Still hurting, but went in to work anyway. I am the master of my wingstubs, dammit! Yeah, right. At least it’s the weekend.
Writing Stuff:
Got my contrib. copies of the Feb. issue from Cricket for “Razi and the Sunbird.” Hurray! No check, but I expect that’ll show up in the next day or so, mailed separately. The packaging envelope had a return address not in Illinois (where Cricket is based), which leads me to believe they send them straight from the printers. Shiny and colorful!
Received a rewrite request from Flashing Swords. The first part of the rewrite was fairly easy to do. The editor wanted me to tighten one of the middle scenes, but I struggled with his second suggestion. He asked me to clarify my magic system, but the thing is, I thought the story was a little exposition-heavy already. So every time I stuck in a sentence or two of explanatory material, when I re-read it, it felt like my pacing had ground to a racing snail’s, floundering in the depths of swampy exposition. (Hmm, I suspect I over-milked that analogy.) In any case, I persevered. Will do one more pass before sending the new and improved version winging back to him. I’ve run out of fingers to cross and am now hobbling around on cross-toed feet.
Stuck a fork in the SF story and mailed it off. Fly, little story, fly!
Also composed my introductory email to all of the Tangent reviewers I inherited and sent “thank you” notes to most of the Critters who gave me feedback. *whew* I’d feel productive if I didn’t hurt so much.
Saw on the Science channel an amazing new medical technique for paraplegics (still way in the experimental stage), where they’ve wired a person’s brain–currently with fiber optics, but they hope to upgrade to wireless–and he can manipulate a computer purely by the power of his brain. Now wouldn’t that be a productivity aide?
Words: Hacked out 300 from the rewrite requested story. Did a couple final passes on the SF story before sending it out.
500/day
15
Could you clarify the magic system through demonstration of the processes involved, rather than by adding abstract exposition about the system? Either by adding description of the process when magic is being used, or perhaps by tweaking existing scenes of magic use so that they more clearly show what the magic can/cannot do, what inner logic it is based on, etc?
I read a book where, to do magic involving movement of objects, the magician had to get an energy source ready, something like get five guys to push a rotating device around until it was going really fast with built up momentum, and then the magician would do his thing, and the rotating device would suddenly slow way down because its energy had been drawn to move whatever the magician was moving. That was an interesting technique; the writer didn’t have to explain how it all worked, you could just see how the energy was being manipulated (not created out of nothing) by following the process they had to go through.
Could you clarify the magic system through demonstration of the processes involved, rather than by adding abstract exposition about the system? Either by adding description of the process when magic is being used, or perhaps by tweaking existing scenes of magic use so that they more clearly show what the magic can/cannot do, what inner logic it is based on, etc?
I read a book where, to do magic involving movement of objects, the magician had to get an energy source ready, something like get five guys to push a rotating device around until it was going really fast with built up momentum, and then the magician would do his thing, and the rotating device would suddenly slow way down because its energy had been drawn to move whatever the magician was moving. That was an interesting technique; the writer didn’t have to explain how it all worked, you could just see how the energy was being manipulated (not created out of nothing) by following the process they had to go through.