Sail onwards

IN MEMORY OF DOUG

R.I.P.

Earthly delights

I'm looking forward to Another Earth, which is being hailed as 'the science fiction movie that rocked the Sundance Festival' simply because, golly gosh, it’s SF and cluey film buffs actually liked the poetic concept of a second Earth with a population that mirrors that of our own, and enjoyed the intellectual game of tackling the hypothetical possibilities inherent in that scenario. Imagine, you can do big scale, otherworldly stories and still explore the human condition.

Of course, the second I read the premise, my mind went back to the 1969 British science fiction film Doppelgänger, also known as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. This movie creeped me out in so many ways when I watched and rewatched it many, many years ago, and that eeriness has stayed with me even though the details of the movie have grown blurrier. The fact that the protagonist was right and no-one believed him, and the sinister atmosphere created around our hero's trials, it all seemed incredibly powerful back then. And that ending! My young mind chewed upon it and mulled over the unfairness of it for ages. It's probably one of those movies that it's best to not see again lest my older and more critical faculties kick in, and instead just coast on my intense, youthful response to it and enjoy the memory.

Guten Tag Deutschland!

I'm not sure why so many people from Germany visited my blog today, but vielen dank for dropping by.

Woof versus Doof

Hmm, personally I'd far prefer Steve Cameron's woof woof to my doof doof, but I have a feeling the cats would disagree.

Facing the final curtain

Well, the end of my AJWWB, at least.

*sniff*

And after a spate of pesky, sunny days full of doing other stuff, I've got a nice, gloomy, rainy day at home to squeeze in a few more words (doof doof permitting) and brace myself for my upcoming return to the Real World.

Grist for the mill

So how about a story that's a cross between Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (doof doof) and Avram Davidson's Crazy Old Lady but with a samurai sword instead of a grenade? Well, maybe I'll drop the samurai sword, but otherwise it could work...

Now Let Us Sleep (I weep just remembering the ending) and Or All the Seas with Oysters (apparently one the foremost ripped-off-by-writing-students SF stories) are still my all-time favourite Avram Davidson stories natch, but I must admit, Crazy Old Lady is one of those stories that I'm appreciating more and more as time passes.

Anyway, it's all quiet again, and has been for a few hours. I've reduced my 9k story to 5960 words - I think I'll go cut another 60 words and then call it a night.

You can't stop the doof doof

It's actually been pretty quiet here over the past 2 weeks, which was wonderfully unexpected, and this morning was lovely, but right now, I'm well into my third hour of unneighbourly doof doof and can no longer work with it. So I'm admitting defeat, shutting up shop and heading off for a walk. Drats! I wanted to finish a revision - I'm cutting story from an indulgent 9000 words down to a lean and mean and more to the point 6000 words (I only have 392 more words to go) - so the story could sit a while before I submit it on Sunday.

Hopefully the doof doof will be over by the time I get back.

Ah well, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley."

Barsoom!

I'll be off to see the final installment of HP tomorrow, and will hopefully also see the trailer for the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie, the first of a trilogy based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Carter, a courteous, courageous, mysterious Confederate soldier who finds his calling as the warrior-saviour of another planet, debuted in A Princess of Mars in 1912, then went on to have all sorts of adventures in the rest of the Barsoom series. He also appeared in many comics.

I'm especially looking forward to the green, 12-foot tall, four-armed, sword-wielding, Martian warrior-barbarians, which you just don't see enough of in movies these days.

All of which makes me want to go back and read Edgar Rice Burroughs all over again. I was a huge Tarzan of the Apes fan when I was 10-13 years old. Though I'd previously thoroughly enjoyed them, after reading the books I was scornful of the Hollywood adaptations which gave my hero the Frankenstein treatment and turned ERB's intelligent and eventually well-spoken Tarzan into an unsubtle, eternally illiterate, mono-syllabic hunk who seemed to do nothing but swing through trees, pound his chest and kill lions.

