tadhg.com » fiction http://tadhg.com/wp Wherein some things Tadhg are discussed Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:50:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Fiction Organization http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/24/fiction-organization/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/24/fiction-organization/#comments Sun, 24 May 2009 23:04:21 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/?p=1723 I made a WordPress page containing a list of all the fiction I’ve published on this blog. I had to do this by hand, because it appears difficult to get a reasonable list using various WordPress approaches (such as tags). The page I created is hardly a masterpiece of user interface design (I hope to improve it significantly over time), but it’s better than what was there previously.

I will end up making it more complicated from a code point of view, because I want to be able to display by each link the publication date and some of the tags of the piece—and I don’t want to have to edit those by hand. This mix of manual selection and arbitrary tagging isn’t handled very well by the current WordPress functionality, which isn’t that surprising. I did think it would be slightly easier to achieve than it looks like it will be, however.

The series plugin I hope to write at some point would address some of the issues, by making it easy to get a list of links to each piece in a series, but even that wouldn’t address the lists that aren’t series.

One of the problems is with tagging. Partly it’s a nomenclature/overloading issue: I use the “fiction” and “writing” tags to mean not just my fiction and writing, but also the works of others and commentary on fiction and writing. For some reason the notion of a “my fiction” tag is unappealing to me.

The notion of a “my favorites” tag even less appealing. I don’t mind putting together a list of the pieces that I’m most happy with, but somehow tagging each one of them as a favorite seems extremely cheesy. That might be nomenclature again, and I could perhaps get around it somehow by having a less cloying name for the tag. I need to think about that one further and see if I can figure out just what the problem is.

Until I do, though, having all of my fiction work handily linked from one page is a significant advance (the power of HTML!). Use it to find stories of mine to read or re-read—and, hopefully, enjoy.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/24/fiction-organization/feed/ 1 pafib #6 http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/22/pafib-6/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/22/pafib-6/#comments Sat, 23 May 2009 06:00:38 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/?p=1711 I ask you, what have I come to? Where is the glory? Have I ever sensed it, felt it, possessed it? Or have I only watched it, a voyeur, trying to warm myself with the feats of others, the fires their passions have ignited? Where are the heights to which I have ascended, when behind myself I see only hillocks?

Now it may be too late to wonder where those things are. My span is limited, and I have not set foot upon the paths to the high peaks. Now it may be time to ask if those things are beyond me. My time will pass, the remaining inclines are steep indeed, and perhaps further out of reach than ever.

I look back and see mostly waste. Not merely waste, of course. There are many good things, many lovely things, many interesting things. Certainly some time spent well. Not enough of it, and none of it in true striving. The time spent poorly looms, vast masses of it surrounding the glittering highlights, obscuring them, pushing them far, aside, and under.

I look forward and see futility. Not merely futility, of course. There may be good things, rather fewer than in the past, but some good things. Not enough. Not enough of them to counter regret from the past and the crushing burden of despair caused by knowing I can learn from but not act upon the lessons of the past.

Now is, as ever, the time to decide whether I should abandon some of those plans for times ahead that yet remain. To concede that failure is not merely a fact of the past but of the future. Yet that acceptance is itself a goal like all the others and as such similarly prone to defeat, equally likely to fail.

Without reaching for the sky, what remains of significance for me? Without the cloak of hope to fitfully occlude the inevitability of falling shorter and ever shorter, how can I act? Is all that I have left a long, or all too brief, accelerating descent into the depths, the deeps, the abyss? I ask you, what have I come to?

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/05/22/pafib-6/feed/ 0 pafib #5 http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/02/16/pafib-5/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/02/16/pafib-5/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:43:53 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/?p=1380 I lose myself and it all goes away. All of the innumerable questions, all of the striving, all the wondering, the floundering, doubt. As I lose identity it takes those and other anchors with it. Spinning through experience, cut free, matter and concepts are indistinguishable and enveloping. They blend, cocoon-like, and soon the only distinction is between all and time.

All swirls and shifts as what had before been separate becomes one, and relinquishes shape, color and texture, draining off markers of distinction. Those markers fade, and all goes still. Remains still. Is still. Within this stillness, the absence of movement or action expands. Spreads past, outside, all, taking in the final piece. All, one, time, also, one. Only. All.

Nothing. A flicker. A flicker of awareness of difference, the possibility of difference, alien difference, difference implying, necessitating conceptually, a state that could encompass difference where before or after there had been no difference a state of either past or future and time broke back into itself can only pass with an observer and that meant required an aware I.

