Sabrina, updating? ~hand to cheek~ How novel!

You never know, maybe one day, I'll get closer to the one-post-a-day goal I had originally.

But I digress (never a good sign when it occurs in the first sentence, or the second).

So my first draft of the urban fantasy story is done, and I have technically completed the edits on my hard copy. I have brought all but the last chapter to share with my writer's group, but as I was editing chapter 15 and 16, my question became this: was chapter 16 even necessary?

It basically acts as a resolution chapter. Everyone who makes their living in the mortal world, returns to the mortal world, with a few extra people in tow, the reader sees what happens immediately after they return and then a short scene a few months later.

It's one of those chapters where I think it isn't really strong enough (as is) to end a novel, but it answers enough questions that it might be needed anyway. I wonder if hinting a little more at what's to come in a planned book 2 might help, but I don't always like that 'hand rising from the grave so you know there'll be a sequel' motif. and in this case, assuming I get an agent and get the book published--well, much as I'd like to say, "Of course it'll be popular enough to warrant a trilogy or series" I am also conservative, read: self-deprecatingly realistic, enough to know that it might be my only one, or at least, it might take a while before I get a second book published. So the first book should be self-contained, satisfying enough that readers enjoy and want to read more, but not cryptic at the end to the point where the reader is left frustrated as they wait to read book 2.

Anyway, since this is meant to be a writing blog, I hav now blogged about writing. Reading Neil Gaiman stuff always helps. I'm finally starting to read actual books again, not just manga, although I'm starting small, with a Gaiman short story anthology.

Um...that is all.



(I really am bad at endings, I'm surprised I've ever finished a story because that always requires an ending. Maybe all my endings are really bad. Gah! No I can't think like that. Maybe they need work, but they aren't bad. There. That sounds encouraging, right? Heh. Okay, I'm done now. It's been a long day.)

My meme-cherry popped

I do believe this is the first time I've been tagged for a meme. Keen!

(Everything is prettier on a new computer. Is that true or it is just me?)

So here're the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I don't know about the tagging others part--I still feel new to the blogger community and a bit like I don't know enough people to do that, but if you read this and someone else hasn't tagged you, feel free to claim I did and play along. Then let me know, I'm a sucker for learning random things about other people.

So me...

1. I just got a new computer and that gives everything a pearly rose-colored glow, much like sunglasses of the same ilk. This is actually the first new computer I've ever had--the other two were throw-aways, one from my high school that originally ran on DOS (but it was already 1999 or 2000), the other my dad got somewhere, about to be trashed. The HS one I got first, and it lasted longer than the newer one I got later.

2. I've been to the Ice Palace, the lone ice rink on Oahu, a handful of times. I have yet to learn how to ice skate. Although, this last time I had a fall that left me sore for two days, which seems like sme kind f progress.

3. If I wanted to, I could adopt the local kine pidgin talk, yeah? Cuz I been living in Hawaii since I was one keiki, so I one local. But even typing sounds odd, and saying it out loud sounds even funnier.

4. Sort of a corollary to 3--I am a miliary brat, but my dad retired after I finished 4th grade, and I never really considered myself a "military brat." I just use the term because when people ask how long I've lived in Hawaii that reply seems to come with greater, quicker understanding. But I've been out of the military, so to speak, or lnger than I've been a "military brat."

5. I am a creature of cravings. I like fruit and water, but since I don't feel like eating or drinking that, I tend to not have them as much as I should. I am trying to change that. It helps to have fruit like mangoes, green apples and korean pears, which my mom will offer me half of. She loves fruit. Lately, I've been craving pomegranate fru-tea ice blended drinks from the Starbucks-like 'Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf,' Pepsi, and dark chocolate.

6. When I was in kindergarten, my favorite color was pink and I wanted to wear skirts and dresses to school every single day. By first grade, I hated pink and dresses and never wanted to wear either. Now I am okay with both, but only under specific circumstances (the right pink must be punk).

