Cover Art
February 28th, 2010
I have two choices when it comes to creating a cover for The Winds of Winter: hire an artist, or create it myself.
Way back in the day, I worked in acrylics, and I got to the point where I could do a reasonable job of painting what I was looking at. (Astronomical scenes were a specialty.) But I haven’t transferred all of this skill over to the digital media I work in now. Some of it, yes — I created all the graphics for this site. But I need some practice with Painter’s brushes to get up to speed. (I’ve been working with Painter off and on since version 2.0. I got a demo with my first digitizer, and was hooked. In those days, the software came in a paint can.)
I also need to improve my figure drawing, if I’m going to paint a cover. That’s always needed work, in any medium.
I spent my leisure time this weekend working through Painter tutorials. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to handle a cover painting by the time I need one, but it won’t hurt to try. If I don’t get there, I found an artist whose work interests me.
I ditched Twitter
February 21st, 2010
Tonight I went to maintain my Twitter account, and discovered that Twitter has ordered all the applications with a mass unfollow capability to disable it. That means I could spend hours unfollowing the people I’ve followed lately who didn’t follow me back — at two clicks and a pageload per person. That’s hours wasted doing something I should be able to do with a search and a couple of clicks total.
That’s many, many more useless mouse clicks than I should engage in, if I want to keep my carpal tunnel syndrome from flaring up.
So I’ve ditched Twitter.
It’s not my preferred method for social interaction — I prefer a medium with more room for nuanced remarks (which Twitter’s 140-characters-per-post precludes). I thought it might be good for word-of-mouth advertising of The Winds of Winter, however, so I was taking part in writers’ chats and carrying on other individual conversations. But this recent policy of Twitter’s means it’s just too darned much work for any possible return.
There are definitely people I’m going to miss. I probably won’t run into them much anywhere else, as I’m not much of a blog-commenter. I regret it.
Goodbye, Twitter.
The Slaying of Sigurd and the Passing of Brynhild
February 20th, 2010
I have added three more sections to the unabridged version of William Morris’ epic poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs. This bring us to the end of Book III. Next is Book IV: Gudrun.
The Darkest Day
February 7th, 2010
I’ve uploaded a new section of William Morris’ Sigurd the Volsung, unabridged. This latest scene is the one I find most wrenching in all the poem.
Later: I have uploaded two more scenes also. We are nearing the end of Book III.
Work proceeds on The Winds of Winter. I’m working on adding a scene to the mid-section of the story. After that, I have only the ending left to write.
The Will of the Norns is Accomplished
January 24th, 2010
I’ve uploaded a new section of William Morris’ Sigurd the Volsung, unabridged. I find this one of the two most painful sections of the story. (The other is coming up.)
The pneumonia is interfering with my work a lot, but I’ve made some progress on The Winds of Winter. I’ve begun the last interpolated scene. I have some minor editing for tone to do, and the end scene(s) to write. I’m pleased overall.
I’ve got pneumonia
January 13th, 2010
Things are moving slowly around here because I’ve got pneumonia, and I don’t have the spare energy to write elaborate posts. I’ll keep uploading new parts of Sigurd, however.
I’m making pretty decent progress on the poem, and on some projects unrelated to fiction-writing.
The Disaster Deepens: Sigurd the Volsung
January 8th, 2010
I’ve uploaded a new section of William Morris’ epic poem Sigurd the Volsung, unabridged. In this, Sigurd, forgetting the past, woos Brynhild for Gunnar.
The Wedding of Sigurd
January 1st, 2010
A new section of the unabridged version of William Morris’ epic poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs.
Microsoft’s Broken CSS
December 26th, 2009
I uninstalled Internet Explorer 8, and I’ve just noticed that the journal pages don’t look right in IE 7. I’m too busy writing to feel like fixing it now.
In fact, I may be too tired of Microsoft’s weird inability to write browsers that handle normal CSS to fix it, period. The page looks fine in Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome, and it was OK in IE8 when I had IE8 installed.
But I’ll have a look at it, sooner or later, just to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid with the journal CSS.
Writing vs. Writing About Writing
December 23rd, 2009
In spite of having emergency dental work that included two root canals, and in spite of a persistent case of influenza and the perpetual headaches it seems to have left me with, I’ve made a highly productive time out of the last couple of months.
I’ve done a lot of work on The Winds of Winter:
- I finished three scenes near the end of the poem. That leaves me with the last scene (or perhaps two more scenes) to write. I now know how the whole plot develops, and it’s only a matter of execution.
- I’ve rewritten two scenes at the beginning of the poem, to improve the story setup.
- I wrote another scene that belongs in the revised beginning — either the whole thing, or the guts of it. Maybe I’ll decide it needs a few lines of fleshing out, but I’ve got most of it.
All of this means that I’m well on track to finishing the first draft of The Winds of Winter this year — probably early this year — after ten years! (I started writing it in 1999.)
And that’s why I’ve been quiet. I write about writing when my story is stalled — when I’m too tired to keep writing metered verse, or when I’ve hung up on the plot, or don’t know how to approach a scene. When my story-writing is going well, I don’t want to interrupt it for complicated essays about writing.
So I’ve been story-writing.
Merry Christmas, all.
