From my drive to God's ears

Not Providence is up. Meet Randall again.

I am coming to adore having this time on Tuesday to share my work with all of you. Thanks for making it worth doing.

Converse

There is a type of logical fallacy which is referred to as the converse accident, a.k.a. "reverse accident" (or the simpler "hasty generalization", though that's specifically an inductive thing, not deductive). It is the logical fallacy I think I see the most often in my day-to-day dealings with humans; but nowhere have I seen it more in evidence than I see it in discussions about speculative fiction.

To spare you having to read the Wikipedia article, the converse accident fallacy is when one interprets a fact gleaned from a very small sample set (the aforementioned "exception") as being universal to that sample set's paradigm: "That swan is white, therefore all swans are white". I don't need to belabor how this works--I think we have all experienced this kind of reasoning, if from nowhere else than from small children who are still learning how the world works, and I have certainly misapplied, say, the laws of convection (I still maintain I can cook a casserole with the oven door open...)--but I do think we need an example of its prevalence in how people approach speculative fiction.

In college, I took a course called Intro to Horror Film (yes, really). Naturally, one of the first films we watched was F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, which is a fantastic piece; and naturally, at our next session, we began to discuss it. Most of the discussion was about the metaphors for disease, metaphors for sexuality, etc. And then, one student raised their hand, and announced they felt it was a bad movie.

Our professor, shocked, asked him why he felt this, and he told us that the ending was unrealistic, "Because if he was a real vampire he would have known it would be daytime soon".

The worst part of it is, in broad technicality he's not wrong.

Nosferatu did not carry this with it as a conceit; however, if I recall correctly, there have been several vampire mythologies which have included the capacity to know when daybreak is coming as part of the vampire package, which I suppose makes sense. But then you get into mythologies where sunlight doesn't kill vampires (Dracula and its precedents), where sunlight does kill but very slowly and it can be stopped with a blanket or tin foil (Buffy, Near Dark), where sunlight makes them sparkle like some kind of living disco ball (a noxiously boring book series), etc., etc., etc. And all of these various vampire myths could be interpreted as "correct". And all of them could be interpreted as "wrong".

Now, nowadays, this is not going to happen often in spec-fic discussions; genre-savvy readers know that any given story involving vampires will have new rules set out for them and use some old ones. But what about stories involving werewolves? Silicon-based lifeforms? Fairies? Janni/Djinn/Genies (all of which are, generally speaking, slightly different!)? You will get someone who will tell you that you are doing it wrong (or better yet, that you've ruined it). And God forbid you write something a little off-beat about the Great Old Ones...

Speculative fiction invites this sort of false reasoning, because the reader quite often has even less of a leg to stand on as far as understanding what is going on. It is easy to assume, in the absence of evidence, that these vampires will be vulnerable to sunlight, that this genie will grant wishes, that the psychic over there will be able to hold telepathic conversations; and even easier for the sudden, un-telegraphed breaking with those traditions to feel like the writer cheating.

Avoiding this is what leads to some of my least favorite tricks of the trade, like paragraph-long expository "dialog" or the main character taking a moment while there's a gun at his head to consider the precise physics of how his superpowers work. Unfortunately, the (just plain better) alternative is risky: it requires taking a certain amount of "sink or swim" attitude toward one's readers, and while treating the reader like they're intelligent is certainly desirable, it is easy to slide from "the reader is intelligent" to "the reader knows everything I know", and to wind up frustrating or even alienating the readership. It probably doesn't help that a great many works of fiction that are generally considered deep are known for producing a deep feeling of confusion in the audience.

My point in all this is not just mental masturbation. My point in all this is, I am coming to recognize this as one of my own pitfalls; and even if my page hits for Not Providence never soar to their previous levels, I will consider it a valuable experience for teaching me to watch out for that.

And to cleanse your palate, a relevant update from Dinosaur Comics.

Commodified Intelligence

And naturally, as soon as I add two quasi-intellectual feeds to this page, I see this article on MetaFilter. Normally I'd let this article speak for itself, but I really think it bears reading--it says a lot about the way current-era readers, writers, and would-be intellectuals operate.

