It’s nice to be writing. It’s really nice to be looking forward to writing… in the Tao of Pooh (a book I read when quite young that has managed to lodge itself in my mind rather firmly), Winnie the Pooh describes the best thing in the world as not eating honey, but the moment before you eat the honey. The anticipation of eating something you know you’re going to enjoy. Writing for me is like that… I love writing, but the best feeling in the world is the moment before you start writing. The moment when all the plot threads and hooks and characters are swirling around in my head, jostling each other to be the first out and on the page. That’s a feeling unlike any other.
So I wake up most days with the buzz of anticipation that I get to write later in the day (even if “later” is sometimes quite early, like today!). And the words are falling in line for me right now. I' just finished Chapter 3 and am steaming on to Chapter 4 already… with some luck I might hit the halfway point of the novel (first draft, obvi) by the middle of the month. That would be fantastic. So we’ll see if I can maintain this lovely pace!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
One Hacker Later...
Somebody managed to break into my Paypal account. Partially my fault because I use human-level passwords (numbers and words, as opposed to more-secure gibberish), but still a tonne of work to undo the damage wrought.
Thankfully, not expensive damage, because that would ruin me, but still a lot of work to try and tighten up my online security. Two-factor authentication, lots of new passwords that are longer and more complicated… a lot of work in a lot of places online, and by no means did I get everywhere. But I tried, and hopefully I got the important ones.
Still, that tied up a lot of time I would’ve much rather spent on writing, so I have some catching up to do! But the new novel is coming along nicely (I’m about midway through Chapter 3 at this point), and it feels good to be writing, rather than just planning on writing or thinking about writing. Sure, there’s a bunch of stuff in my life that’s really hard right now, but at least I can still put fingers-to-keyboard and produce something. That feels good.
Now, examining how long this degree that I’ve been working on is still going to take… that does not feel good. But I have a few months before I really have to start worrying about that.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A New Short Story!
You can find it over on the Short Stories page, but I’ll put a link right here as well. It’s just a silly thing I cranked out for a buddy who plays Battletech, a tabletop stompy robot game. Most people don’t need justifications for why your little plastic army dolls are smashing into each other… but I am not most people.
The story itself is pretty short… just under three pages when I initially wrote it, I think, but I admit to pouring way more time and energy into making sure I got the timeline and details as correct as possible. I kinda like doing that… making fiction that fits within the confines of existing structures. It takes more work, sure, but at the same time it’s satisfying. I think that to some extent that’s because I used to write fanfic (I suspect all writers did at some point!), and it just feels… natural?
Anyway. A little story if you happen to be familiar with the Fourth Succession War period from Battletech. And if not… hey, a little political story that happens to lead into big stompy robots punching each other!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
The Artist "Problem"
There are no shortages of problems with being an artist. Your work tends to be undervalued, the amount of time and effort required is massive, the rejection is constant and unrelenting…
Somebody once said that “If you want to be a writer and can be anything else, be something else. Only be a writer if there is no other choice for you,” (I’m paraphrasing), and I kind of agree with that. I have to write. I’m miserable when I’m not writing. But by the same token, it’s a very hard road to travel.
But one of the problems I find I’m constantly running into is the desire to do all the things. Like, I have scripts I want to write, short movies I want to shoot, models I want to paint, music I want to practice and play… my desire to create far outstrips my time to do so. And so I am constantly balancing compromises… a few hours of writing followed by a few hours of painting followed by a few hours of playing music, and then back to writing and so on. There is always a dozen projects on the go.
Right now the novel takes priority, because it has simply been too long since I’ve published one and that’s unacceptable. But just because it’s the priority doesn’t mean I’m not doing everything else at the same time… and sure, I’m trying not to start more projects at the moment, but it’s just a question of time before I start another one!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Numbers Game
While I was studying to be a scientist, and in the decade that followed when I was working full time in R&D, a lot of my life was devoted to numbers. Big numbers, small numbers… often extremely small numbers, like my paycheck… numbers were kind of what I “did.”
These days its words, which, I’ll be honest, feels a lot better. But even these days there are very important numbers that I follow. How many sales a day, how many sales a month, how many visitors to this here website a week… all numbers, and watching their upwards and downwards trends is interesting if, I’ll admit, not terribly exciting. I live in the realm of small numbers… a few extra visitors on a given day can result in big changes for my monthly views because, frankly, I don’t get that many on average.
