| QOTD |
[May. 26th, 2012|05:41 am] |
Minnesotans are nice; they're also a small and homogenous group. There are 5 million nice people in California, too, but they're surrounded by 32 million rude people. If you turned Minnesota into a giant salt shaker and sprinkled its citizens all over France, you'd get California. --Mike Wolffe in the Strib. |
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| The Sorcerer's Widow: The Serial Continues |
[May. 26th, 2012|12:14 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bill Kirchen, "Swing Fever" | ] |
Chapter Five has now been posted.
Chapters Six through Eleven are paid for.
I'm halfway through writing Chapter Eight, so I'm maintaining my safety margin. I'd like to increase it, but for some reason this story is slower going than Ethshar usually is.
My best estimate -- which could easily be way off -- is that this story will run about twelve chapters, and 30,000-35,000 words. Which is technically, by modern standards, a novella, rather than a novel. Sorry about that.
The old pulp magazines used to advertise anything over 20,000 words as "a complete novel in this issue!" though, so there's precedent. And it may wind up longer than I expect. |
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| Revising Chant - I |
[May. 25th, 2012|10:37 pm] |
After compiling specific notes and general comments from beta readers, looking for patterns, combining similar problems, and setting aside the two suggestions I decided against, I had thirty-seven revision notes to work with. Some are simple: "More conversation around 'Not much of a plan." I know exactly where that is, and why I need to rework the section. It's a flippant comment in the middle of what should be a sensitive conversation. The end result may not be more than an additional two or three dialog exchanges. Relatively speaking, that one is easy. Others appear simple, but are not: "Define Rhythms better." Those three words point to one of the most extensive revisions I'll need to do. It requires small mentions, added phrases, additional sentences, an added dimension to some character interactions, and more precise individual words throughout the novel. Getting it right means the reader will better understand the sacrifices of two characters, the motivations of another, and--looking ahead--the entire sequel to Chant. Then there are notes that are more specific: "Would Evika push her for more information? How curious is she? What questions would she consider and what questions would she voice? Decide which ones Shala will answer truthfully, which one she'll avoid, and which ones will offend her." That's an important one. What those two women choose to say to each other--and what they choose not to say--will become the foundation of a long-term working relationship. It will determine how well the reader understands and believes the development of that relationship over the course of the story. I'm also taking care of little edits as I go along, but I'm making enough changes that it'll need yet another pass. I'm loving the Kindle text-to-speech help in that regard, but some of the pronunciations are funny. "Iyah" becomes "Eye-ya-yah," which is really amusing when paired with the name Riasha. So. About 20K words finished. About 110K to go. |
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| Grandma turns 80. |
[May. 25th, 2012|08:22 pm] |
Today is my grandma's 80th birthday. We're having a big party for her on Sunday--where by "we" I actually mean my folks are doing all the work--but today is the official date. I don't mostly put birthdays on here because I don't want it to seem like a statement if I miss one. But 80, 80 is a big, round number. Eighty is a thing.
Grandma is my last grandparent standing. I mean, I have Grandpa Lyzenga, but I married into him when I was full grown rather than having memories of walking with him when I was tiny; and as much as I will sometimes introduce Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil as my Lingen grandparents, and as much as they are doing their darnedest, they are in fact a really really special great-aunt and -uncle, which is its own thing and not to be denigrated.
But Grandma has enough personality for four grandparents all by herself. (So, I know firsthand or hear quite vividly, did each of my other grandparents in their own ways. Lack of personality: not an issue in this family.) Grandma is an Energizer bunny. I wrote in her birthday card that she embodies the adage about blooming where one is planted, and I really think that's true. She does well with new people and new situations. She just dusts herself off and tries again, whatever she needs to try again, and I have never once heard of a situation she couldn't eventually make that work in. Never once. Her persistence inspires me. I hope it lasts long past 80. |
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Lemonade (for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) fivemack and rezendi) |
[May. 26th, 2012|12:18 am] |
You need a 2 liter jug, a pyrex jug, a lemon squeezer, 2 big or 3 small lemons, 2 limes, 1 orange, a tray of ice, 2 oz of sugar, and lots of cold water. Takes 5-10 minutes.
