Robynettely

Thoughts some people seemed to be thinking whilst driving home after karate last night in the snow: It has snowed an inch in the last half hour! I shall drive faster, in order to get home quickly, in case conditions get worse! There are three lanes on this street, and one other car. Perhaps I should tailgate her. One of the sweetest moments of my life was one evening last winter when I was driving to band practice. it was snowing. I glanced in my rear view mirror, and there was an SUV driving way too close to me, the way they do. I glanced at the road in front of me. I glanced back in the rear view mirror, and the SUV was now facing the wrong direction in traffic, maybe 50 meters back, and miraculously, no one had hit it. Sometimes when I just need a smile, I think of that.

Why I read it: I'm back from my vacation visiting my dad and seeing my sisters, and almost all the reading I did was probably about 100,000 words of my dad's novel mark VII. That means there are six predecessors (although he claims to have "lost" the first one). That 100,000 or so words was 230 pages. There are supposedly another thousand pages. I read maybe 32 chapters. there are over a hundred. It was really long. I suggested he take out about ten of those 32 chapters. I hope he does. Tastes like chicken: maybe Rick Blechta's book, because it takes place largely with North Americans trying to find their way around in Europe (the parts I would have him keep, anyway). Bookmark: none. Loose sheets. What I liked : There are two storylines that converged a few chapters before I stopped reading. I liked the one about the Gutenberg bible, or maybe the weapons. Not so much : The storyline that followed the messed-up teenaged girl had way too much repetitive detail. W

Why I read it: My sister asked for it for Christmas, and we have a little bit of a tradition in our family: when someone gives you a book, you say "how was it?" Also, I read a review of it in Salon , and the review said 80% of it was good, and I was curious about both the topic, and whether the last bit was as bad as the reviewer had said. Bookmark: Paybuck with Margaret Atwood's picture on it. Tastes like chicken: The Amy Vanderbilt Etiquette book I bought last week. Not so much the other MA books I've read before, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I had a strong aversion to Surfacing. What I liked: First of all, I really enjoyed the way she connected debt to wrecking the environment. As Elizabeth May said in the CDN election a couple of months ago, being Green means living within your means, which is a matter of fiscal policy as well as environmental. Also, I've read some of the same books that MA referred to in this one. That made me feel smart. And the

...because we seem to have lost all sense of perspective. We're having a snowstorm right now. It's snowing. It's cold. But it's a Snowpocalypse ? The Snowmageddon ? Apparently we're going to get about 20cm. I'm sure we'll all die.

On the weekend I went to see my friend Nadine. She asked me to send her a short story. Except at the same time, she told me the tale of her friend who writes songs, who always gets upset and defensive when she tears their work to shreds. Sell it to me, this idea of sending stories your way! Yesterday, I emailed two short stories to her. I wonder if that was a bad idea...

There's an ad for a funeral home that runs in my local paper. It reads something like: "Shan Jahan built the Taj Mahal in his favourite wife's memory. What's your plan?" And I always think to myself, "Inadequate, in comparison."

Usually I avoid those royalist documentaries on the CBC, but I was trying to finish knitting a sock, and surfing to find something better would have used one of my hands, so I left the channel where it was. And thus, I watched "Prince Charles's Other Mistress", the story of Dale Tryon. The whole time I was thinking to myself, some future Phillipa Gregory is going to write an awesome historical novel about this. In her sad demise, Dale jumped out of a window, or was pushed, and broke her back, and apparently went mad. I can see why people would want to write semi-biographical historical novels. If it was fiction, people would say it was too over the top, and no one would ever do that in real life. More shockingly (if that's possible), in my lifetime, women are still more eligible to be the mistress of the Prince of Wales if they are married, and a woman will stay faithful to her husband after marriage until she produces a male heir, at which point it seems sort of li

Why I read it: It had been lying around my house for a long time. I think I got it from my friend Shari when she got rid of most of her books when she moved to England like seven years ago. The boy has been reading "The Chrysalids", also by Wyndham, for English class at school. I was wondering if this would be a good thing to recommend to him, now that he's finished the Twilight series for the second time, so I read it. I'm not sure it's a good choice for the boy, because it doesn't really have kid protagonists. Also, I might be going through a stage of "reading from the stash" just a little bit. Tastes like chicken: HG Wells, which is referenced a lot later in the story, and maybe the new Battlestar Galactica. Bookmark : One of those cheque-ordering forms from my chequebook. What I liked: The very British style. There were moments that were quite funny to me, because they were just so deadpan. I love the deadpan style. I liked the way it didn'

That's my total word count today on Watcher. Surely I can remove three more words. Time for a new draft!

