tychoish, now without a net

As I draw to the end of the novella, I realize that I’m not quite ready for it to be over.

When I was finishing up Chapter #8, I had in my mind that I had two chapters left to write. While I wrote a couple of chapters in a very short period of time, for the most part 2 more meant that I had a couple more weeks to deal with the material.

My realization a few hours ago, that I really only had a smidgen more than a chapter’s worth of material, has sort of put me into a bit of a scare. This project has been a guiding force for a long time, like sweaters can be, frankly, so knowing that I’m close to having to let go and move on is hard. To make matters worse, I’m not sure that I’m far enough along on the planning of the next novel to begin to write it. The upside to this point is that planning is one of those things that I’m pretty good at just doing without thinking much about it, unlike writing.

So knowing that, I’m going to go sit down with my pen and moleskin and see what comes out.

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tagged: science fiction • writing

So, I finished chapter eight of the novella last night. This means I have two more to go, and I’m on target for 30-32k words.

Chapter Eight let us check in with most of the major characters (and I think upon revision I’ll work a couple more characters into one scene), surrounding a rather major event in the story. The scenes were among the shortest in the book, and it required a lot of mental jumping around. I think in total

Chapter Nine, is the opposite: it’s basically one long narrative section that builds up to the ending. And then Ten is all bang.

(tycho goes off and thinks for a while…)

Actually, I’m thinking that I might, after all this talk, mash chapter 9 and 10 into one chapter (9), and wrap the story up in one longer chapter. I think I can accomplish what I wanted to accomplish in chapter nine in a short scene, and I think that’ll make it end on a better note. I’ve been weaving two major plot lines together and one of those lines mostly wrapped up in 8, I think I need to just push and get it done. I think the New Chapter Nine will be longer than the other chapters, so this might not effect the end length much, but frankly a little shorter isn’t a problem.

We’ll see. I think that I’m going to make some notes in the notebook, but other than that I’m going to devote the rest of my night, and possibly the rest of the weekend to other projects that need my attention.

“Write on, with confidence and hope, through all crises,” (With apologies to Elizabeth)

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tagged: science fiction

Here’s a little writing question/thought I have about how we write about the future in science fiction.

I tend to write SF that’s set in the semi-distant future. Because a lot of the conceptual work that I’m playing with is about history, I think playing with what “might” happen and having 3000 or so years of history already around to play with is helpful.

At the core my question is about having different projects, take different opinions of the future. So for instance:

The novella I’m working on is set in the second half of the 26th century. I actually think that in terms of “development” it’s a lot like what people in the 1950s and 1960s thought that the (late) 21st would be like. There’s a little bit of colonization of the solar system, but not much. There’s radio lag that characters have to fight, no fast way to transverse space, but the government(s) on earth have gone through a lot of changes. It’s not star trek-ey at all.

The novel that I’m planning out at the moment is set in three time periods between about 2350 and the mid 28th century. It’s more space opera-ey, but no FTL, and I haven’t gotten into any post-human stuff in either story. There’s been more colonization in the solar system, in this one, and my conjecture here is that Earth is much more abandoned, and much less important, even if there are pockets of population/civilization.

I mean there are similarities, but I put up to one another, they’re contradictory, in some fundamental ways. Does this make me a hack? I mean clearly I am, but should I avoid setting up contradictory worlds in unconnected works? Your thoughts are much appreciated.

(I’m also cross posting this to my SF-Writing list. Sorry if you’re getting it double.)

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tagged: science fiction

So I wrote this down over the course of the day in my notebook–probably as a result of some blinding inspiration–in an effort to work on the planning of the details of the the story. It makes sense in context, and while it’s about the end of the book, I don’t think it would give anything away to post it here, so here we go:

When they fix it
they keep the
rubber chicken
but if it fucked with,
say the water,
the people in the future.

Welcome to living in my head.

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tagged: science fiction • writing

I was listening today, as I am wont to do to an old addition of the Boing Boing Boing, a podcast from the editors of Boing Boing. It’s good stuff, and even though it’s not relevant to the news of the day, I usually don’t care. So the guy they were talking to, wrote a book on the 1854 Cholera Epidemic, which is interesting, but his previous work is on dynamic systems theory–more or less.

So here’s the interesting thing. In systems work on cities, the sort of “cutting edge” as it were is analyzing the bottom up stuff–neighborhoods, informal communities that build around places like playgrounds, schools, and market places, and other contact¹ interactions–rather than top down stuff like governments and cultural factors. (Sorry about that sentence folks!)

In cognitive psychology, the more cutting edge models, the ones that probably do the best to explain psychological reality are the top-down ones. They’re epistemologically difficult because it’s hard to isolate variables in top-down systems, but the bottom up systems don’t tend to scale well², and don’t mirror some key experiences. Clearly both have to work at the same time (and most cognitive systems include a black box, to be fair) so there’s a lot left to be discovered.

I guess what this post is all about is the fact that I never really thought to take cognitive-style systems theory out of the mind, nor did I think that when I did, the “radical” positions would be reversed. Part of the issue is that psychology has always been a very bottom-up field, Wundt was a bottom uper and Skinner was the very picture of a bottom-upper.³

The key part of the distinction between top-down and bottom-up is what you take for the unit in the system, of course. Chunks of information in your mind, is way different that a person in a city, or a city block on the city, or an IRC channel online.

Anyway. That’s what I’ve been crunching through. Hope you’re interested.

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tagged: academia

Longtime friends will know that I have these two blue-green tea mugs–actually there have been 4 in total, though only three survive today; and I only ever really have two at any given moment–and they are sort of like character objects, because I had them with me pretty much all day every day. The thing that got my friends I think most riled up about them, is I didn’t wash them, on the principal that a) tea is acidic and therefore naturally a bit antiseptic, but more importantly that I make tea by pouring boiling water on it. While I wouldn’t want to perform surgery in a tea cup in this state–but then, find me a dish that you would like to do surgery on, I dare you!–given the myriad of problems with kitchen sanitation (ew, spunges) I thought I was in pretty good shape.

Well since I’ve been unemployed, and taking classes in an non-friendzied way, I’ve developed a slightly different caffeine habit. When I go out, I rarely take both mugs with me. I found I wasn’t ever drinking both of them when they were still warm. Whereas, I almost always finished both of them before the end of an hour class when I was AlmaMater. Instead, I’ve taken to making a three-cup pot, most days when I’m at home and drinking from a stoneware handmade coffee cup that my dad brought home. On peak days, we’re talking about 4-6 cups of tea, but usually more like 3, in general, which I think is about par for me, maybe down a little, but not much. Lest you think the habit is waning.

Even if I’m consuming about the same amount of tea as I always did, my aforementioned travelmugs are getting much less use. I take one of them out of the house about 3-4 days a week, When I’m home, they don’t get used. The thing about my above sanitation plan, is that it depends on regular use, and recently the cups haven’t been getting regular use.

So I decided–you’d be proud of me–to put the cups through the wash, because they’d been sitting for too long.

End result?

The paint melted off in the dishwasher. Which means:

I’m looking for new cups.

I’d just like to say to all of my former roommates, who gave me shit about the not washing the cups:

I hate you all.

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tagged: productivity • writing