Patrick Nielsen Hayden contacted me to correct an entry on my site.

Okay, not the best contact in the world. I mean, it's a correction. But he read it. Somehow he knew about it. And visited. And. And. And.

Okay, even if he thought the series was lousy, he would have sent in the correction.

But still. Still man.

It means more people are reading the 2008 Hugo Awards Countdown. I kind of thought no one would bother, since I've been working away at it for a while with not very much in the way of hits or even continued hits, but my bounce rate went down by 50% temporarily, which means people were paging their way through.

Maybe I'll do this for the Nebulas. I don't think I'd do it for other awards---I mean, I can't vote in them, and this sort of thing is very exhausting. But in the end very worth it if I do have a vote, because now my vote is more informed than just "oh. I've heard of his name. I guess I'll vote for him". Heck, I paid $70-some to vote. I really ought to have a clue.

And hopefully I can help other people have more information as well. It's one thing to read the list of nominees, and another to see the work they've done. This is even true for the artists, whose work is linked to from the Denvention Hugo list, because now you can look at all the pretty pictures in one place.

But yeah, now I know why people don't really do this. It's tiring!

Then again, I'm the same person who has been working on trying to write and trying to learn about SF rapidly and trying to keep up three interesting blogs while holding a job that requires 60 hours of brain-grueling work a week, which leaves me little imagination for the writing bits. I'm used to insane decisions.

I'm going to have problems doing the fan awards. I've not been a fan long enough to know stuff. But then again, I didn't know much about 99% of the nominees before I started (except for, you know, The Last Colony and Stardust) and now I've seen Doctor Who and read recent Swanwick and Bear and other people, and read Brasyl and post-Atrocity Archives Stross stuff, and on and on and on.

Google. Paparazzi (for the website thumbnails). The WordPress plugins here. All the things I've learned blogging. And of course, John Scalzi, whom I blame for pointing me at Heinlein's YA work and starting a long trail of ... well I dunno where it will end.

I do have a YA science fiction tale in the works. Inspiration is a funny thing. However, I've also learned enough about writing to know that I need to start a bit less demanding and work my way upwards. And maybe somewhere along the way I'll still be able to use the idea. (I mean, I already lost one idea, and badly at that. I just ain't ready yet. But I swear I will be someday. And the idea may not have been so great for me personally to write as all that.)

ETA: I'm not discontent and depressed. I'm discontent and restless all of a sudden. But currently I'm oncall, so the 2008 Hugo series now takes precedence over writing more serial. For which I know about 20 people will want to hunt me down all Misery-like.

Celebrating with ROCK BAND special edition.

And maybe getting Wii Fit.  But priorities, priorities.

(And sending stuff to Nick Mamatas for critique.  W00t.)

And the sky is cornflower blue
Across the lawn is one lonely lit window.
And I sit in my dark house
In the company of no one at all
Except the moon and me and the lit window
Wondering what could have been.

This is the first Father's Day I have not had the urge to tell anybody "Happy Father's Day" just because I don't have a father to tell it to.

I'm glad, because I really hate spoiling someone's day with creepy non-familial-member-wishing-happy-some-relative-day vibes.

Nick needs money.

He'll critique anything for money.

His critiques are said to be the best around, and I believe it.

Unfortunately I have my own money problems, and won't be able to send anything to him for critique.

But you might.

My main blog is currently sporting a link on the front page to his LJ entry too.

... I wonder if I'll ever be a great writer.

I look at the stuff I'm proudest of and realize that it in no way approaches the really good stuff. And I wonder if I have it in me to ever be that good.

I think, somehow, I don't have the lyricism. Is that what's missing?

Ah well. Better get more words written. One day maybe I'll actually be able to write something pretty. Right now, character and plot are kind of important to learn.

Hmmm. Am I stagnating because I've devoted time to a long-term project that focuses very much on one style of writing? I really need to start multi-tasking better. Write some short stories or something.

Or flash fiction.

Something to exercise the other writing muscles.

... that timeless articles are of less quality than time-stamped articles.

I, like, tend to write timeless articles. Bounce rate advice typically ages well, ferinstance. (300 unique hits in one day.)

I wouldn't say they're of less quality.

Pisses. me. off.

Except for my serial.

This has made it possible to actually bring my serial up to snuff and put it back on schedule.

I definitely cannot multitask fiction at this point in my life, especially not with a for-reals job and two other s3riouZ blogs on the docket.

Why I haven't posted for a while

I have three guest posts (1 down, 2 to go) out there. Two are on blogging/writing, one is on writing serials.

