Interesting thing about writing: The more I uncover fascinating contests and markets through my research for Caffeinated Press’s Community site, the more I realize that most writers enjoy a handy excuse for not participating.
“Oh, that sounds so cool, maybe I should write something for it,” people say. “If only I had the time!”
Yes. Maybe you should write something. Maybe you should find the time.
Or, maybe, you should have been writing all along, crafting various short stories, poems, essays and other creative works — and even, dare I say it, editing them in advance, so that when an opportunity arises, you’ve got something ready to submit. A writer should want to write for the joy of it, after all, and not just for the thrill of chasing the next deadline.
Editors bemoan the depth and the unevenness of their slush piles. Perhaps much of that problem would be ameliorated if authors built their own well-curated, well-edited slush piles.
I say this, of course, as a bit of a hypocrite. I keep finding cool stuff to submit to, and then I keep making notes to write something to send. Although, in my defense, I’ve been keeping up the late-night writing trend; just this past weekend, for example, I polished the first 50 pages of the manuscript and developed the detailed synopsis of Aiden’s Wager, then I submitted it to the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. With a top prize of $10k and two runners-up at $1k each, but only 600 or so annual submissions, I like those odds. And I’m on track, tonight, to submit to the 2016 Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize. $1k award, plus publication.
(It also helps that I’m in the middle of an unpleasant cold, so I’ve been more quiet and focused thanks to the pseudoephedrine and also too tired and ill to trudge consistently to the CafPress office to work.)
Will I win the James Jones thing? Almost surely not. Will I win the Steinberg Essay Prize? Again, probably not. But such reality is beside the point. When it’s all over, I’ll be that much closer to finishing Aiden’s Wager, and I’ll have a ready-made creative nonfiction essay I can repurpose later. For the next opportunity. Heck, maybe I’ll even edit it again, or get a beta reader or two — just to be safe.
Over the last few weeks I’ve settled — somewhat haphazardly and not-at-all on purpose — on a new late-evening routine. I’ll pour myself a small martini or a finger or two of whiskey, retire to my home office, let Murphy d’Cat settle across my chest, then open Scrivener.
And then the words come.
In the last month, I’ve:
Continued to tweak the zero-draft version of Aiden’s Wager, my (winning) NaNoWriMo novel from 2014. I believe I’ve figured out the directionality of my first major rewrite. Less than half of the original is salvageable in current form — I’m stripping out the “torture porn” in toto and replacing it with new chapters from different characters’ points of view — but I have a strong pathway to advance that should result in more of a psychological draw for readers than a voyeuristic one.
Written my back-of-the-mag publisher’s column for The 3288 Review.
Submitted, under pseudonym, a long-form personal essay to a literary journal.
Submitted a short personal essay to a prominent mass-market magazine, in response to a special call for submissions about first loves.
Submitted a brief personal essay at the invitation of an anthology editor who’s working on a project about faith and adversity relative to various recent developments in the life of the Catholic Church.
Published several blog posts, both here and on the Caffeinated Press website.
Finalized a first-pass outline for a new non-fiction book, From Pen to Press: Bringing Your First Novel to Market. The outline includes a section-by-section synopsis of each chapter. The book, slated for 50k to 60k words, starts with writing motivation, pivots to the mechanics of prose, addresses the revision process, covers the chore of finding markets to pitch, outlines business/economic considerations, summarizes a publisher’s production cycle, dives into marketing and concludes with advice for sharpening the saw.
Four other writing-related projects are on my radar, too. I’m interested in doing the flash-fiction contest sponsored by the Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters. Fourth Genre‘s contest and the Steinberg Essay Contest — both for long-form personal essays — look fun, and potentially lucrative. And the MiFiWriters group’s annual Division by Zero anthology — themed rEvolution this year — could help stretch my fiction-writing skills. (Plus I just like all the folks at MiFiWriters.)
Sometimes we writers get dry spells. But sometimes, we’re deluged. I’m fortunate right now to be scribbling away as a monsoon of words falls upon me.
Picture it: Sicily, 1942. Marne, 1992. As a student half-way through my high-school years, I indulged the fantasy of being a writer. Much of what I wrote in those days was, believe it or not, snail-mail correspondence, primary to my aunt who at the time dwelt in Oregon. But I did other writing, too. Mostly flash fiction about powerful wizards, as I recall, inspired by the Lord of the Rings, with my content consisting mostly of scene descriptions and almost zero dialogue. That summer of ’92, as the calendar inched toward September and the resulting issuance of my driver’s license, was my final big rural summer-vacation hurrah before I started working and thinking about what happened after I graduated. It was the last time I experimented with creative writing for more than a quarter century.
In the early ’90s I wrote on a then-innovative Brother word-processing system, the WP-3400, the kind with a daisy-wheel electronic typewriter attached to an amber CRT monitor, supported by a 3.5-inch drive for storing documents. The unit is long gone, but I still have the little cube I bought to store my disks, complete with a description of which of the dozen floppies contained specific types of files: On the back, in pencil, I noted which slots held my disks dedicated to correspondence, school papers, mail merges, “author stuff,” and my diary. The Brother unit was the successor to my first typewriter, a 1930s-era Royal KMM, the kind that so enchanted me that last year I bought a replacement KMM on eBay that now sits on my living-room desk and occasionally gets pressed into service for envelopes and checks.
