Category Archives: Daily Update
Daily Update: Hey! It’s Sunday!
Fist, an update on the Lost Boy.
Some people have asked and I think it’s great that people are following along and reading this blog. The boy who’d been lost had returned home after the 3 day long party. Yes, he got sucked in to going to a party. That night the boy, Diego, made all the kids (all younger than him) take out their batteries and sim cards and the boy’s parents destroyed those items. The following morning when the police went to Diego’s house to ask about the boy, the parents refused to allow the police in due to no warrant. There were a lot of boys there.
That Sunday morning (at around 2AM) the police found the boy at a bus stop with a woman under the influence (of what they were unsure) but the boy appeared to be unharmed and not under the influence of anything. The boy was crying saying that he needed to help get the woman home. The police took both of them home.
The parents were very happy to have him return, but he wouldn’t say anything about who/what/where/why. Apparently there were death threats made for anyone who talked about the party.
The parents made the boy go through the entire neighbor hood to collect the “missing” signs they’d hung up and apologize to everyone who had a sign. Then he had to sit down on Facebook and send everyone a thank you and an apology for what had happened. Then he had to call the school, talk to the principal, the teachers, and everyone who helped with searching for him.
As far as I know, he still hasn’t spoken about what happened at that party and no charges have been brought against the parents.
I didn’t hit my 2000 word writing goal yesterday. Went to a friends house for a BBQ. Had some awesome food. Ate until I couldn’t eat no more. Slept in a little bit today. Going to try and knock out a bunch of words today. I was going to write more on my adventure to try and fill in some holes, but going back and re-reading, I think I’ve covered it pretty well from my time after high school until now. I’ll be having fun adding some memories into some of my stories. I added one in My Teacher is a Zombie and my favorite daughter got a good laugh out of it.
Right now I need to take my favorite daughter to her volleyball lesson. today I may very likely sit in the truck and write so I can get caught up on my word count today.
Oh, if you didn’t check it out, I have a guest blog post over at Dan Dan the Art Man’s blog about TV memories. Oh the joys of childhood television watching. Check it out. I hope you like it.
I’m going to get at my writing.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Filled with Woo!
I’m a patient person. I’m really good at waiting. I really am. It doesn’t bother me when a waiter or waitress is slow or behind. I can wait. I’m usually never in a hurry. I don’t mind taking my time. I keep telling myself that the wait will be worth it.
I have several works out and some have been out since the end of November. I’m waiting. I have to look at it as longer is better. If the work were to be rejected outright I’d have heard something by now, right? So I have to assume that the longer, in this case, is better. I just need to be patient and keep plowing forward with other works. I need to keep submitting anything I’ve got finished and see what happens. I cannot allow myself to dwell on works I’m waiting on because the waiting will kill me. Just a little more time. People are busy. I understand.
On that note, I’ve begun working on the next episode of Golden West. The story is going to take a slightly different direction. I like where it’s going and the story will be stronger in the end. The first Action Pack episode is getting great reviews from those who’ve listened to it. That has made the three of us involved quite happy and hopefully we can keep it going strong. I know my second episode is building up to be quite interesting.
My Teacher is a Zombie is getting some editing done to it. I’ll be bugging Dan Dan the Art Man once again for a cover on that one. Once I get the second Episode of Golden West out of the way I’ll be doing my Teacher is a Werewolf. The characters were so much fun I need to keep those ones going. I’m having a lot of fun just writing. Even To Fall From the Sky is coming along nicely. I had an epiphany while writing the other day and WOW! I now have an even more powerful ending in mind that will take the story in the same direction, but just make it a more powerful ending.
Writing 2000 words a day during Lent is helping me really work out some writing issues I’ve had in the past. It’s great hitting a flow where words just seem to fall out of my head. Still not as fast as I would like, but I know with time I’ll get there. I can type fast, I can write fast, I just need to keep at it and both will get faster. There are so many stories in my brain that I need to write, it’s just a matter of making the time to write them all.
Stories like How I Got to Where I Am today. Let’s continue, shall we?
After submitting Of Gnomes and Dwarves: Book 1 to multiple agents and editors, I got disheartened. It’s tough to take rejection and everything I got was a form letter. The only plus side was my work was going quite well and I was learning how to program. My father had sat me down at the age of 12 and handed me a book on how to program in BASIC on a TRS-80 (maybe I was 13). I took another programming class in 10th grade and I loved programming. Why I switched and went into electronics I’ll never know.
