I reached a personal milestone today – 200 pages. That’s right, I am now officially 200 pages into The Novel. (Is it appropriate to call it a novel? I feel like that implies some sort of class and prestige, and not at all the general pulp spectacle that I have been crafting, but I digress.) Even better, the finish line is in sight. I’ve got the major plot line to resolve, obviously, with all of the little character bits that are tied into it, and I’ve also got one major dangling plot thread that I need to address and figure out how to weave back into the whole of the narrative. It’s one of those bits that may be cut the second time around. The characters at the center of it were at one point in the planning stages relatively important to the plot, but as it developed, their stories and mine diverged from one another. But! As I said, personal milestone achieved. Now I just need to make that final push, and then, with a first draft in hand, I’ll actually be able to get a little rest. Huzzah!
Author Archive for Stefan Claypool
I’ve reached that stage in the creative process where, on the verge of finishing draft one of the novel, I find myself struggling to force out the final sixty or so pages. I think the problem is twofold: first, I’ve already unintentionally turned my mind toward the first revision. It’s impossible not to think about the changes that I’m going to make when I go through the story again. That makes it significantly more difficult to focus on the draft at hand, especially when I find myself coming up with new ideas that, while appropriate for the late stages of the book given the way certain characters have developed, contradict already-established events that I’ll have to change the second time around. It’s frustrating to not be able to guide the story the way I’d like it to this time around, but that’s what I get for the way I write. I don’t like to lay out the whole story before I write it, because then I’m stuck trying to conform to an outline, and by extension, shutting out potential sources of inspiration and avenues of creativity. On the whole, I prefer my approach, but it is not without its consequences.
Second, independent of any next steps in the process, I’m just ready for this draft to be done. It’s a tremendous intellectual strain to force myself to write every day after work. Some days I hit my word goal, some days I don’t, but I am at least getting a couple of pages done every day, and I’m finally reaching the point of exhaustion. I need to finish this draft just so I have a draft finished, at which point I’ll be able to step away from the process for a couple of weeks before starting again. I’m honestly just ready to be done with the thing for a bit, but in order to do that, I have to finish it, as exhausting as that may be.
But I’m slowly but surely making my way to the finish line, and I hope to have a draft completed by the end of the month. Here’s hoping!
Good Lord, February is almost over. As a winterphile, that is extremely uncool. As a baseball fan, though, I feel unwarranted excitement building inside of me. I mean, I know that the Cubs have about as much chance of winning the World Series this year as Jimmy Carter does of winning a second term in the White House, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll be any less excited to watch them play. I’m actually considering purchasing an MLB.TV subscription so that I can actually watch the games, but I think that I’ll probably end up just making due with the MLB At Bat iPhone app that got me through last summer. Besides, if I have to choose between listening to Len & Bob and Pat & Ron, I’ll choose the latter every time.
Being creative every day is hard. If this statement comes as shock to you, then you’ve probably never tried it. I’m about 170 pages into my novel right now, and even though I know where I want to get and know the road that I need to take to get there, actually walking that road is getting very difficult. I think part of it is just fatigue from having written so much over the last couple of months, and the rest is an eagerness to just finish this draft and be done with it. I’m thinking more and more about what needs to be fixed with what I’ve already written and less about the writing I’m doing now. That doesn’t make for productive writing, but it’s also unavoidable. The story has developed in ways that I didn’t expect, and now I’m filled with the desire to return to the beginning of the story and make changes to reflect the turns the tale has taken. Themes have begun to emerge, and I want to make sure that those are properly seeded throughout. I also want to make sure that the characters are behaving consistently, as well as make serious changes to the language used throughout. Truthfully, I always expected the first draft to run long, and now I’m ready to cut it up. But I can’t do that until I finish this draft. I’m guessing that I have between 70 and 100 pages left to go. Here’s hoping I can finish before the end of March.
I’ve decided not to get an iPad right now. Don’t get my wrong: I’m still wildly enthusiastic about the device, and am convinced that it represents the first step into the future of computing. But unfortunately being a poor white boy is not conducive to buying highly advanced technological devices, even when they are semi-reasonably priced. The bottom line is that right now I need to be watching my money, and spending $500+ on an iPad would not be fiscally responsible. But there’s another factor at play as well, namely that just as v2 of the iPhone was a huge leap over v1, I’m confident that v2 of the iPad will be light-years ahead of v1. The design will be refined, we’ll likely see a front-facing camera integrated , and the price may well drop. When that happens, a purchase will be inevitable. But for now I’ll just to be content staring at them through the display window. Alas…
I’ve spent way too much time recently improving my computer. I’m coming up on the end of my warranty, and consequently am taking steps to make this thing last as long as possible. I’ve cleaned out nearly everything Power PC related, moved a significant amount of media to external hard drives, and freed up about 30 additional gigs of memory on the machine. I’ve also replaced all my icons, installed Adium as my chat client, and have been experimenting with Boxee, among other things. I would ask if that makes me a nerd, but I know that the answers is no. There are many, many other things that make me a nerd. This is just frosting.
