Daily Update: The past couple of days.
I was going to write a daily update today. Then I wasn’t. Then I was. I waffled back and forth several times debating if I should just jump into some fiction of clear my head first. I think I need to clear my head first.
First, the good. We had a great day yesterday at the beach. We spent most of the day at the beach having a good time, getting a sunburn, eating too much food, getting full of sand, and watching the fireworks from PetCo Park and Seaworld. We went to the Coronado Beach (crazy trying to find parking) and stayed until nearly 11PM. We had a bon fire and it was warm enough that I didn’t even need a jacket once the sun had gone down. Oh it was a great time.
The bad? I was crazy tired. I mean tired like you cannot believe. I had gotten about four hours of sleep. You’ve seen me post about Duchess and her Kennel Kough. Well, it turns out it wasn’t just a cough. She was breathing heavy and hard for a few days. I was going to take her to the vet Saturday morning due to a crazy busy week because she wasn’t really eating much and just looking very weak and tired. She wasn’t coughing nearly as much so I was hopeful that she was getting better.
That was until you got real close to her and listened to her breathing. It sounded ragged and her lungs were defiantly filled with fluid. Her heart was beating harder than normal and the wife and I knew it was only a matter of time, but still wanted to get her to the vet.
She didn’t want to go up the stairs so I stayed downstairs to keep an eye on her in case she needed to go outside and use the bathroom. I had carried her outside and let he lay down to cool off then brought her back inside and laid her down on her bed. It was around 11PM when we went to sleep and I read for a little bit. Before I went to sleep I went to check on Duchess around midnight because she’d gotten very quiet. She’d stopped breathing. I held her for a bit. Cried a little, and went to wake up the wife and my favorite daughter.
We’d gotten Duchess when my favorite daughter was 2 years old. So she’d pretty much grown up with Duchess over the years. It was her first ‘real’ pet (the mouse and fish don’t really count and we gave way the cats, Hope and Ernie, shortly after my favorite daughter was born). So, of course, she was quite attached. I knew she’d want to say good bye which is why I woke her up. It was a very difficult good bye. We finally got to bed around 2AM after I wrapped up Duchess and placed her outside.
Saturday morning while the wife and my favorite daughter got ready for going to the beach (with little excitement at the time) I went to take care of Duchess. One of our good friend’s, Deb, takes care of older and abandoned dogs and also baby sat Duchess and Tootsie many times over the years. I told her the news and she got me directions to the place she took animals when she needed to. Duchess will be cremated (at a very reasonable cost) and m will have a little box with Duchess’s name on it to keep for as long as she wants.
So it was a very emotional couple of days. I miss Duchess, but I’ve gone through this many times growing up. We had at least 6 dogs I can remember and more than a few cats as well as chickens, rabbits, a goose, and probably more I’m forgetting. I also worked at the humane society where I dealt with putting down dogs and cats on a daily basis. I’m not hard-hearted about animals dying, I’ve just had more than my share is all.
I’ll miss Duchess with her little begging while we ate and the way she would play with her food (getting one piece at a time and going to her blanket to eat it or play with it). She was a great dog and even though she had health problems through the years she had a good life. I’ll miss the little pooch.
I’ve got a lot to do with getting caught up on my writing. I hope you had a great weekend! I did post a new short story/novella up on smashwords; My Teacher is a WereWolf. It’s free unless you want to pay for it. All payments are greatly appreciated! Hit this link right here and you’ll be taken to the purchase page (even free). This is the sequel to My Teacher is a Zombie. You can also find it on B&N and Amazon if you’d like to look over there. The price is a meager 99 cents.
I’m off to go do some amazing writing!
Until Tomorrow?
WOO WOO!
Unorthodox Writing Tips 40: How to Finish Something
Can I tell you a secret? You promise you won’t tell anyone? I’m going to let you into a secret on how to finish that book or short story you’re writing.
Type ‘The End’.
Okay, but seriously, how do you get to the end of a story. It’s such a long path. There are so many words you need to write to complete a story.
