Cali has woken up from her nap to let you know that I will be taking it easy this week as I’ll be going on vacation the following week and, well, why not? I’ve been pretty good these last several months and I figure I can take a week or two off every now and again, right?
See you in September!
Tomorrow we’re going around the corner to the 4 Star Theater to see a movie I saw and fell in love with when I was nine. It’s a roller disco movie that features Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly. And yes, it’s the one that features Electric Light Orchestra on the soundtrack.
Yes, we’re going to go see Xanadu, the movie that I was obsessed with in fourth grade. I even had the Marvel comic book (which you can see here in all its 80s glory) and can still remember my teacher’s voice telling me to put it away whenever I had it out in class during free time. And years later it was one of the inspirations for my novel In My Blue World.
So why do I love it so? Even though it’s got terrible dialogue, the weakest of plots, special effects and costumes very much of their time, many of the Berkeley-esque dance sequences were shot wrong, and a prime example of ‘too many producers and writers wanting different things out of it’? Oh, and apparently it inspired the Golden Raspberry Awards?
I think it’s partly because for all its problems, it mimics the style of the classic musicals a hell of a lot better than you’d expect. It’s supposed to be corny. There aren’t too many deep emotions going on other than goggle-eyed love at first sight and wistful melancholia of the past. It’s a silly feel-good movie. It even has a Don Bluth animation sequence! And it has a damn fine soundtrack after all. [I mean, where else will you hear a duet between Olivia and…The Tubes?]
And hey, in 2007 they even made it into a successful Broadway hit musical!
It’s been a bit of time since I got my new PC, and for the most part it’s been behaving pretty well. I’m still running the cleaners on a sort-of-weekly basis and keeping it healthy. I’m still having the occasional weird issue but I think that’s more on the wonky internet in Spare Oom. That’s most likely due to running too many internetty things at the same time and causing a bottleneck, which ends up causing a disconnect. I’ve always had that issue back here, mainly because we use a Powerline adapter back there. [Short version, it’s using the power outlets instead of an ethernet cable, which we don’t have set up back there.] It would be nice to get properly wired up back there, but it would require either some ridiculous wiring straight from the router (which we had back in Jersey) or rewiring with the landlady involved, and I don’t think I really need to go that far.
I suppose this would be a problem if I was, say, a gamer or a coder or doing something tech related, which I’m not. I’m just someone that’s streaming KEXP online while looking at email while downloading new music releases and saving things to Dropbox. It’s not a big problem at all when I’m working straight to Word, but it can be a problem when I’m working at the 750Words site, or writing a blog here. An internet drop-out can cause drafts not to be properly saved.
It’s not a consistent problem, just one when I’m multitasking too much. It’s merely an occasional setback I can work around. And perhaps I don’t really need to have five different internetty things running at the same time just then…?
Taking a blogging day off for the hell of it. See you on Monday!
In going through a bunch of my new and old writing projects these past couple of months, I’ve noticed an interesting and consistent trend through my writing career: my by-line.
In nearly all of my rough drafts, the title page wouldn’t say “by Jon Chaisson”, but “by j chaisson”. A single letter (no period) for the first name and lower case for both. Maybe it’s that I always felt a bit odd writing my own full name on my drafts, or maybe I just liked the looks of it. It’s my handle on Bluesky. I’ve also been using it at work lately. As part of my bookkeeping duties I have to sign off on a few forms and slips and I’ve been signing them the same way. I’d only change it to my full name upon uploading it to Smashwords.
So now I’m wondering…perhaps I’d like to use ‘j chaisson’ as my pen name from here on in. This will mean making a few changes at my Smashwords site. I’ll need to do some changing around with the e-books I have available, and not just the author page; I’ll need to change the cover images and the edition information as well. Thankfully I do my own covers and have the originals so it’s just a matter of making the changes and reupping them. Changing the Amazon paperbacks might be more of a hassle, but I’ve been thinking of taking them down anyway.
So why make this change now? That’s a good question, and the main answer is why the hell not? One reason is because it resonates with me. I’ve used it many times in many places and I like how it looks and feels. Another reason, a more professional one, is that it gives me a bit of leeway for when I want to write out of genre. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but it feels like this is a good a time as any to start.
It’s occurred to me that one of the reasons I haven’t been doing any writing work lately — I mean, aside from focusing on the blogs and some Walk in Silence (the book) work — is that I’ve been working on rewiring my head a bit.
I’ve written here before, many times, that I’ve been too easily and willingly distracted by online things: social media, videos, comics, music, and so on. Over the course of this year I’ve been working on fixing that, and I think I’m finally at the point where I have it all under control. I’m not really giving any of it up, I’m just no longer being passive about it. I’ve been here before, I just want to make it last longer this time out.
