I’ve been caught up with a family member that I love and respect who has gone off the deep end with regards to a few (at least 5) conspiracies that are demonstrably false.
It’s a difficult line to walk. I want to keep engaging with him, to keep seeing if I can get him to accept a few truths so that larger truths can later come through… but at the same time try not to antagonize him too much, or to pick fights that really don’t matter. Harmless conspiracies (Bigfoot! Nessie! Area 51!) don’t bother me. But when they start messing with the way you deal with other people… yeah, that’s a problem.
But one of the fundamental principles upon which most conspiracies rest is faith, and faith specifically requires a lack of evidence (or, even worse, bad evidence… nothing fuels delusions of “Knowing The Truth” like bad evidence). Makes it hard to argue against, because any point you find they specifically use are proof that you don’t understand.
I’m being patient, and I’m trying to be kind, but I’m also being relentless. No way I’m going to let them think they won just because they’ve badgered me into not responding. It’s a weakness of mine.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Getting Caught Up
I was so busy writing today, I almost forgot to put an update here! A perpetual problem… part of the business of writing is talking about writing, where I really wish I could just spend all my time writing!
Well, not all my time. Most of my time, certainly. More of my time than I am currently able to devote to writing (or to writing about writing).
Still, I wrote just shy of five thousand words today, and I think some of those were really good words. Words that will survive the brutal culling that occurs after I finish a first draft. Some of them will be nudged or tweaked, but many, many of them will just be cut.
Write once, cut twice? Something like that? Anyway, it’s a thin analogy, but I love when I hit a good stride and the story just comes out of me. Especially because I think I’m going to have to remove a few entire chapters (or at least heavily modify them)… so getting more words now means I’ll have even better words in a few weeks.
And I got to write a space battle! Always a joy!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and heatlhy!
Balance in All Things
I struggle with the concept of balance in my life. I tend to throw myself whole-body at whatever I am doing until I am satisfied that I have “done” whatever it happens to be. When I competed in Kendo, I would attend 4-5 practices a week, taking hours out of my way by bus and subway to go to gyms and dojos, to say nothing about the weekends spent at tournaments. Same thing for when I got into miniature combat games… I even ran a podcast (because of course I did) that lasted over 250 episodes. When I started practicing guitar, I would practice for hours on end. When I started writing… well, let’s say that 2016 was a very good year for my writing output.
But this has always left me struggling to find balance. To find time for all the things that aren’t the “one big thing” that I am doing at any given moment. And I am trying to be better at that these days. To find an appropriate amount of time for everything, rather than all my time being spent on one thing. It’s tricky! I don’t feel like I’m progressing nearly fast enough as a writer or a film maker or a guitarist or a painter, but I am doing all those things and handling most of the other aspects of my life at the same time. And that’s worth something, right?
Probably?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Summer Cleaning
Today, I did an “adult” thing, in a sort of weird way. I contracted somebody to come and haul away a lot of junk.
I have accumulated a lot of junk over the last few years, you see. Most of it in the garage, a bit of it in the basement, a smattering of it in the bedroom and office and kitchen. Just bits and bobs, a few pieces here and there.
It amounts to approximately one (1) garage full of crap. And it was too much for me to deal with myself. Hence calling “the professionals.”
Now I suspect they’re going to take one look at the small mountain of crap I have and quote me something on the order of several hundred dollars to cart it away, but as long as it’s less than five or six hundred… I’ll probably take them up on it. They’re just too much stuff for me to deal with unless I had huge amounts of the mythical “free time” I hear other people talking about. And I don’t have “free time,” and so I must pay somebody to deal with my lack of free time. Joys.
Oh well. At least it will mean I have a garage again. And that will be nice. Set up some shelves (which I have already purchased!), get a few crates of random stuff out of my game room… so by getting rid of this pile of stuff, I can organize a whole bunch of my other stuff, and therefore everything will be just a bit better.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Good Dialogue
My novels tend to have a lot of dialogue. Part of the reason for this is that I like character-driven stories, and without lodging the narration firmly in the first person it can be hard to get a sense of the emotional and psychological state of people unless you talk to and with them.
Sure, you can “show don’t tell” until you’re blue in the face, but good writers are often those that write good dialogue, and bad writers are often defined by an inability to do so. Not always… Asimov’s dialogue tended to be very wooden, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say he wasn’t a good writer. But as a general rule, good dialogue means enjoyable books.
