Browsing All Posts published on »July, 2012«

Should This Chapter Be Called ‘Girding Your Loins’, ‘Possible Death’ or ‘Dead Cheerful’?

July 31, 2012 by

3

Me: I cannot have a chapter entitled ‘You pay in blood’ followed by one called ‘Blood on your hands’. That’s just wrong. Arkem: Blood around my digits. Me: Oddly enough it’s not the word ‘hands’ that causing the problem. Arkem: Viscous red goo that I cannot explain. Me: Yes, thank you. Very helpful.* I am […]

A Few Biscuits Short of a Cookie Jar

July 30, 2012 by

1

Me: I hate my book. It is a travesty made of terrible writing. Arkem: That’s not true. Me: How would you know? You haven’t even read it. Arkem: Well it doesn’t sound like it would be true. Me: That is a terrible basis for an argument. I have apparently developed a brand new habit of […]

The Monster is a ‘Who’

July 27, 2012 by

4

So I’m running a spellcheck in Word, partly because I think it’s funny, partly because it never hurts to have another set of eyes, even if they belong so a literarily questionable piece of computer software. Mostly this leads to me hitting the ‘ignore’ button repeatedly and occasionally muttering, Word, what are you thinking? You […]

Finishing the Book

July 26, 2012 by

4

I know what you’re thinking, Didn’t she finish the book like three weeks ago? This is where the ‘for certain values of’ comes in.* I finished the complete new draft a few weeks ago. Yesterday I finished the rework-the-new-sections-to-make-sure-they-don’t-suck part. Now I’m doing the go-through-the-dear-god-how-many-change-notes-did-I-make? part. You may notice the slight level of panic in […]

Because When You Solve For X, Things EXPLODE

July 25, 2012 by

0

Formulas and variables and integrals and derivatives: to the casual observer it looks like you’re doing math. But you’re not. Because when you solve for x, things EXPLODE. You’re doing ENGINEERING. — David Malki Rick is a mechatronics engineer. I like to explain this as: I program robots. Rick will tell you that this is […]

Writing ‘The End’

July 24, 2012 by

4

Writing the end of a book is painful for lots of reasons — because you’re letting go of the world you built, because you’re massacring your characters (possibly), because reaching the end of a story automatically raises the question, ‘What next?’. I spend an awful lot of my time making my characters and their worlds […]

Do YA Books Cross Borders?

July 23, 2012 by

1

Me: Arkem’s spare room — or what he calls my room — is filled with books. Rick: Very sensible of him. Me: I thought so. He says he knows what the Kandaces like, and this was less creepy than trying to find fake Ricks to populate the room with. He also says that may be the […]

Danger: Outside World Lies Beyond This Door

July 20, 2012 by

4

So today — for certain values of ‘today’. No, you know what, screw this time zone thing. From now on ‘today’ means ‘any period of time since I last slept’ and ‘yesterday’ means ‘anything that happened at any point before that’. This may be an arbitrary measure of time but it should remain functional enough […]

What You Are Doing Can’t Be As Important As This*

July 19, 2012 by

0

Me: I want you to appreciate that I did not call you at your 2am this morning. I almost did. And then I did math. I wasn’t sure about the math but it seemed like I should not do that. Also I probably would have just bibbled plaintively in your ear about being delayed at LAX. […]

Time Means Nothing, Never Will Again

July 18, 2012 by

0

I don’t have an ear infection. I don’t. Which is good as I’m getting on a fourteen hour flight today. But I did have one last week. Which made my doctor give me a disturbing number of tablets under the theory that, given the situation, ‘extreme prejudice’ was the approach to take. (Including saying, You […]

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