Especially not, Gods forbid, a purple one.

Yeah, it’s trite. Also true. It’s hard.

So this is the task I’ve set myself. At least until next Sunday.

Of course it may seem strange to blog about it, since I’ve complained blogging is a lot like work. Since it involves. You know. Writing.

But [...]]]> Quick – don’t think of a rhinoceros!

Especially not, Gods forbid, a purple one.

Yeah, it’s trite. Also true. It’s hard.

So this is the task I’ve set myself. At least until next Sunday.

Of course it may seem strange to blog about it, since I’ve complained blogging is a lot like work. Since it involves. You know. Writing.

But it’s fiction writing I’ve committed not to think about for a whole week. And therein lies the problem.

It can be summed up simply: since I was a kid – certainly since I was in high school – I’ve thought about writing fiction almost every single day. The only exceptions I can call to mind were a very few when I was literally too sick to. Especially early last year, when for a time I basically couldn’t think at all.

What I’ve never – ever – done is deliberately try to refrain from writing. And, don’t you know, that’s one of the reasons I think it’s so important I do just that now.

As I announced to the world yesterday, with a Tyrannosaur Roar of joy and liberation that shook the entire state (allegedly), I just finished a writing project I’ve been writing at for just over eight and one-half years. I committed to it on my birthday, August 3rd, in 2002. And while this is, in the end, just a draft – it’s the draft I’m probably going to show to the world to sell the thing. So: kinda important.

And … I need a reset. A big, scary phase is about to commence: selling it – and making sure it, and I, don’t get short-changed. I am every scrap as committed to that as I was to writing (and then laboriously rewriting) the monster. Getting paid is a separate enterprise from making, and it’s an equally important skill. Whether we like it or not, it’s a fact, like the need to breathe air.

So I’m not thinking of that either. Not now.

The thing is … OK, what do I do with myself and this hyperactive head of mine? Yes, I’ve spent much of my 36-year career – way too much – contriving ways not to write. And only recently have I begun to make real substantial progress toward breaking that habit.

But avoiding the act of writing and avoiding thinking about writing are entirely different things.

So .. what do I do?

Well, there are maintenance tasks that I have, by choice, somewhat neglected the last few weeks. Since my holiday season has officially ended with the Superbowl, I can take down my Christmas decorations – although I find the colorful lights comforting, so, no hurry. The house needs a good cleaning, which thanks to my friends and various other circumstances I’m now able to do. I need a new tire for my car that does not require my surrendering in exchange a roughly analogous appendage from my own body. Plus … stuff.

Also, there’s walking. That’s suffered the last few weeks, although more due to persistent, minor health bugs, and our awful Arctic weather last week, than to preoccupation with my novel. Emma and I need to get out more, longer, and farther.

And … I need to do more stuff. Just in general. I need to practice freeing my perceptions and emotions from long self-imposed restrictions and just break out of routine. I’ve been chiseling away at these for weeks; now it’s time to hunt up a bigger hammer.

Plus some other things, like at last getting a new power source for my old but trusty desktop PC. Trying to use up some of the gift certificates friends have generously lavished on me before they expire (which prospect I find, candid, outright theft – but that’s for another time.) Learning, at long, last last, how to use my ultra-cool map-making software, Campaign Cartographer 3. Which, yes, I intend ultimately (and soon!) to use to create long-awaited maps for The Project of Which I May Neither Speak Nor Think (so you can quit whining any time now, Ian.) But I don’t have to think about it to learn to make freaking maps with the software.

One of the key lessons I need to learn (and for various reasons, which I expect I’ll elaborate on here in the fullness of time) is what I really want to do? What do I enjoy?

Well, other than writing – which I enjoy more than almost anything else I’ve ever done (use your imagination.) Important as that is to me, to belabor the blindingly obvious, it can’t and mustn’t be the whole of life.

So, that’s another thing to explore this week.

Right. Now to go and get a belated breakfast and start foraging around for that new tire.

Plus, you know. Living.

Go.

Welcome to the Equinox, and the first official (bureaucratic) day [...]]]> I sit in my seventh floor penthouse room watching the most beautiful snowstorm I’ve ever seen. Fat flakes nudge the window, sometimes floating and fluttering, currently driven. I can see no more than maybe a quarter mile. Snow blankets rooftops and rooflines and flocks the trees.

Welcome to the Equinox, and the first official (bureaucratic) day of Spring, 2010.

