The Desolation of Smaug

I saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug over the weekend and thought I'd post a short summary of the movie with some, er, annotations. Needless to say, spoilers. Oh my God so many spoilers for a book that's nearly a hundred years old.


Audience: Why are we in Bree OH LOOK IT'S PETER JACKSON
Audience: Is that young Aragorn oh I guess it's not young Aragorn I kind of thought it might be young Aragorn.

Bilbo: HOLY CRAP A BEAR
Gandalf: Yes asshole, I know about the bear! We gotta hide in this house.
Bilbo: Whose house is this?
Gandalf: The bear's house. SHUT UP

Beorn: I am a generic neanderthal Viking werebear.
Bilbo: You were a lot more fun in the books.
Beorn: You made fun of Peter Jackson's songs. You don't get any more joy in this series.

Azog: STILL ALIVE MOTHERFUCKERS
Bolg: I was in charge in the books. Grumble mumble.

Spiders: Eats them all!
Bilbo: HOLY SHIT STAB
Spiders: It stings!
Sting: And that's how I got the name.

Bilbo: Attercop?
Peter Jackson: I TOLD YOU NO MORE JOY IN THIS SERIES
Bilbo: Didn't I spend most of this part of the book being invisible?
Peter Jackson: Oh sure, that would look good on film.

Tauriel: I am perfect and I will die horribly in the third movie.
Legolas: I am perfect and I will live through all the movies.
Tauriel: Ours is a doomed love.

Gandalf: Guess I better look in this perilous hole. HOLY SHIT
Radagast: Hi! *hic*
Gandalf: WASH YOUR FUCKING HAIR

Thorin: You abandoned my people to a dragon!
Thranduil: DO NOT TALK TO ME OF DRAGON FIRE
Thorin: OH my GOD what's wrong with your FAAAACE

Gandalf: Hey Necromancer, get out here!
Azog: Heh, dumbass.

Thranduil: Do you love my son?
Tauriel: I don't know, I don't think he likes me...
Thranduil: He totally does.
Tauriel: Oh my... *blush*
Thranduil: Don't you dare touch him though.
Tauriel: Oh.
Thranduil: Yeah.

Kili: My mother gave me this stone that'll kill you if you read it. LOL J/K
Tauriel: Ours is a doomed love.
Kili: At least you've got a chance to live through the next movie.
Legolas: Stay away from my girl, dwarf.
Kili: OH my GOD what's wrong with your FAAAACE

Bilbo: Get in the barrels!
Dwarfs: Okay. Wait FUCK
Bilbo: Good, now I just have to... oh.
Peter Jackson: HOW DID THIS HUMOR GET IN HERE

Kili: OW MY LEG
Tauriel: Oh no, now I have an excuse to stay in the movie!

Gandalf: Hey Necromancer, get out-
Sauron: LOL OKAY
Gandalf: SAU... RON...
Sauron: MAKE FUN OF MY GIANT FLAMING EYE, WILL YOU?
Audience: THAT'S FUCKING AWESOME

Bard: I'm going to be too important later to save for the next movie.
Tolkien Nerds: That seems reasonable.
Bard: Check out my black arrow, it's a siege weapon.
Tolkien Nerds: WTF
Bard: How much you want to bet I can't talk to birds anymore?

Stephen Fry: Take all the humor out of The Hobbit, will you?
Peter Jackson: Watch it or I'll kill you in the next movie.

Dwarfs: We can't open this door. Fuck it, let's go home.
Bilbo: Wait, the door's opening-
Dwarfs: YOU'RE AWESOME. Now go into the dragon hole and get us our rock.

Bilbo: Okay, so if I'm this big and the dragon is this big, I'm proper fucked...
Peter Jackson: STOP AMUSING THE AUDIENCE

Benedict Cumberbatch: I AM SMAUG AND I AM AWESOME
Audience: HELL YES YOU ARE

Thorin: Do you have my rock?
Bilbo: GREAT BIG DRAGON
Thorin: GIVE ME MY FUCKING ROCK OR I WILL STAB YOU
Bilbo: Good thing I didn't tell him about the Ring.

