A Return To Writing? Who Knows...

Some of you may have noticed that I wrote an actual post last week. Ah, who am I kidding? That post received one whole comment, so I'm pretty sure it had about as much impact as a feather falling on snow. But, whatever, right? No one comes here for the words; it's all about the pretty pictures these days. I guess I can't really blame anyone for that; I do take some pretty pictures. But, you know, I haven't turned this into a photography blog... yet.

I suppose that's what instagram is for, though, but I haven't gotten very good at posting pictures to there. When they start letting me post them from my computer, I might get better at it. Right now, I have to move my pictures from my camera to my computer and, then, onto my phone to be able to upload them, and that's more than I want (or remember) to do most of the time. Besides, who puts pictures onto their phone? That's assbackwards.
But I digress...

So will I be writing more?
I don't know for sure. I want to, but time these days... Look, it took me two weeks -- two weeks! -- to write my review for Face the Music. And that shouldn't have been a difficult write up but, I suppose, with kids home all the time now...

Don't get me wrong; I don't want my kids not at home. I mean, I don't want my daughter in school, that's for sure, not that she didn't already have COVID-19, because we're pretty sure she had it back in February. We're early adopters, don't you know. But I do wish they didn't make so much noise. My kids, I mean. All the time. Background music is not my friend when it comes to writing, but I'm pretty sure I wrote about that way back in the mists of time.
Wait, wait... The Myst of Thyme.
Why wasn't that a thing?

Anyway... I have things I want to write. I have a bunch of drafts that are mostly just titles so that I will remember my ideas for posts, but getting thoughts onto virtual paper has been a... challenge. To say the least.
And, of course, with the election coming up... Let's just say that the chaos is only going to get louder.

Personally, I'm a bit tired of the chaos. The seven largest fires in California's recorded fire history (which started in 1932), as well as the first and fourth most deadly, have been since trump (#fakepresident) was elected. And I'm not saying there's any causality, but it's a difficult correlation to deal with.

Actually, I'm not saying there's not causality, either, because he, trump (#fakepresident), has been a horror to the environment. And, dude, come on, stop telling us to rake the forest! Shut your stupid, fat pie hole. Science is real, not an opinion.
Which is my cue to say one word: VOTE!

As I said to someone earlier today (the day I'm writing this, not the day you're reading it), trump (#fakepresident) has treated his presidency like a demolition derby, speeding around in his great clown car squeezing his great clown horn. The problem? Everyone else has tanks. And he can't tell.
That's also beside the point.

As I was saying, I have things I want to write, so, hopefully, this place will start to be more of a writing space again.
I guess we'll have to see what happens.

Pictures I Love (pictures I like)

Still not back on my game even though I have some things I need to write. You're stuck with pictures until I can clear my head and make some words.

A Delicacy of Eggs

Eggs are like writing.
No, seriously.
Look, I know, everything is like writing, but eggs are really like writing.
It's about the attitude.
I mean, it's only eggs, right?
Anyone can cook an egg.
That's how people feel about eggs, and it's true as far as that goes. There are certain things with eggs anyone ought to be able to do proficiently enough so that they're edible. Minimally. Hard boiled. Scrambled. Egg over hard. (Look, I didn't know what it was called; I had to look it up. Dumb name, and I never make them that way, because, basically, that's an unskilled way to make a fried egg.)
And people seem to think that "everyone has a story in them," which may or may not be true, but people say it all the time.
There's this attitude that anyone can write if only they sat down to do it.
Like anyone can make eggs.

But not everyone can make good eggs. If anyone and everyone could do it, diner eggs wouldn't need salt or hot sauce or ketchup. They would just be good and you could eat them without a bunch of augmentation. But when was the last time you had eggs at a diner that didn't taste like paper?
When's the last time you made eggs that didn't taste like paper?

The problem with eggs is that they actually take a lot of attention. That is, if you want them to be good, they do. They're only "easy" to make when you don't care what you're getting as the end product.

Let me give you an example:
I make what we in my house call fancy eggs. They're "fancy" because they're all creamy and stuff. In fact, they have cream in them.
And here's the problem with eggs:
A recipe won't get you where you want to go, not with eggs. There's no "cook for four minutes" that will get you good eggs every time you make them. Or, probably, any time you make them.
So fancy eggs start out as mostly conventional scrambled eggs. [No, I'm not giving out any of my cooking secrets! They were hard won, and you can go figure out your own secrets!] Then, when they're almost done, almost but not quite, you turn the heat off, add in the cream, and mix it in in the still hot skillet.

This did come from a recipe book, but the book is... well, it's not anymore clear than I just was about when and how to add in the cream. Why? Because you have to be standing there watching the eggs to know when. In fact, you have to work these eggs the entire time they're cooking if you want them to turn out right. There's none of this pouring the eggs into the skillet and doing something else for a few moments while the eggs cook on their own, then stirring them up a bit and going back to the other thing, repeat until eggs are done. [I know that's how you do it, because, when you make plain old scrambled eggs, that works just fine. Fine enough, at any rate.] But for these eggs, you have to work them the whole time and you have to pay attention to just how cooked they are so that you know when to add the cream.
Too soon and you have runny, soupy eggs that no one is going to want to eat.
Too late and the eggs are cooked through and the cream won't mix in so you have scrambled eggs sitting in a puddle of cream.
How do you know when you're at the correct moment to add the cream? Experience.

No two eggs are alike. It's similar to why I hate recipes that call for two cloves of garlic. What does that even mean? Garlic cloves can vary in size from the size of your pinky nail to the size of your thumb (or thereabouts, it's close enough, okay!). You have to be more specific. And who only wants just two cloves of garlic anyway? Wimps, that's who!
Look, what I'm saying is that you don't get the same volume of egg goop from six eggs from one time to the next, so the cooking time required is going to be different every single time. Sure, the difference is a matter of seconds, but when your eggs go from not-done-enough for cream to too-done for cream within about 10 or 12 seconds, you don't have any time to play around with. You have to be working the eggs and have the cream ready to go in. Also, the amount of cream has to vary somewhat, and you can only tell how much to put in by paying attention to the eggs.

It's expertise.

I know I started all of this by comparing this whole egg thing to writing, and it's a good metaphor. Most books are diner eggs, and that's probably all I need to say about that.
However, I think this is also a good metaphor for democracy. ["Oh, god, does everything have to be politics?" Well, yes, I think maybe it does. Right now, at any rate.] I think we in the United States took our democracy for granted, had that whole "it's only voting" mindset. We quit paying attention to it and let it get too done. Maybe burned. Maybe ruined. I don't know. I suppose we'll find out in 2020. If Trump (#fakepresident) wins again, legitimately or not, we'll know that democracy is over in the USA. The Republicans will be too firmly entrenched and civil rights will really begin to become a thing of the past. They're working hard at making that so right now.
Sorry, women, take your shoes off and get your asses back in the kitchen.
Sorry, black men... Yeah... Just, I'm sorry. I have nothing quippy to say to that.

If Trump (#fakepresident) loses... Well, it may also already be too late if he loses. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. One thing is certain, he's not going to pass over the reins of power peacefully. At the very least, he's going to start screaming that the election was rigged, which is where things will get dicey. It's all going to depend on how his followers, both in and out of the government, respond to his throwing a tantrum. It may mean that it's time to throw that skillet of eggs in the trash and start again.
But I hope not.
Because it will mean that blood is being spilled.
And blood is already being spilled.
Or put in cages.
People being allowed to die, at any rate.

What all of this comes down to is that if you want to be good at something, at anything, you have to pay attention to it. You have to practice it. You have to do it. You can't leave your eggs to cook themselves, and you can't allow other people to take care of the vote you ought to be casting.
And putting words on a page in sentence format doesn't mean you're going to have a book worth reading.

The Burr Advice

Obviously, I never knew Aaron Burr so never received any advice from him. I don't really know if he would have uttered the words, "Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for," or not. It doesn't really matter as it's the words I'm dealing with moreso than Burr. Well, moreso than Burr the historical figure. I'm definitely dealing with Burr, the character, from Hamilton.

