Time for a post with a little more bite to it.
Aug 262011
Aug 252011
I hear tell that a hurricane is barreling toward us. I have yet to bring myself to feel a great deal of concern about this. I realize I may eat those words in the coming days, but for now I have naught but past experience to go on. Every major hurricane-related alert we’ve ever had in the area amounted to little more than a particularly forceful thunderstorm. Such things are not without danger, of course, but so long as one is inside the biggest concern is generally losing power. The house has thus far proven quite resistant to flooding, even over protracted rain spells, and there are no large trees that pose a direct threat. So, we shall see how this goes.
Tomorrow is the Great Big Sea concert, which I am beyond excited about. The day after, some very good college friends of mine are getting married after an absurdly drawn-out on-again/off-again, will-they/won’t-they courting period that lasted many, many years. Every external observer knew that it had one inevitable conclusion. I am delighted that they’re finally getting married and look forward to being there to tell them as much in person. Last time I heard, they followed the blog, so I’m curious to see what they think of my summary of their relationship!
Sunday is when the hurricane is supposed to hit, which all but dooms any hope of working further on the stairs or mowing the lawn. On the plus side, as long as we have power, I should be able to get a fair amount of writing done.
Aug 242011
Slammed through another three thousand words last night. Like so many things, it feels self reinforcing: the more I write, the more I want to. I just need to keep moving and all will be well. I’d love to be have the second draft done by the end of the month, though I doubt that’s realistic. If I maintained 3,000 words per day, that would only place me at around 55-60,000 words by the end of the month, and my current projections predict the complete draft will be nearly double that. In order to hit 100,000 words by the end of the month, I’d need to consistently put out close to 9,000 words per day. Even at my most exuberant, that’s pushing it. 2,000-3,000 feels pretty good, though.
I mentioned it on Twitter, but I haven’t mentioned it here yet. This Friday, Great Big Sea is playing in Lowell! This will mark my third time seeing them live, but the first time that Cody and I will be going with a friend of ours that we’ve indoctrinated into the GBS fold, but who has never seen them live. I am delighted by this and completely confident that she will have an excellent time.
Really, everybody should go see GBS. They are that good.
Aug 232011
Apparently, that worked.
After taking Cody out for dinner, we came home and not only did I manage to sit down and pound out a couple thousand words in about an hour, but I also made time to play some guitar and work on a painting. The trick now will be keeping it up. Setting a consistent time to write will probably be the best tool in the box to make that happen. I started at 9pm yesterday. That’s late enough in the evening that I don’t feel like I have to do it right when I get home, but it’s also early enough that if I spend an hour or two writing, I still have a little time afterwards to do other stuff, too.
Of course, I did all of that stuff and then ran into the realization that I still hadn’t made any progress on my basement stairs. Sigh. Perhaps tonight I shall try to make some headway on that.
In other news, we just felt an earthquake that evidently originated out in Virginia. 5.9 out there, though only a very mild rocking here. Many people didn’t even notice it. Those of us that did weren’t sure what we were feeling and it wasn’t until news of the VA quake exploded that it made sense. It seems that such intraplate earthquakes are rare, but not unheard of. I got a kick out of the fact that this quake was mentioned on the Wikipedia article about intraplate quakes not an hour after it happened. Oh, Internet, you are delightful.
Aug 222011
Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. You are finite. Zathras is finite. This…is wrong tool.
I have many, many projects that capture my interest. Writing is foremost among them, but so too are home improvement projects, costuming, digital art, web development, programming, learning to play the guitar, and so on. I often lament that I simply don’t have enough time to do all of that and my job and spend time with my wife and spend time with friends.
But that’s really a load of crap, isn’t it?
Continue reading »
Aug 192011
Every so often, I have minor epiphanies about the stories I’ve cooked up. They’ll fundamentally alter some underlying aspect of the story, giving it greater depth or more meaning. I love it when moments like this happen. I did not have such a moment today. Today, instead, brought a major epiphany that stitched together dozens of plot threads and ideas that were before only loosely coherent.
Of course, I can’t tell you about any of that.
I can say this, though. Misfits (which has been tentatively re-titled several times, but that’s still its working title) started as a one-off for-fun inversion of fantasy tropes. It intermingled with another story idea, which created the antagonist for the tale. That intermingling gave rise to a Vader-esque arced story; that is, the protagonist of the first story wasn’t the “main character” of the whole story. Then I had some ideas about how magic actually worked in this universe. Then I had some ideas that augmented those first ideas, making it even deeper.
Today, I had an idea that welded all of those pieces into a giant, coherent whole in a way that had me literally bouncing in my chair several minutes after I thought it up. I thought it up while walking to the restroom.
The idea may truncate my four-book chronicle into a trilogy or even a duology, but I’m okay with that. I’d rather have the more awesome story told in the right size than the less awesome story told over more books. Who knows? It may still end up being four books once I sit down and properly outline it all.
Also, Degrees of Epiphany is totally the name of my next album.
Aug 182011
I was going to write a long post ranting about traffic disruptions caused by collisions. However, I can’t find a good way to say what I want to say without it making me sound like a complete jerk. Thus, I am forced to conclude that said feelings do make me a complete jerk and have instead decided to quash those feelings in an effort to engage in some self-improvement.
Now, if only the people who post YouTube and major news outlet comments could only learn to do the same, the Internet would be a better place. Alas.
Aug 172011
A great deal has happened since my last post. I’m 27 now, had the best birthday party of my life, have been married for over a year, went on a cruise with my wife (Port Canaveral, FL and the Bahamas, leaving out of NYC), and have been doing some intense self-introspection. I’ve also been working on the second draft of The Novel (which I have now identified as the third of a four-book arc), have resumed playing guitar, and have even been working on my digital painting. Some of the stair pieces have been stained (thanks, Dad!) and more will progress in the coming weeks. Alas, as a result, still no progress on the vacuform table beyond the last update. October is not far, though, and I’ve had a new fire lit under my ass about getting it done (you know who you are).
I had an absurd amount of energy when I got home last night. I decided I should try and bleed some of it off by exercising, so I hopped on the elliptical and jogged 1.11 miles in 15 minutes. That’s not terribly impressive in and of itself, until you factor in the fact that I haven’t exercised in any serious way in months. Not sufficiently exhausted by that, I proceeded to do some weight-lifting. Still not really exhausted, but very sweaty, I showered and then rather than heating something up quick in the microwave for dinner, I decided I really wanted some eggs, so I scrambled those up. At them and still had too much energy, so I sat down to play some Rock Band on expert drums for about an hour. All of that combined finally wore me out enough to be a little more low-key. Very weird, but honestly…I could get used to having that kind of energy.
The lawn desperately needs to be mowed. It needed to be mowed before Cody and I went on our cruise. We returned this past Saturday, to find it looking like a minor rainforest. I should have mowed it then, but had just spent an hour and a half driving with my parents from NYC to CT, and then another three hours driving from CT back to MA, so I was a little tired. Sunday, it rained. Monday, it rained. Tuesday, it didn’t rain, but it was still wet. The minor rainforest is now more of a mid-tier rainforest. I am mowing tonight, the wetness of the grass notwithstanding. It’s embarrassing. Unfortunately, this probably puts the kibosh on any stair work happening this evening. Sigh.