I refuse to let myself go two weeks without posting here. Very very *nearly* two weeks is quite bad enough, methinks. So. What can I say?

Finally saw The Mummy last week, it was great. Saw WALL•E a couple of weekends ago, and it was also great. Fantastic. I loved it so much, I can’t wait to buy the DVD.

I’ve been reading quite a bit, first through Sarah A. Hoyt’s Heart of Light and Soul of Fire (waiting on Heart and Soul, due to be released in late October), and then tackling the first two in Holly Lisle’s World Gates trilogy, Memory of Fire and The Wreck of Heaven (need to pick up Gods Old and Dark because… ohemgee.) Funnily enough, I had been trying to get away from dragons after finishing Soul of Fire (so as to not scramble unfinished story lines in my head), only to meet plenty of them by way of the World Gates. So unintentional. Since many other things on my eagerly-TBR pile also involve dragons, I’ve started Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card, as I think it’s safe to say that there are no dragons in it. (I’m definitely not off dragons, by any stretch; I just don’t want to start mixing up plot lines. The last thing I need to do right now is start Temeraire, for instance. Truly, I really do, so very much like dragons.)

I took the first notes since March on Olivine. As soon as I have a few moments in a row that don’t involve cleaning (semi-gutting) my office, I’ll develop them. Any work at all is Good News, right now.

I was looking at my writing goals just now — they’re tacked up on my wall, eye level in front of me; now accompanied by another 3×5 card with “DO NOT GIVE UP. NO MATTER WHAT!!!” written in about four vivid shades of Sharpie. I realize that not all of my goals have a date attached, but let’s face it, I’ve done none of the first three, the ones I can do something about:

1. I will create my fantasy world setting, Olivine.
That screeched to a halt on… [consults notebook] March 16. Fundamental part of small and large-scale plot won’t work with my magic system after all. I did pick a world name after that, but actual real world-building WORK, that all stopped five months ago. (FIVE… MONTHS. AGO. OMG. -_-; )

2. I will complete the first draft of Book 1 by December 31, 2008.
I suppose that’s still technically possible; given the explanation of goal #1, seems unlikely at this point.

3. I will write a short story (science fiction) and submit to a contest or magazine.
Did not do. Got tangled up in technicalities over the contest I was considering (this was in May-June); project over-thought and for the moment, abandoned.

Goals are good and I’m not going to crumple up my 3×5 card, by any means, but I’m at a loss. I could say “life has buried me alive, YOU HAVE NO IDEA”, but I feel like I’ve said that a dozen times over the past few years and every time I’m having to REDEFINE the extremity of the statement. It’s like it grows by a magnitude with every use. (I’d better darn well never say it again!)

I haven’t posted because I really, honestly, truly have NOTHING I can say about ANYTHING, and I don’t know how long it’ll be before I think of post fodder. My readership has dropped, but there’s little I can do about it. I’m not very interesting right now. I’m the first to admit that.

I did another cluster over the weekend; I’m curious to see how further brainstorming fares with the themes I’ve written down. Getting some perspective on things I value in fiction, and some insight. I hope all of this can be worked into the stuff I want to write; maybe spark something that would lead back to the goals listed above.

I don’t know what else to do.

Last Friday I went to a midnight release party for Breaking Dawn with Lenneth and Johan (who kindly drove us, and Lenneth’s niece, down to Redding for the occasion.) I spent the evening finishing the last third of Eclipse, watching cute little emos!!!! people drift around; at midnight we picked up our copies and headed home. I finished it Sunday afternoon, finding it utterly crack-tacular, even more so than the other books. Parts horrified me. Parts I loved. By the end, I loved it front-to-back. I’m rereading the latter half now, just to go over the more fascinating parts (imho).

I was never one for vampires, Interview With A Vampire (despite Brad Pitt) gave me nightmares for a solid MONTH, and in general, it’s just not my thing. The story told in the Twilight Saga, however, was so much more than mere vampires; I can’t believe how much I liked it. The end was very satisfactory.

And what can I say? Twilight got me reading again; Eclipse and Breaking Dawn have my writing juices flowing a little. Despite everything going on (and wow, what a lot I can’t talk about here), I still feel a bit more creative than I have in recent memory. I’ll pick up where I left off — working on themes and things of importance to me, brainstorming, clustering — today or tomorrow. Work is starting to improve, and I need to catch up a bit. So I’m doing that, for now.

Brian sent me this yesterday. I started this post as a reply back to him but realized it made for a good rant. And good post fodder.

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. told SCI FI Wire that fantastic space science fiction shows and movies are, in part, responsible for the lack of interest in real-life space exploration among young people.

“I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today,” Aldrin said in an interview during an ice cream party held by the National Geographic Channel at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., this week. “All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It’s not realistic.”

For the most part, I disagree with Mr. Aldrin. I do not think lack of realism is making kids less interested in the space program. I think lack of anything interesting happening, AT ALL, is making kids less interested in the space program. And it’s not just kids.

There’s a lot of talking, organizing, but nothing is really HAPPENING at NASA right now. Hence the commercial interest in the Google Lunar X Prize (in my opinion.) My LPI internship adviser is now the chief scientist for one of the X Prize teams, because he’s not waiting for NASA to get around to getting back to the Moon. There’s a lot of disgruntled scientists (I know, I saw them at the LPSC, in 2000 and 2003) who’ve been living on crumbs of hope, project to project, grant to grant, but how long can that really sustain you?

Since I turned my back on the scientific community, I’m going to write science fiction and go to the Moon whenever the heck I want. :P For whatever non-scientific flippant reason I want. And stay as long as I want.

So for once, for a change, I think Aldrin’s full of crap. Usually I’m pretty much on his side, he’s a great advocate for spaceflight… but people need more than realism. They need hope, dreams… things to inspire them. They need the bar set too high, to give them something to shoot for. They also need to see something happening, and if the space program can’t provide that, they’ll go elsewhere. And they will. And they are.

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