Love in Dark Settings

"The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

--Mary Heaton Vorse.

Topics in this post: Weekly cycle. Pleasure and torture - design and finances. The art of avoiding the obvious (turn-of-the-century toilet paper). Editing and proofreading. A reason to love het: Mary Stewart. Overwhelmed. Not again. My Muse and death. Re-examining fundamental principles in my publishing work. Publication schedule redux. Victorian water engines and evil things to do with them. Changes in my diet. How to spend a holiday. Happy (late) Thanksgiving! Progress in scanning. Soaring upwards with writing counts . . . and staying there. Monthly totals. Bits of progress on chores.

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( Recommendation of Mary Stewart's The Moon-Spinners )

( Progress report on my writings: November 2008 )

"Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it."

--Flannery O'Connor.

Topics in this post: Research from the sources, step #1 to kicking an Internet addiction - get a research assistant, a quick kick-start, my magical formula for writing fiction, accessibility on Election Day, anachronisms and ethics in historical fiction, my Muse pops in again, scanning breakthrough, putting that bachelor's degree to work, a splendid week, past the danger, trying to keep on track, review of Scribe's "Roman Enslavement," why historical research isn't as boring as it could be, and my Muse saunters in, simplicity itself, another three thousand words, strong winds and smooth sailing on the writing sea, hard BDSM the slash way.

(No writing progress report till the end of the month. But you'll see in this entry that I'm doing well.)

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( Review of Scribe's Roman Enslavement )

"I've been writing fanfiction since LONG before I knew the word or that anyone else was doing it; I called it 'here, let me fix that for you.' ('The totally awesome and obviously gay Helen from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall escapes her abusive husband only to end up with the poncy, insufferable, domineering and judgmental male narrator? Here, let me fix that for you.' *scribble scribble torrid lesbian romance*)"

--The ever-quotable Maculategiraffe.

Topics in this post: Geeky list of software I own, calculating publishing times, Internet round-up (libraries), organization - what a novel concept, e-book delays, reviews of the Hulu site and China Beach, okay - one more e-book, unexpected lyrics, slow progress, documentaries redone the way they should have been done in the first place, the economy and the elections, what to do when you want to combine two versions of a manuscript, the endless saga of The Three Lands, my Muse continues, winter schedule preview, the voodoo effect, winter reading preparations, how I write stories, Internet round-up (The Dark is Rising fans), my dissatisfaction with pro SF/F, on course, update!, various headaches - Internet addiction and Website navigation and CreateSpace's slow publishing process, record-keeping, looking at my formidable number of unfinished manuscripts, why I hate research (and why I love Google Books), heading off-Web.

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( Reviews of the Hulu site and China Beach )

( Progress report on my writings (for those of you who want me to just cut to the chase) )

"The fears of authors that they'll get 'pirated' are almost always just plain silly. With the exception of a tiny percentage of very well-known authors like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, the real problem authors face is that only a very small percentage of their potential customers have even heard of them - so how likely is it that the ravening hordes of electronic pirates are out there plundering their titles?

"About as likely as a piano singer in a roadhouse bar in Oklahoma discovering that a pirated tape of her performance is selling like hot cakes all over the country. Just like they did to Maria Callas! - a delusion of grandeur upon which she piles more folly by demanding that the management of the bar has to physically search every customer who comes in to make sure they aren't carrying concealed recording equipment.

"Sound silly - almost insane? Yet, that's exactly what DRM [Digital Rights Management] amounts to."

--Eric Flint, The Opaque Market.

Topics in this post: Reasons to write more and to organize better, sales!, the circular file, another e-book out of the way, and my Internet addiction sinks its teeth in, looking ahead with Loren's Lashes, one more e-book down - four to go, Internet round-up (publishing), next summer's publication schedule, easing into a regular schedule, review of Lucius Parhelion's "Acquisitions and Mergers: The Four of Wands," my old journals, bits and pieces of news, Kindle sales figures for June to September, reading original slash and DAISY/braille books, seminars for my apprentice.

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( Review of Lucius Parhelion's Acquisitions and Mergers: The Four of Wands )

"At the midpoint of the twentieth century, everyone knew that sex had no place in science fiction. Our field was like a George Bernard Shaw play, which is to say that an alien, reading (or watching) it could learn everything there was to know about human beings except that we come equipped with genitals and an urge to use them."

--Mike Resnick: Straitjackets.

Topics in this post: Quiet crisis journalism, renewed productivity, Hurricane Gustav collapse, retro-futuristic prisonfic, Ack! Four days till the memorial events!, Internet round-up, three days to go, Obama, typography, more Internet round-up, retro-future visions, what a send-off, after the send-off.