Gandalf: Wasn't I in this movie earlier?

Kili, Tauriel, Legolas, Bolg, Bard: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN LAKE TOWN

Thorin: We have to lead Smaug into the forges!
Bilbo: Something about this plan seems off.

Thorin: HAH TAKE THAT DRAGON
Benedict Cumberbatch: Ah. Just so we're clear, your big plan was to drown the fire-breathing dragon in molten gold?
Thorin: Er, yes?
Benedict Cumberbatch: SMAUG'S GONNA MAKE IT RAIN UP IN HERE
Thorin: That worked a lot better in Game of Thrones.

Benedict Cumberbatch: I am fire. I am... Death.
Martin Freeman: What have we done?
Peter Jackson: To be continued in Sherlock season three!
Audience: WTF

(I should note: In spite of the above I thought the movie was okay. My wife loved it, we both thought it was a bit too long. But Smaug alone is worth the ticket price if you want to see a dragon done right.)

The Fever Dreams of Nurgle

I remember once, I think, I wanted to write something... but that thought is gone now, washed away in a tidal flood of snot and blood and sweat.

Nobody warns you when you have a kid that you are putting yourself at risk of getting every childhood disease known to man, again. Well, they may warn you, but they say "just wash him when he comes home from daycare and you'll be fine." Liars, all.

Daycare is not a place where loving people care for your child while you work to support him. Daycare is a festering plague pit where only the strong survive. I've been to the pediatric emergency room twice since Ben started daycare over fevers that turned out to be almost nothing, then he got pinkeye.

My wife has been sick for a solid month. She actually talks to people in that hellhole. Upper respiratory infection, bronchitis, strep throat, pinkeye, upper respiratory infection again... I've honestly lost track and I'm not sure either of us has an accurate tally. I escaped the reckoning for awhile, but I've been sick for a week now with something in my nose and throat and an ear infection that came from nowhere.

Neither of us has any paid leave left. I'm relying on a Higher Power to get me out of work to see my family on Christmas Eve. Possibly that power is meteorological.

We have three great-grandparents who haven't met Ben yet, and because we want him to continue to have those great-grandparents they won't meet him until everyone is healthy. Current estimates set that sometime in October. 2015.

Everyone got flu shots, the TDaP booster, and the other necessary illness prevention treatments, but they are helpless before the wrath of a strange toddler with pink eyes and grabby hands. (Still no autism, mind.)

And now Ben, who has been healthy since he got over the pinkeye, had his nose fill up with snot tonight and is warm. Not feverish, just warm. I suspect the cycle is about to start again...

Isn't he adorable? Wash your hands. Don't touch your eyes.

Top Cow Talent Hunt 2013

So I blow off NaNoWriMo, rededicate myself to my novel, and then Top Cow decides to hold a writing contest.

Really? Now?

Yes, I'm putting a script submission together. I've got a fun Irish Witchblade idea that should hold up for 22 pages and nothing much to lose.

No, I'm not stopping work on the novel. I've just finished putting my notes together for easy access and I'll be drafting a new outline soon.

In other news, I just managed to blow a deadline for the latest Writer's Digest short story competition, but I was planning to expand an existing short story for it and I'm not sure that would have been allowed anyway, so oh well. I've also got a few thoughts toward a new blog series on using a wiki to write (after futzing around with various implementations for waaay too long), so watch this space...

Happy NaNoWriMo! I'm Out, Here's Why

Welcome to National Novel Writing Month! This month you will be encouraged to write an entire novel in only 30 days. It will involve pushing yourself to your limits to get 1,667+ words written every day, no weekends off, no exceptions. You will probably lose some sleep, miss out on some Thanksgiving festivities, offend your spouse or your dog, and find yourself sneaking a few paragraphs in at the office. But once you've reached the end of the month you will have a fully-fledged first draft manuscript, ready to polish into a shining stone of brilliance. And that's awesome. If you're participating, stop reading this post right now and go hammer out that word count.

