I've been thinking lately about the nature of 'blog', less as an overarching froofy philosophical term and more as how I execute. Meaning I don't want to sit here and debate conceptua obscura; rather I've been thinking more about what sort of thing *my* blog is. And what I don't want it to be.
When I started blogging it was actually to fulfill an assignment for a Japanese class, and I had to blog a certain amount in Japanese. Coincidentally, a friend was trying to get me to start, and I didn't really figure out the whole website thing (I still don't quite get website things, to be honest), but Livejournal as a service materialized and so I made use of it. Back before it turned all social-ads-icons-groups, instead of being about blogs and writing them. Eh, to each service its own spin and persona, I guess. I miss Livejournal in its old incarnation; I liked its customization, its use of posting avatars, and its simplicity. Gotta be honest Blogger, I'm just not as happy with the look and flow of things here as I was there.
But the blog stuck around, and though a great deal of it was event-by-event, I delved into more and more introspection. I had my own system of avatars and I liked it; though I never came out and explained anything, I used my 'free three' to full effect. I had 'normal', 'serious', and 'whimsical'-- it was like a 'primitive' form of tagging, but I loved it for its visual element. Tags these days, though useful, just don't seem to capture it for me like my little carefully cropped icons did.
So now I'm over at Blogger and it's alright. I don't know, I always feel so cramped here. Perhaps it's the layouts, or something. I ain't gonna lie, there is a part of me that might start looking to switch blog services again. See if I can't dig up something more like Livejournal used to be.
Because, after analyzing a few *other* blogs, I'm increasingly wondering what the hell 'blogging' really means as a generally defined concept. People talk about avoiding 'walls of text', they splice in the strangest of pictures only vaguely connecting to the subject matter, and link like crazy. Me? I just want someplace to talk my thoughts out. And as Faithful Readers know, sometimes it takes walls, floors, and ceilings of text to exhaust them. My thoughts are not easily wearied and worn out, though they do weary and wear on me often.
I am a curious writer, in that I am an enormously *visual* writer. I'm not talking necessarily about stuffing the sentences full of fancy imagery. I'm talking about how I have a deep deep interest in the look of a sentence and how the words are falling into place apart from the semantics. Yes yes, semantics are important, no arguments there! And I'm not talking about producing the most flowery and meandering writing, either. No, there is something in the look, the line and form of words that stitches them together. Part of it comes from my vivid synethesia-based colored letters and words, but there is a huge phonological element that I think few people realize means a lot to me when writing. I make no secret of being aurealogically challenged, but in the interweaving of the visual look of words and how they sound out, it is the closest I come to composing musically.
And so, as I ponder blogs and why I have always endured a certain amount of discomfort here at Blogger, I think there is something about the way a blog 'feels' when it is looked at. Yes, I am crossing senses again, why ever not with my track record?
I speak of the 'feel' of things so very often. I never thought I was much of a tactile person but I spend so much time analyzing and attuning to the tactile 'feel' of what I interact with in life. My keyboard, for example. I have typed on many many keyboards, and I have purchased one--not some fancy ergonomic one, not a special gamer one, nothing like that-- but rather the simple flat and brushed metal apple keyboard. I love the tactile feel of typing with it. I can't explain it. But to write on other keyboards gives me the same cramped, 'this-feels-off' feeling that Blogger does when I blog. And as a regular ol' human being, I will of course not want to do things that I don't enjoy the tactile feel of nearly as often as the things I do. Hence, perhaps, the relative lack of posting here at Stage 2 in relation to Stage 1.
Though I have made a big deal about the audience not mattering, with Stage II there is this definite feel of having ended up in some dark, forgotten corner of the internet. Perhaps many a person is reading, but whether or not that is the case there is something about the way Blogger feels to me that makes me feel more alone. Like I am in a dark alley somewhere, when my other blog, though also often dark in color, felt more like a storefront on a more well-traveled road. Perhaps that was because I was networked in with several classmates and friends who also had Livejournals, and so we all could read each others' words and post back and forth. That really doesn't happen here. Then again, I have lost most if not all my friends that I know who blog for one life reason or another, and of course classmates move on. Still, perhaps some of that was part of the nostalgia. I mean, any writer who's practiced at it has a far more acute sense of who the audience is than perhaps even they might want to admit. I may have said I blogged at Stage I for everyone and no one, but I know the truth deep down. I was blogging to the people I knew were reading it in some measure. It was like facebook, but the 'status updates' had no character count limit.
So perhaps Stage II in some measure has been good for me, because I have done a lot more blogging to a 'faceless' audience. I don't know who's paying attention or not, if anyone. So the writing I think is getting a little more honest. BUT-- well, without an audience, a writer feels increasingly lost, increasingly hopeless. Though I say I don't want to be a slave of The Audience, deep down, every writer seeks validation and approval through their readers. Even those that write to shock and dismay, in that is their validation. But take away the readers themselves, and trap the writer in a hell wherein their words full of meaning ne'er fall upon ears or into eyes of an audience, and the futility of it all will crush them.
What I'm saying is I can perhaps only speak to perceived emptiness for so long before wandering off to find something else to do with my time.
Silly Faithful Readers! I am not DEMANDING you to be more vocal. Just further extrapolating on the situation concerning likely why I haven't been posting much if at all. After all, readers can be double-edged, can they not? They got OPINIONS, and often they want to share them. And hey, this is my blog, with MY opinions! Right?!
That is another aspect of the blog I wrestle with. Being so much of me, it's going to be completely steeped and soaked in bias. I'm a dumb person thinking I'm a smart person by feigning ignorance and humility-- the human condition, essentially-- and that is not the most compelling of advertisements for what the rest of the world should be reading. Any blogger thinking they can present unbiased information is deluded, or else lying to its readers; any blogger that by the same token embraces their bias to the exclusion of the search for truth is just narcissistic and totally self-absorbed. But everything is tinged and tainted. It's just a question of what that stain will be-- and now we are back to the performer and the audience.
Because that is what a blog really seems to be. This is a form of theatre, with we the writers dancing before an audience and presenting all manner of plays. Some of us want more audience interaction than others, and some of us prefer to be left alone to create *art*. I think, in great measure, blogging is a form of creative expression for me, an art project if you will. I have used the metaphor of sketching in words before, it's definitely true. Some of my ideas are better explored than others; some are just rants; some are bragging lists of accomplishments. Whatever it is though, it is all built upon this silly and precarious premise that my life and thoughts and words are *important*, important enough for others to take time out of their precious short lives to read through it all. Which is really very silly, when it comes down to it. Yes, here I am, the writer telling the reader they are foolish for reading. Well, not necessarily for reading, but perhaps questioning your subject matter-- the writer herself. Who NOW is more foolish, the audience or the writer who just got rid of her audience? ...Wait.
And yet, the writer cannot stop writing. Even in a cramped space such as this. Or perhaps in a project ultimately meant for publication, or what. But yeah, I still write. And maybe I'll be looking for a place to write with a better 'feel' to it. But I don't think I'm quite done blogging by any means.
Current Tea: Pomegranate Hibiscus
Current Music: Seven Curses by Solas
Current Project: Getting some more writing in Planned Story done. Did you know I'm 370-some pages in, working on the final arc of the second book, and still limping along? LIMPING, mind you, but still writing.
In Like A Rant
Hai all! Long time no type.
This blog was founded mostly for my own writing practice, and I will admit it feeds off my grand delusion that sharing my life in a social media format is somehow interesting to those aside from me. Sometimes this delusion is fed through rants, because who DOESN'T like reading about people complaining? Seriously, there is some sort of sick perversion going on, and I'm as guilty as the next person of it.
Anyway. This rant is mostly a World of Warcraft-y type one, to answer all the whining about this. If the article makes no sense to you, I doubt the following rant will either. In this particular case, I am not asking that all my readers understand the topic. I'm more using the blog purely to blow off steam and perhaps exercise some furious but logic-driven argument construction. But with having not written in nearly four months, I doubt anyone will notice it's here anyway.
***
To those upset with the proposed Call To Arms addition to the LFG Dungeon Finder by Blizzard, I humbly put forth some thoughts for your consideration.
First off, the Random Dungeon Finder is an ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY service Blizzard is providing. No one is forcing you to use it to get your daily in. You are completely free to advertise in trade/LFG channels, find guildies, and in general go about it ‘the old fashioned’ way. “But that takes worrrrrrrrrrrk.” Yes, it does take some effort to do it without waiting an hour in queue. You don’t have to play this game if you don’t enjoy it.
Second, Blizzard is answering the overwhelming wave of DPS QQ as to their insanely long queue times. They are trying to make it BETTER for those that have already decided they prefer to play the game without taking on the ‘extra responsibility’ roles of Healer or Tank. The core problem is that there are few people that want to tank or heal. You would THINK an instant queue would be incentive enough to get people to tank. Why are they not flocking to the tanking role in droves, then? Why do people remain DPS despite the long queue? Sometimes it is purely for love of class. But in many cases, it is because these people, if they try tanking, do not want to put up with the critical and selfish attitudes of DPS. Also, perhaps because it is more fun being a critical and selfish DPS than to be a tank or a healer.
The cataclysm class and dungeon designs have made it more difficult for a tank and a healer to ‘carry’ poor dps. However, it is still common practice to blame the healer and/or tank for wipes. Everyone has a responsibility, and Blizzard has been working on adding to DPS responsibility in this xpac. This is of course going to be an unpleasant experience for the DPS who have coasted along with little responsibility in the previous xpac’s dungeons. They will continue to blame the healer/tank for wipes, whether it was truly their fault or not. This xpac, and what Blizzard has been doing, has been unabashedly engaging in the process of ‘raising’ DPS out of this coasting mindset. It is unpleasant, and there has been/will be much QQing. ‘Oh, this is a GAME, it’s supposed to be FUN, I don’t want to do anything that’s not FUN’. Yes, it is a game. And yes, for the most part, it is designed to deliver enjoyment to its players. But, like participating in sports, you have a role with responsibilities. Blizzard has chosen to try and equalize the weight of those responsibilities. If you don’t like it, by all means go find some other game. That is fewer DPS in the queue… which, coincidentally, ALSO contributes to solving the core problem!
