Bricks, Breaks and Bemusement

The word of the week is gregarious.

June 30 - Squinting

One day of work, then a holiday: my kind of start to the week!

Speaking of work, today I was very careful about how long I went between visual breaks. A few times an hour, I exercised my eyes using the 20-20-20 Rule:

As a matter fact, I quickly dropped the time down to taking I break every 15 minutes, focusing elsewhere for 30 seconds minimum and I found this to be even more effective. By the end of my workday, which was a busy one, my eyes felt tired but not overly strained and nowhere near as bad as they were by the in the day on Friday.

I did order a pair of computer glasses from an online optician, which should arrive here in about two weeks time. I'm really looking forward to getting the glasses and alleviating my lingering eyestrain, so that I can really enjoy my job as well as continue to write my second novel in the evenings.

This particular evening, I took a break for a little while and set out on the patio at Moka House. I chance to run into a lovely young lady by the name of Mary, who ended up engaging me in a wonderfully varied conversation that revolved around the concepts of writing fiction and the many precepts that involves. By the time I left to go home for dinner, I was quite enthused about my book all over again.

Meeting nice people, well: that's good too.

July 1 - Sunsick?

I went out of town for Canada Day today.

Not too far out of town, however: just over to Sooke, about an hour to the North along very winding roads through very lush forest and valleys along the western coast of Vancouver Island:

The coastline is why people put up with Sooke's crazy winding roads...

From noon onwards, I was at a friends house along with the rest of my gaming group and later on, their families. Although we arrived a little late due to my ride having to divest himself of a bad headache in the morning, we still got in about three hours of gaming. I definitely held down the puns this time and focused instead on the fun, which was probably the right decision given the close quarters.

The evening was wonderful, albeit rather hot; dare I say, unexpectedly so. While I kept myself hydrated in the shade, it was still well over 30° by dinnertime and I was definitely feeling the effects of the heat. Fortunately, I was able to cool myself down and avoid having to rest inside; I definitely should have worn shorts. Or something like this:

What I did forget to do was to moderate my food intake. A full afternoon of gaming munchies combined with hotdogs and hamburgers plus assorted sides from the well-laden table outdoors meant that I need a lot more than I should have. Seeing as I'm missing my gallbladder, my poor stomach has trouble dealing with large amounts of food eaten in short amounts of time and that was the case tonight. After I got home, I was up for hours well after midnight, trying to coax my stomach to deal with the overload. After a lot of stretching and other internal calisthenics which I won't go into, I finally managed to get comfortable enough to go to sleep.

Happy Canada Day!

July 2 - Writework

Don't tell anyone, but I've been writing a little bit at work during the day.

It's part of my process, I realized today: little snippets of scenes will come to me almost fully formed and I have to write them down as quickly as I can before the concepts drift get away from me. It's like the visuals pop into my head and I have to record them before they fade into the ether once more.

That's not to say that I spend a lot of time at work writing bits of my novel; I'm not a security guard at a desk or an accountant with only half a night's work to do on a midnight shift. I have a lot of work to get through and today, more than enough to keep me occupied, but at the same time when my Muse taps me on my shoulder, I ignore it at my peril.

So far, I've been extremely pleased with what popped into my head each day. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's a lot, but without fail each little snippet has moved me emotionally. It's a sure sign that my subconscious and my Muse are working together harmoniously to help the novel evolve naturally.

Part of the process is an almost continuous and unconscious review of all the salient points that I've come up with so far for my second book. Hundreds of small details need to be sorted out in my mind, put into their place so that foundations are built to structure the following chapters in a coherent way based on the previous ones. It's similar to weaving a large rug from 100 different strands of thread: the big picture will emerge only through a combination of patience, skill and determination to see that each thread is in its proper spot while not hurrying to finish but just letting the details settle into place.

July 3 - Unicorns

Well, it happened: I finally chose a wallet.

A combination of overwhelming choice and an underwhelming budget meant that I sat down today after work with the intention of picking a wallet from an online vendor before getting out of my chair again.

It's not an easy thing, choosing a wallet. Heck, making wallets is apparently an exercise in entrepreneurial frustration, according to the folks at Kickstarter:

… and if you walk into an ordinary department store in search of this unicorn, you will be very disappointed. “The wallets are all the same, they’re falling over, they’re in a corner of the store that nobody cares about,” says Dimatos. “And you kind of think, that’s why there are so many on Kickstarter — because this sucks!” Sargent agrees: “All the wallets you see in stores are pretty much the same. They’ve all been copying each other for the past hundred years.”