I know I've done this--I have things on my to-read shelf (PIMP PIMP) that are definitely there just as much to see what all the hype is about as to actually experience what those texts have to say. And certainly I didn't enter or exit grad school with any specific desire except to get more education and duck the vagaries of real life for a little longer. I want to believe I'm above this kind of behavior, but really I'm probably just as much in the gutter and happen to be looking at the stars.*

I do have to say though, the gratuitous Foucault reference takes a little of the stuffing out of Balgobin's argument.

*hat-tip to Oscar Wilde and the science teacher who put the quote on his blackboard

Gadgets and gizmos aplenty

Hey all,

In celebration of me actually living in the 21st century and not feeling like I'm staring at the secret language of voodoo when I read HTML and CSS docs, I have spruced things up a little bit round these parts. As such, if you scroll down you may see a small selection of widgets near the bottom of the sidebar, including but not limited to my Google Reader shared items and the contents of the two GoodReads bookshelves that are a bit less boastful of me to be sharing over the Intervoid. So, welcome to the slightly revamped index page, and enjoy.

Also, yes, that's the first book of the Twilight series sitting in my currently-reading shelf. I figured it'd be best for me to give the series an actual fighting chance before I mock it mercilessly. Unfortunately I think it may get deleted from my shelf before I get past Chapter One. I've read grammar school essays more compelling than this.

This Week's Writing Rubrics

I am right smack in the middle of another week where I have no latitude about my days off from writing, for all the right and fun reasons, which means of course that I am wishing I had that flexibility. However, inspiration seems to be relatively forthcoming so far, so I am hoping that I can maintain this with a little luck and some better sleep (a quality of life issue I have been noting has not been well-addressed in my existence of late). Anyway, without further ado:

Day 1: Complete. Second round edits on Part Four of Not Providence, plus some work on "Recess".
Day 2: Complete. Finished the next chapter of Not Providence.
Day 3: 1,000 words in "Recess".
Day 4: 1,000 words in "Recess" (or to completion if the narrative's ready to close).
Day 5: Edit Part Five of Not Providence.

I am finding the publication of a serial massively enlightening, if scary and occasionally frustrating; and even if this proves to not be as good for PR as I might like I think it will prove to have been a useful exercise for me personally, and that's reason enough to spend my time on it. My only problem is that I need to focus on Done with Mirrors--I am hoping to devote a night or two next week to that, but I may juggle Day 4's assignments to instead be to finish getting a query package together for the novel and get it sent off to an agent.

And now, I am off to drink some water, for I had wine with dinner and believe in not working hungover; and then to take a walk and perhaps purchase the next night or two's dinners. If only I didn't have to cook to feel healthy...

Tuesday? Guess it's time for an update!

Not Providence is up. Maybe this will be just an inch or two clearer now. Also, doctors are evil.

Thanks to everyone who has been patiently helping me improve on this process and this story; I didn't expect this to be a tool of my development as well as your enjoyment, but I damn well should have.

Movie Reviews: Watchmen

First off, let me correct some misconceptions about this film that I have heard bandied about the Internet.

• This is not an action movie. Girls in latex doesn't equal action. (Feel free to make an inappropriate joke before moving on to the next bullet.)


• This is not a superhero movie. This is an anti-superhero movie.


• The book and the movie are different and stand alone, making the same points. I love them both for different reasons and will always, always, regard Moore and Gibbons' graphic novel as the more groundbreaking work, for all the obvious reasons.


• No intelligent person should be as hung up as this planet has become on Dr. Manhattan's penis.

Now, it is time for actual review.

WARNING: I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SPOIL THE MOVIE FROM HERE ON OUT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.



Short overview: I love Watchmen; I think it's a fantastic graphic novel. It is not flawless, but no great work is, and we have it to thank for the way the modern world thinks about the superhero. This film says the same things the book does, but it manages to say them in a way that is unique to film as a medium, and to say them in a way that is still true to the book while being freshened up for our times. If I had to pick one negative word to say about this movie, it is "confusing".

Now, let's dig into the meat.

