Look what my barrista made me to drink while I write my next Immortal Brotherhood romance…
That’s a Bella Tazza (espresso, half&half, and ground chocolate).
I’m all aglow.
Lots of folks are marking the date today by buying lottery tickets. For me, it’s a reminder of how heavily the number nine figures in the Immortal Brotherhood books:
Nine warriors. Nine amulets. Nine books.
Nine words in the tag line the copywriters created for IMMORTAL OUTLAW:
“When the sun goes down, the beast comes out.”
Nine clues in Marion and Steinarr’s quest. [I didn't plan this one. I didn't even realize it until after I submitted the manuscript, but when I started listing them in preparation for making the Google map—Surprise!—there they were.]
And nine because the Norse gods, especially Odin, are obsessed by the number: there are nine worlds in the cosmos; Heimdall, the guardian of the gods, has nine mothers, and Ægir has nine daughters; Odin hung upside down on the world tree Yggdrasil for nine days in order to gain the wisdom of the eighteen (twice nine) runes of Wyrd; the Swedes assembled every nine years at the temple of Uppsala to celebrate and sacrifice for nine days; Odin’s ring Draupnir released eight drops of gold every ninth night, each of which formed a equal ring for a total of nine rings (Tolkein’s inspiration, btw – and there were nine members of the Fellowship at the outset, too). [Find out more about nines in Norse mythology at Wikipedia.]
So tonight at 9:09, I’ll be lifting my glass of honey mead and taking nine sips to my warriors. And then I’ll go back to work on IMMORTAL CHAMPION. Because I know you’re waiting…
According to the Oxford American Dictionary which is built into my Mac, to noodle is to “improvise or play casually on a musical instrument.”
For me, noodling is playing casually on paper or on the computer or even in my head, trying on images, ideas, plot lines, characters. It’s the What If process plus the kind of research that wanders through the stacks and follows interesting links for the joy of it (as opposed to the kind that hunts down a specific datum) plus bits of writing that may or may not lead someplace useful. It’s pages of nonsense and folders full of documents (real or electronic) and pictures and maps and half-formed ideas.
Mostly it’s the search for Read the rest of this entry »
I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt.
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because Read the rest of this entry »
A standing stone with runes plays a key role in IMMORTAL WARRIOR, but if I’d seen this wonderful augmented exhibit from the Cultural History Museum in Randers, Denmark, it might have had even a bigger part. The museum uses digital technology to project a story on the stone itself, then carry the runes off the stone and into the visitor’s space where the viewer interacts with them. Amazing, dramatic, beautiful. (Wait ’til you see the stone crack open…)
I want to go to Denmark.
Thanks to Gizmodo for bringing this to my attention.
I was going to blog about that here, but I had a commitment over at Shapeshifter Romance, so I blessed them with my wit and perspicacity instead (though I’ll undoubtedly steal my own words back, sometime further along the timeline, and post them here for future reference). Wander on over. Read. Comment. Show those other shifter gals that I can draw a crowd…
Over at Murderati, JT Ellison continues her series, A Virtual Montparnasse, with a long, thoughtful post on the pleasures and perils of the Internet for writers—a common topic on writers’ blogs these days, and for good reason. Not only do we let ourselves be distracted by obsessively following the trail of some bit of research into the digital hinterlands, like Ahab tracking the whale, but we use it to just plain procrastinate. Can’t write? Update your MySpace page. Still can’t write? Hit Get Mail, answer each message, then hit it again a dozen times before you pop on over to Facebook to check those updates.
I read JTs missive with sympathy, but also with a bit of private glee, for though I am one of the worst offenders of this type, I have found the solution. I have found Freedom. Then I read far enough and learned she’d found it, too—or at least the concept. Damn. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write about it, too:
Freedom is a shareware program developed by Fred Stutzman, a PhD student at University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. This Apple-only program (yet another reason to give up your PC) disables your wireless and ethernet networking for a given time period. In other words, you launch Freedom, tell it how much time you want in minutes (up to 360, i.e., 6 hours), and it locks out all your internet access, mail, etc., for that time period. No will power needed.
