I mean, not “final” final, but it’s certainly the busiest, most frantic time of year, and I am wading my way through it as best I can.
However, that apparently means forgetting to post! Twice! Bad writer.
Ah well, I don’t really have anything interesting to put here. I did well in my two courses this semester (85-88%), and I’m okay with that. Doesn’t help me in anyway, and grades are a pretty meaningless construct at the best of times, but I suppose it’s nice to be told you’re good at something. I’d like to claim I don’t really try, but that’s not at all true. I try very hard. I am very trying.
That’s a joke.
Regardless, I have to head into work again in a little bit. Oh, I’ve watched the first few episodes of Andor, and if you are a sci-fi fan… not just a Star Wars fan, but a sci-fi fan… do yourself the favour of giving it a view. Is real good.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Positive Journals
One of my major assignments for my 4th-year English course that I just finished was to keep a weekly journal. The idea was that each week we’d be covering a new topic, and the journal would give the professor a chance to read our thoughts, let her know where we were mentally and emotionally as we went along.
Apparently my journals were very good. She mentioned, and I’m going to quote her here: “If sci-fi doesn’t work out for you, you might consider publishing some of your musings, maybe?” Which is amusing for me for a few reasons, but the main one probably being that I don’t understand the point of autobiographies at the best of times or for the most interesting of people, and I’m definitely neither the best nor most interesting of people. My views, such as they are, are pretty pedestrian.
And anger-and-sadness fueled. A lot of anger and sadness these days. Everything is getting harder, and colder, and worse. Well, almost everything. The trajectory of history is still curving towards justice, but gosh is it ever a battle sometimes.
A quick aside: I remember reading once that my favourite author of all time, Terry Pratchett, wrote the way he did because he was incredibly angry. Anger is what fueled his work, and gods did it ever fuel brilliant work. It was funny, but it was funny because it was angry. At the time I read that I thought “Huh, that’s too bad… I’m not really all that angry so I’ll probably never write anything as good as him.”
Which, for the record, I’m okay with. He is the greatest English writer of the last hundred years. Not being as good as him still leaves lots of room for very, very good writing.
But these days… I still don’t think I’ll ever write anything as good as Pratchett, but I think I may have the anger at least. Lots of it to spare.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Looking Like Winter
I will be the first to admit that I’m not a big fan of winter. I don’t think I’ve ever really been one. As a kid I did a lot of winter activities… skiing, ice hockey, sledding, winter camping… but I can’t say I really loved any of them except perhaps hockey, and I wasn’t a great hockey player. Since leaving for university (and having to pay my own bills), I’ve never gone back to hockey, and the only other winter activity I ever really enjoyed was snowboarding, and that lasted up until somebody stole my board almost twenty years ago.
But I love the “feel” of winter. I love waking up to a world covered in a thin layer of snow. I love hot chocolate, and warm fireplaces, and the sense of slow, ponderous weight that everything takes on when it’s winter. Yes, you can go somewhere, but you’d better be wearing good socks. Or two pairs of good socks. And thick pants. And several layers of shirt. The process of just leaving my house is almost half an hour of prep, and I strangely really enjoy that. I love not having to go anywhere more than even that, though. The world telling me “Hey, it’s dangerous outside. Maybe just don’t?” and me saying back “Huh, you’re right. Hot chocolate and blankets, here I come!”
I suppose the snowfall we’re getting today is making me think of this. Sadly, no slow, enjoyable snow day for me. I have to head out into the cold in a few hours to work the other job. But the thought of being warm and cozy is nice, at least.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Generous to a Fault
You, dear reader and/or visitor, may recall that on Tuesday I mentioned that I needed to find my copy of John Scalzi’s Lock In in order to write an essay on it… a considerable essay, worth approximately 30% of my entire grade for this one course.
I did not find it. Well, that’s unfair… I did eventually find it: I had lent it to a friend a few months back and they still have it. But before I realized that, there was a significant amount of panic. It, and its sequel Head On, are both very good, but more importantly there is no way I could write an academic paper on it without the book.
So what to do? I knew if I bought a copy then I would find my original copy immediately afterwards. I don’t have any friends locally who are big sci-fi fans (a good friend in Toronto, but I doubt even he has a copy). So what could I do…
I went to the library. They had a copy! Huzzah!
