Bluejo's Journal

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:27:00 GMT

Words: 1880
Total words: 46666
Files: 4
Tea: Blackberry, blueberry and acai
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: tired

That's most of another chapter.

If I write 3000 words every day when it's possible to write (not when I'm travelling to and from Wiscon or when I'm at Wiscon) I could actually get this book done before Ada comes. There's a lot of stuff in it, and I am only half way through, but I think I have the shape of it and it seems as if this might be possible. We'll see.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:05:04 GMT

Words: 1973
Total words: 44775
Files: 4
Tea: Green tea with jasmine
Music: Brandenburg concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

Well, that was a peculiar chapter.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:55:48 GMT

Words: 2032
Total words: 42702
Files: 4
Tea: Pu erh
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

I thought that was going to be a really hard chapter, but it wasn't!

I wonder why some minor characters come alive and some don't. Sometimes they just sit there and you move them around and they don't develop anything, and others who are equally unimportant or just there because somebody has to be there will become real and do things. Beats me.

OK, we're well into "do my homework" territory here. One of my characters is good at math. She calculates some odds. This is completely beyond me. What she wants to know is, of a population of 252 people, half male and half female, what are the odds of any particular pair being randomly selected. One out of 126? Or is this one of those things where it's much less likely than that? And the other thing is, if these selections are made four times a year, how long would it take before each person got matched with each of the other gender?

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:40:33 GMT

Words: 1959
Total words: 40545
Files: 4
Tea: Blackberry, blueberry and acai
Music: First and Second Orchestral Suite
Reason for stopping: end of chapter 17

Look, 40 kwords, technically a novel! But in reality, not even half way.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:57:33 GMT

Words: 2333
Total words: 38277
Files: 4
Tea: Gaba dragon
Music: Brandenburg Concertos, Suite no 2.
Reason for stopping: End of chapter 15.

Getting on with it.

Z pointed out last night that I hadn't really written anything for ages before this, and I was probably backed up, and I won't continue to produce novels at this speed. He's right of course, I had been fallow -- trying to write an AO sequel, and Beloved Enemy which I'd still like to write, and Turnover which I'm sorry to say I have actually given up on. But I am grateful for being able to do this. I love writing. Sonme writers don't, they like having written, but they don't actually enjoy the process of composing. I do. I like it of all things. I'd say my two favourite things to do are writing and having good conversations.

Sassafrass Kickstarter

bluejo@gmail.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:34:10 GMT

Sassafras, a mostly female Viking a capella group, are doing a Kickstarter to raise money to produce their new album Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok and to produce the play version at Balticon, and to film that so those of us who can't be there can see it later. I think they're awesome, and some of them are dear friends. Their music is one of the things that's been enabling me to be this productive this little while -- there are samples on the web page, I especially commend to your attention the song "My Brother, My Enemy" which is a duet for Odin and Loki.

Support nifty people working with interesting mythology! Give them some money! They're offering all kinds of great things at different levels.

And, I've offered to write two poems for them as stretch goals, one about Odin if they reach $10,000 and one about Loki at $14,000.

The Odin one would be posted here, and the Loki one initially sent to subscribers and then posted here in the fullness of time.

I have already written the Odin one. It's about Odin hanging on Yggdrasil, and it's quite long. If they don't raise enough for me to post it, in the true spirit of Ragnarok I will destroy it utterly and delete the file.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:28:43 GMT

Words: 1773
Total words: 35684
Files: 5
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Tea: Pu erh
Reason for stopping: Chapter 14 done at last

I am now officially into the middle of this book, which means I can stop worrying about stalling out -- I may get stuck, but I will finish it now.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:39:32 GMT

Words: 1502
Total words: 33862
Files: 4
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Tea: Rouge et Noir
Reason for stopping: end of bit

Not even necessity knows all ends. I can't believe I was required to write that chapter, but I was, and I suppose it's the dark side of getting to have all that fun.

