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Today, I’m thirty-three. The last year’s been good to me: I’ve gotten a new job that lets me work from home, we finished Achron. My wife and my son continue to be the best at being my wife and my son (respectively), and are only getting better at it.  They’re the best, and you can’t have them; they’re mine.

This year, I finalized plans for my first novel, and stumbled upon a big idea for a second. I’ve been writing my brains out, trying to make headway, and I think it’s starting to show results. I don’t know if either novel will turn out to be any good in the end, but I will have had the experience of doing it even if they deserve a Viking funeral in the grill out back.

Being thirty-two was a good choice, I think. I recommend being thirty-two to anyone that’s in the market for another year: I was old enough to understand a few things about myself that I didn’t understand before, and I was young enough to maintain a steady supply of glee, fun, and weirdness.

Thirty-three is looking to be a pretty good year as well. I’ve got no choice, I know. The previous year’s all worn out, and I’ve already made the down-payment on the next one. One way or the other, I plan to make the best of it. If it doesn’t turn out as well as the last, then I’ll use it up, and get a better one come next May.

More Neil (Sorry*)

Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech at the University of Arts in Philadelphia.  If you intend to do something creative with your life, be that writing, illustration, photography, or music, then this is worth listening to, maybe a few times.

(*I am not really sorry.  Sorry.)

#AmyMeetsAbed

This video makes me grin until my face hurts. Drop Amy Pond into Inspector Spacetime for a Community cameo? Yes, please. That would be amazing enough in and of itself, BUT:

Neil Gaiman wants to write it.  The scene, at least.

Not going to happen, I know. It’s just the musings of two awesome people who love a thing that I love. But, just for a second, think about it. And try not to squeal like a thirteen year old girl.

Hemingway and the Art of Writing Fiction

The best thing that I’ve read today is this interview with Ernest Hemmingway, on the art of writing fiction.

I like the interview because it shows in part how Hemmingway had carved the shape of his writing and it’s load-bearing habits into his life, and his house. It’s reflected in the labyrinthine layout of the man’s office, and the topics that he’s willing to discuss. My favorite bits:

“I used to try to write better than certain dead writers of whose value I was certain. For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”

It’s a great piece, and worth your time.

Day Off

Today is my first day off the dayjob this calendar year. I probably should have taken some time off before this, but now that I work from home I find myself falling into a routine, and that routine includes sitting down at my work laptop at 8am, and getting on with it.

Well, today is a day off, and I slept in. So there. (I was up at the normal time to let the dog out, and felt perfectly ready to dive right in, but I decided to go back to bed. Strangely enough, I woke up two hours later a lot more tired than I was when the alarm went off. The lesson seems to be: get up when you’re supposed to, and write. Duly noted, body. Duly noted.)

The first round of my research materials are now sitting in a stack on my desk, and I’m a lot more excited than I thought I would be to be reading a history of London that is thicker than the phonebook. I also managed to find a history of Victorian and Edwardian London, taken from old photographs. I got halfway through that one the first night I had it, purely for the fun of it.

Today we’re being visited by another friend we haven’t seen for ages; Anthea, she of the social networking expertise, Words with Friends, and a car named Fred. It feels like ages since she moved to Texas, though we manage to keep in touch through email and crushing defeats in knock-off Scrabble administered from her cell to mine. (I am good at finding words that my letters make, but very bad at finding words in my letters that fit somewhere on the game board.) It will be a good day.