A Writer's Paradise

Peggle, I curse thee

So, here I am at the lake.

(Insert pretty pictures of the lake and cottage.)

Looks idyllic, doesn't it? The idyll does not take into account the two adorable small fry (my niece and nephew) that have pretty much taken over the cottage--and all my brainpower.

In theory, I'm retiring to the silence (relative silence) of the bedroom to write. Only, I've done that maybe twice, and I've managed around a thousand words, mebbe a few more.

Far worse than the adorable distraction, however, is the Peggle (no, no link; I don't hate you all that much) game that I've been playing for hours. And hours. And hours. Two days now. Two days too many. I've pretty much been able to avoid the various Law and Order reruns and the other TV-related distractions (the cottage now has HBO and Cinemax. Uh-oh.), though honestly, since this is vacation, I have scheduled mini-golf and kayaking and napping to work around anyway. It's a delicate balance, vacation is.

So. No more Peggle. Finish the rewrite of "The Girl-Prince." Write a coherent draft of my as-yet-unnamed story.

(Sidebar--possible titles:

Twelve Fallen Leaves
Springtide on Neptune
The Darker Veil
Call Me Iphigenia
The Ships of Triton Wait

None of them quite work yet. We'll see what feels right at the end of Draft 1.)

And in the meantime, plenty of kayaking, cuddling my niece, and mini-golf with my nephew. And some croquet with my stepdaughter, and swimming with my husband... and tomorrow I'll go take mental notes at the Point's July 4th Ladies' Auxiliary Party with Bloody Mary in hand. (I'm writing a science fictional Gothic romance story, (and so should you) after all; a Ladies' Auxiliary complete with Bloody Marys seems like more than adequate preparation.)

I'll return when I have some progress to report...

Contracts and Gardens

I got the contract from Asimov's today. Er. Friday, actually. At that point, we learned that Asimov's publisher also puts out the word games magazine my husband is so fond of, because he though the envelope had something to do with that.

I spent the rest of the day on house tasks:

• picking out paint for the dining room
  
• weeding the herb garden
  
• taking down a wasp nest that had inconveniently grown up inside the bird feeder (yes, I felt bad on two fronts: that it had been so long since we fed the birds, and also, killing a whole family of anything, even wasps, feels evil)
  
• watching home improvement shows on HGTV
  
• feeding the guinea pigs while Mr. Haskell cleaned the cage

What I learned:

• my husband prefers darker greens over lighter greens, even on dining room walls
  
• I'm no fonder of weeding than I ever was
  
• I might be more interested in Jainism than I previously expected, but I am also no more interested in getting stung than I was before. A dilemma. (The bird feeder is in a highly trafficked area of the yard.)
  
• We definitely have more house than we need, at the moment. What we have lets us get away with clutter in a big way.
  
• Two guinea pigs are better than one. Never ever keep social animals in isolation. Duh.

5,000 Hits

I'm looking for a market for a short story (as one does), and it occurs to me that I haven't tried this particular story at Writers of the Future.

And it also occurs to me--I might have breezed past the eligibility requirements for WotF without realizing it. Rule four clearly states:

The Contest is open only to those who have not had professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits.

Hm... 5,000 hits, huh?

Okay, I've got Strange Horizons and Asimov's under my belt now. No real questions there. But I have to wonder about Escape Pod, which has thousands of subscribers. I'm guessing that notion of copies/hits don't fall under the podcasting model? And also podcasting != publication?

It struck me just enough to cause a moment of concern, nonetheless. I suspect it won't be terribly long before podcasts claw their way out of the hole of disregard where webzines used to dwell. Until then, I'm okay with it--because for right now, it works to my advantage.

It has lately come to my attention that certain folks look down on WotF. Certain hidebound, exclusionary types, as far as I can tell. As I believe that the contest has nothing to do with Scientology other than L. Ron Hubbard had something to do with both, I have no problem with WotF. Winning the contest would be an awesome nose-thumbing opportunity. I'm actually kinda glad I have time left to submit there.

Rewriting: The Picture Book Method

Maureen at work (harpist, possessor of long red-blonde hair that belongs in a Celtic tale, and otherwise cool chick) pointed out a site that lets you play with images from the Bayeux tapestry* and make a story.

Since I'd been rewriting "The Girl-Prince" and sort of failing at the beginning, I thought, "Hey, let's see what happens in Picture Book Mode." Beginnings are my particular demon. They get considerably less demonic in Picture Book Mode, I am happy to report.

Now, I share with you. It's not precisely the wording I'll use, but it's close.

Beyond helping me turn a page-long beginning into a paragraph, I now have a lovely teaser for "The Girl-Prince." Not that one needs teasers for short stories, but I have one, and it's cool.

I hope it's clear in the last picture that the thing that's not a woman is a rocket. I used the image of a cooker and a castle and stacked them. I was sufficiently convinced that it could stand in for a spaceship. I hope you are, too.

*The emailing/saving function didn't work quite as planned, but I have ways beyond their kenning to save my work. Mainly--print-screen and judicious application of Photoshop.

Writing Software Q (and at least one A) [PC Users]

Does anyone have any experience with Liquid Story Binder?

It looks like it has a lot in common with my current software, yWriter.

yWriter has the advantage of being free. It definitely works better for me than an endless stack of MS Word files, either unlinked or linked through the Outline mode. There is the EXTREMELY awesome word-count feature (where the thing tells you how many times you used each word; once you scroll past "The" and "I" and "said," it's fantastic and useful).

Disadvantages: text-based files means that there's no spellcheck, no proper way to underline, no changing your font to Courier. I worry about printing out the final product--I'm almost certainly going to have to move the whole thing into Word to get the proper formatting, and I'm going to have to hunt down every instance of *asterisks* to convert to underlined (in order to indicate italics, of course) when I print it out.

Also, the story outliner is in a very tiny box. I would say "uselessly tiny."

It seems to have fewer bells and whistles than Binder, but I'm not sure if I need them or if they'd just end up distracting me. Would be nice to be able to put photo-references and what not right in the file, of course. But not necessary. I suppose, if it could contain all my research too, it would be a true wonder.

Trying it is free for 30 days. The only catch with that is that I'm not going to finish a novel in 30 days, and am I going to be happy about offloading my work in 30 days if it's not worth (to me) the $45?

Waving, Smiling, Sinking

I wrote a paragraph last night.

My goal? Two tonight.