They also had copies of a few other sci-fi books I nabbed (most notably Mary Robinette Kowal’s next “Lady Astronaut” series), which I gleefully look forward to reading when I have “time” again.
Yes, the quotation marks are needed in that previous sentence.
So, source material secured, now I undertake the actual writing of said essay!… or I could just read a few pages of The Golden Compass…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Last Essay for the Year!
It’s not exciting news to anyone but me, but I’m currently working on my last essay for the year.
I think I’ve mentioned it before (in fact, I am positive I’ve mentioned it at least once before), but I’m not a big fan of essays. I get them, I understand and accept them, but I don’t like them. And this essay is going to be slightly better than average by virtue of the topic allowing me to discuss John Scalzi’s Lock In.
Huh. That makes me realize I had better find my copy… I may have lent it to somebody, and that would make writing an essay on it very tricky! I’ll check after I finish writing this here post.
But regardless, I feel a deep sense of relief knowing that this is the last essay I will have to write for about a month. That’s a nice feeling… a sort of general feeling of accomplishment that I can take some pride in, assuming I do okay.
I suspect I will do okay.
Added bonus: with my obligatory writing done, I can again focus on my own writing! Huzzah!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Small-Time Holidays
I know this is sorta redundant, but if you folks out there reading this have the means please consider supporting a small artist, business, or writer this season. It’s tough out there for all of us, money is tight for everyone, but I guarantee you that the big businesses that are raking in money need your cash way less than small businesses, or individual artists, do.
Sure, buy one of my books for yourself or a friend. But even if you don’t want to buy any more of my stuff, go out and buy something from a small business. Get something for your pets from the local pet store. Buy a game or toy from your friendly local gaming shop! Or support an artist you like by giving them a few bucks on Patreon or whatever. It means the world to us.
This will be my only commercial post for the season: I have a few assignments to wrap up my semester at school, and then I’m working 7 days a week to pay them bills (my bill for next semester just showed up and it is literally 3 times what I thought it would be… you’d think I’d know better by now, but here we are). But I have other work to help pay for my bills: many artists, including countless numbers of the ones you love, don’t, or are struggling under the weight of everything.
Toss a coin to your bards, oh valley of plenty.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
So Far So Good?
It’s weird. I mean, many things are weird, but the specific thing I am talking about today is the lack of the Little Blue Bird in my life any more.
I had an account on there for… gosh, years and years at least. But I realized today that I hadn’t even thought about it since I cancelled my account a few weeks back. The blog is receiving slightly fewer visitors, but slightly, which is unfortunate but also not surprising.
So I guess that’s good news? I’m still on Facebook for now, but not nearly as much as I used to be. So I guess social media for now is just a long blip in my life. Which is interesting, I suppose, but I’m as surprised as the next guy that I don’t miss it more.
Ah well. Less time on the apps means more time writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
All the Plans, None of the Time
This is a common refrain here on my little corner of the internet, but gosh do I wish I had more time.
There are so many plans I have! So many stories that are banging around between my ears, straining to be released. So many shorts and novels and scripts… even the novel I am currently working on is pushing on my time like a juggernaut, always stretching every moment I have to sit and write, to push words out of my fingers and onto the pages as quickly as I can. Every word rushes out, worried that I’ll have to close the spigot, that I will have to reinforce the dam, before it can be birthed onto the page.
That makes it sound more glamorous than it probably deserves, but it’s true. I never have enough time to get even a fraction of what I want done, done. And this time of year, as time constraints and expectations pile up and push in from all directions, I feel it far more acutely.
Ah well. I shall lament this state of affairs for some time, I suspect, but for now I need to focus on what I can do, rather than what I can’t. And maybe sacrifice more sleep…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Essay Writing Made Easy
I don’t like writing essays. This is perhaps a sad statement for somebody halfway through an honours English degree, and yet it is true.
Essays, at their finest, are overly proscribed. Very particular in their approach to information and how to distill it, I understand the need and purpose of the structure while simultaneously chaffing against its confines. I don’t want to think of a thesis in the way that my professors (and academia at large) needs me to think of a thesis: I just want to tell you what I know, what I think I know, and what I definitely do not know but would really like to know. But you can’t do that in academia, at least not directly. You have to prove and counter-prove every sentence: make a statement, quote the source, provide context, make a conclusion, repeat for however many pages the prof has requested. And again, I get it… but that doesn’t mean I like it.
