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(Untitled)
It is now February, the month in which Kapoor gets back to work on Gone to Earth. It took about 80 weeks to write the first draft, and 40 weeks for the second. Can Kapoor complete the third draft in 20 weeks? We shall see. There is much to do:- At 132,000 words, it's much too long for a first-time novelist. The next draft must be cut to 120,000 words ( Read more... )
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Obama and Reagan
Yesterday, the senate seat once held by JFK and Teddy Kennedy was won by Republican Scott Brown. The predicted media narrative is emerging: The GOP's upset victory is a repudiation of the Obama Administration's excessively liberal policies (see the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, et al.). This is a strange thing to claim. As Ezra Klein ( Read more... ) -
Another Gone to Earth Milestone
This morning Kapoor finished the second draft of Gone to Earth. Total length: Approximately 132,000 words, or 439 pages. It gained 8,000 words from the first draft, but lost 2 pages because Kapoor removed the chapter breaks so he could read it and decide where to put them in the third draft without being prejudiced by where he put them in the first ( Read more... ) -
Kapoor: The RPG
The first players' hardcopies of Kapoor: The RolePlaying Game are now in the hands of people who are not Kapoor, and one full PDF is in Rafferty's paws. If Kapoor hadn't faced varying degrees of savage criticism from eight and a half years of writers' workshops, he'd be nervous (well, he is nervous that he might just be wasting peoples' time, but ( Read more... ) -
Kapoor Designs an RPG
From time to time in his writing hobby Kapoor's found it helpful to model characters and scenes in RPG terms. He'd start thinking something like "what else can this character do?" and then jump-start his imagination by randomly rolling a career from Traveller or trying to describe the character in GURPS or d20 terms. He's even run a GURPS ( Read more... ) -
Kapoor, Social Animal
Over the weekend Kapoor went to two nighttime parties and one boardgaming afternoon. Parties are now gatherings of people where Rock Band gets played, it seems. Friday night's party was at Chez Casa Varney and featured some games, too - Varney's a big fan of Cosmic Encounter, but couldn't persuade anyone to join him in a game. Kapoor won a game of ( Read more... ) -
Moron Stupak
Oops. That was supposed to be "More on Stupak", referring to the Stupak Amendment to the healthcare reform bill, the amendment Kapoor mentioned yesterday that explicitly forbids abortion coverage. Stupak not only forbids any federal plan from offering insurance coverage for abortion, but also forbids any insurance companies who participate in the ( Read more... ) -
Unhealthy Debate
Over the weekend, the United States House of Representatives passed a healthcare reform bill that forbids certain abusive practices in the healthcare insurance industry and also provides a public health insurance plan for those who cannot get the coverage they need in the market. The bill passed with 220 votes to 215, with many conservative ( Read more... ) -
Kapoor Gets Prizes
One of the bygone traditions in Kapoor's bimonthly writing group is that if one workshops an entire novel through the group, little trophy prizes are given as reward and encouragement. Kapoor is told that in the old days, before printers were inexpensive and when photocopies were dear, writers would read their stories aloud to the group. The first ( Read more... ) -
Gone to Turkey City
Kapoor got to participate in his third Turkey City, taking along a revised second draft of Gone to Earth's first two chapters (draft 2.5 if you will). This time it was hosted by Chris Nakashima-Brown, and attended by such luminaries as Lawrence Person, Jessica Reisman, Paul Miles, and Bruce SterlingTurkey City is an all-day thing. It's a writers ( Read more... )