...Okay then. Any NaNoWriMo peoples who stuck around: folks, you're on your own this year.

I've participated in NaNoWriMo five times now, and enjoyed it every time, even when I didn't finish. It's fun! Turbo-charging your writing output is exhausting, but damn if it doesn't feel good to see all those words on the page.

Here's the thing:

You still have to finish the novel.

The novel you'll have completed by November 30th?  It's still just 50,000 words of rough draft. In today's market that's usually considered a novella, for one thing, but that's quibbling over terminology. What's more important is that those 50,000 words are seat-of-your-pants prose that is almost certainly chock-full of typos, bad metaphors, adverbs, padded descriptions (you can easily add a quick 100 words by elaborating on someone's clothes), and enough plotholes to murder a Vegas tour bus and the tow truck they send out to rescue them.

I've discussed the ghosts of NaNoNovels past before. Suffice to say that none of the four novels I attempted in the past have come off. My latest one, A Boy and his Demon... well I've discussed that too, and I'm still mired in worldbuilding and filling in the details I'll need to put together a coherent universe that will last me through three books. (I am still searching for friendly worldbuilding advice, by the way.) Which is why I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo this year: I'm not abandoning a project that, as far as I'm concerned, is still viable and pretty badass. Even if it drags on for another year.

So what's my point? Am I just writing this to discourage you? Fuck no. Go forth and conquer like a mighty literary giant. But while you're conquering, keep a few things in mind?

1. Take copious notes. I'm serious, every little scrap of idea you have in November should be written down, either in the margins of your notebook or on an index card or a sticky note or typed into a dump file on your computer. You are flying very fast and loose this month and when it comes time to revise, you can't afford to forget anything. If you want to add the notes to your word count I won't tell anyone.

2. Begin and end. Your novel should have both, even if they're terrible. Ideally you should have a fairly solid through-line from one to the other as well. If you can't work out what to write for one section, you are permitted to jot down a brief summary of what you think happens and move on, as long as you still make your word count.

3. Don't stop. A related point: once you reach 50,000 words, keep going until you've got your beginning, ending and through-line. Perhaps your final book is 80,000 words, or 100,000 words, or whatever. Don't stop writing until you've got everything written down, and try to fill in any summaries you were forced to add in November. You are allowed to slow down, if sanity demands, but don't stop.

4. Okay, stop. Once you've got everything down, of course, you can take a breather. Do so. Don't be tempted to start your second draft, because having finished NaNoWriMo you are technically insane and likely to stay that way for at least a month. Use that month to rest and recover. Work on something fun and easy for a bit, go outside, reconnect with friends and family, eat something horrible for you, go run a marathon, whatever. Just don't look at your novel yet.

5. Now go again. Once your month is up and you're well rested, open up your manuscript and take a look. Carry a red pen and, again, take copious notes as you read through. Try to do this as quickly as you can. Your goal is to get a broad idea of what shape your novel is in and where you're going to need to do the most work. You are not correcting spelling and grammar, because you will be tossing out entire sections of the manuscript and there isn't much point yet. Just get a high-level view of your novel. Then, start patching.

There's probably a step six, but if so I'm not done with it yet. And you don't have time to read it anyway! What are you still doing here? Go! Write! Be fruitful and inkify!

Notes From Kelly Sue DeConnick's Writing Workshop

This past weekend I attended a writing workshop at Third Eye Comics, my local badass comic shop. Kelly Sue DeConnick, current writer for Marvel's Captain Marvel series among other things and creator of the new Pretty Deadly Image book, ran a two hour lecture-with-participation on how to write for comics. For the record, she's aces at it. All of her advice was on point and helpful to anyone looking to break into comics, so if you get a chance to catch her doing this sort of thing again I heartily recommend you attend.

