It might be smart to be already working up the next novel. Don't want to fall into a year-long slump wandering around wondering what idea is really, truly best.
The next novel might be smart to be either return to my Late Bronze Age historical, or to plan whatever it is Athena Fox will get up to next (Roman Britain. Shakespeare will be quoted and slings will be used. Other than that I really don't know).
Of course I'm not smart so I'm starting to think about what the preliminary research stack looks like for "Badgers" -- the file name for my Transhumanist Urban Fantasy Mil-SF Love Triangle.
With horror stuff. And that's the first question to ask. How does that connect? It has to be more than borrowed names and cliches, like the "glue some gears on it" disparaging description of some Steampunk.
Thing is, I think some of the tropes of horror -- even specific ideas within the horror landscape, like the walking dead -- have something to say about both the underlying questions of a Military SF story, and of a Transhumanist world. Many forms of horror have a relation to the Uncanny Valley where something is almost but not quite human. "If it tries to look like human but isn't you reach for your dagger" -- says the English-speaking, bipedal beaver holding his cuppa and tea scone. C.S. Lewis was never one for consistency.
Between the Undead and the cryogenically frozen is not that big a gap. No gap at all exists between a werwolf and the creatures of Doctor Moreau. Really, moving into the space of being "not entirely human" is almost literally what transhumanism means.
Yeah, about that. The only thing I can say for certain at this point is that if there's anything resembling a Singularity, the POV characters are still on this side of it.
Anyhow. I think the best place to start is probably Jason Covalito's books. Which I have at least two already in my library. He talks about the intersection between classic horror and modern pseudo-history, and I'm sure there is something there to get me started.
+ + +
Meanwhile I still have to practice trumpet at work. It is all about the open horn right now; cleaning up my slotting and working on my tone. Not even worth learning any new tunes, or getting back to sight-reading. Just twenty to thirty minutes a day of playing intervals. Sigh.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
From a certain point of view
Got through the last rethink and back to writing the last act.
Was good timing to stop and think right then. There's stuff that's going to be moved to the third act and emphasized, so is nicer to be able to have it in the draft instead of trying to put it in later. The Dorians are back. It ain't a great archaeological mystery but it is the one I have so I'm not putting it to bed until the last scene.
I'm a little disheartened by how much editing I'm looking at now.
On the other hand I am starting to feel like I'm really getting a grip on what a novel looks like and how to build one. This is my third go-around so that's about right. The first I abandoned a few chapters from the end. It just didn't feel "enough." The second I think has the minimum elements. There is little character development but there is still some internalized conflict stuff that plays out properly. The world building is also simplistic but sufficient.
Oh, yes, and there were two epic-length fanfics in there. They helped a lot with scene-level and chapter-level work and were great experiences in juggling large ensemble casts.
What I'm dealing with now is the large-scale structural forms and how to hold them in your head and work with them and maintain flow and consistency across the length of a novel.
So third person might have been a better choice. I went first person largely because there are a lot of solo scenes and it makes it easier to keep an internal narrative voice going. Of course in my current round of re-writes I'm adding characters to as many of those solo sequences as I can because it just reads better.
There's two places third person would have really helped. There's a character who is a foil and goad through the first two thirds. He's the one that pushes my protagonist to change. Why he is doing so is unclear up until his last scene. And that's weak. He would be a stronger antagonist if he didn't appear magically and do things for incomprehensible reasons. And the best way to do this would be to have the ability to go inside his head once or twice, or at least look at the world from over his shoulder.
Changing first person is more awkward and less done than changing third person. In the ultimate case, third person omniscient dips into every head it wants to, moment by moment (and is rarely used in genre fiction these days).
The other thing is, well, it is tough to objectify a character from first person. Conan can stride into battle, sweat gleaming from his mighty thews, but he can't describe himself doing it (well, not without sounding like Den (as voiced by John Candy in 1981's Heavy Metal). As I discovered earlier, it is harder to look heroic from inside, especially for a character who doesn't think of herself as being that hero and from her perspective is faking it like mad.
And, yes, this is mirror territory, where you really shouldn't be writing in deep immersion but letting the character admire their long raven locks. In the first novel I actually finished, Shirato, I played around with starting with a shallow immersion and external description when the character had yet to break away as an independent person standing slightly outside of her own society. And I could certainly play that game here, with Penny being described from behind her eyes but even she views Athena Fox from outside her skin.
Of course you can always pick up a POV if you need that external shot. On my last fanfic I even created a one-scene walk-on just to be able to observe the Jack-Daniel-Lara dynamic from the outside for a few paragraphs.
Yes, I certainly played with the idea of having Penny narrate in first person but describe the character she plays in third. But something I've realized as I'm closing in on the final chapters; Penny doesn't want to be this character. She wants to be this person. She doesn't want to be a a genre hero who has adventures, she wants to be the globe-trotting, confident, skilled academic who knows history deeply and can speak a dozen languages living and dead. For this novel, at least, it isn't appropriate for her to ever describe her own actions from outside.
There's an amusing discussion going on in a couple corners of the interwebs about how so many fantasy worlds (especially in games) are littered with the ruins of a past civilization and whether we should be calling them post-apocalyptic. (The other part of the argument is the banditry and the rule of the sword and the easy access to loot seems to imply a breakdown of society).
The view has some merit, I think, but only as in describing the settings of games as borderlands. Places that for whatever reason (past cataclysm or current war) are lawless and in flux and are in short the perfect habitat for the kind of character sometimes described as a "murder-hobo."
As for the ruins? You can certainly argue for there to have been a lost age, but I don't see it as singular. I see it more as deep history. Peoples have come and gone, and some of them had pretty crazy building programs.
Was good timing to stop and think right then. There's stuff that's going to be moved to the third act and emphasized, so is nicer to be able to have it in the draft instead of trying to put it in later. The Dorians are back. It ain't a great archaeological mystery but it is the one I have so I'm not putting it to bed until the last scene.
I'm a little disheartened by how much editing I'm looking at now.
On the other hand I am starting to feel like I'm really getting a grip on what a novel looks like and how to build one. This is my third go-around so that's about right. The first I abandoned a few chapters from the end. It just didn't feel "enough." The second I think has the minimum elements. There is little character development but there is still some internalized conflict stuff that plays out properly. The world building is also simplistic but sufficient.
Oh, yes, and there were two epic-length fanfics in there. They helped a lot with scene-level and chapter-level work and were great experiences in juggling large ensemble casts.
What I'm dealing with now is the large-scale structural forms and how to hold them in your head and work with them and maintain flow and consistency across the length of a novel.
So third person might have been a better choice. I went first person largely because there are a lot of solo scenes and it makes it easier to keep an internal narrative voice going. Of course in my current round of re-writes I'm adding characters to as many of those solo sequences as I can because it just reads better.
There's two places third person would have really helped. There's a character who is a foil and goad through the first two thirds. He's the one that pushes my protagonist to change. Why he is doing so is unclear up until his last scene. And that's weak. He would be a stronger antagonist if he didn't appear magically and do things for incomprehensible reasons. And the best way to do this would be to have the ability to go inside his head once or twice, or at least look at the world from over his shoulder.
Changing first person is more awkward and less done than changing third person. In the ultimate case, third person omniscient dips into every head it wants to, moment by moment (and is rarely used in genre fiction these days).
The other thing is, well, it is tough to objectify a character from first person. Conan can stride into battle, sweat gleaming from his mighty thews, but he can't describe himself doing it (well, not without sounding like Den (as voiced by John Candy in 1981's Heavy Metal). As I discovered earlier, it is harder to look heroic from inside, especially for a character who doesn't think of herself as being that hero and from her perspective is faking it like mad.
And, yes, this is mirror territory, where you really shouldn't be writing in deep immersion but letting the character admire their long raven locks. In the first novel I actually finished, Shirato, I played around with starting with a shallow immersion and external description when the character had yet to break away as an independent person standing slightly outside of her own society. And I could certainly play that game here, with Penny being described from behind her eyes but even she views Athena Fox from outside her skin.
Of course you can always pick up a POV if you need that external shot. On my last fanfic I even created a one-scene walk-on just to be able to observe the Jack-Daniel-Lara dynamic from the outside for a few paragraphs.
Yes, I certainly played with the idea of having Penny narrate in first person but describe the character she plays in third. But something I've realized as I'm closing in on the final chapters; Penny doesn't want to be this character. She wants to be this person. She doesn't want to be a a genre hero who has adventures, she wants to be the globe-trotting, confident, skilled academic who knows history deeply and can speak a dozen languages living and dead. For this novel, at least, it isn't appropriate for her to ever describe her own actions from outside.
