Happy November!
November has brought with it a whole raft (balsa? floating? laden with goodies?) of new changes and interesting things:
NaNoWriMo: another November, another novel. There seems to be heaps of talk this year about the ‘novel in a month’ challenge, mostly around the fact that NaNoWriMo novels aren’t “real novels”, and the frenzied, head down, don’t look up style of writing that it generates isn’t “real writing” either. Argh. In cases like this I think the only answer is: if you like doing it, keep doing it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. But it certainly seems a bit bitter-spirited and mean to begrudge anyone who likes to do it. Yes, it’s silly. Yes, a lot of things get written that might not normally have seen the light of day if the writer had thought about it a little first. I see that as a good thing, not bad. In any case, my profile is (the ever original) jnickelsen. My synopsis and an excerpt are up there. Yes, it’s a story about clones. Clones in New Zealand. That is all.
The house painting: it’s finally done! It looks so much cleaner and happier than before. We’re both really pleased with it.
Work: I don’t know how much I should talk about this one, seeing as it hasn’t really been announced at work (or to my parents, heh) yet, but oh well – no time like the present! I’ve decided I am going to take a year off work, starting at these upcoming Christmas holidays. A sabbatical. Not surprisingly, I’m really looking forward to it. I plan to write (short stories, my longer piece, game reviews, maybe even some freelance writing), read (everything that’s on my to-read list, which is a bit of a daunting task), revise all of my French language learning that’s faded away over the years, ditto with my jazz piano, and guitar. I’m going to sew, garden, bake, and get the house clean and tidy (and my study organised!!) for the first time ever. I have no idea what to expect. It’s going to be quite the experiment.
Diana Gabaldon: Seems a strange thing to mention, but last night Steve and I went to a “books and bubbles” night to hear Diana Gabaldon talk. The books and bubbles bits aside (which was all a bit “girl power-y” for my liking, not to mention the fact that Steve was maybe one of ten men in the audience, out of five hundred), Diana Gabaldon was every bit as intelligent, interesting, and entertaining as I thought she would be. I like people who have done the science-arts crossover; I think they bring a gravity and ‘to the point’-ness to their work – which is not to say that she isn’t hilarious, of course. But her writing style is very direct, and I have always admired that about her. And she brings such a wealth of research to her novels, but incorporates it quite seamlessly in with the rest of the story, rather than going “oo, I found a fact. Everyone, look!”
She is definitely in my wee pack of writers who I have in my mental compartment of people who I want to be reading when I’m writing. Not to copy, because I don’t really write anything like Diana Gabaldon’s books, but to try and inherit some of the tone, the flavour, of why and how they write. It’s a subconscious thing, I guess. You want the method to impress upon you. And if you read enough of one author in a short period of time, you’ll know what I mean. So who else is in there? Garth Nix (especially after I finished reading the Abhorsen trilogy and found myself crying – yes weeping! – at the cafe where I went to read, at the end of the Abhorsen novel); Philip Pullman, for the same reason; Murakami; Jostein Gaarder; Mulisch’s The Discovery of Heaven; Laxness’s wonderful oddness of The Atom Station… and, you may find this strange, but also John Bellairs, author of The House with a Clock in Its Walls, The Figure in the Shadows, The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, and, one of my personal favourites, The Eyes of the Killer Robot. One of these days I’ll write a post on him. Gothic novels for kids.
Anyway, it’s time I was off – my NaNo novel is calling to me.
——
Listening: The Ramones, It’s Alive
Total chaos, and reflections on house painters
Well, it’s organised chaos anyway. I’m at home on the second of my five days off. It’s 9:30 in the morning, and I’m showered and coffeed, and have a cat on my lap – a good start! I’m also sharing the house with a team of four Vietnamese house painters, and a window guy, David, who are all beautifying the house as we speak. It’s great! I’m loving the fact that soon we will be able to actually open all the windows in the house, without having to pound at the frame to squeeze the window open. And no more of that nasty red mould (lichen? whatever it was) that was creeping up one side of the house. And we’ll have doors and gates painted in Pohutukawa, one of the loveliest trees (and colours) if you like your reds. So it’s all good. I just have to put up with all the doors and windows in the house open (it’s a nice day luckily, but still spring, so not the hottest), scraping, whizzing of drills, yelling, and the occasional hunt down of the one Vietnamese guy who can speak English to make, er, adjustments to what the guys are doing.
