Manxom666's Xanga

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:12:11 GMT

Addendum.

For those who are looking for an easy way to keep reading me on my new blog, I've added an email subscription tool to http://jvalka.blogspot.com/ , my new site. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and type in your email. This will send my posts to you automatically. Or so they say. I have no idea how this will work.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:58:15 GMT

Moving day.

For those who read me on a regular basis, please redirect your attention to my new blog: http://jvalka.blogspot.com/ . From now on I'll be making all of my new posts there. I will continue to use this blog for reading my subscriptions, leaving comments and managing the World's End blog ring. Please pardon my dust as I remodel, and thanks for sticking around.

Monday, September 19, 2005

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:18:46 GMT

A book recommendation for writers.

In preparing for the upcoming trial of submission and rejection, I've been trying to arm myself with as much knowledge as possible. I just finished reading a very fine book called 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published, and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might by Pat Walsh. At times the author is a little too much of a clever smart ass, but I also had several laugh out loud moments. So many of the reasons why the book may never be published should be painfully obvious (reason number one is "you haven't finished writing it"), but he gets at the very heart of the hopes and illusions that aspiring writers fall prey to.

In the end, his advice is very practical, and very doable: write the best book that you possibly can (which means check spelling, grammar and do a rewrite), be professional in your approach, don't resort to stupid tricks to get the attention of an agent or editor, know your market and make it clear in your query letter that you know your market, and be patient.

As a professional editor, the author speaks from a position of experience. He doesn't try to dazzle you offering the "secret trick" that will get you in the door, nor does he give advice on how to write a super mega blockbuster best-seller, get yourself on Oprah and land a million dollar movie deal. This is a dose of reality, a bit harsh at times perhaps, but necessary in bursting some of the bubbles that people like me get stuck in. In the end, it would seem that editors want the same thing that writers want: to publish really great books that prove to be successful.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 14:41:54 GMT

A happy ending.

Yesterday at work I hunkered down and started writing in earnest. I did nine full pages after lunch, writing almost non-stop. This morning I finished “The World” at 17 pages, and in doing so finished the first draft of A Proper Fool. I noticed that it was 11:00 when I put the pen down, which multiplied by 2 equals 22 – the number of cards in the major arcana, and the number of chapters I’ve written. I’m not sure what this means, if anything, but I feel compelled to make a note of it.

Immediately after finishing I listened to “What’s Up?” by 4 Non-Blondes, which is my traditional way of marking the completion of a long manuscript. I first did this back in 1996 when I finished writing The Secret Ministry of Frost, my first novel-length manuscript. I don’t know exactly what compelled me to do this, but it just seemed right. I also listened to “Crucify” by Tori Amos, which was the theme song of that particular manuscript. My theme song for A Proper Fool has been “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. I listened to that song after “What’s Up?”

In the last week or so I’ve been moaning a lot about how I don’t want this to come to an end, but right now I feel really good about it, proud of myself for making it to the end. I know that I’m not really done of course – I still have to type the last two chapters up and then look at the whole thing with a critical eye toward revision, but the story is now DONE. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, but I will say that it has a happy, albeit somewhat bittersweet, ending. It seems to me that this is perhaps the best kind of ending to have.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:07:06 GMT

Very near the end.

Right now I'm writing "The World," my final chapter of A Proper Fool. With a little bit of diligence, I should finish over the weekend. The only thing keeping me from the end is my desire not to see it end. I'm pressing on though, feeling hideously ambivalent as I do so.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:39:43 GMT

Movies coming soon.

So many great movies coming out in the next few weeks:

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Mirrormask

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

And on the horizon:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

King Kong

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

In trolling the movie news, I keep reading about how this has been such a terrible year for movies, in terms of making money. I don't know about the money, but this year has been an utterly FABULOUS year for quality films. So far my only real disappointment has been Fantastic Four, and I pretty much new that it was going to suck - it was just a matter of how hard it would suck (pretty hard, but not as bad as Daredevil or Constantine). My favorite movie so far this year is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one that I think both J and I will be watching many, many times over in the years to come. I can still make her laugh with my Willy Wonka impression ("You're really weird." I love saying that.)

She's currently reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and I think she's enjoyed it. She also recently finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which is the longest, most substantial book she's read yet. She's slowly but surely becoming a devoted reader, and it thrills my heart to no end. Both CAL and I have been impressing upon her the importance of reading, which has never really been one of her favorite things to do. When I was just a year older than she is now I first attempted to read the Lord of the Rings, while CAL had read The Thornbirds. J's not quite to that level yet, but neither one of us expect her to be.

Funny, I started talking about movies and ended up with books. A bit of a rambling entry today, but what they hell - it's Friday and I just doubled my daily intake of Prozac.

Happy Friday, all.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:13:56 GMT

The life of the mind.

