Category: Personal

A new approach…?

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I’ve been thinking about why I’ve never been entirely happy with all the versions I’ve attempted with my long-simmering Walk in Silence (the book) project, and I think I’ve finally clinched it:

It’s too positive.

Or more to the point, there have been two different stories I’ve been trying to write all these years, semi-memoirs if you will, that never sat right with me. There’s the original semi-fictional story with various titles that I started writing my junior and senior year in high school, originally wrote in second person (inspired by Jay McInerney, natch) and tried reviving several times over the years…and then there’s the music overview bearing the WiS name that has two versions itself. Version one attempts to chronologically review what I felt were important ‘college rock’ albums that shaped me during those years, and version two (which ended up as the ‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’ series on my LJ back in 2005 and reprised here on this blog some years back) was a personal memoir with music added.

These two different projects have always led separate lives. The fictional one has lit-fic levels of personal trauma and emotional spiraling, while the musical one is a list of my favorite albums with a few personal memories attached. But they’ve also both been inextricably tied to each other as well: both are stories about growing up and being obsessed with music, specifically 80s alternative rock. But more importantly, both are about not fitting in with the mainstream. Both are about finding a special place in life where you feel a part of something special, where you feel like you can be yourself without outside influence or conflict.

And out of all of this, I realized, there’s got to be a perfect opening line for this story I’ve been trying to tell all these years.

Conformity is a hell of a drug.

I use that line a lot these days when I talk about politics and social media and other things that frustrate me, because I can see a lot of its negative issues stemming from (or relating to) the willingness to conform to something that may or may not be a good thing for society. But this was also something I’d thought about back in those days, in similar ways.

As always, this new take on the Walk in Silence project could end up the same as all the others, crashing and burning and never getting finished despite Best Laid Plans. But who knows…? I’d rather give it a try anyway, on the off-chance that it may just be the perfect approach I’d needed all these years.

We shall see, then.

Embracing the hourglass

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I’ve been thinking a lot about change these days. I mean, sure…this always happens at this time of year. Changes you’ve made in the past year, changes you want to make in the future. Sometimes it’s scary to think about, especially when you’re heading in a direction you’re not used to. Or if you’ve made a choice to follow a new path that you’re not familiar with.

And I do talk about the past a lot here, obviously. I talk about my personal history, the histories of my novel projects, my writing processes, and so on. I just find the process of personal evolution fascinating! It’s partly why I love reading music biographies, learning how my favorite artists evolve over the course of their career, what influences their choices and what happens next. Sometimes those histories are interesting stories themselves.

I’ve chosen to embrace each year I get older. While I’m not entirely happy with my body occasionally feeling sore more often, each year brings me something new to learn and experience. Sometimes it’s wondrous, and sometimes it’s traumatic. But I choose to power through each time, because I’m just that damned stubborn about it. [Mind you, I’m well aware that I’m also well versed in delaying things until the absolute last minute or avoiding conflict, things like that. That’s something I’m still working on.]

What will 2025 show me? That’s a good question. I’m really not sure. But I’m curious, and I think that’s what really matters most.

Catching up on reading

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Over the last couple of years, I’ve given up partway through GoodReads’ reading challenge. Not because I wasn’t even close to making the goal I’d set for myself, however. I think I just kind of grew out of doing it every year. I know I can do it, but sometimes extenuating circumstances (draft rereading for my novel projects, reading a ridiculously long book, etc.) put me behind. But more to the point, my heart just wasn’t in it. I’d set a goal at the start of the year, but after a while I just decided I didn’t want that to be my primary goal for reading.

Anyway, I have been continuing my end of year habit of catching up on various books. I’ve been powering through some of the books next to my bed. Some of them have been quite enjoyable while others sadly fell into the did-not-finish pile. I do this partly to catch up, but also to weed out some of the books I no longer want. [My rules still hold: 1) If I’ve owned it over a year and never read it, either start it or give it away; 2) If I’ve read it but don’t think I’ll reread it, give it away, and 3) If reading it feels like a chore, give it away.]

I think at the start of the year, instead of participating in the reading challenge, I will just continue updating my GoodReads list (and start using StoryGraph as well, having just signed onto it). That way I won’t be worried about falling behind or feeling like I’m not getting anything done at all, and I can just enjoy the act of immersing myself in my reading. After all, that’s one of the reasons I got into this writing gig, didn’t I?

Post-Thanksgiving Wind-Down

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Winding down, you ask? When the Christmas season is kicking into high gear? Well, yes. It might be crazy busy at the Day Job, but on a personal level, it’s time for me to wrap things up, take stock in the year to date, and think about what I’m going to do the following year. And it’s certainly been a bit of a strange year for me for varying reasons. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it’s definitely made me rethink a lot of things.

In working on this hopefully successful draft of Theadia, lately I’ve been comparing it to the days when I’d first started the project, way back in early 2020. Comparing the toxic-level stress I’d felt at the Former Day Job with the temporary exhaustion but shockingly minimal stress I feel at the current one. The managers I had then and the customers I worked with at the time versus the ones I have now. Two completely different lives. And those two years spent unemployed and working on a long overdue rewiring of my brain. All of that has definitely influenced my writing in certain ways.

I no longer worry about running out of ideas like I did then. Sometimes the stories come to me with unexpected inspiration — like Queen Ophelia’s War — and sometimes they’re something I have to actively work out from a much smaller piece of an idea. I very rarely try to force myself to write something new. I still need to relearn how to use my writing as something fun that I could work on at the 750Words site, but that’s something I’ll plan out in the new year.