Additionally, I found myself not needing to carry around all my various loyalty cards these days. I've made do very well with my banking cards, credit cards, basic ID and some cash. All the rest can be digitized onto one of several apps on my phone, which considering that I don't do all that much shopping in varied locations makes all sorts of sense to condense things in this digital age. Have a gander at what I finally picked:

Rather than keep spinning my head around, staring at hundreds of wallets and picking a few dozen that have a personal appeal to me, I narrow the list down to three, all of them Star Wars themed. I ended up choosing one that was fairly straightforward in terms of construction, but had the added feature of being a bright color so it's much less likely that I'll leave it on a counter than I might a plain black leather wallet.

Hopefully, it'll arrive in time for my birthday!

July 4 - Perspective

Here's a story that speaks for itself.

Today is the American celebration of their country's birth, a day that stands for freedom.

In 1939, as war was breaking out in Europe, one man decided to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of Jewish children in Czechoslovakia as the Nazis approached.

Nicholas Winton organized an evacuation of nearly 1000 Jewish children, leaving their families behind to be shipped by train towards distant safety only hours before the Germans took control of their home towns. Some 669 children made it to safety, surviving the war and owing their lives to Mr. Winton.

Now aged 105, Sir Nicholas Winton has again been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for the second time. Tens of thousands of people around the world have signed petitions asking the Nobel commission to consider Sir Nicholas for the prize, one that I personally consider him more than worthy of having.

It makes you wonder what kind of difference you're making in people's lives in the world today, doesn't?

July 5 - Renting Bricks?

It looks like you can rent almost anything these days, including Lego.

Which makes sense, given that a lot of the larger Lego sets go for hundreds of dollars apiece and most people only use them once or twice - how many times can you assemble a 3000 piece Star Destroyer, given the time requirements to put the thing together piece by piece?

For people like me, it's unlikely that I'll be able to either afford the massively-expensive yet massively-cool big sets like the Death Star or Star Destroyer, but I would like to try my hand at assembling one or two of them just for my own edification and enjoyment. 

The cost though, will likely keep me from purchasing any sets of substantial size as I simply can't justify the expense for me to own anything that pricey on my budget currently, even with the new job's better pay.

Just for fun: a virtual 71,000 piece Super Star Destroyer and escorts...

Which is where Pley steps in: they're aiming to be the Netflix of Lego sets.

It's an interesting idea that they've come up with. You sign up with them for a monthly fee, pick the sets that you want to rent and then the fun starts. Each set is sent to you( and returned ) free of charge and you can keep them as long as you like, provided that you pay your monthly rental fee - one set at a time, of course. Sets that are returned are sanitized and the pieces checked to ensure their are not missing, though Pley states that up to 15 pieces can be missing from returned sets before a fee is charged.

This idea means that you can rent a set of your choice, assemble it at your leisure and enjoy it for as long as you want to keep paying the monthly rental fee. There is a catch though: to get the larger sets, more substantial monthly fees are applied and in the long run, it'd be better if you just purchased a large sets though some of the rarer ones will run you much more than retail cost, even if you can find them.

Yet even if I had money in the bank, the many hours needed to assemble such a project are just not there for me at the moment. I'm sure some people that do have the time will enjoy renting Lego sets from Pley, which is currently only available in the UK but they're thinking of expanding to the USA soon.

July 6 - A Day Off? Nope!

I had an unexpected meeting this morning.

An 8am Staples meeting, for tech training, which is no good reason to get out of bed, really.

But I still went, as it was both expected of me and also a chance to see a large number of the staff I've worked with again, all at once. Considering that my only shift in the last two weeks was yesterday, it's definitely a weird feeling stepping through the door, almost as though I've been on an extended vacation. But without the can or the relaxed feeling of having done very little on a beach.

All the same, it was amusing and made me wonder yet again when I'll be able to go full-time at my new job. I've started studying for the tests that I'll eventually have to write at some point in the near future in order to qualify for the position as a full-time employee. 

Once that happens, I won't be doing any more meetings at Staples, early in the morning or otherwise.

Later in the day, I switched over to a different project: editing my Third Draft for eventual publication. I move text around a little bit, formatting here and there to and trying to work out how many pages the book would be compared to my Second Draft that I printed back in the summer of 2013. That draft worked out to a solid 306 pages from cover to cover, which made for a decent-sized breed. My work today on the new draft pulled out to 415 pages, which means I've added over 100 pages and increase my word count by adding 30,000 words to my second draft based on the feedback from my critique group for the past year.