Last night I typed up the story I wrote for the Toronto Star Short Story Contest. And you know what? This one is almost a thousand words too long, too! Is everything I write 40% longer than I intended? Today I will print it, and I already thought of some ways it could be less crap. 29 days...

Why I read it: I bought this two or three years ago at the Fryeburg fleamarket because I needed something to occupy the boy with for a few hours (those trips to the fleamarket with my relatives can be interminable). And then, this book appeared on a list of good books that shouldn't be forgotten (get them out of your local library!) in the back of I think "The Thief" by Megan Whalen Turner. That moved it up the list. And then, I used it for a while as my carry around book. And then I just decided to finish it. Bookmark: Mexican 50 peso note. Tastes like chicken: While the intro referred a lot to Lewis Carroll, this seemed more like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" to me. What I liked: The magic was not treated like magic at all. Maybe it's because the main character starts out as eight years old, and is maybe 10 by the end. But the magic was just there, and treated like nature. There was a wonderful acceptance of the world just as it is, without t

Why I read it: Last March I wandered over to the Chapters across from the YMCA, and I went up the stairs to where the good books are, and there, sitting at the signing table, was Rick Blechta . I played for him years ago at the RCM, and I'd bought one of his books then, and read it, and it was great to see him again. And of course I bought a book. It's kind of scary to read a book by someone you know and like. What if I hate it? What if it sucks? So it took a little while to get around to it. Also, crime fiction isn't really my genre. Bookmark: Promo for "A Case of You", Rick's latest book. Tastes like chicken: Probably the other book by Rick that I've read, "The Lark Ascending", which features the same characters. Other than that, well, I dunno. I don't read much crime fiction (I generally find the hard-boiled voice not florid enough. Not enough metaphors or something. Too many short sentences, not enough commas). What I liked: First, I

Yep, I entered my blog into this little thing: http://www.typealyzer.com/ And I am... ESTP - The Doers The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time. Somewhat true.

It's very hard to write a story in third-person when you have been deeply engrossed in a book written in first-person. Especially when that book switches first-person viewpoints.

As planned, I did some edits on "One Unicorn; Missing Uncle" (which is still a crappy title, but at least provided me with some guidance as to what the story is about). It is now down to 5711, which is a reduction of about 650 words. I sure write a lot of extra verbiage. And I now have 1% of the etiquette (really about a charm school) story done. I think I need to get a book or two about etiquette (as out-of-date as possible).

If I was ever going to finish this story, I realized it had to have a better title than Moraine, because that's just not descriptive of anything in the story. It's just the setting. So last night I rechristened the wretched tale "One Unicorn; Missing Uncle". This does two things for me: Aligns me with a camp in the on-going Unicorns vs. Zombies debate (I learned about the rivalry here ). I also chose to start the Etiquette story, not the Zombie story, as my next project (I'm on page 4!), so I guess at least for now, I'm on Team Unicorn. This title, though still sucking, helped me start at the back of the story and do a bit more editing (on paper, maybe I'll type it in tonight...), working back-to-front for a nice change of scenery. Allows me to use my favorite piece of punctuation! A couple of years ago I took a copy-editing course where each of us, in order to introduce ourselves, had to tell our name, what we work at, and what our favorite punctuation ma

Why I read it: Several weeks ago the author was at my local Chapters, sitting at a table, saying "hello" to the people walking by. So I wandered over and made some comment about "the glamorous life of the writer." After a while I let him sign a book for me. He looked like he figured I was going to ditch it in a stack on my way to the cash. He asked me if I was a writer. I said that yes, I write computer manuals. He asked if I'd written the manual for his blender. I said no. He asked if I wrote other things on the side. I said yes, but my team leader says that TWs can't write anything fiction, and the other writer I work with gets grant money occasionally to write pilots of TV shows. And he said "That's all very interesting, but what do you write?" so I confessed to writing short stories that I keep in a filing cabinet, because they are crap. That's kind of sad, isn't it? I shouldn't tell people that. Tastes like chicken: Reminded

If you tell me Everything is our #1 priority, that's the same as saying nothing is.

On "watcher" of course. Now I get to choose what to start next. I think I'm ready to embark on another first draft novel (editing is a separate activity, and ongoing on everything). Three choices: Thing about the birds Thing about etiquette Thing about zombies Etiquette is winning right now in my brain. I'm trying to come up with a system to keep it driving forward, like "Moraine" did. I need a proper title for Moraine. That would bring it all together, I think. Maybe when the boy reads it (I left the draft on the kitchen table, maybe he'll pick it up...) he'll have an idea.

