http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/what-you-cant-help-doing.html

Sorry about the font-mess of yesterday's post. I did it using Safari on a PC, and the result was hellish. Obviously these are not two things that work well together when playing with Blogger. And each attempt to clean it up on my part made it worse. (Thanks to the Web Goblin for fixing it.)

I did a second draft of the Waterstones "What's Your Story?" story (only a few words I wanted to change, but it meant handwriting the whole thing out again), and FedExed it off today.

My thanks to the Eagle Award voters -- I was thrilled that Absolute Sandman volume 2 won an Eagle Award for Best Reprint. (Last year it was Absolute Sandman volume 1. Next year the vote will probably be split between Absolute Sandman volumes 3 and 4, and something else entirely will win.)

(I was looking to see if there were covers for Absolute Sandmans 3 and 4 up yet at Amazon, and noticed that volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all on sale for $62.37 [and that they are going to weigh a grand total of 29 lb altogether] and the last two have 5% preorders discounts up as well. Which I mention mostly for those people who write to me and grumble about the Absolutes being $100 books.)

Not sure if the cover for Absolute 4 is a mock-up or the real thing. I suspect it's not the final, mostly because I'm pretty sure that face is from Sandman #1, and for Absolute 4 we'll be taking a cover portrait from somewhere in the last 20 issues.

...

Regarding the Julie Schwartz Memorial Talk at MIT on the 23rd of May: To reiterate from the other day -- over at http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz/tickets.html we learn that Tickets to the event are $8.00 and will be available at the door, pending availability. There won't be any available on the door, because they have almost all sold out. The website has a list of places selling the tickets -- yesterday there were about 60 tickets still out there. So this is a sort of a last call -- you can try phoning the places at the website to see if they still have tickets...


...

An ebay auction with a story... I've been rereading some old Batman comics recently, although I don't think I'd want these. But the story that comes with them is wonderful...

I'm worried and upset about the earthquake in China. From Nancy Kress's blog I learned that at least some of the friends we made in Chengdu last summer are okay -- and so are the pandas.

...

Rice pudding re-prompt! Once you get home to proper milk, of course. "Your general guidelines for a batch of rice pudding please, Mr. Gaiman!"Thank you!! ^_^b

I'm working on it, honest. Decided to figure out the proportions I'd used by a) finding a very similar recipe on the web and starting from there and then b) fiddling with it.

Two night's ago's rice pudding (the web recipe) was much too salty and wrong. I fiddled with the proportions and last night's was a lot better but now too sweet. Tonight's rice pudding would have been perfect I have no doubt but I forgot to buy more milk, so I didn't actually make one.

Dear Neil,

The press down here in Brazil have enthusiastically announced you'll be here for the Paraty International Book Fair, first week in July. But since you're also scheduled to lecture at Clarion, I'd like to ask if this is true. Or maybe you have a doppelganger. Or maybe the organizers here had a dream. Or maybe you're taking a weekend of from Clarion down here in Rio (if so, it'll be winter here, and rainy, not the best time to come...) Best regards,Eric

That sounds right, yes. (I teach Clarion the 3rd week in July.)

Hello hello hello,

To quote one of your other fans, “I have a question for you about writing”. I find that my own writing will echo the style of which ever author I am currently reading. Any idea how I might get around constantly mimicking others?

You write more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with copying other people's styles -- it's a skill you'll need, after all. Many actors begin as mimics. You don't worry about it, and keep writing, and after a while you'll have written enough that you can't help sounding like yourself, whether you want to or not.

Style is what you get wrong, that makes what you do sound like you. Style is what you can't help doing. Style is what you're left with.

(I just googled "style is what you can't help doing" because it sounded half-familiar, and I wondered who said it originally, and discovered that it may actually have been me, as I found myself looking at an extract from a speech I gave to an audience of comics artists and writers in 1997 at ProCon in Oakland:

We are creators. When we begin, separately or together, there’s a blank piece of paper. When we are done, we are giving people dreams and magic and journeys into minds and lives that they have never lived. And we must not forget that.

