The word of the week is lassitude.
March 19 - Writing Cold
It's been difficult to write the last few weeks; physically it was painful last week and this week I simply have no energy as the cold has stuck full-force. Which stinks, but it's winter's last hurrah, I think. I won't be doing much this week save killing Kleenexes, resting and keeping myself as entertained as my fuzzy head can manage.
At times like these, I turn to some of my writing idols, such as Neil Gaiman, as they look at the writing process and how they face it some days when it's not as easy as it could be. Here's Neil's take on writing and the strange places it can take you, for good or bad.
Another thing that occurred to me today was to do something for the upcoming 250th blog post here in B.C. Beginnings. I've been debating what exactly to do… suggestions? It's a few months away, so there's plenty of time!
March 20 - A week to go for EI?
A week to go until my EI comes in; I've done all that I'm supposed to do and now it's up to the Red Tape dispensers in whatever office you care to name. It's still stressing me out, as I've of necessity had to become a person who believes things when I see them - too much in my life has gone haywire due to details large, or small, getting muddled. So until my EI shows up in my bank account next week, I'll still be on tenterhooks about it.
Once it's in though, I'll be all smiles, as it means I can go forward with my plans to write( and complete! )my novel in the next six months. Along with the accompanying IP( intellectual property )development, marketing plan and all the sundry things that are also a part of creating a work of fiction yourself. Not giving any thought to this beforehand would be foolish, for as I've already found out from my research many new authors just write and worry about these 'small details' later - wrongly so, I'm told. Being foresighted as I am, I will be juggling all these things as I go along, which will actually help with the writing process as I can 'step away' from the writing itself to work on other aspects of the whole. I can even deal with the 'distasteful' project of working on Personal Branding, something which I understand only a little of right now but that I KNOW is vital( almost key! )to promoting myself as an author. As well as getting practiced in public speaking, which I dread along with many.
March 21 - BSG: Blood And Chrome
Yes, I'm loathe to admit it: I never finished watching the last season of the recent Battlestar Galactica. I was totally turned off by the 'miraculous' arrival of Starbuck and the total left-turn the series took at that point, which I felt was an insult to the loyal fans who had followed the incredible potential the series had offered up until then. I likened it to a main character slapping everyone upside the head and stating "Everything up to this point has been a dream." Which stank, as I thought it was all incredible up until that point…
March 21 - BSG: Blood And Chrome
Yes, I'm loathe to admit it: I never finished watching the last season of the recent Battlestar Galactica. I was totally turned off by the 'miraculous' arrival of Starbuck and the total left-turn the series took at that point, which I felt was an insult to the loyal fans who had followed the incredible potential the series had offered up until then. I likened it to a main character slapping everyone upside the head and stating "Everything up to this point has been a dream." Which stank, as I thought it was all incredible up until that point…
So seeing the trailer for the series pilot Blood and Chrome which would have followed the young Adama at the outbreak of the Cylon War brought back feelings of wistfulness for the same awesome feeling the first season of BSG engendered. It has all the things that made the first season mind-blowing and I'm not just talking about the FX - it looks to have story out the wazoo. Too bad SyFy decided to pass on the series and instead make it into 'webisodes' - I hope that these will manage to keep a level of production quality on a par with the trailer, as that's still better than nothing at all. There could have been so much more…!!!
March 22 - Armored
I'm considering a lot of things to include in my novel, one of which is powered armour. Which won't be explained AS powered armour, at least not at first. There's just something about strapping oneself into a suit that makes one as powerful as a tank on two legs that appeals to me; the original Starship Troopers was built around this concept, which vanished in the more recent movie. Powered armour stories such as the classic Armour have always had a special place in my imagination, so when I heard that there's a new short-story collection due out in a WEEK called Armoured, I was tickled! Even better, you can preview( in full! )several of the stories on the book's website, which I found to be VERY informative. Gives me a few ideas for promoting my own novel, as a matter of fact… but I won't give any of those away, yet. Not while I'm waiting for the free-to-play MechWarrior Online to launch later this year… huzzah to giant mech combat action!!
I'm considering a lot of things to include in my novel, one of which is powered armour. Which won't be explained AS powered armour, at least not at first. There's just something about strapping oneself into a suit that makes one as powerful as a tank on two legs that appeals to me; the original Starship Troopers was built around this concept, which vanished in the more recent movie. Powered armour stories such as the classic Armour have always had a special place in my imagination, so when I heard that there's a new short-story collection due out in a WEEK called Armoured, I was tickled! Even better, you can preview( in full! )several of the stories on the book's website, which I found to be VERY informative. Gives me a few ideas for promoting my own novel, as a matter of fact… but I won't give any of those away, yet. Not while I'm waiting for the free-to-play MechWarrior Online to launch later this year… huzzah to giant mech combat action!!
March 23 - RUIN CGI
What people can do with a relatively inexpensive home PC setup nowadays blows me away sometimes. What used to cost tens of thousands of dollars ten years ago can now be done with software costing hundreds of dollars, on regular hardware bought off-the-shelf. In the case of RUIN, OddBall Animation has put together a jaw-dropping eight minutes of CGI eye-candy set in a post-apocalyptic world. With flying robots, laser-shooting missiles and nanotech samurai swords, it's a treat to watch, especially for the small touches. Prepare your eyes for awesome( BEST VIEWED FULL SCREEN ):
RUIN from OddBall Animation on Vimeo.
