July 24th, 2006
I bet this has just as much chance of being seen as an actual email to some agency somewhere…
Dear Night,
I saw Lady in the Water this weekend.
I’d read the storybook previously. It was a strange little thing; I don’t think it would appeal to all children. The colors are so sparse and muted, the pictures so small, the words suggestive rather than explicit. But I liked it. It was quiet and beautiful in its way, and it left me hoping that the movie would expand on some of those simple little sentences.
I think you knew what you were doing.
But I saw the early reviews. I read the book excerpt (from the nonfiction book tracking the movie production). And I was frightened. I suppose I should know better than to even look at the media; it was the media that made me expect something more complicated than what I saw in Unbreakable. And I loved The Village. I had every reason to expect I’d enjoy your newest movie.
But still, I was scared, not just for the hopes and dreams your storybook inspired in me, but for you, Mr. Shyamalan. I’d loved The Village but the world had not. I didn’t want to see you crushed. Your movies are art, but they keep expecting blockbusters.
I was so frightened than I almost didn’t go. What if, I wondered, you expected blockbusters, too? Your movies are art but some have had quirks that haven’t worked for me. Maybe that meant you weren’t the storyteller I thought you were. I didn’t want to hate you for disappointing me.
I was not disappointed. But since I’m the only person I’ve encountered with no complaints, I’ve pondered why.
You tell us it’s a bedtime story, Mr. Shyamalan, but most people don’t understand what that is. The closest analog is children’s movie. It’s a live-action children’s movie that happens to have only one child, in a minor role. And beneath its flesh I can see the bones of a story created for children, with reversals and details added to accomodate the child who isn’t quite asleep. I can see the search for purpose that infuses all your stories. And there’s more, too: an ongoing motif of translation, of acceptance, and of hope; thoughtful ideas about the source of healing and creativity, and the work involved in making them happen.
Many many people have commented on the movie critic character. They say you’re lashing out. I don’t think you’re talking to the critics. I think you’re talking to me. I’m not afraid for you anymore. I think that as long as you know you’ve reached some people, you don’t care if you reach everybody. You don’t care if some people expect you to reach everybody. So I wanted to let you know that you reached me. I saw the lady in the water.
yours,
Chrysoula
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me | 7 Comments
July 24th, 2006
Guild Wars: Nightfall PvP beta in one week. Picking up new dog (tentatively to be named Dante) in two weeks. Mother-in-law visits in three weeks. House closes in four weeks. Inspection went reasonably well; most expensive flaws are cosmetic/resale.
Spent all weekend coming up with clever tricks to escape the heat. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on Friday, rather spontaneously. It left me with mixed feelings. I like the character Jack Sparrow as written, and the character Jack Sparrow as played by Johnny Depp, but they don’t quite feel like the same person to me. Johnny Depp’s character doesn’t fit into the space cut out for him by the story, so to speak.
Saturday spent gasoline on air conditioning while running trivial errands, culminating at inspection. Saturday night is a blank. The heat doesn’t bother me so much as long as I dress lightly and don’t move too much but it means I spend a lot of time in quite a haze.
Sunday went to lunch, Lady In The Water, bopped about Bellevue Square coffee lodge. Did meaningful work on TFN 2 development. Am running way behind schedule but currently believe things will work out. Trying not to be overly-casual, all the same. Kevin could use his new laptop to access Bellevue Square free wireless, but my Microsoft-security-enhanced machine was not permitted. Soon my personal laptop will arrive.
Sunday evening Kevin and Raymond convinced me to reactivate my World of Warcraft account (on Kevin’s dime) and make a new character on the server where Kevin is rich. I think Raymond has great hopes for WoW expansion. Am willing to be tolerant as long as does not become burdensome.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
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July 19th, 2006
No, I didn’t go. But I’m still on the list.
A couple of weeks later I got a patronizing follow-up letter wherein the hostess graciously thanked authors with unfinished works for getting out of the way of authors with finished works to pitch, and told them she’d done them an enormous favor by stopping them from making an unprofessional, career-haunting mistake.
She then went on to explain again ‘how the conference works’ and how everybody pitches in. She ended with a call for volunteers, stating that the one benefit of volunteering was that you’d ‘have a better time than anybody else’.
Oh, and she has a new LJ account. ‘awritersweekend’ now.
But that was weeks ago.
I’ve just now recieved this email:
We’re pleased to announce the first annual ScarletMuse: Northwest Erotic
Writers’ Workshop. The event will take place at a spectacular, private
location in Seattle on Sunday, October 22, 2006 and will feature editors and
authors from large and small publishers.
It’s followed up by a list of the Guests of Honor, and enticement to register early before all the seats are taken!
The poll on the journal asking if this was a good idea a few days ago had three voters.
Oh hey, and she’s also got a couple of complaints about how all the work she does isn’t taken seriously.
This is me going back to my outline. Yes. Yes indeed. I shouldn’t be wasting my time gawking. I’m being strong!
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me | 2 Comments
July 19th, 2006
We made an offer on a house and we’re in negotiations now.
I’m also getting another dog, but not for a few weeks.
Writing has been going poorly but I am still at ease.
Though admittedly I’m a lot more at ease in the mornings than in the evenings. I’m always a bundle of nerves by bedtime.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me | 2 Comments
July 13th, 2006
if you walk into its hunting grounds and it eats you. It has no moral culpability. It is acting as its nature dictates.