In the meantime, I’ll be spending the next month taking stock in what I’ve done this year, continuing with the Theadia project, and deciding what I’ll be working on next.

Rebellion

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I am coming ever closer to the final act of Theadia, which means that I have to craft what I think is the perfect ending for the story. Mind you, I’m not looking for perfection per se, as that would just be madness. Like the third act of The Balance of Light, I have to work out an ending that both wraps up what I’ve been trying to say with the story, and also gives it a sense of proper closure, and I have to do that using several moving parts of my own creation. It can be tough and daunting, but it’s doable.

Thing is, the cast of Theadia is not your typical group of uber-savvy tech nerds, nor are they artillery-laden soldiers or maverick pilots. (Well, one of them is a maverick pilot, but his flashiness is only used once, and for a good reason.) Those aren’t the characters I wanted to write, and that’s not the kind of novel I wanted to write either. The point here is that I don’t want the ending to be a Winner Take All, Honor Saves The Day sort of thing.

I’d said previously that I’d been thinking a lot about nonconformity lately, and I think that works here in Theadia as well. The book’s cast might hold jobs that require they follow the rules for the greater good, but their story is about not following the rules for the greater good. The repeated mantra in the story is a single question: if you could…would you do the right thing? Every character asks themselves that at one point or another, and often when they have to question authority. Their decisions are never about rebellion for the sake of it…they are about going against norms because it’s the right thing to do.

Will it make a difference, though? That’s another question I’ve been asking myself, and I’d like to think that it will. Maybe not in the grander scheme of things; their actions won’t be universe-altering, but they certainly might affect things on the local levels, and that’s what matters. They’re well aware that it could cause all kinds of trouble after the fact, but it’s still worth it.

I’d like to think there’s a little bit of real life truth in that as well.

A little end of year cleaning house

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I’m usually good at keeping things tidy around the house — inquisitive and/or destructive cats aside — but every now and again things pile up. There’s shredding to be done, we’ve suddenly accumulated a large pile of books to be donated, or shipping boxes that have only since been used by cats for shredding purposes, or what have you. Eventually I’ll decide that a cleaning session is in order.

I even need to go through my emails lately. I’m usually good at those, because Sundays are when I go through them while I’m running all the PC cleaning programs, but sometimes I lag behind. This usually happens when my Day Job schedule encroaches on the time I usually do the home cleaning. Point is, I’ve gotten myself on several mailing lists somehow and it’s clear that I’m only reading maybe about a quarter of them, if that. I’ll need to go through those soon enough.

Writingwise? Well, for the most part I keep my files well organized on my Dropbox account so I know where everything is. But over the course of the year, things can pile up. Pictures I’ve transferred from my camera and my phone, image scans, work-related paperwork, things like that…some of those don’t have a specific home and end up in a File These Away At Some Point folder. Do I need to keep them? Probably not. Some I can save, but most of them I can probably delete.

I don’t think I have any stagnant projects that need refiling, as far as I know. A few backburner items (which are rightly sorted in the Backburner Projects folder) but other than that, I haven’t made any major decisions to trunk anything lately. Which is a good thing, I suppose.

Either way, I like doing this at the end of the year as part of my process to start the next year fresh and clean!

So.

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This is so going to change my writing style again, isn’t it?

I’m…well, I’m a little less angry and frustrated and terrified than I was Thursday morning, but no less than I was when The Fuckwit was last in office. [Noted, he’s still not my President. I’m totally fine if you unfollow me if that bothers you. This blog isn’t going to turn into a wonkfest, as that’s not the kind of writer or person I am.]

I have plans. Long and short term, some mere ideas and some dedicated goals. I refuse to let him or any of his minions (or owners, if you really want to be cynical about it) keep me from using my words or to make me hide. I didn’t play their game last time and I don’t plan on playing it this time either.

Perhaps a *little* nervous…

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I’m sure we’re all on tenterhooks as we await the outcome of tomorrow’s election. I know I certainly am, for various and extremely obvious reasons. It continues to blow my goddamn mind that some people are still contemplating voting for The Fuckwit.

(Hey, it’s my blog, I get to wax politic every now and again. I don’t all that often, so stick with me here.)

As for me, I will most likely be heavily distracting myself instead of watching coverage for most of Tuesday because I know I won’t be able to emotionally handle it otherwise. I did this back in 2012 when I was worried Mitt would win by binge-reading the webcomic Endtown. (I highly recommend it, Aaron Neathery’s storytelling is equal parts strange, heartbreaking and humorous.) I believe in 2016 I binge-watched the Gall Force anime series which I hadn’t done in ages, and 2020 I think I just focused on writing and my music collection. Perhaps this time out we’ll watch silly holiday romcoms or something.

I mean, realistically I feel cautiously optimistic. Harris has consistently proven herself not only able to go above and beyond, but also to consistently think multiple steps ahead and and think outside the box when necessary. TFG and his team, on the other hand, has consistently proven himself utterly unable to do even the most basic homework without fucking up spectacularly, and hiding said fuck-ups with distraction. And several members of his own party have even gone public to say oh christ please I’ll even vote for this cheese danish instead of him. Completely ignoring the “polls” that have been popping up as of late, it sounds like Harris has an extremely good chance of winning.

Still, I’ve come to accept the fact that I do not have the stomach or the brain to be a political wonk. I’m just too mentally reactive with such things. So I’m just going to hope for the best. I’m certainly hoping we’ve dispensed with most if not all of the faithless electors who screwed up 2016. And I’m also hoping that TFG’s minions won’t pull another January 6, because we really don’t need a repeat of that now, do we?

Well. Either way, I’ll still be here. I’m definitely not going anywhere.