In college, I didn’t spend much time doing creative writing. Much of my work as a writer either focused on Latin translations (if you’ve never studied a foreign language deeply, you’d be surprised at how translating original works to and from a different tongue sharpens your sense of syntax) or journalism. By the time I resigned my editorship at the Herald, I could write an 800-word editorial in about 20 minutes, with the resulting product solid enough to go directly on the page with very little editing on its journey.
Corporate life after grad school and newspapering led to corporate documents, rendered in corporate prose using corporate fonts. Then I experienced a brief period wherein I feared that corporate life might prematurely cut me loose, so my evenings pivoted to freelancing for online service journalism websites, mostly generating short-form how-to content related to finance, technology or careers. When you write, and then later edit, 400-word freelance articles in sufficient volume, you learn even more about what does or doesn’t work with English usage.
But non-fiction and fiction are wholly separate beasts. I recall — still with a sense of wide-eyed astonishment at my own inflated sense of self — the way I dived into my first experience with National Novel Writing Month in 2011. I remember Duane telling me the details of NaNoWriMo on Oct. 30. On Nov. 1, I began to write a detective story I only sort-of thought through. But I had believed that because I could churn out near-perfect non-fic prose in large quantities in short periods of time, it couldn’t be all that hard to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.
I fell short of my 50k goal that year by roughly 48k words. Try as I might, I couldn’t wrap my head around the right way to tell my story. The following year, I tried again, with no creative writing exercises between events to hone my craft. Again, I fell short, but by only roughly 30k words. The year after that, after dabbling with different short stories, I eked out a “win.” Last year, same deal.
None of my NaNo novels are truly complete. Sanctuary — my 2013 victory– is fundamentally solid, but Chapter 4 vexes me still and fixing it will requires a stem-to-stern rewrite. Last year’s Aiden’s Wager stands around 60k words and is targeted for 85k when it’s done. I know how to finish it because the blanks have been fully plotted, and I think the story has real legs, but I also need to strip a lot of the graphic depictions of what amounts to torture porn from the middle chapters before it’ll be safe for polite audiences.
And I’ve been published as a fiction writer, with this year’s Providence, a novelette included in the Brewed Awakenings anthology.
Now I labor as a publisher, receiving queries from authors and editing selected works. I find I’m writing more things — fiction, non-fiction — but also thinking more carefully about how those pieces are presented. I also recently perused my own writing archives to uncover various trends. Such as:
My personal blog has moved away from short essays on a given cultural or political topic, to more occasional but longer essays interspersed with factual updates about what I’ve been up to. The trajectory points to longer, more substantive pieces submitted less regularly.
I’ve grown more precise about English style even in my informal work, mostly as a reaction to the frequently committed style errors I’ve seen in some of the service-journalism editing I’ve done over the last few years. Many English constructions are common enough that most people don’t think about them, but which still get a “substandard” label by the guardians of linguistic orthodoxy. Increasingly, I default to more conservative usage.
I’m more acutely aware of the mechanics of long-form fiction than I used to be, and such knowledge colors how I approach a new fiction story of any length.
Let me share my evolution specifically related to the production of long-form fiction.
At first, I did what so many writers do: I sat down and started typing, tabularasa, into Microsoft Word. Admittedly, for my first NaNo try, I did possess a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish, but it was a back-of-the-cover blurb instead of a fully fleshed plan. I had some names and a sentence of two of demographics for my characters, but that was about it. I started the first chapter with no sense whatsoever about who the murderer was or why he (or she) did it, despite that the first chapter opened with the murder. My core learning is that I’m not good at turning on a spigot, transcribing the result and arriving at a product that looks like a coherent novel. Some writers can do it, but I’m not among their number.
With my second stab, I tried writing with Scrivener, to rely on its additional bells and whistles to keep my writing notes organized. I had a much better sense of the story arc; I knew, chapter by chapter, what the main plot sequences entailed. I also had some more fleshed-out character descriptions before I started the work of writing. What derailed me, though, were two problems. First, I aimed too high; I planned the first volume of a sci-fi trilogy instead of a stand-alone story, so when I filled in the chapters, I had to think about not just one work, but two other works that weren’t even well-considered skeletons yet. Second, I obsessed about little things far too much for a first draft. I spent a week on my opening chapter (which, I still think, was awesome, but too polished for the early drafting phase) and I spent several hours researching minor details, e.g. the physics of what happens when a grain of sand hits a person in a space suit at half the speed of light. In short: I mostly fixed the planning problem from the year before, but I got tripped up in trying to be too perfect the first time around.