There's an amusing discussion going on in a couple corners of the interwebs about how so many fantasy worlds (especially in games) are littered with the ruins of a past civilization and whether we should be calling them post-apocalyptic. (The other part of the argument is the banditry and the rule of the sword and the easy access to loot seems to imply a breakdown of society).
The view has some merit, I think, but only as in describing the settings of games as borderlands. Places that for whatever reason (past cataclysm or current war) are lawless and in flux and are in short the perfect habitat for the kind of character sometimes described as a "murder-hobo."
As for the ruins? You can certainly argue for there to have been a lost age, but I don't see it as singular. I see it more as deep history. Peoples have come and gone, and some of them had pretty crazy building programs.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Well that was...
Had three goals for yesterday. Outline the next chapter. Practice trumpet. Take a call over some measurements for work.
Well, they didn't call. I didn't get the outline done. I did practice but whatever that was I did that suddenly opened up the upper range is eluding me. I'm more secure on the high C and above and my tone is much better on those notes but I miss the ease I caught that high G with.
There's no standard, by the way. It is the octave problem again; some people change octave at A, some at C. It is double C, but what is the B below it?
Well, brunch today is for wrestling with the novel. One of my various writing books says if you are stuck, it is probably a clue something is wrong. Well, I'm confronting right now that it more-or-less works as a stand-alone book but it isn't what I'd hoped to do with the character as a series character and it sort of violates the implicit promises of the premise.
Depending on the premise. If you blurb it as "Penny is in Athens on her first vacation and..." it works. If you say anything about, "...plays an archaeologist and globe-trotting adventurer..." than it is obvious that at some point the role and reality are going to get confused, and Adventure Archaeologist stuff is going to be happening.
Which it isn't. But maybe I can tweak it a little.
Well, they didn't call. I didn't get the outline done. I did practice but whatever that was I did that suddenly opened up the upper range is eluding me. I'm more secure on the high C and above and my tone is much better on those notes but I miss the ease I caught that high G with.
There's no standard, by the way. It is the octave problem again; some people change octave at A, some at C. It is double C, but what is the B below it?
Well, brunch today is for wrestling with the novel. One of my various writing books says if you are stuck, it is probably a clue something is wrong. Well, I'm confronting right now that it more-or-less works as a stand-alone book but it isn't what I'd hoped to do with the character as a series character and it sort of violates the implicit promises of the premise.
Depending on the premise. If you blurb it as "Penny is in Athens on her first vacation and..." it works. If you say anything about, "...plays an archaeologist and globe-trotting adventurer..." than it is obvious that at some point the role and reality are going to get confused, and Adventure Archaeologist stuff is going to be happening.
Which it isn't. But maybe I can tweak it a little.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Gee!
I invented a "portable practice booth" and tried it out today.
It is a box built of baltic birch ply and lined with acoustic material. Works like a charm. I had no qualms about practicing trumpet during the day, even without the mute.
And something has changed. Either the comfort (of being able to blow as hard as I wanted but without a practice mute to block it) or something in my posture or just that I've been posting at Quora lately and thinking a lot about embouchure and trumpet technique, but I blew a high G.
Clean, and repeatable. I can even run up and down the scale from the C above the staff to the F (first time I did it, though, after three passes I nearly passed out myself). And, yes, I did tap the A once but I'm only counting clean notes here.
* * *
On the other hand...
I had to take a big break on the novel. I had charged ahead into the next chapters but I could sense it wasn't working quite right.
The problem is that this is an origin story. Now she's "origined." So now I have to figure out what kind of character she'll be for the rest of the book (and possible series).
And there's a lot of elements of the character that are there because they needed to be for the origin to work. So Penny is energetic, confident, an auto-didact, physically fit, widely read. Basically, she had to either have the skills to carry off "Athena Fox" in the real world, or be able to learn them over the course of an adventure.
Other things I discovered while I was writing; things that made a scene or moment work and seemed consistent with the character I was building. So she is musical, an experienced actor, and speaks a little bit of a couple of languages.
So there's a lot of directions I thought I would go that in practice didn't work. Some times I got them all the way to a trial scene and they didn't work. For instance, on paper I liked the idea of her thinking of Athena Fox as an alter-ego, as someone she transformed into. So she'd lack confidence in her own skills when in mufti but put on the hat and she'd be all competent. Well, that didn't work. Having her outside the heroism meant she couldn't enjoy it or take pride in it.
Subtler than that is her thinking of Athena Fox as a character, as a fictional thing she portrays. The trap here is that it made her way too genre-savvy to live with in a semi-realistic book. The world of this novel, unlike the Diskworld, does not run on Narrativium. And it also called too much attention to the tropes I was touching on. It is better to continue how I started; that Penny is actually going around traveling to exotic lands and speaking multiple languages and solving archaeological mysteries...she just doesn't quite realize it.
The crossing point, the big moment of the previous chapter, is her realizing she can actually be Athena Fox. But here's the trick. She doesn't want to be a character. She wants to be the person. She doesn't want to have genre tropes happen, she wants to travel and explore and solve mysteries.
Of course I've got the Act III crux coming up. And that is where the "dark side" of the character shows up, and I confront head-on the idea of genre awareness.
But I still need to construct what she is like now.
* * *
Played through to the Minutemen Faction ending in Fallout 4. If you do it right, this is the one with the fewest betrayals. (If you try to complete with the Railroad Faction, you need to follow the Institute thread past the point of becoming an enemy of the Brotherhood of Steel. And both Institute and Brotherhood involve massacring all the other factions.)
It isn't a game without problems. I think it comes down to gamification. There are many things that have to be in there to give a long and rich playing experience, and they can clash with some of the core story.
One of the strongest for me is that most of the encounters, including the majority of all of the Faction threads, are forced to assume you are a starting player; a wanderer, a wastelander, just out of the vault. If you let the Railroad give you a default code-name it is "Wanderer." When you talk to the Brotherhood of Steel even fairly far into their thread they call you "Wastelander" and (as do all of the factions) speak of you as if you are a loner with no connections, no identity, no society you belong to.
Thing of it is, you can already be General of the Minutemen and have personal control over most of the settlements on the map. Which means the other factions should be treating with you diplomatically; as one of the most powerful political figures they've encountered. Okay, the Brotherhood gets a pass on this since they are assholes anyhow. And the Institute, too, couldn't care less for Surface titles. But the idea still stands.
(The other thing that gets me about meeting a faction late-game is the dialog simply can't take into account your history. There are some clever bits, like Preston noticing you already have power armor, but by late game you are basically a Person of Mass Destruction. Heck, they even warn you about the difficulties of the Shining Sea, when you've already explored the entire thing, been to the place they want you to find, and can shrug off a couple of rads without even bothering to wear protective gear.)
Heck, even your own settlers will sometimes wonder who you are and make snide remarks about wastelanders.
But here's a bit that I found really kind of off-putting. And that's dialog checks. Why do these work so much better in Mass Effect?
Well, it might be Mass Effect has better writing. Not the fault of the writers, but more the pacing of the game means plot points need to be bigger and move faster in Fallout 4. So Elder Maxxon can do a 180 with just one line of dialog.
I think it is largely the gamification. In Mass Effect, the special dialog options (Persuade or Intimidate) are available if you have a high enough point value. Otherwise they are grayed out (which is somewhat annoying; you are given the words you could say to resolve the situation but you are prevented from saying them). In Fallout 4, they are a die roll. The higher your skill (Charisma), the better chance of making the roll.
But because this is a roll, the game awards it with a "ding" sound. So the way it all comes together is thus; you are presented with a dialog option in color-coded letters (meaning it is going to be tough to make it work). If you made it, there's the "ta dah!" sound effect and the person you are talking to suddenly agrees with you and changes their mind. It feels...artificial.
Okay, maybe there's another reason. Mass Effect the sound design is much more satisfying even for the Interrupts, which are sort of a hyped-up, QuickTime Event version. And there's no annoying effect for regular dialog options. But also...you are playing Shepard. Shepard-Commander, who talked the Salarians into reversing the Krogan Genophage, who saved the Rachni race from extinction, who talked back to the Council, who was able to get a dozen fractious races to work together to defeat the Reapers. Shepard who brokered peace between the Quorrians and the Geth. Shep isn't just some random vault-dweller who is trying to be persuasive. It is who she IS.
It is a box built of baltic birch ply and lined with acoustic material. Works like a charm. I had no qualms about practicing trumpet during the day, even without the mute.