Considering that most authors are encouraged to reduce their first drafts by at least ten percent, I seem to have gone in the opposite direction by wide margin. However, the way I look at it is this: I've now got a novel draft that I am very happy with and feel is a substantially better book than the second draft in almost every way. From this point onwards, a professional editor can help me to reduce the draft to its essentials and get the book down to a fighting weight, so to speak. The story now contains all the essential elements and the many supporting details in a smoothly-flowing read that, considering the very positive feedback I got on the second draft should blow the socks off people who read this new version.

As of this evening, I have up to Chapter 5 of my second book outlined in detail, scene by scene. There is also a rough outline of Chapters 6 to 10 in place, with some other key plot points filled in at various points for the rest of the novel. Considering that I had a very basic outline for the first novel, the detailed outline for this second book will make things easier, as I've already mentioned in past posts.

Knowing where you're going and how a book will end makes an author's journey much easier and frees his muse to fill him in on all the details as he goes along. 

My eyes have given up the game well before 11pm tonight. Fortunately, I've finished the blog and put the final touches on it to boot, so it's off to rest with a cool cloth for a bit before bed and and early morning as has become the norm of late. Have a great week!

Strain, Silly Drivers and Strange Suppositions

The word of the week is eschew.

June 23 - Printed Perfection

Small victories are a key to life.

Case in point: my printer.

Why, you ask, is a printer important? Well, apart from the fact that you paid money for it, it can print things - silly question, really. I've used my Canon ip4500 for 7 years now to print all manner of things: photos, handouts for my writing group, parts of various drafts of my novel, maps… the list goes on. Yet for the last 6 months, my poor ip4500's been out of commission, taken down by a print head that gave up the ghost and leaving printouts with nasty lines all over them.

Now, I mention this because this is the EXACT situation that people coming into Staples often told me about. How they loved their old printer( it's a workhorse / great pictures / just bought a whole new pack of ink for it before it crapped out )and didn't want to replace it, but they had to, in the end. Toss old printer, buy new one, repeat in 2 to 5 years, give or take.  Keeps the manufacturers happy.

Flip lever, replace printhead. Why aren't they ALL made this way?

Back to me: I bought a Canon back in the day because the printheads are replaceable - now they're not, but for a long time they were. So you just replaced the printhead and not the entire printer, all with the flip of the lever… and a smaller zap to your wallet. Turns out though, that at $100 a printhead( even re-manufactured! )it's cheaper nowadays for me to replace the ip4500 than to effect a repair via eBay parts.

Which I would have, had not fate intervened. A customer a few weeks ago brought in their old ip4500 to Staples, found out it had an error that couldn't be fixed cheaply and so bought a new printer. Leaving said Canon malfunctioning  printer( identical to mine )behind to be recycled. 

With a perfectly-good printhead inside.

Needless to say, I'm quite happy with the result. A lot of careful cleaning, some testing and clickety-clack: I have a like-new inkjet printer again, all set to print out whatever I want it to.

Ironically, I won't be up to much for the next six months, but at least I know it's there when I need it.

Colour me happy!

June 24 - 400K words?

I've written a fair number of words in my life, when I think about it.

As I've mentioned before, this blog itself is well over half a million words now, after seven years of writing every week. My novel's third draft is almost 150,000 words and when I think about the other stories I've written over the years, you could probably put in another hundred thousand words or so, getting my total close to three quarters of a million words in the last 20 years or so.

Which is not a lot compared to Jamie Todd Rubin, who wrote 400,000 words in a single year.

It sounds impossible, but he documented the process for which he used Google Docs to keep an accurate account of what he was producing everyday. Given that he is a published science fiction writer and blogger, his methods obviously bear examining to see how I might learn from them.

One thing that I did notice is that he uses a noise-canceling headset to tune out his surroundings. It's something that I've considered over the years but rejected due to the cost: a good headset will easily run around $300 to $400, which is way out of my budget, unfortunately.

The key thing that Jamie mentions is to write every single day, something that I'm still not quite in the habit of. I do think on my writing and notate every day, but I don't yet have a set amount of time that I sit down to write to the exclusion of all else. I'm thinking that I may do this in the morning, before work, by getting up earlier and use the time to collate my notes so that I can be ready to write in the evenings after I'm home from work and simply have to put the pieces together, so to speak.

I'll be trying this out very soon, I think, and I'll let you know how it goes.

June 25 - Near Misses

I was almost run over today.

