I Know, I Know
You've probably already seen this, but it's just too good to only stick over at the tumblr-tron:
Should be shown at the beginning of writing classes everywhere.
Pleasant Hibernations
It's rainy and dreary. Our roof seems to have a small leak, based on the small drip drip drip in our utility room when the rain comes down hard; this is only to be expected in a hundred-year-old plus house, so I'm not too worried about it. Especially since the source is mysterious despite Christopher journeying onto the shingles, the roof itself isn't that old, and our neighbor who used to be a carpenter says their hundred-year-old house built at the same time as ours also has a mysterious leak and they don't worry about it too much. Don't worry or leave dread scenarios in the comments. We'll call someone to look at it, promise. 
Anyway, there's part of me that feels very Pippi Longstocking about it.* Leaky houses always seemed like the kind of glamorous thing encountered in books, while, you know, the far less glamorous flooded basements were the stuff of my own childhood. No alluring buckets, only the ugly roar of shopvacs. I just need to wear mismatched patterned knee socks around the house, and the effect will be even better.
My sojourn from the creepy island book is done, and today I dive back in. The beginning of winter (in terms of actual weather) seems like an ideal time to hunker down in the writing bunker. Hibernation only without the hibernation part**. Oh, how I love this part of any project. The first time you roll up your sleeves armed with pen and someone else's notes and begin the journey to version 2.0. Or from beta release to one that is… less beta.
I've been cheating on hangovers for the past week or so, experimenting with sticking little links at Tumblr instead. This seems easier to manage, and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, with random natterings like this one and book recommendations landing here. We'll see.
For now, I'm donning those socks and rolling up my sleeves.
*Or very Rivane Neuenschwander–when we were last in NYC Scott took us to the New Museum and they had a big exhibition of her work on display, including a riveting immersive installation called Rain Rains involving aluminum buckets hung from the ceiling dripping water into buckets below. The cumulative soundscape ended up making everyone quiet as they began to take it in. Pretty amazing.
**There's a new issue of LCRW just out on the street and the Dear Aunt G features much on the topic of hibernation. Also, space madness. Forewarned is forearmed.
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Wednesday Hangovers
- The NYT covers The Search for Philip K. Dick, Tachyon's new biography/memoir by Anne Dick. I bet we'll be getting this one, as Mr. Rowe has the other biographies and such.
- Without the wonderful Ellen Kushner's spotting, I'd have completely missed Fernanda Eberstadt's fascinating piece about countertenors now and the castrati then: The 18th-century musicologist Charles Burney describes a (possibly apocryphal) lung-power contest between the young Farinelli and a German trumpeter, in which Farinelli, having finally exhausted his rival, “not only swelled and shook the note, but ran the most rapid and difficult divisions, and was at last silenced only by the acclamations of the audience.” I loved her nonfiction book about music and Gypsy culture in the south of France, Little Money Street.
- A great piece in the Guardian about forgotten women of British science, based on revisiting the Royal Society archives. (Via Steph Burgis.)
- A secret chamber discovered in the National Library at Kolkata: "National Library has always been reputed to haunted. Now, here is a really eerie secret. A mysterious room has been discovered in the 250-year-old building a room that no one knew about and no one can enter because it seems to have no opening of kind, not even trapdoors."
- Adam Selzer on why pop culture references in fiction may not be The Ultimate Evil, or even something to worry about dating things too much.
- The DoD tries to discover the secret of a flying snake.
- Seanan McGuire offers some advice on the interactions (or not) between authors, readers and reviewers, particulary to authors on responding to reviews online. This is my favorite part: "Don't be Princess Demandy-Pants." (Although number five is undoubtedly the most important.)
- When I stop reading Poetry Daily, well, daily? But I did. And starting again is my pre-New Year's resolution.
- Special for Vampire Diaries fans: You have all seen Katherine Stalks Stefan Through the Centuries, inspired by that Bon Jovi concert revelation, right? BRILLIANCE.
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Monday Hangovers
- I have a couple of pieces in this week's Green issue of Publishers Weekly.
- Elizabeth Bluemle at ShelfTalker talks to Cataloging Specialist Ruth Polan about various things, including writing those pithy book summaries (specifically of children's books) for the Library of Congress. Fascinating.
- Divergent opinions on the taste of a 200-year-old bottle of champagne recovered from the bottom of the ocean.
- One-way trips to Mars. I have some ideas for people to send first.
