This week...#2

Monday: I did not write because I was working full time.

Tuesday: I did not write because I was running about trying to tidy up before my mum visited.

Wednesday: I did not write because, again, I was working full time. However, I also forgot to go to a staff meeting in the evening, so what was I doing instead of writing in that time? Rewatching Babylon 5, that's what.

Thursday: I did not write but I did edit. I got a new netbook, after having been without a working laptop for quite a while, and now I have a tiny little computer that I have already started working with. The downside? It's got Windows 7 Starter Edition installed, which means I can't put my favourite desktop wallpaper up, since you can't change the wallpaper on Windows 7 Starter. So no Castiel to inspire me :(

Friday: The day is yet young, and I intend to try and fit some writing or editing in, but my day is pretty goddamn full. Still, at least I'm champing at the bit. Sigh.

Saturday: Work/taking advantage of mum's car to go shopping. However, hopefully I will have time to write in the evening. I might be too tired.

Sunday: Will probably not write as I am seeing friends and we will be baking things that man was not meant to bake, hopefully to rival the Battle for the Gingerbread Doom Fortress. Still, a wonderful day will no doubt be had by all.

This week...#1

This week

...I didn't write on Sunday because I was recovering from work on Saturday. And because it was my one day off and I'd damn well do as I pleased with it. So I played Patrician III all day, noted some pleasing but not immediately obvious improvements upon Patrician II and accrued vast amounts of money. Then lost the game while I was helping Robin put up a wardrobe. So started a new one. I wouldn't have been able to write anyway: too many distractions.

...I didn't write on Monday because I got home from work and decided to read a Let's Play of Resident Evil for a day, and then play some Spore.

...I didn't write on Tuesday because I was totally going to and then Robin e-mailed me at work and said I had to go to pick up some post from our Housing Agency and then I shopped a bit since I was in town anyway and then there was no point starting to write since we had to go out to a game.

...this afternoon I shall not write because I have to plan a game I'm running at short notice tonight.

...tomorrow I probably will not write because I'll come home and there'll be a game I have a hankering to play or something important I have to do.

...on Friday I probably will not write because I don't have a working laptop currently, so honestly it's a bother trying to write, and I don't feel like writing longhand, and our PC only has Staroffice or something weird like that on it. I hate writing on Staroffice.

...on Saturday I'm going to be working until the evening. Then there's statting to be done for a livegame.

...on Sunday I'm gaming in Cambridge all day. It's not something I really want to go along to, but I usually end up going anyway. I'd probably just play computer games all day if I didn't go.

These are the myriad reasons I don't write. Maybe by posting them publicly I will shame myself into writing, just so I have something to report. Tune in next week for full-time work week fun!

P.S. I honestly believe that Monday is the first day of the week. But Sunday was relevant.

Things I am enjoying right now

The Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix. The first one, 'Mister Monday' is brilliant, easily as good (for me) as 'Sabriel', and the teaser for the second, 'Grim Tuesday' in the back has made me champ at the bit to read it. Unlike 'Sabriel', 'Mister Monday' reminds me primarily of vintage Diana Wynne Jones, specifically 'The Lives of Christopher Chant', one of my favourite of her books. The level of detail and vivid realisation of the setting and characters is incredible in 'Mister Monday', and it's rare to find something which takes me so completely on a mental journey to places I'd never imagined. It's like reverting to childhood, and I want to explore further.

'Graceling' by Kristin Cashore. My friends love her writing and I've become quite partial to her blog, This Is My Secret, but now I've taken the plunge and started reading 'Graceling', I see what all the fuss is about. The main thing that struck me (as has been commented on by one of my friends in her blog) was that Cashore has created a character who, by all rights, should be a Mary Sue. She's a tough, confident woman who's niece to a nasty king, has different coloured eyes and a magical ability which makes her literally more kickass than everybody else. She's pretty but doesn't wear dresses and doesn't want to marry all of the lords her uncle puts before her as suitors. She has a strange attraction for an elf-a-like (called Lienid in this) with one eye gold and the other silver and has at least two if not three men fancying her, as well as being the leader of a rebel group who help the helpless. But Katsa is just incredibly likeable as a character. Instead of being a Bitch Sue, she's genuinely misanthropic and cynical for a very good reason - her cruel uncle has her torture and kill folk for his amusement and everybody is afraid of her. Instead of her powers making her a Godmode Sue, they're really not very nice and actually cause her to be a feared and hated figure rather than people looking at her in awe. Her love interest (I'm assuming that's what he is) is called Po, which is an awesomely silly nickname but he is an extremely nice fellow, and the only suitor we've actually seen so far in the book (I'm not hugely far through) isn't a weak idiot to make her one true love seem more wonderful and perfect but is actually smart and cool.

