Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:34 AM

Well, I just finished writing the porridge scene. That was exhausting. And boy am I hungry. I spent probably 45 minutes this morning writing, plus another half-hour I didn't track on research. I think I probably did more research in how to cook a proper Scottish porridge than I have on anything else so far.

Then again, few readers will really know or care if I confused boomslang and bowtruckles, but many more people have actually made porridge and can tell if I've gotten the details wrong.

I feel like I'm spending way too much time on what should be short throwaway scenes. And I've still got several more major ones ahead of me this weekend. But I keep distracting myself with finding fun facts about porridge, such as Shakespeare's pun in the Tempest or the ever-expanding vocabulary of Scottish words for porridge and porridge-making tools. [As Ian put it in his journal, "It's an urban legend, or at least a gross exaggeration. that the Eskimos have 200 words for snow. But the Scots do have about 40 words for "oatmeal"."

BTW, as I'm going along I am in fact learning more -- not just about porridge or the Potterverse, but about myself and how I write. It feels like scenes are taking too long. Events I think should be brief and minor are consuming far more time and words than I would've thought necessary. That may be good from a NaNoWriMo perspective, but it feels odd and unbalanced to me. One area I seem to be hanging up on is transitions, though now that I recognize that, I think I'm getting better. Three days pass between Scene A and Scene B. I have a few minor details in my head about what's gone on, things worth mentioning in a character growth way, but nothing deserving of its own scene.

Anyway, I've got way more writing to do, and I'm hungry.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

So, this week's Angel (featuring Mexican wrestling!) made reference to a villain who is "nigh-invulnerable." And spoiler sites are hinting that there may be ninjas in an upcoming episode.

I am so glad that Joss Whedon hired Ben Edlund for the series...

Also, when we got home this evening, I saw three kittens playing in the leaves behind out house. As we pulled in, they fled into the neighbor's yard. We stopped the car at the top of the driveway to try to coax them forward. No luck, but we did manage to spot two of them with our flashlight. One appeared to be a grey tabby, the other more of a tuxedo cat. And neither appeared to be a full-sized adult, though given we live with oversized Boopsie, my judgement may be flawed. Just a little moment of awwwwww to brighten our evening.

By the way, I just want to amuse/bore/terrify you with the latest paragraph in my story:

Draco paused in thought. Porridge was just, what, oats and water? Fine, he'd never actually seen Hagrid making them, but how difficult could it be?

Draco set the pot carefully on the table, so not to wake Hagrid. Then he dumped in what felt like a reasonable amount of oats. May as well be polite and make enough for both of them. He poured in some water and stirred it around until it felt like the right consistency. Beyond that, he figured it was just a matter of heating it up to the right temperature. He hung the pot over the fire, put the cover on, and sat down to wait for the familiar aroma.

No, this does not bode well.

Ian and I actually went back and forth for a while over the worst possible way an intelligent person could conceivably ruin porridge. The discussion was actually quite fun, though at several points I've had to restrain him from actually trying any of these methods just to satisfy his curiousity. I thought it was far better to leave this to the realm of fiction and speculation, so please forgive any scientific inaccuracies in the results of that scene/meal.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:55 PM

I've seen this one making the rounds, credited to numerous sources. But regardless of who wrote it, I find it delicious:

The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians [in naming an openly gay bishop] are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage.

Speaking of religion and history:

Washington Post on the recent uproar over the Reagan miniseries, in which the former president's supporters objected to a fictitious comment about AIDS delivered in the film:

According to Reagan's authorized biographer, "Dutch" author Edmund Morris, what Reagan actually said about AIDS was that "maybe the Lord brought down this plague" because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."

Avedon Carol:

Which, by the way, it isn't. Adultery is the only kind of sex that the Commandments prohibit. It wouldn't surprise me to know that Reagan was ignorant of this fact; an awful lot of his "Christian" admirers seem to be.

Finally, I don't watch the Daily Show (no cable) but I hear a lot of good things about it. Thorswitch (Different Strings) shares another quote demonstrating why satire is so useful:

[Video footage of Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) addressing the Senate]:

One thing is very clear. As the President has said time and time again, "We will not walk away from Iraq."

Jon Stewart:

You mean that in a positive way, right?

I could go on and on. I haven't stopped reading the news, even if I haven't been writing much about it. Probably the best news I've seen all day is that the Army has dropped cowardice charges against a soldier who sought psychiatric help from his commanding officer for PTSD.
Ian particularly liked JMHM (Sisyphus Shrugged)'s summary: "So we're OK with putting soldiers on trial for their lives in the dark because they sought treatment they're entitled to under military law, but they're willing to be flexible if anyone should, you know, hear about it."
[If you want more information, Democratic Veteran (1 and 2) and TalkLeft (1, 2,and 3) have been on this case for a while.]

