And we're off. While some test readers are still reading, I've begun the first stages of re-editing the novel. For now, all I'm doing it taking a blue pencil to a hard copy of the manuscript and cutting, cutting, cutting. One of my goals for this draft is to tighten the story by 10,000-30,000 words, and that means the merciless slaughter of unnecessary verbiage (especially adverbiage...ha!....I slay me).
No idea when it will be done, but the goal is the beginning of summer. By that point, it will either be done outright, or, more likely, need just a polish. By Christmas, at the absolute latest, I plan to start agent hunting.
11 March 2008
31 December 2007
23 December 2007
12 December 2007
Home stretch
In the last two days, I've written just shy of 10,000 words to finally finish off Chapter XI. Earth is fucked, the war is over, our heroes have arrived wherever it is they're going to be for the next decade or so. All that remains is the final chapter, which will be much reduced from the original--the whole stowaway plot is dropped and we're fading to black as soon as Livvy (I changed her name--did I mention that?) counts six stars in Cassiopeia. In a way, I feel bad for cutting a lot of that, especially the flight into Toliman, but the book is over 120,000 words as it is. The story of the Toliman settlers can be saved for another project.
I've settled on a new title for the book. I'm keeping that under wraps for now, however--only the test readers will know. I'm also considering publishing under a pen name (mostly for commercial reasons), but I'm not settled on that and so I'm keeping that under wraps for now, too.
Just a few more days, folks.
Post Script: On 18 December, I'm taking The Humanist Inheritance down from SDN. This is also for commercial reasons. I'm going to actually split off the thread from its opening post and leave the opening post in Fanfics, so any links to the story out on the interwebs will be unbroken, but the story itself will be gone. It's not being deleted, but I'm taking it out of public view indefinitely. It's a first draft anyway. So if you want to read it, do it now.
I've settled on a new title for the book. I'm keeping that under wraps for now, however--only the test readers will know. I'm also considering publishing under a pen name (mostly for commercial reasons), but I'm not settled on that and so I'm keeping that under wraps for now, too.
Just a few more days, folks.
Post Script: On 18 December, I'm taking The Humanist Inheritance down from SDN. This is also for commercial reasons. I'm going to actually split off the thread from its opening post and leave the opening post in Fanfics, so any links to the story out on the interwebs will be unbroken, but the story itself will be gone. It's not being deleted, but I'm taking it out of public view indefinitely. It's a first draft anyway. So if you want to read it, do it now.
10 November 2007
November HI update
October was a bad month.
The short version is, I wrote very little and almost every word of it has since been shitcanned (more precisely, cut out of the manuscript and pasted into a file called "Deleted Scenes", where it will languish between times when I loot it for a clever sentence here and there). The long version is, there was simply no way to wrap everything up in one chapter, and even if I could, the pacing problems which plagued the first draft would still be there. Worse, the stuff I was writing was garbage. Dead prose, dull scenes, characters acting like they'd just come down with Idiot Plot. So it got axed.
Where does that leave me now? Well, after about a week scribbling in an old notebook, I worked out a better plan for the last third of the novel. Draft 2 "Sky King Star" remains unchanged, the ending chapter incorporates all of Draft 1 "Fever Dreams" and about half of D1 "Ice and Ashes". A new chapter containing the mutiny (that damn mutiny has been my problem since I first thought of it) will immediately precede Sky King Star.
Also added is a prologue (about half the length of a normal chapter), set in Philadelphia the day the Dominion arrives. I wrote it expressly to tie the main story to the Toliman ending (shh! Don't tell Metatwaddle what that means!). Between that and the Spirit of Halifax plot ending before "Sky King Star", that takes care of my ending problem.
Will I make 23 November? Probably not. I'm aiming for 1 December. There's still an outside chance, but it's already the 10th and I have a lot of work left to do.
Now to respond to a couple comments. First, from Da Rev (the inimitable RevPrez, I presume; just for the record, I was opposed to his banning and remain opposed to it):
My conception of the Dominion was never intended to be 100% faithful to contemporary Reconstructionsim (though I do think the contemporary version is vile). It began as a thought exercise before I ever conceived of HI--I wondered what an American Khmer Rouge would look like, and got a cross between Fred Phelps, David Duke, and Huey Long. Later when I thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to write a sci-fi story that tried to stay realistic?", the Dominion idea popped back into my head, and suddenly I had what I thought was a short novella.