And something has changed. Either the comfort (of being able to blow as hard as I wanted but without a practice mute to block it) or something in my posture or just that I've been posting at Quora lately and thinking a lot about embouchure and trumpet technique, but I blew a high G.
Clean, and repeatable. I can even run up and down the scale from the C above the staff to the F (first time I did it, though, after three passes I nearly passed out myself). And, yes, I did tap the A once but I'm only counting clean notes here.
* * *
On the other hand...
I had to take a big break on the novel. I had charged ahead into the next chapters but I could sense it wasn't working quite right.
The problem is that this is an origin story. Now she's "origined." So now I have to figure out what kind of character she'll be for the rest of the book (and possible series).
And there's a lot of elements of the character that are there because they needed to be for the origin to work. So Penny is energetic, confident, an auto-didact, physically fit, widely read. Basically, she had to either have the skills to carry off "Athena Fox" in the real world, or be able to learn them over the course of an adventure.
Other things I discovered while I was writing; things that made a scene or moment work and seemed consistent with the character I was building. So she is musical, an experienced actor, and speaks a little bit of a couple of languages.
So there's a lot of directions I thought I would go that in practice didn't work. Some times I got them all the way to a trial scene and they didn't work. For instance, on paper I liked the idea of her thinking of Athena Fox as an alter-ego, as someone she transformed into. So she'd lack confidence in her own skills when in mufti but put on the hat and she'd be all competent. Well, that didn't work. Having her outside the heroism meant she couldn't enjoy it or take pride in it.
Subtler than that is her thinking of Athena Fox as a character, as a fictional thing she portrays. The trap here is that it made her way too genre-savvy to live with in a semi-realistic book. The world of this novel, unlike the Diskworld, does not run on Narrativium. And it also called too much attention to the tropes I was touching on. It is better to continue how I started; that Penny is actually going around traveling to exotic lands and speaking multiple languages and solving archaeological mysteries...she just doesn't quite realize it.
The crossing point, the big moment of the previous chapter, is her realizing she can actually be Athena Fox. But here's the trick. She doesn't want to be a character. She wants to be the person. She doesn't want to have genre tropes happen, she wants to travel and explore and solve mysteries.
Of course I've got the Act III crux coming up. And that is where the "dark side" of the character shows up, and I confront head-on the idea of genre awareness.
But I still need to construct what she is like now.
* * *
Played through to the Minutemen Faction ending in Fallout 4. If you do it right, this is the one with the fewest betrayals. (If you try to complete with the Railroad Faction, you need to follow the Institute thread past the point of becoming an enemy of the Brotherhood of Steel. And both Institute and Brotherhood involve massacring all the other factions.)
It isn't a game without problems. I think it comes down to gamification. There are many things that have to be in there to give a long and rich playing experience, and they can clash with some of the core story.
One of the strongest for me is that most of the encounters, including the majority of all of the Faction threads, are forced to assume you are a starting player; a wanderer, a wastelander, just out of the vault. If you let the Railroad give you a default code-name it is "Wanderer." When you talk to the Brotherhood of Steel even fairly far into their thread they call you "Wastelander" and (as do all of the factions) speak of you as if you are a loner with no connections, no identity, no society you belong to.
Thing of it is, you can already be General of the Minutemen and have personal control over most of the settlements on the map. Which means the other factions should be treating with you diplomatically; as one of the most powerful political figures they've encountered. Okay, the Brotherhood gets a pass on this since they are assholes anyhow. And the Institute, too, couldn't care less for Surface titles. But the idea still stands.
(The other thing that gets me about meeting a faction late-game is the dialog simply can't take into account your history. There are some clever bits, like Preston noticing you already have power armor, but by late game you are basically a Person of Mass Destruction. Heck, they even warn you about the difficulties of the Shining Sea, when you've already explored the entire thing, been to the place they want you to find, and can shrug off a couple of rads without even bothering to wear protective gear.)
Heck, even your own settlers will sometimes wonder who you are and make snide remarks about wastelanders.
But here's a bit that I found really kind of off-putting. And that's dialog checks. Why do these work so much better in Mass Effect?
Well, it might be Mass Effect has better writing. Not the fault of the writers, but more the pacing of the game means plot points need to be bigger and move faster in Fallout 4. So Elder Maxxon can do a 180 with just one line of dialog.
I think it is largely the gamification. In Mass Effect, the special dialog options (Persuade or Intimidate) are available if you have a high enough point value. Otherwise they are grayed out (which is somewhat annoying; you are given the words you could say to resolve the situation but you are prevented from saying them). In Fallout 4, they are a die roll. The higher your skill (Charisma), the better chance of making the roll.
But because this is a roll, the game awards it with a "ding" sound. So the way it all comes together is thus; you are presented with a dialog option in color-coded letters (meaning it is going to be tough to make it work). If you made it, there's the "ta dah!" sound effect and the person you are talking to suddenly agrees with you and changes their mind. It feels...artificial.
Okay, maybe there's another reason. Mass Effect the sound design is much more satisfying even for the Interrupts, which are sort of a hyped-up, QuickTime Event version. And there's no annoying effect for regular dialog options. But also...you are playing Shepard. Shepard-Commander, who talked the Salarians into reversing the Krogan Genophage, who saved the Rachni race from extinction, who talked back to the Council, who was able to get a dozen fractious races to work together to defeat the Reapers. Shepard who brokered peace between the Quorrians and the Geth. Shep isn't just some random vault-dweller who is trying to be persuasive. It is who she IS.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Music not dead
Just don't have any time, between writing and recovering and a crazy project at work.
Took the Shetland Gue into the shop, sanded it down, re-stained, gave it a glossier coat of polyurethane. I'm still lousy at staining and finishing but it didn't come out so bad. Looks like tuning the strings to A and C is the key (ahem) to playing the Game of Thrones theme, but it is still a bad stretch to that top note. Need practice time before I try to record.
Balked at bidding on a horn I wish I had gone for. Soprano trombone, but not one of those ultra-cheap ones: a used Jupiter in mint condition with mpc and case. Closed at about the same price as those Chinese jobs. I have this crazy dream now of three Bb instruments -- so the slotting is nominally the same (err, except the French Horn starts at the second octave so actually no) -- and all are portable and I can pitch shift them electronically to seat them. But...I adjust pretty quickly to different ranges in the woodwinds and when you shrink the dimensions like that the sonic qualities really do start to collapse as well. The piccolo French Horn basically sounds like a flugelhorn. A really out-of-tune flugelhorn.
Really, a better use of my money would be to start the rent-to-own on a used student-level trumpet. (My local store only has an Eastman at the moment, which doesn't exactly inspire me.)
Changed pegs so my lute-back ukulele is now hanging by my desk for those "practice for a few minutes while a file downloads" moments. So I'm getting a bit more time on it.
Went to the shop last night. I needed to look at the paperwork for the crazy project because dimensions are going out Monday but anyhow. The main chance I get these days to blow into an open horn, and thus really listen to my tone. Well, tone was not what I worked on. My slotting is still not firm, especially when making larger jumps. Practicing scales (actually, scale) is cheating; you can work your lip bit by bit and not have to make a dead leap to the next note.
Apparently French Horns are so bad with this even an orchestral player on a professional-level horn will miss their opening. And unlike the Perlman quote, it is really hard to correct that before anyone else hears.
Oh, and I can hit the E above the staff once or twice in a practice session. Working on stabilizing the C above the staff before I really go crazy up there.
Took the Shetland Gue into the shop, sanded it down, re-stained, gave it a glossier coat of polyurethane. I'm still lousy at staining and finishing but it didn't come out so bad. Looks like tuning the strings to A and C is the key (ahem) to playing the Game of Thrones theme, but it is still a bad stretch to that top note. Need practice time before I try to record.
Balked at bidding on a horn I wish I had gone for. Soprano trombone, but not one of those ultra-cheap ones: a used Jupiter in mint condition with mpc and case. Closed at about the same price as those Chinese jobs. I have this crazy dream now of three Bb instruments -- so the slotting is nominally the same (err, except the French Horn starts at the second octave so actually no) -- and all are portable and I can pitch shift them electronically to seat them. But...I adjust pretty quickly to different ranges in the woodwinds and when you shrink the dimensions like that the sonic qualities really do start to collapse as well. The piccolo French Horn basically sounds like a flugelhorn. A really out-of-tune flugelhorn.
Really, a better use of my money would be to start the rent-to-own on a used student-level trumpet. (My local store only has an Eastman at the moment, which doesn't exactly inspire me.)