So today I’m thinking about the dialogue in my current novel. A lot of it is going to be cut for the 2nd draft, but as it stands most if it I am very happy with. Some of it is too on the nose, just telling the characters things they should already know (but that I didn’t know about them until I wrote it), and that’s the first to go. Other dialogues are going to need to have elements added in, so that the “sudden but inevitable” feels satisfying when it occurs. But for now, I’m just going to enjoy sitting down and listening in as my characters talk to each other in my head.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Economy of Scale
I sell pretty consistently, month-to-month. I have three novels that account for about 95% of all my sales (divided between ebook purchases, Kindle Unlimited Pages read, and physical books), and they will swap which is most popular at any given point. Usually Caitlyn Morcos, Interplanetary Marshal Service is top billing, but occasionally the Queen of the A.I.s or Starconvey EH-76 will pop in for a few days or a week.
I realized today that I “only” have to write about 10 more novels like those three and I could do this writing thing full-time. Here’s the catch… my advertising budget outstrips my sales by a factor of 8. So somehow I have to maintain sales, but not increase advertising at the same time.
Which I think might require witchcraft? Possibly sorcery. But some fell-magic of some variety, because I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it works IRL, as they say.
Still. Maybe I can shift the ad budget around a bit, and as I publish more books the sales of my new books won’t negatively impact the sale of my old books? The dream is that each work encourages people to check out previous works, but I’m really not sure how realistic that is.
Anyway, just some idle marketing thoughts as I continue to strive towards being a full-time writer. I think I can do it…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Running In Circles
I think I’ve mentioned before, but I’m a casual runner. I compete occasionally but only to see how I do, not because I expect to do well (and I never do… I’m firmly middle-of-the-pack for my age-range).
But recently it’s been hard to motivate myself to go running. For a while it was an annoying knee injury, and then it was a lack of good running shoes. At my age, proper gear is important to stop getting injuries (like that knee injury I mentioned above).
However, I now have the shoes, and my knee isn’t bothering me any more… which means the only real hurdle is exhaustion and time, and those kind of tie together. If I wasn’t exhausted all the time, I would have way more time, and that would help me go running.
That stated, I’m going to try and get back into it starting Thursday (assuming it’s not raining, which according to the forecasts, it shouldn’t in the morning). Now the trick will be to not push myself too hard for the first few runs until I get back into my usual stride. But one step at a time.
Am I looking forward to it? No. But I think it’s important to stay in shape, and I’ve been slipping the last few weeks. Time to get back at it.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Happy Canada Day!
I’m always kind of at odds with Canada Day. I love many things about my country, but at the same time it’s easy to see that there are also a lot of problems with it. Nothing that can’t be solved, but there is often a lack of will to solve it.
So on a day like today when we settlers are supposed to celebrate something, I’m often pensive and quiet instead. What exactly is it we’re celebrating? The good that Canada has done? The potential it has to do better in the future?
I honestly don’t know. I’ve never been comfortable with it.
On the other hand, it is a day I get to relax, maybe throw something on the BBQ, and get lots of writing done! So that’s always a good day, regardless of the excuse for it.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Food is Expensive, Yo
I know it’s gauche to complain about stuff when I have a lot. I have a roof over my head, I have a functional car, I have friends and family.
But man. Food is expensive.
Today I spent half my weekly income on groceries. Half. Like… 50% of every dollar I earned over the last 7 days has gone to feeding me for the next 10 days. So I’m slightly ahead of the curve, but slightly.
And that’s terrifying. I don’t need to make a lot of money through my writing… more than I currently make, definitely, but I’m not looking to be a Stephen King or a John Scalzi or whatever. I just want a semi-comfortable living… but part of that involves being able to eat without having to count every penny I spend.
Maybe that’s just not realistic any more. Maybe I will spend the rest of my life in terror of grocery receipts. I don’t know. But gosh, when I was young I honestly never expected that being so terrified of not being able to afford food would form so many years of my life.
Ah well. Hopefully the next book will sell well enough that I can stop being quite so scared all the time. That’d be nice.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Few More of Those, Please
On Sunday I wrote almost 8,000 words. It was, I would like to say, a very good day.
Today I’m hoping to do it again. No idea if that’s reasonable, but be damned if I’m not going to try.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Sprint for the Finish
I can feel that I’m drawing to the close-ish of this novel. Which is good, because I really would like to be finished the first draft by the end of the month.