And … it’s clearing some. Soon I may once more enjoy the panoramic view east toward the Sandia Mountains and north to Santa Fe which has sustained me the last few days. Although the snow was so wonderful I didn’t resent its intrusion.

The view’s the only thing I’ll miss about the place in which I find myself, I’ll tell you. I await my imminent return home, with minor anxieties completely supplanted by rising eagerness.

Obviously, in the more than a month I’ve been offline, serious stuff has seriously happened.

Let me just laugh a bitter laugh at the irony of my last blog post: hah. I knew not of sickness or tiredness, naive child that I was.

More anon.

Beam this one up, Scotty. I'll be in my cabin.

(Photo courtesy of baaadasssscomics.)

But just because you’re you, and I’m swell, I’ll give you more info.

How’s about Guest [...]]]> If you are or can reasonably contrive to be in the Greater Albuquerque area tomorrow, Friday, August 28^th, this is all ye know and all ye need know!

Beam this one up, Scotty. I'll be in my cabin.

(Photo courtesy of baaadasssscomics.)

But just because you’re you, and I’m swell, I’ll give you more info.

How’s about Guest of Honor: author/screenwriter Michael Cassutt;  Toastmistress: CARRIE VAUGHN, best-selling author (and both of them are Wild Cards mafiosi); Guest Artist: the wildly popular PERI CHARLIFU, pottery and graphic artist.

But wait – there’s more!

As I never tire of saying, no matter how much you may tire of hearing me say it, New Mexico is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Capital of the Known Universe. And plenty of our galaxy of local stars (see what I did there?) will be on hand, plus many talented out-of-towners, including but far from limited to: Daniel Abraham, Mario Acevedo, Richard Berthold, Adam Jarmon Brown, Suzy M. Charnas, Douglas W. Clark, Yvonne Coats, Terry England, Diana Gabaldon, Gordon Garb, Steven Gould, Sally Gwylan, Betsy James, Dean Judd, Ed Khmara, Andy Kuhn, Jane Lindskold, Nathan Long, Emily Mah, George RR Martin, Gail G. Miller, John Jos. Miller, Laura J. Mixon, Pati Nagle, Charles & Tauni Orndorff, Scott Phillips, John Maddox Roberts, Joan Spicci Saberhagen, Debbie Lynn Smith, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Jan & S.M. Stirling, David Lee Summers, Pari Noskin Taichert, Tentaclecraft, Ian Tregillis, Robert Vardeman, Nancy V. Varian, Gerald Weinberg, Walter Jon Williams and Connie Willis. Also many of our weird and wonderful local fen will be there.

And not last, and damned well not least either, me. For my schedule, please visit the calendar page of my Forum.

For my reading, Sunday at 1:00 PM in the Vista Norte room by the restaurant – all 35 golden minutes of it – I’ll be doing all-new material. It’s unseen by human eyes (just mine.) Expect dinosaurs to be involved. Plus hot babes. (Sadly, just in the story, not in the flesh. My promotion budget’s still a tad tight.)

For more info, hit the Bubonicon page. Thanks! Hope to see you there.

Unrelated odd bits: when I ask Emma Dog if she wants to go outside, and she gets up on the couch and lies determinedly down with her head on her pillow, I’m gonna take that as a no.

Also:  clearly I haven’t gotten to the post I’ve been promising about seeking behavior. It’s not likely to happen before next week, either. Sorry.

Okay. Maybe not. Under the circumstances, it’s as close an approximation to a snappy title as I can muster. Deal.

First, though: enjoy the swell cartoon above, courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Thanks to haikubica for turning me onto SMBC when [...]]]> Now there’s a snappy blog post title. I am the King of SEO!

Okay. Maybe not. Under the circumstances, it’s as close an approximation to a snappy title as I can muster. Deal.

First, though: enjoy the swell cartoon above, courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Thanks to haikubica for turning me onto SMBC when I mentioned at his and Kathy’s house that I was becoming obsessed with webcomics.

I have some I follow religiously; also have some book recommendations. But later: this post is really all about me. Me, me, me.

Fa-sol-la-ti-da!

So I am, yes, punch-drunk; thank you so much for noticing. Thursday night I finished the draft of my new Deathlands novel. I sent it off Friday, meeting my deadline thereby, with mention that it still wanted a finishing pass, which I am process of accomplishing now. (Well, not now now.  You know what I mean.)

Hooray!