In other military news, bloggers have been writing about Jessica Lynch's interview, where she complains about how the Pentagon lied about her for propaganda purposes. But it still seems shocking to see a large black headline Jessica Lynch claims Pentagon used her for propaganda in the Stars and Stripes, of all places. Army Times merely uses AP wire stories on Lynch and Pogany. On the other hand, how must our troops feel to see an Army Times article that begins "Iraq is fast becoming America?s deadliest war since Vietnam." Harsh.

And that's about all I have for the moment. [What I don't have is any further progress in my story, outside what's percolating in my brain, but that's a separate issue.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:48 AM

I'm not writing anywhere near as fast as I'd hoped or planned.

I mean, I knew that Wednesdays were probably going to be a total loss, with two hours of television (Smallville and Angel) demanding my attention. But yesterday was a struggle as well.

It took me three whole days to write one relatively minor scene. And then, when I got home I realized that I had gotten so caught up in the nitty-gritty details that I blew the payoff. The whole reason I conceived of the scene, and it got lost in the shuffle.

I intended to fix it last night, but instead wasted the evening reading other people's fanfic, and wrote nothing further.

Anyway, I just finished revising the ending, to restore the proper emotional reaction, but I'm annoyed at myself for having to undo so much. Hopefully, I can make up some of the time this weekend. Actually, my hope for this weekend is that I'll be able to complete one of the major pivotal scenes in the first section of the story. Not only will it be an emotionally strenuous scene that requires research, but it probably means I'll have to go back and write an earlier lead-in scene which I had skipped. And though I'm capable of writing other parts of the story between calls, I think everyone would notice if I started spreading out a stack of unrelated books across my desk.

<sigh> Oh well. At least NaNoWriMo has gotten me making steady progress, even if my pace isn't fast enough to meet their goal. [Just for the heck of it, I just checked the file I've been pasting my deletions into (don't want to lose alternate phrasings in case they become useful later), and that's got nearly 2000 words to it.]

Anyway, my heartfelt appreciation to anybody who is reading along. I know it's been slow-going, and my (lack of) speed may not be making it easy. But I really do appreciate it. I realized it actually does help me go on to know that others are reading and to hear (or read in the comments) folks notice (what I think are) the clever things I'm putting in.

Appreciation also to folks who are still reading and linking/subscribing to my journal. I know I probably haven't been a terribly interesting this month, particularly for those who couldn't care less about NaNoWriMo, so thanks for sticking around.

Ah well, back to the grind...

Added later: Almost forgot to mention. For those of you joining the game late, you can read my NaNoWriMo story (which is Harry Potter fanfic) at http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/Draco. I've also tweaked my comments box and added a link at the bottom of the story to provide a place for feedback should anyone so desire.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:50 PM

Fascinating historical discovery today.

First of all, for those unfamiliar with British history (no need to be embarrassed about it; even I didn't know much about this until recently), today is celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day in the UK and British territories. In 1605, Guy Fawkes was involved in a conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament on November 5th, a day when King James would be in attendance. The attempted assassination was discovered and averted the night before, leading Parliament to declare an annual holiday. [Many sites have further information, here's the official British Parliament page and PDF factsheet.]

The intended method of destruction was by a stash of gunpowder in a cellar underneath the building. Just in time for this year's commemorations, physicists at the University of Wales decided to try to calculate the strength of the blast. Via the BBC, here's the estimated radius of devastation:

Quoting further from the BBC article:

Guy Fawkes was no amateur in explosives. Before he became a professional plotter, he worked in the army, where his job was to pack gunpowder.
Therefore if he used 25 times too much gunpowder, maybe it was no accident.
David Reid, spokesman for the Institute of Physics, said: "This throws into question exactly how much damage Guy Fawkes intended to cause."

So has anybody written (or read) any alternate histories written in which Guy Fawkes succeeded? I mean, the BBC History Reading Room offers some brief speculation on What if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded? but I'd be interested in any actual published fiction in such a setting. UChronia (an alternate history site) only lists one juvenile fantasy. I'm surprised; I would've thought it'd be a more popular branching point, given its potential dramatic impact on politics, religion and royalty.

Meanwhile, the British press seem to be using this as an excuse for polls on whether fireworks should be banned from celebrations. I'll confess I don't know all the issues involved, whether they're just talking about private citizens versus public/civic displays, but we're two years away from the Quatercentenary, and I expect the celebrations to be massive.

On the lighter side of the holiday, the BBC includes a Gunpowder Plot Flash game to test your trivia. And EliseM offers a scary earworm to read (or sing) at your own risk. Added later: EliseM has updated her journal with the full lyrics to the song. Filk: it does a body good.