I don’t want to sound like an inspirational speaker here. "Be you." "Be the best you that you can be." But this is really important. It’s something that we mostly lose track of when we starts, because when we start in comics we’re kids, and we have no idea who we are or what our voices are, as artists or as writers.

Young artists want to be Rob Leifeld, or Bernie Wrightson, or Frank Miller, just as young writers want to be Alan Moore, or Chris Claremont or, well, Frank Miller. You’ve seen their portfolios. You’ve read the scripts.

We all swipe when we start. We trace, we copy, we emulate. But the most important thing is to get to the place where you’re telling your own stories, painting your own pictures, doing the stuff that one-one else could have done, but you. Dave McKean, when he was much younger, as a recent art-school graduate, took his portfolio to New York, and showed it to the head of an advertising agency. The guy looked at one of Dave’s paintings—"That’s a really good Bob Peake," he said. "But why would you I want to hire you? If I have something I want done like that, I phone Bob Peake."

You may be able to draw kind of like Rob Leifeld, but the day may come, may have already come, when no-one wants a bargain basement Rob Leifeld clone any more. Learn to draw like you. And as a writer, or as a storyteller, try to tell the stories that only you can tell. Try to tell the stories that you cannot help but tell, the stories you would be telling yourself if you had no audience to listen. The ones that reveal a little too much about you to the world. It’s the point I think of writing as walking naked down the street: it has nothing to do with style, or with genre, it has to do with honesty. Honesty to yourself and to whatever you’re doing.

Don’t worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can’t help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you’ll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don’t worry about whether you’re "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

If you believe in it, do it. If there’s a comic or a project you’ve always wanted to do, go out there and give it a try. If you fail, you’ll have given it a shot. If you succeed, then you succeeded with what you wanted to do.

And it's still true. (That speech is, along with another speech about tulips and comics, and an essay on how to do successful signings, available in Gods And Tulips, illustrated by Chester Brown, price $3 from the CBLDF commercial website.)(And for those of you after instant webby gratification, the whole Procon speech is up at the Magian Line archives at http://www.woxberg.net/gaiman/magian/3-2.html. But the CBLDF Neil Gaiman store one has a pretty Mike Kaluta cover of me being dead on it. And it's cheap...)

Just a housekeeping note:

I'm phasing out my sff.net email address, as well as everything else I've got on sff.net. I've been using gmail for the past few years, and soon that will be my only email address.

So, to reach me:

gregvan@gmail.com

I'll keep the sff.net address for a few more months, but then it'll go away, so please update your records. I'd hate to miss your death threats.

ETA: I'm not actually getting death threats. It was just a joke.

I know this is just a statistics thing, where they calculate the odds of your first and last name combination, but the number doesn't surprise me. I know of two other people with my name, although one married a couple of years back and changed it.

According to my personalized results, there are 1,416,936 people in the U.S. with my first name, and 1,064 with my last. I'm surprised at how low the first number is and how high the second is. Then again, my generation in particular is saturated with Jennifers. It was a rare name before that fucking Donovan song came out. So I suppose it's something of a feat that it's the 21nd most popular first name in the country. My last name? The 25,874th most popular. There are also five people with my brother's name, but when I put in my father's it goes down to two, and when I put in my mother's it goes down to one.

Oh, hey, when I put in my sister's married name, it also gives me a list of famous people with her last name. I didn't get one for Pelland. Go figure.

Settings Tuesdays:

The reason why honey is so dangerous to infants is fear of botulism, lots of little spores and stuff that digestive tracts can’t handle. What I like is the idea of a seriously complex political system that controls the botulism spores. And the good systems can keep the botulism down, but the corrupt systems, those are the ones that kill.

Which is why we always want to vote the non-botulism-supporting tickets into office.

---

The News From Poughkeepsie is a daily blog post featuring an idea for you to take and do with what you will. Read more about it here. This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You can take this idea, change it, make something new, and even make money off of it. All I ask is if you create something - anything! - that this post inspired you to make, please link back here.</p>

Originally published at The Murverse. You can comment here or there.

The middle section of this second draft is something like a word jumble. I have all the words necessary to complete the jumble. I have most of them in place. But once in a while I'll find that a word I inserted into a fifteen letter column is, in fact, not the right word at all; so I erase it and try one of the other fifteen letter words and hope, ten or thirty pages further, I won't find out that that word doesn't work either.

