I’ve been going over the last few chapters I wrote by hand. Ink pen, by a picture window, sunlight pouring in. For some reason, with some projects, this works when I’m trying to make things real. It doesn’t finish the process by any means, but when I take the time to break my paragraphs down and rewrite them in longhand, it seems to draw me into the world I’m describing. Word choice becomes more precise because, dammit, it’s actually difficult to write this way, physically. I never recall as a kid getting tired of writing with a pen (although I’m sure I must have when I got stuck with one of those godawful punishments “you will write a hundred time ‘I will not be contrary to the teacher’s arbitrariness.”)…
Category: Writing
Bothersome Details
I have come at last to the section of the new novel that I’ve been looking forward to writing for some time. The appearance of the eponymous object referred to in the title, the ship which will take my hero on his great adventure, and though I have been anticipating this part for all this time I neglected to do one little thing.
Figure out what the damn thing looks like.
This is not a small—nor uncommon—problem. I mean, I imagined this scene where the hero is confronted by the ship he needs, appearing as if by magic. An important ship in more ways than just as transportation. …
Serendipity do dah
Through purest serendipity, there will be a conference on Germaine de Stael here in St. Louis in May. About five years ago I started working on an alternate history set in 1923 French America. The conceit is that Napoleon never sold Louisiana to the United States, but managed to keep it. There are several reasons for this, a few of them historically legitimate, but it is a science fiction novel after all. In the course of researching the whole Napoleonic era, I stumbled on this woman, de Stael, and came to regard her as a phenom. She was one of the few people toward whom Napoleon seems to have shown actual fear and the only woman, as far as I can tell, and I became intrigued. …
Nebulas
It is a bright award, a tower of lucite with a galaxy suspended in the upper half and a gold plaque on the lower with a name a title and a year. A Nebula Award. I’ve held two of them in my hands and I’d like to have one of my own.
Alas, it is likely not to be. I fly too far below the radar of those who vote on such things.
Be that as it may, as a member of SFWA, I always vote. I do try to vote for the best piece of work on the ballot and it’s always gratifying when it turns out that I’ve read enough stories and books to have somewhat of an informed opinion. …
Catcher In The Rye
I just completed an essay for a newsletter about books we never read, but it is assumed, because we are Readers, we have. Catcher In The Rye is such a book for me. Never read it. Know a lot about it, through some kind of osmosis, rubbing up against people who have read it. You can glean a lot that way.
I made the statement in the essay that I probably don’t even own a copy. I just checked. I do. It’s not actually mine, the name of the person who apparently loaned it to me is stamped inside the front cover. …
Getting There
I’ve always been impatient. So much so, it could almost be considered pathological. I’ve had to learn patience like a religious observance, and it chafes, it does. My father is one of those people for whom the act of doing is a pleasure in and of itself. An attitude I’ve been able to emulate consistently in only one thing. He was once a gunsmith and I recall watching him—for short periods of time only, mind you—sanding a rifle stock. He’d work on it for days, running the papers in ever finer grains over the wood until he had achieved such a penetrating perfection as might be possible before moving on to painstakingly applying the varnish…ah, he was rapt. …
Anniversary…of sorts
I dug up an old diary a few months ago. From time to time I’ve tried to keep one of these, sometimes going so far as to try for journal status, but I just can’t seem to sustain it. So there are these relics lying about that occasionally unearth that give me a glimpse into what daily weirdness I was into back in 19—
The 20th Century.  That’s when I did a great deal of this sort of thing. I suppose ultimately that my own life bores me while I’m living it. Or maybe I’m too busy living it to record it. …
New Words
I’ve been working on a novella lately and this past week I found myself fully immersed in it. I found the groove, so to speak, and have been barreling ahead with considerable glee. It’s the thing about writing I most love and the thing that hasn’t been there for several months, not since I finished my historical and mailed it off in May. Even before that it was sporadic.
But I’ve slipped into the stream on this one and I owe it to a couple of perceptive editorial remarks from the people to whom I’d like to sell it. That part I haven’t had for years now. …
Reading On The Rise
According to this report, reading is on the rise in America for the first time in a quarter century. It’s difficult for me to express how pleased this makes me.
Civilization and its discontents have been in the back of my mind since I became aware of how little reading most people do. To go into a house—a nice house,well-furnished, a place of some affluence—and see no books at all has always given me a chill, espeically if there are children in the house. Over the last 30 years, since I’ve been paying attention to the issue, I’ve found a bewildering array of excuses among people across all walks of life as to why they never read. …
Attic Thoughts
Doing the Shelfari thing has been both fun and frustrating. I always prided myself on my memory, but it amazes me to discover just how porous it really is. Titles keep occurring to me at odd moments now that I’ve got my hard drive working on all this recall. Plus the annoyance of remembering titles but being unable to recall having actually read the book.
For instance, there is a host of books which were required reading in high school that I may well have gotten out of reading because I had read so much other material that the extra credit book reports forgave my lapses re the syllabus. …