With Sanctuary, I got the formula right. I planned the plot in detail, with scene-by-scene descriptions of the major plot movements or points I had to cover to keep the story straight. I walked into the story with a clear sense of who my main characters were, and I included a major subplot specifically to advance one character’s emotional development despite that the story was developed as a crime thriller. By Nov. 30, I had a complete novel in hand. And because I didn’t obsess about the details, I left myself occasional notes to fix things on a second read. One big fix requires a subplot rewrite, but … that’s the point of writing. You never let it go after a first draft, ever.
By last year, Aiden’s Wager built on my previous improvements and I fell into the rhythm much more quickly. I thought less about plot and character from a big-picture perspective, and more about nuance. It mattered to me that I got point-of-view consistent and appropriate for certain scenes. I cared that some characters changed as the story unfolded and others didn’t, and that certain characters demonstrated specific mannerisms or verbal tics. Instead of focusing on an event-driven plot, the story revolved around the main character’s rapid slip into Stockholm Syndrome and how he couldn’t quite break himself out of it without help from the family he rejected. So telling the story of the main character as he progressed from cocky rich boy to angry rape victim to willing submissive — and how he found the path back to wholeness — required more character development than plot twisting, and much more dialogue both internal and external than I was accustomed to writing. In particular, I had to write the main character’s girlfriend very carefully so that her demeanor in the early book hinted at, but didn’t telegraph, her later betrayal and then remorse.
I still have a long way to go as a writer. My “novelist voice” is solidifying, I think, and that’s an exciting place to be. I’ve already thought about what my next novel will cover — no spoilers! — and with the notes I’ve committed, I’m confident this one will be my best one yet.
Rare is the author whose very first novel gets published. Many successful writers admit to having drawers of early manuscripts gathering dust in a corner, because the craft of novel writing comes with practice. Every new manuscript that gets put into the drawer is stronger than its predecessor. Every new manuscript teaches the author a lesson about what does or doesn’t work for how he, as an artist, executes on his craft.
I know I’m a planner. I write only when the entire plot is graphed, the characters are fully fleshed and each scene has a purpose. So I have largely mastered the basics as they relate to a writer with my procedural biases. Now I’m working on more complicated things: Voice. Consistent and appropriate POV. Nailing a scene description with verbal economy. Obscuring didacticism with skillfully rendered dialogue.
I think writing is much like building a house. If you’ve never done it before, you stress over pouring the basement walls, framing the studs, running the plumbing — the basic stuff that’s second nature to a typical contractor. The more you grok the foundations, though, the more you stop thinking about the basic infrastructure that you’ve already mastered and jump ahead to the detail of the cabinetry or the shape of the marble on the countertops. The best architects looking at a field during a groundbreaking ceremony don’t think about drywall or concrete; they think about what vase will perfectly complement the leather sectional they’ve planned for the living room. So also should good authors progress so the fundamentals become instinct and they spend their creative time on the ornamentation that elevates a craftsman-like story into a work of transcendent art.
Writing coaches scold their charges: “Just write every day,” on the theory that habituation leads to success. It doesn’t. Learning from your mistakes to grow your skill matters much more than mere volume even will.
I’ve been doing a bit of blogging to flesh out the content on the Caffeinated Press site, mostly about writing/editing and the business of publishing. Synopses of my recent posts follow.
How Much Scene-Setting Is Too Much … Or Too Little? – Scene-setting isn’t easy. There’s no magical paint-by-numbers approach for getting it right. When done well, a perfectly described scene can make a story; when done poorly, the story collapses.
21 Books That Moved Me – The world benefits when authors tell their stories. But the stories that move us the most are informed by a deep understanding of the trends and ideas that undergird them. This understanding comes from reading or otherwise experiencing each individual plank on the scaffold of our story.
On the Effective Attribution of Speech in Fiction – Balancing diction and tone and rhythm to generate a character’s authentic voice makes for tough work for any author. But perhaps even more important than a character’s voice is the structural framework into which that narration sits.
Points of View – One of the most common structural reasons a person’s manuscript may receive the cold shoulder from an agent or publisher follows from the apparently random admixture of narrative points of view within a story.
Reflections on Fusion Genres – The technical term for a novel that blends more than one genre or sub-genre into a single story is fusion genre. Very many fusion books are good. But because there’s a higher barrier to market than with straight-genre work, very few publishers are willing to take them on, and in the crowded self-publishing world, the sheer volume of available works means that any one story almost assuredly will be lost in the crowd.
Every Voice Matters – Few would deny the truism, but the underlying lesson is observed more often in the breach: That every voice matters and deserves a chance to be heard.
Handling Feedback with Grace – Good writers know that the trial-by-fire from beta readers or professional editors is what brings our newborn manuscript through its long, painful adolescence known as “rewrites” until we finally have a mature product ready for the market.
Tips for Robust Self-Editing – Before you submit your work for a peer critique, give yourself a robust self-edit. Look for common punctuation or grammar challenges that often burden less experienced authors.
The One Mistake That Thwarts Aspiring Writers – Before you submit your work for a peer critique, give yourself a robust self-edit. Look for common punctuation or grammar challenges that often burden less experienced authors.
Send me your ideas for post topics related to writing, editing and publishing — I’d be happy to draft something that answers your questions!