Basically, the Dominion is what I think you might get when you plunge the entire south into hopeless poverty for a generation, put almost everyone to work as a sharecropper, add a ten year drought (thanks to Global Warming) which is threatening to tip the entire region into starvation, remove any effective Federal authority, and add a little deranged Christian fundamentalism to taste. A lot of that is only alluded to in HI--Crash and Interregnum will go into quite a bit more detail.
And now, a comment from Surlethe:
This concludes this public service announcement.
The short version is, I wrote very little and almost every word of it has since been shitcanned (more precisely, cut out of the manuscript and pasted into a file called "Deleted Scenes", where it will languish between times when I loot it for a clever sentence here and there). The long version is, there was simply no way to wrap everything up in one chapter, and even if I could, the pacing problems which plagued the first draft would still be there. Worse, the stuff I was writing was garbage. Dead prose, dull scenes, characters acting like they'd just come down with Idiot Plot. So it got axed.
Where does that leave me now? Well, after about a week scribbling in an old notebook, I worked out a better plan for the last third of the novel. Draft 2 "Sky King Star" remains unchanged, the ending chapter incorporates all of Draft 1 "Fever Dreams" and about half of D1 "Ice and Ashes". A new chapter containing the mutiny (that damn mutiny has been my problem since I first thought of it) will immediately precede Sky King Star.
Also added is a prologue (about half the length of a normal chapter), set in Philadelphia the day the Dominion arrives. I wrote it expressly to tie the main story to the Toliman ending (shh! Don't tell Metatwaddle what that means!). Between that and the Spirit of Halifax plot ending before "Sky King Star", that takes care of my ending problem.
Will I make 23 November? Probably not. I'm aiming for 1 December. There's still an outside chance, but it's already the 10th and I have a lot of work left to do.
Now to respond to a couple comments. First, from Da Rev (the inimitable RevPrez, I presume; just for the record, I was opposed to his banning and remain opposed to it):
BTW, not a bad job on Humanist. Finally finished reading it. A bit heavy-handed and disingenuous about Christian Reconstructionism, but all in all a solid demonstration that hard sf and space opera are not mutually exclusive. I look forward to reading more of your work.I think you're dead on about the heavy-handedness (also the stuff about how awesome it is, but we'll stick to the criticisms for now). Quite a lot of that ended up getting cut--Alvin's whole walk through Washington, for starters. Besides the fact it was about as subtle as a rain of anvils, it dragged on the plot.
My conception of the Dominion was never intended to be 100% faithful to contemporary Reconstructionsim (though I do think the contemporary version is vile). It began as a thought exercise before I ever conceived of HI--I wondered what an American Khmer Rouge would look like, and got a cross between Fred Phelps, David Duke, and Huey Long. Later when I thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to write a sci-fi story that tried to stay realistic?", the Dominion idea popped back into my head, and suddenly I had what I thought was a short novella.
Basically, the Dominion is what I think you might get when you plunge the entire south into hopeless poverty for a generation, put almost everyone to work as a sharecropper, add a ten year drought (thanks to Global Warming) which is threatening to tip the entire region into starvation, remove any effective Federal authority, and add a little deranged Christian fundamentalism to taste. A lot of that is only alluded to in HI--Crash and Interregnum will go into quite a bit more detail.
And now, a comment from Surlethe:
Hey, since I don't feel like waiting for the November update: if you're interested I'll have some free time over Christmas break I could use to read over and tear apart Draft II.Thank you for saving me the trouble of asking. Yes, I'd very much appreciate a few test readers who have the time and inclination to give me comments. Metatwaddle's input has been priceless, but I'd love to hear other perspectives (and, I admit, having spent so much time on this damn thing, I'd like to actually have readers; I miss the instant feedback from the board).
This concludes this public service announcement.
20 October 2007
The trouble with SDN
For many months, during my self-imposed exile, I've had the feeling that something has gone wrong over at SDN, and furthermore, it went wrong a while ago. My original plan was to stay exiled for 90 days, and come back 1 September. It is the middle of October now and I'm still not back. Admittedly, I haven't finished HI yet, but I hadn't expected to get it done in 90 days, either. I really haven't been in any particular hurry to get back. There just seems to be something off about the place, and I haven't been able to articulate what it is.