That said, Burr was a despicable figure, a true scum-of-the-earth human being. And, for what it's worth, I'm willing to go along with Miranda's interpretation of him, on the whole, since it's based on Ron Chernow's book about Hamilton. I would say that Chernow is a more than reliable as a source.

The Burr of the Broadway musical is a conniving piece of trash, a man constantly playing the middle so that he can make sure he comes down on the winning side. A bit of historical curiosity for you: He's the politician who invented going door to door and getting out in the neighborhood, which was not exactly a good thing. He wanted to get people to vote for him because of how friendly he was, how personable he was, not because of what he stood for. He wanted it to be a popularity contest, something like running for class president in high school.

"Vote for me because we could buddies!"

When I was a kid, I was into GI Joe and Transformers. Mostly, I was into the toys, and I collected them and kept them on display in my room. One day, my mom was in my room talking to me about... something I don't remember... when she abruptly inserted, "I wish you didn't have all of these war toys." It was completely out of the blue and, while not exactly confusing, a little confusing.

So I said the logical thing, "Why?"

And she said, "Because if you were ever drafted, you wouldn't be able to tell them you're a pacifist."

Which totally blew my mind. I think I said something like, "Why would I want to tell them that?" I don't really believe in violence as an answer to things, but I'm also not a pacifist. It would never have occurred to me to try to lie to get out of being drafted like, you know, claiming to have bone spurs.

Which brings us back to this idea of keeping your political leanings out of your public life. Not that most of us have a "public" life but, as small as mine is, I do have a public life. The general "wisdom" among my "fellow writers" is that we should keep our politics and our personal beliefs out of our public lives. Rather in the same way that people are saying saying that football players should keep their protests out of sports.

Not that the two things are actually similar. People want football players to keep their mouths shut (or their knees unbent) just so that they don't have to think about what it's like to be African American in America. Writers tell other writers to keep their politics and beliefs to themselves because they'll alienate potential readers if they're open about what they believe.

And that's true. I know that I have lost followers since I started writing politics.

However! The trade off is keeping your mouth shut about the injustices in the world (or, if you're a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter, supporting and praising those injustices). You know why the Nazis succeeded in so much destruction? People kept their mouths shut. People played it safe. People tried not to draw attention to themselves. And you can pfft all you want at this being similar to a pre-WWII Germany, but you can only do that if you're ignorant of the history. Ignorant.

Look, here's the thing:
When I was a kid in school learning about World War II and the Nazis, everyone always said, "Oh, I would never have done that. I wouldn't have kept silent. I would have taken a stand. I would never never never have let anything like that happen or have been a part of it." Everyone said that. But we're in those days right now, the days when people need to stand up and protest fascism and racism and all of the abuses of the Trump (#fakepresident) administration.

Well, for good or ill, all of you out there keeping your mouth shut, we know which side of that equation you would have been on. And all of you out there supporting Trump (#fakepresident), we all know you would have been right in with the Nazi party.
Congratulations on that.

In the end, I'm with Hamilton, "I'd rather be divisive than indecisive; drop the niceties."
Seriously, the Republicans have moved all of this way past "civility." Don't fall for that trap. It's just meant to get you to let them do what they want to do without complaining about it.

Act 1 -- New Game (or) Music To Write By

A couple of months ago, I posted about a song my son composed. You can read about it here. And you should, too, because it's a really great song. A song he wrote and just sprang on us, as I sort of implied in the linked post. "Aurora Daedalus" is something I can write by, and I can't listen to much music when I'm writing. But I digress...

Over the next couple of days, he wrote a couple more songs:
"Eternal Voyage"
"Love Me and Despair"
And...
That's the last we heard of it.

He's kind of tight lipped about what he's working on so gentle probes didn't get any results. Then probes that were less gentle still didn't get any responses, so we quit asking.
I have to come clean at this point and say that he probably gets that from me. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I tend to not want anyone to see my work until it's finished. Or even know that I'm working on something. So, yeah... It's familiar behavior.

Anyway...

Last week, he asked me for help with PayPal, which was kind of weird, especially when he went on to say that he needed a business account. Wait. What?
He's produced a whole album of music and had it all set on a hosting site and everything, but they require a PayPal account to deposit money into.
Fortunately, I have a PayPal business account.

Shameless boasting:
This is the part where I'm going to point out that this is the son I wrote the long education series about and further point out that he's only 16. Sure, it's not like he's Mozart or anything, but I think this is a lot of talent for 16.

ANYWAY...

His album, Act 1 -- New Game is available through bandcamp, and you should definitely go check it out. Seriously, give it a listen. And, then, give it a purchase. It's only $5.00, and, hey, it's music to write by. Or cook by. Or whatever. No, you can't sing to it (since there are no lyrics), but it's pretty nice background music.

Oh, also! He did all of the art. Here's the tricky part: You have to click the link for each song but, when you do, the page for that song will come up, and each song has its own piece of pixel art. Yeah, it's pixel art, but he likes it, and it's GOOD pixel art.

Look, as I tell me kids when it comes to tasting food, what have you got to lose? It's not going to kill you, and you might find something you like. Go. Now. Give it a listen and check out the art.

Writing and the Inspiration Dilemma

There are whole schools of thought about writers and inspiration and waiting for inspiration and when to write and where inspiration comes from and whether it's even necessary. As with most things, there's a spectrum here, with people who believe you should never sit down to write unless you're feeling inspired on one side, and those, on the other side, who believe you should treat writing like a job and sit down and do the work whether you're inspired or not.

Let's take a practical look at this.

But before we go on, let me just say that I have nothing against inspiration. I like it. It's great to be inspired and have lovely (or terrifying) ideas to sit down and play with. But I can almost never sit down to do the writing when I have those ideas. I think most of my ideas these days happen when I'm in the car. You can ask my wife; I make her send me notes when I have ideas and we're not home, so she would probably know best whether that most frequently happens in the car or not. I mean, the car is not the best place to write, not if you want to live through your trip.

I used to know this guy. A "writer." He strongly believed in the waiting-for-inspiration-to-strike-before-doing-any-writing model. He talked about it a lot, actually, about how he would lean back in his chair at his desk and wait for the inspiration to come to him. Wait for the universe to open and flood his head with ideas and words. He'd sit that way for hours. If no inspiration came, he didn't do any writing. As time went on, more and more often, his posts about his writing life were only about how he was never inspired and couldn't find any inspiration and was, as a consequence, never writing.

He's not a writer anymore. I'm not sure he could ever have been called a "writer" since he has no completed work to show for his time as a "writer."

The problem is that I know a lot of people like that, people who quit writing because they relied heavily on being inspired and never did any of the work of writing. It's like this:
Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
And, well, inspiration doesn't come unless you're doing the work.

So you can probably guess which side of the spectrum I'm on.
The truth is that if you look at successful writers, the writers who make a living from their writing, with few exceptions, these are the people who sit down to do the work of writing whether they're "feeling inspired" or not.

"Writers" who wait for the inspiration to happen first lead lives of not writing and, thus, never have anything to show for being a "writer." Sure, they may have a few pages of this or a few pages of that, but you can't legitimately call yourself a writer if you can't finish anything. You can be a writer without ever publishing anything, but you can't be a writer without work to show for it.

Which brings me to my actual point.

The other day, I heard a bit of an interview with a "voter" about why he hadn't voted in an election. He said it was because none of the candidates had inspired him...
Wait, what?
Yes, he said he didn't vote because he hadn't felt inspired by any of the candidates to get out and vote.

Which I realized is what has bothered me so much about last November's presidential election, people complaining that they didn't like either candidate so they hadn't bothered to vote at all. These people are "voters" in much the same way as a writer waiting for inspiration is a writer, which is to say not at all.

Look, it's not a candidates job to be inspirational. It's not the campaign's job to inspire you. Sure, I get that it can help. Like I said, I have nothing against inspiration. It's great.
But that's not what voting is about!
As a voter, it's your job to make the best decision from the available candidates and to go out and vote!

For example, if you have two candidates and you've rated them on a scale of 1-10 and one of them is a 0 (because Trump didn't even make the scale) and the other is a 2 or, even, a 1, you go out and vote for the better one (not that I thought that Clinton was so low as a 1 or a 2, but I know a lot of people felt that way). You don't wait for a 7 or higher to come along and inspire you before going out and doing your job, because it is your job. If you have two candidates whom you don't like and one of them is an authoritarian fascist asshole, you go out and cost your ballot for the other candidate.

