Robynettely

Considering what I'm reading now has 453 pages to go, it's unlikely I'll finish anything else in March, so I'll just post this now. Mid-month saw me go to the library one evening and take out two books, having already started Leviathan, and then discovering that I had two more waiting for me in the holds system. And then another one appeared after I'd read two of them. So I finished more books than usual. “World War Z” by Max Brooks. Library book. The Z stands for zombie, of course. This was a good resource for me for thinking about the science of my zombie novel. Also, good for looking at alternative ways of organizing a narrative. This is a series of interviews with people who were involved in different ways with the zombie war, so really it’s a collection of linked short stories. “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins. I had to take the boy to an appointment and didn’t want to carry around the big, heavy geology book, so I grabbed this from the pile. Everyone else in t...

Last night while I was supposed to be editing Apophis for I don't know, the sixth or seventh time (I'm not sure it works, but I'm down to messing with the formatting now, so it's time to put it on OWW and hide under my desk), I wrote a post on the bottom of the last page. And then I packed the wrong story in my lunchbag! I guess I'm just meant to work on Bezoar today, that's all. Anyway, this leaves me writing my post from my head, which never goes well, or waiting and doing it later, which never gets done. So here goes. Last night I received the March Locus in the mail (which was a good thing, because it encouraged me to finish reading the February Locus, which had been sitting on the kitchen table for about 28 days, and so I read the Sharyn November piece, which made me want to work on the Karate Zombies, which will make Fran happy, if nothing else). Flipping through (first pass I look at the pictures...) and made some mean comment about Robert J. Sawyer or ...

Yesterday all day I had a plan. When I got home, I would make a pizza (the breadmaker was all set up). Then, I was going to read through The Bezoar and make any last minute changes before sending it out to its first market. Then I would make a pass through Apophis and send it to OWW. And then I would sit down and read 100 pages of Leviathan , and maybe work on that shawl , and then bed. Well, the pizza went fine. I remembered yeast this time (yay!) and I had already made the olive salad for Muffuletta pizza. I made a playlist , and then at around 8:30 I tweeted something like “Pizza made and eaten, blah, blah, time to read through this story and send it out.” I was at the kitchen table working on paper. Ed was watching his stories (Ice Pilots I think). I was on page two when that ended and he went up to run himself a bath. I was on page three when he’d finished his bath. I’d written a couple of hundred new words. I skipped to the ending and I think made it stronger. My characters had u...

First Draft “In a Nutshell”. 35 pages -- first draft finished. Next up will be Limering , And maybe One Degree. Editing "The Rabbits". I tagged all the Thea’s Brain sections to make them make sense, and I need to fix the pacing now. It takes way too long to get to the brain stuff. I’d like to pump the atmosphere maybe, too. "Apophis." Working on fourth draft. Ignoring “Succubus”. Zombies. Troll. Pampelmouse. “Bezoar”. One more draft, I think, and it might be done. “Dowsing”. I need to change the POV (taking what I learned from reading those Caitlin Kiernan stories, actually – she does a neat thing where the main character is not the “special” character, but is the one looking at them. I will try that and see how it works for me.) so that there’s an actual plot, conflict, etc. I think there’s a good story in there. Imp face. Being reviewed Nothing. Again. Knitting Morrigan. Ignoring, actually. Anhinga. Finished. Worn 4x. Very happy with this sweater. Doublekni...

“Tooth and Claw” by Jo Walton . Library book. I believe I read on a blurb somewhere: “Is there anything Jo Walton can’t write?” And it is so true. This is a regency romance populated entirely by dragons. Dragons get bigger by eating one another, and yet the story isn’t really about cannibalism, more cannibalism is just something dragons do. It’s not taboo the way it would be with humans, because the dragons don’t see it that way. The father dragon dies in the first chapter, leaving the understanding that his estate (including his gold and his corpse) is to be divided up amongst his three younger children, with the two established children to take but a token apiece. The eldest son-in-law takes way more than his share and the others sue him. So the message is: be explicit in your will. And stand up for yourself. “Sandman Slim” by Richard Kadrey . Library book, requested several months ago. I missed it over Christmas and had to request it again. I have a notebook where I write down thing...

Over at Ilona Andrews' blog , they've got a lively though closed discussion in the comments about the boy who wouldn't wrestle the girl in Iowa. I'd just like to say, hitting a girl is not the same as having a wrestling match with a girl, and it's pretty messed up when someone confuses them. I am here to learn, and if someone won't punch me because I'm a girl, then they've just taken that learning opportunity away from me. That's all.