Isn't history fun?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:39 AM

So far this month I haven't been writing much apart from NaNoWriMo, including on this blog. Therefore, I've finally added a blogroll to the side of my journal. These are my favorite blogs -- the sites I read most often.

In the month or so since I first created this blogroll, I've been using and tweaking it for my own personal purposes. It's long, but thorough -- not many blogs not on this list that I regularly read, except as links from other people's posts.

Links were entered alphabetically, but the list has since sorted itself by most recently updated. That means that languishing down on the bottom of the list are blogs whose URLs I've mistyped, along with blogs that don't ping weblogs.com.

I've been a little worried about the amount of screen real-estate that a blogroll would consume, particularly since I tend to get a bit longwinded in my posts anyway. I'm yet again reminded of Blaise Pascal's famous saying: "I have written you a long letter because I did not have time to write a short one." Comments and suggestions on the revamped format would be most appreciated. [Unfortunately, many of the most-desired features, such as bolding my top ten links, are only available for a fee.]

Anyway, for those of you who have depended upon me for news and information, sorry to disappoint you. But take a look at the links on the right, and see whether any of them are to your liking.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:05 PM

Well, I just broke the 5,000 word mark. I'm a shade over 10% done with the NaNoWriMo goal. Of course, at this pace, it'll take 35 days to write 50,000 words, but slow and steady and all that.

Still, I got through last night's logjam and am feeling pretty good. I'm deferring one scene until I get home where I can spread out my reference materials, but that's a case where I can safely skip ahead to the next and then go back.

Favorite line of the day (capable of standing alone):

"Yeh're no' afraid o'spiders, are yeh? I prob'ly shoulda ask'd that before we left."

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:20 PM

Double-grumble. My computer just crashed, taking with it the first version of this post.

Got no more writing done tonight. What in my head played out as a minor tiff turned nuclear when put onto paper. They've both now insulted the other's honor and upbringing to the point that I can't see either one making the first move, unless it's out of the other's company for good.

So, as it stands right now, I see two options for resolving the dispute. I could tone down Draco's final comment to something slightly more moderate, de-escalating the conflict and giving them both more maneuvering room. I'm uncomfortable with this, however, because all through the story I've been choking back Draco's snark (often literally), and the boy needs an outlet sometime.

The other route is that of JKR's deus ex machina -- bringing Dumbledore into the scene. There is some useful information Dumbledore has to impart, and now's as good a time as any. But I really hate writing Dumbledore -- he's the kind of character who always knows exactly the right thing to say at any time, and that's incredibly tough to write.

I don't know. I think I'm going to sleep on it.

I checked my pagecount tonight and realized that the final scene was perfectly placed to end a chapter, and chapter breaks are even better than those three asterisks for hiding a lot of handwaving...

I'm sending them back out into the forest the following day. I wonder whether they can survive without speaking to one another that long?

Hopefully, with sleep will come a solution. I'll try to pick things up again tomorrow morning.

[Advice from other writers on dealing with recalcitrant characters would be welcome, whether or not you've read my story so far.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:59 PM

So several of my friends have mentioned getting readings from the Morgan's Tarot site, and I thought what the hey.

So, I chose a three-card layout, concentrated on work as my question, and clicked the button. Here's what I drew:

Well, that seems relatively unambiguous.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:29 PM

Well, I've completed 4,221 words in the story, more-or-less (I don't bother editing out the chapter titles in the wordcount program; I just paste the contents from the browser window into a new NoteTab window and check the text statistics. If anybody's got an easier way of getting accurate wordcount on HTML docs, I'd appreciate it. Many of the online wordcount utilities base upon spaces, and mess up on punctuation and the ends of paragraphs.) and reached a good breakpoint, at the end of a tough scene.

Of course at the spot I left off, the characters are seething and not talking to one another again, but maybe a good night's sleep and scene break will enable them to behave civilly once more.

I feel more exhausted by the emotional intensity of that scene than anything going on in my job. I wonder whether I have it in me to write their next encounter tonight before bed...

But, to the question "are we having fun yet?" the answer right now is a definitive Yes.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:20 AM

If you want to read my NaNoWriMo work-in-progress, I have decided to make it available here.

I gave some thought towards trying to write faster and sketchier. But trying to describe the story in that manner sounds in my head exactly like the worst fanfic written by preteens.

"Draco and Hagrid stop in the clearing. Draco notices how quiet the forest is. Hagrid comments on how out-of-shape Draco is, and Draco snarks in response. Draco asks Hagrid what their task actually is, and Hagrid explains..."

Ugh. Telling, not showing. Writing that way just doesn't feel worth it to me. If I were going to take that route, I might as well just make public my plot summary/outline and be done with it.

I know I can do better. I have done better. And, I realized that getting positive comments and feedback on my work-in-progress actually really helps.

