Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

1. Had my dental cleaning. No crowns or fillings needed!

2. Revised Friday's scene in the new short story.

3. Written another scene in the new short story.

4. Read forums at thegradcafe.com

5. Poked some of the links from the collection.

Need to:

1. Organize the massive flood of information into some semblance of order so I can
2. Make sense of it and figure out which schools I even want to consider applying to.

I sent in my application for Viable Paradise. I sent the electronic version yesterday and put the hard copy in the mail today.

Now I wait until the end of June to find out whether they think I'm a good fit this time. Gah.

My new computer arrived today, and not a moment too soon. As those of you who follow me on twitter know, the USB ports on my old MacBook have almost completely failed. They've been flaky as hell for a while, but they've finally crapped out. It wouldn't recognize a thumb drive I plugged in. It used to be that one was flaky but the other was OK, but yesterday neither of them worked right.

So while I was migrating things from old computer to new, I made some notes for a short story that's been an idea jotted down in a notebook since February or March, judging by the notes after it (from StellarCon).

Problem is, I need a good brainstorming session to figure out the key plot points (and what time period it's set in). Ben and I talked a little, and he gave me a couple good ideas, but I still haven't figured out the crux of the piece. :P (I also don't know if I want it to be dark fantasy or magical realism-ish fantasy with some spookiness. There are ghosts, see.)

I don't know. I can let it cook some more, maybe have something for my writers' group on Tuesday. I need someone to ask me questions, let me bounce ideas around, maybe make suggestions that spark ideas.

Argh.

I'm using the formula discussed here to attempt to dissect the film "The Lives of Others" as practice for figuring out my own characters' motivations.

Definitions:
protagonist: the main character. Has a goal.
antagonist: places obstacles in protag's path.
relationship/dynamic character: has been through it before, gives advice. Conversation between them & protag that gives theme. At end, convo is revisited, reconcile protag/antag.

Plot summary: Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler performs surveillance on writer Georg Dreyman. After a while, he begins to like Dreyman and starts protecting him. Dreymann, meanwhile, loses a friend to suicide and writes a treatise on suicide in the DDR, which he gets help to publish in the west.

( spoilers & length )

I don't know if I've successfully done character analysis on this or not. If you've seen the movie, what do you think? Do you agree with my decisions or not?

Someone on twitter mentioned that Amazon had the Blu-Ray set of Generation Kill for $23.99, so I had Ben order it. (Pay with Points is the best thing ever.) We're one disk in, and it's pretty interesting. It's about a Marine recon squad at the invasion of Iraq, based on a book by the Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright. They swear a lot and use a lot of ableist, homophobic language (which, I suppose, is pretty realistic...), and it's hard to keep track of who's who. Other than that, I like it fairly well.

I crocheted a cover for my Kobo. It's not as big as I'd wanted it to be, because I didn't have enough yarn, but it works well enough. I may decide to sew one, make it a two-sided thing with a spot for my phone on the other side. That'll require some planning & engineering first, and I'll need to make sure I have some good interfacing floating around (or go buy some).

I made some edits on Something based on the feedback I've gotten so far, and I'm mulling one suggestion that I think has merit but I'm not sure I can pull it off without being all telling. I'll see what the last two readers have to say when they get back to me later this week.

I need to write up several reviews and one set of beta notes. I think I'll work on that this afternoon.

Our neighbor brought us oatmeal scotchies yesterday. Nom nom.

My football club is full of drama and ridiculousness right now. The coach didn't want to extend his contract, the management wanted him to; he kept dancing around the subject in the media (which he said is because the management asked him to); this week the club said he hadn't told them months ago. He was fired, and they're talking about bringing this other guy in and he's not a very good coach (43% overall win ratio...) and BLAH DRAMA LLAMA GO AWAY.

It's raining right now, quietly. I've been hearing this light rustling through my open window for a while now.

Isis has been sick lately. ( feline digestion )

At least we hadn't given her her insulin already, like the first time. Checked her blood sugar, and it was 407. She got a second feeding and her shot. She was limping really badly yesterday, so I called the vet and asked it we could give her some tramadol we had left from a different cat's dental cleaning. Isis doesn't fall for the hairball gel trick, so I had to give her some more food (on her already-wonky blood sugar). She was all stoned the rest of the day. Today, after 2 doses of fish oil, she's less limpy, which is good. And her blood sugar was only 200 this morning, which is a lot more normal.

I'm working on the synopsis of Iron and Rust. This draft is going to be 6-7 pages, and if I want to send it as the Kickstarter reward submission packet review thing, I have to get it down to 5. I may go through and extend it to 10 pages at some point, then also cut it down to 2 pages and 1 page, since those are the common requested synopsis lengths, and a girl ought to be prepared.

