I've not posted for almost a month and that's partly because I've been ill - some viral ick and then bacterial seediness that has taken two courses of antibiotics to knock out. Also writing for the Guardian - the radfem piece most of you have seen by now and the first two John Donne pieces. Also FLUTE DANCE, a short story for the second TALES FROM THE HOUSE BAND - it's another Mara story and possibly the best thing I've writted in the Rhapsodyverse. Publication looms, and a September US trip, and I still have about 15 k to write of Vol 2 REFLECTIONS. I know everything left to happen, sort of, and am getting up to speed and writing my thousand a day. So I will finish in June, and start the next critical book in July, and start volume 3 in January. If fate allows.

Poetry has gone into a fallow time, but more soon.

Happy birthday, mac_arthur_park

The HuffPo article "Why You Shouldn't Boycott North Carolina" (over NC's shameful passage of Amendment 1 earlier this month) makes a lot of good points:

• Here in Orange County the marriage amendment lost, with 80 percent against it and 20 percent in favor of it. In Chapel Hill, where I serve as mayor, the amendment failed even more spectacularly: 86 percent to 14 percent.


• While winning eight out of hundred counties may not seem like much, it is important to recognize that the Great Eight ... are also home to what Americans love most about North Carolina. These counties include the cities of Asheville, Pittsboro, Cape Hatteras, Durham, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Boone.


• We need your support to convince the rest of North Carolina that these issues are important and that equality is the only solution.

All of these swirl around 2 larger points that the writer doesn't make explicitly:

1. North Carolina is very populous but is one of the least urbanized states--in terms of the percentage of the population who live in urban areas.
2. No state--not even Mississippi or Massachusetts--is completely "red" or "blue".

Minority rights in modern America isn't so much a Northern/Southern or Coastal/Inland issue as it is an urban/rural issue. I have a larger constellation of thoughts about that (broadly speaking, the more one has direct experience of people greatly unlike one's self, the more one is willing to treat them like human beings), and it's worth reminding ourselves of this dynamic.

To Accomplish By August 30

1) Read Les Miserables (with Kway, hopefully, but I'll do it either way)

2) Write either 3 to 4 short stories *OR* ten chapters in a longer work

3) Watch 8 movies

4) Learn rudimentary knitting OR crochet (meaning, work on and complete at least one beginner pattern)

5) Go camping at least once with J.

6) Cook at least six new recipes

7) Eat vegetarian meals at least three nights a week

I'm on the central coast of California (I don't know what growing zone that is, sorry ETA: Zone 10a?) and we are growing them in wine barrels from our local vineyards. They started dying a few days ago and we googled and found out that you harvest them when they die, so we dug up three plants and look we have potatoes!



We are going to eat them tomorrow night for dinner. We still have about 6 plants to dig up so we have a couple more meals. We'll dig up the rest in a few days when they are deader. Then we are going to plant more! They grew very quickly.

I hope they're delicious! So far our zucchini and crookneck squash have been wonderful. Also all of our onions have been delicious, and we have this veritable forest of parsley that we try to use in everything, LOL.

Does anyone know why our radishes didn't grow? They started really small and then went to flower and died. Did we have too many? did we need to really thin them?

We spent an absolute fortune at the farmer's market this morning. The only purchase I regret is some highly overpriced fresh pinto beans which are not cooking correctly. We also brought home an entire box of fresh corn, some eggplant (I'm going to attempt eggplant Parmesan with it), kale, summer squash and sweet onions.

J. likes hitting up garage sales on Saturday mornings, so we did that for an hour or two first. He found some amazingly interesting deals including an almost-perfect slot car set (it's missing one item: the tires for one of the cars) that he intends to use as a base to make a replica of Top Gear's test track. I came home with a new spoon rest that looks like a postcard from a Paris world fair in the 1800s and a teeny, tiny teapot.

Still happy with my decision to start looking for and applying new jobs. I'm hoping that this ends up being a positive step for me and J. We could use a little more cash coming in (the VA job will pay a few thousand more per year than I'm currently making - every little bit helps!) and I could use the new experience. I'm stuck deep in an ugly, hideous rut. It's time to hop out.

Reading Fifty Shades of Grey right now because I am utterly curious as to the whys and wherefores of phenomenon books. I have to say...this pretty much sucks (no pun intended). The writing is horrible and the author has a few too many Britishisms for it to be believably about a young, American college graduate. I also have to say that the cursed thing sucked me in to the story (badly written and implausible as it is). This irritates me and will inevitably cause me to read Russian or French literature in some sort of smart-ass retaliation. I'm also reading Mira Grant's Feed, because the last book in the trilogy just came out last week, and I can finally tear through the thing as quickly as I want to with none of that pesky year-long waiting that everybody else bemoaned.