Then this morning, I looked in Off Topic, and discovered Kanastrous did it for me.
At this point, Fleet Admiral JD replied thusly:
The thing that has been bothering me (and, I suspect, more than a few other people) is not acrimonious debate. That topic was brought up on the board a little while ago, and while I do believe the issue of civility in debate is not limited to the binary choice of "Miss Manners" or "Everybody is an asshole all the time", I think, in the balance, most people get exactly what they deserve in board debates, and at any rate, I would not trade honesty for civility.
(I do think that a good general rule would be to give any poster at least one civil reply, to see if he's debating honestly; if he's not, then call down the napalm).
But this incident didn't happen in a debate; it was just a question, one that would have been easy to answer. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Fleet Admiral JD here (I don't hold any grudge, or indeed, much of an opinion at all on him), but he DID act like an asshole and, so far as I can tell, for no better reason than because he could. I suppose you could argue that Kanastrous's snippy reply to DPDarkPrimus warranted a hostile response, but really, DP should have answered the question fully (or not said anything at all), it wasn't DP who responded, and really, JD's response still would have been massive overkill if it had come from DP.
In real life, only an epic prick would act like JD did in the thread, and that epic prick would have to be pretty certain he could win the fight that he'd likely start by acting like that. Yet acting like that has become completely acceptable on SDN (one reply to Kanastrous was "Overreact much?").
Somehow, on SDN, the idea that any level of hostility is acceptable in a debate has mutated into "any level of hostility is acceptable, all the time". Especially, I suspect, when it is directed against newbies or unpopular posters. I'm absolutely positive I'm guilty of this too (I didn't bother doing a search of my own posts, in part because I need to do a Google search to find them, and in part because I really didn't want to see them), but that doesn't mean I was right. Part of why Kanastrous's response resonated with me was because he pinned down some of my own motivations for acting like an asshole in the past. I could try to justify it by saying I have had to sit and take shit from bosses, students, parents, etc. in the real world and so my hostility on SDN is driven by a desire to unload what I can't unload on them, but really, it's not much of an excuse. It's still acting like a giant prick because I'm unafraid of retaliation.
So what to do about this? Well, speaking as a Senator and a member of the administration...not very much. There's no practical way to enforce "Don't be an asshole" without A) forcing moderators to make value judgments on what's "too nasty", which they will undoubtedly get wrong often and will be accused of getting wrong oftener, or B) writing a great hairy clot of rules regulating posting behavior that will annoy everyone, accidentally force people to be nice to dishonest jerkoffs in debates, and allow people to act like pricks anyway once all the loopholes have been found. The best way to change the culture on the board to something more civil, without turning it into Miss Manners, is to do exactly what Kanastrous did: when someone acts like a big dildo because he thinks he can get away with it, flame the living shit out of him.
Combat hostility with hostility. It's the SDN way.
Then this morning, I looked in Off Topic, and discovered Kanastrous did it for me.
Hey, fucktard, are y'all such total obnoxious asswipes that your pleasure in life is calling people names when they ask a simple (or what ought to be a simple) question?The background: Kanastrous asked the meaning of the word "RAR!", assuming it was an acronym. DPDarkPrimus responded "It's a board meme", a magnificently unhelpful response to which Kanastrous replied, "Thanks. That's magnificently unhelpful."
Searching a board for the meaning of an acronym is a waste of time, at least, if I'm going out on a limb and thinking that just maybe people around here aren't such a pack of assholes-for-the-sake-of-being-assholes that they can't even bring themselves to answer a pig-fucking simple question.
You must be one incredible fucking coward in real life, if you have to build yourself up and get off on pointless rudeness to total strangers who are too far away to smash your fucking teeth in, just for daring to ask a simple question.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Didn't your mother pay you enough attention, when you were young?!
At this point, Fleet Admiral JD replied thusly:
Hey, fucktard, why don't you take a look at previous posts and figure it out? It's not a hard thing to grasp unless your skull is as thick as a frigging tree trunk. Then again, judging by some of your posting behavior, maybe the truth is that simple concepts are beyond your comprehension.Kanastrous then opened fire with both barrels, which I quoted above.