Next, there are cases of people never having played the tank role for one reason or another—they’ve only played one class, they’re new, or perhaps they are too nervous to try and learn to tank in the presence of complete and utterly critical strangers. The Dungeon Finder, contrary to our whiny sense of entitlement, never promises us good players in the randomizer. Nor does it promise masters of any of the roles. People cannot learn new things if they do not try, fail, make mistakes, and try again. To walk into a dungeon experience and not give a learning tank, healer, OR dps the benefit of the doubt and the patience through their honest mistakes not only does a disservice to them, it does not promote growth as players. So you have to put up with a wipe for a tank who fumbled his aggro management, or for a healer who missed a GCD and let the tank die. Which is going to contribute to that tank/healer getting better: ‘Do you know what you did wrong? What can we do better? Don’t worry, just try not to do it again’… or ‘WTF FAIL TANK’. And, as we have covered earlier, we need more tanks and healers. Getting them trained past the learning stages is critical.
Which leads me to the Incentives. Blizzard is trying to make it more worth our while to attempt the tanking (and to some degree the healing) roles. They are trying to outweigh the anxiety that comes from learning something new and putting up with the unknown of possibly unpleasant people in the group. Blizzard is trying to RAISE new tanks and healers by giving people more a reason to expose themselves to those classes—because unless people learn and get good at tanking/healing, they will not want to do it. Even if they try it and don’t particularly like it, it gives them a better understanding and empathy for a role they may have previously derided. In the post, Blizzard comes right out and says it: “Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little. While this system gives tanks and healers something extra, the incentive is being provided so that we can help players in the DPS role get into more dungeons, get better gear, and continue progressing.”. Blizzard is FULLY AWARE they are bribing their players, but look at their MOTIVES—to help out the player base as a whole. They are bribing one set of players so the other set can get what they have been wanting and QQing about not having. DPS, take the offered help and quit yer whining.
“But this means that people who have always tanked and enjoyed instaqueues get MORE stuff,” the QQing continues. “That’s not fair! And tanks have a self-righteous attitude anyway! Why reward that??” Keep in mind, you have to FINISH THE DUNGEON to get your reward. Yeah, tanks can drop and start again. But there is now MORE incentive for a tank to stay with the group! Also, EVERY ROLE in this game suffers from arrogant, self-righteous players. Tanks seem more obvious since they often need to direct the group due to their pulling responsibilities. But not every self-confident tank is being bossy just to irritate everyone. Being bossy is often the only way to get those not used to mutual dungeon responsibility to pull their weight. Even more so when people are tunnel-visioned and hell-bent on working as little as possible at their role, masking their laziness with the mantra ‘but I just want to play what’s most fun to me’. If what is most fun to you is pulling aggro over the tank and then dying because the healer has gone OOM trying to keep you up through it, there is going to be a problem. It is not your role to top the meters. It is your role to MANAGE YOUR AGGRO. If you don’t like this responsibility, then go find a different game to play.
Let’s not point any martyr fingers either. DPS think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for waiting in their queues SO LONG. Tanks think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for putting up with everyone’s nub mistakes. Healers think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for healing through the nub mistakes. We all think we have it the worst, that no other role could POSSIBLY understand how hard we have it, and what we have to put up with. I’m seeing a pattern among us all—we all think we’ve got it worst.
I am not saying ‘excuse every tank for their behavior’. But let’s take the planks out of our own eyes before going after the specks in others’. Every single one of us knows the pain of having to put up with an arrogant or oblivious idiot in our random dungeon group. Tank, Healer, DPS—it makes no difference. We as humans by nature are inherently selfish people. Entering into the task of completing a dungeon with 4 other strangers is going to set 5 peoples’ selfishnesses against each other. This is not an issue of ‘OMG Blizzard is giving tanks SO MUCH INCENTIVE it’s not FAIR’. This is an issue of Blizzard trying to help its players out and grow them in understanding, patience, and empathy. Heaven forbid a game might teach us something as wild as ‘maturity’.
Ultimately: No one is FORCING anyone to switch roles. If you want to keep playing DPS, play DPS. No one is forcing you to use the Dungeon Finder. But shut up about Blizzard not doing anything to help you. They have, and continue to do so. No, they are not pandering to your instant gratification. They are working on your LONGTERM gratification. And anyone who is sacrificing the former while focusing on the latter on your behalf is far more trustworthy and benevolent than the former.
***
This blog was founded mostly for my own writing practice, and I will admit it feeds off my grand delusion that sharing my life in a social media format is somehow interesting to those aside from me. Sometimes this delusion is fed through rants, because who DOESN'T like reading about people complaining? Seriously, there is some sort of sick perversion going on, and I'm as guilty as the next person of it.
Anyway. This rant is mostly a World of Warcraft-y type one, to answer all the whining about this. If the article makes no sense to you, I doubt the following rant will either. In this particular case, I am not asking that all my readers understand the topic. I'm more using the blog purely to blow off steam and perhaps exercise some furious but logic-driven argument construction. But with having not written in nearly four months, I doubt anyone will notice it's here anyway
***
To those upset with the proposed Call To Arms addition to the LFG Dungeon Finder by Blizzard, I humbly put forth some thoughts for your consideration.
First off, the Random Dungeon Finder is an ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY service Blizzard is providing. No one is forcing you to use it to get your daily in. You are completely free to advertise in trade/LFG channels, find guildies, and in general go about it ‘the old fashioned’ way. “But that takes worrrrrrrrrrrk.” Yes, it does take some effort to do it without waiting an hour in queue. You don’t have to play this game if you don’t enjoy it.
Second, Blizzard is answering the overwhelming wave of DPS QQ as to their insanely long queue times. They are trying to make it BETTER for those that have already decided they prefer to play the game without taking on the ‘extra responsibility’ roles of Healer or Tank. The core problem is that there are few people that want to tank or heal. You would THINK an instant queue would be incentive enough to get people to tank. Why are they not flocking to the tanking role in droves, then? Why do people remain DPS despite the long queue? Sometimes it is purely for love of class. But in many cases, it is because these people, if they try tanking, do not want to put up with the critical and selfish attitudes of DPS. Also, perhaps because it is more fun being a critical and selfish DPS than to be a tank or a healer.
The cataclysm class and dungeon designs have made it more difficult for a tank and a healer to ‘carry’ poor dps. However, it is still common practice to blame the healer and/or tank for wipes. Everyone has a responsibility, and Blizzard has been working on adding to DPS responsibility in this xpac. This is of course going to be an unpleasant experience for the DPS who have coasted along with little responsibility in the previous xpac’s dungeons. They will continue to blame the healer/tank for wipes, whether it was truly their fault or not. This xpac, and what Blizzard has been doing, has been unabashedly engaging in the process of ‘raising’ DPS out of this coasting mindset. It is unpleasant, and there has been/will be much QQing. ‘Oh, this is a GAME, it’s supposed to be FUN, I don’t want to do anything that’s not FUN’. Yes, it is a game. And yes, for the most part, it is designed to deliver enjoyment to its players. But, like participating in sports, you have a role with responsibilities. Blizzard has chosen to try and equalize the weight of those responsibilities. If you don’t like it, by all means go find some other game. That is fewer DPS in the queue… which, coincidentally, ALSO contributes to solving the core problem!
Next, there are cases of people never having played the tank role for one reason or another—they’ve only played one class, they’re new, or perhaps they are too nervous to try and learn to tank in the presence of complete and utterly critical strangers. The Dungeon Finder, contrary to our whiny sense of entitlement, never promises us good players in the randomizer. Nor does it promise masters of any of the roles. People cannot learn new things if they do not try, fail, make mistakes, and try again. To walk into a dungeon experience and not give a learning tank, healer, OR dps the benefit of the doubt and the patience through their honest mistakes not only does a disservice to them, it does not promote growth as players. So you have to put up with a wipe for a tank who fumbled his aggro management, or for a healer who missed a GCD and let the tank die. Which is going to contribute to that tank/healer getting better: ‘Do you know what you did wrong? What can we do better? Don’t worry, just try not to do it again’… or ‘WTF FAIL TANK’. And, as we have covered earlier, we need more tanks and healers. Getting them trained past the learning stages is critical.
Which leads me to the Incentives. Blizzard is trying to make it more worth our while to attempt the tanking (and to some degree the healing) roles. They are trying to outweigh the anxiety that comes from learning something new and putting up with the unknown of possibly unpleasant people in the group. Blizzard is trying to RAISE new tanks and healers by giving people more a reason to expose themselves to those classes—because unless people learn and get good at tanking/healing, they will not want to do it. Even if they try it and don’t particularly like it, it gives them a better understanding and empathy for a role they may have previously derided. In the post, Blizzard comes right out and says it: “Understandably, players prefer to take on that responsibility in more organized situations than what the Dungeon Finder offers, but perhaps we can bribe them a little. While this system gives tanks and healers something extra, the incentive is being provided so that we can help players in the DPS role get into more dungeons, get better gear, and continue progressing.”. Blizzard is FULLY AWARE they are bribing their players, but look at their MOTIVES—to help out the player base as a whole. They are bribing one set of players so the other set can get what they have been wanting and QQing about not having. DPS, take the offered help and quit yer whining.
“But this means that people who have always tanked and enjoyed instaqueues get MORE stuff,” the QQing continues. “That’s not fair! And tanks have a self-righteous attitude anyway! Why reward that??” Keep in mind, you have to FINISH THE DUNGEON to get your reward. Yeah, tanks can drop and start again. But there is now MORE incentive for a tank to stay with the group! Also, EVERY ROLE in this game suffers from arrogant, self-righteous players. Tanks seem more obvious since they often need to direct the group due to their pulling responsibilities. But not every self-confident tank is being bossy just to irritate everyone. Being bossy is often the only way to get those not used to mutual dungeon responsibility to pull their weight. Even more so when people are tunnel-visioned and hell-bent on working as little as possible at their role, masking their laziness with the mantra ‘but I just want to play what’s most fun to me’. If what is most fun to you is pulling aggro over the tank and then dying because the healer has gone OOM trying to keep you up through it, there is going to be a problem. It is not your role to top the meters. It is your role to MANAGE YOUR AGGRO. If you don’t like this responsibility, then go find a different game to play.
Let’s not point any martyr fingers either. DPS think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for waiting in their queues SO LONG. Tanks think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for putting up with everyone’s nub mistakes. Healers think they are sacrificing SO MUCH for healing through the nub mistakes. We all think we have it the worst, that no other role could POSSIBLY understand how hard we have it, and what we have to put up with. I’m seeing a pattern among us all—we all think we’ve got it worst.