- Veronica Roth on writing about the midwest.
- The fabulous Cindy Pon and Shveta Thakrar on writing across cultural lines.
- Tansy on the brilliance of Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis. Totally agreed. (In fact, if you're going to read only one enormous book this year, I say make it this one/two. You can read The Passage later. It'll keep.)
- In which Karen Healey reveals there's a Leverage RPG.
- V. intrigued by Scorsese's Fran Lebowitz documentary "Public Speaking" for HBO, which the WaPo says is "Less a documentary than an ode…." Hank Stuever makes it sound both fascinating and sadly distant.
Electronic Brains, Dream Mash-Up No. 1*
Today I am busy with many things, including an overdue auction critique, so this will be short and silly.
Remember when Kelly was on her blog tour and she proposed combining Bringing Up Baby with paranormal romance? This is kind of like that.
As a sidenote to a conversation at World Fantasy with Ted and Christopher, I realized that the computers in Desk Set and WarGames are–more or less–the same computer.
Joshua
meets
EMERAC.
Would you like to play a game, Bunny?
*An occasional series.
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Saturday Hangovers
- I am still fallen off the face of the earth, trying to get caught up on things. If I owe you an email, a response, a critique, etc., etc., it's coming. I have one more big deadline to meet this weekend, and then, it's coming. And I still have this dratted cold. But in the interest of closing tabs…
- The divine Sara Zarr on what she learned from being a National Book Awards judge in the young reader's category: "Richard Rodriguez says that the reader re-creates the book when he reads it. If that’s true, and I think it probably is, that means 100 readers could have 100 different experiences of the same book. Which can be frustrating, but is also kind of magical and also tells you something about what it is to be a person, an individual."
- A dead interesting post about the possibility of considering women's fiction where the heroine ends up in love with no one but herself as romance (I, personally, would like to see more romances like this, esp. in YA–though I do love more traditional romance, too), which also details Pamela Regis' eight main narrative events of the romance novel.
- Justine Musk on developing a creative practice.
- Betsy Bird gets interviewed at From the Mixed Up Files, one of the best middle grade-focused blogs around.
- Delia Sherman contributes to the absolutely fascinating and wonderful series Katherine Langrish has going, inviting writers to post about fairy tales.
- Must get.
- You MUST READ Connie Willis' Blackout and All Clear. (Yes, it's out!) A tremendous achievement by her. (If any of you grousers about the locations of tube stations or whatever show up in the comments, I will only pity you. This is an amazing work.) I'll stick up a post for anyone who wants to discuss sometime this week. Sir Godfrey 4-ever.
- A NYT piece on Steve Kloves' decade writing Harry Potter movies.
- Maud shares a quote on the inconvenient timing of revision epiphanies; this is so true, it has been part of my process for years. I think it was an interview with Ernest Lehman that I first saw this stated–he said he'd turn in the draft of a script, only to immediately phone up the studio (or Hitchcock or whomever; I've never been able to relocate this interview) and say, "Don't read it. I know what's wrong with it now!" There is no quicker way to get distance from your work than to hand it over to someone else.
- Finally, cover contest! Which will culminate with a week of celebrating amazing alt historical and steampunk novels beginning Dec. 13. Mainly focused on YA, but other things will undoubtedly sneak in. Spread the word.
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DRAFTED
Done! And my longest first draft ever* at 82K, although this feels less like a first draft than my usual, too… since I have been working on it for ages, and did some revision during. Which I hardly ever do.
Now to watch a lot of Fringe, finish Sarah MacLean's delicious new romance, and then tomorrow catch up on metric tons of freelance stuff.
Still, yay. Done. (For now.) The creepy island novel exists!
*My first drafts tend to come in short. Hopefully, not this time.
**On twitter, I mentioned that I have this slight but constant anxiety whenever I'm mid-draft or -revision, that I'll be hit by a bus (or lightning or a falling piano) before it's completed and so all I'll have left on my computer is this random mess that isn't done. Morbid writer thoughts or type A personality run rampant? You decide.
Columbusiana & Excuses
Home from World Fantasy, but still not done with the novel. Explaining to others that you are "stuck in mid-climax" is confusing for everyone involved. So if I mumbled at you/said random things that didn't make any sense/seemed distracted and mildly crazy then it's not because I don't love you, but because interacting with others at this stage of a draft is difficult at best, unwise at worst. I did write about 5K on the road and in the hotel, and I'm *thisclose* to being done. No, really. I will finish this week. I. Will.