Here’s what Fred says:
Freedom is an exploration of least-effort computing (in which computational affordances are disabled for task focusing) and spatial reclamation (in which our computers resist encroachments of connectivity).
That’s his PhD-speak version. Here’s the English translation:
Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.
Freedom enforces freedom; a reboot is the only circumvention of the Freedom time limit you specify. The hassle of rebooting means you’re less likely to cheat, and you’ll be more productive. Not rebooting is why we bought Apple computers in the first place. When first getting used to Freedom, I suggest using the software for short periods of time.
That’s right. The only way around Freedom is to completely reboot.
I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I can tell you, it WORKS. There’s no denying, it’s a little disconcerting to turn over your computer to this thing for the first time—kind of an Aack! It’s eating my baby’s brain feeling. Do what Fred says and start small, with just, say 30 minutes, and learn you can trust it to give your computer back when its done (it does, really). I recommend you check to make sure nothing that needs the Airport or ethernet is running before you launch Freedom (e.g., make sure Time Machine isn’t in the middle of a backup—in fact, turn TM off for the time being, just remember to turn it back on afterward). And do be aware that you’ll see the spinning wheel of death as it shuts down your access, but that all you have to do is click on an app or open window and it will go away. Just trust it and make the leap. Once you do…Wow!
Think about it: six hours of no temptation. Six hours. It’s pretty damned wonderful.
What are your ways of avoiding/eliminating/killing procrastination in its digital form?
Someone on a writers’ loop I belong to recently celebrated finishing a non-fiction contract project. This is one she’d been grinding away at for a long time, and she referred to it as an ”albatross.” She was looking forward to a new contract, similar but with a different subject matter that she views as more interesting. Most of all, though, she was looking forward to not having the dead weight of the albatross around her neck, to having the time and the energy to work on her own personal project.
I could totally understand. Once upon a time, I turned down a second interview on a technical writer position because after the first interview I had worried that spending all day writing manuals for utility company billing and location software (can anything possibly be more boring?) would make me hate writing. I wasn’t published yet, but I knew I wanted to be. And I wanted to love getting there.
So even though it would have made me a ton of money (oh, lordy, I just totaled up how much I would have made in the intervening years…), I told them ‘thank you very much but a second interview would be a waste of your time and mine.’ They were shocked. Shocked! And I was sick to my stomach for days. Fortunately, I had the support of my husband, but it was still a really scary thing to do—I’m definitely a bird in the hand type, and this was choosing the one in the bush, which proceeded to fly off for another five years or so. But during that five years, the writing was fun. And it has stayed fun, even with deadlines and rewrites and long gaps between sales.
I often wish I had the fortitude to do both the fun and the not-fun writing, and I surely admire those who manage it. But I knew I wasn’t, and I did what I had to do. I have since taken other jobs to help make ends meet, but I made sure none of them had anything to do with writing (except for a short-term job grading high-school English papers—now that was enlightening, in a grim sort of way). They were all things that, even if they left me physically tired, left me with a desire to write and a brain with which to do it.
That’s what it’s about: protecting the writing. I was dead serious about it, and if you want to write, you need to be serious about it, too. Honor not just your skill and the muse, but your desire to write. It’s a delicate thing, and it needs nourishing. Whether it’s finding some way to keep body and soul together that isn’t a soul-sucking brain drain, or simply carving out a little time of your own, do whatever you need to do to make it possible, and preferably fun, for you to write.
Shoot the damned albatross–and then make sure you toss it overboard instead of turning it into a necklace. You can borrow my cross-bow.
It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I’m practicing the pirate lingo I learned at the Official ITLAP Website, including the pick-up lines for Lady Pirates (my personal favorite: That’s quite a cutlass ye got thar, what ye need is a good scabbard!)
If you don’t have time to learn Pirate, try their English to Pirate translator.
To the left, the original Lady Pirate, Anne Bonney.
P.S. — Vikings are pirates, too, you know. So I suppose “Pass the lutefisk” is also Pirate Lingo…
