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For me, revision is the most rewarding part of the writing process.  It’s the time when all the false starts fall away, when the infelicities of language become fully functioning turns of phrase.  When all the hard work of original composition has been completed (mostly), and I can turn my attention to issues of language and character.  

And, because I’m old-fashioned when it comes to revisions, working with pen and paper, I can physically see the work improving.  I can touch the improvements.  Feel them.  I do it this way because I’m practically incapable of carrying out successful, big-picture revisions purely on my laptop screen.  I can’t see the sentences as they’re actually written, can’t see the story, if I can’t also touch it.

I like to keep tabs on time travelers.  Who doesn’t?  They’re a shifty lot, what with their attempts to pass as our contemporaries, and their secret knowledge of the future, and their super-high-tech wristwatches. 

It’s not that I’m jealous.  So what if I grew up reading and watching stories about time travel?  So what if there are countless things in my life I’d like to undo, or redo?  No.  This is about trust, and secret time travelers just can’t be trusted.  Why are they here?  (Actually, I blame time travelers for the economy.)  What could possibly be so interesting about today, or yesterday, that’s worth all the trouble to visit it from 2327? 

What aren’t they telling us?

I was saddened to hear that Elisabeth Sladen passed away today. 

Back in the 70s, she played Sarah Jane Smith:  one of the most iconic companions from the decades of the original run of Doctor Who.  Sarah Jane eventually got her own spinoff show, many years later, but I always thought she belonged in the TARDIS.

(ETA: Uhhh, that was supposed to be, “stimulation,” not, “situation.”  Fixed now.)

Reader John Murphy (thanks, John!) sent me a link to this article in Nature. 

Why?  Because DARPA is funding research that involves hooking people’s heads to batteries to improve their abilities at certain tasks.  Oh, and one of the pioneers of the modern incarnation of this research?  A German neurologist who experimented on members of his own family.  (And dare I wonder if this implies the research was carried out on his family land?)  Meanwhile his colleagues were telling him that the research was unethical, “fucking dangerous”, and that he ought to stop it right away.

I can’t help but get a chuckle out of this… a very worried chuckle.

This work week was not five days long.  I’m pretty certain somebody crammed an extra 70 or 80 hours between Tuesday and Thursday.  It feels like this past Monday was two weeks ago, or more.

Which I suppose is typical of a Friday evening.  But anyway. 

I’m very tired, and not feeling particularly clever at the moment.  (Well, I’m never clever.  Although sometimes I rhyme accidentally.  Even so I feel even less inspired than usual this evening.)  So here’s a random assortment of stuff that’s going on, of interest to nobody but me.