LoneStarCon 3 – WorldCon 71 Report

Posted on September 6, 2013 by acubedsf

View from our Hotel Window

My kids and I drive the TARDIS.

I am back from my first WorldCon!

I have to admit, I went in fan mode and not author mode.

I partially picked panels to go to based on who was going to be in them. In retrospect, that was actually a pretty good way to pick panels. The people I expected to be thoughtful were thoughtful, and the people I expected to be funny were funny. And sometimes vice versa.

I also stood in line for signatures and worked up the courage to approach a couple of authors outside of their official signings to get some books signed. The authors were all very gracious and fun to talk to. Squee!

I was excited to be able to nominate and vote for the Hugos this year, and getting to see the ceremony live and in person without DRM or technical issues and with some strong opinions about who I wanted to win was a real treat.

Somehow, although it seems like I didn’t see enough people or go to enough panels, I still didn’t find much time to visit the dealer room until the last hour we were at the con.

Overall, a great experience.

Aliens as Bad Guys

Posted on August 16, 2013 by acubedsf

I am currently working on designing the characters for my new project. I knew the main character and the basic story arc, but the project wasn’t moving along smoothly because I didn’t really understand anyone else in the story. All the other characters felt like cardboard cutouts. So I started planning out several of the other major characters, and now I’ve got a much better (and somewhat different) plan for the story based on the characters. Which is good.

The bad guys in this story are aliens. I haven’t planned out any of their characters. Heck, I haven’t even named them. They weren’t even on my first list of characters to plan, even though my main character is going to spend a significant chunk of time with them. They’re just nameless, faceless (literally, in this case) bad guys. And I could leave them like that.

In fact, it’s tempting to leave it like that. They’re the bad guys, after all. Why would I want to spend time in their heads? Why would I want to think about them like they are actually individuals? Why don’t I just label them as evil and give them some repulsive philosophy and be done with them?

I think there’s a good reason not to. Because just as planning out my character’s friends has made the story much better and richer, I think planning out my character’s enemies is going to enrich it as well. And planning out aliens (even evil ones) is generally fun.

So that’s my plan for my writing time this weekend … understanding my bad guys.

July Stats

Posted on August 2, 2013 by acubedsf

I am embarrassed by my July stats. Part of my lack of output is for a great reason: vacation! But part is for a less than great reason: a stubborn summer cold. After both, I am feeling motivated to be much more productive in August.

WORDS WRITTEN: 0

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 0.9

WORDS/HOUR: 0

Observation

Posted on July 26, 2013 by acubedsf

Observation for the day: being in an MRI machine is like being forced to listen to Vogon poetry without the benefit of a Bablefish.

June Stats

Posted on July 2, 2013 by acubedsf

How the heck did it get to be July? I must be having fun, because time is passing rapidly.

Here are my stats for June. Once again, editing and planning have reduced my word count. Writing less often has been the bigger hit, however. And now that I know what I *can* do when I write every day … months like this are disappointing. The bar has been raised, my friends. The bar has been raised.

WORDS WRITTEN: 1961

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 17.7

WORDS/HOUR: 111

What it means when I start building character family trees …

Posted on June 30, 2013 by acubedsf

My new project has gotten larger in scope, and I am currently working on constructing a family tree for my main character. The last two times I planned out family trees, the project turned into a novel. I suspect the same thing is happening here.

I am working my way through the Snowflake Method to do the top-level planning for the project, and the one-paragraph summary for step 2 looks like novel material. I am a planner, and one of the things that I like about the Snowflake Method is that it helps me get a handle on the scope of a piece. I also like it because I end up with a list of scenes to write – almost a writing to-do list. And I love lists! More, I love crossing things off lists. So the prep work is totally worth it for me.

Do lists work for you?

Apollocon 2013 Report

Posted on June 23, 2013 by acubedsf

I just got home from Apollocon 2013, which I consider my “local” science fiction convention. I’ve been going for a number of years, and I always enjoy it. As usual, I wished I could borrow Hermione’s time turner so I could attend multiple panels at the same time.

I enjoyed all the typical con things: meeting other authors, expanding my thinking on various issues at the panels, and coming home with new books and a list of more books and blogs that I want to read.

One of the neat things about this particular con is that because it is in Houston, home of NASA/Johnson Space Center, it has some great space science presentations and panels. This year, the highlights for me were:

– Dr. Paul Abell‘s presentation on the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in February (the audio recordings of this thing are just amazing)

– Astronaut Stanley Love‘s presentation on searching for meteorites in Antarctica (with lots of observations about the physical space spent on logistics and time spent on non-science work which are as invaluable to science fiction authors trying to get it right as it is to NASA mission planners)

– Dr. Paul Abell, Dr. Al Jackson, and Dr. Stanley Love’s panel on Planetary Defense and the work being done to find and categorize near earth objects with the potential to impact our planet and cause local to knock-us-back-to-the-stone-age destruction as well as the work being done to find ways to prevent such an event from occurring should a NEO be found that is predicted to impact the Earth

Of course, I am fascinated by meteorites, so I enjoyed all these talks immensely.

But even if one is not fascinated by meteorites, these guys make their subjects compelling. I highly recommend going to one of their talks if you ever get the opportunity.

I Write Like

Posted on June 18, 2013 by acubedsf

I ran across a post on Will Wheaton’s blog where he ran the text analyzer on I Write Like on his writing and it told him he wrote like Cory Doctorow.

So, of course, I had to see who I write like.

The result:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

I didn’t recognize the name, but I did recognize this awesome graduation speech he gave at Kenyon (full version here).

Now I want to read one of his books to see if he writes like me. 😉

I tried the text analysis on another story of mine, one where I had intentionally tried to write in the style of P. G. Wodehouse. I got the same answer – David Foster Wallace. But apparently Wodehouse is not in the database.

Who do you write like?

May Stats

Posted on May 31, 2013 by acubedsf

Here are my stats for May. My words/hour ratio is lower than April because I spent the month editing two stories. But I almost got in my age-old goal of an hour a day (although the current goal is 100 words a day, which seems to work a lot better).

WORDS WRITTEN: 5794

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 27.3

WORDS/HOUR: 206

Space&Aliens

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