Wednesday, March 27, 2013

STATION IDENT 032713



From the updates to Kim Boekbinder's SPACE! album project:

"Chorus consists of brief, rising-frequency tones that sound like the chorus of birds singing at sunrise, hence the name "chorus" or "dawn chorus". Chorus at Earth is generated by electrons in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. Once generated, the chorus waves affect the motions of the electrons through a process called a wave-particle interaction. Wave-particle interactions disturb the trajectories of the radiation belt electrons and cause the electrons to hit the upper atmosphere." - Donald A. Gurnett/U/Iowa.

Every day the sky is singing electromagnetic songs to you.  No one knows why.  

Would you consider that to be trivial knowledge, or significant? 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

STATION IDENT 032013


Source:  Fiction-66


Well!  So ends the tale.  It didn't set out to be a novel, but we so rarely set out to be the things we eventually become.

Did you like it?  I did!  I mean, let me be clear - already there are a hundred-hundred things I want to fix on the 2nd draft, and even paging back through entries now I get a little nauseous and upset with things, but I had a lot of fun writing it.  More than fun; the exercise of writing a novel helped me get through some bleak moments this year.  There were times when it was the only creative activity that I was happy with.  Knowing that I was making progress made me feel better about everything else in life.

And I like what it became, warts and all.  So much so that, even though the 2nd draft will most certainly incur  a good deal of revision - I'm resisting the impulse to break it down to what other stories are. Clear victory over adversity, 3 act structure, all of that sort of thing which you know you've seen a hundred times before.  This doesn't need to be that kind of creature.  It grew up the way it wanted to.  I'll clip some of the excessive wording, and maybe shuffle the order of events a little, but overall I want to enhance its rough edges, not sand them off.  Confusing and contradictory perhaps, but a unique thing - that's the future I envision for it.

Needs a title still, and maybe a few other bells and whistles, but all that's still to come.  I promised to put it to bed for at least a couple months, and I'm sticking to that.

But what of the blog?  What of daily updates, what of Station Idents, what does the future hold?

I promise to check in and drop some thoughts regularly.  It'll be a bit quieter for a while - I need to regain some energy.  When I do swing into editing pass number one, I was thinking maybe I'd post about what I'm doing and why.  Again, not because I want anyone to use it as an example necessarily - just to show you the process.  I love it when my favorite writers post scripts, notes on the context of a scene, where they were in life when they wrote it, why they decided to structure their creations in a certain way.  So hopefully I can do the same, on the off chance that someone out there might benefit just by seeing what it is that goes on behind the wizard's curtain.

And eventually, there will be more writing.  A New Thing, this is guaranteed.  So go get some air, visit some new sites, think some things.  Create.  We'll be here when you get back.

This was merely a beginning.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

STATION IDENT 031013


Source: Christopher Frank Beitz

And just as I'm saying goodbye to Draft 1, I find out that some dear friends of mine are moving and I have to say goodbye to them as well.  This, as the French say, sucks.  ;)  But this is the way of stories and the way of life.  Paths diverge and reconnect.  That's part of how they work, and they are often all the better for having done so.

All my tribe are nomads.


On the plus side, the week has also brought a small tide of treasures - gorgeous concept art for a game project I'm working on, good news, lovely scotch, nice food, and excellent company.

And now, I have to start brainstorming on a short story - this time for a 'zine.  I'll keep you posted about that, as soon as I know more.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

STATION IDENT 030313




And that, as they say, is that.

Still a couple of weeks worth of entries coming your way, but there's first draft, done and done.

Time for a victory whisky.

Cheers!  And thank you all so much, for reading along and watching me figure my shit out here.  There's more to come, in terms of new writing and other stuff - I intend to keep on updating this blog as I figure out what order to tackle things in.  But for now, I'm going to put my feet up for a bit and bask.