Remember me?

Ha! Surprise, Poppets! You probably thought I wasn't going to blog anymore. I kind of thought so, too. But it's nice to have this as an option, so I'll keep it going, even if I'm not here as often as I was. I sure won't give up the space, b/c otherwise it'll be scooped up by some dirtbag marketeers (who gobbled up Everydaibh and probably took Isonomia the minute I dumped them).

So, I'm nearly done with the first revision of the book I wrote at the end of last year, and I'm again in the High Hatred Mode for the piece, the usual love/hatred I feel for stuff I write -- love it when writing it initially, then hate it afterward. My biggest triumph with this book was writing it so quickly, which was entirely aided by writing it during my workday, on the sly. That let me get so much work done, it was great, and made my workday otherwise bearable, and was a resounding "F*CK YOU!" to my current employer.

It stands at 130,000 words; it was nearly 140,000 words, but I edited about 44 pages out of it. Right now, I'm making an outline for it (I never start an outline before writing a book; I do it afterward -- hey, I'm left-handed; we do everything backwards) -- just to see how the story flows, to see if there's any plot-tweaking I need to do.

I've got a second revision to do for it, and after that, it'll be ready for readers, to see what they think of it, and then to incorporate any comments they make into a third revision. THEN (pant pant) it'll be ready to be pimped to agents.

For somebody as historically off-the-cuff and improvisatory (is that even a word?) I'm doggedly meticulous in my revision of my work, what I call "deshittification."

One thing I wrestle with is my conception of horror -- horror is a reactionary genre, and I'm not a reactionary. I've realized while working on this piece how difficult it is to have a liberal conception of horror. There are things that horrify liberals, yes -- but the very nature of being progressive implies that you are able to think your way out of anything. There is nothing ineffable in liberalism (or is there? Muhahaha!) There's no door you shouldn't be willing to open, no place you shouldn't be willing to go. Part of liberalism's optimism is precisely what sabotages the idea of horror, in my view -- everything's supposed to be solvable in liberalism. There's no problem too tough for a good liberal. Whereas horror is invariably moralistic, and often the problems don't get solved, and things end up worse than before. Hence, the reactionary quality to it.

I've fought with that in the story, since the characters are all a group of bohemians (or fauxhemians), and are ill-equipped to face what's going after them. It's literally outside of their world, and only one of them is truly horrified by the encounter. The rest are largely uncomprehending of their peril. But that's kind of the point of the story. If evil's a virus, ignoring the symptoms won't make it go away, and there's no amount of wishful thinking that'll do the trick.

Anyway, onto the second revision, which should go quicker than the first revision, which I started in December.

Fin

I finished the first draft of the book I was working on. It's just short of 120,000 words -- not bad for about 43 days of work on it! Here's to writing while on the job, eh? Woo hoo!

Oh, and in addition to loving blimps and zeppelins, B1 is now fascinated by the Union Jack.

And on and on

I'm at over 105,000 words on the long piece. Much carnage and mayhem. Technically, I'm probably closer to 115,000 words, but I vaulted 20 pages in my "Cuttings" file, where I mothball stuff that's problematic. Anyway, I'm really hoping to get it done by week's end, like around the 120,000-word mark. It's a decent story, I think. People will probably think I'm depraved, but I'm just writing, y'all.

I can already imagine the interpretations as people read it, although anybody who knows me will see so much of me in it as they read it, like my trademark sarcasm, irony, snarkiness, and angst. Heh.

I'm definitely more pleased with this piece than any long fiction I've done to date. Once I get the draft done, it'll be time for the read-through and revision, the tightening of the laces, keeping it all together, tight, effective, all of that.

Then I'll let some folks read it, see what they think.

Snuffle

I'm still wrestling with the remnants of a cold that had already tagged the rest of the family. I'm nearly better, it was a mild cold, but an annoying one.

I'm also recovering from a bout of South Park Character Generator addiction -- whew, glad to be over that; for about 48 hours, I was turned everybody I could into South Park characters.

I cranked out over 4,000 words on a story I'm working on; I've been frustrated this summer, working on some long-term, long fiction projects (it feels pretentious to call them books, so I almost always just say "stories" or "long fiction" or that kind of thing -- to me, a book is what you hold in your hand, and a stack of papers isn't a book, really. It needs a spine to be real for me, a "book" is a finished product; until it gets to that point, it's just a draft). Anyway, I've stumbled a bit this summer, humming along on some pieces and then something going wrong with them, or them not quite cohering for me. It's a little frustrating, but it's part of the creative process -- some things work, some things don't. When they don't, and when, after a reasonable interval, I can't make them work, I put them down and work on something else. I can always revisit the failed pieces.

