Author: thewriterinblack

One of the great questions of the writing world:  Pantser or Plotter.

Um, yes?

When I first got started writing, I’d have an “idea”.  Since I write mostly SF and Fantasy the idea was usually in the form of some story gimmick:  what would it be like to play tennis on the moon?  How would an EMT service on the moon work?  Suppose psychic powers existed but were really, really limited?  Suppose “her world exploded” wasn’t a metaphor but literal truth?

And then I’d sit down and start writing, making things up as I went along.

Most of the time the story would fall apart and I’d have nothing.  I’d have an opening and either be going in circles or just get stuck and have no idea what to write next.

So I started plotting in advance, outlining the things that happen in the story.  I’d still have the stories fall apart in my hands but at least I wouldn’t have written a bunch of finished text before reaching that point.  And I learned that I can work from an outline.  If I ever do collaborative work, that can be important.

So, for a long time then I was a “plotter”.  But I often didn’t adhere closely to the outline.  Instead, I’d find the story going in different directions.  That was okay.  I could just pause, redo the outline to reflect the new direction, and proceed from there.  Sometimes it might take several iterations through that before I was done.

But here’s the thing.  The final stories weren’t any more likely to sell when I plotted than when I’d pantsed.

Enter Dwight Swain and his book “Techniques of the Selling Writer”.

One of the things Mr. Swain had in his book, on preparing for writing a story, was having a “starting line up.” This meant defining five elements of the story:  situation, character, goal, opposition, and “disaster”.  Your character exists in an initial situation.  He has a goal he’d like to achieve (which could simply be avoiding some bad thing happening).  There’s opposition to the character’s goal (usually a “villain” of the piece, but not necessarily).  And some bad outcome from failure to accomplish the goal, the “disaster”.

The stories of mine that failed to get off the ground in the past were usually over the lack of some element in this starting line up.  So, lately, I started to spell them out explicitly before starting writing a story.  Oh, if I have an idea for a story opening or something I might write that to get a feel for things and then pause to create the starting line up.  But I do it, every time.

And the result is that I’ve found myself going back to pantsing.  I can just write the story because the elements I need are there.  I can wonder a bit in subplots, explore character a bit, take some time letting minor characters strut their stuff, but with the starting line up to give direction I can keep the story moving in the way it needs to move.

So now my outlines, if used at all, tend to be smaller bits meant to work out particular story problems, a kind of guided free association to figure out how to resolve challenges. (Character is here.  I need him there.  How do I get him there?)

But that’s how I work today.  Tomorrow?  Who knows.  I’ve changed my working method before and there’s no reason to suppose I won’t do it again.

Something to get the blood pumping maybe?

Yeah, there are some repeats from previous interludes but, well, they’re just that good. 😉  And Hammerfall features heavily on this particular playlist (my “call to arms” playlist).  Always interested in other suggestions on that theme.

 

Nothing really has changed.

I have been told from time to time that I should keep my politics to myself if I want to sell books.  I’ll “turn off” readers.

Well, maybe.  But I am who I am.  And one of the things I am not is a shrinking violet.  So to hell with that.

I tend to more or less lean libertarian as a philosophical basis but don’t believe it is truly achievable in the real world (so long as “real people” are involved) and also recognize that no system is stable in the long run and the trend is usually toward more “government” control over individual lives and less individual liberty.

This leads to making political decisions based on “will this help or harm on balance” or even “do less harm, or greater harm on balance” when “help” isn’t an achievable option in furthering the cause of individual liberty.  Sadly, I’ve never seen a case where the choice was “helping less or helping more on balance”.  Would be nice to have the luxury of such a choice.

And this tends to annoy the h*ll out of Libertarians of the “ideologically pure” stripe (as well as both Conservatives and Liberals) as I will agree with them philosophically while radically disagreeing with them tactically. (Oh, and by not buying the idea that the Liberal/Conservative/Libertarian “utopia” will every be achievable in the real world–that the best we can achieve is some stumbling approximation that only lasts for a while.)

I suppose you can call this position “Pragmatic Libertarian.”