The music. Whoever did this soundtrack should be proud; they managed to choose songs that were appropriately evocative and that blended well with the scenes they accompanied. I was never lost during the flashbacks because all the pieces, while they may not have actually been written and published/made famous during the era being portrayed, evoked the era strongly enough for me to know when things were happening even without being certain of my Watchmen trivia.

The cinematography. I was a bit annoyed when the prison break and the gang fight both turned into action sequences; but when the gore and the brutality really started coming through in full frontal color, I got what Snyder was doing: he was using action-movie cinematography to bring across the brutality and dysfunction in a way that comic books could not. This kept happening to me throughout the film: a scene that in the comics was unsettling but possible to gloss over was impossible not to engage with in the film, from Big Picture's minion getting his arms sawed off to the Comedian shooting his pregnant girlfriend in the face. And while his need for a slow-motion sex scene in every movie is a little bit annoying during the love scene in Archie, I can forgive that for the breathtaking way he handled the opening montage and credit sequence.

The actors. Billy Crudup did an amazing job of playing the alien ubermensch Dr. Manhattan; Patrick Wilson brought across the nerdy, awkward, kind, yet dysfunctional personality of Nite Owl with flair; Jeffrey Dean Morgan was sublime as the Comedian, who had the psychopathic, self-aware little grin that I always loved; and then there was Jackie Earle Haley, who I will hope and pray to get nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Rorschach. His voice, his mannerisms, his entire style was amazing: he brought a disarming life to Rorschach's final moments that surpassed the same scene in the comics. Hint for second viewings: Watch the motion of his cheeks.

The ending. Yes, it was changed; but in some ways I really liked this change. I won't say it made more sense, because that feels blasphemous, but I will say that I found it allowed them to drop a couple small things (though the presence of Bubastis now makes almost no sense), and it made some of the events of the book feel more synchronized and blended than it did in the book (the shot of an angry Dr. Manhattan used by a newcaster near the end of the movie made me feel like Ozymandias was even more of a genius).

The one negative thing I will say about this film is that it has a very high barrier to entry for those who have not read the book. My friends who saw the film with me had no frame of reference for some of its flashbacks, and so were trying to pick up on the fly the ways to identify when those flashbacks were occurring relative to the main narrative, which can't have been that much fun. I think that it is one of the ways in which Snyder worked a little too hard to make this a film for the fans--as a fan I loved it, but he created a major problem for himself by tying it so closely to the book.



END SPOILERS

All in all, Watchmen is definitely a DVD purchase, and worth the money to see in the theater.

Now, let me take just a moment to talk about Dr. Manhattan's penis.

People, shut up about this. Penises are not new, penises are not bad, penises are not that interesting. It is a CGI dick. You're wasting air and bandwidth on some lines of code.

We have gone through about a century of movies, and a large portion of that has included women baring their breasts and/or genitals; can we get over the fact that in this movie had a penis in it? Your jokes about the big blue cock are not particular funny, and the idea that this is groundbreaking really just makes me a little annoyed. I just hope that what movie producers get from this is the idea that full-frontal male nudity is acceptable in mainstream film, because while I don't crave pictures of other mens' genitalia I think it's time that our Puritan roots get pruned.

Thanks and welcome, a little bit late.

I am bad about keeping up with LiveJournal. I have an account, to be certain, though I don't bother paying for it anymore, but even within my own social circle I find the signal to noise ratio to be abysmal; the only things that keep me coming back are the desire for life updates from friends I don't see often. It's certainly not the memes.

So, when I tell you that I only just today discovered that an old friend, long since moved out of town and fallen out of touch, linked to my Archive page earlier this month, I hope you will pardon me. Thank you, Mr. Creedmore, for your kindness; and if you've come here from his link, welcome to the site!

Day 2: Ain't Easy

Day 2 of this week's 5 Days of Writing, and it was like pulling teeth. I ran into a major plot blockage on one section of Not Providence, of the "let it steep" variety; I just want to let it sit for a couple days. Luckily I have "Recess" to work on, which has things pretty clearly laid out, so that'll allow me to focus. I'm sure some of this has to do with being sick, and when writing while sick, I do best with either total delirium or rigid structure.

