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Sunday, June 30, 2002
Far Arena Chapter 01 June 30 Just a few small deletions to good backstory not essential to the tension or set up for next few scenes. I see; only tiny quibbles now you've shaved back the expository lump in the first page. I'm going to hold off taking a serious editing pass through until you're finished, because otherwise I'll be cutting and pasting from documents I've worked in, and we'll lose all sense of our changes in a multicoloured sea of criss-crossings and underlines. Glad Blogger's back up again. Blogger was refusing to let IE log in, and of course, IE is the only thing I can use to post on Pro, since the only other thing they support is the latest Mozilla build that won't run on my OS 8.6; Netscape is giving me network errors as I try to pull up the web page that has the info for application to this course I want to apply for tonight, and as for trying to put my CV together, picture me rocking back and forth in my seat and singing in a demented little voice Wo-ord is poopy, Wo-ord is poopy, Wo-ord is totally, utterly poopy over and over again, because I am trying not to use the f-word more than three times in an hour. The utter inability of Word to allow one to change the left margin without completely resetting all the formatting - different for every set of entries - is bringing out the Dr. Emilio Lizardo* component of my personality. *Mad scientist in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Saturday, June 29, 2002
Far Arena Chapter 01 Uploaded lastest version to repository. Realized when I did it that I couldn't tell from the file name whether you'd taken a look and edited yet or not. Guess we should stick to the idea of appending our initials to the date in the name when we check or edit something. Using David as my "acid test" for whether description or backgrounders are bogging down action. Often he liked the material cut but had lost track of the thread of the action. Keeping in mind the target length and that we'll need to cut throughout, I am working on a "cut first" strategy for shortening. Not comfortable until you've had a look and given the nod, though. Work Sorry to hear things are uncomortably busy.Hope the weekend is restorative. Thursday, June 27, 2002
Contact numbers Lynda, you were going to send me some contact numbers for UVic and UBC. Got them, merci buckets - AS, Friday. Very glad tomorrow's Friday. For this whole week, I was doing well if I merely came home exhausted, without anything hurting. Today I had more energy, but it's ripping-heads-off energy (I haven't, yet). With 3 MWs off on holiday and various people's time being used up by merger meetings, orientation sessions, etc I have eaten lunch hours late two days this week and not made it out at quitting time yet. Next week is going to be even zanier, one long-established deadline, one we-need-it-real-soon, one set of final results and two sets of preliminaries from projects with tight, constantly changing timelines. Wednesday, June 26, 2002
The Little Mermaid I'm awaiting your posting with your analysis of the The Little Mermaid. I ran across my audiotape (done when I had no VCR) of the Babylon 5 episode "Severed Dreams", which took me in the same way. I should do likewise with that episode, which is perfectly constructed. Another novel? But the conception is so much fun, eh? It's all the rest that's time and hard work. I don't seem to "catch" whole novels the way I used to (although a backlog of at least 13 ought to be enough for anyone - and that's minus the ORU), but I keep having ideas for non-fiction books that just ignite. House of Em: Chapter 1 (What can I say? It just happened. Sketched the notes on the plane to Vancouver yesterday.) Moved it to a link. Draft first chapter of the The House of Em, Amel and Mira in childhood (RTF format) Monday, June 24, 2002
And my words After somewhat more than 20 minutes I can recall ... Dirt Ambassador, vest, elbow, mantle. Galley, lemon, kettle. 8/10 - I missed snake and lump. But I only needed 5 to pass. Current thinking on memory loss This week's issue of the British Medical Journal, one of my regular weekend surf destinations, has an article on What we need to know about age-related memory loss, you might be interested in. I'm waiting for my 20 minutes to pass to see if I flunk the screen for delayed recall: couldn't find relationships to fit all the words to make one pull on another - get the ol' semantic net lighting up). Their recommendations are:
We must be getting middle aged if we're worrying about HRT and dementia.