The new puppy continues to bring much hilarity and joy into our life. We have, however, had some backsliding in the potty-training front in the last day. That's a problem. We'll just have to keep working on it. She's only been with us for a week. We must have patience.

Ta!

Called home tonight to say congrats to my brother for graduating Magna Cum Laude in law school.

As always my dad and I ended up talking about books we are reading.

Me: Yeah, I bought The Land Of The Painted Caves yesterday.

Dad: Burn it!

Me: What?

Dad: You will one day regret every minute of your life you spent reading that book. Burn it now.

Me: So, it's not good.

Dad: If you are smart enough to like American Psycho you'll hate yourself for finishing this book.

Me: Did you finish it?

Dad: Yes. But I'm a literature professor and I need to know just how bad things can get.

Me: But maybe it will help me know how not to write.

Dad: Just fucking burn it.

‎Last night I attended my first Cleveland Critical Mass bike ride. Don’t feel badly that you don’t know what that means; I didn’t know about it until a few weeks ago. Critical Mass rides happen on the last Friday of the month in about 300 different cities all over the states and in some other countries. Here in Cleveland we had about 400 riders. In other places they have over 1,000.

400 riders strung out along a roadway was an incredibly impressive sight. We must have stretched out close to half a mile. I can’t even imagine 1,000.

The point of Critical Mass is not speed or getting to a destination first. The point is to raise local awareness of bicyclists and our right–nay, requirement–to share the roads. Did you know that in many states, including Ohio, it’s a misdemeanor for adult cyclists to ride on the sidewalk? This is because sidewalks are for walking, and people walking are generally traveling at 2-5 miles per hour. Whereas cyclists are generally traveling at least 8 miles an hour, and easily can be traveling 18, 20, or more. Cyclists are a hazard to walkers. They are operating vehicles, and belong on the street.

And the fact is that cyclists are safer on the street. I have been clipped by a car once on the street, it’s true. But I’ve had many near-collisions when riding on the sidewalk, because people are not looking for a bike on the sidewalk moving at 12 mph when they back out of a driveway or pull up to an intersection. They see me when I’m on the street.

Still, there are people who don’t understand the law who still honk at cyclists, yell at them to get on the sidewalk, and even assault them. A recent instance I read about was someone whose kid was pelted with a milkshake that was thrown from a car window. I’ve had people swerve at me, and someone open a passenger-side door in my face just to frighten me.

I’m not sure where this level of anger comes from. Yes, you might have to slow down and pull over to the left to get around a cyclist. But you’d have to do the same if a UPS truck was stopped there, and I don’t see anyone honking at the UPS guy. I sometimes have a sneaking suspicion that some of the resentment comes from thinking that the cyclist feels superior to people driving the car, or a guilt that the driver feels for driving along, drinking a milkshake while these cyclists are exercising.

I know that I’ve been cursed at with “fatso, get off the road!” As if my wide hips are taking up more space. My very presence offends some people.

I’ve learned to be more assertive in my biking, and also more cautious. I try to stick to roads with four lanes, and to bike toward the middle of the right lane so people don’t try the slip past me when there really isn’t enough room. I also bike at off hours or against the rush hour traffic so that I’m not frustrating tired people who just want to get home from work as soon as possible. I take my share of the road, but try to do so with respect for drivers.

And I obey traffic laws. I stop for red lights. I yield at stop signs–a full stop is incredibly wearing on the knees, so I cheat a bit, but I give up the right-of-way when it’s not mine to take. I signal my turns. I try to be a good citizen.

Still, it’s hard to be a cyclist at times. And cycling alone always seems more subject to verbal abuse than cycling with a group, or even just two.

So last night, cycling with 400 people, was a kind of empowerment. We rode through neighborhoods where kids ran to the fences, waving wildly at us, adults smiled and called out encouragement, and drivers waiting at intersections honked their horns not with impatience but in celebration. We were a novelty, this enormous group of cyclists.

We were a parade.

Maybe the people who smiled at our dinging bells and honking horns and smiling waves will remember us. Maybe when they come along a solitary cyclist pedaling down a narrow street, they will recall the crazy, happy atmosphere of last night’s ride.