I use Outlook for my email. It’s easy to let the email pile up. It doesn’t take up much space. I can order it however I like. I don’t have to worry about how much space it takes up because it’s not physical. I can just let it accumulate and I’ll get around to organizing it later. Today I looked at my inbox. It was over 200. At one point I used to have over 2000 items in my inbox. I need to reduce that number. How do I do that? A little at a time. I’ll move items into folders if I don’t want to get rid of it and I’ll delete older items that I no longer need. I know I’ll be able to get it back to below 100 in a few days of spending a little time each day dedicated to reducing that number of items in my inbox and keeping that number low.
The same thing works for getting a piece of fiction (or non-fiction) written. For me, I try to knock out at least a little bit each day. I know how many words I want to write and how far I need to get. I have a clear and measurable goal. Each day I keep track of the number of words I’ve written and I can see the number of words I need to write to complete a work go down. I dedicate a little bit of time every day and just type.
Honestly. It’s that simple. Even if you only spend fifteen minutes a day writing you’ll get closer to your goal than if you spend no time and try to cram all your writing into one binge session. Yes, it’s possible to write in a binge session, but for me I’ve found it easier to write a lot of words in a shorter time. If I have two or three hours of free time I’ll fill it with something else rather than sit and write. So I try to set aside at least 30 minutes a day to write.
Well that’s not a lot of time, is it?
For me, it is. I type quickly. I can type up to 2500 words in an hour. Yes, writing fiction. So it’s not difficult for me to take 30 minutes and write 1000 words. It’s harder for me to find the free and quiet time. Once I have it, I know it’s not a lot of time and I need to get writing from the word go. If I set aside a lot of time, I’ll find myself playing angry birds, temple run, reading a book or comic book, or even watching TV figuring I have all this free time, let’s see what else I can do.
That’s where I need to restrict myself. If I write for my 30 minutes, great! Then I’ll do something else. If I don’t write for those 30 minutes then I know I need to spend my time writing. If I get done with my 30 minutes and I feel like going longer, awesome! I’ll write longer and see just how many words I can knock out in that given day. So far this year I’ve had a few days where I’ve written over 6000 words. I don’t even feel I’m writing at my full potential on those days because I took breaks, played games, watched TV, and other things instead of just writing, but perhaps that’s what pushed my forward. Knowing that I could do more than I was doing.
I know I’ve said this many times, but writing daily and keeping track of your progress is helpful in many ways. It keeps your goal in front of you at all times. It makes you think and rethink the choice of playing a game or writing. Should I watch another episode of True Blood or should I sit down and write first? Will I find inspiration when I read that comic book, or will I feel rewarded after I’ve written and then enjoy the comic?
Type a word. Type a sentence. Type a paragraph. Continue this until you type ‘The End’. You don’t have to write for hours every day. Once you get the hang of sitting and writing in those little periods you can see your word count go up. It’ll go up dramatically faster than you think it will. You just need to make the time, sit down, and write. You can do this.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: So what happened yesterday?
Yesterday was a painful day. I think my sinuses were acting up though I haven’t had a severe headache like that in some time. Hopefully today will be a better day.
I did get a lot of work accomplished before the crushing pain shut me down. Day Job type work, not writing or recording type work. I had also intended to do some reading yesterday. That didn’t happen either. Darn it.
So yeah, that’s what happened yesterday. I did do some looking around the web. I’m not sure why, but I went looking for reviews on some short stories I’d done. One was powerfully negative (a two start review) but more about the plot of the story and not really about the writing. I can live with that. I haven’t had to deal with negative reviews much so I was a little surprised at how poorly the person perceived it. These things will happen I know. Now everyone will love what I write.
Speaking of a story, the one I have on submission at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is still in round one. I’m still the second on the list meaning someone will be getting to it real soon. I still love their submission process. It’s nice to see things changing on the page. Sometimes it’s daily, sometimes it’s not. It all depends. They also do blind readings meaning they don’t know who sent in the submission. This prevents favoritism. I also like that as well. I’m hopeful. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I really wish I had more to say today. Yesterday I went to be super early and slept in as late as possible. Tonight I hope to get a lot accomplished. I should be getting out my review of Sandman #2. This is a weird comic and I think I’m loving it for all its weirdness. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
I’m also thinking of stopping with the daily updates. It’s not that they take a lot of time, but I want to concentrate more on my fiction writing. I might go to every other day with the ‘daily’ updates. We’ll see what happens. I’ll still produce something every day be it a review of some kind or just me rambling and of course I’ll continue with my weekly rants and unorthodox writing tips. Like I said, we’ll just see where this goes.