I should get to it. With any luck it won’t take all day (spoilers: it will) and I can get a few thousand words on the novel done as well!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
And Just Like That...
Well, I deleted my little-blue-bird accounts. I’ll miss it, honestly… not what it is now, of course, but what it represented.
Again, hats off to the idiot who bought it and drove it directly into the closest iceberg, bounced off that and straight into several hand-selected rocks before setting the ship on fire. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such concentrated incompetence on such a massive scale before.
What’s done is done. Going to be a lot lonelier around this here blog for some time at least, but hopefully people will trickle over through my other efforts. And for those of you still checking in… thanks!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Long Slow Death of a Little Blue Bird
Well, I don’t think it’s official yet, but it looks like I’m down one more social media platform. I haven’t hit “uninstall” yet, but I’m almost certainly going to later today.
Which is a pity in many ways. I’m pretty sure a bunch of the traffic I saw here on this website was directed by that other one. Which was never that much traffic, sure, but it was still nice to know that there were people who might not otherwise know who I am finding my work.
Ah well. All good things. I suppose I can just let people find my work through the publication of my books… that’s fine too.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Attending a Wedding
Two close friends of mine were married yesterday. It was a nice (read: fast) ceremony held in a private home, with plenty of food and drink.
No coffee, though. Which, frankly, almost ruined the entire event (I joke, Laura and Jesse! I joke! It was lovely!).
I don’t think I’ve ever written about a married couple in any of my books. I’d have to think about it… and I know that I have written about people who are married, but not specifically the couple itself. Lots of romance in several of my books, a few “husband is dead” or “wife is lost in space” relationships, but no honest-to-goodness marriages. I don’t think there’s anything particularly significant about that, honestly. I didn’t have great models for good marriages, since my parents are still married but haven’t been happy together since… oh, at least 1970. At this point they are almost entirely together out of spite and familiarity: they refuse to get divorced because they don’t want to see the other person being happier without them.
And, hey, who am I to judge. They’ve been married a good long time, and despite not really being happy with the marriage it also doesn’t seem to be making them dramatically miserable. So maybe they’re in the right relationship for them?
But the idea of marriage… I should really try to write about one or two good ones at some point. I already try to write healthy relationships, based on communication and honesty, so it shouldn’t be a big jump to write about a marriage in the same way. Not for the book I’m working on right now, but maybe for the next one. I’ll have to keep it in mind.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
And congrats again on the wedding, Laura and Jesse. It was an honour to attend!
The Proper Application of Hashtags
I’ll be honest… I’m kinda tech-savvy, but I’m really more tech-savvy adjacent. When I was young, I read that there are three kinds of tech users: those afraid to break their computers by touching it, those who have broken their computer by touching it, and those that go around and break other people’s computers. I’m firmly in the second camp… I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m usually willing to poke and prod at the tech to get what I need out of it (although rarely much more).
Hence running a podcast for years. I knew enough to edit the audio, to get the right software to the right people, and to make sure the mic setup worked, but anything past that point was usually out of my abilities.
The reason I mention all this is that at my day job I do bi-monthly streams to teach people about board games. I enjoy doing it, it’s fun and a neat way to engage with the audience, but I almost never do much more than the actual show. I can start the Facebook Live stream and writeup the thread, but that’s about it. My co-host for the last several years handled all the “social media” stuff, advertising and sharing and hashtagging as needed.
She’s moved on to greener pastures (for which I am very happy for her! Way to go Nat!), and one of my other colleagues has taken the torch from her. I overheard part of the transition conversation, and part of it was focused specifically on making sure you used relevant hashtags.
And the reason I mention that is because on here I keep a pretty close eye on the engagement numbers. They’re usually pretty consistent, but occasionally I will get these huge spikes of four or five times the number of people coming to the site (or spending longer on the site, which I also really appreciate!). If I was really on the ball, I’d dive into what those threads have in common and try to focus in on whatever topic that is… but that feels… I dunno, weird to me. I' come here to write, to keep people updated on what I’m working on (I hit the halfway point in the novel!), and because I enjoy it.
Sure, I want people to find and enjoy my books, no question. But spending time on doing that is time away from writing those books… at least more time away from writing those books, and I think I probably spend too much time on this business-side stuff already! Maybe someday I will have more time to devote to that side of things. But it is not this day.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Slow Forward Trudge
One of the most notable downsides to returning to university is the homework. I didn’t like it much back then, and I sure as heck don’t like it much now.
