But the black notecards mean, "Oh [expletive of choice], I hope I remember what I meant by this note by the time I'm done with this stupid draft." There aren't many of them, but sometimes my choice of mnemonics leaves something to be desired, even internally. Anybody got any idea what I would have meant by "tientäjä flight times"? Would it help if I told you that no one is supposed to fly anywhere until the book I haven't written yet, so it has to be shorthand for something, and I don't know what?
And you know what? I'm going to have to stop on the way home from lunch with
songwind and get more notecards. That's not the direction this is supposed to go! Fewer notecards, not more!No, no. Deep breaths. More is good because more means I have those issues identified and organized rather than just having them floating out there ruining my book. We embrace the notecards. Yes.
I am using my mail from
palinade to mark my place in matociquala's book. It's sitting on top of a letter to yhlee. I'm sure I could make this livejournallier if I tried.(In college, Danny Pearson and I used to joke about name-dropping Ralston people. We'd say, with elaborately casual tones, "So I was talking to
scottjames the other day...." And the other person would feign awe: "You know scottjames? Oh, wowwwww...what's he like in person?" This is much less funny once some of your friends think others of your friends actually are big-name famous people.)Anyway, the thing about Bear's book is, it's the sort of thing I want to read and not the sort of thing I want to write. Isn't that nice of her? I call it friendly-like. For rehashed Shadowrun, it's really not too bad!
(For those of you who don't read Bear's journal: I am kidding. She got a very silly bad review on Amazon, and the best thing to do with bad reviews is to mock them. Especially when they miss major bits of worldbuilding in order to make their own political points. "Daring to become a non-white superpower"? Umm...did this reviewer miss all the references to Malaysia? What color does he think they are in Malaysia? Ahem. Anyway. Point is: if you're going to write a bad review of a book, make sure you write a bad review of that book and not some unrelated mental construct of your own. You can come up with nits to pick in nearly every book. Pulling them out of your various orifices is not useful to anyone.)