I've discovered my serial juices

One thing I've learned about writing serials: it seems to be where my head rests when it comes to the writing process. I plan out a little ahead at a time, making notes. Then I write them out in full, although my notes may bear only a small resemblance to what actually gets written.

I worked that way in NaNoWriMo. That's how I managed 2000 words an hour at my maximum speed (and 1500 words working at low NaNoWriMo speed) and have them actually be, like, coherent and logical and cause/effect and stuff. At some point I wrote 15,000 words in one day, and that was with taking a break to watch a musical show put on by friends on the same day. And the next day I added nearly 10,000 more.

Right now, though, my serial work is back to 500 words an hour, and they are words I would actually pass to a beta (I don't like passing bad work to betas. They are there to beta, not alpha). I am pleased.

Mind-mapping and blogging

I do mind-mapping for my SeriOuz blog posts. That brings down a typical 2000-word post of mine into the 500-word-per-hour range, which means I still have serious pain, but it's not like impossible. And I manage to reach deep depths with them.

By the way, I wrote up an article whose purpose was partly to compare House, MD and Sherlock Holmes, and I do believe it's the first truly serious attempt I've seen outside of actual House, MD book essays. One of my little treatises as usual.

Another mind-mapping-to-blogging success.

Why blogging every day is not an instant success formula.

I tend to focus on information punch rather than light and fluffy rapid-fire blog posting. It goes against the grain of "you MUST post EVERY DAY in order to BE a SUCCESSFUL blogger or else you're JUST A WUSS and NOT taking it SRSLY".

Well, that article alone yielded about 900 unique hits over a week. And I have a tutorial article that has about 15,000 hits, working its way to 16,000 as we speak. The others in that series rate about 2,000 hits each so far. Other articles of mine have hit 200-400 some hits, which is more than a lot of the "post every day you wuss" people can say for their own.

I don't think I really care at this point if I don't blog every single day. And people seem to wait for me to come back. Definitely goes against the grain of traditional bloggy wisdom.

Note: I have nothing against people who do blog everyday, and blog great stuff everyday. Small stuff can still be great. But don't do small stuff everyday unless it pleases you for whatever reason. Doing it just because is not really a good idea.

Just got done watching "Wilson's Heart".

That is how you do it.

Emmy awards for HL and RSL please.

See here!

I don't know about you, but the statistics entry was awesome. The winners and runner-ups were extremely good.

Well, I guess this means I continue to scrap around the editing department at work, looking for an ARC of my own (never been lucky where Scalzi's been concerned).

Now what this means for my blogging; this is the bit no one but me and apparently a few people who like my serial care about:

I'm going to turn DOWN the fiction and turn UP the meta-blogging. So

• I keep my current blogging about blogging/holmes/reviews going. I will not review writing books.


• I will no longer write posts purely about writing fiction, unless there is a blogging/holmes aspect.


• I will no longer write any fiction, with two exceptions: any reviews that decide to go the two-fiction-character route, and my Crime & Violins serial.

This does mean I'll have the time to up Crime & Violins back to a weekly spot. This is pretty much resetting the button back to before the Synopsis Workshop of Doom, when I thought I could get back into writing serious amounts of fiction all over the place while blogging all over the place.

No. Bad. Stupid.

Happy again!

(hmm, happy 'cause I lost. Would I have been happy if I'd won? actually, I think I wouldn't have been.... good thing I'm not that original. :) )

ETA: and restart Anachonistic Holmes!

1. Who's gonna win the Zoe's Tale ARCs?
2. What's going to happen in Wilson's Heart?
3. How the heck am I going to rebalance writing [fiction] and writing [blogging, as I actually do it for SerioZ rEasonZ]?

Of course, #3 shall be settled: THUNDERDOME-style. So I pledge: if for some reason I manage to snag a Zoe's Tale ARC, for my hobby-time writing I'll turn 75% to fiction and 25% to other (thus reducing the meta-blogation), rather than the fiery half-and-half that's not working out right now.

If I don't manage to snag a win, then I'll go the other way.

After that, I am most concerned about #2. The video clip currently on FOX.com tells me I'm going to be out of thinking lemons Monday night.

John Scalzi of Great Wisdom saw fit to post a contest, which is now over, that was basically opening a gigantic portal to the "random spontaneously generated fiction of doom" dimension and, for some reason, hoovering in more o' that. The prize is an advanced reading copy of Zoe's Tale.

I'm not sure what was wrong with me, in that I didn't really notice until the day it was going to end. I had a small inspiration, and posted one entry. And rather late, I just started posting random stuff, pulling them out as quickly as I could, because it was fun. Trying different styles each time, and suchlike.