Still, I don't like failing; I play to win, and it bugs me. I was caught in a bit of a funk near the end of the summer, and have gotten my feet under me again, and am working again. That's good, even though I wrestle with whether my ability to write translates into having anything worthwhile to write about. I dunno; I get all tangled up inside -- like I'm always thinking about things and am passionate about a lot of things, snarky about even more, and part of that always percolates into my words, but at the same time, I wonder if there's no real depth to my work, or if I run away from depth.

Like maybe it intimidates me, or that I'm afraid to be vulnerable in that way, to really show what I care about. I mean, there are things that I truly care about, but if I were to explore them fully in fiction, there might be a risk of sentimentality, or hokeyness, or something. I don't think I have a great mind; I'm smart, but I'm not brilliant -- about the only area where I would say I'm brilliant is in my ability to make people laugh. I'm really, really good at that.

But at the same time, it's not something that necessarily translates into fiction, or at least something I personally can translate into fiction. And yet, there is a black humor to a lot of what I do, a gleam in my gimlet eye that gazes at the world -- I can't escape that part of me that laughs at everything. That's the part, the jester, that doesn't take things seriously, and I feel like if I killed the jester, I'd be a pretentious douchebag (DB), like so many of the DBs I work with at Bizarroworld, who take themselves Oh. So. Seriously.

Those DBs bug the hell out of me, and how they network and protect each other. Then again, Spousette says it well when she says that if people's work is any good, it stands on its own, and doesn't require that kind of networking for the work to shine. And yet, it does. Networking matters. Gruh. I don't take myself very seriously, and I wonder if that's what holds me back, or if it's a good thing.

My drugs are wearing off. Sigh.

ZzzzzzZZZZzz

Music: The Warlocks, "So Paranoid"

I'm sleepy. Cat puked at the end of the bed around 3ish, about the worst alarm clock one could have, and I was up, and that was that. It's extra-bad because last night was Spousette's class night (Part 1, Wednesday is Part 2), so I waited up for her to get home, so I slept like 10:30 to 3:30, or something like that. Not enough sleep.

The song I have on, a syrupy bit of psychedelia from the Warlocks, is like a shot of NyQuil in my sleep-deprived condition, but oh well.

I just changed it to Negative Approach. Just try sleeping through that. Trouble is, it's only 1:17 long. Now I've got Nugent doing "Stranglehold," which is another long, sleepy one. Everything's gonna make me sleepy today. All part of the zombie dance, I guess.

I'll do black and orange tomorrow (black shirt, orange t-shirt, black fingernail polish), in honor of my favorite holiday, which, unfortunately, caught up to me this month way too quickly. We've just been too family-busy to stop and enjoy the moments.

And I hear it might rain tomorrow evening. Halloween rains suck. It better hold off.

100th!

Today I got my 100th "Editor's Choice" comment star on Salon! Woo hoo! My day will be downhill from this point.

Luau

Poor Spousette and B1 have colds. So far, B2 and I are spared. I'm in a better mood today than I've been in a number of days, mostly because I wrote 1500 words of fiction yesterday; I hadn't written f*ck since visiting my folks. Writing always makes me feel better, like I'm getting something done. Never mind that it's a rewrite; it's still writing.

Today's busy, but not as insanely busy as yesterday. It's also very quiet. Maybe a little TOO quiet...hmmm.

When I get back...

...then it'll be agent time. Busily trying to get people interested in my book. The long slog from late summer through winter. I hope I can make it work. I'm overdue for some good writing-luck, don'tcha think?

I am Boxer

This is me versus Bizarroworld

Remember "Animal Farm" my lovelies? I'm Boxer -- except I don't have blind faith in the leadership (below, from Wikipedia)...

Boxer is a fictional horse from George Orwell's Animal Farm. He is the farm's most hard-working and loyal worker. He serves as an allegory for the Russian working class who helped oust the Czar and establish the Soviet Union, but were eventually betrayed by the Stalinist deformation of Marxism.

Boxer is one of the most popular characters. Boxer is the tragic avatar of the working class, or proletariat: loyal, kind, dedicated, and strong. By contrast, he is not very clever and seldom progresses beyond the fourth letter of the alphabet. His major flaw, however, is his blind trust in the leaders, and his inability to see corruption, leading to his manipulation and abuse by the pigs in more or less the same manner as he was by Jones. His two mottos, seen below, sum up the double side of his character.