Changed pegs so my lute-back ukulele is now hanging by my desk for those "practice for a few minutes while a file downloads" moments. So I'm getting a bit more time on it.
Went to the shop last night. I needed to look at the paperwork for the crazy project because dimensions are going out Monday but anyhow. The main chance I get these days to blow into an open horn, and thus really listen to my tone. Well, tone was not what I worked on. My slotting is still not firm, especially when making larger jumps. Practicing scales (actually, scale) is cheating; you can work your lip bit by bit and not have to make a dead leap to the next note.
Apparently French Horns are so bad with this even an orchestral player on a professional-level horn will miss their opening. And unlike the Perlman quote, it is really hard to correct that before anyone else hears.
Oh, and I can hit the E above the staff once or twice in a practice session. Working on stabilizing the C above the staff before I really go crazy up there.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
The Teumussian Imperative
I had a train of thought that ended with deciding I really do need a new title.
So far all I've found is things that I don't want to do. Referencing one of the names of the protagonist is easy to imagine; "Birth of Athena," "Athena's Choice," "Athena's War," etc. Or "Penny Bright," "A Penny Saved," etc. "Fox," too...but all I can think of is "Fox and Hounds." The only connection of the Fox to Greek myth is a fairly obscure myth about a giant fox that eats babies.
It is hard to explain the main reason I don't like this. It has to do with how the protagonist relates to these names. She doesn't think of herself as a Penny or a Fox or an Athena. The latter is a character she plays, the former is a name she was saddled with (in her words, it was better than "Penelope.")
I'm also generally against artsy titles that quote too obviously from mythology or the classics. Any kind of "Wine-dark Sea" title is a non-starter. I might make an exception for Shakespeare, except by the time you leave behind the ones everyone has used ("By any other name," "Slings and arrows," etc. etc.) you are on lines so obscure only another die-hard will even recognize they are from the Bard.
(The other difficulty in quoting from, say, Homer, or even Octavian, is that these are all translations. Outside of a few extremely popular and probably apocryphal "Veni, vidi, vici" stuff you are left with, again, having to explain that you are quoting from someone.)
I'm also against having too much of a pun. Besides the fact that I'm going quirky, not comic, the obvious-pun titles I've encountered are most usually short hand for murder mysteries. Generally of the "cozy" type, even if they do take place in more exotic locales than the Vicar's Tea Party.
Really, I keep coming back to artifact-centric titles because nothing says more clearly that this is archaeological in intent. Not historical fiction, not action, not science fiction, not a romance, but specifically a story in which a two-fisted intellectual has an adventure while solving a puzzle centered around history, culture, and language.
So maybe the best bet is to revisit the available artifact words but surround one of them with stronger action verbs. "Quest" or "Hunt" or "Adventure" or something.
So far all I've found is things that I don't want to do. Referencing one of the names of the protagonist is easy to imagine; "Birth of Athena," "Athena's Choice," "Athena's War," etc. Or "Penny Bright," "A Penny Saved," etc. "Fox," too...but all I can think of is "Fox and Hounds." The only connection of the Fox to Greek myth is a fairly obscure myth about a giant fox that eats babies.
It is hard to explain the main reason I don't like this. It has to do with how the protagonist relates to these names. She doesn't think of herself as a Penny or a Fox or an Athena. The latter is a character she plays, the former is a name she was saddled with (in her words, it was better than "Penelope.")
I'm also generally against artsy titles that quote too obviously from mythology or the classics. Any kind of "Wine-dark Sea" title is a non-starter. I might make an exception for Shakespeare, except by the time you leave behind the ones everyone has used ("By any other name," "Slings and arrows," etc. etc.) you are on lines so obscure only another die-hard will even recognize they are from the Bard.
(The other difficulty in quoting from, say, Homer, or even Octavian, is that these are all translations. Outside of a few extremely popular and probably apocryphal "Veni, vidi, vici" stuff you are left with, again, having to explain that you are quoting from someone.)
I'm also against having too much of a pun. Besides the fact that I'm going quirky, not comic, the obvious-pun titles I've encountered are most usually short hand for murder mysteries. Generally of the "cozy" type, even if they do take place in more exotic locales than the Vicar's Tea Party.
Really, I keep coming back to artifact-centric titles because nothing says more clearly that this is archaeological in intent. Not historical fiction, not action, not science fiction, not a romance, but specifically a story in which a two-fisted intellectual has an adventure while solving a puzzle centered around history, culture, and language.
So maybe the best bet is to revisit the available artifact words but surround one of them with stronger action verbs. "Quest" or "Hunt" or "Adventure" or something.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Violent Consequences
This is the problem I'm having with heroism. With action, with escapades, with all the violence and crazy doings that are all across genre fiction and are what make it fun to read.
Because in the real world, the stuff has consequences. Sure, anyone can chose to drive a car really, really fast down a crowded highway. And crash and get arrested and their car impounded and...
It is exciting because it is out of the ordinary. And it is out of the ordinary because it generally doesn't turn out so well and most people are smart enough not to try it in the first place. The two are flip sides of the same coin. Driving real fast on a closed-circuit track by a trained stunt driver just isn't the same thing. It is precisely the violation of norms that makes it, well, "heroic." (For certain definitions of the word!)
This ties a bit into genre tropes (but isn't dependent on them). Many of the things that occur over and over in an action movie are things that go badly in the real world. In the movies the bad guys shoot a cop to show they are serious. In the real world, every cop for six states around agrees that it is, indeed, serious.
And this isn't just a scaling problem. Sure, things are over-the-top in an adventure. But heroes are over-the-top within the world of the adventure movie as well. The characters might be barnstormers and they are frequently shown as flying in ridiculous dangerous ways that few dared in the real world. Well, our protagonist does something even MORE ridiculous and dangerous. Because he's the hero. Because it is practically part of the definition of being in a thrilling action scene that what is taking place has gone outside the norms.
Heck, there's often a brief scene after the giant shootout which left an entire warehouse district littered with bodies that the Good Cop says, "They had it coming. Now get the hell out of here before I have to arrest you." So it is even recognized within the genre that the norms have been violated and the expected consequences have been magically evaded.
So what I've put my protagonist through already could easily, probably should have, resulted in news coverage, legal actions, fines, arrests, publicity, and yeah an awful lot of time sitting around uncomfortable rooms talking to unhappy authorities. Yet, on the scale of a rip-roaring adventure, she's barely passed the threshold of "my worst travel story."
Yeah, minor stuff ends up being a huge inconvenience. I personally know more than one person who has been stuck in a country for over a week with the wrong paperwork, talking to the American Embassy every day and just hoping to get it all cleared up somehow. Heck with continuing on to the adventure, they considered themselves lucky just to get back home.
So how can you in a story have your hero do something heroic then get back on the boat? I just don't know.
(Again, this isn't about "yes, there are dangerous occupations and dangerous places in the real world." This is specifically about exceeding ordinary circumstances. This isn't "I was in World War 2 and I got shot at," this is, "I was at the Louvre and I got shot at." And La Gioconda save the writer if what is wanted is, "I was in a running gun battle down the halls of the Louvre.")
(In an upcoming chapter, on my current novel, what I think I am being forced to reach for is an admission that heroes are given a get-out-of-jail-free card. That my protagonist has implicitly been promoted from "tourist who is now going to spend the rest of her vacation in a police station" to "larger-than-life hero with friends-on-the-force who can get them out of the consequences of their actions." It works within the larger themes so, sigh, okay.)
Because in the real world, the stuff has consequences. Sure, anyone can chose to drive a car really, really fast down a crowded highway. And crash and get arrested and their car impounded and...
It is exciting because it is out of the ordinary. And it is out of the ordinary because it generally doesn't turn out so well and most people are smart enough not to try it in the first place. The two are flip sides of the same coin. Driving real fast on a closed-circuit track by a trained stunt driver just isn't the same thing. It is precisely the violation of norms that makes it, well, "heroic." (For certain definitions of the word!)
This ties a bit into genre tropes (but isn't dependent on them). Many of the things that occur over and over in an action movie are things that go badly in the real world. In the movies the bad guys shoot a cop to show they are serious. In the real world, every cop for six states around agrees that it is, indeed, serious.
And this isn't just a scaling problem. Sure, things are over-the-top in an adventure. But heroes are over-the-top within the world of the adventure movie as well. The characters might be barnstormers and they are frequently shown as flying in ridiculous dangerous ways that few dared in the real world. Well, our protagonist does something even MORE ridiculous and dangerous. Because he's the hero. Because it is practically part of the definition of being in a thrilling action scene that what is taking place has gone outside the norms.