For all the struggling writers out there (myself being one of them) , an article worth checking out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201803.html?nav=rss_artsandliving/books

The article starts out as a review of a new writing memoir, Reading, Writing and Leaving Home by Lynn Freed (which I've just added to my long term reading list), but it also contains some time-tested truths about being a writer, living "the life of the mind" as Barton Fink once moaned.

I quite like the following passage:

For years, a story has made the rounds about William Faulkner, unknown and unappreciated, working as a night watchman at the University of Mississippi and writing "As I Lay Dying" on an upturned barrel. The story is almost certainly as much a fiction as anything Faulkner wrote, but it makes the point: Real writing gets done because the writer has to do it, not because he or she merely wants to do it. Thus Freed tells us that after the success of her wonderful second novel, "Home Ground," she came under pressure to follow one success with another:

"I forgot everything I knew about ideas and fiction. But desperation and vanity does this to a writer: It makes her stupid. In fact, finding an idea for a novel is easy. I came up with one idea after another. In this case, coming up with an idea for a book was almost a guarantee that whatever I wrote to fit that idea would falter. The more obsessed I became with chasing down a plan, with wresting the idea into the confines of an abstraction, the more the real fiction eluded me. . . . I had deafened myself with thinking."

At first glance that may strike you as odd, but it's exactly right: "Nothing seems to make a writer stupider than thinking. Rational intelligence has little bearing on fictional intelligence; it can make one forget the contradictions inherent in life, the constancy only of surprise. Knowing too much, we find ourselves paralysed by choice -- this characteristic or that, this scene or that?"

And now, I get back to my own writing. I've got a novel to finish.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:54:17 GMT

Waking up.

Yesterday J and I drove to the music store to get her an alto saxophone - she's going to be playing in the 5th grade band. My own little Lisa Simpson! I hope she likes it. She was very geeked playing with her new sax last night.

Anyway, as we were driving home from the music store I saw a small group of people (7 or 8) standing by the road in front of a K-Mart and waving signs. One of the signs read "Bush is a natural disaster." A police car turned its flashers on and asked them to step back away from the road.

It was such a small protest, so small that it could be deemed insignificant, but I thought it was the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Here was a group of people pissed off about the state of the country, taking to the streets to express their discontent to all the motorists passing by. Seeing the police car there with its flashers on gave the protest an added sense of urgency, even if the officer was only asking them to step back.

People in the US are starting to wake up. They're not happy with what they see, and they're doing something about it, even if it's just to wave a sign at cars speeding by at 50 MPH.

This is damn good news.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 11:47:25 GMT

An experiment.

This morning I started a new blog on Blogspot, and I'll be toying around with it for the next week or so. I'm thinking about moving there from Xanga, which is not exactly the most user friendly blogging site around. Blogspot just seems so clean, so streamlined, so much more attractive to me than Xanga right now.

Anyway, this move is by no means official. If and when that time comes, I'll make sure that everyone has the new link. For now, it's just an experiment.

Later...

One of the really cool things I've discovered about Blogspot (or is it Blogger?) is that I can back date entries, which will allow me to transfer my "greatest hits" (if you will) from this blog to that one. I would also have the option to search within that blog, which is a major plus for me. Besides posting my rants, reviews and so on, I've also used my blog as a research tool, a place to keep links that I might want to refer back to at a future date. Xanga does not give me the option of searching within this blog, which irritates me greatly.

What's more, ever since they changed the photo manager on Xanga, I've been unable to do anything with it. I can upload pictures, but I can't seem to do much with them. And I'm paying for this luxury!?! What the hell?

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:35:58 GMT

And now for something completely different.

British office compiles list of odd names.

LONDON - Horatio Hornblower is an odd name, but consider his siblings: Azubia, Constantia, Jecoliah, Jedidah, Jerusha and Erastus. Rene Jackaman, archive assistant at Cornwall County Record Office, found all those names after coming across a real-life namesake of C.S. Forester's fictional naval hero in county census records.

The Hornblower name has been on record for centuries.

Inspired by that discovery, staff and researchers at the Cornwall Record Office compiled a list of more than 1,000 unusual names found in censuses as well as in births, deaths and marriage records going back as far as the 16th century.

"My all-time favorites are Abraham Thunderwolff and Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane," she said.

Other discoveries included Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, Susan Booze, Elizabeth Disco, Edward Evil, Fozzitt Bonds, Truth Bullock, Charity Chilly, Gentle Fudge, Obedience Ginger and Offspring Gurney.

Levi Jeans was married in Padstow, Cornwall, in 1797.

Other remarkable duos in the marriage records included Nicholas Bone and Priscilla Skin, joined in wedlock in 1636; Charles Swine and Jane Ham in 1711; John Mutton and Ann Veale in 1791, and Richard Dinner and Mary Cook in 1802.