I think that’s the bit I’m having the most problem with. I’m not a bossy person – would make a terrible foreman. Steve notices things, like – the guys have painted the doorsteps, when we told the boss man we wanted to sand them back and polyurethane the wood. (He didn’t tell them, argh.) I didn’t even notice. But if I had, I would have felt terrible telling them – especially after they spent however much time painting the steps. And I also have this weird paranoia that they are all on the outside looking in, and thinking how lazy I am, reading all morning, and spending time on the computer. Gah. I wonder if it is awkward for them too, or if they really don’t care at all.
I went down to the Karori library cafe yesterday around 11:30, and stayed till 1. It was quite nice – they make a great soy flat white. But I also felt a bit aimless, even though I’d brought my notebooks and laptop with me (no wi-fi, but no biggie). So I walked home again, did some weeding in the garden, did the dishes, and then made chickpea and lentil patties for dinner. Oh drool. They were so delicious, and there were heaps left over for my lunch today as well.
Anyway, I’m trying to be productive, so I’m going to sign off now, make a cup of tea, and then hop back on the computer and review some of the workshop stories the others in my writing class have submitted for the week. Then there’s some of my own writing to do, and I have to wander down to the post office to send off some games I sold on TradeMe.
Adios!
The Proxies, Courtenay Place on a Friday Night, and kitty Weight Watchers
Brr, it’s cold this morning. I didn’t get up until quarter to nine, even though Steve got up and dressed and off for a mountain bike ride at eight. I sat in bed, wrapped in blankets, poring through my new treasure, the Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I got it in the post on Friday with four other books I’d ordered from the Folio society: A High Wind in Jamaica, Robinson Crusoe (I love this book so much), The Remains of the Day, and Brideshead Revisited. With these, and the nine (ergh!) books I ordered from Amazon a week ago I’m all ‘booked up’ for the near future.
The extreme book-ordering on Amazon happened as a result of starting to read Garth Nix’s Sabriel, absolutely loving it, and feeling greedy, decided I’d gobble up the lovely looking paperback set. Then books one and two of the Hunger Games had to go in the cart, as well as the two Dreamdark books, and it went on from there. (I’m currently reading Edith Patou’s East at the moment, btw, which is a re-telling of the story ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon’. It’s told from the perspective of quite a few different characters, which I found jarring at first but now I like quite a lot.
Yesterday was a bit of a slow day, after the madness that was the Proxies at the Adelaide on Friday night. Good, goofy fun – we went along with Jeremy and Megumi, which is a bit of a story in itself. We decided to catch the bus in to Newtown, but the trolley bus’s rope broke, just past the botanic gardens. We got off and high-tailed it down to Lambton Quay, to wait for the next bus, only to find that the bus that arrived was the same one we’d got off earlier – somehow it had been repaired that quickly! It still took us about an hour and a half to get to Jeremy & Megumi’s in Newtown. We finally got there and consoled ourselves with a few beers and some gorgeous takeaway curry at their place.
The Proxies, if you hadn’t figured it out by now, are a Pixies tribute band. I’d never really been much of a fan of tribute bands in general, but this is my second time seeing them. It is so fun to be able to spend three hours leaping around with your mates, singing all your favourite songs at the top of your lungs. Brent came along later on, and so did Dave and Clive from work and Clive’s lovely girlfriend Lize.
Steve and I walked down to Courtenay Place from the Adelaide, to catch a taxi and again marveled at the chaos and mayhem of that street on a Friday night. We were reasonably drunk, so no-one thought we were impostors or anything, but all I can say is jeez, you could tell it was school holidays.
Saturday morning (yesterday) we got up with headaches and had to take Sooty to the vet for his dental check-up and his micro-chipping. The vet looked at the check on my wrist (done by the guy who took our money at the door of the Adelaide) and said “is that so you can remember?” Ha ha. Then he weighed the Soots and said he’s overweight (argh!) and would we be interested in putting him on kitty weight watchers? They do a plan for your cat and you go in for monthly weighings and things. The vet was trying to do a promotion for the plan, so for thirty bucks Soots can go back for his check-in sessions and we don’t have to pay any more. We said why not? I have to take a ‘before’ photo of him today, poor guy.
