a recipe for madness

I seem to have hit upon a workable method for writing the Tiresias pov scenes.

Talk to people about dreams and madness. Come up with core concepts for two of the four that need to be written (the other two I'm still uncertain about). Let these compost for a while. Late at night, put Tiresias' music on loop. Make sure there will be no interruptions (this includes closing e-mail, of course). Turn off all the lights; leave about three small candles burning. Reset the computer display so Wordperfect gives you white text on a black background; this minimizes the light from the screen. Turn the screen off and lie on the floor for a while, thinking about Tiresias as if preparing to role-play him. When the scene starts to take shape, get up, write the scene longhand on the backs of random scraps of paper. Write hunching over the paper to see in the candlelight. Don't worry about mispellings or other mistakes. Let your handwriting go to hell. (Bonus points for using the black-and-silver fountain pen you already and will forever associate with this novel.) Toss the sheets aside the instant they're done and grab a fresh one; stream of consciousness is important. When you have one completed, turn the monitor back on, type it in. Go back a few steps and start on another one.

I had one done already; did two more tonight, for just shy of nine hundred words of present-tense madman point-of-view. I haven't yet decided what the other two will be about, but I think -- not that I have any distance on them at the moment -- that I like the two I've done. (And the progenitor of them all, the original Tiresias scene, which I did ages ago.)

Drop that on top of 1556 words of forward progress on Act Five, and it's a good day's night's work.


Authorial sadism: Calling in favors.

LBR quota: I loves me some bloody rhetoric.

good news, of a minor sort

In the first part of this year, I did a good job of writing new stories and getting fresh material out the door, but I should have foreseen that the novel would kind of destroy any prospect of keeping that up all year long, as I originally intended. Anyway, between the death of that plan, a coincidence of assorted delays at places I've sold stories to (meaning nothing's actually appearing any time soon), and a general lack of sales in the last few months, I've had no short story news to report.

So, like a TV program broadcasting random "human interest" stories when news is slow, I'll mention that "Kingspeaker," one of this year's accomplishments, has been passed along to the senior editors at Baen's Universe. It now stands a still small but non-trivial chance of selling, which is cool.

And I'm not just saying that because they pay well, either. <g> I made an impulse decision to subscribe a month or so ago, said impulse being driven by reading the first part of Elizabeth Bear's "Cryptic Coloration" and wanting to read the rest. (matociquala, I blame you. It was the vividness of Matthew's description that hooked me in -- that, and the subsequent classroom scene.) Anyway, I'm patchy about subscribing to things, because I have yet to find a magazine I like consistently enough to stick with for more than one subscription. Baen's hasn't hurdled that bar by any means; in fact, most of the SF I read for a scene or two and then gave up on. But the nice thing is, they publish a lot of both SF and F every issue, plus articles and the like, and don't cost much at all relative to what you get; six bucks for an issue, thirty for a year, and every issue is about the length of a Robert Jordan novel, with far more happening in it.

I liked enough out of this current issue that I'd say it's worth the price of a subscription. We'll see what I think of future issues. But it would definitely be an awesome market to appear in.