This is almost like work

After a good morning in the study, I have completed a scene. About 4-1/2 pages. Under ordinary circumstances I would pronounce that a good day’s fiction work, have some lunch, and go downstairs to the office, where myriad incomplete tasks await. But I haven’t made my page goal.

Discipline in the area of my own fiction output is something I haven’t expected since–well, since I started Mercury Retrograde, I suspect. Writing has mostly been a guilty pleasure of late. I must reaccustom myself to expectations of productivity. I must have some lunch and come back to the study, and stare at myself until I write another scene.

The good news: I have gotten past the “maybe I’ve entirely forgotten how to write, and now suck horribly” fear that always comes up when I haven’t been writing for a while. I know what I wrote this morning is good. Now I (mostly) only doubt my ability to attain the level of productivity I’ll need to make my date.

Mostly. I still acknowledge the possibility that No One Else Will Love It. But that’s a thing every writer must live with. It is one of the top two reasons so many writers drink so much.

The other, of course, is fear of abject suckage. But coping with that, and writing sentences anyway, is one of the most important things that separates pros from amateurs.

Today, I am a pro. I’ll be back after lunch.

Sign of the times

I’m not sure how to spin this, but I do know it’s weird. And absolutely typical of how we live now.

Last night around 11, Mark, Rachael & I were hanging out watching one of our guilty pleasures on the DVR. The phone rang; it was Daniel, calling from his dorm at the University of Chicago. (Naturally my first thought, which is a sign of my age, is that it must be something Serious and Important because he was calling so late. But those are old attitudes; we’re all routinely up at that hour on weekends, and Dan know this, of course.)

But as it turns out the subject of his call was time-sensitive: he had just changed his relationship status on Facebook, and he didn’t want us to find out from Facebook rather than from him that he was, as it says on FB, In A Relationship.

He is a considerate soul, and that’s one of the many things I love about him. But I cannot escape the sheer bizarreness of living in times when your parents can Facebook Stalk you from 1500 miles away. I mean, isn’t having a little privacy the main reason to go so far away to college?  Distance has become immaterial.

I am very pleased for Dan, and for his girlfriend Sarah who I don’t yet know: there is a reason why college is where geeks go to spawn. That’s where geeks have to go to find people of analogous levels of geekiness. I am proud of their ability to balance having the kind of relationship geeks crave with the demands of the educational path they’ve chosen. And I’m glad to know about it, because the idea of their happiness makes me happy.

But I also appreciate that there is a natural interval between being ready for your friends to know about the relationship and being ready to make the announcement to your parents. And Facebook has just closed that gap.

I don’t know how to spin this. But I do know it’s weird.

Stupid novelist tricks

Well, as a famous sidekick once observed, I’m back.

After really screwing myself on my fall schedule (more on that anon. Yes, I know I said that already.) I am finally back in the study, where finishing my own novel is actually the hottest project in my queue. ‘Cause, yeah, back when I said I’d publish it next May, it seemed a totally attainable deadline. Meanwhile, I have (according to the word count thingy in Power Writer, my writing program) a little more than 88K words written. I know that number’s inflated; it includes a lot of planning and previous-draft material. A better gauge is that I am a bit more than halfway, in terms of distance my characters must travel, to the midpoint of the novel. If this one has four acts (and I think they do, but I also think the first and fourth acts are more in the stage-drama than the screenplay tradition: which is to say they’re meaty) then I am in the second half of act two.

What I know is that, if this book is going to press in May, I’ve got to finish it by early December. It’s going to be interesting.

The good news: this is not a first draft. I know the story. The bad news: the previous drafts are mostly not up to my current standard, and I’m writing every scene from scratch–and, in fact, most of the scenes I’m writing are wholly new.

During the golden period when all I did was work on my fiction-writing skills, I could produce about 7 pages per day. Now, of course, I’m also running a publishing house–and I believe I need to be producing at least 10.

“Nervous” is an understatement. In fact I’m waxing the cat right now.

Off I go, then. Wish me luck.

Taking a moment to appreciate the magic

I had a wonderful conversation with a reader this morning. He had heard about the free eBook giveaway for Ed Morris’s There Was a Crooked Man and wanted to know how to lay hands on a print copy. (Amazon, which can never quite get the dates right, is amazingly late in getting the Trade Paper version of Crooked Man live on their site. Probably trying to make up for the time they listed one 6 weeks before its pub date.) We started by email, but soon he picked up the phone. And that was when I re-encountered the magic of what I do every day.

The reader (his name is Jason) made a point of telling me that he knows Ed Morris; they went to high school together, and he remembers how Ed was always The Creative One. I shared with Jason what an enormous kick I get out of working with Ed, and how quickly his star is rising. We took care of the business for which Jason had called and I went about my business.