Why I read it: There was a review in Salon , and so I requested the book from the library. Actually I requested it months after I'd read the review, because the review of the book reminded me of Nadine, my ex-coworker who is a britophile. I think what I liked in the review was the description of the layers upon layers of history in the ground in Britain, which aren't so apparent here in North America. While there's history underneath everything here, too, it seems like natural history, not so much human history. Maybe the First Nations lived lighter on the land than Angles and Saxons ever did in Britain. I had a conversation with the librarian when I checked it out, that resulted in the conclusion that I was going to have to read 40 pages per day to get it read on time, because there were other requests so I wouldn't be able to renew it. Did I mention before why it was "in transit" and the like for several weeks? (I have a feeling I wrote a note about this so

I'm about 100 words from my target wordcount, which, knowing me, means I will write another thousand words before I can let it end. And from where I am now, it doesn't look like there's that much to take out. And Moraine, well, it got longer again. But the words were good words, worth having. I'm going to have to get ruthless with some of my precious ones.

I'm now at about 6400. But that's okay, I think the 500 or so words that I added are good words (I bottomed out at around 5900, but then started trying to flesh out one of my characters, and well...). I did get rid of a couple of pages of notes, which means that the pile of papers surrounding Moraine is getting smaller.

Friday I printed out a draft, and I let Ed read it. He didn't say it sucked, he didn't call it unoriginal, and he seemed to have liked some aspects of it, so I guess that's good. He confirmed that I need to work on the Uncle Dave character. I think I need to flesh out his history a bit on scrap paper. Yesterday we were discussing the story over dinner after a walk in Stouffville (the point was to walk on the OR Moraine) and the boy got peeved that he hadn't gotten to read the wretched story. I told him he could read the next draft. So I guess I have two volunteer readers now. And then, I was doing basically data entry on some markups I'd done on the printout (reorganized and tightened the opening a little bit) and my wordcount actually fell below 6000! 5998. It does want to be shorter. I thought so.

I'm down to just over 6000 words now. Last night I spent about an hour working on the setting, and somehow it still got shorter. In other news, apparently I have no physical limitations. All of my limitations are mental. Though I may be taking this comment out of context. Okay, I am. Did I ever mention that my superhero name is Miss Interpretation? Also, EG TourGuide , you will be amused to know that while I was doing research (I wanted the proper name of whatever is killing the red pines in York Regional Forest), your blog was the #2 hit! Well done.

Last night I removed 1030 more words from Moraine, and it was, if anything, easier than the first thousand. Maybe that was due to a rather self-actualizing hour spent one-on-one with Sensei, or maybe I just recognized that the easy words to take out were gone, and I was going to have to cut ruthlessly if I was going to make it happen. The night in between, I was supposed to put some words in, but I watched election coverage instead. I must say, that went very well.

That's how many words I managed to remove last night from Moraine. When I set myself the goal of removing 1000 words, clearly I hadn't considered how that involved removing 12% of the words, and how I wanted to remove about 0% of the story. It took a couple of hours, but I managed to do it. And just think, I get to do it at least twice more! And as I work along, that last 1000 words is going to be close to 20% of the words that are left! But now I get to put some in, which is fun, I guess.

So if I wrote less than four more pages long hand on Moraine, and then called it over, it shouldn't have added that many more words, maybe 600. So I typed it up on Saturday, and added a little bit (mostly parenthetical statements of "fact check that"), and now it's over 8000. I don't think it merits more than 5000, but maybe I'm wrong. Also, the market I picked to target the story to (I'm thinking this may be a method to motivate myself) doesn't really publish things longer than 5000 words... I made myself a to-do list for it, and if I can do one item per day, that would be good, and then I can let someone read it. Because there's at least one person who's whining about "why don't you let me read things? You know I can read your handwriting..." Um, because my first drafts are crap? Remove 1000 words Ester doesn't want to run away, per se... Remove 1000 more words Fix Dave's backstory (it's a jumble now) Remove 1000 mo

Your result for Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test ... Linguistic 27% Logical, 14% Spatial, 55% Linguistic, 31% Intrapersonal, 25% Interpersonal, 31% Musical, 22% Bodily-Kinesthetic and 31% Naturalistic! "Verbal-linguistic intelligence has to do with words, spoken or written. People with verbal-linguistic intelligence display a facility with words and languages. They are typically good at reading, writing, telling stories and memorizing words and dates. They tend to learn best by reading, taking notes, listening to lectures, and via discussion and debate. They are also frequently skilled at explaining, teaching and oration or persuasive speaking. Those with verbal-linguistic intelligence learn foreign languages very easily as they have high verbal memory and recall, and an ability to understand and manipulate syntax and structure. Careers which suit those with this intelligence include writers, lawyers, philosophers, journalists, politicians and teachers."