I mention this only because the last week has been a definite lull. My sales are rarely double-digits a day, but they are pretty consistently a few sales daily… but none for the last week and a half. And I don’t know why… I suppose in many places the weather is getting nicer, and maybe there is a general downturn in book purchases when the sun is shining? Just a guess.
Hopefully not a long-lived trend! I need those book sales to do little things like “eat” and “have a place to live.” Small, but important things!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Universe Building for Dummies 101
One of my favourite elements of writing a new series is the initial world-building… or, as is often the case in sci-fi, galaxy (or even universe!) building. It’s always an interesting experience to sit down and to try and think how a society operating with just one or two key technological differences might be radically different from ours.
In The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage, this was all about the economy. In a galaxy where all basic needs are met but there is still a capitalistic system underpinning it, what could conceivably be “currency”? My answer there was spice, since I wanted to go with a Caribbean-flair to the adventure that Cici and Mina were on, and from that I decided that all planets were seeded with identical foodstock, but only a few spices could grow in isolated locations, creating an entire spice-trading economy… and the story flowed outwards from there. In contrast, for Starconvoy EH-76, I needed to figure out a way to get submarines in space (hey, if the Trek in the Stars can do it, so can I!), and that led to the entire conflict between the two mighty star empires that forms the foundation of Griff’s voyage. And so on.
For the novel that I’m writing on right now (the working title is The Trojan Stars, but I don’t think I’ll be sticking with it… maybe, but we’ll see), the big thing is figuring out how the FTL interstellar drive works in such a way to produce important strategic points without requiring a lot of fiddly details. Becky Chambers does a fantastic job with this problem in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, providing a reason for the heroes’ voyage but also a technological foundation that makes the story just sing. It’s a remarkably feat, and while I don’t think I can do it quite that well, I do love the time I spend wrangling my brain to make all the blocks line up in a satisfying way.
So, that’s my work for today! Finish up the universe building (again… I did it a few weeks back before I went into exams, but managed to lose the file to a power outage… sloppy on my part. Always back up your work constantly, people!), and then diving back into writing Chapter 1!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Back to Writing!
Okay, with that my last exam for the semester, and correspondingly my last course until Fall, is over! Woo!
I think I did okay, but whether I did well or not, there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s in the books, it’s done, it’s finito. Huzzah. Let the celebrations begin!
Honestly, I’m mostly looking forward to getting back to writing more enthusiastically (as opposed to my current method of writing, which I would describe as “desperately”). I have a bunch of ideas I want to work out, and it’ll be nice to have to time to actually work on them!
So, here’s to another semester down, and to being several steps closer to graduating. If everything goes as planned, I should be finished with Laurier in early 2024! Fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
After These Messages...
It’s strange the kinds of things that get lodged in your brain. Like, that little jingle from when I was a very young child watching cartoons… “After these messages… we’ll be right back!”
Anyway, today is devoted to studying for my exam tomorrow. So I’ll be back on Thursday after the exam with progress on my next creative projects!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Studying for Exams
Honestly, I’ve always had a mixed appreciation for exams. On the one hand, I tend to do pretty well in tests. I have the kind of mind that can usually rationalize out a problem in a logical (although not always correct) way that will get me at least partial grades from my profs. Very useful.
On the other hand… what do exams really do? They don’t test retention of knowledge, or ability to process knowledge… they sort of test how much you know about a topic at this moment which, I suppose, is about the best you can hope for? Maybe school would be better if the emphasis was less on “did you learn this fact temporarily” and more on “can you use or understand whatever it is you learnt two, three, or seven years down the road.”
Of course, determining if that’s true or not… totally different issue. But the whole school-bribing scandal from a few years back shows that it doesn’t matter what your grades are (at all), nor does it determine if you will be good at a job or not. Many people paid to get into a school that nominally didn’t deserve to be there, but they ended up doing just as well (or better) than the students who “earned” their spots.
I don’t know. But I am happy that this is my last exam of the semester, and my last exam for a few months at least. My brain can use the rest from the usual school stuff for a bit.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The importance of Play
I’m a big fan of games. Not just video games, but tabletop RPGs, board games, card games… play in general, up to and including many sports. I was raised playing soccer and hockey until I went to University the first time… I was never great, but I was consistently pretty good. If I was able to drop 100lbs at the time I probably would’ve been great. Ah well.