I am not saying ‘excuse every tank for their behavior’. But let’s take the planks out of our own eyes before going after the specks in others’. Every single one of us knows the pain of having to put up with an arrogant or oblivious idiot in our random dungeon group. Tank, Healer, DPS—it makes no difference. We as humans by nature are inherently selfish people. Entering into the task of completing a dungeon with 4 other strangers is going to set 5 peoples’ selfishnesses against each other. This is not an issue of ‘OMG Blizzard is giving tanks SO MUCH INCENTIVE it’s not FAIR’. This is an issue of Blizzard trying to help its players out and grow them in understanding, patience, and empathy. Heaven forbid a game might teach us something as wild as ‘maturity’.
Ultimately: No one is FORCING anyone to switch roles. If you want to keep playing DPS, play DPS. No one is forcing you to use the Dungeon Finder. But shut up about Blizzard not doing anything to help you. They have, and continue to do so. No, they are not pandering to your instant gratification. They are working on your LONGTERM gratification. And anyone who is sacrificing the former while focusing on the latter on your behalf is far more trustworthy and benevolent than the former.
***
Rolling Ball
So just because I was curious, I took a look at my word count for November, just to see how I stack up in the NaNoWriMo 'competition'. I really got very little done in November, 1.5 chapters all told. The start of the month I was still reeling with a decisive 'I don't know if this is worth continuing with' mindset. You know, lots of depression and futility and all that. I did finally get the writing started again; though the holidays always put an awful wrench in my writing plans, this week has been kind of amazing. I've written eleven pages so far over these past three days, and I'm hopefully not done for the day.
But anyway! Word count. 1.5 chapters is about 15,000 words for me, which obviously averages to about 10k words per chapter. Which ALSO means every 5 chapters I write is considered a novel by NaNoWriMo. Which ALSO ALSO means that my first book, according to them, is very nearly 5 novels long, and my second one is over 4 and still going strong. ...I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw about this.
But in the name of countering futility, I will dwell purposefully on the fact that 15,000 words is much more than 0 words. 15,000 more. I am inching my way closer and closer to the halfway point in this huge project. Which is kind of amazing to think about, and kind of scary.
You know what's also scary? I was thinking the other night, it took me about 6 months of drafting time to write Book 1. It has taken me 18 months of drafting to not quite finish Book 2. Pardon my internet language, but WTF happened??
Worldly distractions aside, Book 2's content was exponentially harder to work through than Book 1. I remember spending weeks of frustrated time making chart after colored chart of the first major arc within Book 2, twisting and tweaking at it to make things all work in harmony. I'm all kinds of proud how it turned out, it's an epic arc spanning 2 novels worth of word counts. But I didn't handle it as well as I could have. That arc threatened to break me. I very nearly didn't make it through.
But here we are now, on what I, er, think is the final arc of Book 2, and I am thankful things are proceeding so quickly. It's very possible, that because I have been looking forward to this particular arc for so long, that a lot more is worked out and set-in-stone-ified, so I have less to worry about. Or I could have just gotten lucky and managed to put things together in a way that hasn't required a lot of tweaking yet. YET. There is much yet to be done; we are still setting up the Main Events.
The other aspect of this book that has been holding me up with much angst and frustration is that Second Main Character. My ardent goal in this story is to truly have two full main characters. I want readers to enjoy reading both sides of the plot, to relate to them both in different ways, to love and hate them both. The problem is that I am having trouble showing my love to this Second Main Character in my writing. Yes, I love him very much; I have a greater picture in my head of the path he travels and the changes that will come to him. But right now, he is a very difficult sort to write. And I fear that because I don't enjoy writing him as much, readers will not enjoy reading him as much. I *do* enjoy reading what I've written of him; I think that I often compensate my troubles with the struggles to write the emotional interaction with those around him by putting him through some of the more creative and generally fun events.
Part of my recent analysis of him (which I think I have mentioned in a recent blog entry?) has determined that I need to add scenes to Book 1 focusing on him, increasing time with him for the Reader, and spending time putting more emphasis on his positive qualities. He has them, I promise you! I have just been spending far more time putting him in situations where the more negative ones are drawn out.
So this is all well and good, but I'm a little nervous about coming into this current arc with him. This will be the first one in awhile where he and the First Main Character will find their paths directly tangling up. Though I am not enthusiastic to do it, I am gearing myself up for an emotional leap with him-- a purposeful gap between where he currently is in my development of his character and where he needs to be going into this arc. This will mean a lot of extra work adjusting everything comes previous, but... well, he can't advance in the state he's in! But I'm not sure now is the time to walk away from everything current and go back to rewrite everything he's involved in. I mean, maybe that's what I'll end up doing! But I fear breaking the current flow I have. So I think I'm going to try and take a chronological leap of faith with his character, and see how that goes.
A new holiday looms here soon, and there is much to be done to prepare for it. I know that means I'm going to lose out on writing time at some point this month. I don't know what sort of state I'm going to be in as the month proceeds. There is shopping and decorating and food preparation to see to, and there are many days without a caregiver, because they get holidays off (and we do not, but 'tis the nature of the affair). I have several days when various people have appointments, so I'm hoping I can cram shopping and such into that time and then save the rest of the days for writing. I would very much like to set myself the goal of finishing Book 2 by the end of the month, but I am afraid. Of setting goals, I mean. Because when I hold myself to a deadline, I can get exceptionally guilt-ridden if something along the way happens to derail me. So I guess this is a secret deadline. I won't tell me, and you won't tell me, and I'll try anyway.
I do try not to walk myself through the ultimate extrapolation of how my time has gone these past 2 years. Even if I am completely single-minded about my writing, it will still take all of next year before the next 2 books are done... and I'm not sure I can trust myself to finish everything that quickly. I had initially projected I would be done by January 2011 with everything; that will certainly not happen. Can I be done by January 2012? That might be a secret deadline that is just too ambitious to attempt. My ideal time flow means getting 1 chapter a week finished, which means each book takes 25ish weeks, which is... half a year. That's of course without any distractions. Because I have none in my life! I DO NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF DISTRACTION. That or sarcasm.
Anyway. I need to get back to my four pages for the day. I've taken enough of a 'break'.
Current Tea: First Abundant Berry, then Goji Berry Green Tea
Current Project: Planned Story, Book 2 Chapter 21
But anyway! Word count. 1.5 chapters is about 15,000 words for me, which obviously averages to about 10k words per chapter. Which ALSO means every 5 chapters I write is considered a novel by NaNoWriMo. Which ALSO ALSO means that my first book, according to them, is very nearly 5 novels long, and my second one is over 4 and still going strong. ...I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw about this.
But in the name of countering futility, I will dwell purposefully on the fact that 15,000 words is much more than 0 words. 15,000 more. I am inching my way closer and closer to the halfway point in this huge project. Which is kind of amazing to think about, and kind of scary.
You know what's also scary? I was thinking the other night, it took me about 6 months of drafting time to write Book 1. It has taken me 18 months of drafting to not quite finish Book 2. Pardon my internet language, but WTF happened??
Worldly distractions aside, Book 2's content was exponentially harder to work through than Book 1. I remember spending weeks of frustrated time making chart after colored chart of the first major arc within Book 2, twisting and tweaking at it to make things all work in harmony. I'm all kinds of proud how it turned out, it's an epic arc spanning 2 novels worth of word counts. But I didn't handle it as well as I could have. That arc threatened to break me. I very nearly didn't make it through.
But here we are now, on what I, er, think is the final arc of Book 2, and I am thankful things are proceeding so quickly. It's very possible, that because I have been looking forward to this particular arc for so long, that a lot more is worked out and set-in-stone-ified, so I have less to worry about. Or I could have just gotten lucky and managed to put things together in a way that hasn't required a lot of tweaking yet. YET. There is much yet to be done; we are still setting up the Main Events.
The other aspect of this book that has been holding me up with much angst and frustration is that Second Main Character. My ardent goal in this story is to truly have two full main characters. I want readers to enjoy reading both sides of the plot, to relate to them both in different ways, to love and hate them both. The problem is that I am having trouble showing my love to this Second Main Character in my writing. Yes, I love him very much; I have a greater picture in my head of the path he travels and the changes that will come to him. But right now, he is a very difficult sort to write. And I fear that because I don't enjoy writing him as much, readers will not enjoy reading him as much. I *do* enjoy reading what I've written of him; I think that I often compensate my troubles with the struggles to write the emotional interaction with those around him by putting him through some of the more creative and generally fun events.
Part of my recent analysis of him (which I think I have mentioned in a recent blog entry?) has determined that I need to add scenes to Book 1 focusing on him, increasing time with him for the Reader, and spending time putting more emphasis on his positive qualities. He has them, I promise you! I have just been spending far more time putting him in situations where the more negative ones are drawn out.
So this is all well and good, but I'm a little nervous about coming into this current arc with him. This will be the first one in awhile where he and the First Main Character will find their paths directly tangling up. Though I am not enthusiastic to do it, I am gearing myself up for an emotional leap with him-- a purposeful gap between where he currently is in my development of his character and where he needs to be going into this arc. This will mean a lot of extra work adjusting everything comes previous, but... well, he can't advance in the state he's in! But I'm not sure now is the time to walk away from everything current and go back to rewrite everything he's involved in. I mean, maybe that's what I'll end up doing! But I fear breaking the current flow I have. So I think I'm going to try and take a chronological leap of faith with his character, and see how that goes.
A new holiday looms here soon, and there is much to be done to prepare for it. I know that means I'm going to lose out on writing time at some point this month. I don't know what sort of state I'm going to be in as the month proceeds. There is shopping and decorating and food preparation to see to, and there are many days without a caregiver, because they get holidays off (and we do not, but 'tis the nature of the affair). I have several days when various people have appointments, so I'm hoping I can cram shopping and such into that time and then save the rest of the days for writing. I would very much like to set myself the goal of finishing Book 2 by the end of the month, but I am afraid. Of setting goals, I mean. Because when I hold myself to a deadline, I can get exceptionally guilt-ridden if something along the way happens to derail me. So I guess this is a secret deadline. I won't tell me, and you won't tell me, and I'll try anyway.
I do try not to walk myself through the ultimate extrapolation of how my time has gone these past 2 years. Even if I am completely single-minded about my writing, it will still take all of next year before the next 2 books are done... and I'm not sure I can trust myself to finish everything that quickly. I had initially projected I would be done by January 2011 with everything; that will certainly not happen. Can I be done by January 2012? That might be a secret deadline that is just too ambitious to attempt. My ideal time flow means getting 1 chapter a week finished, which means each book takes 25ish weeks, which is... half a year. That's of course without any distractions. Because I have none in my life! I DO NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF DISTRACTION. That or sarcasm.
