10 Minute Rule

Not a cohesive string of thoughts in my mind today. Instead I’m going to focus on…

Some Thoughts:

1. Unintentional ASMR is a much purer form of the art. Seriously, the internet is loaded with sex-driven ASMR in which scantily clad women whisper suggestive things. How is that supposed to be relaxing? I’ve been into just random interviews with people whose voices are ‘right’. These can be male or female. It is more about tone, speed, and cadence.
2. One really good example of the above is a video showing the Alexander technique as shown by Diana Devitt-Dawson. She has the vibe. Not quite Bob Ross level, but good.
3. Self-haircuts are terribly difficult. You cannot know how difficult until you realize how madly you’ve mangled the back of your head. I’m going to give it another shot this evening and see if the Lady Talis can tell if it looks good. No, I won’t ask her to do it. Never.
4. Yes, it is stupid not to ask. Freedom means having the right to be personally stupid.
5. I finished the office upgrade. The new look means a movement of the C64 keyboard (which will still be upgraded to use as a keyboard), an additional low shelf replacing a short table. This gave me more storage and surface area. Now I am excited about being able to keep this space clean.
6. It is extremely cowardly to direct my attention to yet another Shadowrun novella–a non contracted one at that! Nah, I’m still doing it though. Scared of the Justice Engine. I’ll just build up more steam and further the daily habit with this ‘easier’ piece.
7. It is easier because I know the story. I already have a solid outline and pieces of chapters. I can knock this out, given the argument of hours to words, in 110 hours. That’s solid time for a 55,000 word novella. I ought to be paid 5500 for such work. Sadly, novellas do not get that kind of money. I could sell it through the holostreets interface on drivethru rpg for a few bucks and see if I recoup the hours. More important than the pay for this is the proof of concept that this works.
8. Turns out this minute per post thing mostly works, but some of these entries are taking a bit longer to think and thus type through than others. Some less. The speed of words is a curious thing. This post is over 400 words for example, which argues my processing to typing per minute speed is under 7 words a minute, which sounds pretty darn lousy. I’m going to need to get back to being better at processing.
9. I think going back to daily exercise is really going to help me with that process. More on the exercise to mental function thing tomorrow…

I think I am dodging a particular novel. To be clearer: I am.

Yesterday I restarted work on a modern novel that I am struggling to find the narrative thread for. I have a banger idea and some solid side character concepts. I even have the thread of a protagonist–though I remain uncertain about writing a female protagonist though I truly feel like this is her story. I got a good amount of outlining and reconnecting in. Then, as I was cleaning the office and putting away old work, I stumbled on an unfinished novella and instantly decided to finish that instead. The novella is Shadowrun based and as such familiar and easy. It is the novel equivalent of low-hanging fruit given how far along it is and how well I understand the scenario and the motivations. Everything I do not know about the modern story, I know about the Shadowrun novella. So, I convinced myself in principle that it makes more sense to finish the SR story and have that ready to push out to publication than it does to tackle this other story I’ve been dodging for 5 years.

I am a punk. There, I said it. I am running from the story I don’t know how to write because I am afraid of failing at it when I know it can and should be so very very good. This is movie rights type stuff and I am selling the entire bag. Fear, then, is the focus of this ten minute post. I don’t wish to sound preachy, but I personally realize what fear can do to a writer. I am watching it happen in real time. I am watching it hold me back from what could be the start of a new path of writing for myself. What is it I am afraid of? Well, I am presently reading Seveneyes by Neal Stephenson, and it is loaded with incredible science, ideas, and world building. Yet, he entirely bungled the character story. He’s writing women –largely as the POV characters– that I cannot accept as being anything more as an insult to women on a psycho-sexual level. The narrative thread is more milieu than character story, which is probably the point, but so far from what I want to do and so much exactly what I am afraid of doing to my own work. All of that fear pushing me back from the keyboard makes me a punk.

I think a lot of writers are punks. We get scared to do different things and lock into doing what we are good at. If you want to be more than genre. If you want to tell relevant stories, you need to embrace that fear and keep going. I’m going to do that.

Right after I knock out this novella.

I like Marvel. I’ve always enjoyed the way they were able to create iconic comics that made me feel like I was feasting on a story with real implications. I read though Secret Wars and all sorts of Crisis by other names. I love the arcs. I love so many of the characters. I also recognize that the translation to the screen has been rough and often difficult for a very key reason: It is hard to please fans who are already so intimate with a character that they have great expectations of what is going to unfold on screen. This is why the phase one formula targeted B-characters. Cap, Iron Man, Thor… all of these guys were behind the core stories of Spiderman, Wolverine, the Fantastic Four, etc. So while we had expectations they were much lower than we would’ve had the start of the new MCU been wrapped around Parker, Logan, and the X-men. This is all preamble to what I suspect is going on with the newest phase of the MCU. They ‘re ending this phase with Cap and starting new with the FF. This is them saying we are ready to hit the big stories now.

