10 Minute Rule

Regular fiction is different than fantasy. Regular fiction is built off a backbone of common understanding. We write about the world we live in and focus on a small subset of that world and the human condition. We create meaning through that shared understanding and dive deeper into what this part of our world means to us and why. If I talk about growing up in Harlem I am, on the one hand, fighting against perceptions of Harlem shaped by years of media coverage, the people who lived there then and live there now, and the reality of how my age and station shaped my understanding of the space. If I am writing about the fantasy nation of Paye I am writing based on the reality of how the characters age and station shapes their understanding of the space. I am also writing from the ground up. I am building a city that has relationships and treaties with other cities. I am speaking out on the various cultures that moved through that space and lingered or perhaps were replaced.

This project is daunting but exciting. I’m assembling this world bit by bit and the culture part is the hardest. I don’t want it to be stand-ins for existing cultures but the ideas of those cultures. It’s complex and fun and.. it takes time to get right

In creating this world for my novel I quickly discovered that I do not have a novel for this world. I have myths and legends and conflicts and Oathkeepers and Oathbreakers. I have cultures slowly forming and spreading across the world. I have a Theocracy and an empire separate from the Theocracy but beholden to it in the eyes of her people. I have magic and it is held by the church in a vice so tight that it might well as not exist. I have characters spread across this world with no solid way to bring them together that does not seemed forced or contrived. I have a beginning which now seems to have no place in story or perhaps it is not the beginning at all but instead a part of the story in the middle or later still. I have racial and cultural parallels that are unintended and should be unwritten. I have a world that needs a story that tells a great deal of the world itself.

So, I have nothing. Except perhaps for opportunity.

I don’t know why I expected this process to be fast. Like everything in life I want it now. I say to myself, “I’ve waited 30 years. This is long enough.” But I was waiting idly. I was not slowly building world and story. If anything I was forgetting story and character. Earlier in the day I was at an outdoor mall looking at leather wrapped notebooks and I remembered that I have one like that and it is filled with information about this world I am creating–information that isn’t being ported into the story of the world or the map of the world because I entirely forgot the book existed. As I write I realize that there are in fact two books of this sort in need of my eyes and integration. Opportunity.

I am going to put focus on this novel world and make it a priority. I feel the story is there and as the world reveals itself to me bit by bit, so shall its story.

Rough day with the map editor. My computer is deeply unhappy with the interface being open so long and often and has begun to fight back. Basically, I need more ram… and a restart. I’ll do that in a little bit after I take care of all the business left open on other windows, and yes, I hear that out loud. The process has been demanding but at the same time fulfilling. While I don’t know the story of the novel quite yet, I am beginning to uncover the story of the world. I know a great deal about where it has been and what has transpired over these many long and hard eras. This is a story about a world that has forgotten much about itself and lost even more to myth and confusion. It is a story about rediscovery and the fears also attached to that. It is ultimately a story about people who are navigating this world. It is about characters I’ve carried with me since high school some thirty years back.

I am excited to see what comes of the story and the world. I feel it was waiting for the technology to provide me the means of creation and here we are finally. This does not mean the other writing is done. In fact, I mean to tell the science fiction still and do that work as well this summer. I am redrawing the deadlines in order to give room for me to truly create with some pressure but not so much that I fail. I aim to succeed.

I feel a little like a creeper. I’m sitting here staring out of my window and into the windows of people blocks away trying to make out their tiny forms moving to and fro and imagining their lives; imagining what this city means to them and how they breathe it in each day. I am a tourist here, but I am trying to understand what here is as I intend to spend more and more time here with my partner. We are working to become part time residents and working to enjoy this other space and the other life it brings, but that begins with understanding it.

I don’t yet understand the rhythms of this city. Just after 8 am the downtown area looks entirely dead. Nobody on the streets and few cars moving beyond the ones on the highway. By 8pm most of the stores shut down as if trailing dusk by three hours in their disappearance. The homeless take over by then. The streets of Pike and Pine are so flooded with those without homes that it becomes a community unto itself. Dangerous? perhaps, but only in the sense that we are foreigners to them and lookey loos at worst. Nobody wants to feel like they are being watched or pitied in the watching. That isn’t what we are doing, but curiosity can be mistaken for a great many things.

I don’t know what today will bring on these streets but I remain curious and excited to find out.

Some Thoughts:

1. Sometimes I still look at the keys when I type. They are blurry this morning–early eyes and all.

My laptop is close to dying and I’m trying to squeeze in these last ten. My partner is on the roof, staring out at Seattle from 400 feet in the evening sky. It’s after 8 pm and it feels like the entire city has shut down for the night. I cannot understand it. What I do know is that we’re having a good time and enjoying this lifestyle and time together away from being parents. This is what our present and future looks like, minus 5+ month chunks of sweating in the desert while we put 3 other kids through middle and high school. I get her being done with all of that. I still see some joy left to squeeze out of that life, but she’s done it four times now.

But the blog isn’t about the disparities. It is about what brings us together. Often that is travel and exploring the day to day life together. We are a good pair–especially when left to be just the two of us. We do well and argue or disagree about little beyond the kids. She helps me be a better writer, and I help her be a better explorer. We work and we are happy in each other’s arms. I cannot ask for terribly more than that out of this life.