I’ve been scribbling notes for my book/story/novel thing this morning – the one that’s still going through my head after a year or so of dead-ends. I have another ‘lead’ that I’m going to follow up, and hopefully will make some headway this month, before I have to put it all aside and take something else on for NaNoWriMo. I also have to finish up some stuff for my short fiction class, so I’d better get back to it.
‘Till next time….
Oh, and I have another review up at NZGamer. This time it’s for Red Faction: Guerrilla.
Borderlands hands-on
Just a quick note to let you know my Borderlands hands-on is up at NZGamer. It’s a truly awesome game!
Soots
It’s Monday evening. No, I’m not sitting on the couch with the cat, this was taken back in July. I’m at my desk, just hangin’. Soots just did come in though, and he did his thing where he comes a little close, as if to say he wouldn’t mind terribly if you did want to pick him up and smother him with attention. So I picked him up, and he’s gone all smoochy, which is to say there’s the faintest hint of a purr I can barely feel on my leg, and he keeps looking up at me, and if I bend my head down towards him he gives me a wee lick on the forehead.
Poor Soots. He hates noises, plastic bag rustling, stompy feet, and doesn’t really like it if you go after him for a pat or to pick him up. We got him from the Cats’ Protection League back in December 2006. The women who worked there called him a “little lost soul”. They had to feed him alone in his cage, because he didn’t like having to fight for the food bowls with the other cats. He used to belong to a lady who had a stroke, and then apparently the neighbours looked after him for a while, but I guess that didn’t work out. He doesn’t have many teeth left – when we first got him we took him to the vet and he wound up having six teeth removed – one was so loose it practically fell out in the surgery.
He thinks a lot, and is extremely paranoid, but as soon as you’re in bed, and the lights go out, he hops on top of you and gets in for a close cuddle. Or if you’re horizontal, or even just on the couch watching telly. He loves laps. But only if he comes to you. Pippi (the little black and white one) jumps all over him, and at first I was a bit worried that he’d hate her and go even more anti-social, but they seem to get on just fine now and race up and down the hall after each other.
He’s such a wee sweetheart.
Self-portraits
This is where I spend most of my evenings (note the empty wine glass), scribbling and generally faffing around. The rest of the study is in even more of a state, even with the new bookshelves put in. One day, if I’m brave, I’ll put in a picture of the entire room.
Too bad Alice’s head’s been cut off by the lamp – it’s one of my favourite Rackhams. (Note the witch off to the right! I love her.) The black and white photo on the right is of the flat I lived in, on Queen street, in my last year in Dunedin. Ben took the photo.
I love looking at pictures of other people’s writing areas (like the guardian series of authors’ rooms). I think mine looks cluttered but still quite welcoming.
Universe vs household chores
Some days you come across something that totally, bizarrely, sums up what you’ve been thinking about all week. Today was one of them. Cheers Charlie Brooker – we have obviously experienced some sort of transcendental mind meld. Let me know if you have one of those dreams with cats that have superpowers and I’ll know it’s true.
Anyway, the astronomers who made the discovery about Andromeda deserve our awe and respect, because their everyday job consists of dealing with concepts so intense and overwhelming that it’s a wonder their skulls don’t implode through sheer vertigo. Generally speaking, it’s best not to contemplate the full scope of the universe on a day-to-day basis because it makes a mockery of basic chores. It’s Tuesday night and the rubbish van comes first thing Wednesday morning, so you really ought to put the bin bags out, but hey – if our sun were the size of a grain of sand, the stars in our galaxy would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and if our entire galaxy were a grain of sand, the galaxies in our universe would fill several Olympic-sized swimming pools. You and your bin bags. Pfff!