Put the sugar in the pyrex jug. Boil the kettle. When the kettle boils, cover the sugar with boiling water, stir to dissolve. You don't need to make syrup or anything, but you want the sugar dissolved.
Meanwhile, put the tray of ice into the 2 liter jug. Squeeze the lemons, limes and orange in, getting out all the juice and pulp you can and avoiding adding the pips. Pour the dissolved sugar and water in. Top up with cold water. Shake or stir. Drink, with ice. It'll be cold enough. I used to refrigerate it for a while first, but then I had to make some in a hurry and it was just fine.
This is very refreshing and about as isotonic as you can get. I sometimes add mint or basil to the sugar in the boiling water when I have that growing outside. If it's too sweet, use less sugar next time. I figure this has about a teaspoon of sugar per glass.
The other thing you can do, right now while limes are nine for a dollar, is just squeeze half a lime into your glass of water and ice. Kids won't drink this, but it's good. |
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| Lovers in sweet despair |
[May. 25th, 2012|11:08 pm] |
So iTunes just cued up Mystic Lipstick (Celtic Tenors cover), a folk song written in 1989 by Jimmy McCarthy. (McCarthy wrote a number of Christy Moore's folk hits.) And it seems strangely appropriate, because I've just finished watching an episode from the fourth series of Waking the Dead that featured Irish nationalism and British politics, and I have been having thinky thoughts about Romanticism rolling around in my head since I got back from Greece.
Greece has been terribly romanticised in its turn, of course. Leaving aside its mythological status as the Cradle of European Civilisation (a construct of the European Renaissance), the 18th century saw it constructed as a Romantic destination on the Grand Tour (et in Arcadia ego), a construct which bore little relationship to reality. The 19th century and the Greek war of independence saw the construction of a (self-built, internally contradictory) national mythology, and its growth as an Interesting Place for international Classically-interested archaeologists... well, let's just say that from a certain point of view the likes of Schliemann on the mainland and Evans in Crete contributed to the erection of Whole New Interesting Mythologies.
And now the stories northern Europe tells about Greece have to do with laziness and profligacy, and you know what? No more true than ROMANCE. Fuck off, ECB in Frankfurt. Look at some context.
Ireland did not, of course, see itself lionised and mythologised during the European Renaissance - quite the opposite, since the 16th century saw it viewed as a land of barbarians ripe for colonisation and the 17th century witnessed the repurposing of martyr and atrocity stories from the Thirty Years War to give voice to the anxieties and stife arising from the Rebellion of 1642 and the English Civil War - but the 18th century saw the beginnings of an interest in Irish antiquarianism and the start of a "national" impetus towards myth-making and - as the 19th century began - lionising the Catholic Emancipation movement in messianic and nationalistic terms. Nationalism and tenants' rights are the two major themes of Ireland's politics in the 19th century, and though the lack of a Home Rule victory until the 20th century prevented the canonisation of an officially-sanctioned nationalist mythology until much later, the pantheon contains numerous unofficial and contradictory saints. Complicating matters for Ireland is that its Protestant and Anglo heritage is much less easy to disavow than the Turkish heritage of Greece. If it is to be disavowed, it must be done in subtle terms, acknowledging Exceptional Anglo-Irishmen, casting the others as West Brits, betrayers of nationalism and the Historical Imperative of Irish Nationhood.
