I have only two scenes and a transition on The White City left, and I have to go back through and salt in more character bits and clues and red herrings. So close. So close.
This novella is rapidly turning into a novel.
Where the hell is my climactic space battle? Two more goddamned scenes, book. GET ON IT.
- Mood:
cranky, and getting crankier - Music:Iron & Wine - Belated Promise Ring
See? It's so pretty! And it's completely machine washable - which I was amazed by (being a creator of fine hand-made objects which must be hand washed)
And seriously, the quilting is amazing too, hats off to the amazing lady with the fancy machine:
I don't quilt, I've never even really tried quilting. I know a few people who quilt so I know enough to begin to appreciate the work that went into this. I was very proud of myself when my grandmother commented I should check out the underside and I'd already noticed it on my own. I may be a little paranoid about the animals sleeping on it when we're not around though... So that's my crafting-not-knitting detour! More yarn stories soon, I'm binding off my first major lace shawl...
We got back to KC yesterday morning, and my little sister fell upon the Christmas presents with gusto. My parents spoiled me much beyond I had expected - I had told them that with dad's situation, they shouldn't get anything for the big girls at all. But, of course, they did. Between them, my sisters and the fiance, I ended up with:
- A framed needlepoint that my mom made just for me
- A generous Target gift card
- A pretty blue bracelet that my little sister made
- A hands-free earpiece for my phone
- A big, comfy hooded sweatshirt jacket
- Both new Batman movies
- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
- A new Terry Pratchett book
- Two bottles of my favorite red wine
I am spoiled.
And I managed to do well on the gift-giving front, which always makes me feel better than getting them myself.
Now I have the next three work days (mostly) off. The "mostly" coming from the fact that I have a client call at 3 today that I have to listen in on. :P But after that it's smooth sailing. Video games tomorrow and meeting up with one of my college boys for dinner.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
otahyoni coming to visit on Wednesday so we can hang out. House party to celebrate New Years Eve. Big dinner with the family to celebrate New Years Day. Resolutions. TV marathon for Saturday. Maybe some more family time before it's back to work on the 4th...I'm excited.
But now I need food...
- Mood:
excited
I drove home at the crack of dawn on Christmas day. The real joy of Christmas is that no one is traveling at that hour--they're at home opening presents and having family breakfasts. The roads were so empty that I was able to do almost the entire trip with cruise control on, which has never happened before.
(Please note that I make the trip on the busiest stretch of highway in the USA: I-95 between Philadelphia and New York. When the driving consists of sitting in the right lane with the cruise control set at 84mph, and occasionally making an easy pass to the left, it is a rare day indeed. Normally I hate cruise control, because it is useless on highways that have more than a few cars on them.)
I got home around 9am and parked in front of the house next door. Let me note that the residential streets of New York city are mostly all tree-lined. In my mother's neighborhood, there's a strip of grass along the curb with trees in it, then the sidewalk, then the front yards of everyone's property. On December 25th, of course, the trees are all bare of leaves. The tree under which I parked is not a variety I'm familiar with--it had a few berry-like fruits of some sort clinging to it, but not many, and I figured a couple of berries wouldn't do my car any harm if they happened to drop. I have parked under this same tree many times without incident.
I go inside, greet my mom, and go to take a nap. (Tradition when I drive up so early, since I don't get to bed before 1am.) Around 1pm we are ready to head into Manhattan to my sister's apartment.
I go out to prep the car. And I discover that in the mere 4 hours since I arrived, that despite the freezing temperatures, every bird in the tri-state area has apparently come to a giant frat party in the berry tree. My car is absolutely covered in bird shit.
And not ordinary bird shit! This is technicolor bird shit. That flock of birds had tasted the rainbow, my friends, and shat it back out on my car. Blue, purple, neon green, red, orange, acid yellow, and a little bit of brown and black. Practically none of the "standard" white bird poop.
This must have been some summit meeting of birds, because nothing was consistent. Flat splats, lumpy drips, long squirts that looked as if they'd been laid under pressure... It was a thorough catalogue of things that can come out of a bird's ass.
And the amount of it... The car was covered. This was a Jackson Pollack painting of bird poop.
