michaeljasper.net
"Another Wrecked Web Site"
Jan 6, 2002
Attitude Adjustments 'R' Us...
Now Playing:
"Magnolia" soundtrack, "Bachelor #2," Aimee Mann
Also Listening To:
The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron (on tape, commuting to work)
Now Reading:
Black Gate 2;
Galveston, Sean Stewart
Today's Quote:
With the bottle tight in her grasp, Shontera looked back at the line and saw Roberta watching, her face puckered with concentration. When she turned back to the Wannoshay woman, the alien was gone, leaving behind only a strangely comforting smell of mud and salt.
There we go -- finished just about all that I wanted to finish! I have the Wannoshay novel almost ready to go now. As soon as I tweak the chapter version of "Crossing the Camp," (change to 3rd person past from 1st person present), tt's all new stuff from here on out. Whew! I found some nifty stuff about Milwaukee to help get the facts straight for the sections of the book that take place there, including a cool bus map of the downtown area. The Net is way cool!
Oh yeah, if you're interested, check out my List of Fives page. See? I've been using my snowed-in time productively!
I also completed my Hugo (and Campbell) nominations for the 2002 WorldCon. I wasn't planning on actually going to the con this fall, just because it's expensive, and I got a little tired of it by the third day last year (not to mention sick as a dog). But I did enjoy seeing folks again, hanging out with Jeff and Frank and Toby and Lister and Jim K, meeting Derek in person along with lots and lots of other people. We'll see. I may go... I'd love to go to the San Francisco area again. I've had nice experiences the two times I've been out there, and now I know lots of folks who live there (well, more people than I knew last time I was there!).
In other news,while I was tooling around in the slush/snow/ice-covered roads in the Escort (or, as we call it here in the Jasper household, "The Esquart!"), I listened to some more Julia Cameron. While I'm not totally into her spirituality aspects, I do like almost everything she has to say. Along with overcoming all the culturally-enforced beliefs we all have a what it means to be "an Artist," she also spoke about one of my touchiest subjects: The Day Job.
Her point was that after a while, you'll get to really appreciate your Day Job, because it gives you the opportunity to do your art. If you had no Day Job, you wouldn't have the means to write, paint, sing, act, or whatever. At first this seemed ridiculous to me (I mean, the Day Job has been holding me back! I could do so much more if I didn't have to give up 40 hours a week, plus commute time, to the cube farms!), but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
And it's an attitude I need to have right now, as I've been really negative about my job in the past few months. It could be a lot worse, job-wise. I have lots of freedom, decent work, low stress, good money. No manager on site, but in California! I could be unemployed. I mean really, how much writing could I get done if that was all I did? I'd burn myself out, I think. It's a nice pie-in-the-sky dream to strive for (making enough $$$ from my fiction to support myself), but for right now it's not a viable option. Maybe someday. And really, look at all I've managed to do with my writing while working full-time. Not bad. I need to keep this grateful attitude about the Day Job in my head as the year goes by.
Part of me is a bit apprehensive about doing too good a job at the Day Job, because then I'd get promoted, I'd have more responsibilities, more money, and then I'd have less energy for my own energy. I believe this is one of those self-censoring knee-jerk reactions Cameron talks about on her tapes. The only thing holding me back, from any kind of success, is me.
All-righty then! Anyone feel like doing a cheer besides me? Sorry. Sometimes I get a little jazzed up, especially after a sale (I've been up since about 4:30, putting all my info together -- contracts, emails, website additions, etc.). Think I'm gonna go crash now. Later!
Jan 5, 2002
Creeping back to normalcy, sort of...
Now Playing:
"O Brother Where Art Thou" Soundtrack
Also Listening To:
The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron (on tape, commuting to work)
Now Reading:
Beluthathatchie, Andy Duncan
Today's Quote:
"Sure," Shontera said, her face hot. She'd been thinking of spaceships falling from the sky like fireflies, hitting the sandy beach outside her Myrtle Beach dream home with sounds like gunshots.
Okay, I apologize to everyone for getting so pumped up about the Campbell Awards. Just had to say my piece, get the info out there, and let nature take its course. And hope and pray my story shows up in Asimov's in the next month or two! I think being cooped up in the house with a foot of snow on the ground is making me obsessive-compulsive! (Why can't I stop washing my hands and whistling the theme song to "Three's Company"???)