Then you have the Romantic Irish movement at the end of the 19th century, existing alongside Gaelic revivalism and the growing European antiquarian interest not only in "Celtic" cultures, but in magic and mysticism. No overview of Irish Romanticism is complete without an understanding of how the likes of Yeats and the rest of the Celtic Twilight literati partook of an international intellectual/literary atmosphere that included members of the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn. (And if anyone can point me to a solid and readable academic study that discusses this, I'd be grateful - I used to have a handful of references, but that was when I was still in school.) Lady Gregory was connected with figures from this milieu, and Yeats himself was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. A misty mysticism pervades much of Yeats' writing. He positioned himself as a "national poet" of the new Ireland, even after independence, and as many of the other literary figures who entered the national pantheon (Pearse, for example) not only died in the Rising or in the War of Independence/Civil War years, but had a vested interest in portraying their relationship to Irish Nationhood in mystical, quasi-religious, at times messianic terms (it is easier to get people to die if you position dying as a salvific act), misty mysticism pervades Irish literature of the late 19th and early 20th century.
It is an obscurantist haze layered over a complicated reality. What makes it worse is that misty mysticism - or at least its salvific/messianic nationalist offshoots - remain common currency in certain puddles of political rhetoric, and enjoyed a much wider currency than they do now within my own lifetime. (See Northern Ireland, pre-Peace Process.)
And both the misty mysticism and the complicated historical reality inform present national politics. But because our national myths (our dialectics, even!) rely all too much on the Romantic Mirage (and its obverse, the Lazy Irish Savage: hello, ECB! Our financial woes are actually mostly your fault, since you helped provide the credit - and then mandated the socialisation of debt - that got us to this point!), it is nearly impossible to even construct an argument about history today without engaging the Mirage. (The Mirage is politically useful, in that it elides discussion of class and the historical benefits conferred thereby: many of the present prominent political figures of the Republic have several generations of political connections, and those that do not generally come from publican or professional backgrounds.)
It's impossible to ignore it, you know. It just sits there, even if you never mention it, pulling the conversation askew with all the gravity of a soul-sucking black hole.
I say this, because I am contemplating opening Kevin Hearne's Tricked, which based on previous track record, will be an entertaining pseudo-Celtic mixed mythological romp set somewhere in the continental United States. While at the same time I am still reading Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day - which at least in its first part, juxtaposes the weird and Romantic with the utterly mundane and is the better book for it. The more painful: but McDonald understands that the layers of the rotten onion (the Matryoska dolls of Irish mythology, each one stranger than the next) have a kind of recursive complexity impossible to reduce to linear clarity. The only possible shape is the spiral. Not the line, not the circle, but a twisted helix bending around an indefinable centre.
My analogy runs away from me. Still.
*rambles along, ramblingly*
This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/479383.html. There are  comments there. Comment where you like. |
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| A question for the crowd |
[May. 25th, 2012|05:35 pm] |
I named a character once in The Bone Palace, an offhand reference that didn't warrant an entry in the dramatis personae but is still in print. Now I find myself needing to write more about that character and a) not liking his name much anymore, and b) finding it a bit too similar to someone else who shows up quite often. How many of you would be wildly irritated if I changed someone's name between books? (I doubt most people even remember that he was ever mentioned, but somewhere out there is the reader who will.) |
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| Cephalopods and ornithology |
[May. 25th, 2012|03:06 pm] |
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If you are at Wiscon this weekend, and if you are in the bar on the first floor, and if your bartender is named Zach, ask him about either cephalopods or ornithology. He will be informative and witty on either subject. |
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| Thud: Turnover |
[May. 25th, 2012|09:09 pm] |
Words: 3492, about 100 of them words from last time. I started again, much better. Now have good grip on voice.
Total words: 3492
Files: 2
Tea: Four O'Clock White Orchard. Also home made lemonade.
Music: Three Double Concertos.
Reason for stopping: Solid end of chapter.
Z fixed, or reasonably fixed, Protext on this computer, so I am trying it again. Much nicer using this keyboard!
Posted and deleted science query because I want an answer, not my competence to write SF brought into question. Thanks to people who gave useful answers anyway.
