TheZot

Here's a question (with a poll! Woo!) for everyone. Should the Ben and William stories get sent to nifty? Generally speaking I like to fling my stuff there. I'm under no illusions that I'll ever publish any of it any place that matters -- even if I do, it's at least a full draft away from being ready for publication, which is fine. Nifty, while rather... spotty in its quality, has the advantage of permanence, and I figure if I'm putting something out there to be read I want whoever reads it to be able to find it next week, next month, and next year. And while I certainly hope that GA will be here for ages, it's a safe bet that nifty will be. The thing with B&W is that they've only shown up in Firegrass, which could reasonably be read as standard heroic fantasy. The next piece, Dirty Basement (no link, it's only done in first draft and out for readthrough/editing/savaging) will have it clearer that they're a couple, and at some point when I get Wild Life going (the origin story) there'll be an appropriate amount of sex. Given that firegrass is just heroic fantasy, I can see it not really belonging on Nifty. On the other hand, it'd really suck as a reader for Nifty to have only two thirds of the stories they're in. Hence the poll. So... opinions folks?

Okay, not you personally (not that there isn't something horribly wrong with you or anything) but your characters. I've been thinking about that lately, as I've been doodling out the outlines for a new novel with new characters, and poking at existing characters in new stories. What's wrong with them? It may seem like a strange thing to wonder about, but I was reminded by ABG (Author of the most excellent, though not done, Torch Song) that a character's flaws are at least as interesting and certainly as important as their finer qualities. What are their problems, their issues, their demons, what things wake them up in the middle of the night screaming? What, basically, are the bad things driving them forward? Just about everyone's got something wrong with them, something less than good that affects them, gives them that mental limp or that little twitch in some circumstances. It's part of being human, I think, and if you want your characters to be human they have to have troubles too. I don't mean troubling circumstances -- those are external, and they can certainly make a story interesting, but actual troubles, which make the characters interesting and more real. For a short story this probably isn't a big deal. If you've got two or three thousand words you're likely concentrating on a few scenes and a small part of the characters behaviour, but in longer works (novellas, novels, and series) you've got time for the characters to express themselves. If they don't you end up with them feeling... plastic, and sort of a cariacature of real people, when you really do want them to be real people. And real people have problems. So, what're yours?

Ah, C, the language I love to hate, as I write more code in it than any other language. (Granted, mostly in support for languages that aren't C) At this point I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I think more programmers should know it because it gives a lot of low-level power that you don't have in most other languages that're in vogue today. (Forth's good for that too) On the other, an awful lot of the programmers I know who program in it ought not to, since they'd do a lot less damage in most other languages. It's a pity the Lisp guys, lo those many years ago, dove straight down to the depths of elegant, unreadable consistency. Had the syntax and presentation not sucked so very hard the computing world would likely have been a much, much better place. Continuations, tail calls, first class functions, closures, working garbage collection... the list of stuff that slowly comes to the surface thirty years after it was first done in Lisp is kind of depressing, really. Pretty much all of it basically insanely difficult to do in C, and damn tough to implement in C for other languages. 'Course, it may well have been that the general state of the art wasn't up for run of the mill programmers to handle stuff like that, so it wouldn't have mattered. Still, I can but hope for the death of C. (But just for other people, you understand )

I'd have to throw Never Study Without Wine to the list 'o short stories. You find the nicest things trawling through the old stuff at Nifty...

Yes. Yes you are. And if you can't, well... Amazon is your friend!

While I'm very tempted to play Spot The Reference... I can't take credit for the terrible horrible no good very bad day line -- that's an homage to my favorite book of all time, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz. It's great, everyone should own a copy. (Even if you live in Australia)

Or, oddly, the phone book. You don't want to name a character after someone in there, but it can be a good source of first and last names, especially if you're in an area that's relatively ethnically diverse. Maybe won't do you much good in chunks of, say, North Dakota, but if you live somewhere along the east coast of the US... And worst case you can always hit the online white pages for, say, Newark.

I have got to learn to not leave cookies and saucers of milk out; whenever I do that I always wake up with a head full of ideas and not nearly enough time to do anything with them. It's even a werewolf story this time, which is really out of character for me, as I loathe most werewolf stories. (Night Howls excepted, which you should go out and read. Right now. It's OK, I'll wait) And most vampire stories. I'm not sure whether I'm going to hate this one, but I am going to write it. Should be interesting. The weird thing is that part of the inspiration for this has been Carniv

Hey, editing and a good excuse to lay about with a stick. Don't say I don't give more than your money's worth! -Dan (And your beau liked it, so for you, just today, triple value!)