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno

I'm on the social committee at work. Because I'm a writer, they often ask me to whip something up for some pitch somewhere. We're starting our annual corporate charity donation campaign with a raffle for sports tickets for a game tomorrow night. So I wrote: "Tired of spending Halloween cowering at home with the lights off so people won't knock on your door and demand candy? * Tired of the yearly ritual of walking your kids around the neighbourhood, because they wear all-black costumes and masks they can't see out of? Here's something better you could do on Halloween Night! * Note: the draw will be held October 29th, so if you don't win, there are still a couple of days to pick up some candy to give out, if you're so inclined. " And that became: "Looking for an alternate way to spend Halloween?" Apparently they were afraid I was going to offend somebody. This made me very sad.

It's the new meme I'm trying to spread around the office, along with "I want to be a high contributor". That's a performance management rating, by the way. Let's ignore for the moment that I'm writing this at work. Please, it's a short post.

Why I read it: Part of the "blogger's books" project. I've been reading her blog for maybe a year. As a published-writer wannabe, her blog is maybe the best one I read. That's because she goes on at great length about the life of a writer, how the money comes in, how the words go out, how her hormonal cycle affects her climbing, her writing, her motivation. I was really happy that I liked this book. Tastes like chicken: Covers a lot the same ground as GGK "The Summer Tree" - a lot the same supporting characters out of mythology -- wild hunt, Arthur, etc. But this book seemed like it added something, wasn't just the standard rehashed blend of northwestern euro myth. Bookmark: Library receipt. What I liked: To start with, I agreed with the theme that better for humanity in general to have some risk (fairies) than for humanity to become sheep... in order for us to stay human (i.e., intelligent), we need an element of danger. While there were probabl

We just had curriculum night at the boy's school. When talking to his English teacher, she mentioned that they will be reading "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham this year (the context was that "the boy reads too much, and don't worry, we will read a book this year, but I can't give you a grade on reading unassigned novels in class. It's great that you love to read, but...") Anyway. The Crysalids is a fabulous book. What I remember is: There's a boy and his younger sister, and their mother is very stressed out about pregancies, because no one wants to be producing mutant babies. And apparently that's pretty common in the post-apocalyptic future in which they live. Their father is some kind of religious nut. The boy has a friend with six toes. Many of the children are psychic. In order to avert whatever crisis of being found out is going to befall them, the children, led by the boy's younger sister, use their psi powers to cry for help (the

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Why I read it: The last GGK I read was such a disappointment, I wanted to see if he was really as good as I remembered. I've read this before, but it was at least 15 years ago. Bookmark: Hard cover flap Tastes like chicken: What I most strongly remember about this series from before is that it is definitely derivative. It feels like the sort of thing some well-educated person would write who wanted to write a best-selling fantasy novel (full disclosure: I have a draft around the house that is titled "Best-Selling Fantasy Novel", BSFN for short) would write. There are dwarves, elves (lios alfar), orcs or dark elves(svart alfar), an unkillable evil, interventions from gods, an old king with two sons who have quite the rivalry, a neighbouring king with a stunningly beautiful daughter (people are never plain in a BSFN, are they?), wizards but not too many, various competing systems of magic... I remember it getting even more derivative as the series progressed. I'm su

It's another truck I see driving around town, and once again, I betcha your East Gwillimbury Tourguide would have taken a picture. But here's my beef. If you're going to spell Shop "shoppe", I really think you should go all the way, and use Ye and Olde. And then, you can't just spell Butcher the usual way. How about Butchyr? Like vampyr, only worse. "Ye Olde Butchyr Shoppe", doesn't that sound much more like a place where the staff could be dismembering people? Oh. That's not what they're going for?

I finished the story about the lobsters. It sucks. I started another short story. This one seems better. It's about the Oak Ridges Moraine. I'm sure I will offend everyone.

