DNA Analysis PWNS Hoaxers

I don’t know if you heard the super exciting news, but some utter idiots claimed they found a Bigfoot corpse.

They not only claimed they’d found a corpse, they provided tissue samples.

Something tells me they’re a little fuzzy on the realities of DNA testing:

One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 percent from an opossum, according to Curt Nelson, a scientist at the University of Minnesota who performed the DNA analysis.

Um. Yeah. Kinda sorta debunked, don’t you think?

But are these guys slinking away in shame? Oh, pshaw and pish! No really intrepid con artist is going to let a little thing like conclusive DNA results stop his fuckery, especially not when he has a guilliable spokesperson to come up with excuses:

Biscardi said the DNA samples may not have been taken correctly and may have been contaminated, and that he would proceed with an autopsy of the alleged Bigfoot remains, currently in a freezer at an undisclosed location.

Riiiight. This is going to be just about as kosher as that alien autopsy video, innit?

What amuses me the most about this is the transparent motive of the discoverers. See if this paragraph makes you laugh as merrily as I did:

Also present were Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two who say they discovered the Bigfoot corpse while hiking in the woods of northern Georgia. They also are co-owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise.

Uh-huh. Needed to drum up some interest in the business, I see. It’s just sad that, despite the embarrassment with the DNA, there are still going to be people out there who swallow this hook, line, sinker, pole and angler.

DNA Analysis PWNS Hoaxers
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More Scenes from the Writing Life

The bizarre dilemmas that come up when writing from the viewpoints of characters from other planets:

1. When you’re looking for a synonym for “dark brown,” you discover that all of them are utterly useless, as an alien likely won’t be thinking in terms of chocolate, coffee, liver, or any other familiar foodstuff. Not unless they’ve been hanging round Earth far too long.

2. Dodge trying to find a non-exhausted metaphor for “ink blot” by spending ten minutes hunting down Moby’s song “Very” online. (Project Playlist doesn’t have it anymore, the buggers. How dare they do this to me?!.) Then return to wondering if your aliens would think in terms of ink blots, seeing as how they do in fact have ink…

3. But not sandwiches. A sandwich is a foodstuff most useful to beings with hands and opposable thumbs. Equines, not so much. And “sandwiched between” is an even more exhausted metaphor than “ink blot” anyway.

4. Just when I think I’m going to have to resort to “[that one dude], [dude 2], and [dude 3],” the final three characters, who have been eluding me for over ten fucking years, show up and fit themselves into place like straggling choir members arriving two seconds before the performance begins. The audience will likely think they were there the entire damned time.

5. Spend several moments sounding out the new names and trying to figure out how to spell them so that they a) don’t look dorky and b) the reader can hopefully pronounce them. Sigh. Hope for the best and expect the worst: after all, people still can’t pronounce Aes Sedai, even though Robert Jordan has the phonetic spellings in the back of every damned book. “A’s Seddy” indeed. (It’s eyes suhdie, people, come the fuck on.)

I haven’t even gone into the minor catastrophe looming when I realized I’d fucked up everybody’s position in the line at the beginning of the story, or the difficulty of writing dialogue without using contractions (try making it sound natural, I double-dog dare you), or trying to think like a smartass sentient equine, but you get the picture.

The point is to make the final product look absolutely effortless. That’s the beginning and end of writing. Think of it this way: the first draft is an abattoir of a crime scene. The final draft should take a forensic technician with a tank of Luminol to find the blood spatter, and even then, they’d better have to rip up the floorboards to get to it.

I’m going to need a bigger bucket of bleach and a truckload of sponges, but we’ll get there. I’ll have those fuckers using microscopes.