So when I started doing web pages full time for my job, I was in heaven. I love designing for he web and I’ve been doing it as my job full time since 2001. Mostly I do back end work with getting things tied to databases and developing working interfaces, but lately I’ve been doing a lot more front end work. The field changes so quickly.
I think when it comes to writing that’s what I love about programming and creative writing. They’re both similar in the fact they require a certain amount of creativity, planning, and dedication to sit for hours alone and just type. Be it code frameworks or plot outlines, I find creativity in both endeavors.
As for my writing, I hit a slump after a lot of rejections. I took about a year or more off from writing. When I came back to it, I read several books on writing. Alright, closer to 30, but I was reading as much as possible. I took a challenge from one book and decided to write as many short stories as possible and in one year I wrote over 100 short stories. Of those 100 I submitted nearly half as I knew half were really bad. Of those 50 or so I submitted I had 10 publications. This was when online fiction was just starting out and there were no real strong ebooks. Half were online and half were anthology and smaller magazines. I was excited. I got back into writing fiction with V&A Shipping as a NaNoWriMo novel. I got the entire book written during that November and I felt great. I wrote Astel, Billy Barbarian, I even started three other novels that I didn’t finish, but I had strong starts to.
Then I lost my grandfather. That took the wind out of my sails. A year later when I started writing again my mother lost her husband. He’d never really been my dad, but I loved him all the same. I had difficulty getting back into writing, but I’d been playing around in the podcasting community for a while. I decided to podcast V&A Shipping. As I was recording the episodes I started writing again. Then I lost my dad.
It was a difficult one, two, three. But when I lost my dad I kept on podcasting and did Billy Barbarian and a number of short stories. What finally got me out of my writing funk, after trying to write and only getting a couple rough starts going, was Mike Plested suggesting that we do a collaborative work together. Bring out Jack Kane.
Sure it took he and I over a year to write, but that was due to many stops and starts. Finishing that book lit something in my brain and suddenly I decided that I needed to stop puttering around with my craft and get serious. I needed to treat my writing like it was a part time job. That’s what I’ve done since mid-December and this year I intended to keep a string of words flowing out and have not missed a day.
I started with writing this blog daily. That’s helped more than you can imagine. Then I decided that I needed to do more than just blog, but I needed to write daily. Not just write daily, but keep track of how much I was writing each day and to keep that word output in front of me so I could keep tabs on myself. And not just keep tabs. I needed to PUSH myself to do more. To do better. To perform at a level I’ve never performed at.
I’m not going to reach publication with works sitting in a drawer and hoping for the best. I’m not going to get published sitting back and waiting to get discovered. I always knew that, but keep myself from doing what needed to be done. Guess what, I’m writing more than I ever have. If this year turns out like I hope, I’ll produce as many words in 2012 as I have my entire time writing. That will tell me that I am capable of writing more fiction. yes, I’ve been blogging a lot, but once I get rolling, I need to keep rolling.
Look out world, 2012 is the year for Murdock to announce that I’ve arrived! Just you watch. This blog will chronicle all I am doing and all I’ve done. Some I cannot talk about yet, but as soon as I can, you’ll see. You’ll see.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Writing, Working, Editing, I’ve got a heaadache
I’ve got a headache today. It’s not supposed to rain this weekend. There’s no low pressure system overhead. I’ve taken my sinus medicine so I’m not congested.
I’ve been burning the candle at both ends. I will hit my 2000 words today. I didn’t yesterday. But I do want to keep at it. I’ve got a writing streak going since the beginning of the year. I’m happy about that. About half of what I’ve written has been blog posts and half has been new fiction. Being that I’m at nearly 80,000 words for the year, I can honestly say I’m quite proud of that for two months work.
Not only am I proud of how much I’ve written, but I can honestly say that it’s some of my best work. Sure we all grow as writers, but I’ve had a lot of starts and stops along the way. It feel good to get back on the horse and really start putting out words. I’ve got a lot of projects going on all at the same time with my writing and keeping them all going is a challenge.
I’ve taken a queue from my work.
With my work I create detailed plans on what it’ll take to get a project coded and deployed. I write up timelines, do costs analysis. There’s a lot more than just sitting and typing code. Keeping track of where you’re at is critical. I’ve applied this to my writing with my word count spread sheet and I find I output a lot more words by keeping close tabs on what I write.