Until Tomorrow (maybe)!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Focus?
Ever have one of those days where your brain feels like it’s in a cloud? You don’t really have a headache, but nothing seems to make as much sense as it should and getting anything done it just highly painful?
Yeah, I’m having one of those days today. It’s like someone scooped out my brains and dropped in a goop of gumdrops and cobwebs. I’m sure this too shall pass.
Until then, let’s see what I did yesterday. I did manage to get some reading under my belt. I’ll be posting another Sandman review. I knocked out nearly 5000 words yesterday. That felt great. I went to work out yesterday. Did 8.5 miles in 30 minutes on the bike.
Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe I got my blood flowing and knocked some of the crud that built up in my veins while I was on vacation. My Favorite Daughter and I went to the work out room yesterday because she’s getting ready for tryouts for volleyball. They start next week.
Speaking with one of the returning Junior Varsity girls she found out that not only did 9 seniors graduate, but 5 of the JV girls aren’t returning. This means there are potentially a lot of open slots on the team. This is a big plus as there are a lot of girls trying out.
I haven’t worked out for some time. It’s about time that I get my rear end back up on that treadmill and do some working out. I’m back up to where I was before and I’m not happy about that. I’m not in terrible shape, but there were many things I would have like to have done while on vacation in Oregon that I wasn’t physically able to do. Why? I’m out of shape. Again. And over the weight I’d like to be at. Again.
So I’m eating less. Far less. And I’m going to start working out again. Let’s see how this goes.
I plan to record tonight. And Edit. And Write. I guess I’d better get on that if I’m going to get close the the number of words I knocked out yesterday, eh?
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Weekly Rant: Google Infusion
I used to be a huge fan of Google. My home pages are all set to Google. As a search engine it was the cleanest and easiest to use. I loved it for years. Sadly it had its sights higher than just a simple search engine.
Now when I look at anything these days, it’s got Google all over it. Gmail made sense. It allows Google to push ads. I got that, I understood it. I embraced this new product by Google. Google Maps, sure. I like Google maps. It’s still a simple tool to use. It’s evolved over the years to include Street View and all that. I’m good with that. Google Reader? I love this app on my phone, tablet, and even the web page. It makes keeping my RSS feeds straight and I’m happy with how it works even if they seem to push an app change on a weekly basis that makes me need to figure it out all over again, but I still like it.
Google Docs? This is a very useful tool. I’m not sure why no one else had developed something like this, but I do like what Google Docs has allowed Mike Plested and I to do with our collaborative efforts.
Google+. Well, ok. This is kind of what Facebook used to be. I guess I can understand this, but do I really need another social media outlet? I like Google Hangouts and all that, but it seems to be something that wasn’t needed that’s just invading my space.
My phone and tablet are both Android. I liked them being Android. I liked the Android market. I liked what I could do with my phone. Then I got a push and now I’ve got Google Books, Google Play, Google Music. Suddenly I went from having an android phone to having a google phone. Why? Why is Google all over my phone? I mean, I understood the little Google Search bar my tablet had, but did Google really need to invade my phone so much?
Even when Google started pushing ads on my searches, I was okay with it. But they’ve started to go over the top. Now when I do a Google search, I get my results and when I go to click that first link…BAM! Ads pop in just before I can click anything and unless I sit and wait I’m usually clicking on an ad for something I didn’t intend to go to. Why? Why not just have the ads on the side like it used to?
Am I wrong here? Is Google going over the top? Do I really want Google Goggles when they come out so my entire life is all Google all the time? When will this end? Will Netflicks soon become gFlicks? Will Starbucks become gBucks? Will Google start to push into the real world and be in everything I do? When will they stop trying to conquer the world? If their apps remained as simple as they started out I think I’d like Google much more, but the longer I’m using their apps the more they’re morphing into something that I’m no longer a fan of. What happened to simple? What happened to clean and streamlined? Google is a search engine. Why do I need Google Chrome as my web browser? Why can’t Google remember I said ‘no’ the first time it asked if I wanted to install it? Why doesn’t it realize it’s already my homepage and quit asking me? I want my Google to be the same Google it used to be.
Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety and want things the way they used to be. Maybe I don’t want everything I used to be Google. Just because it lives on the internet doesn’t mean I want it to be Google run. Can’t we roll back some of these Google developments? Do we really need Google cars that drive themselves? I think it’s wonderful they’re working on that, but why isn’t anyone else? Where are the automated cars that drive themselves from Yahoo? Or WebCrawlers? Or DogPile? Why is Google the only ones to be so far reaching and all these other search engines are just search engines?
I’m going to Google Google and see just how far their reach is. This might take a while, so I’ll do this in my spare time. I’m sure their reach is far greater than I think it is. Could Google be the start of SkyNet?
Until Next Time?
GOO GOO!
P.S. For a list of everything Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products)
An Open Letter to Mur Lafferty.
Dear Mur,
I’ve been a long time listener and reader of your work. I discovered you from your geek essays on Wingin’ It! O so many years ago. It seems like it’s only been a short time, but years have passed and I’ve only rarely reached out to you. I am poor at communication with others. This is a fault I’m working on.
Once I found your podcast I downloaded all your episodes and listened to them all and stayed caught up for a very long time. I listened to each episode and how you would give such great advice and you would admittedly say “It’s easy to give advice, but so very difficult to follow it”. This is human.
I watched as you morphed from writing essays for fun, to writing them for pay (Knights of the Dinner Table and Suicide Girls) and you would talk about your previous work on Role Playing games. I enjoyed listening to each of your podiobooks.
Sadly, as things happen, I ran out of steam and my enjoyment for podcasts has faded to where I only listen to very few these days, but I’m reading more blogs. I still read your blog posts and lately you said you’re suffering from depression and bouts of self-consciousness. I feel your pain. I’ve been there.
Being positive and upbeat is not an easy task. For me, I’m mostly an unknown person. When I do something I don’t have 1000 people looking at what I did. I’m lucky if 10 people a day see what I do. I have few comments on the work I’ve done and they’ve been mostly positive. So far I’ve managed to avoid any haters.
Then I see what you’ve done. I’m amazed at not only the quantity you’ve produced, but the number of people who consume your work. I could only hope for that at this point. I want you to know that I admire what you’ve done. I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished. It’s hard to see you down and I wish there was something I could do to pick you up.
I don’t know if you remember, but Mike Plested and I met you at WFC2011 in San Diego. Even though it was the briefest of moments, I was happy to shake your hand and make your acquaintance. You were busy with an interview so we didn’t talk much. I want you to know that you had an impact on me just by being there. I can now say I met Mur.
Because you’re so well known, I’m sure you’ve had your share of both positive and negative feedback. I know how much positive feedback can pick a person up. I also know how quickly one little piece of negative feedback can tear a person down. Pile on top of that all that life has to throw at us, and things can get quite gloomy quite quickly. I’m here to let you know that you’re not alone in having these feelings. I’m also here to let you know that I’m glad you share these feelings. I’m hoping that, even though I don’t comment much on what you do, that you know I’m here for you. I also know I’m not alone in saying that. Watching you struggle is something that many people do in silence and they let it over run their lives. Putting it out there for everyone to see is not an easy thing to do. I applaud you for doing so.
You are great at giving advice, but have a hard time taking your own advice and have said before you wish someone would give you some motivation for a change. Alright.
Suck it up, Mur! There are a lot of people who have remained silent for years and enjoyed what you’ve done. Please keep at it. Sit down, escape into the world of your creation and keep going. It’s not because we want something new from you, it’s because we need something new from you. We want to see you write and succeed! You’ve accomplished a lot over the years and better things are around the corner. Persevere and push forward. Don’t let negative thoughts get in the way of your work. Instead, put that negative energy to work for you and press on if for nothing else, just to spite those negative emotions. Write through and put it behind you.
Feedback will come and feedback will go. It’ll be both positive and negative. For the most part, readers and writers are introverts and the silent majority are enjoying what you’re doing and would love to see you continue until you’ve reached the top. You are motivation and inspiration for those of us who still want to get there.
Mur, thank you for all you have done, all you do, and all you will accomplish. I wish nothing but the best for you.