Heck, there's often a brief scene after the giant shootout which left an entire warehouse district littered with bodies that the Good Cop says, "They had it coming. Now get the hell out of here before I have to arrest you." So it is even recognized within the genre that the norms have been violated and the expected consequences have been magically evaded.
So what I've put my protagonist through already could easily, probably should have, resulted in news coverage, legal actions, fines, arrests, publicity, and yeah an awful lot of time sitting around uncomfortable rooms talking to unhappy authorities. Yet, on the scale of a rip-roaring adventure, she's barely passed the threshold of "my worst travel story."
Yeah, minor stuff ends up being a huge inconvenience. I personally know more than one person who has been stuck in a country for over a week with the wrong paperwork, talking to the American Embassy every day and just hoping to get it all cleared up somehow. Heck with continuing on to the adventure, they considered themselves lucky just to get back home.
So how can you in a story have your hero do something heroic then get back on the boat? I just don't know.
(Again, this isn't about "yes, there are dangerous occupations and dangerous places in the real world." This is specifically about exceeding ordinary circumstances. This isn't "I was in World War 2 and I got shot at," this is, "I was at the Louvre and I got shot at." And La Gioconda save the writer if what is wanted is, "I was in a running gun battle down the halls of the Louvre.")
(In an upcoming chapter, on my current novel, what I think I am being forced to reach for is an admission that heroes are given a get-out-of-jail-free card. That my protagonist has implicitly been promoted from "tourist who is now going to spend the rest of her vacation in a police station" to "larger-than-life hero with friends-on-the-force who can get them out of the consequences of their actions." It works within the larger themes so, sigh, okay.)
Monday, August 12, 2019
Conflict Conflct
I did another read-through, and this time I finally figured out what was bugging me. I almost hit it multiple times before; that there isn't enough conversation, that too much takes place inside the main character's head, that there are too many lectures, that the theme doesn't seem to connect to the events.
The sad truth is that I'm not good at writing conflict. I like to think of a book as a dialectic (which term I'm almost certainly misusing). There's a thesis and an anthesis, and they become represented by personalities who struggle against each other.
This works if it is a Man vs. Nature or even a Hero Brought Down by Hubris story. You can describe them all in those terms.
But the key is there needs to be that conflict, and it needs to be carried out into confrontation, the more personalized the better.
And this is where I've failed. The primary action is a linear struggle; she is trying to get from Point A to Point B and there are hardships (and sometimes obstacles, but far too many of the former and far too few of the later). The parallel thread is a mystery, and that is also a linear sequence of discovering the necessary information.
This is my third crack at a novel. As of this moment only the second was completed. In that, I think I did succeed; almost every argument that was advanced was advanced by a personality and was contrasted and contested by another personality (usually the protagonist). And my outline for the potential fourth is also putting more positions into the form of people who can argue for them as well as fight for them.
This one, too many of the arguments are my protagonist, alone, thinking things out. As of the last read, the strongest scenes are those where there is conversation and where in the conversation there is something at stake. Oddly, the Agora scene is one; even though Océane and Phillip are not implicitly opposed in any philosophy or theme, they have strong personalities and constant personal goals throughout the conversation; they are never passive.
Well, okay. I had figured out most of this earlier and that's when I strengthened Vash and Herr Satz. I had intended them to represent thematic arcs. I don't know if they do, but they end up having scenes that contain conflict and are reasonably strong. I am also hoping the coming conversation with Ariadne will also be a good argument.
Thing is, too much of what happens isn't in the form of a conversation. The scene I'm working on right now is Penny learning about ceramic decoration. I have pots, I even have some distracting business, but in the end all I am set up to do is write, "I looked at pots. I learned the following stuff."
So. Are there ways, when I've finished the draft, that I can go back and tear out certain sequences and do the same things...advance the physical plot and the mystery...in a more active way that creates more in the way of interesting conversations and potential conflict?
I gotta add. This whole "conflict" thing is a bit of the Argument Clinic sketch. It isn't about someone shooting at the protagonist whilst they try to find out Who Dunnit. It is about articulated views being strongly presented. That is why the offer to buy off the detective is more interesting than the hoods sent around to beat them up. The latter is a test of their physical courage, strength and/or endurance. The former is a test of their goals and purpose and self identity. The latter is phrased, "Can I keep them from killing me?" The former is, "Is it really worth it, what I do?"
So, yeah, I went through a few hours of depression there. I think this is ultimately a very flawed book. But I have some ideas now how to apply bandaids.
The sad truth is that I'm not good at writing conflict. I like to think of a book as a dialectic (which term I'm almost certainly misusing). There's a thesis and an anthesis, and they become represented by personalities who struggle against each other.
This works if it is a Man vs. Nature or even a Hero Brought Down by Hubris story. You can describe them all in those terms.
But the key is there needs to be that conflict, and it needs to be carried out into confrontation, the more personalized the better.
And this is where I've failed. The primary action is a linear struggle; she is trying to get from Point A to Point B and there are hardships (and sometimes obstacles, but far too many of the former and far too few of the later). The parallel thread is a mystery, and that is also a linear sequence of discovering the necessary information.
This is my third crack at a novel. As of this moment only the second was completed. In that, I think I did succeed; almost every argument that was advanced was advanced by a personality and was contrasted and contested by another personality (usually the protagonist). And my outline for the potential fourth is also putting more positions into the form of people who can argue for them as well as fight for them.
This one, too many of the arguments are my protagonist, alone, thinking things out. As of the last read, the strongest scenes are those where there is conversation and where in the conversation there is something at stake. Oddly, the Agora scene is one; even though Océane and Phillip are not implicitly opposed in any philosophy or theme, they have strong personalities and constant personal goals throughout the conversation; they are never passive.
Well, okay. I had figured out most of this earlier and that's when I strengthened Vash and Herr Satz. I had intended them to represent thematic arcs. I don't know if they do, but they end up having scenes that contain conflict and are reasonably strong. I am also hoping the coming conversation with Ariadne will also be a good argument.
Thing is, too much of what happens isn't in the form of a conversation. The scene I'm working on right now is Penny learning about ceramic decoration. I have pots, I even have some distracting business, but in the end all I am set up to do is write, "I looked at pots. I learned the following stuff."
So. Are there ways, when I've finished the draft, that I can go back and tear out certain sequences and do the same things...advance the physical plot and the mystery...in a more active way that creates more in the way of interesting conversations and potential conflict?
I gotta add. This whole "conflict" thing is a bit of the Argument Clinic sketch. It isn't about someone shooting at the protagonist whilst they try to find out Who Dunnit. It is about articulated views being strongly presented. That is why the offer to buy off the detective is more interesting than the hoods sent around to beat them up. The latter is a test of their physical courage, strength and/or endurance. The former is a test of their goals and purpose and self identity. The latter is phrased, "Can I keep them from killing me?" The former is, "Is it really worth it, what I do?"
So, yeah, I went through a few hours of depression there. I think this is ultimately a very flawed book. But I have some ideas now how to apply bandaids.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Bitte nicht den Horror-Clown
...an actual newsmagazine cover on the eve of a certain inauguration.
I knew I was going to have to do some overview and work-up before writing the last chapters. And I'm deep into it now. Wishing I had made different choices. Wondering what different choices are open. Worrying about some of the things (many of the things) that are in there now.
I've been doing a bit of research for local color stuff. I'd like my protagonist to hang out with some contemporary Greeks, some young people, check out music and art and foods outside of the tourist favorites and the Classical Era.
First another research fail. There was at some point an internet cafe right by the National Museum of Archaeology. That is just so handy for plotting purposes I'm going to use it, despite the name coming up blank on every other search and the one picture I was able to find showing what look suspiciously like early 2000's computers.
But that's also the thing. Story is largely about when things go wrong. If this was just "Penny has a good time in Athens" then I could just look up hotels and museum hours and restaurant menus and take everything I found at face value. This is adventure, which pretty much exactly means that things go off the rails into places and events that are less common. What actually happens if you jump into a canal in Venice? Have a medical problem at Oktoberfest? Get shot at in Athens? These are a lot harder to look up.
Anyhow. Local color.
I knew that there were abandoned buildings and squatters right in the heart of Athens; I'd seen them, I'd asked around (just a little). So, yeah. There are. I haven't been able to find out if there is an Athenian equivalent to the kind of spaces like the Oakland Ghost Ship. I suspect there are but it is those differences that matter. It turns out there are some larger abandoned spaces; much of the 2006 Olympics, and connected to that, the old International Airport. Which are still in partial use, largely at a community level, and are really not being maintained so, yeah.