Edit: there was no John Carter trailer :( Blessed be You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rf55GTEZ_E&feature=player_embedded

Poetic failure

I'm settling into my AJWWB, which, alas, will soon be over. I can feel my next week return to the Arvo Job nibbling at the edges of my mind. I must ignore the thought! Now I remember why I usually take 3-4 weeks off. But that's next week. For now, I get up (no rush), feed the chook (who is waiting at the back door every morning and clucks joyously when I pull back the kitchen curtains - what a suck!) and the cats, make a pot of tea, read. Then I spend the day writing, reading, walking, writing, wrestling with ideas, cursing my writing slowness, chatting, writing, wishing I were a speedier wordsmith, and taking photos of the cats chasing the chook. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I could live like this!

This morning's pot-of-tea-and-reading session included the VWC's July writing magazine. The theme was 'How's your Motivation?', which all seemed somewhat theoretical because at the moment, motivation is NOT a problem. However, I know that once I'm back amidst the rushing around of Real Life and the effects of my AJWWB wear off and it's been ages since my last acceptance, every so often, most probably when I'm tired and come home to another rejection, I'll raise a fist to the heavens and cry "Why, why, why am I doing this to myself?"

So I really liked Paul Bateman's article, with more advice on dealing with rejections (I can never get enough of that) and, very importantly, he eloquently counsels on how to cope if you never achieve your writing goals: ' But if it never happens - and it very often never happens - stay open and alive to life. Be yourself. Be kind and content. Be secret and exult.'

I love the last phrase, which is from a Yeat's poem:

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
By William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

So, once more, it all boils down to: write because to love it; write because you have to; write because you enjoy the actual process because sometimes that's all you've got (exult!).

Lockdown

I think I shall lower the drawbridge and venture forth on a walk, perhaps to the local village, perhaps not. Decisions, decisions. It's raining, naturally, which is why I'd rather stay cosily ensconced in my writing room and, well, write. But no, I shall be good. I shall get some exercise and fresh air ere twilight descends - I shall!

Now, where are my boots and brolly?

Steamy asides

Yesterday was steampunk circus day, with lots of cogs, corsets, bustles and brown aviator coats, as well as gasps and clapping and lots of laughter. I wonder if it's too late for a career change? Perhaps if I dig out my old hula hoop...


Today is galley checking and composing a short bio for the YBAF&H 2010 anthology day, with a spot of just writing something, anything, as well as the breathtaking derring-do of cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. Perhaps wearing a pair of goggles might make scrubbing the tub a little more exciting...

Sad facts

I had a note in my diary to check up on Maria Gomes Valentim. Born on 9th July 1896, she would have been 115 years old today. Unfortunately, she died 18 days ago on 21st June 2011 (which I must have missed in the end of June rush). Still, 114 years and 347 days is a good haul. What an amazing chunk of history she witnessed.

Because I also read a review of Nagasaki: The Massacre of the Innocent and Unknowing by Craig Collie this morning, I automatically linked the two events and worked out that Maria was 49 years old when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan 6/8-1945 and 9/8-1945. 49! I wonder how aware she was of what had happened, how horrified or not she was when word, and finally images of the dead and dying people, trickled out. These days, drenched as we are in instant updates, I don’t think we can really grasp how long it used to take for information to reach the general public. And even then, how much of that information was just self-serving propaganda?

Apparently Craig’s book tackles a lot of the mythologies about the bombings, and he writes that most Japanese people remained largely unaware of what had happened because of the strict censorship, and even the people in charge didn’t fully understand what had occurred. Because the world seems so small and fast now, it’s hard for us to imagine that such an epic event, seared into our psyches by decades of investigations and countless images from movies and such, wasn’t instantly perceived by every single person on the planet. We imagine the ground shook. But the world is a big place. And no-one tweeted about Fat Man or Little Boy.

