Sunday Progress Update

Last week, the Sunday update didn't happen until Wednesday, and this week it's Tuesday. Progress!


Reading
I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, finished Small Favor, got partway into Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and then my iPod suffered some kind of failure. I don't know if it will be possible to resurrect it and, if it isn't, the future is likely to hold a narrower, and yet more varied, set of audiobooks, since I'll be limited to what I have an Audible and can thus put on my phone.
Since it already was on my phone, I just re-listened to Men At Arms, by Terry Pratchett. I'm not an across-the-board Pratchett enthusiast, but I really like the Watch books. As a late...it's complicated of mine once said, "I'll take Drunks Trying to Make a Difference for $200".
Anyway, I finished that about an hour ago, and now I'm re-listening to An Artificial Night, by Seanan McGuire, because it too was on my phone already, so it was that or Dead Beat. An Artificial Night is honestly one of my favorite books, and is the holder of three of the dubious Evan Reads a Lot And Has Opinions Awards, specifically for "Only print fiction I've found genuinely scary", "Only 'creepy little kid' horror I've found genuinely scary", and "Only work in any genre to make me sort of give a fuck about Tam Lin". Mostly because the part it borrows from is the part where Tam Lin gets turned into all the different things, and Janet has to keep hold of him. And like, that's where the good metaphor is. That's the part that has anything to do with anything. Tam Lin did a stupid, or possibly just had a poorly timed moment of bad luck, when he was younger, and the process of moving past that requires that Janet be patient and be willing to get hurt a little bit while he goes through a process of messy, repeated transformation that's probably even harder on him than it is on her. (In real life, of course, you don't have to be willing to deal with that, but it's often going to be the price of staying with someone while they try to get over whatever issues they have, and it is sometimes worth it. But this is a writing blog).
I also started reading On Writing, by Stephen King, largely to find out whether some of the more annoying attitudes about craft and process that people take away from it are actually present in the text. So far, 23 pages in (to the 2002 mass-market paperback edition, if it matters), he's only said three things about writing at all. Listen to your editor (agree, although with more caveats than he puts on it), the machinery to be a writer is inborn, but not especially rare (agree), and television is bad, or at least bad for writers (strenuously disagree, although this might have been a somewhat more reasonable position to take when one's exposure to television started in 1958. Narrative fiction in all media, but especially television, has improved immensely in the intervening 6 decades).


Writing
Absolutely nothing except this blog and a couple of long Facebook and Tumblr posts. Not even pointless assignments for my Other Job, because summer term is over and fall hasn't started yet. Not counting the social media activity, however articulate and well-researched it might have been, I spent 2 hours and 10 minutes writing last week. Eventually there will be a progress tracking widget somewhere on this blog to show how far I've gotten on the 20,000 Hours project. I'd like to finish in less than 20 years, so hopefully I'll find a way to pick up the pace.


Publishing
We've got an unprecedented number of submissions right now, and needless to say, I'm behind on reading the ones that it's my job to read. I used to read all of them, a whole year ago when we opened the magazine, but that just isn't practical anymore. This is requiring us to do some rethinking about how to best implement the part where, while obviously we don't want to publish bad fiction, we want even less to not publish good fiction. Every piece we get deserves appropriate and charitable reading, but what that looks like can vary wildly from story to story, and there are hard deadlines and limited person-hours. It's a hard problem and we're working on it. Believe me, if we come up with an amazing solution, you'll hear about it.

The Different Kinds of Gods That There Are

So right now I'm listening to Small Favor, and I'm between Dresden's initial meeting with Mab and his first ever Parking Lot Argument With Fix While Thomas Hangs Out in an SUV (seriously almost this exact interaction reoccurs in Cold Days, but I digress). At one point in that conversation with Mab, Dresden refers to her as a "demigod", and now irritable fantasy writer is irritated.
About half the definitions below are ones I made up to particularize things that are fuzzy, and none of them only mean one thing. Really each term is a spectrum, and what part of that spectrum is most useful is going to depend on what you need the *other* words to mean.