Why I read it: I gave it to Ed for his birthday last year. Nadine read it recently (I think she's doing a GGK festival, because she borrowed "The Summer Tree" from me a couple of weeks ago and gave it back last week). She's asked me two or three times since if I've read Ysabel yet, I guess so we can discuss it. Still no "Darkmans". It's still "in transit." I don't think that word means what TPL thinks it means. Tastes like chicken: Tim Wynne-Jones, maybe crossed with "Da Vinci Code" but without the lame-assed puzzles. I'm wondering if he was intending to write a YA book here. I saw this book on a display for the library at the boy's school, but I don't feel like it was marketed to teens. Maybe that's because GGK doesn't have a teen audience really (though I think the Fionavar Tapestry would be great for teens). Somehow I missed that Kim and Dave were from the Fionavar Tapestry until Nadine pointed it out,

Why I read it: Well, I didn't really, not this time through. I read parts of it to the boy, but then he moved on and read the rest of it and the sequel himself. It was about a month ago. I'm only mentioning it now because it's banned books week and I didn't really realize that it was a "most challenged" book. Bookmark: Probably a Yugioh card or something. Tastes like Chicken: This one for me is like Shakespeare or the bible. I've read it so many times, it doesn't compare to anything else. Other things compare to it (I almost wrote IT there, and that wouldn't have been good). What I liked: Familiarity. I also liked that the boy finally read the thing. What I hated: As an adult, and having probably read this book five or six times before, the religious content seemed heavy-handed. I never noticed that before. It seems just absurd to me that anyone would think that references to witches (Mrs Which) and crystal balls would be offensive. And also a

Why I read it: I'd just finished something else and had another book listed as "in transit" at the library, so I didn't want to start anything long, because the "in transit" book was a leaden tome at something like 838 pages, so when it was mine I wanted to be able to devote my full attention to it. There are holds after me, so no renewal available. I didn't want to have to put something down half-way through, and I didn't want to read my carry-around book, because a good carry-around book is hard to find and needs to be dragged out as long as possible. Short stories seemed like the perfect choice. I could put the book down at any convenient spot and not have to recapture characters or place. I finished the book, and the library book is still "in transit"! Well done, TPL! (It's "Darkmans" by Nicola Barker , if the suspense is killing you). Tastes like chicken: I've read pretty much every published book by Garth Nix excep

Why I read it: I liked the previous book I'd read by this author, so when I was at the library checking to see if what I'd requested was in (it wasn't) I got this instead. Bookmark: Library receipt. Tastes like chicken: Probably the only thing comparable for me would be his other book. What I liked: The characters were very amusing. I was quite curious how an author could make a book work, when the main character was a pedophile priest. And it did work. I would say it helped that we rather drew away from the priest towards the end and took more interest in the other characters, and it didn't hurt that the priest... well, let's say that things didn't go too well for him. What I hated: Two things. I hated the author's need to wrap everything up with a tidy explanation at the end. He did this in "the MD" as well. Just be in the ridiculous, go with it, let the characters revel in the hell of their own making. Though I did rather like the resoluti

Today when I got to work I opened the internet to discover that David Foster Wallace had died. This made me very sad. While I only read one of his books, I enjoyed it very much. See this post. I'd meant to read Infinite Jest, but never gotten around to it. I guess I'm going to have to make a tag for writers who were seemingly suicides (I'm reading another Tom Disch book now). Anyway, in one of the obits, I came across this article, which I found very amusing. And so, the next short story I write will be about lobsters. Okay, I admit it, it was going to be anyway, when I'm finished this one I'm working on now, which will be probably tomorrow. That one is about funerals. I'm so cheery.

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test... The Cardinal You scored 58% Cardinal, 38% Monk, 29% Lady, and 30% Knight! You are the real power behind the throne. No one dares dispute or refuse you. Which is good because that's how you get things done. You are also, however, completely corrupt and highly immoral. This doesn't bother you in the least as you lounge around your rich comfortable surroundings, reveling in wealth and authority. Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at H ello Q uizzy

If only I ever carried my camera around everywhere I went, like your EG tourguide does, I would show a picture of the truck. On the side it said something like "We have preserved 17,000 hectares of habitat for wildlife". I'm sure it's not what they were going for, but the image that immediately popped into my mind was of bears, raccoons, seagulls, and maybe even crows traipsing over a garbage dump.

Why I read it: One of my coworkers, Nadine, lent it to me, and then several weeks later she gave notice, so I thought I'd better read it now, so I could give it back before she left. I would have gotten to it eventually, since I live here ( the book is sort of a cultural history of Toronto), so it's the only city I can write about (set my stories in) with any real sense of authority, and it would be good to "understand" it from another perspective (historical in this case). Also, after rather a long string of novels, I thought it was time to read some non-fiction. There was a documentary I saw a little while ago, "Let's all hate Toronto". When I told Nadine that ultimately Torontonians hate this city the most, because we hate it every day, whereas people from, say, Vancouver, really only hate Toronto on special occasions, she said that was typically Toronto-centric thing to say. She commutes every day from K-W. What I liked: I got a little self-righte

