So today I got up… not late but with too much to deal with before leaving for officeish. Blog post didn’t get done.
As always when this happens, I get stuck for stuff to write. The very fact that I’m already late makes it impossible for me to think of anything to write about… and it only gets worse.
It’s interesting what Cyn posted about writers and schizophrenia because my first idea for writing was about the curious relationship between writers and the voices in their heads, the attempts to medicalize it and the middle finger I’d like to show most of those people.
But then I have issues with the medicalization of a bunch of behaviors and problems, and I think in many occasions being depressed is a perfectly normal reaction to your life circumstances.
I might do that post tomorrow, now. There was after all the link at instapundit about writers having higher suicide rates and despite its being in Sweden (A Portuguese ambassador got kicked out of Sweden for excessive drinking. Those of you who know how Swedes drink can marvel. His answer was “It’s the most depressing country in the world. I had to drink.”) I can see a link here. My dentist tells me freelance writers grind their teeth more than anyone else, so… there is something in it.
But it is something for tomorrow.
Anyway, so I couldn’t figure out what to write about EXACTLY and a lot of this post is going to be scattered, as I cram into it everything I coulda shoulda might yet write about.
First, my short story Waiting For Juliette is free on the Kindle and non drmed so you can put it on whatever devices you want. The internet is giving me guff so I can’t give you a link till tonight. Anyway, if it puzzles you a little, it came out in an anthology “The future we wish we had” – I was going to make it a sentient house story, but Dave Freer scooped me on that, so… cold sleep.
Second, I’m considering a Kickstarter but not sure what for. I feel if I’m going to kickstart it, it needs to be a research-intensive project which I wouldn’t do without money upfront. I’m hesitating between the last two books of the Shakespeare series (No, it wasn’t meant to end on the third.) and a second trilogy in the magical British empire, where the Kaiser is a secret werewolf, and… well… things go wrong and there’s the equivalent of WWI, with the second generation of our brave protagonists joining in and – for reasons unknown to me – a French orphan and a donkey caught in it all. (She hasn’t told me what she and the donkey have to do with anything.)
Other things at various stages of completion that MUST get done soon (in my copious spare time) include, of course, the long overdue Noah’s Boy, before Toni Weisskopf comes over and superglues my butt to my writing chair; Through Fire, second of the Earth Revolution; Starting DS3; then the indie stuff – The Brave And The Free, Orphan Kittens, the Fourth Furniture Refinishing, Shadow Gods (almost there) and shorter term, a story in DST for Baen for xmas, and a xmas anthology for indie publishing.
It will all get done, one way or another, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t wish for a PTerry procrastinator in order to borrow time.
And now I’ll shut up and go to work.
According To Hoyt 
It is a classic dodge in the Newspaper columnist biz to periodically proffer a column identified as Random Notes, comprised of bits of things the columnist doesn’t care (as yet) to develop into a full fledged column.
I see no reason why a blogger cannot do likewise.
Throw out a batch of story/novel/series nuggets for readers’ reactions and call it “market research.”
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I have fun throwing out collections of random historical facts that I’m not interested enough in to discuss in a post.
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Sarah if you name the voices in your head it helps to follow the conversation and get a story. If you are good enough at it you may be a playwright instead of just an author. Excuse me someones is babbling…
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They name themselves. And I don’t want to be a playwright.
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Doesn’t matter what you want.
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Rather does. As someone who rarely watches TV and whose appreciation of theater froze with Shakespeare, the chances of my becoming a playwright are the same as those of a blind man becoming a championship archer. Possible, perhaps, but it would require wanting it badly.
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Wouldn’t you be more just witnessing the action, kind of like a journalist?
Sorry, didn’t mean to be insulting there. :-D
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You didn’t call me a Traditional Media Journalist. I am a journalist now, which is weird, if you consider that’s what I wanted to be when I was in ninth grade. Dreams come true in roundabout fashion…
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Interesting – I wanted to be journalist too. I even started a paper and sold a couple of copies to the ranch hands. lol I just didn’t have the time or energy to put out more than one paper though.
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Thomas Sowell posts a “Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene” about once a month. He covers topics he doesn’t feel deserve the time or research for a full column. I enjoy them. I’m sure you could do the same thing now and then. We eager readers will accept whatever we get!
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One problem with such a column is that, in the absence of a central organizing theme, the comments might tend to become unfocused.
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Oh. Well. Because you guys are normally focused like a laser! I still remember the post asking for pimping of books that turned into THE hairstyling post. (Not that I’m complaining. I enjoyed it thoroughly. However, claims about focus or lack thereof might be very much hors du subject)
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I was about to ask if he meant more than normal.
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Just because the universe is perverse, it might result in the commenters becoming focused — probably when a blue moon lands on a 29th of February.
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Why should the commenters have all the unfocused fun?