Anyway. I need to get back to my four pages for the day. I've taken enough of a 'break'.
Current Tea: First Abundant Berry, then Goji Berry Green Tea
Current Project: Planned Story, Book 2 Chapter 21
This Rant Touched Me Inappropriately!
Why so many rants lately?
I've seen several articles pop up via facebook about some of the newer TSA scanning technology, and this 'groping' that persists to be mentioned. People are getting indignant and outraged and planning their civil disobedience marches and boycotting flying and all the rest. This astounds me. Have we really become that self-absorbed as to have missed the point of it all?
The source of the angst seems to be coming from two new practices in TSA procedures. The first is the newest full-body scanner technology that has the ability to show the scannee in a way that could be embarrassing. Essentially, you look like an unclothed human blob. Which could be violating and sexual harassment. Right? The second seems to be the 'groping' procedures when people are personally searched, which people liken to sexual harassment. People are quoting articles of the Constitution to argue against these. Let's... take a step back, shall we?
What happened to spawn all this? Oh that's right. Men carrying bombs blowing up planes. Weren't you all freaked-out upset about that a few years ago? And I promise you, if a plane explodes again, you will freak out again. You want safety and freedom from fear, but you don't want your personal bubble encroached upon. Guess what-- neither is guaranteed in life. GET OVER IT.
But let me reiterate. Men carrying bombs. One human being has the capacity to destroy many human beings. We have enormous capability for atrocity. What prevents us from exercising it? How do we prevent others from exercising it? For the good of the whole, a few must suffer the indignity of their gentlemen or lady parts being, oh God it's just too awful, touched while officers look for telltale signs of atrocity-commiting weapons.
Now, I don't know about you. But *I* saw The Sting. Remember what Robert Redford's character says in the beginning? About where to hide money? 'Stick it down your pants. Ain't a tough guy in the world that'll frisk ya there.'
Hmmmmm. People wouldn't possibly try to hide a bomb in one of these 'sensitive' areas! Oh no no no they would never do that!!
People, please.
The more we raise a stink about it too, the more terrorist-type folk are going to zone in on those areas as ways to break the system. In the name of personal freedom, we are putting people in danger because of the sanctity of our penises and boobs. If we, by the sheer force of our whining stop these procedures and scanners, guess where people of ill intent are going to be hiding their goods? Go on, guess.
There is a reason airport security has evolved in the direction it has. TSA is conducting war on terrorism, and we as normal non-combat citizens don't understand that in a warzone, things like not touching someone in a search to find explosives because they feel 'harassed' will contribute only to a losing strategy. The enemy must be matched and overcome, and we are only crippling ourselves with this stupid 'don't touch my junk or even look at it in a scanner' mentality.
Here's another question: when you go to a hospital when you are sick, do you refuse treatment if it involves any sort of groping? I would like to know which hospital you are going to then! In the name of preserving your health, you will need to give up a lot of personal freedom. I don't hear you whimpering about that! Oh, right-- because this is you we're talking about. Not everyone else on a plane or in an airport whose safety is the ultimate goal, who cares about them. What's important is that *I'm* not touched!
Have we really lost sight of the reason why this is all happening? Has our blind suspicion of 'The Government' twisted us so much we can't see the fact that all of this is in place because people are trying their best to figure out how to protect us? Your penis is not more important than hundreds and thousands of people. Sorry. I'ma tell it like it is.
I haven't even touched (not an altogether intended pun) upon the fact that, for all this new-fangled scanning technology and the groping techniques, I have yet to hear of a blatant case of abuse by a TSA officer. See, when these guys start jerking off to the scanner images in plain view, or attempting rape of those being groped, then we have just cause to worry. When people were civilly disobedient in the 60s in the name of civil rights, they did not do so because they were extrapolating the distant possibility that some white man might not let a black man sit in a restaurant. Civil disobedience happened because the abuse was well in place and considered the norm. This sexual abuse stuff is nothing of the sort, it is people whining about their personal bubbles.
And. As if all this weren't enough! I challenge anyone upset and indignant about this to take a life drawing class. I speak from art school experience-- the act of drawing a nude figure is about as unsexual as you can imagine. First off, you're not thinking about sexual stuffs, you're thinking about the mechanics of the drawing. Second, and get ready for a shocker, most people just don't turn you on. Most of us don't look like [insert top model/actress/dreamy male lead here]. Crazy, but true.
So! Imagine you are a TSA officer on scanner duty. Your job is to stare at that little screen as people come through the scanner, the nekkid blobs that they are. Are you thinking about how hot every chick is and how you'd like to bang them? Or are you thinking something more along the lines of 'there's a blue blob in their pocket looks like a nail clipper oh something on their foot must be some kind of shoe fob and ah they forgot to take their earrings out that's going to set the machine off and I see no bombs on this person NEXT'. Accusing scanner-watchers of sexual harassment is like condemning radiologists looking for breast cancer.
Okay, next exercise! Imagine you are the TSA officer on 'grope' duty. You're looking for suspicious lumps and packages and such among the regular lumps and packages, if you will. You've got to carefully inform the person what you're doing, and conduct yourself in a respectable manner while all the time remembering there are dozens of people watching you. Who is realistically going to be able to focus on a good sexual-harassing grope when there's everything else going on? Or the fact that you are hired to protect people, but that is entirely beside the point, right? CLEARLY these people think of nothing but how to harass people day and night.
So, how do we deal with this? By boycotting flying? By all means, go for it. The less of you selfish loonies on my plane, the better. By causing a scene, holding up the line and getting every supervisor in the place involved? Nice one, you realize you're not only taking others' time but providing a great sort of distraction for any who might want to sneak in with dangerous items. By posting to facebook about the indignancies you suffered? That will garner a few comments and no further action, hooray! By complaining about how inconvenienced you were to everyone you meet? I call emotional harassment on that. I have the right to not be emotionally groped by your selfish skewed perspective!
A final word. When we buy plane tickets and don't read the fine print, we have no excuse to open our mouth against anything TSA subjects us to. We are purchasing a privilege to fly, not a right to do it how we want. Do as you like with this information, but don't come sniveling to me about how your 'rights' were violated when we've got crazies out there looking to kill planes and buildings full of people in this country. I promise you, the right to keep yourself untouched is slightly less important than endeavoring to keep as many people alive and unharmed as possible.
I've seen several articles pop up via facebook about some of the newer TSA scanning technology, and this 'groping' that persists to be mentioned. People are getting indignant and outraged and planning their civil disobedience marches and boycotting flying and all the rest. This astounds me. Have we really become that self-absorbed as to have missed the point of it all?
The source of the angst seems to be coming from two new practices in TSA procedures. The first is the newest full-body scanner technology that has the ability to show the scannee in a way that could be embarrassing. Essentially, you look like an unclothed human blob. Which could be violating and sexual harassment. Right? The second seems to be the 'groping' procedures when people are personally searched, which people liken to sexual harassment. People are quoting articles of the Constitution to argue against these. Let's... take a step back, shall we?
What happened to spawn all this? Oh that's right. Men carrying bombs blowing up planes. Weren't you all freaked-out upset about that a few years ago? And I promise you, if a plane explodes again, you will freak out again. You want safety and freedom from fear, but you don't want your personal bubble encroached upon. Guess what-- neither is guaranteed in life. GET OVER IT.
But let me reiterate. Men carrying bombs. One human being has the capacity to destroy many human beings. We have enormous capability for atrocity. What prevents us from exercising it? How do we prevent others from exercising it? For the good of the whole, a few must suffer the indignity of their gentlemen or lady parts being, oh God it's just too awful, touched while officers look for telltale signs of atrocity-commiting weapons.
Now, I don't know about you. But *I* saw The Sting. Remember what Robert Redford's character says in the beginning? About where to hide money? 'Stick it down your pants. Ain't a tough guy in the world that'll frisk ya there.'
Hmmmmm. People wouldn't possibly try to hide a bomb in one of these 'sensitive' areas! Oh no no no they would never do that!!
People, please.
The more we raise a stink about it too, the more terrorist-type folk are going to zone in on those areas as ways to break the system. In the name of personal freedom, we are putting people in danger because of the sanctity of our penises and boobs. If we, by the sheer force of our whining stop these procedures and scanners, guess where people of ill intent are going to be hiding their goods? Go on, guess.
There is a reason airport security has evolved in the direction it has. TSA is conducting war on terrorism, and we as normal non-combat citizens don't understand that in a warzone, things like not touching someone in a search to find explosives because they feel 'harassed' will contribute only to a losing strategy. The enemy must be matched and overcome, and we are only crippling ourselves with this stupid 'don't touch my junk or even look at it in a scanner' mentality.
Here's another question: when you go to a hospital when you are sick, do you refuse treatment if it involves any sort of groping? I would like to know which hospital you are going to then! In the name of preserving your health, you will need to give up a lot of personal freedom. I don't hear you whimpering about that! Oh, right-- because this is you we're talking about. Not everyone else on a plane or in an airport whose safety is the ultimate goal, who cares about them. What's important is that *I'm* not touched!
Have we really lost sight of the reason why this is all happening? Has our blind suspicion of 'The Government' twisted us so much we can't see the fact that all of this is in place because people are trying their best to figure out how to protect us? Your penis is not more important than hundreds and thousands of people. Sorry. I'ma tell it like it is.
I haven't even touched (not an altogether intended pun) upon the fact that, for all this new-fangled scanning technology and the groping techniques, I have yet to hear of a blatant case of abuse by a TSA officer. See, when these guys start jerking off to the scanner images in plain view, or attempting rape of those being groped, then we have just cause to worry. When people were civilly disobedient in the 60s in the name of civil rights, they did not do so because they were extrapolating the distant possibility that some white man might not let a black man sit in a restaurant. Civil disobedience happened because the abuse was well in place and considered the norm. This sexual abuse stuff is nothing of the sort, it is people whining about their personal bubbles.
And. As if all this weren't enough! I challenge anyone upset and indignant about this to take a life drawing class. I speak from art school experience-- the act of drawing a nude figure is about as unsexual as you can imagine. First off, you're not thinking about sexual stuffs, you're thinking about the mechanics of the drawing. Second, and get ready for a shocker, most people just don't turn you on. Most of us don't look like [insert top model/actress/dreamy male lead here]. Crazy, but true.