A very good point. Back before it was nearly all digital, the rule of thumb I'd heard of from good photographers is that you expect one picture worth keeping per roll of film. That's somewhere between a 1:24 and 1:36 hit rate, which is for the people who're good at this. Now, granted, writing's not the same as photography, but the same thing applies. Expect to completely toss your first draft, and most of your second draft. Maybe that won't happen, but don't be surprised, and don't fight it. (Which is easier said than done) Listen to your editors/readers when they ask why, or think parts suck, or tell you motivations are unclear. Those are signs there are places you need to fix. Being a good reader/editor's a tough thing, so be nice to 'em when you get them. It's difficult to overcome that reluctance to say "y'know, this bit here? It sucks" even though that's what you have to say, though perhaps a bit more kindly, when reading someone's work. Treasure the people who're willing to shred your writing, because they're the ones that'll help you get better fastest. Assuming you don't kill them, of course.

Heh. Nah, I don't think I've gotta make an offering to hang around. The two just coincide -- if I've got time and the inclination to hang around here, it means time and inclination to write, too. (Which feels really good to do, even if it does drive me nuts sometimes)

Well, here's a few pieces of advice. 1) Always be willing to toss anything you've written. If you fall in love with some of what you've done you're not going to be able to judge it properly, and even if it's the best sentence/paragraph/section in the history of literature, it can still have to go because it slows down the story, doesn't work with everything else, or just plain confuses 2) It helps to be a few rough draft chapters ahead when you're writing. That way when you're putting the final polish on a chapter you've got a solid idea where things are going in the near future, which makes it an awful lot easier to have them all fit together well. 3) Keep in mind that it can always be done better, and if you're not pushing yourself at least a little, you're not going to get better. On the other hand, you may well not be able to do better right now, so if you push and it isn't going, then put it aside for a while and come back to it. Even then, you may not be able to do it better. Remember that spot that gave you trouble and try to work on it later. 4) While it may be able to be done better, there's nothing wrong with pretty damn good. Write stuff you can be proud of. You may look back and think you could have done things differently, but you should at least be able to look at it and say "I'm glad I wrote that". Bottom line is that you have to push a bit to get better. You don't have to, and nobody'lll make you, but it's worth it.

Yep, after altogether too long, I'm back. Woohoo! Or, y'know, something like that. Anyway, time now presents itself, at least a little, which is cool. And in bits and pieces on the train, but still... one takes what one can get. And yes, this does mean I've finished a first draft. Just need to get it properly savaged edited and it may well be good to go. It's kind of weird, but just having something done, even in draft, is kind of nice.

Ah, an ever so swell question. First off, it's important to note that sexual behavior is, in general terms, genetically encoded, like a number of other very primitive behaviours. The wiring for it is built into your genes. (This is true of all species, and for a number of different behaviors) You have, encoded way down deep in your DNA, the genes necessary to build the brain structures that make you go ping for the member of the appropriate sex. More importantly, you've got the genes to go ping for both sexes. This should be clear with very little thought -- guys, certainly, have all the genes that women have. The same can't be said for women, who generally don't have the genes expressed on the Y chromosome. On the other hand, the Y chromosome is relatively fragile, and quite small, so the odds of any behaviours being encoded on it are quite small. That means everyone could have developed the brain bits that makes women attractive, as well as the brain bits that make men attractive. The question really is "why did those particular bits express?" Currently the answer is a shrug and an "I dunno". Odds are it's potentially hormonal. And potentially environmental. And potentially genetic. And potentially thermal. (Yes, there are species where temperature affects the expression of genes) And potentially just random. It's a complex of behaviours after all, not just one. "Preventing" homosexuality and bisexuality just isn't going to happen. Like many things, there are just too many different ways it's likely to be expressed and, fundies and other nutjobs aside, it's just not worth bothering doing anything about. -Dan

And a much-belated thanks, guys. I've been away altogether too long, and I think it's about time I come back -- the word processor's been getting kinda cranky and needs a little attention. -Dan

Well, it's too late -- the goat's out of the bag. Might as well revel in it...

I dunno guys, sometimes a goat is just a goat...

