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May 21st, 2012
 | 02:16 pm - drive-by posting
I am so backed up on at least two major posts I want to make--this is why I'll never be a blogger with a big following--so here's at least a "keep myself honest" writing-update.
Finished going through the complete ms, entered most of the correx and new scenes into the computer yesterday. Have just one last bit to do, hopefully tonight. And then I'll send it to the beta readers give it another go-through one more time because I'm sure there are still a few lingering continuity issues.
How do other people do this? I stumble over something in chapter 20 and think, "Oh, wait, didn't I say something about this earlier? What did I say?" I can never find the earlier reference if I go looking, because it was just half a sentence long and I can't remember the context. The only way for me to iron out that stuff is to go back to the beginning and read the whole thing all over again, and hope that I notice it when I hit the first reference and say, "Oh, this thing. What did I say about it later? I don't remember" and then I put a sticky flag on the page so when I hit it again later, I can find it this time.
The problem is how often the second reference to it seems to have disappeared and I get all the way to the end again and wonder if I just missed it or if I was thinking of something else entirely and am just confused.
I reiterate my common complaint: Why can't I just write simple books? Why do I want to have a zillion moving parts and insist they fit together like the engine of a German sports car?
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May 14th, 2012
| 10:49 am - Random this-n-that
This morning's First World Problem Stupidity: I left my apartment and locked both locks, even though my cleaning people only have the key to one of them. I was all set to run back home (killing 1.5 hours of my day) when I realized that hey, we have a management office at the complex. I called, they opened the other lock, and all should be well.
Continuing FWP: my cat gained 1.5 lbs in the past year. That's a lot for a cat, nearly 12% of his body weight (like an average human gaining 15-20 lbs). Fat boy must now go on a diet and get more playtime. The playtime is on me. I think it will take the form of playing "chase" around the house.
Mother's Day dinner on Saturday. We do that because the restaurants in NYC mostly limit their menus on actual Mother's Day Sunday, or they're jammed up so packed it's annoying. We went to Del Posto this year. I am stunningly grateful that my sister, who earns at least double what I do, is hip to this and doesn't ask me to pick up more of the bill than I can handle. (Also, I think she knows how much it costs these days, between gas and tolls, for me to go back and forth to NYC and for me to drive into Manhattan from Mom's house. Driving is required for my elderly mother.)
Writing update: Didn't get much done this weekend as it was Mother's Day and I was doing the long drive back and forth. I am seeing that I'll need to do a THIRD pass through before I can give it to my beta readers. Le Sigh. That is how I write. A new layer goes on each time.
I'm stuck on timelining again. I have two major events that are interspersed with two ongoing situations that look a lot alike. Basically, assassinations, but for different reasons at different times...yet they could in theory work as being for both reasons at once. Argh, it makes my head spin. There's no way to dig it out without going through again so I can keep all the moving parts in my head at once.
There are times when I would like to write simple stories with straightforward plots and small casts of characters, set in contemporary America. Hell, even complex plots with large casts of characters, as long as it's set in contemporary America. WORLDBUILDING IS HARD, Y'ALL.
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May 7th, 2012
| 10:01 pm - Movie Review: Safe
I am disappointed that Safe was released into the early part of the mega-action-movie vortex and is therefore going to get sucked under and swiftly drowned, because FINALLY Jason Statham was in a good movie again.
Yes, his character is almost exactly like his character in The Transporter. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
This movie should have been released in early March, when it would have stood out more, and fewer people would have been drawn in by the Shiny of CGI-laden comic book movies and been more willing to see a straight-up action flick that actually surprises by having some fairly complex plot put forth coherently.
Characterization is solid and either "flat" or "subtle" depending on your particular taste. The story isn't entirely new, but it is a significantly more complex version of every plotline one finds in such films: we have the ex-military man as reluctant hero (but see below); competing ruthless gangs; an innocent 11-year-old girl in danger; corrupt cops; lots of personal vendettas amongst everyone from the lowest street thug to the mayor of New York. (Who is clearly not supposed to be Bloomberg, since he actually lives in Gracie Mansion.)
There are at least three different cliche plots going on at once, but they fit together with the precision of a Swiss watch, which is, right there, miles better than most movies of this genre. The main plot is just different enough to keep it interesting, though.
The "reluctant hero" is a common plot, often with the "competent guy saves the day because he happens to be there" overlay. What Safe does differently is that the hero isn't reluctant so much as utterly destroyed--his life has been ruined in a manner well beyond "we killed your family"; the Russian mafia kills anyone he speaks to for more than the space of ordering a meal, which leaves Luke (Statham) homeless, jobless, and friendless. (That the Russian mob is keeping ongoing tabs on him so closely is more than a little farfetched; however, it's only been a year. One can no-prize their doggedness as something they don't expect to keep doing for horribly long, and this is borne out by the fact that Luke was about to kill himself right before he fell into the larger plot.)
His reasons for deciding to interfere in a situation and get himself into the story are logical, and the effect on him (dragged up from the lowest point in his life) is a noted part of the character arc.
There are three really great things that elevate this above a standard, forgettable action movie:
1. Although the plot is nothing new, at every point where another movie would do [standard trope], Safe does something different. It's not always spectacularly creative, but it subverts the paradigm enough to jazz the brain and hold your interest. Even the pen-used-as-weapon trope has enough of a twist to make it acceptable and interesting.
2. Related to #1, characters consistently do the smart thing instead of the standard thing. The mob bosses, the cops, the mayor, Luke, and Mei (the girl) are all smart people, and do things that make perfect sense given their characters. This is particularly important at the very end of the movie, where FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, an action movie has a particular cliche set-up finish and then DOESN'T GO THERE in the best way possible. It was awesome. Characters were smart, instead of stupid for the sake of plot-convenience or drama.