Why I read it: I finished the first two of the three books I took on vacation in two days, so when I found myself in a bookstore in North Conway NH (due to the boy's need for more Twilight books -- he'll be embarrassed that I mentioned that), I thought I'd pick something up. They had a shelf of ARCs they were selling for charity, and I'd never read an ARC before, so I thought that would be neat. I'd heard the name of the author before, though I don't think it ever appeared in the list. Tastes like chicken: A cross between Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" and Emma Bull's " Finder", with a chunk of that short story by Kelly Link I read in a magazine a while ago thrown in (the one about the girl with a boy shadow, and the pocket universes). Bookmark: White Birch Books complementary bookmark. What I liked: For one thing, it made me want to take out my fiddle and, I don't know, try to tune it or something (I am a very crap fiddle pla

Why I read it: I bought it a couple of years ago because the cover looked interesting. I started it a couple of months ago in the tub, but put it down again 14 pages in, and didn't pick it up again. (In this case, the long prologue seemed like a mistake -- this one seemed nearly unintelligible.)When I was packing to go on vacation, I selected it knowing I was unlikely to get through it when I had to go to work every day. Tastes like chicken: The Black Rose/Shadows Linger? What I liked: For fantasy, the characters were non-standard. The wizard, for example, was described as portly. What I hated: The author didn't seem to have much use for women in his world. There were three of note -- a prostitute with a heart of gold, the 61-year-old dowager empress (I forget her title) who is particularly despicable because she's always dressed as a vampire serpent queen geriatric skank, and a concubine who, though mentioned on the back cover, turns up about 80% through the book seemi

Last Friday I finished the latest page-a-day project, a wretched novel that I will now put in a cupboard to ferment for a few months or years, in hopes that when I take it out again, it will somehow magically become, you know, good . In the meantime, I am working on a couple of short stories until I decide what to do next.

Why I read it: A year ago, maybe two, I was documenting a product that had PIPs in it (or Pips, or PiPs, depending on who's writing). PIP stands for picture-in-picture, like when a news reader has a graphic over their shoulder on TV. So I was in a teleconference, and a senior manager said "Let's count how many times she says PIP." So we did. And every time I heard the word PIP, I thought of this book, so I started to read it. Last year, when I was going through my phase of losing library books (It only happened twice, and I've done my penance) I wanted to have a "carry around" book. This would be something I could always find my place in, and if I lost it (because I owned it) I could always get a replacement, and not owe the library money. So I've been reading this book for quite a while. I read 100 pages on a business trip to Ottawa in May. I finished it on vacation. What I liked: The easiest thing was that this book is so archetypal, even though

Why I read it: It was on the list in my notebook of things to read, and then Gwenda Bond referred to it and "The Lottery", so I requested the book from the library. I might have mentioned I was on vacation last week. I read three books. This was the first. Tastes like chicken: Weirdly, Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child". What I liked: I liked a lot. The foreward by Jonathan Lethem mentioned "The Lottery" as being something every North American kid read in school, and I didn't remember it by the title, so I pulled out my Norton Anthology of Short Fiction from University, and sure enough, "The Lottery" was there. So I read it, and yes, I had read it before. I remembered being angry at the ending the first time I read it, and I was angry this time too. I don't think I read it in University, because there was no underlining in pencil or red ink like there was on some of the other stories. Anyway, I thought the way we viewed "We hav

Last week I went on my annual Maine vacation, where I usually see my dad and one if not more of my sisters. Before I went, I had to work a Saturday morning in order to get some TW projects done, so I used the office printer to print "Toothbrushing Club" on scrap paper (It adds an extra dimension to the story to see hardware installation instructions on the backs, right?). I stuck it in a binder, and I took it on vacation with me, meaning to mark it up with a copy-edit while I was away from the computer. Didn't do that. Anyway, I showed the binder to my dad and my sister, but neither of them was exactly chomping at the bit to read the thing. They flipped through, I guess. Saturday morning, my dad asked to look at it again. I thought, awesome, this is my chance for some actual feedback! Apparently not. My dad totally fixated on "What font is this?" Times New Roman (windows default body text) "What size is it?" 10, again the default. "Is this doubl

Why I read it: Read an obit of the author a couple of weeks ago, and it made me regret not having read anything by him when he was alive. Then, when I was at the library a couple of weeks ago to see if anything I'd requested had come in, I perused the shelves so as not to leave empty-handed, and this was a name I remembered (and in fact the first book in what appeared to be a series that I had written down on my "list"). What I liked: I haven't read much horror, except for the occasional Stephen King that I picked up at relatives' houses when I was trapped there, and the like. So I don't even know if this is typical of the genre, or even really falls within the genre. It seemed to me like a well-done deal-with-the-devil tale. It had engaging characters, a believable location, etc. I got the feeling from the obit that Disch was a "somebody" in science fiction circles. I liked that part of the story took place in the past, and then moved into the fut

You Are Fencing You're competitive but not brutally so. You compete to make yourself better. You find having an opponent to be challenging and rewarding. You are fierce when you're in a competition, but you don't wish your rivals any real harm. What Olympic Sport Are You?