To that end, it’s not always about creating new fiction. There’s editing to consider. I just submitted a story and after the first draft, I let it sit for a couple of days, I had some inspired thoughts, and did some rewriting. It was around 4500 words when done and I cut down nearly 400 and added back in almost 600. I did not count any of these words. I probably should have, but hey, it’s my system. Either way, I’m quite proud with how the story turned out.
On the work front, I’ve also been quite busy. I’ve got a large project, a couple of people I’m managing to help with the project, extra duties added to my workload beyond the project, deadlines, meetings, assistance.
Between work and writing, it’s a lot to take in. Combine the fact that my Favorite Daughter has he volleyball… well, you get the point. There’s a lot going on and only so many hours in the day.
I’ll do an Unorthodox Writing Tips, probably next week, about time management or something to that effect. As I had said at the beginning of the year, I’m going to treat my writing like a part time job and commit to getting words out there. It hasn’t been easy and I’ve had to be flexible, but I’m getting it done.
I think that’s what’s led to my current headache, so I’ll take a couple aspirin and call it good.
Ok, so I left you hanging yesterday. I’m good like that. I’m glad you’re following along.
While going to ITT I met a lot of people. One of my classmates introduced me to a friend of his. She was nice, but I was busy and not really interested. We did wind up going out a few times, then a few more times. I started telling her my book ideas. She was enthralled. I let her read Of Gnomes and Dwarves (the comic version) and she loved it.
She wasn’t going to ITT, but to another school and she needed to type up something that someone else had written. Being that she had my hand written binder (and the only copy of my work at the time) she typed it up for me over the course of two or three weeks. I was quite surprised. It made me quite happy to see my nearly illegible words typed up.
Once I completed ITT (graduating with honors) and I wasn’t working and going to school, I was able to dedicate some time to a relationship. ITT went from 6pm-10pm. I worked from midnight-8am. It made out schedules incompatible. Once I was done with ITT, we moved in together and I got a normal day job. I went to work for Qualcomm.
Let me just state this for the record. If I were an engineer, I probably would have been happy with electronics. Being that I was a troubleshooter on products that got returned, I was bored out of my mind. The most fun I had was with a 5 page pamphlet entitled HTML 1.0. Netscape was awesome, writing HTML code great fun. I really got into designing webpages for my Of Gnomes and Dwarves characters. My friend Sean even got a job working at Qualcomm under a different position and it was great fun working together.
I eventually bought a PC. I wanted to do web design for a living. Heh, didn’t we all during the mid 90s? Well, that didn’t go.
I wound up getting a job with ATT (PacBell at the time, then SBC, now ATT). I left Qualcomm with little thought. I’m not sure how the cell phone division did after I left, because I was moving onward and upward.
In that same year I got married, we had my favorite daughter. Life was awesome! I even decided to pick up those comic scripts I had started and translated them into a book. It had taken years, but I finally had a 60,000 word novel. It was a lot of data dumping, a lot of telling, a lot of bad grammar. It wasn’t very good, but I still to this day love the story and characters.
I had some friends read it. I got a lot of suggestions and made a lot of edits over the next couple of years. Then I moved into a new team. For that team I had to go away for training. I had been thinking about working on the second book which I had scripted and decided I would work on it a little bit while away on my training. I didn’t have anything else to do, I’d be away from home. Why not?
After that week I was wiped out. I had gotten up at 5am each day and started writing. I would take a shower at the last minute and rush to the training. I had a floppy disk with the file on it and would write in class during the hour lunch and during the breaks. I would go eat a quick diner and I’d be back in the hotel room writing some more. It was writing bliss like I’d never know and have never known again. After that week I had a SECOND 60,000 word novel.
It took me about a month to write the third in little snippets of time here and there and I now had three 60,000 word novels. All that time I’d spent agonizing over making the first novel perfect helped me write far better books the second and third time. I had gotten better and dialogue, showing not telling, no more data dumps of information. The characters really took on a life of their own.
I submitted the first book to many agents and publishers, but that’s a story for tomorrow.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Action Pack Podcast is live!
Last night the Action Pack Podcast went live. The three of us involved with this endeavor are quite excited. The concept is serialized fiction spread out over a year. Each story will end on a cliffhanger and a new episode will come out each month. There will also be print editions available over at Flying Island Press. You can pick up the podcast at Action Pack Podcast. Stop by and let me know what you think.
My fellow authors, Mike Plested and Scott Roche, are also helping generate noise (buzz?) about the podcast. Stop on over at their sites and see what they’re all about. All three of us are quite busy podcasters and writers. Don’t forget to check out Dan Dan the Art Man, the man responsible for our artwork!
