Another slow-starting week. Monday, I had an appointment in Seoul, and then some things to do. After a tiring day of errand-running in Seoul, I returned home and slept for a incredible 13 hours, though I was woken by Lime for a short while so I could eat something. Needless to say, I got no writing done on Monday. Tuesday… ….was a little more fruitful. I managed to draft a non-working, but perhaps fixable, ending for “The Truth About Mughals.” The end is a bit deus ex machina, but I think if I play with it, it might be less …
Month: July 2007
Read & Watched & Listened
This list spans June and the first half of July 2007. READ: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. Fascinating, disturbing, and surprising. It has the usual disclaimers from locals, but what I found unusual and particularly inspiring was her continuous reminders of the kind of horrific objectification that was forced on female slaves in America, on the downright moral and sexual depravity of white masters. What was striking was that she spoke less in abstract terms, instead slamming home her point with specific examples from her life, which were enough to turn my stomach. She …
Write-a-thon Week 4, Completed
Saturday Update: The Innsmouth Fatwa: 895 words (draft complete at 5,515 words) The Truth About Mughals: 5,340 words Weekly Total: 15,076 words Write-a-thon Total: 64,146 words I’m not sure how far I’m going to get with To the Happy Country. I’m beginning to think it’d work better to draft the thing as five or six separate novellas and then stitch them together. However, in the meantime, I did bang out the end of The Innsmouth Fatwa (which I rethought during my mountain hike and expanded a little, though, yes, sometime it shall endure a thousand cuts, though hopefully not the …
Improperly Prepared Blowfish
I was waiting for the lineup to be announced on the website, typically timid, but hey, a little hype can’t hurt, and since a few others have announced their stories’ acceptances, I figure maybe it’s kosher, especially since I’m excited! I am happy to have sold a story to the very unique and bizarrely wonderful anthology Machine of Death, which is based on about the weirdest anthology concept I’ve come across in a while: The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to …
Ran Like a Bastard
I took Lime to the campus gym. 20 minutes on the treadmill, 15 minutes on the bike. She forced me to do more stretching than I usually do, but that’s good: I ought to. I also did some weights — mostly upper-body stuff, mostly to pass the time while I cooled down. Tomorrow, I think I’d like to hike the mountain instead.