Decision on Estrogen Replacement The following reference, found on BioMedNet, has made up my mind for me about whether or not to do estrogen replacement. Looks pretty positive for memory. I believe there's an increased risk of cancer, but given the choice--particularly since witnessing my mother's decline--I'd rather risk the cancer than survive with dementia.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
Feedback on Arena01.rtf My small captive audience of "first listeners" experienced the first scene of chapter 1 today. David laughed in the right places. I marked down places where he got a puzzled look on his face trying to follow, and any places where both he and Jenny were not sure who was speaking to whom. We also have our usual problem of people assuming that the children of lovers (e.g. Ayrium, Lixe, Dorn) must be mutual. That's the tougher one. I don't think we can avoid saying something short and blatant to clarify that. I expect it will be something we will have to do in every book, rather like the formula Applegate uses in Animorphs to fill in the needful each book. I have a suspition it was an editor, at some point, who made Rowling do likewise in the Harry Potter books. Both series, of course, being ones I am regularly immersed in due to my children's obsessions. :-) Some good narrative tricks to be gained through that. Just like I mentioned to you on the phone, once, how I was in awe of the tight plotting in the Little Mermaid, after seeing it for the millionth time. Every scene has a distinct purpose that moves the story forward, sets up the next complication and does character development at the same time. Susan I've invited a friend, named Susan, to post her reactions to Throne Price on the blog, since she pointed out we don't have a bulletin board. I'd rather not bother with a bulletin board until and unless there's demand. But I like the idea of opening the blog to input from interested readers. Di Mon's knife I have been looking, without avail, for the scene where Erien arrives on Rire, with knife, and reacts in true Gelack fashion to Lurol. (She's bound to remind him of it when he's old enough and socialized enough to be embarrassed). But I did find this, from 1989:
My previous passes ... I uploaded them a while back, as the last batch of files I put into a dated folder for fear of clobbering some of your revisions ... pre our file-naming convention! Can't remember the date, but they're on the system.
Starting 'read through' with David and Jennifer today David and Jennifer, my captive "first audience", have agreed to start the Far Arena "read through" this morning. I'll convey any resulting feedback in markup to the first chapter which I'll do and upload. Won't get through a chapter today but they've promised to help out over the summer so should be a regular part of my week henceforth. Chapters 22 and 23 Would you like to work on the last two chapters while I start at the beginning with the "read through"? Receptive, as always, to alternative division of duties. Also wanting to be sure I have your "mad hacker" passes through the early chapters to work from. You know, during the period where you were cutting and I was flinching? I should go with all the cuts I don't feel prepared to fight for. :-) Chapter 21 Is up for you to review, Alison. Arena21jun23.rtf Particularly interested in what you think of the use of Di Mon's knife as the means of setting up the remaining conflict over Di Mon. I like the way you developed the idea of the knife as symbolic of Erien's bond and unresolved issues with Di Mon. If we've edited it out in last past, I think we could justify putting it back in, in the last one. Friday, June 21, 2002
Writing and Depression
Maybe I should have called this entry "Cause or Cure". It is prompted by your entry, below, where you mention feeling "mildly depressed" about writing. I used to be depressed by the dismal prospects of getting published given my sometimes violent passion for getting the Okal Rel Universe stories out to others, as if I owed it to the characters to provide them a means of surviving me. Throne Price has cured that angst, and Brian's much valued interest in the series. What I find depressing now, on and off, is the sense that so much of the world seems to be going 'print blind'. People don't read. If they do read, they can't cope with anything longer or more challenging than Animorphs (which, by the way, I am enjoying as my eldest reads it to me). Sometimes I feel perfectly comfortable with an elitist stance. Who cares if only the literate can enjoy the ORU? It is the literate I view as our audience, and the encouragement and enjoyment reported by readers whose opinions I value has sustained me through those blah times when you ask yourself "why bother?" Sometimes I even feel the ORU has a crucial message for our times, regarding the challenge of balancing desires--however heartfelt and "good"--with the carrying capacity for life on our planet and respect for the choice of