I assume you saw Matthew Broderick and a number of commercials featuring dogs, so I leave you with my funny session target results.
This moment always challenges the balance between task and rest
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Category Archives: Writing
30,000 words
148 pages.
Woo and hoo.
I can’t believe I started this mid-November.
My new writing project is now 21,000 words. That translates into 104 pages towards a completed book that I’m excited for my daughters to read.
I’m really digging Scrivener.
Writing updates and a reason to fear the beard
If you haven’t seen it already, my professional site has updates about two short stories that just got published. The newest one is in an electronic magazine that you do have to pay money to read, but it’s worth it.
I found this video while yelling at my XBOX. It responds to voice commands, even when given in a Kermit the Frog voice. Don’t think I didn’t check.
Rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, and the like
My current writing project is a middle grade fantasy that’s sorta my version of Pilgrim’s Progress. Instead of researching the dark history of our state, which was a ton of fun for my previous book, now I’m learning about my own spiritual state. (You see that play on words? Wokka wokka.)
I was listening to my Nobuo Uematsu station on Pandora (I highly recommend it) and Loreena McKenna’s “The Mummers’ Dance” came on.
It just so happened that I was at the point in my writing where an airship crew was dancing a mournful jig (because my story is awesome) and this song, a corsair interpretation of Ecclesiastes 1, came to me:
All streams run into the sea
But the sea is never full
All things full of weariness
But hearts are never wholeWhat do we gain from our day’s toil
Beneath the beating sun?
Can we say that this is new
Before our course is run?
Before our course is run
What I love about writing a fantasy is that I can bust out with a song and no one thinks it’s strange. I mean, if dwarves can sing of cracking plates, then why not a corsair jig about empty pursuits?
So, sing my song to the tune of “The Mummers’ Song” and marvel at one of the only music videos (that I know of) to feature people dancing with wicker chairs on their heads.
(A mummer is a performer who acts in a traveling troupe to tell folk plays. Yeah, I Googled it.)
Only once has a contract been more exciting.
When librarian jobs were up in the air – that contract was the most exciting to sign. The one I signed tonight was the second. Another of my short stories got picked up, this time by a British audio magazine (the stories are read – it’s not a magazine about stereos). I will get paid in pounds. For some reason that’s funny to me. The other part that made me laugh was that the contract said it was effective 2/12/11. I thought, “Wow! Retroactive to February?” and then I remembered the whole football/soccer/police booth/payphone booth difference.
I just realized something. A British guy is going to be reading my story of an urban alchemist fighting on the mean street of Van Buren. Well, this should prove to be a rather fanciful outing.
A special thanks goes out to Slade for describing the perfect gangster hoopty (they don’t still say that, do they?), John for preaching on Matthew 6:19-20, and to my in-laws for supplying the legal pads.
Gluten-free pizza is surprisingly tasty
The realizations abounded this weekend, some quite mundane (Tacoma has adopted the Rainy, Cold, and Rainy-Cold season designations) to the supernatural (“Are you hearing this? God is real!” “Well, duh.”).
Give me a call or message me if you want to hear more about this past weekend.
Also of note: I have a magazine that signed on one of my short stories (a spec fic version of my nephew’s flag football game). The crazy thing is that the magazine is paying to publish the story. I think I’m entering new territory.
A Haiku Song? Yes, please.
Thanks, Jesse, for thinking of me when you watched Tom Wilson play songs in haiku.
Haikus for a year
Make me want to play guitar
Just like Biff Tannen
Tom Wilson is also on Netflix. I will definitely have to check it out.
I hope you all are having a happy Veteran’s Day.
On Sunday, this is what I’ll be wearing:
No, Mike, I haven’t converted to something, although you gotta admit that my wife’s texts were a lot funnier than my own. (I said I had converted to Awesomeness. She beat that.)
I’m wearing it in solidarity with believers, specifically with Juma Nuradin Kamil’s family, around the world on a Sunday when we remember and pray for followers of Jesus who have been/are being persecuted. (Really, we should remember and pray all year long, which this app (for iPhone and Android) can help you with, but it’s also good to have a set day on the calendar.)
