by Charlene Teglia | Dec 22, 2004 | Uncategorized
No time to blog yesterday, and today isn’t looking good either. I’m in the final push to get through the ms. at least one more time to make sure I didn’t miss anything before the deadline. But I recently ran across John Updike’s Dance of the Solids and it reminded me of a poem I had tucked away, which I repost here for your reading pleasure. If you hate math, you might want to skip Poetry of Symbols by Charlene Teglia, copyright 1997.
Lorentz transformations and tensor notation
Are creations too lovely and fine
When I’ve yet to dare create a Euler’s square
Or write sonnets of tangent and sine;
Fractals that iterate endlessly fascinate
And Reimann’s made arc out of line,
Lobatchevsky’s the poetic geometry
That lets astronomy shine;
The Gausses, the Cantors, the poets, the mentors
Have made beauty of symbol and sign;
What poor poem can I make in their glorious wake?
The triangle eludes me, the circle’s not mine.
This is actually at least tangentially related to Love and Rockets, because I studied a whole lot of rocket science for this book. Including the mathematical formula to calculate escape velocity from a planet’s gravity well. Fascinating stuff. But that just gives background to the story. The story itself is all about the funny things human beings do when they fall in love. And let’s not forget sex. Sex definately requires a sense of humor.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 21, 2004 | Uncategorized
Yule has garnered another fantastic review, with a perfect 5 from Romance Review Spot. In case you’re wondering if I’m only advertising the good ones, there haven’t been any bad ones. The reviews are pretty much unanimous, as are the reader responses. Why does this make me incredibly happy? Well, it’s always nice to get a pat on the back. But when you’ve been immersed in a project you lose perspective and you always wonder if you really pulled it off. At least, I do. And it’s really nice to see that yes, I did.
Which makes me feel better about my current immersed without perspective state. And brings me to the “how long can I say I’m almost done” bit. Yes, I really am pretty much done with the edits on Love and Rockets. I just take my time going over the final thing, putting on final touches. There’s always something I see after it’s been “done” for a few days that I didn’t see before. I’m going through from beginning to end. I’ll do that more than once to make sure I didn’t miss anything and it all flows. And then I’ll send it on its way.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 20, 2004 | Uncategorized
We voted to do very little for the holidays this year, for a couple of reasons. I’m too tired to do more than the bare essentials. Toddlers and simple holidays kind of go together. (She’s showing an alarming interest in climbing, which did not bode well for a tree.) I’ve got these revisions to finish up by Christmas Eve. What with one thing and another, we agreed that this year there were a lot of things that just weren’t all that important.
So I put wreaths on the doors and Christmas music in the CD player, and that’s been very nice. I’m going to make another batch of cranberry bread when I get around to it (maybe not before the weekend), and we’ll cook another turkey for Christmas day. The simplicity of our preparations and the classic carols are good reminders that really, this is what the season is all about.
Today is the 20th, so the solstice is just around the corner. Tried to find an astronomy site with the correct time for the winter solstice this year but came up dry. I did find this, however, and it’s full of links to interesting solstice information of all kinds.
I like the winter solstice best because it marks the return of the sun. The longest night of the year comes, and then the light begins to grow day by day. It’s a happy time, the promise of spring and summer in the middle of the cold, dark night. It’s good to remember when things seem dark that the light always comes back.
Good Yule, everybody. Now it’s time for me to go finish a book.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 19, 2004 | Uncategorized
I finished the bulk of Rockets this morning. Now all I have left is the fun part, beefing up the sex scenes. I think I originally sent this to Harlequin Temptation, which is sexy but still limited in what you could say or do and the number of sex scenes per book. It was incredibly liberating to write Dangerous Games with nothing held back. Now I get to go back over the scenes in Rockets without pulling my punches and I’m looking forward to it.
Revisions are tiring, so I’m glad I saved the fun stuff for last. Writing new pages is energizing. I realized yesterday I really need to take a break when I’m done with Rockets and write something new. Maybe a few scenes of a work in progress, maybe something completely different, but my brain needs to stand up and stretch before I go back and revise that last ms. Which means I probably won’t get it out the door before the end of the year. If I do it without being all mentally refreshed and rested, it’s going to suffer.
Rockets is solid, though, and I’m happy about that. I am very pleased with it, and will be even more so when I’m done with the final stage.
by Charlene Teglia | Dec 18, 2004 | Uncategorized
I came up with a new story idea yesterday. And my creative brain flat refused to cooperate with any more revision on Rockets until I agreed to write it down. The creative brain does not care that I’m on a deadline and I’m not supposed to be fooling around with new stories. I let it have its way in the end, because we both know that if creative brain isn’t happy, logical brain will be out of business before long. If you want to have a good, long bout of writer’s block, go ahead and let logical brain dictate to your creative brain.
As soon as I started a story file for the new project and jotted down the core of the idea, creative brain produced another big chunk of revision, all smiles.
What’s the new idea? The working title is Alienville, subject to change without notice. And it may or may not grow up to be a full-fledged story. Not all ideas do. But this one really seems strong, given that I was completely shut down for 24 hours until I agreed to commit the idea to paper. Creative brain seems to think this one is really important.
But my daily dose of revision is now done, and in record time, and I’m going to go have an eggnog latte as a reward.
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