Real Life's been kind of kicking my ass lately, and I've not been getting nearly the sort of writing done that I'd like. The rewrite of the last two chapters of Yankee, any of Carpe Diem (though at least I've got the background research I need done for that one), Wild Life, What Lies Beneath, any of the little interstitials with Justin and Rob... all just sitting there. Not that I've been un-busy -- it's been an eventful month, what with having my dog euthanized, the separation, landing a potential new job (awaiting paperwork) and looking for a potential new apartment (awaiting the aforementioned paperwork before leases are found and signed and all). Plus the current job's kicked into high gear as I make sure things are in a good state for me leaving, and there's the time and effort being spent to make time to spend with the kids and work on some sort of reconcilliation. Fun is. I'm not sure it's necessarily a good thing when the soundtrack to Mirrormask seems really appropriate. But it does, and most of it's been on repeat on the iPod for the past week or two making life all that much more surreal. Anyway (and yeah, it does feel good to just write, even if it is only a rambling blog entry) I've been managing to grab bits of time here and there to throw a couple hundred words at one particular story, Dirty Basement, that Ben and William have been in the middle of for a while. And as I've been working on that I've been finding one of those interesting little things that occasionally you run across when you're writing something that's not entirely standalone -- Important Side Things. You know these, or you've probably seen 'em in series fiction. They're people, places, or events that are Important, and will probably show up later on. They're not really foreshadowing, as such, since there's no real guarantee they'll mean anything, but... you just get that feeling they're more than just the standard setting stuff. I'm not talking here about things that you design in to be important or a regular occurrence. Those are different. Yeah, I've some threads running through all the Ben and William stories; some running jokes, common themes, an ongoing background plot, and places that they either refer to or go to regularly. Those are normal, and as a writer you think about them ahead of time and put them in where you need them for whatever need they satisfy. (Long standing enemies, home bases, allies, or whatever) What I am talking about are those things that you write in as the story progresses because they have an immediate and non-recurring function but as you write 'em in for some reason they don't turn out to be as ephemeral as you thought and instead actually have a life of their own. You don't mean for them to be much but as soon as the words hit the page, or your brain turns over the scene enough to nail that part of the plot, something is oddly... solid about that thing or person or place or event. As a for instance, in Dirty Basement there's an obligatory rescue scene (hey, it's adventure fiction!) and one of the people they rescue's a boy, maybe eight or ten. He wasn't supposed to be anything but window dressing, someone for the heroes to rescue and never show up again. But... he isn't. The kid muscled into the rest of the scene, and now instead of just some semi-random kid I've got a 10 year old who's hero-worshipping Ben, dislikes William a lot, and has enough solidity to him that he's bound to show up again. I have no idea why, or how, or even if, but he's got that feeling. His wife and sister are still shades, as is his father, though Dad at least will probably show up later, but this kid just... exists. Strange. Especially since the only reason the kid, and the whole rescue scene, is in the story is because I needed Ben knighted for something that takes place a year later. It was all supposed to be mostly throwaway. Go figure. Ah, well, three thousand words down, probably another four or five to go, and at least this thing will be done. Then it's off to the editors and other things. Woohoo!

Works fine for me, in both Camino and Safari under OS X. I'd make sure you've got a recent version of both firefox and java installed, though it's tough to say exactly what else you might need to do without knowing more about your system. There's no access to the chat except via the java chat client, for enough good reasons that I'll forestall the inevitable thread direction and say "Just don't go there".

Weddings are weddings, no matter what else is involved. Face it, guys, your mothers are involved, and any control you think you might have over the proceedings is entirely illusory.

Bah. Characters are a pain. I should be working on the rewrite of the last two chapters of Yankee, or on its sequel, or on Wild Life, or even (gasp!) actual Real Work. Instead... instead I'm cleaning out someone's basement. Metaphorically, at least. At least this thing should be shortish, probably about as long as Firegrass was. To tease, here's a bit of the beginning of this untitled thing: Untitled Story "William," Ben said, his voice thick with accusation. "What did you do?" "I didn't do anything," William protested. "Its just that there's a pocket dimension in our basement." "Really," Ben said. "Yes," William replied, nodding hard. "Where, exactly, was this pocket dimension?" William started to fidget uncomfortably. "You know that back corner where the stone in the walls was discolored, the one you didn't like so you put extra wards over it and moved the traveling trunk on top of it for safe keeping?" Ben just nodded. "Well," William said brightly, "you need a new trunk."

Okay, I've finally gotten the last prod I need, and the final two chapters of Yankee are going to get rewritten and then released. With the understanding that the shape of the story's not going to change, this is everyone's chance to weigh in on what in those last two chapters was problematic. Won't guarantee that I'll fix whatever it is you've noticed, but the odds are a lot better if I actually know what you think actually is a problem... -Dan

Yeah, my first real cliffhanger ever! I'm so proud... Like everyone else, I'm curious to see how it all ends up. And I'm curious to see how the next suckerauthor continues things. (As long as it's not me -- I have no idea how the heck to continue on from where I left it)

I got tapped to write a chapter of Collision, the round-robin murder mystery thing that a bunch of authors are working on. Chapter 14, "Running to Stand Still", is up on AwesomeDude, DeweyWriter, and CRVBOY. Enjoy. (Amusingly, there's been exactly one piece of mail about it so far, asking when chapter 15's coming out, and that showed up about an hour after chapter 14 went live...)

Heh. And that's just the fully plotted and partially written stuff. (We won't talk about the stuff in the comments, I'd be busy for the rest of the decade...)