The point is that I love games. Part of it is the sense of community that play fosters. There are few faster ways to make positive memories than by playing a good game with good people (coincidentally, there are bad games and bad people, but a great way to discover either or both of those things is to play games with people!). I’m dabbling in a sci-fi space flight sim these days which is a lot of fun, I’m playing a big dungeon delving board game, and at night I’m reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style book that’s almost a solo RPG… oh, and I’m reading the rules for a solo RPG that I’m really excited to play (“Starforged”).
Moral of the story? Play is good. And while there are many hard or difficult or depressing things in my life, the ability to play a game always helps to cheer me up.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Hard Day
This is a tough day for me. It is every year. As a result, I’m keeping my head down, sitting on my couch watching cartoons and Star Wars and just relaxing as best I can, hoping it passes me by less awfully than historically.
Thursday I dive back into the novel. Maybe even tomorrow if I get the opportunity!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Assignments Done
Well, I have submitted the last of my assignments due for this semester. It’s a nice feeling… sure, I still have an exam in a week, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about that other than study. And I’ll do that, but studying for an English exam is a matter of hours, not days, like these essays were.
Still, it will be weird not to have summer courses this year. There aren’t any offered that are of interest… which pushes back my hoped-for graduation until 2024, but I’m not doing this for a specific deadline, but to become a better and more broadly-capable writer, so if it takes a bit longer, so be it.
Anyway, with that done I can dive back into writing the novel (woo!), and a few scripts for animations I want to make. It’s good to be back!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Happy Long Weekend!
To those who celebrate, happy long weekend! I, unfortunately, have to work retail in order to pay for my writing and living costs, so while I have today off, I am back at work tomorrow… and then off Sunday and working Monday.
Also, I have a massive assignment and a little assignment both due on Monday, and I really need to get those done, so I’ll be spending most of today doing that. The essay (worth a whopping 40%) is going to be the lion’s share of the work, and while I am not “excited” about doing it, I think it’ll probably be fine. Plus, I had an assignment for this course due back in January, and nothing since, so I can’t really complain.
The little assignment, also due on Monday for my other course, will just be cranked out in an hour or so. Enough to read, edit, and then submit it. It’s only worth 2%, it’s barely worth the effort, but by the same token there’s no reason not to do it. So I’ll do it after I finish the big essay.
And then I have an exam to study for (I’m not worried about it, but I still want to do well so I have to put some time into prep), and then I’m done until September! Lots of opportunity to write and shoot Stop Motion and all sorts of wonderful stuff like that! Whee!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Done and posted!
If you are a Patreon supporter, you already know that I posted the first Stop Motion video I did on ye olde ‘Tube a few days ago… but if you don’t follow me there, you might not know!
Here’s a link!
Only trouble is that if you don’t know the source material, it’s gonna make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Basically, it’s a hypothetical discussion between two Trickster demigods: Nanabush/Nanabozho and Loki. I figured they would instantly dislike each other and get into a brief competition.
Even not knowing the source material, I figured it was worth posting because that way I have a benchmark to measure my future work against. And while it is rough (there is some definitely lessons learnt!), I’m still proud of how it turned out. So give it a look!
And hey, let me know what you think!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
One Stop Motion Done!
Well, the Stop Motion animation I was working on for class is finished… well, almost finished. I have a buddy doing music for it. But when he’s done, then it will be completely done. I’m really happy with how it turned out, and more importantly I learnt an awful lot from the process… like how much I like writing scripts and doing these sorts of silly things!
Future animated shorts will be… shorter… but I have to be more mindful of interstitials and transitions. This one had 4 or 5 that I had to do last-minute because I only realized I needed them after I had disassembled the set (which is also a useful thing to know. I set up everything so I could shoot everything on a set before changing it, but in the future I might just make multiple sets so I can go back and reshoot as needed).
Anyway, I’ll probably be posting the video to ye olde ‘Tube before too long, and I’ll put a link here when I do. It will make almost no sense to anyone who hasn’t read Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor, but it might be interesting as a benchmark for my future work. Kinda like I still love the work I did with the Tintian series, but I would write them much differently (and better!) now.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Other Projects!
So I think I mentioned a while back that I’ve started to dabble in some side creative projects.
That’s actually unfair: I am always doing other creative projects in addition to writing novels. I write some short stories (admittedly, not recently), I paint, I play guitar, I draw occasionally (again, something I haven’t done in years, but I love doing it)…
But with the availability of solid Stop Motion software on phones (and the power of modern cameras), I’ve started to dabble in a little stop motion animation. The one I’m doing currently (my first!) is for school… but although it is only halfway finished, I’m really quite proud of it. Writing scripts for audio format is something I’ve done for years (I’ve written and performed several audio stories), and adding visuals to that… well, it’s just lovely.
