Barely visible goalpoasts, or lapcounters, or somesuch…

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Happy Autumn, everyone… welcome to my favorite time of year. Here’s what late September looks like today, in Vancouver, at some spiffy pricey homes near Granville Island:

Posh Lake

In August, I made an arbitrary decision to finish drafting the current novel in progress. By mid-month, though, it was obvious I needed a little more time. I mentioned this to a fellow writer at Kelly’s office picnic and she pointed out that September 21st was the official first day of fall, so I reset the deadline accordingly.

And it is done! It’s Frankensteined and far from beautiful, but I’ve done this enough times now to know that beauty will come. (And, actually, it’s more polished than my usual finished drafts.)

Next up: a short story revision, looking over Blue Magic page proofs, possibly a new short story draft, then polishing, polishing, polishing. I also need to decide if I’m gonna do something akin to NanoWrimo—Spike is, I believe, and I’m tempted to join her. Who else might be in for some November word-crunching?

Exquisite words revisits Eighties Horror

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A nice little bit of stage-setting from Peter Straub’s Shadowland. He gives you the images without saying, specifically “there’s a desk here, a candle there.” Your imagination paints in the corridor easily, given the basic set pieces–staircase, desks, firelight and the boys. You get that first day of school anxiety, too, and in the broken fuse, a sense of something already gone wrong.

Registration Day: 1958
A dark corridor, a staircase with an abrupt line of light bisecting it at one end, desks with candles dripping wax into saucers lined along a wall. A fuse had blown or a wire had died, and the janitor did not come until the next morning, when the rest of the school registered. Twenty new freshmen milled directionlessly in the long corridor, even the exceptinally suntanned faces looking pale and frightened in the candlelight.

Blurgh, Tube

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I rarely admit it publicly when I’m under the weather, as the primary symptom of every little bug I pick up can be characterized as “really doesn’t appreciate unsolicited medical advice.” This time is no exception, but I will say I am having my annual September go-round with germs, and it’s eaten into what I hoped would be a pocket of time and energy I’d set aside for blogging and working out. Next week, maybe, that’ll come together.

In the meantime, it’s cool enough to have the fire on, which is comforting and delightful and something of a relief.

I will say a few short things about TV, though: the best things about the first new episode of Inspector Lewis were its title (“Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things”) and Laurence Fox’s hair. The plot had about as much cause and effect as a bowl of overcooked spaghetti; if there was a Huh? award, it would rate one. Made me sad, it did. I love me my Lewis.

Doctor Who: loved “Let’s Kill Hitler,” especially all the Rory content, but felt meh about “The Girl who Waited,” which seemed to me to be an attempt to water down five minutes of potentially powerful emotion into twenty-five minutes of really coulda done something else there.

Progress through Torchwood has stalled midway, also due to plotfail.

Finally, I saw the Ringer pilot. This, I thought, had some promise: there’s enough of a plot there, at least, to get me interested, Sarah Michelle Gellar was well-cast, Ioan Gruffudd was a welcome surprise, and there were enough teeny ambiguous story elements in play to make it seem as though the possibilities are–if not endless–multidirectional. I’ve seen it characterized as noirish, and I’m not entirely sure I agree. Then again, I’m no noir expert, and I’m willing to wait and see.

Next week brings us Castle (and many other crime shows, returning and new) and the return of Glee.

Exquisite Words hopes to make you giggle

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There are a lot of kinds of humor and everyone laughs at different things, but I think it takes a real gift to make any reader laugh out loud using prose–because so much of funny is about tone and expression and context. Where you get that back, with just text, is voice and one of the many things worth admiring about Vonnegut–and the reason he makes me laugh–is that he had voice to burn.

If I may insert a personal note at this point: When I was alive, I often received advice from my own big brain which, in terms of my own survival, or the survival of the human race, for that matter, can be charitably described as questionable. Example: It had me join the United States Marines and go fight in Vietnam. Thanks a lot big brain.

–Kurt Vonnegut Jr., GALAPAGOS

On a completely other note, I am playing with an app called Tripcolor, to see if it would be a good way to send Italy pics to you all over the holidays and make you totally jealous. Hmmm, that doesn’t make it sound like a good idea. Anyway, said playing is happening here.