The Lost Kitten

Had a dream last night. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say there were two kittens. One plump and happy and outgoing. The other was smaller and shy. The two were sisters from the same litter (and thus, ostensibly, ought to have been the same size.) Insert all the random weirdness that is dreaming here. Until. Somewhere in all of that nonsense, I realized I hadn't seen shy kitten in a very long time. She hadn't come out to eat or anything. Uh oh. Cue the dramatic and heart-wrenching John Williams score. I HAD TO FIND HER. And I was scared to find her all at the same time for fear that I'd come across only her dry, shriveled up corpse. I did find her, curled up in a clothes drawer (even my subconscious gets cats) with her sister. She was tiny. Pitifully thin and wasted. But not dead. The dream ended with all of the emergency measures and plans to nurse her back to health.

Why tell you this? Because that kitten is writing.

I haven't written a single sentence on any story since the middle of November. (The kitten I haven't seen in a long time.) Sure, there are excuses and moderately good reasons for it. But the fact remains, I've been looking for that particular kitten for the past two weeks and with this dream, it's clear I'm holding a limp body in my hands - a body that's just about ready to give up unless I initiate some drastic intervention.

For the curious, the fat, outgoing kitten is day to day life - the things that suck up all of your attention when given the chance.

Funny. I know what to try for a sick kitten. Droppers of water and kitten formula. Warmth. Physical contact close to the heart (kittens cue off of mom's heart beat, so tucking a sick kitten against your skin close to your heart helps.) I don't know what to do for sick writing. Except maybe to approach it gently with the intention of dribbling in a few words at a time many times a day. I'm told it's a sign of a healthy mind if you begin taking positive action to solve problems in your dreams. Don't recall where I saw that, but I'll take it. And trust that it will spill over to actually solving the not writing problem. I hope.

You Know Your Cat Is Trying to Kill You When

I post this not as a whine - mostly - but as a public service to all you writers working on fight scenes.  You see, my cat tried to kill me this morning. There I was sound asleep. The 13lb girl you see at left here, jumped a very long way, and landed, all four feet in one spot, on my lower belly. I was awake. That everyone else on board wasn't, given my shriek of dismay, surprised me.

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Harbinger of a Good Day

This is Cuillean, a shy and delicate girl, suffering, as many of us do, from an excess of weight. (We're working on that.) She's my cat, as opposed to hubby's. And she's skittish. In fact, to this day, when DH walks in or makes a sudden move, she runs. This in no way should reflect on the gentle, caring person he is - the DH adores his felines, too. It came as some surprise, then, when a few years ago as DH was packing his gym bag, as he does every morning in an effort to manage his health, Cuillean climbed atop his gym bag and settled down. He turned around to put his work shirt into the bag and stopped. He blinked. "Cuillean," he said. "That's my bag." She murped and jumped down.

You can see this coming, can't you? She did it again the next morning. Only, she declined to get off the bag when spoken to. DH did the only thing he could do. "I'll just have to pet that cat on my bag," he said. Cuillean had successfully conditioned the human. Thus began the ritual of 'Morning Pets'. It no longer involves the gym bag. Now the alarm goes off, DH shuts off the alarm, rolls to his back and turns the covers down. I roll to my side facing him. He pats the mattress five times. Cuillean jumps up on the bed, strolls into that spot between us and gets her ration of chin and butt scratches. Then she flops over on her side and kneads my husband's armpit. This is unbearably cute when Cuillean isn't in need of a claw clip. This goes on until something startles the girl or until the second alarm goes off. Yes. We now set the alarm a half an hour early just to accommodate Cuillean.

DH has mentioned that there's a direct correlation between quality morning pets and the quality of his day. No morning pets, crappy day. Good morning pets, much better days. I can't help noticing how something so small, so inconsequential - a cat sitting on a bag - grew into a meaningful, emotionally fulfilling ritual. I'm taking an online course wherein I'm encouraged to write in fifteen minute increments. Starting with something small. Think I'll go set my timer.

Change

Yes, the ubiquitous fall foliage shot. It's thematically correct. Really.

A friend, Jeffe Kennedy, updates her blog every single weekday. You'll notice I don't. We were chatting yesterday about a group blog we've both signed on for - the Word Whores. There are seven of us. We’ll each have a day of the week to post our musings. The group came up with a list of 52 topics for the year that we would each write to. Yeah, there's a story here regarding how all of this came about, but it's not mine to tell...this is Allison Pang's (as opposed to Frankenstein's) monster. That and I suspect the story of how the Word Whores got started will be part of our 1/1/11 kick off of the blogsite. More on that as events warrant.