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"GROUND RULES:

"1. No character-bashing, pairing-bashing or het/slash/whatever-bashing in your comments, period. All characters, pairings and show eras welcome. If you're sick unto death of reading about [insert name here] and [insert name here] doing [insert activity here], well, life's a vale of tears.

"2. Someone writing a story that does horrible and painful things to your favorite character is not considered 'character-bashing.' It is rather considered 'one of the defining purposes of this community.'"

--Community information for solid_leather.

Topics in this post: The light at the end of the tunnel, when gay writing gets really bad, nutrient calculating, the offline roots of my Internet addiction, my advice to writers on how to get readers to visit your site, Internet round-up, monastic science fiction, "Whipster" and an anniversary, fall cleaning and winter reading, closer to the deadline, down to the wire, no no no!

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I'd better do this according to school year rather than calendar year, since my eyes won't be in shape to do links-chasing in January. These are works that I discovered or rediscovered during the past year that I was especially impressed by.

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"Really, she must try and concentrate on [her protagonist's] alibi. . . . And she had not properly worked out the speed of the steam-yacht. One ought to know about these things. Lord Peter would know, of course; he must have sailed in plenty of steam-yachts. It must be nice to be really rich. Anybody who married Lord Peter would be rich, of course. And he was amusing. Nobody could say he would be dull to live with. But the trouble was that you never knew what anybody was like to live with except by living with them. It wasn't worth it. Not even to know all about steam-yachts. A novelist couldn't possibly marry all the people from whom she wanted specialised information."

--Dorothy L. Sayers: Have His Carcase

Topics in this post: Ahead of my publication schedule but behind on everything else, review of Lija O'Brien's Staged Life, winter plans, Internet round-up (not-worksafe pulp covers), online goods and evils, e-book plans and my icky non-publishing schedule, low-fat and low-sugar vegetarianism, review of the 2008 film Brideshead Revisited.

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( Review of Lija O'Brien's Staged Life )

( Review of the 2008 film Brideshead Revisited )

"She went to bed thinking more about another person than about herself. This goes to prove that even minor poetry may have its practical uses."

--Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night.

Topics in this post: Memorializing my mother, getting back to business, reaching out and pulling back, Internet round-up, e-book sales headaches, getting lots and lots of writings online, more post-death arrangements, updating my sites, my unusual apprentice, work and more work, "People Are Funny," kinky mementoes, names and gender identity.

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"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen."

--Henry David Thoreau

Topics in this post: Anniversary, self-publishing, slavefic, summer schedule, permission, orders, Internet round-up, sexual consent in fiction, examination of conscience (examen), one-track mind, reviews of Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles and Manna Francis's Quid Pro Quo, sleep, lectio divina, my online fiction, flagging your relationship status, fitness and religion, minimalist home, overwhelmed with work, switching to a task-oriented schedule, another Internet round-up (self-publishing and leather), plus my rant about gatekeepers in the publishing world.

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( Review of Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles )

( Review of Manna Francis's Quid Pro Quo )

"This simplification [of a solitary's life] is a matter of making decisions; this way but not that way. But the decisions have a certain inevitability about them. Certain sacrifices have to be undertaken and choices made. It is rather like pruning a tree; in order that the tree may bear good fruit the branches must be pruned. But it is not just the dead and decaying wood that has to go but also good burgeoning shoots, full of possibilities. It is a matter of deciding the priorities in one's life."

--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.

Topics in this post: Simplicity of surroundings; "brother" monks versus "choir" monks; learning from other people's beliefs while avoiding cafeteria-style spirituality; Internet addiction and my sleep schedule; "Into Great Silence" (film about Carthusian monks); joining my schedule with my apprentice's; caring for my mother; "sabbath" schedule.

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"When my husband and I were first dating and I found out he hadn't read the Narnia books as a kid, I insisted he read them. He really enjoyed most of them despite being extremely leery of organized Christianity, but when he finished the series, he said, 'I dunno. For the first six books it felt like the Christian symbolism was kind of gently caressing my subconscious... and then in the last one, it suddenly tackled me to the ground and started dry humping me while screaming "who's your daddy?"'"

--maculategiraffe.

Topics in this post: Storms, heat, publishing historical fantasy print books, haircuts, my mother's 1966 letters, slash convention, review of my leather fiction, slavefic, the fan fiction community.

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"The sacrifices others see [the monk] making are in reality no different from the athlete's recognition that certain elements detract from one's performance."

