Retro-review (a Reader’s viewpoint): Foundation

Isaac Asimov is simply the greatest SF writer I’ve read. How’s that a way to start a book review?

Foundation is the epic story of the fall of a galactic empire. Hari Seldon is the architect of psychotherapy, a branch of science that can plot the behavior of large groups of people. Using this unique talent, Seldon is able to forsee the collapse of the galactic empire, and correctly plot the path mankind must take to escape a fall into a thousand year era of barbarism. To that end, Seldon establishes a Foundation to preserve a kernel of the knowledge and culture that once was. The path that the Foundation must follow (as mapped out by Seldon) is a series of crisis points and decisions, all of which lead the galaxy toward the establishment of a new Empire within a few hundred years instead of a thousand.

The Foundation is established on a small, resource-starved planet called Terminus. There they begin to compile the ambitious Encyclopedia Galactica. Their work is interrupted when the political turmoil of the surrounding planetary systems try to involve them. Quick thinking on the part of Salvor Hardin, the first mayor of Terminus, saves the Foundation from extinction and establishes a foothold of power using the one resource that they alone understand in this decadent time period: atomic power!

From that time on, the Foundation grows in power and influence using the atom, becoming almost an empire in itself. To read Foundation is to get a small glimpse into civilization; it’s a micro anthropology lesson. From primitive beginnings, to theocracy, to expansionism, and  coming full circle to bloated bureaucracy. Mr. Asimov successfully convinces us that his story is part of a larger universe. This is why I loved reading Foundation and its three sequels Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. Oh, there are many, many more books from his Foundation universe. For the full list, check out the Wikipedia article.

Foundation began as a series of short stories published in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1950. Unfortunately, the short story origin of the book is the only flaw to be found; the story has a slightly disjointed feel about it. Do I care? NO. From one viewpoint, it’s that sense of discontinuity that creates the ‘bigness’ of the story, the feeling that it takes place in a very large and fragile galactic Empire.

As soon as I can, I’ll post a review of Foundation from a writer’s viewpoint. TTFN!

My new favorite text editor

JDarkRoom is one of several minimalist text editors. I’ll list others below. What I like about JDarkRoom is portability. It’s a simple Java (.jar) application, making it usable by both the XP I use at work and my Linux laptop at home. Talk about the best of both worlds! It is also portable in the sense that it resides on my USB drive and I can take it anywhere.

Now, why use a minimalist text editor instead of fancier apps like MS Word and OpenOffice? I’m not dissing them; they have their place, and their place is to make the words look pretty when I need to send them off to an editor hungry to publish my work. At all other times I don’t need so many bells and whistles, and I don’t want such a bloated program hogging my wimpy computer resources. Hello, JDarkRoom! Just a simple screen that seems to cut you off from the rest of the computer — and that dreaded attention sink, the Internets — so all you have to do is write. That’s nice.

JDarkRoom has just enough configurability to make it interesting. I love the word count function. By pressing F6 I can bring up menus that configure the look and feel such as background color, font color, and line width. You will have to try it out to grok it.

Below are some (but not all) of the minimalist word processors out there.

* JDarkRoom — the happy subject of this post. Go check it out!
* Q10 — this is a nice application. It has a lot of the functionality I want — such as USB portability — and in some cases is better than JDarkRoom. For instance, it boasts live text statistics that update as you type. However, it suffers from a serious, severe flaw that disqualifies it for me: there is no Linux version, nor will there ever be. A brief Google informs me that it won’t run under Wine. Sorry, Q10, I want a one-app solution!
* Writer — This is interesting. It seems to be like JDarkRoom, but is entirely online. You can save your work there, or save it to a local disk.

For a longer list of good apps, including some for the Mac, see this article.

Progress Report

Wow, it’s been a whirlwind week! We are basically opening up our house like an orange and turning it inside out. Paint and furniture everywhere but where they belong. The good news is that we got a room painted and are looking forward to more improvements. I hope the baby is happy when he comes…

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be posting a writing progress report? Oh, yeah. I haven’t posted one of those in a long time.

Well, I’m happy to say that I did get some writing done, about 1200 words. I did it in two sessions of 20 minutes apiece. Sometimes I tend to blow off writing because…well, I don’t know. I just know that this time I just sat my butt down in the chair (a common tip in the writing world), set an alarm for 20 minutes and just wrote the whole time without stopping. Setting the alarm really helped me to focus on writing. So I plan to do it this way from now on.

As for next week, I’m sure I can find another 2 days with an extra 20 minutes in them. And that’s the essence of writing, isn’t it?

Have a great week & keep cranking!

Not again!

I’m late by about three days, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear I won a caption contest again at Inkygirl!

Where’s Guy?

I just wanted to make a quick note to let any readers know I’m still around. Last weekend was very productive, only not in my writing. Baby is demanding of my time even before he’s born!

I’m thinking of posting my usual Sunday progress report every other week, anyhow.  More later!

What are your big rocks?

My internal Whine-o-Meter goes into the red at least once a week. There’s not enough time! it says. Waaaaaaah! it says. While, during the week, I get pings from the internal Motivation-o-Meter, usually during my day job, saying If I had this time available for what I want to do, I’d do x.

So there’s this great struggle I get to contend with regularly. When I get home, I realize there’s much to do getting the house ready for the arrival of our new son, much of which has to wait until the weekend or until some other task is done.

Now, you may not have exactly the same concerns that I have, but isn’t it true that we all have major things in our life that rightfully demand our attention? How do we make sure it all gets done?