Remember, remember the First of December — hangovers, and burned by your plot. I see no reason why this writing season, should ever be forgot.
The stroke of midnight on this, the glorious first day of December, A.D. 2014, ended my fourth straight year of participating in the orgy of nerdtastic masochism known formally as National Novel Writing Month. It also marks my second, and consecutive, win; I clocked in mid-day Sunday with 50,004 words — a whopping four more than I needed to thwart the validation algorithm’s “you must be this tall to win” rule. And all that, with the entire third act left to write.
NaNoWriMo is a hobby for some and a kick in the pants for others. Despite bold proclamations that participants can write a 50k-word novel in a month, the truth is, NaNoWriMo is intended to get the bulk of a “zero draft” written by aspiring writers who may not otherwise have the time or the focus to do it on their own. The promise of the November wordslinger scramble is that if you get a bunch of work done in one massive flurry of drunken and/or caffeinated activity, you can augment and edit later, instead of eyeballing a blank paper with zero words and thereupon becoming the literary equivalent of a cheese-eating surrender monkey.
My first attempt, and my second, ended in Boris-and-Natasha levels of failure. Neither broke 10k and neither was organized in a logical way. Last year’s was better, and although I got the story to about 56k, there was one problem — that damned fourth chapter — that I couldn’t quite work around. One of the hardest lessons for this former journalist to internalize was the difference between fiction and non-fiction writing. Give me a word count and a deadline within the newsroom, and I’ll deliver page-ready copy every time, on time. I became quite adept, when I ran the opinion desk at a small community newspaper, at writing 800-word staff editorials in 20 minutes or so. But fiction? I thought I’d breeze into it. How hard could it be to make shit up? Karma spied my arrogance and rewarded me with humiliatingly low word counts until, having caught that good, old-time fiction religion, I repented of my sins and treated my novels like the precious works of art they truly are.
Writing is like sexual metaphors: The less you practice, the more you’ll embarrass yourself when you finally pull out and fumble sheepishly for your pants. Over the last few years of doing NaNoWriMo as well as branching into short stories, I’ve learned a few things about my style and my craft:
I do better when I detail my plot and main characters before I write. This year, like last year, I used Scrivener for Windows. That program brilliantly organizes prose and supporting information into one clean interface. I detailed every chapter and every scene, setting 50-word scene summaries for each and even specifying target word counts, points to make, quotes to include and whatnot. Some folks forego planning and just write. I don’t know why they’re not alcoholics.
I start at the beginning and finish at the end; I rarely jump around the story.
I self-edit as I write. During word wars at our write-ins — i.e., when we writers peek out from the shadows and count how many words we can write during a specific period of time — I average about 360 words in 15 minutes, with a standard deviation of 103 words. At the write-in I hosted on every Saturday in November, I logged the results of every war, covering 17 different writers. I had the narrowest SD of anyone as well as the lowest mean; I also had the second-lowest maximum. But my prose is clean, so there’s that. (Point of pride: My write-in incurred a whopping 221,481 logged words in 2014, with a max spurt of 1,317 words over 20 minutes, a grand per-writer mean of 522 words in 15.25 minutes and an average standard deviation of 169 words.)
I tend to write dialogue-heavy, with episodic short scene descriptions. When I relate a series of actions, I tend to use a lot of “after” and “then” — a stylistic affliction I can only really fix on a later cold read. Initial character descriptions focus on physical attributes and wardrobes; mannerisms only get pulled in to break up long passages of dialogue.
This year’s effort was … precious. Having been waylaid by sundry crises in the first half of the month, I arrived at Day 25 (of 30!) with a whopping 17,195 words complete. But, mirable dictu, I had a five-day vacation for the last five days of the month. You want to know what that kind of progress looks like?
All the words.
It basically looks like 6,562 words per day. Remember how I said I write at about 360 words per quarter-hour? That tally doesn’t include frequent breaks for peeing, getting more wine, waiting until the cat re-positions himself on my lap, re-reading and editing what I just wrote, checking email, peeing again, looking up bondage equipment on Wikipedia and eating candy. I wrote for eight to ten hours per day, each of those last few days, to eke out the narrowest of wins.
And I’m good with that workflow, because I learned that it’s easier to keep your story straight when you’re plowing through it, instead of dabbling with a disconnected scene here and there every couple of weeks. I got inside my characters’ heads, and actually changed a core part of the story based in large part to how I wrapped up one important, but sad, scene. That scene, by the way, marked the first time I’ve ever teared up over what happened to my characters.
All of the above notwithstanding, let me share with you the gist of Aiden’s Wager. I’ll begin by asserting my surprise at discovering that this was really the novel I intended to write last year. My 2013 effort — a detective story — followed a fairly typical, plot-heavy structure with a few one-off scenes added for color. In the end, though, the plot got in the way of the characters. That incongruity between story and structure was my ultimate problem with the fourth chapter: It tried to fix the plot holes through careful foreshadowing, but the real story by the end wasn’t the mystery, it was the way the main character evolved over a particularly challenging case.