Period.

You want to know how I know? Because France just did just that! FRANCE! Dudes... if France can do it, if France can do the right thing, certainly we here in the United States of goddamn fucking America ought to be able to do the same thing. Ought to be able to.
Because, obviously, we're not capable of that, as the even more recent election of Greg Gianforte kind of demonstrates.
Seriously, what the fuck?
And you call yourselves Americans?
If the people of France can get themselves out to vote for Emmanuel Macron, a guy no one really liked, for the sole purpose of keeping Marine Le Pen out of office, then no one in the United States has any excuse.

When the choice is between the lesser of two evils, you fucking vote for the lesser of two evils.

So all of you people who didn't vote need to own up to your lack of doing your fucking jobs as citizens of the United States and get up off your asses now and register your protest against the fascist asshole "running" the country.
Running it into the ground.

Sorry (not sorry), fuck inspiration. And that goes to you "writers," too.
Do the work.
If you do the work, the inspiration will eventually come.

Confusing the Message for the Medium

Back in the 1950s, Ray Bradbury wrote a little short story called "A Sound of Thunder." It's the one about the dudes going back in time to hunt dinosaurs, and you should already know it. If you don't, go read it now before I spoil it. Look, it's a short story, it won't take you that long.

Anyway, the dudes are sent back in time to hunt dinosaurs. There are all of these precautions set up to keep them from disrupting the time line, and they are supposed to follow them explicitly. However, at one point, one of the dudes steps off of the designated path and, when he picks up his foot, finds he has crushed a butterfly. But it's just a butterfly, right? You'd like to think that but, when they return to their own time, they find that everything has changed.

I know! Trippy, right! That's, like, SO deep and meaningful and shit! The dude stepped on a butterfly and changed, like, EVERYTHING! Duuude! And only those dudes knew anything had changed! That's so weird, right! Duuude!

Oh, like, dude! maybe they could go back in time again to before the one dude killed the butterfly and stop him from stepping on the butterfly and fix everything. That's so trippy! Like, duuude!

The problem, though, is that the story is not about the time travel or that everyone in the group who had traveled had kept their original memories intact. That's just the medium to deliver the message, the message that even little things can have huge consequences.

However, this idea has become a staple in science fiction and time travel stories, the idea that the person who travels in time can change the past and yet retain their memories unchanged. It's bullshit, and it wasn't Bradbury's point and, frankly, I'm sick and tired of seeing it done, because it's one of the most ridiculous logical fallacies in science fiction. Probably more than anything else, it is the thing that makes me hate time travel stories, and I can almost say that unilaterally because virtually every time travel story out there uses this idea.

Probably, right about now, I'm stepping on some people's toes, because time travel stories are very popular, and people seem to love this crap.

But here's the other thing I hate about time travel stories and, for this, I'm going to use an example...

Recently, I've been watching The Flash with my daughter. (The boys have no interest in the DC TV shows (and for good reason!).) Because we watch everything after the fact, we're working our way through season two, right now. Now, as a character, I like the Flash -- If I could have a super power, it would be super speed. -- but I haven't much liked this version of the Flash. Sorry, the character in this show is NOT Barry Allen. However, it's been okay enough to watch with my daughter because she does like it. (She prefers Marvel, but she can't watch the Marvel TV shows, yet.)

It has been "okay enough" right up until we got to the episode "Flash Back." They've already done a few time travel episodes, but those were episodes -- see if you can follow this -- where time travel happened but were not about the time travel; "Flash Back" is about the time travel. And it turned a show which was "okay enough" into a show I am currently hating for its blatant and utter stupidity.

So let's break this down:
1. Barry Allen is supposed to be a brilliant scientist. To say that another way, he's incredibly smart.
2. Barry Allen already went back in time to the murder of his mother, and he refrained from saving her, something he desperately wanted to do, because of the danger of changing the past.
3. In "Flash Back," before Barry leaves for the past, they give him that whole speech, "Don't change anything, because you will be the only one who remembers how things are actually supposed to be."

So...
1. Barry is super smart, so he should know better than to tamper with the things that have already happened.
2. If Barry could withstand the temptation to save his mother, he should be able to withstand any other temptations about changing the past.
3. Bullshit!

But...
Of course, Barry can't resist and purposefully affects the past at least three times in the episode, not to mention all of the accidental/unforeseen changes.
Wait a minute...
Knowing the danger of messing with the past, Barry goes ahead and purposefully makes alterations to the timeline for which he cannot know the ramifications.
But the writers expect us to believe that
1. Barry is smart.
2. Barry would succumb to the temptation of fiddling when he didn't save his mother.

This is just... bad writing. Bad writing. Horrible, stupid writing. And it's the kind of thing that makes me hate more than 90% of time travel in popular culture. Not to mention that this particular example of it undermines the entire Flash TV series. We can now no longer trust anything in the show because the writers can just do whatever the fuck they want at any given moment and blame it on Barry having changed things in the past.

And the bigger problem?
Once you've established that your hero can time travel, you can't have him not do it without that being equally as stupid as having the time travel. Either way, the show can't move forward, now, without being dumb.

Maybe I should go back in time and explain to Bradbury the horror he is going to unleash on the world with his one little short story.

Dream a Little Dream... Or a Big One

Do you have a "dream"?
Do you even know what that is or what it means?
Is it a dream or a fantasy?
Yeah, I want to make a difference between those things.

But first:

I've been doing this a while, now, the whole author thing and, with it, the blog thing. I've changed the way I blog since way back in the beginning when I used a lot of my time to go and search out other blogs and be very interactive in the whole blogging process. It's time consuming, and I got to a point where I had to ask the question about what my dream was: Was it to write or was it to blog? But that's beside the point, though worth noting. The short of that was that I changed the way I blog, and I no longer go out searching for new blogs by other authors to get involved with.

The point of me telling you that is that I want to note how few blogs show up in my blog feed each day, now. Back when I was being heavily involved in blogging, there would be dozens of blog posts in my feed each day. It was seriously difficult to keep up with. When I changed the way I blogged, I didn't stop following people (even if I did stop visiting all of them), so all of those posts still showed up in my feed each day. Now, though, today, there were only two new posts in my feed. Monday, the heaviest day of the week, there were only eight, and there were none from Saturday and Sunday. [All of these numbers are as I write this on Tuesday, August 16.] Days without posts used to never happen. Never.

Sure, some of the missing people moved onto other platforms (InstaTwitter or whatever), but many of them just gave up on writing. Probably most of them. Okay, actually very certainly most of them. If I go down my list of people who no longer blog, most of them no longer do anything. They just quit.

And that is because of the difference between a dream and a fantasy.

For our purposes, we're going to call a "dream" something you yourself can accomplish.
We're going to call a "fantasy" something that happens to you.

So you can have a dream of buying lottery tickets, but any thoughts of winning the lottery are fantasies. Winning the lottery is not something you can achieve; it can only happen to you. Likewise, you can have a dream of being a writer (because you can sit down and do that), but you can only have a fantasy about being a rich and famous writer. You can be the best writer in the world and never become rich and famous because, as with the lottery, that is mostly luck. Maybe completely.

The problem is that it's easy to subvert your dream with the fantasy. Those things can be easy to confuse. When you believe your dream is the fantasy, you can become disillusioned. I know of several writers who quit, just gave up on it, because, after publishing a couple of things, they didn't become household names. It was crushing to them, and they just quit writing. They had a fantasy of becoming rich and famous and allowed it to take the place  of their dream. That's a dangerous thing, allowing your fantasy to squash your dreams.

How do you deal with that kind of thing?

Well, the first way is to identify your dream and recognize the fantasy for what it is.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to have a dream of being "rich," but you need to identify that as your dream. Your actual dream. If that is your dream, you need to choose a path that enables you to work toward that as a dream and, let me just say, writing is a poor path to riches. Pun totally intended. You could even choose fame as a dream, I suppose, although fame is a very elusive thing, and you need to find avenues that lead to that more readily than writing. I would suggest giving Will Smith a call. Evidently, he followed a very specific plan to get to where he was in the 90s.