Then again, I have a few dropped plot threads I need to tie off and a few "more tension!" moments to fix, so I'll be changing it anyway. May as well wait until I've done all that to fix it up nice.

I changed my thyroid medicine again. I dropped down to 10 mcg of T3 after noticing I was really irritable and that my tinnitus was back. (Irritatingly, it happens for both high and low thyroid for me. Makes it a fun guessing game.) Since I've recently gone up on my T4, which is converted to T3, it's possible I was getting a little high on that end. I'm still having tinnitus for much of the day, but it's gone when I wake up. I'll give it a few more days to balance out (it needs about a week to reach steady state). I should probably call my dr and let her know I adjusted my meds. I may go down further if this tinnitus doesn't abate. I'll know pretty quickly if it's too low, because I get The Nausea. I lasted about a week when we dropped my T3 last month before feeling awful.

I'm doing things with people this weekend! I'll be missing the second half of Werder Bremen: Hertha BSC on Sunday, but I can download it if I have to. Twitter can keep me posted.

And next weekend, we're going to Asheville with Ben's parents and brother. We're staying in the same B&B Ben & I stayed at for our anniversary 2 years ago. There will be hiking (yay -_-) and the Biltmore and food and (hopefully) Beth (who is awesome & giving us comp tickets, so we only have to buy 1)! Our usual catsitter has a second job at the vet school hospital, and the backup one locally had problems with Isis (who growled and clawed and pissed and shat). The usual sitter hasn't gotten back to us, either, which is frustrating, because she's the only one Isis doesn't hate. Probably because she shows no fear of the crazy evil tortie.

We may have to do separate vacations for the foreseeable future if this keeps up. Especially at holidays. (And, joy, I really want to go to my mom's house by myself! It's so much fun!) I could ask if mom & co want to come here for Thanksgiving, but she doesn't drive that far, Grandpa shouldn't drive that far anymore (he's 87, and his artificial hip hitches if he sits too long), and my sister works retail, so she has to work that Friday. Which pretty much means it's always me going to them. We already have plans (but no plane tickets) for New Year's in St Louis, and I may end up begging off. The new catsitter charged us extra last time because she had to bring a helper and spent a lot of time dealing with the evil hissing beast (and wore WELDING GLOVES to give her shot), and at $15 a visit, 2 visits a day, times two for the helper/trouble charge, those 4 days away become 8 in catsitting fees. With me not getting any hours at all, we can't afford the extra charges. (And subsequent vet bills because Isis' blood sugar is whacked out due to stress and she gets sick again.)

It doesn't really help that I don't like Family Togetherness Time (tm).

Because the internet lacks a sarcasm tag, and we haven't invented a punctuation mark to denote it, all the authors I listed yesterday as "not actually science fiction" was sarcasm.

I'm currently reading one of Drake's RCN novels, which are based on the same source material (a Napoleonic-era British sailor's diary) as O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin books (Master and Commander, ff). O'Brian set his in the Age of Sail; Drake set his in a distant future where people have colonized space.

Drake's Hammer's Slammers novels are not-very-loosely based on his time serving in Vietnam, and set in a future where people have colonized space (and hire mercenaries to fight their battles for them). (If you like gritty military SF and you haven't read these, the first collection is excellent.)

Bujold's Vor of Barrayar are based on the imperial Prussians (with some influence of Czarist Russia), with purposeful similarities to Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey stories and the occasional reference to Georgette Heyer (especially A Civil Campaign).

Cherryh's Foreigner books aren't specifically based on real Earth history, as far as I know, but the parallel between clueless humans (presumably white people) stumbling into more complicated alien politics than they thought and colonialist Europeans drawing borders in Africa and central Asia that ignored the existing people's affiliations is there, even if you don't squint too hard.

Her Alliance-Union books are, like much space opera, the Age of Sail in space, with long journeys between various human establishments (be they colonies on stations or on planets), trade, pirates, a too-powerful Earth Company (a la the East India Company), politics, rabble, and the like.

LeGuin's books are generally anthropological in nature, especially the Hainish ones. The concept there is that the Hain seeded the universe with people, and they left them to develop/evolve under different conditions. Eventually, some group of them discovers space flight (or the Hain teach them? I'm not sure), and they go from planet to planet to observe the natives and eventually ask them to join their league of worlds (the Ekumen). They're quite brilliant.

And these are all science fiction, regardless of what some purist genre-snob thinks.

