Songs, Scribing and Solar Flares

The word of the week is feisty.

March 17 – UnGreen

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

There was no drinking on my to-do docket today, as it was a recovery day for me to try and rest after injuring my ribs this past weekend. I had no desire to be out at a bar tonight where a chance encounter with an elbow would probably leave me in agony… and unable to finish the delicious beer I would have paid for. Seeing as I've been drinking less and less in the last two years, to the point where I can go weeks and even months without thinking about a drink, there's little point in my going out tonight feeling as achy as I do.

There's always next year. Maybe then I'll have a different group of fine folks to hang out with? Who knows, maybe I'll run into this fun bunch:

Tonight's writers group meeting went spectacularly well, I have to say, even if I was the one leading it. The topic was 'Food For Thought' and it was - you guessed it - all about the subject of food in one's writing.

Like the other group presentations that I've led, I put in a goodly amount of research and preparation, including a handout packed with pertinent points. It was a group of over a dozen people that met at the Atrium downtown and we all had a great time for several hours solid. It was exhilarating and gratifying for me to be able to lead an evening with my writing peers, to have so many people enthusiastically participate and foster a feeling of a supportive, intelligent discussion.

I can't wait until I do my next topic this spring!

March 18 – Disaster Dodged?

Did you know we dodged a solar bullet recently?

Scientists revealed this year that back in 2012, a massive solar flare that erupted from the sun could have changed life as we know it here on earth.

Fortunately, the flare occurred as the earth was on the opposite side of the Sun and so no harm was done - this time. However, reading the report, it is quite evident that if the flare had shared the same quadrant of space as the earth, disaster would likely have resulted here on our lovely fragile blue planet.

That's a big flare. And the Earth's too close, I might add.

Ever since I was a grade-school boy, I've had a worry in my head about life on earth getting wiped out. I find it's a tad ironic that the Mayans almost had it right that life might have ended in 2012 after all. Maybe they had some hard-won ancient astronomical knowledge that we now lack despite our current scientific progress?

Whatever the case, I'm glad that the sun decided to wait until the earth was out of the way before firing it's gigantic solar blast. I certainly enjoy our modern civilization and the millennia it's taken the human race to get here, so I definitely don't want it all the come crashing down thanks to the biggest sunburn the earth has ever seen.

March 19 – First 5 Chapters redone!

Three solid days of writing.

That's what I had off this week and I made full use of them, from early Tuesday morning to Thursday late in the evening. I've already made a full pass through the novel utilizing the very specific notes given to me by my critique group that I've been meeting with monthly for the last year. That pass was for general word corrections and for some minor improvements in overall story structure, as well as adding in some details to support additions and changes to the novel.

This week was all about rewriting the beginning of the book.

Not that there's anything terribly wrong with the beginning, but it wasn't the right one for the rest of the novel. When I was writing the book's first draft, the style was definitely apocalyptic and far too heavy-handed than it needed to be, given how the later chapters shaped up.

Now that I've heavily rewritten and adjusted the first five chapters this week, the book has a completely different feel from the word go. Instead an apocalyptic, devastated world, we get a picture of a planet that's been invaded in the recent past and that really informs the rest of the story in a totally different way.

It will be very exciting to continue my heavy editing in the next month, hopefully getting through at least 10 chapters a week until I hit the end of the book and can do another pass for adding in additional items. I have pages and pages of notes containing all the aspects, nuances and other things( to use a very general word )that I want to include in the book under the auspices of a third draft.

I can't wait to show it to you all when it's done this spring!

March 20 – Homes

Let's talk math.

Surprising topic for me, I know, right? Yet numbers have their place in everyone's lives and when it comes down to it, if you don't know the basics then you can't build a foundation for  anything.

Building foundations is what I want to talk about: home ownership and all it entails.

I'm not trying to be an expert or a smartass here, but just make my feelings on the subject clear in a simple way without inviting a massive flame war or debate.

Not having been a homeowner, I can't speak to the actual experience, but I can look at experiences of others and extrapolate. I've known people who were house-poor and others who owned several houses as well as lots of people in between those two levels of the property ladder. I'm not planning on climbing that ladder anytime soon, in the main because I don't have the resources to plunk down into a mortgage... making me the owner of very expensive piece of modern real estate compared to just renting one. For now.

Things can change and I'm certainly open-minded regarding learning more about being a homeowner, as I'm at that age for a lot of people have been firmly entrenched in the joys and sorrows of such. What I do like to know, as in any subject that involves money and me twined together in holy matrimony, is the reality versus the pie-in-the-sky version that tends to sell people. Being the kind of person who kicks the tires first and then worries about the new car smell, I can say the same for homes. Reading this article about The True Cost Of Home Ownership was informative and while I don't take everything it says as the truth( especially as it looks solely at the American market ) it definitely added to my knowledge of the subject.