Getting ready to spend some much needed downtime in Seattle. I’m excited both about the opportunity to be there and the time to be just about me and my lady. We do well on the road together, and I think we could really use some of that right about now. It has been a tough semester. There is a lot of work that goes into teaching and a lot of wear and tear mentally when it isn’t done right. Sometimes more when it is… I don’t know that I did it right this semester. I know I have learning and growing yet to be done as an educator and as a man who embraces responsibility overall. I’ve shown some bad tendencies this semester and that needs to be cleaned up. That is also part of the break reflection.

It is also a time to step back from big games. I play a ton of Apex and Minecraft and Madden. I’ll spend a solid week offline, which is much needed at this juncture. I’ve lost a real sense of balance when it comes to such things. Overall, I am looking forward to the peace and merry and the different that makes Seattle a key destination even in the deep of winter rains.

I read this quote on the back of my daughter’s truck today: “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” 

It is commonly Attributed to Oscar Wilde and I am surprised I entirely forgot it existed. Feels like it ought to be the thesis of how I feel Americans ought to be. I want to include it in my class next semester and make sure there is a sense of that understanding of what it means and why it matters.

it was also cool to see her have it.

in other news, I did start the Giants sim and leveraged everything I could into getting draft picks, changing to a spread offense and trying to rebuild. Haven’t finished the draft but it’s looking good so far. Yes, I went with a new QB.

Giants suck.

This is a fact of reality that I cannot change in real life. Instead I intend to recast the Giants reality in the fantasy realms. I have to. I have to feel good about my G-men at some point or at least understand why things have gone so badly. It’s like I said yesterday, and G.I. Joe said before me, “knowing is half the battle.” So, here is what I know:

Daniel Jones was a good pick. The only other option in that situation would’ve been trading for or signing a QB to backup Manning and leveraging that pick for one in the 2020 draft. Jones is arguably the second best QB in that 2019 draft. That draft itself was painfully thin. Kyler Murray was the first QB off the board and he’s legit. Behind him was Jones and then Dwayne Haskins. The only other notable QB in that draft is Gardner Minshew. Now, had I been ‘the guy’ I would have certainly drafted Minshew and traded my pick for 1st round capital in the next draft as well as something in the later rounds of 2019. Minshew is Hostetler, the guy the Giants rode for a short period of time near the end of the Simms era and found a way to push their QB and a way to get some needed wins. I could have worked with that.

Two first rounders don’t mean success is coming. In fact, it is a trap situation. The Giants lack explosiveness on either side of the line. While I feel it is coming on D, I don’t see the O-line growing up to be a tough enough unit to create running lanes. Something needs to be done there. A glance at the Sporting News Big Board shows little to be excited about. There is a guard that shows some Nasty and a center that could be a long time NFL starter. There are also trap plays… Malik Willis could be legit or he could be trash. He’s a QB who hasn’t played top talent and do the G-men really want to start over at QB? In the first round? I say no. I say trade down, actually. The Giants have 11 picks in the draft and 5 inside the first three rounds. There is ample opportunity to beef up the squad with players to grow on and not take on two first round contracts. Trade for a second this year and a 1st next. Use the 1st this year to get a lineman and use free agency to get another.

Some Thoughts:

1. Missed submitting the post again yesterday. First time I didn’t follow through on the double click in a long time. I must be distracted…

When I first went to Azgaar’s website (https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) I was overwhelmed. There are so many options to choose from here that it is safe to say that this is the most immersive free map generator I’ve ever used. Also safe to say is it is better than what I’ve payed for over the years. I’ve been using the site for hours now, trying to garner a better understanding of the depth of it and how to translate that into a world map reflective of the world I am trying to construct. Guess what I learned from that process? I don’t actually know enough about my world to fully construct a map.

And there it is. There is the subconscious truth that has haunted me all these years. I cannot write about a world unless and until I fully understand what this world is and the forces at play. It is a relief to understand it after all these years of absolutely getting it wrong. Now that I have diagnosed the issue, the real work of world building is underway. I’ve tasked hours to the job. My entire winter break is about figuring out what this world is and what are the stories that have been and will be across the ages. One thing I’ve learned from the generator is how little I’ve thought about politics outside a handful of national skirmishes. I don’t even know all of the nations. It is not enough to know the races. you need to know where they came from and where they’ve migrated to and why. All of this is part of the questioning that goes into developing a world map. That, and geological events. Weather is so important yet I’ve ignored it largely in my thinking. This too takes a huge burden off of my soldiers as I now realize what I need to do in order to build this fantasy reality instead of spinning for more years trying to figure that part out. Now the real work begins.

I’m trying to construct the map for this fantasy world and all it gives me is a headache. I feel so far out of my depth that I don’t begin to understand how to get to where I want to get. In fact, I don’t know where to start. In fact, I don’t know what I want the world to look like. I prefer to have a picture of a world all premade and from there shape the human conflicts that impact that space. There are a few things within the world which I feel I need in order to tell the part of the story I know, but for the most part, I am struggling with getting started with all of it. This is what comes of drifting away from fantasy for the better part of twenty years. That, and my headspace for the day is entirely out of whack.

Perhaps this is the day where I say, let it go, and fall back to simpler thoughts and ideas. I don’t have to get everything perfect today. I just need to know that I am trying to get moving forward.