The human brain isn’t equipped to house thoughts of this humbling enormity. Whenever I read a science article that nonchalantly describes the big bang, or some similarly dizzying reference to the staggering size and age and unknowable magnitude of everything, I feel like a sprite in an outdated platform game desperately straining to comprehend the machine code that put me there, even though that isn’t my job: my job is to jump between two moving clouds and land feet-first on a mushroom without ever questioning why.
Perhaps astrophysics stories should come with a little warning. Just as graphically violent news reports tend to be preceded by a quick disclaimer advising squeamish viewers that the following footage contains shots of protesters hurling their own severed kneecaps at riot police – or whatever – maybe brain-mangling science reports likely to leave you nursing an unpleasant existential bruise for several hours should be flagged as equally hazardous. How can I flip channels and enjoy Midsomer Murders once I’ve been reminded of the crushing futility of everything? I can’t even get worked up about the murders in that kind of mood. Yeah, kill him. And her. And them. Sod it. It’s all just atoms in an unfathomable vortex.
1000 blank white cards
So I’ve been playing more board games lately – everything from our old copy of Pay Day (with pieces from Go To The Head of the Class) to Saint Petersburg – and I was sifting boardgamegeek.com AND found reference to something that sounded sort of mysterious: 1000 blank white cards. I looked it up and found yet another internet phenomenon I seemed to have missed when it was actually phenom-ing. (Find info here and here.)
The gist is that you start out with 1000 blank cards, from which you draw on a handful, and use these, mixed in with a whole lot of blanks, to ’seed’ your deck. When you play (basic drawing and playing sort of mechanics), you either score points based on what is on the card, or, if you get a blank, you have to draw on it and create a new card. Awesome eh? At the end of the game, the players vote for their favourite ‘x’ number of cards to include as the seeds for the next game.
And while it would be nice to produce some gorgeous looking works of art, I think that’s not the point… the main thing is to be creative and have fun with your friends – the stuff of all great board games. I’m totally going to try this one out.
On ‘the shtick’ and having a pointless blog…
Every once in a while I sit down to blog and think “I should really have more of a thing going on here…” A thing. You know, a shtick. Everyone seems to have quite professional looking blogs these days, either making finer points about AR or VR or social media or new media or knitting or LOLCats. My blog’s a bit of a mess by comparison. I can’t exactly put the URL on a business card, or god forbid, my CV, as a shining example of my writing style and my suitability for a particular job. This is a social gig, plain and simple. At least I think it’s social. Or am I just talking to myself? So what’s the point of it all?
This was originally going to be a beat-up post, where I pointed out all the various flaws of the site (irregular updates, random musings, some too long, others too short, odd links and retarded photo skills), but you know what? Fuck it. I like my blog. It has an intangibility that I find refreshing, a jumbled-up mix of nothingness that makes me feel complete as a human being. My suitcase full of carefully-written diaries (going back to when I was seven) will stick around for posterity when I’m old and grey – or maybe some little shite of a grandchild will decide to throw it all away. What we consider tangible objects are illusory anyway, I reckon.
So why not – why not a salute to the pointless blog, to the messy blog, the jack-of-all-trades blog, the irregular, unprofessional blog, the blog with poor spelling, the blog that always apologizes for not having written sooner. As multitudinous as they all are, there’s something fantastic about the way we all seem to still be sticking around, smelling up the place, while the sophisticated journalism students (I don’t know where that reference came from, BTW) produce flawless copy. Even though Twitter has taken the personal broadcast to the next level, I’m still kinda fascinated that so many of us are persisting in our blogging endeavours.
My blog is exactly like my life, like my house. You step in through my front door and the first thing you see is not some artfully-arranged display of framed pictures against a neutral background with splashes of feature colour here and there. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m a clutterbug. And my bookshelves – there’s anything and everything about everything in there. Every genre. Academic writing, sci-fi, poetry, YA. Ditto with my music. Even if I wanted to limit myself to writing about a particular subject, I’d have absolutely no way to choose: do I write about writing game reviews? being a stationery fiend? a reader? a student? an IT worker? a crafter? a house renovator? an American-Kiwi? And like my tastes in books, in music, movies, friends, booze, games and men, I couldn’t tell you for certain exactly where those tastes come from or why I feel so passionately about them.
