3 Green Fish

I added a little over a page and a half today, most of it funeral stuff. It’s strange, because just knowing that this is the comedy section of the book changes the way I write things slightly — I find that I’ve adopted a slightly different style, and it’s not entirely intentional. There are certain quirks to my writing that only show up in certain circumstances, such as this section of the book.

You wouldn’t be able to tell it from the second half of this sentence, but the funny part isn’t the priest talking about how the dead guy’s death is really quite a good thing. Oh, Father Geldric, will you ever learn?

So, I’ve been struggling a bit with my work here, and honestly, when it gets difficult it stops being very much fun. So, today I did things differently to make things more fun — I jumped ahead to Part 2, and wrote the first half a page, skipping over about a chapter and a half of unwritten stuff at the end of part 1, and the rest of the revision. Then I went back and did a little rewriting on one scene to make it from Bandolor’s perspective.

The nice thing about skipping to part 2 is that it’s kind of the comedy section of the book. In a way it’s the interlude between all the bad stuff that happens in part 1 and the gathering disaster of part 3, and getting away from the action of part 1 makes it easier to adopt a more tongue-in-cheek voice.

No excerpt today, as I don’t have anything for you that isn’t full of spoilers (I’ve gotta have a few surprises). I’ll have an excerpt again soon, I promise!

So, I made progress today. Actually finished the last of the major changes to my first draft, I think, and I’m considering skipping through almost all of the remainder to start churning out more. If I just add a little description to one section and change around one more conversation, I think it might all be okay from here on out, since I fixed most of the parts that I wanted to change for the moment, and it’s more or less set to continue on from here.

Mostly I worked on changing around a key scene between Adrianna and Bandolor. It fits better and is more plausible, but it might still need work in the future. At least this way my continuity isn’t screwed up, and I can head back to the current action with a basic understanding of what happens earlier. The really exciting news is that I should soon be able to start part 2 (finally!) which I hope will be more humorous than part 1. That would be fun.

Today I fought Murphy, and while I guess I won in the end, he certainly ate up most of my waking hours. So I got started late and didn’t write much. It’s been a rough road lately — technology keeps on needing attention. Argh.

So yeah. I added half a page and now it’s time to call it a night. Unless I try to get the network printer working tomorrow, I should have a better day anon.

The first two Resident Evil films were some of the best movies based on video games, if not the best. The reason they worked so well, in my opinion, was simply the premise: the gigantic Umbrella Corporation creates a super-virus that animates the dead. Take the usual zombie issues, add in some nice action and you’ve got yourself a decent action flick. Resident Evil: Extinction jumps forward in time; the T-virus has spread across the globe, the undead are everywhere, Umbrella corporation continues its activities in underground bases, and those people who survive do so by remaining ever on the move.

Yes, it’s post-apocalyptic. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but it was a bold step that panned out well for the most part. On the one hand, the film predominantly lacks the claustrophobic environments of its predecessors, but on the other hand, the spread of the T-virus across the United States would have been extremely difficult to portray well with a coherent plot. Instead of trying for that expansive of a story, Extinction focuses on one particular band of survivors, and on Umbrella’s wayward experiment in superhuman ability, Alice (played once again by Milla Jovovich), who kicks undead butt any chance she gets.

I don’t think this film is quite as strong as the last two, but it’s still fun, and Jovovich alone can keep an action movie going at high speeds. The big monster that rears its (extremely) ugly head by the end isn’t quite up to the par of the Licker in the first movie and Nemesis in Apocalypse. Also, the science has gotten even more dubious (just how exactly does the T-virus wipe out all life?), but all in all, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the movie. You can’t go wrong with a huge flock of killer crows all cawing in anticipation of pecking out some eyeballs.

Resident Evil: Extinction, staring Milla Jovovich. Directed by Russell Mulcahy. In theaters as of September 21st, 2007.

I actually added 3 pages two days ago, but my internet connection cut out before I was done. Then I spent most of yesterday trying to get the internet working again (you all can thank me for that later*), and that didn’t exactly put me in the mood to write. As you can probably imagine, it also made it difficult to do things like post stuff online.

