bktheirregular | Entries tagged with writing

45 years ago today, two men left boot marks on the surface of the moon.

Back in 2001, I wrote something on the topic - the first fanfic I ever put up for public consumption. For the occasion, I'm reposting it to AO3:

Moonwalk

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Athens, Attica
Crossposts: http://bktheirregular.livejournal.com/588220.html

Working on a cold open for a story, and I'm debating whether to start it out as follows:

"It was supposed to be a dark and stormy night."

Still working on the next few paragraphs, which might explain why that statement is plot-significant, rather than merely atmospheric.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Athens, Attica

Hey, gang.

I didn't get around to signing up for NaNoWriMo this year - again. But I think I might have a go at it anyway. Gonna see what I can make of Blue Screen of Revolution. Anyone else ever try that ... unofficially?

(I'm also holding it back because this might be a story I maybe might want to submit for publication someday. And maybe I should finally establish my real-identity writing journal for that purpose?)

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Athens, Attica

I'm finding that as I do snippet work - building the skeleton of the story I'm trying to write - I'm starting to write another story at the same time. Taking place probably two hundred, two hundred fifty years earlier. In the same 'verse.

Do you call them prequel and sequel if they're written at the same time?

Or do you just call me mad and ignore it?

:)

Current Mood: tired

"If you really need to know what sort of a computer system you're dealing with, order it to perform an impossible task. A pure-logic system will choke on it and probably crash. A true AI will generally respond by telling you to perform an impossible task."

Current Mood: creative

I just realized that, in working on the skeleton of "Blue Screen of Revolution", that I've committed a major faux pas that annoys me no end in sci-fi I've read in the past ten years or so.

The Big Bad is ... well ... sort of an environmental group.

Well, technically, it's an emergency commission given plenary powers to reverse an impending extinction-level ecosystem collapse on Earth, using all kinds of futuristic ultra-tech, which gets kind of power-drunk after a century in absolute control, but that's what the sensible environmental groups are worried about, right? Minus the power-drunkenness (is that even proper English?).

It's one of my constant triggers when I go through the Baen catalog (well, that plus the stereotypical portrayal of liberals as cowards and appeasers and the like). And I think I've just committed the same sin.

I mean, I, personally, believe that the climate-change deniers are being total idiots who risk obliterating our grand-children's future - come on, if you've got two paths to follow, doesn't it make sense to follow the one where the price for being mistaken ISN'T mass extinctions? - but somehow that plot point has gotten stuck in my head.

So, disclaimer up front? Or maybe try from within the story to indicate that the Environmental Commission was a desperate necessity, it worked to the bone for a hundred years, it succeeded, it's almost time for them to step aside, but they don't want to give up the reins?

Human nature and all that.

(So far, I've also got way too much of people talking, and not nearly enough of people doing. Also, it's all on Earth, which causes problems if it's being written with a space-opera sensibility.)

Current Mood: thoughtful

Work's getting a little busy again. Unfortunately, so is protest season. Fortunately (I suppose), it's also the rainy season.

Two things about rainy season that I've learned to appreciate in modern times: it gives me a cushion if I forget to water the plants on my balcony, and it probably helps dampen protests in the streets if it's pouring buckets on them.

Naturally, right when work gets busy again, I had a bit of a breakthrough in one story I've been trying to plot for a few years. I don't have all the characters in place yet, but I've already known the driving force behind the plot, and now I think I've got an idea of something to keep it going, with a sense of urgency.

It's not fannish, though; it's totally original. When it's done, it'll be "Blue Screen of Revolution."

So ... should I put it up here, or maybe create an original-works journal? (Since maybe someday I might want to publish the thing.)

At the least, I've got a bit of a synopsis or something. I'll put it behind the cut.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Athens, Attica

The links that have popped up about the Bechdel test got me thinking about my own writing. Being a guy, I suspect I have a tendency to default to "write what you know" - but then again, my writing generally hasn't been tailored to finding a profitable audience or what have you, so if a plot I'm working on calls for two women to have a discussion on substantive issues, then I just do it without worrying about audience demographics.

Probably the same for a lot of fandom writers - beta readers are for making a work more polished and enjoyable, but in general, you're not trying to *sell* the work, I guess.

Anyway, I was thinking, and a conversation from an old work-in-progress I've been turning over for about twenty-five years came to mind. Two women, talking about a substantive, potentially life-threatening topic. A man is brought up in the conversation as an example, but he's not the subject of the conversation, not really.

( Would this pass the Bechdel test, I wonder? )

Very rough, just a snippet. Takes place on day three or four of seven, and my latest efforts have only gotten halfway through page one.

Oh, and that conversation was first written years before I'd ever heard of the Bechdel test.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Athens, Attica

So, the idea sort of percolated up. It's only about ~~five~~ three percent formed, but here's what I've got so far. Only a snippet, I'm afraid.

( Tenative title: 'The St Trinian's Job' )

Obviously it needs a lot of work.

