Deadlines

I have two deadlines in December. One is for a chapbook collection of some of my writing, part of series of chapbooks being done by a small press in the Bay Area. A darn fine small press. Thus far, they have published chapbooks by Terry Bisson and Kim Stanley Robinson.

The chapbook editor apparently likes my fiction contribution as is. I just finished updating my 2004 Guest of Honor speech at Wiscon ("Writing Science Fiction during the Third World War"). The editor likes the new version of the speech. He says it's luminous, which is high praise. Nothing remains except an interview.

The other project is a short novel or a very long novella. I have to finish revising it this week. It's 100 pages in the current version. I figure 25 pages a day. The story was a bear to write, and I'm still not happy with it. Maybe it will be okay. At least it will be done and out the door in four days.

Quote for the Day

This from Viggo Mortensen, with whom I fell in love while watching The Lord of the Rings:

As Howard Zinn has often pointed out, history told from above -- from the standpoint of generals and kings and presidents -- encourages passivity, a sense of helplessness. In this version of history, "great men" make history, not ordinary people. But looked at from below, history has another lesson. Whenever change as happened, it has been through protest, dissent, struggle, social movements, ordinary people picketing, striking, boycotting, sitting down, sitting in. All this means that we make history, history is effected by our everyday decisions.