As for writing, it was another productive day. Got another 2000 words out. It nice when I hit a flow and can roll with it. Hopefully I can keep this pace up during Lent and carry it on beyond. I’m already 4 days ahead of my yearly writing schedule. This is important because the last thing I want to do is fall behind again. I was able to get caught up and now ahead. I see no reason to stop now.
I finished a short story and sat on it for a couple of days. I had three or four ‘ah-ha’ moments and those went into the revisions. I’m now waiting for a response and requested edits (edits will always be requested, I’d be surprised if they weren’t). I’m quite happy with how the story turned out. I can’t want to see how it does once it makes it out into the wild.
Now more about how I got to where I am today.
After spending nearly five years as a starving musician, I decided that being in a band just wasn’t in the cards. It was a good run, but unfortunately I could not motivate the guys beyond small clubs and it was all on my to do any promotion, book gigs, etc. Combine that with the lead singer wanting to be the only creative force in the band, and I felt stifled. I had creative ideas that I needed to get out.
I did not explain this in earlier updates, but this was when I really had to take a look at what I wanted to do with my life. In high school, I played D&D. Sean and I both played and continued to play as adults. I loved the game. I had decided to write a book based on our characters. Yes, one of ‘those’ books. There were many stops and starts during high school, in the Navy, even while I was in a band. I just could not get the story going.
After leaving the band, I had a great idea for the story. Yes, the characters were still based on the D&D characters, but everything D&D was out of it. Well, to some extent. There were still monsters and random encounters, but I had decided to make it more of a story and less of an adventure. I had to get them to meet in a way that made sense. I had to have a story that I could tell.
Well, suffice to say it sucked. I trashed it again.
Then I met a comic book artist. He was just getting started and he was GREAT! I had gone back to school at ITT Tech to get a degree and I wrote pages at night. He agreed to pencil the work. I got cranking on the script. I was excited. I was going to write a COMIC BOOK! WOO WOO!
The guy was really good. He went on to write Warrior Nun Arela, moved on to be an intern with Jim Lee (I got to go to the studio and meet his entire crew, that was awesome) and eventually moved on to Marvel and last I heard he was doing Catwoman for DC. He’s done well and I’m glad he did. I don’t know that doing a little independent comic with me would have helped him that much. Check out Pete Woods as he’s done great things in the field of comics.
So after this period of time, I kept on writing Of Gnomes and Dwarves as a comic. I had decided that the first run would be 15 issues telling one storyline and then I’d move on to the next storyline. I wrote 48 or 49 issues before i ran out of steam and could not find another artist. I tried submitting my work, but it was rough and I go no interest.
I dove back into school. It was very easy for me because it was basically a rehash of my Navy ‘C’ school. Getting ‘A’s was as easy as staying awake in class. My comic had been shelved, but I was still happy to talk about it to anyone and everyone who would hear about it. They all thought I was nuts, but that it was cool that I’d written something even if it wasn’t published.
I got to work on 8080s and 8088s and we even upgraded an 8088 to a 286. This was at a time when a 386 was cutting edge. If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry. These were IBM computers and the PC was just starting to take hold. It was before the computer explosion of the mid-90s. These things weren’t cheap, but they were getting there.
Then I met the woman who would become my wife. More on that, tomorrow.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Dinner with my Brother
Last night we went to have dinner with my brother. We had a great time. Went to Mission Valley and had dinner at Gordon Biersch. Very good food. I didn’t have a beer, though I really wanted one. We brought along one of my favorite daughter’s friends. It was a great time. I haven’t seen my brother since the service we had for my father in Minnesota so it’s been about a year and a half. He’s still quite bald and I didn’t pass up the opportunity to point out I still have a full head of hair.
He shared a great story about his daughter that I will share another time, it’ll take a little writing to get the details, but it’s pretty funny. Well, now it’s funny. I’m sure at the time mom and dad weren’t too happy.
We also made a call back to his house and talked with his kids. They’re 3 and 6 so it’s always fun to talk to them on the phone. We all even said hello to his wife. They all miss daddy. He heads back home today.
Back to more about how JR got to where he is today.
Sean, his girl, and I had moved to San Diego. We planned on hitting it big as a band. We had just gotten our taxes back so we had a little bit of money and arrived in town knowing no one and having no where to stay. We rented a hotel for a week while we looked for a place to live. We wound up there for two weeks. It was awful. One bed so I slept on the floor. Each day we got a paper and looked for two things; jobs and apartments. Both were in short supply.
