Martians, Machinations and Miscommunication

The word of the week is propitious.

March 24 - Personal Progress

Timing is everything this spring.

My schedule has thankfully fallen into a perfectly practical regular rhythm, where weekly I work three days on and have four days off to write my novel as well as catch up with my life.

In terms of having a life, I've been working steady weekends and that's not been so great for getting out to meet people. All the same, my hourly wage isn't exactly ranking in the 'disposable' category currently, so perhaps it's for the best that I've not been going out much of evenings.

Yes, it's an e-card. No, I couldn't find anything that wasn't less lame.

Right now I'm not feeling the lack. I have a job, I have my novel and I have my family here in BC, all of whom are doing well. I've set aside almost everything else that I could be doing to focus on what I need to be doing and that's enough. Material things are not even on my radar anymore and I haven't watched any of the many TV series or read most of the books I own practically since this time last year. Heck, I still haven't seen a single second of the third season of Game Of Thrones( which I love! )and the fourth season is starting anytime now. Perhaps I gives you an idea of how I've disassociated myself from most everything except what I've already mentioned I'm up to this spring.

Finding a better job is next on my priority list, as soon as I've finished editing my novel's third draft. Once I've established a better pay scale, I can spend my non-day-job time working on the next book in my trilogy. It would be wonderful to be able to take three months off as I did back in 2012 - I am confident that I can put in the time day-to-day and still manage to get similar results within a similar time frame later this year. 

 I haven't set a goal yet but I'd very much like to make a good start to the second book by year's end while I shop my first book around some agents to see who might be interested.

March 25 - Shock

Today found out my granddad had a stroke, several weeks ago. Two strokes, actually.

He's still with us thankfully and has suffered no major effects, but I was shocked by the news! Nobody on that side of the family had told MY side of the family, not even a hint.

That's not the way things  need to work in a close family and I'm horrified that weeks have gone by with my family here in BC having no idea of what happened.

Needless to say, while I talked to my grandfather today I had a decent chat with him about less-weighty topics, to be sure and he sounded much cheerier by the end of the call. As he's my only living grandparent left, it's weighing on my mind that in all the years that have passed, I've seen very little of him or my late grandmother, for that matter. You can't get back the time that you didn't spend with someone and while I'm not one for regrets, I wish that family matters had worked out differently and that I could have a little time back to spend more of it with that side of my family.

Don't wait until it's too late. I'm hearing that loud and clear.

March 26 - More Of The Same

My workplace is chaotic.

That's a rather charitable description and in no way reflects anything about the character of the people who work there. It's just a simple fact that the store could be run much more efficiently and given the current way that it's going day to day, I find myself with little desire to dive into the chaos in order to 'fix' things - that's not my responsibility.

What it does bring to mind is leadership.

There are thousands of books about leadership out there, many of them very well-written and all of them espousing various Rules and Insights into the seemingly magical or mystical methods of inspiring people to work harder for the same pay. I've read more than my fair share of them and no two books are the same.

Essentially, it boils down to this: you're either a good leader or deficient one and oftentimes it's difficult for you to tell the difference. Good leaders might not be efficient whereas deficient ones might very well be efficient in some ways but don't realize they're sorely lacking in others.

When I think about leadership, I think about the people I've worked for that I respected and inspired me to want to do my very best. Others make me want to watch the clock and become very good at my job so that they don't breathe down my neck every 5 minutes to make sure I haven't made yet another tiny mistake.

Good leaders make better companies and better people. Who doesn't realize that?

March 27 - 1/4 done!

At the end of today, I finished editing the first 10 chapters of my novel's third draft.

This was the most difficult part of what I had to do for the book, in a way, because of the almost total restructuring that every scene and every chapter had to go through.

Now that that task is done, I am FAR happier with the way the book reads from the very start. I've also been able to insert and tweak many more layers and aspects of the story overall, meaning that little seeds are planted earlier in the book that will grow throughout much more naturally.

I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say I'm energized to finish the rest of the book over the course of the next few months. I'll be plugging away every week, solidly turning the words over line by line and scene by scene in order to make them the best they can possibly be. I'm taking pains not to obsess over any particular part but to look at it as needing to progress steadily on the project as a whole.

That's all for now. Back to writing...

March 28 - New Writing Tool!