So sure that would be fun. Do some fun/spooky/crazy stuff from the basement Electronica scene to guerrilla street artists to the fascinating largely immigrant squatter community which in some cases is almost semi-official to, well, actual urban spelunking in abandoned underground spaces.
But there's three things that make me shy from it. One is that it doesn't seem plot related. Thematic, sure. But as tempting as criminal hideouts or whatever might be, you attract a lot less attention moving trafficked antiquities out of a rental warehouse near the docks just like every other commercial business.
The next is that it is a little Every-Hero. Yes, there are people who can instantly make friends and be permitted into secretive and sensitive cultural areas because they are just that nice. And, yes, my protagonist is designed to have some of that; she's conventionally attractive, personable, a skilled actor, and careful not to step on toes. But I see this done just so damn much, the clean-cut American Everyman who instantly makes friends of hostile tribesmen or scared refugees or whatever and no.
Last, I opened on the Acropolis with a protagonist named Athena. I cut a contract with the reader then and there that said that Ancient Greece is going to figure in the narrative. So as much as I do want to show there is more to Greece, and the young people are more likely to quote Tupac than Ovid, I don't want pivotal plot events to take place within settings and frames that clash thematically with that premise.
Ah, well. I do definitely want to do some street food. Not that easy to find around here but it does seem like smart research to eat a bit before I write certain scenes. Pity my protagonist can't continue to enjoy ouzo; she's under doctor's orders until the end of this particular story.
Still, between the deadly forest fire that struck South of Athens only a few months ago, the Medicane "Zorbas" which strikes Athens that weekend, and the public referendum that preceded the Prespa Agreement (where Greece compromised that FYROM could use the name "Macedonia" as long as they added the qualifier "North") which is also this same weekend, the people she sits down to chat with are going to have a lot on their minds that they can talk about.
I don't have to do a Tomb Raider crawl through dangerous underground spaces in order to make my page count. It would just be, you know, so much fun.
(More's the pity; the Yellow Vests stuff is just starting to happen and isn't at the kind of mass where it would be remarked on in Greece. Golden Dawn got so thoroughly knocked down when they shot a popular rap artist they are hardly in the picture by this date. So much as I'd love to have some big public events, the reality is that there's always a small protest in Syntagma Square but the specific names are going to be obscure and insignificant.)
I knew I was going to have to do some overview and work-up before writing the last chapters. And I'm deep into it now. Wishing I had made different choices. Wondering what different choices are open. Worrying about some of the things (many of the things) that are in there now.
I've been doing a bit of research for local color stuff. I'd like my protagonist to hang out with some contemporary Greeks, some young people, check out music and art and foods outside of the tourist favorites and the Classical Era.
First another research fail. There was at some point an internet cafe right by the National Museum of Archaeology. That is just so handy for plotting purposes I'm going to use it, despite the name coming up blank on every other search and the one picture I was able to find showing what look suspiciously like early 2000's computers.
But that's also the thing. Story is largely about when things go wrong. If this was just "Penny has a good time in Athens" then I could just look up hotels and museum hours and restaurant menus and take everything I found at face value. This is adventure, which pretty much exactly means that things go off the rails into places and events that are less common. What actually happens if you jump into a canal in Venice? Have a medical problem at Oktoberfest? Get shot at in Athens? These are a lot harder to look up.
Anyhow. Local color.
I knew that there were abandoned buildings and squatters right in the heart of Athens; I'd seen them, I'd asked around (just a little). So, yeah. There are. I haven't been able to find out if there is an Athenian equivalent to the kind of spaces like the Oakland Ghost Ship. I suspect there are but it is those differences that matter. It turns out there are some larger abandoned spaces; much of the 2006 Olympics, and connected to that, the old International Airport. Which are still in partial use, largely at a community level, and are really not being maintained so, yeah.
So sure that would be fun. Do some fun/spooky/crazy stuff from the basement Electronica scene to guerrilla street artists to the fascinating largely immigrant squatter community which in some cases is almost semi-official to, well, actual urban spelunking in abandoned underground spaces.
But there's three things that make me shy from it. One is that it doesn't seem plot related. Thematic, sure. But as tempting as criminal hideouts or whatever might be, you attract a lot less attention moving trafficked antiquities out of a rental warehouse near the docks just like every other commercial business.
The next is that it is a little Every-Hero. Yes, there are people who can instantly make friends and be permitted into secretive and sensitive cultural areas because they are just that nice. And, yes, my protagonist is designed to have some of that; she's conventionally attractive, personable, a skilled actor, and careful not to step on toes. But I see this done just so damn much, the clean-cut American Everyman who instantly makes friends of hostile tribesmen or scared refugees or whatever and no.
Last, I opened on the Acropolis with a protagonist named Athena. I cut a contract with the reader then and there that said that Ancient Greece is going to figure in the narrative. So as much as I do want to show there is more to Greece, and the young people are more likely to quote Tupac than Ovid, I don't want pivotal plot events to take place within settings and frames that clash thematically with that premise.
Ah, well. I do definitely want to do some street food. Not that easy to find around here but it does seem like smart research to eat a bit before I write certain scenes. Pity my protagonist can't continue to enjoy ouzo; she's under doctor's orders until the end of this particular story.
Still, between the deadly forest fire that struck South of Athens only a few months ago, the Medicane "Zorbas" which strikes Athens that weekend, and the public referendum that preceded the Prespa Agreement (where Greece compromised that FYROM could use the name "Macedonia" as long as they added the qualifier "North") which is also this same weekend, the people she sits down to chat with are going to have a lot on their minds that they can talk about.
I don't have to do a Tomb Raider crawl through dangerous underground spaces in order to make my page count. It would just be, you know, so much fun.
(More's the pity; the Yellow Vests stuff is just starting to happen and isn't at the kind of mass where it would be remarked on in Greece. Golden Dawn got so thoroughly knocked down when they shot a popular rap artist they are hardly in the picture by this date. So much as I'd love to have some big public events, the reality is that there's always a small protest in Syntagma Square but the specific names are going to be obscure and insignificant.)
Friday, August 9, 2019
Hi, Sierra
...now go away.
I was forced into an OS upgrade a few months back. The upgrade process at least was painless (unlike a friend's computer, which somehow killed the HD so bad they were almost suckered into a new machine).
Performance enhancements? Not that I've noticed.
Useful tools? Nary a one I've found yet.
Regressions? Let me tell you about regressions. My USB 10-key stopped working correctly (it would delete the entry as soon as you took your finger off). Got a new 10-key and the OS popped up a "helper" that kept asking me to please hit the button to the right of the shift key so it could properly identify it and set it up correctly. You ass, Apple. Not every USB peripheral that agrees with universal definitions set by an international consortium is a fucking keyboard! Fortunately after a half-dozen go-arounds I was able to figure out which of the various "cancel" buttons actually, you know, cancelled the set up assistant.
Next is some basic file stuff. Here's what I've been doing for I don't know how many different OS's and even on a PC or two; open a folder, if they are graphics switch to icon view for faster browsing, select an item or a group and hold to get the "open with" pop-up.
Here's High Sierra's version; open the folder. Wait a minute or two because apparently it is that much worse at figuring out how to display a list. Hold and wait for "open with." High Sierra scans...I don't even know what it scans because I usually give up on it. Especially for groups. The old system somehow managed to deal with multiple files, but the new system seems to start the scan from scratch for each and every file. Why? I write better software in my sleep, and I'm not an Apple programmer.
(Seriously, folks, this is search 101. You narrow the search one the first file, and test only within that smaller group for consecutive files. How is this hard? You had it right before?)
Well, before the Mac fanboys jump in that my machine is obviously too old for such a modern OS and probably doesn't have the RAM, I got extra-size RAM when I got it and, yes, it is well within Apple's official recommendations.
Which is good because based on how Apple is manufacturing their new machines I'd really rather not. They are no longer repairable, apparently. And not only aren't they repairable, Apple considers them non-recoverable. If you have a newer phone or iBook you will lose the data unless you are backed up externally. Doesn't matter that it is still on the drives...Apple has scorched-earth on any of the usual data recovery options in their effort to make sure all customers come to their own shit stores, where they can upsell you instead of repairing.
There's a bunch more trivial annoyances High Sierra throws my way, but the brunt of it is that it doesn't do as well the basic things the OS did for five generations. And doesn't offer anything worthwhile in return. But this is Apple. You can't even get help. Complaints? Forget it.