It was so overwhelming, so much like a joke out of a movie, that I could only laugh. Sure, I was horrified at the thought that bird poop was hardening on my car, doubtless starting to etch its way into the finish of the paint. But the sheer volume of poop was just...I don't know what prompted a convention of incontinent birds in that tree, but laughter was the only reasonable response. It's poop. It washes off. It would amuse and challenge the guys at the car wash.
Then I remembered that it was Christmas and no car wash was open.
Fortunately, it was due to rain that evening, and fortunately I was able to find street parking in Manhattan instead of having to put the car in a garage. That evening I scrubbed at the loosened poop with a broom. It rained heavy buckets of rain for the next 24 hours.
Nature gives and nature takes.
Has anyone heard back from them/gotten confirmation?
- Mood:
cheerful - Music:Greg Brown - Pretty One More Time
openID and livejournal accounts may comment freely.
- Mood:
bitchy - Music:Iron & Wine - Belated Promise Ring
Today's teacup: violets
Today's tea: Today is a day requiring both blackcurrant tea and salabat, which I made with jasmine green tea. (See below.)
Temperature this morning: 28 degrees
I'm finding myself a little crabby with the NPR story this morning on Louisa May Alcott, which seems a little disingenuous to me in that there's a deal of censure being attached to Alcott's working toward making a living.
Artists, of course, are expected to spend tewnty years learning a craft and art that they will then do just for the love of it. The fact is, yes, most of us will do it just for the love of it.
But we also need to eat.
Alcott grew up in grinding poverty with a fabulously popular but indigent father. The fact that she was concerned with securing a good encome in her adulthood does not make her less of an artist; it makes her an artist like any other.
High-mindedness and a desire for financial stability are not mutually exclusive, you know. Alcott supported her family and herself with her work. She was an independent woman in an era when that was not common or encouraged. I am not, personally, a big fan of her work (though the ivy story in A Garland for Girls stays with me to this day), but I am a fan of her life.
And I'm pretty sure that the author of Little Women and Hospital Sketches could manage to be both an artist and mercenary at the same time.
Of course, I am a commercial artist myself. If nobody wants to read my books, I don't eat. Fortunately, I do consider accessibility an artistic value (one that I am not particularly good at, but it's nice to have goals) and I don't consider it a value that necessarily lies in opposition to depth of meanng or nuance or ambiguity. The hard trick, of course, is balancing it all. Layers; this is what layers are for.
cristalia has been talking a bunch about Dashiell Hammett lately; I also offer Dennis Lehane as an example. (Mystery has figured out how to do this well; I imagine SFF can pull it off too.)Both of them, I am pretty sure, earn(ed) a living.
Today I must work on The Secret Project With
kylecassidy (also featureing trillian_stars) and The White City. I think part of the problem I am having with The White City is that it is at its heart a very bleak little book, and it ends with a noble sacrifice and a cold wind blowing--and I am a little scared of writing that, because it's so sad. Also, there's the simple logistics of Our Heroes solving the mystery. Which is apparently trickier than it might seem.La.
Well, blogging doesn't get the writing done. Off we go, avoidant-lass
- Mood:
determined - Music:Morning Edition
I wanted to thank everyone for the great comments and discussions from last week’s posts — even the people who disagreed with me ;-) Based on your comments, I wanted to follow up on a few things.
Booksignings: I’m annoyed at myself. Rereading what I wrote, I looked at a number of factors, including the financial, the sneezers, and so on, but I completely omitted one of the other reasons I do these events — to connect with my readers. Eight people made the effort to come out to Nicola’s Books to see me and get me to sign their books, and I came back and wrote about how sometimes booksignings don’t feel like they’re worth it.
I feel like an ass on this one. I love getting to meet and talk to my readers. I’m grateful to everyone who took the time out of their night to drive out and see me. The other factors I discussed are important too, and I still need to figure out how to prioritize my own time and energy, but I apologize for ignoring this part of the booksigning experience, and for any hurt feelings that may have resulted from that.
Publishing Lottery: I wanted to address something that came up in a handful of the comments. When I say every “successful” author I’ve met worked her or his ass off to reach that point, that does not mean:
- Working hard guarantees or entitles you to success as an author.