others--however questionable or "evil". Whether the questions asked about culture, gender issues, winning and losing, status or morality, are well answered or just raised in a convincing array of opinions for examination, I feel I am making meaningful use of my diverse education and reflective experience of life by spinning stories to share. And I do not believe I could share them in the same way if constrained to the demands of prime time television or a movie block buster, which however exciting or well suited to our "five minute attention span" these days, preforce lack subtlety or the scope to develop different ways of apprehending the world. Other times I suspect myself of hubris, or plain old "look at me" disease coupled with a dose of sour grapes for all the attention paid to things that seem tinsel-simple or at least simple-minded to me. At such times I suspect my own taste. But the pleasure I derive from writers and multimedia story tellers who do great things, IMHO, sustains me against my own doubts of pathalogical bias: series like Babylon 5, and writers like Guy Gavriel Kay, Lois McMaster Bujold, Marie Jakober, Rebecca Bradley, David Brin, stretches of Katherine Asaro, Usula Le Guin, Tolkien, Rowling, and many other who don't spring to mind immediately for quirkish reasons, not to mention, of course, yourself Alison. Reading someone grand is the next best thing to writing something equally deserving, with the added zest of being much less hard work with lots more novelty and instant gratification. But whatever my mental struggles with the writing business, in the end I come full circle. I write because I am a writer. Whether that is a noble thing or something of a mental illness, I can't help it. Until and unless I can, I try to convince myself, these days, not to fret about it. Just do it. Of course, as with all things, some days I am more successful in that mental discipline than others. :-) Chapter 20c June 21 Done some more, through to swearing, and uploaded. Hope this doesn't collide with your edits of previous version. Expecting you will accept or reject all edits at will, and upload again to me named for date, retiring the old version to previous. (Don't protocols sound bossy when you articulate them? Anyhow, I think that's just what we've agreed on generally. If not, remind me. I've started using comments to annotate some revisions I wanted to waffle on or explain my reasoning for. I'll try to keep that to a minimum.) Home today on a holiday. Taking a break now and will be back at Chapter 21 after. Thursday, June 20, 2002
Carnage on the fourth (floor) Ugly day today: three of us have been laid off (yes, I said 'us'), effectively halving the department.
Chapter 20c Thanks for the above, filling in the hole. You've managed to work in the STIs so they work dramatically and logically. We're going to have a tussle about whether dialogue should be tagged or not, I see! Will upload the next version once done.
Latest rumour says that most of us will know today whether or not we are going to be laid off. I've never been in a position to be laid off before! Contract expired, yes. Hoping I'd be mercifully terminated, occasionally (praying for career euthanasia). Never laid off. I might even be eligible to apply for unemployment, which is definitely not what comes to mind - certainly in the UK contract employees were ineligible. Another experience that the writer would take notes through. Tired of stewing about job, and mildly depressed about writing, I spent last night just hanging out with my characters - writing domestic scenes and going to town with the prose and the description. Feel better. Am beginning to see what Caitlin means about fantasy vs. science fiction: fantasy writers get to use language, symbol, setting and characterization while SF writers meet moans about "soo slowww". I'm reading Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest, which Marie has several times recommended. I shied away because it looked Mists of Avalon-ish, and while I recognized the achievement of Mists I found all the female masochism hard to take. Daughter is nothing like that - the springboard is the retelling of the fairy tale which I've heard under the name "The Wild Swans", about the girl whose six brothers are turned into swans by their wicked stepmother, and who is bound to silence and to spin shirts from nettles to release them. The author works this into a setting of medieval politics, Irish and Britons. Her handling of the six brothers is a study of how to differentiate character. Tuesday, June 18, 2002
It was the coffee ... After your plaintive little note below I wrote the scene that was perking, more a sketch than a full colour rendition, but I did e-mail it. I can envision Ditatt, Dras and Branstatt coming along in the aftermath of a minor riot in which the Vrellish have taken out their ire on the next lot of Nersallians who crossed their path, and Branstatt observing, "We'd better find him before he starts the Sixth Civil War."
