Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Bummed About One Thing, Stoked About Another

I was kind of hoping to post that The Artifact Competition audiobook was currently in production, but for some reason that fell through. Thus, I'm bummed.

However, my wife and daughter (and mother-in-law and sister-in-law) will be arrive here in Honolulu tomorrow from Japan for 5 days so I'm stoked! The visa paperwork is awaiting signature, but is otherwise ready to go. Phase 3 of the Big Change is imminent!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Lost No More

I'm only a couple of years late, but I feel compelled to comment. I just finished watching Lost and I have to say that I was blown away.

I know, I know it's old news and opinions are fairly polarized from what I can tell, but I felt the ending was satisfying. I thought that the show had done an excellent job throughout of going back and showing you answers to questions, big and small. Even when we knew where the storyline would end up, there were times when I was baffled up until the reveal as to how it ended up that way. To me, that established a framework wherein just about anything, given infinite time (and which, of course, no one has), could be explained within the context of the show. Yes, there were red herrings and dead ends, but overall, I was impressed, and most particularly impressed with the intricacy of planning required, in the first three seasons anyway, to show events from multiple perspectives, answering questions or filling in gaps from season 1 as late as season 3.

I didn't know anything about the flash forwards until Kate stepped out of the car in the season 3 finale. Besides losing Charlie in that episode, the depiction of Jack as a broken man was, for want of a better word, haunting (I feel silly phrasing it that way, but it fits). For every new direction the series took, the show continued to maintain my interest, and it continued to deliver solid story-telling. The build-up over the flash deadward scenes towards the final episode, I thought, was amazing. Did the ending leave unanswered questions? Yes. Did it make empirical sense? No. Did I want to see more in the way of the much-talked about, but to my mind less evident, "mythology"? Yes. Do I think that any of this ruins the series or makes it a waste of my time? Absolutely not.

Anyway, sorry for chiming in late on a cold subject.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Blood Solution: Progress Report 11

Approaching Infinity: Book Three
Word Count: 92,300

Since I am no so close to the end, I've done away with the goal. The final count will be what it will be, and it should be coming in the next few weeks. I know! I failed to have it done by today. Apologies.

But, actually, I'd like to talk a little about word count. There are lots of opinions about word count (though perhaps only among people with nothing better to talk about), which are mostly negative. Most people would say that a story is exactly long as it needs to be, which I will not contradict, but if you set out to tell "X" kind of story, having some framework, some realistic parameters, is rather helpful. It's a gauge. Also, since I write when I'm not at my full-time job, the running word count serves, once again, as a gauge. As a physical manifestation of my guilty conscience, it keeps me on task. It's not a quality gauge, per se, and it doesn't only go one way, but it can be a stark reminder of whether I've been lazy or productive. Even if the count goes down (temporarily) after a re-write, the exercise of writing the crap that came first was productive. Writer's block can slow anyone, but the only way I've found to overcome it is to write through it--as many times (badly before well) as is necessary. For me, to say the count goes up (or down) means only that the piece is that much closer to (or further from) completion.