Please, continue to tell me what you think of the serial; if something about it is really sucking I want to know before I am too mired to do anything to reverse the process.

These are the days I dislike being a writer. Hopefully, the days when I love it will come tomorrow.

I really want to work in a KMFDM reference here...

Whatever bug I caught in Nashville is now at its breaking point. The sore throat is gone, the sneezing is mostly gone, and the cough has settled in but is sporadic; what I am left with is a sense that something is wrong with me, a sort of rubbery feeling in my head and a sense of everything happening a little faster than I can handle. I am hoping exercise helps me focus and does not just kill me; thank God today's meals are rich in vegetables.

This feeling began last night, which is why Day 1 of this week's writing projects was not as productive as I would like. I finished edits on Part 4 of Not Providence, but that was all I could do before my capacity to concentrate was severely hampered by a combination of the wobbling-brain side of the illness, the side effects of Alka Seltzer Plus, and new books.

To comfort myself and to increase productivity a little, I decided to bite the bullet last night and submit "A Million Stories". That's my February and March magazine submissions done, and my New Year's resolution maintained.

Also, I fixed the error with the link in yesterday's update post, and appear to have fixed the desynchronized fonts; however, I have been hearing rumors of a "main page" for Not Providence that has links to the as-yet nonexistent Book 2 on it, and that's a problem. Can anyone confirm this or give me a screenshot?

I'm sure I had something more eloquent to say, but the tar pits living in my mind have eaten it.

Updated!

Part 3 is now up. Meet "the crip".

Also, the site is getting a little makeover to improve readability; unfortunately, this means things may look a little odd here, as I have to focus on the bill-paying work as well as this stuff over here, so a tag or an element may not get attended to right away. Right now, I know that these posts are showing up in Times New Roman, and the rest of the site is in Sans-Serif; and that the footer fonts are ridiculously undersized. If you see anything else, let me know, please, so I can try to attend to it.

Enjoy the reading!

We're Pretending We're a Travel Blog, Part 4

Home safe. Just to get that out there.

The morning started with us calling up Choz (motherfucking) Cunningham this morning, and meeting him at the Pfunky Griddle, aptly described as "do-it-yourself pancake hibachi". You pay about seven dollars for a plastic ramikin (God, I hate spelling that word) full of topping, and all the batter you can pour onto the griddles set into the middle of the tables. Actually quite an experience, I'll do it again if I can.

After that was a nap, which we all sorely needed, and me waking up to feel like someone had tarred my throat. I think the cocktails and the dog hair and the lack of sleep all finally conspired to get me sick. This may require working from home tomorrow and a vast quantity of tea, but I will muddle through somehow.

Then, finally, there came the airport. Security was, once again, painless, though I again made a mistake and forgot to take off my jackets. Go me. The first flight was fine, except for the vague desire to die the entire way, reinforced by the shifting out of Central and into Mountain time on the way to Denver. My experience of Denver now is patches of brown and tan Tetrads, with the occasional suture scar of a forest or gorge, and a somewhat dark, very oppressive airport. I loaded up on Vitamin C, popped some DayQuil and Airborne, and made myself ready for the second flight.

The second flight was, my friends, my first experience with getting onto an open-seating flight and not being the first group on. So my beloved emergency exit seats were taken, and I was forced to take a seat with the plebes who aren't willing to pretend to be John McClane in the event of an emergency. I discovered that Southwest seats are actually all relatively comfy. At least until the guy in front of you reclines his chair into your face and you wind up typing with the laptop keyboard perpendicular to your sternum. So, don't blame me for not getting much done on "Recess", I did my best to improve and grow it under the circumstances. I am choosing to believe that guy's seat really was broken, because the alternative is to be annoyed.

I also had the interesting experience, on board the plane, of talking to a woman who doesn't really read much--she cited John Grisham as her primary literary choice, who is not bad, but certainly not my thing. We discussed crime and procedural dramas until we both got bored, which happened about the time I realized she hated it when stories got intellectual and weird, and decided to let her live as she chooses to live. Me, I still have a mental scar of Ikari Gendo's face as he smiles and says "Congratulations!"