He fights bravely in the Battle of the Cowshed and the Battle of the Windmill but is upset when he thinks he has killed a stable lad when, in fact, he had only stunned the poor boy. His death serves to show just how far the pigs are willing to go — when he collapses after overstraining himself, the pigs supposedly send him to a veterinarian, when in fact he was sent to the knacker's yard to be slaughtered and boiled out into glue, in exchange for money to buy a case of whiskey for the pigs. A strong and loyal draft horse, Boxer played a huge part in keeping the Farm together prior to his death.

Ironically, during Old Major's speech which inspired the principles of animalism a specific reference is made to how he would be turned into glue under Jones rule, thus implying that it would not happen to him under Animalism. This is possibly a further decline from animalism to Napoleon's government.

Boxer may have been inspired by Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, a miner in the Soviet Union who became a hero in 1935 for his great productivity, or the Soviet Stakhanovite movement named after him, which was aimed at increasing worker productivity. His name was possibly based upon the Boxer Uprising in China.

Ah, Animal Farm....

Sun and sweat

Pretty good ride in this morning, although damn is it humid! And I kept hitting little clouds of teenaged mosquitoes or midges or something that would stick to me. What a nightmare! Ptht! (me spitting out bugs)

Six more days until the trip to California. It's a wedge driven in my summer schedule -- an interruption. I'm sure my folks will love seeing the kids, and the kids ought to have fun, but the trip'll be kinda hellish, I imagine, although hopefully the novelty of it will inspire the boys to behave!

But I'm hell-bent on getting the book pitched to agents, and this week-long hiatus is an interruption for me, kind of breaks my stride.

I'm making some additional changes to the story, for a stronger ending. Nothing wholesale, just some more tweaks and tightenings of it. I decided I'm going to kill a major character in the story; normally, I avoid that, since I think it's kind of lame, like "Ohhh, somebody has to die" -- but I thought that him surviving the story sort of weakened it, weirdly enough, whereas his death would positively impact several other character groups -- like if he died, he'd provide strong motivations to three other major characters, and would propel the story forward into another realm. It just works better that way, I think. It raises the stakes of the story, and I like that.

Otherwise, if everybody survives, it's like the end of a sitcom, where they freeze-frame it with everybody smiling and laughing, and the music and credits come up. And I hate that. So, I think he will likely perish!

This quote reminds me of many people I work with...

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." — Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant

I'm an honorable savage in a dishonorable time!

Cherries Jubilee

I've been gorging on cherries lately. They've been so good! Apparently this year was a great year for cherries, and it shows -- they're so good at the farmer's markets, and I even managed to find some big, good ones at Treasure Island. I love cherries!

I didn't bike in today, took the bus instead, wanted to finish up the editing of the fantasy book; I've got like 20 pages left on it (I still have to input all my editing marks; it never ends!) Still, so glad that the end is in sight.

Part of my brain was like "Dude, you should write some new short stories." But the other part is like "Don't go there, man. Get this scutwork done." I'm being disciplined and sticking to it.

Crabcakes printed out a color picture of a crown that said "Behold the King of Nicknames." She's amused at my ability/compulsion to nickname absolutely anybody. It just happens. I have like my nice nicknames for people that I like, and my snarky nicknames for people I don't (like Baron Von Shitforbrains -- that's not one I've used, but I'm sorely tempted).

Stormy Weathers

The sky looks pink this morning; it's all very overcast, but with the sun coming up (somewhere), it's making it look pink, almost periwinkle, or something.

Wow, was that ever a load of stormage last night. It was like a strobelight (or strobe light? Hmm) outside our window, and yet, I managed to sleep. I think I can sleep through almost anything.

3-D is out all week; I'm so glad for that. I hate his George Costanzian presence. His very existence offends me.

I kind of can't believe it's Thursday already. The week has managed to drag and pass quickly at the same time, some kind of temporal warp or something.

My project for the week has been reloading the lost music on my iTunes (I'd bitched about that before, elsewhere, so no need to rehash it -- suffice to say my work iTunes lost about 1,500 songs, maybe more). So, I've been busy bringing files to work in bundles; I've added about 700 since Monday, and after today, should have about 900 restored. By the time I'm done, I should have around 5,000 or more songs on at work. Yes, you can see where my priorities are on the job!

