Stuff White People Like?

I can't tell if this is supposed to be funny, or if it's just sad.

For the record, I only score somewhere down below the 50th percentile on the things I'm supposed to like. I must not be too stereotypically white. Of course, I suspect most people will "like" at least half of these things, most of the time.

If it were about blacks, however, there'd be huge screams of racism, and rightly so. I vote sad.

Fits and starts

About a week ago I posted I was starting on act III in my story "A Far Sun," and at that time, I was. But after writing about 3,500 words of my heroes' arrival at the Library, I realized I hadn't completely thought through how they would have reconciled their available choices in the aftermath of the "big battle." So, I wrote some notes in my notebook exploring their choices, and trying to identify the pros and cons of each. Of course, there is really only one viable course of action for them (and it's what I had written in the first place—they go to the Library), but I need to let them sort that out for themselves. I am taking time out from the "action" to write a (probably) long conversation/argument/discussion amongst themselves where they try to decide what to do.

I don't know if this discussion will survive to make the final cut. It's kind of anticlimactic and slows down the building momentum right at the point it should be accelerating. But they need to hash out their options so that everyone understands what they're doing, and why. And by everyone I mean all four of my protagonists. Yeah, I call them "heroes" because that's the role they're playing.

And for those who are paying attention (both of you!) you know I've been mentioning three heroes all along. The newest one, at least temporarily, has sort of wormed his way into the story from a somewhat unexpected direction. I had long ago envisioned a love interest for my female hero Jane, and when a suitable candidate came along I simply went with the notion. Oddly enough, his personality, back story, and agenda just fell out rather naturally, so now I have him. And he's important to the plot, as well.

About the only thing that concerns me is the speed with which Jane as taken to this guy. Mere days, and she's in love. Well, she thinks she is. It's not so odd that he feels as he does; he was prepared to make that choice when he met her. I view the "love dynamic" being a little like how we picture the Victorian era. People could meet and "fall in love" almost immediately. Or so we have been led to believe. There is a feeling called love at first sight, but it's not that enduring love that develops over time. Oh well, besides that, I'm happy where my characters are at and where they're going.

So there.

Controversy surrounding my writing

Over the weekend I had a substantial controversy with my wife over my writing "hobby." It's not that she thinks it's a hobby, it's that she thinks I spend too much time doing it. She also doesn't see why I refer to it as "work."

I won't argue I lack good balance between the facets of my life. I do have the distinct tendency to become rather embroiled in (some would say "obsessed with") things; some would even see the repeating pattern scattered throughout all my so-called "hobbies" over time.

Writing was never really a hobby for me, but it is so difficult and so time-consuming that it's truly very hard to ever finish anything (and thus why others would see it as a hobby). In 1993 I did write the first draft of my first novel in about a year, but that was accomplished only by working literally every night and every weekend that I could spare. It was very long, about 300,000 words, and it was complete crap. Since the first book was only half the story, I did embark on writing the second part and wrote about 150,000 words over the next year, or so. I eventually rewrote the first "book" and I'm still trying to finish the second. If I survive my current writing project, I will finish it.

I have been writing stuff since ... forever. In junior high I was writing things and my friends were reading them. I knew I had talent, but since I have talents in several areas, I guess I never saw writing as something particularly unusual or special. But it is.

I no longer look at writing as something in which to dabble. I believe I can publish. It's just a matter of doing the writing then pursuing the book deal. I don't really care how difficult it's supposed to be, or how many others think they can write but really can't. I really can write. And I want to write.

I saw this blog post and though it's not about writing, the feelings of the author resonate with me. It doesn't matter how difficult the task is, and it doesn't matter that most fail. What matters and what we both fear is in not trying.

I am not ordinary—never have been. I should be able to do this thing I've set for myself, and I need to get started before I get too much older and the risk of dying becomes too great. The biggest tragedy would be not trying and thus failing to achieve. I should take my writing seriously, and approach it with the same determination to succeed that I pursue my IT career.

So it's valid when I say I have work to do. I need to be persistent and dedicated to it, otherwise I won't accomplish my goals. I'm not sure I could ever make enough money writing to quit my day job, but that's not really the goal. I simply want to have something written and published, and for what it's worth, have a small audience that wants to read my stuff. It's only then if that doesn't satisfy me will I look to the next goal down the line.

Sounds like fun!

Actually, I had to look up "LAN Party" on Wikipedia. But now that I know what it is, it does sound like a better time than a prom.

But what do I know? Back when I went to high school (yes, we did have electricity) D&D hadn't even been invented, yet. So there couldn't have been too many gamer girls around. Would have been nice, though, to have met a geeky girl. Oh, well.

RIAA says DRM will make a comeback

I found this on BoingBoing, and just had to put my two-cents in.

I buy (keyword: buy, which means purchase, pay money to, etc.) a ton of music. That is, lots and lots. I'm a freaking music junkie, I think.

But I will never, ever "rent" music and allow some big company to tell me what, where, when, or how I listen to it. I download albums from Amazon.com MP3 downloads, and I also buy albums from Magantune.com. Neither one has DRM or prevents me from doing things with the music. Magnatune's license is quite liberal; they allow you to share your music (purchased music) with up to three of your friends--no additional cost.

