nalo's blog

I'm at 6,916 words.  Some of them:

It started running around in the middle of the intersection. People in the street scattered out of the way. Some of the cops tried to make a human cordon around the thing, but the rest of them were too busy wiping slime out of their eyes to be any use.

"It looks upset," I said.

Ben kissed his teeth. "Don't be stupid, girl. It don't have a face. So how you going to know if it's upset or not?"

"Rich ran around in circles like that the day I dropped his iPod and broke it."

I majored in Russian and French in undergrad, but that was lo these many decades ago.  I want to put a couple of Russian phrases into my novel-in-progress, but I'm rusty, in my own odd way.  Didn't take me long to figure out how to say, "Would you be tasty?", but I'm a little rocky on the conjugation when it comes to a phrase as simple as "Come here".  If you wanted to say, "Come here" in Russian and you were speaking на ты, would it be "идёшь сюда"? 

Synecdoche, cod liver oil burps.

_Taint_ is up to 6,312 words.  That's 1,042 words for the day.  I had some bad news last night, so it was a nice contrast today to spend some time in jewel-coloured worlds with magic eggshells in them.  Sometimes writing seems like a job, and sometimes it's play.  Today, it was play that lightened my heart enough that I was able to gain some perspective on my bad news.  It's difficult, but not devastating.

And now, of course, I'm wondering whether the tone that today's writing took is too silly, and I'm trying to figure out how to balance the whimsical with the consequences of, for instance, having a piece of heavy debris land on an uninvolved bystander.  (The crushed police cars I'm not so worried about.)  But I'll fret about those things more when I have a manuscript upon which to inflict said fretting.

Today's research topics: Russian folklore; dietary deficiencies in birds; medicinal uses of hawthorn.

Names of moves in popping and street dance; Mac cosmetics; the names of different kinds of mangos; the name of that Chinese-Caribbean grocery up on the Danforth, east of Woodbine, north side of the street.

Those are all for the novel-in-progress.  Part of the fun of writing science fiction and fantasy is the research.  I didn't think I'd enjoy it when I first embarked on this path.  I was not the most diligent student when I was in school.  But it turns out that when I'm passionately interested in a story I'm writing, it's relatively easy to be interested in doing the research that makes that story plausible.  Who thought I would ever care what a non-Newtonian fluid is?  Well, thank goodness I had to find out for Blackheart Man.  Else I might never have known how much fun oobleck is.

Speaking of research; does anyone know the name of the move that Ciara does in this video near the end? It's between 2:44 and 2:53; it's the one where from the top of her head to her knees her body's nearly parallel to the floor.  Robert Muraine does what looks like a version of it here, between 1:51 and 1:54.

My young adult fantasy novel Taint is up to 5,270 words.  I'm considering changing the title, but I'll figure that out later.  My protagonist is beginning to develop her own voice and mannerisms.  I'm still working up to the "all hell breaks loose" scene.  And I'm researching the names of some of the moves in popping and street dancing.  I should look for some classes.  There are plenty of dance schools near me.