Then, we finally landed, and due to bad planning on my part and an emergency at a friend's workplace (let's hear it for Silicon Valley, home of the *coughcoughwe'reexempt*-hour work week!), I was forced to take a cab. The cabbie was a nice Indian man, his language skills somewhere between pidgin and real eloquence; it was like if Hunter S. Thompson had been an ESL student. I got in and we started a typical airport cab conversation that rapidly paradigm-shifted:

Him: "So, where you coming from tonight?"

Me: "Oh, Nashville, coming home. I was out there seeing friends for the weekend."

Him: "Ah."

Silence.

Me: "So, how's your night been?"

Him: "Pretty lazy so far. So far, this my third fare. I work very hard yesterday, all my arms, tired, but, good tired, you know, you work hard maybe little overwork?"

Me: "Yeah, totally."

Pause. Drink water.

Him (chuckling a little): "Also, I think I overdrank little. Have four, five shot."

I settled in, because this cabbie was officially awesome.

He got me home in record time, though not record price (thankfully), and I trudged inside, where I immediately went, charged into comfier clothes, and sat down to blog, which has taken me, thanks to discussing my epic journey into the renal system of America, an hour. So I will conclude now, on this thought: Nashville is a beautiful bustling town, working its way up to small city, like Fort Bragg with centuries more history; and I realized, as I watched the plane descend tonight, that I live in a sea of golden lights.

Thank you for reading.

We're Pretending We're A Travel Blog, Part 3

1am, Sunday morning. The book release party for Sara is now over. A goodly number of books moved, a few prints sold, and quite a bit of fun had.

Today began with writing. This is never a bad thing. I wish Red Rock or Dana Street had quite the same atmosphere as Crema; I'd probably get a lot more done. Or at least be a lot more excited about having unengaged Saturdays.

Following Crema and writing, there was the Nashville Parthenon. Yes, a replica of that Parthenon. Their Athena is, simply, stunning. It is a correct match-up, except that the architect used his face instead of the original Athenian architect's as the face of Hephaestus (which is fair, until you consider the original Athenian architect was executed for that), and it is amazing. There is not a lot that can prepare you for how impressive it actually is; the entire architecture of the building is designed to make her more impressive, and somehow, those lifeless eyes are actually incredibly vibrant. She is, in all senses, enormous.

After the Parthenon came the Heritage Hotel, which is also quite nice, though I'd say a little more quaint than majestic. Maybe it's the lack of an air of primitive religion in the air; maybe I just have trouble being struck by architecture. Hard to say.

Then it came time to prepare, which was exciting. My suit feels very good, and I'm told looks very good, and I am all in all most pleased with my Christmas present. But the important thing here is the party, which was lovely, and which contained, of all things, my friend Choz, from the Santa Cruz LARP scene. Choz is, it turns out, doing fantastically; and it was so nice to get to talk to that amazing brain without so many things in the way. It is weird to realize how long I've gone without seeing him, and how long I've known him, and, really, how many people I appear to have left a mark on. It gives me hope for the future.

We talked over cocktails, then beers; then we had to take a break for a very funny and innovative magic act, and, my friends, came the clockwork burlesque. Oh yes. You heard that right. The representative of Syrens of the South who came to the party was one of the most skilled dancers I have had the pleasure to see, and the choreography was, to my knowledge of burlesque, refreshingly original. I'll have the look on her face and her stilted gliding in my head as an example of the kinds of expression the human body is capable of.

And now, it is time for bed and the prayers for a hangover-free morning. Tomorrow, I pay someone to let me pour my own pancakes. The things you come up with on those long Southern nights...

We're Pretending We're A Travel Blog, Part 2: Waffle House

I arrived safely, some hours ago, in Nashville, and was immediately subject to a punch in the face that I was no longer in California. Sara and Matt greeted me with a text that asked if I was out of the gate; and when I replied in the affirmative, another that just said "Walk fast!" Huh? Wait, I just walk forward and I will get to the exit? The one exit? There aren't like, eight baggage claims and a dozen side corridors where I can get lost? Wham!