So! Imagine you are a TSA officer on scanner duty. Your job is to stare at that little screen as people come through the scanner, the nekkid blobs that they are. Are you thinking about how hot every chick is and how you'd like to bang them? Or are you thinking something more along the lines of 'there's a blue blob in their pocket looks like a nail clipper oh something on their foot must be some kind of shoe fob and ah they forgot to take their earrings out that's going to set the machine off and I see no bombs on this person NEXT'. Accusing scanner-watchers of sexual harassment is like condemning radiologists looking for breast cancer.
Okay, next exercise! Imagine you are the TSA officer on 'grope' duty. You're looking for suspicious lumps and packages and such among the regular lumps and packages, if you will. You've got to carefully inform the person what you're doing, and conduct yourself in a respectable manner while all the time remembering there are dozens of people watching you. Who is realistically going to be able to focus on a good sexual-harassing grope when there's everything else going on? Or the fact that you are hired to protect people, but that is entirely beside the point, right? CLEARLY these people think of nothing but how to harass people day and night.
So, how do we deal with this? By boycotting flying? By all means, go for it. The less of you selfish loonies on my plane, the better. By causing a scene, holding up the line and getting every supervisor in the place involved? Nice one, you realize you're not only taking others' time but providing a great sort of distraction for any who might want to sneak in with dangerous items. By posting to facebook about the indignancies you suffered? That will garner a few comments and no further action, hooray! By complaining about how inconvenienced you were to everyone you meet? I call emotional harassment on that. I have the right to not be emotionally groped by your selfish skewed perspective!
A final word. When we buy plane tickets and don't read the fine print, we have no excuse to open our mouth against anything TSA subjects us to. We are purchasing a privilege to fly, not a right to do it how we want. Do as you like with this information, but don't come sniveling to me about how your 'rights' were violated when we've got crazies out there looking to kill planes and buildings full of people in this country. I promise you, the right to keep yourself untouched is slightly less important than endeavoring to keep as many people alive and unharmed as possible.
Cyborg Metaphor
I promised myself this morning that when I got here to the library I would focus with relentless and single-minded purpose upon writing my book, and not get sidetracked by things like updating blogs. I have a meeting in the middle of the day you see, and so it was a fair amount of effort to get me to agree to head to the library before AND after the meeting to attempt to write. It's that whole perverse fascination I have with futility. Why bother going to the library in two small chunks of time? Nothing will get done unless I have a very LARGE chunk of time.
Which of course isn't true, but sometimes I have to choke on that a bit before I acquiesce to a broken up work schedule. Anyway, fighting through several home distractions I hauled myself to the library, where I have an hour and a half before the meeting. I purposefully left my sketchbook at home, as well as the book I'm reading so as to keep myself focused. (All evidence to the contrary I really do love writing, I just am so easily distracted). And guess what else got left at home, not at all purposefully? The flash drive containing all my writing.
...
I have some of my writing. I back up routinely of course, so Ol' Man Compy has a copy in him, but it's an older-type copy. I'm missing especially the most recent chapter and a half I've been working on these past two weeks, where I wanted to pick up and continue today. So I have a few options, I guess. Rely on my memory and pick up where I left off yesterday to the best of my ability, or perhaps focus on another segment of the writing. Or brainstorm, at least I have my notes and colored pens.
But anyone that knows me decently well knows of my Emotional Inertia, and how when I have decided to focus on something or some emotion, it's extremely hard for me to switch to other focuses with much speed. If I have my heart set on doing something, I get particularly upset when I can't do it. My emotions and interests often seem to flit about like feathers tossed in wind, near-weightless and capricious in their paths... but when they land, they do so like lead weights. Heavy, nearly impossible to dislodge, and poisonous with prolonged exposure.
So my heart and emotions were set on this most recent scene in Chapter 20. I was ready and primed to write it. Now I am missing all of Chapter 20, and I am annoyed, and can't seem to shake my focus on it. And yet, I don't have all the tools I need to perhaps do the job. Futility mutters about how there's little point in trying to remember what's not here and write it anyway; Reason points out that I have a good memory and it's really not all that hard to stitch in part of a scene that is written separate from the whole. Reason also reminds me how I have lots of other things I could be focusing on in my writing, and that despite missing the precious flash drive with the most recent work I have quite a bit of my writing. More than enough to get something done.
Faithful Readers recall my love of Battle Angel Alita (Random Aside: I had recalled hearing about how James Cameron had the rights to a live-action movie, but it seems according to the wikipedia article that perhaps we are creeping closer to the realization of that. ...I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that! I suppose if anyone is capable of handling the story decently it would be him, and based on his decisions he seems to have taken the project on not for the money it will make but rather because he is a fan of the work himself. It becomes a question of how much 'adaption' takes place at this point.). Particularly in the fifth manga volume, during combat engagement Alita loses multiple cyborg limbs over the course of a single fight. The writing drew a fascinating observation from this, and subsequent fights throughout the story: practitioners of cyborg combat learn to fight beyond the loss of a limb or more. Cyborgs have a unique advantage over flesh and blood: that they can shut down the pain nerve impulses, and block out what would send a body into shock otherwise. Losing an arm doesn't mean the end of the fight, it just means the nature of fighting has changed, and this curious cyborg combat metaphor has stuck with me through the years. Probably because I am so bad at implementing its ultimate lesson: we lose things we are counting on in the struggle of life. Adapt, and keep fighting.
This of course is completely at odds with my Emotional Inertia. I am not a cyborg, I am a regular, fragile, soft and bloody human being. I get stuck on things. When my emotional 'limbs' are ripped from me, I seethe and rant, or else I sink into depression, or else I smolder in disgruntlement. I don't nod, accept the damage, and keep fighting. I sort of stew about it for awhile and hope the limb gets reattached before attempting further combat. I don't do well in this carefully constructed metaphor. I would lose a fight with a cyborg fairly quickly.
So this situation is yet another 'opportunity' to practice the art of cyborg combat. I've lost a limb I was depending on, my flash drive. What do I do? Plop down in the middle of the battlefield and wait for the medic? Wander away to find a mechanic that will reattach it, but will put me out of action for a day? Whine about it? Or keep fighting, because I have other limbs still? It is an inconvenience and a disadvantage, but is the fight really over? The nature of a fight is struggle; the opponent is not going to be nice and keep from cutting limbs of if I ask sweetly. The hardest thing of all is to take this unexpected state of affairs, adapt, and keep trying. At least, to me and my Emotional Inertia, it is the hardest.
Of course, I did sort of chip away at the lead weights by blogging a bit about it. I suppose in the metaphor we have constructed here, that would be like a brief retreat to seek more advantageous terrain. I do intend to try and write anyway. I just need to get past the fact that things aren't going exactly how I planned and that's a fairly common occurrence when cyborg fighting happens.
Current Tea: Strawberry Green
Current Project: Fighting on with fewer limbs
Which of course isn't true, but sometimes I have to choke on that a bit before I acquiesce to a broken up work schedule. Anyway, fighting through several home distractions I hauled myself to the library, where I have an hour and a half before the meeting. I purposefully left my sketchbook at home, as well as the book I'm reading so as to keep myself focused. (All evidence to the contrary I really do love writing, I just am so easily distracted). And guess what else got left at home, not at all purposefully? The flash drive containing all my writing.
...
I have some of my writing. I back up routinely of course, so Ol' Man Compy has a copy in him, but it's an older-type copy. I'm missing especially the most recent chapter and a half I've been working on these past two weeks, where I wanted to pick up and continue today. So I have a few options, I guess. Rely on my memory and pick up where I left off yesterday to the best of my ability, or perhaps focus on another segment of the writing. Or brainstorm, at least I have my notes and colored pens.
But anyone that knows me decently well knows of my Emotional Inertia, and how when I have decided to focus on something or some emotion, it's extremely hard for me to switch to other focuses with much speed. If I have my heart set on doing something, I get particularly upset when I can't do it. My emotions and interests often seem to flit about like feathers tossed in wind, near-weightless and capricious in their paths... but when they land, they do so like lead weights. Heavy, nearly impossible to dislodge, and poisonous with prolonged exposure.
So my heart and emotions were set on this most recent scene in Chapter 20. I was ready and primed to write it. Now I am missing all of Chapter 20, and I am annoyed, and can't seem to shake my focus on it. And yet, I don't have all the tools I need to perhaps do the job. Futility mutters about how there's little point in trying to remember what's not here and write it anyway; Reason points out that I have a good memory and it's really not all that hard to stitch in part of a scene that is written separate from the whole. Reason also reminds me how I have lots of other things I could be focusing on in my writing, and that despite missing the precious flash drive with the most recent work I have quite a bit of my writing. More than enough to get something done.
Faithful Readers recall my love of Battle Angel Alita (Random Aside: I had recalled hearing about how James Cameron had the rights to a live-action movie, but it seems according to the wikipedia article that perhaps we are creeping closer to the realization of that. ...I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that! I suppose if anyone is capable of handling the story decently it would be him, and based on his decisions he seems to have taken the project on not for the money it will make but rather because he is a fan of the work himself. It becomes a question of how much 'adaption' takes place at this point.). Particularly in the fifth manga volume, during combat engagement Alita loses multiple cyborg limbs over the course of a single fight. The writing drew a fascinating observation from this, and subsequent fights throughout the story: practitioners of cyborg combat learn to fight beyond the loss of a limb or more. Cyborgs have a unique advantage over flesh and blood: that they can shut down the pain nerve impulses, and block out what would send a body into shock otherwise. Losing an arm doesn't mean the end of the fight, it just means the nature of fighting has changed, and this curious cyborg combat metaphor has stuck with me through the years. Probably because I am so bad at implementing its ultimate lesson: we lose things we are counting on in the struggle of life. Adapt, and keep fighting.
This of course is completely at odds with my Emotional Inertia. I am not a cyborg, I am a regular, fragile, soft and bloody human being. I get stuck on things. When my emotional 'limbs' are ripped from me, I seethe and rant, or else I sink into depression, or else I smolder in disgruntlement. I don't nod, accept the damage, and keep fighting. I sort of stew about it for awhile and hope the limb gets reattached before attempting further combat. I don't do well in this carefully constructed metaphor. I would lose a fight with a cyborg fairly quickly.
So this situation is yet another 'opportunity' to practice the art of cyborg combat. I've lost a limb I was depending on, my flash drive. What do I do? Plop down in the middle of the battlefield and wait for the medic? Wander away to find a mechanic that will reattach it, but will put me out of action for a day? Whine about it? Or keep fighting, because I have other limbs still? It is an inconvenience and a disadvantage, but is the fight really over? The nature of a fight is struggle; the opponent is not going to be nice and keep from cutting limbs of if I ask sweetly. The hardest thing of all is to take this unexpected state of affairs, adapt, and keep trying. At least, to me and my Emotional Inertia, it is the hardest.