As someone who never really could do a real short-short before, somehow I managed to keep my little stories at below 200 words. My favorite involves tuna. Some of them definitely involved a little coordination between tea and meds, and also between Writer (yaws for a long time) and Blogger (likes things shorter and with more sex).

Anyways, you should go read all these little stories from the readers of Whatever. There are over 70k words worth of story all told.

I haven't yet decided whether my first entry was sexist (thus dooming me) or not. But I never thought I'd drop in a reference to Sailor Moon.

Anyways, Writer and Blogger hope we win. Because we really like Hickory and Dickory, oh yes.

Writer: Who was it that was having confidence problems today?
Blogger: Shup.
Writer: Who was it that was going all drama queen *raises hand over head drama-queen-esquely* and bemoaning "Blogging I r doin it rong"?
Blogger: Shup. In case you're wondering why Writer is being so annoying, we got stumbled again.
Writer: You know, for someone who claims to be Blogger, you're quite bad at predicting the stumbling of your own pieces.
Blogger: Do you or do you not want to watch Jeremy Brett in "The Speckled Band" tonight?
Writer: Tut, tut.  Stooping to such low threats is a sure sign of---
Blogger: Ahhh SHUT UP.

Writer: Blogger.
Blogger: ...
Writer: Blogger.  You don't have to sulk like that.
Blogger: ...
Writer: It can't be a bad thing that the day I wrote an article about writing fiction was the day we increased our number of subscribers by 20%.
Blogger: ...
Writer: Right?
Blogger: ...
Writer: Let's go watch "House's Head" again, shall we?
Blogger: ...
Writer: In fact, let's go for a Tivo marathon and watch all of Season 4 again.
Blogger: ... Only the ones after "It's a Wonderful Lie". And we get to watch Living the Dream, twice.
Writer: I'll get my shoes.

Our life may currently sux0r, but on the other hand, we currently rulez teh SEO:






Though Writer isn't certain that this is exactly what we want to rule SEO in.  "Writing fiction is hard" articles are not popular.

Regardless of the lack of stats, Blogger is amused.

By the way, the StumbleUpon toolbar and plugin for Firefox is made of awesome.


Luv,
Blogger & Writer

Stupid taxes.

Yes, it's bad.

Off to think of ways to make it less bad.

Inspired by ccfinlay's melancholy musings about .

Here are some of my own.

So... I've been there, done that, didn't get the T-shirt.

Sometimes life changes. Sometimes you seem to change---for a good reason, or for no reason at all. There are times when it feels like both. It's change for the worse or for the better; and sometimes it feels like both. But you have to find a way, even if it's not what you thought you'd be doing.

Life is always moving forwards. Life never lets you stay behind, even if you try. The present intrudes upon the past, the past slips away, the future comes like the light at ends of tunnels---a train? Or an exit? "Living in the past" is just four words, I think. Death is the only permanent answer.

So you lose everything, lose every root you had, lose everything you ever thought was important to you. Sometimes it's crueler to only lose some things, but not lose others; perversely, that's more common.

Sometimes you have to lose everything to gain something new. New thought, new vision, new horizons. It's hard to do when some remnant of the old you is still there. Is it always ever pretend if who you are is who you pretend to be? To slip into new roles as you play out your life, one role at a time? The old adage about all the world a stage; it's true.

People don't understand, sometimes, why I put so little faith in names or the past. You can always reinvent yourself. They say you can't run away from yourself---and maybe that's true. Some core of your being persists through all the travails of life.

If that core doesn't include what you used to be good at, transcendent at---then who are you? If that was your core, then that means cores can change. Then the question remains: who are you?

I put little faith in identities. They are passing fancies of the brain, chemical-induced through weird processes that we little understand. Who we are always changes, even when we try not to change.

Change sucks. But it always happens. We hope that when it happens, it won't be sacrificing what we love.

Life is a bitch.

But you are always around to catch you. That's a kind of faith, in a world where no faith holds true forever.

[And: meds are good.  So is Sleepy Time Extra, now with Valerian]

1. John Scalzi wrote back to me! I don't know, my mind still goes purple with light shock whenever I read an email from him. That quickly. Even if it was just a question about what caching plugin he uses for Whatever.

2. Mortgage company attempting to scam me and partly succeeding today ($4000 charge). Insurance company that cannot coordinate itself to send a fax to mortgage company without me there in person. Tomorrow will be fun. Not.

3. House M.D. that was on tonight. Watch the befuddled reactions of the entire house_md community here.

I was going to polish up my blogging for writers article about a taxonomy of bounce rates, but my brain no longer works. Off to bed.

PS: BTW, you can also watch the official House MD boards losing it.

Old school: years ago, it would have been rec.tv.house-md that was going mad.