Aiden’s Wager is different. I billed it, on the NaNoWriMo site, as “literary fiction.” Which it is, insofar as the real story eschews an event-driven paradigm in favor of a narrative showing how the main characters progress or regress over three weeks in late autumn. In a nutshell, the protagonist — a 22-year-old named Aiden, first-class-prick scion of an exceptionally wealthy family — gets disowned and disinherited after a brief jail stint, by his reputation-conscious father. Aiden hails from a “Rich Kids of Instagram” kind of social circle of cut-throat young people vying for power and dominance within their tribe of fellow hundredth-of-one-percenters. Aiden maintains his swagger and assumes he’ll come out of his newly diminished circumstances like a boss, but one of his rivals sets him up, blackmails him and treats him like a trophy to solidify his own status within the tribe. Aiden must therefore think about the purpose of his life, the source of moral authority and the way that power dynamics corrupts people and relationships.
It’s not a light-hearted story. The entire middle third of the book deals with the blackmail — its origination, and how the main antagonist deliberately isolates, dehumanizes and subjugates Aiden. That middle third is, in places, vividly pornographic. I try to show how a cocky rich kid gets the rug pulled out from underneath him, and in the emotional chaos that ensues, he becomes a victim who succumbs to Stockholm syndrome and becomes willfully subservient to, even worshipful of, his abuser. The final third covers Aiden’s attempt to repair the damage he caused to himself and his family after forcible intervention by his disgusted older brother. A big chunk of that recovery entails an exploration of moral authority, aided in part by a visiting Catholic priest.
I’m happy with this story. I think it has legs. At the outset, I wanted to write about moral authority in general in the guise of a questioning young man crossing paths with different people. In this story, I accomplished that goal — but concepts like power, coercion, consent, faith, control and teleology also recur. I tried to mainstream bisexuality, present the clergy favorably, touch on the prevalence of antisocial personality disorder among the elite and emphasize the emptiness of a life devoid of meaning beyond one’s own ego. I may have to edit out some content in the middle third; some audiences may not want to read extended and explicit passages of gay torture porn with a strong D&S overtone.
But then again, in a Fifty Shades of Gray world, maybe they might.
Nights in West Michigan have grown consistently colder — in the 30s, usually — and most of the leaves have descended from their perches atop the now-barren canopy. Autumn’s full, glorious array reminds us to be prepared for the winter to come. A few weeks ago, I went for a walk in a county park and saw the transition up-close and personal: Bees going after every fading flower, greens turning into reds and yellows, squirrels building their stashes. All the little creatures, it seems, are fortifying themselves against the frigid desolation to come.
On Halloween day, I had my annual biometric screening. Most of the content — blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, weight, BMI — met my expectations. No surprises. One measure, fasting glucose, caught me off guard. Not bad enough to freak out over, but not what I expected given that by all lights, I’m in better shape today than I was when I had my first assessment a full decade ago.
The thing about autumn is that the beauty of the landscape proves so charming that you aren’t forced to reflect on the clear lessons hidden beneath the surface. Instead, you repose quietly, enjoying the scenery or sipping the cider and relaxing in anticipation of the busy holiday season to come. So too with aging. We change styles and behaviors, but the danger that counts is the one locked deep within — we obsess about which sweater to wear but never think to check our biometric values. Like the parable of the grasshopper and the ant, at some point, the flurries will fly, and only the well-prepared will make it through. Wellness is a beast that requires daily diligence even in the warm summer sun, because if you come up short when a health blizzard hits … well, it is what it is. Now, then — some general updates, in no particular order.
Work continues to be busy. I just oriented my first official new hire as a department manager. Went smoothly. Our division is undergoing a significant restructuring, so it’s been “interesting times” around here in the fullest Confucian sense of the term.
It’s November, which means National Novel Writing Month. I’m again participating, and again hosting a write-in on Saturday mornings in downtown Grand Rapids. This year’s novel, should it be polished to the point of shopping, is literary fiction — a tale of a young wealthy man from a dog-eat-dog competitive social circle who, after he’s cut off from the family money, must develop his own life goals and set of morals while fending off the predation of his former friends, who now see a turn-about opportunity to further humiliate him. The meta-narrative of the story focuses on the main character’s investigation of the various classic sources of ethical meaning from the perspective of someone who’s working through a mash of antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders while drowning in a rich, hypermasculine peer group with similar tendencies. Given the language and very strong adult themes, if I ever publish it, it’ll be under a pseudonym. Probably my porn name, which actually makes a great author name, too.
The wrap-up activity after my conference took more out of me than I thought. I had to develop and compile surveys so I could issue continuing-education credits. That work, and the resulting time crunch, contributed to my inability to attend a much-anticipated Halloween party at PPQ’s house. CEs are time-consuming.
The election was … interesting. I volunteered a bit this year for the GOP, given my status as an elected precinct delegate. Did some door-to-door campaigning a few weeks ago for the MRP in eastern Kent County then spent seven hours as an election challenger in one of the busiest precincts in the City of Grand Rapids. Good experience, but it highlights how so much of the ground game is being run by very young people with very high self-regard who lack any substantive political experience.