So it's a lot of back and forth right now. I get lots done, but it doesn't seem that way. Not until I hit that final third of the book will the words start falling into place the way they did in the first third. At least, that's what I hope. 

You're getting this entry because I've hit the Sargasso Sea of writers, I've drifted off the shipping lanes and am totally becalmed and surrounded by flat, dull water, filled with stinking seaweed all the way to the horizon. So I'm forcing myself to write daily on impulse about almost anything. I hope that sheer embarrassment will eventually force me back into writing fiction.

Art. I actually like art, which is a bit of an embarrassment for someone who takes pride in being a philistine. I never know what I'm looking at, never understand why I'll stand for five minutes looking at something, while others bring on boredom and/or nausea. And I'm not anti-modern, either. It's just that the modern stuff hasn't been filtered by time yet.

Which is all my long-winded way of saying that I occasionally go to galleries on my lunch hour, while hoping that I don't lose my cred as an anti-culture right-wing dinosaur. Today's was the main campus gallery. And the show was titled "Censored."

Of course. My eyes were rolling even before I read the artist's statement--two pages of single-spaced, 8-point times roman, explaining how all these pieces had either been removed from other displays *or* were inflammatory to groups such as the Klan and woman libbers. Yes, this stalwart of progressivism used that term. He went on to explain how corrupt and anti-speech our society was, and how for thirty years he'd been fighting the good fight against the Man.

Brave, brave, artist. Was his stuff any good? Or even in the slightest bit inflammatory? All I could tell from it was that he liked breasts. Big breasts. And he thought defacing the American flag was a pungent comment.

I wonder if anyone has the heart to tell him that his art was banal, that there were no outraged libbers or reactionaries firebombing the gallery. I also wonder if he really thinks his freedom of speech is being infringed by other people refusing to propagate his speech? Does he really think he's being brave and transgressive, or has he learned that this is the only his boring art would ever be considered for display?

Hah. I've made my word count. Now I get to stop!

cal

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/13/tv.newseason.ap/index.html

ABC is going to remake "Life on Mars"? On what planet does that sound like a good idea?

(Although the idea of Colm Meaney playing Gene Hunt is intriguing.)

So they decided that they were going to make crepes.

They've never made crepes before, but that didn't stop them. They had a broadband connection, and they had Wikipedia.

Now they've got crepes.

Hi, Internets! Since you contain the wisdom of the world, here are three questions of great moment:


1.) I know it's possible to hook a laptop into a DVD player and display the screen on the TV, as I've seen it done. What equipment would I need to do this with a Mac?


2.) What superfabulous wonderful thing should I wear to Club Vivid? Where should I shop for superfabulous wonderful things? What have you always wanted to see me in? Dress me up!


3.) So, I'm very confused about comparing ratios. That is, a ratio is already a comparison, and I never know which element you should be comparing to which when the point of the comparison is the difference between the differences. If that makes sense.

So, say that you've got a lime and an orange. And the lime has a volume of X cubic centimeters, and a surface area of Y square centimeters. And the orange has a volume of 2X cc-- it contains twice as much juice and pulp as a single lime-- but it doesn't produce twice as much zest; it has a surface area of less than 2 Y square centimeters.

The lime clearly has more surface in relation to its volume than the orange does.

So which one do I say has the larger surface-to-volume ratio-- the one with more surface, relatively speaking, or the one with more volume? It seems arbitrary to pick one or the other as the thing compared, when it's the relation between the two that's of interest.

I'm aware that you're supposed to consider them as fractions and compare them that way, but trying to do that just confuses me, because (1) the units for area and volume are different; (2) I don't know which one goes on the top and which one on the bottom-- logically, the surface-to-volume and volume-to-surface ratios ought to be the same thing, but fractions don't work that way; and (3) a ratio is two things and a fraction is one thing and they can't be the same thing because that would just be freaky and wrong.

Can anyone talk me through this so it makes sense?