Go to work now. I am on kitchen patrol and have to empty the dishwasher, which I forgot to do last night. We are now officially merged. Floating menu? Since we're posting works in progress, here's where I'm at with the floating-sword menu I had talked about. It needs some parts and a bit of burnishing to smooth out the tip, true. I'm not satisfied with the colours - would like the text in red, but it just wasn't standing out well; would like a more interesting colour for the sword, but have to look my notes as to what the trick is to overlay a colour and get the grey to modulate the saturation - I used a "embossed gold type" technique I'd used and came up with something that was sunset gold. If you have a colour preference, say so. And I know, alas, it is not a Gelack-style duelling sword. I don't know how to get print on the skinny thing! Any suggestions?
Secondary pages Here's the style-sheet-backed page I made up for the TP "Glossary" earlier on - I've dimmed out the background figure, since you'd said it was too dark on this system, but I need to take a sampling because it's way too light on my Mac. ... later, from work. But why oh why won't it scroll. At home on IE (Mac 5.1)it is fixed and centered. At work on IE (Windows 5.5) it's upper left and moves with the page. Back to checking compatibilities on CSS ... Draft of new layout design 2 See http://www.okalrel.org/new/sb2/index.html The bars in black would be more informational/preview in nature. The names and mini-boxes on upper left would be links. Not sure I'm happy with the look. Only one of the buttons in the navigation bar works at this point. Designed in Fireworks, as fixed 600 X 300 design. Secondary page (characters) designed in Dreamweaver for ready adjustment (resizing) of web browser. Not stuck on the background for secondary pages either. Monday, June 17, 2002
And the phone call did happen We did have the call to settle the layout issues. I just haven't followed through with the template. Maybe I'll give it a go tonight instead of trying to do anything coherent. PS I do want that draft scene you told me about, re: Erien wandering Gelion incognito and getting in scrapes. Where is it? No e-mail with tidbits for me. :-( Thursday, June 13, 2002
Found, a treasure! I have retrieved the long form of the current glossary from the depot. I am disposed to cut it up into individual files and mark it up - those subjects that haven't already got entries - but will hold pending layout decision. Higgledy piggledy It is cooling off from a high of 30 here in Victoria (due to some configuration of pressure zones that contrived to draw air out of the interior to bake us), and the flat is becoming habitable now the sun has set. While it was too hot to mentate, and certainly to tangle with any characters, I decided I'd do some work on the site. Uhh. First I was defeated by my own storage system. Lynda, do you have a copy of the first Throne Price appendix, the one that contained short articles rather than sentences. I was thinking we should adapt them. I would have, if I could have found them. Secondly, we have GOT TO make a decision on navigation. I like our indexes as we have them set up, but right now we have a mixture of things opening in the same window, new windows and Java pop up windows of at least two different sizes (for instance from the glossary) . I vote for stripping it back to plain HTML and opening new pages in the same window - that will allow a web-like series of links from term to term. Thoughts? And getting everything that we actually have written linked to the index. And we need to come up with a somewhat consistent layout. What's your favourite? My feeling is that we can use side-barred backgrounds for index-type pages, but for articles/entries we should go for a non-side-barred background. This is probably a telephone project. Any chance this weekend? Throne Price cover THE cover, lying on a patch of sunlight. The multicoloured sparkle comes from a bronze mesh embossing, and the lettering is silver and also embossed. Sorry about the size, world ... I couldn't shrink it and keep the effect! Thursday, June 06, 2002
All You Can Eat Science has opened its on-line site and archives to all registered comers (free registration) until June 27, including special issues on spacetime, "bionics" (ie artificial body replacement parts), extremophiles, memory and dreams, various biomedical topics and inevitably, genomics. Wednesday, June 05, 2002
Housekeeping I have sent you a FAX with my first shot at the description of our blog. I went through the blog ... would you be able to get the images on the archived pages reconnected?? Before someone looks at it?
We also, I see, had a couple of weeks when NOTHING HAPPENED and we seem to have file-not-founds. Ah well, such is life. I have spent the evening polishing a commentary introducing the medical genetics series for the CMAJ. I have one more committed thing to do - a review of a novel I've been hanging on to far too long. And then I'm back to writing with a clear conscience! Except for summer distractions like boats.