One of these days I'll be able to tell you about the topic from the other side of the front door of my own.

March 21 – Songs In My Head

I just can't get enough of Frozen this month, and neither can millions of others, it seems.

The catchy songs have been stuck in my head this week after I watched the blu-ray release of the movie at home with my sister. While you may expect the massively popular song "Let It Go' by Idina Menzel to be ringing in my brain, other songs have stuck there and that's a little unusual for me: music doesn't really rattle around upstairs for very long. Though I do tend to get a 'daily song' stuck in my head where a song will pop up in the morning and I'll try to figure out why it's hanging around for the rest the day, as my subconscious is usually trying to tell me something. It's always interesting to find out what.

In the case of Frozen, there's a lot of catchy tunes, a fun story and even a reindeer to make things interesting. I found I liked the movie as much for the subtle pop-culture references as for the clean CGI, which made for a lovely HD experience; the marriage of solid CGI with an HDTV has really transform the movie experience at home and paired with a decent sound system, you'd hardly know you weren't in the theater anymore these days.

As for getting the Frozen tunes out of my head, I don't think that'll happen anytime soon, but I don't mind. Seeing as most of the songs are fairly uplifting, I think that's probably a good thing. It certain seems to have worked for this couple, with millions of views on YouTube for their Frozen lip-sync on a family trip:

March 22 – Life From A Decade Ahead

Can you see the future?

Recently I read that books are the only true time machine, through which you can visit any point in the recorded past and beyond, given the fancies of the author's imagination. Seeing the future is also the purview of the author, but in a totally different way and in hindsight, some of science fiction's predictions have become science fact today. Always, there's hindsight which lets experience pick and choose where better choices might've been made to change the outcome of people's lives.

Mark Manson turned things on their head a little about by asking people about what advice they may have given to their younger selves. He received around 600 responses, combing through each and everyone to compile a list of the Top 10 Life Lessons that people in their 40s would tell their younger selves a decade earlier.

Mark said that some of the lessons people wish they had known where repeated over and over in the e-mails he received - It's definitely worth reading the article. I found that I could relate to quite a few of the stories and life lessons that were mentioned in it:

“When I turned forty my father told me that I’d enjoy my forties because in your twenties you think you know what’s going on, in your thirties you realize you probably don’t, and in your forties you can relax and just accept things. I’m 58 and he was right.”

While I'm not sure ready to just 'relax and accept things', I'm definitely able to see with  with a lot more perspective in hindsight. Where I am right now isn't where I'll be in 10 years and I find that very exciting to contemplate.

March 23 – A Decent Day Done

Today was all right - decent, even.

It was my third day working of three in a row, before having the next four days off. That seems to be the way things are going at the moment with my employer, with slow spring sales meeting less hours. Which is fine, in a way, because that gives me the better part of each week to do nothing but work hard on my novel.

The time spent at my day job today was pretty decent, with several customers complimenting me on my attitude and sales acumen as I helped them find what they need. It's really all about that, no matter what retail or service job you're doing: helping people get what they need and hopefully you both enjoy the entire process from start to finish. When you're confident about what you're saying and doing as well as being truthful, there's no better place to be when dealing with people. As a bonus, the stress levels tend to drop as your ever – attentive boss sees that not only are your customers smiling but they're walking up to the register with lots of items in their hands, which ends up making him happy too. Not that that's time I list, but it's definitely up there with enjoying my day more overall. Such was the case today and I went home with feeling a rare combination of contentment and happiness from doing my job.

So is rather odd when I took an online test entitled Which Batman Villain Are You? and got unexpected result. To be honest, these kinds of tests ask leading questions that are fairly easy to guess the answer from me in context, so I was not too surprised when I got my answer: The Joker - yikes!

This is the LEAST terrifying Joker image I could find...

All in all, it was a decent week. I'm REALLY looking forward to MORE writing time this week coming up, as it means my novel will be even closer to being finished... or at least as finished as a comprehensive all-out edited third draft will make it!

The pain in my left side has subsided to an uncomfortable ache with the occasional pang if I twist or accidentally press the exact wrong spot. I believe that it's healing up, as I'm resting better at night and generally moving about of the day without more than just an uncomfortable feeling that fades each passing day. If this is what rugby players or other contact-sport athletes feel every time they finish a game, I have to take off my hat to them. I'll stick to my imaginative exercises and leave the body-bruising to more hardy folks.