This is one of the niftiest pieces about the writer's life I've encountered in a long time. Thanks to Lightning for posting the link!
More than half of all writing advice you receive over your lifetime will be incorrect, incomplete, or howlingly wrong. You will encounter advice driven by neuroses, bitterness, failure, ego, and arrogance. In books and in writing workshops, you will have instructors who mistake their own path to success as the only path to success ...
And that's just the first three sentences!!!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
Betsy's itching to fly
As for the Betsy Ross itself, remember those silly-looking rocket ships that Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers would use to cruise around in the old movie serials? Who would have thought that those low-budget specials would perfectly approximate the shape you need to slice efficiently through the milky atmosphere of lightspeed-plus? Fortunately for everyone’s nerves, however, they don’t resemble the movie versions to the point where they buzz like a mosquito on steroids or emit sparks and smoke out the exhaust pipe. They just rush through space at twice the speed of imagination, looking pretty peculiar but quietly doing the job.- "The Imaginary Bomb," Chapter 4
The Associated Press has a news story this morning called "Americans have personal bonds with cars." Well, duh. It's kind of amazing what passes for news in this world of bread and circuses.
Almost four in 10 of those polled said their car has a personality of its own. Two in 10 have a nickname for their car. Most often it is a female nickname; popular choices include variations on Betsy, Nelly, Blue and Baby.
When people talk about their strong feelings for their cars and trucks, they mention dependability, time spent maintaining them and the freedom that comes from cruising on the open road.
Vehicles seem to play a special role in our mythology, too. Serenity was the 10th character in the nine-person adventures of Firefly. Enterprise is central to Star Trek. Han Solo's soul is poured into the Millennium Falcon. It's hard to picture those characters without their choices of transportation.
And so the Betsy Ross becomes part of my universe of imaginary physics. When the idea flashed in my mind that the ship would resemble Flash Gordon's, it became more endearing to me and, I hope, to the reader.
Joss Whedon, who invented Malcolm Reynolds, wasn't the only one who wanted to visit the life Solo and his sidekick, Chewbacca, would live if they'd never blundered into royal entanglements. I'm not even sure I did this consciously, but there certainly are elements of the surly, impulsive and often charming Mr. Solo in the character of Bob Whelan, and Pete Wong's role often seems to be mainly that of the competent partner who barks out an objection to Whelan's impetuous decisions. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would pick up a mysterious passenger who is far more than he seems. Baxter Hetznecker as Obi-Wan Kenobi? A bit of a stretch, but not entirely unfeasible.
A very long time ago, having shepherded Bob, Pete and Baxter through the trials and tribulations of The Imaginary Bomb, I took them halfway through a second adventure and impolitely abandoned them on PC-3, where they were helping their bartender friend Snooky in her effort to preserve the tavern that she'd built out there on the final frontier. The good news - for Pete - is I lost the trail of the story right after he and Snooky became serious snuggle bunnies one night. The bad news - for Bob - is I left his own love life hanging, although I pointed the way for him. As for Baxter's love life, well, someone has to keep his eye on the task at hand, which is determining who the bad guys are and how to dispatch them.
But the trail has been cold for a very long time, and picking up where I left off has been a daunting task. Mostly I've touched up what I've already done, adding scenes here and there and reworking the scenes that already existed. Since going back to the drawing board last September, I haven't taken a serious step beyond the last words I wrote about Pete and Snooky back around 1990:
“Time for the walls of Jericho to go for a tumble,” she purred when they came up for air. When his hands drifted down toward her hips — the thinnest hips in the galaxy, according to Bob Whelan, you may recall — she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his hips, knowing his hands would be in the right place to support her. What happened next is really and truly none of our business.
As I said before, it's truly a lovely place to leave the two of them, but her bar is still in jeopardy, and bad guys are still afoot. In fact, as I pondered where to take the story from here, I discovered the situation is far more serious than a mere developer trying to bully a tavern owner out of business. I've spent the last four months wondering when my old imaginary friends would get around to doing something about it.
It's time. I'll start telling you about it in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, if all of this is gibberish to you, you might want to check what has come before - here.
The Associated Press has a news story this morning called "Americans have personal bonds with cars." Well, duh. It's kind of amazing what passes for news in this world of bread and circuses.
Almost four in 10 of those polled said their car has a personality of its own. Two in 10 have a nickname for their car. Most often it is a female nickname; popular choices include variations on Betsy, Nelly, Blue and Baby.
When people talk about their strong feelings for their cars and trucks, they mention dependability, time spent maintaining them and the freedom that comes from cruising on the open road.
Vehicles seem to play a special role in our mythology, too. Serenity was the 10th character in the nine-person adventures of Firefly. Enterprise is central to Star Trek. Han Solo's soul is poured into the Millennium Falcon. It's hard to picture those characters without their choices of transportation.
And so the Betsy Ross becomes part of my universe of imaginary physics. When the idea flashed in my mind that the ship would resemble Flash Gordon's, it became more endearing to me and, I hope, to the reader.Joss Whedon, who invented Malcolm Reynolds, wasn't the only one who wanted to visit the life Solo and his sidekick, Chewbacca, would live if they'd never blundered into royal entanglements. I'm not even sure I did this consciously, but there certainly are elements of the surly, impulsive and often charming Mr. Solo in the character of Bob Whelan, and Pete Wong's role often seems to be mainly that of the competent partner who barks out an objection to Whelan's impetuous decisions. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would pick up a mysterious passenger who is far more than he seems. Baxter Hetznecker as Obi-Wan Kenobi? A bit of a stretch, but not entirely unfeasible.
A very long time ago, having shepherded Bob, Pete and Baxter through the trials and tribulations of The Imaginary Bomb, I took them halfway through a second adventure and impolitely abandoned them on PC-3, where they were helping their bartender friend Snooky in her effort to preserve the tavern that she'd built out there on the final frontier. The good news - for Pete - is I lost the trail of the story right after he and Snooky became serious snuggle bunnies one night. The bad news - for Bob - is I left his own love life hanging, although I pointed the way for him. As for Baxter's love life, well, someone has to keep his eye on the task at hand, which is determining who the bad guys are and how to dispatch them.
But the trail has been cold for a very long time, and picking up where I left off has been a daunting task. Mostly I've touched up what I've already done, adding scenes here and there and reworking the scenes that already existed. Since going back to the drawing board last September, I haven't taken a serious step beyond the last words I wrote about Pete and Snooky back around 1990:
“Time for the walls of Jericho to go for a tumble,” she purred when they came up for air. When his hands drifted down toward her hips — the thinnest hips in the galaxy, according to Bob Whelan, you may recall — she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his hips, knowing his hands would be in the right place to support her. What happened next is really and truly none of our business.
As I said before, it's truly a lovely place to leave the two of them, but her bar is still in jeopardy, and bad guys are still afoot. In fact, as I pondered where to take the story from here, I discovered the situation is far more serious than a mere developer trying to bully a tavern owner out of business. I've spent the last four months wondering when my old imaginary friends would get around to doing something about it.
It's time. I'll start telling you about it in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, if all of this is gibberish to you, you might want to check what has come before - here.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Hmmph.
So. I generated a new site mere hours after whining about my inability to get going on the sequel to The Imaginary Bomb.What do ya suppose this means?
Hee hee.
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