It's simple. The greatest enemy of musicians is obscurity. Piracy exists and has always existed. There is the perception (on the part of the RIAA) that digital piracy materially affects record sales, but that does not factor in the following two items: 1) not every piracy of a song/album represents a lost sale, and 2) even pirated music leads to future sales.

I'm old, and I may have a different attitude about music and musicians than younger folks, but I have no problem paying a reasonable price to have good, new music. It has value to me, so it's worth something in return.

I occasionally obtain music from others. They think it may be something I am interested in. Some of the time I like it, which almost certainly leads to my purchase of music. Nightwish came to me that way. Now I own something like a dozen albums of theirs. Sometimes I don't like it, so there's no loss to the musician or record company. It wasn't something I would buy, and it's not something I will buy, either.

I don't buy as many CDs as I used to. I buy MP3 downloads much more often today, and I've come to prefer it. If I have to I will go back to buying CDs, and if those CDs won't let me digitize the music without restriction, then I won't buy those, either.

And that's that.

Moonrise, moonset, and midnight fighting in the ... dark?

Argh! I've been writing my story "A Far Sun" in earnest since January (2008). Because I can, and because in the story the phases of the moon (and the relative light emanating therefrom) are important, I've been keeping track of where the moon is and what phase it's in.

And gotten it all wrong.

No, it's not because my moon phase calculator is wrong, it's because the "calculator" is visual and I cannot seem to fathom that a dark circle means the moon is "new" and a light circle means the moon is full. So, I'm off by two weeks in the story. Exactly. As I said: ARGH!

Actually it's not that much of a problem since no one (in the story) cares what date or day of the week it is. Moving forward (or backward) two weeks does have an impact on the weather, however (since the protagonists arrive sometime in late March/early April) but of course I can fudge the temperatures and the dates that trees begin to leave and flowers begin to bloom.

Two weeks forward is my current plan. Going back two weeks places my protagonists in a position to be cold and perhaps even deal with snow. Moving forward (a whole month swing) means the weather will be warmer and really bad weather (i.e., snow) much less likely.

Why do I even care? Well, when the story goes out into the woods and the protagonists are walking and camping, it really doesn't make sense that the big battle in the middle of the night should happen right when there's a new moon. It's dark on these nights. People are rather unlikely to see much in such dark, so describing what goes on from the POV of an observer doesn't exactly work.

Why correct the error, since no one knows what the moon phases will be in the year 2297? OK, that's a good question. But trust me, someone will check, and it's a detail I'd rather get right, than stupidly wrong. So you ask, what are the moon phases in 2297? Well, find them here. You can find a really accurate sunrise/moonrise/moon phase calculator here. It only does 185 days at a time, but that's good enough.

And off we go!

I finally figured out how to handle the appearance (or non-appearance as the case may be) of two "new" characters in my story. These guys both appear in the very beginning, then don't come back until much, much later in act III. I was worried their introduction (and disappearance) might seem odd and was considering writing in their backstory throughout the bulk of the story. Well, that's not what I did.

I simply changed the initial "accident" scene in the beginning where Adam and Jane are transported into the future (I'm not really giving anything away, here). And by "simply" I mean I changed the POV in the scene away from Adam and onto a perspective from inside the control room, which overlooks the Chamber where Adam and Jane are monitoring the experiment. So we get to see Adam and Jane disappear, then we see Brian (and some others) disappear a moment later. Poof! Now it's obvious to the audience that everyone is somehow linked to the accident, though we only get to see Adam and Jane as they awaken to a somewhat different set of circumstances than what they'd known. We're all left wondering what's happened to Brian and Fralick. Wondering, indeed.

So I've worked through the crisis at the end of act II. I know I said I was there before, but I realized I needed to more completely wrap things up in the aftermath of the big battle. I won't give anything away, though. Yes, there is a big battle and for a time it's quite uncertain if Adam and Jane will survive, but of course ... they do. Now I'm off and running in act III (hence the title of this post) and finally getting to write all those "candy bar" scenes I've been imagining and holding in my head for months and months. Yes folks, our heroes finally get to the Library. And not only that, we are quite nicely set up for a really big reveal. Shocking, some might say.

Well, I'm going back to writing, now. And this is the really big fun part, too! Can't avoid getting to the ending, now. The only difficulty I can see is making the "big bad guy" big enough and bad enough.

For those keeping score, I'm just past 104,000 words and 415 pages. Approximately 140 pages remain. So stay tuned.

Distinct similarities

Listen to this golden oldie from 1965. Better than that, you should check out the video from the Ed Sullivan Show, below, which includes the insane dance they were doing for the song.



As I said, insane. There's another clip on YouTube from the TV show Shindig! that's even more bizarre, but you have to watch until about the 2:10 mark to find it.

But that's not the reason for this post. Check out this song by Joe Jackson from Amazon.com's MP3 download site. Seems Mr. Jackson borrowed heavily from Freddie when he wrote "Rush Across the Road". That said, I do like the song.

BTW, I recommend Amazon.com MP3 downloads. Less expensive than buying the CD "hardcopy" and much more instant-gratification-enabled, as well. I also buy albums from Magnatune.com, though chances are you've never heard of any of those artists.

Happy listening!