You should’ve remembered how to get the little one’s right first.

Brave New World is all about wrapping up loose ends. You get the sequel to the Incredible Hulk film. You get to close the loop on the Thunderbolt Arc by showing us his full rise to the top and… no spoilers here though. You get introduced to a next arc villain in the Serpent Society (maybe… they aren’t really big enough for Secret Wars level stuff). What you don’t get is a good film.

I’m sorry. I like the director. I’d like to go back and watch the Cloverfield Paradox again–it was super interesting (if almost entirely unrelated to the series). I like what he was trying to do, even if it felt like rehashed material from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It just didn’t do enough for me to feel like the blockbuster I expected. Narratively, there was ZERO arc for Cap. Same applies to side characters like Sabra (who may or may not be a mutant in the MCU). It felt like a gigantic setup for the introduction of Adamantium and tying up the pesky loose end of a dead celestial in the middle of the ocean. Of course, how the frack do they know it is a celestial or even what that is? Did Cap Marvel tell people? Did Starlord?

Sigh. That’s the emotion that followed the ending. I left the theater alongside a crowd of silent people. That in of itself is a review.

I have more than love to celebrate right now. I finished a project and as a result I am open to develop other fiction. I am going to work on a novel tomorrow, 1000 words as we talked through in a previous blogs. 500 words an hour for two hours allows me to have a chance to develop new work and keep going on my quest to get to the point where I can smoothly produce marketable fiction in the way described and at the level of value I ascribed for myself. I’m feeling really good about the situation.

Some Thoughts:

1. Listening to creepy internet mysteries while blogging is not the move. However, it does let me know the internet is a terrible terrible place.
2. Oh, and people are stupid. Like really really stupid.
3. More and more I am starting to feel like aspects of anime are reflective of a certain subset of people who are, well, wack.
4. The Legend of Saquon continues to grow. Now he’s chill enough to bring people (a ball boy) excluded from the team parade inside the ropes to enjoy with the team. Nice. Trying to get my kid to be like him.
5. Slow on the words tonight.. Not so much burn out as not having a lot to say.

I am giving serious consideration to changing my workspace. Half my desk remains unused and hidden behind a screen. It is that way because of how my monitors are mounted on the desk–something that doesn’t appear to be modable due to the physics of the desk. The space is dirty, and crowded, and fails to execute the basic tenet of “make me feel good about writing.” Therefore, I need to switch things up in an effort to start feeling more relaxed and focused in my writing.

What focuses me on writing? I think I’m a forest-punk kind of guy. I want to have tech from various ags all around me–the cobble together or reuse kind of stuff in an environment that feels like it is foresty. I know that is not a real word, but it conveys the idea of trees and green and lush, calm life. Sadly I work in an office that faces the rising son and gets a ton of heat and has bad (basically broken) AC that costs too much to fix, so the green is unlikely or at best seasonal. However, I can add a water feature and maybe manufacture some level of additional storage to hide my clutter. This is progress.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am beginning to think about the things that keep me happy, focused, and thus productive. The time conversation was extremely helpful and enabled me to gamify progress a bit. I dig gamification in the sense that it helps me apply my thinking to a problem in a fun fashion.
2. Ok, marbles and writing it is!

I have not addressed the Luka trade. I think we all feel like the Lakers won right there? At least in the short term the team is primed to be very good. I feel for players like Dalton Knecht who are full of promise but got dealt because of the big man issue. At the same time that deal fell through, so they are kinda back with the team? I’m not sure how that impacts the locker room. All I really know is Luka and Bron are dangerous. They create enough that the other weapons on that team are gonna have chances to score.

I am getting excited about spring ball. Though unorthodox, the way Northern Colorado approaches the situation is working to develop my kid. They are a gym first program. He needed that physical boost. Meanwhile he is loving in the film room and that is making him better. Should be a good season for him next year. He’s ready to pop out.

feeling the same about the young one. He’s got a lot of work to do in terms of learning the game but he too loves on film—just the til tok clip kind. He needs to turn the corner this JR year.

that’s all. Ten on the phone takes longer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Solid writing today. Kept the phone out of the space for the second hour and really did good. All I needed was quiet.
   

