Month: July 2023

If I could only tell writers (new or old) one thing it is to trust the process. You are undoubtedly going to feel like the work is never ending. You may be in a word count situation where you feel like you will never get to the number you are supposed to hit for a contracted project. You may feel like you are writing too much and are never going to be able to shave the words down to the required amount. All of this is not only possible but probable. Writers do it every day. We do it all the time and we do it well a lot of the time because we trust the process. Well, what does that actually mean? It means we let ourselves write. We allow the words to hit the page as they will until we are done. Then we revise. We edit. We shape and play and re-read and re-edit. We allow ourselves to be creative, and then we allow ourselves to systematically work through the writing until it is what we wanted it to be, or it is a fair compromise between that and what the editors/publishers suggest is the best market fit. This is

Some Thoughts:

1. 23 days to the first game of the freshmen season, the parents are getting antsy. Some are very concerned their kids will not get enough minutes. Well, given that we have a Freshmen B team, I’m guessing there will be opportunities for everyone to shine. Will they all be starters? No. There are 11 positions on each side of the ball and some kids play and start both ways, because the team needs it in order to be competitive. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but it is High School sports. Coaches retain jobs by winning and teaching.

I’ve always been the man who wanted to be there for his boys. It is harder to do that when the way you want to be there isn’t really understood by anyone but them and you. Instead it becomes a ‘why does this matter so much?’ proposition that you cannot really explain because it is entirely foreign to everyone but you and the dudes involved and that makes it seem entirely insular. That too builds walls in a family situation.

I want to be at every game. I spent time at a father/son retreat today and that room was filled with people who understood what I was talking about. It was nice to be understood–to hear a coach say that the first person these kids look for when they hit the field is you. I never knew how to articulate that. I never knew how to say that I was missing that as a player–that I never had anyone at a game for me. I always played for myself but I wanted to know people who loved me were out there watching, and not having that made me recognize how much that meant and not giving that to my kids makes me realize how much I’m failing as a dad by not doing it.

Other revelations rose from the father/son, but I’m not sure I’m ready to write that out yet. Until then…

Some Thoughts:

1. There are things about playing football that teach you about being an adult.
2. There are lessons about adulthood that can be learned in the basic every day moments, and I don’t believe those lessons are always being taught to kids–even my kids. I want them to all have healthy and positive lives, and I wonder daily if that is going to be the case for any of them.

After picking and pecking away in the word mines all day, I just don’t feel like writing a freewrite. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to rant either (though, see some thoughts below for a rant lite). Instead I want to focus on the good in life. The first thing worth sharing is a dip in the pool. I slid into the bathroom temperature waters and was quite pleased about it. I get how cold water can be refreshing, and especially on a super hot day like (insert any day in July). Still, being even partially submerged instantly feels good. I was able to lay in the sun and listen to a solid Chuck Wendig read and think all about how chill life can be.

This is in sharp contrast to, say about 3AM, when I woke up for no particular reason and moments into the waking discovered that I was mentally re-writing the entire ruleset for Shadowrun in order to represent a slimmed down, rules lite approach to the game which creates a great deal more room for better world content and story and character advancement! I am stoked to be going to GenCon (where I will not be pitching these ideas… A forum exists for that already). I haven’t been in better than a decade–so long that I don’t even remember what it is going to be like. It is going to be travel no matter what else it ends up entailing, and that is good enough for me. I love to explore, and I suspect it will be cooler (and more humid to be sure) than the desert.

My partner has not uncovered the secret Indianapolis–the one filled with really cool stuff we will both enjoy. I believe that place exists. We just have to find it. In the meanwhile, I have a weekend here in town, including a 5 hr father/son football event tomorrow that I have absolutely no information about short of an address. Weird, right? Extra weird to have the mid-kid be a senior. I remember him as an infant. That doesn’t feel like very long ago…

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m allergic to negativity. It’s worse when it comes from people who have a gravity about them, because that negativity pulls everyone in and just makes me sicker.

I think the world is slowly being prepared for the arrival (appearance? Unveiling?) of Aliens. I say this after glimpsing a bit of the Senate hearings and listening to the whistleblower speak. More importantly, considering the response (rather tepid don’t you think?) to the notion that USA has been collecting UAVs and biologicals since the 30s. At this point it hardly feels like a surprise. My partner blames fiction. Moreover she suspects (and now I do as well) the rollout of particular fictional elements have only aided the rollout of this new information.

We just got Marvel’s Secret Invasion. Most of our new sc-fi is about one of three basic subjects: AI, Apocalypse, Aliens. A fourth, Time Travel, should be discussed at length, but at a later time. This is about the Aliens and the growing reality of us not being the only species in the vastness of space.

