Nethermore

I was going to blog about how cool Evanescence’s new album is (I managed to find a few songs in advance of the release date; I pre-ordered the full album yesterday!)–however, I just received an email that I won a free copy of Infoquake by David Louis Edelman.

Now, here’s the cool thing about winning a signed copy of Infoquake. I heard a lot about this book at WorldCon this year–Lou Anders really talked it up too–and I promised myself I’d get myself a copy. I just didn’t have the room to buy all the books I wanted to buy at the Con.

Later, Spike the Surfdog comes over at work and says, “David Edelman’s got a contest going on over at his blog for copies of his book. We’ve got to enter it!” So I sat down, wrote a few things (Hugh Jackman was Spike’s idea) and sent it off.

Spike gets to read the book first since he showed me the contest. Anyway, as the Stinky Hobo would say, “What a good day!”

I placed honorable mention in the limerick contest–so I’m mentioned twice on the page there. Take a look at the limerick AND the letter I wrote to win a copy.

I wonder if my luck will carry over to the Writers of the Future contest, whose results are starting to trickle in. I’ve given up hope on being a finalist (word is that they’ve called them all)–but I’m still crossing my fingers for a quarterfinalist or maybe even a semifinalist. Unfortunately my story “Robes of the Gods” isn’t ready yet to send into Q4 of the contest.

My new favorite website is Dave Devries’ “The Monster Engine.”

This artist has taken monster pictures drawn by children and then rendered them in a more-illustrative style. In most cases, he’s kept intact the original proportions of the children’s drawings.

Take a look at the pictures! You’ll laugh at them and you’ll love them because maybe you’ll remember having drawn similar things as a child.

Last night, a friend of mine recounted a familiar story and offered his two-cents on the story’s theme.

When I was little, I remember Mom reading me the story about the Grasshopper and the Ants. Grasshopper comes along in the spring and wants to spend all his time playing. He tries to get the ants to play along, but they’ve got work to do, storing food for the winter. They suggest that he does the same.

“But winter’s such a long way off!” says the Grasshopper, and he plays all summer.

When winter comes, and Grasshopper has no food, he comes begging to the Ants to let him in. They do, of course, since this is a sugar-coated story and shows that the Ants have compassion.

The story should’ve ended with the Grasshopper freezing to death. That’s what would have happened in real life. The Grasshopper, stuck in the snow and dying, would have shaken his fist in the air and proclaimed, “It isn’t fair!”

But, by golly, it’s fair. He discovered the rules when the Ants told him, and he chose to play instead of to work.

In order to succeed in life, you have to figure out the rules and play by them.

One of the rules of success stems directly from the Grasshopper/Ants fable:

Every one of us will pay a price eventually. Life is a toll road. To use it, you pay up front, or you pay at the end, but no matter what, you will pay one of these tolls.

Feel the Pain of Discipline. Or, Feel the Pain of Regret.

A little bit of work/discipline daily goes a long way to erasing the regret at the end of the road. Lack of discipline at the beginning feeds into how much regret we feel later on in life.

Luckily, we know the rules. We get to choose.

The Pain of Discipline now. Or the Pain of Regreat later on.

The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is trying to make the yurt obsolete. They’re also trying to get people into smaller houses than are presently the norm.

Started out when Jay Shafer wanted to have a 100 sq ft house. It would include all the amenities that one needed to live comfortably. However, the building codes where Jay lived wouldn’t allow a house so small. So he researched the regulations for what could be put on a trailer, built his house, and put it on wheels.

Check the houses on the products page and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

I think it’s admirable that in a culture of ever-expanding houses, there is a movement toward functionality over materialism.

However, at thirty to eighty thousand dollars a pop, less really isn’t more in my book. For the craftsman-minded, he does sell the plans on his site (for the same price as plans for houses much larger), and I think one could put one of these houses together for a fraction of the cost.

If I had more time on my hands, I’d design a few of my own and give this guy a run for his money.

But that would detract me from my focus—writing the book.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to note the patterns in my life and the obstacles in those patterns that keep me from writing. Since April I’ve noticed many patterns and have even been able to use some of them to my benefit in getting writing done–as long as I stick to the “Writing Rules” that I’ve given myself.

One of the obstacles that I’m still having trouble with is my tendancy to do too much. A lot of us artist types are interested in just about everything. For example, I like to draw. I like to paint. I like to build things. I write music. I play the guitar. I love languages. I love to read.

I’m just naming a few things. I mean, I’d love to learn how to do metalurgy and fix cars and write screenplays. I’d love to create a podcast for the website and a webtoon and a webcomic, among other things.

There’s not enough time to be a jack-of-all-trades. The addage holds true: “Jack of All Trades; Master of None.” I’m proof of that.

But I’m trying to rein myself in and focus. I took my guitars and amps home to Idaho this weekend to store in my parents’ basement. I gave back the German books I borrowed from my brother. And I’m trying to get all my outside art projects taken care of so that I can spend more time on what I want most: to write.

These other things all have feelings of accomplishment linked with finishing related projects. But writing is what I love. The moments I get to spend working on my book are like breaths of fresh air in a world otherwise polluted.

Regardless of what I’ve been doing to trim unnecessary things out of my life, one fact still remains.

I still feel overloaded. I’ve got to learn how to say, “No!” And not a wimpy no, but an emphatic NO! that carries with it the unspoken message, “If you ask me again I’ll your hair on fire.”

So lately I’ve been going full steam to get these outside projects out of the way so that when I get home, I can write instead of worry about deadlines for projects I’ve promised to help people with.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind helping people out.

But it’s time to help myself out and get that book done and then send it out and write another book.

I’m going to accept the occassional project. But writing is my priority.

Yesterday, I received this letter via snail mail:

Dear Isaac . . .

