Tony Stark, Slightly Crazy Inventor-Scientist

So last night my husband and I finally watched Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Which got me thinking about mad scientists.

[Side note: I have this giant poster of a book cover hanging over my tv:

If you didn't know, I wrote the story introductions to this book, and the cover is AWESOME. But having a giant poster of a mad scientist hanging over one's television makes you think about science a lot!]

Anyway, after watching Dr. Horrible, I found myself full of rage. Why are superheroes always using these innate powers and abilities to save the day, but scientists are always using their gifts for evil? Why are scientists always portrayed as bad guys? After all, in real life every single good thing in the world comes from science!

And then I remembered Tony Stark. Tony Stark! Inventor! Computer scientist! Student of strange physics! Hero! And hottie!

Batman uses technology to save the day, too, but at least in the Christopher Nolan series, it's suggested that he cannibalizes a lot of ideas from his family's company. He's a clever guy, and I definitely approve of his work, but Tony Stark seems to have a much more scientific and inventor-ish approach to his superheroics.

Needless to say, Iron Man is officially my new favorite superhero.

Thought week!

Last week was devoted to that strange post-novel ennui that often hits me after finishing a major draft or revision of a project. This week has been about researching, rethinking, and note-taking. I'm gearing up to revise a novel I wrote last year that I'm really excited about, and after working for Pathfinder--a universe with intense background worldbuilding--I know I need to bone up my worldbuilding for this project. The world that this book is set in has a lot of odd and unique features, and this week they've been blossoming into a much more interesting environment.

I also have to thank my friend Dale Ivan Smith for recommending a great book: Writing Twenty-First Century Fiction, by Donald Maass. I've only just started reading it, but it's really encouraging me to dig deeper into my characters' hearts and guts. I'm super-excited about the project ... although I'm nervous about actually getting to work next week!

With a Bang!

Last week I turned in the manuscript for the novel I've been working on. Hoorah! It was a big, serious push to get the last of the revisions and proofreading done, but it felt wonderful to turn it in.

Something else fun happened last week: I had a poem come out in my favorite online magazine: the Lovecraft eZine! The piece is called "Not With A Bang, But Waves Whispering," one of the first poems written during last year's three months of I'm-writing-a-poem-a-week. I created a lot of poems and poem fragments during that time, and it's fun to finally be able to share one with people.

I've had almost a week off from writing, but I still feel pretty mentally fatigued. I have a short story to revise, but I'm not actually getting anywhere with it--it's a complicated piece, and I'm a bit nervous about wrecking it while I'm in this lunkheaded mode. On the plus side, we've been having a lot of great weather so I've been outside working in the yard a lot! At least it keeps me busy when I might otherwise be frustrated about the whole no-writing business.

This weekend is H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival & Cthulhucon. Is there any better weekend of the year? I don't think so! I can't wait to go catch up with all my favorite Lovecraftians and gorge myself on awesome movies. It's going to be a blast!

Given my obsessions this week, I'm hoping somebody nice will send me a print of this fun painting by Ursula Vernon:

"Garden Cthulhu", by Ursula Vernon

I might just have to buy it for myself, since it's so perfect for me!

Housekeeping

So I've been hearing a lot of people talking about ditching Blogger out of fear that Google will send it in to the same oblivion it's sent Reader and Notebook and just about every other good Google product. What do you think? I've been on here a long time!

Here in Oregon, we've had an unusual burst of good weather. I spent the last week doing work in the garden. I planted a cherry tree, even! Pretty exciting stuff. But now we're back to rain, so I'll be staying indoors.

Trying to keep my chin up this week, but feeling down. Some days the game goes to depression and this is one of them. Here's wishing you a better one!

Gardening and revisions

Roseraie a Wargemont, by Renoir (public domain, via Wikimedia)

As you can see from this magnificent painting, roses demand a certain amount of structure. Having never owned any roses before we bought our house, I knew roses should be pruned, but I thought it was sort of optional. A light grooming activity, like dead-heading.

Then I realized one of our rose bushes was falling over.

It's a big, older rose bush, probably dating back to the early 70's (it's an Apollo tea rose, still bearing the metal tag nurseries used to use in the pre-plastic-everything era), and last summer it looked magnificent. It grew--intentionally, I believe--with a decidedly left-leaning slant, its large branches spreading an arch of yellow flowers over the birdbath. It smelled wonderful, and grew to about ten feet tall. It became my absolute favorite plant on the property.

I did some trimming in February, cutting back about a quarter of its height and removing a lot of canes that were dead or criss-crossing other branches. When we cut out one big, awkward cane, we actually saw the bush stand up taller. It was amazing to see, and very encouraging.

But yesterday, while I was weeding around the bush (the whole back yard is heavily overgrown with crab grass, bindweed, and blackberries, which are now beginning to jump into serious spring growth), I discovered what had been hidden beneath the winter's leaves and dead grass: a fissure running most of the way around the rose's root line. On the side opposed to the lean, the fissure is wide enough I can stick my finger down inside it.