Not really a word, more of a phrase or a clause. But all of a sudden, I keep seeing it used all over the place. Maybe it started when one of my colleagues asked me to "reach out" to another colleague for information on a project I'd been supposed to be working on, but in fact knew nothing about. And the other person replied "It's too late to be reaching out," which I thought was a totally appropriate response. Now I'm seeing it everywhere, and I wonder, what does it mean? I don't want any colleague I've never actually met "reaching out" to me. Just send me an email. Please.

Back when I was in high school, I practiced my musical instruments. One of the ones I played, hammered dulcimer, sounded good even when I was just banging on the strings. Sometimes when I would play a piece (and I remember myself being pretty good) weird, accidental, awesomely cool things would happen. And I was concerned that when I got really good, those amazing accidents, the ones where I made a change in a piece by accident that made it "my own" wouldn't happen anymore. I needn't have worried. Also, today on Salon there's an article about Apophis (not sure how long that link will last...) so I guess I should work on that story. (ETA: you must watch the video there. The wailing shrieking music is awesome.)

I started this post in January, time for new beginnings. But I'm not starting new things just yet. I've got all these old things I just want done: Anhinga Morrigan Rabbits Bezoar Apophis I'm going back to them, and looking at them, and trying to make them work, rather than just make them done. Take, for example, the socks I knit Ed for Christmas. I finished the first one on the 24th of December at about 8 pm. There was no way I was going to get the second one done in time -- I'd started it, but I was maybe six inches down the leg, and those (click the link!) are some long socks. And then it was Christmas morning, and my brother-in-law was gloating about his new handknit socks , so I gave Ed his one wrapped sock. But it was too long in the foot, so I knit the second one shorter. But it was too short. So I ripped out both toes and made them right. I finished these socks at like midnight on Jan 3. And now, with my Christmas knitting finally done (I also had to do ones for...

Not much changing here... "Unicorn". Still at market #7. "Dolphin". Still at market #1.

"Spiral Hunt" by Margaret Ronald. I read a lot of nonfiction last month and really needed a novel. This book was not perfect – it had an early, very long and seemingly pointless scene in a magic shop (that did, to be fair, turn out to be important later on). I didn’t feel like the cop character acted like a cop all the time, but then I don’t know any actual cops, so I’m basing that totally on cop TV shows, which are probably not accurate, either. The magic system was very complicated and took a while to get into. It had a likeable, complicated protagonist and an excellent sense of place. Boston is very much a character in this novel. “My Misspent Youth” by Meghan Daum. I requested this from the library because somewhere I saw mention that it had an essay about playing oboe. And then, on the first page of the title essay, I thought to myself, “she’s going to move to Omaha,” and knew I’d read that one before, online, a couple of years ago. But I was wrong, she actually moved ...

First Draft “Imp Face”. Short story, about 5000 words. Because if I don’t mine my family history, someone else will... “In a Nutshell”. Four hand-written pages of a start that I add to the thousand words I wrote last year. Editing "The Rabbits". Short story; working on 3rd draft. It’s down about 3500 words. Karate Zombies. Still percolating on rewriting the first chapter. This post http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/10/all-important-first-chapter.html is making me worry. “Bezoar”. Read it, revised it, read the comments I got on it last August (why is this so hard for me?) Though it’s funny what I did. I’d read the comments initially when I printed them out. Then I guess I let them process for four or five months, then implemented most of them, then read them and got to feel self-satisfied. It’s a better story now than it was before. Good enough? I don’t know. But it’s better than it was before. One more draft, I think, and it might be done. Ignoring “Succubus”. Short...

I really ought to title this Word of the Season , since that's about how often I do it. Anyway, I was reading a book, all innocent-like, and this word just jumped out at me: ineffable . Immediately I thought to myself, what a wonderful word! It's like the F-word, nicely couched in a prefix and a suffix! Especially if you take that prefix off, and you wind up with effable, which is F-able, only polite. Except effable isn't in my dictionary, so I guess it doesn't work that way. I did look up ineffable, though, and was satisfied that it is an adjective meaning (according to the Oxford Paperback Dictionary that I keep on my desk) Too great for description in words , or That must not be uttered . The prefix in- can apparently mean "in" (how clever!) or "not". So effable would mean speakable . And I see now that Dictionary.com does have that. And its root is Latin, not Saxon, so it has no connection with the F-word at all. Too bad, really.

"Unicorn". Still at market #7. "Dolphin". Still at market #1, still with changes sent back 27 October. My goal for 2011 is one short story out per month. January will be “Bezoar”. This also means I need to get some stuff 'shopped.