I’m not turning back this Tuesday. I am looking forward. I recently came to the reasoning that I deserve $50-$100 an hour for my writing. Given that I’ve written a pair of novels, a half dozen novellas of which 3 have been paid for and one published professionally and one published just on my own (I’m thinking about putting it up online again though through DrivethruRPG), I have the talent and history for the pay. I am going to be pushing to enroll in an MFA program this week, and that is designed to get me the credentials to continue teaching post my present tenure. The writing though, that’s the thing that is entirely in my power. It is not about how many cents per word I get. It is more about how fast I produce those words. So, if I am (and I am) writing a 12,000 word project and I believe I ought to be able to get $50 an hour, it means I need to get it done in 24 hours. That equates 500 words an hour. That is actually entirely doable–especially if I can seriously lock in and schedule it well. How long would a project like that actually take to do ‘in the zone’ of getting a solid 500 words an hour over the course of a week? 14 days at two hours a day and two days of not writing.

So why isn’t that happening?

Research, distractions, freaking life. I need to lock in. If I can do that—If I can shut out reality for two hours a day, I can be the writer I need to be.

I just completed a difficult scripted conversation with a plumbing company employee that made me realize that some jobs can and should be replaced by AI. It was enough of a moment that I honestly felt like it was worth a blog. There is more to this moment than this one phone call. I’ve worked with several internet providers over the years and reaching out to them is… difficult. They use phone systems that are not driven by sophisticated technology and designed solely to route me away from the human help I actually need. I need the human help because whenever I call one of these systems I am trying to deal with a nuanced problem. AI, from my understanding of the level of technology in its present state, is not very good at nuance in that respect. However, transcribing my information into a system in order to get a truck out to my house to look at a problem should not take a 10 minute phone call. I could hear her typing in the information as we spoke. I could hear in the pauses and the variety of tap pressure and speed when she got hung up on something and or needed to read from a prompt. It was as if she was working for the computer and, because I called, it needed her voice to talk to me. They have programs for that too now.

The more I consider the role of AI in jobs the more I find myself asking two fundamentally different questions. The first isn’t even about AI itself. The question is instead about people. Do we create jobs in order to hire people who do not have the skills or intelligence to find other more heightened forms of employment? I mean who actually needs someone to hold a sign on a corner and maybe spin it a few times to direct you towards a particular business. Real Estate people do that pop up work with A-frames. Likewise, are we still at a space where we need a room full of booking agents (yes, I heard other people in the background doing the same dang thing) transcribing data into a system that can better speak for itself?

The second question is about the technology. What level of nuance and understanding is required to carry out the role of a booker or of someone of other administrative functionality? What is needed of a teacher? Both of these are roles AI is being used to replace to some capacity. So, what does it say aout those roles and what we need from those roles vs. what AI is capable of offering?

24-0.

That’s all I really need to say about that. ‘Quon still needs to get live and I feel like they will lean heavy into the run in the second half. Give that man his ring!

As for Kendrick…

I was disappointed there was no Wayne, but the show was actually pretty cool. I worry that we have too high standards in terms of what the show can be. The spectacle needs to include the unexpected, and Nick Fury was not enough. Don’t get me wrong, Samuel L Jackson was a great touch and the message Kendrick pushed was really solid. I loved the American Flag of black men. How could I not?! We are also American in spite of what the new government makeover says. Kendrick even said, “You chose the wrong guy.”

There is a lot to say positively about that show and I want to see it agian to hear how he meshed the songs together and the inherent message in that and in what lines he chose to say. A lot of good here. Just not the spectacle I expected… I guess I really expected Wayne.

I had a moment today when I had to realize that not everyone lives in the screen space. The Lady Talis doesn’t. She does not understand what it is like to move from screen to screen chasing that high you get in each iteration. I used to think of it as running from something; even hiding from myself. Now I see it for the fix and the feeling that it is. I spend my morning moving from fiction to fiction to fiction. Three iterations of worlds cast on different screens. I rarely slow down to catch a minute of down or human time. That doesn’t bother me. When I need it, I take it. When I want it–when I want to step away from that churn–I take it. But it keeps me going. I use the fictions to create my fiction. Not the content of the game or the show I then switch to, but the energy of it; the knowing that this was created and experiencing that creation as motivation to make my own. That churn keeps me motivated in the cycle. It keeps me away from the natural world and all of its problems and responsibilities. It is hard for someone who doesn’t work like that to really fathom how that works. Even here in explanation I wonder if it makes sense to someone other than me.