So what about these new projects that are just…sitting there, doing nothing? Well, that’s a good question. And I have a plan that I hope will work. It might be a Best Laid Plan or it might actually work, but hey, at least it’s a plan: continue with the compartmentalization strategy.
I’m not assigning myself work here, which is the trap I’ve fallen into before. No, this is merely part of the job of being a writer. So for instance, say I have my first ten minute break of the day at work: my current habit is to head to the break room, have a snack, and screw around on my phone for a few minutes reading social media until it’s time to go back. Sure, it might be just fine on its own…it’s a bit of mental relaxation during a busy day, right?
I’m trying to break myself out of that. Mainly because I’m personally bored with the habit. It doesn’t do much for me anymore. [I mean, unless A texts me a picture of one of our cats. That’s always worth it.] I think about my other coworkers: some of them head outside to the upper parking deck. Some of them do a bit of reading or texting or chat with friends who are also on break.
My plan before was to change it up and go straight into writing something longhand. Hell, I even have a small notebook that fits perfectly in my jacket pocket! But once I’m on break….? Nothing comes. I’m right back there, futzing around online. Which means that I haven’t quite mastered the approach. What I need to do is prepare myself for that ten minute writing session! So how about this: let’s say I’m scheduled for that ten minute break at 10am. So to prepare for that, I can think about what I want to write at that time by, say, 9:45. A fifteen-minute prep time while I’m ringing up customers. I can definitely think about my writing while at the register, I’ve done it loads of times. So by the time I do go on break, I’m ready and prepared to pull out that notebook and do a bit of work!
To change it up, why not change the setting as well? Go up on the roof, head outside, go somewhere for that ten minutes. And I’m sure that by the time I get this preparation down, I can use all that extra time during my half-hour lunch using the same process to add to the word count.
Will it work? Well, who knows? But it’s worth a shot, right?
So I’m caught up with the rereads of my current WIPs and I’m ready to get started on the rewrites and revisions of those, which leaves me with one last major task: to reread the Bridgetown Trilogy once more to prepare myself for writing MU4.
Thoughts so far:
–That first chapter with Nehalé Usarai holds up really well after all these years. I love that it hints at the ‘slow build’ of the entire trilogy: quiet and static at first, and slowly growing in intensity and ‘volume’ until the end where you’re left breathless and with a feeling of ‘oh shit this is not going to go well for a lot of people in this city, is it’. I wrote it that way on purpose.
–Sure, the introduction of Caren and Denni uses the classic ‘waking up from a bad dream’ trope, but my writing has been all about using those kinds of tropes and twisting them in different directions. They were not dreaming but visiting their separate lumisha dea — their place of spiritual inner peace — and the visits were not so peaceful this time out. I was lucky in that by 2015 I was intimately aware of the ins and outs of this trilogy so I knew how to make tropes work to my advantage.
–Would I change anything, years later? Maybe? I think I could have beefed up a few character descriptions here and there, maybe make a few of them more dynamic, and fix a few grammar and word choice mistakes, but storywise? Nope. I’m definitely proud of this work. I did exactly what I wanted to do with it and I’m thrilled with the results.
One of the reasons why I return to this universe is that I simply love being within it. It’s the one where I spent this much time, energy and thought: unique characters, detailed maps, an alien language, a spiritual belief system, even a way to travel long distances. It was my own take on the science fiction genre, and I saw it as a way to have fun with the creative process. I could take as deep a dive into it as I wanted, and I certainly did, many times over. And I knew that once The Balance of Light was done, I’d be done with the trilogy…but not necessarily the universe itself. I always knew I’d come back to it, one way or another.
Once I’m done with the trilogy, I’ll of course read what I have so far of MU4 and go from there. I’ll most likely have a much better grasp of what I want to do with it, and what I should do with it.
I’m allowing myself a good reason for not reading anything new for quite some time: I’ve been mostly rereading my active WIPs and reacquainting myself with them for future work. But to be perfectly honest, I haven’t done any major reading in quite some time.
It could be that working through the 1,700-page, two-hardcover version of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In might have fried my brain earlier in the year, but I just don’t find myself wanting to actively read these last couple of months other than the occasional manga or my own stuff. I’m not even overly excited about all that many recent genre books lately, which is a bit of a surprise. No fault of the authors or their novels, mind you — I’m just assuming this is just a temporary literary burnout. I’m still buying some titles of my favorite authors or books that intrigue me and saving them for later. Supporting the authors and my local indie bookstore and all that.
When am I going to return back to reading for the enjoyment of it? Good question. I’m not going to let it worry me too much because I’ve gone through this before in the past. It’s just a phase. I’m just going to continue focusing on my own writing for a bit, and once that’s finished I’ll see where I go from there. My bedside TBR pile will be dusted off and ready to go when I’m ready myself.
Welcome to Bridgetown 