So, I'm opening things up a little bit. Read it if you feel like it, as often as you like. I've added little day bookmarks to the page, indicating where I stop each night. Now, I have been going back each day and tweaking earlier lines, but in general, it provides a convenient way for readers to jump to the newest material, no matter how long ago you last read the story.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:44 AM

Wellness tip: Making hot cocoa with heavy-whipping cream, because you're out of regular milk, is not a good idea first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Things that seem like a good idea when you're only half-awake don't necessarily pan out once you're out of bed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:14 PM

"Cask of Amontillado" by Alan Parsons Project keeps running through my head:

It's just such a deliciously evil song... I want to play it again and again, but Ian's in the room and I don't want to annoy him. [Besides, I want to focus on my writing instead...]

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:35 PM

So, I've been using the freeware VeriTime time tracking software as I've been writing. I'm now at 1,952 words (from a start of 486) after 3 hours and 8 minutes writing. Good words, but it's slow going (I turn off the timer when I take breaks, but I've been at this since about 11:15 this morning).

I started the month with Draco getting out of bed. In the wee hours Saturday morning, I got them through breakfast. Yesterday, I got them to the edge of the woods. Today I've gotten them to a clearing for a break before they reach their destination. It feels like the song "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini": "From the bed to the breakfast. From the breakfast to the forest. From the forest to the clearing. But I've got to write much more!"

It's a laborious process, as I was describing it to one friend via IM. At this pace, I don't think I can make their goal (50,000 words), but I'm reluctant to entertain such thoughts yet because I'm both stubborn and don't want to jinx myself.

They've posted a pep talk on the website, with the comment that:

[H]ere's the trick: We have a horrifically absurd deadline on our side. An absolutely laughable due date that makes quantity far more important than quality, and forces all of us to abandon our notions of getting everything right and tidy on the first go-round.

This does amazing things for a writer. With the emphasis on just getting the chapters done and keeping the pace flowing, you'll find yourself writing in broad, open strokes, sketching the borders of your fictional world with an unfamiliar ease. You'll also find yourself suddenly liberated from that inner-critic who tends to kill great ideas before they bloom.

And you'll discover that novel-writing, when transformed into a high-velocity sport, can be wonderfully fun. Great messy gobs of fun, where you lose yourself for hours in the blissful reaches of your imagination and meet people who will stay with you for the rest of your days.

Not everything in November will go so smoothly, mind you. In the rush, you'll write some things that make you cringe. Characters will likely turn out a little lopsided, and your plot may make a wrong turn somewhere near the second act, and never find its way back home again.

But it doesn't matter. However muddled things get, they can all be straightened out in the rewrite. November is your chance to experiment, to chase wild tangents, to purposefully write yourself into cliff-hanging corners, just to watch your MacGyver- esque imagination pull your story out of yet one more impossible jam.

Is that what I should be doing? Just say that the forest is quiet rather than laboring over how to describe it, and leave those details for later finessing? Say that Draco snarks rather than figuring out what his snide remark actually is? Instead, I've been snipping and moving around to come up with lines like this:

Draco listened for other signs of life, but heard little. Somewhere above, branches were swaying in a light wind, and he thought he heard a trickling brook, but no calls from birds or animal, nothing crunched in the distant undergrowth, just his heart hammering in his chest and Hagrid crinkling his map.

I mean, I could write it all fast and breezy, but then again, I've already got a story outline. And, when the major development in this part of the story involves how the two characters overcome their animosity, actually showing the gradual steps seems most important, and that takes time and care.

Comments or suggestions?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

Everything went well last night.

Shortly after finishing last night's post, more of our friends showed up. I went downstairs, acted the gracious host, and was fine again. I socialized for the rest of the night and had a good time, and I don't think anybody else was aware that anything had been wrong earlier. [Aside from the one friend who had seen my post before he left; and checked up with me that I was ok. Thanks.] I think the very act of writing out and explaining my feelings in the previous post helped me to express what was wrong and thus, get over it. I hung out until about 1 AM and had a good time.

My thanks to everyone who attended, and for those who were there on the earlier side of things (from about 5 -- 6:30), my apologies for not being a better host. I've got to patch things up with Ian's folks, today, but rest assured I'm exhausted but otherwise I feel fine.

At the end, it was just Ian and myself, Dave and Sami (1st & 3rd floor tenants, respectively) and two of their friends, and we just hung out and chatted. We all agreed that the party went swimmingly well; we've got a good space for a party on the first floor, and we're going to do something like this again.

<Yawn> [I just woke up about 15 minutes ago; Ian's off at Sunday school.] And now, to try to write 3000 words today to make up for yesterday's NaNoSlacking.

PS: Just an elaboration on something from yesterday. Edgar Allan Pooh: "The Telltale bump-bump-bump down the stairs."