I think the short version of what this is about is "an art festival on a generation starship". |
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| Thucydides, Book 2, Chapter 3 |
[May. 25th, 2012|06:05 pm] |
Thucydides, Book 2, Chapter 3.
Section 1:
οἱ δὲ Πλαταιῆς ὡς ᾔσθοντο ἔνδον τε ὄντας τοὺς Θηβαίους καὶ ἐξαπιναίως κατειλημμένην τὴν πόλιν, καταδείσαντες καὶ νομίσαντες πολλῷ πλείους ἐσεληλυθέναι （οὐ γὰρ ἑώρων ἐν τῇ νυκτί） πρὸς ξύμβασιν ἐχώρησαν καὶ τοὺς λόγους δεξάμενοι ἡσύχαζον, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἐπειδὴ ἐς οὐδένα οὐδὲν ἐνεωτέριζον.
The men of Plataia apprehended thus that the Thebans were within and [apprehended that the Thebans] had unexpectedly seized the town, and fearing greatly and thinking that many more had entered (for they did not see in the night), they advanced to come to terms, and accepting the terms, they kept still did nothing, especially since they [ie, the Thebans] offered no violence to anyone.
Section 2:
πράσσοντες δέ πως ταῦτα κατενόησαν οὐ πολλοὺς τοὺς Θηβαίους ὄντας καὶ ἐνόμισαν ἐπιθέμενοι ῥᾳδίως κρατήσειν: τῷ γὰρ πλήθει τῶν Πλαταιῶν οὐ βουλομένῳ ἦν τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀφίστασθαι.
But negotiating these matters, they perceived that there were not many of the Thebans and they thought - by making the attempt - to easily prevail over [the Thebans], for the throng of the Plataians were not wanting to desert the men of Athens.
Section 3:
ἐδόκει οὖν ἐπιχειρητέα εἶναι, καὶ ξυνελέγοντο διορύσσοντες τοὺς κοινοὺς τοίχους παρ᾽ ἀλλήλους, ὅπως μὴ διὰ τῶν ὁδῶν φανεροὶ ὦσιν ἰόντες, ἁμάξας τε ἄνευ τῶν ὑποζυγίων ἐς τὰς ὁδοὺς καθίστασαν, ἵνα ἀντὶ τείχους ᾖ, καὶ τἆλλα ἐξήρτυον ᾗ ἕκαστον ἐφαίνετο πρὸς τὰ παρόντα ξύμφορον ἔσεσθαι.
Therefore it seemed to them to be [the case that] they had to attack, and they rallied alongside each other by digging through the common walls, so that they would not be seen going through the streets, and they stood wagons without yokebeasts in the streets, so that they would be in place of walls to form barricades, and made ready the other things as it appeared appropriate for the things about to happen their preparations.
Section 4:
ἐπεὶ δὲ ὡς ἐκ τῶν δυνατῶν ἑτοῖμα ἦν, φυλάξαντες ἔτι νύκτα καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ περίορθρον ἐχώρουν ἐκ τῶν οἰκιῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτούς, ὅπως μὴ κατὰ φῶς θαρσαλεωτέροις οὖσι προσφέροιντο καὶ σφίσιν ἐκ τοῦ ἴσου γίγνωνται, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν νυκτὶ φοβερώτεροι ὄντες ἥσσους ὦσι τῆς σφετέρας ἐμπειρίας τῆς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν. προσέβαλόν τε εὐθὺς καὶ ἐς χεῖρας ᾖσαν κατὰ τάχος.
After all in their power had been prepared, they kept watch while [it was] still night, and towards the beginning of the same dawn they advanced from the houses upon them [the Thebans], so that they would not lay hands upon be fighting [men] who would be better prepared after daybreak and would be engaged on an equal basis with the other men the enemy, but since in the night they'd be more fearful, [the enemy] would be weaker than their own men who had experience with the city. And so straight away they made their assault and went to hand[-to-hand] as quickly as possible.
This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/479171.html. There are  comments there. Comment where you like. |
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