Rosemary Kirstein

Joseph Gordon-Levitt? I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt! I’ve been following him ever since he was 13 on Third Rock from the Sun, all the way up to Inception and beyond.

Neil Gaiman? Love Neil Gaiman! Ever since I lived next door to a comic book store and stumbled upon the amazing Sandman series, and on to his stories and novels…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring in and directing the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics?

Are you freakin’ serious?

ZOW!

Well. That just made my day.

After being told many times, by many sources, that I should be listening to the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale” I finally decided that I wanted something new, interesting and amusing to listen to, and thought to myself, Hey, what about that Night Vale thing people keep mentioning?

Well. Silly me. I should listen to all those people and sources. Because, see what I’ve been missing?

I spent my entire weekly housecleaning laughing like a loon, with my iPod loaded with Night Vale episodes, and a bluetooth earphone plugged in my ear. I didn’t want to turn on the vacuum cleaner, because I wouldn’t be able to hear over it, and I didn’t want to stop. So I did that part really fast. Then I did some extra housework, just so I could keep listening. Then I cleaned the snow off our cars and shoveled the entrance walk. Still listening.

I finally stopped in order to actually produce some art of my own, instead of merely consuming other people’s art.

If you don’t know about Welcome to Night Vale, you really ought to check it out. Don’t listen to just one episode — stay for the first three (and do them in order). They’re about 20 minutes each, and if you end up liking it you’ll have another glorious 33 episodes waiting for you. One of the advantages of getting to things late — you don’t have to wait 2 weeks for the next episode.

The easiest way to listen is on your computer at SoundCloud’s NightValeRadio page. Or follow the links on their main site to download from various other sources.

For the cautious who want some warning about what they’re getting into, let’s just say it’s a spooky comedy. Here’s their own description:

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.
Turn on your radio and hide.

I did so love the episodes I’ve heard so far. I’m up to number 6: History Week.

Meanwhile: Snowstorm not as bad as predicted. Yet.

Also meanwhile: Hey, remember how I mentioned how much I enjoyed the audiobook version of Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman’s The Fall of the Kings ?  Well, it was just selected as one of the top ten best audiobooks, by AudioFile magazine. And so I remind you of it again.   Excellent book, lovely performances, not the least of which was by Ellen herself.  This is yet another wonderful thing to listen to on your iPod, iPad, tablet, mp3 player, music device, or actual computer!

I wonder if people who don’t themselves comment, read the comments?

Anyway, this popped up in reply to my “Because Linguistics!” post of a couple of weeks ago,  when I talked about an article in All Things Linguistics, dealing with the “Because Noun” phenomenon.
My pal Brian felt moved to point out:

Brian Says: December 6th, 2013 at 2:17 pm   edit

We can improve:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

with:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
because ENGLISH!

Yeah, that’s a lot better.

This.

(by Tully Hansen, Found via Ellen Kushner’s   Facebook post, which she reposted from Kashmiri Stec)

As has become my personal Thanksgiving tradition, I’ve added some vacation days to the regular holiday days off from the DayJob, resulting in 10 whole days off. And as has also become my tradition I eschew all Thanksgiving celebration, in favor of using the time to hide away from the world and write.

I couldn’t afford to actually go anywhere (downside of a 32-hour workweek), but since my sister took off for New Hampshire to eat turkey with friends and generally socialize, I have the house to myself for five of those days, which is almost as good as going away!

I’ve been hunkered down, pounding away. tearing my hair out, and pacing.

I also had intended to do some lovely hikes, and visit the gym, and then — dammit! I did this thing to my knee that happens every now and again at inexplicable intervals.

The first time it happened, I waited a couple of weeks, hoping it would go away. Finally broke down and saw an Orthopedist, who prodded me and declared it was absolutely a torn cartilage, and spoke to me seriously about surgery. It feels like a torn cartilage, it acts like a torn cartilage, hurts like all kinds of crazy. Then we took an MRI: no discernible injury whatsoever. Nada.

So: physical therapy, bunch of ibuprofen, and I was fine. Next time it happened, I knew what to do, and it was gone in a couple of days.

So, alas, happened again this week, and I was not able to head out to the nearby park to hike in the woods, as I wanted. Nor visit the gym.

Nor drive down to Fairfield to visit some friends for a post- T-day noshfest.

And these were people I really wanted to see! Including two who are home from college, and I don’t get to see enough! Plus: world’s cuddliest cat — and I am suffering from serious lack of cat-cuddles.

Well. I did get lots of writing done. Of course, much editing and rewriting will follow. I don’t know about you, but when I declare that I’m going to write no matter what, the result will always include a certain percentage of, shall we say, dispensable prose. Still, happily, I wrote lots of words!

And so did Sabine! And so did Ann! They both completed their NaNoWriMo goals, hooray!

I’m thrilled to bits for both of them — but especially for Sabine, for whom this is the first book-length work completed.