A couple of weeks ago on Monarchy was about Queen Mary and her confinement when she was confused and thought she was pregnant but really it was all in her head. This wretched novel is the same. 401 is a number pulled out of a hat of course, but still... Today I wrote two lame scraps of the backstory into the text, and then I fell back on my favourite activity, moving sections around! Soon every scene will have been in every spot, except the first and the last! Actually, I have this Excel spreadsheet (like apparently Justine Larbalestier suggested but doesn't really use, and that's fine, but her novels clearly don't have this massive flaw in that they... I don't even know what's wrong with it except that it's not as good as it should be) anyway, I started trying to apply a normal time frame, a schedule to events, like, you know, weekdays have to come between weekends, and you can't have a whole string of tuesdays in a row, and I couldn't even make that wo

Or so it seems. Worked on the wretched thing for about an hour and a half. Wrote two scenes that were from my notes from last weekend. The two scenes were all about my fairies' motives. Oh, and their clothes. Fairies' clothes are very important. Tried to make two of the settings more consistent, but probably just made them more boring and illogical. I found myself trying to do keyword searches in order to find all the instances where things were, well, not what I'm going for now (what I was going for last year being something completely different). Some of the techniques I use in technical writing, like "search and replace" just don't translate well to fiction, where consistency of terminology would make my prose seem as boring as, well, a computer manual. And no one wants to read those. Considered adding the backstory I thought of a couple of days ago, but couldn't bring myself to do it (I will -- it needs to be done). Refigured one character again. How

Wow, the publisher and editor must have had a lot of confidence in Susanna Clarke. This is one fat book for a first novel. And there are some bizarre (though consistent) spellings. Or maybe I was reading an English edition. (I just looked it up, and the one that I kept noticing, "shew", is archaic, according to Oxford, so I guess it's an affectation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Why I read it: I must have seen reviews of it. I asked for it for two or three years in a row for Christmas, but nobody obliged (maybe because it's so long). So, one day I was at the library to see if any of the books I had requested were available (they weren't), and I wandered over to the paperback shelves, and there it was, so I picked it up. I had been idlely looking at the Bernard Cornwell titles, I think, trying to figure out which I had read. What I liked: Pretty much everything. It's written very much in the style of a Dickens novel, and fortunately, I like

Today I was reading "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" and I realized the problem with the Toothbrushing Club is that the fairies are too benign. And to think on about Tuesday I was considering just taking them out, they bored me so much. Not anymore. Onward!

I must have worked on that wretched Toothbrush novel for two hours today, and my second draft still isn't done! When will this stupid thing be finished? I'm only about three-quarters of the way through! I can't stop moving scenes! Reality is setting in. Maybe my goal was a tad unrealistic, considering my lack of commitment to achieving it. Will I really be ready for a line edit by Friday? I think not. Is this the despair that JL was referring to (I think it was she who said that despair is an integral part of the rewriting process), or am I just some kind of lazy dilettante? I think I'll just go watch "Monarchy" on TVO.

Today I took a half-day (afternoon) vacation from work, and I actually worked on my wretched novel for two hours! What a better way to spend the afternoon than buying more pairs of jeans and shirts I won't wear at the mall. One of the other TWs got a marked-up manual back with a big rant on it about how a DIP switch is actually an entire block of controls, and each individual control is a "post". Well, she thought that was silly, and went on a walking tour of the office asking different people what they would call the individual components and the entire thing. The best answer: one of the engineers told her that he doesn't know what it's called in English, but if you translated it out of German, it would be a "mouse piano". That has got to be the coolest technical phrase ever. It almost makes me want to learn German.

Why I read it: This is part of my project to read books by the bloggers I read, so I'll know whether I should take their advice. The blog is http://www.whatever.com/ , if you're one of the 3 people on the planet who doesn't read it. I got the book as a PDF as a free download from Tor, just for signing up. What I loved: The idea is neat. I can tell he's been a marketing writer, because the marketing material that is part of the story is very realistic. What I hated: This was not the book for me! I think I may just hate science fiction. Or at least outer space science fiction. Even though I wrote one once. (It's filed away.) The cover references comparing Scalzi to Heinlein should have been a giveaway, because I don't think I ever finished a Heinlein book, even though I've got Stranger in a Strange Land around here somewhere, and really wanted to finish Number of the Beast (but just couldn't). I felt like there was no plot to speak of. Guy goes into sp