What follows are the notes I took that are applicable to any sort of writing, not just comic books. I'm not going to reproduce my entire note pool because A. it would get unwieldy for one blog post, B. I don't write comic books for a living, C. a good chunk of it is exercises that won't translate well, and D. Kelly Sue does write comics and if anyone's going to dispense her specialized wisdom in that area, it's her. But I'll gladly steal (well, post with permission - thanks Kelly Sue!) the more general tidbits, because they're fucking worth knowing.

Disclaimer: Anything in quotes is a direct quote. Anything outside of the quotes is subject to the stupidity of the stenographer. Now, in no particular order:

1. Ideas in your head are always going to seem more perfect than words on the page. Deal with it. You need to put the words on the page. The shitty first draft is better than perfect words in your head.*

2. Variant: "Ideas are shit. I have six a day!" Sitting down and getting the story done is the hard part. Nobody's going to pay you for your ideas. You are welcome to make people pay you to write their ideas down.

3. A good part of your job is sitting like this, listening to the voices in your head. Kelly Sue's method involves writing down conversations she hears in her imagination, but you might see freeze-framed scenes. Whatever works.

4. An exercise for the crazy: Get a favorite comic book's script (or a favorite book) and copy it out in longhand. This will help you focus and read critically. (I have tried this and it works, though it is a time commitment.)

5. Warren Ellis's advice for fight scenes is to call your shots, meaning if somebody is going to be hit with a club in one panel, the club should be visible in the previous panel. In a book, this means foreshadowing: if an object or plot device is going to be crucial to a scene or the whole book, try to make sure you've at least mentioned it before you use it.

6. “What is the Get?” Once you have a first draft, go through and ask yourself with every scene: Does it tell us something about characters, or push the plot forward? If not, cut it. Kill the darlings, basically. But create a Morgue file on your desktop to set your darlings aside, and one day, when you're at loose ends, go through it and look for new story ideas.

7. If you're having a rough time of it, just think "I need to get through today, tomorrow I'm quitting." Remind yourself of that until you're done for the day. Then, tomorrow, think: "Okay, just one more day, but then TOMORROW..."

8. Kelly Sue recommends the South Park writing method, which is making sure your scenes are connected by "but" or "so", not "and" or "meanwhile". (She also admits to a bit too much "meanwhile".) You can watch Trey Parker and Matt Stone describe their method here.

9. Some "don't"s: Don't fall in love with your words. Don't add captions that tell us something we can already see (in prose, consider this to refer to adverbs). Don't be a petty child (or at least try). And finally don't give your stuff (manuscript, self-published work) to editors at conventions. 75% of the things editors get at conventions will go in the trash before they get on a plane. Instead, get the editor's contact information and their permission to send them your stuff.

10. Feminism 101: First, when writing someone of the opposite gender, pretend they're people! Kelly Sue also recommends the Bechdel Test, and introduced the Sexy Lamp Test, to wit: Can you replace a female character with a sexy lamp and not change anything else in your plot? If so, fuck you. This means you've written a female character who is nothing more than something to rescue or avenge, or a reward or decoration. To fix this problem, simply ask yourself what the sexy lamp wants; then, give it agency, meaning the ability to go out and try to get what it wants. Note the "try": a character doesn't need to be successful to have agency.

11. In the same vein, let's have a 5 year moratorium on rape in comics. It's a lazy choice. So is killing children or dogs. Kelly Sue still feels bad about killing a dog in one issue just to get to an ending she wanted. And I'll note that my wife will stop reading or watching anything that kills a dog immediately. Which is why I still haven't seen House of Cards. Thank you Kevin Spacey.

12. On creating characters: Use the old improv trick of "yes, and" when you're coming up with a character. Ask yourself what your character wants. Another old actor's trick: keep a journal for a character you're trying to develop. Take notes as you see themes cropping up.

13. Characters again: Ask yourself, "What is their [your character's] wound?" Try to tie that in with your character's gift. (For example Superman has all his powers, but he's the last of his kind.)