God
The Abrahamic God, any comparably comprehensive and powerful deity, or anything that is straightforwardly a god, such as a member of the Greek or Norse panthrons.

god
Scope and power range starts at "Anything that is straightforwardly a deity", as above. Can be used to differentiate such beings, most of whom have limitations, from an omnipotent and omniscient God, if both are in play, or if they're showing up enough, and persony enough, that getting all reverent and capital G about it doesn't seem appropriate (both of these apply to Hades and Odin in The Dresden Files). Could also distinguish beings that are of a scope or power level with Gods, but for some reason aren't Gods, from those that are, or could describe beings of godlike power that are not actually operating on that level, or lack the attendant responsibilities. (Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 is somewhere in that space).

Quasigod
If "They're sort of a god." is an accurate description, this is an applicable term. This literally just means "sort of a god". Overlaps with small g gods above, and with pseudogod and semigod below.

Psuedogod
Refers to beings that seem like gods but are not. They could be a god in a world where there are also Gods or a God, beings that are not actually on a power/scope level with gods but seem like they are to mortals, or beings that are not gods but are presenting themselves like they are.

Demigod
A being with one parent who is a god or God and one parent who is not. Usually the other one is human, but they don't have to be. I suppose this could also refer to a being both of whose parents are themselves demigods. Depending on what kind of world you're writing, they're power level, and some other things, they may also be a god, quasigod, or pseudogod. Probably they are not a God, but they might be if they have an established place in a pantheon or something.

Semigod
Rather than being half-god, they are halfway to being a god. A semigod could reasonably be a being who's about half as powerful as whatever gods are around, or one who is somehow halfway through a process of becoming a god or God.

Hemigod
Literally half of a god or God. This term will not apply in that many situations, but could apply to a god that has been physically or spiritually bisected but is still doing stuff, or to half of a deity that is a pair of beings or has a dual nature, especially if half of the pair, or the other aspect, is absent or has been destroyed.

God has stopped looking like a real word. 

Tuesday

I finished listening to White Night. It's much easier to do clever banter in stories than in real life, because you can give everyone as long as they need to think of a good response.
I've just upped my main job to 40 hours a week, from 32. Counting transit time and whatnot that brings the hours out of my week to 55. Fortunately, I take the bus, so I can get some things done during my commute, but I'm keeping energy expenditure pretty minimal until I can acclimate, or until I determine that I can't.
I did download some submissions for The Fantasist onto my phone, so I can read them. I'm also, along with my partner, now St. Louis chapter head for the Speculative Literature Foundation. Not sure what exactly that work will entail yet, other than figuring out what the speculative writing community here needs and wants, and then figuring out how to help make it happen.
Normally, lately, I sleep for 3 or 4 hours right when I get home and another 3-4 hours before I need to leave by the house, on weekdays. That split schedule means I can be awake during more of the hours that I'm actually awake, but it also means I'm running shorter on sleep this week. I'm also still learning how to be productive with that chunk of time in the middle, how to balance everything.

The Journal of Evan Not Writing

I spent 15 hours doing work things for money, counting transit time. There were lots of times in there that I could have written stuff, and I didn't, because I was exhausted. I promise this will not always be The Journal of Evan Not Writing. Eventually you will get to see me persevere and write stuff anyway, but this week you get to see me not writing and not beating myself up over it.
I did get a little reading done. With my eyeballs. It's been slow going on The Gathering Storm, despite Sanderson's prose reading faster than Jordan's, 'cause it's just harder to care. I don't have any nifty writerly thoughts about it right now.
I'm listening to White Night, but I don't have a lotta insights there either other than that it's courageous to be messing with the "several seemingly unrelated threads somehow come together" formula this far into a series, although he was sorta half-assing that part in Dead Beat and Proven Guilty anyway. And also that I wish we saw more of Molly's training, because I like apprenticeship narratives.