The WAL

I’m a podcast junkie.  There, I admit it.  My MP3 player typically has less music on it than podcasts.  The balance has further tipped in that direction.  The song count on my MP3 player has dropped to forty and the rest of the gigabyte is stuffed with podcasts.  Interviews, fiction, writing, public broadcasting, culture, science.  Two-point-seven megs of space left and nothing small enough to fit in it.  Just shy of seventeen hours of worlds brought to my ear phones.  I love it.

Out of the corner, out of the cabin, and far down the corridor.  It looks like I’m going to break 65k for this short novel, at least on the first draft.

And it’s only three days until Double Trouble.  If you can’t wait, join the crowd.  Pip and Tee have both let pdfs of the books into the wild, available at Chasing the Bard, the Morevi, and a lot of other places around the net.  I’m having a hard time not opening them, but I really want to wait for a dead tree version.

He might still blot out the sun, but did so better for people lower to the ground who had to look around his expanding stomach.

I’m once again not going to rant today.  Don’t seem to do much of that lately.  I’m avoiding all non-political news at the moment - there are too many dead children featured in news stories right now and I find that the most depressing thing.  As far as politics goes, interesting things are happening on both sides of the border, but I’m finding it much harder to be excited about the US presidential race at the moment in light of the stagnant inaction in Parliament on anything of substance whatsoever.  Things are even less exciting at the provincial level, or they might be if anyone actually covered them.

But I’ve got plenty of great podcast material for commutes and other non-writing quiet time.  I’m branching out a bit more lately, reaching further afield.  My latest discovery is the Mr. Deity video podcast, recommended by Steve Eley of Escape Pod fame.  Funniest thing I’ve run across in a long time.  Not really suitable for kids and unfortunately not good for commuting, but it’s hilarious enough to spend the time watching.

So, as must be completely obvious to everyone who reads this (and there are a few of you out their according to the site stats - friends and family, no doubt), I suck at blogging regularly.  I think the main problem lately is that time spent blogging is time not spent writing, and I’m writing a lot lately - more on that in a bit.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  I don’t feel ready to let the blog go - if nothing else, it lets a few people I know but don’t see very often keep up with what I’m currently ranting about, at least when I’m ranting here.  I’m going to commit to blogging something once per week, probably on one of my days off.  Is it enough?  You tell me.  No one ever says anything so I suppose it’s possible that the limited site traffic I do have is all automated search engines and blog indexers.  I have had a couple of people send me e-mail, though, so I know someone’s out there.

A writing update.  The first draft of “Turn the World Around” came in at 23,374 words on the 2nd of November.  Since that day, I’ve also finished first drafts on five previously started stories ranging between a little less than 6,000 words and a little more than 10,000, written two very short pieces (about 500 and 1750 words) and done second draft editing on two stories, one fantasy and one you could loosely call SF.  Total word count for November so far is 19,250 and I’m averaging over 900 words per day so I should break the monthly target of 20,000 tomorrow.  I just finished the first draft of a humorous Christmas story tonight and I’m planning to pick up another previously begun story tomorrow.  (It’s called “Foog”.  Don’t ask.)

Now I’m not saying that all of this is good writing.  First draft tend to suck, but I think the way I’m starting to work things is to just get the damned first draft out through the keyboard and it can be edited to not suck later.  Of the editing I’ve done so far, the stories suck less.  Are they good yet?  Well, probably one more revision before I start to find some First Readers.  (If anyone would like to volunteer…)

I’m still working in the same place in the same job and I’m still chewing through podcasts during my commute and sometimes at home when no one else is awake.  My favourites at the moment are Escape Pod (the first podcast I discovered), Astronomy Cast, The House (politics from the CBC), and More Hip than Hippie.  That should give you an idea of the breadth of my interests.  There are a few others that I listen to as regularly as they come out on a variety of subjects.  I do download a lot of stuff from the CBC, a little from NPR and a smattering from all over the world and podosphere.  I’m also trying out my first podcast novel, Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty.  I’ve subscribed to a few others from Podiobooks, but haven’t started listening to any of them yet, which I-tunes reminds me of incessantly.

My family members are all healthy and happy and the kids are looking longingly toward  Christmas.

Next post I’ll find something to rant about.  If you’ve listened to the news in the last couple of days, you’ll have found at least half a dozen.  A week from now, I’ll probably have more.