A quote

On the new Celestial Seasonings Chamomile Tea box:

“”Inkwells and teacups are never so full as when one upsets them.” – Edith Wharton

What say you?

Writing update

So, I’ve been writing a lot, finally.

In the week and a half before Christmas, I wrote a story currently titled “The Master Clock,” about 6500 words. It’s in editing stages. I sent it to a couple people to read and I hope they like it. (I already know where some of the problems are. Eeek. I wish I’d proofread it before I gave it to them, but I needed it out the door to feel good about myself.)

Since Christmas eve, I’ve laid down 7500 words of a story “The Crystal Face of God,” and it’s almost drafted. I think I have a fair amount more editing to do on this one though, and at least another 1000 words to add or more, because I just filled in some details so I could get to the end and have it all down.

Both are entering the editing stages. I have a few more stories in the brain pipeline that I might start working on while editing, but that will require me to pay special attention to time management, making sure I can finish everything.

Woo, productivity! Sadly, I have real work tomorrow morning, and I am up past my bedtime.

More silliness

Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band needs stationery.

Okay, that’s enough procrastination. I actually have a story to write. Happy Holidays!

You Just Don’t Understand Me

As the snow blows sideways in this wonderful storm, I want to relate to you a really meaningful interaction I had with a three-year old this morning.

There’s this little boy who we’ll call ‘Jack’ for the purposes of this story. Jack is three years old, intelligent, articulate, and imaginative. He was in our parent-child program for a few sessions, but now he’s old enough to take classes by himself, with a group of other children his age. This is his first real class.

He is also L-O-S-T lost in his own world. Lost like wandering off during activities, collecting bean bags and rubber stars and stashing them under various mats in his own little game, that sort of lost. Lost like swishing his saliva around in his mouth to the point where it bubbles out and you have to say, “Jack, why don’t you go get a tissue from your mother,” because there’s really no polite way to breach the subject in the middle of class. (Don’t say, ‘eew,’ because I know you all did that when you were three or four, or twelve or twenty, in the shower by yourself.)

Now, I have no problem with this in general, because I think kids should have as much free play in their lives as they want — especially three-year olds. No sense in sticking them in structure if they don’t want it, except when their parents are paying two hundred mumble dollars for you to teach their wee one to roll over and stand on one foot.

But it really actually is a problem when you have seven three and four-year olds in a gymnasium and one of them wanders off, because then the other six get it in their heads that they can just go play too, and suddenly you’re herding… well, cats would be too easy. And safety wise, you don’t want oblivious kids wandering unsupervised around the equipment because “they could get hurt.” And it’s my liable ass that has to make sure they only get the good type of excitement.

Anyway, at the end of class, my co-teacher ‘Lisa’ and I take the kids over to a carpeted wooden pirate ship that was built specially for the gym. It’s probably the most rocking-awesomest thing in the world, with a steering wheel, slide, rope ladder, plastic rock wall and an honest to gosh plank that kids can jump off into the pit. Now, usually kids like to haul on the steering wheel a bit and then go down the slide, or they like to climb up to the plank and jump off, over and over. There are a special few who find the crawl space under the rope ladder and rock wall, and my little friend Jack is one of them.

Generally, I let them stay under there for a few minutes. At least I know where they are and that they can’t get hurt and won’t hurt anyone else. But eventually (being less than five minutes), it’s time to go. Now I have to get this kid to let go of his imagination for long enough to get him back to mom.

“Jack,” I say a few times to get his attention. He crawls out from behind the rock wall and looks at me through the rope ladder. While I address him, he starts fiddling with the ropes. “Time to come out,” I say.

“But I need to fix my windows,” he says. He picks at the ropes a bit more, but keeps an eye on me too.

“You need to come out now and either take your last jump into the pit or go line up with Lisa.”

He turns and looks at me straight on, with this intense gaze that only a smart, preoccupied kid can have. Then he scrunches his eyebrows together and in his adorable three-year old voice says, “Jacob, you don’t understand me.”

I love kids. He totally won my heart today.

Trail Mix, yum yum

I made a yummy trail mix. All ingredients bought at Trader Joe’s.

roasted, salted almonds
roasted unsalted sunflower seeds
roasted salted, shelled pistachios
raisins
dried cherries
chopped dried pineapple (unsweetened)
chopped dried mango
chopped chunks of fruit leather ends (they sell packages of these. It’s like buying turkey or cheese ends from the deli…)

I put enough of each in to make it a pleasing color. This is, I suppose, a good way to go about any sort of ‘cooking’ project. The sunflower seeds are a bit small so they keep sliding to the bottom, and the last handful is always overwhelmingly sunflower seeds. Oh well. It is not too sweet or too salty though.

