Cross-Country Skiing is Painful!

So yes, cross-country skiing is fun. But it's also painful the next day! I swear, all of my muscles hurt. Even my triceps. Silly little triceps. Every time I move, something aches. I think I'll deal with this by reading about skiing, rather than actually skiing, at least until next weekend. :)

Cross-Country Skiing is Fun!

Snoqualmie Pass Nordic Trails

In college, Forrest and I went downhill skiing... once. I quickly discovered that I disliked the adrenaline produced from zooming downhill with minimal confidence in my ability to recover if anything went wrong. So Forrest has been angling for some cross-country skiing instead. This weekend, we finally made it up to the snow!

Jerry came along with us. Neither he nor I had ever been cross-country skiing before*, so we signed up for the beginner's lesson. We meant to get there in time for the 10:30 lesson, but we took too long at the grocery store getting supplies and wandering around looking for a gas station, so we missed the lesson. We mentioned this to the lady doing registration, and she hooked us up with Betty, one of the instructors, to do a private lesson for us at 11. Very awesome, since we were only charged the standard rate.

Cross-country skiing was much easier than I was expecting! Granted, this is probably in large part because we were learning on groomed trails with convenient little ruts to guide the skis. Even so, I had a lot of fun figuring out the right amount of effort vs glide.

I only fell down 3 times, and all those were within a 5-minute window until I figured out that looking backward while moving made me fall. At which point I stopped doing that, and I didn't fall any more. Jerry can't say the same, falling a total of 18 times throughout the day. But his center of gravity's higher than mine, and his skis were longer and more difficult to deal with, so he's got some good excuses. Forrest fell too, so no one was immune.

After our hour-long lesson, we tracked down Forrest, ate a light lunch, and headed back out on the trail. The only green (aka easy) trail we could get to was the Cold Creek trail, since the lifts up to the upper trails were taken out during a recent avalanche. Including the lesson, we probably skiied about 4km, or 2.5 miles. Not to shabby for our first day, eh?

Not quite true: When I was a kid, my family once went cross-country skiing in the Sierras. But my memories are very dim and mainly involve patches of thin, muddy, half-melted snow. Those memories do not even vaguely resemble the thick, well-groomed trails I skied on today. So I don't think it really counts.

Us: 1, Rats: 0

Dead Rat in Trap

A couple nights ago, Forrest went into the pantry/laundry room and discovered a rat staring back at him from atop the water heater. So over the weekend we spent the better part of a day moving all the pantry food into the kitchen or throwing it out (Pasta Roni from 2003, I miss you!). As far as we could tell, the rat(s) had only gnawed on a bag of rice.

We bought some nasty-powerful rat traps and baited them with peanut butter (per my dad's suggestion) for a couple of nights without arming the traps, so the rats would be complacent and unsuspecting. Last night, Forrest finally armed the traps for the first time. Around 1 AM, Forrest woke up, saying that he'd though he had heard a commotion and a rat-squeal from the pantry. It being 1 AM, he decided to go back to sleep and check the trap in the morning.

As you can see from the photo, we got the sucker! Please note that both Forrest and I had rats as pets when we were kids, so it's not that we hate rats indiscriminately. We just don't want rats living in our pantry, or worse, infiltrating the rest of the house.

We're hoping it was just this one rat — it's a small female, so maybe it was working on setting up a nest. We're hoping there isn't a colony of rats ready to move in to our pantry. But we'll be setting more traps tonight, just in case.

Songsmith Ad: Must Been Heard to Be Believed

Ahhh, Microsoft. You make such great software, and ads to sell them! I like Videogun's commentary on the terrrrific ad for Songsmith:

“ [T]his REAL commercial for Microsoft's new Songsmith software (you sing at it and it creates horrible musak to accompany you) is completely insane. Not only is it apparently earnest and not a parody, self- or otherwise, it seems like it comes from a bizarro parallel universe where irony was never discovered. ”

See for yourself. Don't forget to turn up the speakers! ;)

Update: Forrest points out that this is from Microsoft Research, not the commercial arm of Microsoft. Still, the Cheese Factor is just to much for me. :P

Almuerzo Español

Fui a un reunión hoy, durante el almuerzo, de hispanohablantes. He sabido sobre este grupo hace algunas meses, pero cada vez que occurió la reunión, me acobardé de ella. Esta vez, fui; ¡me alegré de ir!

Hubo un hombre, Rene, de Cuba, que es el líder del grupo. Él organiza las reuniones, manda los emails al grupo, etc. También hubo una mujer china de Ecuador (que nació en Nueva York) que se llamaba... Celestia? No recuerdo exactamente. Y un poco después, nos acompañó otro hombre, pero no se presentó.

Rene me dijo que mi pronunciación es buena, y (como me habían dicho otros hispanohablantes) mis Ses parecen españolas. :)

Google can translate for you. :)

Plan for Finishing My Novel

Write Missing Scenes

1. Make a list of missing scenes. (Luckily, I already have easy-to-spot placeholders throughout the document, so this step should be pretty mechanical.)
2. Calculate how long it should take me to write these scenes. Set goals.
3. Write the scenes! Same "quality" bar as for NaNo; just get the remaining scenes written.