I got the rejection email from Viable Paradise. The letter said they received way more applications than they could accept and they could not accept me. (Though I think there's a typo, because they couldn't have accepted 28 people...) It's also "not an indicator that your work was subpar in any way" and the instructors "strongly suggest that you apply to VP 16 next year."

Do I read that as "yes, please, you should apply next year" or "we're just saying that, because everybody we reject gets the same letter"? (Hello, little insecurities.) I mean, I can't imagine anyone who's not serious about writing would go to the trouble of sending in the application form (and $25 fee) for something that'll cost them $2000 all told (tuition, hotel for a week, travel).

Argh.

So I guess I'll revise the story I applied with, especially the parts I've been told were too infodump-y (I still have NO IDEA where else I can work them in), and send it out to other places. Starting with Lightspeed, because they give lightspeed rejections and I can send it out elsewhere within 48 hours. (When I met the assistant editor at ReaderCon last year, she said, "try us first!" because they won't hold on to the story forever unless they want it.)

But for today, the plan is this:
- hem the other edge of this pretty remnant and finish making it a wrap/shawl thing. Sadly, the first hemmed edge is kind of rough-looking, because the second fold was bigger than I wanted it to be. (I have to French seam it, because it's likely to fray.)
- play more Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3.
- if I need to give my wrists a break, watch more Gundam Wing.

I wrote three paragraphs and deleted five, for a net of -165 words. But I actually worked on The Novel, so that's a start.

I had a cup of black tea with breakfast and 2 of green with lunch, and judging from my inability to focus on anything, that may have been a mistake, since I've been mostly off caffeine since Thanksgiving. So I learned for next time.

So my author bio in the back of my books can read "When Hertha is playing, you can find her in the Olympic Stadium." (Or, if I get published in Germany, "Wann Hertha spielt, findet man sie in der Ostkurve.") Because you know that's what I'd be doing on match days if I lived in Berlin, wearing blue and white.

I wonder if I'd need a work visa if I work as a writer for myself. Looking into it now would be rather premature.

I do have a horror that we sell the house, the cars, and a lot of furniture, ship the rest to Germany, and fail to thrive there, and have to come back, without a place to return to or any stuff (like cars and jobs). That doesn't mean I shouldn't try, you know? A trial period, a few months to see if I can find paying work, say, before selling the house and bringing Ben over, would help out. (I also have a horror of renting an apartment or finding a WG sight unseen. Maybe by then Chiara, the Italian gal in my Goethe class, will have moved there & I could borrow part of her floor while looking for a place to stay.)

Pity the Embassy probably doesn't need a pharmacist on site. I wouldn't even have to do anything for my licensure, since federal facilities only require licensure in a US state. (I could work in any VA or military base in the country on my NC license.)

It's that time of year when we make ourselves feel virtuous by saying we'll give up bad habits, or do a list of things. I'll break mine down by category.

Writing
- Finish revisions on Valkyrie One
- Prepare and send my VP application
- Completely revise Iron and Rust
- Outline next novel

Taiji
- Practice something every day
- Test for yellow sash (either end of 2011 or Metal Rabbit)

Fitness
- Keep going to Pilates at least once a week
- Add back the elliptical at least once a week

Life & home
- Fix the front yard
- Clean up the mess in front of my bookshelves
- Sell books & fancrap I don't need
- DECLUTTER
- Organize the sewing room (I'm scared to go in)
- Come up with a plan for moving to Berlin in 10-15 years
- Convince Ben this isn't a harebrained scheme
- Drink more Scotch

Work
- Get paid for something (there's not much on any temp/per diem/travel on any of the 3 agencies I know of that operate in NC. And I can't work outside NC, legally.)

I ought to sit down with paper and make detailed notes for how I want to accomplish some of these things (like yellow sash), because they're rather vague, and vague doesn't help me get shit done.

First, a question: what sort of posts do y'all like reading? I don't get many comments, even to posts that I think might generate some controversy, or at least thoughtful discussion. I'm not trolling for comments, here; just wondering if I'm boring everyone to death.

Idea
I have an idea for a post based on something A said months ago, about the difference between liberals and libertarians. It's sort of the synthesis of his comment, some comments leora made on facebook, and months of my brain working on the whole thing. The words "monstrous" and "inhuman" may be involved.

Illness update
Tinnitus persists. Cognitive issues, like difficulty finding words, are also there. It's sort of like trying to think with a migraine, except without the icepick in the skull. I've slept poorly the last two nights. The eye doctor saw nothing in my eyes, so no eyestrain or vision changes or other signs of disease that are visible in the eye. I may have found a cyclical pattern that maps to my menstrual cycle, joy. Appointment with the headache clinic is in about a week. Should also be about a week till my period starts again.