Also, there is Big News on the Wild Cards horizon. First, the very first anthology, imaginatively titled Wild Cards (hey, it was imaginative then!) is about to be reprinted. But that’s not all: this new edition contains three all new stories, by grizzled Wild Cards vets Michael Cassutt and Carrie Vaughn (okay, it just amuses me to refer to Carrie as a “grizzled vet”), as well as newcomer David D. Levine. David won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for “Tk’tk’tk.” Which oddly was on my to-read queue – trying to get into reading short stories – when David’s entrance into the Wild Cards crew was announced.

But wait – there’s more. News which actually pertains directly to me. (Wait – I thought this was all supposed to be about me! I ripped myself off! Dang!)

There is also a brand-new Wild Cards anthology in the works. It’s entitled Fort Freak. It features stories by hoary WC old-timers like Stephen Leigh, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, John Jos. Miller – and me! (Since Melinda never reads this blog I totally don’t have to worry about her kicking my ass for referring to her as a “hoary old-timer.”)

There’re also some who are newly-infected with Xenovirus Takis-A contributing to this volume: Cherie Priest, David Anthony Durham, Paul Cornell, and Mary Anne Mohanraj.

For more information on the new additions to the WCverse, click on this link and this one to That American Tolkien Dude’s Not A Blog.

In one week I sold a new story and finished a novel. I’d call that pretty cool.

So, contrary to what you probably believe, I have not been frittering away all my time on webcomics and Twitter. Oh, no, my friends. Not even close.

(By the way, you might want to check out Cherie Priest and David D. Levine on Twitter, too; I follow ‘em. If any of the other Carders I mentioned above are on there, they’re successfully hiding from me. So far.)

Along with averaging north of 6000 words a day on my novel  – so my mad time-management skills are more mad than actually skillful – I wrote a lengthy detailed story proposal for my as-yet-untitled contribution to Fort Freak. Plus, I wrote four new character bios:  two for characters that have actually been around since the early days of Wild Cards and are coming back into play (they had bios; it’s just that they’ve been lost, plus there’s twenty years worth of history to catch up on), and two for the brand-new characters I’m using in my yarn. Both of whom, I’ll add, are jokers without an ace power to their names. Although that’s not to say one or more may not enjoy certain advantages.

All of which may have something to do with why I’m so damned fried today despite having slept until one minute before one in the afternoon. Y’think?

Also I’m not getting younger, fuck it anyway.  I truly believe that in the very near future our lives – that’s productive, vigorous, joyous life, not having [...]]]> I’m not doing enough. Not writing enough, not exercising enough. Not creating enough pleasure in my life. Not getting enough juice out of life, as Tony Robbins puts it.

Also I’m not getting younger, fuck it anyway.  I truly believe that in the very near future our lives – that’s productive, vigorous, joyous life, not having my rotting husk kept in a terrible semblance of life by artificial intervention – will be extended greatly, possibly indefinitely, by the explosion of knowledge in the medical sciences which is already in progress. Even if I can potentially live another ten years, another hundred, another ten thousand, I am not guaranteed so much as my next breath. Nor is anyone.  And nor can anyone ever be.

So I need to get cracking. I am philosophically a hedonist. I believe the purpose of life is to experience as much fun-pleasure-joy as one possibly can.  I also believe we can only share what we have; and that inevitably we do share what we have. So by creating and enjoying pleasure for myself I bring it into the world.

Better that than more fucking misery. That’s my belief.

My greatest pleasure is creating, particularly – aw, you guessed it – writing. My consuming vice is fear, and I know which one:  fear of criticism. And my most destructive habit is denying myself pleasure.

If that seems strange to you, I’ll probably bore you at endless length about it. Later.

Over the years I’ve amassed a great many tools to live and create more productively – hence, joyously. The kick is getting myself to use them. I’m good at talking myself out of them, subconsciously if nothing else – a phenomenon I’ve dubbed The Evil Habit.

So now I need to give myself a kick in the ass.

I need to write at least 3000 words a day to deliver my Deathlands novel on deadline. I already know how I write best:  balls out.

I also know I can use Twitter to waste time or achieve wonderful things.

So here’s what I’m gonna do come Monday (Sunday’s task is something else – needful and productive, not germane.)

1. Commit to a minimum 3000 words a day.
2. Write in pulses of at least 1000 words each.
3. Time myself to see how fast I can crank out 1K – make a game of it!
4. Announce to the world via Tweet when I start and my goal – thus publicly committing myself.
5. Post updates when I break from each pulse.
6. Obviously, contrive to sit my butt down for a minimum of three happy, balls-to-the-wall pulses!