Now, I must tell you my story about last night's band practice. In the summer, we don't have access to the high school we normally practice in, the high school being closed. So we use a church basement. Last night was our third rehearsal there for this summer. The first week we played there, a filmy grime covered everything and there was a smell of mildew, due no doubt to a recent flood. The second week, there were massive hepa filters with giant plastic tubes (a foot tall) leading to the windows. They were quite loud. We turned them off so we could hear ourselves. This week, same as last week, we went in through the basement door (so the drummer, tuba player, etc. don't have to carry their instruments through a series of narrow stairwells, etc.) as usual, shut the hepa filters off, set up, sat down and started playing. And about 45 minutes later an older gentleman came in and asked "Is Mrs. X here?" (Obviously names changed to protect the not present to defend th

Yesterday evening I again looked at my draft of toothbrush. Third day in a row! Target: "readable" draft by 15 August (2008). Tasks remaining: Finish second pass Stop moving sections around Read the whole thing before inflicting it on others (probably includes a line edit) Um, good luck with that? Every day I write a page in my current first draft (I always have one. Sometimes it's a short story, or a screenplay. Currently it is a novel). Yesterday morning I was writing along, and one of my characters said something that ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED me. She made a wild accusation at one of the other characters, and I said to myself, "OMG (actually I swore, but you know what I mean), how did she know that?" And then I realized, she's absolutely right. I've got 300 pages written here in long, dreadful, poorly developed prose (a first draft is just a shell to fill in with a story later on, right?) and this character was, well, that way the whole time, and I had no id

Worked on the wretched TBC again last night, for probably an hour, moving scenes around to make them make sense. Seems I had no action for about the first 30 pages of the story. Now at least something happens. I move one thing, and then I have to move about six other things to make it make sense again. And then this afternoon I looked at the second half of the print-out I made weeks ago. I've barely touched the second half lately, so I was thinking I should have a go before I printed it out again. OMG, dispair really is an integral part of the writing process. I booked my vacation for 18-22 August, and my goal is to have a readable draft by then, to fob off on my poor, unsuspecting sisters. Maybe I should go back to the beginning again, since that's the part they would start with...

We were all standing around, water cooler style, and there was a lull in the "how I spent my Canada day" conversation" stories. So, I said "We were sitting on a patio on Sunday evening, and Ed had just ordered a coffee, when he said to me 'I have a confession to make.'" You can imagine how everyone's ears perked up. I continued my really quite lame tale. "And he said, 'That coffee I served you this morning was decaf. I'm really sorry. I bought it at the corner store by accident. They changed the colors of the cans, and I grabbed the wrong one by mistake.' And I said something about how I accidentally put 1% instead of skim in my coffee one time at work because the cafeteria switched milk brands. And I said I forgave him, and I didn't even have a headache, though I did sort of feel draggy all day." I thought I'd kicked too much the day before or something. "And then we bought real coffee at the corner store," I

Why I read it: Cybils nominee. What I liked: Excellent sense of humour. I read the boy the part where Georgie is reading the Book of the Undead, and it's like bad greeting card poetry, and he said he wanted to read this when I was done. That's always a good sign. What I hated: I felt like I was reading a sequel, though there was no indication anywhere in the book that this was the case. There were tons of references to back story. Also, it seemed like there was an awful lot of tell in those portions. --later-- So I looked on Amazon, and in fact this is the sequel to "The Wall and the Wing". It would have been nice maybe to have that indicated somewhere on the cover. Unless that book did remarkably poorly, and they wanted people to read this one as a standalone, or not feel obligated to read the first one first. This somewhat angers me. Though to be fair, the blurbs on the back were all for "The Wall and the Wing". Maybe that was a hint I just didn't k

Why I read it: A few weeks ago I read a "Big Idea" by Kate Elliott, I think to announce "Shadow Gate", the second book in the series, on www.whatever.com . In the piece, she said the idea for eagle reeves came from her husband, who is a cop, and a really crappy ABBA song. I was, of course hooked. What I loved: The world seemed really non-European to me -- very, I don't know, Chinese maybe. The Qin might be like Mongols, and the Sirniakan Empire might be the middle kingdom, I don't know. The people aren't blond. There aren't elves or fairies, but demons and gods. I loved that the author let me feel smart. She never told me, but let me guess what Kesh's treasure was, and then have a self-satisfied glow when I found out. She didn't say where Bai had been, but let me guess, and again turn out to be right. Characters have nicknames and I get to figure it out on my own. In fact, when a character is listening to other people he doesn't know,