At least these days I can sort of see the point. The class time is for learnin’… talking about the material, asking questions, being provided with evidence for or against the various interpretations of a work. But you still need to write stuff for an English degree, and that leaves homework and essays.
Granted, my 4th year course is awful for that, demanding weekly comments on an online forum (blargh) as well as journal entries (gah) and a term paper in addition to all that. I don’t think I would mind so much if it didn’t all feel like busy-work. Stuff we have to do because the prof wants to check off stuff we’ve done.
My other course (a 2nd year American Lit course) is better, and provides much more useful feedback, but there is still a significant amount of “Do This Because You Have To Do This.” Oh, and an exam. I have a love/hate relationship with exams… I kinda enjoy them as a challenge or a contest, but I hate actually having to go to them and the buildup to them. Too stressful.
Anyway. A lot of today is going to be devoted to picking essay topics for my two courses, and starting to do the preliminary readings for those. Not the worst way to spend the day… but it does mean less time for the novel (again). Ah well… if I get these essays done soon, I can get right back to putting all my focus into the novel. That’ll be nice!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Book Tabs and Other Weird Things
For years as a university student I have been told that it is okay to damage your books.
That’s not the language my profs use, of course. “Mark up your books!” they cry. “Fold pages, scribble in the margins, add tabs! Highlight as necessary!”
And I understand. On a conscious, thoughtful level, I get it… especially in the context of essays. It is hard to go through a book and find that one quote you remember from your read-through but can’t recall quite where it was… highlights or arrows or whatever would be a huge help!
But I can’t do it. Going all the way back to elementary school when I was finally old enough to read on my own and I would sit in our living room on the couch or an armchair with “The Hobbit” or (eventually) the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and read for hours and hours… from that point to today, 30-something years later… and I still can’t do it.
I encourage anyone and everyone to write in your books! They’re yours! There is literally no reason not to write in your books unless you specifically have borrowed them or they are bookmarked (ha) for somebody else eventually… and even then! The notes you leave for yourself, as long as they don’t render the book unreadable, could be useful… or at the very least heartwarming, as people in the future look upon your insights into whatever work you have marked up.
But not for me. I couldn’t even tell you why. It just… feels… wrong? I guess? If I had to guess I probably ruined one (or several) of my brother’s books or comics as a kid and he disciplined me harshly enough that it stuck until today. Just a guess, but I suppose it feels the most likely explanation. Maybe one day I’ll get over the hangup… I have just purchased some lovely book tabs, and I think I’m going to use them as a gentle introduction to the fine art of marking up a book.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Music That Matters
To some extent, all music matters. To the same extent that I suppose all writing matters, or all fiction matters… which is to say that “matters” is a highly subjective thing. Maybe one of my books is somebody’s favourite book ever… I doubt it at this point in my career, but only because there are only about a thousand copies of my books out there, and the odds of being “the best thing I’ve ever read” if your pool is only about a thousand people is pretty small.
But who knows? It’s not impossible.
But I started talking about music, and I’d like to loop back to it. On Tuesday I mentioned that I had watched, and loved, the Cyberpunk Edgerunners series. Part of that love is how the director (or whoever is responsible) wove the music into the story. Music sets so much in our lives as meaningful or meaningless. The soundtrack of everything we consume is as significant, if not more, than the dialogue or actors for a good drama. There is an argument that comedy or sci-fi or other specific genres don’t hinge on the music as much (although I think the really good ones do), but drama and romance and horror and probably a bunch of other visual media definitely, absolutely require good music. Or perhaps less “good,” and more “appropriate.”
A lot of the Edgerunners music is not my style. Very heavy rock, or really synth-focused EDM, or whatever. But it always felt “right.” Any time the music was noticeable, it was great. It tied to the story and added meaning and punch to whatever was happening.
I almost always listen to music when I write, but rarely when I read… I suppose that is one area that reading lags behind television and movies. Because a good soundtrack is a thing of beauty.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Genre Conventions and Cyberpunk Edgerunners
Going into Cyberpunk Edgerunners, I knew it was going to be sad. There are plenty of genre conventions, and occasionally they are subverted, but for cyberpunk as a genre (as opposed to Cyberpunk as a specific world/universe/fictional setting for video and tabletop games) one of the pillars is that the ending is going to be some flavour of sad.