Today, though, I added another 3.5 pages. Thus, since my last novel watch, I have added 6.5 pages of fresh, brand new content! Woo!

It helps that I’ve been working on an exciting part of the story. There’s a little action, which is always good, and I was able to introduce a minor villain earlier, so that’s good too. I definitely think shifting things around like this was a good idea, and as much as I’ve lost time to slow revision, it’s definitely been the way to go. Hopefully I’m back on track to work regularly now (and hopefully the internets won’t get clogged again).

Today’s excerpt is in honor of Cristie. ‘Cause of the fish. It’s also the last thing I wrote tonight, so don’t be surprised if you see problems with grammar. Or spelling. Or coherence. Yeah.

One group of men tended a frame with a dozen long heavy rods, on which hung pairs of herring. In each pair, the head of one was actually threaded through the gill and mouth of its counterpart, forming an inverted V-shape to hang on the rod. Adrianna found herself staring at the rods of herring more than anything—they looked like mutant fish with a second head growing out of their mouths, and a second body bursting out of their sides.

(*Yes, I know I didn’t fix the internet. Yeesh.)

Do you ever have deja vu about some project you’re working on, where you think “I’ve done this exact thing before, completed it and finished it”? Because I had that earlier, working on this revision when I got to that point where I was starting to add new stuff. It’s kind of a weird feeling, and maybe it’s just a reminder of the other times that I’ve revised the opening to something and then gone on to continue it.

Today I rewrote a big scene and started adding my major new addition to the plot of part 1. After that’s finished, I may just skim through revising the remainder of part 1 to move on to better stuff. I really want to introduce Ellia and get that whole subplot moving.

In other news, my “weekends” are getting shorter, but it would be nice if I could get them down to two days…

And in today’s installment of weird math anomalies, my total goes up by almost 1 page when I barely add half a page of content. Huh.

I took a few days off, which I think helped a little. I’m kind of in a low spot in terms of plot and action and I don’t know what really needs to go here. So it’s kind of slow going. Blah.

Tomorrow I mean to work harder, and get back up to steam. Gotta hurry up if I want to add new content!

I was happy with my old mouse, but after close to seven years of use, the scroll wheel finally busted. After much deliberation, mostly due to an inability to find any stores nearby that carry a wide selection of mice, I ordered a Kensington Mouse-in-a-Box Optical Elite online. My hope was that, being a Kensington mouse, the Optical Elite would be a similar size and shape to my last Kensington mouse.

It’s actually a little larger, but it still fits well in my hand. While rounded like all sensible mice, the peak of the Optical Elite is centered rather than toward the wrist, and it’s a little wide up front, so it might not be quite as ergonomic as my old mouse — however, these are minor quibbles, and I have to say that it’s still an excellent piece of hardware for twenty bucks. The optical sensor seems to work very well, even on my ancient grey mouse pad.

The Optical Elite comes with 5 buttons, but one of these is the scroll wheel button, which by default switches the direction of scrolling. If you use scroll wheels on mice a lot, this could be a handy feature. Two of the buttons are the standard left- and right-click buttons, and the last two are on the sides. I find my thumb rests near one of them, making it potentially very useful, while the other is harder to reach. Since the mouse is symmetrical, this is more an issue of hand shape than design. MouseWorks software, included in the box, allows you to program each button in a variety of ways, from various clicks to key combinations, and even set specific commands for multiple buttons pressed simultaneously.

The Kensington Mouse-in-a-Box Optical Elite costs about $20, and can be purchased directly from Kensington, from Amazon, or from any number of online stores. Supposedly, you should be able to find it at stores in your neighborhood too!

I had another off day. This revision is starting to drag a little, but the good news is that after the new section that’s coming up I can probably skim through most of the rest and plan on doing more revising later. That’s about the point where Adrianna found her voice in the first draft, so I won’t need to change much, for the moment at least.

On the whole though, I took the day off. Nothing to see here, move along…