I was forced into an OS upgrade a few months back. The upgrade process at least was painless (unlike a friend's computer, which somehow killed the HD so bad they were almost suckered into a new machine).
Performance enhancements? Not that I've noticed.
Useful tools? Nary a one I've found yet.
Regressions? Let me tell you about regressions. My USB 10-key stopped working correctly (it would delete the entry as soon as you took your finger off). Got a new 10-key and the OS popped up a "helper" that kept asking me to please hit the button to the right of the shift key so it could properly identify it and set it up correctly. You ass, Apple. Not every USB peripheral that agrees with universal definitions set by an international consortium is a fucking keyboard! Fortunately after a half-dozen go-arounds I was able to figure out which of the various "cancel" buttons actually, you know, cancelled the set up assistant.
Next is some basic file stuff. Here's what I've been doing for I don't know how many different OS's and even on a PC or two; open a folder, if they are graphics switch to icon view for faster browsing, select an item or a group and hold to get the "open with" pop-up.
Here's High Sierra's version; open the folder. Wait a minute or two because apparently it is that much worse at figuring out how to display a list. Hold and wait for "open with." High Sierra scans...I don't even know what it scans because I usually give up on it. Especially for groups. The old system somehow managed to deal with multiple files, but the new system seems to start the scan from scratch for each and every file. Why? I write better software in my sleep, and I'm not an Apple programmer.
(Seriously, folks, this is search 101. You narrow the search one the first file, and test only within that smaller group for consecutive files. How is this hard? You had it right before?)
Well, before the Mac fanboys jump in that my machine is obviously too old for such a modern OS and probably doesn't have the RAM, I got extra-size RAM when I got it and, yes, it is well within Apple's official recommendations.
Which is good because based on how Apple is manufacturing their new machines I'd really rather not. They are no longer repairable, apparently. And not only aren't they repairable, Apple considers them non-recoverable. If you have a newer phone or iBook you will lose the data unless you are backed up externally. Doesn't matter that it is still on the drives...Apple has scorched-earth on any of the usual data recovery options in their effort to make sure all customers come to their own shit stores, where they can upsell you instead of repairing.
There's a bunch more trivial annoyances High Sierra throws my way, but the brunt of it is that it doesn't do as well the basic things the OS did for five generations. And doesn't offer anything worthwhile in return. But this is Apple. You can't even get help. Complaints? Forget it.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Block III
Blocked out Act III of the novel-with-a-name-in-flux.
Wow. There's a lot of threads I threw up in the air that I want to bring to conclusion. I don't think I'm going to have much trouble hitting my word count goals. The problem is more doing so in an interesting way.
Right now I'm in a chapter I've been anticipating since I first outlined the thing; my protagonist is at the great National Museum of Archaeology in Athens with research questions she wants to answer. On the plus side, she's there within a month of when I was there so I have available all the sorts of looks and feels you only get with difficulty by doing remote research. Also on the plus side, this is coming closer to actual archaeological puzzle-solving -- on of the legs of the tripod of an Adventure Archaeologist story.
On the negative, this is largely background research. Her questions are rather inchoate. And there's no ticking clock, no pursing bad guys, no snakes. So I've thrown in a professor with visiting friends who is saying things Penny would love to be able to overhear, and an Athenian art student who likes to hang out around the popular museums picking up tourist chicks, and an overly suspicious docent just so everyone can be tailing each other and surprising each other and otherwise be doing some low-key hijinks.
Basically it is stage business. I saw so many directors blocking out scenes, coming up with reasons to have a cross or two or a dozen to keep the stage picture from being too static.
The last big "research" chunks are a dinner get-together of a bunch of art students who will go randomly around various elements of the modern Greek experience; throwing their own varied reactions to North Macedon and Golden Dawn and Angela Merkel and Ovid and whatever else comes up in the natural course of a free-wheeling ouzo-lubricated conversation.
So I'm not going to research then write. I'm just going to set into it. Heck, these guys are students. And individuals. So they will have ideas that are incorrect and opinions that aren't mainstream. All I need is for them to be interesting, plausible, and at least somewhat appropriate.
And then there's when the police show up. Which I know little about and don't even have good ideas how to research. When this became an issue in two previous chapters I off-staged it; "After I had talked to the cops..."
And title. I had set out to write a quirky Adventure Archaeologist story that both poked fun at the concept and delivered on the promise. For various reasons, including that this is the origin story, it ended up having a lot to do with travel -- basic, practical travel advice, as well as a fair amount of eye candy description of several places.
The best of all possible titles would look like a serious genre thriller around a pseudo-archaeological premise; The Doomsday Codex or The Ariadne Clue or The Mask of Agamemnon or whatever. But do so in a slightly "off" way, a bit silly, a bit over the top, a bit too much on the nose, or including a pun in the title; anything that would inform the prospective reader that it isn't going to be a grim serious but extremely unrealistic thriller of lost technologies and guns akimbo.
(And it would also have a pattern that would lend itself to brand identity for a series).
Sub-title, blurb, cover all help, but you have to grab the eyeballs first. It also has to feel whole; it just isn't right to have a bodice-ripper cover and inside is a physics text. No matter how much you gave the game away with title and synopsis, it still just doesn't work artistically. Closest I can think of at the moment is the cover to Bimbos of the Death Sun which both is (like the title) satirical and the thing being satirized. And apparently the author hated it so...
A small thing. One of the reasons I picked a character who isn't that knowledgable is so I could have her learn key facts in front of the reader. So the reader is presented with them too and doesn't feel cheated when the hero suddenly pulls out "Ah, but there were no pineapples in Alexandria before 1087..." One of the purer examples I can think of at the moment is Doctor Who, particularly New Who, where the Doctor is constantly babbling and lots of colorful side things are going on but it turns out that one of them was a clue.
In "Time of the Angels" they are investigating a starship that crashed into an ancient monastery that is just crammed with statues. The Time Lord reflects that he knew these people before their civilization fell and vanished. He'd even worked with one of their architects; "Two heads are better than one," says the Doctor. And explains he meant the locals had two heads. More time passes. More statues everywhere. Way too many statues, crowded around almost menacingly. And one of the companions says, "I get the feeling we are missing something..."
The only examples I can think of off the bat in my own are language. When pretending to be French my protagonist says "Les carottes sont cuites," That phrase came up in a conversation she had way back at the Athenian Agora. Just before the Act II/III break, she finally commits to taking on the mantle of hero and thinks "Alea iacta est." That also showed up back in Athens. And, yes, I explain it again for the reader who missed it the first time.
I've been doing a number of call-backs and running gags but that's not really what I was talking about above. These are more verbal tics, or bookend bits.
I've been leading up to a revelation on "...with the dirt still on them." It is a phrase I picked up from one of the books I read on antiquities trafficking. The way I intend to work it is the undercover Carabinieri Art Squad guy talks about artifacts being sold in bulk right out of the ground. And later a sort-of innocent gallery owner expresses her disappointment at what is supposed to be a private collection; "I was surprised by how dirty..."
Unfortunately it is otherwise not quite happening. I mean, I've got her in the National right now, but I can't plant the reader in front of the objects and let them grasp the lessons. I still end up with either my protagonist or some handy bystander having to stand there and say, "the white glaze used in red-figure ware often implied..."
Wow. There's a lot of threads I threw up in the air that I want to bring to conclusion. I don't think I'm going to have much trouble hitting my word count goals. The problem is more doing so in an interesting way.
Right now I'm in a chapter I've been anticipating since I first outlined the thing; my protagonist is at the great National Museum of Archaeology in Athens with research questions she wants to answer. On the plus side, she's there within a month of when I was there so I have available all the sorts of looks and feels you only get with difficulty by doing remote research. Also on the plus side, this is coming closer to actual archaeological puzzle-solving -- on of the legs of the tripod of an Adventure Archaeologist story.
On the negative, this is largely background research. Her questions are rather inchoate. And there's no ticking clock, no pursing bad guys, no snakes. So I've thrown in a professor with visiting friends who is saying things Penny would love to be able to overhear, and an Athenian art student who likes to hang out around the popular museums picking up tourist chicks, and an overly suspicious docent just so everyone can be tailing each other and surprising each other and otherwise be doing some low-key hijinks.
Basically it is stage business. I saw so many directors blocking out scenes, coming up with reasons to have a cross or two or a dozen to keep the stage picture from being too static.
The last big "research" chunks are a dinner get-together of a bunch of art students who will go randomly around various elements of the modern Greek experience; throwing their own varied reactions to North Macedon and Golden Dawn and Angela Merkel and Ovid and whatever else comes up in the natural course of a free-wheeling ouzo-lubricated conversation.
