jon_chaisson: (Default)
Wednesday already??  Eep!  This month is going by far too quickly for my liking.  Need to gt more done!!  Yeah, I know, I'm doing a crapton of stuff already as it is.  But at the same time it's working out just fine.  The days are gong by fast because I purposely have a very full plate and I'm doing what needs doing to keep it running smoothly.

[Note to self: get off your ass and get those In My Blue World postcards created and printed for Worldcon already!!]

Made a concerted effort to mute a handful of people on Twitter lately.  (Don't worry, none of you who follow me here as well.)  Mostly the consistent doomcriers and retweets of doomcriers.  Yes, I am well aware that bad things are going on.  I just don't need the constant reminders or the nihilism.  And I'm not blocking you, I'm merely making the sane move of having a somewhat positive social media feed. 

Other news: It completely blows my mind that we'll be visiting London again in a few weeks!  We've got a few exciting things lined up for it, and if we can, I'd love to meet up with some of our friends there.  Of course, I'll be out of pocket and not posting (except maybe a fly-by or two), but I will most definitely be bringing my tablet so I can do another major revision/edit pass of In My Blue World.  I do find that doing edit work (as well as behind-the-scenes notes and outtakes) is quite relaxing during vacation.


Okay, back into the trenches. Another busy day ahead!  Have a good rest of the week, peeps!
 


jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Two weeks in London is clearly not enough time to take it all in. SO MANY NEAT THINGS! We went there partly due to it being Worldcon, but also because, y'know, LONDON. A city I've wanted to visit for years, especially with me being an utter music nerd who followed Britpop over Grunge back in the early 90s. [If you go on Twitter and look up the hashtag #joncsbritpopmeme, you'll see pictures tied in with various songs from the UK.] And yes, I was able to make my way over to Abbey Road and see the crosswalk (it's a narrower street than the album cover lets on) as well as cross it and leave a note at the Abbey Road Studios wall. In the next day or so I shall post many of my pictures. Some will end up on the Tumblr, but I'll also be posting the music-related pix at my Walk in Silence blog. It was quite the awesome vacation, and we are already planning on going back at some point.

So you're probably wondering...did I even get any writing done over the last few weeks? Why yes I did! I chose to do some work on a possible Mendaihu Universe book (or trilogy--we'll see about that) by way of writing a few pages' worth of notes. Nothing too chunky just yet, just a lot of questioning, throwing ideas around, and seeing what resonates. It may take a bit more time before I get anything solid, but I at least have some ideas. A lot of these notes had been written during a few convention panels, which I find to be one of the best places to do so. It's partly inspiration, partly keeping my mind in focus.

I also worked just a tiny bit on Two Thousand on the flight over (a few paragraphs, which I'm going to toss because it's not at all what I wanted), but also worked on a few pages' worth of character building for that as well before the trip. This one will be my first non-genre fiction in quite some time--in fact, since the original version back in 1994. I have some neat ideas on this one, so I'm hoping it'll be fun.

Which also brings up the question: What about Walk in Silence? Well, that one seems to have stopped dead for a little bit, and there's a reason for that: it's about 20k of crap so far. Okay, maybe not that bad, but I've come to the conclusion that it's not the direction I want. There's a lot of work there that I could use in a much smaller form, but I need to refocus and restart. I'm going to put that one aside for a little bit and come back to it at a later time. On the plus side, I just finished reading Bob Stanley's Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, and it's inspired a new direction for WiS in the process.

Which also begs the next point: I really should stop announcing what I'm currently working on, because as soon as I announce plans, they disintegrate! Sheesh.
jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Woo, vacation coming in less than a week!! We'll be flying out of SFO on Saturday and across the briny blue to the UK for Worldcon and much sightseeing, and I'm totally looking forward to it. A and I both have a list of places to visit--the many museums, the usual tourist traps, and of course a few Beatles-related points of interest. And I'd be kicking myself if I didn't spend two weeks in London and not visit the famed Abbey Road, right? We even picked up a few tickets to see a play at one of their many theaters there. I'm really looking forward to this trip, gonna be a lot of fun!

Looking forward to Worldcon as well...it's going to be one where I know quite a few people who are also going to be there, so it'll be a lot of fun to stop and say hi to everyone! Interestingly enough I haven't yet read through the entire con schedule yet (partly due to the fact that I completely forgot to do so until a few days ago), but I've come to the conclusion that cons work even better for me if I don't overplan it. There are always a few definites as far as panels are concerned, but keeping my plans relatively fluid means I'm less concerned about possibly missing things and more open-minded about panels I stumble in on at the last minute. I've discovered new books and writers that way too!

So yes...this weekend has basically been all about the planning. Getting a shuttle to the airport, getting London transit cards, buying travel books, mapping out a schedule, working out a to-do list, stopping mail delivery for a bit, and so on. All the usual steps one takes pre-vacation. And now I'm at the point where I'm making a mental list of what I'll be bringing on board the plane. This is one of those rare moments where we can bring a carry-on with us but not an additional bag to be put overhead. Not complaining about that too much...I'm sure I can figure out a way to arrange the necessities in my satchel--you know, the tablet, the mp3 player, book to read, notebook for writing, possible change of clothes (you know how it is), camera, and all within the confines of the space they're giving us. It'll be tricky, but I think I can pull it off.


In other news...what have I been up to the last few weeks? Aside from a three-day cold that annoyed the hell out of me, I've been keeping busy. I'm not as far along with Walk in Silence as I'd like to be, and I think it's because I've hit a slow muddy segment that will most likely need to be heavily rewritten. I'm at the point of why the hell am I writing this anyway, and is it really worth the work? second-guessing, which is annoying. The words don't exactly suck, but I'm perhaps at a point where I'm getting bored with the project. Or that I'm at a point I don't want to write for some reason and would rather not deal with it. In other words, I've got the writer's typical mid-project don't wanna's.

If anything, I'm going to utilize this vacation for two things: a brief break from the writing to get my thoughts back on track, and a distraction to plan what fiction project I'm going to work on next.


So yes...going to be a busy week of last minute plans, packing, and everything else under the sun. I may even post something here or at WordPress before I leave, if time permits. We'll see.

WTF...??

Jul. 21st, 2005 09:27 am
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Something's up in London again. Not nearly as violent as two weeks ago...but something's up. Minor blasts that seemed only to blow out windows of a bus and a few trains. More soon...

On CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/21/london.tube/index.html

On BBC.co.uk:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4703777.stm

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