Friday, August 26, 2005

Carpe Diem, Baby

Tammy’s blog from a couple of days ago included a quote from Calvin Coolidge. I don’t usually put a lot of emphasis on quotes and sayings, but this one really struck me.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

“Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.” That’s a great description of me. I have no ambition, no drive to succeed (at least, in a long term sense), no “killer instinct”. I have dreams instead. I say, “Someday it would be nice to be a published author.” Someone with ambition would say, “Someday I will be a published author.” If it never happened, the ambitious person would feel like a failure. On the other hand, if I never become published, I’m okay with that.

For me, it’s about comfort and peace. I’m quite happy to live day by day, doing whatever makes me feel happy at the time I’m doing it. I have no real long term goals, just a general sense of where I want to be. I’m slowly making my way through college -- I like to say, sarcastically, that my goal is to finish my two-year degree by 2008 (I started in 2002) – but, frankly, I feel relieved on the quarters when it’s not possible to go.

I work hard at the things I do; it’s not that I don’t want to succeed at whatever I’m doing at the moment. I don’t slack or cut corners or try to evade responsibility. I have no ambition, but I’m not lazy. There’s a huge difference.

Now I have that quote set as my computer wallpaper to try to remind myself to work beyond the limitations that my wish for comfort sets for me. It sounds nice. But I’m more than likely never going to do anything about it. Having ambition is really hard work; I’d rather just amble through life.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Music is in the Air Part 1 - Hop In

Parental Advisory: This blog should not be read by anyone, including the author, who wrote it blindfolded in order to protect himself from the naughty words contained within.

Is it me, or is music in a state of decline? I barely even listen to the radio anymore because all the stations play just a handful of songs over and over; and those songs range from boring to flat out offensive.

My wife and my older sons are into hip hop, so whenever we’re all in the car, that’s what we listen to. I dislike hip hop immensely, not because I hate the style, but because every hip hop song on the radio glorifies sex and/or greed.

Every song is like a musical version of MTV cribs; ‘Here’s my 22 cars, here’s the mansion that I live in all by myself, here’s the play room for the ho’s. Damn, I’m the baddest mother fucker to ever walk the face of the planet. Worship me, bitches!’

Here is a typical hip hop song:

My name is Rapper G and I’m a pimp

Get outta my face or I’ll make you limp.

I’m the greatest thing to ever hit this place

The girls line up to lick the band-aid on my face.

I’ve got 50 inch rims on my H2O

To make sure all can see them I ride it really slow.

I love all the bitches from their toes to their racks

I tell them, ‘You know, Baby, that I’ve got your back.’ (uh huh)

I’m the pimp and you’re the ho

Come on over here and let me corn your row.

etc.

And that’s another thing I hate about hip hop – what’s with the worship of pimping? Since when did selling women’s bodies become a glamorous occupation? Are there girls out there who just can’t wait to start their prostitution careers? Is that something you can get a two-year degree in now? Is there such a thing as an Associate’s Degree in Whoring?

Yo, hip hop perverts! Thanks for teaching my six year old to call himself a pimp! That’s exactly the sort of value I want him to grow up with!

At least hip hop songs generally have inventive beats. Next time we’ll discuss the blandness that is the Alternative scene.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Confession Time, Part 2

At the risk of losing readers, I have a confession to make:

I don’t read blogs.

Sorry, but it’s true. I read Tammy’s every day. I read Debi’s and Krista’s once or twice a week. Usually. I link to anyone who links to me (when I get around to it. Look, Ronn, you’re finally there!), and once a week or so I go through my links (which for some reason keep moving themselves to the bottom of this page instead of the side where they’re supposed to be) and check out what’s going on. If someone new comments on one of my posts, I click on their name to see if they have a blog and try to make a return comment on one of their posts. If they come back again, I think about someday getting around to adding them to my links.

I like writing and posting, and I love comments (look! someone was interested enough in what I had to say to comment!). However, I don’t get up every morning and read a dozen blogs. I’ve tried blog-hopping, but my brain starts to go numb after the third or forth one. It’s like alcohol; I understand the addiction others feel for it, but I’m not that excited about it myself.

I apologize if that makes anyone not want to come by anymore, but I just had to get that off my chest. ;)

***

Can anyone tell me what, exactly, a “hollaback girl” is? I’ve heard that song a million times, thanks to the overplaying tendencies of American radio, and I don’t get it.