Of course, I did sort of chip away at the lead weights by blogging a bit about it. I suppose in the metaphor we have constructed here, that would be like a brief retreat to seek more advantageous terrain. I do intend to try and write anyway. I just need to get past the fact that things aren't going exactly how I planned and that's a fairly common occurrence when cyborg fighting happens.
Current Tea: Strawberry Green
Current Project: Fighting on with fewer limbs
I Vote Sandwich
I'm going to try and key this rant about voting into a more reasonable, intelligent discourse. Like political candidates though, it is altogether very likely I will not be able to deliver on my promise. Either way though, between discourse and rant, we ought to have a little fun, eh?
So Election Times are Hard Times for us in this household. Mostly because of the incessant phone calls and ringing doorbells. I have two parents that are sick and inflicted with great levels of pain every moment of the day, usually attempting to try and seize a few precious minutes of sleep. I recognize and respect the need for political campaigners to be out there making themselves known. But why is it I cannot get them to leave my tormented parents to get a little extra sleep? Come, let me beat on you with a baseball bat every five seconds for weeks on end, and *you* see how you feel when, after finally falling asleep, some automated computerized phone call jars you awake with its prattling on about whoever is running for what office. And my dad wonders why he finds the phone off the hook so often these days. 'What if someone tries to call us?' he asks, his eyelids drooping in fatigue while he absently tries to massage his ever-present back pain away. And I nod emphatically thinking, 'Exactly'.
Automated phone calls aside, let us consider the television commercials.
The thing that strikes me overwhelmingly about political ads is that they are, well, empty. They are about presenting either a glowing picture of the candidate spending time with his family and solving the state's problems, or else showing how the opposition is sneaky and deceptive and will take your money and job and spend it all on fancy cigars and raises for themselves. The time spent in the ads speaking of what the political candidate actually intends to do is pitifully small, if it is there at all. And this year has been a particularly mud-slinging one it seems. Based on the commercials I've seen, I have determined that everyone on the ballot is a no-good sleazeball and I should therefore vote for... well now, there's no one left! Hm!
Another thing that has really bothered me is the use of buzzwords/phrases. 'Wall Market Schemes' is the big one for this election, it seems. *Raises hand* ...Yes? Question? "Uhm yes. What exactly is a 'Wall Street Scheme'?" Ah, well, you see... well... hm. I know it has to do with your money. And... something bad?
Obviously, the economy of this country has but recently been squeezed through quite a change in face and structure. We had what has been termed a 'collapse' of the housing market, which has backlashed to most areas of the 'economy' (I use a lot of quotes because honestly half of what has made the economy 'collapse' has been our panicked reaction to it. The face of the economy in our country has changed, but it's even stranger to realize that the concept of 'economy' is a very abstract one built far more on future projections and promises than a physical wad of cash in someone's hand. Money in this country exists in the nonexistent form, rows of numbers in computers and the estimated value of property or stock, and is particularly vulnerable to the meteorology of the public's mob mentality at any given point. So forgive me if I perhaps am skeptical of what we term the 'economy' and how much faith or attention is attributed to it. Let's get back to wads of cash here, and stop playing with imaginary numbers. Hey look! Nested rants!). The terms 'Wall Mart Fat Cats' and 'Wall Mart Schemes' confuse me though. We are pointing our fingers of blame at this mysterious entity we call 'Wall Street', which in my mind is every bit as imaginary as our Economy. What do we really mean What does Wall Street stand for? The Stock Market itself? Stock investors? Financial analysts? Private investors? Money managers? Last I checked, Wall Street was a fairly small surface area, if we compare it to the rest of the country. And the idea of taking someone's 401k money and applying to a risky housing venture has happened cross-country and internationally. When politicians take taxpayer money and invest it, they do it in many different ways, not just in Wall Street. Really, we have merely constructed a convenient villain to point our fingers at. "Wall Street Bad!! Voter SMASH!"
Which brings me to my next point in this lovely 'discourse' we are having (see? I can quotationalize myself too!). When I was in high school in 2000 (oh so long ago!) I remember the 'Get the Vote out' campaign. I remember the statistics, something ridiculous like only 20% of Americans voted or what. You might even consider October to be 'Voting Awareness Month'-- that is, if it weren't Breast Cancer Awareness month! But see, I have the same response to all that as I did with breast cancer. Consider me aware of the need to vote. Your efforts are no longer necessary. And you know what? Urging people to vote is addressing a nonexistent problem. We are exhorted to vote as if that will avert some anarchic crisis. "Your voice matters!" one of the voting slogans goes. Does it? Well... only a tiny bit. Contrary to the way the campaigns claim, the world will continue to spin even if you don't vote. Our country will not perish, our government will not dissolve into street riots. People will still be elected, hold office, and continue to not deliver on their promises they make to the public. Your vote is a droplet of water in a great bucket. Yes, a lot of water droplets make a great wave. But without your droplet, the wave is nearly as big, and even if it's only a ripple, there are usually only two ripples anyway in any given election. Are you with one, or the other?
Ah yes. There are political parties besides Republican and Democrat, did you know that? I feel rather sorry for them, actually. They really do try so hard every election to garner that 1% or so of the vote.
My point is not to say 'voting doesn't matter'. No, my point is that the act of voting is misleading. Politics as a whole are misleading for that matter, but let's focus on voting for now and expand off that.
When we vote, we feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We have made a decision, a choice. But this is not a choice like going to the deli and choosing a roast beef sandwich instead of a turkey one. When I choose a roast beef sandwich, I expect to get a roast beef sandwich. I would be quite annoyed if instead I got a turkey sandwich, and when questioning the deli worker, was told 'well, you were in the minority this time 'round, more people asked for turkey so that's what we have today.'
"Alright," I say, choking down my disgruntlement. "What is the turkey sandwich promising?"
'He promises to come on Whole Wheat Bread with Dijon Mustard and tomato basil aioli spread.'
...I guess I have to be okay with this. But when I take my plate and sit down, the person next to me suddenly leaps up. "WHAT IS THIS??" he screams. "I was promised that this turkey sandwich would deliver dijon mustard! This is not mustard at all, but mayonnaise!! And this is Asiago cheese bread! And there's spinach on here, I didn't want spinach!!"
And of course, I sit there smugly. 'Shoulda gotten the roast beef,' I murmur, a little louder each time someone else jumps up to find their sandwich not as they expected it, until the next day now the deli is only offering roast beef. Of course, they said it was coming on rye with pickles, but it's on pumpernickel with swiss cheese instead.
My deli-cious point here is that voting increases our sense of outrage when things don't go the way we voted them to. We are being told that voting is a way to get our voice heard, to profess our opinions and let the country know what we want. But what it really does is set us up for inevitable disappointment. Because if our chosen candidate loses, we feel like our voice didn't matter; and if he by chance wins, he will inevitably not be able to deliver on everything he promised, and thus we feel misled. Voting is a grand exercise in being disappointed, because we aren't prepared for it with the mindset of how little of it we *actually* control. Frustratingly, politicians cannot be sued for not doing what they promise to do; they can say anything they want to get into office and do whatever they want (within lawful reason) from that point.
I am not saying politicians as a whole are a lying scheming group of crooks anxious to get their hands on taxpayer money. Most if not all of them want to represent a group of people and work to make decent policy in this country. There is a great deal that is out of their control about making policy, and the reality of why so little of their promises they make during campaigns get fulfilled is because they have to fight long and hard to effect even small change. So why can't they be more open about that? Of course, because if one politician were completely realistic about how his term in office is going to go, he would sound like this: "Well, I would like to balance the budget, and give more jobs to those here instead of sending them overseas, and legalize marijuana use... but guys, do you know how many coalitions and committees and involved parties are out there? I can barely get them all to agree on where to have lunch. I mean, if I manage to create *30* new jobs it'll be a miracle." Aaaaaaand no one would vote for him. We would vote for the other guy who promises to balance the budget first thing, bring thousands of jobs back to the state, and pass laws funding the school board properly all the while playing with his children.
We have over these past hundred or so years firmly entrenched this campaign style of bright and beautiful promises. It's like any other sort of advertisement. No one would want to buy a fast food hamburger if they televised pictures of what they looked like-- squashed, flat dull-colored squares of meat with spattered condiments and wilted lettuce. No, what we see on television are the thick and juicy mounds of meat dressed in misted tomato and lettuce, crowned with the freshest and fluffiest bun. And yet, we are okay with that minor disappointment; we in fact often overlook it when getting a fast food hamburger. It tastes alright. It's not good *for* us, and it doesn't quite deliver on all its amazing promises. And advertising isn't a single isolated event; the force it exerts on us and our psyche comes from thousands and thousands of commercials and ads piled on top of themselves within our memories. And yet, would we rather fall in love with a pretty promise and then wrestle with the disappointment of finding it was untrue than to have the discouraging truth in the first place?
Then too, we come back to that two-political-party thing. It is essentially a proposal that every problem only has two possible solutions. But most intelligent folk know that's not true. Yet, when presented with a ballot where there are more or less only two options to choose from, what are we to do when we like neither option? When perhaps we have an option we've thought of? Voting does not address this issue. 'Go and campaign yourself', someone might say. Ah yes, but see, if you want to win voter support, you need to end up on either the Republican or the Democratic side, which means you need to align yourself with their general offered solution. You either get roast beef or turkey. 'But hey, I thought of this brilliant sandwich, it involves salami,' you might say. You take it to the deli suppliers. 'That's great,' they say. 'But if you want our support, backing, and money, you gotta change your stance to roast beef.' 'Or turkey. I mean, there *is* a salami guy, but... no one ever orders the salami.'
Even stranger. When I carefully read through the voter's guide this year what I found was striking-- all the campaigner's promises were the same. Balance the budget. Bring jobs. Fund the schools. Stop Wall Street schemes (er, riiiight). End corruption in the office. The only differences are about how they intend to do it... and oddly, even now the solutions are the same. Cut taxes, create jobs. The only differences are the exceedingly minor ones of who gets the cuts and where the jobs are going to come from. Which means that voting is going to effectively be split by who wants money back on their taxes, and beyond that it's about party alignment and who you happen to be biased towards or against.
