I'm finding it more and more difficult to tolerate many of my fellow homo sapiens.
Mostly because of all the dripping, vile hatred I'm seeing towards people who have a different skin color, sexual orientation, religious belief, or whatever.
I'm not talking about random people who show up in my newsfeed on Facebook. I'm talking about people who, in many cases, I've known all my life.
Apparently, if you lose your job and have to go on unemployment and get government assistance to feed your family, or if you're a victim of a vicious, violent crime, or if you've become addicted to drugs, you have forfeited your humanity and don't deserve sympathy, empathy, or any assistance whatsoever.
Christians, each and every one. One or two of them are even pastors.
I wouldn't be a Christian in any case, even if so many of them weren't spewers of the most sickening hateful vitriol imaginable. But I'd be a lot more patient with them if they weren't the source of so many terrible things going on in the world today.
Sorry. I'm just terribly disappointed in someone who is actually a pastor at a church and an old friend who has pretty much revealed himself to be one of those people, too. Though he's not quite as loud about it as many others. I also haven't confronted him about it--there would be no point.
I'm going to spend this weekend working on the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. Now that I've worked my way around this little roadblock I'm making pretty good progress.
I'm about half-way to my minimum word-count of 75,000 words. Of course, since it's a first draft, that may not count for much, but it's a pretty ballpark idea as to how long this thing's going to be. I'm thinking right now it'll wind up around 100,000 words, altogether. Maybe too long for a YA, actually, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. I may wind up splitting it up into two books before I'm done, but, again, I'll worry about that when I finish the first draft.
I'll be working on another painting, too. For the sake of my sanity.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
This week in randomocity
H. R. Giger died this week.
In case you didn't know (and I can't believe you'd be reading this if you didn't) he was the artist who inspired the creature and several of the sets for my favorite all-time movie, Alien. That was my first exposure to his work, and I became curious to see more.
What I've found over the years has almost always blown my mind. Disturbing but beautiful work, haunting and powerful. It's the sort of stuff that bypasses your conscious mind, and takes root directly into the subconscious. I've used his work to inspire the tone for a lot of my writing--look for my novella, "Warden," which I published here a while back.
He was a genius, a towering talent, and he will be deeply missed.
I'm taking a couple of days off from work to try to make some more headway on the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. It's slow going. I'm still in love with the story, and the characters, but for some reason it's really difficult to get the words on the page.
Therefore, for writing inspiration, I turned to Ramsey Campbell, specifically his novel, Creatures of the Pool. Campbell is a great example of how you freakin' write a novel. He sets the scene and advances the plot better than damned near anyone else. Sometimes he's a little bit too economical and I have to put the book aside just because what I had just read was so dense with detail, subtext, and plot advancement. I urge you to check him out, if you haven't already. Any of his work, not just this particular book. This is how it's done. There are tons of writers--many of them bestselling authors--who would benefit a great deal from reading Campbell's stuff.
It does my heart good, that there are still a few writers out there who actually write novels instead of outlines and first drafts that somehow get published and purchased by people who don't seem to know better.
So, that's my next few days. Writing, maybe doing a little painting or sketching or something, and laundry.
As good as it gets!
In case you didn't know (and I can't believe you'd be reading this if you didn't) he was the artist who inspired the creature and several of the sets for my favorite all-time movie, Alien. That was my first exposure to his work, and I became curious to see more.
What I've found over the years has almost always blown my mind. Disturbing but beautiful work, haunting and powerful. It's the sort of stuff that bypasses your conscious mind, and takes root directly into the subconscious. I've used his work to inspire the tone for a lot of my writing--look for my novella, "Warden," which I published here a while back.
He was a genius, a towering talent, and he will be deeply missed.
I'm taking a couple of days off from work to try to make some more headway on the first draft of The Sorcerer's Daughter. It's slow going. I'm still in love with the story, and the characters, but for some reason it's really difficult to get the words on the page.
Therefore, for writing inspiration, I turned to Ramsey Campbell, specifically his novel, Creatures of the Pool. Campbell is a great example of how you freakin' write a novel. He sets the scene and advances the plot better than damned near anyone else. Sometimes he's a little bit too economical and I have to put the book aside just because what I had just read was so dense with detail, subtext, and plot advancement. I urge you to check him out, if you haven't already. Any of his work, not just this particular book. This is how it's done. There are tons of writers--many of them bestselling authors--who would benefit a great deal from reading Campbell's stuff.
It does my heart good, that there are still a few writers out there who actually write novels instead of outlines and first drafts that somehow get published and purchased by people who don't seem to know better.
