Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Didya hear? There’s talk of building walls….
Too many events IMO degrade into shouting contests and threats, with a sort of you better run and hide mentality steaming up and rippling across the national scene. Accuse someone of something and someone else with counter with threats against you.
All this brought to mind Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell”, 1980, from The Wall.
You better run all day
And run all night
And keep your dirty feelings
Deep inside. And if your
Takin’ your girlfriend
Out tonight
You better park the car
Well out of sight
‘Cos if they catch you in the back seat
Trying to pick her locks
They’re gonna send you back to mother
In a cardboard box
You better run
h/t to Lyricsfreak.com
Floofceny (floofinition) – a housepet’s unlawful taking of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it permanently.
In use: “When Aspacia began her day, she discovered evidence of floofceny. A floofen had stolen her checkbook and torn out all the checks during the night.”
h/t to Aspacia S. Bissass
Once again, none of my novels were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Naturally, I was distraught. It almost put me off of my coffee. Almost, but not really. It’s their loss.
Despite that oversight, my spirits are rising. Nothing to do with anything tangible; it’s just that time of my cycle. It’s beautiful weather, and seems like a wonderful to day write and edit.
As part of my lazing about this AM, I read a 2011 Paris Review article, “Catch-18”, by Erica Heller about her father, Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22. Several passages interested me, but I want to highlight two.
At one point when Dad was writing Catch-22 (he wrote it for nine years, which turned out to be something of an average gestation period for his books), only once and quite late in the game do I remember him becoming discouraged, fed up with the writing process and how long it was taking to finish. This brief, uncharacteristic bit of self-doubt caused him to actually set the book aside and try to find distractions. I recall seeing him watching television in the evenings, but his boredom and exasperation was immediate. Within a week, he’d become so sullen that soon he was scurrying exultantly back into the waiting arms of Catch, telling my mother that he honestly couldn’t imagine how anyone survived who didn’t have a novel to write.
It is hard to imagine not having a novel to write. That’s my primary survival/coping mechanism. Computer games help, along with coffee, wine, and beer.
When Catch was finally taking off, about a year after publication, my parents, who had now moved us to a much larger, far grander apartment, would often jump into a cab late at night and ride around to the city’s leading bookstores in order to see the jaunty riot of red, white, and blue and the crooked little man—the covers of “the book,” piled up in towers and pyramids, stacked in so many store windows. Was anything ever again as much fun, I wonder, for either of them? They would come home giddy and very late and go to sleep with their heads still full of the potent magic of a dream poised right on the cusp of becoming true.
That sounds fun and real, and is the kind of thing that I dream of doing, cruising places looking for copies of my books and evidence that my dream is becoming true.
Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
I was streaming “Eye of the Tiger” (Survivor, 1982) in my head as I was cleaning the carpets today.
“Eye of the Tiger” is one of those songs that was released and gained popularity while my wife and I lived outside of America working for Uncle Sam. In this case, we were at Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan. I was mostly working twelve-hour shifts in the 603rd MASS Command Post. Between those shifts and typhoons, it seems like we didn’t hear much from the outside world. When we visited Hawaii on leave, we discovered that McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets were the next greatest thing, MTV had launched and was gaining popularity, and Rocky III was the hot movie, with “Eye of the Tiger” as the movie’s defining song.
It all seemed a little surreal.
Delefloof (floofinition) – a housepet sent or authorized to represent other housepets. See also: delecat, deledog, delebird.
In use: “No matter what time he arrived home, exactly one delefloof met him at the door, like they’d been standing sentry inside it. Of course, after being home for one to three minutes — just enough time for the delefloof to activate the floof notification network (F.N.N.), the other floofs appeared, wanting attention and, of course, food.”
Yes, I’m reading my baby, but I’m enjoy what I wrote almost two years ago. My baby in this matter is the second novel, Entangled LEREs, in the four book Incomplete States series. I’m often surprised as I’m reading it, thinking, “I wrote that?” I impress myself, but I was writing to me, and I’m easily impressed, so I wouldn’t be impressed that I’m impressed, if I were you.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve posted something like that. *shrug*. My observation about my writing pleasing me also belies how my writing process works. I usually stream scenes through me. “Release the muses!” I shout, and then write like crazy. Writing scenes are often like encountering a tsunami and being swept away. I know what I wrote and can give you the details, but I don’t recall thinking about it much. I think about it before I start writing and after I stop, but I rarely think about it during the process.
The point is, those words are a first shot at writing the scenes. Editing follows, and polishing, and more editing for continuity and pacing, and polishing and editing. I’m an organic writer, so that scene is often edited to help fit a later narrative that emerges. I learn the characters as I go, so their thoughts and interactions in these scenes are revisited and modified to suit their personalities, motives, and agendas. It’s a long way from the first stream of writing to even the beta draft that I’m editing into a first draft.
It’s also a little scary. As I read through these scenes, I wonder, do these things get sufficiently resolved? I won’t know until the entire series is edited.
I’m not worried about being scared. I suspect that I missed some thins when writing the beta draft of the series. That’s why I edit and revise. If I find that my fear is correct, I’ll edit and revise again, continuing that process until I’m satisfied that I’ve answered the questions in a manner and to a degree that will satisfy the reader, moi.
In an aside, as I’m reading and revising, it’s fun to re-discover how I’ve integrated friends and family’s names and segments of their lives into my fiction. For example, a comet that breaks up and destroys a planet is named Santella-Klements. The first is another part of the extended family and includes cousins close to me growing up while Klements is a friend’s last name.
Okay, time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
Floofdom (floofinition) – a couch, sofa, floor, chair, bed, pillow, rug, carpet, yard, or other space guarded or protected by a housepet.
In use: “The tom and the queen squared off over the floofdom, defined by a square of sunshine on the floor. Although the tom was twice her size and was there first, the queen had an attitude and won the skirmish.”
Michael Seidel, writer 