March 24 - Preparing to Move Out / On
Today was all about one thing: moving boxes. Moving them from our condo locker downstairs to the storage locker I've rented for a month, or two. It's all of my Stuff: things useful and not so useful. Books and dishes and small appliances and all the other things that make a place a home, as well as somewhat cluttered. It's still puzzling to me that after moving a half-dozen times in the last 4+ years I can still have so much Stuff, but I've at least whittled it down to Essentials and Nostalgia. I think I've about reached the point in my life where THIS month, April, I can go down to the storage unit, haul out a box, take a bunch of pictures of Nostalgia Stuff, and get rid of it. I probably won't even bother to sell any of it on eBay, as Nostalgia usually doesn't command a worthwhile price unless it's extremely rare or still in its original box. For the most part, I think I can condense things with only a little effort and pain on my behalf, as today I spent almost 6 hours moving those boxes from one storage to another. As I don't want to just have things SIT in storage, wherever I end up, it's going to be a process of paring down to the point where it will all fit into whatever apartment I end up in.
Along with all my books. Those, I will never part with. Though I'm trying NOT to buy more paper ones and so save space with eBooks. We'll see how that goes.
March 25 - Check. Not Mate.
I slept in today, a bit, as I was up late last night - playing chess. In NWN, of all places - Samuel has added in a module that allows players to play with animated monstrous chess pieces, with all the correct rules. Given that it was the first game of chess I've played in over ten years, I did fairly well… and I love that I was able to play a game within a game, with friends. Too bad NWN's been giving me a video stuttering problem since I installed my new video card a month ago; I'm still working on finding a solution, but for now it means the game is a real pain to play and hard on the eyes to boot. Argh.
The weather today was spectacular, so after only a couple of hours of gaming online with my Xbox, I gave my wrists a rest and headed out to Starbuck's for the afternoon with a friend. It was deliciously sunny and I spent a fair few hours there, people watching and enjoying the fact that I could sit down at an outside table and not have the metal chair singe my legs with arctic frost. I suspect in a few weeks I will be out a LOT more, as I find my muse more active to match my own activities. That would be a most welcome change!
Although I never thought it would happen, I've found myself wondering what day it was more than once in the last couple of weeks. As someone who's VERY aware of the time, I find this funny AND disturbing - it means I have to get into my writing routine ASAP, or I might find myself losing days to lassitude and laxity too often. My time is free right now, but NOT infinitely so!
What people can do with a relatively inexpensive home PC setup nowadays blows me away sometimes. What used to cost tens of thousands of dollars ten years ago can now be done with software costing hundreds of dollars, on regular hardware bought off-the-shelf. In the case of RUIN, OddBall Animation has put together a jaw-dropping eight minutes of CGI eye-candy set in a post-apocalyptic world. With flying robots, laser-shooting missiles and nanotech samurai swords, it's a treat to watch, especially for the small touches. Prepare your eyes for awesome( BEST VIEWED FULL SCREEN ):
RUIN from OddBall Animation on Vimeo.
March 24 - Preparing to Move Out / On
Today was all about one thing: moving boxes. Moving them from our condo locker downstairs to the storage locker I've rented for a month, or two. It's all of my Stuff: things useful and not so useful. Books and dishes and small appliances and all the other things that make a place a home, as well as somewhat cluttered. It's still puzzling to me that after moving a half-dozen times in the last 4+ years I can still have so much Stuff, but I've at least whittled it down to Essentials and Nostalgia. I think I've about reached the point in my life where THIS month, April, I can go down to the storage unit, haul out a box, take a bunch of pictures of Nostalgia Stuff, and get rid of it. I probably won't even bother to sell any of it on eBay, as Nostalgia usually doesn't command a worthwhile price unless it's extremely rare or still in its original box. For the most part, I think I can condense things with only a little effort and pain on my behalf, as today I spent almost 6 hours moving those boxes from one storage to another. As I don't want to just have things SIT in storage, wherever I end up, it's going to be a process of paring down to the point where it will all fit into whatever apartment I end up in.
Along with all my books. Those, I will never part with. Though I'm trying NOT to buy more paper ones and so save space with eBooks. We'll see how that goes.
March 25 - Check. Not Mate.
I slept in today, a bit, as I was up late last night - playing chess. In NWN, of all places - Samuel has added in a module that allows players to play with animated monstrous chess pieces, with all the correct rules. Given that it was the first game of chess I've played in over ten years, I did fairly well… and I love that I was able to play a game within a game, with friends. Too bad NWN's been giving me a video stuttering problem since I installed my new video card a month ago; I'm still working on finding a solution, but for now it means the game is a real pain to play and hard on the eyes to boot. Argh.
The weather today was spectacular, so after only a couple of hours of gaming online with my Xbox, I gave my wrists a rest and headed out to Starbuck's for the afternoon with a friend. It was deliciously sunny and I spent a fair few hours there, people watching and enjoying the fact that I could sit down at an outside table and not have the metal chair singe my legs with arctic frost. I suspect in a few weeks I will be out a LOT more, as I find my muse more active to match my own activities. That would be a most welcome change!
Although I never thought it would happen, I've found myself wondering what day it was more than once in the last couple of weeks. As someone who's VERY aware of the time, I find this funny AND disturbing - it means I have to get into my writing routine ASAP, or I might find myself losing days to lassitude and laxity too often. My time is free right now, but NOT infinitely so!
2 comments:
Enjoy it while it lasts, Peter!! Being "available" to yourself is a rare gift. I have great confidence in your literary abilities as you have a good command of the language and a unique way of using it. Hope this makes sense to you. It does to this old girl!! Later.... Aunt Carolyn.
Thanks Aunt Carolyn! Your belief and encouragement mean a LOT to me! :-)
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