The part of my brain that usually handles earworms has branched out and presented me with a name running persistently through my mind, the name of a person I don’t remember ever having come across in the flesh or in writing:

Betty Taminiau.

I googled it, of course, and found nothing that rang a bell. I did find Jan Taminiau the fashion designer, Bert or Bart Taminiau the field-hockey player, Renske Taminiau the singer, Aart Taminiau the artist, and several others (not to mention the 63 million occurrences of Betty). Until then, I hadn’t even been sure that the name actually existed.

In all its rarity it’s such a normal name that I can’t believe I haven’t read it somewhere and the earworms department has just found it in a cubby-hole and dished it up for me to look at. She sounds like someone who compiles cookery books, or someone from the Dutch WWII resistance, or even both: “the culinary writer Betty Taminiau, who saved twenty-three Jewish girls by hiding them in her cookery school.” I can see her now, still pert and lively at ninety-four; I can’t decide whether she has a tribe of great-grandchildren or only a morose black-and-white tomcat.

I do sometimes “get” characters like this, but they usually fit into something I’m already writing. Not this one. But if I don’t find a pre-existing Betty Taminiau, I’ll have to write something to make her exist; her name is much too splendid to let it go to waste.

From sciamanna; she mentioned it on IRC. I don’t have any one “my novel” at the moment —one fatally stalled, three in submisson-anxiety coma— but I’ll answer for A Voice from the North, colloquially known as “the Frozen North thing”.

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landaulet

It floated into my mind when I was half-awake at 5:45 or so, trying to ignore a headache and to visualise subtle shades of midnight blue because green made me queasy and red hurt too much. A parting shot of the dream engine, I suppose, at the tail-end of a jumble of stuff inspired by the Prisoner of Zenda movie we watched last night. A splendid movie: with effective deliberate over-the-topness and very true to the book.

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A while ago some people on the rec.arts.sf.composition newsgroup tossed the idea around to have a dedicated IRC channel where people could drop in and out to talk about writing (and, as writers do, about cats, chocolate, and just about anything else), to shout out wordcounts without littering the newsgroup, and to ask “what’s that word again?” in someone’s general direction and get an answer immediately so it doesn’t stop the flow.

This disappeared into the general Usenet nowhere for a while, until it came up again just when I happened to have time, so I went and set it up. It’s been up for two weeks now and it’s started working as intended. People drop in and out and talk about anything that happens to be relevant or interesting (though, at the moment, very much about bread-baking; the other hardcore baker and I have already got two other people to take it up), shout out wordcounts, ask for words and toss around plot ideas.

Some people feared that the IRC channel would take the interesting discussion out of the newsgroup, but that seems not to be happening: the chat is mostly social and practical, immediate, whereas the more thoughtful discussion is still in the newsgroup, and even comes back to the newsgroup from the channel (“that’s a good idea, shall I post it or do you want to?”)

It’s not exclusive, though it’s ex-directory: if you don’t do Usenet, but read this and think you’ll fit in with a loose group of …er… idiosyncratic writers, don’t hesitate to drop in. It’s #rasfc on irc.freenode.net, and if you mention my name (I’m irina_r there) someone will know where you’re coming from.

The kids are away at camp, the house is full of hackers hacking away (Boudewijn is hosting the Krita Hackathon) so it ought to be easy to make some writing progress.

Erm, no. It flows like treacle; very sticky.

Probably because this is one of those awkward scenes that don’t write themselves and can’t be glossed over to fix in the second draft. It’s a court case, and I simply don’t know enough to let that write itself, I have to pay attention to every detail. I’m tempted, and about to give in to the temptation, to have the accused (the about-to-be king and his consort) simply split and leave everything dangling. They’re that kind of people.

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Finally done a real round of marketing-type stuff. It doesn’t make me not want to be a writer —any job has its no-fun parts— but it’s the least fun part of the job, until now.

Three serious email queries, one of which got rejected in 20 hours (!): probably boilerplate, but friendly and encouraging boilerplate along the lines of “this is not the kind of thing I’m handling right now, it’s no reflection on the quality of your work, you should definitely seek other representation”. Pity, because this was the agent I liked best from his web site; when I have something else that’s finished enough, I’ll see if it’s the kind of thing he’s handling then.

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If —I’ll be optimistic: when— an editor buys my book and gives me an advance, I’m going to buy a new bicycle. A new new bicycle, not just another second-hand rattletrap only slightly newer than my current rattletrap. This one. Or this one. Unfortunately they don’t have them in green. But I’ll settle for red or purple or grey as long as it’s the right shape for my proportions and the lights work when I want them to work. Well, I did get the light of the old grey mare bike fixed, and the chain oiled and tightened, but it’s still a rattletrap.

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Last week the story of King Vegelin (well, currently Prince Valain) sprouted wings and a propeller and soared away. I was averaging easily 800 words a day. Then the family flu came and took me by the scruff of the neck.

Two days of nothing, one day with exactly one sentence, one day when I was proud of 151 words, and today seems to be reasonable (though I still have an annoying cough and random fits of sneezing): 370 words until now and I’ll see what comes of it. But I know where the story is going now. I’ve killed a good guy and a bad guy, and slightly redeemed a bad girl, and set up the prince as a Really Good Guy. At least that’s something.

Eric Jarvis wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition on January 24:

(aargh! I hate Google Groups, and I especially hate the new beta interface)

If anyone is up for a challenging exercise I’ve got an idea. Short shorts, 500 words or so. ALL the events portrayed must take place within five minutes.

So this is what I did. It’s exactly 500 words and I wrote it on my birthday. Yes, Dorothy, I know that posting it in the public domain means that I can never submit it anywhere; but it’s my birthday present and it’s not for submitting.

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Yesterday I finished transferring the blue-fluorescent-marker edit to electrons. Terms of Service is now officially finished. For the second time: this is the revised version, still innocent of slush piles.

Now for the synopsis. That word has an epithet when I think it that I won’t write in public, because that’s one skill I don’t have (didn’t have it in high school either). Boudewijn wrote the synopsis for the previous version, and what I’m trying to do now is to make it match the new one without showing the stitches. It’s slightly easier than it sounds, because most changes are cosmetic (though I did fix a continuity error or two, zapped a complete subplot and played down a little subplot that had never really come to fruition), but it’s still, well, The Very Hot Place.

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