Blogging experience wanted ... Over on the Movable Type main page there's a request for contributions to a forthcoming book about blogging ... why one blogs, how one uses it, etc. We should put together a paragraph or two (soon!) on Reality Skimming. Cory Doctorow (Canadian SF/F author) is one of the editors. Tuesday, June 04, 2002
chapter 20a Take a look. I've edited again but did it with reviewing on. Looks like it "sticks" to the RTF version. Easier for you to see what I've changed and either put back or accept. Date's June 4. Liked the parental gang-up and quiet sense of Dras and Horth in collusion. Strikes me we have a nice parallel, for Erien, with Amel's Lilac Hearth experience in Throne Price in as much as everything seems ordinary and homelike but the ordinary behavior is creepily becoming sinister...except the protagonist can't put a finger on exactly why and is rendered powerless by being made to feel ridiculous [Whereas Amel is in no doubt ... He knows all those nice Reetions are out to get him - Alison.] I like it. David loomed over my shoulder tutting about explanations while I worked on the STI 1 bit (my version and yours to date :-) so I made Bley's input more conversational and displaced some of the info load into Erien's thoughts in two doses which I hope strike you as appropriate. If not, give it another kick back at me. But I will show restraint and not toy with the nearly-complete-and-almost-perfect chapters and get back to Eler's and the elusive 21. Have found at least one piece that belongs in 21, as well. Yes, you were right, they're scattered. With components that only ever existed on the telephone, as well, I suspect. But I'm on a roll now. :-) A wrinkle in integer-space We renumbered, y'know. It occurred to me to go hunting up and down the low 20s in search of fragments of what has become chapter 21. I found one, masquerading as chapter 23. I have renumbered it (just to add to the confusion) and uploaded it into the depot. I'm sure you also have chunks of it, although I think you imported some of the business in it into a previous chapter. Anyway, it's there, Arena21 and today's date. Thanks, Lynda Edge update It's in your in-box. Brian is back from points exotic. Cover is printed and on its way to us (I hope in a robust packaging to prevent it from being stuffed into my mailbox), but books are not ready. Brian is chasing printer. Brian also wonders if we have moved the blog ... could you send him the new URL, please? Curious. I wonder if he had an URL with the IP addres instead of the domain name? (Lynda) 20 vs. 21 In school I'd get 90s in maths and 60s in arithmetic. I was not good at accuracy, and while maths contains self-checks (things often cancel out or can be reduced to simpler formulae), arithmetic doesn't. Which is on the way to explaining why we were talking about 2 different chapters. Chapter 20a is uploaded, in its most recent edit, dated June3. Chapter 21 does not exist in a complete form. I know we have batted bits back and forth, from a couple of different points of view, but I don't have anything like a complete set of bits. Do you? I wish I could get my indexing sorted out. I blew up the content index about a year ago with all the downloaded HTML files I was stashing on my hard-drive. It was finding more words than were in the English language and would go asymptotic in its time-estimates and then run out of memory. Trying to get it to index select folders turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, because every blasted folder along a path had to be marked for indexing - and I have files buried six folders deep. Since then, the prospect of trying to locate anything just gives me that sinking feeling. I sink to the floor and lie there. Rel ship formations I know, I'm bad. But I'm sick with a cold :-( and needed to cheer myself up. See Rel Ships you can drag into formations. You're forgiven. Actually, if you want to get adventurous, I was looking at the title of the blog and thinking "wouldn't it be neat if that could be flashed." Either the text itself, or have a rel-ship skimming along in front of it. With a link explaining what the heck is going on! - A
Chapter 21 Can't find it. Do you have a draft? Or did we never cut it out of old cloth? PS done a bit more on chapter 20b tonight. Monday, June 03, 2002
Chapter 20, and the wildlife I have put back a tinkered-with Chapter 20a, dated today. Main tinkering was taking a shot at fixing the STIs, and paring down the business around the book. I thought it had to be briefer because Erien is not really paying attention. We should also put in the title - what is it? - to nail it down in the reader's mind. I aIso beefed up Ranar's parental judo.