With I, all shattered into fragments, disconnected entities that make up the world. With each fragment, a name. With each name, a thought. With each thought, associations. Memories. Experiences. Personality. A whirling maze of infinite shifting connections, but a maze with a perceiving center in which I found myself. I was myself and in the world and surrounded by things.

I stagger. I look around and see them, these things, glaring in their concreteness. I cannot feel them, and then realize I can no longer feel the self that did feel them, or the self from before that, or the self at the start of this thought. I have myself, this disjointed mass of pathways, but I cannot feel it.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2009/02/16/pafib-5/feed/ 0 Chunk of Beginning http://tadhg.com/wp/2008/05/12/chunk-of-beginning/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2008/05/12/chunk-of-beginning/#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 01:24:37 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2008/05/12/chunk-of-beginning/ I don’t really know what this is, apart from looking like the start of a fantasy story, but it fell into my head, more or less in one piece, this morning:

I was four years old, and didn’t really understand, but the lightning remains vivid. I don’t remember my father distinctly, at that moment of his death or otherwise. I don’t remember the mage’s face or even the color of his robes. In my mind’s eye they are unfocused figures, and between them is the lightning, so stark, so bright, so unnaturally blue.

My memory tells me that it was darker blue at the edges, lighter in the middle, and that it started as a solid wave before breaking into six tendrils, each terminating at the body of my father.

I’m sure about the color.

The memory also has no sound except for the crackling. No screams, no incanting, no burning. No smell of burning either, or of home, just the strange smell of electric discharge.

That was twenty-six years ago, and now I have caught a glimpse of the shadow cast by his killer.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2008/05/12/chunk-of-beginning/feed/ 3 Some Notes on Editing the Second Draft http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/10/some-notes-on-editing-the-second-draft/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/10/some-notes-on-editing-the-second-draft/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:46:49 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/10/some-notes-on-editing-the-second-draft/ I finished the second draft nine days behind schedule, which in the overall scheme of things isn’t that bad a slip. It turned out to be extremely difficult to maintain a steady approach to the editing, unlike either the micronovel version or the first 35 episodes of AFBH, two projects of similar duration that I completed successfully (and on time) last year.

AFBH was a similar commitment in terms of time-per-day. What made that easier in comparison to the editing was that it was extremely predictable: doing it consisted of watching the episode, reading the appropriate section of the book, taking notes, and writing up each well-defined section.

The editing, however, varied from session to session, so that some days I had to cut heavily (at about a five-to-one ratio), other days I had to significantly fatten sections that I had merely sketched out, and sometimes I had to write entirely new material. Switching between those things was quite difficult. Most difficult of all was writing new material that I hadn’t planned out. Despite having worked on the thing for so long, significant chunks remained unplanned, and doing the task of working things into the plot while trying to stick to the daily routine was extremely tough for me.

I finally got unstuck with the remaining parts of the last two chapters when I divided them into five-hundred word chunks and came up with what each chunk should contain. That sounds obvious, but writing isn’t always like that for me, and often flows without that kind of planning. I might not need that kind of detailed plan all the time, but I apparently do need it to fall back on when struggling.

I’m not going to touch that novel for quite some time. Editing it was quite a stressful experience, and I need to let it go for a while. Going over deadline, and struggling to finish it while failing to do so, was not a pleasant experience.

I did find the daily public status reports to be a useful motivational tool. I really, really hated writing that I hadn’t made any progress, and so would often be forced by that to work on the editing, which tended to get easier once I started it. It didn’t always get easier, however, which accounts for a number of those “no progress” updates. The downside is the same as the upside—I couldn’t stand writing those posts stating that I didn’t make any progress. On the days where, for whatever reason, I knew I simply wouldn’t be able to get editing done, it was very unpleasant to put out an update.

Those updates probably shouldn’t be entire posts on the main page of my site, either. Thanks to my readers, as usual, and to everyone who gave me encouragement.

I’m extremely happy to have finished that second draft. Happy and relieved, and optimistic about future projects.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/10/some-notes-on-editing-the-second-draft/feed/ 1 SF Novel Second Draft Done http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/09/sf-novel-second-draft-done/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/09/sf-novel-second-draft-done/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:48:41 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/08/sf-novel-second-draft-done/ Yes, done

It’s been quite a struggle. that’s not too surprising, given that I’ve been wrestling with this draft for almost five years, the novel for almost six.