The publishing company is humming along. We’re in the edit phase of our anthology and are actively looking toward starting a quarterly literary magazine in 2015. There’s much enthusiasm for that journal by several contributors, so I hold out hope that it’ll launch with sufficient love and nurturing.
The boy cat has started tunneling under my blankets at night to curl up next to me. It’s adorable. I get a little ball of fuzzy, purring warmth showing up at unexpected times.
Hard to believe, but Tony and I are closing in on our 200th podcast episode next month.
Today’s exercise in stream-of-consciousness blogging follows. Hold on to your buttocks.
I am now apparently hosting a family of feral cats in the garage. A white cat with a little black nose and sapphire eyes — I’ve named her Snowball — has taken residence of the garage attic, along with her three children. The kittens are old enough to scurry about independently, but young enough to occasionally nurse. One is solid white, one is solid black, and one is solid grey. Advice from Stacie is to simply trap them and have them humanely euthanized. Others suggest a trap/neuter/release program. The advice mirrors battles among animal-rights activists. My solution, which I freely admit is the least responsible thing I could do, is to give them food and water.
The last few weeks have featured a packed social calendar. Yesterday I saw Iron Man 3 at Celebration South with Julie, Steve, Brittany and the “other” Jason; the week before I caught Oblivion at Celebration Rivertown. Last week, Tony came to town to record and we ended up enjoying some cigars and premium adult beverages before trekking to Erb Thai for some tasty, tasty curried food. On Friday, Stacie came over to meet my cats and slog back a few beers. Last week, I had cigars with The Irritable Bastard. The week before, Tony and I hoofed it to Horseshoe Hammond for the Midwest Smoke Out.
Life has been interesting on the writing front. I’ve been making more progress on some of my sundry manuscripts and I also purchased three of my friend Duane’s recently released novels, from Amazon.
Since last month’s deluge, the weather in West Michigan has been downright cheerful. Consistently in the 70s, with a mid-80s day last week, and sunny. Fairly moderate humidity, too. I think I’m going to go for a nice long walk along Kent Trails later today. I hope this pattern holds for the Isle Royale trip at the end of the month. On the extra-special bright side, it’s transitioned into “walking around with very little clothes” season, and so far the folks with the best bodies are the ones most likely to flaunt them. Please, oh please, let the trend continue. Remember: Just Say No! to muffintops.
I finished reading The Origins of Political Orderby Francis Fukuyama. Most of the book was solid and well-presented; his conclusions largely tracked what I’d expect from a political science perspective of evolutionary social biology. The key insight I pulled from his work — which ended with the French Revolution — is that political order waxes and wanes and one of the forces leading to social decay is repatriomonialization. This fancy term identifies the tendency for political elites to create systems that support their kin or tribe. In small societies, the kin are usually blood relatives, but in larger societies, the tribe may well include fellow elites. Hence the tendency for the political class to resist change that harms the political class, and the reason why elite activists favor the erosion of federalism. Fukuyama’s belief, obliquely expressed, is that violence is typically the tool used to undo repatrimonialization. Hence, the only way to break gridlock and self-serving behavior in government is to overthrow the government, because political leaders are almost never willing to voluntarily cede their elite privileges for the good of the state as a whole. His observations should give pause to those who dismiss recent public opinion polling that suggests that a large minority of the American public expects widespread political violence within the next decade.
If you believe my grandmother, I’m apparently writing this from behind the walls of a Texas prison. If you believe the GPS unit on my phone, I’m writing this from Grand Rapids. Where, oh were, could I be?
Texas Pokey?
Funny story. So last week, my mother calls and asks, point-blank: “Where are you?”
I was brutally honest in reply: “Well, I’m on my back porch right now, with a bit of grog and a cigar. Where are you?”
To which, she burst out in laughter. Her own mother — St. Dorothy the Matriarch — had just called her upset because she had received a collect call from a Texas prison from someone whose muffled name may have sounded like “Jay.” Of course, granny didn’t accept the call that she feared may have come from her own flesh and blood. Instead, she hung up and called my mother to demand that she figure out where I was. My mother, ever the practical sort, dialed my cell phone. So although I do intend to visit the Metroplex at some point (perhaps this fall?) to see my friends from the Denton Dallas and Beyondpodcast in their natural environment, I am not presently in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
So what’s up with the prison call? It’s a scam, of course.
Social Wrap-Up
Tidings of social merriment:
Last night, I enjoyed wine and cheese at Reserve with my friend Michelle. The server slipped me a note with the name of an online-only wine retailer that, in her view, makes the best “nerdy whites” on the market. I’ll have to check it out.
Friday was WriteOn. Writers and pizza and creative brainstorming, oh my! We even had the rare twofer of Cassidy plus AdamSmash.
Two Saturdays ago, I had cigars and cocktails with Brian and Mark. That was fun.
My new department at the hospital had an “un-birthday” party recently, to celebrate everyone’s 27th non-birthday all at the same time. We went to Ichiban and had sushi and assorted adult beverages. Mmm.