More Scenes from the Writing Life

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Ethics for thee, but not for me (h/t Carpetbagger):

Anchorage, Alaska – Last week, lawyers for Senator Ted Stevens filed several motions asserting that Senators are above the law and
deserve special treatment. Specifically, the defense explained that since the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, they cannot investigate Stevens or interview his staff since they are part of the legislative branch. Stevens’ attorneys went as far to say that only Congress can discipline a Senator who violates the law by lying on the financial disclosure forms. However, Stevens voted for the legislation which established the financial disclosure forms. In essence, Stevens’ defense is that legislation he supported is now unconstitutional, and therefore the case should be dismissed.


Funny how things you voted for become conveniently “unconstitutional” when they turn around and bite you on the ass, innit? Seems this has been a rather common refrain in Republicon circles. Bush regularly ignores laws he doesn’t like. John McCain is all for campaign finance reform until his campain finds such reforms get in the way of his fundraising. And on and on it goes. I think it’s time the bastards in Washington realized that if you make the laws, you get to follow them yourself. No fucking exceptions, comprende?

What else can we expect from people who have no conception of reality? For a shining example of just how insane the right wing’s become, we need look no further than our old buddy Newt:

Last night on Fox News, host Sean Hannity and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) returned (as they often do) to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent suggestion that Americans inflate their tires properly in order to save energy costs.

Seeming to outdo his previous false attacks on this issue, Gingrich claimed that Obama’s idea is actually encouraging Americans to “enrich Big Oil” because selling air has “a higher profit margin than selling gasoline”:

GINGRICH: Well, I got a very funny e-mail from a retired military officer in Tampa who pointed out that most tire inflation is done at service stations and you pay for it. And it’s actually a higher profit margin than selling gasoline. So Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas.


Um. Newt. Big Oil sells oil, not air. Service stations sell air. I know reality’s an insurmountable challenge, and you all love to believe every stupid claim you get in your email inbox, but do try to keep up, there’s a good little fuckwit.

Then again, maybe not. When Republicons try to employ logic, the results are – well, cringe-inducing:

During a House GOP press conference today, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) used the power of logic to push for increased coal mining as well as increased oil drilling. To help make his case, Shimkus held up a lump of Illinois coal and even displayed the jersey of the Southern Illinois Miners:

You know, if drilling is good, drilling and mining is better. … It’s drilling and mining and using great resources like Illinois coal. You all follow the congressional baseball game. I wore this uniform proudly. It says, ‘The Miners.’ The mining industry and coal is part of the solution.


Indeed they are – if you’re defining the problem as far too much clean air and a distinct lack of unsightly strip mines.

Isn’t it cute how he’s had a flash of inspiration by looking at a baseball jersey? “Hey… this says The Miners. The answer’s been right in front of me all along!” Look, I know sports can inspire people, but this is just fucking ridiculous.

And what day would be complete without another McCain lie?

In December, when most of the leading presidential candidates were releasing holiday-themed ads, John McCain — who’s “reluctant” to talk about his service during Vietnam — was able to combine two messages in a single campaign commercial: “One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain. On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.”

It’s a story McCain has not only put in his ads, but has also repeated for several years, including over the weekend, at the forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.

Yesterday, however, questions arose about its veracity.

According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity — or as he said, “just two Christians worshiping together” — is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.

“As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.”

Steven Waldman notes that McCain’s recounting of this story has changed over the years and “has gradually morphed
from being about the humanity of the guard to being about the Christian faith of the guard and John McCain.”


Is it possible that Solzhenitsyn and McCain had extremely similar experiences? Of course it is. Co
incidences happen.

But there’s reason to be suspicious about whether McCain’s powerful anecdote is apocryphal.


Yes, like the fact McCain didn’t even bring it up until 1999, after Solzhenitsyn’s story came out. Carpetbagger et al recommend caution in questioning this, but for fuck’s sake. I’m a writer. I can spot a bit o’ plagarism when I sees it. McCain has a pattern of lying and claiming credit for things he didn’t do. The stories are remarkably similar. McCain’s story came out after Solzhenitsyn’s. Let’s just put it this way: if it’s proved McCain lifted this from Solzhenitsyn, I won’t have a heart attack.

Just please tell me these lying, stupid motherfuckers are going to get their asses handed to them this November.

