michaeljasper.net
"Another Wrecked Web Site"
March 21, 2002
And the winnah is...
Now Playing:
"Memphis, TN," Pearl Jam
Now Reading:
Strange Days, Gardner Dozois
Okay, here are my predictions for the people and movies that I think will win Academy Awards this Sunday. I know I'm stretching it a bit with 2 Oscars going to "LotR," but damn, it really deserves it. I hate that "A Beautiful Mind" will walk away with the most -- it was good but not great, and in many cases not even factual! Ah well...
(Remember, these picks aren't who I WANT to win, but those I think WILL win.)
Mike's Oscar Picks:
Yeah, I'm a geek for choosing the Lord of the Rings so often, but man, that was easily the best flick I've seen in a long time. Granted I haven't seen all of the movies in the list, but I've kept up with the reviews, mostly. I regret most not having seen "Tenenbaums," and now it's no longer playing in the Raleigh area.
Thanks to Trey for the idea about posting my predictions, and I'm hoping to win his contest (if you haven't already done so, email him your predictions!). I'm suprised at the number of movies I haven't seen yet. What can ya do?
Greg van Eekhout has a really cool journal entry about the growing community of spec-fic writers that have gotten to know one another via the Internet, sharing stories of success and rejection. Most of us haven't even met in person! I totally agree with his comments -- there's always a sense of competion among writers, but when you start running with the big dogs and one of the dogs has a big sale, there's not the sense of jealousy that comes when someone you don't respect gets published. It's more a sense of rightness with the world, a payback for hard work. There may be a tiny sting of jealousy when someone hits it big, but a little jealousy can do wonders for my motivation. It makes me want it even more.
Cue the "Rocky" theme music -- "Getting strong now! Writing words now! Rewriting scenes now! Licking stamps now! Mailing out subs now!"
Ahem. Anyway. You get the point. Later!
March 20, 2002
News at last...
Now Playing:
"The Whole Story," Kate Bush
Now Reading:
Strange Days, Gardner Dozois
Today's Quote:
"You don't have to go down if you don't want to," the colonel murmured from beside Joshua, making the priest jump. "Just take a look down there. So you know what we're dealing with here."
Joshua leaned closer to the dark opening in the floor of the ship. A soft humming came from down there, but the sound was not caused by any sort of machine. As far as he could tell, the ship was powerless. This humming came from something alive.
"A light, Private," de la Croix said, and the young woman on Joshua's right blinked on a bright beam from her opaqued glasses.
Father Joshua looked down into the caves that had been burrowed underneath the Wannoshay ship. The caves started from a main rounded area easily fifty feet wide, then narrower arteries branched off in the black, hard-packed Illinois dirt.
And everywhere he looked, bandaged, four-fingered hands held up in front of their eyes, Joshua saw dozens of Wannoshay.
Oh, my. I finally got the news I've been waiting for for almost a month now. In the back of my mind I guess I always knew I'd be able to make it, that I'd get accepted there, but of course the rest of my mind was filled with doubts. But I got an e-mail this morning that cinched it -- I'll be going to the weeklong short story workshop in May as part of the Oregon Coast Professional Fiction Writers Workshop.
Professional Fiction Writer. I like the sound of that. Ever since I got "Mud and Salt" published in Writers of the Future, I've considered myself a professional fiction writer (as should anyone else with at least one publication at the rate of at least three cents a word, which is the Mike Jasper benchmark of professional writerness (tho not particularly the Mike Jasper benchmark of "professionalism," no, not by a long shot)). But I've never really believed it.
Now I feel like I'm a pro, and going out to this intensive workshop from May 25 to June 1 will really push me and make me a better writer. A whole week devoted to writing and reading -- what a blast! And I'll be working with teachers Gardner Dozois and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, two of the leading editors of short specfic in recent years, and hanging out with Dean Wesley Smith and 11 other pro writers. It's a bit intimidating, but my last sale to Asimov's (just last month -- what a year this is turning into!) assured me that my first sale to Gardner wasn't a fluke.
I sent them "Gunning for the Buddha" as my submission story, and I had a tough time choosing between that and "The Disillusionist." Now I know I made the right choice (even if Ellen Datlow at Sci Fiction said she really liked "Disillusionist" and told me to send it to Shawna McCarthy at Realms of Fantasy). Gee... Could I drop more names here in this entry???
