This article from the Guardian has got to be one of the most depressing things I’ve read in a long time. I certainly feel sympathy for these people, though it does put elements of my own life into perspective: Life without hope: America’s child prisoners. That this article was published on a British news service provides in interesting perspective on the issue.
Monthly Archives: September 2007
It's official: I am, indeed, quite, quite mad.
As of this morning, I am officially a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month. Fortunately, I won’t be the only one, so I won’t have to shoulder this madness on my own.
Wish me luck.
Daikaijuzine, Reloaded
I just finished rebuilding Daikaijuzine in WordPress. There are still a few kinks to work out, and some prettifying to do, but it’s running now on a better platform, and ready for viewing.
Daikaijuzine News – 9/10/07
Daikaijuzine has apparently been targeted by that lowest form of life, the spammer. Apparently a good deal of spam has been sent through our submissions form, and some corruption or other the the database has occurred, causing the site to break completely.
At this point I’ve done the following:
- Disabled anonymous submissions; and
- Restored enough of the site to at least show a "Daikaijuzine is down" message.
The good news is that all of the articles and stories that have been published are still in our database and thus easily recovered. The bad news is that, according to my research, the prognosis is not good. Other sites which have run Xoops and encountered such problems were not able to recover fully without starting over completely from scratch.
I was pondering moving Daikaijuzine away from Xoops to a new platform anyway. This may be the best time to do that.
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball
- Even though our homeowner’s insurance will very likely cover the cost of our stolen bicycles, we went ahead and bought me a cheap bike at Target today so that I can still get to work until we get our replacement bikes. Cheap bikes at Target are not as cheap as I remember them being; I remember when they were less than $80, but we spent about $140 on this one. Ugh. We also had our regular handyman come out to look at the back fence and at the carriage house to shore them up and make them more secure. Just so this doesn’t happen again.
- The Floor of Doom is mostly done; have I mentioned that? Last week we finished laying the laminate in the last few places it needed, then we also borrowed my father in law’s air compressor and nail gun and used those to lay the quarter round around the base of the walls. First of all, playing with a nail gun is a hell of a lot of fun! Second of all, it’s amazing how much more finished the floors look. We’ve still got some bits around the door jambs to finish up, and a couple of transition strips, but we’re happy calling the floor done anyway.
Did I mention that we recently found a store nearby where we can buy lutefisk? No? Well, we recently found a store nearby where we can buy lutefisk. It comes frozen, in a bag, and you can microwave it. Because nothing says Scandinavian gourmet like the smell of microwaved fish jelly. Personally, I can’t really conceive of any good reason for us to buy lutefisk except perhaps to simply impress people by saying, "We have lutefisk in our freezer! Are we the coolest kids on the block or what?" Also, if we had lutefisk in our freezer, I could invite my father over and he and I could dare each other to eat it (this is how I ended up eating a cinnamon roll dipped in barbecue sauce once about six years ago). Also, I think you can buy head cheese at the same store. But you can’t buy haggis, which is truly a shame. I still have to go to Dixon to buy haggis.- I’m up to 77,587 words on The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster. Huzzah! Of course, I cheated and cut and pasted a good twenty thousand words from an earlier draft. Still, I’m pretty pleased. I think I’ve got a good twenty thousand words to go on this draft, and then it will be DONE. And then I can start plotting out my project for NaNoWriMo 2007 (as if it my novel would stick with any sort of outline anyway).
- Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
- Good night.
RIP: Madeline L'Engle (1918 – 2007)
Ever since this morning when my wife called from the computer room that Madeline L’Engle had died, I’ve been trying to come up with something clever and poignant to say about her. I can’t. I’m just not built that way. I mean, it would be no exaggeration to say that reading A Wrinkle in Time was a major turning point in my life. That book — but more so, I think, its sequel, A Wind in the Door — really stretched my mind, made me think about new ways of looking at the world and about telling stories. The concept of the Tesseract really blew my mind when I was a kid; and the sense of scale, cosmic and microcosmic, that she brought to life in A Wind in the Door blew it even more.
She was an amazing and gifted storyteller. She will be missed.
Who Wants to be a Superhero (Season 2) – Season Finale
And the winner is…
Continue reading Who Wants to be a Superhero (Season 2) – Season Finale
Sci Fi Meanderings
Via Slice of Sci Fi, I found a rumor that is bound to upset, shock, and dismay up to half a dozen people worldwide: Flash Gordon, despite a plan for a two-season arc, will probably not be renewed past the first season on the Sci Fi Channel. As someone who has seen plenty of my own favorite shows canceled over the years, I would normally offer my condolences to all five members of the show’s loyal fanbase, but in my opinion, there are better things they could be doing with their Friday nights: like, possibly, mulching their yards, sorting their sock drawers, or inserting flaming bamboo shoots underneath their fingernails — very likely a much less painful experience than watching that show.
In other news, tonight is the season finale of season two of Who Wants to be a Superhero? I stand by my prediction that Hyperstrike will be this year’s winner, but mostly I’m just looking forward to seeing a giant Evil Stan Lee marching through the streets, causing chaos, like an octogenarian Jewish Godzilla. You just can’t beat that!
Writing Update
Today I pushed the current draft of The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster past the 50,000 word mark. Granted, nearly all of those words were copying and pasting from an earlier draft with no more editing than some minor name changes, but what the hell.
I admit that I’m still not entirely pleased with this draft so far. I feel like my POV characters lack focus, and like the plot just sort of drifts along, with no purpose and no point.
Bleah. Time for bed.
Straight Ahead
I am a linear writer. A very linear writer. And what I mean by that is when I write a story, I start at the beginning, and write in chronological order, scene by scene, until I reach the end of the story. I may rearrange scenes later, or insert a new scene at the beginning of the story or between two other scenes, but when my first draft emerges, it’s in sequence.
I know other writers who are very different; they have no problem whatsoever writing out of sequence, writing scenes as they come and worrying later about what order to put them in. I’ve tried writing like that, but it feels so unnatural; like trying to eat with my ears, it just didn’t work. I’ve given it a serious go; it’s not like I haven’t tried it and hypocritically passed judgement on it. No, it just doesn’t work. If I start thinking about writing non-linearly, then I start to wonder things like, "But what if I just end up skipping all the difficult scenes, and write only the fun ones?"
So, I write linearly. I’ve made my peace with it.
The downside, though, is that I end up having to write those difficult scenes as I come to them. I can’t just skip over them. I’ve tried, but then my overdeveloped sense of guilt kicks in, and I can’t write anything else until I finish that other scene, at least with a token effort. I can’t even write, "Finish this scene later", because then it feels like an incomplete brick in a wall. When you’re building a brick wall, you can’t just mark a brick you don’t feel like working on and promise to come back to it later (I’ve laid bricks, so I know this is true).
One painful consequence is that my writing output is not consistent. For example: I’ve been working on this one scene with Fred and his wife, Vivian, for nearly a week now. It’s not meant to be a particularly touching or moving scene, but it’s meant to convey a lot about the two characters in some relatively subtle ways that I haven’t quite figured out yet. I think it’s almost done, thank God, but it’s been a slow slog. The last long scene I had to write, with Hank meeting Doctor Nefario for the first time, was much easier, and I pounded it out in a few hours. During NaNoWriMo I can punch out these painful scenes quickly, but when I’m in a more serious draft, I just don’t feel good doing that; I need to put in at least a little bit of effort.
How linearly do you write?