I bought a laptop today. Well, I started interest-free payments for one, that is. 

My workplace sells laptops by the job-lot and there's been a little ultrabook sitting at the end of an aisle for longer than I've been working at the store, unsold. Yesterday its price dropped yet again and as it was the last one, on clearance, I bit the bullet and put in to buy it on our company Computer Purchase Plan. I was approved for the CPP( heh )today, meaning that I'll be paying a mere $40/month, sans interest, to own this sleek bundle of techno-joy.

Why do I need a newer laptop, you ask?

The key word there is 'need' - it's for my writing and for the last half a year, the hand-me-down laptop from my parents has been a struggle to use. It's slow, quite heavy to carry around and prone to overheating; all those factors don't help my creative workflow. The same goes for my 3-year old ASUS Transformer, which I originally hoped I could tote around to write wherever and whenever I wanted, but again the tool wasn't right: it's even slower than the old laptop and multi-tasking? Forget it.

The Acer S3 is a tool suited perfectly to my writing needs: it has an 'instant-on' feature I've not seen in most any other laptop I've sold at my work. Meaning I can flip it open and start writing within seconds, which I could kind of do with my slower ASUS; something I still love about that machine. Here's a picture of all three units, with the Toshiba on the left, the new Acer S3 in the middle and the ASUS Transformer on the right:

Left: Big and bulky - Middle: Best! - Right: Better but backward

Needless to say, I'm over the moon at being able to get such a stellar laptop( ultrabook! )for such a tiny monthly outlay. It will make editing the remainder of my novel this spring a MUCH smoother process and getting started on my second book all the simpler.

A final note: turning the Acer S3 over, I noticed to my delight that the unit was manufactured on August 29, 2012, only 24 hours before the day I finished my novel's first draft! It's as if the universe anticipated my needs and gave the order to create this particular Acer S3 when it did, harmoniously for me to find it this spring and put it to good use for my writing.

I think that's an extraordinarily cool coincidence!

March 29 - Blossoms

Victoria's beautiful in the spring, more so than any place I've ever seen in my life.

The blossoms here are what makes it so lovely. The city had the foresight to plant thousands of cherry trees decades ago and every year they bloom, as I've mentioned here in the blog before. The expectation of such sights each year still doesn't take away from its majesty. Just have a look at this picture that a local photographer posted of a random city street here:

Stunning.

On my way to work today, the wind had picked up ever so slightly. Small swirling vortices of blossoms accompanied me as I cycled along streets, dancing around in ahead of me in pink choreographed chaos. It reminded me very much of the scene from American Beauty, where a plastic bag was filmed as it played with the wind: enchanting and unique and inspiring.

That's Victoria. I love it here.

March 30 - Mars

Four years.

In less than half a decade, the next step outwards from our planet will take place.

Mars One will launch the initial stage of what will be the first manned mission to Mars. Unmanned ships will preceed the habitable trans-solar vessels that will carry the first permanent colonists to the red planet.

It's mind-boggling to think that in a decade's time, humans will be walking on the red planet. Permanently too, I might add: everyone who's going to Mars is taking a one-way trip, leaving everything and everyone they know behind in order to take the next giant step for humanity. Naturally, there's nothing saying that if those first brave colonists are still alive in another 30 years then there might be more regular travel between Earth and Mars to allow a return trip, but that's just speculation right now. Besides, if they're willing to leave the earth behind, why reason would they have to come back at all at any point in the future?

Lots of 'ifs' go through my head when I think of the Mars One project. If my situation here on Earth had been different, if I had no permanent ties here and if I had a skill set next that would let me be considered for the mission, I think I would have volunteered. One of the few regrets I have in my life is that I likely will never travel in space, between the planets or the stars, so setting foot on another planet would literally be a dream come true for me. Perhaps in another 40 years, I'll be able to afford a ticket to Mars to go and look for John Carter's footprints among the red dunes of that distant, alien world.

Not so alien, though, if humans are walking its surface soon.

It's a weary me who's wrapping up the blog a little after midnight this week. My left side is still aching now and then, depending on what I've been doing. I have an appointment next week to get an ultrasound, which I hope will have nothing to say save needing more time to heal. All I want to do now is write; work's been less real to me than the words in my head fighting to be realized and the clock's ticking to get my stories out into the world.

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.