One of the consequences of my position is that sometimes “slow down the rate things get worse” is all one can expect to achieve. When I point out that a proposed “fix” falls somewhere between “very likely” and “almost certainly” on the “make things worse” scale it doesn’t mean that I have a “better answer” other than “don’t make things worse than they already are.” Sometimes “don’t make things worse” is the best you can hope for, at least for now.

I have seen that “not stable in the long run” and “trend toward more government control over individual lives” tend to be universal truths. In the long run there isn’t a fix that anyone’s found.

You don’t have to like it. I don’t. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

And remember that just because “don’t make things worse” or even “slow down the rate of things getting worse” may be the best you can hope for now, there’s always tomorrow.  If you don’t screw things up too much in the meantime, tomorrow gives you another chance to find, or build, something better.

It’s finished in draft and I’ve incorporated some feedback from alpha readers (folk who give feedback from a “writing professional” perspective).  It’s now out to beta readers which is the antepenultimate step before actual release.  Getting closer.

Here’s a tentative blurb/description/back cover copy:

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I was born in the year 1215 in a small town in Westphalia As a boy, my parents apprenticed me to the famed alchemist Albertus Magnus. Under his tutelage I grew to adulthood and learned the mystical secrets of alchemy including the manufacture of the Elixir of Life. I have gone by many names through the centuries.

I was already centuries old when I encountered the creatures of darkness made manifest that I know only as Shadows. They have chased me down through the years for reasons I have never understood.

Light was the only weapon I had against these Shadows, light that could drive them back but not harm them. And so I ran. Every time the Shadows caught up with me I fled to a new identity, a new life, until inevitably they found me again. At long last, with nowhere left to run, I had to find some way to fight the Shadows, not just for myself, but for the people I had come to care about.

My name is Adrian Jaeger. This is my story

I saw a recipe online for hamburger gravy and it brought back memories of childhood and home cooked meals.  The problem is the recipe called for flour and milk.  Now, the amount of flour used in gravy, when divided into a “serving” isn’t really all that much but when you’re counting carbs, every bit helps.  The milk, however, is a different story.  1 cup of milk (whole, low fat, skim–doesn’t really matter) has between 11 and 13 grams of sugar.  That’s a lot for anyone on a low-carb diet.

So, I came up with this recipe which is tasty and low carb.  As always, this makes a lot.  For me it’s a week’s worth of meals.  Or you can use it when entertaining if your entertainment runs along the line of down-home country cooking.

Ingredients

• 3 lb ground beef (they come in rolls of that size at my local supermarket)
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 tbsp bouillon crystals
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 quart unsweetened “Coconut Milk beverage” (that’s what it said on the package)
• 1 tbsp xantham gum.
• Salt to taste.

In a large pan crumble and cook the ground beef until it is no longer pink.  Stir in the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is tender.

Add the bouillon crystals, Worcestershire Sauce and coconut milk.  Bring to a simmer.

Stir in the xantham gum.

Simmer for about 5 minutes to let it thicken.  Add salt if needed. (Be careful.  It’s easy to add more.  It’s kind of hard to take it out.)

Serve over mashed cauliflower, mashed turnips, or the vegetable of your choice (mashed or not).

Musing a bit here but back when I got started, late 80’s to early 90’s, the music I listened to was all of a piece (bear with me.  I’m going somewhere here).  Love songs and ballads, lightweight pop music, that sort of stuff.  The fiction I read was mostly, almost entirely, pretty upbeat as well.  As one example, I got so bothered, so freaked by the “danger” to the protagonist in the late Harry Harrison’s “The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge” that I nearly dropped the book.  I got through it and ended up reading it and the rest of the series, but it was a close thing.  I couldn’t really deal with the darker elements of life, not even in fiction and music.

This showed in my own writing.  I never really put my characters in jeopardy (EMT was probably the most “risk” I put my characters through at that time).  And when I tried, I tended to shy away from expressing it vividly.

The result was rather weak writing.  I was able to sell some stuff if I had a clever enough gimmick but that was about it.