3a.) Also, anyone have the link to that story that was going around a week or two ago about how concrete examples make it harder for children to learn mathematical concepts? Because I know I used to be able to do problems like this in high school, as long as it was just ratios of numbers to numbers, but I don't remember the steps I used, and trying to reason it out from citrus fruit is just making my head spin.

Between the comments in the journal and the thoughts they inspired, I've come to the realization that it's not yet time to start a separate journal for bellydance stuff. Sure, it would be fun to set a new one up and come up with a pile of new user icons, but there's no real need for it yet. Maybe if I start performing, I'll start up a separate journal, but for now, no.

For those who aren't big fans of the bellydance posts, fear not, I shall continue to use bellydance-themed icons for them.

Feeling our oats...

Actually, that's oat cereal. You want to write good books you gotta eat good food. Or something like that.

It looks like the (Complete brand?) oat cereal we'd been eating has disappeared from the marketplace, as things will from time to time. So, we've been experimenting ... getting a somewhat passing grade so far are Barbara's Shredded Oats and Mother's Tasted Oat Bran. We use Cheerios from time to time, and now have Oatios to try. Displeasing to the point of feeding half the box to the birds -- Nature's Path Organic Mulitgrain Oatbran Cereal.

Chess last evening was disappointing; I played two rated games and lost them, though I wasn't blown out of the water, then I played a bunch of unrated games where I was ... really not sharp. Even the last one where I had a huge advantage .. and let my opponent get a stalemate. Got to slow down, looks like.

And looking ahead, I'm probably going to declare another break in Saltation, as in no Saltation next week, as I reread and go over the existing Longeye portions so we can rectify two plot problems we've just spotted before they bite us in the last chapter.

I've been posting more and more about bellydancing here, and since this is supposed to be a writing journal, I'm thinking about creating a different journal just for bellydance talk.

[poll closed]

ETA: I didn't put an option for "I'd rather read it here, but I will friend a new journal" because I'm trying to determine how many people I'll lose if I move the talk elsewhere.

Also, a perk of creating a new journal for it is that I'll be able to do more bellydance networking with a journal that's specifically bellydance-oriented than with this hybrid journal. But it may be premature to be thinking about that since I'm just a student and not a performer.

This is from an email that I received today. The author is anonymous and it is sure to make you giggle at least 10 times. ;-) Have fun!

-------------------

Why did the chicken cross the road?

BARACK OBAMA:
The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!

JOHN MCCAIN:
My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON:
When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.......

DR. PHIL:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road...

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE:
That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it inhis eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain. Alone.

JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth?' That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal

media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

AL SHARPTON:
Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&am p;&^(C% ........ reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE:
I invented the chicken!

COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY:
Where's my gun?

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010229.html

The House Republicans have a new slogan:

In a memo to be sent to Republican members today, the leadership hints at a new slogan building on the change message that has already been shown to have political resonance with a public unhappy with the nation’s direction.

It looks like Republicans will counter the Democratic push for change from the years of the Bush administration with their own pledge to deliver, drum roll please, “the change you deserve.”

I don't think anyone, least of all the Republican caucus of the United States House of Representatives, really wants a serious discussion of what we "deserve."

Or as another well-known Southern politician once observed, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

jarkman is a very bad chap indeed.

My thought of the day is actually stolen from Neil Gaiman's page. It's one of those things that you've heard before, but it bears repeating, especially because it's said so plainly.

Books don't get written by thinking about them, they get written by writing them.

... and I will leave you with that thought while I go figure out what happens next in my short story. I wish you all a happy writing day filled with lots of adventures and compelling characters!

Character sketches Mondays

Prophesy is a funny thing. So when Prince Lawrence was visited by the local seer on his thirteenth birthday, he was dismayed to find out he is not the Chosen One, or a Hero, or the Savior. He was destined to be a good and fair king during the time of peace his mother, Queen Ophelia, orchestrated. His biggest problems would be taxes and trade. It would be a golden age of his kingdom.

And utterly, completely boring.

So he runs away. Leaves his kingdom, becomes a traveling bard. Attaches himself to adventuring types. Encourages the husbandry of monsters. The country begins to slide into chaos, the queen is assassinated, and no one knows where this selfish prince is.