'Red Dead Redemption' is...well, it's like 'Grand Theft Auto IV' with the boring bits surgically removed, crossed with 'Sid Meier's Pirates' and then given cowboys. It's well-made, fun and engaging. It's got the charm of having your fearless bounty hunter dismount from his wild ride across the plains to pick some flowers. It's got bizarre and unique characters with special kinds of '-philia' (Seth, as just one example), the horse riding is amazing and soooo much easier than driving a car in any game ever, the combat system is something even I can understand and frankly it's just all kinds of fun. I think it was made for a better player than me, though. I keep dying, like all over the place. And while I've found the one game where I don't utterly suck at race sections, I was grateful of the option to skip over them when I failed enough times the game took pity on me. There are some bizarre glitches: at one point all the horse-drawn vehicles were standing in place vibrating with a weird noise. Like, the horses and driver and everything were just bouncing up and down in place. Hilarious. Then my favourite horse got eaten by a cougar and I haven't been able to catch another of the same kind. So now I have a nice white horsey instead, though I really want either a black one or a pearly beige one. I really really wish you could keep more than one horse, like stable them somewhere, since inevitably just as I get a nice one, it'll get shot, eaten by some of the wildlife that is constantly trying to kill you, or buck me off and disappear into the wild blue yonder. Still, lassoing and breaking horses is ridiculous fun, so I don't object too much, I can just never find the kinds I want when I go looking. The game does keep you constantly supplied with horses, btw, they're just usually the rubbish kind that have average speed. So, froth finished on that one.

'Sherlock Holmes' (can't remember what all the series are called). My mum got me the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series in its entirety for my birthday, and goddamn are they good. I'd forgotten how perfect Brett is as Holmes. Much wuv.

And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings...

Let's discuss the weather.

It's raining today. Started off a bit grey and gloomy, but quickly developed into heavy, pregnant clouds and now the window before me is peppered with light dashes of rain, rapidly getting more frequent. This is only interesting (this being England, after all) because the last couple of weeks have been positively Mediterranean. The sun was out, the air was humid and the ice cream cart was out near where I work. Of course, this meant I scurried from shade to shade and watched the summer people drift by lazily in their sunglass- and sandal-clad groups to enjoy the beautiful (and rare) weather. Now the air is soft and humid and the light is grey with nary a silver lining in sight. And somehow I feel better, more like writing. I actually find that when it's grey and rainy, properly rainy, with misty fields and dripping eaves and the smell of wet leaves and damp earth (or concrete), the weather tickles at my mind, makes me jittery and ready to be creative. Inspiration scratches round the edges of my consciousness and snuffles at my free time, reminding me every so often that it would be fun to do some writing, wouldn't it?

Whereas in the sun, I am productive in real world ways, involving unpacking some of the boxes of the move, or going into town. I am also unproductive in time-wasting ways, playing 'Red Dead Redemption' being this week's example. The problem is, I have a million and one non-writing and non-gaming things to be doing that need to be done really quite urgently, but instead, that dozy little bit of my brain that likes to write has woken up and wants to be going. Perhaps the important things I have to do can wait for a day...

Bee in my bonnet

This post is far from my usual style, but I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet. You see (for those who do not live in Britain), there are currently two campaigns called 'Look 21' and 'Look 25' which are designed to provide guidelines as to selling age-restricted products. The idea is that if someone doesn't look 21 or 25, depending on the scheme the company adheres to, they should be asked to provide proof of age. This is either a passport or a driving license. There are other things that can be ID, but I'm not confident they'd be accepted everywhere. In theory, maybe they should be, but in practise I've seen a place advertising that staff will not accept a driving license as proof of age, which might be illegal, I'm not sure. Both of these things require a reasonably significant investment of money: certainly more than I ever had to spare while I was a student. Bear in mind that the drinking age in Britain is 18, so 'Look 25' actually asks people who are anything fewer than seven years past the drinking age to provide proof of age. A fair margin for error, some might say, and at least the legal drinking age is 18, not 21.

Except every person has stories like the ones in this article from the BBC. I'm glad there's finally starting to be a backlash against this attitude.

My pennyworth on the subject.