- If you have not succeeded, you are either lazy or you suck.
I don’t believe I ever said or implied either of these things, but they came up here and elsewhere, and I thought them worth responding to.
Every successful author works hard =/= everyone who works hard will succeed. A lot of the people I’ve seen who stayed with it and committed to improving did eventually break in, but there are no guarantees … except, perhaps, that if you don’t do the work, it’s nigh impossible to build that career.
I’d also say that most of the time, books and stories are rejected because they’re not good enough. (See Ann Leckie’s post for the potential traps in “good enough.”) This doesn’t mean that good books are never rejected. Goblin Quest [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] was rejected more than 30 times. Not because it was a bad book (I hope). Not because I was unlucky. But because it takes time, research, and work to get a book to an editor who loves it.
Are there good books that never find a home? Of course. Good books get rejected. So do an awful lot of bad books. The thing is, when I was first starting out, I couldn’t tell the difference. I believed, like so many new writers, that my stuff was good. Like so many new writers, I was wrong.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t believe in yourself. You have to — otherwise, where do you get the confidence to submit your work? But don’t let overconfidence turn you into that guy. And always work on making the next story even better.
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
It was published in Every Day Fiction. As the name suggests, EDF posts a new piece of fiction (up to 1,000 words) on their website every day - they even email a free copy to their subscribers each morning.
Manna From Heaven is flash fiction, but even though it’s less than a thousand words, it packs a wallop. I thoroughly recommend it.
How about you?
What’s the best short story you’ve read this year?
- Mood:
good
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23
What's the worst book Chance has read over this Christmas holiday (so far, anyway)?
12 (52.2%)Some samples for the undecided:
The Lost Symbol
Moments after the man’s death, the numbers on the scale had decreased suddenly. The man had become lighter immediately after his death. The weight change was miniscule, but it was measurable...and the implications were utterly mind-boggling.
Katherine recalled writing in her lab notes with a trembling hand: "There seems to exist an 'invisible' material that exists the human body at the moment of death. It has quantifiable mass which is unimpeded by physical barriers. I must assume it moves in a dimension I cannot yet perceive."
From the expression of shock on her brother's face, Katherine knew he understood the implications. "Katherine..." he stammered, blinking his gray eyes as if to make sure he was not dreaming. "I think you just weighed the human soul."
There was a long silence between them.
Breaking Dawn
Like before, it was as if the touch of his skin, his lips, his hands, was sinking right through my smooth, hard skin and into my new bones. To the very core of my body. I hadn't imagined that I could love him more than I had.
My old mind hadn't been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.
Maybe this was the part of me that I'd brought forward to be intensified in my new life. Like Carlisle's compassion and Este's devotion. I would probably never be able to do anything interesting or special like Edward, Alice, and Jasper could do. Maybe I would just love Edward more than anyone in the history of the world had loved anyone else.
- 09:02:06: Gorgeous morning. Clear, crisp, breezy. Need to get out.
- 09:11:51: Wonderful to have a husband who can instantly improvise a haka on the merest suggestion. (Stomp-stomp-roar, stomp-roar! Both of us.)
- 09:34:58: No birds at feeder this morning. Hmmm. Too cold? Too windy? Or sunny and perfect for foraging far from house?
- 21:50:31: Work on land: transplanting surplus water iris, mowing, trail maintenance, census stuff, documentation
- 21:51:19: New post on http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/ with lots of pictures of the land.
- 22:17:58: New posts on http://www.paksworld.com/blog/, one before and one after the work on the land.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
"When Your Number Isn't Up"
Words today: 300.
Words total: 2600.
Reason for stopping: Uncooperative protagonist is uncooperative.
Darling du Jour: N/A.
Mean Things: Not the greatest moment for one's stash to roll all over the crime scene floor. No wonder he's not cooperating.
Research Roundup: The date for the invention of sugar packets (too late, alas); hotel registers.
Books in progress: Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man.
The glamour: Out for a brief shopping trip this afternoon, which involved schmancy Aveda shampoo, more books, and a few gifty things. It demonstrated the thing where I need to be out of the house a little more often than I have been this week. Luckily, there is drinks tomorrow to accomplish that for me.