Back to my envy of Jeffe's disciplined blog posting schedule. I'd made some comment that I'd get started writing my blog posts in advance so they could be scheduled to post automatically. That way, my chances of missing a posting were lower. Jeffe seemed surprised by that - she was just going to blog on her scheduled days as they happened and wasn't I disciplined to write my posts ahead of time.

I quickly disabused her of that notion, pointing to my sporadic updates of my own blog. I so envy people who seem to be able to arrange their lives in such a way that they can sit down every single day and actually pull words from their heads. My life defies that sort of thing. As soon as I say “Henceforth, I shall rise at this hour, sit my butt down in my office chair, and WRITE”, life replies “Oh yeah?” and throws some crisis into my path that requires I be someplace else at precisely the time I’d fenced off for work. Jeffe gently pointed out that if I wanted to be one of ‘those’ people who could sit down at a specific time each day to write, I had to be willing to disappoint my friends and loved ones by saying no some of the time. I had to get to a point, she suggested, wherein I could say I can’t do x – this is a work day for me. “It seems like some people just don’t consider writing serious work,” Jeffe noted.

Oh. Including me, apparently. If I took my own work and time seriously, I’d guard it. I began seeing how I’d created (and how I continue to contribute) to the problem. Okay. Issue identified. Now. To change…

Fishing for Story

The Great Blue Herons who fish from our docks are a study in faith, patience, and persistence. Okay. Crankiness when you need to pass them on the dock, too, but that's another story. It's fun watching these huge birds fish. They stand stock still, eyeing the water. Ever so slowly, they bend their knees (backwards, I might add) and ease their faces closer to the surface of the water. You don't know who to root for - the poor fish about to be eaten or the hungry heron looking for supper. The bird waits. Waits. Then strikes. I don't know if the pressure of the audience enhances performance, but the birds I watch rarely miss.

I'm studying the local wildlife because I have the time on my hands. The stories that usually play nonstop in my head are quiet. Funny how panicky I get when I sit down at a blank page and hear nothing. Rather than get maudelin and self-absorbed over the creative ebb, I watch the herons. Sure. I could wrap this up all neatly with some observation about how the herons teach me to wait for precisely the right moment to strike, or how standing still is a big part of getting what they're after. All of which would be great if I wanted fish rather than another completed novel. Okay. I *am* joking about the fish thing. I'm not that dense. Most days.

Regardless, I love watching these distant relatives of dinosaurs hunting and flying and walking around on their spindly, backwards-bending legs. They're querelous birds when they're disturbed and fierce about protecting their nests. When they leave wet prints on the concrete dock, the spread of their toes is the size of my hand. I'm trying for a photo of that...so far, herons score; Marcella shoots digital camera and misses.

Science Not So Fiction

My husband and I live aboard a sailing catamaran most of the year. Yesterday, I discovered water in the port bilge. These boats aren't supposed to have water in the bilges. The joke is that you clean the bilges of these boats with a hand broom and a dustpan. Fortunately, I know where this water is coming from - the hotwater heater leaks when it's turned on. The chances of the boat sinking because of this leak are slim. This morning, while trying to cook my breakfast and boil water for that all important first cup of tea, I ran out of propane and had to grab the wrench and go switch out the tanks. This is a slightly hazardous job. Propane is a heavier than air gas and it is highly flammable. Boats blow up because of undetected propane leaks and a single stray spark. My point? The whole living aboard the boat thing has given me new respect for the notion of spacefaring in a self-contained craft. This boat is three years old, yet we already have a list of kludges and fixes (and a list of those things which may be safely ignored - like the water heater leak) so that we can operate. This is only a sailboat. Our margin for error is really pretty big. Can you imagine trying to keep a boat in repair and in shape in space? Mess something up there and it's possible you won't be able to breathe. Leaks in zero-g would be catastrophic. Sure, my fresh water leak is inconvenient and wasteful, but all I have to do is put into a dock, grab a hose and refill my tanks. What are my options in outer space if one of my fuel tanks or water tanks springs a leak? Or worse - one of my O2 generators blows out? Yeah. In some of my books, the science fiction surrounding some of the stuff that goes wrong with space craft isn't entirely fiction after all.