Of course, you knew she was already a published writer, right?

So, I’m emerging today to do some writing-associated but non-writing tasks. Such as, say, blogging. Hi, there!

And other biz-type things that I really must see to.

Which I must now get back to.

Hope your days of celebration were as enjoyable as mine!

The workbook to my left is FORGOTTEN ALGEBRA, a Self-Teaching Refresher Course,   by Barbara Lee Bleau, PH.D.   If you are currently in school, and have asked your teacher why you have to study all that algebra crap, since you’re obviously never going to need it — NEWS FLASH! You will need it.

boingboing.net pointed me to this.

Which then led me to this.

By the time I found this … I was pretty well hooked.

My official new fave blog: All Things Linguistic!

Yep, still here, and still cracking down on the writing, so blogs remain a bit sparse on the ground lately.

It’s been about four months now that I’ve been pushing especially hard, and it’s quite a tug-of-war with the DayJob. I’ve been slipping in to work a bit late most days, but so far either they don’t mind, don’t care, or don’t notice. Or possibly they do notice, but also notice that I always stay a proportionate amount of time late to make up for it.

I’m actually there now, putting in some extra time to pre-catch up for the Thanksgiving holiday, when I have THE ENTIRE WEEK OFF, HOORAY!

I’m doing my usual thing of skipping all the trad celebrations and just living as a writer for the whole time. I can’t afford to get away to any undisclosed locations this time around, but my sister is kindly vacating for part of the week, which means that I can be as absorbed, abstracted and antisocial as I need to be! This, by me, is fun.

It’s been getting colder — so alas, my woody nook won’t be usable for much longer. I try to get outside whenever I can, but mostly it’s been cave-bear mode, since there’s no longer any sunlight when I get home.

Just before the last leaves fell, some of which, oddly, were pink.

Meanwhile, Sabine and Ann are still NaNoWriMo-ing.   Lots of writing going on around our house — and the library, and Starbucks, and at lunch on the DayJob, and all that.   We are dedicated!

Here’s something I found on the ground by my cement bench (as seen above) the other day:

Assiduous critters abound.

This nut is empty. There is exactly one hole in the nut, and you’re looking at it.

Yeah. You don’t need me to spell it out, do you?

More later…

Hey, if Matsuoka Shuzo believes in you, why argue?

Just reminding folks that cracking down extra-hard on my writing last month meant fewer blog posts. A simple equation, apparently. Can’t fight math.

Oh, and look! I’ll be doing it again this month! Well.

Seriously. Just gotta.

I’ll still check in at least once a week or so, while I’m in the trenches. If I Twittered, I’d tweet, but although I do have a Twitter account, I just can’t get into it… possibly because the device by which I would tweet is not a phone and only works when I’m in range of an open WiFi network.. It’s the casualness and ease of Twitter that makes it so attractive, and so powerful. Take away those two things, and it’s just another chore!

I have actual writing to do, thanks. So, not likely to tweet.

Meanwhile: Hey, my sister signed up for NaNoWriMo!

What, do you not know that that is? That month-long marathon, in which people of all walks of life, professional, amateur and experimenter, sign up to write an entire 50,000-word novel in exactly one month? Never heard of it? It’s been around for years now, and it’s grown into quite the event. November IS National Novel Writing Month!

Really, go check out the scoop on their website. I’ll wait here.

Back now? Good. Isn’t it a lovely concept?

They have pep talks, too.

And you can always get the book No Plot? No Problem!  by Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo.  It’s 1.99 for the Kindle version.  Which means you probably already spent more money than that just by turning on your computer, navigating to the Amazon website, and clicking on “Look Inside.”

So, Sabine’s attacking her word-count like a proper pro. She is currently between day-jobs, and I’m TOTALLY JEALOUS BECAUSE SHE CAN WRITE ANYTIME SHE FEELS LIKE IT ALL DAY but enough about me.   I’m her cheering section this month, and I have no doubts that she will hit the NaNoWriMo mark of 50k words with flair to spare!

My pal, author Ann Tonsor Zeddies has also signed up.

Why didn’t I sign up, you ask? Because the proper NaNoWriMo deal is to write a 50K-word novel, beginning to end, in one month. If you’ve just started something, you can generally slip in with it. But the thing I’ve been working on currently is nowhere near its beginning, and it would just be plain cheating to sign on at this stage.

Of course, I could have taken a month out of my life and started some other work, beginning to end. It’s not like I have a shortage of ideas waiting for my attention. And now I’m kinda wishing i’d done that.

But I’m going to stick with my current plan. Of course, there’s nothing to say you couldn’t sign up.

There are many wonderful benefits of going through the NaNoWriMo experience, chief among which are: writing a novel.

Seriously — that’s enough. Regardless of whether or not the completed novel you end up with is good enough to be published, it’s worth doing.