And now the second draft is done, and I’m going to leave it alone for a long time.

The truth is taht I’m not that happy with it. I knew that I wouldn’t be that happy with it when I started this latest attempt to get the second draft done. I found the editing extremely hard, and I also just didn’t feel that I knew how to solve a number of deep problems with the novel. I still don’t.

I suspect that people who read it are going to say, “You spent five years on this?” I imagine that after that, they’ll pointedly say, “Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler in three weeks, you know.”

But it’s done. The first draft was unreadable, a colossal mess of almost 200,000 words. This version, while it might be a bad novel, at least passes as something that counts as a novel. So now I have a screenplay I’m proud of, a bad novel, and a number of short stories (some of them good) under my belt.

The next novel (which I intend to start early next year) will be better.

I appear to have lost seventy-four words along the way somewhere, but given the late-night nature of a lot of my posts, that might be an addition problem rather than being actually short in the word count.

Word count: 79926

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/09/sf-novel-second-draft-done/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C14 Stalled Once More http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/08/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled-once-more/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/08/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled-once-more/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2007 07:47:56 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/08/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled-once-more/ Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/08/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled-once-more/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C14 Still Stalled http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/07/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-still-stalled/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/07/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-still-stalled/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:55:37 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/07/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-still-stalled/ I’ll do my best to finish over the next two days.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/07/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-still-stalled/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C14 Stalled http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/06/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/06/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:55:31 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/06/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled/ No progress. I’m stalled again. It’s unbelievabley frustrating to be stalled so close to the end. Hopefully I’ll get over it soon. One long burst of activity would finish the damn thing.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/06/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-stalled/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C14 In Progress http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/05/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-in-progress/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/05/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-in-progress/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:53:24 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/05/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-in-progress/ Little progress tonight, despite the word count. The chasm between “writing” and “not writing” as states feels like it’s widening, making it harder to go from one ot the other. It was like that at the start, and when I got stalled in the middle. I have to assume that will is what it takes to flip the switch, but an inadequate explanation of the concept of will has always undermined the usefulness of that assumption.
Word count: 72034

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/05/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c14-in-progress/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C13 http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/04/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/04/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:51:20 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/04/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13/ Paraphrased from an episode of The Wire I watched earlier (when I should have been editing): “Make your number, or die in this room.” For tonight, at least, I made my number.
Word count: 69259

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/04/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C13 Not Yet Done http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13-not-yet-done/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13-not-yet-done/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:58:49 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13-not-yet-done/ Thirteen doesn’t appear to be lucky today. Not that much to do, but it’s currently beyond me.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c13-not-yet-done/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C12 http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c12/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c12/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:12:03 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c12/ I think I can see the finish line.
Word count: 63926

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/03/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c12/feed/ 0 Second Draft Not Quite There http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/second-draft-not-quite-there/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/second-draft-not-quite-there/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:58:29 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/second-draft-not-quite-there/ Obviously, I didn’t finish the second draft in November. I didn’t manage it by the end of this weekend, either. I’m close. Very close, probably about six thousand words of writing away, which isn’t too bad given the target of eighty thousand.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish it today (or Friday, but an extra weekend wasn’t too bad). I’ll try to finish it tomorrow, but it looks unlikely, unless I get some serious inspiration for what those six thousand words should be… the end of the first draft is a little more sparse than I had thought. I need about an extra thousand words for Chapter Thirteen, and an extra two-and-a-half thousand each for Fourteen and Fifteen. Certainly doable, but not tonight.

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/second-draft-not-quite-there/feed/ 1 SF Novel Second Draft Update C11 http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c11/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c11/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:29:41 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c11/ Four to go.
Word count: 58594

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/02/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c11/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C10 http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/01/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/01/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:59:08 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/01/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10/ Done. Five to go.
Word count: 53262

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]]> http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/12/01/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10/feed/ 0 SF Novel Second Draft Update C10 Delayed Again http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/11/30/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10-delayed-again/ http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/11/30/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10-delayed-again/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:57:23 +0000 Tadhg http://tadhg.com/wp/2007/11/30/sf-novel-second-draft-update-c10-delayed-again/ Another long day. So I fail to hit my target of the end of the month, but I’m still going to aim for the end of the weekend. Finishing the second draft only two days behind schedule would still make me rather happy.

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