While it is highly unreasonable that people twice the drinking age are asked for ID, it is unfortunately mostly employees being wary due to the high penalties for serving underage drinkers. As someone who works in a place that, due to recent company expansion, sells age-restricted goods, employees who handle age-restricted goods are subject to an atmosphere of fear of potential prosecution if they don't ask for ID and fear of aggression on the part of the customer if they do, as well as in many cases sympathy with the plight of the customer. We're heading towards a culture where literally everybody is asked to prove their age when buying alchohol and 18 certificate DVDs. It's not fun for anybody, but it's a flailing attempt to try and pull the potential media backlash against things like violent video games and binge drinking culture. From the POV of people in the arts industry, age certification on products provides a useful way of pointing to the certificate and saying, "Er, sorry, but it's not intended for kids, so it's not our fault Little Timmy was mentally scarred by 'Generic Soldier: Guts and Glory' or is [probably more likely] taking joy in pretending to viciously slaughter alien monsters, with extra blood splatters in 'Alien Invasion V'." Not that the media takes any notice whatsoever of the age certification system, so busy are they leaping on the next 'Serial Killer played Mankiller: Bloody Revenge IV' story. But that's a different bee for a different bonnet. Please notice that I don't mention the government anywhere else but in these two sentences. I'm unwilling to lay this blame at the feet of Labour, as seems to be the current trend: yes, they implemented a lot of the obsession with IDing, but I think any middle class, middle-aged government would have reacted in the same way to such a monumental problem. Let's just not talk about the Digital Rights Bill.

There are a few beefs I have with this whole system that aren't linked to IDing when buying. For a start, Tescos and some other supermarkets require ID for everyone going through a checkout with someone buying age-restricted products, which is extremely irritating, especially when parents cannot buy a bottle of wine when going through a checkout with their child. The culture of blame is putting the responsibility for drinking culture on the retailers, not on the individual and while there should be some level of corporate responsibility for one's products, shops shouldn't be required to make up for inadequate education about the dangers of drinking, nor should they be expected to treat adults as though they had no awareness or maturity regarding their own decisions.

When places like Wetherspoons ask someone to leave the pub at seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening for ordering a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of water without ID, something has gone wrong. I understand that ID measures are there for a good reason, but before I had ID I could potentially be thrown out of a pub when sitting with my friends drinking a soft drink. When you get to an evening's socialising, you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere open at that time that does not serve alchohol, and so by introducing such strict measures, innocent people are having their freedoms heavily restricted. My liberal soul rebels against the idea of guilt by association. ID is expensive and, for the only two definite pieces of ID that are accepted almost anywhere, are linked to facilitating either driving or leaving the country. In addition, for those who are teetotal, it verges on offensive to them that they must shell out a lot of money for ID just to sit with their friends in a pub with a soft drink. In an ideal world, their most suitable system would be an opt-in system rather than an opt-out one.

In short, if I'm attempting to buy an age-restricted product, feel free to ID me. I knew that was a possibility when I decided to buy it. OK, if I'm clearly not under 21, it's annoying, but you're just doing your job, I'll let it slide. But when I'm ordering a soft drink in a pub, or when I'm not directly buying an age-restricted product but someone vaguely nearby me I clearly know is, what right do you have to tell me I need ID for that? I don't buy drinks or cigarettes for underage kids when approached - please trust me as an adult to make that decision for myself.

Idea-situation-plot

Nicola Morgan wrote an amazing and awesome post on Help! I Need a Publisher (a blog well worth reading for her glorious snark, down-t0-earth advice and an unwillingness to coddle writers I haven't seen since Stephen King). It's about ideas, not where they come from but how they end up as books. The post on Kidlit she links to is also extremely good: that's about the difference between situations and plots.

I think I figured out what's wrong with so many of my works-in-progress. I have ideas, situations, characters or settings (often some or all of the above) but not the 'and then...'.

So, Arthurian legend meets Judge Dredd. A teenage girl goes into training to become a Cyberknight, squire to a knight who doesn't play by the rules. And then...?

Pirates of the Caribbean...miles above the planet surface, with flying ships. James Colney returns from a three-year stint in the aerial navy to find that his one true love has married someone else. A duel ensues, then a murder, of which he is accused. He and Max flee the floating island they called home. And then...?

The climactic battle between heaven and hell happened, without anyone on earth noticing, but the effects were felt through natural disasters, riots and war. The battle was ended by a great last-ditch effort by the Archangel Michael which destroyed the Antichrist and shattered the angels and demons into pieces, scattered across the world. Their broken ethereal forms joined with the nearest human they could find and now they seek to unite with the other parts of themselves, while still fighting their eternal battle between light and dark. And then...?

A world where the gods walk among men, Paragons arranged into Courts and led by Monarchs. Thousands of years ago, the Monarchs murdered two of their own, one of them the Monarch of Change, the Harbinger, because they did not wish for a potentially cataclysmic change he would bring. Now the new Monarch of Change has arisin, and they must decide what to do about him, or risk losing their power or even their lives. And then...?