Coronal Rain

We have a stellar furnace at the center of our solar system and we know remarkably little about it. A new Solar Dynamics Observatory is apparently changing that. The link is worth a click through, if only for the photos. They are lovely. Be sure to click on the slideshow thumbnail on the right. Just the first photo of the sun turns our central star into something that looks like it belongs in a horror show - it's beautiful and kind of terrifying all at once. You can imagine that bright/dark star over a world of fiends. As to the point of the article, apparently, when plasma erupts from the sun, it arcs along magnetic lines in the corona and the plasma then falls back to the surface of the sun in vivid splashes - if one is allowed a watery metaphor for something registering 60,000 degrees Kelvin. The plasma falls in 'droplets' and are referred to as coronal rain. The mystery had been in why the drops fall so slowly. The new observatory offered enough detail of the sun's corona to allow scientists to realize that masses of hot gas are buoying the 'rain', slowing its descent through the solar atmosphere. Interesting, no? Nice possible romantic moment - escape your bad guys and sit watching a plasma eruption and the subsequent rain. From within the safe confines of your starship, of course. Or have to navigate close enough to a star to have to deal with the massive heat as well as the super-heated gases, as well as the potential plasma eruptions. Dodge one of those and remember that you have to dodge the coronal rain as well. Mm. Nothing like the threat of imminent death to get the creative juices flowing. Now. Where were those matches?

Life As We Don't Know It

Take a creative writing class and call me if someone doesn't say at least once "Write what you know". I've always wanted to ask how someone could write what they don't know because - well - how would you even begin? That's why, no matter how strange and alien a world may be in a science fiction novel, every alien aspect is described in terms of what we humans can reasonably know. Our aliens must be modeled on perfectly mundane, earthbound critters, if only because they're all we've got. Maybe. Based on a chemical puzzle, scientists hypothesize that Titan may be home to an alien cellular life form. If Titan is host to a brand of E.T., it certainly will not be life as we know it. Life on earth evolved in a watery soup and that watery soup remains captive in every cell in our bodies. On Titan, the soup wouldn't be H2O - it would be liquid methane and ethane. Which may mean that life as we don't know it is odder than we ever imagined. And possibly stinkier than we imagined.

Possibility

The other night, I was watching an episode of "Monster Quest". My husband leaned over to glance at my screen and smirk. "Not much science in that show, is there," he said. No. It was distinctly not a question. Truthfully? The observation is accurate. Far too few TV shows, even on the ostensibly science-friendly Discover channel, contain much in the way of actual science. I mourn the lack. However. For my purposes as a writer, while science tends to be my preferred tool for story generation, ultimately, stories don't care whether the science is good, bad, laughable, or complete drivel. Stories care about possibility, about what could be...if. So I sat through an hour of some guys ghost hunting in the Lizzie Borden house - an hour during which remarkably little happened. In the end, the investigators came away with one EVP (electronic voice phenomena) that defied explanation and that passed muster when put through a voice recognition specialist's tests to verify that it was indeed a voice and not just white noise. While ghosts and everything surrounding them is currently considered 'paranormal' and not 'scifi', what happens if science and technology finally bridge a gap and prove that ghosts occur? Are they then scifi? Will humanity find a way to A) communicate with the dead without use of mediums and B) find some way to profit from the whole deal? There's an old Star Trek episode (original series) wherein a transporter accident appears to kill Captain Kirk - he randomly appears as an apparition to various members of the crew until they work out that he's been trapped in some kind of space/time anomolie. They subsequently figure out how to sync the transporter to Kirk's space/time and recover him just as the air in his space suit runs out. Surely there's a SFR story in a recurring EVP haunting a heroine who has to figure out she's picking up either an alien dimension or an alien whose communications tech doesn't work like ours does (radio waves are so passe).

Teleporting

Scientists in China have managed to teleport information sixteen kilometers using photon entanglement. The scientists entangled two photons of light, then sent one about ten miles from Beijing. When they altered the state of the proton in Beijing, the proton ten miles away changed state in the exact same way at the same time. According to the article, it's one thing to mess about with protons, and quite another to assume that we'll shortly be putting the airlines out of business by teleporting to our vacations in Fiji. (How I wish that weren't the case...flying is not my favorite mode of transportation.) The experiment may yet lead to new computing and communications techniques allowing for faster, more secure transmission of data. Put computer modules inside a cyborg that calculate using entangled protons and you can effectively deprogram that cyborg by removing him or her from the planet - you'd unentangle the protons over distance. Presumably, as technology and knowledge advances, the distances over which protons remain entangled will increase, but still. Would it hurt in some vaguely physical way to have embedded processing modules essentially die inside your head? How easy (or difficult) would it be for someone to modify the protons of your onboard computer - re-entangle them to protons - and therefore programming - they control?