I got back to Sara and Matt's wonderful little 2-bedroom home, which is full of the bric-a-brac and detritus of a life lived in letters and makes me all sorts of envious, and we proceeded to let Sara catch up on Dollhouse (which may yet not suck), after which 20/20 came on and the interviewer proceeded to explain in the world's most comedically stereotyped tone how really, recessions are natural and government spending won't fix anything as compared to just leaving everything in place and riding it out.

And then...then there was Waffle House.

Those of you who know about Waffle House can probably stop reading; I suspect my amazement will mostly tell you how close I've stayed to my front door all these years of my life. Waffle House is something I mostly know via anecdotal evidence from Southern gamers and, of course, Bloodhound Gang lyrics; it was only tonight, March 13th, that I got to experience Waffle House first-hand.

People may tell you Waffle House is "like Denny's" or "like Carrow's" or something similar. These people are lying. They are similar in the same way as a poodle and a bull mastiff. Waffle Houses are not the original greasy spoon, but they certainly all have a piece of that original greasy spoon's brickwork in their foundations; it's the only way to explain the bizarre warp-gate into the Dimension of Plastic and Grease that occurs when you enter.

To begin with, it appears to be a requirement that every Waffle House have precisely one letter in their sign burnt out. The one near the Nashville airport is "Affle House"; the one we visited was the "Waffe House", which brings to mind some kind of grease-bombing zeppelin. We entered and were greeted with about six tables that look like the kind fourth-graders eat lunch on; a long counter that explains where Tarantino and the Coens got all those shots for their movies; and precisely two normal-looking people who are there to remind you how weird-looking everyone else is.

The menu was two sides of a laminated placemat; the most expensive item on there was $5.95, and that was two eggs, toast, bacon, and a waffle, and their hashbrowns menu took up an entire little sidebar, complete with its own lingo. Our waitress was a skinny, hugely-chinned woman in what I'd guess was her mid-forties, and she had the accent that launched a hundred tropes. She called me "baby". She shouted her orders in short-hand that made no sense to anybody, possibly including the kitchen staff. And when I ordered a couple blueberry waffles and some hashbrowns diced and peppered (that's tomatoes and jalapenos, in the language of the Waffle House hashbrown), she looked at me and said "No meat?" My affirmative answer got me a look that I knew meant "Y'all ain't from 'round here, are ya?"

The food was delicious in that way that you know you shouldn't do more than once or twice, really; greasy, heavy, salty, but good in a very traditional way. This is what Denny's aspires to be, I think, underneath whatever bullshit they're flinging currently--a giant bucket of the best-worst parts of home cooking.

We spent most of the meal listening to an incredibly skinny, spiky-haired waitress talking to a woman who I swear was pulled out of the fridge before she could set, explaining about all the weirdos who come into Waffle House at night. Apparently, our table had one night been used to do drugs. And the other booth where we almost sat was where a man and a prostitute had sex.

The woman made of suet (who, I should note, was dressed in white with pink dots or shapes of some sort, I assume because she is trying to pretend she's actually someone's DT hallucination) asked the obvious question, "How did they get away with that?", to which the waitress answered "Well, she was havin' sex with him with her mouth...?"

"Havin' sex with him with her mouth."

God Bless America.

We're Pretending We're a Travel Blog, Part 1

My vacation to Nashville begins, in a sense, last night, at about 11:30; having finished a bit of editing for a friend (well, finished round 2) and a bit of editing for a me, I plopped myself down on the couch to watch Episode 22 of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Two hours later, I turned off the TV, having watched Episode 26.*

Let me tell you, nothing preps you for a flight like staying up until 2, steeping your brain in Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'd say this might become a ritual, but I don't want to wind up swallowing a drill.

This is followed by me getting up so early the sky was still spongy black and the sunlight was doing fuck-all to make anything look brighter. My last two airplane flights, of the approximately five I have taken in my life, both departed from SFO, and were both during the height of the U.S. government's pedal-to-the-metal security measures; one of them was even international. So, of course, this means I overshot how much time I needed to clear check-in and security, especially considering I checked in online yesterday.