Heck, I’d be shocked if we were alone in the milky way. Just recently we recognized the weird pulse (that may be a new kind of quasar) and started having to question everything we know about what is beyond. However, we also have to start thinking about the timing issue as well. We are, for all intents and purposes, circling back to major war footing–one that threatens to be a destructive presence larger than ever before. Think about all of the other major sighting periods: They all preceded huge world events/wars. I am beginning to suspect that whomever is watching us is aware of when we might really screw this up and makes a point to put eyes on the situation, so we as a species do not ruin what is a perfectly habitable planet.

Some Thoughts:

1. I will continue to follow these hearings, but the mainstreaming of this information definitely is changing the way I need to be teaching the students about information. I gotta reset my game now.

Crazy week in the sports world. Lebron’s chosen son, Bronny, suffered a cardiac arrest on the court. He lived, thankfully. However, now his entire career is in question. The good news is his dad is practically a billionaire, so he’ll be fine without basketball (financially). As I mentioned the other day, Saquon Barkley signed a one year deal loaded with incentive bonuses and 2 million guaranteed money. Also, as I alluded to in past conversations, the media ate him alive for signing… Just as they themselves fabricated the specter of him not signing. That is how it goes with the media, sadly. The 24 hr news cycle demands you have a story out of anything. Case and point: the recent series of ‘articles’ around this topic. Basically, LeBron and a few other NBA stars joked about the absurd ($774 million) contract offer to Mbappe, which he turned down. They suggested that they may find reason to take such a contract. I mean, I get the joke, but articles about the threat to the NBA are foolish. Again, he turned it down. What’s even more absurd is the $222.5 million the Saudi club, Al Hilal, paid to get the opportunity to negotiate with Mbappe. That’s a truly astonishing amount of money changing hands. Oil money is just unreal.

And he turned it down.

Thus far, Ronaldo is the only one to take the Saudi money. We can talk about the Golf money another time (because LIV won that one to be sure). Mbappe wasn’t the only one to say no. Lionel Messi also said no. Instead he followed in the footsteps of LeBron James and…

Messi hit the ground running. He’s won the first two games he’s played in. I really mean him. He won the first with a penalty kick and in the second scored two goals and two assists. Dude is getting $50-60 million annually to win those games, and he’s doing it in a place he loves… albeit for a hundred million a year less than he could have made.

Such is sports…

I meant to find a blog about lists. I wanted to write about how far I’ve come in starting to and continuing to list things in order to get them done. Alas, what popped up was The Breakfast Choice, forcing me to take a look back at where I was then to where I am now. Short version: I fell in love and found a partner who is an actual partner in the sense of us looking out for each others better interests. In other words, she feeds me.

How’d we get here?

Back then I was in a situation where I would go to work and find myself hungry and not wanting to work. So, I’d go to a place–either Village Inn or Wildflower Bread Co (the pancakes there are top 5 all time–#1 being held down by Frankie’s Diner in Victoria, BC). I’d order the pancakes (of course) and whatever else I could squeeze in with that. I’d get down to business right away, handling a dozen papers or more during that time. Often I’d just sit there for an hour and write. I loved that time to myself. Unfortunately, it cost me a lot of money. Furthermore, when I didn’t go, I didn’t eat.

Now I’m with the love of my life and she gets it. She is quick to point out when I don’t eat and often suggests I do go to such places to get back to writing. I’ve learned to find balance between being a healthy daily eater and finding the time to go out and lock in on the words. In fact, I might find my way to a breakfast spot later this week, because I feel like I’ve earned it. I feel like I might need it too.

Some Thoughts:

1. Giants signed Barkley. Dope!

We had a chance to see John Oliver perform live tonight and it was pretty much exactly what I hoped for. His take on America and on Britain hits chords that have me laughing out loud. He has so many things to say and so much of what he says resonates as a sound truth. Perhaps above all else his note of optimism in the people of this lovely planet is what I find most endearing. He sees that we are getting it wrong over and over again, but he also sees that we all have the capability to recognize that and, maybe one day, work this shit out.

Comedy disarms. Comedy puts you at ease enough that you can listen to an argument from a perspective that is not your own, and in that see that there may be other points of view at play here. Oliver is entirely disarming in a way that makes you feel like, ‘yeah, I totally feel that’. For example, he broached the subject of expertise and how we have created a cycle of treating experts and non-experts with exactly the same weight. He’s not wrong. One of the fundamental problems in my household is that whenever I speak on a subject that I have studied or been intimately familiar with for decades I’m immediately treated like I don’t know what I am talking about or that they know as much as me. I’m ‘google fact checked’ every time I open my mouth. And if what I say doesn’t exactly align with whatever comes up first on that search, then I’m automatically the one who must have it wrong. Now imagine how it must feel if you’re a top scientist and some random twitter troll tells you that your findings have to be wrong and the masses choose to believe the Troll… That’s what a lot of the filter bubble of modern reality is pushing. It is hard to talk about that–about confirmation bias–and do it in a way that disarms vs. escalates. Oliver has that locked down.