I’ve been asked how I know the length of a novel before I write it, and the short answer is that I don’t, really, but you kind of get a feel for how long a story will take to tell. I usually write a lot more than ends up in the book, and the second draft of my novels usually drops ten to fifteen thousand words in the process of refining and removing a lot of “She nodded” and “He smiled” and things like that. Brain-filler-words, not necessary to the story, but necessary for me to keep the story flowing out of my head and onto the keyboard.
But, either way, I have about twenty to thirty thousand words still to go, and only a week to write ‘em, so it’s head down, fingers on keyboard for the next while. I think I can get this done… and then get started on the next project!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Trouble with Motivation
I’ve spoken about many of my difficulties in my writing career pretty extensively, and I don’t want anyone to think for a second I don’t love writing.
I love writing. My problem in this context is that I love it so much doing anything else always feels a little disappointing, and as it stands I still need to do other things to enable me to write. I hope that won’t be the case for very much longer, but as it stands, thems the breaks.
And it’s particularly tricky when it comes to motivation. A big part of why I write is the sheer love of it, sure, but at the same time I’m writing because I want to make a living from it. I want to be able to eat, not fancy but consistently. I want to be able to afford a home that has both power and clean water (crazy, I know), and other than that… not a whole lot, honestly. I have very modest needs, and it’s a struggle to meet those at this stage.
So moments like this, as I approach the close of another novel and will soon have to pay somebody a lot of money to edit it so I can publish it… it’s hard. The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can move on to my next project, my next novel or movie or short story or whatever, but the sooner it will also become apparent that I still can’t afford my modest standards of living off my writing alone.
It’s tough. But I don’t know what else to do, so I keep plugging away at it, hoping that maybe this novel will be the one that means I can devote more of my time to this joyous work.
Ah well. Maybe this one. And if not, maybe the next one.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Gambling
I have a problematic history with gambling. Which is to say that I enjoy it far too much, and I lack the self-control to stop most of the time.
Thankfully, I self-medicate by just never going anywhere near most gambling establishments. I love going to casinos, but as a result, I just never do to avoid the unfortunate state of losing all my money. It’s a weird combination… I know on an intellectual level that the house always wins. That’s why casinos exist… if they were in the business of losing money, they wouldn’t be in business. And I tend to be pretty good with both probabilities and avoiding standard fallacies (“Somebody has to win!”).
But at the same time I can’t really help myself. I always lose, but I always play if given the chance.
In some ways, my career is a gamble of its own. I know the likelihood of becoming a full-time writer who can support himself on his writing is slim, even if I work my butt off (which I do!). And yet, here I am, betting that this will be the book that will let me spend more time and energy writing, and less doing all the other things I have to do to support my writing.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Father's Day
There are a bunch of arbitrary holidays, and Parental days I consider foremost among those.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate my parents. I think I do. I hope they know that, because I certainly tell them often enough.
But the idea that I “have” to honour them a specific day, or in a specific way… never really jived with me. I’m weird, I know. It’s a little like Valentine’s Day or Family Day or whatever. I hope I never need the reminder of when I am supposed to appreciate people who matter to me.
It might happen someday, I honestly hope not, but who knows.
Anyway, I called my dad, and we chatted for a little while. It’s only been a week or so since I visited him (he lives about an drive hour away, and I am currently sans-car, so I can’t visit as often as I’d like), but it’s still nice to catch up.
Happy Father’s Day to any of you out there who celebrate! As for me, I think I’m going to spend what’s left of the day writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Headaches
When I was younger, I don’t recall ever having headaches. I can’t specifically tell you why… it’s not like I’ve dramatically changed my diet or exercise habits or anything like that. I have lost a lot of weight since I was young, so that might be a contributing factor, but again, it might not be. I honestly don’t know!
What I do know is these days I will have headaches for a week or two every few months. If I had to guess I’d say it probably is linked to the weather? But that’s a guess. Either way, it’s bloody unpleasant when it hits. Like the last few days.
Still, I can’t really complain. I can spend today drinking coffee (caffeine tends to help), writing my novel, and generally staying out of bright lights or moving quickly. There are far worse things to suffer from, and they’re really rather mild compared to the migraines some of my friends and family suffer from.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Temptation of Change
Having surpassed the halfway point of my novel a few days ago, the draw to work on other projects has ramped up dramatically.
This usually happens to me around this time (or when I’m closing in on the finale). My brain is already drawn to what I’ll be doing next, and more of my cycles of my creative thinking is going into planning and dreaming the various plots or scripts for those.