Other sad facts stand out. Harry Truman didn’t authorise the dropping of either bomb. An unelected military officer – General Thomas Handy – gave the formal orders. After Nagasaki, Truman insisted any further bombs would require his authority, which put a stop to the military experimentally dropping a third bomb on Tokyo. And in another of Time’s vaggaries, the original target for the first bomb was the industrial town of Kokura, but the elements and mechanical failures conspired to necessitate a change of course mid-fight, and Nagasaki was enveloped in the nightmare instead. But Kokura was saved.

How do you get your head around that? A bit of bad weather and you get vapourised. Or not. Life. Luck. Wow.

The hood revisited.

I spent all day yesterday back in St Kilda visiting folk and favourite shops, and drifting in and out of my old haunts, the ghost of a resident past.

It’s been two years since the gentrification of Melbourne’s inner suburbs found me wanting as a desirable resident and ordered me to move on, and each time I go back, increasingly the place no longer belongs to me. The incremental changes are adding up. One dark and cavernous op shop that I used to pop into every week is now a big, shiny exercise/coffee/yoghurty bike place, the once nook-filled Chronicles Bookshop has become a square, shiny yoghurty place, the once famous burger place where regulars hung out has been replaced by bland, shiny yoghurty place full of tourists, and for goodness sake, even ‘The Newmarket Hotel’, that last bastion of take-your-trendy-designer-atmosphere-and-stuff-it, has gone upmarket and, no doubt, also serves yoghurt. Scheherazade is gone, The George Cinema closed a while back, countless other beloved places have vanished, and my 'Magic Op Shop', which once upon a time always produced something that I really needed when I needed it most, well, now it looks overgrazed; even though I searched high and low, it gave me nothing yesterday. They say you can’t go home again, but you can almost go home, which is a strange, disjointed feeling.

I met up with an old neighbour. He told me all the latest local news, including how he recently solved the mystery of what happened to a neighbour who disappeared four months before I left, during the time of the February 2009 bushfires. It was an amazing story. Sadly, people are now moving in and out of the building where I used to live too quickly to get to know each other. My old neighbour, a great talker who used to help everyone with their handyman problems, said that he mostly keeps to himself these days.

On my way out of town, my old friend The Book House, perhaps for old time’s sake, bestowed its favours upon me and provided me with a hardback copy of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America for $4.00 (I read Julian: A Christmas Story a few months ago). Then I left St Kilda. Again.

In one of those neat balancing out acts that life sometimes constructs, an hour later in the city, I met a man from Castlemaine – another new resident and commuter like me – and we talked about being part of the exodus of inner city residents to the country, and how we were both annoyed by other newbies who go on about how much they love living in a country town BUT they wished the shops had longer opening hours and that there was a bigger supermarket and that there were more restaurants and blah, blah, blah.

So, before you know it, we both agreed, there’ll probably be a whole lot of shiny, yoghurty places out here too.

Wet weather writing

So this is what the view looked like from under my umbrella on my bracing walk today at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I told you it was cold and wet.

After splashing around the botanical gardens, I'd planned to buy another notice board on the way home because this morning I suddenly became convinced that pinning up cards with storylines and characters to create an overall visual plan of the YA novel project would help solve my structural problems (I often think that acquiring the exact right officey organising doodah will provide writing salvation). Unfortunately, Chickenfeed (a shop full of cheapie bric-a-brac for those unfamiliar with the name) was all out of these magical writing aides. I'll search elsewhere tomorrow.

Rain, rain, stay today

I couldn't have asked for better weather for my AJWWB - it's been pouring down all week. Excellent snuggle up with the cats at the keyboard weather, the sound of rain on the roof adding to the cosy factor. So far, I'm getting about 6 solid hours of work done a day and am building up to more as my brain limbers up and remembers how to do long haul fiction writing. Each afternoon, after a morning of reading, writing, checking my emails for rejections and feeding the soggy-looking chook, I bundle up, open my umbrella and go for a walk and a think, then visit the library or catch up with folk, and possibly do a bit of shopping (which seems more like a recreational activity than a chore when you're on holidays) before heading home for the second keyboard shift. Evenings are for other things.