3. Some actual art in the unfolding of the story. One of the biggest problems of this sort of action movie is that often you can see a tug-of-war between the writer(s) and director(s) and a movie is a big hash. Maybe at some point something was coherent, but by the time it gets to the theaters you're left with the feeling that important parts of story are on the cutting room floor, and the original script didn't tell this particular story. Safe doesn't have this problem, probably because the director is also the writer. He gets to establish all the players and their backstory in interesting ways at the beginning before having the multiple vectors crash into the main action story. The effect for the viewer is "Okay, you know who everyone is and how they're connected. Ready? Here we go!" He frames that opening section by having the same scene from the POV of both Mei and Luke, which keeps the viewer grounded and anticipatory.
It won't be in the theaters long, so if you like action movies and don't want to do battle with the crowds going to box-office darlings, get going.
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May 3rd, 2012
| 01:52 pm - NYC sublet for publishing person?
One of the work-study students in my office has gotten an internship with a Big Six company this summer. Can anyone help her out with getting a sublet or share with sane people for the summer?
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April 30th, 2012
| 09:25 am - writing update
Spent 12 hours on Saturday inputting all the stuff I had written the previous weekend, and then working my way through the smaller edits on the following 20K words. Then ran slam into the beginning of the last part of the book, which was marked by a note that said, "Whole mess o' rewriting needed here."
What that actually means is "whole mess o' new scenes." I'll see what I can do this week, but I suspect next Saturday will be another marathon session.
Still love the book, though.
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April 24th, 2012
 | 12:51 pm - Yesterday I wrote
Firstly, I'm sad I missed PSTPW Day yesterday because I was mostly off the internets. Here's the icon, one day late. Yes, it is a reference to Grosse Pointe Blank.
Anyhow, I was off the internets yesterday because I took the day off from work to write. I recently managed to hunt down my muse and staple him to the desk by his toga (it's a male muse for this book; more anon). I don't often manage to capture my muse, so since I'd managed to nab him, I figured I'd keep him trapped and drip hot wax on him as long as possible.
I wrote about 1500 words yesterday, which for me is the high end of a daily turnout (yes, even when I take the day off just to write), so clearly it was a good plan.
I got through the hole in the zeroth draft and successfully backfilled what needed to be backfilled. Next up is more of stuff that's already been drafted, so I released my muse. I suspect he's going to hang about for a bit anyway--he's apparently a masochist--but I'm giving him the day off today so he can recover. (Translation: I have my jewelry class tonight, so I don't expect to do much, if any, writing.)
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It's a male muse for this book because HOLY CRAP IS THIS A SAUSAGE FEST. I have a feeling that Nuns isn't getting written because the boys in my head want to get out first. But yeah, it's turning into a big exploration of all forms of bromance amongst guys who are fundamentally unequal in social status, and recognize (or not) this disparity to various degrees.
Shit, this one is hard. I still love this book, but oh holy damn I don't even know if the beta-reader-ready draft will be close to what I want it to be.
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April 19th, 2012
| 06:01 pm - Happy birthday!
Oh, hey, today is ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) melinda_goodin's birthday! Except it's probably tomorrow already where she lives. I think I did this last year, too, with the wishing of birthday happys while it was still legit in my time zone but not hers.
And rather than forget, I'll give sksperry my annual one-day-early Happy Birthday!
It's convenient to have friends with birthdays near each other. :-)
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| 05:35 pm - State of the Book
I have reached the point where it cannot be denied: I need to write a big chunk of retrofill. I hope I can keep it under 7K words, but realistically I know it will be double that.
I hate composing new stuff. I have to keep telling myself this is not composing new stuff. It's part of the revision process, and I knew damn when when I wrote the zeroth draft that there was a big hole right here. And my reward for filling that hole will be to get on with the fun business of going over the rest of the book AGAIN.
I still love my book. I just wish it were toilet-trained already.
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| 03:28 pm - Oh, hey, that would be me!
Apparently today is "Ask an Atheist Day."
If there's anything you've ever wanted to ask an atheist, please go ahead. If your question is serious, I'll answer it seriously.
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April 16th, 2012
| 03:41 pm - on faces
I was reading an article about how people are now getting chin implants (men and women). This is the sort of article I ought not to read, because it makes me vain. Along with my tiny nose and no-tweeze eyebrows, I also have a chin that could most charitably be described as "pugnacious." This now makes three major features of mine that other people pay money for. Apparently the rest of the world would like to look Irish, because really, I look very much like other people of my gene pool--certainly the rest of my family appears to have been stamped out by cookie-cutter.
The notion of facial surgery--and I should specify that I'm talking about voluntary stuff here, not reconstructive--came up yesterday. My friend S and I were talking about how different movie stars look their age (or not). We're kind of feeling like all the ones who are our age look older than we do, so the concern was, Do we look older than we think we do?
Both of us decided there are two factors we can't tell the effect of, but which are factors that don't apply to our faces. First, movie stars have all kinds of stressors on their faces, from a lifetime of heavy makeup and chemicals, to the requirement of staying so thin it borders on haggard. Whatever else one can say about weight, it does a good job of keeping the face smooth for a few extra years.
Second is the effect of bad plastic surgery. When a forty-year-old gets a face lift, but it looks as if she got a face lift, this automatically ages her (or him, increasingly). We still associate the "lifted" look with sixty-year-olds, even though the age of facial surgery has been trending downward.
Or it could just be that I'm getting older and can't really tell. I look in the mirror and to me it's still the same face that's in my high school yearbook.
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