Wednesday, 06 October 2004

Things are going along okay.

I haven't gotten much writing done, but I've just had an exciting idea, so I've got that to work on.

I also had a small, tactical idea. In general, I don't like to start stories with the character's name. That is, I don't like stories that start, "John hoisted his backpack and set off...." So, I often put a lot of effort into coming up with some more clever way to start a story. Some first sentence or two or three that sets the scene, indicates the conflict, foreshadows the conclusion of the story. The problem is, that's really hard to do before the story is written. Even if I know generally how the story comes out, it's hard. So, my tactical idea is, in first drafts I'll just go ahead and start stories with character's names. Then I'll come back and fix it in the second draft.

I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

I ran more than 15 miles last week, including a 5-mile run on Saturday on the trails at Allerton Park. Since then, I've gotten almost no exercise (except we lifted weights this morning). It's too cold and too dark in the morning for exercising to be any fun. And, the past three days, I've been too tired after work to squeeze a run in before dark. (And the time for that is rapidly drawing to a close anyway.) I need to come up with some sort of a plan.

I have been doing some read. I finished Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, which was wonderful. I also read Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archive which was also wonderful, and as a side benefit gave me part of my new idea. The other part of my idea came from reading The Iron Council, which is very good, but which I didn't find quite as interesting as China Miéville's previous work. I'm enjoying it, though, and am looking forward to the second half.

Not much other news. Went to the dentist. Upgraded my firewall machine.

The short days are getting to me already. It's a bad sign that it's happening this early in the fall.

As I say, I need to come up with a plan for fitting in exercise and writing into the short cold days of winter.

I'm working on it.