Blog Chain - The Perfect Place

Welcome to the last blog chain of the year :)  Tere brings us this question:

What conditions do you need to get your best writing done? Closed door, crowded coffee house? Computer or notebook? Can you just sit down to write, or do you need to wait for the time to be right?

I used to be a big believer in the perfect time and place for writing.  Except that for nearly three decades, I was so obsessed with needing the perfect time and place, that I never did any writing.  What I learned is that it doesn't matter where I am or what time of day it is.  All that matters is my state of mind.

That's right.  That's all it takes.  There are certainly things I like to have.  A cup of coffee, a keyboard with tappity keys like the ones on the Apple flat keyboards, a quiet room where I can put whatever music is in my brain on repeat.

But those things are difficult to come by.  I usually work with the sounds of dogs snoring beside me and the lawn people cutting grass outside my window or Matt playing video games in the living room.  Sometimes I work longhand, sometimes on my computer, sometimes in BN or Starbucks or sitting in the front seat of my car with my laptop propped on the steering wheel.

When it comes to writing, my state of mind is all that matters.  My intent.  When I sit down to write, I tell myself that I'm going to write.  I'm going to write like my soul depends on it.  And then it doesn't matter where I am or what time of day it is, only that I'm doing what I love.

Tere came before me and kicked this awesome chain off, and head over to Margie's blog to see what it takes to get her in the mood.  See y'all next year!

Traveling By Map

The Muppets.  I remember them.  I remember Kermit the Frog stuffed animals.  I remember watching the TV show.

I went to see the new movie last night.  Despite the fact that Jason Segal is kind of creepy looking in an earnest sort of way, the Muppets today are as relevant as ever.

I chuckled, I sighed, I was embarrassed by the songs, and I laughed my ass off.  The Muppet movie simply shows that there is a place in this world for unabashed sentimentalism and positivity.  Maybe there's not enough of that.  Or maybe we need all the cynicism, all the darkness to recognize just how friggin' brilliant the light stuff truly is.

Now, where are my fart shoes?

Every Time

Every time I sit down to write, I'm not trying to tell you something, I'm not trying to make anyone laugh or cry or shoot beer out of their nose.  I'm simply trying to explain the world around me.

Because sometimes the world makes sense.  And sometimes it doesn't.  Half the time, I plow through life like a blind guy driving a bus filled with explosives.  The other half, I stumble around like I'm drunk.

My hope is that someone reads something I've written and it helps them understand their world a little better.  I think we each live in our own bubble worlds.  Some are smaller, some larger.  Sometimes those bubbles collide, sometimes they merge for periods of time, allowing two people (or more depending on how you roll) to share their world.  And all I can do is describe my world.  How it works and what doesn't make sense and how fucked up it all can be.  In the hopes that it makes sense to someone else.

Even when, sometimes, it doesn't make sense to me.

I read for the same reason.

Because, despite living in our own bubble worlds, everyone wants to know they're not alone.  Sharing experiences, sharing ideas about the worlds we live in--even if those worlds are pure fantasy--helps us cope with the dark.

The real truth, is that I don't know Jack about writing.  I don't know anything about publishing.  Some days I can barely manage to get my shoes on the proper feet.  But I can tell you about my world.  I can tell you what I know, what I don't know, what I love, what freaks me out, what wakes me in the night with cold sweats.

And maybe, if one person gets it, that'll be pretty cool.

And maybe our worlds will make a little more sense.

Catching Up

I feel like I've been off my game for a few weeks.  I've had my head buried in revisions, which are kicking my ass.