7. I can never pick a favorite anything, be it books, manga, music or movies, colors, food or v shows. There's always a long list of very general things because the things I like, I like a lot (Neil Gaiman can do no wrong in my book, same with Charles de Lint, and even out of the many Valdemar books Mercedes Lackey wrote, I couldn't pick just one). Although I will say that Belle from the Disney version holds a special place for me out of the Disney princesses. I think it's because she likes books, kinda looks like me (ah yes, we both wear our brown har in a ponytail, we must have been separated at birth) and isn't passive.

8. (I feel like the last one should be the best, but how do you choose a 'best random fact'?) I usually find it pretty easy to start something--here I'm specifically thinking of stories, but it can be applied to other hobby-projects as well--but it's always difficult for me to finish something. Now I've finished the first draft of this fae story, but I'm getting stuck on the edits, and I want to rewrite the ending because it reads like 'oh, here's the end, wait, we haven't resolved X, add a scene/chapter. tere's teh end, oh wait, what about Y?' But I am editing in a big way, better than I did for the first quest-fantasy story, so I feel like I'm making progress. Maybe with the next story I'll do an even better job of ending it. Let's hear it for practice.

Okay, so what does everybody else have to say? Random facts abound!

Haven't had a writing group post in a while

That's what you get when I go on teh computer the morning after my writing group meets. Some vague thing irked me last night. And this morning it felt like I wanted to say, "Gods forbid I include any details for the sake of description and giving the readers a fuller image of the scene," which I think was the problem. Of the pages I brought last night, the trend seemed to be that there were details that didn't add anything to the narrative/plot and in other places, there needed to be more details to make the story clearer.

My reaction (in my head) was a peculiar combination of, "I see what you mean, that makes sense and I should change it," with, "What's wrong with including the fact that this immature guy has to stand still and not move his hand, and now his knuckles itch?" I kept the latter purely mental, while verbally responding with the former. That's why they make written comments as wll, so I can go through it afterward, when I've set the emotions aside, and see if those details really are unnecessary, or if there's something missing to make them pertinent.

Even after the worst meeting (which this was not, not even close), I am grateful for the writer's group. Because these areas they pointed out were parts I glanced over, that I didn't see the problem, or maybe I saw the problem but didn't know how to fix it, and they came in with a suggestion to fix it. Beta readers in almost any form are helpful, regardless of the strength of one's "You're killing my baby!" feelings, because there will always be aspects of an author's writing that needs work, which they can't see on their own.

My personal worry is that I have too many aspects like that which I can't see, and should I ever stop bringing the major works to my group, I'd miss out on some big editing that needs to take place, which then makes me feel like I'm relying on others, and I don't much care for that.

Or maybe I'm degernerating into paranoid rants, but I want to my work to be written by me. Thus, I try very hard not to give in to too many of their changes, particularly when it's along the lines of 'change this sentence to this.' Most of them aren't fantasy or sci fi-oriented, and some of their opinions on point of view, pace and voice are influenced by that. Basically, I just don't want to lose my own voice in my writing by trying to fix everything that point to as a problem, even if they are, technically, correct.

I think that point ends differently from how it began, but overall: writing groups are good, if you find one that suits you, be careful if you're in one that doesn't fully suit you, don't give in to all their changes, nor ignore all their suggestions, and try to listen with the emotion set aside.

It's too late now, fulfillment just adds fuel to the flame

*No Doubt, "Too Late" from the album, Return to Saturn

The title has nothing to do with this post. I just like it and it seems like it suits the business of writing, for some. That perhaps a writer who is published once, ill then be motivated to write even more, thus fueling the fire of success.

That's not the point though. No actually, I hd a curious realization the other day. Now lately I have been reading a lot of manga, and by a lot I would guess in the hundreds since getting on this kick with Christmas 2005 (I'd read some before, but that's when I really started devouring them). I've run across some stories that were simpler, but had lovely artwork, others with better stories and slightly less desireable art, some with high quality story and art and other with less quality of both. Assume what I'm about to say speaks of the good ones, and basicall every statement ends with IMHO.

I happen to think manga can have well-developed characters and strong plots. The best ones have some sort of character development, for at least the small handful of major players (actually I'm reading one right now that has that, "Ouran High School Host Club"). But it occurred to me that reading a manga versus reading a novel is a very different type of reading. Comic book-style/art aside, I read the story differently.