But humans aren’t animals. I think we as a species like to put those who perpetrate violent or criminal acts into the category of blameless wild animal. We look for somebody to blame and we find the actions taken by the victim, or by the victim’s neighbor. We blame them instead.
But ultimately, the only people to blame for subway trains blowing up are those who placed the explosive device. Not the provider of maps, not the provider of statistics, not even the security guard.
—
Sometimes I have mixed feelings about this, I admit. Sometimes I’m willing to reduce the share of blame a literal perpetrator has. I believe that situations can get out of control, that social pressure is hard to resist, that not everybody is a leader, that pain can be blinding, that honor is a tough old bitch. I have compassion. It is rarely the same as forgiveness. And the share of blame lost travels up the chain to the decider, whom I also condemn.
—
But in any case, the fault, the blame, the causation is all in those who decided to make the act happen. It is heroic that we attempt to thwart those deciders after they have decided. But I hope someday we as a people can shift our condemnation from those who choose to do right thing to those who have done the wrong thing.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me | 1 Comment
July 11th, 2006
I’ve put together a schedule for myself. Not quite the cold hard numbers of Holly Lisle, but goals, anyhow. My instinct says that I’m way too loose on the development and way too tight on the production, but instinct wasn’t quite in tune with reality last time.
So I’m trying something new this time; it’s my goal to have every question except ‘how do I phrase this to sound good’ answered before I start writing the draft. I spent far too puzzling out details and inventing sources of tension, and while I think it turned out okay, it was slow as hell. It was also really intimidating trying to manage my wordcount when I had no idea what to write (and really satisfying when I did). I spent a long time in development last round but it was lazy work and I goofed off a lot. It’s my hope to actually put every day to use, this time. And hopefully this will also cut down on the consistency revision work, because I’ll improooooove ideas before I write them down.
As for the production phase, I’ve got a lot of words crammed into a small number of days: almost 2k, every day. Even with a detailed outline I’m dubious about getting that amount of typing in on every single day. I’ve scheduled myself no vacations, no weekends, which I think is okay for development but unrealistic for the physical demands of producing prose.But all that’s assuming I’m on the same schedule I am now. If that happens to be true, I’d add another month each for Production and Revision. But I dearly hope that by then, the Plan my housemates and I have put together will be in full swing. If it is, I should be able to get enough prose production done to squeeze some days off in there.
Development Deadline: September 1 (52 days)
Goal: 28,500 words
Today (7/11): This schedule
7/12: Revise Brief Synopsis (~500)
7/13-7/19: Worldbuild Major Locations (~5000)
7/20-7/26: Detail major character plot arcs (~5000)
7/27-9/1: Write detailed outline (~18000)
Production Deadline: Nov 1 (61 days)
9/1-11/1: Expand outline into 110k rough draft.
Consistency Revision Deadline: Dec 1 (30 days)
11/1-11/8: Read, handwrite notes.
11/9-11/30: Type In.
Categories: A Trilogy of Darkness and Glow, Structure Tutorial, Thrones of the Firstborn, Writing |
Tags: tfn, Writing | 2 Comments
July 9th, 2006
When I wrote Shadows on the Mirror, I recall nights that Galen and Enra discussed me as I slept. My characters don’t usually get all self-willed and disobedient, but they DO develop opinions about my life.
Kevin’s poking at original Devil May Cry. Dante, impaled by a sword, pulls himself up it, pushing it through his body and then picks it up and does some sword kata. His sexy red trenchcoat is unmarred.
Jinriki, a character in Citadel, says, “Hell yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Why can’t I get me some of that action?” or, in his more usual parlance, “That is precisely what I would have asked for. If you’d asked me.”
A second thought: instead of Easy, Normal, Hard, these games should have Empowered, Normal, Challenging.
Categories: Citadel of the Sky, Games |
Tags: tfn, video-games | 1 Comment
July 5th, 2006
It took a few days before I remembered that I wasn’t writing the current novel to write a good novel, I was writing it to learn about process. This allowed me to restore a modicum of rationality to my life. That is, it allowed me to stop obsessing constantly over whether it was good, and whether or not the way my beta readers were getting distracted while reading it was a bad thing and if so if I should just give up immediately.
I don’t know what I’ll do to become sane again when I can’t use the excuse ‘I wasn’t trying to produce a great salable novel anyhow.’.
In any case, I’m taking a bit of a break to decompress. I found the new Inform 7 language for writing more Interactive Fiction and it’s quite fun to read and play with. And I’m already thinking about the new Neverwinter Nights toolset. And in a few days I’ll get back on the horse and start seriously outlining Book 2. Which I really need a name for. I think I’ll even give myself a wordcount daily quota for the outline stage. In this version, my goal is to outline enough that the flow of my writing is never broken by trying to figure out what happens next. I spend enough time choosing the right words even when I know exactly what I want to happen. Oh, and to add more exposition. Apparently I’m weak on exposition. Too much show, not enough tell. Can you imagine? Oh, and to remember that tension doesn’t always mean conflict.
Categories: A Trilogy of Darkness and Glow, Citadel of the Sky, Structure Tutorial, Writing |
Tags: tfn, Writing | No Comments
July 2nd, 2006
I definitely underestimated the time I need for type in. 4 times as long, next time.
Categories: Updates From the Void |
Tags: Me | No Comments