And the extremely wise Holly Black fixed my nutshell pitch in five minutes of gabbing, which I much appreciated. I find synopsizing PAINFUL.
The convention was a bit disorganized (we had to white out no show name badges and sharpie our names on because we registered on site–which was an adventure in and of itself), but as full of the wonderful people who are my favorites as always. Friday night we grabbed dinner with Ted Chiang (says the LA Times: "patient but ruthless"), Genevieve Valentine (whose reading the next day from her forthcoming steampunk post-apocalyptic circus novel Mechanique gave me shivers), and Kelly Barnhill (her upcoming MG looks great) at a diner called Knead that was quite good (cheesy bread!). Then we moseyed back to the mass signing and the bar where we saw lots and lots and lots of beloved people; and hey, I even got to finally meet Bill Schafer, aka the evil genius of Subterranean Press. Then I stayed up too late with Liz Gorinsky, Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz–rabble-rousers all. Saturday Christopher read from his D&D novel and the story he has in Kelly and Gavin's STEAMPUNK! YA antho from Candlewick (out next year), and that night we had dinner at Martini with Chris Barzak and Tony, Rick Bowes, Holly, Steve Berman and Dora Goss–including mozzarella made AT THE MOMENT OF ORDER and an after excursion to the world's best ice cream shop (anise and fennel seed; I shall dream of you forever). And then I stayed up way too late with a rotating cadre of peoples.
The awards yesterday were a fabulous ending to the weekend and I quibble with none of them. I was especially pleased by Susan Groppi's win for Strange Horizons (timely given today's announcement) and Karen Joy Fowler's for her brilliant story "The Pelican Bar," which I consider an instant classic.
As usual, there were many people I got to see, but not nearly enough of. Actually, scratch that, because I didn't get to see anyone enough. Far too many names to name. I miss you all terribly.
Also as usual, being surrounded by so many great people is a complete energy boost. I'm glad to be home and back at work. So now to finish this book, and juggle a carnival of other projects. Which is to say, it's likely to be thin pickings here this week and next (although a massive hangovers post is coming at some point). Ciao.
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Smash Cut/Vamp Talk Thursday
I am ALMOST done with draft one of the new novel, but not quite. Still, after many words written this week, the end is very close. If I don't hit it before we leave for WFC in the morning, it'll happen in the car on the Neo.
Draft! will make me very happy. As will tired brain Thursday viewing of:
Masquerade. Damon and Stefan devise a new plan to deal with Katherine at the Lockwood's masquerade ball. Katherine asks her friend, Lucy, to join her at the ball. Bonnie, Alaric, and Jeremy do their best to help Stefan and Damon with their plan, but Katherine has a surprise that none of them expected. The evening takes a bad turn when Tyler and Matt start doing shots with their friends.
Will attempt a post or two from Columbus, but that may be overly ambitious. Onward.
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Monday Five
Because I haven't managed to do the random post on Fridays lately, and really, why not on Monday?
1) Lots of people are recommending scary reading in honor of Halloween, which is a lovely idea that makes me happy. I always struggle with making lists, afraid (ha) to leave things out. Anyway, I've been doing lots of scary-ish research reading lately, primarily about alchemists and their alchemical tricks, for the current work-in-progress. And I'm rereading Stephen King's Danse Macabre for the first time since high school, and finding it just as absorbing as I did then. (In addition to Cybils reading, natch.) I recommend tracking down the November issue of Harper's for Téa Obreht's fabulous essay Twilights of the Vampires: Hunting the Real-Life Undead, a delightful travelogue through Serbia and Croatia to examine the roots of the really old stories. You'll like it.
2) It's my intention to (finally!) finish a draft of the aforementioned work-in-progress by the time we load up the car and drive to World Fantasy on Friday. This is highly doable. And then I can fix it.
3) I like it when friends are on book tour, especially when they come near us. Spent a delightful day in Cincy yesterday with Scott and Justine (and other wonderful localish folks, Scalzi and Megan). And then there's WFC and its horde of delightful types coming up in just a few days. A girl could get spoiled.
4) Apparently the National Book Foundation doesn't believe in fairy tales, at least not as something that qualifies for its awards? Which is crazy. Kate Bernheimer and Marie Tatar are on the case.
5) If I owe you an email, you will get it today. Promise.