A few weeks ago I trekked to Lansing for a recording session with Tony that transformed into a dinner (at Gilbert & Blakes) and cigar (at The Corona) extravaganza with him and his lovely better half.
This coming Wednesday is the monthly Cigar and Cocktail Evening, to be held at 7 p.m. at Grand River Cigar. All are welcome, no RSVP required.
Writing Deliciousness
My writing group embarked on a year-long voyage of creative discovery through the development of Mechlanberg, a steampunk-type city for which we’re all collaborating on a series of short stories. Each member of the group is responsible for one aspect of the city’s development. My assigned area is “crime and danger.” Every meeting, we discuss and rehash various aspects of how the world functions — its history, topography, culture, economy, etc. I’ve started writing a series of short stories based on the crime/danger paradigm through the eyes of a young girl named Elyse entering Mechlanberg from the desert to become a “firefly” (a member of a prostitute’s guild). I’m underplaying some of the more “out-there” aspects of Mechlanberg lore — like memory water and tentacle forests — to focus on a character-development story arc. If I keep doing one short story each month, and each builds on the last, then I’ll have developed a novella before NaNoWriMo ’13 kicks off. Not a bad accomplishment.
Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, if you wish. Be ye warned: They’re both in “first draft status” (thank you, Scrivener) and haven’t been edited for word choice, detail, etc. So they’re a bit rough.
Of Marathons and Half-Marathons and Iron Men
The plan, at present, is that Tony, Jen and I will compete in the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in mid November. They’re thinking “half marathon,” which makes sense given everyone’s relative level of fitness. The event is one of only two times a year that The Strip shuts down to vehicular traffic (the other time is New Year’s Eve) and the run occurs at night so the lights of Las Vegas take pride of place.
There’s also the North Country Run, an event I just learned about and fully intend to attempt in 2014 (registration for 2013 has since closed). It’s a trail run — half, full or ultra — in Manistee National Forest, presumably along a segment of the North Country Trail. Apart from a brief loop on a semi-paved road, the entire race is conducted on the single-file foot trails of the forest and includes such features as roots to trip you up, mosquitoes to drain your blood and flags to guide you so you don’t accidentally run off-trail and get eaten by a bear. Sounds heavenly.
I’m still pondering a triathlon at some point. My cousin Callista completed an Ironman event last year and that’s just freaking awesome. She worked really hard at it, and I respect her for that. I just need to work on my biking skills a bit and re-learn how to swim without a tank on my back.
Isle Royale
… and speaking of the outdoors, it’s a 95-percent probable “go!” that I’ll be doing a backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park in late May or early June. The expedition involves an eight-hour drive to Houghton, followed by a six-hour trek by boat to the island. Spend four nights on the trail, then return the same way. Scheduling isn’t final yet — I have to stagger it with other people’s vacations and a three-night training trip to Madison, WI, in May — but I have everything lined up for a peaceful trek in the Lake Superior backcountry, with just the island’s wolves and moose to keep me company.
The Fuzzies
Readers of this blog know that I don’t post a lot of pictures. No LOLcats, no funny pictures with meme-style overprint, no “look at me, I’m drunk in an exclusive club” selfies, no “look at my hippie dinner” Instagrams.
So here’s your exception:
Yes. I now have two cats. Long story, but they’re fabulous little critters who are perfectly litter trained, people-friendly and just all-around adorable. Even when they wake me up at 4 a.m., having decided in their feline wisdom that it’s time for me to get up and pet them.
If you believe my grandmother, I’m apparently writing this from behind the walls of a Texas prison. If you believe the GPS unit on my phone, I’m writing this from Grand Rapids. Where, oh were, could I be? Texas Pokey?
Funny story. So last week, my mother calls and asks, point-blank: “Where are you?”
I was brutally honest in reply: “Well, I’m on my back porch right now, with a bit of grog and a cigar. Where are you?”
To which, she burst out in laughter. Her own mother — St. Dorothy the Matriarch — had just called her upset because she had received a collect call from a Texas prison from someone whose muffled name may have sounded like “Jay.” Of course, granny didn’t accept the call that she feared may have come from her own flesh and blood. Instead, she hung up and called my mother to demand that she figure out where I was. My mother, ever the practical sort, dialed my cell phone. So although I do intend to visit the Metroplex at some point (perhaps this fall?) to see my friends from the Denton Dallas and Beyondpodcast in their natural environment, I am not presently in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
So what’s up with the prison call? It’s a scam, of course. Social Wrap-Up
Tidings of social merriment:
Last night, I enjoyed wine and cheese at Reserve with my friend Michelle. The server slipped me a note with the name of an online-only wine retailer that, in her view, makes the best “nerdy whites” on the market. I’ll have to check it out.
Friday was WriteOn. Writers and pizza and creative brainstorming, oh my! We even had the rare twofer of Cassidy plus AdamSmash.
Two Saturdays ago, I had cigars and cocktails with Brian and Mark. That was fun.
My new department at the hospital had an “un-birthday” party recently, to celebrate everyone’s 27th non-birthday all at the same time. We went to Ichiban and had sushi and assorted adult beverages. Mmm.