I believe that “hollaback” can be broken down into two component parts: “holla”, a truncated version of “holler”, and “back”. Put together, the definition I have come up with is to reciprocate a verbal attack. In other words, someone said something nasty about Gwen Stefani, and she’s hollering back.

The problem here is that the song specifically states that Gwen is not a “hollaback girl”. She’s quite adamant about this fact. The entire chorus is dedicated to the proposition that she wouldn’t even dream of being a hollaback girl. Yet the remainder of the lyrics are quiet clearly pointed rebuttals of some unknown yet obviously pointed attack.

So what we’re left with is a song hollering that it’s not a hollering song. Which means that either the song is contradictory or it’s a flat out lie. The best answer I can come up with is that Gwen means that she’s not merely a hollaback girl but, in fact, she’s also someone who is ready to take action. This is not a perfect answer because, as far as I’m aware, Gwen hasn’t been in any brawls with anyone, so all she has done is hollaback at whoever slighted her in the form of this song despite saying in the song that she wasn’t going to do just that.

The whole thing just makes me dizzy. I’m going to go lay down. Please feel free to holla at me if you know what’s going on.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

This is Hard

I’m working third shift this weekend, which usually means plenty of time for writing. The only problem is that nothing’s happening. It’s been so long since I worked on my book that I can’t find the voice. I have a few poorly written lines of a scene. I know, in general, what is supposed to happen during the rest of the scene. I should just pound it out and not worry about how it’s written for now; just get the scene down and worry about editing it later.

But I can’t. I hate leaving a sentence before it sounds exactly how I want it to. I sometimes spend an hour or more on a single paragraph if is doesn’t sound quite right. I don’t believe in “rough drafts”. I took Research and Exposition in high school, which was all about writing research papers. We were required to fill out index cards and make outlines and write a rough draft before we could write the actual paper. I wrote the paper first and then went back and cobbled together all the crap they wanted me to waste my time with.

It just seems like such a large amount of effort to go back over something I’ve already written and rewrite it. Why not just write it the way I want it the first time? This is why, back when I was taking part in the online writing workshop, I posted one chapter in the time that most of the other writers had posted three. By the time I finished the now-defunct The Price of Power (75k words), Tammy had written the original version of Ghosts in the Snow (250k) and the original sequel (100+k) and was halfway through with Threads of Malice (120ish k, coming this fall to a bookstore near you!). We started our current projects at approximately the same time. She’s at 75k, a little over a month from completion. I’m at 43k, 30k of which is previously written stuff.

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare myself to Tammy. She’s an author; I’m just a writer, and (as previously noted) a casual one at that. And my lack of productivity has much more to do with the fact that I haven’t tried to write anything in three months than my obsession with writing my sentences just the way I want them.

Still, when I am writing, I seldom manage great numbers of words in a day. But hopefully the time I take is made back when it comes time to edit; if I did my job right the first time, very little editing will need to be done.

Monday, August 15, 2005

For those of you wondering why I haven’t made frequent posts lately, I’ll refer you to my post from June 3rd (I can’t link to it though email, so you’ll have to find it yourself until I can get home and get online). You can’t say you weren’t warned. ;)

Confession time: I had ample free time over the weekend to (finally! (Hmm…does this count as splitting this infinitive?)) get some writing done. I played BF2 instead.

Sorry Tam.

Here’s my philosophy on my current online responsibilities – if I have a relatively large amount of time available (an hour or more) and if there are other SR guys playing BF2 and if the server they’re on isn’t full, I will join them. If any of those criteria aren’t met, I won’t play BF2. If I still have a reasonably large block of time, I plan to write. At any point where I don’t feel I have a decent amount of time, it’s JKA which, thanks to the strange way the MP community has evolved over the years, can be played in small increments of time.

I feel a little bit bad about not having a full commitment to writing, but not so bad that I’m willing to sacrifice getting killed over and over by online strangers for it. In the final analysis, when I write, I’m really only writing for myself. At least for now.

I live my online life in the company of writing greatness – or at least really goodness – in the form of actual make-money-doing-this authors. As Tammy herself recently pointed out, they no longer have the luxury of writing purely for themselves; sometimes they have to hold things back for the sake of their audience. Furthermore, they have deadlines; they absolutely must write.

I have no such absolutes for my writing. I only write because stories – or pieces of them – keep forming in my head and demanding to be let out. Sometimes they’re screaming for it; other times (like now) they’re quiet. I used to be motivated by the thought of becoming published and writing as a career. I would still like to do that, but being involved with the fringes of the publishing world by witnessing Tammy’s fortunes, I have come to realize how far from reality that idea is.