Track Characters

4. Annotate the document with where characters appear in the scenes.
5. Evaluate this character-appearances list: Who just disappears after chapter 4? Who randomly appears in chapter 8 as a major character (eg, the real antagonist; oops!) Decide whether to cut a character, combine multiple characters, or give a character a larger role so that their removal is unnecessary.
6. Make a list of "missed opportunities" that I might want to work into the story. (For example, no one important ever wrestles with whether to Sacrifice themselves. There's potential for good conflict/drama there, but the plot would have to be altered for it to be necessary.)
7. Make a list of scenes to add, modify, cut, or move.

Let both lists stew while going through the next two phases...

Research and World-Building

8. Read books about relevant Earth history: guilds, non-monarchy governments, coups (successful or not), dictators (especially their motivations), etc. Take notes.
9. Outline my territory's history, based on research. (How did they end up with their semi-representative High Council system of government? What have flesh/spirit relations been like before the current Guild system? What are the neighboring territories, and how have they influenced this territory's history and culture? Etc.)
10. Write character bios (including basic ones for "scenery" characters).

Practice Writing

(done concurrently with the researching step above)

11. Read books on writing. Take notes.
12. Do writing exercises (not on my NaNo story, though).
13. Critique other people's writing to practice what to look for in my own writing.
14. Read other authors. Note how they handle characterization, magic (especially mental battles, which I had trouble writing), government-taking-over intrigue, romantic subplots that aren't lame...

Refine Plot and Characters

15. While referring to the world-building notes and character bios, re-read the story and take notes about scenes and subplots to add or modify.
16. Write the scenes! At the end of the next step, I should feel ready for beta readers...

Revise Draft

Here there be beta readers! By the time I get to here, the plot and characters should actually be fleshed out the way I like. From this point on, I'll be working on the smaller parts of the story: word choice, tone, etc. I'll figure out in more detail what needs to be worked on once I get to here.

ʇsod uʍop-ǝpısdn

(˙ʇsod ƃoןq sıɥʇ ʍǝıʌ oʇ ssǝupooƃ ǝpoɔıun ɥʇıʍ ʇuoɟ ɹǝɥʇo ǝɯos ɹo sɯ ǝpoɔıun ןɐıɹɐ pǝǝu ןןıʍ noʎ)

˙˙˙ooʇ 'sǝʇıs ʎʇıןıʇn ǝƃɐɯı-ɹoɹɹıɯ ǝɹǝʍ ǝɹǝɥʇ ʎןuo ɟı ʍou ¡unɟ ǝɥʇ uo uı uıoɾ uɐɔ noʎ ʇɐɥʇ os ןɯʇɥ˙sɹǝʇʇǝןuʍopǝpısdn/ʎɐןd/ɯoɔ˙sǝɹıʍuǝʌǝs˙ʍʍʍ//:dʇʇɥ ʇno ʞɔǝɥɔ oƃ ˙op ʎǝɥʇ ǝsɹnoɔ ɟo ¿ʇɥƃıɹ 'uʍop-ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ sʇuɐʍ ǝuoʎɹǝʌǝ os

First Drafts

During November, "pep talk" emails are periodically sent out to Wrimos. Published authors wrote these pep talks, which was pretty cool. The post-NaNo one was written by Kelley Armstrong (whom, I must admit, I hadn't heard of), author of several fantasy novels. She had this to say to us unpublishing Wrimo winners:

What NaNoWriMo gave me was a quick and dirty first draft, and by the end of it, I could see that my book had some good stuff... and it had some serious problems and missed opportunities. ... If a multi-published author can’t expect to turn out a publishable first draft during NaNoWriMo, then neither should you. ... It’s a rare writer who publishes the first book they wrote — I didn’t — so practice is invaluable.

The "missed opportunities" part is so true! I am braving the waters of letting other Wrimos critique my steaming pile of— er, I mean, my rough draft. Just writing the synopsis for my story, I realized "omg, I should have done that to the character!" or "d'oh, of course I need to include this!" That's what revising is for, eh?

Finishing NaNo Today

I won!

Writing to you from the NaNo trenches: I have 47,285 words written right now. The 50,000 word finish line is in sight! I will be holed up at Peet's Coffee today until I cross it. I am going to win this year. Woohoo! :)

Update, 1:13 PM: I'm now at 48,325 words. 1.7k left to go!

Update, 5:37 PM: I did it! 50,000 words! I win! :D

Literary Books

I'm at Barnes & Noble, about to start writing for today's NaNo session. About a month ago, this particular bookstore had rearranged its shelves so that "Fiction & Literature" is on one side of the building, while things like Mystery, Romance, and Science Fiction & Fantasy are on the other side.

So as I was walk past the information booth on the way to a comfy seat with electricity, I overhear an employee talking to a customer: "I think we're trying to separate the more literary books from the, um..."

I can't help but smile, hearing her talk herself into an awkward corner. She notices me smiling; she half-smiles back at me. I laugh, having caught her in her literary snobbery. She laughs too, as does the other customer. We all know what she's avoiding saying. (I happen to disagree that non-"literary" books are the bane of literature like some do, but it was still an amusing moment.)

...Can I include these 171 words as part of today's word count? ;)