Skip to main content

End of Summer

August has never been my favorite month. While I don't expect many tears to be shed for me as a poor teacher trudging back to school after two months of vacation, resuming my professional duties does represent an adjustment. Suddenly I don't have the time I had to exhaustively research and write my stories, I've got squeeze in an hour or two in the evening. I have resumed my double existence as a literary fugitive. While I wasn't able to finish all of my projects, two months of basically uninterrupted writing bore a lot of fruit. To shift my writing into a lower gear (even by a step or two) hurts.

I was able to get drafts done for five stories and get two to a state fit for submission. One thing I tried this time around was not bogging myself down on one story. I wrote a draft for one story and then put it aside in favor of another. Eventually I got back to the previous versions and slowly worked up each, improving it each time. 

I tend to obsess over my stories, a fault that leads to a sometimes labored style. By the end of this summer I felt as though I was getting to a place where the words were simply appearing on the page, rather than surrendering after being dragged kicking and screaming into place.

In other respects, this was a memorable summer. I saw my brother who was visiting from Australia. I went to Readercon 2013. I braved the crowds at the rescheduled Comicon and basked in the unbelievable weather and scenery of New Mexico. 

Hopefully as 2013 rolls on I'll have a few more things to report but for the moment I'm just going to express gratitude for the time I did have. It wasn't wasted.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation.  Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia  is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel  Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...
Post a Comment
Read more