A few minutes later, it struck me: what a magical thing it is that those of us in the book business do every day. Everything comes down to the readers in this business, of course; but they are not who we talk to, day in and day out. Our days are full of talking with other authors, with agents and members of the book trade, and press in-genre and out. And all those people spend their days on the business of books, too; it’s easy for all of us to think it’s normal.

But Jason gets it, where most of us don’t remember on a daily basis: this is magic. For people not in the book business, the wonder of books and authors is readily apparent, and all the rest of the stuff we think about every day is beyond imagining: because, of course, it’s not really relevant to the experience of reading, of opening up a book and having realities of which we’d never dreamed come to life in our heads.

Strange how all of us who are in this business came to it because we were in love with the magic. And yet as soon as we begin working in the business every day, we forget it’s magical at all.

It’s not just those of us in the book business who fail to see the magic in the things we do every day, of course. All of us think our daily lives are normal, while at least some element of what we do is like magic to people who see it only from the outside. All the blessings we enjoy every day, all the wonder in which we take part: they are our particular magics.

We can’t exist in a state of constant wonder over our own lives, of course; not and get anything done. But today, I’m glad I’ve been reminded of all the wonder in my daily life.

I make books. Every day. Surely I am one of the luckiest people on the planet.

On how to have a sane writing life

I’m not sure I’m qualified to say how to do it. I’m still working on it. Fortunately, Jeff Vandermeer has weighed in.

If I really knew how to have a sane writing life, I’d be blogging about writing much more. Fortunately, I have nearly come out the other end of Mercury Retrograde’s surprising-even-to-me fall release adventures, and expect to be here, and in the study, much more soon. I have a novel of my own to finish, after all.

But more on that, and on how I screwed myself this year and what I learned from it, anon.

Is the Espresso Book Machine the next Underground Railroad?

Slate Magazine has a pretty nifty rundown of the sudden disappearance of 1984 and Animal Farm (oh, the irony is really too much) from Kindles worldwide–and the implications of the truly wild level of control over readers’ libraries the Kindle gives Amazon. I’ve felt for some time that publishing books that fall outside mainstream sensibilities is a public service in support of free expression; until this morning it never occurred to me that the act of creating physical printed copies might be as important a part of the equation as giving the author a voice in the first place.

Somewhere, Orwell is just nodding…and lighting up another joint.

Second Life: Round Two

This is not the first time I’ve set up Net Identities different from my real self, of course. Back when we geeks were the only ones on the net and all the internet social life was on discussion boards, I had a variety of identities, each of which suited the venue in which I was working or playing at the time. But the Interwebs have grown up since then, and it’s become an extension of real life and real business. Transparency is important. Man, if you work in social media or have even read about it more than twice, how often have you heard that axiom? So it is somewhat of a mental shift for me to return to the idea of creating an online identity that is not Me.

I log back in to Second Life. This time the decision-making is easier: I just make the same avatar and first-name choices I did last time. Then comes the Big Moment: the last-name pull down. Most of the names are unexciting, but there’s one winner:

@barbarfriendish Success! I have scored the last name “Scorpio” on #secondlife! #fb

I lock it in and begin working my way through the rest of the registration. Nothing unusual here: real name, email address, etc. During this process Daniel, who, incipient college student that he is,  rolled in around 9 this morning and has just awakened from a restorative nap, wanders downstairs to see what I’m doing.

He is profoundly disgusted by the whole affair. Really, how can I be this stupid? This is not a replay of his earlier resistance to my joining Facebook, where he feared I’d be “all up in his grill”; he just thinks the whole thing is pointless. I explain that it develops there is more going on in Second Life than interactive porn, stuff that may turn out to be useful in the publishing side of my life; he snorts, unpersuaded, and withdraws.

Leaving me to try to select a Community and Start Location.

If Wynette gave me advice on how to choose these, I don’t remember. I poke around and look at the choices.

Choices that stand out, although none of them feels Inherently Right:

• Dublin in SL (SL meaning Second Life)
• The Faery Crossing
• Steampunk Victorian Caledon
• Second Life London

I would probably find the highest percentage of kindred spirits in Steampunk Victorian Caledon, but I am not a Steampunk Kid. And I do not have a high enough twee tolerance to be happy with most of what I am certain goes on in The Faery Crossing. The series I’m working on in my writing life does have ties to London–but if I get to retire on that side of the Atlantic, it’ll be much closer to Dublin than London. I’m choosing Dublin.