It’s an experiment to see if I can get enough extra protein and sugar to keep going through the really active days at work. I don’t like regular trail mix because it always comes with peanuts or other things I am picky about. This way I get to make it how I want. Next time I am thinking of putting chopped dates and figs in.

Yum yum.

some writing

So I have neglected to find more links or make other posts because I am in the process of writing stories. Somehow I got into my head that I could be a speculative fiction writer instead of just a fan. I’ve been writing a lot in and around my work schedule.

I went through documents that accrued over four years of school and found a decent stash of story gems, so I took one of them and started running with it. I’ve written about 6k words since last week, and I think I have the basic frameworks of the story in place. It’s nice to see that. The hard part now is going through and making sure the continuity makes sense and the story says what I want it to say without second-guessing my choice of language or general skill as a writer (and then going on and messing up the story with over-editing or giving up completely). I’d say I’m 2/3rds done. It’s a short story.

After I finish it, I’m going to ship it off to a few people to read. If they don’t say, “Augh, this is terrible,” or even if they do, I will try to incorporate some of their comments into the piece and then ship it off to various spec fic magazines. This is my plan, and is also why I have been and may continue to be lax in updating.

Things you learn from British SF

My friend over at liniment & lead posted a fun list of thirty things you learn from current British SF:

05. Creepy people are creepy for a reason. Children are automatically creepy and are much more prone to accepting contact from alien life, hostile or otherwise.

06. Sometimes humans are the most alien of all.

07. Never question someone immortal, nearly immortal, or just bloody old. Especially if he has really great hair.

Also posted are some interesting limericks.

Comic writing vs screenplays

A little early morning linking for your pleasure and my late-for-work.

Mark Waid, writer of um… comics, shares some thoughts on the differences between screenwriting and comic writing:

Screenwriter walks into my office. Famous, one of the two or three whose name is as instantly recognizable to movie fans in Iowa as it is to us Left Coasters. And he’s immediately on my good side because the first words out of his mouth are not “so I have this pitch for a supernatural western,” but, rather, “I know how to write for film but I don’t know how to write for comics, and I presume there’s a difference.”

…

The single most important difference between a screenplay and a comic book script is that a comic story is made up of frozen moments. Screen stills. Snapshots.

Read more thoughts over at Kung Fu Monkey.

I read an interesting blog on screenwriting written by John August, writer of Big Fish and a few other notable movies. He answers lots of interesting “how do I” questions and also writes about the industry. He was doing some good blogging on the writer’s strike at the beginning of 2008. Visit JohnAugust.com.

Technology failures

On Wednesday, I saw a bus with the destination “CHECK FILE”.

Clearly, the diagnostic and the destination use the same display, and someone wasn’t paying attention.

For more such errors, check out Revealing Errors, a blog by Benjamin Mako Hill (another Hampshire grad, but before my time). Says Mako, “Our goal is to reveal errors that reveal the technology around us to learn how technology affects our lives.” It’s a very interesting.

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell

I read a couple of webcomics regularly. I find that most try my patience a lot of the time and please me sometimes. Either they don’t update regularly or often, or when they do update, the plot doesn’t move.

Let me explain a little of my tastes. I read webcomics with plot, primarily. Those single shot humor ones are fine every now and then (except I needs my xkcd), but I don’t live for them. Comics like Girl Genius and Order of the Stick are great stories. Unfortunately in those particular comics, the plot comes and goes, and sometimes it devolves into stupid silliness.

However, there is one comic I read that has never done that, not ever. Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell is a comic about a girl named Antimony Carver who comes to a boarding school and has adventures. It’s far more awesome than Harry Potter. Antimony and her friends are way more interesting. I think I’ve talked about it before, but I want to reiterate how awesome it is.

Tom’s story started strong, and has remained so. It’s an episodic story. Each adventure is a chapter, each chapter is some twenty to thirty pages long. None have been boring, and even the slightly silly ones had substance and character development. It’s nothing like Girl Genius or Order of the Stick when they decide to be silly.

(The dialog over at Studio Foglio must have gone something like this:
“Gosh, our story is going pretty damn awesome. Look how gripping it is!”
“I know! And we have so many things to reveal and twists to plot.”
“But wait, our ACME Sillymeter is reading below 100%!”
“How can this be! Whatever can we do?”
“Eureka! Let’s strip them down to their underwear and have them dance in the streets with mops on their heads! Then we don’t have to make more plot until after Christmas.”
“Phil, you’re brilliant.”)

As much as I want you to read it for the story, I want you to read it for the art. The art has grown and changed a since the beginning. The mood and tone are the same, but Tom’s skill at portraying his characters has improved significantly. It started passable, and for quite a while was good enough. The current chapter of the story I would begin to describe as beautiful.

The best part is, it updates Monday, Wednesday, Friday without fail.

Start here.