---

The News From Poughkeepsie is a daily blog post featuring an idea for you to take and do with what you will. Read more about it here. This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You can take this idea, change it, make something new, and even make money off of it. All I ask is if you create something - anything! - that this post inspired you to make, please link back here.</p>

Originally published at The Murverse. You can comment here or there.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/beware-wrath-of-angry-penguin.html

I got back from Australia and realised that the Waterstones story cards were meant to have been completed and returned by last Friday. They were sent out on April 14th, but, due to human error, mine didn't reach me until I was in Melbourne last week, and I didn't even look at the date, just read it hastily, went "Well, that can wait until I'm not touring Australia any longer and I'll have lots of time to think about it...".

But, I discovered, I didn't have lots of time. I have about 24 hours, as it has to be in London at the end of the week. I looked at the card, guessed that I could fit about 250 words on it, and wrote a 250 word story (using the Pelikan flexnib that Henry Selick gave me from http://www.richardspens.com/. I'd been waiting for something to write with it, and this seemed perfect). I have two more cards, in case of disaster, and I might do a second draft tomorrow before FedEx comes. Or I may not. But I find myself, for the first time, a bit envious of Margaret Atwood and her Long Pen...


In response to your bee picture, my eleven year-old daughter said "It looks like an angry penguin." (Me)"Are you sure it doesn't look like an angry bee?" (Her)"Nope, an angry penguin."

Take care!

Gina


I love my job.


Hi!

I have a question about writing. I read your advice, and the thing is, I don't do it like that at all.

For one thing, I don't write a first draft completely, then edit it several times. I work with scenes. I write a scene, I correct it, a re-correct it, I edit it and so on. I usually have a story planned out in my head entirely, so I end up writing the scenes in any order, really, although it's mostly chronological.

I'm guessing your advice would probably be "whatever works for you", but the thing is, I don't know if it works for me. I've never finished a novel yet. Actually, my first novel (which is uncomplete) is resting right now because I met my husband, who's Canadian and couldn't speak French, and I stopped writing in French. I just though, what's the point of writing if the person I love the most can't even read it? I want him to read it /before/ everyone else, not years later.

So I started writing in English, and man is it hard. You think you're fluent in a language, and next thing you know you're struggling to find synonyms or words that have the right connotation, and your characters all speak the same way, because that's they only way /you/ speak. So I'm extremely slow.

I'm just worried that my approach might just be plain wrong, and lead me to never finish anything. I don't know who to ask for advice so I'm turning to you.

I guess my question really is, should I make sure to finish a first draft as soon as possible, even if what I write is crap and has to be rewritten later, or can I polish each piece, put them all together, then polish the result? Is it very important to have a whole to work with, and can that whole be in your head rather than written? (I always spend several months just thinking about a story for hours every day before writing it. By which I mean, that's the way I did it for the only two "real" novels I've started)

Sorry I wrote that much. Feel free to take an aspirin.


The biggest problem I can see with the way you're doing it is that it doesn't seem to give you anything finished. (If it was working for you I'd have no suggestions. There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right, after all.) The second biggest problem is that if you're writing a novel scene by scene, trying to get each scene perfect, you don't get to see how anything works when you put it all together, and that's important. A novel is more than just a sequence of scenes put side by side. It has its own rhythms, and you have to bow to them; a novel, or any long story, is something that has to work when you put the whole thing together.

If you're being forced by the nature of what you're doing (episodic comics or serial television, or even writing a novel at 200 words a day online or in a newspaper) to just write and hope it all works out, that's one thing. But if you're writing a novel determined to make each scene perfect before you go on to the next, and you're writing the scenes out of order, then you're making something that's either going to work or not work when you put it all together. (That's still "write the first draft any which way".)

But it won't excuse you from doing a second draft, because you'll get to the end, and put all the scenes together, and then you'll still have to do a second draft, if only because when you read it you notice that you've got two Wednesdays coming together, and someone's name or eye-colour changes between scenes. Or your heroine seems like a bitch, although that wasn't your intention, because you don't have a scene there that shows her humanity. Or a great scene you wrote and rewrote and honed and rewrote and polished till it shone just doesn't fit anywhere because the thing that's happening at the same time loses all vitality if you cut away from it.