We eventually found a place that gave us a month to month contract. No one else wanted to give us a place to live because we didn’t have jobs and we couldn’t get jobs with no call back number because we didn’t have a place to live. It was vicious.
First, last, and deposit ate up a lot of the money we’d brought with us, but once we had a phone, it was only a matter of time before we all found jobs. This was the early 90s so no cell phones and no internet. It made doing things the old fashioned way a way of life.
Sean and I had gotten telemarketer jobs and his girl got another phone related job. We all had paychecks. Well, for a couple of weeks. The first place we had jobs basically stole all the money they’d brought in for some contest. We were thankful for paychecks and cashed them as quickly as possible. We even got to see the business on the news as police tried to locate the owners.
We both got jobs again as telemarketers. Those also fell through, but for different reasons. Finally we went to all the temp agencies. That was a grueling task and we both worked a number of odd jobs (yes, I’ve been a ditch digger) until we got regular work on the night shift at a plastic injection molding factory.
Steady work was finally achieved. Just in time because being flat broke and not making a car payment meant I no longer had a car to drive. The plus side, I didn’t have to make a car payment or insurance payment. The downside, the three of us only had one car.
But beyond that, we were able to start getting the band together. The gas station across the street where we lived became our little hang out. We got to know all the attendants. It turned out that one guy there was a guitar player/singer and had a drummer and was looking for another guitar player and bassist. We were in and Defective formed that day.
The drummer was in college (the only one of us) and he lived in a frat house. That became our practice pad until enough complaints came in from the neighbors. Then we found a person with a garage that’d been soundproofed that he rented out as practice space.
We practiced two or three times a week and once we thought we were ready, made a really bad demo tape (I’m still trying to run down a copy) and I got a copy of the Reader and started looking at where to play.
Over the course of the next three years we played anywhere we could. We played everywhere in San Diego we could. Dreamstreet, Brick by Brick, the Cashbah, Soma, and places that aren’t even around any more. We also played a lot of parties. For the most part we were a punk band, but we also played other songs like Helmet’s big hit Unsung.
This is where headbutting started. I wanted to play more than just three chord punk songs and when we did play songs that I or Sean had written, people really got into the music. This didn’t sit well with the singer who felt he should be writing/singing. It got to the point where he would argue every gig about the song list making sure we’d eliminate any songs I’d written.
I left the band. The singer begged me to come back. I wasn’t going to until we got a call from Soma to play the main stage. We’d played the basement several times, and they were calling US! I re-joined Defective. We fought and argued over the song list right up until we went on stage. We were back stage while Blink played (now Blink 182). We took the stage and only played what the singer wanted to sing. We didn’t play one of my songs and I was quite pissed.
The next two bands, Sprung Monkey and Lucy’s Fur Coat finished out the night. It was great to play in front of nearly 1000 people. But I couldn’t stand the lead singer’s attitude. I told him so and said enough was enough. if he didn’t want to sing songs I wrote, then there was no point in my staying with the band.
That was Defective’s last gig.
Tomorrow it’s life After Defective.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: My Brother is in town.
I’m not sure if I’ll get my 2000 words done today. I did yesterday and it felt great. I’ll do my best and we’ll see how it goes.
Why? You might ask.
My brother is in town. We’re going to have dinner tonight. He had dinner with his boss and co-workers last night. I haven’t seen my brother since my father’s funeral. Inexcusable, I know, but times are tight. It’s sad, I know.
As I said, I did get my 2000 words in yesterday despite finding an addictive Tower Defense game. I won’t tell you the name because I don’t want you to get sucked in like I did. Lost a couple hours to that game. It was a good distraction, but distractions are distracting and I need to get back to focusing on my overall goal this year.
Putting down a couple thousand words per day has been good for the annual goal, though. I’m now better than 3 days ahead of my annual goal. If I stay on track, I’ll be way ahead. I like the sounds of that as vacations will happen later in the year ad I doubt I’ll write nearly as much during those times. It’s exciting to be two months into the year and still on target with most of my goals.
You may have noticed that Kance Encounter hasn’t dropped yet. Yes. I’m sorry about that. I’ve been writing far less fiction than intended and I do plan on getting it out there. Work on My Teacher is a Zombie was so much fun, that I may target this as my set of shorts for the year. I’ll have to bug Dan Dan the Art Man and see if he’s up for the challenge.