My big project seems to be a big muddle at the moment, which is to be expected at this stage, with the inevitable choices of what to keep, what to ditch and what to add whirling inside my head. When trying to second guess readers, editors and publishers gets too much, I take a break from the big stuff and work on a shorter piece. I finished the Spirit story yesterday. Now it can sit for a while.

Anyway, back to work :)

More makeup

All of which, for some reason, has me replaying in my head the last scene of Death Becomes Her, in which Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn are using hardware products to fix their faces, and applying layers of industrial strength paint with spray cans.

Painted beauty

As a child, I was always intrigued by the way my mother refused to leave the house before she had 'put on her face', which is probably why I'm not keen on war paint, and why I find this clip so fascinating:


What it looks like when you wear 365 days’ worth of makeup all at once.

Doing inventory

I have:

The first two volumes of a big space opera trilogy in different draft stages. So far, I’ve knocked the first volume down from well over 230,000 words to approx. 179,000. The second volume weighs in at over 206,000 ish words. Both books are still too long. The project is humongous. I wrote a few thousand words of the third volume before putting it on hold indefinitely, which makes me sad because I’ve left my characters stuck on mountain ranges, caught in the middle of space battles, and trapped within planet spanning sea walls.

90,490 words worth of YA fantasy. Some of it got straightened out in the YOSF&F workshop last year. Reducing it and editing it will be my main AJWWB project. It still doesn’t have a kick-ass title.

5000 words of another YA fantasy, but one that will require a lot of research. One day...

7000 words of a book that started out as a paranormal romance, but keeps wanting to become something else. I love the heroine and want to give her room to stretch. Well edited, but under wraps for now until I decide which genre would be the best fit for it.

2362 words of a horror novella, or maybe a book, all that remains of a project that was mostly deleted. I still like the central premise, but its voice won’t gel.

6 stories out in the world, their status as yet undetermined.

8 completed short stories that need a good, hard edit before they too go forth. They’re slumbering in little computer cocoons, waiting to become butterflies.

5 big stories with that need endings. Or middles. I’m almost sure they’ll be finished one day, especially the one about the warrior Ice Queen and her dragon which just needs an historical event involving an exiled king (I know his name) clarified two thirds of the way through. But just what exactly is that event? Hmmm, I might get back to that one over the next 2 weeks.

6 big stories that keep getting rejected, but nicely. They keep almost making it. What magical tweak do they need to make them irresistible to editors?

Countless bits and pieces that didn’t amount to much. Most of them will probably remain fragments forever.

I filing cabinet full of typewritten stories on paper from my pre-computer, olden days of writing. I dimly recall a few titles and outlines. I really should fish out a few and give them a looking over. Who knows what perfectly usable sentences might be lurking in there.

Lots and lots of ideas clamouring for attention. All I need is a few years of dedicated writing time to make them happen.

Bards and Sages Quarterly, July 2011.

But, by golly, wait, there's more! The July 2011 issue of Bards and Sages, which includes my story Found in Translation, is also out now.


You can puchase it here at Amazon.com.

In the current issue:

An interview with Visions of Mars author Eric S. Rabkin on Why Speculative Fiction Matters.
An intergalactic con artist realizes too late that some words, when taken literally, have deadly outcomes in Found in Translation.
A copper dragon's goal to dance in Swan Lake stumbles over an obvious problem in The Dream.
A demonic detective investigates the murder of a fallen angel in Faces of the Fallen.
Plus more original stories!

Ah, what a day (I'm pretty chuffed that B&S used my story to advertise the contents.) I've celebrated by not doing any housework, pottering around the house and this blog a lot, and soon I'll be off to the movies to see Meek's Cutoff.

10Flash Quarterly

I just opened an email with this announcement:

The July 2011 issue of 10Flash is posted! Check it out at 10Flash Quarterly.

Yay! So you can follow the link to finally read my science fiction story Information Exchange, plus nine other assorted tales written around the theme Two Years and Still Counting.

What a lovely start to my AJWWB.