Saturday is for Plotting

Comments

1. Patrick says:
   January 5, 2008 at 9:24 am

   Are you plotting to take over the world?
2. Dan says:
   January 5, 2008 at 9:28 am

   Did I miss a memo? I thought Saturdays were to be used for catching up on video games and stuff.
3. John Scalzi says:
   January 5, 2008 at 9:37 am

   Not when you’ve blown past a deadline, Dan.
4. Kate Baker says:
   January 5, 2008 at 10:24 am

   Yah, are we talking plotting in the sense of mathematician/physics guru, or evil dictator?

   If it’s the second, liberal applications of horse-radish/wasabi is a great, non-lethal way to get your enemies to talk, after of course, the watery eyes and burning of the internal nasal cavities subside.

   Holy God is that stuff bad in big quantities. Don’t ever mix it with your rice if you just happened to have enough left over. The rice does NOTHING, nothing I tell you, to mask the effects!
5. Cassie says:
   January 5, 2008 at 10:27 am

   I don’t know, John. Why do you keep doing this deadline thing? Aren’t you big enough like Rowling not to have deadlines anymore?
6. Diatryma says:
   January 5, 2008 at 11:10 am

   Even Rowling had a deadline– if the next book didn’t come out soon enough, legions of book-deprived fans would march on her house, shouting and waving serving forks for lack of any more serious cutlery.
7. FrancisT says:
   January 5, 2008 at 11:25 am

   And possibly for fixing

   Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to rest.akismet.com:80 in /homepages/43/d110299596/htdocs/whatever/wp-content/plugins/wassup/main.php on line 748

   at the top of the page?
8. John Scalzi says:
   January 5, 2008 at 11:44 am

   Don’t worry about that. It’s a harmless and occasional glitch. The only reason you see it at all is that the front page here is cached.
9. hugh57 says:
   January 5, 2008 at 11:47 am

   FrancisT @7: And possibly for fixing

   Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to rest.akismet.com:80 in /homepages/43/d110299596/htdocs/whatever/wp-content/plugins/wassup/main.php on line 748

   at the top of the page?

   Yeah, what the heck is that, anyway?
10. hugh57 says:
    January 5, 2008 at 11:48 am

    Ignore me @9. John’s answer showed up right after i hit submit.
11. Jeff Hentosz says:
    January 5, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    I have an idea! Do your plotting here, John. Think out loud, as it were.

    Sure, sure. As they come to you, run your notions up the ole Whateverpole. We’ll weigh in — approving, rejecting. We’ll debate and argue. We’ll riff on them on several disjointed Whateveresque threads and make LOLZoës out of them, then later this evening you can go out to your garage and shoot yourself.

    Whoops; hang on a minute… My idea seems to have gone off the rails somewhere along the line.

    I’ll be back.
12. Chang, on Safari says:
    January 5, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    But you said we’d go to the zoooooo!!! You promised!!!
13. Jim Wright, plotting like mad says:
    January 5, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    Saturday is for plotting: See, I took that as an order – not a description of what Scalzi was doing with his day. I.e. Minions, go forth and plot…then write the plotting down, if there’s time – edit.

    So, I’ve been compiling a list of all of the people who have done me wrong, and then plotting revenge on each. It’s a long list, the plotting could take all weekend.
14. Lee Studley says:
    January 5, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    But Saturday is for welding and fixing verilog modules and rearranging the shop because try as I might, the time slider just
    places me back to moments where I haven’t done all the stuff so I just have to do it all over again. It doesn’t rollover, or back it seems.

    So the Zoo is definitely out for me, at least until this is resolved.
15. Nathan says:
    January 5, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Hey Jim,

    Ya’know, that fermented bear grease can make you see things. You might want to get a little fresh air.
16. TexasPatrick says:
    January 5, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    No no no. Weekdays are for plotting. Saturdays are for executing said plots, and Sunday, well, that’s sitting around watching the plots come to fruition day, and the game(s).
17. Jim Wright, plotting like mad, like mad! says:
    January 5, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    You just made the list, Nathan.