Yesterday I talked about my time in the Navy. A couple things I didn’t mention. In Jr. High I played drums in band. In High School I played drums in A band. My two best friends, Jeff Fahnstock and Sean McCoy and I had a three piece band called S.C.R.O.G. Inc and eventually we had a drummer Eric (I forget his last name). I continued with the drums until I got out of the Navy.
When I had to move from Florida to Colorado, I had to take a couple trips. They were long. They sucked. It was boring. Eastern Texas is beautiful. West Texas is 700 miles of nothing to look at and I went off the road more than once in my little car due to falling asleep.
When I was stationed in Seal Beach, Sean and Jeff were roommates in Long Beach (just North of Seal Beach) and we jammed a few times, but Jeff had his band and Sean practiced a lot. When I got out of the Navy, Jeff was still in Long Beach, but I didn’t want to go back. Sean had moved back to Durango, CO. I didn’t want to move back in with mom or dad. I didn’t want to go back to Durango either, but I didn’t have many options. I called Sean and the move happened.
Living in Durango as an adult is far different than as a student. As a student there isn’t anything to do except drink and get in trouble. As an adult, there isn’t anything to do except drink and get in trouble. The Navy taught me how to drink. Oh did it teach me how to drink. Me and alcohol never really mixed and it wasn’t until much later in life that I discovered this. But I digress.
Sean and I formed a band in Durango. I had sold my chrome and black drums for a sweet 5 string bass and bass stack. Sean helped me learn how to play bass and things progressed from there. I wasn’t great, but I got by. Mostly following along with the guitar.
When I got out of the Navy, I got a severance check. After taxes, that didn’t last long. I had to get not one, but two jobs. My first was working at the Humane Society. The other was working at a gas station on the outskirts of town. Both had their ups and downs. I love animals. I hated having to deal with what we did when we became overcrowded. I loved sitting and reading and taking money as a cashier. I hated working the second job because we closed up late. But these are the things you have to do to get by sometimes.
After a year in Durango, Sean and I packed up. We needed to move on. We wanted to be musicians, but there was little to no music scene in Durango. The only time any music scene happened was when our friend Jeff showed up for a visit. This is a long story. Perhaps I’ll tell that story tomorrow. It was a lot of fun.
We tried to decide where to move. The Grunge scene was just starting to break out of Seattle so we decided that going there was a bad idea. Any band that was going to make it had made it. Los Angeles/Long Beach we both decided wasn’t where we wanted to go. It was overcrowded with so many bands, we’d never get noticed. We decided to head down the coast to San Diego. We packed up all of our belongings, he packed up his girlfriend (my girlfriend could not leave town given her situation and it was sad to leave her) and we headed to where dreams and fortune would be ours.
Tomorrow, San Diego!
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: I’m awake and feeling great!
Last night’s writing session was filled with awesome. I had put a note in the last written chapter of To Fall From the Sky <!—Insert more here —> and last night I finished off that chapter, wrote the next chapter, and started another. I write short chapters. Makes the book punchier and it will feel like it’s moving faster if the viewpoint keeps shifting. That’s my personal opinion.
I wrote 2200 words last night and a majority of that was new fiction. I had thought I would be too tired, too mentally exhausted. I almost didn’t write and I was going to just veg out and watch TV, but decided to instead play a level of angry birds, and though. Why am I doing this? And jumped in and started editing the previous chapter because it sucked and then dove in feet first once I had an ah-ha moment while going through some of the older material.
It just happens like that some times. I used to sit down and eat an orange or two and for whatever reason, I began to associate the smell of oranges with sitting and writing and pretty soon a glass of OJ would have me firing on all cylinders.
That’s changed. Now I can sit and just start typing. Like this post, for example. I’ve been doing the daily posts for two months now and they’ve become easier and easier to write. It’s like getting up and stretching. I just do it and I try not to think too hard about it.
I mentioned yesterday that I’d mention how I got here today. Well, I’m not going to start too long ago. I’ll skip the childhood back in the woods (though there are many fun stories from those days).
My brother had joined the Navy. According to him, it was the best thing since sliced bread, so rather than head off to school, I decided to go into the Navy as well. I had scored very high on the ASVAB (finishing all sections long before the timer dinged) and with a 98% I pretty much could decide to do whatever I wanted to do. I did not qualify for a Top Secret clearance due to some trouble as a teen (I won’t go into that here, but it was teenage stupidity) but I did qualify for a secret clearance. That got me in as an Electronic Warfare Technician.