Happy Hour Discurso

Wow. Just…. Wow.

Sitemeter led me to a new delight tonight: PTET.

Leads DaveScot around by the nose.

Unleashes the Smack-o-Matic until Denyse O’Leary blubbers.

Has the same soft spot for Buddhism I do (once the religious crap’s stripped away and the philosophy’s left to shine).

I likes this blog!

Oh, and, you know, there was that really nice compliment that melted me into a soppy little puddle:

While I’m in a blog-rolling mood, props to En Tequila Es Verdad for being without question the best blog in the world today…


Wow. I mean… really… wow. That’s overwhelming, is what that is. Gracias.

But you know what? This blog wouldn’t be anything without my readers. I scribble it, but you, my darlings, are the ones who inspire it. So that compliment, there: that belongs to you.

Salud, mi amigos.

Wow. Just…. Wow.

Note to McCain Lackeys: You Might Want to Have a Talk with John

Carpetbagger has some good advice for supporters of John McLame they’d do well to heed:

If Republican hacks are going to go on national television to attack Barack Obama for supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution on Russia’s aggression towards Georgia, they probably ought to know that John McCain supports the same U.N. Security Council resolution on Russia’s aggression towards Georgia.

Now, if we had a healthy political press, this would have made for some highly entertaining television. However, we have a screaming bunch of assmonkeys who don’t have the first fucking clue as to how to perform little journalistic functions like fact checking. If it’s not in their teleprompter, they have no idea it exists. So we get pieces like this, wherein a McCain apologist attacks Barack Obama for a position McCain also holds, and it takes the fucking bloggers to point this out.

You know. The same bloggers who are derided as Cheeto-scarfing, Mom’s-basement-dwelling amateurs by our “professional” news media.

I weep for my country.

Note to McCain Lackeys: You Might Want to Have a Talk with John

Fighting Fair

I don’t hang about Conservapedia much, or I wouldn’t have missed this delightful exchange. Y’see, Andy Schlafly, assclown extraordinaire, would lurrrv to debate a stinking librul – except for the fact he can’t. He ran away from Ames like a kicked cur.

(Note to Andy: here’s how challenges work. If you make ’em, you pay for ’em, and you stick by the original terms of your fucking challenge. Unless, of course, you’re so shit-scared of being publicly clobbered by a flaming liberal that you have to find a way to weasel out when one of the buggers misunderstands your grandstanding, chest-thumping, self-congratulatory bullshit and actually takes you seriously.)

The problem is this: Ames and people like him not only fight fair, they fight nice. They’re good, kind, decent people who try not to sink to the stinking pits of depravity their neocon opponents inhabit. And this is why liberals lose even when they win.

Ames won this round. Andy will claim the victory because he’s a lying sack of choleric monkey shit. It’s how the game is played, and the fake celebrations confuse people into believing something’s there to be celebrated. Since a liberal wouldn’t think of celebrating such a hollow victory, well, it’s the neocons who look like they’ve won.

I think there’s a lesson in here.

Yes, we have values, and we shouldn’t engage in tactics we despise to win.

But we need to be better bastards.

When slime like Andy tries to kick liberals in the teeth, don’t turn the other cheek. Let him break his foot hitting the hard stuff.

When bottom feeders like Andy try to move the goalposts, give their hands a good, sharp smack and announce, “The goalposts stay where they are, you son of a bitch. What, you have to cheat to win now?”

We don’t have to be nasty, necessarily. But liberals have a tendency to be conciliatory and offer compromises and try to accommodate, and people like Andy see that as weakness. They use others’ good will to fuck them over, because they know they can get away with it. They don’t understand diplomacy. They do, however, understand the use of force.