Just when I thought I had things under control, I go and check the mail, which hasn't come through for over 3 days. Along with a royalty statement for Strange New Worlds (no $), I had another acceptance!!! Yeehaw! I sold "Working the Game" to the very cool new electronic magazine Future Orbits!! I'm very, very happy for this story to see print, because I was really close to trashing it, even though it deals with themes about poverty and work that I'm quite close to and want to do more with in the future. And now, bada-bing! It's gonna be published, at the fine rate of six cents a word (boy, am I glad I didn't cut too much, and left it at almost 6,000 words)!
Anyway, I made some progress at last on my Fiction Writing syllabus. I was feeling a bit stressed about this, as I was supposed to work on that over xmas, and of course never got 'round to it. But I read of John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist again the other day, and I'm glad we'll be using that as a text. Should provoke some interesting conversations in class, at the least (I love the parts where he slams the writing of Harlan Ellison -- ouch! What a snob!). I kept thinking of more and more stuff we could talk about, and I'm getting more and more pumped up about teaching the class. Hopefully there'll be enough folks to fill the class -- we didn't get the word out 'til late last year.
Oh yeah, I finished "The Executioner's Guild," the last story in Andy Duncan's collection that I hadn't read. I did a brief write-up of it on my Book Review page. Great stuff all around, though some stories didn't work for me as well as I would've liked. Andy went to NC State just like me, getting his Master's in my first semester there, I think, so I never got to really know him. How cool would it have been to be in a workshop with him? Oh well, at least I got to chat with him at his reading at Quail Ridge Books. He read from one of my favorite stories in the book, "Lincoln in Frogmore," which had a hand in my story, "The Disillusionist." Great stuff. Buy a copy and read it now!
And that leaves me with the Wannoshay novel, which is inching along. My goal is to get the three already-written chapters put together before I return to work on Monday, but finding time to do so has been tough. I keep finding other things that need to be done, like the syllabus for my class, or a short story to read (I reread my proof of "Natural Order" and felt really good about that story seeing print, sometime this year!), or snow to shovel, or whatever. I need to just slow down, take some deep breaths, and not stress myself out. There's always tomorrow. I'm just itching to start work on the new stuff, as soon as I get my timeline and my facts straight for my "Future History" of the novel. It'll get done. Later.
Jan 4, 2002
Calling it a day...
Now Playing:
"Satellite Rides," Old 97's
Also Listening To:
The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron (on tape, commuting to work)
Now Reading:
Beluthathatchie, Andy Duncan
Today's Quote:
Father Joshua nodded at the National Guard officer at the to The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii and strode across the altar. Tuesday morning, 7:20 a.m. mass, held for the same four elderly men and women he saw every morning in the pews. As always, he felt a sting of irony at an Irishman presiding over the souls of Italians, but he also saw the need for his work, as more and more men left the vocation. Of the few new priests entering the service, most of them were from Mexico and other homelands besides America.
We are all immigrants, Joshua McDowell thought, crossing himself in front of his sparse congregation. Including the people from the stars.
Okay, it's almost 8 p.m. and just wanted to update the ol' journal after a fairly productive day-o. Got a bunch more done on the Wannoshay novel, and have some good ideas about how to best structure it and which characters to focus on. Still need to fix the POV to third person for two chapters, which is taking longer than I'd thought!
In case you (or a friend) were scratching your head for someone for whom to vote for the John W. Campbell Award for New Writers, here's a brief infodump about my eligibility:
My pro-level genre publications include the following (most of the links will give you the ENTIRE story; if not, shoot me an email and I'll gladly hook you up with a copy):
You can also find more info about the Campbell Award at the fine website maintained by James Van Pelt.
Please note: You must be a member of the 2002 WorldCon in San Jose, CA, by January 31 (or have attended WorldCon 2001 in Philly) to be eligible to nominate writers for this award or for a Hugo. I saw most of y'all at PhilCon, so I figured I'd drop you a line. For more info, go to WorldCon 2002 website.
Whew. Enough of THAT...
I keep forgetting to mention that I'm also listening to The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, a book on tape lent to me by Clarke. I've heard of this series quite a bit, and was always skeptical (it seemed a little too touchy-feely for a Man like me). But I've heard most of one tape, and I like what I've heard so far. While it seems more focused on getting people who want to be creative jump-started, and getting currently creative people unblocked (neither problem I have right now at least), it has a lot of good stuff to say about being creative in our society.
