Hex and Cat

Found my Carrara 6 installer. It wouldn't install. OS is too new. But it turns out I had only hidden the Carrara 7 install, not actually deleted it. And it has broken fonts. Yes, they have a version 8.5 for a relatively low upgrade price but according to forums it doesn't change the font problem or fix any of the other bugs that have been with the thing since, oh, version 4.

By broken I mean the menus have no words and when text boxes pop up everything, even the buttons, are empty. So I tried anyway. I remember the program fairly well; that's the only reason I put up with it this long. And immediately hit the poor UI design, where everything is hard to see and the control handles are too tiny to grab and every time you miss a text box pops up to remind you that you missed -- a text box warning that needs to be clicked through but can not be disabled.

So that's not happening. Life is too short to suffer utter crap like that program.

Fusion360 would be lovely, but the "lasts forever" annual $50 was cancelled. Thanks, Autodesk. Now it is over $500 a year. And the thing is now so top-heavy and overloaded even the web site comes close to crashing.

So I guess I am going to buy Cheetah3d. It's been coming along. It has gotten more expensive, and it has a little of that too-eager proselytizing among the users and the same weird habit of not actually having a manual. But I've given it a trial spin....and it still beats Carrara.

Toy boat toy boat

The edited boat scene is coming along. Took a while to get started, longer to figure out my notes and get the timing worked out again.

Was listening to boat sounds on YouTube to get in the mood while re-writing the "waking up in my cabin" scene. There are a lot of those since YouTube got rid of that twenty-minute limit. Ten hours or more continuous background sound for "relaxation, REM, study, sleep." Steam trains through snow storms, libraries with crackling fires, insides of pirate ships, cruise ships, airliners, space ships. And for those with simpler tastes, ten hours of an electric fan.

Then I got the sudden urge to hear the Queen Emeraldas theme again. Which I found. So I'm writing a scene on a boat in a novel largely set in Greece and I'm watching the title song of a show about a space-going pirate ship -- subtitled in Greek.

>>>

Oh, yeah. And I've started taking notes on another novel. Someone at Quora was asking about Space Opera and....

On a Boat

And finally, I'm at the chapter that I knew needed to be re-plotted from scratch. Which I'm working on.

Turns out there was more Italian in the last Venice scenes. I added:

Polizia
Butto salvagente (a phrase I heard while watching videos of ambulances and rescues in the Venice canals).
And a complete "E, Polepetto. Basta, basta!"

This in addition to adding "Mi" to "Mi scusi," and Signori and Signore in the first Italy scene. By the time she hits Padua there is a complete exchange:

“Buongiorno!”
“Salve,”
“Come stai?”
“Sto bene, grazie. E Tu?”

But then, Venice is also the scene where Nessun Dorma is sung, as well as La Donna e' Mobile and Vissi d'Arte is mentioned. Two words are singled out, vincero (how the aria is written) and amore (how it is often sung.) And can't forget the Acqua Alta, Piazza San Marco, calle, rio, campo, piazalle, vaporetto, osteria, fondamente, ponte, and sottoportego.

While I was at it, I went back and took the direct quote of Nessun Dorma out. So no more getting sued by Giuseppe Verdi.

>>>

I'm having trouble finding a place I want to work with on a cover. What I need is for someone who knows format and fonts and is a pair of eyes that has done books before. They might tell me my idea for the cover is stupid, that's great, too.

Especially since I don't actually seem to have 3d software loaded on any of my machines right now, and the more I work with Gimp the more I miss Photoshop (Gimp has the functionality, but it is slower -- Photoshop is a more natural set of actions to get things done smoothly).

Here's the rough idea:

I played around with flames and riot police and Acropolis/Parthenon, and thought about doing a tholos/tomb background, but simpler works for me. Have to do a stacked render to get proper control of the volumetric light cone and the balance of the lighting effects. Done it before though.

>>>

The only other major re-write is the third scene at the National Museum of Archaeology, and that should go much faster. The 6th of next month marks one year since I had the concept I wanted to write. I hope and even have reason to expect to have the larger edits done by then.

Sunk Costs

The little Venice scene I meant to add was going swimmingly. Until I realized this is a perfect opportunity to show off something the average tourist doesn’t get; the inside of a Venetian home. An insight into the lives of the working Venetians.

Which would get into all sorts of interesting discussion about Venice in the modern world, beset with tourists they are unable to do anything about because Rome is beset with debt and won’t throttle the destructive flow. Nothing sums up all of this better than what happens if you try typing “Inside a Venetian home” into a search engine. You get a zillion Air BnB links, because the cost of living has gotten so high and the tourists so rapacious working Venetians are selling or getting their houses sold out from under them to make them available to the tourist trade.

But not only is it a bit much to research, it is also out of the arc. I do want my protagonist to realize there is context she is missing. I want her to get a glimpse behind the paper-mache walls of Euro Disneyland. But her first chance to actually step backstage needs to take place in Athens.