I used to think it was mostly a matter of, "They're shorter and more visual, so I can read them in half an hour to an hour." But the other day I sat down to begin reading Kate Elliott's Spirit Gate (I'm being a bad reader--I got side-tracked away from The Burning Stone and thus haven't finished the Crown of Stars series yet, but I do want to read this one, which I got for my birthday), and even only reading the first few pages before heading off to work, I was struck by how calm the activity made me feel. Even when reading tense or action-packed sequence, there's still part of me that tranquilly content, "I can't wait to see where this goes." My emotional state with manga is more grin-y, "this is fun, what's gonna happen next, I want to know now." Essentially the same thoughts, just phrased differently and with a more active sound to the latter. Perhaps it's a matter of the ID and ego.

(I did say I'd get into pulling out some of that psychology stuff, didn't I? Just didn't expect it to be today.)

So Freud had a lot of silly ideas, but people still cling to a few. Wait a moment, I'll give you a chance to get out all the Oedipal Complex jokes you know. Better? Okay, here we go.

So Freud had this idea about the unconscious and conscious mind (the iceberg imagery, of which only a small piece of ice above the sea level is really conscious thought), and within this was the Id, Ego and superego. Let's ignore the moral high ground of the superego, he's boring anyway. The ego as I always thought about it, was the practical sort, sying okay, we can do that, but not ight now. A harried mother of toddlers, perhaps. The id is the toddler, worse twins, and then both want A/B now. No! They want C, too!

Manga seems to fulfill that innate and mostly unconscious id desire to read, because there are (usually) plenty of manga at hand that I can read. Be it from the bookstore, a recent purchase, or the library, or rereading ones I've already bought (I think I found a couple of good series that lend themselves well to rereading). Reading novels seems more of an ego compromise, "wait until the summer (I've been in the school system so long that I associate summers with reading for a slew of entire days), and then you can read all of these books, and these over here, and a couple of those too." They were the reward for finishing the semester, finishing the year, finishing high school or college.

Now that I'm working, it's all a bit screwy for the novels. I want to read during my free time, time not taken up by work, eating, sleeping, or working on writing and editing my novel (I've caught up with the edits for my group. I'm on the cusp of chapter 14). All of that takes up a lot of time, though, and sometimes I must admit, I just don't feel like reading. So when I do, it's usually a small window and it's much easier to read a short manga than risk getting sucked into a novel only to have to put it down at the most inopportune moment because of other stuff.

You're just reaching an awesome chapter, the big fight scene, whichever, but it's so late you have to go to bed or you'll be groggy all day at work tomorrow.

There's still hope for novels, though, don't get me wrong. I read all those Thursday Next and the Nursery crime books in a fairly short amount of time (I found The Erye Affair as well at the library), and it was such a nice feeling to start a novel.

As easy as it is to say each reader reads differently, I think it may be just as true to say every reader reads each book differently, too. And by book, I mean manga, novels, nonfiction, all of it, even breaking it down to genres or even authors. I bet if I read Spirit Gate and then Neil Gaiman's American Gods, I'd notice a distinct difference in how I approached each of those books as well.

Just a neat little thing I noticed about myself I guess.

Bad writer, ignoring your readers

Hello readers. I'm sorry for ignoring you. Blame stress at work. I always do. heh.

So I have an older sister who writes. She sent me an email with some new writing the other day and only today did I get around to checking my email in order to reply. It was an interesting start to a story and it made me think of Book #1 (or was it Book A?). Anyhoo.

It's my questy/classic high fantasy story that I dare not look at for fear of keeling over from the horror of the writing. It got me highest honors in English, but I have this image of it still reading as very young. I began it in high school, reworked, finished and revised it in college, and I know it isn't as good as my current stuff is. But then, that's not surprising. I'm still learning, so it makes sense the earlier, less skilled work reads younger and doesn't have as much depth.

But that story was the sort where I started writing without little more than an opening scene and a couple of characters. 50-80 pages in, I had to stop and completely rework those first pages as I figured out what the plot was now that I had a firmer grasp on the characters and what they wanted. Her story read like that. In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to start a story with only a vague idea of what's going on. It can take longer, but eventually you get a feel for the chcracters and the plot and can rewrite the earlier stuff to match the story after you figured it out.

