Day: July 27, 2022

This is the one where I compare Canadian Football (because I am in Canada) to the NFL. I’m talking about the BC Lions here–not the Whitecaps Football Club, which is actually what we Americans call soccer. Specifically, I am back to talking about sports narratives. While the NFL does a good job of building up individual superstars (especially QBs) even on bad teams, the Canadiens take a different approach. Compare this website to this website. Maybe it is something in the level of attention these teams get, but the G-men feel far more corporate. In fact, the Lions have open practices (and fewer practices) all the time. Only Training Camps are open to US viewers. Strange, eh?

There is no deep conspiracy or anything like that here. I am merely noting the cultural differences. I feel like my life has been one of being submerged in “American” (read: USA) idealism with not much by the way of exposure to the rest of the global civilization and I notice more and more that the rest of the world is different. The stories are different. The way things are approached is different. Reality is different and as such fiction is different too.

I’m a Scalzi fan. I am also a believer that the narrator of audiobooks can be a very important part of the success or failure of the narrative if consumed in that fashion as Scalzi so often is. He has Wil Wheaton. He’s winning. Beyond that though Scalzi is funny and he is real and his stories often feel like reflections of life carved up with sci-fi and made into a humorous digestible. It works. He works. So, why bring him up? Jealousy? Nah, nothing like that. It is just a way to remind you to be yourself on the page. Scalzi is dutifully himself. In the afterword for The Kaiju Preservation Society he talks about how he had to be honest to himself and write the book that was there and not the one he was forcing himself to write. I feel that. I bounce around a large project for specifically that reason. I have to attack the narrative in the natural way that it comes to me or not at all. Furthermore, I have to write the stories I feel or not at all.

I’ve been diligently completing this latest project with a few other projects lurking in the back of my mind, but not one of these lurkers feels right. That is why I keep taking on other writing jobs and keeping my skills up. One day I will tell those stories or some other story, but that day is going to be the day that is write for that tale. I cannot force the words to show up and organize themselves neatly on my screen. It has to happen the way it happens. Or not at all.

Some Thoughts:

1. Random football note: Julio Jones is now a Buccaneer. There is an appeal to playing for Brady it seems. It also feels like the Rams and the Bucs are duking it out again in the playoffs. Will the Giants be invited to crash the party as a division leader? Maybe… The division is pretty bad, but the Eagles loaded up this off-season as well.
2. Feels like I might do a waiver Wednesday tomorrow.