Thanks, Jeremy, for showing us this video that lines up with one of the songs we play. We won’t be showing it on Sunday, but it’s definitely worth a watch.
Art that expresses my heart? Sign me up.
Travis Prinzi of the Rabbit Room has a great article about telling a meaningful story, quoting from Walk the Line:
I mean, you can’t help nobody if you can’t tell them the right story.
I started a new story as part of NaNoWriMo, yes, but also because it’s straight from my heart. Each book I’ve written, I’ve rejected people-pleasing more and more and now write what I believe to be a good story and not what I think will sell (if you’ve watched the majority of what’s on TV, you’ll notice that it’s not always the best story that sells).
Thanks, Futile Ohm, for the link to the NaNoWriMo version of Scrivener. This project has so many character details that it definitely helps me keep all my notes organized. Anyone that has seen me in the midst of writing a novel knows that they should have bought stock in legal pads and tiny memo notebooks.
And for those praying about agents looking at my manuscripts and all that, James 4:2-3 had some insight for me this morning.
A REALLY good problem to have
My wife and I just synopsisized 240 pages into 2.5. This is in response to an email from someone (vague on purpose) who is looking forward to reading more of my work.
It was tough to focus, though, when all I wanted from today was to memorize the words to this song so I can torment Slade on Splash Mountain.
For being so tall, you’d think I understand growing.
Thomas Kinkade has a light source as the focal point in all his paintings.
Georgia O’Keefe has suggestive desert flora and fauna in hers.
Me? I’m the guy who’s going to go crazy painting nebulae.
I try and then can’t get it to look exactly like the photo.
This is irony because the photo is only a small shadow of what a nebula would look like up close. The other thing I’m realizing is that I’m expecting to get it perfect the first time. Since art can only summon up a memory or feeling and not replace the original, I don’t think I can ever get it perfect, to be honest. But I can grow in my painting, in how and what to do.
Sticking out from under my piles of notebooks this morning was my query hook for my second novel (I’m on my third, the first being insane). I read the sentence that was supposed to get my book another look and had to laugh. It was so cheezy.
It was also encouraging because, on Monday, I read one of my queries for the current book to some junior high and high school students. One kid was honest enough to give it the stink-eye. Monday I came home and typed furiously. I shared the new, completely different query with another teen. Their reaction? “Wow.” I had to clarify if it was “Wow, cool” or “Wow, get away from me”. It was the former.
You could say that I grew as a writer. I know it’s also cheezy to cite Captain America, yet the choice to give the serum to the scrawny guy has stuck with me. Steve Rogers appreciates the growth. I feel like getting a book published has been tough because, well, it’s tough to get a book published, but also I feel like if I do actually end up having a book on the shelf, I will appreciate it more after the journey.
Yes, feel free to snark and mockingly sing Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” or whatever song it was in Anastasia.
Hope you had a fun 4th
We’re having fun. The high was 80 degrees today. Not that I noticed, though. I spent most of the day writing inside. I’m almost done with my short story about a librarian who fights off marauders using Henry V and the battle of Agincourt. This is what happens when you hang out with Mike for a whole weekend.
A character from my book.
I started drawing with my youngest tonight and illustrated my favorite character (who’s only in the book for five pages, max.) My youngest drew her own character.
Batman’s new villain
The Bard delivers all his ultimatums in iambic pentameter.
224 Pages
The second round of edits are done. Now I send the manuscript off to others to see if it makes sense to normal-ish people and not just crazed beardos.
I think I may have become a writer.
Relevant Roosevelt
Doin’ research for the last section of my book (the end is near!) and I came across this interesting chunk from a Roosevelt speech:
…and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the republican, the democratic, and the socialist parties that they cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind – they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
I’m glad that 100 years later we have learned to remove bitter and untruthful assaults from our politics…
The Results of Pop Quiz 14
I think NASA chickened out.
