Night out at Kieran's

[pegkerr]

Headed out to Kieran's last night with minnehaha B, to enjoy Strong Bow cider, Paddy O'Brien's music and the wonderful pot roast sandwiches. I was drawing plot diagrams on the backs of paper placemats when B. showed up. Great fun, with all sorts of plot parallels and arrows pointing off to themes and characters. He grabbed another place mat for scribbling notes and started questioning me at great length, mostly about the magical system, because I need it as a context for the story. I've brainstormed books with people before, but it was an intensely interesting experience to flesh out a magic system by having a non-fiction writer asking the leading questions--especially someone who thinks about system theory for a living. I need to give a great deal more thought to what the magic does. What is it for? How is it used, if used correctly? What is the price for using it wrong?

There was one other thing he gave me that I need to think about. I was talking about how difficult it has been to get to the book. There's been HPEF board stuff, and kid stuff, and well, on and on, blah blah blah. "Have I ever talked to you about the difference between what is urgent and what is important?" he asked. "Many managers have trouble because they can never see the difference, and they always pick the wrong thing to concentrate on: the urgent thing, rather than the important thing. It'll be awfully easy for you to keep putting off working on this book, because even though it's the most important thing, it's never urgent."

"Not unless I get it under contract," I agreed, a little gloomily. "And I hated working under contract." I'll have to think about that distinction between urgent and important some more. I looked at B. a little impishly. "So . . . when are you going to start working on your next book?"

He groaned. "I'm in denial."

He also handed me one very cool detail which I'd like to work in somehow: I could have Rolf stab someone with an ice dagger at some point. How convenient to have your murder weapon melt away!

Kieran's seems to be a magical place for me; I always have a good time while I'm there. But I was really extremely tired. I wanted to wait around to give the pot roast sandwich a chance to settle so I could follow up with some Bailey's chocolate cake in a couple of hours, but my eyelids were drooping so much that I was worried about driving home safely. B. had to leave to go pick up K. at the airport anyway, so we made an early night of it.

Comments

Another business rule

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

The 80-20 rule. One form of it is:

Eighty percent of the profits come from twenty percent of the customers.

Eighty percent of the problems come from twenty percent of the customers.

It's not the same twenty percent.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Along the lines of the urgent vs. important idea is the "big rocks" idea. I was introduced to it through the Franklin Covey folks. Here's a description that's close to what I learned: http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/home/rocks.html. The Franklin Covey people have a Flash demonstration of the idea at http://www.franklincovey.com/promotion/wmm/flash/ptmfp/index.html, skip the welcome and look in the "Time Matrix" menu item for the "Big Rocks" demo.

The basic idea is that there is always stuff that takes up your time. If you don't pay attention, the urgent stuff (like board stuff, kid stuff, etc.) takes up so much time that getting the really important stuff (like book stuff) done is a struggle. If, the theory goes, you put effort into planning the important stuff, the urgent stuff doesn't go away, but since you've planned to get the important stuff done, you struggle less to do so.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

You enjoy Strongbow cider?

Strongbow? This would be the Strongbow beloved of British teenagers drinking in parks after dark?

Proof positive that you're all absolutely barking over there, I feel. Glad you had a good time anyway. What's Bailey's cake like, then?

[redbird]

In much of the US, the options are Strongbow and Woodpecker. There are a few domestically produced ciders, but they aren't widely distributed. A few (very few) bars in New York will have something more-or-less local (which, for us, means New York or New England) on tap, but mostly it's just beer. Keeps my alcohol consumption down, until I get back across the Atlantic.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I'm on a medication that's a bad idea to mix with alcohol. And anyway I really do prefer cider to beer, so at Kieran's it's Strong Bow for me. Sorry to puncture your illusions about my coolness, alexmalfoy, if you had any left!

Bailey's cake is a very dense chocolate cake flavored with Bailey's Irish Creme whiskey. Great for a chocolate fiend like me.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The problem is that none of the good British ciders make it across the Atlantic. Or, at least, they rarely make it across. Once in a great while I'll see Dry Blackthorn on a menu. Only once ever did I see it on tap. I never see Irish ciders.

Strongbow is far better than the American cider brands, which are even sweeter. We're doing the best we can.

B

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Nor the Normandy ciders. All the rules of wine-tasting seemed to apply to local Normandy stuff. It wasn't all great, but you could totally taste the differences, and that in and of itself was an experience, given that previously my only experience had been Woodpecker and Woodchuck in the U.S.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Best of a bad lot, really.

K.

[carol-j.livejournal.com]

*delurking*

I am quite enthusiastic about FlanklinCovey stuff. It is worth reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and their planners are the best!

Carol

PS. Peg, your journal rocks

*back to lurkdom*

Ice dagger

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I think there might be a Lord Peter Whimsey short story where someone is murdered with something that is then melted. It might have been called something like the "mystery of the footsteps that ran". I cannot find my copy of "Lord Peter" so I can't check.

Still, a very ingenious idea for a murder.

If you want to talk to someone who writes occult non-fiction about the magic in your novel, I would be delighted. Though from what I've seen in both EHR and WS, you already have an excellent feel for it. My quick summary is, magic should be there for a reason. If it's functional, does it move the plot along? If it's just window dressing, is it GOOD window dressing?

Urgent vs Important

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I've been dealing with that lately, in both dayjob and novel-drafting. It does help, a bit, to figure out what can be dispensed with for the time being.

Kieran's

[(Anonymous)]

King Borealis used to hang out at the original Kieran's in Saint Paul. Lovely white table cloths and engraved silver. - Bob