So the plan is to jam as many words as I can on the Wannoshay novel before I fly outta here on May 25th, while compiling as many story ideas as possible along the way. I've already got 10 story ideas put together, so it'd be nice to have another 10 or 12 more. And I'm sure I'll end up coming up with my own crazy-ass story ideas while I'm out there in Lincoln City (I can't wait to see Portland again, and spend at least an hour in Powell's bookstore if I have the time!).
And I plan on reading tons of short stories before then. It's no accident that I'm reading Gardner's short story collection, y'know. ;) As a treat for getting in, I ordered Kris Rusch's story collection from Golden Gryphon, and I plan on devouring that book as well. And since you can't just buy ONE thing from Amazon, I also picked up another live Pearl Jam CD (their last one, in Seattle, which is a 3-CD monster) and the live "Down From the Mountain" CD featuring music from "O Brother Where Art Thou." Nothing like a mix of grunge on bluegrass, you know...
I must say, I never would have even considered going to this workshop if it hadn't been for my wonderful wife Elizabeth. She pushed me to go, even though I didn't want to spend the money it'll cost me to go. But just like I'm helping her go to grad school, she wanted to help me go to this workshop, so she picked up 3 days of work over her spring break (when she should've been relaxing!) to earn some extra money that I can use to pay my way to Oregon. Is that not the coolest thing you've ever heard someone doing? Lizzie rocks. She's excited about me going, though she confided in me today that she'd never had any doubts that I'd get invited to go (only 12 writers get to go to this invitation-only workshop). What can I say. My wife rules!
Whew. So that's my day so far. I'll try and update later with my daily writing output. I just had to get my good news off my chest. Later!
It's a little bit later, and I got my 1,000 words in! I'm up to 35,100 words, and I should be done with Joshua's chapter tomorrow. Awesome. See ya!
March 19, 2002
Too-tired Tuesday...
Now Playing:
Johnny Cash
Now Reading:
Strange Days, Gardner Dozois
Today's Quote:
Too awestruck to have noticed the bittersweet smell until that moment, Joshua's nostrils tickled and threatened him with a bout of sneezing. The scent was salty and earthy, like a handful heavy-duty rock salt thrown into a puddle of newly-formed mud.
Okey-dokey, I got my 1,000 words in today, right at 9 p.m. This working at night ain't half bad. I got to do some reading first to get me in the right mindset -- read some great stories by Gardner Dozois from his collection, "The Clowns" and "Touring," both almost horror stories more than fantasy, and definitely not SF! -- and then bam, did some more drafting. Very nice.
I needed it, too. I was dead-tired all day today at the Day Job. It's hard for me to stay focused there the past few days, because my deadlines are far, far away. I need constant pressure to perform, like I had in February when I had to write 5 manuals in less than four weeks. That was kind of fun. Now all I have to do is the boring, drudgery work of reading tech documents and scoping out the next version of the software (which of course ain't ready yet, so it's vaporware!). Anyhoo. I'll get rolling at the Day Job soon. Just hit a lull.
It doesn't help that I got about 5 hours of sleep last night. Stayed up late reading the Dozois book, reading his travel journal from WorldCon '95 in Scotland, and then starting a wonderful story he co-wrote w/ Michael Swanwick and Jack Dann about a computer salesman in Faerie. It was quite awesome, and made me think that I need to send a copy of it to fellow writers Tim and Greg, who write similar kinds of stories and would appreciate this one...
As for the writing, I'm up to 34,100 words on the Wannoshay novel. I'm still behind my buddy Toby, but gaining on him slowly. I just hope I can keep up the pace, writing at least an hour a day, not overdoing it but not slacking off, either. Right now Joshua's in the Wannoshay ship and talking to "Mums," the designated leader of the aliens. And soon he's gonna go under the ship to see the caves the aliens have burrowed under the ship (you were wondering where they'd been hiding, weren't you??). Fun stuff. Talk to you later!
March 18, 2002
Proofing and drafting, drinking and talking shop...
