I'm not sure whence the true source of horror in this vacation comes--from the sites we're going to see or from the useless jumbled directions we've gotten to "help" find them.
Every system from Google to Mapquest to the National Park Service seems completely unable to describe the non-Euclidean geography of New England, especially with most of it now under repair.
It doesn't help either that the people of Massachusetts view "lanes" as purely mythological, jostling each other on the roads like the Three Stooges shoving together through a door.
I hate traveling. I like arriving places. The best vacations are just exotic places to read.
]]>Indeed, I've deleted lots of archived posts from yesteryear, keeping only the ones in Movable Type. Why? Because who wants to read what I thought in 2002? I certainly don't.
I hope you enjoy the new format and find it easy to use.
(LiveJournalers can see the site at www.will-ludwigsen.com.)
]]>The dealer's room is amazing, though my recent resolution to buy only books I plan to read very soon or plan to keep because they're hard to find has reduced my buying. I found a great Ash Tree Press edition of Russell Kirk's ghost stories, though.
When I haven't been kibitzing upstairs (we're actually staying on the floor below the lobby), I've been working on a Sekrit Projekt that I'll unveil soon.
]]>If you don't hear from me in a week, assume I've made the error of staying a night at Innsmouth's Gilman House.
]]>You know, just in case somebody asks me. Or I need to typeset my own book someday.
I've even been nerdy enough to pick up a three-ring binder of documentation from an old typesetting machine to look at the examples. Judging from that, I like Caledonia, Palatino, and Caslon.
Now, however, I can narrow it even further: I like Caslon Old Face the best, specifically in use in the Playboy book.
You too can use the wonderful tools at Identifont to figure out the names of your favorite fonts and typefaces.
Just in case somebody asks.
]]>That said, there are some mass market books that I keep anyway because they're essentially reference books. One of these for me would be Stephen King's Different Seasons.
I was thinking while looking over the shelves today which of these books I'd take with me to a desert island. I'm assuming that I'd be allowed to go to this desert island with my trademark blue milk crate (the one in which I took all of my possessions to college, packing insanely light).
Here's the list:
And yes, I have editions of these that, all together, would fit in that milk crate.
What are your desert island books?
]]>
Patti, of course, is always my first reader.
The title is A Scout is Brave, and it is a horror coming-of-age story. I've read it several times around the campfire at Willcon and it's been well-received.
There's still plenty of work left to do; this is essentially the earliest draft, and there's a lot of rewriting ahead of me. But it now exists as a physical object in the so-called real world, so all that's left is the refinement!
]]>Not only did you choose to cash a check in the express lane, but you then proceeded to indignantly argue about the one dollar fee to do so with both the clerk and the manager for fifteen minutes of my life.
I'm proud you finally took a stand about an issue as pressing as the ONE DOLLAR fee you've been charged for a courtesy service at a supermarket. I'm sure you've taken as much time and energy fighting over, say, the $531,000,000,000 you're spending on the War on Iraq, or the four-and-a-half clams a gallon you're blowing on gasoline because speculator douchebags have moved on from real estate.
God bless you for taking the limited time and energy you (and, for that matter, I) have on this Earth to fight for something so noble.
May you choke on whatever you eat or drink with the dollar the manager gave you literally out of her pocket.
]]>I reached my goal.
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Of course, I'm still two chapters away from finishing, so it'll probably end up at 85,000 words or so. (Or at least I hope. Please don't become Lord of the Rings, novel.)
I still have five days until my thirty-fifth birthday to finish my zero draft.
]]>The writers of Lost and Battlestar Galactica just make up a bunch of weird shit as they go along and hope to tie it all together in the end. They just throw in a polar bear, trusting themselves to improvise a reason for it later after an all-night, coffee-addled session in the writers' room.
Because I find the false starts, titillating dead ends, and confusion that result to be annoying as a viewer sometimes, I've tried to start with my conclusion and build the clues leading up to it. I've done a lot of list-making, a lot of argument-building. I feel a little like Vincent Bugliosi, except I'm not developing a known case as much as wholly inventing one.
Bugliosi, too, doesn't have to worry much about the dramatic import of his clues, though he probably presents his best ones later in the trial. The real challenge for me has been not to reveal too much too soon or undermine one revelation with a weaker one. Each clue has to build on the next, each has to be more significant and dangerous, and each has to be harder to get.
Because I know the answer at the end, though, the clues aren't much fun to invent. Maybe that's the real reason those writers make it up as they go along: they may or may not pull off something sublimely surprising or resonant, but at least they'll have the fun in the meantime of saying to each other, "Wouldn't it be crazy if Starbuck came back from the dead? Sure. Put it in. We'll figure it out later."
Next time, I'm going to take a more fluid approach. I didn't need to outline as much as I did (I've gone through half a dozen useless ones, some down all the way to the scene level), I didn't need to write character biographies, and I didn't need to START with my deep emotional meaning because it would have been more fun to discover as I went along.
Or maybe it's better to say I don't need those ANYMORE. Maybe they served as training wheels for this first novel.
]]>
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70,043 / 80,000 (87.6%) |
Those are a rough 70,000 words, but there's almost enough flesh there to make a novel. Some of it is necrotic or cancerous or vestigial tissue, but it's there.
I guess there's a critical mass for a novel where you realize that you've got enough so that you haven't wasted your time. If you blow three thousand words to discover a short story isn't worth finishing, that's far less scary than blowing thirty thousand on a novel.
At 70,000, this novel is getting finished, even if it ends up in a drawer for the rest of my life as that inevitable first terrible novel.
]]>Back in the day, you loaded a custom character skin and went at it with crowbars. And you liked it!
Happy birthday, Don!
]]>What's with the crazy weakness for standing water? Every time it floods around here, people show up with inner tubes and diving masks to play.
You live ten miles from the Atlantic Ocean and two from the St. John's River. I might not willing take big gulps from either body of water, but at least the mung in them is diluted.
Enjoy your ringworm!
]]>(Yeah, I'm just now posting the pictures. Shut up.)
I grilled some chicken and corn on the cob, Aimee whipped up some pasta salad, Karen made some brownies, and Publix provided some ice cream for our festivities.
Much Lego-building, park-walking, dog-frolicking, and politics-talking transpired, and everyone survived. We swung Marty over to Obama, too. Or at least Adama.
]]>Yeah, I know: that goes against everything the beach stands for.
Still, ugh.
And don't get me going on my idea to start subscription libraries again.
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