A paraplegic child survived to adulthood, 4,000 years ago!

The Canberra Times has a fascinating article about researchers from the Australian National University finding in Vietnam the 4,000 year old skeleton of a man who was a paraplegic, which they can tell because the vertebrae are fused.

The amazing thing is the problem must have been obvious even as a child, yet he lived to be about 25. That's an unbelievable record. Everything we know indicates life was pretty grim back then, so this is a real feel good story.

The article speculates the man might have had some special skill the community needed, but that doesn't explain how he survived childhood. It seems hard to believe struggling prehistoric communities were going to fight to keep everyone alive. Maybe he had very special parents, either by position or compassion? Or maybe, just as some religions today hold that children born at certain times are especially blessed or chosen, this child fluked a birth which guaranteed he'd be cared for?

Writing and Music

Today's post comes courtesy of a suggestion by Carrie, who has the good taste to like Dead Can Dance.

I do most of my writing while listening to music, usually with headphones on so as not to irritate the rest of the universe (and to block it out).

The good thing about music is it stops me from procrastinating elsewhere. At least, that's the theory; sometimes we have system failure, but mostly it works.

If the room's silent and I'm tapping away, I might start wondering what people are saying on twitter and flip over there for a few minutes, or an hour, or two. Music locks up the Procrastination Region of my brain, which appears to constitute approx. 80% of my neurons, and keeps me typing in the right window.

My music selection is quite eclectic and changes daily. The one thing I can guarantee is I never listen to classical music while writing, which isn't to say I don't like classical. We have season tickets for the Brandenburg Orchestra. But classical doesn't have the same locking effect on the Procrastination Region.

There are core bands who always get slots. Beatles, Pink Floyd, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Fleetwood Mac, Enya, Loreena McKennitt.

I'm listening to fairly standard popular rock, with a heavy weighting towards Celtic/Folk and Etherial Darkwave.

Then there are a large number of bands who rotate through. Right now I have Ace of Bass, Toto, Alan Parsons Project, Alannah Myles, T'Pau, Extreme, Peter Gabriel, B52's, Pretenders, Heart, Blondie, Lily Allen, Boney M, The Veronicas, Sugababes, Miranda Sex Garden (mediaeval & darkwave), Garbage (band name, not my evaluation), Rogue Traders, Merril Bainbridge, Kevin Rudolf, Jackson Browne, Gwen Stefani, T-Rex, ELO, Cranberries, Ultravox, Visage, The Seekers, Flash and the Pan, Big Audio Dynamite, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Heather Nova, Tory Amos.

Sometimes the song will match beautifully. Once, while editing over and over a paragraph I just couldn't get right, and getting very frustrated with it, Fairground Attraction came on, singing, "It's got to beeee...P_E_R_F_E_C_T!" Thanks for the help, guys.

So the good news is music keeps me on the job. The bad news is, it affects the rhythm of what I'm writing. I know you know all good writing has a rhythm, and unlike music the rhythm of writing isn't constant. If I'm not careful, I end up writing a story that bounces in 4/4.

I fix that by playing different music for different scene types. It works!

Action scenes get heavy rock music. Especially fights.

Description is written to Celtic, Folk, and Darkwave. Description must not be written to rock or pop.

Dialogue gets either Celtic, Folk, Etherial Darkwave, or...silence. Every character speaks with his or her own rhythm and own speech patterns. It's really important I concentrate on a character's speech until I have them dialled in. The quieter it is, the more quickly I can hear them.

When Nico's thinking to himself, acting on his own, or arguing with Diotima, he gets Pop/Rock. The fact that Nico thinks to pop music is probably sad, but that's how it is. He's frequently surrounded by people with brains the size of a planet, such as his brother Socrates, his girlfriend Diotima and his boss Pericles, so a little light relief for his own brain cells doesn't hurt.

I can sing along and write at the same time. This is because my mouth is rarely connected to my brain.

Weirdly, I've discovered many normal readers can't hear the rhythm in a novel, but they respond to it.