Now Playing:
"Murder," "God," Johnny Cash
Now Reading:
Strange Days, Gardner Dozois
Today's Quote:
He set the mike down and stepped away from the desk, feeling as if he'd been connected to his machines with invisible wires, and the further away he moved, the more wires he was disconnecting, becoming human again. Becoming an old man, an old priest, again.
Got my preview of "Working the Game" for its upcoming publication in Future Orbits in April. It looks great, and I can't wait to see it. Tom Vander Neut runs a quality operation, and I encourage you to subscribe. It's always good to get a different viewpoint on stories, and this magazine focuses on strong SF stories with believable main characters. Can't wait!
I met my old writing buddy Chris downtown again, at the Flying Saucer, for beerz and shop talk about writing, books, and movies. Always a good time. He gave me his latest novel chapters, and I gave him the latest Locus so he could read the interview with China (a.k.a. "Tom") Mieville. One of these days he's gonna make it to see "Fellowship of the Ring" so we can compare notes. He has three little girls, so his time's limited. Crazy.
It's always good to see Chris and geek out a bit about the books we've read and the authors we like. Now I have to read the Gene Wolfe book! But first I want to read some more of the Dozois story collection. Nothing like a bar that serves over 50 draft beers, all for $2.50 a pint (Mondays only, tho). And the servers are always, um, friendly, and um, easy on the eye. 'Nuff said...
Tonight Lizzie was out with her sister, so I did some drafting on the Wannoshay novel, now that I actually know what the heck I want to write. I've got part 1, the first 120 pages or so, all mapped out. I've started thinking about what's gonna happen in my spare time, like when I'm driving or at lunch, which is always a good sign. A fiction writer's work is never done -- we're always working! It's fun, though. I could barely wait to get home tonight and start writing.
I had 2 emails from editors who are going to be publishing my stories in the future waiting for me when I got home, which made me feel good. I feel like a working fiction writer! A good feeling, I must say.
And speaking of working, I've added another 1,100 words or so to the novel at last. Real writing, not notes and half-assed bits and pieces of plot. I'm on chapter five, back to Joshua again, remembering his adventures inside the alien ship. Cool stuff. Later.
March 17, 2002
J-j-jaded!!!
Now Playing:
"The Ghost of Tom Joad," Bruce Springsteen
Now Reading:
The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford (I finish it tonight or I give up!)
Today's Quote:
The first secret was that they were stronger than they liked to let on. Ally didn't know why the let the military push them around so much, especially after watching some of them lifting cars and picking up pool tables like they were made out of plywood. Maybe it was because they didn't talk much, even though she knew they could understand English. She'd been secretly hoping they'd learn French first, but the pushy Americans always got their way, teaching English to the aliens, who spoke painfully slowly. It was just that their mouths didn't work in the same way as humans.
The second secret was that the aliens - the Wannoshay - had discovered Blur.
Happy St. Patrick's Day, and happy b-day to my dad, the suitably-named Pat Jasper. Double-nickels!
I realized today that I am a jaded writer, already. I have lost the jumping-up-and-down, holy-shit-it's-true, they-love-me-they-really-love me, no-way-can-it-be-true, damn-it's-really-true sense of wonder I once got when I received an early acceptance letter. Now I'm just a jaded writer, adding the acceptance letter to the folder chock full of rejections and acceptances, and go back to work. It's sad but true.
Okay, enough BS. Here's the deal: my story "A Simple Way to Pass the Time" was accepted for inclusion in The Way We Work, an anthology focusing on people and how they deal with their jobs and work. A fascinating topic, and should be a cool antho, if it ever comes into being.
That's a big part of why I'm all "ho-hum" about the antho -- everything's still up in the air. There's no publisher yet. They don't know what they payment ("honorarium," sorry, this is a literary publication!) will be. They're not sure when it'll come out.
Now, 5 years ago, I would've been out of my mind with joy at the idea of someone being even slightly interested in one of my stories. Hence the jadedness of my writing persona.
One thing I've noticed about the SF community is that they're much more serious about their anthos than this -- if someone presented a call for manuscripts like this in the SF newsletters, there would be hell to pay if they hadn't lined up publishers and all that already. But this is a literary publication, and things don't seem to work that way in that area. That's part of the reason I got out of trying to write literary stories -- they don't pay, and when they do it's usually in copies! Gimme a break.