14. Once more on characters: Ask yourself, what part of the body does your character lead with? As an example Kelly Sue noted that Captain Marvel leads with her heart and her chin: she sees a problem and her response is to march in and hit it. Her best friend Spider-Woman on the other hand leads with her hips: her first response to a problem is to get up and walk away, she has to try very hard to be a hero. (Yes this last question will make you sound like a crazy person.)

15. Put your characters through hell. You are allowed to feel bad about this afterward.

16. Further reading recommendations: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Writing for Comics and Graphic Novels by Peter David. Also Chris Claremont's run on X-Men, and pay attention to the way he throws out random details that end up paying off into great stories down the line.

* Originally this ended with "And the second draft is going to be a hell of a lot harder than the first." Then I got a note from Kelly Sue: "I probably did say this, but it’s not quite true. The hardest part - the actual hardest part - is getting the first draft down. After that, it’s grunt work. You get stuck, you get upset when you see things that don’t work, sure - but having a manuscript to work with is infinitely better than NOT having a manuscript to work with." I believe I lumped two statements made over the evening together, and somewhat mangled the context.

I do disagree with her, though. I find getting the first draft down painful, but doable. The second draft, where I have to fill in roughly a thousand plot holes, flesh out my cardboard cutout characters, and get the hideous goddamn creature that is my novel breathing, is infinitely harder for me.

That might be because I'm working on a NaNoNovel and huffed raw nitrous oxide during the first draft; it might be that I failed at Proper Preparation and Planning the first time through; or it might be that novels are a different beast than comics and short stories, because with short stories I've found the first draft absolutely is harder than the second. And Kelly Sue has vastly more experience, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

The Situation Is Dire

As of tonight, the following things are true:

- There is no bill that has passed either chamber of Congress that will lift America's debt ceiling.

- If we do not lift the debt ceiling by the 17th of October, Thursday, we are at risk of defaulting on Treasury bills (America's debt). Because Treasury bills are the global standard for a safe investment, this would mean global financial chaos.

- The Senate is scrambling to put together a compromise bill that would raise the debt ceiling, but any lone Senator (read: Ted Cruz) could blow up the deal just by jamming procedure through Friday.

- Speaker John Boehner has failed to even pass a Republican-friendly bill to raise the debt ceiling in the House, and that wouldn't have passed the Senate in any case.

That's the truth. But my reality is that right now, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have their shirts off and are engaged in a bare-knuckle boxing match in the middle of the Senate floor. John McCain is wearing a knit cap and screaming at McConnell to get Reid against the rope. In a corner of the chamber, Ted Cruz is puffing up as the essence of Yog Sothoth fills him with unspeakable vigor. Al Franken's reading Bible verses while dressed up as Stuart Smalley, trying to suppress the incursion, but the tentacles are already forming. Rand Paul is not there: he's gone to seize Fort Knox, in anticipation of going back on the gold standard.

In the House, Boehner is kneeling in front of Eric Cantor with a Tantō sword clenched in his trembling fist. Tears run down his cheeks as he begs forgiveness, over the phone, from Rush Limbaugh - but Limbaugh demands that honor be satisfied. Nancy Pelosi has snapped and is holding vote after vote to empty air. She's winning, but the margins are surprisingly tight. Michelle Bachmann is leading the rest of the GOP caucus in prayer, hoping that maybe this will be enough to trigger the Rapture.

Grim stuff, but it's almost better to think that way than to remember that a small gang of cretins has hijacked our legislature and is holding a metaphorical gun to my country's head over nothing. And we can't do anything about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to work, do my work, and write a bit on breaks. I will leave at my usual time, purchase a few comic books and Chipotle dinner for myself and my wife (without regard for my diet, under the circumstances). Then I'll come home, spend time with my family, and see them to bed. And then I'll turn on the news, and when the end comes I'll say a prayer for my country and go to sleep. And in the morning I'll get Ben up and prepare him for our new lives in Barter Town.

I think we can make it work.