I feel like every week and a half or so I get a thought on this and circle back to dump a few words on it, which is an exceeding coy way to do business. This time it was a way to demonstrate one of the three or four lines of conflict, and what was missing: motive. I thank Dashiell Hammett for figuring that one out for me. Those two thinks should take me solidly into at least the third section of five, if I can just cough up the words to take us there. Right now I'm struggling to fill out the first scene.
That struggling makes me wonder if my brain is determinedly trying to learn something about sentence-level prose, and if that's why I hate mine so badly at the moment. It would make a lot of sense in terms of how these things have gone before. If so, this is on a long-term level all to the good, because I will emerge from this plateau cranky and disheveled and a better writer. Right now I'm just cranky and disheveled, sadly, so we wait for that shining day to come.
And now it is past midnight, so I am going to retire to bed with The Thin Man and fill my brain back up with words for tomorrow's dumping.
- Mood:
pensive - Music:Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan -- Revolver
Meanwhile, I took loppers in hand and got serious about clearing the N/S trail on the east side of the creek woods, which had become overgrown and encumbered by blow=downs. Along the way saw a lot of birds, heard more, saw nifty lichens and a ground fungus of a kind I hadn't seen before, and managed to get very tired and stiff. Many limbs were lopped and dragged, lopped and dragged, lopped and....you get the idea.
Some pictures from the day are up at the 80 acres blog.
- Mood:accomplished
new movies seen:
“The Center World”: It’s a little bit depressing, a little bit dreary, has the superb Molly Parker dancing in her panties. It reminds me of all of those other movies about sad people having sad lives and trying to connect with each other. Maybe this fits somewhere with “Exotica”, which I clearly need to watch again ASTAT.
“LIE”: This one knocked me over. Sympathetic pedophile that you still want to beat to death with a frying pan, but it’s the main boy’s performance that destroyed me.
“(500) Days of Summer”: I have no idea what I was expecting but Joseph Gordon-Levitt can do no wrong. Not exactly what I wanted but a nice surprise anyway.
and..small spoiler alert:
“Avatar”: which I saw with my almost 70yr old father, which is kind of amazing since his family didn’t have a TV until after he had left home and he remembers movies with news reels instead of trailers and commercials. The SFX were outstanding and amazing and yes, who could complain, really?
I’m not (spoiler) as sold on us rooting for an alien race that still needed a human-cum-alien to save the day (even though he becomes an alien in the end, which is obviously the preferred state), which I guess redeems Cameron from making a fully anti-human movie but the aliens rocked and that Sam W., is a hot tamale and I was pretty much just impressed with the whole of it. I could nitpick. But I’m not going to do that.
Mirrored from [makeshiftdaisy].
Heading to the bath to plot.
- Location:heading to the bathtub
- Mood:
creative - Music:None
Profile
- jmeadows
- Jodi Meadows
- Jodi Meadows Dot Com!
(W)ords and (W)ardances
Page Summary
- matociquala : mike, you know i sleep under your desk [+0]
- ladysaphira : Quilt [+1]
- avadriel : (no subject) [+0]
- barbarienne : The best Christmas present ever! [+6]
- msisolak : Another year, another June, another sunny honeymoon, another season, another reason [+0]
- j_cheney : WFC, Anyone? [+1]
- matociquala : It's snowing! [+9]
- matociquala : we apologize for the inconvenience [+6]
- matociquala : even the very longest love don't last very long [+30]
- jimhines : Follow-Ups [+8]
- jongibbs : What’s the best short story you’ve read this year? [+13]
- secritcrush : Ending the year in style [+12]
- e_moon60 : From Twitter 12-27-2009 [+0]
- cristalia : Like walking away. Like a mouthful of rain. [+0]
- e_moon60 : 80 Acres Workday [+0]
- nagasvoice : Alabama Hills, November 2009 - lots of picspam [+4]
- mekkavandexter : quick celluloid update [+2]
- nagasvoice : Fossil Falls, November 2009 - heavy picspam! [+3]
- vg_ford : (writing) Last Rites - the Plotting [+2]
- nagasvoice : have some Flickr pix! [+3]