[Bank name] takes very seriously its responsibility to handle consumer information with confidentiality and discretion at all times. Unfortunately, we recently discovered that computer tapes that contained your name, address and . . . credit card account number were mistakenly identified as trash and thrown out. . . .

With the assistance of federal law enforcement authorities, we have conducted a thorough and extensive investigation of this incident and a search for the tapes. Although we have been unable to locate the tapes, we believe they were compacted, destroyed and taken to a landfill where they were buried. We have no reason to believe that anyone accessed or used your personal information as a result of this issue. Our continuing review of your account has not revealed any suspicious activity connected to this incident. You can continue to use your account as you normally would.

So I’m going to cancel the card. I appreciate them informing me of this strange incident. However, their only reimbursement for throwing out computer tapes deemed “trash” is to give me access to one free comprehensive disclosure of all information in my credit file.

I can get this for free once a year anyway.

They also said that I can have an initial free 90-day fraud alert added to my personal file.

Most credit card companies offer this service and you can continue paying after the 90-day trial period is up.

Then the letter states that I should monitor my account statements carefully over the next 12-24 months as a result of their fouling up and tossing out important computer records.

At least they apologize for the inconvenience.

And I will apologize for cancelling their service. As soon as I find out where I put that card.

Man, when Burger King messes up my order, at least I get free french fries.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about Vernor Vinge. My friend just finished reading A Deepness in the Sky, and I’m still partway through A Fire Upon the Deep. A lot of people have told me that they like to read Vinge because he makes his readers feel smart. He doesn’t spell everything out for them.

The conversation got me to thinking about my own style of writing in the first draft. My super writing weakness (one of them, anyway) is using big sections of text to explain what’s going on rather than revealing character, setting, and plot by showing what’s happening. Usually I go back through on the second draft and delete these infodumps in order to let my readers connect the dots.

So, revealing the story so that the reader can figure it out seems to be a balancing act. It’s akin to those old connect-the-dots exercises in activity books. The writer’s job is to draw enough dots that the reader can connect them correctly in order to see the big picture.

The writers who draw too many dots, or connect dots that readers can obviously connect by themselves, make a reader feel stupid. A writer who draws just enough dots and lets the readers connect the rest make readers feel smart. A writer who draws too few dots will make discerning readers feel smart and the rest of the readers feel stupid and/or confused.

According to my friend, Vinge makes some readers feels smart and others feel stupid/confused. I can’t tell from my own experience of Vinge, since I’m not done with the book yet. But the prologue to that thing had me scratching me head, wondering where exactly to connect the dots.

Anyway, just another way to look at infodumps. I’m striving for the middle ground. Not too hot, not too cold. But that medium amount of dot drawing that is considered just right.

I guess they finally got internet connections in the spirit world. A friend of mine showed me that Geoffrey Chaucer has set up his own blog over at blogspot. It’s called Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, and it’s a very clever idea, if you ask me.

Of Geoffrey’s most recent posts, he asks his readers to please vote for him over at Hot or Not with this plea: “Plese uote for me and saye that ich am hotte.”

Afterward, he reviews the new stageplay “Serpentes on a Shippe.”

(Caution, the following paragraphs may contain a slight spoiler for Lady in the Water, not that it matters much, since the movie kind of spoils itself.)

In other news, I watched Lady in the Water over the weekend. While it wasn’t a total waste of time, and had a few touching moments, over all it is a strange little movie too heavily laden with symbols and coincidences (think the coincedences of Signs on steroids).

I was worried about Shyamalan acting in one of his own movies since I didn’t think he was very good even in his bit parts in the others. To his credit, he does a decent job with his character in Lady in the Water. In other words, his acting wasn’t annoying. However, I do wonder what he’s trying to say by casting himself as the writer who will write one of the most-important books in the history of humankind.

Ctrl Zed has updated their myspace page. Go check it out. There’s a history of the band, their influences, and a new song, evidently an improv bonus track from their new album, FOOD!

Last night I had a discussion with a member of my writing group about Focus and Conflict in fiction. It reminded me of a man I met when I was a missionary in the Philippines.

Orlando Salcedo worked for some time as a writer for comics. Now, the comics in the Philippines are less the superhero kind and more on a subtle, relationship level. He gave me a stack of photocopies of the comics that he wrote before I left to return to the States. The stories ranged from “What should the family do for Christmas?” to “I think my girlfriend loves another man.”

Regardless of whether these types of stories have any interest to you, the principle these stories presented can be applied to all types of fiction.

One day Orlando pulled me aside. “You want to be a writer?” he asked. “Then there is one thing you should always remember. A story starts with a problem and ends when that problem is resolved.”

This fits right in with how to fix a sagging middle in a book. Most times when this happens, the author has forgotten to keep the conflict–the problems–coming in. When the problems stop but the story keeps going, the story slows down because the reader unconsciously thinks the story should be over.

I discussed this concept with Janci from my writing group, and she shared a little about what she’s learning from revising her latest novel.

Every writer has a different modus operandi when it comes to writing books. Some focus on plot, others on character, etc. Janci focuses on character and has felt in the past that her stories lacked plot.

But this latest story has a plot! she says. And she didn’t even have to “plot” the story. The reason this works for her is that she keeps the conflict coming, the problems rolling. If one problem is about to be solved, she makes sure that there’s another problem that arises. This keeps up the tension–and the reader’s interest.

I’m going to try this method of “plotting” as I write one of the viewpoints in Nethermore and see how well it goes. I figure it can’t turn out all that bad. Afterall, this is the same way that Stephen King describes his writing process in his book On Writing.

In other news, I came across an interesting website called Write a Novel. It looks like it’s basically tutorials on how to write. Seems like it might be a great writing resource. I’m still in the process of perusing it and seeing what I think.