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I was inspecting one of those Time Life Foods of the World volumes while processing books at the store, this volume was Sweden. I stopped flipping through when I recognized a face in a series of three photos; it was the great, then quite young Swedish actor Max Von Sydow, demonstating how a Swede shares a drink with a lady friend. First photo, Max staring soulfully into the camera representing lady fair, a fluted fairly large glass full of aquavit or something similarly horrible in front of his mouth. Second photo, he tilts his head back as far as he can and dumps the whole thing straight down his gullet, the fluted shape is obviously to facilitate emptying the entire huge shot as quickly as possible. Third photo, he resumes staring soulfully and a little blearily at the camera.
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I remember that book! Heck, I have that book. Mmmm, Max von Sydow. On a tangentially related note, I highly recommend the volumes on the Austrian Empire and Africa. Especially Africa. Why? 1) The cooking stuff is great. 2) The writing is superb and you get a sense of what Africa was like just before all Dade County broke loose with de-colonialization, through the eyes of someone who knows that there are problems but who anticipates that things will get worse before they get better (Laurens Van Der Post). Whatever you think of him, he wrote a love-song to Africa in the guise of prose about cooking.
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Made me look! O my, yes, he is young. Not sure I would call the first look exactly soulful, but the last does have a nice touch of bleer to it. (See page 130 of Foods of the World, The Cooking of Scandinavia)
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> As always when this happens, I get stuck for stuff to write.
I run into something similar, in another realm. Every weekend I do the menu planning for the following week, and if I’m pressed for time, I find it too difficult to
(a) pick interesting things from cookbooks
(b) lay those dishes out on a calendar
(c) write down the shopping list that arises from the recipes
The solution I came up with is to read through my cookbooks ahead of time, when I’m relaxed and not in a rush, and put little Staples-brand post-it flags on every page with a recipe that I want to try some day.
When, when Saturday or Sunday morning rolls around, I can just grab one or two cookbooks, flip to the already marked pages, and skip step A.
The analogy for blogging would be this: every time you come up with an idea for something to blog, throw it in a text file. Then, when you’re crunched for time, refer to the text file. That way you don’t need to feel INSPIRED, you merely need to EXECUTE.
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Uuhhh … planning ahead, anticipating situations and preparing for contingent circumstances???? Where would this country BE if everybody did that? Where would we be if government took that up?
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Where would we be if government took that up?
Who knows, RES, but I’m willing to try it! The only government agency that even comes close to following something like that is the military, and they go overboard. After all, an air assault on Liechtenstein? From Crete? Think about it — the government does.
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So I have heard. It is one reason why, whenever the easily unhinged start screaming about the US Government has plans for invading Canada, Indonesia, Bali Hai, Shangri-La … my reaction is
a) damn right!
b) they had better ought to!
c) so?
d) why does that shock you?
e) all of the above.
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Well, Shangri-La built all those tunnels that go all around the world.
So clearly, they started it.
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I’d prefer them to go after Tahiti – less snow and fewer French Canadians.
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My understanding is that the only country for which we have no invasion plans, merely contingency plans for laying siege, is Brigadoon.
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well, we tried our best to get the US to invade Portugal in the 70s. We wanted Portugal to be the 51st state, but we’d settle for colony. Actually, we’d be happy just to have the US invade the village. Alas, it wasn’t to be. therefore the mountain — looks down at self and nods — the mountain came to Mohammed.
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Apropos of nothing, the title of this post gets shortened to Tardine on my Chrome tab.
“Tardine”. I like the sound of that. To bad it’s not a real word.
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Tardine – n. A small fish known for the slowness with which it swims.
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However, it tempts one to construct a meaning, albeit very un-PC:
Tardine (n) slang: An individual considered to be lacking intelligence who is confined in a tight space with others of like disability.
Those idiots from the office were packed in that elevator like Tardines.
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Well played, sir.
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And here I thought Tardine was something to do with the condition of politicians the day after they have been run out of town on a rail.
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And here I thought Tardine was something to do with the condition of politicians the day after they have been run out of town on a rail.
No, you’re thinking of spardine.
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Ooh, nice one.
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No, Spardines are people who engage in mock personal combat in tightly enclosed spaces.
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I believe that Tardines are Gallifreyan combat infantry. I think they still use bayonets, which is why so many of their foes employ personal armor.
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ALL military men employ bayonets. Just not in combat. Mostly.
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It always comes down to bayonets, eventually. Wars cannot be won without taking and holding positions, and that means fighting to the knife, up close and personal. It was true at Thermopylae, at Waterloo, at Stalingrad and Ia Drang, it will hold true when we reach other planets.
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Granted, but I was meant it in the kinky, metaphoric way.
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UGH! Typing, so me not good dayto
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So your parents raised you this way deliberatly?
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Oh, no, they fought against it and eventually collapsed in a heap of apathy.
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The reason “pilla” is the Portuguese slang for the male organ? Yah.
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Wars cannot be won without taking and holding positions
Without holding ground — your enemy’s ground. The Air Force has tried several times to bomb people into surrendering. It seldom works on a large scale, unless you wipe out the entire population. If you don’t occupy the ground, and teach your enemies that you won’t tolerate their behavior, you haven’t “won”. That’s one thing George Bush failed to do — to actually occupy Iraq, and make them earn the right to govern themselves again. We now have the same problems we had before we invaded Iraq. We have the same problems in Afghanistan. To win wars, you have to prove you’re capable of totally destroying your enemy. Slapping him on the wrist doesn’t work, unless you use a 16-pound sledge and miss the wrist by several feet. That’s especially true of this battle with Islamists — they think we’re incapable of destroying them, both physically and psychologically. They, indeed, have won the battle. This is a generational war, however, and there’s no guarantee our descendants won’t bomb them back to the Precambrian.