So let me reiterate: I am going to go to the polls to vote for one of the two guys who have promised the same thing but probably won't fully deliver on it, and will have to more or less just deal with the result of who ends up there and what he does. So... could I not then achieve the same result by *not* voting?
If you want me to vote, I suggest you provide me with a better incentive to do so. If my vote is needed to keep some dictator from coming to power and imprisoning the entire country in a spaceship, let me know; if some lunatic is intent on raising taxes on everyone by 300%, I will ride out with my one little vote to stop him. But honestly. If some charismatic lunatic manages to charm the country and get them to vote him into office, my singular vote will not stop the mob mentality tide. The choices I am presented with, roast beef and turkey, are neither to my liking, and yet I will end up eating one or the other regardless of my attempted choice at the deli counter.
At least this deli is still one of the best in town. I hear it's a lot worse other places.
A final note: do not take my choosing not to vote as a spitting upon the freedom to do so. Choosing not to exercise a freedom is not an abdication of it, any more than choosing not to eat lunch is an abdication of my freedom to eat. A freedom is not a forced action, for then it would cease to be a freedom. I choose not to vote right now because both sandwich choices get me to the same result (a full stomach) with no avoidable impact. The pressure to vote seems built on fear, this fear that all Americans will stop voting. But let me tell you: there are, if you haven't checked lately, an awful lot of Americans out there. And so what if a lot of us don't vote? All the system is concerned with is counting the votes that are made, and making a decision between one thing or the other from there. The increase in volume of voters doesn't change all that much. If you have 10 people vote between roast beef and turkey, and then have 200 people vote between them, here's the thing: one will still win and the other will still lose. Perhaps the winner and loser will differ depending on how many and who vote. But more voters does not ensure any one side's victory.
So Election Times are Hard Times for us in this household. Mostly because of the incessant phone calls and ringing doorbells. I have two parents that are sick and inflicted with great levels of pain every moment of the day, usually attempting to try and seize a few precious minutes of sleep. I recognize and respect the need for political campaigners to be out there making themselves known. But why is it I cannot get them to leave my tormented parents to get a little extra sleep? Come, let me beat on you with a baseball bat every five seconds for weeks on end, and *you* see how you feel when, after finally falling asleep, some automated computerized phone call jars you awake with its prattling on about whoever is running for what office. And my dad wonders why he finds the phone off the hook so often these days. 'What if someone tries to call us?' he asks, his eyelids drooping in fatigue while he absently tries to massage his ever-present back pain away. And I nod emphatically thinking, 'Exactly'.
Automated phone calls aside, let us consider the television commercials.
The thing that strikes me overwhelmingly about political ads is that they are, well, empty. They are about presenting either a glowing picture of the candidate spending time with his family and solving the state's problems, or else showing how the opposition is sneaky and deceptive and will take your money and job and spend it all on fancy cigars and raises for themselves. The time spent in the ads speaking of what the political candidate actually intends to do is pitifully small, if it is there at all. And this year has been a particularly mud-slinging one it seems. Based on the commercials I've seen, I have determined that everyone on the ballot is a no-good sleazeball and I should therefore vote for... well now, there's no one left! Hm!
Another thing that has really bothered me is the use of buzzwords/phrases. 'Wall Market Schemes' is the big one for this election, it seems. *Raises hand* ...Yes? Question? "Uhm yes. What exactly is a 'Wall Street Scheme'?" Ah, well, you see... well... hm. I know it has to do with your money. And... something bad?
Obviously, the economy of this country has but recently been squeezed through quite a change in face and structure. We had what has been termed a 'collapse' of the housing market, which has backlashed to most areas of the 'economy' (I use a lot of quotes because honestly half of what has made the economy 'collapse' has been our panicked reaction to it. The face of the economy in our country has changed, but it's even stranger to realize that the concept of 'economy' is a very abstract one built far more on future projections and promises than a physical wad of cash in someone's hand. Money in this country exists in the nonexistent form, rows of numbers in computers and the estimated value of property or stock, and is particularly vulnerable to the meteorology of the public's mob mentality at any given point. So forgive me if I perhaps am skeptical of what we term the 'economy' and how much faith or attention is attributed to it. Let's get back to wads of cash here, and stop playing with imaginary numbers. Hey look! Nested rants!). The terms 'Wall Mart Fat Cats' and 'Wall Mart Schemes' confuse me though. We are pointing our fingers of blame at this mysterious entity we call 'Wall Street', which in my mind is every bit as imaginary as our Economy. What do we really mean What does Wall Street stand for? The Stock Market itself? Stock investors? Financial analysts? Private investors? Money managers? Last I checked, Wall Street was a fairly small surface area, if we compare it to the rest of the country. And the idea of taking someone's 401k money and applying to a risky housing venture has happened cross-country and internationally. When politicians take taxpayer money and invest it, they do it in many different ways, not just in Wall Street. Really, we have merely constructed a convenient villain to point our fingers at. "Wall Street Bad!! Voter SMASH!"
Which brings me to my next point in this lovely 'discourse' we are having (see? I can quotationalize myself too!). When I was in high school in 2000 (oh so long ago!) I remember the 'Get the Vote out' campaign. I remember the statistics, something ridiculous like only 20% of Americans voted or what. You might even consider October to be 'Voting Awareness Month'-- that is, if it weren't Breast Cancer Awareness month! But see, I have the same response to all that as I did with breast cancer. Consider me aware of the need to vote. Your efforts are no longer necessary. And you know what? Urging people to vote is addressing a nonexistent problem. We are exhorted to vote as if that will avert some anarchic crisis. "Your voice matters!" one of the voting slogans goes. Does it? Well... only a tiny bit. Contrary to the way the campaigns claim, the world will continue to spin even if you don't vote. Our country will not perish, our government will not dissolve into street riots. People will still be elected, hold office, and continue to not deliver on their promises they make to the public. Your vote is a droplet of water in a great bucket. Yes, a lot of water droplets make a great wave. But without your droplet, the wave is nearly as big, and even if it's only a ripple, there are usually only two ripples anyway in any given election. Are you with one, or the other?
Ah yes. There are political parties besides Republican and Democrat, did you know that? I feel rather sorry for them, actually. They really do try so hard every election to garner that 1% or so of the vote.
My point is not to say 'voting doesn't matter'. No, my point is that the act of voting is misleading. Politics as a whole are misleading for that matter, but let's focus on voting for now and expand off that.
When we vote, we feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We have made a decision, a choice. But this is not a choice like going to the deli and choosing a roast beef sandwich instead of a turkey one. When I choose a roast beef sandwich, I expect to get a roast beef sandwich. I would be quite annoyed if instead I got a turkey sandwich, and when questioning the deli worker, was told 'well, you were in the minority this time 'round, more people asked for turkey so that's what we have today.'
"Alright," I say, choking down my disgruntlement. "What is the turkey sandwich promising?"
'He promises to come on Whole Wheat Bread with Dijon Mustard and tomato basil aioli spread.'
...I guess I have to be okay with this. But when I take my plate and sit down, the person next to me suddenly leaps up. "WHAT IS THIS??" he screams. "I was promised that this turkey sandwich would deliver dijon mustard! This is not mustard at all, but mayonnaise!! And this is Asiago cheese bread! And there's spinach on here, I didn't want spinach!!"
And of course, I sit there smugly. 'Shoulda gotten the roast beef,' I murmur, a little louder each time someone else jumps up to find their sandwich not as they expected it, until the next day now the deli is only offering roast beef. Of course, they said it was coming on rye with pickles, but it's on pumpernickel with swiss cheese instead.
My deli-cious point here is that voting increases our sense of outrage when things don't go the way we voted them to. We are being told that voting is a way to get our voice heard, to profess our opinions and let the country know what we want. But what it really does is set us up for inevitable disappointment. Because if our chosen candidate loses, we feel like our voice didn't matter; and if he by chance wins, he will inevitably not be able to deliver on everything he promised, and thus we feel misled. Voting is a grand exercise in being disappointed, because we aren't prepared for it with the mindset of how little of it we *actually* control. Frustratingly, politicians cannot be sued for not doing what they promise to do; they can say anything they want to get into office and do whatever they want (within lawful reason) from that point.
I am not saying politicians as a whole are a lying scheming group of crooks anxious to get their hands on taxpayer money. Most if not all of them want to represent a group of people and work to make decent policy in this country. There is a great deal that is out of their control about making policy, and the reality of why so little of their promises they make during campaigns get fulfilled is because they have to fight long and hard to effect even small change. So why can't they be more open about that? Of course, because if one politician were completely realistic about how his term in office is going to go, he would sound like this: "Well, I would like to balance the budget, and give more jobs to those here instead of sending them overseas, and legalize marijuana use... but guys, do you know how many coalitions and committees and involved parties are out there? I can barely get them all to agree on where to have lunch. I mean, if I manage to create *30* new jobs it'll be a miracle." Aaaaaaand no one would vote for him. We would vote for the other guy who promises to balance the budget first thing, bring thousands of jobs back to the state, and pass laws funding the school board properly all the while playing with his children.
We have over these past hundred or so years firmly entrenched this campaign style of bright and beautiful promises. It's like any other sort of advertisement. No one would want to buy a fast food hamburger if they televised pictures of what they looked like-- squashed, flat dull-colored squares of meat with spattered condiments and wilted lettuce. No, what we see on television are the thick and juicy mounds of meat dressed in misted tomato and lettuce, crowned with the freshest and fluffiest bun. And yet, we are okay with that minor disappointment; we in fact often overlook it when getting a fast food hamburger. It tastes alright. It's not good *for* us, and it doesn't quite deliver on all its amazing promises. And advertising isn't a single isolated event; the force it exerts on us and our psyche comes from thousands and thousands of commercials and ads piled on top of themselves within our memories. And yet, would we rather fall in love with a pretty promise and then wrestle with the disappointment of finding it was untrue than to have the discouraging truth in the first place?
Then too, we come back to that two-political-party thing. It is essentially a proposal that every problem only has two possible solutions. But most intelligent folk know that's not true. Yet, when presented with a ballot where there are more or less only two options to choose from, what are we to do when we like neither option? When perhaps we have an option we've thought of? Voting does not address this issue. 'Go and campaign yourself', someone might say. Ah yes, but see, if you want to win voter support, you need to end up on either the Republican or the Democratic side, which means you need to align yourself with their general offered solution. You either get roast beef or turkey. 'But hey, I thought of this brilliant sandwich, it involves salami,' you might say. You take it to the deli suppliers. 'That's great,' they say. 'But if you want our support, backing, and money, you gotta change your stance to roast beef.' 'Or turkey. I mean, there *is* a salami guy, but... no one ever orders the salami.'