It’s tricky. On the one hand, part of the job that keeps me moving forward is this constant drive for “the next” project. The next novel, the next short story, the next animation. I love that I’m always trying to figure out what I’m going to be doing next because there are just so many things I want to do.
The trade-off, of course, is that I can’t start the next project until I’m done this project, and so I need to keep at least some (ideally most!) of my focus on what I’m working on right now. A delicate balance between wanting to think about what comes next and needing to think about what I’m doing right now.
Either way, I’m looking forward to getting this novel finished up! My current temptation is to do a “short” animation for a music-video-kinda-thing just as a way to keep learning about the art, but we will see how I feel in a couple weeks when the novel is done!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Nothing New
It has been said before that there’s nothing new under the sun. From a physics perspective that’s certainly true (all matter was created at the same time, more-or-less, and while the specific form it’s currently taking may be new, the matter itself is old!).
But it’s a bit of a challenge as a writer to consider that any story I want to tell is really just a re-telling of another story. A few bells, a whistle or two, but at its core, some fundamental story archetype being re-explored through my world and my narrative, rather than something truly unique.
To be honest, I’m okay with that. I’m not out to reinvent the wheel or to be the most creative writer of all time or anything like that. I just want to make stories that people enjoy. And just because everything has been told before doesn’t mean I can’t tell it in interesting and new ways.
The story I’m working on right now owes a lot of its roots to Star Trek. It’s a story about exploration at its core. But the way I approach that exploration, and the reasons for it, and the ship it takes place on, all of that is different… and hey, Star Trek is just a re-telling of older Western stories about exploration and strange new worlds, so it wasn’t super unique either!
Basically, just because something isn’t “new” doesn’t mean it can’t be good. And here’s hoping my novel is good!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Old Sci-fi
Part of the job of being a good writer is being a voracious reader. It’s actually one of my favourite parts of the job! I can devour a good book in a day, and occasionally will finish multiple a week.
An expensive part of the job, certainly, but important.
But some of the sci-fi I read isn’t exactly contemporary. I’ve read a lot of foundational stuff, including Asimov (see what I did there?), and it can be difficult to wade through some of the old fiction. Values and judgments back then were very different, and sometimes jarringly so.
The series I’m reading right now isn’t that old, and it’s not that difficult or problematic. But there are a lot of elements that were in vogue at the time that have since fallen by the wayside (and mostly aren’t missed). “Male Gaze” is a constant problem… the inclination to view every woman in a story by their sexuality and attractiveness, and to have the heroic men all be muscular violent types. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the idea.
It’s not the worst sin that old sci-fi is guilty of, but it is jarring when read with modern sensibilities. But this is part of the job… learning what older writers did wrong, so that I don’t make the same mistakes… I make new mistakes instead.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Over Halfway and Progressing!
I have comfortably passed the halfway point in this novel, and that feels pretty good. It won’t feel as good as actually finishing the first draft (still aiming for mid-month), but you gotta take the little wins when you can.
It’s nice when a story flows like this. I’ve had a few minor bumps along the way, but nothing I didn’t manage to work out in a day or two. And while my notes are getting more and more extensive as we go along, I’m still enjoying the thrill of discovery with these characters… every time I sit down I feel like I’m getting a better idea about who each of them are. I just wish I had more time to work on it… I could have the first draft finished before the end of this week!
Ah well. If wishes were fishes and all that. I’m just happy that things are moving along, and I hope that everybody who reads the story has as much fun with it as I’m having writing it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Fear of Falling
I’m not a big fan of heights. I suppose it’s safe to say that I really hate heights, and that I’m scared of them.
Somebody once told me that it’s not the fall that’s the problem, but the sudden stop at the end. As somebody who has never actually fallen from a significant height (that I can think of), I’m not sure that’s true. I have spent far more time terrified of high places than I have spent hitting things from having fallen.
To some extent, I seek out opportunities to be high up. I think exposure to fear is important, the ability to not let is dictate what we can and can’t do. I mean, I will probably never go to Australia because of my fear of spiders (I freeze up if the spider is the size of my pinky-nail), but I will go up ladders, or walk near cliffs, drive over really tall bridges… it’s uncomfortable, but usually I can handle it.
I mention this because yesterday I was supposed to be doing a high ropes course, but it was cancelled due to weather (high winds). A part of me laments not getting to do it, but another part of me is definitely relieved. Overcoming your fears is important, but sometimes it’s nice to not have to worry about them.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!