Read/edited: The Rabbits (working on 3rd draft) Succubus (working on second draft) Apophis (working on 3rd draft) Wrote: Troll (4000 words, maybe 2000 of them in Dec?) This one came alive when I'd taken the month off from it for NaNoWriMo Dowsing (4000 words start-to-finish in Dec?) While wandering around in Mocassin Trail Park yesterday, listening to Ed and Connor talk about Halo Wars, I realized what I'd meant to do with this story that I completely forgot in the first draft. I need to type it up, stat, and then retype it with that entire theme on top. Imp Face (2000 words so far) Knitting: Socks for Lynda finished Socks for Ed almost finished -- I hope tonight or tomorrow, because I'm sick of doing other people's socks Morrigan hibernating Anhinga hibernating

“The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart” by Jesse Bullington. The good bits seemed to have been in the first third of the book, and the middle was a bit of a slog. I read it because of Jeff Vandermeer . I did finish, and it was good fun. Any book that name-checks the white company is worth reading (big Hawkwood fan here). “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg. My sister asked for it for Christmas, and the tradition is, when you give a book in my family, the other person asks “How was it?” I wondered, am I hostile to this book because of who asked for it, or does it really smack of the Grades 4-8 writing exercises I had no problem with? Maybe it seemed dated, or maybe I just didn’t connect with it. Or maybe I use Caitlin Kiernan and Elizabeth Bear as my writing role-models, and a bipolar person and a depressed person who have to write or they starve may not be the best role-models. The book is about forcing yourself to write. I wondered as I read, why do people do this? Why for...

This year when I mentioned to Ed and the boy that I was thinking of doing NaNoWriMo, they said "see you in a month!" and "what do you think you'll get out of doing that again?" I guess they're annoyed with me because I haven't finished rewriting Chapter 1 of last year's novel, and I need to pump up the tension at the climax, so I haven't sent it out yet. Anyway, I ignored them, and decided to do it anyway. I've been writing a lot of short stories lately, and I wanted to do something longer. I have lots of novel ideas, but nothing was really fully baked. The only idea I had that came with a plot was "Pampelmouse". Unfortunately, since most of the characters are parrots, they have some limited communication skills, and their POV is limited, and I thought it was outside my current skillset. I don't know at what point it would have been within my skillset, but whatever. I started anyway. Sometime in October, I outlined (eight words...

One of my VP peers, Miranda Suri, posted a challenge a few days ago. It's kind of about deliberate practice. There are a lot of things I could do. However, I think for the next five days, each day I will read one of my stories. Yeah, aim high, Robyn. I actually can't read my own stuff, so this will be brutal. Read, just read, don't devolve into rewriting by the second page, and then never get to the end. I have five short stories chosen, in varying states of completion: "Bezoar", "Rabbits", "Apophis", "Succubus", and "Mary Alice Goes to Hell". And I've written it down, so now I'm accountable. Mrrmmm...

Two weekends ago was SFContario, and as part of my whole goal to, you know, meet actual writers in the genre and be a pro writer, I attended. Due to its being on a weekend and my being extremely overscheduled like all the time, I went down Sunday for 11am. I went to three panels: Family Trees of Fantasy: Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ed Greeenwood, Jo Walton, Michael Swanwick, and James Alan Gardner riffed for an hour about books I should read. Review and Criticism in the SF Field: Leah Bobet and someone I'd never heard of didn't show, but TNH, Tony Pi, and Brett Savory seemed to think accurate reviews were good. I sat behind Jo Walton. I always hope some awesomeness rubs off; you never know. I was too shy to say hello. Will No One Free me from this Troublesome Book?: Violette Malan and Stephanie Bledwell-Grimes (who I saw at Ad Astra) carried the day, as David Nickle didn't show. Maybe this is some Sunday con thing? I'd never noticed Violette Malan's books before, but...

I'm surprised I managed to read this much, considering November was NaNoWriMo, so all my spare time was filled up with Pampelmouse. Nevertheless, here's what I read: “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson. Should have been subtitled “and other stories,” as this was a short novel and several short stories of varying quality. The boy read it before me, and he was extremely confused when he got to the short stories, and abandoned it. It was about vampires. I had somehow gotten the idea it was about zombies. Anyway, the science was good, but its age showed. There was an incredible amount of alcohol consumption, and the female characters were treated badly, both by the main character and the author. “Brains: A Zombie Memoir” by Robyn Becker. Very funny, very entertaining. I laughed on every page. The boy read this one first, too, and I wonder if he got the jokes. There were a lot of cultural references. He said he enjoyed it, though. Not only was it good zombie research, but also, writ...