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The doctrine of proportionate force is a doctrine for guaranteed defeat OR a doctrine that will ultimately require overwhelming force. The only way to achieve victory in war is to convince the enemy that you can and will crush him. Only when the enemy believes that is it possible to ease off and allow him to demonstrate compliance.
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People tend to look at me funny when I say that we should have gone in and crushed all opposition with overwhelming force, set up a provisional government, and expected to run that government for a minimum of 20 years, as we educate the public. Go figure.
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we could put together an AccordingToHoyt dictionary! lessee here, we’ve got tardine, witlow, and what else? I’m sure those aren’t the only ones.
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You.Are.A.Bad.Person.
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I could contribute Dollish-isms, such as flabbergastion and fuction. Pistachou. (means: I am extremely aggravated with you.). And so-forth.
M
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well, I did use to say things like “A couple of stuff” when I first came to the US. Also I referred to pilot lights as “guiding lights” and potholders were pan handlers.
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hey, I didn’t realize that what I had been happily referring to as a “hot-plate-setter” was actually called a trivet until, um, I think it might have been the last year or two of high school. maaaaybe later.
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Here I always thought a trivet was a hinge that pivots in three dimensions.
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Never heard of that one. Three dimensions, you say? How’s it work, like a ball bearing, or something?
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One of my favorite words-that-aren’t-a-word is flustrated.
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Flustrated ought to be a word, as any parent of a toddler or teen or person working with the general public in a service capacity will tell you.
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My least favorite word-that-is-not-a-word is ginormous.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flustrated
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for reasons unknown to me – a French orphan and a donkey caught in it all. (She hasn’t told me what she and the donkey have to do with anything.)
Albeit out of time stream — there might well be differences due to the seizure and concentration of magical power in a particular family — but is she from Orleans?
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Doubt it. At least, if she is, she wouldn’t know it.
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OK, to be more obvious in a different manner, does she have visions?
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OOOoooooo. Nice idea, that, CACS…
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From the author of the displaced detective series I receive that as a particular complement. Thank you.
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The donkey or the orphan?
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I was thinking the maiden. I had not considered Balaam’s donkey.
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I give fair warning. If you don’t hurry up with Noah’s Boy I’m going to have to stalk some unsuspecting Ark and when it isn’t looking stuff it full of Dragonkitty plushies.
Just watch I could become seriously hinged here and what does that say when an author drives her readership sane?
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Ark or ARC?
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Ark. I couldn’t bring myself to stalk an ARC. They are small and all defenseless. If it was an ARC would have to huggle it and keep it safe so I could read it over and over while eating my ham and cheese sandwich. :D
Note: It is really hard to work in a ham reference just out of the blue.
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Oh. See, we shop a lot in the ARC thrift store near us. (Writer’s money, okay?) So I thought you were going to stand there wait for me to show up, then demand my current work in progress.
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Ah! No….but you shouldn’t give someone your causing to be hinged ideas. ;)
I’m telling you at any point I couldn’t totally flip out(due to waiting for the book) and give money to a bank or something. I could totally unloose it, throw all my clothes on and run around my neighborhood clothed. Trust me that isn’t something we want people seeing.
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Don’t worry about Toni; she’s too busy supergluing Travis’ butt in his writing chair, I think.
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I hate it when my characters won’t tell me what they’re up to.
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Mine tell me what they are up to (unless they are hijacking my afternoon) but refuse to tell me how they got there, forcing me to come up with the story. Much like cats in that regard.
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Mine have been utterly silent for the last couple weeks, unfortunately. I keep coming back to ponder a setting idea I had (what if, fifty years ago, humanity realized that exactly five people from any metro on earth larger than 100,000 population gained the ability to fly unaided? What would our world look like now? What if dying “fliers” are replaced at random and what if one very evil chick thinks she’s figured out that algorithm that makes the decision…all she has to do is kill one of her town’s five fliers…), but nobody there will talk to me either.
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Sometimes this happens to me too…
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You can fly?
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Yes, in my imagination. All the time. I can also go up and down stairways without walking. Now if I can only persuade my body to do that in reality, my knees would rejoice.
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Let me know if you work that out Mr. Weatherford. I would love to be able to fly for real. I, too, dream I can all the time.
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My favorite recent dream was when I was running– I miss that–
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I am sure she wishes. Imagine being able (for the most part) to take a straight line path to your destination. Imagine not having to deal with the TSA. Imagine having to learn how to read the conditions to avoid downdrafts, etc. Imagine having to work out how to stay out of various other flight paths on your way to any place you wish to be. Imagine the government interference. Well, then, maybe it would be better not.
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That’s why it’s best to fly only at night. In dark clothes. Riding on something comfortable, like a broomstick.
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