Cameron looks at things from a totally different angle, which I really like. So far she's hit the nail on the head with the myths we build in America about artists -- they must be starving, they are born that way, they wear black (heh), they are unhappy. I love the part when she says that artists are usually only unhappy when they aren't working on their art; if you see a writer or other artist who's been productive that day, they tend to be quite chipper. So very, very true.
Oh yeah, I must say -- Books on Tape rock! I still have fond memories of listening to Neuromancer and Ender's Game while commuting to work last year. I need to get some more. Gotta run. Later!
Jan 3, 2002
Snow and more snow...
Now Playing:
"Eighteen Tracks," Bruce Springsteen
Now Reading:
Beluthathatchie, Andy Duncan
Today's Quote:
The rest of the children scuttled away as well, hands and feet barely making a sound on the dusty road. They left an almost-sweet scent of mud and salt behind them.
Yep, we got the snow we'd been expecting -- over half a foot, with more expected later today! So I'm home from work, not willing to risk hurting my precious '93 Escort LX (155,000 miles and counting!) on the snowy roads. I have some reading and work to do for work as well, though I think we're gonna have to play in the snow first! Elizabeth is way pumped up about the snow.
I got my two hours of writing in early today, so I can kick back the rest of the day. While it worked nicely writing last night -- Elizabeth kicked me out of the living room last night at 7:01, telling me "Get to work!" -- I still like writing in the morning better, with a mug of coffee next to me and the rest of the world still asleep. I like getting up while it's still dark out. Plus I can get my work done and feel like I've truly taken one step closer to my dream, making the rest of the day much, much more enjoyable.
I've been really having fun organizing the Wannoshay novel. I have my "Future History" for the book almost ready now -- it runs from September 4, 2015 with Father Joshua's heart attack in Chicago, and ends exactly three years later, also with Father Joshua... But I can't say more, that would be telling.
I also mapped out the chapters, including the three chapters that have all been written already (except for the small changes from 1st to 3rd person in two of them, and changing the past to present tense in one of them -- I can't seem to find the time to do that yet...). I've got 24 chapters so far.
Here's some free advice for anyone who's working on a novel. This is what I did, and it worked well for me. Start out with a written synopsis, pulling all the various elements of the story together, along with all the characters. Pretend you're putting this synopsis together for a potential agent or publisher as a proposal, and fill it with all the cool shit you'd want to read in a novel (don't worry how hard it will be later, once you have to actually WRITE it!). My outlines/synopses usually end up being 4-5 pages long, double-spaced. Once that's done, open a new file, slap your novel title on it, and create a bunch of chapter headings ("Chapter One," "Chapter Two," etc.), one per page. Then go back to your synopsis file and start copying sentences. Maybe one sentence will equal one chapter, or maybe a whole paragraph of the synopsis will equal one novel chapter. When you're done you should have something written in each chapter, even if it's just a sentence, or even a word or two. When you're done, you'll be so much further along than you were only short moments earlier. Then when you're doing the drafting, you don't have that blank page/screen in front of you -- you've got something to work with. Even if you don't use all the info from your synopsis, at least you have a headstart on your story.
Did that make sense? Oh yeah, and if it helps, try doing a timeline, especially if you have more than one main character and your book covers a long period of time, like over a year. And I like maps, so I usually draw maps. And more maps. Can you tell I've had some caffeine today? Whew.
Gotta run. The snow piles are calling! Later.
Jan 2, 2002
Resolutions and Snow...
Now Playing:
"Fight Songs," Old 97s
Now Reading:
Beluthathatchie, Andy Duncan
Today's Quote:
Unlike so many other women here at the plant, she had plans. She wanted to be down South when she was Roberta's age, relaxing in a prefab house with smart walls, something close to the beach. Just her and Janna, along with the sun and the sand.
All-righty then! I've been working on The Wannoshay Cycle for my designated working time today, though I'm breaking a little early to do a quick journal. I also did some note-taking and organizing for my other novel, The Ghetto Dwellers, so that one's all ready to go once I get done with the Wannoshay one. I just wanted to get all my ducks in a row on that novel before I filed it.
Now, fittingly, I'm back in the cold, snowy Midwest. It's fitting because currently, here in sunny Raleigh, NC, it's snowing! We're supposed to get up to a foot of snow in the next 12 hours! Crazy. The city will be shut down for at least 2-3 days. Nice timing, eh?