In my writer's group a few women always seem to ask the new members whether they have an outline for the plot. But they ask in a way that seems, to me (I could be totally wrong in my assumption, but for the sake of this post and point) like they expect every writer to know exactly how the story ends right from the get-go. I don't necessarily agree with that. Just as every writer has a different process for writing, they have different processes for planning a story as well. It may make it harder for them to critique because they don't know where it's going, but a lot of these stories coming in now, they still don't, even if the first draft is done or the writer herself knows exactly how the story goes.

No one else needs to know how you write a book. But you should know your own methods. Know your weaknesses, be it dialogue or plotting or too many flashbacks. Know how you edit and what you tend to miss (which you can find out by seeing what a consensus of readers point out for improvement that you consistently don't see until they point it out), and know your strengths.

I noticed this a few times with our new members that had also attended another group. That "well, they said to take X out, now you're telling me to put X back in." You can't always listen to writing groups. You have to look at what others say and then decide for yourself what works best. If you can conceivably look at every comment a critiquer gives and explain why you need to leave it as is (a real reason, not, 'but it's my baby,' remember dears, "Murder Your Darlings"), then leave it as is. If their suggestion makes sense to you keep it and make the change, but you're the writer and it's your story and your method of writing. they aren't writing your story for you and...

You will always know more about your story and the characters than the reader does. As much as we sometimes want to put in all the cool little quirks and tiny details that create this beautiful image in our heads, we can't always. We have to pick and choose for the single or small handful of details that create the image in the readers' heads. Alas, if I get published, my readers may never know that my protagonist's best friend used to be quite bulked up (not obscenely so, but a lot) and he lost a lot of muscle mass after a long illness. He's crazy tall and still muscular but very lean, a few shades short of skeleton at times, if you'll allow me the exaggerated imagery.

...

...Heh. I have no idea how to wrap this up. Yay for distractions and losing one's train of thought.

Happy writing.

So sleepy, darn these morning schedules

I'm a night person, really I am. But I live with people who are, due to jobs and school, day people, and since getting a job, I must also wake up at a reasonable hour. And then I'm on my feet for at least four hours six days out of seven (yesterday was eight hours, and tomorrow will be seven--we have no chairs for employees). So the fact that it's 9:30 p.m. right now and I'm on the computer does not bode well. I'm already yawning, and even though I may be awake until 11 p.m. or midnight, working on the computer requires a functioning brain, which watching TV and reading manga does not.

Anyhoodles, I'm just about to edit five pages for my writer's group tomorrow. I won't have time to do it later because of my hours. In terms of the whole manuscript (I am behind my new year resolution goal), I'm on page 101. It really does a number on the flow when I'm working on editing a select few pages from chapters 12 or 13 (where I'm at with the group), and then trying to switch gears and look at stuff from chapter 7. I feel like "Wait a minute, I was just looking at this stuff, haven't I edited it already?"

It feels too familiar, although I haven't looked at that chunk for months. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though I'm inclined to think the latter since I've been stuck on the past couple of pages for a while now. I just need to buckle down (even on one day off) and take the whole day to read through the manuscript. I'm trying to read for flow and pace, which is difficult when I allow myself to stop after only two or three pages. I think I justify it by saying, "Two or three pages better than nothing."

So I'm off, and I hope all of you are writing and having fun as you write. Happy writing.

Last post on Fforde...maybe

Since the last time I posted here, I have finished Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten, the last three books in the Thursday Next series. The only book of Jasper Fforde's (as far as I know, he may have more series beyond this and the Nursery Crime series) I haven't read is the first about Thursday Next, The Eyre Affair. I haven't yet found it in bookstores or at the library.

I really do enjoy his writing. The light, funny style, all the twists and plays on classic literature and genre literature. I finished it before heading off to work yesterday, and an hour in to working, I almost lamented having finished the book because I thought it would just be such a nice way to end the day. Go home after whatever work drama you may have, and read a good book.

