Drafts, Downpours and Drama

The word of the week is incisive.

Aug 26 - Ritual

It's interesting how quickly people can fall into habits.

We live short lives, yet sometimes we feel like we've been doing something for far too long. Other times, these habits can be comforting to us, as they reinforce the normalcy of our lives.

One habit that I've been keeping up for over half a decade now is writing this blog. In the beginning, it had a different purpose than it had now, which is still to inform but also to record and document, if you will. Where I've been, what I've been doing, what I've been thinking and feeling and all the other things that I write about, week to week.

Not a whole lot of people read this blog, when it comes down to it. A few dozen here and there that I know every week, plus a lot of strangers that wander in from the web from various sources for various reasons. Some of the most popular posts in this blog of mine might surprise you: TotalDrama Island is the most popular post of all of mine, with over 400 hits. But most the time it's not like that. I like to think of this blog is a positive habit, one that keeps me going and forces me to think on what I've been doing at the same time.

It's writing practice, reflection and journaling all-in-one, all of which are good.

Aug 27 - Bill Watterson

Who better to give life advice than Bill Waterson, who drew Calvin and Hobbes?

The creator of one of my favorite comics is famous for giving a graduation speech in 1990, in which he espoused quite a lot of good advice. While some people would say that it's advice given by a successful person after the fact, the fact remains that it's still good advice no matter what the source.

Above, I've shown a small snippet of a comic drawn in Waterson's notable style by another younger comic artist who wanted to pay tribute to Calvin's creator by drawing parts of his famous speech. It's a wonderful way to enjoy some Calvin and Hobbes that we haven't seen before. Click here to jump to the full comic and enjoy it in all its splendor.

Aug 28 - Wrecking It

I was feeling down again, so I went and rented Wreck-It Ralph, for a toonie.

It's a computer-animated film lovingly done as a tribute to the early videogame age, along the lines of ReBoot, which explores what happens inside video games when they're not being played.

I thoroughly enjoyed it!

It's wonderful to see films that show the viewer how much effort has gone into creating them and arched just smarmy ads for products or treading old ground that we've all seen before. In the case of Wreck-It Ralph, we get to see a character who wants to be more than he's been up to that point in his life and yearns for something better.

I found it to be a delightful story, with memorable characters and no slow spots that jumped out or took me out of the story. The animation was excellent in HD, with creative choices by the art director to provide colorful and entertaining visuals as the story moved along.

It definitely took me out of the mood I would perhaps described as despondent and left me at the end of the movie with a much more balanced view of how one can change one's life if you really want to. While that may sound cliché, I will have to say that the film didn't make me roll my eyes at any point about the lessons it was conveying but instead had me nodding in sympathy with Ralph as he made his choices.

Sometimes those choices work out, and sometimes they don't. You'll never know unless you make them.

Aug 29 - Rain!

Victoria got one of its rare rainstorms today, and I was out in it unfortunately.

After a fairly long and tiring back-to-school-busy day at work, I emerged to find that the rain had turned from a gentle shower into a veritable downpour. While it wasn't a thunderstorm, it was the heaviest rain I've seen for quite a few years and I made sure that before I left the shelter of my workplace, I had all of my waterproof gear on including shoe covers and a slip cover for my backpack. My glasses and my other workaday things were safe inside the waterproof covering, thanks to my planning ahead for this sort of thing happening every once in a while.

What I hadn't counted on was the rain being quite salty, having come from over the ocean to dump all over the city. The only unprotected part of me was my face and within a minute, my eyes were burning from the salt content of the water that was running down into my eyes. I also discovered that my gloves, which had been fine in previous light rains, gave up the fight and became sponges quite quickly, leaving my hands soggy and cold to grip the handle bars as I rode.

Note that he's not wearing gloves...

Fortunately, traffic was quite light given the heavy rain and I was able to go at a steady pace, despite not being able to see all that clearly. Wiping my eyes did little good as the water came back right away and kept burning just enough to make me blink rapidly the whole way home in order to make out objects.

Once I did get home, I had to hang up everything to dry in the bathtub, including my helmet, unusually. I washed my face and got my hair dry, still smelling of salt. I also discovered that my waterproof biking jacket has started to lose its waterproof coating, as it was rather damp on the inside in addition to being soaked on the outside. Given that it's a decade old, I'd say it's probably time to replace it but right now the price of a decent jacket isn't in my immediate budget.

So I'll just be sure to bring along a towel in case another downpour happens.

Aug 30 - The Play's The Thing

I saw a live play tonight!

Not having been to the theater for probably a decade or more, it was quite a treat. The play was one of dozens of performances being put on by the 27th Annual Fringe Festival, part of the national on goings in cities across the country this week.