But I'm going to look like crap in that outfit, so please, take a minute today to call your representatives and ask them to get us out of this.

Furloughed

Last week I was furloughed from my day job because lunatics are holding the government hostage. I can't write about this without devolving into incoherence and rage, but Andrew Sullivan has some thoughts I agree with, and Chuck Wendig took a dip into scatology on the subject.

Anyway.

I got four days of "unemployment" before I was called back into work, and it was pretty damn sobering. See, my reaction to this a few months ago would have been "Well... great!" Because I'd be confident the furlough was temporary, and I would have no demands on my time to prevent me from writing my little heart out. I could give being a full-time writer a shot without the hassle of actually quitting my job. I might even get back pay for it.

The reality was "nope". Leaving aside the need to care for the young lad (and spending time with him was a little blessing, don't get me wrong), I managed to burn most of my remaining time on television, video games, and an ill-fated attempt to kill the bees in my roof. (I think they're dead. I think they're dead because the wasps got them. That's not better.)

I wrote, yes, I got one short-short story done and posted and one half-finished. I took some notes and did a bit of research for the novel. And that was about it.

Being home all day didn't give me some magical energy boost. I wasn't suddenly churning out 2,000 words a day. Not being distracted by work just meant I got distracted by other things.

Which carries a valuable lesson. If you want to write, you have to make time to write, no matter what your circumstances are. I don't care if you're alone on a desert island with a crate of pens and Moleskines. If you don't commit to writing every day, come hell or high water, you won't write.

It's a basic lesson, and I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to have it drilled into me before it takes. But there's no getting around it.

So what are your favorite tips on building up good writing habits? Don't be shy.

Do Me A Favor (Strange New Words)

See that image over on the left? It's a proposed cover for Ari Marmell's Strange New Words, a collection of short stories he's written over the years. You might know Ari as the author of the amusingly grim Conqueror's Shadow series, or the grimly amusing Goblin Corps. Or you might have read some of his work for the Magic: The Gathering or Iron Kingdoms games.

My point being: Ari's a very good fantasy author with a proven track record, and I've got no doubt he's written some strong material for this book. So I'd like you to take a minute to click on this link, go read over the Kickstarter, and contribute a few dollars to help him get it off the ground.

My reasons for this are not... entirely altruistic.

See the Yeti Rock-Thrower tier reward? It's the one where Ari has offered to critique a short story or a novel chapter for the low low price (I'm not kidding here) of $100, minus the cost of a hardback copy of the book and a USS San Jacinto patch. That is a frigging bargain, which you can discover for yourself if you go looking for critique rates at any reputable agency.

As of last week I've pledged $100 to become a Yeti Rock-Thrower. See, I love writing and I intend to keep writing, but I am downright horrible at kicking my own ass hard enough to finish any project larger than a short story. (That's finish as in "oh God I can finally submit this", not finish as in "I 'won' NaNoWriMo again".) And that sucks. I'm writing because I ultimately want people to read this shit, er brilliance, and that's not going to happen if I keep leaving the corpses of unfinished novels behind me like so many chicken bones.*

I need privacy, I need quiet, I need regularly scheduled blocks of time to write.** And I'm not going to get any of that because I have a day job and an infant son, so I'm settling for threatening to tear a strip of flesh out of my own arm. Because if I don't finish polishing this book, I'm going to be letting $100 go to waste and I'll never hear the end of it.

You may say, "Dave, real authors don't need to do this sort of thing." And to that I say, "Professional authors don't do this sort of thing because it's not profitable, but real authors will try any Goddamn thing they can to finish the book. Now hand me my Viking helmet."

So now I've got some financial skin on the line without taking the ultimate step of quitting my day job. Or I will once Ari's Kickstarter gets fully funded. And at the moment it's only halfway there, with fifteen days to go, and if it doesn't get fully funded I keep my $100 and I'll have to start thinking about how to remove literal strips of flesh in a motivational manner.