Not a lot of time left here to speak this evening, but I will end with this. Comedy lightens me. It reminds me that I’m not the only one who feels like things are messed up and way too polarized and heavy right now. It make me feel like I’m not the only one who thinks we need to learn to laugh at ourselves a little bit.

We do.

When I finally go through this blog again and pull out all of the stuff about writing to see if there is enough to make an outline for a book, I’m going to need to come back to today. I figured something out about space. I figured out the value of sound when it comes to space. I live in a house where the kids (most are actually fully grown men) watch anime for up to 12 hours a day. So, as you can guess, my house is a constant ballad of screaming Japanese girls. It is really too much to deal with and still maintain any sense of mindset. Even in the office when I’m trying to work, I’m hearing it. That sets the tone of the house and of my workspace. Yes, I should tell them they have to do that in their rooms, but the very not brady situation here means this will only create more problems. So, I came up with another solution.

I’m listening to the sound of a storm.

I’ve talked about this before–how the sound of roaring or falling water makes me feel instantly better. Rain and waves in particular manipulate my mindspace towards the productive and the powerful. I put on the rain, and I don’t have to be where I am physically adjacent to. If you are in a similar situation, do this. Find your peace sound-be it waterfalls, Bob Ross, or what have you. If your homespace doesn’t allow for you to turn on the speakers, then slide on the headphones. The key here is that the music is supposed to transport you away and not towards. It is a barrier vs. an escape. The words are the escape and the music holds back the outside world so you can get to where you need to be.

We are being trained to vote against our own interests. Moreover, we are being tricked into thinking our interests are not what they are. This is true of both major US parties, but the Republicans are just plum better at it. I’ve been struggling to understand why, but in the end it comes as a reflection of the base. In short, the Republican base is one that follows church principles and concepts of listening to those who channel the moral authority. The Democratic base… less so. I speak of the lock step process that once held the GOP together. They always had the stronger grass roots movement, because the roots were buried deep in the church, and every Sunday the base got watered. This is still largely true, and that base largely supports the divisions being fed to them through their common outlets (news, music, etc.). It is common enough to be a film and TV trope. It is so common in fact that the opposite, derision of democrats, is equally a trope. It is okay to say in film ‘we know where every democrat lives’ but to say that of Republicans… that’d be both wild and immediately targeted by the Republicans as an attack (and an excuse for them to buy more guns).

Divisions are sharp in our nation and they are shaping our future, but how much are we really divided? How much of it is the blustering of those in power to remain in power?

Some Thoughts:

1. Here’s what I learned about being young: you have no real sense of a context outside your own. My kids were talking about the idea of being old and wondering why people are so disturbed when they are called that. My partner and I attempted to explain the context (which they do occasionally use) of oldness as being a bad thing or somehow being a label consistent with being diminished. To them however, old means what they say it means, and this is all. Tried to teach but it went nowhere, but towards a place of us being talked down to. I deal with ODD every day at home and, honestly, I’m over it.
2. Trying to really sink into these projects a bit more, but I gotta say: Only two of the three are really appealing. The 3rd feels like work. Still, writers need work. I hope to take this ability to juggle the work as a moment of momentum and channel it into the next novel and, hopefully, securing more work at GenCon.

How many chances do people get?

let me briefly acknowledge the existence of a metaphorical elephant. People are born into privilege even if their parents were not. That privilege determines, to some extent, your number of chances both from a theoretical and a physical/health perspective.

if you are the beneficiary of kind and generous and well meaning parents you will get a lot of chances to screw up or fail. If you are not, you most likely will not. I’ve had many chances in life and I’ve failed many times.

however, time catches up with us all eventually and as I sit here well into Friday’s early morning I realize I don’t have too many chances left. I’m getting older and I’m still not getting the exercise I need. I’m still not dedicating the required time to words. I’m still not eating right. All of that is measurably unhealthy and shortening my lifespan. Moreover, it saps the quality of life I can expect to live in the time I have left. Yet, again and again I do nothing. Then I get another chance to try.

this cannot continue forever. I have to get right and I have to find that daily will to do it. It’s hard to do it here because of the example I’ve set over the years that my kids follow in their own do nothing ways. Why shouldn’t they? Who is showing them not to?

I need to be better and in need to find the will to work against the tide to do so. Maybe that changes the tide over time, but that isn’t what is important in the short term. I need to change me.