The experience of writing a novel’s worth of words is, in and of itself, a worthwhile activity

I could point to all sorts of useful results : the sense of accomplishment, the exercise of one’s creativity, the training in daily application, the testing of one’s limits, learning about yourself, yadda yadda.

The hell with all that. That’s like saying that eating a steak is good because it has protein and iron and it’s good for you, and that’s why you should eat a steak instead of candy.

No, no — you eat the steak because it is delicious! (Vegetarians, substitute vegetable of your choice.) Really, it’s good! Never had one? You’re in for a treat. This is why we want a steak. It’s one of the wonderful things about existence.

With NaNoWriMo, you get to find out why writers write: not just to “have written”, but to write. For the doing of it, the doing of something remarkable.

Throw yourself into the story! Take chances, be bold, be crazy –or dare to be deep, dare to speak truth, dare to reach for beauty.

Do you understand that even if everything comes out as crap, it’s still worth doing?

Here’s another metaphor: Do you ski? When you ski, do you ski to win the race? Do you ski to look cute in your snow-bunny suit?

Or do you ski to ski? Chances are you ski because it’s an amazing experience. And you get to do it over and over, as many times as you want, and if you fall face-first in the snow you laugh like a loon, clamber to your feet, find your runaway skis, strap ’em back on, and do it again.

At the end of NaNoWriMo, you have something. It might be something already in its final, perfect form; or that can be improved, made into a work of literature you can share with others and maybe even sell — or it might just be a bunch of great photos of you zooming down the mountain, that you can keep and cherish forever.

NaNoWriMo is only a month long. That’s short enough to not be scary, but long enough to have the real experience of writing a novel.

That’s the point, folks. The doing of the thing.

By the way, everything is really about the doing of the thing. Or haven’t you noticed?

And now, courtesy of those wacky Russians, your Daily Affirmation:

What, no takers?

This cedar tree is the one in our backyard that shelters my woody nook where I hide out from the rest of the condo complex.   Every year it loads itself up with berries, and birds just have a feast.    My favorites are the cedar waxwings, which tend to descend in a mob and clear out every available berry — but they haven’t shown up yet this year.  I hope they’re not skipping us.

Still hunkered down, still digging in on writing.   Still much to do, but certain progress is being made.

In other news:  My Leuchtturm 1917 notebook has arrived.  I ordered it on Regina’s recommendation — but I’m still in the middle of a second LIFE Noble Note.   Once that’s filled (and I fill ’em fast lately) I’ll switch to the Leuchtturm.  I’ve already tested the paper, and it’s excellent — it seems a bit lighter than the paper in the LIFE notebook.

But!  The surface of the LIFE is really amazing.  They’ve done something to give it a velvety smoothness.  Quite lovely –  while the Leuchtturm paper has just a bit more bite to it.

However!  The Leuchtturm already has a hard cover (I had to make my own for the LIFE), with elastic closure, and page numbering (a great convenience!), and a back pocket (like the old Moleskine), and amazingly, a table of contents in the front that you can fill in, which, since you have numbered pages, actually makes sense!  And instead of a grid, the Leuchtturm has “dotted” pages, another great idea.

Oh, and labels for the spine and cover.   So, we’ll see.

Also, hey, new pen!  I’ve been wanting to try an italic nib…

Steerswoman calligraphy style really requires an italic nib.

This is a Rosetta North Star with the “Sedona” colored resin body.   It feels good so far…

Much of this obsessing on paper and pens is inspired by my desire to be free to write anywhere, anytime.   To that end, I’m trying to become as easy with pen and paper as I am with a keyboard.  This takes practice, of course.  And to tempt myself to keep at it, I look for pen and paper that I can love, and will want to use.

Meanwhile, Jo Walton is on a book tour of Europe, about which I am insanely jealous.   Fortunately, she’s blogging it, so I can live vicariously through her.   And she’s not going to the cliche places, no sir. Warsaw, Stockholm, Oslo.   I would love to go to Warsaw.

So, you can read about it at her blog.   Also, she has a new website, which looks great.  She can’t use JoWalton.com  as an url because one of the many other Jo Waltons in the universe has beat her to it, so she’s JoWaltonBooks.com.

I’m also following Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman’s adventures in England, but it looks like they’re only updating on Facebook while traveling, and not their actual blogs.  I hope they’ll add some of those iconic photos of the English countryside to their blogs, so everyone can be as jealous of their travels as I am.

Well.   Back to the dayjob tomorrow, where my co-worker (who was once my boss before the last boss — the one who was fired abruptly –  and was not repromoted to boss again, we all think merely because he is in his seventies) has been cut back to three days a week, which is not his choice, by any means.   We suspect he’s being phased out.  Which would not be smart of Management.  But hey.

Here’s a rather nice video I found out about through my friend Metanous — yeah, I’m sure the sound was “sweetened” in some way.   You just don’t get acoustics like that in an open square.

Listen with earphones or a good speaker — it’s worth it!

Ack!  Must go finish my laundry and put in my wordage for the evening…