More recently, I’ve gained an appreciation for the dark.  John Ringo’s books have introduced me to power and gothic/symphonic metal.  And that was really a catalyst.  The fear, the outright terror for the fate of the characters one is reading, is what makes for powerful fiction.  Back when I was in sunshine land I could not have written “Plague Station” (still looking for a few beta readers if anyone’s interested).  I had the idea for “Oruk Means Hard Work” years ago but I couldn’t have written it because I couldn’t have written the ending, the way it had to end.

There’s a great line from a movie that was otherwise, IMO, pretty lame:  if you want to paint pictures like that, you’ve got to use some dark colors.

So don’t be afraid of the dark.  Embrace it.  Use it.  Therein lies great power for your fiction.

Thus ends this musing.

Many years ago I read Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel “Falling Free.” In that novel a sign was mentioned that read (paraphrased from memory): “On the eighth day, God saw that he could not do it all, so he created Engineers.”

The moment I read that “The Church of the Holy Engineer” was born.  The key doctrine is that building is an act of creation, an act of worship.  Building, pushing the limits of what can be built, and doing it with superb craftsmanship are acts of devotion.  Likewise is pushing back the frontier of knowledge to expand what can be built.  Inventors are honored as prophets.

Needless to say, adherents have a strong tendency to go into science and tech fields.

I haven’t actually used it yet in any of my published work, but it plays a part in this snippet:

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In the Number Three Power Room, Particle Engineers Mate Second, Eric Thomas ignored the general quarters alarm as he hung suspended above Particle Generator G, Gertie as the crew called her.  Haste would only delay his task.

“How’s that, Vel?”

From her position at the test station, Vel Sanders, Particle Engineer’s Mate First, ran a test signal through the recalcitrant primary feed then examined the readout.

“A bit more, Eric.”

Thomas chewed on his lip and turned the adjustment screw one more sixteenth of a turn.  Inside, that modest movement was divided several million times, tweaking the position of the feed unit a small fraction of an atom’s width. “Now?”

Sanders repeated her test and nodded, satisfied, “Spot on, Eric.  Button up and clear the area.”

“Right.” Thomas reached into the inspection port and removed the test crystal from its holder.  He sealed up the Particle Generator, lowered himself from the rail above it and quick-marched out of the generator room.  The massive shield door shut behind him.

“Fire it up,” he said into the intercom beside the door.

“Let us sing praises to the Holy Engineer,” Sanders said and activated the Particle Generator.  Inside, the feed, joined with hundreds of others met at a tiny point at the center of the generator, a point smaller than an atom, smaller than a proton, as much smaller than the proton is than the proton is smaller than a baseball.  At that tiny point the beams induced a self-sustaining implosion compressing the mass energy of the beams smaller still.

For an instant, the smallest of black holes formed at the center of the particle generator, formed and almost as quickly exploded.  Then, for the barest instant after exploding it left a naked singularity in its wake. For that unmeasurable instant of time, in that equally unmeasurable point in space, the laws of physics ceased to exist.  Anything could come from that pure chaos, anything at all. But by tuning the conditions around it, where the laws of physics still held, Particle Engineers could control what came out of it. And what came out of this one was antimatter, specifically anti-hydrogen.  Auxiliary systems grabbed the antimatter and fed it into the first stage reaction chamber where it met ordinary matter, simple water in this case, producing the energies used to drive the Noah.

“All green,” Sanders reported. “And, Eric, helmet.”

Reflexively, Thomas unzipped his collar, allowing the flexible helmet bubble to unfold, surround his head, and seal itself back to his collar.

…

Thomas swore as the output of Power Room Three dropped again.  A shorted feed had burned out Hepzibah. Secondary radiation from a near strike had fried Imelda.  Jezebel had just not worked. Now Kailani had failed.

“Vel, what’s up?”

No answer.

“Vel?”

Thomas swore at the silent com link.  He motioned for the work crew that stood with him outside the door to the power room to step back while he keyed in the override for the door. Moving his lips in a silent prayer for luck, he stepped into the doorway.