JR
Comic Review: Sandman #1
Let me start by saying that I’m way behind on reading Sandman by Neil Gaiman. I’ve read many comics over the years, seen a lot of different styles and stories. My main focus had always been super heroes. I really enjoyed Batman and Spiderman as a kid and as I grew older I was more into Spiderman and the Marvel titles and strayed from the Batman titles. I had read many independent comics over the years such as Stray Bullets, Cerebus, Strangers in Paradise, and the like, but mainly I read superhero comics.
I had read about the Sandman in very early comics so I had assumed when I saw the title with its weird covers that it would be that superhero and had no idea what it was really about. It was from the DC Vertigo realm and I was far behind on the story. From what I’d heard it was basically one long story and I’d need to pick up the back issues to get caught up. My wallet wouldn’t afford that.
That brings us to the world of digital. I now have a copy of all the sandman titles. I’m going to read through them all and post my thoughts. I have read all (I think) of Neil Gaiman’s books and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. I’m trying to go in without any stars in my eyes expecting to love every word on every page.
I’m not sure how often I will be putting this out, but as I finish an issue I’ll write up a review while it’s still fresh in my mind and get it out there.
Let’s jump in, shall we?
Issue 1 is a long comic. The Sleep of the Just is the first story. Knowing Neil’s storying telling style, I was expecting to get the lay of the land before I got any story. I got a lot more than that. I got 70 years worth of story in one comic. A 40+ page comic, but a lot of story to begin with.
We start out in the 1920s with a group that’s trying to summon and trap death so they can achieve immortality. They don’t get death, but instead get someone they weren’t expecting. They strip their captive and lock him away in an unbroken circle and demand things from him that he cannot deliver. He stays stoically in his cell waiting for a time when someone will make a mistake. Over the years people falling into dreamless sleep. It starts out as a mild case of sleeping too much but grows to where people don’t wake except for once or twice a decade. These people are committed to mental institutes, one has a child and sleeps through the entire ordeal. All suffer from this sleep and have no dreams.
The son of the man who summoned the captive grows old and begins to demand the same things his father did. Once he is old and in a wheelchair he makes a mistake and rolls one wheel across the unbroken circle. This is where the story really starts. We now know that the captive is Lord of Dreams. We don’t know his real name, we just know that he controls dreams and nightmares. This is what’s causing people to have dreamless sleep. It’s what’s causing the sleeping sickness. Yet he won’t speak to his captors which only makes them more infuriated.
Over the years the items taken from the Lord of Dreams are bought and sold. I’m sure this will become important in books to come.
The Lord of Dreams escapes and takes his revenge on the son. Rather than curse the man with nightmares he instead curses the man to never allow him to sleep again. His life becomes a living nightmare and he is committed. Dreams then escapes back to his own realm, weakened and nearly powerless.
I can say that this comic was nothing I was expecting. Let’s start with the artwork. Are you can see by the cover of this comic, it’s not your standard comic. There’s no action pose by our hero. There’s no flash or splash. It’s a rather disturbing cover. From what I can tell this continues on in the series.
Inside the comic we don’t find clean lines and standard panels. Instead we find a scenes that flow from one to the next and don’t follow the normal panel to panel I’ve grown to know from a comic. It took me a bit to get used to this, I’ll admit, but it adds to the dreamlike quality of the book. Rather than have a linear flow it feels different as you read it. The art also is reminiscent of the early horror comics like Weird Tales. Things aren’t hard edged in this book at all. The people and faces aren’t handsome or perfect. There are moles, scars, deformities. Even though it’s drawn this way, it’s still very disturbing.
I like that.
Beyond the art, the story, to me, felt a little weak to start with. I know we’re getting a lot of background and we’re still laying things out. I get that. The 41 pages really relied on the images to show us a lot of the story. We get some back story, but we’re still in a realm where I’m not sure what’s going to come up next. Obviously there is a long way to go in the series and I’m anxious to find out what happens next.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Music and more.
A while ago I had posted my frustration about the mp3 players on my tablet. Winamp was showing between three and five of each song, Google took over my music player and forgot where all my music was even though all the music was listed twice. I had finally downloaded MixZing and had been happy with it. The main reason for my happiness was because I could select where my music folders lived instead of having everything that was an MP3 show up. Due to the large amount of music I’ve accumulated over the years (endless hours of ripping CDs) has given me a huge library of a couple thousand songs.