I guess that's one reason I like things like NaNoWriMo -- it makes people write and finish things, helter-skelter and however. And once something's finished, you can always fix it. (The first draft of Good Omens took about 9 weeks. The second draft took MONTHS. And it wasn't until we came to rework it a little after that for the US edition that we realised that we had indeed, without noticing, created a week with two Wednesdays in it.)

Incidentally, I'm in awe of anyone who would even attempt to try to write fiction in a language not her own.

As for thinking time versus writing time, well, that's up to you. But -- and I wish it were otherwise -- books don't get written by thinking about them, they get written by writing them. And that's when you make discoveries about what you're writing. That's when you get the happy accidents.

So think all you like, but don't mistake the thinking for the writing.


...


Remember the National Doodle Day doodles? (I talked about them at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/q-was-this-face-that-launched-thousand.html). This just came in...


The National Doodle Day auction has begun. Proceeds will benefit Neurofibromatosis, Inc. (nfinc.org). Gillian Anderson's (Scully of The X-Files) brother suffers from NF. Click here (http://www.gilliananderson.ws/charities/nf.shtml) to read about Gillian's involvement with the cause.

We have 175 doodles on the auction block including many from The X-Files "gang": David Duchovny, Chris Carter, Annabeth Gish, Mark Snow (composer of the well-known X-Files theme music), Mitch Pileggi, and various XF Alumni.

You can easily check out all the available doodles by looking at our Doodle Guide at:
www.gilliananderson.ws.

And it's a family affair for Gillian. We have doodles by her sister, Zoë, her 13 year old daughter, Piper, and Piper's Dad, Clyde Klotz who also used to work for The X-Files.

To immediately access the eBay auction --
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZnfinccharity

Direct Links to Neil Gaiman's doodles plus his fave doodles on the auction block:

Ebay link to doodle #1

Ebay link to number 2

Kendra Stout: Ebay link here

Cat Mihos: Ebay link here

Fred Hembeck: Ebay link here

Sergio Aragones: Ebay link here

Gahan Wilson: ebay link here


There are some other pretty nifty ones as well I'd not seen the last time I posted about it (Simon Pegg! Robin Williams!). I was vaguely happy to notice that my first doodle, of something vaguely ifritish, seemed to be attracting more voters than the sort-of-Sandman I did next (thinking, they probably expect a Sandman).


...


This is cool, and I can't wait to read it: http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.cgi?entry=bk52


...


And finally, from the Sandman 20th anniversary poster, P. Craig Russell's Lucifer and Mazikeen...

The time: 8:00.

The place: a dance studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The protagonist: a tall, nervous brunette in full-on tribal goth bellydance gear.

The protagonist volunteers to dance first. She hands the CD to the instructor, mentally rehearses the dance, then gives a short intro speech on the goddess Nemesis.

Cue music. Our protagonist finds she's a little shaky out of nerves, but she makes it through the opening music just fine. The first stanza goes well. The second goes well, although the swooping hand movements are a bit shaky. She completely forgets what the hell to do at the third stanza and waves her arms around as she fishes for what the fourth stanza is all about. At the last second, she remembers and dives into the move, and upon finishing it she promptly does the second half of the chorus first by mistake, which means she has to do the first half second, which isn't the world's best lead-in to the musical interlude, but tough shit.

The musical interlude, thankfully, is straightforward, although our protagonist's legs have gone shaky, so her slow descent to the floor while doing snake arms isn't as slow as it ought to be.

But she regroups, and gets the entire second verse right, then does the final chorus and fade-out in the right order.

Her fellow students profess amazement when she says she forgot half the dance and had to fake it. They are either genuinely amazed, or very good liars. At this point, she doesn't care.

It takes her five minutes to remember what the hell she was supposed to do for the third stanza, then kicks herself, because it had really cool arms and she wishes she could have shown them to the class.

She goes home, crumbles some Reese's minis into dutch chocolate gelatto, and is grateful she doesn't need to dance in front of anyone again for a long time.

Ah, spring! When a half-hour out on foot in the open air results in about twice as much time spent afterward nodding off at the computer in allergy-induced drowsiness!