They had a big announcement planned, but then in a moment’s hesitation said that they found a creature that uses arsenic instead of potassium in its DNA structure. Keith Richards has been doing that for years, so I don’t see what the big deal is.
What did bloggh readers hope would be announced? Two-thirds of you predicted that NASA would say “it’s been secretly dating the NSA but can no longer hide its true love. It’s a grown agency and can make its own decisions.”
You guys are weird.
There’s a great article up from Donald Miller called The Great Stumbling Block of the Creative Mind. I can relate to self-editing based on what other people will think. I constantly have to fight against the “this won’t sell” voice and write the story that I would enjoy reading. When I booktalk, I recommend books that I enjoyed. Many times that lines up with what students like. The same should apply to my Gatling gun horse.
It’s like the difference between this bloggh and my professional one (the creativity block…not the Gatling gun). Here, I don’t care what you think (for the most part…sometimes it creeps in). I’ll put up a picture of a Japanese folk dancing robot:
label it sugoi, and smile. With my professional site and Twitter, I’m constantly evaluating what I post. Part of that is out of respect for where I work and that a big segment of readers are in junior high, but I am obsessive in checking author responses.
So, thanks for reading the bloggh and if you find it saikou or psycho, whatever. I’m havin’ fun.
Pac-Man’s scary backstory
I’m looking into some of the scary history of the early 20th century for my book and putting a sci-fi spin on it. It’s similar to this:
As if the bloggh wasn’t weird, today you’ll help make it weirder.
Today some of you will be in your houses handing out candy, some will be in your houses protesting that you have to hand out candy, and some will go out in search of candy even though you’ve used the same ghost/sheet costume for two decades.
There’s one thing that I know all my readers can rally around: esoteric narrative with postmodern themes and motifs.
Today we’ll be crafting a story together. I’ll give you the starter and you put aside any pretenses that there’s quality assurance in content and just post the next part of the story in the comments.
The community effort will be like Wikipedia, except without all the jerks who say my edits are “dubious”. Facebook readers, you can respond to the note.
Here’s the start…
……
There was a group of friends who hung out in the driveway. They were surprised by the first trick-or-treater.
We choose the asteroid.
The moon
Beacon for lovers. Setting for weird Georges Melies films. Reminder of Chairface Chippendale’s far-reaching criminal influence.
In 1962, JFK said that we choose the moon (remember the cool site his library set up?):
George W. Bush had said that he wanted NASA to focus on getting us back to the moon. While a lunar base would be cool, especially as a construction yard (although would we want more space junk?), it’s a place we’ve already been.
Obama spent Columbus Day signing his space vision into law. We’re going to have a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in 2030. Those dates don’t feel like they have the same sense of urgency as the Space Race. We’re not afraid of a Sputnik fleet brainwashing our teenage girls, only to be saved by rock and roll, anytime soon.
What works is providing a challenge for NASA. Now they have to hit a moving target.
What? You say the moon orbits around the Earth, which in turn orbits around the sun? Don’t tell the Internet commenters that. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that trolls hate science.
“Don’t burden me with your Kepler ellipticals, boy!”
The real benefit of the program is that there are some vocal experts on landing on asteroids. Steve Buscemi is already putting together his Aerosmith mix tape in anticipation of being selected. The asteroid program is said to rely heavily on commercial help. Richard Branson is wringing his hands in Burnsian delight.
Which one’s the crazy one?
If you want to fund the program, sell advertising space on the module. Send the GEICO gecko up. Better yet, to gather the most news time, put Kim Kardashian up there with The Situation, Nancy Pelosi, and Glenn Beck.
The only danger would be if they could work out their differences, populating an asteroid with their own twisted culture. Then we would definitely need the nuclear option.
The big question is what will happen when the next administration takes over. Will the next president scrap Obama’s plan like he did to Bush’s Constellation project?
The funny thing is that I’m so immersed in my alternate history right now (27,000 words!), I keep thinking Woodrow Wilson wins the next election.
And now back to my alternate history.
