it was lovely--all balance and technique, and moving your feet around, and your hands are mostly just there to give you things to balance on. Apparently, I climb better than I realized, because I just floated up it.

I fell off scads trying to get over the roof, though. Don't worry. *g*

Going back tomorrow. We'll see if I have any juice.

While I was melting butter for the muffins (Chaz's blueberry muffin recipe, modified for orange-cranberry-walnut whole wheat muffins (1) (2)) the microwave attempted to immolate itself.

This is not a tragedy, as said microwave was left behind by the last inhabitants of this residence, and it's old enough that it has rotary dials and wood-grain.

But I am glad I didn't bother cleaning it today.

---

(1)If it's good with orange extract, it will be REALLY good with orange extract, Cointreau, orange juice, and bitter orange peel. Right?

(2) Yuppie wand blender is good for pulverising the cranberries into the yogurt. I thought they would be a bit much, whole.

So the thing about the steampunk aesthetic that everybody's talking about: it's weird to me, like watching a band you've loved for years get popular.

Maybe I've just been writing steampunky stuff for too long now (I think I started AtWS in 1993 or 1994, and the idea for the city of Eiledon dates back way before that), but it seems to me that the aesthetic roots here have been around for a long time. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, of course, but we've been mining that field for a long, long time. Castle Falkenstein and Brisco County, not to mention the venerable The Wild Wild West. (Non-Will-Smith edition, although I am a Giant Spider In The Third Act apologist.)

There's a whole world of Beyond Thunderdome postapocalyptica in the grunginess of it, but the color scheme is different, resulting in brown leather and brass fittings instead of black leather and tattered chainmail. (Seriously, run Master Blaster through a couple of filters and see what you get...)

Which is not to say the steampunk thing isn't cool. I've been playing with technofantasy since I was in high school. I'm pleased to see it finally becoming an overnight success, after twenty or thirty years of obscurity. And besides, it's nifty looking.

...Maybe it's just what happens when kids who grew up on Krull and Labyrinth get jobs and money and a little bit of time on their hands.

Or maybe we just finally figured out how to run the 80s through Photoshop to achieve a sepia tone

I do think it's interesting how trends and fashions work. They're a way of skinning reality, of creating an aesthetic that reflects a worldview and vice versa. Time periods look like themselves, and there are all sorts of visual cues there as to what's important and what's the focus in any given era. I find it all intensely cool...

Breaking news--

Mass market paperback Trade hardcover* edition of METAtropolis. Or however you capitalize that.

*Yeah, I don't even know what paperwork I'm signing. I'm writing a book.

2184 words on Grail since 7 am, and I'm calling it a good day's work. If I can keep up an average rate of at least six pages a day, I will be done by early January. Which gives me time to revise the horrid steaming mess that is The White City, and then, once truepenny wraps up her current extravaganza, get pushing on A Reckoning of Men in time to have it done for the summer deadline--which leaves me some time to write The Steles of the Sky.

Oh, yeah, and there's all that Shadow Unit due between now and then.

If I seem like I'm not around much on the internets or for social obligations, that would be why.

Grail is persisting in being sort of interesting to write. Today, it pitched a fit at me and drew a line in the sand structurally, telling me (in essence) that I can't make it skip ahead in the narrative to kill some time for sub-lightspeed-travel, thank you very much, and I can just suck it up and write that part of the book. Which part of the book doesn't currently seem to have much bearing on what I thought was the main plot arc, but I am pretty sure than when my right-brain plants its feet like this, it's usually on to something, and all the left-brain can do is go along with the program and quit whining about why?

So today was nine pages of backstory I hadn't been expecting to write. But it's wordcount, and go me.

I think I've sort of learned to go with the flow and stop trying to microsteer so much. Maybe I'm actually learning to write! Stranger things have happened.

Mean things: loneliness of command, nobody wants to believe that Tristen isn't a war criminal any more, Daddy issues, privation, Balkanization, civil war, religious baggage.

8206 / 100000 words. 8% done!

---

Oh, yeah, incidentally, I know elizabethbear.com and shadowunit.org are hosed. It seems to be an ISP problem. Hopefully it will be fixed before too long.

2222 words on Grail today, finished chapter one and started chapter two, and in a minute here I have to eat something and then go swim and then go over to a friend's house and have tea and borrow the fax machine. The days are just packed, I tell you.

Last night, I got about 1600 words on Shadow Unit related material, which I logged for today because I had already posted.

Yep. I am mighty. I have no idea what's happening in this book, except people are sitting around eating and worrying about each other, but I have faith, It'll all come right in the end.

Mean things today: kids grow up, and Tristen never gets to be anybody's daddy for long.

Also, giant freshwater space salmon.

6022 / 100000 words. 6% done!

So, after years of looking, I finally scored a bottle of Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu, yet another Dogfish Head triumph of experimental, molecular, and forensic archaeology and spectrographic analysis. 

If you don't know, Dogfish Head makes several beverages that are attempts to reconstruct the alcoholic drinks of ages past--Midas Touch, a 2700-year-old Egyptian barleywine recipe which is one of my favorite beers; Theobroma, an attempt to reconstruct a 3200-year-old Aztec chocolate brew; and of course Chateau Jiahu.

Midas Touch is available constantly, but the other two are something the guys at the brewery make and release when they feel like it, and I haven't been able to find any previously. But last week I was wandering through a Whole Paycheck, and what did I find?

...I bought a bottle of each (they are wine-bottle sized). And since I am having dinner company tonight, I decided to open the Chateau Jiahu to share.

TBRE and I split a little out into cordial glasses in advance of company. It's interesting. Sweet, as you would expect, malty, not as floral as I would have thought but the note is there. Also, traces of bitterness--I know not whence they come.

It's maybe not quite as well-balanced as it could be, but that's kind of balanced out by the coolness of drinking, dude, Neolithic ale.

2,285 words on Grail, for a total of 3800 words total.

Writer goal for this book: release the ego and just write the book. It will be the best book I can make it, and killing myself worrying will just make it an book that's not good for me.

Today, I got Perceval out of a nice swim in a radioactive river and ruined Benedick's breakfast. Life is good.

Look, it's the return of the progress bar!

3800 / 100000 words. 4% done!

And I guess I'll wander over to novel_in_90 and chart my progress there.