Now, I want to take all of this back a step farther: What is your real dream? I mean, writing is my dream, but there is a deeper dream, Let's call the dream the "deep magic," but there is a "deeper magic," the thing that supports the dream. That dream for me is the dream of leaving something behind. Something lasting. Something for my kids but also something that goes beyond just them and, in one way or another, everything I have done in my life has worked toward that.

Let me put it another way:

My grandfather was a great man. I'm going to go into why that is because 1. it would take too long and 2. it's unnecessary to what I'm going to say. He was a great man but, once I and the rest of his grandchildren are dead, there will be nothing left of him. Nothing beyond a notation in a genealogy file somewhere. And a birth certificate. Nothing that anyone will ever take note of in the future. Even the farm he poured his sweat into and the house he helped build are all gone now, burned to nothing in the wild fires that swept through East Texas a few years ago.

I don't know what kinds of dreams my grandfather had; he was more than a little laconic. But it makes me sad that he will be forgotten one day. I want to leave something behind, and my writing serves that dream.

It's not that I have a dream of being the Shakespeare of the age. Or, even, the Tolkien. Or, even, the Lewis. But I would be more than happy with being a MacDonald. See, you people don't even know who that is, do you? Here, I'll help: George MacDonald. See, it doesn't matter how unheard of he is for the most part, because his books are still out there and he still influences people. Probably in more ways than we can even imagine.

So, yeah, I choose the dream of writing to fulfill the dream of leaving something behind that lasts. And, well, if fame and riches follow, well, that's a nice fantasy, but it has nothing to do with my dream.

So what is your dream? Is it small or is it big? And can you separate it from fantasy?




"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

"Barachiel" Revised (or Done Or Raw)

I mentioned recently that I lost a computer. As in, it passed away. It gave up the ghost. Well, if computers have ghosts to give. It kicked the bucket. Or whatever passes for a bucket. It went to the light. I know, because it quit making any of its own. It gave its last gasp. Which I actually heard. It's in cold storage, now. Literally. The hard drive is. It's in my freezer, kind of like Walt Disney, waiting for a day when it can be resurrected. Or, at least, have its data carefully removed like donated organs. I just can't afford that transfer, right now, because all of the "normal" means of data retrieval didn't work.

But this post isn't about that. Go back and read the other post if you want to know more about all of that.

I spent most of July restoring documents from other sources. That's an adventure, let me tell you. [Okay, it's not, really. It's like the complete opposite of an adventure.] One of the things I could not just restore from another source was "Barachiel." I actually had to buy "Barachiel" and re-type it from my Kindle. Which is the point of all of this...

There's a reason authors (and other artist types, I would assume) declare things to be finished. It's not because they are finished, not necessarily, but because there's a point when you have to decide to quit working on something because you are no longer making any notable changes to the piece, whatever kind of thing that is, from a painting, mural, short story, or novel. As my wife would say, "Done or raw, do the chaw."

Supposedly, that saying comes from Texas and passed down to her from her grandmother who grew up there. I, too, grew up in and around Texas, though, and I never heard that saying until my wife said it. I still think it's kind of weird. And, yes, Texas is a big place, and her grandmother grew up in a different part of Texas than I did. But I digress...

"Barachiel" is a good example of all of this, because, as soon as I started re-typing it, I started fiddling with it. Not that there was anything wrong with it, because there wasn't -- okay, actually, I caught two errors: one missing space (after a comma) and one missing letter (leaving only an "a," which can be a difficult error to catch, sometimes) -- but, now, even just a few months after writing it originally, there were phrases that, I suppose, I wouldn't say quite the same way. Evidently, that's true, because I changed some. And I added in a few things here and there. Why? Because I was looking at it again, and I couldn't help it!

That's why we declare projects finished and we don't go back to them!

Seriously, I couldn't help tweaking! [Tweaking! I said tweaking!]

It was right there in front of me, and it just happened.

If I picked it up two weeks from now, I'm sure it would be the same. And again two weeks after that.
Why?
Because we always change, and the phrases and words change, too.

So, no, there is nothing significantly different about the revised edition of "Barachiel," but, just because, I'm going to make it FREE! for a couple of days. If you've already read it, you can get the new version and compare and, if you haven't read it, here's your chance to get the ever so slightly improved version. For FREE!

So, yeah, go pick up your copy of "Barachiel" today!
And, as always, please leave a review!

What Roller Derby Taught Me About Writing

I got to go to one of the practices for the Cinderollas.

I was watching them warm up, and they started doing this thing with a bunch of balls. Not what's in the above pictures, that was something else entirely. No, what I mean is that when everyone was just there skating around (and there were a lot more people than just the ones pictured because there junior team was there, too, along with some other skaters), they threw a couple dozen of those lightweight brightly colored balls for kids out onto the skate floor.

Let me back up a moment:
As I said in my first post about roller derby, I grew up skating and working in the recreation program at my church. We did skating in the gym, and I was often in charge. One of the first and basic rules of skating was balls and skates don't mix. When I was in middle school, one of my best friends broke his leg because he tripped over a basketball while he was skating. Well, perhaps tripped is too light a word. It's not like it was just there on the floor in front of him and he didn't go around it or something. No, it came rolling across the floor and hit his feet. At any rate, the rule was no skates and balls at the same time (not that we always followed that rule, mind you, but that was the rule, nevertheless).

Needless to say, I was surprised that they were tossing all of these balls out onto the skating floor during the derby practice. They were kicking the balls, throwing them at each other, and, generally, having fun with them. Eventually, when they got ready to actually start practice, they gathered up the balls.

About that time, Dirty Carie, the CEO of the Cinderollas (with whom I'm trying to get an interview), came over and asked me if I had any questions. My initial response was, as is always the case, "No, I don't think so," but I immediately changed my mind and asked about the balls, something like, "What's the deal with the balls?"

Her response was very interesting:
We try to get them not to think about their feet and what they're doing with their feet. Newer skaters tend to focus on their feet and think about how they're skating and not pay attention to what's happening around them. Of course, that doesn't work in a match. So, if we give them something fun to do, they are more likely to think about the game and let their feet just do what they need to do. If they get busy playing with the balls, they forget to think about their feet and just skate. The more we can get them to do that, the better they skate.

That's true for a lot of things, especially physical things for which muscle memory can take over. Often, thinking about it, thinking about what you're doing, can just mess you up. I think we frequently call it "trying too hard."

It works for writing, too. Writers often get too focused on the individual words and sentences. They think they have to only have "useful" words or just the right word or that every sentence has to further the story or be perfect or beautiful in some way. They do word counts on specific words and go back and cap that particular word at some arbitrary number of usages. Or other weird things. It's like thinking too hard about what your feet are doing.

Writers need to just tell the story. Don't think about the words or the perfect sentences or any of that and just tell the story. The better you get at telling the story, the more easily the right words and sentences will fall into place. All on their own, really. It's kind of magical that way. Sure, it takes practice and, sometimes, especially at first, thinking about the words helps, but you can't stay in that place. At some point, you have to play with the balls and forget about your feet. Just have fun in the game and tell the story.

Parcivillian -- Part 3 (a local color post)

Stav Redlich

Delek Miller

The pictures above are from a rehearsal session I went to with the band Parcivillian (Elliot was not there, but their temporary drummer was there). However, this post is not about that. This post is continuing the interview from last post. I just wanted to have different pictures this time.

So let's get back to it!

The other big question you probably have (well, it was the other big question I had) is, "Where did they get their name?" I think that's a valid question. It's one I'm always curious about, so I asked them.

Me: Where did you get your name and how did that happen? [There was a lot of laughter at that point.] Have you told this story to anyone before?

Stav: Yes, I have, recently.

Delek: Not really, though. Not many people.

Stav: Yeah, not many people.

Elliot: I've never told it to anybody.

Me: So it's going to kind of be a debut on my blog, then?

[Everyone agreed to that.]