He didn’t drop dead so the particle generator must have shut down.

Another hit had torn into the power room.  It did not seem to have hit the particle generator but…Thomas visualized the power routings.  Yes, it had cut the primary feed to the generator. Kailani was probably okay if they could just feed her with juice.

Sanders still was not answering.  The same hit that had clipped the cable had also vaporized the access ladder.

“Vel?  Come on, Sanders, Answer.”

Still no response.

Thomas switched to local broadcast on his com link to address the work crew. “Break out five meters of number three power cable from Locker Twelve A.  I’m going to check on control.”

“On it, Engineer’s Mate.”

Thomas looked up at the control room again.  The access ladder was gone, but that would hardly stop a particle engineer’s mate.  He leaped and caught hold of the support structure, curling his body he reached up with his legs to hook them over another brace then twisted to find a new handhold.  In seconds he reached the door of the control room and wormed his way through it.

Another hit had punctured the hull, cutting through a corner of the control room and spraying it with superheated plasma.  Sanders charred corpse lay crumpled in the corner.

“Shit.  May your Engineer keep you, Vel.”  Shaking his head, Thomas switched to the engineering frequency. “Engineering, Power Room Three.  I need a particle engineering rating here.”

“No can do, Power Room Three.”

“Look,” Thomas said, “I can get this thing back up, but I lost my partner.  I need someone to run the board while I work the hardware, or someone to work the hardware while I run the board.  Either way, I can’t do it alone.”

“You’re going to have to.  Nobody’s available.”

“The access gangway is gone.” Thomas felt his voice rising. “I had to climb up the support structure to get in here.  I can’t….”

“You’ll have to.  Nobody’s available.  Now do your job and clear this frequency.”

Thomas shut off the com link. “Right.  And fuck you too.” He wriggled the rest of the way into the control room.

The control board revealed its secrets to his probing hands.  The telltales revealed where the power feeds were damaged and he rapidly worked out where he’d have to install bypass cable to get Kailani back up.  He would have to drop back down to the power room to supervise the work crew in making the repairs then climb back up into the control room to test them and restore power.  He could do it. It would just take forever.

He did not have forever.  The near miss of an antimatter warhead sprayed plasma into the power room so fast he did not have time to realize he was dead.

“…while you still know everything.” That joke is older than I am. (Sorry, folks, this isn’t a writing post.)

So apparently there’s this “walk out” going on in American high schools that is supposed to be a big show of support for “gun control”, by which they mean (they always mean) further restrictions on the rights of law abiding gun owners.

We’re supposed to care about this why exactly?

“The children are our future!” The future is the future.  For now they’re kids.  They’re wet-behind-the-ears kids with no life experience to put events in perspective and see what effects their proposed policies will actually have.

“We survived that attack, that makes us the experts.” Oh, please.  I had a broken collarbone once.  That doesn’t make me an orthopedic surgeon.  Being at the scene where a tragedy happened does not make you an expert on anything, not even on what happened at the event.  Look, ask ten eyewitnesses to something to describe what they saw and get ten different replies.  The only time you get get complete agreement is when the witnesses get together and agree on a story–which may or may not bear any resemblance to what actually happened.  There’s a reason why investigators generally prefer to interview witnesses separately and ideally keep them separate until they do interview them and get a record of their account.  It doesn’t even have to be dishonesty (although it can be).  People talking will “remember” additional details on hearing other people talk, even things they could not possibly have seen or heard, and this goes back and forth until all the folk “remember” the same story.  Whether things happened that way or not remains, however, an open question.

And yet, the same people who are telling us that these teens, these children are too immature to be trusted to drink alcohol responsibly, too immature to be allowed to own firearms (one of the things they’re demanding) are somehow mature enough to be given any credence on national firearm policy?

That’s not a rational position.

But it’s not about reason.  The whole thing is nothing more than a big appeal to emotion–not the teens, but the ones behind the scene driving them on (You expect me to believe that a bunch of teens scattered across the nation just spontaneously organized and scheduled this?  Please.)–an attempt to stampede action that they could not pass in the cold light of day.