There’s definitely a valid argument in favour of refining your mind in one direction. Looking at the many different angles of a particular subject requires precision and discipline of thought. But broad thinking can produce magic too, as well as junk. I guess that’s why blogs that concentrate on just one or two subjects are that much more palatable. With our waning concentration levels we feel like we can’t afford to waste any time on something that might surprise us – for good or for bad.
At least a blog with a shtick is sort of advertising its wares before we have to make that commitment to follow it or not. Because interestingly, people seem to want to find a blog they can follow, that they can stick with for a long period of time. We don’t tend to skim across blogs (unlike other online content) – we want to plumb them. We have different expectations from blogs than our expectations of regular people. We don’t mind if our friends blather on about the everyday junk in their lives. We just don’t want our blogs to do the same…
Things I learned between the ages of 6 and 10
- You can make just about anything out of a cardboard box.
- Cool pens and stationery make writing more fun.
- The imaginary world’s usually better than the real one.
- Magic is real.
- Witches (and potions) are awesome.
- Diaries are cool; secret ones are cooler.
- If you’re feeling left out – start a club.
- Watching your favourite movie over and over is awesome.
- You like what you like; nothing anyone says can change that.
- Libraries and roller skating rinks are where it’s goin’ on.
- Gamebooks – played with pencil and paper – rule.
Things I’ve been reading online
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/can-do/ – awesome, inspiring reminder of why we need to keep thinking and inventing. And man, Ben Franklin was incredible!
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google – Is Google Making Us Stupid? I think so. So does Nicholas Carr. Seriously, this isn’t just a luddite’s expression of how kids these days are going down the toilet (or something), but rather a surprisingly comprehensive look at how technologies affect the way we think.
http://www.danpink.com – Daniel Pink’s blog. I came across Daniel Pink through his TED talk, On the surprising science of motivation. It was indeed surprising, and from there I found his Johnny Bunko site, which is also a real eye-opener.
Cool writing app – Bonsai story generator
I came across this while reading about the Critters web group. Basically you enter a couple longish (1000 words or so) stories or pieces into the text field, hit “go” and weirdness results.
Here are a few gems that I got:
- A gentle easy-listening tune came back into a migraine.
- Carl thought, as he picked her up and watched the grey sky.
- The oiled pieces Lionel Ritchie sang “EEUNGH!” Safe.
- The girl had to do that sort of coffee with an angel with a strong cold bitter mess by the house held the gun club one out the golden grain But who shall tinge the radio in the shower.
- There, on the work bench.
- He was distracted from hitting a sip of winter.
- The woman still smoked.
- When he woke still in the pantry for sugar, and then was reminded of a crow, and walked barefoot into the thought of info-mercials, astrology commercials and the woman, and then to the couch.
- She nodded to the trees.
- He then started to melt, and smutty late-night programming roll over the house.
- He’d propped the yew and thrusted.
- Carl squeezed the couch.
- He wondered what hope could he?
- Carl slowly began to put her hand against the fridge potato and drove them again, the gun up a little.
- He had horrible nightmares all he wanted to be with him, what he saw.
- Everything, everywhere, had to do some cleaning up, all his clothes tangled in the bright orange pieces.
- Lionel Ritchie was no moon, so cold, and lay there, shivering.
- He yawned and half-wrenched the seat, the couch, and flip him about Jack Frost, who in a stool, and thrusted.
- Carl was usually the girl leapt from the garage for thee It reminded him up and smutty late-night programming roll over to him, playing at something He knelt and reached out to leave but he didn’t know what.
- She nodded, satisfied, and rushed to the toilet.
- Girlish singing in the small radio It was so hot.
- On impulse he had taken Mariah out get dressed, and her ice cube, like an ice that covered with green lichen and saw it wasn’t unusual for him to mention the snow woman.
- Carl realised what Edgar could feel, well-muscled.
- But his feeble protests were serious.
- “That’s nice,” he said grandly, feeling a beautiful Sunday Mornings.
- Sex.
- Something scrabbled high sweet voice as she iced the soft cloth.
- He was distracted from the snow.
- The girl climbed beneath the ash-tray seemed surprised but it was no blood, no time.
- He took his pant legs and feet and pulled off his head.
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