Stav: We used to be The Turn, but we didn't like it, so we were looking for a new name. I was in my herbal studies class and said to my teacher, "Hey, we're looking for a new name for our band," and she was, like, "Ooh! Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."
[There was a lot of laughter about that and comments of "yeah, right" and the like.]
And I thought, sure, [she'll] get back to me with names like Leafblowers [and a lot more laughter about other names they thought she would come up with, but I can't actually make any of that out on my recording. You'll have to just trust me that it was funny. She actually came back with a list of ideas, some of which  he mentioned, but, again, laughter, so I'll pick up after that.] ...and then she says Parcivillian, and I was, like, whoa. That just clicked.

So what it is is there's this book called Parzival
[Note: Parzival is part of the King Arthur mythos and is another name for Percival. This particular book dates back to the 1300s. Also to note: This book is required reading for every student at their school.]
and what I've thought about it and what it means to me is that it's the story of the journey of a hero...

Delek: He's just an average guy.

Stav: He's also just a civilian, an average guy. Put those two together, you have Parcivillian, and that's what we're kind of striving to be, too. We're striving to be the best that we can be...

Elliot: Exactly.

Stav: ...and be as great as we can be, but we're still just three normal guys, just three guys that you can go out to coffee with and have a laugh.

Delek: Also, there's no one else in the world with a name like ours.

Stav: The short version is our herbal studies teacher came up with it.

Delek: Actually, it has a lot of meaning for us.

Elliot: It does.

Delek: That book represents Waldorf education, and that's something we've all been in our whole lives. And we've also had that teacher our whole lives. It's part of who we are. The name [Parcivillian] in some ways is just part of our journey through life.

Stav: And it stands for if we do get big, if we do make it, we don't want to be those assholes that blow off just anybody. We're still just people and we still wake up and brush our teeth every morning.

Delek: Which a lot of people forget. And a lot of people who listen to music forget, too. Everyone who plays music is just a normal guy. Instead of making your coffee, they're playing music for you.

After that was some discussion about how they were going to work out rehearsing with two of them going off to college. But Stav had some more words about his future plans which I want to include because some of it's about writing.

Stav: For me, just finish up high school. Keep writing. That's what I do everyday when I come home. Keep trying to have as many diverse experience as possible, because that's what influences my writing. You can't write just from sitting at home all day. [Emphasis is mine.] You need to have experiences and you need to experience emotion.

Elliot: And beauty.

Stav: And beauty. And that's what I'm trying to do all the time.

Me: I know lots of people who think they can write just from sitting at home all day.

Stav: No, you gotta go out into the world...

Elliot: You have to go out and sit at the coast for two hours and watch the sunset.

Delek: That's not just for writing lyrics. That's for writing songs, too. Like just music. I just go for a walk by myself and I start singing, and I'm like, "Let's work with that." Sitting at home is rarely that productive if you're just home all [the time].

And that brought us to the end of the interview. BUT! I'll be back next week with a part I skipped over but which may have been my favorite part of talking with these guys. I'm sure when you find out what it is (next week!) you'll understand.

It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 1) (an IWSG post)

Let's start with a story:

My wife is a data analyst. It's a job that requires some math skills. Not a lot. Not like calculus or trig or, even, all that much algebra, but it does require some maths. There's a lot of working with percentages and fractions. There are a few months each year when her job is really busy and requires lots of overtime. Last year, not long before the rush, one of the people in her department retired. Like any good company, to get through the busy time, they hired a temp. A temp with the potential to stay on. That was rather than hire someone permanent for the position at the point when they still had time to do that and provide adequate training, but that's another story entirely.

Now, the temp they hired seemed qualified for the job, which was not the full job, just some of the lower level routine stuff that required a lot of time. She looked qualified on paper, anyway, and got through all of the interviews and stuff. However, when it came time to do the job, she couldn't math. At all. It was almost immediately apparent that she wasn't going to work out, and there was still time to hire someone else. But, guess what, that's not what happened.

What happened is that they kept her on. The initial hope, I think, was that if they kept working with her that maybe she would "get it" and be able to do the job they hired her to do. But, no, that didn't happen. She never "got it" and, in fact, for a while, she made more work for everyone as she continued to not get it, because she would spend time doing a task (more time than it should have taken) and, then, someone else (usually my wife) would have to go back and re-do the task because it hadn't been done correctly. Eventually, after weeks of this, she became a kind of glorified filing clerk, because that's the only thing she could do.

I want to point out at this point that she was, as my wife put it, "a perfectly nice person, very sweet." She liked her. Everyone liked her. There was no one that thought she was a bad person or a dumb person or anything like that. But she couldn't do the job. And, yet, the people who should have told her that she couldn't do the job were unwilling to do their job of letting her know that she wasn't working out. Nothing positive came out of the situation.
1. It created more work for everyone involved.
2. It caused the marginalization of the temp as they looked for tasks to keep her busy because they couldn't give her any real work.
3. It created a false sense of hope in the temp as the message she received was, "you're doing fine," even though everyone knew that wasn't the case. But, you know, they kept her on, so she must have been doing something right, right? No...
4. It caused resentment toward the people who should have stepped in and said, "Hey, you're not ready for this work, yet. We need to let you go and find someone else." And, maybe, she never would be ready for it or, maybe, she just needed to get reacquainted with her math skills. No one will ever know, because no one ever told her that she wasn't doing the job. They just kept decreasing the level of the tasks given to her.
5. She was never told in what way she failed at the job. When the time was up on the job, they just didn't retain her. There was never any feedback on what she could have done to be kept on.

And, see, that's the real issue. No one ever told her what she was "failing" at, so she never knew what to get better at. Well, other than my wife explaining the same errors to her everyday, to which she would always reply, "Got it!" in a way that seemed the first few times that she really had gotten it. But that, having a coworker try to show you what you're doing incorrectly, is not quite the same as having your superior, the person who has the ability to tell you they need to let you go, sit you down and explain to you where you're not meeting expectations.

See, no one wanted to be the one to hurt her feelings.

Wow.

So I'm just going to say this:
Screw your feelings.
And, yes, that sounds more harsh than I really mean it, but, still, screw your feelings.

The problem is twofold:
1. Indie writers who hold their friendship for you hostage in order to get good reviews.

And, man, have I run into this one. I've lost count of the number of "friends" I've lost over negative reviews, but I'll just say this: If our "friendship" is conditional upon me saying that I like what you write, then we have no friendship. If I can't say to you, "You know, I don't like this one," without you yelling, "Well, you're not my friend," then we're already not friends. Or, likewise, if I can't say that about something some friend of yours wrote. It's the same thing. All I have for you is this:

It's time for you to grow up.

2. Indie authors who are unwilling to give honest reviews to their friends because they are scared of losing their friendships.

I know you "think" you're supporting your "friends" by giving them positive reviews of their not-better-than-average books, but, really, you're just making it harder on everyone, yourselves included. Every 5-star rating you throw out there that should have been a 3 or a 2 or, even, a 1 is destroying the credibility of the indie book market in general. You know how I know? Because I see it said repeatedly by book reviewers who refuse to review indie books and by readers who will not buy indie books (sure, they'll download free stuff because who cares if it's free). They see all the false positive reviews out there and have learned that you can't trust indie authors. I'm sorry, but the fact that you are out there lying (because you are lying) about the quality of your "friends'" books is making my job more difficult. And, you know, it's encouraging them to continue to write the same crappy stuff rather than working on getting better. What I have for you is this:

It's time for you to grow up.

 Here's the thing, people say it all the time, "If you want to be a writer, you better develop some thick skin," and that's true. Except it's not about having "thick skin." It's about learning separation. The things people say about your work are not things they are saying about you, and someone can very validly say, "I don't like this thing you made, but I like you." When you flip out about that and do the virtual equivalent of yelling, "Then, I'm not your friend," you're acting like a first grader. At best. And, well, if that's where you are developmentally, then you need to go find something else to do with your time, because, frankly, writing is not for you. Or, at least, writing for anyone other than yourself. You need to do what Dickinson did and store it all in a trunk and leave it for someone else to sort out after you're dead.