Security took me all of thirty seconds. And I was carrying two bags, and made a mistake (I left my boarding pass in the tray with my shoes and laptop; that human instinct to release all objects in one's hands at once). If you can't make it through security in about a minute or less per person, you either have a small child, metal implanted in your body, or, more likely, a piece of your brain missing. This is another place where I can't fathom the populace's overall lack of common sense and/or empathy; I thought Henry Rollins was just an angry man** until I really saw how simple one person traveling alone should be.

So now, I sit here at SJC, Gate A2, and I wait for my boarding to be called so I can jockey for a bulkhead seat with the rest of boarding group A. I am past the parts that make me really nervous, and soon will be past the one part that makes me kind of nervous (if you've met me in person you'll understand why I dread dealing with airline seating), and then it's off to Nashville for a delightful weekend with Sara and Matt. I need to do some writing on the plane, but right now I think I'll start the bidding with some sleep.

My neuroses were full of it. Travel is great.

*A more thorough review comes later. But for now, I will summarize with "..." and a link to Jacques Lacan's Wikipedia entry. Also, both extremes of the spectrum have thoroughly missed the point.

**He is.

The Fog Behind My Eyes

It's curious how much a time change really does mess with you. I'm never truly aware of the ways my body reacts to light or temperature or the cycle of the sun until it's a truly dramatic effect, like being wide-awake at 11 o'clock at night, or the first week this year of commuting home in the daylight; then, my eyes are filled with fog, and my mind is half-buried in a tar pit, and I just cannot function beyond the basic levels needed for survival.

I console myself by remembering that I have felt this before, and that I have fought it off with more sleep, a better diet, and just plain toughing it out; that everyone has rough patches; that not all writers write all the time. Then I force myself to still feel productive, lest I fall down that hole of Never Writing that can claim so many brains.

All this is to say that this week's schedule has been a bit disrupted. Monday was me editing Chapter 2 of Not Providence, and writing about 650 words for Eyes of Stone, which was its own kind of refreshing (though that new section needs a serious sandblasting). Tuesday, then, was me editing both Chapter 3 of NP and doing the second-round edits on "A Million Stories", both which, I feel, need to be printed out and brought on the plane with me for perusal during my trip to Nashville.

My current plan is to start work on "Recess" tomorrow night (tonight being dinner with my aunt), and work on that over the weekend. I also plan to send out "A Million Stories" in the next handful of days--normally I'd say "by Sunday", but I'm not setting any kind of deadline during a vacation--and to try to get Done with Mirrors out to an agent next week.

On some level, it bothers me that this feels like an unproductive week, given that my schedule still has an hour or more, on every day save two, devoted to forwarding my career. I think every writer starting out tends to compare themselves to people who are doing this professionally, and I'm no exception--it just so happens that the yardstick I use is productivity. (I come up lacking on prose sometimes, too, but I just as often come up feeling superior, and I feel like it's a dangerous game to measure myself against others' prose lest I wind up slipping back into my fanboy phase.) Such is life, I suppose. At least this week, I get to do some of the worrying in a different state.

Not Providence: Commitment Unflagging

Chapter 2 is up, in which a teenager bludgeons you with cheap symbolism.

To respond to the one criticism I did get from last week, I apologize for the rather uneventful Part One after the more tightly-focused prologue; Part One stayed as it did back when I had some idea that I was going to be regularly posting 1500-2000 words every week, before the stress-worms laid eggs in my spinal column and I realized I couldn't possibly do that and continue work on other projects. In the future, I will do my best to make double posts on weeks when a more navel-gazing chapter would otherwise make up the bulk of the content. Thanks for sticking with me through the rough start.

Time Wins Over Discipline

As disciplined as I generally am about writing, this is to be one of those weeks where I only managed 4 days of writing-related activities. The time change between Saturday and Sunday destroyed me, partially because a late-night romp through Milpitas turned into an early morning romp suddenly, and I found myself forced to wake up ass-kickingly early in order to have a productive day. Add to this that today was the day when I had to press buttons to see how many men the government was sending to take away my lunch money, and I am afraid that today was destined to be one lacking in forward literary progress.