So I'm not going to research then write. I'm just going to set into it. Heck, these guys are students. And individuals. So they will have ideas that are incorrect and opinions that aren't mainstream. All I need is for them to be interesting, plausible, and at least somewhat appropriate.
And then there's when the police show up. Which I know little about and don't even have good ideas how to research. When this became an issue in two previous chapters I off-staged it; "After I had talked to the cops..."
And title. I had set out to write a quirky Adventure Archaeologist story that both poked fun at the concept and delivered on the promise. For various reasons, including that this is the origin story, it ended up having a lot to do with travel -- basic, practical travel advice, as well as a fair amount of eye candy description of several places.
The best of all possible titles would look like a serious genre thriller around a pseudo-archaeological premise; The Doomsday Codex or The Ariadne Clue or The Mask of Agamemnon or whatever. But do so in a slightly "off" way, a bit silly, a bit over the top, a bit too much on the nose, or including a pun in the title; anything that would inform the prospective reader that it isn't going to be a grim serious but extremely unrealistic thriller of lost technologies and guns akimbo.
(And it would also have a pattern that would lend itself to brand identity for a series).
Sub-title, blurb, cover all help, but you have to grab the eyeballs first. It also has to feel whole; it just isn't right to have a bodice-ripper cover and inside is a physics text. No matter how much you gave the game away with title and synopsis, it still just doesn't work artistically. Closest I can think of at the moment is the cover to Bimbos of the Death Sun which both is (like the title) satirical and the thing being satirized. And apparently the author hated it so...
A small thing. One of the reasons I picked a character who isn't that knowledgable is so I could have her learn key facts in front of the reader. So the reader is presented with them too and doesn't feel cheated when the hero suddenly pulls out "Ah, but there were no pineapples in Alexandria before 1087..." One of the purer examples I can think of at the moment is Doctor Who, particularly New Who, where the Doctor is constantly babbling and lots of colorful side things are going on but it turns out that one of them was a clue.
In "Time of the Angels" they are investigating a starship that crashed into an ancient monastery that is just crammed with statues. The Time Lord reflects that he knew these people before their civilization fell and vanished. He'd even worked with one of their architects; "Two heads are better than one," says the Doctor. And explains he meant the locals had two heads. More time passes. More statues everywhere. Way too many statues, crowded around almost menacingly. And one of the companions says, "I get the feeling we are missing something..."
The only examples I can think of off the bat in my own are language. When pretending to be French my protagonist says "Les carottes sont cuites," That phrase came up in a conversation she had way back at the Athenian Agora. Just before the Act II/III break, she finally commits to taking on the mantle of hero and thinks "Alea iacta est." That also showed up back in Athens. And, yes, I explain it again for the reader who missed it the first time.
I've been doing a number of call-backs and running gags but that's not really what I was talking about above. These are more verbal tics, or bookend bits.
I've been leading up to a revelation on "...with the dirt still on them." It is a phrase I picked up from one of the books I read on antiquities trafficking. The way I intend to work it is the undercover Carabinieri Art Squad guy talks about artifacts being sold in bulk right out of the ground. And later a sort-of innocent gallery owner expresses her disappointment at what is supposed to be a private collection; "I was surprised by how dirty..."
Unfortunately it is otherwise not quite happening. I mean, I've got her in the National right now, but I can't plant the reader in front of the objects and let them grasp the lessons. I still end up with either my protagonist or some handy bystander having to stand there and say, "the white glaze used in red-figure ware often implied..."
Saturday, August 3, 2019
The Adventure Begins
Finally Act III. Expect it will take two months but hoping to trim that.
I have the ready references copied over into the Scrivener file; map, pictures of the first location, weather for the day. Even a photo reference for a new character who is getting introduced here.
But now to draft. My first sketch for the chapter, I did a thousand words on the Desecration of the Herms. I'm keeping that for various pacing and other structural reasons, but cutting it down to under 800.
What I didn't realize until I hit this is that the previous 50,000 words were about my protagonist saying, "I'm no hero." Now she's accepted the role. So this; the character in the next chapters, is the character I will be writing with. Possibly for several books, if it all works out.
And I don't know how it works on the page. I know the character fairly well by this point. I am not sure how it actually works in a scene-by-scene basis.
And I'm not going to be able to prioritize writing over all else. The dust in my abode has reached critical levels and I will have to stop and spend some time cleaning, paying bills, making medical appointments, working out, and so forth. Sigh.
* * *
I did discover some possible new writer's resources. I'm on the fence about Quora. It is very good for general background and to pull possibly useful "bits" out of as you get a lot of people with local knowledge (and local opinions) speaking up. Hearing from a native born Athenian who is living in Athens about what HE thinks about street food or immigration is just wonderful.
But questions don't really get answered. I dropped one about the legal implications of jumping in a Venetian Canal. Actually, I found the answer through general search; yes, you can be fined even for falling in. The Venetians are really starting to put their foot down, and running, swimming, loud music, camping, even standing in the middle of Piazza San Marco eating a slice is considerably frowned upon and can result in a serious fine.
Anyhow.
There's a new outliner software I am interested in enough to at least watch the video on if not take a trial run. And another piece of software that exists just to game (or at least to explain the game) of KDP algorithms.
Amazon is doing something rather insane these days. It does make money, at least in the short term, so of course they are doing it. But what happens now is books are dropped in a black hole after thirty days. They stop counting analytics. They also stop connecting them in the "people who also read..." links. So not only are they harder to find, the sales numbers no longer count in your total ranking.
This has caused an entire sub-industry of people (often working together in teams under a house name) to factory-produce books once every thirty days. Books that are also similar enough to trigger the various recommendation systems. Authors who aren't for various reasons desirous of pursuing this approach have been experimenting with serialization, re-issue, packaging, etc.
(As a for instance, if you wrote three books, then thirty days following the last one issued a combined volume that bundles them all together, that counts as a new book and kicks your numbers up.)
Not anything that I want to play, but I am tempted to drop the ninety bucks on Rocket and see what it thinks are current and appropriate key words and meta tags.
I have the ready references copied over into the Scrivener file; map, pictures of the first location, weather for the day. Even a photo reference for a new character who is getting introduced here.
But now to draft. My first sketch for the chapter, I did a thousand words on the Desecration of the Herms. I'm keeping that for various pacing and other structural reasons, but cutting it down to under 800.
What I didn't realize until I hit this is that the previous 50,000 words were about my protagonist saying, "I'm no hero." Now she's accepted the role. So this; the character in the next chapters, is the character I will be writing with. Possibly for several books, if it all works out.
And I don't know how it works on the page. I know the character fairly well by this point. I am not sure how it actually works in a scene-by-scene basis.
* * *
And I'm not going to be able to prioritize writing over all else. The dust in my abode has reached critical levels and I will have to stop and spend some time cleaning, paying bills, making medical appointments, working out, and so forth. Sigh.
* * *
I did discover some possible new writer's resources. I'm on the fence about Quora. It is very good for general background and to pull possibly useful "bits" out of as you get a lot of people with local knowledge (and local opinions) speaking up. Hearing from a native born Athenian who is living in Athens about what HE thinks about street food or immigration is just wonderful.
But questions don't really get answered. I dropped one about the legal implications of jumping in a Venetian Canal. Actually, I found the answer through general search; yes, you can be fined even for falling in. The Venetians are really starting to put their foot down, and running, swimming, loud music, camping, even standing in the middle of Piazza San Marco eating a slice is considerably frowned upon and can result in a serious fine.
Anyhow.
There's a new outliner software I am interested in enough to at least watch the video on if not take a trial run. And another piece of software that exists just to game (or at least to explain the game) of KDP algorithms.
Amazon is doing something rather insane these days. It does make money, at least in the short term, so of course they are doing it. But what happens now is books are dropped in a black hole after thirty days. They stop counting analytics. They also stop connecting them in the "people who also read..." links. So not only are they harder to find, the sales numbers no longer count in your total ranking.
This has caused an entire sub-industry of people (often working together in teams under a house name) to factory-produce books once every thirty days. Books that are also similar enough to trigger the various recommendation systems. Authors who aren't for various reasons desirous of pursuing this approach have been experimenting with serialization, re-issue, packaging, etc.
(As a for instance, if you wrote three books, then thirty days following the last one issued a combined volume that bundles them all together, that counts as a new book and kicks your numbers up.)
Not anything that I want to play, but I am tempted to drop the ninety bucks on Rocket and see what it thinks are current and appropriate key words and meta tags.
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