--Frank Bianco: Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, support for solitaries, stability, meditation/contemplation, liturgical hours, work, novelties, lectio divina and Vitae Patrum, Great Books and ethics, rigid daily schedules, seasonal schedules, social interactions, overwork and tiredness, the Psalms and Thomas Coverdale, Anglican chant, arguments against solitude, grace through trial, asceticism.

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"Some people and groups push e-books as democratising the publishing industry, toppling the tyrants of literary culture and saving the environment at the same time. . . . When any writer asks me: should I epublish? I say that epublishing [is] an answer, but only if you are asking the right question."

--Emily Veinglory.

Topics in this post: Internet roundup, original slash, reading fantasy, reading historical fiction, natural gardening, word usage, self-publishing e-books, self-publishing POD books, Internet addiction (breakthrough!), my mother's 1967 letters.

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( Review of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Other Wind )

( Review of Diana Gabaldon's Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade )

"The life of the solitary is not an easy life, since there are no prescriptions for it and each day must be faced anew. The signs which say 'keep in lane' and 'when red light shows wait here' are of little relevance to one who is called to strike across country, equipped with a rather inadequate map and a compass one has not yet learnt to trust. From time to time the solitary seeks affirmation, reassurance that the path along which he or she is being drawn is genuine and not an illusion. . . .

"Sometimes no guide appears, and one is given no such reassurance. This is a test of faithfulness, of perseverance in the face of doubt and darkness. The early pioneers of the desert of course had no guides. They just went out into the desert, the place of desolation, and got on with it."

--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.

Topics in this post: cowls and habits and other clothes, (not) finding a community, lectio, the Desert Fathers (especially St. Anthony), stability, family obligations, intemperate speech, schedule.

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"There is usually no precise equivalent of [Ancient Greek's] 3rd person imperative in English. Euclid often uses it in expressions which are translated by 'let there be' or 'let it have been drawn'. In the Septuagint translation of the Bible, God uses the 3rd person imperative in the first five and one-half days' work: genêthêtô phôs, Let there be light or Be there light. Perhaps an English example of the 3rd person imperative can be found in the stage direction Enter the King.

"What the commands of mathematicians, God, and playwrights have in common seems to be this, that the mere act of speaking suffices to bring about the truth of what is being said."

--Alfred R. Mollin and Robert B. Williamson: An Introduction to Ancient Greek.

Topics in this post: making booktrailer videos, fan mail, making cover art, early childhood reading, editing fantasy, reading science fiction, researching historical fantasy, prison tourism, prison history, memories of watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, editing and laying out leather fiction, wordage.

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( including A Writing Meme )

"Voluntary poverty can be the easiest step of all. . . . Gone is the struggle about this or that - all of it is forbidden. You own nothing. How much easier, how much simpler than our world of endless decisions between acquiring and not acquiring."

--Richard J. Foster: Freedom of Simplicity.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, acquisitiveness, Carthusian monks, sacrifice, tidying my surroundings, schedules, skimming quotas, solitaries, rhythm versus novelty, library browsing quotas, travel quotas, Zen Buddhism and the arts, reading quotas, using simplicity as an excuse not to be simple.

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"When the female sea horse spots her mate each morning, they engage in an elaborate greeting ritual, wrapping their tails around a branch of coral or a blade of sea grass and rubbing their snouts together, seemingly quivering with joy over their reunion. Then they entwine tails and glide across the ocean floor. A biologist friend of mine once remarked that she wished her husband would be half that affectionate when he didn't want sex."

--Stephanie Coontz: Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, self-publishing e-books, writing fantasy, braille, history of transsexuality, history of marriage, text-to-speech, reading historical fiction, Easter, Digital Rights Management, wordage (and how), sneering at bad gay porn stories, admiring good gay porn stories, Earth Hour, history, writing historical fantasy, print-on-demand (Lightning Source and Amazon's CreateSpace), self-publishing print books, April Fool's Day, audio books.

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"Working as a servant was as much a rite of passage for young people in the late Middle Ages and early modern era as going off to college is today. In contrast with other societies around the world, where servants were usually a class of people doomed to servitude for their entire lives, in northwestern Europe large numbers of young people passed through a phase of service before forming their own households and working their own lands or trades. In northern Europe, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all young people put in time as servants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the early 1700s, according to one study, 60 percent of all English youths aged fifteen to twenty-four worked as servants at some point in their lives."

--Stephanie Coontz: Marriage, a History.

Topics in this post: military history, orders, leather history, service, protocol, schedules, family hierarchy, religious hierarchy, business hierarchy, support networks for hierarchy.

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"There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

--G. K. Chesterton.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, accumulating possessions, support networks for simplicity, my Muse's effect on my schedule, mania's effect of my schedule, simplicity readings.

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