First Deadline

I'm taking a break from science today in the hopes that others can learn from my mistakes. This past Sunday, I finished and turned in my second book. It was the first book I'd ever done on deadline. No. A real deadline - as in - someone waiting and counting on you deadline. I was two weeks late. Not the impression I'd wanted to make. How to fix this so it never happens again: the two words no artist ever wants to hear, but which, if said artist aspires to becoming a business person, must be said - Project Management.

1. Establish a post mortem habit. After every single project, assess what went well and identify what did not work. Include in that list everything that held you up, randomized your time and attention, and that dropped roadblocks in your path. Put everything down - making breakfast, doing the laundry, having to fix the flat on the car...you aren't evaluating yet. You're listing. After you've listed, you'll evaluate. You will pick the things on that list of distractions that you're willing to allow to go on distracting you. May I suggest that you automatically allow spouses, children and pets to go on being distractions (within reason)? I understand divorce court really chews up available writing time and resources.
2. Identify areas for improvement and change. From your list, do you notice that you allowed email to randomize you? Or Facebook, Twitter, your blog, IM, etc? Give yourself x number of minutes per day to do those things, then stop and work. If you finish your day's goal, you can go play on your time-killer of choice. Not until then. Set aside one day per week for errands. Stick to it. Teach your family to clean up after themselves so that when you do vacuum, it lasts longer than three minutes. Ultimately, this second step boils down to learning to manage yourself and to…
3. Manage expectations. This was my biggest failure. I did not manage my family's expectations. I'd already written and sold a book and done it all while taking care of them...why should this second book have been any different? Because I had half the time in which to produce that book. I had no idea what that meant. Neither did my family. Now we do. I will actively manage their expectations of how many 'can you get, do, make, be, pretend...' things I can do in one week while still making deadline.

Sure. I'd built deadlines for myself before. They had no teeth. If you want to test yourself and your project management skill, give yourself six months. Build a 90k word book from idea to finished - not polished - just finished and edited and rewritten so it isn't 100% rough draft. And then remind yourself that this is the job you aspire to. Some days, that will be cause for deep despair. But then come the days when it's utterly exhilarating.

Geometry in Space

I wonder if the first sailors expected vast stretches of nothingness when contemplating an ocean crossing - especially the ones who went just to see what might be on the other side. Whenever I contemplate writing the space flight portions of books I find I have to constantly challenge my assumption that traveling through interstellar space would entail vast stretches of nothing but vacuum. Recent photos from a series of new telescopes the world (and orbiting said world) over provide terrific views of the galaxy as a dynamic, living system which sometimes defies explanation. The 'impossible star', a star forming in the constellation of Scorpius, apparently exceeds the theoretical limit for a star's mass. What a thing for characters to see while tooling around interstellar space - phenomena that challenge the known laws of physics.

Solar Sailing

A British satellite is slated to be launched next year as proof of two concepts. One: that solar sails can provide solar wind powered propulsion for space-going vehicles. Two: that humans can send satellite 'garbage collectors' into orbit to clear away our space litter. The obstacles: no space craft has successfully managed controlled space flight using only solar sails and the existing swarm of space debris currently in orbit around the planet, which makes navigating orbital space a hazardous proposition. From a fiction stand point, sails of any kind are appealing and not just because I sail. On water. Sails in space sounds like fun if one can find adequate energy sources to power the sails. Could radioactivity leaking from a black hole propel a sail? Or suppose it's your satellite that's going up to collect garbage and destroy antiquated, abandoned space craft by burning it up on re-entry? Until you realize that one of your pieces of 'garbage' is fighting back...

Sixty Second Science

Scientific American produces a series of podcasts, audio only tidbits, covering a science headline per week day. I love these things. In a minute long (plus a tiny bit of change for titles) podcast, I get an quick, fun overview of a broad range of science. If one of the subjects tickles my creative fancy, it's an easy matter to go do a bit of further research. The podcasts are valuable, too, from a vocabulary standpoint. If your characters are scientists, there's great joy in being able to say 'that gene transfer took place between two entirely different taxinomic kingdoms' and have it actually mean something. (From the April 30, 2010 podcast)

Hacking the Brain

An article at Wired.com suggests that the brain is the next great hacking frontier and contemplates the possibilities for securing neural interface devices. The article focuses on the lack of attention being paid to creating robust security for such hardware as deep brain stimulators used to treat a variety of illnesses, or for the systems being developed that would allow an amputee to mentally control a prosthetic limb. May I just say "story goldmine"? Whether you have a character hacking a cyborg's interfaces in order to commit third person murder, or a futuristic tech shop specializing in security layers for people whose neural implants weren't entirely on the up and up, or whether you character is a hacker who happens , one day, to drop into the wrong brain - there's far too much fun to be had here. In fiction. In reality, I'd rather know that anything wired directly into my brain was safe against some random gold farmer.