So we should get forceful. When we’ve tried a compromise and found the only thing our opponent’s willing to compromise is his integrity, compromise stops, and the smackdown begins. Call them out. Call them six kinds of coward, explain to the universe at large just what a stupid fucking loser your opponents have to be to pull that shit, expose the dishonesty and don’t fucking back down. Bludgeon them with the truth. Ream them with the facts. Don’t get nice again until they’ve shown you their belly. Because if you offer your hand the instant they stop growling but before they’ve shown submission, you’re gonna lose a finger.

And no, that’s not going to keep these pathetic little liars from slithering their way out of a tight corner and trying to play the victor. They won’t fight you honestly because they know they’re gonna lose. That’s why you celebrate calling them out on their lies. Throw the loudest, longest victory party evah whenever some neocon weasel-fucker has just ducked, weaved, and goal-post shifted himself away from certain disaster.

Stuff your liberal guilt into a sack and drown it. What do you have to feel guilty about when you’re fighting fair? You’re being assertive, not aggressive. You don’t lie, you don’t cheat, you don’t make impossible demands, so there’s nothing in the world to be ashamed of. And if you called your opponent a two-faced goat-fucker during a heated exchange, well, sometimes, truth hurts, but it’s important to tell the truth even so.

We don’t have to fight dirty. But fighting fair doesn’t mean having to fight nice.

Fighting Fair

I Wonder if PZ Will Let Me Steal His Guest Bloggers

PZ’s been off playing in the Galapagos Islands, leaving Pharyngula in the capable hands of a bevvy of guest bloggers. He’s just announced his imminent return, and I’m happy, but…

I was really starting to enjoy the variety of viewpoints.

And the long posts on various aspects of biology.

I’d grown rather fond of them, in fact. And I don’t know if they have blogs of their own. The pain of separation looms.

Unless….

I can lure them over here.

Lessee. What inducements can I offer?

  • A forum in which anything and everything can be discussed.
  • Some of the most amazing commenters in the blogosphere.
  • Post at your own convenience: daily, weekly, monthly, whatev.
  • Your very own sign-in, not this mere minion stuff.
  • Unlimited free (virtual) drinks.
  • And have I mentioned the quality of my commenters?

Is it enough? Only time will tell.

LisaJ, MAJeff, Danio, Sastra: I hereby invite you to En Tequila Es Verdad. Mi casa es su casa. Email me at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com if you’d like a room over the cantina.

I Wonder if PZ Will Let Me Steal His Guest Bloggers

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Could it be justice at last(h/t Think Progress)?

Federal prosecutors have sent target letters to six Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, indicating a high likelihood the Justice Department
will seek to indict at least some of the men, according to three sources close to the case.

The guards, all former U.S. military personnel, were working as security contractors for the State Department, assigned to protect U.S. diplomats and other non-military officials in Iraq. The shooting occurred when their convoy arrived at a busy square in central Baghdad and guards tried to stop traffic.

An Iraqi government investigation concluded that the security contractors fired without provocation. Blackwater has said its personnel acted in self-defense.

The sources said that any charges against the guards would likely be brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which has previously been used to prosecute only the cases referred to the Justice Department by the Defense Department for crimes committed by military personnel and contractors overseas.


It would be fantastic to see prosecutions of these mercenary bastards. Too many private firms seem trigger-happy, lawless, and completely out of control. Time to make them aware that there is such a thing as the law, and that you can’t murder indiscriminately. “War zone” does not equal “open season.”

This would also be a nice message to the Iraqis that, you know, we give two tugs on a dead dog’s dick for their welfare.

In other news of potential justice, the former Justice Department assclowns who used political litmus tests in hiring and firing attorneys may be in for a much-needed arse kicking:

Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.

The suit is an attempt to hold top officials accountable for the hiring scandal that ultimately led to Gonzales’ resignation last year, said Daniel Metcalfe, the attorney for the plaintiffs who is also executive director of its Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University’s Washington College of Law.

“My clients wish that they hadn’t had to bring this lawsuit — they would have greatly preferred to be working inside the Justice Department, where by all rights they deserved to be, defending the government in court rather than standing as victimized examples of government wrongdoing,” said Metcalfe, a former longtime Justice Department official.


