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Midweek Music Break: Theme-Park Earworms
The Missus and I took a much-needed mini-vacation this past weekend, trekking off to central Florida for (among other things) our first visit to the other theme park in that neighborhood. We love amusement parks and fairs (county, state, you name it), but neither of us is a big roller-coaster fan; most of the rides at [...]
The Shock of What You Already Know
For one reason or another, while sort of spiraling down the drain toward the end of this draft of Seems to Fit, I’ve been thinking some about Merry-Go-Round. Don’t fret if you don’t recognize the title Merry-Go-Round. This was the novel I wrote back in 2007-08, and apparently last mentioned here at RAMH in a [...]
Software I’d Like to See: Fotōpic
It makes no difference that I’ve been a computer programmer for nearly 30 years now. There are computer programmers and there are computer programmers. If your assignments (actual or potential) don’t require you to use a given technology, chances are you’ll never learn that technology. Meanwhile, the world passes you by in the form of [...]
Cramming Technologies into an Elevator
My brother the architect once explained to me the key to building things successfully. By building he meant not just framing, erecting walls and roofs and so on, but everything: flooring, painting, pouring foundations, and so on. All of it, he said, had one critical element: edges. How an architect or builder or home handyman [...]
On Writing Long: Edith Wharton
Back in May — the 26th, to be exact — Steve King’s invaluable and always entertaining Today in Literature newsletter informed us that on that day in 1891, Edith Wharton’s first story was accepted for publication, by Scribner’s Magazine. The story was called “Mrs. Manstey’s View.” (Yes, by the way: that’s accepted for publication — [...]
Love and Laughter
Yesterday I went into a soapbox-lecture rant, shall we say? (yes, let’s — rants seem to be another thing that’s done a lot), about some of the comments to a recent post on Nathan Bransford’s blog. At the end of every week, Bransford posts a “This Week in Publishing” entry summing up recent industry news [...]
“What’s Your Book About?”
I hate that question. (I hate a lot of questions, grump that I am.) There’s no easy way to answer it, really — not just me, for Merry-Go-Round, but a lot of other writers, for their books. After you’ve spent months or years ensuring that it would be about something, when somebody asks the question [...]
Merry-Go-Round: Prologue
It seems to be the thing to do, these days, to actually just go ahead and post an excerpt of one’s current work-in-progress (“progress” in either the actual writing or in the getting-it-to-market senses). So then. Here goes… Prologue Maroon-proof. Mikey would wonder about that for a long time. It barely sounded like English.
We Interrupt This Routine…
Since I started working on Merry-Go-Round last August, I’ve been sticking more or less to the same morning routine: shut off alarm (which goes off between 4 and 5am); stagger into the bathroom — the path illuminated, faintly, by a night light; slip back into the bedroom (carefully, mustn’t awaken The slumbering Missus); grope around [...]
Reassurance. Maybe.
Regarding the entry I just posted, and the references therein to neurotic uncertainty over whether a book is DONE, this quote from William Strunk, Jr. (the original author of the classic Elements of Style): It is worse to be irresolute than to be wrong. Boy, do I hope so. :)