My weekend wildlife encounters consisted of a ticked-off sea-lion, assorted seals and lots of kelp. Late on Saturday, seeing the weather so glorious and having spent the whole of day doing the MySQL intro, I signed on for a kayak tour around Oak Bay and Trail island on Sunday morning. It was a superb day for it: brilliant sunshine, very little wind, and not too strong a tide; the most chop we got was from the wakes of passing powerboats. A lone sea-lion expressed loud displeasure at having four kayaks of various sizes and yellowness trucking through his Sunday afternoon. Every so often, we'd see a seal impersonating an extra large kelp bladder, eyeing us. If you're down here before the weather turns autumnal I'll have you in a boat.
Sunday, June 02, 2002
To prove I am working on Chap20b ... and because I thought you might enjoy this re-write.
However, the majority of Gelacks would much prefer an incompetent Lorel ... :-)
Met a fox Beautiful morning today so I took a walk. Just two blocks from home there's a strip of houses along the river bank. Went down a pedestrian walk way between them into an undeveloped area that transitions into a very natural park -- its parkness amounts mostly to a ban on development. At least I think it is a park area. There are some footpaths. I followed one and came up behind the house bordering the pedestrian walk way. Saw something slip up through the bush into the back yard of the house, but couldn't quite make it out. I was curious because it didn't move like a dog but the shape suggested something canine. I went back around and no sooner had I set foot on the pedestrian walk way when right there in front of me was a very handsome fox. He (or she) had black-tipped fur and a lovely ruff. He looked at me, decided I was too big to eat but didn't look dangerous, and loped back up the walk way and around into the yard he'd come through to go poking around in the grass near the back fence for something. He chowed down on something he found there, once, while I watched. Now and then he'd look at me as if to say, "Hmmph. You still here." Then he trotted off into the back yard of the river-frontage house and down the bank into the wild strip along the river beyond. I count that my second wild life encounter of the weekend, since I caught a cheetah on camera last night on www.africam.com :-) Given the nine hour time difference, it is best to check late at night for most things. Also saw a hippo in a lake on another camera but you had to look to see the head come up - eyes and nose only - then in the next 30 second interval it would be gone. (You can see "my" cheetah if you go to africam, visit cam replays from the menu and look for Sun 2 Jun 2002 07:46) FA chapter Alison - can you work on chap20aMay19.rtf? I'll work on the Eler chapter (chap20b). I think chap20a is mostly okay now except we need to dove tail the end of it with our new goals as expressed (briefly) in FAplotnotes. I've updated the plot notes just slightly, as you'll see by the names. I will move all out later-dated copies into previous dir. Saturday, June 01, 2002
The grey, squishy bits Two views of the workings of the brain, the first an impressive integrative article from 1995 on the Sociobiology of Sociopathy, in which the author examines genetics, sociobiology, game theory and various other interpretations of sociopathy. And the second, comes from a beset character in Terry Pratchett's The Thief of Time, an Auditor (of reality, as far as I can tell) who has taken human form for infernal purposes - persuading humanity to shoot itself in the collective foot (easy to do), because they really mess up a nice orderly universe - and is finding being enfleshed an unexpected challenge: The bag of soggy tissue behind the eyes worked away independently of its owner. It took in information from the senses and checked it against memory, and presented opinions. Sometimes the hidden parts of it even fought for control of the mouth! Humans weren't individuals, they were, each one, a committee! This is the book with the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death, Pestilence, Famine, War ... and Ronnie, who left the group over artistic differences before they became famous), the secret service of the Monks of History, and their gadget-maker Qu (I'm ashamed to say how much of that scene I had to read before I got that and started snickering in the grounds of the Parliament building), and death by chocolate. Susan Sto Helit finally meets a nice boy; being Death's granddaughter does give one certain interpersonal challenges. And it's the mark of the master that a character emerges with a distinctive personality despite a one word vocabulary. SQUEAK. What is even more impressive is that - in this churn'em up and pulp'em down publishing market, Pratchett's books-in-print list covers TWO PAGES. I can't recall when I last saw an author who had that.
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