No, that sounds too tame, too brief. How about this:

A car screeched to a halt less than a foot away from me, going from 60kph to ZERO after the driver suddenly realized the light was red and people - including ME! - were crossing the street while other cars were also going the OTHER way.

It could have really ruined my day, and his.

Almost: I was a foot in FRONT of his bumper...

What happened was this: a large dump truck was turning left at the lights, around the corner where I was standing, waiting to cross. The truck blocked my view of traffic to my left, as well as blocking Silly Driver's view of the light, which had turned red while the truck finally got through its turn. The crossing light said 'Walk' and everyone stepped off the curbs… which is when Silly Driver realized that the empty curbside lane( the other lane was taken up by stopped cars; hint much? )should NOT have been used to speed his journey to work / school. He slammed on the brakes just in time, as I caught him in the corner of my eye, realizing his car was moving FAR too fast. A second of tire screeches and Silly Driver's car was sitting IN the intersection while I and the lady next to me shook ourselves and finished crossing; Silly Driver was ducking to pick up something from his passenger footwell and refused any eye contact.

 
No harm, no foul, right? All the same, I had a good bit of cold-sweat shakes for a brief minute once safely across and away from the road. It was THAT close and ALL I'd been able to think about as I stood staring at Silly Driver's bumper was how an accident would just ruin my brand-new pair of pants.

Weird, eh?

Ten years ago this cartoon came out... and we've learned little since.

It also got me thinking: what if I'd been hit and had to spend the summer( AGAIN! )in the hospital? Sure, I'd be covered by insurance( I have a fair bit for this sort of thing )but that's assuming I was only injured.

What if I'd been killed? A headsmack the wrong way off his windshield or the ground and that'd have been it; he wasn't going slowly, I'll remind you. I'd definitely have broken limbs and likely more.

If I'd bought the big one, then nobody would be around to write my stories. My second book would remain unwritten, as would the third and ALL the other stories I have sitting around in my head - especially the ones I don't know are there yet. Nothing would have been published and well, it'd be rather disappointing for me to stare at glumly from whatever afterlife you happen to believe in.

Plus, I'd be gone and a few people would miss me. More than a few, I like to believe, and I'd definitely miss being around, that's for sure. All you folks are great and I'm not ready to disappear just right now.

I'm choosing to take this as a sign that I Should Write My Books - Sooner, Not Later. I think that's a healthy way of looking at things, don't you?

Also, I'm going to be even MORE careful crossing the road, even in 'sleepy' Victoria!

June 26 - Proof of parallel universes?

Something I forgot to mention yesterday: a receipt.

Well, let me backtrack a little. One of the first things I do at work in the morning is to 'tape' the invoices I get, which means I pull out a quaint old-style printing calculator to add up all the bits on the invoice to ensure everything matches up and that the service provider hasn't made an error. Fairly simple.

Yet my first receipt of the day… wasn't. Have a look:

One of these totals is not like the other...

Now, since you're wondering what's weird about that receipt, let me fill you in.

It's the first receipt I did that day, simply adding two sums: 337.500 + 16.88, which gets you $354.38.

Only, the first time I did it, I got $356.88. Which is WRONG.

Very, very wrong. As in, the calculator SHOULD NOT have been able to give me that total.

Blinking, I zeroed the calculator and added the two sums again, getting the correct total of $354.38. I've NO idea why( or HOW )the calculator could screw up a simple addition. I checked a few more times and got the correct total of $354.38 each time, leaving me to wonder what had happened.

My theory: I'd just caught the edge of a parallel universe, where things are similar but different, enough so that small errors were still occurring and I'd caught the edge of one. Meaning that the accident I'd avoided this morning by the narrowest of margins had, in fact, caused me to be injured in other parallel lines whereas I was perfectly all right in this one… but experiencing echoes of the others.

I'm just going to go with that - because if you can't trust a calculator, well then, you're really screwed in this universe. AND I happen to like the way things turned out for me with a lack of injury this week.

One the same note, I had a minor and amusing conversation with a stranger on FBook today along the same lines. An artist had posted a picture to one of the groups I belong to, asking for an opinion as to which of the two paintings she'd created was better. I looked at the picture, then replied "The third one you haven't made yet." She replied to my comment with this:

Peter, how did you know I have to make another? Or was that a joke? I do have to make another though, it is funny that you would say that not knowing that I would. I have chills.

 

How did I know? I just… did. It's been a really weird week. What's next? The X-Men appearing in my kitchen?