The main reason I stopped writing literary stories and novels, however, is that they are so BORING. Pretentious. Repetitive. Self-centered. Self-referential. Boring.
I'm quite enjoying speculative fiction these days. I'm writing a fun SF novel, one that I just finished outlining in depth this morning, and I have an alternate world fantasy novel waiting on the left back burner along with a historical fantasy on the right back burner, along with about 5 or 6 stories in various spec-fic genres to be written this year.
It's a great field to be in, and I can feed my inner child and never ever grow up. What more could you ask for? So maybe I ain't as j-j-jaded as I thought. Later.
March 14, 2002
So what have YOU done creative lately...
Now Playing:
"Greatest Hits," Eurythmics
Now Reading:
The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford (still!!!)
Future Orbits, vol. 3
Today's Quote:
Pushing against the plywood, Ally squeezed into the restaurant as quietly as she could. She clamped her mouth shut against a scream as she snagged her arms and legs on the shards of glass left in the window frame. She dropped bleeding to the floor of the restaurant only by some miracle of her own agility and luck.
So I'm finally caught up on all the line edits and comments I've gotten from my various reviewers on the novel thus far. Whew. That's tedious work, but it always pays off. I'll need to do substantial revising once this bad boy's done, but 'til then it's time to forge ahead. New material! New scenes! New twists! Stay tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel.
Do you know what's sad? I'm still sore from rock-climbing on Tuesday night. How pathetic. I think a big part of this is because I was climbing the wall at the Y using just arm strength, and not using my legs, where we all have much more strength. I got 3/4 of the way up the first time, and I swear, my arms died. I couldn't move them. It was a little scary.
Then the guy belaying me down below with the rope was like "Just lean back and push off from the rock." I'm like "Yeah right, you little pipsqueak -- I let go and that rope you're holding is gonna rocket you up the pulley like a, like a, like a fast-moving-guy-on-a-pulley thing" (or words to that effect). But I survived, though my forearms are still a bit achy. I need to keep doing it and building strength in my arms, which are pretty much quivering hunks of flesh thanks to so much time on the keyboard.
And on that lovely mental image, I'll leave you for today. Later.
March 13, 2002
T-minus Three Months...
Now Playing:
"No Code," Pearl Jam
Now Reading:
The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford (still!!!)
Today's Quote:
The way she refused to call him Father Joshua still stung, but he didn't mind that so much as the fact that she had never told him her first name. There was a level of intimacy missing from every interaction they'd had in the months since the man from Milwaukee had turned his gun on himself right before Thanksgiving. "See you then."
Oh man, I've got exactly three months to get my act together. My goal all along was to finish a draft of The Wannoshay Cycle by my b-day, June 13th for those of you keeping score. Right now I'm barely 1/4 of the way there, at 31,500 words. I'm planning on this novel to be about 120,000 words, all told.
I've got the novel broken down into three main parts -- the aftermath of the alien arrival, followed by a series of intense interactions between human and alien after the camps are created, and finally, the arrival of the OTHER aliens (the ones who came late, and are spoiling for a fight). Each part will probably be 40,000 words or so (I've already got about 9k done for part two, in the form of "Crossing the Camp" and "Mud and Salt").
I think once I get rolling with the early chapters, getting all the logic and timelines figured out, the rest of the novel will unfold nicely. I've just got a lot of history to unfold fairly quickly, along with four main characters to establish in part one. The goal is to get most of part one done by the end of March, most of part two by the end of April, and the rest done by June 13.
Sorry, that was all probably boring as crap to all of you. Sometimes I need to just think aloud here. Plus I'm trying to refocus after wasting 5 hours or so trying to get our computers networked with the wireless hardware I got a few weeks ago. Microsoft is killing me -- everything's installed, but I can't seem to make the final, critical connection that will hook up the laptop and the desktop. It's so close (and yet so damn far)...
More updates later, hopefully. Right now I'm revamping the first few chapters, and thinking about making them into novellettes, because they're all fairly self-contained. So I've got three Word files on my Desktop: "Joshua and the Aliens," "Ally and the Aliens," and just for variety, "Skin and the Aliens." We'll see what pans out there (I'd have "Shontera and the Aliens," but most of that's been done already in my story "Explosions"). Confused yet?