The title sounded like fun. I did my ‘A’ school and had to memorize a lot of codes, configurations, and I knew a lot about missiles of the 80s as well as ships of the 80s. For the most part my job was passive detection.
When I finished my school, I took it because I became E4 out of ‘A’ school, the Navy decided they now had too many EW Petty Officers and sent my class and the class before me (we graduated a class a week) to security duty. The class ahead of mine went to Fallbrook and my class went to Seal Beach. The Navy had gotten rid of the Marines who had been performing the security duty and put us in there.
It was a job. I learned to shoot a lot of different guns (my dad had already taught me how to shoot) and I took some basic courses to help me gain some college credits. All in all I didn’t like the lifestyle of the Navy. The most fun I had was being the drummer in a band during ‘C’ School. Speaking of ‘C’ school.
After nearly 3 years doing security duty, I went back to ‘C’ school . I loved going to school.
*note: I’m a test taker. I take tests in record time.
Each week we had a quiz and 15-30 minutes to take the 10 question quiz, but the instructor gave us as much time as was needed. I would finish in about 10 minutes and be on break until the rest of the class finished. Normally that was around lunch break or 4 hours later. This frustrated me to no end. On test days we could go home after we finished so I was normally back in the barraks watching Star Trek reruns after an hour or two while the rest of the class would come back almost at the end of class time.
I completed my ‘C’ school with one of the highest grades the school had even seen. 98.9%. One person in my class had done slightly better. I graduated. The other person did not. Here’s why.
They had cameras in all the classrooms. They had one camera on me, and one on the instructor. They were convinced that I was cheating because I did my tests so fast. We had a stack of manuals to look everything up in and all you had to do was learn which manual to look certain diagrams up in. To me it was a breeze as was the actual troubleshooting.
They never caught me cheating, but what they did discover was the person with the highest scores in the class sat directly in front of the instructor. So when he would grade my quiz or test, the other person was marking the correct answers, then just looking them up. He was given a BCD. Bad Conduct Discharge (or Big Chicken Dinner) and left the Navy with a dishonorable discharge. Me, well, again they decided they had too many EW Petty Officers. Upon completion of school we were given a choice. Leave the Navy with 4 years under our belts, or carry on for the remaining two of our contract. I chose to get out. Like I said, just wasn’t my lifestyle.
As I mentioned, many of my friends came and went. It was sad to see them go and I’ve never been good about keeping touch with all the guys from Seal Beach or from Cory Station. I always wondering what happened to all my friends who were married by 20 and some having kids. I’m guessing some became lifers. I did have contact with one guy who played guitar and sang in the band I played drums in. He now does landscaping and is still married to the girl he met in Florida. I think that’s awesome.
My remaining time I spent working in the commissary checking IDs. I had 2 months to go for my four years and then it was time to go home.
More on this story tomorrow.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Volleyball and Groceryshopping
My favorite daughter had another tournament today. They played well, but lost the first two matches. They rallied back and won the final match despite the line judges and refs being against them. It was nice to see them so happy after the win.
The family went to Bj’s Brewery and Eatery afterwards. I had an awesome pot roast sandwich. Oh yum. The wife and kid had burgers.
After we got back to our neighborhood we did some shopping and put the groceries away.
It’s been a long day.
Writing: Last night I stayed up as late as I dared to get in my 2000 words. I’m glad I didn’t stay up later as I slept past the alarm and woke up 30 minutes after we should have gotten up. We still got ready in short order. As for those 2000 words, I was able to complete work on my special project and I even added a few words to Golden West. It felt so good to hit my daily goal.
I had a lot of distractions over the past couple days and I don’t expect that to change over the next couple of days. My brother will be in town tomorrow and Tuesday. I’ll be heading downtown to visit with him while I can. It’ll most likely be He and I one day and the Family the next day. We’ll see how it goes.
Regardless of distractions, I have a goal and I’m going to do my best to stick to it.
Next week I’m going to post little stories about how I got to where I am today. I hope it’s a fun journey for you. I know it’ll be interesting to write it all out. I haven’t written an in depth vision of where I was so many years ago and how I got to where I am today. I’ll make notes of where to fill in gaps later. Should be a fun journey. If I bore you to tears, just let me know.
Right now I need to knock out some fiction. So…
Until tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
Daily Update: Oil Change.
I own two large vehicles. A chevy tahoe and a dodge Ram. I don’t drive a lot so gas prices never really bothered me. The confuse the hell out of me though. I’ve watched them go up steadily over the years and never understood why.
