Liza Olmsted

Being a writer and all, sometimes I need names. And I like the affectation of naming my things. I haven't named my car*, but I try for interesting names for all of my hard drives, ipods, etc**.

So, I seem to have just purchased a kindle***, and it's going to need a name. (Firewood?)

There are some fabulous Old French/Frankish names, like Childebert or Clotaire, but I can't remember my favorites today. It's really very sad. So instead I turned to my favorite list of Puritan names. I think the best ones are If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned§ and Humiliation.



So, what should I name the kindle? I'm open to suggestions...






* Robin McKinley (robinmckinleys ) named her car Wolfgang. It took me a while to figure out that she wasn't talking about a person.
** I'm sorry to say, my iphone is named "Joe". I was really falling down on the job that day.

*** My mom talked me into it. It should arrive Tuesday.

§ My mom's response: "yup, a little wordy tho". :)

Today I had a conversation with a coworker about the word "muggle", from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter* series. He pointed out that it's a wonderful word, because it evokes "muddle". It also sounds like a distorted version of "magical", so "magical" vs. "muggle" would make a nice contrast. Furthermore, in English, most words that have the letter "g" in them, such as "egg", "ugly", or "fog", came from Danish/Scandinavian/Old Norse, from when the Danes had taken over large swathes of England. So the choice of "muggle" evokes those barbaric roots. All in all, a lovely word.

When I was studying CS, I had the theory that we were actually Wizards-in-Training, because of Arthur C. Clarke's statement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We were learning pretty advanced stuff, so clearly I was learning magic. So, since I graduated with a degree, you might call me a Wizard.

Lately, I've been trying to learn a third-party application for updating one of our devices. It's big, it's powerful, and it's flexible. I feel like a muggle.




* If you haven't heard of it, you probably live under a rock and aren't reading my blog.

I think I write better when I don't think. The act of thinking, of trying to make the story "reasonable" or trying to "figure out" what comes next, kill the story. My linear brain doesn't have any idea what should happen next. If I just followed logic, it would be dry and obvious. So go figure that my stories stop being interesting. At the same time, I can't abandon logic entirely, right? There's no story without cause and effect--aka logic. But I've noticed that when I stop thinking about the story, and instead just think the story, it's like watching a movie. Suddenly I realize there's a village up ahead, and one or both characters are going to go into it. (Turns out only one does, and the other goes around, because it wasn't logical for her to go into the village.) And if there's a village, well, he'd want to make use of the inn's fire to cook some of the game they've caught. And of course, he came through this same village just a few days ago, so he already knows the innkeeper--and his wife, who would be in the kitchen. But all innkeeper's wives are old, with grown children who man the bar--and I didn't want one of those. So she's young, with a toddler on leading strings. And suddenly I've discovered that my character is a flirt. That's good to know. :) And then it ought to rain, and if they're walking for days through the rain, one of them is going to get sick. (Not both--that's too complicated, and it's less likely anyway.) Wow, so one of them is sick. And suddenly I have the lead-in to the chapter transition, and it's way cleaner than it would've been without those developments.

When I was writing that story, that first chapter flowed like a gushing river, and I wrote it in a month or two.* The second chapter stalled. I spent months and months on it. I was doing a lot of world-building as I wrote it--not separately, but in the story itself. And my thinking brain got engaged, kicking out my intuitive brain. The story slogged, and it sucked, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back on track.

Unfortunately, I still haven't. :( I tried going back to the beginning of the chapter and rewriting it, but that version ended up being way too condensed, and I'd lost the funny tone of the MC overthinking everything, which had really pleased me in the first chapter and the first version of the second chapter. So what do I do? Should I continue the crappy first version? Should I continue the overly-pared-down second version? Or should I give it one last go and try a third time? None of them sounds appealing.

The other problem is my working space. Or lack thereof. I live in a shoebox**. When I have time to keep it picked up, there is a very small amount of desk*** space where I can write. But usually that space is covered in papers and junk and the clock with a dead battery that just won't stop ticking, which I'm so entertained by that I don't have the heart to pull out or replace its battery. And even when the desk is picked up****, the rest of the house is so stuffed that I have a hard time focusing on the hard work of trying to fix the sad chapter, not to mention the hard work of stopping thinking so I can engage my writerly intuition. So I've been trying to find a bigger place to live, with a whole room for an office/library. With all kinds of nice, creatively energizing and inviting things in it, so I'll want to spend time there. And a clean desk, with a desk chair that's actually the correct size for my body.

While I figure out how to create that space, I have to remember one key thing: the room won't make me creative. If I put all of my expectations on that room giving me the ability to write... it won't. How do I keep writing enough that I don't put too much pressure on the fragile construct that will be my office?



* For me, working full time, that's reasonably fast. :)

** It was a single-car garage in a former life.

*** Aka dining table

**** Er ... almost never

This weekend I visited Sacramento for amorinalynn's baby shower, and then stopped in El Cerrito to visit my cousin's baby--the first in the next generation.  Aww for adorable pregnant women and babies!  But I was so exhausted after all the driving.

HMB was paradise yesterday: sunny, no fog even over the bay, just warm enough that when we went for a walk around 5, we were overdressed in long pants and long-sleeved shirts.   It's summer, so it's usually foggy, cold, and/or windy.   We went to Ben's friend's house and picked peas from his pea plants, which are growing like mad.  Third week running that we've picked a whole bagful of peas.

And I got to pet all sorts of kitties this weekend.   amorinalynn's, I got to see my cousin's, and Ben's friend's cat, and Ben's neighbor's cat, and another random cat along the way who was clearly waiting out in the street just so passersby would come pet her.   Further reinforcing my idea that in my next life I want to be a housecat.

I've been listening to this Anthropology lecture from UC Berkeley about evolution, which has been just fascinating.  I listened to that for at least 4 hours of driving this weekend, part of which covered human reproduction.  With all these babies, it seemed especially relevant.   I discovered that human babies have to turn their heads to one side when going through the birth canal, or else they don't quite fit... even with the extra-loosened pelvic ligaments** and extra-squishy baby skull.   :-/   Yipes.   I think I wouldn't be so bothered by it if I had no intention of ever having a baby.

So after all that driving, and visiting people, I was really tired last night.  I managed the walk, and I managed dinner, and then I crashed on the couch.  Ben kept me awake until after 9, and then I was really just done, so we went to bed.  I fell asleep in moments.   And slept through until 7 or 7:30 this morning.   D'ya think I was tired?

Apparently now it's Monday, and a work-day.  So... back to work.  :cracks the whip:



* http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=2009-B-2303&semesterid=2009-B, or the feed itself.   I highly recommend it!

** Wasn't it the ligaments?

Oh, and I just saw The Devil Wears Prada. I haven't read the book. It was fun, and I always like Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

But ... ( Could be spoilers... )

What did I miss?