So I'll get to work now and quit yakking. Later.
March 11, 2002
Lyrics and a Draft of Discovery...
Now Playing:
"The Last Dog & Pony Show," Bob Mould
Now Reading:
The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford
These four walls can never hold us
We're looking for wide open spaces,
High above the kitchen
And we're strangers here
On our way to some other place...
-- "World Where You Live," Crowded House/Neil Finn
Let's see. It's Monday, which always sucks. I had a great weekend, but it's hard getting back to work. And I didn't get any writing done, though I did come to some conclusions about what to do with my writing and how best to spend my time and energy, so that's always a plus.
I realized I need to hang onto my novel chapters instead of sending them out the instant I'm done writing them. As Stephen King said in his book about writing, I've been writing with the door open, when it should be closed, and preferably locked! What happens when you write with the door closed is that you and only you are the person who sees the novel-in-progress. All comments have to wait until the draft is written. Now me, I've been letting people in and out of my office through the open door, and I've gotten myself stuck -- I want to go BACK and fix the errors and missteps of my earlier chapters, but at the same time I know I need to finish the latest chapter. Too much critiquing too soon is a bad thing.
Thanks to fellow writer Jay, I realized I'm writing a Discovery Draft. I think I'd heard this term somewhere else, but always thought of it as being more like one of those "organic" writers ("I never have an outline, I just let the words FLOW," or "I let me characters tell me what to do next" or some of that other touchy-feely stuff that just doens't work for me). But it's almost exactly what I'm doing -- armed with my outline, I just plow through the first draft, adding details, characters, and plot twists as I go, while staying relatively close to the outline. Then, when I'm all done, I go back and tie up all loose ends and fix all logical issues, and then, and only then, do I have a first draft. It's a voyage of discovery. I like that.
You know, today's turning into a somewhat random Monday. I'm having some trouble getting focused, so I've been goofing off instead. Checking out the journals of other writers. Looking up weird names on the net. Getting a story idea or two.
My goal for the rest of the year is to write one novel chapter a week, and one short story a month. That seems very do-able to me. I enjoy stories, and I love exchanging stories-in-progress with other writers, so I want to continue with the stories. I also think stories will be a nice break from the intense concentration of novels.
To make this entry a little less random, let me try and tie things together with another sweet pair of lines from Crowded House, to complete the day:
Now I'm walking again, to the beat of a drum,
And I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart...
Nice line. Later!
March 10, 2002
A weekend off...
Now Playing:
"Back Porch Music"
Now Reading:
The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford
Well, not a whole lot going on here, writing-wise, but it's been a pretty good weekend nevertheless. Elizabeth and I had a really nice weekend, enjoying the warm weather yesterday -- hell, I even cut the GRASS yesterday, how's that for being productive??? -- and taking some time off from working to just enjoy life again.
We were supposed to go see "The Royal Tenenbaums" this weekend at some point, but just never got around to it. We watched Carolina almost upset Dook in the ACC basketball tourney on Friday, having some drinks and enjoying the first full basketball game we've watched all season. Then on Saturday we finally cleaned the house and then met our friend Clarke at the new mall in Durham, the Streets at Southpointe.
Now normally you wouldn't be able to drag me to a damn mall, but we wanted to show off the new car to Clarke, and I wanted to check out the two-story Barnes and Noble there. So I went along, and we fought traffic for close to an hour then wandered around the massive place -- it's a nice mix of outdoor buildings and an indoor mall. The B&N was nice, but nothing great.
The best part for me was finding a copy of Neil Gaiman's Smoke & Mirrors, his story collection, and reading some of his stories with an iced latte while Lizzie and Clarke shopped it up. Very enjoyable. I was dying to buy the book, but I told Lizzie not to let me buy anymore books beforehand, so I was outta luck. Ah well.
And now it's Sunday night already, and I haven't done any writing all weekend. I am slack. I've got some time tomorrow night, so I'll do it then. Meanwhile I plan on reading a bit more on the Ford novel (I'll never finish that one!) and watching the show about 9/11 on TV with Lizzie. Have a good one.