Some upgrade happened at some point. Now MixZing doesn’t allow me to select a specific folder, but only a “top level” folder. So it was only playing music from the core memory and not from the SD card. Now Google Music shows only one version of each song and it remembers where those songs are. I still can’t tell it where the music is and where the audio books are so that’s a minor frustration, but I’m back to where I was before. I have a working MP3 player, but I can’t easily set up and manage playlists. I’d like to just add a folder of music to a playlist and set it up rather than add one song at a time. Perhaps I’ll take some time to review playlist generators again and see what I can come up with.
I’m saddened that I cannot count on MixZing to do what it was doing so well before. *pout*
In happier news, I’m writing again. My fingers are still getting used to typing out words, but it’s happy to be back at the keyboard. My current goal is to get back to 50,000 words over my annual goal before the end of the month. I’ve got a lot of writing to do and I need to get working on it. These posts may become shorter in the coming days.
I’ll be doing some new blog posts in the coming days as well. The things I’ll be adding, Daily Duck (This will be a picture of a duck each day until I run out of photos), Daily Writing prompt (this will be a sentence or paragraph to help spur some writing creativity in others), and I’m going to do a read through of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. I’ve never read this before and before you start gasping and sucking all the air out of the room, I was more into superhero comics as a kid and kept reading them through the 90s and into the Naughties. Yes I read things like Stray Bullets and Cerebus, but my main focus was Spiderman and most of the Marvel lineup. I had heard about Neil Gaiman and Sandman, but it was too expensive at the time to pick up all the back issues. So here I am, I have a digital version of the Sandman books and I’ll be reading them and posting my thoughts on each one. Not sure how long it will take me to read through them all, but we’ll see how it goes.
Beyond that I have a short story on submission with Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It’s a great slush pile process as you can see where you’re at in the list. I’m currently the second in the first round. If you’d like to follow along you can go here (http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/submissions/track-submissions/) and my story is 19174. I’m hopeful this one will move along in the process and we’ll see what happens from there. I’m excited about this story. I’ve submitted to them many times but I don’t think any of my previous submissions was up to the caliber of this story. I honestly think this one has a shot. If it gets rejected, it’s on to the next market.
Last night was a lot of fun as ‘the kids’ I mentioned yesterday surprised us all and came down for the week. Everyone was at the in-law’s house and there was much swimming in the pool and eating. My Favorite Daughter got her surprised returned and it was quite funny.
There is a lot to do. Not only do I have a lot of words to write during my free time, but I’m also writing a large number of technical documents for work this week. It’ll be a lot of writing that I need to do this week so I’d better get at it.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: What a week!
Before I get started with getting you all caught up with where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to, I’ve had some great fun rewatching the Odyssey rover landing on Mars. No, we don’t have video of the actual landing, but it was so great to watch the video of the NASA team as they followed it through it’s seven minutes of terror while it guided itself to a safe and successful landing. I thought I was going to tear up a little bit. So happy and so proud of this accomplishment by so many people involved. My facebook, twitter, Google+, and newsfeed are all full of news of the landing. It’s such a great moment.
Last week I spent watching the Olympics. Ok, I did a lot more than that and I’ll touch on some highlights, but I did watch several hours of Olympics highlights. I’ll say that I’m a little disappointed with how NBC has been handling it, but there are so many events it’s not possible for one network to cover them all. If I remember correctly last time it was several non-stop channels showing every event and rebroadcasting those events in their entirety. Getting little snippets of the events I’d like to see is frustrating, but I did watch nearly all the swimming and gymnastics. I’ll be watching as much of the Track and Field events as I can. I know NBC will only be showing some and not all so we’ll see what we can get.
So, I’ve been away for some time. It all started on July 26th at 2:30 in the morning when I got up, got showered, and we finished our packing and headed over to the Millican’s house. The goal was to be on the road by 3AM. After several trips out the front door, into the cars, out of the cars, down to McDonald’s for breakfast, back to the Millican’s house, and back again, we were on the road at 6:30AM. Our goal was to miss the LA traffic. Well, we missed the brunt of it.