And maybe they will be just a little more patient, give just a little more room, and we can all be better citizens on the road together.

Crossposting from Dreamwidth now. Sigh. If LJ won't let you comment, you can comment here: http://zoethe.dreamwidth.org/795282.html?mode=reply:

During Clarion, I coined the phrase “busking on the wrong corner” to describe the phenomenon of “entertaining writing that doesn’t serve the story.” It’s the reason writers have to  kill their darlings.  It’s the trap that stops a lot of good writers from making the transition to great.

“Busking” is the practice of playing in public spaces for donations – you know, that guy playing the guitar, his guitar case open before him, full of scattered singles and quarters.  Buskers are often some of the most talented musicians.  But the buskers’ art is also partially a knowledge of where the crowds are.

You can sing your fucking heart out on a corner where there’s no foot traffic.  If you’re really good, you might make a few bucks.  But if you’re really good and really smart, you’ll position yourself near the subway where people are pouring out by the hundreds as rush hour ends, a place where even a mediocre musician can clean up.  Part of your strength is not just the raw force of your musicianship, but knowing where to place that skill so it’s maximized with silver rains of spare change.

Writers (me included, oh so included) are often putting their talents to use on the wrong corner.  This chapter is brilliant writing, it’s got great characterization, it’s exciting.  But underneath, the scene is at odds with what the story is trying to do, and what you’ll wind up with is a great scene that advances the story in the wrong ways.

Lemme give you the real-life example: the lead character of the novel I’m plotting right now, Autumn Akeley, is a taxidermist.  In the beginning of the book, Autumn is deep in the woods on a rumor, searching for the Hulk.

Why the Hulk, you ask?  Because she’s not just any taxidermist – she makes wild viral videos online parodying recent movies in order to drive business to her online taxidermy shop.  Autumn’s latest planned video (“The Bearvengers”) needs a gigantic, light-skinned animal she can dye green to play the part of the Hulk.  Autumn does not kill animals for her entertainment (she takes the death of any creature very seriously), but she just got a tip from a hunter that there’s a decaying grizzly in the woods she might be able to use.  She tracks it down with her friend Karla and examines the corpse – it’s a little too moldy for her liking, but it has very light fur.  She thinks she can salvage it.

Then a shot rings out across the forest: there are poachers in the woods.  As someone who hates to see an animal killed senselessly, she does not take lightly to poachers.  She sets off to investigate, starting the chain of events that sets up the novel….

…Now, that’s a pretty good scene.  It’s got an interesting character doing something we’ve never seen done before in a book, it displays her odd compulsions, it allows us to watch her work (if you have a character with an odd profession, people love to see the fine details), and for a short intro it’ll do quite nicely.

And yet we are busking badly here.  Why?

Because this novel is about Autumn’s friendship with Karla.

Okay, unfair, I didn’t tell you that – but the whole point of the novel is that a new man in town with a shadowy past begins to romance Karla, causing a rift when Autumn discovers the man’s past as a serial killer.  And this scene, while good in a vacuum, utterly fails to set up the dynamics of Karla and Autumn and their friendship.  In fact, you’d be excused for forgetting the existence of Karla in this summary, because while we can put in some nice dialogue and characterization to set up Karla’s character, the underlying structure of the scene is not about her at all.

This is a great scene for a novel featuring bold Autumn Akeley, bold adventurer.  It’s a terrible scene for Autumn and Karla’s big fight – especially since the next scene involves Autumn tracking down poachers, which has even less to do with their friendship.  And if you’re not a careful writer, you’ll think this is an awesome scene because it’s got it all – humor, good characterization, a quick hook to action – without realizing that it’s an awesome scene that’s structurally at odds with what you want to do in the long run.  It doesn’t set up the things that need to be established.

It’s a good scene in isolation.  In context, it’s a darling that needs to be killed… Or at least dramatically changed so that Karla does something so interesting here that the scene metamorphosizes away from Autumn’s search for the Hulk and into an expression of how Autumn and Karla couldn’t get along without each other.

The point I’m making here is that had I written that chapter, I’d have been very proud.  It’d be a nice, 1,500 word opener that would grab the reader, full of lovely details and fun stuff.

And then I’d have to place it into my trash folder, because ultimately it doesn’t do what it needs to, then hunt for the right scene to write.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/214853.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/26/musical-synchronicity-of-a-certain-miserable-sort/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18704

It may just be me, but I think the lead characters of these respective and currently popular songs deserve each other. Listening to the lyrics will help to explain why.