Monthly Archives: November 2011

11/30/11

SortaNaNo count and rain sound

About 77,800. Finished? Yes and no. I’ve got cracks to spakfill, but they’re all small stuff — words and sentences and paragraphs I’m iffy about for one reason or another, but nothing so bad that I couldn’t leave it as it is or choose one of the options I’m dithering between.

I’ll be spakfilling for the next two weeks. Anything left uncertain after that gets a lick of paint and a note to get an editor’s opinion. I’m also unsure about which pieces to include or not — but again, editor.

I’ve been getting stressed from noise lately — mostly thanks to a neighbour’s very sick air conditioner, but there are also water pumps, barking dogs, yelling kids, etc. I’ve found that playing the sound of rain helps. It blocks out a lot of the insidious mechanical noise, which is the noise I’m especially keen not to hear, and at least puts up a fight against the dogs and kids. I like this site, rainymood. It plays a rain recording with some gentle thunder and muted birdsong.

11/27/11

Voussoirs, lunettes, oh my

I love architectural words. Cornice, pediment, dado, spandrel, blind arch — house porn meets thesaurus porn. It’s fetishistic, like technobabble or car talk. And I get frustrated when I don’t know the term for some architectural item.

So I was happy to happen upon this page about architecture in Ontario. It has a lovely lot of building terms, with pictures of everything. Ever wonder what to call the doohickey at the bottom of the spring of an arch? It’s a kneestone (and who knew that that bit was called the spring?) The ornamental parapet-thing on the front of a building, hiding the roof? A fractable. I espcially like the word for a fancy, raised element (usually a doorway) on the facade of a building — frontispiece.

(I paused at the description of Brutalism as “attractive”. Breauty is in the eye of the beholder? Though the Brutalist house, surrounded by trees, is very nice, I think. It looks clean and relaxed, and natural, like an updated cave.)

11/15/11

Midmonth count

81, 530. That’s the lot, though there are a couple of short pieces I almost definitely won’t include.

But it isn’t a real count, since there are still quite a few (thousand?) undecided words. A couple of stories are 100% finished, a couple 99%, and the rest less than that. Can I get the lot finished in the next two weeks? I think I can, if I stay rational and don’t get all anal and OCD. Sometimes I get very stuck, for no very good reason, on certain sentences and paragraphs. Other times there is a reason, but I still may not be able to come up with an improvement that I like.

Anyway, I’ve been working a lot faster and with better focus than I was able to when I tried to get this thing together before. I’ve also found I’m more willing to let old stories stay as they are. It’s definitely hard rereading something that’s 15 years old. I think differently now, have different tastes — I’m sure I’ve said this before — and can also write more complex sentences than I could back then (not that complex sentences are better than simple ones, it’s just an option I have that I didn’t have before). Looking at my attempts to rewrite older stories, which tend to involve adding words and fanciness, I’m not really sure that there’s improvement. To correct glitches, clarify actions and fix any really clumsy expression, sure; but when I start mucking around a lot with conversations and characterisation, or adding explanations that weren’t originally there, I think something gets lost. It’s a bit like plastic surgery, maybe — a face can be improved by a little and ruined by a lot. Stu put it well when he said to me that stories have texture. The temptation to change the texture is perhaps to be resisted.

11/15/11

Ice skating in the tropics

My ankle’s better, so I went to the new ice rink in town. Positives first: it was fun. I was happily surprised at how quickly I got my skating legs back. Or half back. Back enough, anyway. The rental skates were quite comfy, too. Negatives: It was too warm. The ice melted fast. (If they’d keep the rink as cold as the movie theatres, it’d be great!) Also wasn’t thrilled by the lack of warnings to people who were skating too fast. And no direction change, unless I left before one. Personally I reckon you want to switch every hour. Anyway, it was jolly good fun, even with the hooning kids and getting soaked falling in a huge puddle, and I may go back, if possibly in some kind of waterproof armoured suit — but first I’ll check out the more distant rink, now almost reached by the new skytrain extension. In photos it looks bigger, which would be nice, and people look warmly dressed, so it might be colder and less melty.

(N.B. Given that many people in and around Bangkok are still up to their necks in literally shitty floodwater, all complaints above are in the vein that the grass in paradise could be a brighter green.)

11/8/11

SortaNaNoWriMo count

42,850. Minus about 500 words that I just can’t get right, or that I find myself obsessively fact-checking. I’d like to be able to swap my brain for someone else’s a couple of hours a day!

11/1/11

NaNoWriMo, sort of

Well, it’s Melbourne Cup Day again. That rolled around fast! I was supposed to be back in Bangkok, but due to flood situation I’m still here. (Danger has passed for the city centre, it seems, so going back soon.)

Anyway, I’ve decided to make this the month where I try to knock that story collection into shape. I was feeling so neurotic last time I tried that I just ended up tying myself in knots over stories that probably don’t need much, if anything, in the way of changes.

Gunpowder Tea is still coming along. I realised I could simplify something that was annoying me and add an improvement to the plot. Still some thickets in the middle to hack through, but I have a more positive feeling now. It has taken me a long time to get comfortable with this one, but at last I feel like I’ve settled into the flow.