Needless to say, I will stake this rose and do some more pruning. I will try to fill in the fissure with enriched soil to protect its roots from the questing weedy encroachers. I will keep my fingers crossed. But mostly I will feel a bit guilty that I didn't cut it back sooner. I know it was neglected for about two years before I came to live with it, but if I had gotten around to clearing out some of the weeds last summer, I might have realized that a serious problem was developing.

I can't help but see a correlation between rose maintenance and revising my novels. When working on a novel, it's important to establish a larger shape that you keep to, but don't allow to become overblown. Secondary plotlines and confused character arcs can weigh down that structure, and if you haven't made it strong, they can pull the whole story down upon itself. But of course, it's hard to see all of this happening when small issues--badly paced scenes, poorly turned phrases and the like--obscure the bones of the piece.

The novel sitting on my beta reader's desk has a big advantage over the novel sitting on my own: its outline was carefully examined by my editor and tooled into a strong scaffolding for the work. That outline went through several drafts before I even started writing. The other novel had an outline that I developed quickly and revised haphazardly as I wrote the first draft. It has lots of structural problems because of that, although a lot of awesome actions scenes hid those problems from me as I was writing. (What? Actions scenes can really kick up a book. If there are enough cool fight scenes, I might not even notice the vampires are sparkling and the boyfriends all suck!) Now I have a lot pruning, staking, and restructuring to do as I revise.

But at least that novel isn't going to fall down--or be swallowed up by bindweed, which lives on in the soil for 3-5 years. In this case, writing is far, far more satisfying than gardening.

Let's get it started

I have a silly ritual for starting a new short story. I open a new document and I make it look like this:

Yes, before I even start writing my piece, I want it (basically) in proper manuscript format. Why? Because I am a professional writer, and pros don't write things just to lock them up on their hard drives. Pros send their stuff out in the world. Having my story look professional is a good reminder that my piece is going places.

Another thing I do: I give the piece a descriptive title and I put that at the top of the page. Why? Because in Word 2003, which what I'm usually writing in, it automatically generates a file name when you hit the save button, and I'm tired of erasing the words "Wendy Wagner about xxxx words" all the time. It's dumb, but I love having the computer automatically name my story what I'd like the file to be called.

I also set the title line to "Brilliant Title," or "Kickass Title" every single time. This is because I want my story to have a kickass title at least once in its life, and I'm not always great at titling pieces. When I've finalized the story, I will save a copy in my "Submissions" folder that has the title for a file name.

When I hit a hard spot in my story and I'm tempted to give up, I just scroll back up to that first page and see my official-looking first page. It always makes me write harder to try to live up to its standards.

She flies with her own wings*

This is both a Valentine's and birthday ode to the state of Oregon, my home state. As states go, I think it's terrific. Please don't move here. ;)

You know, last year, when we got the news that my husband's job was moving to Kent, Washington, we thought about going with it. I tried to keep my chin up about it, but every night, I got teary because as stupid as it sounds, the thought of leaving Oregon makes me cry. (Honestly, when we bought our house in this little suburb of Portland, I cried for two weeks because I didn't live in Portland anymore. [Sidenote: the boundary between Portland and our town lies less than a mile from my house]) Even though I was born in Washington and lived there until I was five years old, my heart is bound to this place.

What's so great about Oregon? Well, first and foremost has to be the fact that no one can own the ocean beaches here. That's right--the entire coastline belongs to our citizens. That sure makes road trips down Highway 101 awesome.

What else is terrific? Well, Oregon has an amazing variety of different environments packed into its borders. If you check out this USDA hardiness map, you can see ten different colors, representing ten very different temperature ranges that affect plant growth. California has ten as well, but it's about twice as big as Oregon! It's a lot easier to visit our bounty than it is California's. And we're pretty much a rectangle, so you can make your drive pretty efficiently.

Another thing that's terrific about Oregon is that we have a lot of really yummy things to eat. Did you know that Oregon is the world's largest producer of hazelnuts AND wasabi? Daaaamn! Those are two of my favorite snack ingredients! I'm not even going to go into details about Portland's food scene, but you shouldn't forget that our bizarre rules about food carts has caused a veritable explosion of weird, cheap, and greasy street foods. (Jeez, I really need some Whiffies right now!)

But what's my favorite thing about Oregon? Damn, but that's a tough question. I think our overall natural beauty is probably the highest of our West coast neighbors--although I think California and Washington both have more individual "jaw-dropping" locations. I think our biggest city has most overall yummy food, even if Seattle and San Francisco and L.A. have more hot shot chefs. I think our state is just as wacky as those guys, too. And by wacky, I probably mean "packed full of hippies, strippers, and rednecks." Which is great. Because they love Oregon, too!

You know, maybe I don't have a favorite thing about Oregon. Maybe I just like it because it's the right place for me.

*"Alis volat propriis" was made the state motto in 1987. I think it's rad!