History has seen this kind of stampede into action before.

It has never turned out well.

This is originally from Tom Kratman.  In his words “widest possible dissemination authorized and encouraged.” So here it’s disseminated:

The Left’s 20 Rules of Racism:

1. If you believe that general intelligence exists, is heritable and at all testable for, you’re a racist.
2. If you point out that liberal philosophies and programs intended to have a good impact have had a disproportionately bad impact on the ethnicities targeted by liberals, you’re a racist.
3. If you notice that other cultures have some problems, you’re a racist.
4. If you notice your own culture has had some successes, you’re a racist.
5. If you try to identify subcultural problems, you’re a racist. If the problems existed or got worse under liberalism, see item 2, above.
6. If you’re mainstream American culture, and don’t hate that culture, you’re a racist.
7. If you’re capable of noting unpleasant facts about subcultures and discussing them without your brain fogging, you’re a racist.
8. If you won’t kowtow and grovel as soon as someone accuses you of racism for one of the reasons above or below, you’re a hopeless racist.
9. If you do not believe that mankind is a tabula rasa for liberals to make whatever they think would be good to make of man, this week, you’re a racist.
10. If you don’t take personal responsibility for all the evils of slavery, you’re a racist. This is true even if you only arrived from Poland last week.
11. If you’re white, you’re a racist.
12. If you’re white and just arrived from Poland last week and don’t accept that you’re a racist, you’re a racist.
13. If you try to interject logical thought into a discussion of culture, you’re a racist.
14. If you refuse to admit culture is a racial matter, and a liberal wants to conflate the two, you’re a racist.
15. If you believe that race and culture are indistinguishable and a liberal decides that you shouldn’t conflate the two, you’re a racist.
16. If you believe that black or Hispanic girls who are paid by liberal inspired programs from the age of 13 to have babies will have babies, you’re a racist.
17. If you believe that _any_ girls of whatever color who are paid to have babies will then have babies but then, insensitively, observe that a smaller percentage of white girls do, certainly because they haven’t been targeted for as much “help” from liberals, you’re a racist.
18. If it doesn’t bother you that the truth offends liberals, you’re a racist.
19. If your name is Tom Kratman and you write and in your writing your heroes and heroines tend to be from minorities while your villains are white liberals, you’re still a racist.
20. If you read The Bell Curve, you’re a racist. On the other hand, if you didn’t read it but wrote a scathing review on Amazon anyway you might not be a racist provided you take personal responsibility for 300 years of slavery even if you just arrived from Poland last week.

The Right’s Twenty Rules of Racism:

