Not As Tech-Stupid As I Thought...

So my latest self-torture project is to learn enough HTML and CSS to be able to build my own eBooks from the ground up. I know what you're thinking: But Jaye, you're always going on about how tech-stupid you are! How can this possibly be a good thing?

Here's the secret: *whispers* I'm not really tech-stupid. It's actually more like tech-lazy. In my other life, I was a ceramic engineer and I worked in the nuclear waste industry. I was rather shocked to discover that some of those skills are actually transferable... although, you know, not the really interesting ones relating to the Care and Feeding of Weapons-Grade Plutonium. And not the ones about How to Avoid Having Your Reproductive Organs Irradiated. (Useful Hint: showing the source your arse can help, but only for certain types of radiation.) And definitely not the ones relating to how they figure out how much dose it took to kill you if there's a Horrifying Incident involving neutrons. (Useful Hint: it's a neutron dosimeter affectionately referred to as a toe-tag.)

Unfortunately, the transferable skills I'm talking about have to do with all that useless boring frustrating coding experience I had in graduate school, back in the days when Windows was called DOS, and most of our lab equipment wouldn't recognize a computer if it came up and bit it on the arse. In those days, I had to write my own data analysis program and design my own graphical user interface. It was painful. And slow. But it got the job done a lot faster and with a lot more accuracy than if I'd had to do it the old-fashioned way, with a slide-rule calculator, scissors, and library paste.

And it made everyone in my research group think I was a Coding God of Unparalleled Brilliance. *mwahahahaha!*

Believe it or not, there is a twisted and deviant part of my brain that actually enjoys coding and finds it rather soothing *ducks to avoid thrown objects*. HTML/CSS makes total sense to me. I've yet to try putting together an eBook file, but nothing I've read so far smacks of black magic. Who'd have thought?

What's really sad, though? I'm actually sort of geeked about the prospect of building eBook templates.

I think I need to get out more.

Where Are My Minions?

Okay, so, I got a Domain, right? In case anybody wasn't watching... www.jayemckenna.com is now MINE, ALL MINE!!! (Much evil cackling and rubbing of hands ensues...) And through some amazing feat of technical wizardry, it actually leads to The Swamp. Which is sort of amazing, because The Swamp is normally really hard to find, and not many people stumble across it.

Eventually my tame IT dude is going to go all technical on it and it will be Visually Stunning and there will be confetti and trapezes and dancing penguins. And maybe a few sexy dudes in loincloths, if the entertainment budget stretches that far. (But don't hold your breath...)

But in the meantime, it's just me in this miserable charming, overgrown bug-infested pristine Swamp.

By myself.

Now, I might be pretty new to this whole Being on the Internet Thing, but Dudes, if this is my Domain, where the hell are my Minions? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there supposed to be Minions? Do they just show up? Is there a form? With a check-box thing for making sure I don't get stupid Minions? Because, you know, it's really embarrassing when they try to invade the blog next door, or set fire to wrong windmill...

Hmm. I'd better put in a call to Tech Support. And check the mailbox. I suppose they might have been shipped surface mail. I hope the Minion Warehouse remembered to punch a few air holes in the box...

Clouds and Glass

My brain does not play well with medications of any type. A lot of medications make me experience odd side effects, so I'm very careful about what I take and how much of it I take, and I really hate being forced to take anything. One of the allergy meds my doc suggested I try last summer worked wonderfully, but it also made me hear music. Annoying brass band music. In my head. All. The. Time.

So when I hurt my back last month, I resisted going to the doctor because I knew he'd just give me medication that would make it impossible for me to work. Predictably, the pain got bad enough that I couldn't work anyway, and Husband Beast scraped me up off the floor and dragged me off to the doc (amazing what a week of "I hurt too much to cook dinner" will do for a man's powers of persuasion...). Several prescriptions for muscle relaxants, pain pills, and steroids later, things are looking (and feeling) a lot better, but the last three weeks have been rough in terms of getting any writing done, or even being able to think straight.