The map for the next couple of weeks is interesting for me. I am far enough ahead on updates for Not Providence that I do not feel bad starting or restarting other major projects, but the idea of returning to Eyes of Stone is still daunting. I think this is me learning a valuable lesson in when to not let a project sit, though my interest in finishing it is still high enough that I shouldn't wind up paying too steep a price for this break.

So, currently, the plan is to continue apace with Not Providence, finish edits on and submit "A Million Stories", begin and complete the editing and rewriting process on "Recess", and meanwhile start to review Eyes of Stone and make sure I still have the thread of it. When "Recess" is done, I will focus in on Eyes of Stone, Not Providence, and the care and feeding of submissions until such time as all three of those stories are published or one or more of them clearly needs to be run back through the Belt Sander. Such is my life. Luckily I'll have a plane flight or six this week to prompt me to get things done.

This concludes your writing update. Up next in my little corner of the world: my thoughts on Nashville, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and acceptable breakdowns in reality in the fantasy novel. One thing I never run out of is opinions.

More from the Land of What

Ecofont: the font that uses less ink thanks to imperceptible holes in the letters.

No, really.

Willy Wonka is alive, and he's working as a typographer.

Time for the Unveiling

Alright. I kept babbling about a Super Sekrit Projekt. Today is when I draw back the curtain.

I am pleased to announce that today marks the first update of Not Providence, my new weekly serial, running weekly on Tuesdays until the saga ends or the universe enters heat death.

It will run absolutely free, no charges, no requests for donations (though if you suddenly feel like giving me your filthy American dollars, I will gladly accept). Love it, hate it, read it all at once or a little at a time. Whatever; if I brought a smile to your brain, I'll consider my mission accomplished.

Because today is the first day, and the updates are liable to be short, you are receiving a bonus: the prologue, as well as Book 1, Part 1, which can be found, as of this post, at the most recent update page.

For some ideas of the parameters of this project, you can read my ground rules.

Right. Let's do this.

Let's Pretend.

There is a curious alchemy to group storytelling. Sometimes it turns into exactly the sort of thing that gets parodied in popular culture--four separate narrative threads butting heads, if possible with some impugning of another's talent, intelligence, masculinity, femininity, and/or venereal status. But then sometimes, a group gets together to tell a story, and it becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Today's entry into the latter category is further evidence for what a huge nerd I am: my current Dungeons & Dragons campaign. (Please feel free to lunge away brandishing crosses.) I've been gaming since I was about twelve years old, with the odd break due to lack of opportunity and/or interest. I've run more or less the entire gamut--tabletop games, drama-sodden Vampire LARPs, boffer LARPs (somewhere between dinner theater and a pillow fight), overpriced miniatures--and I've seen what I want to lose and what I want to keep. When the latest edition of D&D came out, I find myself both disinterested and opinionated, largely based on assumptions derived from previous editions and the oh-so-reliable Internet rumors. I called it immature, I called pointless, I called it one-dimensional; and then...one of my oldest friends offered to try running it.

And it was fantastic.

The rules are what they are; make no mistake. This is a game of egregious violence disguised as moral uprightness, and you will encounter both dungeons and dragons in your play; expect politics and fantasies of manners to often take a back seat to sawing off a monster's face. But, at the same time, this game is proving to be the best tabletop gaming experience I have ever had. Some of it is the rules allowing a fair amount of narrative flexibility; some of it is, genuinely, the rules allowing one's character to be heroic and epic (occasionally in the false sense I have previously ranted about). But some of it is just that the group I am playing with manages to synchronize and improvise in a way that makes the game better than the sum of its parts.

We gather up once a month, we pick up our dice, and we play for about 10 hours, give or take; then there are another 4-5 hours of wind-down and discussion, often sliding into other games and game theory; and then I wake up on Sunday with the guilty, heavy-lidded refreshment of the morning after a serious bender and a long period of sleep, the feeling of my entire body smiling secretly at the world, as though I, an adult, managed to get away with this.

These are the feelings games should elicit. These are the feelings stories should elicit. And if nothing else, I am proud to be participating in helping someone besides me feel that way.