A few weeks ago I trekked to Lansing for a recording session with Tony that transformed into a dinner (at Gilbert & Blakes) and cigar (at The Corona) extravaganza with him and his lovely better half.
This coming Wednesday is the monthly Cigar and Cocktail Evening, to be held at 7 p.m. at Grand River Cigar. All are welcome, no RSVP required.
Writing Deliciousness
My writing group embarked on a year-long voyage of creative discovery through the development of Mechlanberg, a steampunk-type city for which we’re all collaborating on a series of short stories. Each member of the group is responsible for one aspect of the city’s development. My assigned area is “crime and danger.” Every meeting, we discuss and rehash various aspects of how the world functions — its history, topography, culture, economy, etc. I’ve started writing a series of short stories based on the crime/danger paradigm through the eyes of a young girl named Elyse entering Mechlanberg from the desert to become a “firefly” (a member of a prostitute’s guild). I’m underplaying some of the more “out-there” aspects of Mechlanberg lore — like memory water and tentacle forests — to focus on a character-development story arc. If I keep doing one short story each month, and each builds on the last, then I’ll have developed a novella before NaNoWriMo ’13 kicks off. Not a bad accomplishment.
Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, if you wish. Be ye warned: They’re both in “first draft status” (thank you, Scrivener) and haven’t been edited for word choice, detail, etc. So they’re a bit rough. Of Marathons and Half-Marathons and Iron Men
The plan, at present, is that Tony, Jen and I will compete in the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in mid November. They’re thinking “half marathon,” which makes sense given everyone’s relative level of fitness. The event is one of only two times a year that The Strip shuts down to vehicular traffic (the other time is New Year’s Eve) and the run occurs at night so the lights of Las Vegas take pride of place.
There’s also the North Country Run, an event I just learned about and fully intend to attempt in 2014 (registration for 2013 has since closed). It’s a trail run — half, full or ultra — in Manistee National Forest, presumably along a segment of the North Country Trail. Apart from a brief loop on a semi-paved road, the entire race is conducted on the single-file foot trails of the forest and includes such features as roots to trip you up, mosquitoes to drain your blood and flags to guide you so you don’t accidentally run off-trail and get eaten by a bear. Sounds heavenly.
I’m still pondering a triathlon at some point. My cousin Callista completed an Ironman event last year and that’s just freaking awesome. She worked really hard at it, and I respect her for that. I just need to work on my biking skills a bit and re-learn how to swim without a tank on my back. Isle Royale
… and speaking of the outdoors, it’s a 95-percent probable “go!” that I’ll be doing a backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park in late May or early June. The expedition involves an eight-hour drive to Houghton, followed by a six-hour trek by boat to the island. Spend four nights on the trail, then return the same way. Scheduling isn’t final yet — I have to stagger it with other people’s vacations and a three-night training trip to Madison, WI, in May — but I have everything lined up for a peaceful trek in the Lake Superior backcountry, with just the island’s wolves and moose to keep me company. The Fuzzies
Readers of this blog know that I don’t post a lot of pictures. No LOLcats, no funny pictures with meme-style overprint, no “look at me, I’m drunk in an exclusive club” selfies, no “look at my hippie dinner” Instagrams.
So here’s your exception:
Yes. I now have two cats. Long story, but they’re fabulous little critters who are perfectly litter trained, people-friendly and just all-around adorable. Even when they wake me up at 4 a.m., having decided in their feline wisdom that it’s time for me to get up and pet them.
Meow!
Yesterday my friend Duane launched an inaugural podcast dedicated to the craft and business of writing. He did a great job with it, sharing some of his own experiences and then riffing, briefly, on what it means to be a writer.
Prompted some thought.
From my vantage point, a writer is someone who:
Consistently pushes out work product, even if it’s not intended for widespread readership
Writes for compensation but nevertheless aims to release polished and useful prose
Loves the craft
You know who isn’t a writer? Someone who merely intends to write, or someone who pushes out paid work product with no regard for the feel of the prose (i.e, a hack).
To be a writer means more than just putting words to paper. The concept requires something more — a desire, deep down, to either tell a story, or to relay information with elegance and with an ear for the ebbs and flows of the language.
I know a lot of people who’ve never been published, but still put in the time. They’re writers. I also know a lot of people who get paid to write but don’t much care about what the final product looks like — these people aren’t really writers. They’re more like hired guns.
As a writer, I’ve seen my fair share of successes ($200 articles for 30 minutes of work, woohoo). I’ve seen my share of failures, too. Like rejections by editors who clearly didn’t understand the subject matter. No worries. I keep plugging away, just like Duane does.
Writing isn’t a glorious profession. Nor is it a functional description. Rather, it’s an avocation, a way of thinking and acting that recognizes that words mean things and that stringing them together requires inspiration, not just perspiration or aspiration. It requires a willingness to grow your craft, to learn and to advance and to experiment. It requires you to write.
Don’t let the bastards get you down. Then again, don’t let the bastards within stop you from starting in the first place.