I know about supply and demand. I get that. But we’re dependent on and artificial supply problem. Gas companies seem to use any excuse to raise prices and it’s not fair.
Prices before the war in Iraq were below $2 and were for a very long time. The war had no real impact on supply but oil and gas companies used it as an excuse to more than double the price then post record high profits. I just don’t know why more people aren’t outraged about this.
Perhaps a lot of people are like me. You don’t think about it until you are at the pump or like now when you get an oil change.
The cost of gas is crazy. The cost an oil change not so much. The prices has gone up over the years but is has more to do with the services they offer as you can still find cheap oil changes. There is competition for your business.
Back to gas stations, if one raises its price everyone raises their prices. Almost as if they’re all colluding to pull one over on the general public. Again I don’t understand why there isn’t more outrage about this.
Personally I’d like to see more alternate fuel vehicles developed as I am not sold on battery powered cars. I mean what are they going to do with all those batteries in a few years when they need to be replaced?
On a lighter note my favorite daughter is taking a Pre SAT test today. She’ll be there for a couple hours and I’m doing the oil change / car wash. Figures I could make use of a little quite time and do my daily blog post.
Yesterday was a good day for writing. I was only 136 words shy of my 2000 word goal. Let’s see how close I can get today.
Until tomorrow!
Woowoo!
Daily Update: Really Universe? Knock it off.
Yesterday I had grand plans. I knew I had a release, but I had everything ready to go. I knew my favorite daughter had practice, but due to my having a release, the wife was going to take her. I was going to write during my lunch, take a couple of breaks, perhaps even knock out a few words during the release.
Sigh.
I did get a few hundred words out yesterday, but I should have know better. I got everyone up at 6am. I don’t start until 7am so I figured I had an hour to do some quick blog reading and get at it. My favorite daughter wanted breakfast. It smelled so good that once I was done, the wife wanted breakfast. My writing time disappeared and I had about 50 words written.
I thought I would be able to take breaks from work, but for the most part it was consumed by phone calls, preparing for the release, and general work ‘stuff’. I didn’t think this was such a big deal.
I went and got my favorite daughter from school, came back to the house, and started typing. I about 100 words in and my brother called. He’ll be in town next week so it’ll be great to see him. I have a great story to tell about my niece, so I’ll need to ask permission. It’s really cute.
Hung up the phone after a great conversation and typed about 100 words (probably less) and the wife called asking what we were going to do for dinner. I headed out to subway (we need to go grocery shopping) and came back, ate, and it was release time. We started early. I thought “This is great!” Files got pushed out at 5pm my time. Normally this is closer to 6pm. I got in there and realized nothing was working. It was throwing errors like the files hadn’t gone out. I had neglected to inform the person moving the files of the new directory. <grumble>
Once I was able to get in and start testing (after over an hour delay), I realized that I didn’t have admin rights to the database. The client hadn’t set me up properly. Testing stopped pretty quickly as I tried to get a hold of the people in charge of the database (and also the customer for the web app I’d built.) They didn’t come on until 7pm. That’s when testing really began and we ran into one minor issue, but still testing needed to be done. I finally finished around 8pm with my testing and correcting that one smallish issue and then started helping someone else with testing. I have a xoom tablet so I was able to help in development and testing, but once everything moved to production there was a different issue.
<Double sigh>
Around 8:45pm I needed to go and get the daughter from practice. Fortunately the release finished in time and I went to get the kid. We made a pit stop on the way home and were back at the house by 9:25pm. I started writing and I swear I wasn’t 10 words in and the wife needed help with something for her work. I helped her with what she needed and by 10:20 I had a headache the size of Texas. Something told me we were in for bad weather. I wrote a couple more words, but it was just too painful to keep going. I took my good sinus medicine and went to bed.
Today was very similar, but without a release, volleyball practice, or needing to help anyone with anything. It was just a running stream of everything else that needed to take priority.
This weekend my favorite daughter will be taking Freshman SATs (practice for next year) and has volleyball practice in the afternoon. I will write as much as I can during that time. Sunday is tournament day so it’ll be up early and off to Temecula once again. The girls are performing well so it should be interesting to watch them play.
I’ve still got recording to do, editing, and a number of other things. I need to write up an Unorthodox Writing Tips (I’ll do that next). But I need to produce words. I’m still slightly ahead of schedule for the year, but I wanted to do 2000 words per day for Lent. Missed that yesterday so I need to get back on track.
Speaking of getting back on track.
Until Tomorrow!
WOO WOO!
J.R. Murdock 