But here's the other thing about being a grown up, and maybe this comes from having spent so much of my life as a teacher, you have to be able to tell people when they haven't done a good job. If the only thing you can do is tell people "good job" because you're worried about hurting someone's feelings, you need to grow up, too. This is not a dinner party where you nod politely and tell the host that the substandard food is "wonderful" and "delicious." In fact, that behavior at a dinner party will lead people not to come back and leave the host wondering why. You know, since everyone said they loved the food the previous time. The problem here is that in this "dinner party," we're all responsible for the food and, when we go around telling each other "oh, I love that" when you actually want to spit it out then that's the food that gets served. But, see, we're not the guests. Readers are the guests and, when they keep coming to the indie writers' banquet only to find a bunch of crap food that the all the "cooks" are saying is wonderful, well, then, those readers will decide that ALL indie food is crap.

Basically, if you are unwilling to give a negative review, you shouldn't be giving any reviews at all. The whole thing where you opt out of reviewing the books you don't like and only giving reviews to books you do like would be like me only giving As and, maybe, Bs in my classroom and leaving all of the other kids gradeless. It doesn't help the situation.

So, no, when I read a book that I don't like, for whatever reason, I get to say I don't like it and, even better, I get to explain why I didn't like it. Other people can then come along and figure out if they want to try it. So, if I say, "This one is too sweet," someone who likes sweet things will go, "Oh! I like sweets! I'll try this one." Or, if I say, "This one was too salty for me," someone else has the option of saying, "Oh, yeah, I don't like lots of salt; I'll stay away from this one."

Honesty is important in reviews. Period. It's not about treating my "friends" like they're five and saying, "Oh, it's beautiful!" and hanging it on the refrigerator. So sorry if you think that's what this is all about. There comes a point when even parents quit hanging those things up. Usually right about the time the kid realizes the drawings are actually pretty crappy.

So, just to reiterate, if you're approaching this whole indie writing thing as if it's some weird support system of giving good reviews to your buddies so that they won't feel bad, well, just grow up. Actually, and excuse the language (or not, I don't really care), it's time for you to grow the fuck up.

[This post has been brought to you in part by Alex Cavanaugh and the IWSG.(But, mostly, this one is just me.)]

No, I Don't Have a Phone (and, no, you can't use it)

The other day, I did a thing I don't do very often. It's a thing I want to do... or want to want to do, maybe... but it's never as good as it seems in my head. I took my notebook with me to the cafe and figured I'd get an Aztec and sit and write for a while. The family was out of town and what better indulgence could there be with no demands on my time, right?

And, see, that's the part where it always sounds better than it turns out, because, almost as soon as I found a place to sit outside, a parent from my kids' school came by and started talking to me. Is it just me, when I am sitting bent over my notebook with my pen going, who thinks that should be a signal not to be disturbed? But that wasn't even the real problem. The real problem is that I didn't really know who the woman was other than that I had seen her on the campus. I don't even know who her kid is. But, then, because I have worked with, basically, the entire middle school in regards to creative writing and because everyone knows me as someone who has published books, lots of people know who I am whom I don't know at all.

But she thought I should know her and talked to me as if I knew who her kid is and what it is she was talking about. And I sat politely through it wondering how I could get back to what I was doing without being rude. The answer there is that you can't.

Eventually, she left. And so did I, because I didn't want to run into anyone else who wanted to talk at me. So I went across the street to the hotel that has the creek running behind it and sat on one of the benches there with goal of getting back to work. There's also a park right there, a park where homeless people tend to hang out.

Not long after I got back to work, one of said homeless guys came by. He wanted to use my phone. To order a pizza. He had money. It would only take a moment. He'd give it right back. He did this kind of thing all the time. I'm not sure if, by that, he meant borrowing people's phones or having pizza delivered to the park. Maybe both. The problem, of course, is that I don't have a phone.

Okay, the real problem was that the guy didn't believe me when I told him that I don't have a phone. And, hey, I get it; everyone has a phone. Except me. And, well, maybe everyone he asks to borrow a phone, because maybe that was why he was so persistent. Maybe everyone tells him they don't have a phone in order to get him to leave. Posers.

So we argued over the fact that I don't have a phone with him trying to convince me of why I should let him use it. The non-existent phone. Until, finally, he left. Sort of. Because he almost immediately came back. I mean, he went around the curve in the path, I looked back down at my notebook and tried to figure out what word I was supposed to be writing, and there he was again. "Are you sure you don't have a phone? I just want to order a pizza." And we went through the whole thing again.

Then, he left.

Except, 10 or 15 minutes later, he came back. Now, the thing to know here is that when he came back, he acted as if I was some completely new person. It was like we had never even spoken before, and we had to have the whole conversation over again. And I swear I heard him mumble something like, "The other guy didn't have a phone, either," when he was leaving.

And I left, too, because, man... I suppose that's why I never go to the cafe or anything like that to do any writing.

I did feel bad for the guy, and I hope he got his pizza. But, really, I don't own a phone.

Exploring Personality: Part Thirteen -- What It All Means

So let's talk analogy for a moment.
If you could have any car you wanted, any car at all, and you could afford to maintain and drive it, what kind of car would you have? That car, that bright and shiny car with the engine that purrs, that's your plot. But guess what; that car isn't going anywhere without a driver, the driver being your protagonist. And it doesn't matter how cool the car is if your protagonist is a total ass (ass... now that's a word I think I need to use more often; it's so versatile) or completely stupid (remember, stupid is not a personality type). Have you ever been in a car with a stupid driver (and I don't mean a bad driver, although a stupid driver is also a bad driver)? It's not something you ever want to do again.

See, it doesn't matter how good (or great) your plot is if you have a protagonist that doesn't work on some level; however, you can have even a junker if your protagonist is someone your readers want to hang out with. As long as the car isn't going to literally fall apart around your readers (or explode), you can get away with a lot if you have good, engaging characters. Which is not to say that I believe characters are more important than plot... except that they kind of are. People (readers) are going to talk about your characters way more (in a general sense) than they are ever going to talk about how cool your dashboard is. Or your steering wheel. Or the heated, leather seats. Okay, they might talk about that, especially if it's cold out. But, in the end, for most readers, it all boils down to the characters.

Which is why it's so important to understand how people are different from each other and, more importantly, how they are different from you, the author. It's a common thing to ask yourself, "What would I do in this situation?" but you're going to end up with only characters who act just like you if that's all you ever do. That's okay once, maybe twice, but, eventually, your readers will get tired of books filled with just one character: you. What you need is for Bob to act like Bob and Jane to act like Jane and Fred to act like Fred and Gortuka from planet Xenon to not act human at all.

I think the only real way to make characters distinct, to make them individuals as opposed to paper dolls, is to make those characterization decisions before you start writing. You ask yourself the question, "What kind of person is Bob? What kind of person is Jane?" And "What kind of... thing is Gortuka?" If you know that stuff before you go in, you can make informed decisions about how your characters act. That way, if you get to a point in your story where someone needs to push the red button, you can have Bob do it, because you know that Bob is the one that can't resist being told not to do something whereas Jane and Fred do what they're told and it would be breaking character for one them to say, "You know what, I'm going to push the red button even though my boss said not to."

I know I frequently come off as someone who gets nit-picky over the details (plot stuff) but, honestly, that stuff only grabs my attention when the characters aren't engaging. It's like being involved in a conversation with someone at a party. If the conversation is good, your attention will be focused on the character but, if the conversation is inane, your gaze starts to wander, and you start to pick up the details of the plot you're in. If that is also lacking (like all the plants are dead or there's a big crack in the ceiling or there are cockroaches crawling on the furniture), the whole thing falls apart, and you want to go home. Or quit reading. Whatever the case may be.

At any rate, for those of you out there who are authors, I hope this series has given some perspective on how to make characters more "real" and more complex and, yet, an insight into why not every character will make the same stupid mistake you might need to happen to move the plot along. For instance, an Eight (the Boss) is never going to act like a Four (the Individualist) and have that heart-to-heart talk about how special he really is if only you would see it. That's just never going to happen.

And, maybe, all of this will enable some of you to see more of whom you are, so you can separate out yourself from your characters. That, I think, is the biggest trap writers fall into. So don't ask, "What would I do if a ravenous slug were crawling up my leg?" Ask, "What would Bob do if a ravenous slug was crawling up his leg?" Answer: He would scream bloody murder and run to Jane to save him.

"If it's not on the shelf..."