These were all borrowed from the library, which in some ways is not a good thing. Because I have books that I bought years ago and have yet to read. One of my resolutions for this year was to read at least ten that fell into that category. I haven't read them, not because they're bad, or anything related to quality, but I get library books and read those first, or read manga which take half an hour to hour to read one volume. So one the one hand, ten books in a year's time really is an underestimation of what I can read, but at the same time, there's so much other stuff, other books that get in the way. I still have a Charles de Lint book and a book on Japanese mythology from the library, as well as that Dufresne writing book, The Lie that tells a Truth.

Classic Literature and why we love you

Wednesday I work until 7 at the store, which means I'm closing, which means that I probably won't get out until 7:30. That means that if I went to the writer's group this week, I wouldn't get there until 8 p.m. and my sister likes to leave at 9, so I'd only be there for an hour anyway, not really enough time for all the group members to read the pages as well as get a lot of feedback and I'd hate to make my dad drive back and forth so much. So I probaby won't go this week, although if my sister still does, I may give her my pages and just receive written feedback. I don't much care for the idea of them critiquing it while I'm not there though. My brain gets wrapped up in these issues with the writing and then sometimes I feel like, 'why bother bringing pages at all? It's all crap.' I don't feel like that all the time, or even most of the time, but I'm fighting that feeling right now even as I editing my pages with the group's comments in mind, because they had a point.

Swiftly veering away from talk of the group, however, I went to the library this Saturday and borrowed a pile of books. A couple of manga because they're fun and quick to read (satisfying my desire to read and complete a book, and look at pretty pictures), a Charles de Lint book, and three Jasper Fforde books. They didn't have The Eyre Affair, but they had books two, three and four:

Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

I'm on page 212 of the first book, which is nice and a little guilt-inducing, as I don't work until 3 today, but will probably read for most of that time instead of editing which I would be doing.

Anyway, this post is jsut to once again assert my newfound love for Fforde's writing. this book takes place in 1985, but you don't notice that so much except in reference to fashion. Any other 80s references aren't so jarring (ahh, scrunchies, I bet I still have a bunch tucked in the back of a drawer somewhere).

Also related to literature, but not Fforde: I've seen commercials for a new movie called The Last Mimsy. I am almost certain it's based off a sci fi short story called Mimsy were the Borogroves, the title of which is taken from Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwock" poem. As Fforde makes me want to look up all sorts of obscure nursery rhymes and reread Great Expectations, so does this make me want to drag out my sci fi anthology from a "Studies in..." course and reread that short story.

Books are fun!



I'm such a dork.

My attempt to not go all angsty/ranty

So I put this off a few days because I wanted to approach it as analytically as possible, although I know I couldn't be totally objective.

I went to the writer's group on Wednesday, received two cards and a gift card for my birthday, for which I am thankful (one card was homemade with a picture from Belgium, lovely picture, gonna use it for research/description/inspiration at some point, I just know it). There was actually another person with pages, but we took so long to get started and then to read and critique my seven pages that my sister and I had to leave before we could read the other girl's.

Anyway. I know how I react to critique. There is the inital 'they're criticizing my baby, how dare they.' But I am bringing in the pages knowing full-well what is to come, and knowing I will learn things about my stories I hadn't noticed before, and ultimately the experience will help. I set the emotions aside until I'm by myself, get it out of my system and then look at their written comments and my notes on their verbal comments with a clean eye. See what I can use.

Here's what I did not appreciate this week. Coming from a new member: 'I've noticed this will every writer under 25, that it reads like a videogame or RPG.' I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist. She added, anime too. Another women, a veteran of the group, said, "I was gonna say movies, but yeah." They referred to my pages as falling prey to this.

I exchanged a glance with my sister.

Here's the thing. I don't particuarly care for the fact that they were making a blanket statement about all writers under 25. Second, I don't play videogames or RPGs. At best, I occasionally used to watch my brother play videogames, and used to listen to my friend talk about her RPGs. But there's also the fact that there are many different kinds of videogames. And neither women bothered to explain further what they meant specfically. How is my writing like a videogame?

I understood their critique when they said the narrator sounded too distant, too observant and not close enough in the characters' heads, and it was after that point this woman brought up her blanket observation, so I guess they're related, but being unfamiliar with videogames I don't get the comparison.