Welcome to the Bush regime, where being on the receiving end of a government ass-raping is the order of the day if you’re not an ultraconservative, loyal Bushie. I’m glad these six are fighting back. I hope the fuckwits who rejected them on ideological grounds get their teeth handed to them in a hat by the courts.

Another day, another Republicon at a loss for words:

This morning on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asserted that the Republican Party “used to be the party of big ideas.” Gregory then asked his guest Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), “What’s the big idea Senator McCain is campaigning on?” Jindal responded, “I think there’s several,” but couldn’t provide an answer. Gregory asked again, “Where are the new big ideas of the Republican Party that John McCain is, is championing?” And again Jindal couldn’t provide an answer.


I love it when they get all tongue-tied. That seems to be happening a lot lately. I think that might be because the Republicon party is out of ideas, has no accomplishments to speak of other than completely fucking the country, and are hated by all but the most deluded of the neo-theo-cons.

Since that’s the case, you may be wondering just why McCain’s polling so close to Obama. Turns out there’s a simple answer: Americans are fucking clueless:

The handwringing over Barack Obama’s modest lead in the polls is already rather tiresome — “Why isn’t Obama up by double digits?” the political world demands to know — and there’s no shortage of competing rationales to explain it. But the NYT’s Frank Rich offers one of the more compelling explanations I’ve seen: “[T]he public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.”

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image…. With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.


What follows is one of the most succinct takedowns of the McCain myth I have ever seen. And in a national newspaper, no less. Phenominal. I hope a few people spilled their Wheaties reading that one this morning.

This would come on top of the bad moment they had last night, wherein they learned their hero has some funny ideas about who’s rich:

Last night, during his Saddleback Church presidential forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to “define rich.” With regard to tax brackets, “where do you move from middle class to rich?” Warren asked. Obama said, “if you are making $15
0
,000 a year or less, as a family, then you’re middle class.”

McCain, however, dismissed Warren’s question, asking in jest, “How about $5 million?”

WARREN: Everybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point, give me a number, give me a specific number. Where do you move from middle class to rich? […]

MCCAIN: How about $5 million?


Go read his remarks in full context on Carpetbagger. They get worse. The man is living in some kind of alternate universe.

Aren’t they all?

Happy Hour Discurso

Sunday Sensational Science


Don’t laugh. I’m about to admit that the movie The Saint captured my imagination. Look, I know it was total cheese, and I know that cold fusion is controversial and quite possibly bunkum, but that line of Elisabeth Shue’s has haunted me for years: her scientist character asks us to imagine driving our cars a million miles on a gallon of seawater. I’ve imagined it ever since.

Well, we’re one step closer to that day. But it won’t be cold fusion that gets us there. It’s cobalt, fuel cells, and some very determined scientists at MIT.

We’ve been able to split water into its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules for centuries, but as far as an energy source, it’s been virtually useless. It takes energy to break things up. Clean, cheap fuel isn’t going to happen when you have to use hydrocarbons to create hydrogen fuel, or when the materials that help the process along cost thousands of dollars per ounce.


So Daniel Nocera, head of MIT’s Solar Revolution Project, decided to take a cue from nature. Plants manage to split water into hydrogen and oxygen quite efficiently, using just the power of the sun. What if we could find man-made materials that could do the same thing? Nocera and his team asked.

We could end up holding the key to clean energy in our hands.

They started playing with the periodic chart. They started mixing chemicals. And then:

“We [have] figured out a way just using a glass of water at room temperature, under atmospheric pressure,” Nocera says. “This thing [a thin film of cobalt and phosphate on an electrode] just churns away making [oxygen] from water.”

Think about this for a moment. No exotic metals as catalysts. No special temperatures or pressures necessary. Just a simple little setup that could run on a beam of sunlight, giving us a fuel that could power our planet cleanly.

The possibilities are intriguing.
.