Our first stop was San Francisco. The Millican has a long time friend there and we stayed there for the night. We got up the next morning and hit the BART into the city with Art as our guide. We rode the cable cars, had clam chowder on the bay, took pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, went to Boudin (a local bread place), hit up Ghirardelli (a local chocolate place), rode the cable car back to China Town, ate and shopped, rode the cable car back to the BART, realized we’d only ridden one cable car line, hopped on a cable car going up (we’d bought an all day pass, had to use it, right?) Rode to the top of the hill. Took some more pictures, rode the cable car back down the hill. Yes, I did look down into the ground to see the cable moving along. It was awesome.
We finally got back on the BART and went back to Berkley where we had pizza at Zachery’s. This is a Chicago-style, stuffed pizza. We ordered 3 for the 11 of us there. I only made it through two and a half slices before declaring mercy. We had an entire pie left over for breakfast the next morning.
The next day we were up and on the road by noon to finish our trip up to Oregon. We stopped by Shasta Lake to take some pictures. We stopped and ate lunch. We took our time and got in to the Millican’s mom’s house around 9:30PM. We had tacos, we set up the tent for the youngest of the group, and we were in bed by midnight after watching some Olympics (this was our nightly ritual).
We did a LOT during our trip. To sum it up (I’ll go into detail on one part) it was Eating, shopping, hillbilly rafting (we found a log and floated down the river on it, twice), went to Crater Lake, hillbilly teetertottering (we found a felled tree over another felled tree that was perfectly balanced), river rafted (I’ll go into detail on the first trip in a minute), swam in the river, river rafted, ate lots of UMPQUA! (you may call it ice cream), ate lots of food, visited the ‘Lil Pantry more than once, and all in all had a great time.
So the first river rafting trip was something like this:
The Millican and his wife wound up in one of the tahitis
they rolled it at the end of the rapids in front of a resort
As they swam for shore and their boat, seats, oars, camera, and one shoe floated down the river, a jet boat tour came by
it picked up their boat and oars and took it back up river to them
they spent the rest of the tour in the bigger raft
My Favorite Daughter and my buddy’s younger son fell out at the end of the next rapids
I was behind them, the bigger raft in front of them. They were safe
on the flat part after those rapids, his two daughters were adjusting themselves in their raft and fell out
that was funny
we were running behind schedule so my favorite daughter and my buddy’s younger son (in one boat) his two daughters (in the second boat) and me in the third all took off to get to the end quicker so they’d know we were alright
at the Argo rapids his two daughters went first with no trouble
they went to the left
my favorite daughter and my buddy’s younger son went to the right, I followed
their boat went down and to the left. my favorite daughter’s weight kept the front of their boat from going up
I was sitting WAY in the back of my boat and knew before I even got to the spot they went past what was going to happen
the front of my boat went WAY up and I rolled into the rocks
I kept a hold of my boat and banged off rocks to the left, to the right, hit my hip on a shallow rock. Hit my foot on a deep rock and lost a river shoe
then the rapids calmed down to a riffle and I somehow flipped myself back into the boat
minus seats, oars, and missing one shoe
I did still have my sunglasses through
Then I saw I was only halfway through the rapids
<sigh>
I can do this, right? I don’t need me no oars. BRING IT!
<flip> bang, thud, fumble, gurgle
then I hit the smooth spot and was finally able to swim over to the kids and getting into my boat again
So boating was an adventure. Only the Millican’s older son and my wife were able to keep from falling into the river. They got lucky this time. Next time I may dump them on purpose. We’ll just have to wait and see.
On the trip back we stopped again at Shasta Lake. We were going to go to the Shasta Cave, but fires had a majority of the area evacuated and/or closed down. We did, however, stop off in Lemoore to visit the kids (the niece and nephew are there with their four kids). It was a great time had by all. The little ones didn’t know we were coming and they were confused then ecstatic. We stayed the night at the Navy lodge, got up the next morning, almost went to go see the World’s Tallest Horse, then got back on the road by Noon. We were home by 6 and truly wiped out in the best possible way.
So I spent a good deal of time not writing. You can easily see why. This week will see me record the next two episodes of the Action Pack Podcast so one can drop this week and one on 9/1. This will get the crew back on track. I will also be meeting with Mr. Plested and hopefully Mr. Roche at some time this week. I have a lot of writing and a lot of recording and a lot of catching up to do. I also have pictures of ducks to get.