    No kreplach for you!
18. Brett L says:
    January 5, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Crap. I’m out of sync. I thought workdays were for plotting and Saturdays were for executing. No? If I get executing at work, I’m going about it in such a way as to make one of my fellow Texas Exes look like a piker. I don’t need no stinkin’ tower.

    [Note: Dear No Such Agency, if this post should happen to trigger your TIA 'bots to pass this along, I'm only kidding]

    –I’m not usually this paranoid, but my tinfoil hat broke.
19. Patty Cryan says:
    January 5, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    The author, he plots.

    Better than plotzing, I guess.
20. TallDave says:
    January 5, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    Ah, John, if only you could write books as fast as we read them.
21. Sara Genge says:
    January 5, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    How to know when you’ve made it big time:

    Write nothing much on your blog and see if people still drop in to comment. You know. Just to fill the thread.

    :)

    Happy plotting!
22. Rembrant says:
    January 5, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Sixteen word post, 20, no 21 replies. Huh. Which counters a thought I had when you posted Whatever stats for 2007. The thought then was that there weren’t many posts considering the number of visits.
23. RooK says:
    January 5, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    You want to be a writer? You’ve got to follow the rules of writing.
    Always. Be. Plotting.
    ALWAYS be plotting.
    ALWAYS BE PLOTTING!

    You’ll use the plots you’ve got and you’ll write them. No, you can’t have the Glengarry plots, they’re for writers.

    -ASIDE: Just put up the damn adds and entertain us, dammit.
24. John Scalzi says:
    January 5, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    Rembrant:

    “Sixteen word post, 20, no 21 replies.”

    Actually, not the record.
25. B. Durbin says:
    January 5, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    Chang, on Safari: My parents never promised us anything if there was a chance it wouldn’t happen. So I got very used to replying to “Are you ready to go?” with a simple “Yes,” only then followed by the thought, “Where are we going, anyway?”

    (The most common issue around where I grew up was fog; you don’t want to be on the roads with a bunch of idiots in the fog. So if my parents wanted to take us to the California Academy of Sciences, or the Exploratorium, or Great America, they’d keep us in the dark until about twenty minutes before we had to leave. Which made for some nice surprises along the way.)
26. Jonathan Vos Post says:
    January 5, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    Take over the world? Nothing as small as that.

    Remember, The Ponte degli Scalzi (or Ponte dei Scalzi), literally, “bridge of the barefoot”, is one of only three bridges in Venice to span the Grand Canal. Or was that bridges on Venus? Or was that the Grand Canal at the Olympus Mons Resort? I forget.

    But He does not. In the sense of mathematician/physics guru backing it all up onto hologram nanodisks.

    He created the universe (in each of multiple novel series), and on the Saturday he rested and plotted.

    I, for one, welcome our new plot overlord.
27. JJ from CA says:
    January 5, 2008 at 6:47 pm

    With nothing to read, I had time for a low-brow anagram:

    Apologist’s untidy fart.

    Plot that! Oh right, been there…
28. JJ from CA says:
    January 5, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    There’s a “remove all doubt” moment…I missed an “r’. Ah well, back to wok.
29. Cassie says:
    January 5, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    RooK @23, don’t you know writers are not allowed to use adverbs?

    John cannot be “always” plotting, it’s not permitted.
30. MWT says:
    January 5, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    Hmmm… is the record the infamous “My toe is sore” one with 11 words (including title)?

    I’ve noticed that for me, Saturday is for resting. I tend to do the most sleeping and the least amount of productive things on Saturdays.
31. Dana Jean says:
    January 7, 2008 at 12:40 am

    Okay. I was in B & N and went to the Science Fiction section to specifically get a Scalzi book as I have never read any of his writing. But, I couldn’t decide which I should purchase. What one book of Mr. Scalzi’s is his absolute best writing? Recommendations?
32. Dana Jean says:
    January 7, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    No recommedations? None? Nada? This guy’s writing sucks that bad, huh?

    Bummer.

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