So please click this link and go help Ari out. We'll both be grateful, and you'll have done your good deed for the day.

*To my neighbors: Stop doing that. My dog doesn't understand stomach perforation.

**These are of course not "needs", as any experienced writer will tell you repeatedly. But they wouldn't hurt.

Zero Count, Worldbuilder's Disease and Flagging Morale

Dear God in Heaven this ain't good.

It also ain't accurate - my last blog post went up on the 14th, and I've jotted down some bad attempts since - but in terms of "words of like, fiction I've put down on paper" it's pretty much spot on.

Now, in my (pitiful, shameful, insufficient) defense, my wife and I did have a baby at the end of July and our schedules have been a teensy bit thrown off by, um, getting up at all hours of the night to feed the boy. And I've recently gone back to work, which means when I get home I get to take the baby for most of the evening to give my wife a break and then go to bed for not enough sleep before I get up to do it all over again.

So it's not all me being lazy. But I don't get to use that as an excuse to not write anything.

Let me introduce you to A Boy and His Demon. (Working title. I don't use nifty code names like Sarah Cawkwell.)

I started this book last year for NaNoWriMo and finished the first draft in... February? That sounds right. The idea is an epic fantasy series, ultimately, but starting with a fairly self-contained first book where an adventurous young boy tries to overthrow the undead king of his island home. The basic plot is in place

(just got stopped by a dog walk and a crying baby, feeding and diaper change)

and I've got a killer ending and I think the story's interesting, the villains are cool and the heroes have potential.

But nothing fucking works.

The island's geography is a mess, and that's screwing up all my timelines because Boy Hero has to go from one end to the other at least once. The villages operate under a system of law and government that amounts to "don't piss off the Lich". I'm not sure if the population is sustainable, especially with people getting killed and raised as zombie slave labor all the time. There are sentient animals that probably should have been hunted to extinction by now. Trade and travel are highly limited but every village has boats capable of reaching the mainland and I'm not sure how that works.

(now my wife's going to bed, so I'm on baby duty until his next feeding. at midnight)

(and now I'm back, after about four, maybe four and a half hours of sleep)

It gets even worse when I consider that I mean for this book to set up a trilogy. What's the back story on the Lord High Butcher and his horrific master, the Burning King? How much of the southern continent does the Empire of the Dead rule? Are there still independent kingdoms? Were there ever independent kingdoms? Either way, how did they interact with my island before and after all the shit hit the fan? What happened on the island during the worldwide demonic invasion? The War of the Three Sorceresses? The Godwar? Where are the gods and the demigods anyway?

There's a term for all this worrying and nitpicking, and it's Worldbuilder's Disease.

(transcribing notes jotted down at my day job while waiting for a meeting to start)

My real problem is that I'm not writing, but also that I started reading epic fantasies when I was beginning my second draft. J.R.R. Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks. These are guys who have mastered the epic form and demonstrated just how much work I have to do. But how do I know when it's too much? And how do I start revising when I have so many gaping holes - honking big plot-relevant holes - in my world?

(and back home after work, haircut, dinner, changing a poopy diaper)

The answer, of course, is that I don't, I have to fill in the damn holes or there's not much point to revising. But the sad truth is that worldbuilding feels like treading water to me. I know it's necessary, but it doesn't improve my word count and it doesn't help me fix my bland main character, and the longer I do it the more I think that I'm losing my ability to actually finish the draft.

Where was I? What is this?

(God help me Miley Cyrus)

And I am going to finish the draft no matter what, because I do not need another set of lunatic ghosts dancing around in my head. (Hi Constance, hi Shosanna, I'll get to you, shut up.)

(two loads of laundry hung and folded)

I am going to finish the draft. I am going to fill in that chart with words every day. I am going to build the world I need to build.

But, ah, if anyone has any tips on the worldbuilding thing? Post them in the comments. Thanks.