Also, the broadband is acting up again . . . neither up nor down, just declining to load every third or fourth page. I'd check Verizon's web page for info, but ever since they sold off their residential business to Fair Point they've been less than helpful, and Fair Point so far doesn't have anything much on their own web site except for a couple of splash pages explaining how wonderful they are, and how dedicated they are to improving our service.

(A general rule: any company that spends a lot of PR money on telling you how it's going to improve your service . . . isn't going to. Companies that actually do improve their service don't need to waste paper and electrons on telling people about it, because -- oddly enough -- the people notice it all on their own.)

From an email from a friend, posted with her permission:

"I'm at school this afternoon, grading Elements of Fiction unit tests from my upperlevel
freshmen. One of the tasks was to identify the narrative POV in Saki's famous
short-short, "The Open Window." One bright young man has pointed out a previously
unidentified POV: He calls it "third person submissive." "



cal

I hate it when software insists on updating itself when I'm in the middle of a project. Convenient? No.

I also despise APPLE for their sneak attack Safari-dumping. No Macs here, no IPhones, no silly little music boxettes, OK? My ears are clear. Safari is *not* what I want. I have Firefox 3 beta 5 running, I have the newest Opera running. Take a hike, Safari!

So, that said, I did manage to finally get the Saltation chapter up today, about an hour late. Even if it isn't as clean as it ought to be. Some drafts are like that.

Chess tonight. Maybe I'll get to try out my new digital clock. I kinda dislike digital clocks, which are hardly as readable as analog for someone who has been playing chess with *real* clocks for 43 years, but I'll need to have some experience with them if I want to TD these days. Progress.

Soon we'll have more info for you about the Write-a-thon for Clarion West. Wheee....

We see that Sony's online e-book store admits we exist:

http://ebookstore.sony.com/search/ebooks.htm?searchtype=q_author&searchtext=sharon+lee&q=&q_author=sharon+lee&q_title=&q_isbn=&x=23&y=10

A cute thing is to try searching on Steve Miller ...
if you find that page with a photo of a guy with no beard? That ain't me.

Hokay, away we go!

My two favorite non-writing activities related to writing are research and building playlists of music.

The current project -- a decidedly time-limited distraction from the novel -- requires an enormous amount of research, a lot of which is difficult. Good difficult. I know I'm getting close to where I need to be because of the dreams I had last night. Saturation dreams, the kind I have when my brain is putting together all the pieces and making sense of a bunch of stuff. It's not totally different from learning a new game (especially a mmporg). It feels strangely like swimming. At the moment I can't touch bottom, but I know it's there now.

The even more fun part for this story was putting together the playlist. I habitually do this for short stories. I suspect it's actually more important for short-form stuff than it is for longer works because short stories live or die by their hold on mood and music is an extremely effective way for me to get into the feel of the time and place. The times and places of this story are extremely particular.

Sometimes my playlists are heavy on music with lyrics. This playlist is largely instrumental, or with chanting. I even fit in a couple of Wimme's solo yoik pieces.

I'm being coy about the story itself because it's for the Haunted Legends anthology and... well, I feel like being coy about what I'm doing. If nihilistic_kid or ellen_datlow want to know what I'm working on before I send it, I'll be glad to tell them. I'm guessing not, though.

Also, I'm at that phase of story ideation here I get superstitious about saying what I intend to do, lest I pin down things that should be mobile.

(I already have my five winners!)

Gacked from gnomi:

The first five people who reply to this post, and who re-post this challenge: YOU WIN!!!

For your prize, I will send you a gift.

It might be something I've made, or something cool from my hidden stash of obscure grooviness. It might be a rubber duck, or a toy, or a pretty picture, or a book I think you might enjoy. A useful object, a tchotchke, a piece of jewelry, or something else that is taking up room in my house.

Whatever it is, I promise I will get it to you in 30 days of your posted comment or less, and you must e-mail me your mailing address. Even if you think I already have it.

E-mail your address to me via LiveJournal (jenwrites [at] livejournal [dot] com).