So, that's my next few days. Writing, maybe doing a little painting or sketching or something, and laundry.
As good as it gets!
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Skeleton writing
I came across this in a novel I'm reading:
He looked up and saw a group of people dragging a machine.
And my teeth started grinding. Why? Because that was all the author gave to describe the scene.
Part of the job of the writer is to decide how far to go in descriptions. The less the writer describes, the more work the reader's imagination has to do to fill in the details. Some writers go way too far, describing every detail, whether it's relevant or not. Too many, though, do what the author above does, and don't describe anything at all.
And it really bugs me, because the details the author left out are important and leave the reader kind of struggling a few paragraphs later. For one thing, this 'machine' this group of people are dragging--machine is an ambiguous term. There are all kinds of machines. We can assume it's a fairly large machine, since it has to be dragged, but the mental image I arrived at conflicted pretty dramatically with what the machine later turned out to be.
This was jarring and completely took me out of the story. This is a Bad Thing. This is not something an author will want to happen.
It's made worse because the viewpoint character knew what the machine was when he saw it, as becomes apparent a few paragraphs later. That sort of pisses me off, too--it's a fake way to build suspense, and it actually would not have made any difference if the reader discovered what the machine is when it's first introduced. So, I'm also feeling a bit manipulated, too.
Now, how about this--I'm just making this one up:
John met the private investigator in the PI's office. The PI was a tall man, a bit younger than John thought he'd be. There were piles of papers on his desk, along with overflowing ash trays. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and spilled Scotch.
Maybe the details you subconsciously glean from the above paragraph will mean something later, maybe not. And you'll notice other than the PI being described as tall and young, I didn't go any further in describing him. So, I'm meeting you halfway--you know he's tall and young, and you can plug in his eye and hair color--even his race--and everything else. I also implied he's a slob, a smoker, and maybe an alcoholic, and that may or may not be relevant to anything. Now, isn't that better than:
John met the private investigator in his office.
It's a major gripe of mine because I'm seeing this in a lot of novels these days--many of these read like first drafts, not like a finished manuscript. It's becoming more and more acceptable. Drives me nuts. It's lazy writing. It's the author not doing his or her job. More importantly, it's an editor not doing his or her job, catching this, and making the author fix it. If I were an editor I'd be pissed if I ran across this.
Unfortunately, I seem to be the exception. Dammit.
He looked up and saw a group of people dragging a machine.
And my teeth started grinding. Why? Because that was all the author gave to describe the scene.
Part of the job of the writer is to decide how far to go in descriptions. The less the writer describes, the more work the reader's imagination has to do to fill in the details. Some writers go way too far, describing every detail, whether it's relevant or not. Too many, though, do what the author above does, and don't describe anything at all.
And it really bugs me, because the details the author left out are important and leave the reader kind of struggling a few paragraphs later. For one thing, this 'machine' this group of people are dragging--machine is an ambiguous term. There are all kinds of machines. We can assume it's a fairly large machine, since it has to be dragged, but the mental image I arrived at conflicted pretty dramatically with what the machine later turned out to be.
This was jarring and completely took me out of the story. This is a Bad Thing. This is not something an author will want to happen.
It's made worse because the viewpoint character knew what the machine was when he saw it, as becomes apparent a few paragraphs later. That sort of pisses me off, too--it's a fake way to build suspense, and it actually would not have made any difference if the reader discovered what the machine is when it's first introduced. So, I'm also feeling a bit manipulated, too.
Now, how about this--I'm just making this one up:
John met the private investigator in the PI's office. The PI was a tall man, a bit younger than John thought he'd be. There were piles of papers on his desk, along with overflowing ash trays. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and spilled Scotch.
Maybe the details you subconsciously glean from the above paragraph will mean something later, maybe not. And you'll notice other than the PI being described as tall and young, I didn't go any further in describing him. So, I'm meeting you halfway--you know he's tall and young, and you can plug in his eye and hair color--even his race--and everything else. I also implied he's a slob, a smoker, and maybe an alcoholic, and that may or may not be relevant to anything. Now, isn't that better than:
John met the private investigator in his office.
It's a major gripe of mine because I'm seeing this in a lot of novels these days--many of these read like first drafts, not like a finished manuscript. It's becoming more and more acceptable. Drives me nuts. It's lazy writing. It's the author not doing his or her job. More importantly, it's an editor not doing his or her job, catching this, and making the author fix it. If I were an editor I'd be pissed if I ran across this.
Unfortunately, I seem to be the exception. Dammit.
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