Alison Sinclair found me a woman who translated Plato. Let me introduce you to Ellen Francis Mason, of Boston, who 1819-1865. She translated the Republic and the Gorgias in 1844. She died of asthma in Dieppe at the age of forty-five, but she did get to see Florence and Rome first. She bought some mosaic miniatures and a Pompeii painting and donated them to the MFA in Boston. She was married, but Sarah Orme Jewett wrote a love poem to her. From these fragments I have shored up my ruins -- not just mortality and that this is all that will be left of any of us, but when I think about women in the past wanting to have a life of the mind I feel smothered.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:10:47 GMT

Words: 1335
Total words: 32360
Files: 5
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Tea: Hong Zhang Fu
Reason for stopping: worried about structure

So I was looking for a Plato translation from somebody not steeped in Christianity and I discovered the odd fact that no women seem to have translated Plato, ever. This is completely bizarre! I don't understand it at all. The only non-sexist writer in thousands of years, and he's been exclusively translated by men? It's 2013!

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:58:56 GMT

Words: 1820
Total words: 31025
Files: 5
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Tea: Pu Erh
RSI: not telling you. This is supposed to be useful for me, not to make other peole fuss. Deleting this line hereafter.
Reason for stopping: end of bit.

Does anyone know if there have been any translations of The Republic or Plato generally that aren't by Christians and people so entirely embedded in a Chistian worldview that they want to reconcile Plato with it?

I've got myself into the same stupid tangle I always get into when I write out of order. You know the answer to this? Don't write out of order! But I wasn't sure I needed this POV. But I do. Hubris book! Now with three great POVs.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:56:17 GMT

Words: 2489
Total words: 29205
Files: 4
Tea: Rouge et Noir
Music: Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suite 2
RSI: I'm back with the robot hands plan
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

It may be hubris to write this book. I'm just having so much fun.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:44:31 GMT

Words: 2086
Total words: 26252
Files: 4
Tea: Gaba dragon
Music: Brandenberg Concertos
RSI: Oh yes
Reason for stopping: end of chapter

I've been dithering about whether I need this other POV, and I'm convinced now that I do. So there we are then.

I think this is now longer than I have got on anything I have stalled out on, so I need no longer worry about that. (If I am wrong, please do not tell me!)

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:56:40 GMT

Words: 1158
Total words: 24164
Files: 4
Music: Bach's First and Second Orchestral Suites
Tea: Green tea with ginseng
RSI: Trying to stop typing for a bit now
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

I went to Marche Jean-Talon in the hope that they might possibly have zucchini flowers and porcini, because they did one day in May last year, and indeed they did, so I will have pasta with zucchini flowers and porcini for dinner. I also have more delicious food for the next few days.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:02:55 GMT

Words: 1427
Total words: 23005
Files: 4
Tea: Green tea with ginseng
Music: Seven motets
RSI: Plato says mind rules hands.
Reason for stopping: need to think and check things.

Does anybody know about wrestling -- about hand to hand fighting? I hadn't done any since I was ten years old and this book unexpectedly needs some.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:17:34 GMT

Words: 1321
Total words: 21420
Files: 4
Tea: Gaba dragon
Music: Seven Motets
RSI: not very pleasant
Reason for stopping: Need to make a decision.

Double-tongued Apollo is double-tongued. In a Socratic dialogue.

What I should say when people tell me a book made them cry

bluejo@gmail.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:16:19 GMT

"Wow, you were that caught up in it? That must have been a really powerful experience. I'm impressed that you cared that much."

This is partly based on suggestions people made, and partly based on thinking what it means when I say that something made me cry. (Somebody Will makes me tear up every single time I hear it.)

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:15:06 GMT

Words: 2520
Total words: 20099
Files: 3
Tea: Pu Erh
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: Only hurts when I stop typing
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

Also researching as I go and dithering about something.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:59:04 GMT

Words: 1116
Total words: 17604
Files: 3
Tea: Ice water
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: I did try to stop. I even switched little Caliban off, what more do you want? But I had to get that conversation down while I had it in my head.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter, going to bed.