And what I’m doing here – you’ve no doubt guessed – is a form of the above:  committing myself to make it harder to get out of.

It’s experimental. It’s a good experiment, though:  think it has potential to serve me well. And of course I can fiddle with and fine tune it to make it serve better. (So screw that nasty old fear of criticism, eh?)

I’m excited. You?

So now: finish getting ready, let in the Em, give her her treat, gather up my Big Pot o’ Red Chile Pumpkin Soup, and hie myself hence to ASFS stalwart Kevin Hewett‘s townhouse way to Christ and gone on the West Side for our long-awaited Zombie Movie Night. Yay!

I’d resigned myself to not having honeysuckle blossoms – with their attendant wonderful aroma – of my own this year. I was prepared to be content with the fact that both the honeysuckles I’ve got in the ground, the store-bought one and the one I coaxed into [...]]]> It’s not a cliché if it’s literally true, right?

I’d resigned myself to not having honeysuckle blossoms – with their attendant wonderful aroma – of my own this year. I was prepared to be content with the fact that both the honeysuckles I’ve got in the ground, the store-bought one and the one I coaxed into rooting myself from a clipping, seemed established and thriving. I had originally been going to buy one that already had flowers on it, but decided it didn’t look too healthy, and instead picked a more robust-appearing, but flowerless, plant.

Then Saturday afternoon I went out to check on the honeysuckles and discovered two yellow flowers toward the top of the storebought vine. They didn’t broadcast their smell very far, but they definitely had it – that honeysuckle scent I’ve longed for for such a long time.

It’s a big thing for me. I love the smell of honeysuckle; it’s probably my favorite scent. I’ve really wanted my own for years – the whole 21 years I’ve been in my house. I’ve tried in the past to grow them but despite the legendary hardiness of the plants mine died.

Now, having researched intently and done things right, mine grow. And I was rewarded with flowers. Flowers I never expected until next year. Yay!

I would’ve mentioned this earlier but I had no landline phone service over the weekend, hence no Internet. Fortunately, the repair guy arrived within two hours of my calling today and got me back in business. Of course this enables me to upset myself and waste my life online…

Speaking of which … I was looking at this Spanish-language blog on Agorism. I’m back to studying Spanish again, and as with the gardening (and, it pleases me to report, various other areas in my life) actually sticking it and making progress, however sporadic. Although my vocabulary isn’t huge, I read it pretty well; it’s my listening comprehension which lacks.

Anyway, I found an unfamiliar word, which wasn’t a great surprise. In Firefox I supposedly have a Spanish-English dictionary plug-in installed – which, unlike my English dictionary plug-in, I’ve never gotten to work. Anyway, in a transport of optimism, I highlighted the word and right-clicked it. Up came a context menu with an option to “translate.” This took me to a laundry list of choices – French to German, Japanese to English – and clicked on the “Spanish-English.” And up popped a definition in Babelfish!

Only … I wasn’t using Firefox. I was using Opera. Specifically the new 9.50, supposedly a significant upgrade.

Whoa! Did Opera do this before? I never realized it. I didn’t even have Javascript enabled (I usually use Opera to browse pages that don’t require Javascript and on which I mostly don’t care about graphics.) Anyway, this is great – exactly what I’ve been hoping for as an online language-learning adjunct. This’ll make it a lot easier to read articles in Spanish without totally losing my train of thought as I fumble through a dead-tree dictionary. Plus Babelfish handles different verb tenses (mostly; although it just choked on “tendrá.” Which I’m pretty sure means “will have,” but I wanted to check.)

So, cool. Now I can fritter my life away reading Spanish-language websites as well as English! Progress!

Oh – the shiny new Firefox 3.0 supposedly releases in a few hours. If the development team’s dreams of mass downloads are realized (allegedly 1.5 million users have vowed to DL the update on opening day) the Internet will slo-o-ow to a crawl. Or if, like me, you’re bound to it-for-dialup, an even greater and more aggravating crawl.

Personally, I plan to wait and see if any really picturesque or horrifying bugs have escaped beta testing before I DL. If you want to jump ahead on into the madness, though, go here.

And in the interests of fairness, you can snag Opera 9.50 here.

And if you don’t want to see really horrifying bugs, under no circumstances click here.