Defining Life

A book came out several years ago called Rare Earth. It was written by a pair of scientists arguing that the human race is likely alone in the universe because life as we know it thrives only within a very narrow band of set circumstances. Did you catch the same caveat I did when I first read the book? "Life as we know it". Turns out, since the book was published, life as we know it, and the conditions under which it can and will thrive, has been expanded several times, so, too has the habitable zone - the boundry in a solar system wherein one could assume life forms might be able to survive. What if "life as we know it" is too limiting? The major issue, of course, is that life as we know *is* all we know. It's dreadfully difficult to look for something when you can't describe it. Scientists can't agree on whether or not viruses are alive. How can you search for life that isn't as you know it when you can't even define what you do know? Now, physists are suggesting SETI - the folks scanning the radio frequencies of the skies for an ET phoning anyone at all - is too narrowly focused, that the search for alien intelligence is defined based on human, radio technology that is increasingly being left in our own past. Scientists urged investigators to broaden not only their search, but also their thinking by looking into our future and make some educated guesses about how other living things might give us clues as to their existence. The linked article offers another link to a detailed list of some of the scifi suggestions. For those of us feeding our imaginations, the next obvious question is what happens when your theory pans out and you find signs of an alien civilization? How pleased (or not) is that race about having been seen? And depending on how "life as we know it" they are, how much trouble is your hero or heroine in?

Earthbound Science

The main premise of a science fiction story is that science is in some way, shape or form going to figure into resolving a major plot point. Most of us (I include myself there) assume that requires galactic-scale science. It needn't. In the War of the Worlds, an alien invasion that no human-made power on earth could stop was nevertheless doomed from the moment the first alien ship touched down. Earthbound viruses killed the invaders when nothing else could. (Irony? Viral invaders kill the alien invaders?) It's fascinating to me that some of the most elegant solutions to complex problems aren't always huge, grandiose schemes of technology, engineering and discovery. They're humbler. Simpler. Like viruses, which are so simple, there's considerable debate as to whether they're actually alive. Or like this potential carbon-sink - something that could pull excess carbon dioxide from the warming atmosphere and lock it into the ocean - researched by scientists in Australia. Whether that carbon-sink can have a significant impact on global warming remains to be seen, but the idea itself is a lovely example of being willing to look anywhere and everywhere for a solution to what looks like an intractable issue. It's tempting, when writing on a galactic scale, to believe that big problems require bigger solutions. Sometimes they do. But occasionally, a little virus, or a single flea infected with plague, or a bit of iron-rich whale poop will solve all sorts of problems.

Counting Stars

Every once in awhile during a story, my characters stop and count the stars. It's a way to keep from taking the backdrop of space for granted. Think of your last road trip. Did it really pass in a blur? Or was there something, no matter how tiny, that made you catch in your breath for a second? When I need something for a space-faring hero to show a heroine or other way around, I go to Hubble Telescope site, and to the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. The Astronomy Picture of the Day isn't strictly photos of celestial phenomena as evidenced by a spectacular shot of lightning generated from volcanic ash clouds. In that photo, you're seeing something that science cannot fully explain, yet. Theory has it that static builds up in the dust, gas and heat, thereby generating the lightning, but research to verify the hypothesis is ongoing. Where am I headed with this? What's out there between the stars? Dust and gas. Suppose your spaceship passes near a dense, dark nebula that's thick with dust. A nearby star has been exhibiting an upswing in radiation emissions, exciting that dust and gas. If lightning doesn't require oxygen in order to fire, a hero and/or heroine could catch a deep space lightning storm. Or perhaps a spaceship cuts through a patch of dust and the static generated by the dust passing over the hull leads to new adventure? Do they glow and give away their position? Does the static blow their electrical grid? Or short their onboard computers? How many ways do you want your characters to survive by the skin of their teeth just after they've paused to count the stars?

Space Weather

Haven't you ever wondered what an ion storm is, much less where one might come from? While http://www.spaceweather.com/won't answer that specific question, it provides plenty of fascinating solar weather data - sun spot activity, solar wind, auroral activity and even for the next day or two, the expected trajectory of the space shuttle transiting the continental US on its return from the space station. Still. It's time to find out whether interstellar travel is subject to phenomena that we'd perceive as weather.