Since it is quite explosive, carrying huge tanks of hydrogen in your car would be dangerous. In theory, it would be possible to bring a jug of water instead and produce little bits of the gas on demand.

But let’s not get hung up on cars. It’s not just cars, but houses: should this become an economically viable technology, it would solve the problem of powering your home on a cloudy day. You’ll have plenty of hydrogen stored up, to use as needed.

And what about consumer electronics? Did you ever expect your cell phone and computer could run on water? There’s a good chance they someday will:

The days of fast-fading cellular phone batteries may soon be over. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL

) recently developed a working prototype for a portable fuel cell energy source that could power a cellular phone 300 percent longer than existing rechargeable batteries do. Indeed, the new technology would be less expensive, smaller and more powerful than any battery currently in use, according to Jeff Morse of LLNL’s Center for Microtechnology Engineering. He predicts that it could replace standard lithium-ion and lithium-ion polymer batteries in a number of consumer electronics products, such as laptops and handheld computers.

The new power source, which runs on liquid fuels, has at its core a thin layer of electrolyte materials sandwiched between electrode materials. As control elements distribute the fuel over one electrode surface, the other receives air. Heating of the electrolyte-electrode layers stimulates the flow of protons from the fuel, sending them across the electrolyte layer to the air-breathing electrode. The protons then react with oxygen to generate electrical current. Conveniently, recharging the power source requires only a simple switch of fuel cartridges.

And where would this liquid fuel come from? You guessed it: your little electrolyzer gizmo made cheap and simple by Daniel Nocera et al.

We’re closer to a future where energy is cheap, abundant, and non-polluting. The science of energy will get us there, one inspiration at a time.

Tip o’ the shot glass to the Wired Science blog, which provided the inspiration for this Sunday’s science. As always, click on the photos for their sources and fun, (usually) relevant additional material.

Sunday Sensational Science

Scenes From the Fiction Writing Life

People get really interested in the process of storytelling. Where do ideas come from, how did you create characters, etc.

It’s not all that fascinating, I’m afraid. Most of it’s a seemingly endless stream of frustration, blocks, false starts, recalcitrant words, and sudden revelations of your own appalling ignorance. A writer at work looks like the sort of people stuck glaring at a computer loaded with a Windows operating system that’s just decided to take the evening off.

Then things start to frantically fall into place, and the writer feels like a cat caught in a riptide, thrashing at the water with all four limbs, trying valiantly not to drown.

So here’s where I’m at with this story: last night, I got clobbered with a profound ethical dilemma that never occurred to me before. If you’d been there to witness, the scene would have looked like this: writer stands on porch in cool night breeze, smiling happily at the stars whilst smoking a cigarette. Writer’s entire body suddenly jerks, cigarette nearly flies over the balcony rail, smile absconds, and a stream of obscenities flows. Writer starts to walk into the house with lit cigarette, stops just in time, smokes as fast as possible while leaning down to deposit cigarette in ashtray, and then dives into the house to pound a frantic note on the computer, still cursing, eyes roughly the size of Frisbees. Two hours of profuse typing follow.

Tonight, the inspiration refused to flow. You would have seen the writer eyeballing the night’s previous work with the same expression mother-in-laws have when they come for unexpected visits and find the house in slight disarray. Then there’s the digging through previous notes, the rising despair, the procrastination as writer pulls up Solitaire and fiddles with just the right music to persuade the Muse to pony up. Slowly, the tension fades as the next scene reluctantly presents itself. Gaiety ensues. The writer goes out for a celebratory smoke, comes back in to write, and then spends a solid hour researching horse colors online because she doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue what color the next character is.

Yes, you can be stopped in your tracks in the middle of a story over ridiculous details.

I’m still not sure what color Aisonah is. And it’s driving me utterly crazy, because when I write, I need to see. I can’t get into the story and write down what’s happening if I can’t see the details.

There she goes. A flash of rose, a hint of pale blue, dusted over cream. Now I can begin to see her.

Now I have to go write her.

Scenes From the Fiction Writing Life