Argumente

I'm up to the half-way point in the fix-ups and I'm burning out on it.

I knew the big Oktoberfest scene would be a problem. Not the revised teufelsrad. A little chat that's a bit of a conversation from Dune, with each of the players having multiple layers behind their words.

Well, it is done. It is stronger than it was, and fits the new flow better. I did end up with a ridiculously fast-acting drug, though. It is a real-time conversation and I made the moment when the drug goes into the beer specific, so...

Now I'm looking at an argument between various Italians that is only fitfully translated. This one will have almost no Italian quoted, though. The only word that will appear in the narrative in native form is "Rom."

And then there's the revised Sheep scene. Actually, I think I can blow it off, even though there is some fun stuff in it. I shifted some stuff out of the Oktoberfest confrontation and now that realization needs to go there.

Would possibly concentrate better if I didn't have to wear headphones through the entire day. My new neighbor will NOT stop making distracting noises (mostly a baseball game. Or whatever sportsball is going on right now). Seriously, I get more work done at the cafe. Noise, interruptions, and all.

Bluebs

And I got mired in the dirndl scene. The editing intention was to turn as much empty narrative into fully-dramatized scenes, and this was a good scene to put in some dialog and interaction. It is also an overview of Oktoberfest traditions -- I'm still meaning to add some of the things she got told off-screen to being told on-screen.

What I didn't realize is if I do this, it turns into a scene about boobs. I mean, a dirndl is really all about the boobs. It is a carefully engineered boob-enhancer. And for writing an immersive female character, getting all voyeuristic about anatomy is pretty much at the bottom of the list of things to do. Sure, it's not going to "breasted boobily down the hall" but, sheesh.

I don't care if she's having fun and the whole interaction could give some nice character interaction. I mean, sure, she's gushed over her jacket, her boots, and have you seen a dirndl bluse? Cuuuute! The way to look at it, though, is you could do the same with a male character pissing into a urinal but that doesn't belong in most stories, either.

In short, it distracts from the main directions of the narrative.

I've got the shredded scene lying around in pieces right now, plus scraps that are supposed to get stitched in somewhere if they fit. It isn't a hard task to make it work. It certainly isn't challenging. It is just a bunch of annoying text drags and revisions to take the material I've got and put it into a new shape that...isn't all about the boobs.

So finally got through that one. Although I still ended up looking at catalogs of push-up bras. Sigh. But I managed to make it through the scene without anything feeling like it was going too far. Now the revised teufelsrad scene, on the other hand...

Durn. This bock is a 7.9% ? No wonder.

Not dead yet

At some point I want to do a post-mortem on the 1-year novel. But I'm still in editing so it is a bit early.

So far the biggest take-home is the methods basically worked but I need to problem-solve things in the Outline I didn't realize I needed to a the I wrote it. I'm not talking about a more detailed outline. The narrative style outline worked fairly well for this particular book. But I only outlined certain bones of the plot and left out other things that simply couldn't be retro-fitted in.

There is no strong antagonist who is present and visible through the story. There is no strong love interest, either. There are, worse than that, no reverses to the protagonist's personal relationships. She doesn't need to chose, betray, get betrayed, be surprised.

Well, mostly. I realized most of this early on and I worked to put as much as I could within the framework I had. So Vash and Herr Satz are at least somewhat interesting and get a bunch of interaction and both have an arc in their interaction with Penny that come to surprising conclusions.

>>>

Editing is going quite well. So far. I did a lot of editing as I went, but that meant, progressively, I hit the early chapters more times than I hit the later chapters. So there are bigger holes in the later chapters. This is the main structural edit, not the grammar or voice pass. This is the one where I make sure the plot and themes and character arcs are as visible and sensible as possible.

So far I've mostly taken stuff out, in fact. Tightening in on the through lines. So anyway I'm at the 30K mark now, doing an easy but time-consuming edit in which I rip apart the dirndl scene to dialogue it out and shift some material from a later scene here instead, where I can dramatize it, too.

The next hole to repair is worse. That's the conclusion of the Vash arc. I've simplified what he's doing, but I haven't figured out what her plan is. That is a problem with the outline that is essentially inescapable; it pretty much had to say "Penny does something clever here."

>>>

Ended up taking a couple of weeks away from the trumpet and that might have been a good thing because I came back with the clearest High C I've ever blown. Nice tone up there, finally. Now I'm working on taking the puff out of my cheeks. With my whiny new neighbor I've given up on practicing at home, even with the practice mute, so I'm bringing my sheet music to work instead.

I think I figured out why the high B and A are so vicious, too. First, you are blowing that high C partial to get up there, then valving down. Which means already you have to push a whole bunch of air, and when you valve it you are having to push it through even more tube and a lot more bends and squiggles. Plus of course the partials are getting far too close together (especially the "false" slot, which is right in the middle of those two notes).

>>>

It is hot as heck and this marks six weeks since I started the levo or about due for a really bad slump. Well, I'm slumping. But I still got a half-day in at work. And editing.