INSERT SWEARING HERE! Imagine it’s very loud! It develops that while I was doing other things (like taking my time to evaluate a starting location), Second Life logged me off. Once I choose Dublin, I’m bumped back to the initial screen. AAAARRRRGH!

I am not excited about any of the last names it offers me this time…

Second Life: My First Foray

I’ve taken care of the emails and assorted other things that must be handled first-ish, and sit down with Second Life. First, the obligatory tweet:

@barbarfriendish Cue the dramatic music…I’m GOIN IN…to #secondlife

Oh crap, there’s a download involved! We’re upgrading my computer this weekend; I’ll probably just have to redo stuff. But I promised to be there tonight…

First, the system informs me, I must choose a starting look–I remember Wynette said this is just how you start, and there’s tons of customization to be done, new avatars to buy, etc. But this may be how I show up tonight. I find one with a funky hat and blue hair that does not offend my sensibilities. If I can’t have blue hair IRL I will definitely have it in SecondLife.

Now I must choose a first name. Usually I go around the net as myself. But I think it may be fun to have an amusing name for my avatar, and on Second Life you don’t get to choose your last name: you must choose from a list the system generates. So I really can’t go around as Myself in this venue.

Actually, this is kinda cool, if you think about it. This is my alternate persona I’m building here. My alternate persona is, of course, much cooler than I. What shall I name her?

And here we stumble over another of the ways in which Second Life allows you to re-think things: the gender issue is worth some thought here, because in Second Life you can use whatever avatar you can download, buy, or create. I frequently feel as if I am a guy in a chick body. I happen to be female, of course, and I have given birth to my own children, but being female is not part of how I define myself, merely one of those facts into which I was born, like having perfect pitch or being nearsighted. As a guy I’d be mostly gay, of course. But I can definitely see, if I get invested enough in SecondLife, having secondary avatars who are male. So an androgynous name might be a good thing…

Have I mentioned that I suck at naming? This is probably the hardest decision I’ll make all week.

Let’s try Paris. It’s androgynous, and I don’t have to commit, from what I understand, so I plug that in and move on to the less flexible part: the system-generated last names. There’s a drop-down, which I open, hoping for something as fabulous as the last name (Frequency) Wynette scored. My selection now includes a number of OK names, none of them fabulous. Though “Xubersnak” cracks me up.

I have a moment of real flirtation with keeping this name. But then I’ll have to choose a first name that goes with it, and that’s going to change the whole tenor of my persona. I will do as I have been advised in the event that I don’t like any of the options I’m offered: quit and come back later today, when the system will generate me a new list. I still have a few hours.

Welcome to My (Second) Life

I’ve never visited Second Life. Until recently it seemed something I could safely ignore. But my friend and former business partner, Wynette Hoffman, author (as W.A. Hoffman) of the Raised by Wolves historical fiction (with gay men and buccaneers, not pirates thank-you-very-much) series, is hosting an event on Second Life today. And damn it, I think what she’s doing may turn out to be important. So now I have two reasons to show up.

As those of you more versed in Second Life than I already know, I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m going to show up looking decent. And it occurs to me that the Second Life virgins may find my adventures today useful. Naturally it is time for a liveblog.

I will be tweeting as I go along, as @barbarfriendish. I have other deliverables today, and an errand or two, so this will not be all in one block the way my #russbooks liveblogs have been. But there will be a blog post in the end…

Wish me luck.

The Jagged Edge of Forever

Isn’t that a great title? That is the name of the newest of Rev. John Cunyus’s highly-respected translations from the original St. Jerome Biblical texts. I have the first-ever copy here on my desk, and it’s blowing me away. Look at this awesome cover:

Full disclosure: John and I went to college together. As so often happened with our generation, we lost touch until the miracle of Facebook reunited us. We are better friends today. I wish all clergy were like him.

Bragging: John dedicated this volume to me. Little ‘ol me. I am quite overwhelmed.

The coolest thing about this series, IMO, is the scholarliness John brings to the work. For those of you who aren’t Bible geeks (and I’m not, but I can learn) the St. Jerome texts are considered the authoritative translations from the original Aramaic Torah/Old Testament (choose the label you like) into Latin. Evidently St. Jerome studied with the rabbis in order to develop sufficient mastery of Aramaic to do the texts justice.

(Aramaic is a hard language. Rachael speaks Hebrew but is more often than not baffled by Aramaic.)

John, a Latin scholar, is doing what may turn out to be the authoritative translations of St. Jerome’s work.

There is, as you may have deduced already, a whole series of these translations, with more on the way. If you are interested in reading texts in English that have been translated as faithfully and with as little bias as the translators could manage, you should check them out.