Even stranger. When I carefully read through the voter's guide this year what I found was striking-- all the campaigner's promises were the same. Balance the budget. Bring jobs. Fund the schools. Stop Wall Street schemes (er, riiiight). End corruption in the office. The only differences are about how they intend to do it... and oddly, even now the solutions are the same. Cut taxes, create jobs. The only differences are the exceedingly minor ones of who gets the cuts and where the jobs are going to come from. Which means that voting is going to effectively be split by who wants money back on their taxes, and beyond that it's about party alignment and who you happen to be biased towards or against.
So let me reiterate: I am going to go to the polls to vote for one of the two guys who have promised the same thing but probably won't fully deliver on it, and will have to more or less just deal with the result of who ends up there and what he does. So... could I not then achieve the same result by *not* voting?
If you want me to vote, I suggest you provide me with a better incentive to do so. If my vote is needed to keep some dictator from coming to power and imprisoning the entire country in a spaceship, let me know; if some lunatic is intent on raising taxes on everyone by 300%, I will ride out with my one little vote to stop him. But honestly. If some charismatic lunatic manages to charm the country and get them to vote him into office, my singular vote will not stop the mob mentality tide. The choices I am presented with, roast beef and turkey, are neither to my liking, and yet I will end up eating one or the other regardless of my attempted choice at the deli counter.
At least this deli is still one of the best in town. I hear it's a lot worse other places.
A final note: do not take my choosing not to vote as a spitting upon the freedom to do so. Choosing not to exercise a freedom is not an abdication of it, any more than choosing not to eat lunch is an abdication of my freedom to eat. A freedom is not a forced action, for then it would cease to be a freedom. I choose not to vote right now because both sandwich choices get me to the same result (a full stomach) with no avoidable impact. The pressure to vote seems built on fear, this fear that all Americans will stop voting. But let me tell you: there are, if you haven't checked lately, an awful lot of Americans out there. And so what if a lot of us don't vote? All the system is concerned with is counting the votes that are made, and making a decision between one thing or the other from there. The increase in volume of voters doesn't change all that much. If you have 10 people vote between roast beef and turkey, and then have 200 people vote between them, here's the thing: one will still win and the other will still lose. Perhaps the winner and loser will differ depending on how many and who vote. But more voters does not ensure any one side's victory.
Into The Fray
It's November 1st, which means it's the start of NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. And... just like last year, I will not be participating!
Last year I had a friend who did it though, and because she made the monthly quota of 50,000 words I believe she got some manner of free or reduced price self-publication of the book. I was thinking I might go in on that this year, but upon perusal of the site it seems that particular 'prize' is gone this year, which means it's back to the regular old grind of my four book project.
I came to the library for the first time in over a month I think to try and get some work of some sort done (and as we can see by the post, that's working out SO WELL /sarcasm). Even though I haven't been physically here to work on writing though I have been slowly poking at the story and specifically Main Character #2 in attempt to overcome some of the more recent trouble. Yes, there is always trouble, you'd think I'd be used to it by now.
The solution that seems to be taking shape involves going back into Book 1 and adding scenes. That's it, flat out written addition. The problem this proposes though is that it is essentially classified as a major editing endeavor, which is something that I was reserving for when the whole thing is done. Yes, I tend to impose arbitrary boundaries and rules upon myself and my projects, and perhaps this is one of them. But the proposal of going back into Book 1 and wrecking major change upon it is a dangerous one. Book one clocked in at over 200,000 words to give you some idea of its length, which according to NaNoWriMo is like, 4 novels. That is a lot of stuff to hack through and edit.
Why though is it an all-or-nothing thing? Can't the scenes be written and added, and then the rest of Book 1 be left alone until the Mass Editing at the End of All Things? Perhaps because I know better than anyone how much has changed since page 1 and now, and how to stitch something directly in without preparing the fabric for the addition could be detrimental for all pieces involved. On the other hand, to get tangled up in the editing could stop me entirely, cause me to throw up my hands in despair and never return. Not like I haven't faced that real possibility many times before! I mean seriously, why did I come back here to the library in the first place? Mostly because I know I am riding out to face the glum fear of futility through all this, and despite all the thoughts that seem to rise acid-like in my stomach to deter me (Someone else has already come up with this idea. You are too long-winded. You're not as good a writer as you think. You'll never find someone wanting to publish it. They'll want to change it. Your idea won't work. People won't relate to it. You haven't read enough to know whether you have a good idea or not. You don't know enough people. You don't do any of the right things to get your name out there or network among others. You don't work fast enough. You play too many games. You're taking too long. You're not interested in it. It's too immature. It doesn't work. WHAT IS THE POINT.), I must finish it for no other reason than to prove to myself the dark shadow of futility shall not best me.
But the good thing that *could* come of going back and editing now is to bring that first book up to stylistic and characteristic speed with where I am right now. I am 350,000 words a different and changed writer from when I started. Over 700 pages of work and of course things are going to change. Writing a book, it seems to me, is about learning how to shepherd that change skillfully. Stifling it is bad, and letting it run fenceless is bad too.
Or I could get stuck in a neverending cycle of hopeless re-writing. It's like saying the same sentence over and over again, making it more elegant and dramatic with every reading but-- it's the same content. No true growth of thought can come unless there is exploration of new and different content, instead of just a recircling of the same stuff over and again. New stuff is scary and different and unknown, yes. But without it we are stuck saying the same thing mindlessly.
The other option is to ignore the scenes I know I need to add, guesstimate the impact and change they will bring, and then continue with where I am, 2/3 of the way through Book 2. The problem with this should be obvious: how can we be sure of the change? On the other hand, should I not be a writer who can Make It Work? We have too many hands here at this point. Too many, I say.
I'm stuck, and stuck good-- and that's a terrible situation to be in when Futility lies in wait whispering discouraging words. If only I could get myself to just jump in and start writing something. If only I could do that in so many different areas of my life. What's stopping me, really? Just this strange fear that it will be worse at the end of things, and not better. Where did that come from?
Current Tea: Peaches and Cream. I found a thermos I bought in Japan and brought my tea in it today. Normally I bring this carafe my brother bought for my dad while in Korea, which is nice enough and reminds me of him, but can't keep beverages cold for the non-existent life of it. This thermos though, keeps tea so warm I have already burned my mouth on it-- and that's 3 hours after I filled it.
Current Project: Jumping into Writing
Last year I had a friend who did it though, and because she made the monthly quota of 50,000 words I believe she got some manner of free or reduced price self-publication of the book. I was thinking I might go in on that this year, but upon perusal of the site it seems that particular 'prize' is gone this year, which means it's back to the regular old grind of my four book project.
I came to the library for the first time in over a month I think to try and get some work of some sort done (and as we can see by the post, that's working out SO WELL /sarcasm). Even though I haven't been physically here to work on writing though I have been slowly poking at the story and specifically Main Character #2 in attempt to overcome some of the more recent trouble. Yes, there is always trouble, you'd think I'd be used to it by now.
The solution that seems to be taking shape involves going back into Book 1 and adding scenes. That's it, flat out written addition. The problem this proposes though is that it is essentially classified as a major editing endeavor, which is something that I was reserving for when the whole thing is done. Yes, I tend to impose arbitrary boundaries and rules upon myself and my projects, and perhaps this is one of them. But the proposal of going back into Book 1 and wrecking major change upon it is a dangerous one. Book one clocked in at over 200,000 words to give you some idea of its length, which according to NaNoWriMo is like, 4 novels. That is a lot of stuff to hack through and edit.
Why though is it an all-or-nothing thing? Can't the scenes be written and added, and then the rest of Book 1 be left alone until the Mass Editing at the End of All Things? Perhaps because I know better than anyone how much has changed since page 1 and now, and how to stitch something directly in without preparing the fabric for the addition could be detrimental for all pieces involved. On the other hand, to get tangled up in the editing could stop me entirely, cause me to throw up my hands in despair and never return. Not like I haven't faced that real possibility many times before! I mean seriously, why did I come back here to the library in the first place? Mostly because I know I am riding out to face the glum fear of futility through all this, and despite all the thoughts that seem to rise acid-like in my stomach to deter me (Someone else has already come up with this idea. You are too long-winded. You're not as good a writer as you think. You'll never find someone wanting to publish it. They'll want to change it. Your idea won't work. People won't relate to it. You haven't read enough to know whether you have a good idea or not. You don't know enough people. You don't do any of the right things to get your name out there or network among others. You don't work fast enough. You play too many games. You're taking too long. You're not interested in it. It's too immature. It doesn't work. WHAT IS THE POINT.), I must finish it for no other reason than to prove to myself the dark shadow of futility shall not best me.
But the good thing that *could* come of going back and editing now is to bring that first book up to stylistic and characteristic speed with where I am right now. I am 350,000 words a different and changed writer from when I started. Over 700 pages of work and of course things are going to change. Writing a book, it seems to me, is about learning how to shepherd that change skillfully. Stifling it is bad, and letting it run fenceless is bad too.
Or I could get stuck in a neverending cycle of hopeless re-writing. It's like saying the same sentence over and over again, making it more elegant and dramatic with every reading but-- it's the same content. No true growth of thought can come unless there is exploration of new and different content, instead of just a recircling of the same stuff over and again. New stuff is scary and different and unknown, yes. But without it we are stuck saying the same thing mindlessly.
The other option is to ignore the scenes I know I need to add, guesstimate the impact and change they will bring, and then continue with where I am, 2/3 of the way through Book 2. The problem with this should be obvious: how can we be sure of the change? On the other hand, should I not be a writer who can Make It Work? We have too many hands here at this point. Too many, I say.
I'm stuck, and stuck good-- and that's a terrible situation to be in when Futility lies in wait whispering discouraging words. If only I could get myself to just jump in and start writing something. If only I could do that in so many different areas of my life. What's stopping me, really? Just this strange fear that it will be worse at the end of things, and not better. Where did that come from?
Current Tea: Peaches and Cream. I found a thermos I bought in Japan and brought my tea in it today. Normally I bring this carafe my brother bought for my dad while in Korea, which is nice enough and reminds me of him, but can't keep beverages cold for the non-existent life of it. This thermos though, keeps tea so warm I have already burned my mouth on it-- and that's 3 hours after I filled it.
Current Project: Jumping into Writing
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