I brought some work home, just in case, which is sort of ironic, in that I haven't been doing a whole lot of it while I'm actually AT work... Things are a bit slow, and I don't have a deadline, which makes it hard for me to be motivated. As you may have seen in my Dec. 31st entry, I thrive on deadlines! I may actually get some stuff done tomorrow, get my work project pulled together. I have to keep my goal, #10 on my list for 2002!
Speaking of goals and New Year's resolutions, it's nice to see the goals of my fellow writers and journalers. Check out fellow NAWer Samantha Ling's journal for links to other writers' resolutions, as well as hers! 2002 should be a productive year for lots of folks, it looks like.
Right now the novel is progressing a little slowly, as I'm taking the three stories that make up separate chapters in the book and tweaking them to fit the structure of the novel. It's a little tricky because the first story, "Explosions," is in first person, and even more tricky, the next one, "Crossing the Camp," is not only first person but in PRESENT tense! I know, what was I thinking, right? Everything in the novel is gonna be 3rd person limited, so the third story, "Mud and Salt, shouldn't require any tweaking at all!
I'm also putting together a timeline and making sure all the dates in the stories match up. It's sort of tedious, but kind of fun. Nowhere near as hard as doing that first draft. And luckily, since I've reworked all three stories extensively (two of them thanks to Jed Hartman, fiction editor at Strange Horizons, the structure and meat of the stories are very strong and don't need revision.
And finally, I have a new story idea to work on, tentatively titled "South of Winnipeg, Close to Nowhere." This one tells the story of my fourth POV character, a twenty-something woman who works at a video store and is dying for something new in her life. She gets asked to help with a documentary -- the director is a college kid who assumes she knows something about filming and cameras because she works at a video store -- and she and the crew visit one of the "ghettos" where the newly-arrived aliens have been relegated until the governments can figure out what to do with them. I have to do some research on Canada, and it should be interesting to see how the two different governments react to the alien arrivals. So anyhoo... Lots of ideas going on lately.
And it's about the end of my two hours of writing for today. Gotta go run and check out the snow! We've got close to an inch already, and these big, lightly-floating flakes just keep on a-coming! Later...
Jan 1, 2002
2002 -- here we go!
Now Playing:
"New Favorite," Alison Kraus + Union Station
Now Reading:
Beluthathatchie, Andy Duncan
Oooh. Stayed up way too late last night, and made too many mixed drinks (with a relatively low failure rate -- one of the drinks I made I put soda water in it instead of sour mix, and it was quite nasty) and put away too much champagne 'round midnight. My stomach's still a bit woozy.
We had a small group here -- Clarke, Josh, Cammie, Holly, Val, Lizzie and me -- which made it nice and manageable. Everyone brought food, and I cooked way too many chicken wings and then Lizzie boiled shrimp for peeling and dipping. Along with the chicken and shrimp and mixed drinks, we had some awesome taco dip from Holly and Val, spicy cabbage from Josh and Cammie, and goat cheese from Clarke. Oh, and I restocked the liquor cabinet with six bottles of various hooch. We even had the colorful little umbrellas. I think we stayed up past 3, watching the tube and hanging out.
And now I'm about ready to crash, and it's only 7:30. I haven't done any of the writing I was planning to do today, but I did get started on some organizing for my two novels planned for this year. I need to organize the timeline for The Wannoshay Cycle and bring together all the various details of the three stories that make up separate chapters of the book. That'll be fun -- there will be four points of view in the book, and I look forward to getting to know those characters better. I just created the fourth character the other day when I realized I hadn't referred to her in my outline after my first mention of there being 4 people in contact with the aliens.
For The Ghetto Dwellers I just need to get all my facts straight from both the short story I just wrote and the first 25,000 words of the introductory section I did in November. Mostly I just want to start a list of all the different aliens in the book so I can keep them all straight! I think I have over a dozen different "otherworlders" now, and I don't want them to overlap. The coolest thing is that the aliens in Wannoshay also show up in Ghetto! I love stuff like that, though I'm not sure why...
Speaking of getting things done, I have my Goals for 2002 page up, so you can see how I plan to spend my copious free time (ha ha) this year. I did pretty good with my goals for 2001, accomplishing almost all of the writing ones, though not doing much for the exercising more one... Ah well. Maybe this year? Later.