Tammy’s first book was published and did so well that it achieved a second printing. Her second book is coming out in a couple of months. Her third book is due next year. She has spent virtually every moment of her time over the past couple of years working on her writing. Yet she is making much less doing that then I am at a (relative for a 35-year old man) low paying job. If I were ever to be published, I still wouldn’t be able to quit my job (as I always pictured myself doing).

Tammy’s not writing for money or (God forbid!) fame or anything like that. She feels a need, much like my own, to transmute ideas in her head into stories. The difference between her and me, writing-wise, is that she is much less lazy – she actually sent her writing out to agents and got accepted. And because of that, she now writes from a much different perspective than I do. She has to write.

I don’t. I forget that fact sometimes. It’s true that I should spend a little more time on it, if only so that the story doesn’t become so somnolent that I forget what is supposed to happen. And someday the words will demand to be let out once again. But for now I am content to chip away at it a little at a time.

Okay, that became a bit long and rambly. Allow me to sum up:

Short Term Analysis:

Getting published = lots of work, not much return. Thrill of seeing your name in bookstores. Not all it’s cracked up to be.

Online gaming = fun.

Long Term Analysis:

Getting published = lots of work, not much return. Not all it’s cracked up to be.

Online gaming = fun.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Moved

My apologies to my four readers for the lack of entries last month; it was a busy time for me.

Moving is a painful process. I tried to make it easier by breaking it down into stages and doing a little bit each day, but that just spread the pain out over three weeks instead of one condensed day. I hoarded every empty box from my work and we started packing the day we signed the lease. Soon the garage was full, but it seemed as if we hadn’t done a thing. We got approval to start moving things in early, so I spent the last week of July shipping boxes while my brother in law painted a couple of rooms in the new house. My goal was to have all of the small stuff moved by Saturday the 30th so all we would have left was the large furniture.

I failed in that endeavor; despite spending what seemed like every waking moment after work on moving, there were still three rooms left to go by Saturday. We started at 8am and didn’t finish until 4pm. Most of the stuff ended up in the new garage or the basement; we’ve started to sort that stuff, but there’s so much of it, it’s going to be 2008 before we’re fully in.

It’s amazing how much a family of seven can accumulate over the course of a few years. I blame my wife; she can’t turn down good deals on things like frames or vases, even though we have tons of each. She also keeps a bushel of the plastic grocery bags, although I’m not sure what for. And she wouldn’t let me throw anything away, even though we have more toys than our boys could possibly play with and the majority of them have been sitting unused in boxes. I could have pitched 80% of them without anyone noticing.

Just to top everything off, I also got poison ivy from somewhere. I don’t know where; as far as I can tell, there is none in the yard. My guess is that it was mixed in with the mulch we put down at the new house. When I get poison ivy, I get it everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I’ve been miserable for the past week. Thank god for Diphenhydramine.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Let's Start Over...

Sometimes I wish I had amnesia. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to start with a clean slate? I sometimes daydream about what would happen if I woke up one day in, say, Kansas, and didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. I even thought about turning this idea into a book, but the whole amnesiac-with-a-story has been done to death recently (not to mention its continuing popularity in various soaps).

It would be very cool to read my own story without already knowing the intricate details. What would I think about it if I wasn’t so completely biased?

And think of all the things you could do for the first time again. Like watch “The Shawshank Redemption”, which is quite possibly the best watch-for-the-first-time shows ever (it holds up to repeated viewings, but once you know the twists, it can never have the same impact).

Of course, amnesia would create its own problems, the first one being the fact that you probably got slammed hard on the head and now have brain damage. Of course, many of the people I know already seem brain damaged, so perhaps that wouldn’t matter so much.

And what would happen when your former wife / child / cat / other miscellaneous past loved one found you? And you had already re-married and had other children? And a new dog? Your old family would probably forgive you and something would be worked out. Your old cat wouldn’t, but that’s okay; dogs are expendable.

Speaking of soaps (yes I was – go back and check the end of the first paragraph :P), Sheila is apparently back on The Young and the Restless. A long time ago, during the only unemployed couple of months in my grown-up career, I was given the assignment of watching Y&R for my wife and keeping her up to date on it. Despite the shoddy writing, ridiculous plot twists, and often bland acting, it turned out to be fun to watch. The best character was the evil nurse Sheila. Even after I went back to work, I’d watch whenever I could just to see what she was up to. Eventually she left and the show grew too tiresome to watch.

But now she’s back, and I might just have to TIVO Y&R.