Football
Hertha beat SpVgg Greuther Fürth 2:0 on Friday, making them the only undefeated team in the pro Bundesliga (1st and 2nd), and putting them nicely on the top of the league table with 23 points (7x3 wins, 1x2 draws). Only 25 matches to go this season, and if they keep this up, they'll be back in the 1st league next September. Unfortunately two of our top players were injured in the match. Nikita Rukavytsya strained a thigh muscle and is out for two weeks, and captain Andre Mijatovic will be out for six with a knee ligament injury (outer ligament, Außenband). They join usual goalie Maikel Aerts (ACL, at least four more weeks) on the injured bench. Coach Markus Babbel can put 17-year-old Nico Schulz in for Ruka, which he did a few weeks ago when he banned Ruka for coming late to practice, and he's got another option or two for Mijatovic. The other GK, Marco Sejna, has done well the last two matches, except for one spectacular fumble Friday that came dangerously close to a goal for Fürth. He's kept a clean sheet so far, and the Hertha defense has only conceded 5 goals in 9 matches, which, actually, is the lowest number of conceded goals in the entire pro Bundesliga.

Wolfsburg, on the other hand, lost to Nürnberg 1:2 on Saturday. After 9 matches, they have 10 points (3-1-5) and are in 13th place. The defense has conceded 16 goals, on par with 15th place Schalke, and better than Bremen (18 goals, 8th place), Stuttgart (17, 14th), K'lautern (17, 15th), Gladbach (27!, 17th), Köln (17, 18th). Apparently, last year's Wolves had some issues with their defense, so Dieter Hoeneß (Uli of FC Bayern's brother) went out and bought some defensive players, including young Danish international Simon Kjaer and German international Arne Friedrich. Unfortunately, Arne hasn't been able to play this season thanks to a back injury, but he hopes to be back for the second half of the season. Adding to the defensive woes is the injury of goalkeeper Diego Benaglio (Swiss international). The team doesn't seem to have gelled yet, especially the defense. After the match, striker/captain Edin Dzeko expressed his frustration, stating that "we're not playing as a team." I get that sense from watching them on the field, myself.

Writing
I'm still in chapter 1 on revisions. It's been difficult to concentrate at times, and the ringing in my ears doesn't help. I'm going to use November's NaNoWriMo as motivation. I'm not participating, but I'll be using the framework to motivate myself to finish these revisions. I need deadlines to get things done.

To be addressed in a separate post
Sanity/Fear rally plans!

I've been poking around on the net, and a lot of the advice boils down to things like "set up separate business & personal accounts" and "keep track of EVERYTHING" and "in order for the IRS to consider it a business, not a hobby, you have to turn a profit 3 years out of 5."

Will I need to do all that crap when I start making royalty-based sales? I got the payment for Retro Spec, and it was $24 ($23 after paypal fees), which isn't enough to report as income.

Of course, the other main piece of advice is "when in doubt, ask your accountant." I, of course, don't *have* an accountant.

I know some of y'all are freelancers or self-employed; how do you do it?

So, apparently my inability to plot in an outline is detrimental. Potentially. (Well, I also wasn't sure I could fit the plot into the word limit.)

The anthology editor wanted a proposal before the story was written, to prevent multiple stories of the same storyline being included. So I sent her my synopsis, and we'll see what happens next.

The worst that can happen is she already has one of these and says no. In that case, I can send the story to other magazines (Lightspeed, perhaps; maybe F&SF, since they like actiony stuff).

I sent the email a few minutes ago. Now we just wait. And I work on revisions.

ETA: She replied, "Sounds good, thanks."

What does that mean? *_*

Marburg, Dez. 1996
Stille
Ruhe
neugefallener
fallender Schnee
im Dunkel gehe ich durch
die ruhige Strassen.
Schöne Lichter von den Läden
rufen mich an, einzukommen.
Ich drehe mich von denen Weg.
Der leisefallende Schnee ruft mich an -
Bleibe draussen. Komm doch - es ist schön
hier im Schnee.
Die Altstadt ruft mit ihren gelben Lichtern-
kannst alles hiervon sehen. Es ist ja schön.
Schau mal.
Ich steig die Treppen hoch, die mich in die Vergangenheit führen.
Ich schau die Stadt an.
Der Schnee rieselt auf die Strassen
auf die Lichter
auf die fröhliche Menschen, die
Hand im Hand durch die Stadt spazieren
auf mich, die alleine durch die Stadt geht -
allein, aber nicht einsam:
ich kann die Stimmen des Schnees
und der Stadt hören.

--23.9.2001

it's probably crap.