Struggling to work through a narcotic cloud for the past three weeks, while frustrating, has given me an interesting insight into my own creative process. (Yeah, I know, I'm groping about for the silver lining here, dudes... there has to be one. By my reckoning, three weeks of lost work is hardly worth one interesting insight, but I'll take what I can get at this point!)

Back in the Stone Age, when I was a starving graduate student, I was doing research on glass structure. Glass is an interesting material in that it doesn't have a fixed crystal structure like a lot of solids do. It's more like a flash-frozen liquid. There are identifiable structures you can find, but these structures only exist in the short range. There is no ordered, repeating pattern like you would find in a crystal. It has become apparent to me that my creative process organizes story-things in a similar manner, and writing a story for me is a bit like trying to figure out a structure where none is apparent.

When I have mental clarity, I can see the subtle signs of long range order in the chaos of my thoughts. I can see layer upon layer of ever deeper connections between the characters, motivations, and events of the series I'm working on. I can see far beyond the obvious, ordered, short-range structures, and get a sense of the underlying connections and how they fit together and what sorts of things they might turn into. Pain meds completely shut down my ability to sense any of that. They trap my mind in a place where all I can see is the obvious, structured short-range stuff that's right in front of me. I know all those layers and connections exist out there, but I'm unable to follow the threads of them or even see them.

Interesting as all that is, the real take-away from this experience is a lot more practical: Women of a certain age should gracefully concede that lugging around forty-pound bags of softener salt is a Bad Idea.

And For My Next Trick...

It has come to my attention that I have a one-track mind. Or, as Husband-Beast would say, I have a multi-track mind, but all the tracks run in the same general direction.

Here’s the thing: up until recently, I’ve not had time to focus on more than one project at a time. Now that I have more time, and am attempting to get something out there for real, I’m putting a lot more time into revising and editing, but I find that The Swamprat is unhappy with that.

This means I’m going to have to learn how to work on more than one thing at a time. So we’re going to give that a try and see what happens. (I suspect it will be Pandemonium on a Stick, but I’m trying really hard to reserve judgment at this point.) I’ve finished drafting the sci fi series (five books), and I’m moving into the revision/editing stage on book one (working title is Touch of Darkness). But I’m gnashing my teeth in Creative Frustration because I’m not actually writing anything. So I’m going to try to start drafting some fantasy stuff at the same time.

If that works out, I’m going to have a go at balancing on one flipper whilst bouncing a little red rubber ball on my head and playing a cheerful tune on my nose flute. Stick around—it’ll be fun.

When Characters Misbehave

I was all set to write this morning.

Except that there was snow to shovel so I could get the car out of the driveway in order to do the Mandatory Grocery Shopping. And there was the biweekly Scaling of Mt. Laundry, and the Cooking of Dinner. Oh, yeah, and the lifting of weights (boring), and the making of chai and baking of bread and untangling of the socks from the jeans (if they had any idea how much that pisses me off...)

And then, after chores and lunch and mandatory Morning Phone Call to Parents, then there was writing.

I figured I had a good four hours before I had the pick the kids up from anime club.

So I fired up Pyglet (the laptop. No, it isn't pink, but it's really cute, and constantly insists that it's a Very Small Animal), opened up Scrivener and grabbed my story, all ready to start.

Oh. Yeah. Sex scene today. That is where I left off yesterday, isn't it?

Okay, no problem—it's quiet, I got four hours, we'll just get this thing done.

So I yell at Nick and Vaya (main characters of book 5 of the series and the stars of said sex scene), "Okay, dudes, we got four hours, let's do this thing."

And they looked at me.

And I looked at them.

And they looked at each other.

And Nick shuffled his feet and batted those pretty green eyes at me and said, "Yeah, about that... we were thinking maybe we could just sit around and play cards instead?"

So, yeah. That’s about how that went.

And I didn’t even win at cards.