I've made good social inroads with Crabcakes, one of the production people (the other Em, the one who wasn't Snausage, Homegrrl) -- she's the one nice and/or decent person in that group. I always think it's useful know one production person, since they get scoop more often than we do. She's commented about how crazy Bizarroworld is, how nobody talks, how much that sucks. I feel her pain; everybody goes through that reaction when they join the madhouse.

I'm perennially amused that the Raj gave us luggage tags with the Bizarroworld logo on it as some kind of bonus. It's like "Hmmm, are we...uh...going someplace?" Yeah, out the f*cking door!

So, I'm about 3/4 of the way through the fantasy novel, copy editing it. I hope the fucking editors who eventually (hopefully) get this book appreciate all the front-end editing I've done on it. I'm sure some BVHD asshats will scoff at it, like "Ahuh, well, this section's a little weak, we need more plu perfect tense!" but I edited the bejeezus out of this book. After the edits are done, I'm going through it ONE LAST GODDAMNED TIME to add sparkle, as I put it -- a final coat of sparkle and then varnish. The sparkle will be just adding to description and such, where needed.

The glow is gone, the sky is cloudy-blue again. I guess that rosy glow was the sun rising behind the clouds. Neat.

Anyway, it'll be fully and finally done; once we're back from the trip to California, then the pimp-a-palooza begins, with me crafting the all-important query letter, and trying to get somebody to take this book. I can see it now: "It's like Beowulf meets A Game of Thrones!"

Disabled

The Internets at home was screwy over the weekend, irritatingly enough. I should probably recap the vacation, but meh, sez I. I'm back at work, my mood in the dumps, as ever. I could feel my mood slowly downward-spiraling as I neared the inevitable return. It's funny, but I lose track of what day it even is if I'm not at work. Isn't that funny? Utterly unstuck in time I become! Vacation 1 is down; Vacation 2 looms in early August.

So, I'd mentioned getting yet another rejection on a story, right? It was one I thought was my best, and was said to be a strong story, one the reviewer greatly enjoyed, but wasn't quite right for the magazine I sent it to. One of the suggestions was to shorten it a little, so I cut 1100 words from it; now it's something like 7.5K long, which might help it land somewhere. Sigh. I just can't win.

Speaking of winning, a buddy of mine won first place in a writing competition, earning the $2,000 first prize! I joked with him before submission time that if I didn't enter it, he'd have a great chance of winning (he'd told me about it, but it was too near the deadline for me to whip anything up for it). And sure enough, he won! That's a huge feather in his cap. Prizes are a great way for no-name writers to raise their profile. I need to do more of that, I guess, since my profile is non-existent.

Rain O'er Me

Yesterday, I got soaked on the ride home. I'd made it as far as Navy Pier before the ominous stormage nailed me. And it got me, alright! I was worn out after the ride home, since the rain added some drag, weighed me down that much more with water. But I made it, anyway.

Today, I've got to get through my workstack, and once again clue JTOC and Tsarina about my being gone next week on vacation, so they can continue to fail to plan accordingly. What a bunch of tools! But I'll have done my part. I told Postal to just let the work pile up if they fail to account for my absence, and I'll just deal with it on my return. Maybe my absence will demonstrate the value of my work. Hah. I got a ton of writing done this morning, and am very, very close to finishing the fantasy novel I'd jumped back into two or three weeks ago. Stoked about that, since it's a solid piece of work; I'm very happy with it, sure hope I can get the interest of some agents.

Tonight, most of the Lunch Bunch are gathering at a watering hole for some firewater-fueled frolic. That should be fun, the crew back together, since we all seem to enjoy each others' company. It'll be fun, a good way of breaking in the vacation.

Tomorrow, B1's got his summer daycamp in the morning, and we'll pack and get ready to go, and then make our trek to Ohio, first for a wedding on Saturday, and then going camping Sunday through Tuesday (and also visiting our alma mater, which is in the area). Then a 4th of July celebration, and then homeward-bound on the 5th.

Deadly Ernest

You know me, he of the endless blog rebootings! I was plotting it, long ago!

Ernest "What Won't I Drink?" Hemingway would sometimes mix absinthe with champagne, and you know me, Hemingway fan/hater (in the same breath), I had to try it. And it wasn't half bad. Wasn't half good, either, but it weirdly worked. And I liked that about it, the weirdly working.

And weirdly working made me think about where I work. So, behold, the birth of a blog!