From Yogi @ www.flickr.com/photos/yogi/1147960/

In a previous article, I used the sand and rocks illustration. Well, Ali Hale over at Dumb Little Man posted an article recently called 3 Critical Time Management Techniques You Shouldn’t Forget, and I liked the way she put it:

Schedule the Big Rocks, Let the Small Stuff Flow
I’ve only come across the “big rocks” catchphrase in the last couple of years, but it expresses a timeless trick for great planning: get all the big stuff into place, and let everything else fit around it. Schedule blocks of time for writing that report or having that essential meeting that keeps getting postponed. You’ll find plenty of time to take care of your emails in between.

This is an excellent article, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It’s aimed at balancing life & business, and really, can’t we consider our writing our business? Even if we are not yet doing it for pay, if we are serious about writing we have to look at the process in a businesslike way.

Ali quotes from an earlier Zen habits article, which recommends making a list each week of the big rocks. So, what big rocks are in my life this week? I’ve made a list here:

• Bible study with my wife (r)
• Prepare a talk for the congregation meeting this week
• Put kitchen together after having vinyl installed
• Meetings: Thursday night and Sunday morning (r)
• Ministry work on Saturday (r)
• Travel: visiting Mom to show off the baby bump!
• “Scheduling meeting” with Princess on Friday

Where’s the writing? That’s what I’m working on improving my commitment to. As you can see, there are already a lot of big rocks in the jar. The ones marked with (r) are repeated each week. So, I have caused my writing to become like the sand that flow around the big rocks. I’m working on setting an attainable writing goal each week. And this little analysis shows me that the sand I let flow into the jar has to be carefully selected, that it reflects my ambitions and goals.

I think that if I can look at the week using this excellent metaphor, it can help me prioritize what’s important and deprioritize what is not.

Have a great weekend and keep cranking!

Marseguro and Terra Insegura

Yesterday, I received two books in the mail: Marseguro and Terra Insegura, which author Edward Willett was kind enough to send me to review. Thanks, Edward!

I’m really looking forward to reading & reviewing these books. In addition to Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, they will be the books I will cut my book-reviewing teeth on. I’m especially excited because I have certain writerly plans for my book reviews. More to come later!

My week for critique

I just learned that my story “John Glorious” is in this week’s list of stories to critique on Critters. Now all I have to do is wait ONE WHOLE WEEK for critiques. Can I be so patient? Stay tuned!

Character, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

Do you want to write interesting stories, or boring ones? The answer is obvious: to avoid making a yawner story (for both your readers and yourself), you want a main character that is not boring to be around.

And all you have to do is HATE. YOUR. CHARACTERS.

A common quote that is passed around the writing-sphere is “Chase your character up a tree, then throw rocks at him.” In other words, don’t give your character an easy time of it. Easy is boring. If something can go wrong, make it go wrong 100% of the time. Be relentlessly mean to him. Don’t give him a break. Or, if you do give him a break, it’s only to make the final jab in the gut that much more painful. Anything else is pulling punches and playing fair.

Start with what your character cares about the most. If your character cares about something, then attacking that thing (or person) will cause him the most pain. From a writing standpoint, pain is good.

This means you have to know your character well enough. A sketchy character with a cardboard personality will not have likes and wants, just action scenes. Work on what motivates him. Then hit it hard.

I’m going to give you a real-life example. My wife and I are expecting our first child, a boy. The little guy has been moving around a lot recently, and feeling him bump around inside his mommy’s belly has pleased me to no end.

Princess just started her third trimester, and just at this time, we realized that two or three days flew by without any movement. We started to get worried. After all, the book we’re reading (which is an excellent book in every way) tells us to time our baby’s movements, and if they’re too slow or nonexistent, we should worry and see the doctor immediately. So, we spent an anxious night losing sleep, full of worry, wondering if our baby is okay and afraid that he’s not.

If this were a work of fiction, the point where we realize the baby is not moving is chasing the character up a tree. But it doesn’t stop there. A writer who wants a good, dramatic story will throw rocks by thinking of what more can go wrong.

With a little bit of imagination, we can think of all sorts of things that can go wrong when an expectant couple fears for the safety of their unborn child:

• The couple can start to blame each other, perhaps suspecting that some habit of the father’s (such as smoking) or the mother’s (such as drinking) is to blame. A loud argument erupts before even there is a trip to the doctor.
• The father throws the mother into the car and speeds them off to the emergency room. On the way they have an accident and the baby is hurt. Now they don’t know if the baby was really in trouble before, but now it’s too late.
• The father cannot function. He goes off to the bar/gym/work and gets hammered/injured/fired.
• The father suspects his wife of hurting the baby on purpose. He begins to confide in a female coworker.

I’ve purposely focused on the father’s reactions, mostly. If I tried to brainstorm for the mother, I would easily double this list. But, clearly by adding some carefully selected reactions and overreactions we can make a bad situation worse. Even if the baby is healthy, we have added a level of complication that we wouldn’t have if we went the easy (boring) route and just went to the doctor in the first place. Chase your character up the tree and throw rocks at him!

(BTW, Princess and I did take the boring route and went to the doctor. The baby is fine, but he’s not moving as much as before because he’s running out of room in there! It’s funny that in real life, boring is so much better.)

Progress Report!

Well, it’s the end of a busy, busy week. I’d like to comment on how busy it was…but there just isn’t time!

It was a productive week, though, I will say that. After finishing my short story outline last week, I was able to write during two lunch breaks at work, and managed to crank out just over 800 words. I’m sure that compared to other writers, that’s not too productive. But, since 800 is greater than zero I will say the week saw some good productivity. I am targeting a word count of 5000 words for this short story, so if I put some more steam into it I should get it done by the end of a month.

What’s to come next week?

• Another 1000 words, minimum;
• A list of subjects for future blog posts;
• One of those subjects written up and scheduled for posting.

That should do it! Have a great week & keep cranking!