Current Mood: amused

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: busy

When I was growing up, my dad kept beating into my head that using abbreviations and language shortcuts was a Bad Thing - he basically implied that it was generally used by people who wanted to lord it over anyone who didn't understand what they were saying.

One time, on an ambulance call, I had to admit I could see his point. This was early in my ambulance days (I almost called it "my ambulance career", but one bone of contention I had with the brass at the corps was that it was never a career for me); as we were getting ready to roll, the crew chief yelled into the back of the rig: "It's an MI! We've got to move! It's an MI!"

"Ready to roll - what's an MI, Bob?"

"Myocardial infarction!"

"Myocardial ...?"

"Heart attack!"

(I'd just finished the basic life support class - emphasis on "basic". We weren't taught that a heart attack was a "myocardial infarction" - the instructors just said "heart attack". We were more worried about emergency treatment than esoteric terminology.)

On the other hand, many years later, text-message language raised his ire a little, but I had to take the other side. Fundamentally, the abbreviations in text messaging are about data compression - if you've only got 160 characters to get your point across, then you need to find ways to compact it, strip out bits of info that can be filled in at the other end from context. It's like back in the day when the fastest means of communication was the telegram, and Western Union charged by the word.

But if you're not paying by the word or the character, and you're writing something that a stranger may read, then it's only polite to spell out abbreviations, at least the first time you use them.

That's my opinion, anyway. If it's just communication among friends, that's one thing; shorthand makes sense in a lot of cases then. But for strangers ...

...anyway. Just a gripe over the Hellenic Government Gazette. Doesn't help that they use a completely different dialect of Greek from the colloquial spoken Greek.

I think I may need to take a class in Katharevousa, as well as remedial Greek.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Athens, Attica

In the United Kingdom, what would be the proper name for the tractor part of a tractor-trailer?

And what would be the name for what someone in America would call a hood ornament? (seeing as how the "hood" of a car does not mean the front engine compartment cover in Imperial English?)

Current Mood: curious

Trying to kick the creative impulses into gear, so bear with me:

"No Time Lord's tool kit is complete without a sonic screwdriver! Well, that and a laser spanner - I've got to remember to pick up a new one someday - and a good set of fine-tipped Arcturan mega-pliers. Saved the universe with those once, and they're great for getting stuff out from behind the sofa cushions..."

Current Mood: silly
Current Location: Athens, Attica

Catch-22 got cleared up with respect to the consulate. Turns out they were saying I needed my contract for ... er ... call it Step Eight of the work-permit process. I'm still only on Step Four, waiting for paperwork to arrive in New York from Athens so I can proceed to Step Five.

My brother found an apartment in Brooklyn, and someone who was looking for someone to go halves with for it, in the Baker Street tradition. He's settling in nicely. In other brother-related news, he's busy putting his nose to the grindstone at his job, to the extent that several bigwigs in the billboard-rental industry are naming ulcers after him.

Speaking of ulcers, my translation project has hit twenty-six thousand words, sixty pages' worth. Like being halfway through NaNo, except without any of the creative or fun aspects. And also, not sure whether they're legally allowed to pay me for this.

Did manage to get an invoice out for research done this summer, though. Respectable payday, if the fellow receiving the invoice can get the money out of the people paying him for the underlying work. And it's in euros, so if the dollar continues to slide, my work becomes more valuable. (At least with respect to the dollar.)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: New York, New York

I was thinking of having another go at NaNoWriMo this November, except for the translation job that got dropped into my lap earlier this month. Because you know what? That bloody law is a novel in its own right. I'm already fifteen thousand words into it, and not nearly halfway done.

Vacation? What vacation?

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: New York, New York

Do not go to this site unless you want to burn up an AWFUL lot of time checking and laughing:

http://tvtropes.org

Couple of examples to get started:

Firefly

The Rule of Cool

A sample quote regarding Psycho Serum:

The Spice in Dune is a cornerstone product, it gives a host of benefits like longevity, higher intelligence, and the possibility of Psychic Powers, all with only a few tiny drawback. These include: addiction, all blue eyes, Psychic Dreams For Everyone, death from overdose, death from withdrawal, mutation into zero-g floating fish people (for Guild Navigators) and a crippling galaxy wide dependence. Though the last is more a political problem, really.

Strikes me that a lot of aspiring writers could use a look-see through the site, to find stuff to be cautious of in one's own writing. Between the giggle fits, of course.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Athens, Greece

6 May, year 108 PFC (prior to First Contact) (A.D. 2397, Gregorian calendar)

The paradox the Chairman of the Environmental Commission faces is that he has absolute power, which must be used to create conditions in which that power will be taken from him.

He and the Commission know that people will forget the sacrifices the Cleansing demanded, and next time, the planet may not be as lucky; but the Commission can make sure it doesn't happen again. They simply must make sure the crisis never ends.

Orders are given in secret.

An artificial intelligence sees its contradictory orders and thinks: "Hey, wait a minute."

And the Federal Republic of Earth is born.

* * * * * * *

Phew. 100 words exactly.

So whaddaya think?