It's like playing consequences, but I should already know the answers, with the amount of thought I've put into to every one of these. And yet I don't, which is probably why I'm having so much trouble with them. Thank you, Nicola Morgan and Kidlit, you've shown me precisely what is wrong with my writing method. Now I just need to figure out how to solve it.

Last night I had an incredibly detailed dream about trying to rescue a ginger-and-white cat called Jericho from Queen Elizabeth I who had been resurrected and was running a supertech hospital as big as a small town surrounded by SWAT teams. She needed the cat to take over the world, but by God, me and a group of heroic individuals weren't going to let that happen - I woke up when one of the scientists who was helping us was cornered and jumped through a plate-glass window several stories up, hoping that her body would shield the cat she was escaping with from being hurt when she hit the ground and died. I'm once again baffled by what my brain does while I sleep.

'Uglies' by Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is one of the belles of the ball at the moment in YA fiction. And rightly so.


'Uglies', the first in his series of the same name, is...brilliant. Westerfeld combines speculative fiction, a touch of philosophical meandering to get the leetle grey cells going, well-realised characters and style decidedly lacking in pompous self-importance. I realised after sitting on the bus with my eyes glued to the page for the first few pages that Westerfeld has realised what so few writers do: sometimes, style needs to be invisible. It seems effortless, and I found that I didn't even notice I was reading to some extent. Things just seemed to happen inside my head as I read. I really feel like I've been told a story.


The setting of 'Uglies' has to be read to be fully felt, I think, but the basics of it is that at the age of sixteen, every child in the city (and all of the cities across the country/world as far as we know in this book) is given an operation that physically alters them to make them fit an idealised standard of beauty. It's a simple idea, but Westerfeld runs with it. There are no 'Anathem'-style chunks of exposition here: the details of Westerfeld's world almost slip in round the edges, often not mentioned until the characters encounter them. This can be confusing at first, but you can rest assured that everything you need to know will be told later. I always find it distracting when someone in a sci-fi novel reflects on how the things they've been familiar with all their life work. I mean, I vaguely know how a car and a TV work, but I don't use one and think, "Ah yes, that is the internal combustion engine at work there, first patented in 1861" (I had to look that up and it's probably wrong). So in 'Uglies' we don't get an explanation of how hoverboards work until they stop, or the technology that allows people to navigate computer screens by thought and eye-movement.

There are interesting Matrix and Equilibrium-style (among other things) issues of free will, authority, conformity, the honesty and brilliance of natural human emotion, beauty and the influence it has on society, but Westerfeld doesn't bother us with long philosophical rants on the matter, expounding his theories to make sure we get the point of the novel. Nope, he trusts us to get the point, and if we don't, at least we get a good story along the way. And there are advantages to being 'pretties'. Endless food, a beautiful city, parties all the time, literally eternal contentment. And youth and beauty for as long as your body can stand the life-extending treatments. I know several people who would go for that without question.

So when Tally Youngblood, our hero, finds herself running away to join a rebel faction of 'uglies' (pre-op people) who refuse to be turned 'pretty', we really sympathise with her whining. I'm not sure I'd give up New Prettytown for that. But Tally changes, as people do. It's what makes this good - a good setting is nothing without great characters, and Tally is awesome, with her quick mind and almost unconscious bravery. I think a big part of the whole idealised female character/Mary Sue thing is that they rarely go through a genuine change. Oh sure, they have superficial 'flaws' at the start, and might even have them still by the end, but on the way they discover how wonderful and heroic they are inside, usually with the help of a male love-interest. Tally starts out a whiny, unpleasant character, a slave to the conditioning she's undergone throughout her life. She is brave, sure, but also kind of pathetic at times, because she's learned to be reliant. And then she is forced to become self-reliant. There is a male love-interest, but the only thing she needs him for is the realisation of that whole beauty-comes-from-within thing. Other than that, she learns because she has to, she adapts, and she becomes a strong character who is both sympathetic and awesome.

Literally the only flaw I can come up with for this novel is the story. It's a bit...simple. If you wrote out the events, not that much actually happens. In the same way, the intuitive way Westerfeld doesn't over-explain the issues brought up by the story or the technology of the setting makes it seem a little slight as a sci-fi novel. But that's actually kind of fine. 'Uglies' is never dull, never boring, because even the slight tension that's there is wonderfully handled. It feels almost like half a book, but at the same time, I wouldn't have Westerfeld condense this any further, and while I want to read the next part of the story desperately, the first was substantial enough to keep me going for a while.