The play I saw was a small production called The Occupied Mind of Mr. K. Here's a brief summary of what the play was about:

From the creators of last year’s hit Awkward Hangouts of History comes a riotous, unnerving black comedy of the supernatural and the “one percent.” Jobless programmer Vijay, deadbeat friend Dylan, and psychic meditation guru Pericles conceive a novel solution for their economic woes: to take over a recently deceased billionaire’s “vacant” body and gain control of his business empire.

I really enjoyed the entire production! The performers were lively as a group, with very few line stumbles and very energetic performances, with the sole exception of one young lady whose obvious inexperience on the stage showed in a somewhat wooden but still serviceable delivery. It gathered some very favourable reviews as well, which I heartily agree with.

As a writer, I have to say that I now look at live performances in a different light. Observing people is a big part of what I do and watching the actors on the stage, I got a real sense of how one brings a character to life through the actors art. Much like painting a picture in the mind with words as I've been doing on my own, the two are both sides of the same coin in many ways.

It I was also there to be entertained and I really truly was. The world outside and all its cares disappeared for an hour as I watched the story unfold live upon the stage under the lights. Becoming immersed in the performance was a fantastic experience, being drawn into the emotional river as it flowed towards the end of the tale was wonderful.

I hope to see more plays next year, now that I know to mark it down on my calendar for the 2014 11-day run.

Aug 31 - A Year Gone

One year ago today, I finished the first draft of my novel.

Since then, I've completed a second draft and I'm currently working on a third. I've also printed dozens of copies of the second draft in a lovely paperback formats to hand out to friends and family at cost, a project that I'm quite proud of despite the amount of work and funds that it's taken to date.

From here, I've got a ton of work to do still. With all the feedback I've received to date on the second draft, I feel that I can now do justice to the third draft and make it the best book possible without having a professional editor look at it - something I can't afford right now. However, the third draft should be good enough for me to shop around to agents and hopefully from there to secure a publisher.

Okay, this is a pic of the second draft. It's still a big stack o'paper...

That's the route I decided to take: traditional publishing. Why, you ask?

Simple: it's a matter of time. Having a mostly full-time day job right now means that I don't have the luxury of time to be able to promote my book myself, which is quite necessary in order to secure any sort of meaningful sales. With the resources of a publisher behind me, I am free to write the next two books in the trilogy instead of spending many hours every day flogging my book near and far myself.

That's the choice I've made and the one I'll be following this fall and winter. We'll see where it leads me.

Sept 1 - Moving Onwards

The last couple of weeks have been a little hard on me.

While my job is going fine, I've been having growing thoughts about spinning my wheels, so to speak. I've been there six months now and though the people have been fantastic, is certainly not something I'm going to retire on a large pension from. In fact, it's not even really paying most of the bills.

But that's not what's bothering me. My mind is strange sometimes, in that it often won't let a problem go until it's found a solution. Right now, my problem is that I'm not feeling fulfilled in many ways, including my employment. They're not things with easy solutions, unfortunately.

Writing the next draft of my novel is my top priority. I have to wrap my mind around that and let everything else that's distracting me go, including thoughts about being unworthy of relationships and working at a job that I'm massively overqualified for. Plus dealing with being at a point of my life where I never thought I'd be: free to do whatever I choose to but being burdened with debt that's unattached to any sort of equity-based possessions like a house or car, which I find immensely frustrating. I'd love to be able to work a day job simply out of the desire not to dig into my savings instead of doing so out of necessity of not having to become homeless due to a lack of same.

I can't help being where I am right now, which means I have to make the best of it as I always have. My emotional state has been a pendulum for the last couple of months, despite the pithy I experienced in Arizona which has not studied me as much as unstuck me from my burdens to wobble around juggling and admittedly fewer number of them. Yet they're not all gone and I still worry, regardless.

Where to go from here?

It's a new month and this blog, as I said a few times before, is about new beginnings. I've also mentioned before about needing focus and in thinking about it these last few weeks, I've come to the realization that my worries will not go away. I have to simply set them aside, not ignoring them as much as not letting them have power over me while I focus my energies on what I can do about my life right now.

I have the third draft to do. I have a job that I generally enjoy because the people I work with, despite the constant mistakes I make, which is great. My family are all doing well and I have to pull myself up by my own mental bootstraps and push on despite the steepness of the hills that I feel I'm treading.

Nobody else is going to walk a mile in my shoes for me.

I'm tired, with bags under my eyes and a busy week ahead. I hope by the end of it I'll be more energized, as right now I'm feeling worn. Best to sleep on it.