Was I the only person bored by the Incredibly Important Summit to Decide the Fate of Our Health Care System yesterday? No? Good.
I have been listening to the Alan Parsons Project way too much lately.
I have been blogging way too little.
Go USA.
Moon is a film by Duncan Jones. It stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, an employee of a lunar mining company that harvests helium for energy use on Earth. Sam is alone on the Moon, with no direct human contact and only his robot GERTY to keep him company. At this point, the film could have become one of three things. It could have become some sort of space opera where Sam fights Moon Men over natural resources. It could have become a cerebral, elegant, and poignant science fiction film in the vein of 2001. Or it could have become Mystery Science Theater 3000. And despite my unabashed love of MST3K, I am please to report that Moon is one of the best pure science fiction films I’ve seen in quite a while.
The film is filled with beautiful imagery, an understated and effective score, and a very naturalistic and moving performance by Sam Rockwell. But the biggest reason to recommend Moon is the way that Jones approaches the subject matter. I hate to bash on Star Wars, but the series corrupted America’s concept of science fiction. Sci-fi has became a byword for action-adventure in space, and even when brave directors have tried to break out of that formula, they haven’t met with much success. Even films like The Matrix and its various knockoffs were simply “action-adventure IN THE FUTURE” or “action-adventure WITH COMPUTERS,” rather than classical 2001-style science fiction. With few exceptions, the genre on film was for a long period of time nothing more than simple variations on action-adventure.
But science fiction isn’t defined by explosions in space. Science fiction uses advances in technology to expose truths about the human condition and the way we adapt to brave new worlds. That’s why I’m thrilled to see a film like Moon so well received. It’s a film about a future that we can easily envision. What it does, like all great sci-fi, is explore the consequences of that future. And coupled with other recent projects like Caprica (yes, I know it’s not set in the future, but you get the point), it gives sci-fi fans a little bit of hope about tomorrow’s genre projects.
There’s nothing wrong with big budget blockbusters like Star Wars. Those are really enjoyable films. But every once in a while, a Moon is a welcome relief.
The difference between Keynes and Hayek is that Keynes’s theories were primarily concerned with providing politicians cover for expanding government control of the economy, whereas Hayek’s were concerned with explaining how things work.
I was going to write a blog post tonight about this topic, but fortuitously stumbled upon this piece, which more or less summarized exactly what I was going to say. The topic is our perceptions of how we interact with technology and how they change over time. Check it out.
I’m not going to bother explaining what the iPad is. If you’ve been anywhere near a computer today, you’ve seen it and formed an opinion on it. My opinion, predictably, is of the OHMIGODITSTHECOOLESTTHINGEVERIHAVETOHAVEIT variety. That said, I understand that some people aren’t as enthusiastic. They ask why it’s preferable to a laptop. They say it’s essentially an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch. They question its purpose, and the purpose of tablets in general. In short, they don’t “get it.” That’s understandable, and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. And while I’m not an expert in theories of media consumption, I have been thinking about the issues raised by the iPad and by other recent technological advances in some depth, and would like to offer my perspective.
I finally decided to dive headfirst into Wodehouse – that is, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, famed British novelist and playwright. I had been recommended his work over the years, but never actually made a serious effort to read any of it. His most famous creations – bumbling playboy Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves – were brought to life in an acclaimed British television series starring comedy geniuses Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, and were also the subject of a Lovecraft-inspired short story included in Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (which I should say is thus far my favorite installment in that particular series). Given that Wodehouse’s works had influenced the works of those three titans of British popular culture, I figured I might as well give him a chance.
Hold your horses, it’ll be back eventually.
Does that headline seem a little overblown? Well, don’t worry, it’s not from me. But it’s entirely possible that in the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts’s special election to fill the Senate seat left vacant following Ted Kennedy’s death, you’ve seen a few similar headlines around the blogosphere. I know I have. Not shockingly, they’re all from liberals. Now I’m not going to say that liberals shouldn’t be upset about the Brown victory. After all, if you subscribe to that particular political philosophy, then Brown’s election is a stinging rebuke, and will almost certainly derail the “progressive agenda” for the time being. That’s a hard pill for some people to swallow. However, I think that a little perspective is needed.
