Monday, March 31

Ask a philosopher

Got a question? Ask a philosopher dot com.

I finished reading the Updike book set in a post US-Sino war, and I'm glad I read it. I picked up a couple of tips on what to do and not to do on my current futurecast novel, as in: don't be too specific about the technology, because it'll be distractedly wrong. Vague, I think, is better. On the to-do side: stick to the story, and don't get bogged down in writing the future history in too much detail. Understand it, but I don't go around life today explaining things that happen to me in terms of the history of the past 50 years, I just live in the aftermath. So my characters don't need to 'explain' stuff; they just need to live.

Now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, also set in a post-apocalyptic future. So far, it's bleak and brutal, much more than what I'm working on. And so far he's been focused on the story and has spent very little time explaining the history. Very powerful method.

Friday, March 28

Onward

I worked for about 90 minutes today on the novel, and I feel oddly optimistic about it at the moment. Which is very nice. Onward, weekend soldiers!

Wednesday, March 26

Life

So life has been busy. Two weeks ago I was in Arizona for work (and some sneaking off to see baseball). And last weekend we took a great four-day, 1300-mile road trip down to south central New Mexico, with stops at the UFO museum in Roswell and the White Sands Film Festival in Alamogordo, where my son had a couple of movies being screened in the high school competition.

And I thought I lived on the edge of nowhere. If that's true, then southern New Mexico might be the dead center of nowhere. We drove by a lot of beautiful, empty desert. It has been a few years since we went on a long car trip, which is something I love to do but is hard when the kids get older and less willing to endure what I think is a blast: driving across the huge empty areas of the west with the windows open and the radio blasting. So it was good to get out on the road, even with four teen-agers in tow. And to stand barefoot in sand, after a long, cold winter.

The point is I've been busy. I've been reading an Updike novel, set in the postwar future of 2020, recommended by friend Krell at our shop talk lunch earlier this month, and I'm learning some good things from it in regards to my story, some dos and don'ts about writing about the imagined future. And tonight I spent about an hour copy editing the novel, which is the first I've touched it in a few weeks. It always feels good to work on it, even if I'm at the daunting stage where it just seems too big and hopeless. But, you know, an hour here, three pages there, eventually, with luck and some -- a lot of -- effort, it'll get done.

Sunday, March 16

Catching up


It's been quiet here on the Edge of Nowhere. Not much writing work getting done, but I've been busy with normal life. And I'm not worrying about the lack of work. I'm in a good place on my current project.

Had a swell lunch with my friend Krell yesterday, after his family stopped by our family's house for some bonding time on Friday night. He's up here from Austin, showing his oldest daughter where she was born, taking the family up snowboarding. It was good to catch up and a have nice lunch conversation about our writing projects. Talking about my book, and hearing him talk about his work and his novel, motivated me to get back on a regular schedule. As Krell said (paraphrasing here), "I'm happier when I work on it." And I agree. It's so true. So back to work.

Also, I finally got my hands on a copy of Jeff's new
100 Year Picnic album, "Tales of a Modern Splash." It's been a long time since I really listened to a whole album, what with iTunes and XM radio, it's really been about the songs. But I've been listening to Jeff's work very closely, and I'm very impressed. It is also very motivating for me. He and I made some deal about two years ago about completing something each month -- for him it was to be a song, for me a short story or chapter -- and here I am two years later pretty much still in the same place with one big exception: I'm listening to a complete album written, performed and recorded by Jeff and his buddy Edwin (and each song is called a chapter -- nice touch.) So, the old competitive juicies are kicking in a bit, as in 'I better catch up.' (You can go hear a couple of tracks on their MySpace page, too [check out "Come On" or "I Don't Know What To Tell You," and my favorite song on the album, "We Were Not The Same."])

Finally, I'm just back from a few days down in Arizona for work, the clear highlight of which was trips to a couple more spring training parks. Last year (or was it two years ago?) I was able to catch games at the Giants park in Scottsdale and the Angels park in Tempe. This year, I got down to Tucson to see our National League Champion Rockies host Seattle, and then over to Mesa (see photo above) to see the Cubs host the Padres (stayed for seven innings before I needed to run to Sky Harbor to catch a flight back home).
This coming weekend, we're back on the road for a few days to attend a film festival down in New Mexico, where my son has a couple of films entered in this high school competition.


Wednesday, March 5

Book nerds rejoice

MetaFilter notes book nerds everywhere will enjoy these scans of cover art from the works of Beat Generation authors. Jack and Bill, for two.

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