Christopher East

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday!  Our Labor Day weekend was enhanced by a houseguest:  Tim Pratt stopped down for a writing retreat, giving us a chance to host someone in our recently retooled guest room/office.  Between socializing meals, there was a healthy writing vibe in the house… well, more from Tim and Jenn than from me, although I did manage to feed off of their energy to get some blogging and Futurismic done.

I have also gone so far as to pull Subnetworks off the shelf long enough to examine a few pages, and managed early forays into research and organization for the second draft — just getting a few things straight in my head about the world of the book, gradually edging myself back into the headspace to work on the novel — which is kind of a scary prospect.  Producing raw wordage is one thing, but revising is the really hard work.  Wish me luck!

This year my M.O. for vacation time has consisted of scheduling it out piecemeal into various four-day “staycation” weekends that give me a chance to get away from the office and recharge my batteries — in the company of my favorite person and my two favorite cats, of course!  Since home is my favorite place to be, I’m perfectly happy to spend my vacations this way — and the fact that it’s both cheaper and lazier is a nice bonus!

This weekend held particular significance, though:  Thursday represented the four-year mark since Jenn and I met at Worldcon in Anaheim.  It’s been an exciting and wonderful four years so far, full of change and adventure for both of us.  We rang in the occasion with a spectacular dinner at our favorite restaurant here in the Valley, Café Carolina.  Jenn’s post describes the meal perfectly, so I won’t try to elaborate, except to show you the dessert:

We filled our Friday and Saturday with food and fun as well.  One highlight was an outing to Dark Delicacies in Burbank, a horror bookshop where Amelia Beamer was signing her new novel.  There we met up with friends and made some new ones, then stopped over at Porto’s for a pile of pastries.

It wouldn’t be a four-day weekend without TV, movies, and games, of course.  I’m catching up on season five of Rescue Me (about halfway through so far); I always seem to forget how good this show is when I’m not watching it.  I find elements of it problematic, but there’s something refreshing about how unapologetic and gutsy it is, and the ensemble cast is consistently amazing.  (I think Steven Pasquale in particular is a brilliant comic actor, and his story arc this year has been filled with entertaining surprises.)  We also instant-streamed the weird Belgian animated film A Town Called Panic, a wonderfully strange, frantic movie I found a little too stream of conscious for a full review — suffice it to say, it’s the best weird Belgian stop-motion animation you’ve ever seen.  And on Saturday night we enjoyed some World of Warcraft instancing with friends, where I got to heal my first heroics with my neglected resto druid.  (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it…)

The weekend wrapped up with Jenn’s birthday, and I made my first solo batch of chocolate chip cookies — a personal baking milestone.  Not only that, but they look and taste like cookies.  Holy shit!

It was nice to shut down and relax for a while, but it’s Monday again and time to resume some responsibility.  Back to work, to editing, to blogging and bill-paying…and soon, to writing, as I’ve decided September will ring in draft two of Subnetworks (or, more likely, draft 1.5, the last pre-critique version).

For now I’ll leave you with our anniversary photo — I do believe we are as happy as we look in this picture, so it’s a great way to remember a great weekend!

I’ll keep this post simple:

The first draft of Subnetworks is complete!

I slowed down in June, but started rolling downhill in July:  final word count for the month was 14,500.  Final word count for the novel?  Probably too long.  But who cares?  I finally finished it!

Is it normal, when you finish a novel, to feel like you should get like a month off from everything?

For various reasons, writing productivity dropped off in June, especially in the second half where I had huge stretches of non-writing days.  Boo!  I could blame it on editing Futurismic again, or less relaxing lunch breaks (when I usually do my writing), or poor time management, but I think the main thing is I’m nearing the finish line on Subnetworks.

This means two things:  One, the writing is getting more difficult, as I have to make sure I tie together all the threads.  And two, I think I’m kind of fearing the end, because once I’ve finished I’ll have nothing going, which right now feels more important than having finished something.  Plus, finishing the first draft means I’ll have to fix it.  (*Dread!*)

For all that, the word count drop off wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be:  down to roughly 5,800 words.  And at the end of the month I managed to finish off chapter 29, which leaves me with just three chapters and an epilogue left in my outline.  The main goal for me this year was to finish a draft of the book, and that is going to happen, probably ahead of schedule.  Hey, I’ll take it!

Strategy successfully implemented:  my first non-Futurismic month in a while turned out to be a boon to productivity.  I was on pace to shatter last month’s word count total, but unfortunately my momentum was derailed by the Great Oslo Health Saga.  Even so, I edged out last month by about 100 words for a total of 8,900 new words on the novel.  I’m about six chapters away from wrapping this sucker up!

On top of that I set a record for blog posts in one month with 23, and completed five new tunes, including these two.  Not a bad haul for a month’s work!

It was an even better month for writing in April, both for productivity and attitude.  I have a feeling winding down Futurismic submissions helped out, so we’ll see if an editing-free May continues the trend.

According to my writing journal, I wrote on eighteen of thirty days last month, completing three and a half chapters of Subnetworks for a total of 8,800 words.  Ten chapters to go!

As of today, I’m completely caught up on responding to submissions in the Futurismic slushpile.  Which means that, twenty-eight days into my fiction-editing vacation, I’m finally starting my fiction-editing vacation!

What this means is that rather than starting my morning with coffee and Futurismic, I’m going to start it with coffee and writing.  This also means I don’t have to cram writing into my lunch break, so instead, I get to work on GarageBand music, which has been sacrificed lately in the novel push.

Man, it’s nice to have some inventory built up!  I expect this state of affairs to continue until early June (tentatively), when we’ll open the floodgates again, and I’ll get back to work.

I had a pretty good writing month in March, despite a handful of downer days of the “why do I bother?” variety.  I’m starting to accept those low moments as part of my process, and generally find that treating them with a few hours of video games or spy movies tend to get me over the hump.  I soldiered past the obstacles and kept the project moving, and I’m still enjoying the work.

I started the month by quickly finishing chapter 16, which brought me to the midpoint of my outline.  I’ve since written chapters 17 and 19 and part of 18 (I ended up reordering a couple of chapters when reality ran counter to my plan).

Total word count for March:  about 6,200 words.  Onward!

A few random thoughts for a random Friday morning:

• I can’t tell if this itch I’m feeling to write a short story is A) me trying to get away from the novel or B) me wishing I could just finish something already!  (My guess:  a little of both.)
• Enver Gjokaj in Previously on Point Dume — ’nuff said!
• If SUVs got 100 mpg, ate pollution, and resurrected Firefly, I would still hate them.  Because people who drive them would still cut me off on the expressway at least five times a day, block my view, and destroy at least six street-parking spaces at work.
• My average response time for Futurismic subs has gone from about 15 days per story to about 25 days per story in the past month.  I’m falling behind…might be time for a vacation!
• My belated thoughts on the NHL trade deadline:   kind of a yawner this year.  I’m glad the Kings brought in some forward depth, but the coach has messed up the line chemistry, and the team is spiraling.  And…holy moly, the Sabres actually made some deals!  Nice to see Vanek and Pominville heating up lately.

That’s all I got for now.  Have a great weekend!

Andrew Porter has just posted an interview with me at his website The Science of Fiction, wherein I answer questions about editing, Futurismic, and science fiction in general.  This is my first interview anywhere…hmm, that kinda took a while…anyway, I hope folks enjoy it!