One of the summer jobs I had while I was in college was working at Toys R Us. I've mentioned that I worked there before, but I don't think I mentioned that I worked there on two separate occasions, the first being while I was in college. It... didn't go well.

See, there was a problem: I was too helpful. No, seriously. At the time, TRU had a policy about helping customers: We were allowed to take the customer to the place in the store where any given item ought to be but, if it wasn't there, we were to say, "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it." Even if there was a box of the item on the overstock shelf (on the aisle just above the items), we were to tell the customers that line. I couldn't bring myself to do it; it was virtually always a lie.

I got more commendations from customers than any other... oh, wait, I was the only employee that summer to have customers comment that I had done a good job to management. Enough so that it was brought up in a store meeting. And, yet, I was reprimanded for helping customers during my first performance review. During my second, I was told I "wasn't working out" and let go. Oh, yeah, also because I was "anti-social" and did things like read during my breaks rather than go outside and smoke with everyone else. [Yes, I was told that part of why I was being let go was non-work-related behavior. (And the not smoking was specifically mentioned.)]

Jump forward several years. I had moved to CA a few months before, and I needed a job. I needed a job like "right now." TRU was running an ad that they were hiring, so I went in. Yes, even having worked there before, I was willing to go. I needed the job. And I wasn't in LA anymore, so I was hoping things would be different.

And they were different. One of the things that had changed during my absence was a shift in corporate thought from "the customers get in the way of the job" to "the customer is the job." When I was hired in CA, I was told "the customer always comes first." It was a huge difference. So huge in fact that not only was I not "let go" after my "trial period" (or whatever it's called), I was promoted faster than anyone else working in that location. Basically, as soon as they were able to promote me (because TRU has policies about minimum times before someone can be promoted), they did. And again. And again. Until I quit (which is a long story and not applicable to this).

Which brings me to my point: I didn't change. I had the same attitude and behaviors working at TRU the second time as I did the first time. It was Toys R Us that changed. They changed what they were looking for in an employee, so I went from being someone who "wasn't working out" to someone who was very valuable (they tried to talk me into staying more than once when I quit). Oh, and I was still reading during my lunches and breaks, too.

If I had try to change who I was, the way I was, when I went and tried to get the job after I moved, I wouldn't have been right for it, and I would have been "let go" again because "it wasn't working out." Writing books works that way, too. If you spend your time trying to adapt to the market, trying to fit in with the current trend, you'll always be a step or two behind. You can't help but be, because you're too busy reacting to an organism that changes faster than anyone can keep up with. When you just do your thing, eventually, it will come into alignment with you.

At least for a while.

I'm sure that at some point (if it hasn't happened already), TRU will go back to their attitude that the customers are an evil which have to be endured, just as readers will one day go back to the attitude that vampires are an evil which have to be endured. [As my son would say, "See what I did there?"] Basically, trends change. Find your thing and stick with it.

And, if anyone ever tells you, "If it's not on the shelf, we don't have it," don't believe them. Right now, that's Target's line, but I make them go look.

When the Tracks Don't Meet (or Travelling At the Speed of Plot) (an IWM post)

Have you seen that cartoon of the train tracks being laid? They're coming from two different directions, but there's a problem: The tracks don't meet up in the middle the way they are supposed to. I think there are a bunch of guys standing there scratching their heads. Or something.
Yeah, I would have liked to have posted the image here, but I couldn't find it. You'll just have to pretend.

Usually, where books are concerned, those kinds of things are called "plot holes," but, really, they're not the kinds of things I would call "holes." They're just pieces of... let's call them "discontinuity." I hate them more than the plot holes, I think. Oh, you need me to differentiate?

Okay, let's say your protagonist loses the keys to his car in chapter two but, in chapter five when he's running from the bad guys, he fumbles them out of his pocket: That's a plot hole. And that's not what I'm talking about in this post.

* * *

If you want to find out what I am talking about, you'll have to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly. Oh, you want a hint? Fine, I'll give you a hint. It looks something like this:

Did that get your attention? Good. Now, go read the rest.

Time Enough? (an IWSG post)

"People assume that time is a straight progression of cause to effect but, actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff."

Of course, what I want to do is get all philosophical about time, about how time is finite, about what it would be like to be able to step outside of time... Except I can't really imagine that. My view of time is kind of like a painting. Or, maybe, a movie. Time only exists within the movie and, if you could only step out of it, you could see the whole thing at once, be in any part of it. That kind of thing. Except, conceptually, as soon as I remove myself from the movie, I put myself in another one, because I still imagine a sequence of events and, without time, there can't be a sequence, so it's not something I can properly imagine.

None of that is what I really want to talk about anyway...

Sometimes, there are events that remind us of the finite-ness of time, that there will be an ending. At least, for us. Well, for all of time, but I expect TIME to go on much for much longer than I will. At any rate, the sudden departure of Tina Downey of Life Is Good from TIME has served as a reminder. Time is, after all, finite. There's a deadline on the things I want to accomplish in life.

I suppose most people have all sorts of things they want to accomplish and that they all feel like they have plenty of time in which to do it. There's always tomorrow, right? But there's not always tomorrow, and, sometimes, tomorrows quit coming sooner than we think they will.

I know that Tina was writing a book. Mostly, though, I think she was working on the writing skills she would need to really write the book. What it means, though, is that I'll never get to read the book. Neither will you. And, you know, maybe it wouldn't have been any good and, in the scheme of things, it doesn't matter, but, maybe, it would have been life-changing. For me. Or for you. Or for someone. That book that really inspired a life and changed its course.

We'll never know.

I have a lot of books like that. Unfinished ones, I mean; I'm not claiming that I'm writing great, life-changing, works of literature. I have PROJECTS! The idea that I could leave TIME with them unfinished... well, it kind of panics me. I don't want to leave things unfinished. Well, I don't want to leave these things unfinished. I'm sure I will always feel that way about whatever projects I have in the works, but other projects are in the future, and I have nothing invested in that stuff yet. These things, these things I have going on now, I know I don't want to leave still in progress. Especially the stuff that relates to The House on the Corner. Too many people ask me when the next when will be finished for me to be okay with just not doing it.

None of this is meant to change the focus from Tina's passing out of TIME, but it was one of the first things I thought of, "I'll never get to read her book." Which, then, has applications for all of us. Not just writers, all people who are doing things. Who have projects of whatever sort. Some of which sit around and sit around and are left abandoned for months or, even, years on end with the thought, "I'll get to it. Sometime." But "sometime" doesn't always come.

So... I am reminded to look at the things I want to do and evaluate them on the basis of what it's okay with me to leave unfinished. Like, I would like to spend time painting, but it won't really bother me if I leave TIME and there are big stack of unpainted miniatures in my garage. It's not like I'm the only one that could paint them. But no one can write the stories that are in my head. Even with notes about them, no one can write them the way I will, so that's the thing I need to get busy with, working on the things that only I can do so that they're not left unfinished should I have to leave.

And that's what I'm going to go do...

Stand Your Ground (but not with a gun)

Back when I was in middle school, I had to take a law class. Seriously, it was a requirement because of the program I was in. It was titled something like "Introduction to Law" and was meant as a government-type course with an emphasis on the legal system and how it works. Toward the end of the course, one of the things we had to do was re-enact court cases, the idea being that if we had learned what we were being taught, we would come away from those re-enactments with the same decisions as the courts did.

Here's the summation of the case I want to talk about:
Two men go into a convenience store to rob it. Man #1 has a gun; Man #2 doesn't know Man #1 has the gun. The robbery doesn't quite go as planned, and Man #1 pulls out his gun and shoots the clerk. The clerk dies. Generally speaking, this is first degree murder because the man willfully took the gun into the store; basically, he planned to use it if necessary. The question was whether Man #2 was guilty of the same crime. Remember, he didn't know about the gun.