That's the end of chapter 8.

Of course Sokrates recognises Apollo. Of course he does. And of course they have a double-tongued conversation.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:50:05 GMT

Words: 1617
Total words: 16469
Files: 4
Tea: Elderflower and apple
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: Went away from the computer for the whole afternoon, eh? And have stopped.
Reason for stopping: Trying not to write more than 3000 words/day.

Still having fun.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:40:09 GMT

Words: 1619
Total words: 14779
Files: 5
Tea: Rouge et Noir
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: Let's try to rest hands for a bit
Reason for stopping: end of chapter

Reading Ficino and the NeoPlatonists makes me realise what a very Protestant relationship I have with Plato, almost entirely unmediated by things other people have thought about him.

In this chapter I have achieved one of my long term ambitions, saying "No, wait," to Socrates during a dialogue. I was writing both halves of the dialogue, which helps, but actually writing "No, wait," made me really happy even so.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:28:46 GMT

Words: 2128
Total words: 12869
Files: 4
Tea: Ice water with half a lemon, it's really hot
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: Going to stop tying now, honest.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

Snarky Apollo POV is snarky and Apollonian.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:22:31 GMT

Words: 1642
Total words: 10741
Files: 4
Tea: Pu Erh
Music: Bach motets, and then Three Double Concertos (Plato is *so* right about music.)
RSI: Kind of sucky.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter and RSI.

If I can write two more chapters I'll say I can write this book.

I didn't explain this very well yesterday. If you were a time traveller and you could save artworks that we know used to exist but which don't exist any more, what would you go for?

Not at all incidentally to this, if I had my natural pastiche talent but in art instead of in words, and if I'd spent the last thirty years painting, maybe I would be able to paint the Botticelli's "Winter" that I can see in my head and which my characters have in their dining hall and which we lost in the Bonfire of the Vanities. I had to go and stare at my reproduction of the Madonna with the Book for a while until I felt better. When I have poetry or a story in my head I can get it out of my head and share it with people. When I have music or a painting it's just impossible, except by describing it in words as best I can. Well, it's the price you pay. But I can see the Inverno in my mind's eye as clearly as I can see the Primavera.

Oh yes, and I sold "On the Impending Death of Iain Banks" to Moral Relativism Magazine.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:31:27 GMT

Words: 1335 (actually more than that, but some moving things out for later makes it hard to count.)
Total words: 9099
Files: 5
Music: Three Double Concertos
Tea: White Orchard
RSI: painful
Reason for stopping: need to look things up

I have three chapters and I'm almost there on a fourth. I am not yet at the point where I can confidently say that I can actually write this, but I am definitely getting closer.

Tell me some cool lost classical art that hasn't been found?

I need Pausanias... and actually I can get it online. What a wonderful modern age we live in! Are there useful NeoPlatonist texts online in English or Latin?

Where do artichokes come from?

This is the first time I have ever finished one book and gone straight on to begin another without the bit where I lie around with my brain reverberating for some considerable time in between. It's very strange, especially as I'm still going to have to fix MRC. But people keep sending me comments on it and I keep thinking "What, that old thing?" I guess I'm catching up.

Oh, and I have written half my Wiscon speech.

Thessaly: Pulp-o-Mizer Cover

bluejo@gmail.com — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:56:17 GMT

No, really! Except it would be better with a girl.

Thud: Thessaly

bluejo@gmail.com — Mon, 06 May 2013 21:42:12 GMT

Words: 2892
Total words: 7599
Files: 5 (city file)
Tea: Cold Pu Erh with ice
Music: Three Double Concertos
RSI: Yes, well, doing exercises
Reason for stopping: rysmiel came home from work.

I have a whole pile of things to check, but I think they're all things I can either google or which I need to check with Thrud.

I love this book. I just love writing it.