In which the worst has happened

On July 2, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Guys, the huge storm was MONDAY NIGHT. No excuse for my internet to go out on Wednesday!

Arrgh.

More thinking out loud

On July 2, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

editingredpen Today’s gonna end up being an editing day; it’s going to have to be. I spent all day Monday on the Baen entry (which, incidentally, I think I’m really proud of, and thanks very much to Ronovan, Kraftycatcreations, L. S. Engler, shrtstry, and ebthompson93, all of whom provided some suggestions and advice on short notice) and didn’t get anything remotely useful done yesterday, so right now I’m really behind on word count and about to get much worse.

Here’s the thing, though: at some point when I wasn’t looking this story got a lot bigger than I think I originally wanted it to. To continue the Star Wars metaphor that’s loosely tied the whole series together I’ve found myself writing Return of the Jedi when what I wanted was the first half or so of A New Hope, maybe ending when they escape the Death Star. I’m not blowing up the damn Death Star yet. I don’t even think these guys are the guys who take that job.

(No, that’s not a hint that I’m planning on killing somebody. I don’t even know who my Obi-Wan Kenobi is right now.)

I kept the Benevolence in deep background in the novella. (Which you should buy and read, dammit.) There’s no way to keep that going in a novel-length manuscript; the books are called The Benevolence Archives for a reason and the Benevolence needs to be a part of the novel. But I seem to have tossed myself into a place where I’m going from these guys being this looming threat in the background straight into my heroes standing alone against the might of the evil empire territory and that’s really not where I wanted this story to go, so I need to either figure out a way to roll with it or pull the entire thing back and reconceptualize a little bit.

(I keep reminding myself first drafts are allowed to suck.)

Also, my habit of writing by planting myself in front of a computer and just, y’know, going is kicking me in the ass here. I’ve already introduced at least one twist and possibly two that I have absolutely no idea what to do with and I think before I proceed much further I probably need to know what’s actually going on with them. The target length for the manuscript is 75000 words; I’ll be around 20000 by the end of the day which is just over a quarter of the length, which means that the central conflict really ought to be clear by this point and I feel like it’s probably not.

So, yeah: today is going to be spent editing, and at the drawing board, scribbling ideas and making myself plan. I like what I’ve got, don’t get me wrong; I just need to pound it into more of a shape before I start hanging other things on it.

Or something. I’m not good with metalworking metaphors.

Just for the record

On July 1, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve talked a lot of shit about goalies over the last couple of weeks, but Jesus, if it wasn’t for Tim Howard having the game of his goddamn career we’d have just lost 16-0 instead of going into jesus why is the game still going please someone fucking score time.

#BecauseWhyNot

On July 1, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

maxresdefault … You’re supposed to think the Lego dude is giving you the finger here, right? That’s not just my screwed-up mentality taking over?

It has been a singularly useless morning. Not only have I not gotten any writing done, which isn’t exactly the end of the world– I got through basically two full drafts of an entire story yesterday, and am not yet so far behind that I’ve got any reason to be nervous– but I haven’t really done anything else with the time. I’m pretty sure I spent an hour just lying in bed staring at the wall. Like literally staring, not trying to sleep or reading or anything. Just staring.

And now I’m watching soccer, which has been the other thing I do when I’m at home alone four days a week, and once the World Cup is over I’m seriously not going to have anything to do with my time other than yucky things like keeping my house clean.

I thought– at least partially due to a lack of anything else compelling to write about at the moment– that I’d take a couple of minutes to point out some of the things that I actually like about soccer since several of my other posts have either been critical or gently mocking in some way or another. So have some positives, although keep in mind that even right now as I’m listing several of them in my head that a bunch of them are going to be stupid:

I love the opening ceremony for World Cup matches. I assume regular soccer matches don’t work like this, with the anthems and the little kids and the picture with the refs and the ball and all that, but there really is a lot of symbolism there that I’m quite fond of– starting with both of the teams walking out onto the pitch together.
I like that the game never actually stops. You’ve got 45 minutes before you get a break, go run your damn ass off, and when that 45 minutes are over we’re going to add extra minutes for the places where you screwed up and had to halt the game. I know this makes American TV networks insane because there’s not as many places to stick in ads. That’s a feature, not a bug, and I love it. Fuck the networks; I like it when they’re inconvenienced. I’ve entirely lost the ability to watch football over the past several years and a good part of the reason is the way a damn game will take three and a half hours because of all the pauses and time-outs. (The other half is the evil; that’s another story, though.)
I like that even though every soccer player is born with a genetic condition that gives them terribly weak ankles and calves that are incredibly easy to injure, they’re tough enough to shrug off those horrible injuries and get back up and get in the game like nothing happened.
Okay, that was unfair. That said: the game has a weird sportsmanship to it, where once the players realize that someone is actually injured– it seems like someone gets hauled off in a bucket once per game– someone will generally kick the ball out of bounds to stop the game, and I saw at least one example where Team A kicked the ball out of bounds because a Team B player was hurt, and then when Team B took their corner kick they basically handed the ball straight over to Team A because that was the fair thing to do. Then again, biting and headbutts.
While I still think the lack of scoring is a problem, it is really exciting when it does actually happen. There could still be a little more, though.
I like intelligent announcers. Soccer seems to have a preponderance of those, or perhaps I’m simply mistaking British accents for intelligence, but I don’t think I am.