Category Archives: Writing

A Unique Idea that Wasn't

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Found out this week that the “direct deposit” tax idea that was the foundation of my March 2007 Ornery American essay was actually published in the Summer 1993 issue of The Whole Earth Review. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth?

It was a prediction made by Kevin Kelly as part of an “Unthinkable Futures” piece he wrote with Brian Eno:

Software gains allow a certain portion of taxes to fall to the discretion of the payer. John Public can assign X amount of his taxes toward one service, to the exclusion of another. It’s a second vote that politicians watch closely.

I saw it this past Thursday, quoted on Futurismic. The Futurismic story referenced a BoingBoing piece I’d seen earlier in the week, but the quote didn’t appear in the BB item.

An online version of the original item is found here. My essay is at this link.

I went back into my archives and found the original version of my essay: I wrote it in February 1996. So even though the essay was over a decade old before I polished it enough to be publishable, the central idea was older and put forward by someone not me. Which goes to show that many people can have the same idea at close to the same time, but not everyone will do the same thing with it.

Still, my teeth hurt a little.

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One-Third

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Not as much progress as hoped on MARE NUBIUM — but considering last week was packed with something almost every night, writing time was extremely limited. Here was the run-down:

– Tuesday, choir practice (a standing appointment until we take a break after Independence Day)
– Wednesday, Cary Public Art Advisory Board
– Thursday, Triangle Filmmakers’ Special Interest Group (not that I make films, but it’s fun)
– Friday, Vacation Bible School training session
– Saturday, graduation party for four young-uns from the church
– Sunday, the usual plus a Special Called Business Meeting

Then today I spend half the day burning up very expensive gasoline going all over Cary and back and forth to the Baen office in Wake Forest. It seems I spent the other half standing at the counter in the Post Office while they tried to figure out the International Reply Coupons I was cashing in to send responses back to a couple of authors.

So, given all that, I don’t feel so bad that I only made it to a little over 33,000 words. I’m calling that one-third complete, and right now I feel pretty good about it.

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30 Thousand

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Another week, another 5000 words on the novel. If I can somehow sustain this rate, I might be finished with the first draft of MARE NUBIUM by Explorers’ Day.*

Shoot, I’ll be thrilled to make it by Halloween, if that means getting it cleaned up and submission-ready by New Year’s.

Onward!

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*My preferred name for Columbus Day.

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Mini-Rant on Copy Editing

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I wasn’t an English major, but I had a few good English teachers through the years who gave me an appreciation for proper use of the language. As such, I guess I became enough of a language purist that it bothers me to see a drop in the quality of copy editing in published works.

I don’t mean the stylistic choices that authors make, or even the words that authors make up — I’ve done that myself, and I like what Orson Scott Card said about it to our Literary Boot Camp class: “I’m a writer, it’s a word if I say it’s a word.” What has bothered me recently is seeing too many wrong words, usually homophones*, left in the text.

I understand the editing process can be lengthy and we’re all human — as I mentioned, I wasn’t an English major so I’m not sure about some of the rules (and I don’t remember much of the terminology). Sometimes an author can catch errors and the publisher chooses not to fix them because of cost, as happened with my book. But sometimes the copy editor just blows it.

Is it too much to ask for a copy editor to know that “led” is the past tense of “lead” (as opposed to the soft metal, “lead”), and that an archer would have someone in their “sights” (connoting vision) rather than their “sites” (locations)?

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*Like homonyms, but they just sound alike.

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DRAGONFORGE, by James Maxey

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Finished reading DRAGONFORGE today, on the plane from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham, and I must say my friend James Maxey has crafted a tight, compelling story that picks up where his excellent BITTERWOOD left off. I thoroughly enjoyed DRAGONFORGE — but how could I not enjoy a book in which one of the leading characters is a dragon named Graxen the Gray?

Seriously, James did a great job expanding and enriching the future world he described in BITTERWOOD. I haven’t been reading much SF or F recently, because I see quite enough in the slush pile that already distracts from writing my SF novel, but I’m glad I read DRAGONFORGE to be reminded of what good genre fiction is supposed to be.

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25,000

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Yesterday I passed the 25,000-word mark on MARE NUBIUM, which for me is pretty good progress for a week. Considering the time I spend at my two jobs, I don’t know that I can maintain that pace (this week I had the advantage of some concentrated time in a hotel room). I’m going to try not to get down on myself if I slow down a bit — so long as I don’t stall out again.

The good thing is, given my 100,000-word target, this means I’m roughly a fourth of the way through the thing. But now I should quit with the blog entry and try to get a few words in. 😉

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Twenty Thousand

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In my inchworm-slow progress writing the novel I’ve outlined, a milestone of sorts: crossing the 20,000-word mark yesterday. Considering the most recent additions were achieved in very small steps — a few hundred words here, another few there, mostly in between panels and in the morning before ConCarolinas opened — that ain’t all bad.

Now, to get the next 80,000 words done. Onward and upward.

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Counting Words, Backward

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In an effort to apply one of the lessons I learned in Dave Wolverton’s writing workshop — and to cleanse my mental palate before biting off metaphorical chunks of my novel — I turned to a completed short story with the aim of cutting its 12000+ words down to fewer than 10000.

Primarily I stripped a tedious opening “chase” in which I revealed a lot of world-building details but not much else down to its essential elements: the world is dangerous, and the character gets caught. I also cut out two sections from a second point of view (POV), sprinkled what was really needed from those sections in a few other places, and even added an additional fight scene.

In all I think I cut 3000 words and added back 500 or so, and last night the word count stood at 9970. Now, to see if any editors like it….

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ConCarolinas Schedule

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Opened my ConCarolinas schedule this morning to find that I’m assigned to a half-dozen panels, including one I specifically didn’t want to be on. So here goes:

Friday
6:00PM – Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of – NOW ACCEPTING SUGGESTIONS 😮

Saturday
9:00AM – Fantastic Animals – That is, animals as characters in fiction … done well and poorly
10:00AM – The Science Panel – What’s up in the world of science, especially with respect to story potential
5:00PM – Putting the Science in your Science Fiction – A nice follow-on to the 10 a.m. panel

Sunday
11:00AM – Where’s My Personal Jetpack? – In which I whine (and channel Daniel Amos*) about not having a rocket pack
3:00PM – Cover Letters – What to do and what not to do, as demonstrated by the slush pile

The con is the 30th of May through the 1st of June, in Charlotte. Visit the ConCarolinas web site for more info.

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*Quick, without resorting to Google: who was Daniel Amos?

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