I watch anime from time to time (and have a few favorites), but apparently not enough to see the point there either. As for movies...the woman who said that has always said to write description as if you're watching a movie of it in your head, now she criticizes me for apparently doing that?

I find their analogies confusing, even though the basic idea of a distant narrator and a few of their other points made sense to me. I agreed with them. Just making this comparison to other forms of media escaped me.

So I guess what I'm wondering is this: Have any of you ever read something and thought it sounded like a videogame or RPG, and if so, can you give me a concrete explanation of what that means to you? It may not be the same as these members were thinking, but it might help and I'd appreciate it.

I know a writer wouldn't want to write something and treat it as a movie, RPG, etc, because those are different media forms that have different needs, but a writer can use some techniques from other places to enhance their own writing. Where might that go wrong?

Thank you and happy writing.

Gotta love a good quote

No hard thinking for me today, if you don't mind. Here's are a couple of quotes from writers, for writers, for writing. You may or may not agree with all of them, some are more for amusement. Take what you like from them. The Gaiman quotes are from his online journal, some foudn through The Quotable Neil. The rest, excluding the Churchill quote, I don't know where I found that, are quoted in John Dufresne's book, The Lie that tells a Truth.

I like quotes. I collect them. Heck, I hoard them. But I'm generous, so here you go:

You have to write if you're going to be a writer. Because Elves won't do the work for you. --Neil Gaiman (plenty more where this came from)

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. --Elias Canetti

If you want to be a writer, write. You may have to get a day job to keep body and soul together (I cheated, and got a writing job, or lots of them, to feed me and pay the rent). If you aren't going to be a writer, then go and be something else. It's not a god-given calling. There's nothing holy or magic about it. It's a craft that mostly involves a lot of work, most of it spent sitting making stuff up and writing it down, and trying to make what you have made up and written down somehow better. --Neil Gaiman

When a writer is born into a family, that family is doomed. --Czeslaw Milosz

The problem with fiction is that it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction. --Tom Wolfe

What is remembered is what becomes reality. --Patricia Hampl

Writer's block is a luxury most people with deadlines don't have. --Diane Ackerman

Inspiration is to work every day. --Charles Baudelaire

Writing like a mad thing. Wishing that time were more, well, rubbery… Everything would be okay if we just had rubberier time. If you could lean against a week so it would have ten or fifteen or thirty days in it. That's all we need. --Neil Gaiman

If you hear a voice within you saying you are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working. --Vincent Van Gogh

Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straightjacket of which the wearer is unaware. --Arthur Koestler

All writers, I think, are to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ouselves. --J. Anthony LukasWhen I'm not working I sometimes think I know something but when I'm working, it is quite clear I know nothing. --John Cage

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work. --Ursula K. Le Guin

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn't allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering "Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!" and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there's nothing left to write. Because the rejection slips will arrive. And, if the books are published, then you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will be as well. And you'll need to learn how to shrug and keep going. Or you stop, and get a real job. --Neil Gaiman

‘You're a writer? I've got an idea for a book you can write.’ This is right up there with ‘If you all just hand over your wallets nobody's going to get hurt. Except for any writers amongst you. We really hate writers,’ on the list of things writers generally hope not to hear. --Neil Gaiman

(Writing American Gods) was a bit like wrestling a bear. Some days I was on top. Most days, the bear was on top. --Neil Gaiman

Lacking bear pepper-spray, I walked home across the garden last night singing very loud bear songs, which went something along the lines of, "Lalala, I am singing very loudly to alert the bear to my presence, Lalala because most of the websites I've found talk about making noise and giving bears lots of time to get away, Lalala also I do not want to startle a bear at all because according to everything I've read on the subject bears do not like being startled." You don't have to worry about rhymes with bears. They don't mind about rhymes. Or tunes. Or scansion. Frankly, hypothetical bears are a very easy sort of audience. --Neil Gaiman

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. --Winston Churchill

Big Deadline is still a thing of madness. The other two little deadlines at its feet chivvy and squeak and grunt and bare their sharp little teeth. Several smaller deadlines howl impatiently from the bushes outside.Argh. --Neil Gaiman