Busier at work today, which is good as busier = more money. Against Gravity is quietly percolating in my brain.
I have a theory.
The theory is that writing a coherent plot outline is a bit like playing chess, where when you start a game the available options for making moves are extremely wide, and it's impossible to predict the final outcome. Right? But, like a plot outline, the further on you get, the fewer the possible moves you can make before checkmate. At that point, you can try and predict the end if you like - somebody's going to win, either way; that's the end. But the difference between a chess game and a plot outline is, exactly which moves you make to get from chapter six of a ten chapter outline to your expected ending can be harder to predict. Or you can make out the vague notion of events, but find it harder to write them since you're constrained by events in the previous chapters.
At least, unlike chess, you can go back and make changes. Try that next time you're playing chess, you'll get a smack upside of the head from your opponent.
I was surprised and really quite delighted to find that William Gibson is now keeping an online blog over at his website. People tend to focus on the cyberpunk elements of his writing, but one of the better reasons for him to be as famous as he is is his undeniable artistry with the language and the evocative imagery of words he uses to describe his created words. This comes out too in the blog. Although one does rather suspect the prodding hand of a publisher eager to make use of currently fashionable promotional tools when he just has a new novel out.
On a local note; reports of a big cat on the loose somewhere in Scotland keep making me wish the BBC could find some wobbly curmudgeon with a knobbly walking-stick and a good line in Hammer dialogue to interview, preferably someone with big bushy eyebrows and a dead deer slung over his shoulder, to interview: "aar, there be beasts in the hills, laddie, and things beyond yer English ken ... and stay away from the auld castle ..."
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