FYI, this post was written to Rivers of Babylon (Boney M), Golden Brown (The Stranglers), Ebony Eyes (Bob Welch), Me Myself I (Joan Armatrading), Don't Call Me Baby (Madison Avenue), Rapture (Blondie), Funky Town (Boney M), Sunday Girl (Blondie), Midsummer Night Blues (Waldeck - great Austrian twenties band), Not Fair (Lily Allen - this song's hilarious), Lady Madonna (Beatles), She Came From Planet Claire (B52's), Another Day (McCartney), Poles Apart (Pink Floyd).

Setting a new standard in archaeological announcements

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to have announced the discovery of 30 Phoenician tombs dated circa 300BC on his personal estate in Sardinia.

This would be interesting stuff under any circumstances, but what makes it really interesting is Berlusconi is said to have made the announcement while in bed with a hooker. They do things differently in Italy.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the next dig to make a major discovery can do to top this for a press release.

Dialogue: life rarely imitates art

If you ever listened carefully to people talking in real life, you know real people almost never speak as well as the fake people in books.

Real people ummmm, and errrrr, and repeat themselves constantly. They talk around themselves, say inconsequential things, break in on their own lines of thought. It's a mess.

Book dialogue, even when it's colloquial, is always more formal, grammatically better, and doesn't say the same thing three times in four sentences.

But every now and then, I hear something that would make perfect book dialogue. Today at my local coffee shop, a girl in her early twenties was making the coffee. When a waitress called the coffee server Jenny, the guy behind me, obviously a regular and about the same age as the girl, started the following conversation:

Guy: “Jenny. Is that your name? I didn’t know.”
Girl: “Yes, it is. You only had to ask.”
Guy: “I couldn’t, you make me nervous.”
Girl: “Oh! Well you make me nervous too. We better get married then.”
Guy: “Yes, and have lots of nervous children.”

Neither of them missed a beat. I swear it was exactly as I wrote it. You know this little dialogue is going into one of my books, don't you? I would have told them that, except at this stage the girl making the coffee had turned a bright, bright red.

I'll update you on any impending nuptials.

Editor and Agent Blogs

ScaryAzeri asked about interesting blogs for new writers. There are so many it's impossible to list them all. I have well over a hundred blogs listed in Google Reader, and most of them are about writing, or writers, or history, or archaeology, or science. I'm going to restrict my list to the blogs I know of that are mandatory reading for someone who wants to sell their writing.

I have to admit, I did not read a single one of these until I had written three books, at which point I thought maybe I should work out how to sell one of them. This list is hardly exhaustive, but if you start from here and follow the cascade of links you will (a) learn everything you need to know about submitting your work, and (b) waste the rest of your life reading blogs.

Janet Reid. My own agent, and the source of all that is wise and good in publishing. Seriously. If she can sell me, she can sell anything. Janet's blog has piles of useful advice, all written in her own, unique style (you'll find out when you read it).

Miss Snark. A famous and very anonymous literary agent tells the truth about publishing. Her blog is now retired but remains a deep pool of information. Read it. Then you too can play the guessing game called Who-Is-Miss-Snark.

Rachelle Gardner. Rachelle's an agent working predominantly with Christian books, but even if that's not your thing, you shouldn't let it stop you reading her very sensible and thoughtful advice.

Nathan Bransford. An agent at Curtis Brown. Hugely popular with interesting things to say.

Agent Kristin. Another agent saying sensible, useful things!

Are you spotting a trend here? Agents are your friends when it comes to learning about how to deliver something they can sell.

Editorial Ass. That's Ass as in Assistant. Join the gentle world of Moonrat and learn what happens inside a publishing house, and too applaud the many victories of the loyal Mischief.

Editorial Anonymous. A children's book editor who can teach you a great deal about publishing.

Pimp My Novel. The view from the sales department.

Preditors & Editors. The site for checking out that agent who just offered to represent you.

Writer Beware. Full of excellent general advice about how to avoid being scammed.

I know I've missed many great sites. The floor is now open for suggestions. Remember, the idea is sites that a beginning writer might find useful.