If so, I could get rid of my can opener with Wolverine around…

June 27 - Eye Owies

My eyes failed me today.

More specifically, my week caught up to me by way of eyestrain.

Late in the afternoon today, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing my computer screen. I adjusted the lights on my desk and kept working, but a few hours before quitting time I was having real difficulties seeing at any distance and I had to take some frequent breaks in order to finish what was on my desk.

Once I got home, the problem was even worse: I couldn't read my cell phone at either at arms length or up close. My right eye ached and I immediately put a cool cloth over my eyes to rest for about half an hour, which seemed to help a little. I did some research on the big screen using my PC, looking up remedies for eyestrain, of which there are quite a few.

01100101 01111001 01100101 00001010 = eye

It was quite a surprise to me, as I've had no problems at all for the last month while working at my desk. My eyes are changing as I age though so I suppose it's inevitable that this should come about. It's also true that I haven't worked a desk job before where I had to focus my eyes at the same distance for hours at a time without any break intervals in between like wandering around a retail store or looking out at the lobby or through windows on a regular basis.

The rest of my evening was low-key, with little work being done on my novel save juggling ideas in my head. My sister and I watched most of the movie Sunshine, which I happen to like the concept of and in my opinion it was decently executed despite being a little dry overall.

Kind of like my eyes at the moment, when you think about it.

June 28 - Being Blind

I needed some inspiration this week and found it in an unlikely place.

Most of you may be familiar with the story of Helen Keller, the woman who lost her sight and hearing at 19 months old when she contracted meningitis. It's a story as inspiring as any I've heard, where someone trapped inside a cage of their own body fights to reach out and succeeds beyond anyone's imagination.

What I also wasn't aware of is that there's rare video of Helen Keller available now, thanks to the Internet and individuals determined to keep her inspiration alive. Below you'll find a video where Helen speaks about her greatest regret, which is something so simple that we all take for granted yet for her it was something she never mastered despite her incredible will and determination:

In the afternoon today, I installed a text-to-speech app called @Voice Aloud Reader on my phone. Essentially, you copy text from any source( via your phone )then paste it into @Voice and that is you and it reads it aloud - rather nicely too, I must say. There are numerous voices that you can download in various accents( free while in Beta, too! )and they sound very natural compared to voices available even a few years ago. I'm not an audiobook person, but this was a nice solution to what I hope is a temporary problem with my eyes, allowing me to 'read' a few more chapters in my current Kindle book while my eyes rest a bit.

Next up: getting the app to read MY OWN book aloud - yay!

June 29 - Second Day Off

Yesterday and today I did get some writing done on my second novel.

Admittedly, it wasn't nearly as much as I wanted to get done, given the discomfort I was in from my eyestrain. Using my voice recognition tools, I was able to write scene-by-scene summaries for several more chapters, which I'm doing in much more detail than I did for my first book. I think of these summaries as a much more detailed 'map' of where I want to go with each small part of the book; each summary is at least a paragraph or two in length and sets down some fairly precise ideas about what the scene is about. The outline that will result from these summaries will probably be 10,000 to 20,000 words in size, which is a small novella in itself and one that I can refine as I go along as needed.

Later in the afternoon I went to see my eye doctor, whose office is conveniently open seven days a week. He examined my eyes thoroughly and was pleased to tell me that there was no underlying condition that could be the cause of my eye difficulties this week. I was due for a checkup anyway, as it's been a year and a half since I was last in, so I was happy to hear that it was simple eyestrain that was the cause of my discomfort. He recommended that I purchase a prescription pair of computer glasses from a retailer( online or local ) to use it work in order to maximize the efficiency of my eyes need for focus at the short distance I'll be working at when using my computer daily.

This was pretty much what I had expected, but it was a relief to hear that there was no other difficulty detected. Given that my mother has Sjogren's Syndrome, which causes among other things very dry eyes, I'll be happy to simply scout out the best price for computer glasses in the next day or two and place an order. My preliminary searches today turned up a few candidates, though I was surprised to find out that there are very few Canadian retailers who deal with this specific type of prescription glasses despite the fact that tens of thousands of office workers must need new glasses every year.

To me, that sounds like a prescription for the business idea. Anyone want to start up an optical company?

That's all I have for you this week. Thank goodness I'm only working 4 days, thanks to Canada Day on Tuesday, which should give my eyes a break. I'll be following through with a LOT more regular eye-breaks at work; I CANNOT allow ANY eye issues to interfere with the completion of my second novel. It's just one more challenge to face of many on the path...