I'll pause for a moment to give you a chance to consider. Pretend the Jeopardy music is playing. Or something. In fact, here you go:


So... Once we had re-enacted the case, which resulted in a "not guilty" verdict, we were asked to give our own opinions on what the outcome should have been. All of the class said the outcome should have been "not guilty." All of the class but me, that is. First, all of my classmates started giving me a hard time; I was the only one who said the man was guilty so I must be wrong. How could I be the only one with the correct answer, as it were? Then, my teacher started pressuring me: "Are you sure you don't want to change your mind?" And here was the hard part; she had everyone that believed "guilty" stand on one side of the room (that would be me) and everyone that believed "not guilty" go stand on the other (that would be the 35 or so other students in the class). I'm not sure I can adequately relate what it's like to be in that circumstance. To be the only one standing up for something against a wall of your peers telling you that you're wrong.

But here's the thing:
Their decision was based on what they felt was fair. Basically, it wouldn't be fair for the man to be found "guilty" since he hadn't known about the gun. They were having an emotional response to the situation.
My decision was based on this law that said, in short, that the man was guilty of the same crime as Man #1, whether he knew about the gun or not, because he had participated in the crime.

As it turned out, Man #2 had been found guilty just as Man #1 had been because of the law. I was the only one in the room that had looked at the facts and made an objective decision based on those facts. And, as it turned out, my teacher had pressured me because, as she said, that's sometimes what happens on juries, especially if deliberations have been going on a long time and the jurors just want everything to be over. Basically, she wanted to see if I would cave under the pressure (and she allowed it to be a lot of pressure, almost two full class periods).

But I stood my ground, because I had actual facts sitting in front of me, so to speak. And that's not the only time I've been in that position in my life. By a lot. But that is one of the best examples of having to stand on your own against everyone else that I have ever experienced or seen. Man, I hated middle school.

So what am I saying here? That you should always just demand that you are right no matter how many people stand up against you and tell you that you're wrong? Well, no. But I am saying that you shouldn't back down just because everyone else is saying that you're wrong. Mostly, I'm saying to look at the facts, the data, all of the information. Make a decision based on those facts, not with your emotions. If you've made the best decision you can based on the information at hand (not how you feel about that information), you shouldn't change your mind just because everyone else says you should. Especially if they are appealing to you on an emotional level (and let me tell you, appealing on the basis of what is "fair" is about as emotional as you can get: "fairness" is rarely objective). Now, if someone comes to you with actual fact, data, whatever, you should certainly look at it, evaluate it, and, maybe, revise your thinking. But just remember: Being the only one on a side, does not make you wrong.

Having said all of that, for you writers out there, this is the same way you need to approach your manuscripts. The hardest part of that is to remove as much of your own emotion as you can so that you can evaluate your work as objectively as possible, then put your emotion back in and ask yourself the question, "Do I like this? Is it something I would want to read if someone else wrote it?" If you can say yes to those questions, it doesn't really matter what anyone else says about your work. And, if you can say yes to those questions, it can give you the strength to stand alone through the rejections and the pressure to change.

No Respecter of (Third) Persons: Part One -- How Does That Make You Feel? (an IWM post)

Somewhat recently, I was presented with the question of... okay, I don't remember, exactly, what the question was, but I'll say it like this: Why do you believe that third person perspective is superior to first person?
That's a really good question, especially since I don't exactly shy away from first person.
So, I suppose, the real question is more along the lines of "Why do I think you shouldn't use first person?"

Well, okay, it's not that I think you, the specific you sitting here reading this post, shouldn't use first person; it's that I think the general you out there shouldn't use first person. At least not until you have figured out how to write in third person. First person, especially for the beginning writer, has too many traps and short cuts; until you know how to get around them, you should write in third. And, actually, it's writing in third that will help you to learn to avoid the snares.

So let's start with descriptions...

* * *

Do you know the drill, yet? I feel like you ought to know the drill. Unless this is your first time here, in which case, here's the drill:

His name is Bit, and he's glad to meet you.

Seriously, though, hop right over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out why you ought to be writing in third person. Or, at lease, why you shouldn't be writing in first. No, they're not the same thing.

The Management Myth (or Making Your Own Future)

About a year ago, I wrote a post about the importance of liking your own work. The post was about how writers should like the work they are writing enough to believe in it and stick to their vision of what that work should be, but that idea isn't limited to just writing. You should take ownership of whatever it is you're doing in your life, believe in it, and not submit it to the constant whims and validation of others. But, if you want to read more about that, go back and read the post.

In that post, I touched on an idea that proved to be somewhat more controversial than I'd anticipated. Well, since I had not thought it a controversial point, I was surprised to find out that it was. So let's talk about aspirations.

I grew up in the South in a state that had and continues to have one of the poorest education systems in the country. It is both poor in that it is bad, and it is poor in that it doesn't have the kind of funding many other states are able to devote to education. I grew up knowing a lot of kids (teenagers) whose greatest aspiration was to, maybe, one day be a manager at Wal-Mart. Or something like that.

Now, before I go on, this is nothing against retail employees or any denigration of them. I spent time at Toys R Us among other places, so I'm not putting anyone in retail down or claiming greater status than anyone who is in retail. In fact, for a long time, my goal was to work retain, in comic books and games, and I've worked in various capacities in those environments, too.

What I am saying is that it's unfortunate when teenagers, due to their circumstances, cannot dream anything better for themselves than to one day be a manager at Wal-Mart. Being a kid, a teenager, is time when you ought to be able to dream big. To aim for things that may not be probable but could, actually, be possible with the right toss of the dice or enough work. Working at Wal-Mart is the thing you do in the summer or at Christmas while you strive for bigger things. Sure, some people will never make it past Wal-Mart, but you certainly can't if you never had aspirations bigger than that to begin with.

And here's the trap:
The goal of "one day being a manager at Wal-Mart" is a lie. Not that the goal itself is a lie but the possibility of it becoming a reality is a lie. At least from the standpoint from which I'm approaching this, that of the teenager (the teenager who is not going on to college or any form of higher education) right out of high school entering the workforce by picking up a retail job planning to stay there indefinitely.

Here's the thing about being a manager at a place like Wal-Mart or Toys R Us: "Regular" employees cannot be promoted to manager. It doesn't matter how long you've been there or how good you are at your job; they don't promote up like that. I know, because there was a point where I was under consideration for management training when I worked at TRU. Here's the process:
1. Be really good at whatever low level job you enter in.
2. Get promoted all the way up to Department Head (the equivalent of assistant manager (and I don't think they call it that anymore).
3. Be so good at that, at being a Department Head, that the regional or district manager takes notice of you.
4. Be sent away to management school which is the equivalent of getting a degree in business. And you have to pay for it, so it's just like going to college. And, sure, if the company (TRU, Wal-Mart, whichever else follows this model, but my understanding is that it's most of them) thinks you're worth sending, they will give you loans and stuff to pay for their school (sometimes you might even qualify for some scholarships, but that's difficult), but, then, you have to pay them back.
5. Be transferred to some other store other than the one you were working in to avoid issues between you and people you used to be equivalently employed with.

So let's look at this a moment:
If you are good at your job as a Department Head, the store you work at is not going to want to put you up for management training. If they value you, they don't want to lose you, so they won't recommend you. You have to get noticed by someone higher up than the store director, and that's tough to do. Especially if you don't know you need to (which I didn't). So, then, if you're approached for management training (as I was), the first thing they're going to tell you is that you will have to go away to school. TRU, at least, has training centers, and you have to go to one of those. You don't get paid while you're off doing that, so that's the loss of your income (such as it is) to your family while you're off at school. Then there's the fact that you will be transferred to some other store once you've become a manager.

The point of all this is that you don't go to work at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us and work there long enough to finally, one day, become a manager. That's not their system. There was a woman that worked at TRU as a department head while I was there who had been there in that position for something like 15 years. That was as far as she was ever going to go.

Of course, the other way to get to be a manager at Wal-Mart is to go to school for a business degree and apply for a management position. You can do that without ever having to work at Wal-Mart or TRU as a "regular" employee.

The whole system is rather deceptive and designed to make people believe they have something that they're working toward when, in fact, in almost all circumstances, they do not.

It's not completely unlike the way the traditional publishing industry works these days: The want to find already successful authors before they're willing to look at publishing them.

[Note: All of this is based on how things worked about 15 years ago. That's when I experienced all of this and discovered TRU's system and that it was based on Wal-Mart's system, which nearly every chain store had adopted. Things may have changed since then, but I sort of doubt it.]