So! I think I’ll post that video up in a bit. It’s a little rough… the lighting is the big issue. I only have 2-point lighting at this point, and I really want/need 3-point to make everything clearer, and there are a few moments that the camera is making the image brighter or darker, but hopefully not a big flicker issue. I guess we’ll see once I stitch everything together!
At least something to look forward to, yeah? Yeah!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Long Sentences
For one of my courses (“Caribbean Literature”) I have to read The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon.
It’s not the worst thing I’ve had to read this semester by a long shot, but I just finished a sentence that, without exaggeration, lasted ten pages. One sentence, lots of commas and hyphens, but no periods or full-stop punctuation. It was sorta stream of consciousness, but mostly it was annoying.
Granted, Selvon was writing decades ago, and his specific style was to bring a sort of Caribbean patois to English literature, and boy howdy did he succeed there. The book itself has been mostly enjoyable (aside from some blatant sexism, but again, the book is just shy of a century old at this point and while not acceptable it isn’t surprising either), but this one sentence annoyed me. A lot.
It’s hard to read! It’s specifically anti-readability. It always strikes me as the author sticking their nose in the air and saying with a snooty attitude “Well good readers will understand!” A sort of “No True Scotsman” argument for writing or reading… if you don’t like it, you’re not a “real” reader. Like… oh, I dunno, post-modernist crap that wanders around without ever actually telling a story and that’s supposed to be the story. Although not that bad.
Anyway. Makes me appreciate that my particular stylistic difficulties (parenthetical asides and ellipses) don’t really impact readability that much. A bit, no question, and I have to be careful with them, but yeah. Long sentences. Selvon couldn’t pull ‘em off, and I ain’t gonna try!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Better than Before!
One of the only upsides to losing the first chapter of the novel I’m working on is that I’m pretty sure that I’m writing it better. I have a better idea of how I want the chapter to go, at least.
The “problem” is now wanting to put all-the-things in that first chapter. Like an alien race… I almost never write aliens because I don’t have a mind that works well on the concept of “not human.” Like, most aliens you think of are usually just humans with some slight cosmetic changes. David Brin does some incredible things with properly-alien aliens in the Uplift series, but I have no illusions of being able to replicate that. Sometimes my humans are somewhat weird humans, though… atypical, at the very least. So maybe I’ll do that for this novel? Future humans meeting more primitive humans? That’s basically alien (or magic, depending on who you ask).
Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be putting aliens in this novel. But maybe. Might be a nice change of pace…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Always Save Your Work
Whelp, that was a lot of lost work…
My computer froze up yesterday, and in the process of rebooting it I lost all my notes for the novel, plus about a chapter that I had written. The notes are the real blow… I’m too demoralized about this stupid mistake to rewrite them right now, but I’ll have to fill them in as I go along. Just stupid of me to not save my multi-day work at all.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: save your work, and backup your computers!
Ah well. No point crying over spilled milk. I’ve started rewriting the lost chapter already and hey, who knows, maybe it’ll be even better this time!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Big Stompy Robots
I am an unapologetic fan of big stompy robots. From the early days of Kaiju (Godzilla-style) films with actors inside robot-suits, to anime and cartoons, to Battletech and WarHammer, and to modern video games and movies… I just love big stompy robots.
I don’t think they “make sense” in a traditional way. There are shockingly few situations where having a 20-100m tall robot makes any logical sense. But the same could be said of airships, which I love, and landships, which I think are hilarious but still love. It doesn’t have to make sense to be cool… heck, most FTL systems don’t make sense, but they’re still cool regardless.
But I don’t know if I could write a big stompy story. A lot of the joy in these stories are the visuals… which isn’t to say the Battletech books aren’t fun. They are! But they’re predicated on decades of people kinda knowing what those robots look like. As a random example, the Robotech/Macross series of books just weren’t as good… the comics were great, the anime/cartoons were great, but as words on a page, they just lacked the oomph of other stories. So the ability to translate giant mecha into narrative story, I think, relies on an understanding of what the mecha “are” (in universe at least), and then a hefty suspension of disbelief.
Maybe I’ll try one out in a few books (my next 2 at least don’t involve mecha). Always good to stretch your creative comfort zone!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!