Completely soul-crushing, lightly depressing, a very temporary happiness with crushing oppression looming… “happy” just doesn’t really factor into the genre. And, on the one hand, I’m kind of okay with that. I mean, well done cyberpunk is one of my favourite genres ever, full-stop. It’s great when it’s great.
The show is fantastic. A little over-the-top with the violence and blood, but again, genre appropriate and more “cartoony” in most cases than really horrifying (although there are a few exceptions). The tone and pace are perfect, the characters are interesting, and they avoided most (although, again, not all) of the trope-heavy traps that often befall good sci-fi and cyberpunk work.
It was a joy. Even knowing I was going to be sad about how it ended, it still landed that amazing “sudden but inevitable” that I, and many other media consumers, love so dearly. You could see it coming. You knew it was coming. And it still managed to land with the emotional impact of a rocket launcher to the face.
Bravo, Cyberpunk Edgerunners. Bravo.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
"Spicy" Language
One of my courses I’m taking this semester is “American Literature,” and let me tell you… reading this stuff has been a trip. Some of it has been quite good… I have a new appreciation for Edith Wharton, although I don’t like her work I can at least say I don’t hate it… oh, and I now “get” Modernism as a genre, even if I think it’s awful. At least I understand the underpinning concepts, and I can respect them in the same way I can respect a Picasso and yet never want one in my house.
But Faulkner. Yeesh. His language is “spicy.” The argument that will be made (that is always made) is that it was acceptable language back then. The same argument is leveled against Twain, and in both cases I get it… but I still don’t like it.
Of course, part of this is because Faulkner probably thought there was nothing wrong with his choice in words. And I think there is nothing wrong with my choice of words… but who’s to say in a hundred years? Two hundred? If it happens during my lifetime, sure, I’ll happily fix it and apologize for my blindness. It happens to all of us. But if it happens afterwards? Or should I say when it happens afterwards? The fact that there may be people around saying that they “shouldn’t” fix my work because it would change my intent… that’s a weird thought to have in my head. I don’t know how it makes me feel. But I don’t like it. But there’s also nothing I can do about it except for being as conscious as I can be now so that when it does happen everyone already knows I wouldn’t protest to changing my work to be less insulting.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Motivation and the Truth Thereof
Motivation is a weird thing. It comes and it goes, sometimes predictably, and sometimes unpredictably. It is predictably unpredictable, I suppose.
The trick is to not care. I don’t write when motivation strikes me: I write whenever I have the time, whenever I have the energy, and whenever I can. Motivation helps me write when it aligns, but whether it is there or not… I write.
And I kind of think that is the way it has to be. We can’t sit around waiting for lightning to strike. You can’t sit and stare at the screen until the perfect sentence forms, or the perfect line of dialogue. You just write the best you can, and then you edit the best you can, and then you pay for the best professional editor you can. And at the end of all that, you get something that hopefully you can be proud of.
That’s kinda the trick, I think.
Now, I will wait for motivation for other things. Motivation to practice guitar or to paint or to bake, sure. Those are things I enjoy but nothing is hinging on it more than personal fulfillment. But motivation for work? Nice when it’s there, but the writing has got to get done no matter what.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Start Of the Tough Times
I’m pretty sure I say this every year (but at the same time can’t be bothered to scroll back through 12 months worth of posts!), but November and December are hard, hard months.
I work at a game store to pay for my writing expenses (and my living expenses, although those often feel significantly less important), and as a result the “holiday season” starts today and ends basically in January. During this time we will see more and more customers who get more and more frantic. The store will be packed, shoulder to shoulder, in my aisle (board games), and people will become increasingly belligerent and angry as the things we “should” have in stock are unreleased, impossible to get, or “too expensive.”
I am always of two minds about this. On the one hand, it can be difficult when people have no idea what they’re looking for: on the other hand, I love talking to customers, and a good one is always a joy. But no matter what, I always crawl home at the end of every shift exhausted as work keeps piling up and we simply lack the people to stay ahead.
And then exams, of course… only 2 this year, both on the 12th of December (because of course they’re both on the same day), but I like being prepared, and so that means long nights coupled to earlier and earlier days.
One upside, I suppose, is that this continues to shine a light on how much I love writing. Because even in the midst of all this… I still find time to sit down and crank out a few thousand words. Just wish I could do that more often!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!