1. Anyone responsible for three hundred years of slavery would have to be a lot older than you and me.
2. There has to be some genetics in “racism’s” DNA, some DNA in its gene pool, or it just isn’t racism.
3. Racism could be eliminated in the United States if we could just eliminate the white liberals who so plainly depend on it so much and do so much to keep it going.
4. Reality isn’t racist: The reality is that there are pond-scummy gallows bait in every group. Some of those will be more of a problem to their own group than to you (see Rule 14, below). Some will be more of a problem to you precisely because you’re not a member of their group. It is wise, not racist, to avoid the latter. In Boston, this may be referred to as the “Evelyn Wagler-George Pratt Rule,” and that’s not code. Odd exception to half of Rule 4: Jesse Jackson would much rather be followed by a white on the streets of DC, at night, than a black.
5. There have been two instances in recent history where the concept of “honorary white” held sway. One was in apartheid South Africa where, for example, Japanese were considered “honorary white.” The other was when, in relation to the Trayvon Martin shooting, the American mainstream media made Hispanic George Zimmerman an “honorary white.” This is not entirely coincidence since (see Rule 18) the very liberal American media is as racist in their way as ever the Afrikaner Broederbond was in its.
6. Nobody really thinks whites are as evil as portrayed by white liberals and black demagogues. If they really thought so, they’d be too afraid to ever leave the house, since a) there are a lot more whites, b) those whites are much better armed, c) they’re more likely to be veterans of the Army’s and Marine Corps’ ground gaining combat arms, and d) they have an historically demonstrated cultural aptitude for mass, organized violence.
7. People who insist you’re speaking in code insist on it because they believe it’s true. They believe it’s true because they really do speak in code and can’t imagine anyone who does not speak in code. It’s not racist to think those people are idiots, nor to note that they’re mostly white. (Exception to rule: When conservatives talk about guns and zombies? Especially in terms of using the former to kill the latter? Yeah; “zombie” is code for “liberals of any color.” See Rule 6, above.)
8. It’s not racist to note that white liberalism managed to do in about thirty years something that three hundred years of slavery could not, seriously damage the black family, generally though not universally, and ruin it completely over wide swaths.
9. Speaking of slavery, the bulk of slave raiding and trading in Africa was black, usually Islamic black (see Rule 16, below), on black. The Arabic word for black and slave is the same, “Abd.” And the first registered slave owner in Virginia was black. Pointing this out to liberals, white and black, is always fun.
10. It’s not racist to wish that our first black president had been Thomas Sowell.
11. The “Some of my best friends” defense against a charge of racism is no defense…unless it happens to be true. Sometimes it’s best expressed to a white liberal as, “You don’t have so much as a day in uniform, do you, dipshit?”
12. The system of education that white liberals have inflicted on inner city blacks is a crime against humanity. No amount of money that they toss at it helps to overcome the elimination of discipline liberalism has caused. It’s neither racist to note this…nor wrong.
13. The various college and university minority “studies” programs, because they give a useless pseudo-education, and at very high cost in both money and time, are racist in their effects.
14. Most black crime is black on black crime. It is racist in its effects to deprive the black community of the social good that comes from executing black criminals that prey on other blacks.
15. It takes a white liberal idiot (Lord, forgive us our redundancies) not to understand the difference between casual sex with a member of another race and marrying and investing one’s entire reproductive effort in a member of another race. See, e.g., http://www.tomkratman.com/yoli.html. Dipshits.
16. Islam is not a race. Detesting Islam is not racist. There is nothing in Islam which genetically compels either slightly tanned Palestinians or totally white English reverts to pray toward Mecca five times daily, to self-detonate in crowded squares and movie theaters, to find offense in just about everything, nor even to clitorectomize their women. Flash alert: Lysenko was wrong. Dipshits.
17. When a liberal accuses you of racism, rejoice; it means the dipshit knows he or she is losing.
18. The worst racists are liberals, mostly white ones, who assume that blacks and hispanics are so inferior that only affirmative action in perpetuity would give them a remotely fair chance. (That this also keeps a lot of liberal white social workers and bureaucrats employed is, of course, merely incidental. Ahem. Dipshits.)
19. There was a conservative argument for a kind of affirmative action. Unfortunately, all the money’s already been spent on employing white liberal social workers and bureaucrats, and we’re broke now, so that ship has sailed. Again, blame dipshit white liberals.
20. Screaming “Racism! Raaaacissssm!” on the part of a white liberal, when the matter in question has no DNA in its gene pool, no genetics in its DNA (see Rule 2, above), is the surest proof that said white liberal is genetically defective. And a dipshit. And it’s not racist to point this out.

This is another slow-cooker dish that is quick and easy to make, yet tasty and good for a week’s worth of entrees.

Ingredients

• About 5 lb skinless boneless chicken.
• 1 Tbsp xantham gum powder
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley flakes
• 1 Tbsp thyme leaves
• 2 14 oz cans chicken broth

Put the chicken into a 4-4 quart slow cooker.  Sprinkle the xantham gum over the chicken.

Add the onion, garlic powder, dried parsley flakes, and thyme.

Pour the broth over all.

Cook on low for 6-8 hours.  When done, stir.  The chicken should break up into pieces.

I cut back the parsley in the above recipe from the last time I’d made this–the original used too much.  And if it were me, I would probably at more garlic in the future but…well, we’ve gone over before how I am with garlic so for others this is probably about right.

Enjoy.