Caveat: You must have a U.S. or Canadian mailing address. If the address is Canadian, you'll get something groovy, but lightweight.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/warning-contains-language.html

Over at Sara Benincasa's YouTube channel, you can see lots of videos made by Sara as she zoomed around in tunnels and behind the scenes in New York for the CBLDF a few weeks ago...

This is Why I Support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (the lighting means you can't see the black eye, I'm afraid). (If all four videos don't show up on your feed, then go to the original post.) (This one doesn't contain any swearing...)



Why Frank Miller supports the CBLDF:



(I think Frank's reply is my favourite. It's simple, personal and direct.)

Why Jeff Smith does:



and why Bill Hader does:



Feel very free to spread them around. (I hope that after San Diego this year we'll have a lot more of them to put up and spread around.)

Finally, here's me announcing the conclusion of the Gordon Lee case, at the New York Comic-con CBLDF event (I like the way the camera finishes on Magnetic Field and Future Bible Hero Claudia Gonson):

 I'm heaving a great big sigh of relief here. It's been a whir of houseguests, vacation, prom, more houseguests and mother's day...did I mention house guests? I sent the last of them packing this morning. Thus, the heaving sigh.

Now I want my life back! I want my quiet house to write in, my cats to keep me company, and my darling family to come home in the afternoons/evenings when I'm ready to greet them after a happily productive day writing.

So I'm home now until June 26. That gives me about a month and a half to revise in peace and cat-li-ness before school lets out and the next vacation descends. Yeah, I know--you all feel SO sorry for me. But I'll tell you what I told my mom--if it were just me and Frank, the vacations would be just grand. But it's not just me and Frank. It's kids with us, kids staying home, cats, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. It's nuts. The old, "I need a vacation to recover from vacation" is NOT an exaggeration.

Puerto Rico is going to be fun, but I get home on July 4th, and Girl Scout camp starts July 12. It looms over me like a vulture waiting for just the right amount of decay to set in before pecking away at my innards. I feel like no sooner do I get my feet under me but I'm forced to run again. It's exhausting. It's too much squeezed into too little time. Even for me, who rolls with whatever comes her way, it's overwhelming.

Once Girl Scout camp is over in July, I am DONE. No more volunteering! Maybe I'm getting old but I just don't want to do it anymore. It's time for someone else to step up to the task. I will actually look forward to a week on the beach in August, because I'm not coming home to chaos for once.

I keep thinking things will settle down eventually, but I'm starting to believe that life just doesn't happen that way.

Almost a year ago, I got an email from Matt Wallace asking me to send him a story.  Now, if you've read this blog, you probably know I absolutely love Matt Wallace.  I love his writing, I love how funny his blog is, and I love that he's a tough guy who wants to be Claire's bodyguard.  But all the stories I had written were out, and I had nothing to send him.  So I did what anyone in my position would do: I lied and told him of course I'd send him something. 

Being a fan of Variant Frequencies, I thought I had an idea of the kind of stuff they (and Matt) liked.  So I wrote "Saint Darwin's Spirituals," and told him it was a weird story with "golems and ghostfucking."

I guess he liked it, because now "Saint Darwin's Spirituals" is out in not one but TWO places: Murky Depths and Variant Frequencies!  How is it in two place at the same time?  Well, Matt is using VF and MD to drive up publicity for each other, and I, your sometimes not-so humble blogger, am his space monkey.  But what a fortunate space monkey I am!  Look at the killer-kahn cover art by the one and only Vincent Chong Saint Darwin garnered:



Yes, I know that's the same image x2, but you'll have to forgive me.  Nobody would let me actually see it until the magazine came out this weekend.  And I LOVE that picture!  I love that if you look really really closely in Lucy's goggles, you can see something in them, and one looks like she has a rope around her neck.  That is some serious detail, and it makes me super happy that Vincent Chong liked the story that much. 

But enough of that.  Hopefully, you want to get the actual story.  There's two ways you can experience it -- podcast via Variant Frequencies (NSFW without earbuds) and in print via Murky Depths.

The podcast is absolutely free.  If you know me, you know how much I love podcasts.  They bring a whole new level of intimacy to a story.  And Variant Frequencies is a very, very special podcast.  Rick Stringer puts a hell of a lot of work, swea