The thing that has been bothering me (and, I suspect, more than a few other people) is not acrimonious debate. That topic was brought up on the board a little while ago, and while I do believe the issue of civility in debate is not limited to the binary choice of "Miss Manners" or "Everybody is an asshole all the time", I think, in the balance, most people get exactly what they deserve in board debates, and at any rate, I would not trade honesty for civility.
(I do think that a good general rule would be to give any poster at least one civil reply, to see if he's debating honestly; if he's not, then call down the napalm).
But this incident didn't happen in a debate; it was just a question, one that would have been easy to answer. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Fleet Admiral JD here (I don't hold any grudge, or indeed, much of an opinion at all on him), but he DID act like an asshole and, so far as I can tell, for no better reason than because he could. I suppose you could argue that Kanastrous's snippy reply to DPDarkPrimus warranted a hostile response, but really, DP should have answered the question fully (or not said anything at all), it wasn't DP who responded, and really, JD's response still would have been massive overkill if it had come from DP.
In real life, only an epic prick would act like JD did in the thread, and that epic prick would have to be pretty certain he could win the fight that he'd likely start by acting like that. Yet acting like that has become completely acceptable on SDN (one reply to Kanastrous was "Overreact much?").
Somehow, on SDN, the idea that any level of hostility is acceptable in a debate has mutated into "any level of hostility is acceptable, all the time". Especially, I suspect, when it is directed against newbies or unpopular posters. I'm absolutely positive I'm guilty of this too (I didn't bother doing a search of my own posts, in part because I need to do a Google search to find them, and in part because I really didn't want to see them), but that doesn't mean I was right. Part of why Kanastrous's response resonated with me was because he pinned down some of my own motivations for acting like an asshole in the past. I could try to justify it by saying I have had to sit and take shit from bosses, students, parents, etc. in the real world and so my hostility on SDN is driven by a desire to unload what I can't unload on them, but really, it's not much of an excuse. It's still acting like a giant prick because I'm unafraid of retaliation.
So what to do about this? Well, speaking as a Senator and a member of the administration...not very much. There's no practical way to enforce "Don't be an asshole" without A) forcing moderators to make value judgments on what's "too nasty", which they will undoubtedly get wrong often and will be accused of getting wrong oftener, or B) writing a great hairy clot of rules regulating posting behavior that will annoy everyone, accidentally force people to be nice to dishonest jerkoffs in debates, and allow people to act like pricks anyway once all the loopholes have been found. The best way to change the culture on the board to something more civil, without turning it into Miss Manners, is to do exactly what Kanastrous did: when someone acts like a big dildo because he thinks he can get away with it, flame the living shit out of him.
Combat hostility with hostility. It's the SDN way.
12 October 2007
More Southern justice
From the AP:
Guards Acquitted in Boot Camp Case
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — Eight former boot camp workers were acquitted of manslaughter Friday in the death of a 14-year-old boy who was videotaped being punched and kicked. The scene sparked outrage and changes in the juvenile system, but it jurors took just 90 minutes to decide it was not a crime.
So:
Southern state? Check.All-white jury? Check.
Black victim? Check.
White perp? Check (to be fair, some of the guards were black or Asian; the jury probably just couldn't figure out how to convict them but not the white guards)
Incontrovertible evidence? Check.
Acquittal? Check.
The AP article describes the county in which the crime took place as being conservative, with a great respect for law and order, which apparently translates to "Anything any goon in a uniform does to a minority or a poor kid is just aces with us".
I have no doubt when the apologists come crawling out of the woodwork (and they always do), they will claim that since the victim, Martin Lee Anderson, was in the juvenile justice system, he was obviously a troublemaker, was probably mouthing off to the guards, et cetera, and deserved what was coming to him (this same reasoning was used to justify sentencing Mychal Bell to decades in prison for a cafeteria fight, even after the circumstances of the Jena 6 case came to light). Two responses: first, I'm coming around to the idea that "He's a troublemaker/thug/criminal" has become the 21st century equivalent of "He was winking at a white woman". Second, Martin Lee Anderson's heinous crime was...joyriding.
No further comment is necessary, I think.
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