A Letter To My Son

Dear Benjamin,

We found out you were on your way the day after Thanksgiving. Your mom had been nauseous for a few days and finally took a pregnancy test. We'd been trying, in a "let's see what happens" kind of way, for two years, but it was pretty much a given that some fertility drugs would be in our future.

That morning I woke up to your mom saying "What?" as loud as she could. I walked to the bathroom and I already knew what I was going to see, and she showed me the positive test. Then she cried - just couldn't believe it - and I held her. Then I raced out to get four more tests just to be sure. I think by the time the doctor confirmed you were coming we had twenty positive tests sitting in a baggie.

We told your grandparents and your aunts at the holidays by showing them your first sonogram picture. Your mom got tackle-hugged twice and a few people got choked up. Everyone was just overjoyed.

You were kind of a big deal.

* * *

I think as far as pregnancies go you were a pretty easy one, right up until the end. I had to rub your mom's feet more than a few times, and she had to go on a special diet because you messed up her blood sugar, but there was never any terrible pain for your mom and no real danger to either of you.

Not that I didn't imagine a few. You've probably seen Star Wars by now if I'm doing my job right. Well, I understand where Anakin Skywalker was coming from now. When you're a dad you can imagine all sorts of horrible things happening to your wife and son and be scared of them, no matter how ridiculous they sound. Traffic accidents were very popular in my mind for awhile. I don't know what I would have done if your mom had still been working in D.C.

I think, maybe, I didn't quite believe it was real, even when your mom's belly got big and you were just a few weeks out and we were taking parenting classes and setting up a crib for you. I kept thinking something was going to happen and I'd never get to meet you.

But I did.

* * *

The doctors brought your mom and me into the hospital on Tuesday the night before you were born. They wanted to jump-start her labor before you got too big to handle or something else happened. They gave her drugs that bumped her contractions up from "that's happening" to "Oh my GOD OW" pretty quickly - I think the time between the drugs starting and the epidural starting was the worst.

Your grandparents came to visit us in the hospital, and while your mom was talking to your grandmom there was a little "pop" on the monitor, like you'd kicked it again, and your mom's water broke. That was around seven in the morning. After that the labor went very quickly, then stopped by four in the afternoon for no apparent reason. So the doctors asked your mom if she'd like to meet you early via Caesarian section and she said "yes", and a little over an hour later we were holding you for the first time.

I got pretty overwhelmed. Okay, I cried. You probably can't imagine your dad crying all that well, but it happened. It wasn't sad crying, it was "too many emotions hitting me at once" crying. The nurses measured you - 8 lbs, 9 oz, 21 inches long - and cleaned you up and got you dressed in a little white onesie and a pink and blue striped hat. You hated that hat, it never stayed on your head.

Your mom came in to meet you and then had to take a nap because she'd been through a lot. Then we took you up to a hospital room and you got to meet your grandparents and your Aunt Lauren. Everyone thought you were adorable.

* * *

We took you home as soon as we could and introduced you to Lina. She wasn't sure about you at first, but once she got a good sniff she accepted you. She still likes to bark when we take you out of your bassinet, but she'll get over it once you start dropping some food for her in a few months.

You've been a really good kid for this past first week. You're healthy, you eat well, and for the most part you're quiet or sleeping. Sometimes you get fussy when we don't feed you as much as you want, but I swear we're just trying to make sure you don't eat yourself sick. You love car rides and your stroller and your bouncy seat and looking out the window. You like to walk around in your dad's arms and curl up with your mom in the recliner.

I hope you get to read this one day and know how much we both love you. We waited a long time for you to turn up and we're glad you're here now.

Love,

Dad

Pacific Rim

This is not "Five Writing Lessons From Pacific Rim". There's a certain point in movies where spectacle overwhelms any ability to critique the plot and I certainly wasn't trying. This is just my impressions from seeing the movie this weekend.

Be warned there will be some spoilers, so can I recommend you go see the movie? Seriously, it is quite awesome.

So, yes. Wow.

Part Three of Shining Week

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(Thanks to the Shine-o-Matic for the text.)