Bookshelf:

Recently Read & Reviewed:

• Charles Stross, Iron Sunrise
• Margery Allingham, The Case of the Late Pig

Currently Reading:

• Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

Next Up:

1. Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
2. Sean McMullen, Voyage of the Shadowmoon
3. Daniel Keys Moran, The Long Run
4. Margery Allingham, The Return of Mr. Campion
5. Robert Reed, Sister Alice

Encouraging Signs

I'm not too enamored of baseball's wild card format - I'd rather have four divisions with four champions in each league, rather than three divisions with three champions and a wild card - but it does occasionally make for some interesting races.

In the American League this year, though, with my Red Sox clinching the wild card early we were left with just the AL West race in the final week, which is good, since we could go see the A's play the Mariners on Tuesday night. The Angels eliminated the Rangers as we were arriving, and the Mariners were already well out of it, but the A's have been collapsing all month, and their loss last night left them in a tie for first place. The Angels are looking ascendant so I think the A's will have a tough time making the playoffs this year, even with playing the Angels head-to-head this weekend. It's been the A's pitching which has let them down this year, after several years of dominance. It happens. Pitching is a black art.

The National League has been more exciting, with the Dodgers struggling to maintain their lead in the AL West, and the Giants and Padres trying to catch them while also competing with the Cubs for the NL wild card. These sorts of four-teams-for-two-spots competitions can be kind of fun, trying to figure out exactly what has to happen for your team to make it - or not. Last Tuesday Syd and I (along with his wife Jade and my friend Rob) went to see the Giants host the Houston Astros (Syd's team), who were then in the hunt for the wild card and had closed on the Giants and Cubs. The Giants embarrassed them pretty badly that night and the next, though were stunned in the 9th by the Astros on Thursday. It was some exciting September baseball.

(When I originally wrote this entry, I thought the Giants had effectively eliminated the Astros, but the 'Stros kept fighting and lead the Wild Card race as I write this. Thanks to Tim Illingworth for correcting me here.)

Plus we got to see Ichiro Suzuki collect two hits in his quest to set the single-season hits record (which he will almost certainly set, as he needs 3 hits in 4 games to do so). Ichiro also made many flyball catches in the outfield - it was just an Ichiro kind of night.

Rob also took me to see a luxury box at Pacific Bell Park, since his company has one and we could get smuggled in. The boxes at Pac Bell are very nice, with very attractive lobbies and some excellent food. Definitely a cut above my experience with the Oakland Coliseum luxury boxes. A cool little side trip.

Then Saturday Deb and I went with Subrata and Susan to see the Giants host the Dodgers. We went to the right game, and after a see-saw score left things tied 5-5 in the 8th, Pedro Felix hit a grand slam to give the Giants the win. This may be the first grand slam I've seen in person, and we got a rundown on the basepaths during the game to boot. Exciting! Also warm and sunny in the city, so it was a great day all around. Probably the best game I've seen all year.

We got all these tickets months ago, and it's neat that they paid off with lots of good baseball. Who'd've guessed it?

I've gotten some feedback from some friends who have read the novelette I finished a few months ago. My friend Cliff enjoyed it and gave me copious feedback with a number of suggestions for fixing up and enhancing the first half of the story. Then I ran into another friend, Chris, who also enjoyed it but has not had time to write down his thoughts yet. He had some similar ideas along the lines of what Cliff suggested, but also thought the story seemed very well-written considering I, well, haven't been at this very long.

So that was cool. I am still kind of burying my head at the prospect of doing a larger revision, but I'll get to it.

Meanwhile, I've been struggling with writing another story. I wrote about 2000 words of something I'd had rattling around, and found that it was meandering around without really going anywhere - or, rather, without getting there in an interesting way. I reworked it some to get to the elements I thought were interesting, and realized that I didn't really like the characters, was having trouble presenting them in a sympathetic way, and didn't see a lot of point in writing the story with this particular set of unlikable characters, so I punted on the story.

So I turned my attention to another idea I'd had in mind, ended up (before actually writing a single word) tossing out all kinds of bits from my original idea, reworked it around some completely different characters, and it finally congealed into something I'm rather excited to write. So I've gotten a start on that and need to do more.

I have noticed that my main characters tend to have a smartass streak in them, to which someone I mentioned this to said, "Well, they say to write what you know." Ow.

It is a little weird how I can push and push at a story, not make any progress at figuring it out in my head for a long time, and then all in a single day vast portions of it come together into a basic framework I can work with. The first story was much like this. It's not quite right to say that I'm just transcribing what I've already figured out (fortunately, I find I enjoy writing dialogue, and that's a big part of what I haven't figured out), but sometimes it feels like it. No doubt when and if I write longer stories I will have to turn to working on written outlines just to keep track of everything, but for these novelette-length pieces I can keep all the important bits in my head without much trouble.

I would be remiss in my duties as an amateur writer if I didn't wonder if every writer has this experience. Heh.

So I'm pretty excited to not feel stalled on my writing anymore. I'm moving forward on several fronts. I just need to make sure I keep doing so. I haven't been nearly as productive as I'd hoped I'd be, four months ago, but I can only move as fast as I can move. And the world certainly doesn't need more crappy science fiction.

(Crappy journal entries, though; that the world clearly needs more of!)