Speaking of ducks, here’s a little list of the animals we saw while on the river:
Squaw fish
Trout
Salmon
Turtles
Canadian Geese
Mallards
Strange red-headed ducks with mohawks
Bald Eagles
Osprey
Turkey Vultures
Wild Turkeys
Deer
Weasels
Beavers
I’m sure there were more, but they’re escaping me at the moment. I have much to do. I’d better get at it. It’s good to be back home.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Unorthodox Writing Tips 39: Fearlessness
It’s easy to find yourself afraid at some point in your life. For many people it starts with a fear of the dark or the fear of being alone. Perhaps a fear of high places and the fear of falling. Fear comes in many forms and some people never conquer these fears.
My mom is afraid of anything that is alive and flies. If it’s alive and it’s in the air, she’s freaking out. That’s just how it goes for her. I had a buddy whose son was terrified of butterflies. Some fears are tangible, others not so much.
Some people are able to look fear in the eye and not flinch. They live for the rush. They fly the fastest planes, they do double front flips on BMX bikes off massive jumps, they risk life and limp to do things that normal people wouldn’t even thing of doing.
Then there are people just like you and me. We lead normal lives for the most part. We not out driving cars at 200 MPH but instead driving at the posted speed limit (maybe we’ll creep a little bit over) on our way to the grocery store or to drop off the kid(s) at a sporting event. Our lives are filled with many mundane things. Something fearful might rattle us, but for the most part we understand what scares us and either avoid those situations or know how to handle ourselves.
If you’re reading this and you’re like me you also write. Or you want to write. Or you’d like to write more. Deep down there’s that lingering fear. What will others think of this when they read it? Will anyone read it? Will I be able to handle the rejection if someone doesn’t like it? What if I get a terrible review? Is my writing good enough? This is an awful lot of work to put into something that I might never make any money doing.
That’s where you need to realize what this fear really is so you can face it. It’s the fear of the unknown. People face this under normal circumstances. My Favorite Daughter is afraid to go on Space Mountain because she’s never been on it and can’t see it. Yet she loves Thunder Mountain because it’s (for the most part) on the ground. She’s scared of what she can’t see. Her only way to over come this fear will be to face it head on and deal with the aftermath of her decision once she’s ventured forth.
That’s what writing it all about. It’s putting aside that fear for a moment and trying it out. Then putting that fear aside again and continuing. It’s putting that fear in a box, locking it away and pushing on. Once you’ve completed a work, it’s keeping that fear and doubt in check and sending your work out for others to look over or to send it to an agent, a publisher, a market. Yes all those bad things might happen. They all might happen on your first work. They might all happen on your second through tenth work. It might happen over and over again.
This is all a learning process. Even established writers still struggle with these same fears, but they’ve understood that if they write something to the best of their abilities, learn from all those early issues their work had and applied it to works going forward. They not only learned from those early works and what needed to change with their writing, they also learned to manage that fear and keep sending out work despite the knowledge that even though they’ve been published before, this might get rejected just as quickly as anything they’d previously written.
Writing is an unsure prospect. It’s not as easy as quitting your job at one company and looking for a job in another company. In publishing things change quickly. I’ve read many stories about an author well liked by an editor at one publishing house only to see that editor get replace with one that can’t stand the author’s work. Suddenly they went from a near sure thing to being right back where they started. This has been happening to mid-list authors for years.
There’s a lot to be afraid of when it comes to writing, but there is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the actual act of creation. If you’re seeking publication then it’s a matter of perseverance. It’s a matter of facing the fear of rejection and moving on. It’s a matter of being the type of person that will continue to type out stories and put them out there to see what sticks.
Writing isn’t easy. I’ve said this many times before. Those who face the challenge, learn from this mistakes to improve their craft, and face their fears head and and continue even when it seems like you’re the only one that likes what you’re producing, those are the ones that will find publication. Those are the ones that have a chance at making this into a career. Don’t be afraid. Sit, type, submit. Repeat as many times as needed. It does get easier as time goes on and you’re realize it’s not as scary as you’re making it out to be.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 