OCCUPY WALL STREET - I wasn't sure how I felt about this until I read this article.  I'm all for capitalism.  I believe that people should work hard and be rewarded for their work.  I don't believe in unfairly taxing the rich.  I do believe we have an obligation to help those who have fallen on hard times.  I have no sympathy for people who try to game the system.  What bugs me about the opponents of OWS is that they claim the OWS protesters are a bunch of lazy bums who just want to ride the coattails of the more prosperous in our society.  Maybe there are some people like that, but for the most part, I think people are simply fed up.  Just as I'm against lazy people gaming the system, I'm against the super rich using their wealth and influence to unfairly rewrite the rules for their continued benefit.  I don't expect the government to tax me 30% and tax the super rich 50%.  That's unfair.  But I do expect that if I'm being taxed 30%, that the super rich are paying their 30% as well.  Sadly, that's not the case.  Special interest groups run our country.  Public money is being used to bail out private enterprises because we deregulated to such a degree that we allowed these banks and investment houses to hold our economy hostage.

So, while I may not necessarily agree with all the sentiments of the protesters, I do think it's time for a serious change in this country.  I'm most reminded of the book FEED by MT Anderson when I think of how bad we've become.

HOLIDAYS - Seriously.  It's not even Thanksgiving.  Do I really need to see all this Christmas crap?

GREAT BOOKS - EVERYONE SEES THE ANTS, READY GAMER ONE, THE SECRET WAR.  I've been having trouble reading lately, but these three books have really been great.  EVERYONE SEES THE ANTS is the latest from AS King.  I was interested from the day I heard about it, and it didn't disappoint.  There's an emotional distance in King's writing that always keeps me from completely embracing her characters, but I think it's me and not her, because her writing is brilliant.  READY GAMER ONE was just amazing.  Fun and energetic and well written. THE SECRET WAR is the second Jack Blank book by Matt Myklusch.  Second books of trilogies are always tough to pull off, but I actually think I liked it better than the first.  With the heavy lifting done in book 1, Matt really got to launch the story in a fantastic direction.  Can't wait for book three.

WRITING - I have stuffs in the works.  I'm working on finishing revisions for my second book.  I've got some other stuff going on that I can't really talk about, also because I'm a tease.  But one thing I can talk about is publishing and the internet.

I've decided to conduct an experiment.  I'm not sure just how well it's going to work, but I'm committed to trying it.  I'll write up a much more detailed post in the coming days, but the gist is that over 2012, I'll be writing a book on-line.  Two chapters a month minimum.  I'm going to offer each chapter free on my website.  In every format I can think of.  I'll publish it under the Creative Commons license so that others may also convert it into various formats.  I'll also put it up for sale for the Kindle, Nook, on Smashwords, and all those other e-books places.  I haven't decided how I'll do that yet, since I don't think it would be fair to charge Kindle users .99 for every chapter.  So I may publish it in chunks, as novellas.

But beyond that, I'm going to attempt to make it interactive.  I have the story I want to tell pretty much mapped out.  But I'm going to open the world up and see if anyone else wants to play in it.  Readers will be encouraged to add to the world, and create characters in the world, which might be incorporated into the story I'm telling.

Truthfully, I have a lot of stuff to figure out, and this might fail miserably.  I want to see how the internet can be used to tell stories.  I don't expect to make money, but I'd like to see if it's possible to do so by using the Radiohead method...offer people something worthwhile without asking for anything in return and see what happens.

Anyway, I'll be posting more details in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for it.

VACATION - I gets one!  Sort of.  Visiting my brother in Seattle in a couple of weeks, so I'm psyched about that.  If anyone is near seattle and wants to meet up, let me know :)

And that's it.  Hope everyone is doing well!

Blog Chain - Greatest Achievement

We're back for another round on the blog chain!  This time, it's Michelle H. asking the questions, and she wants to know:

This is the month in creating writing goals and making big accomplishments. What is your greatest accomplishment — in writing, your life or perhaps something incidental that had a big effect on you?


This was a difficult question for me to answer.  It might be easy to say that getting published was my greatest accomplishment, but I think that Deathday was simply culmination of some hard work and a lot (A LOT) of luck.

You know what?  I don't know.  I think the truth is that my greatest accomplishment is still waiting for me to accomplish it.  My life has definitely had a lot of high points.  Some lows.  Some WTF moments.  But I think I've yet to really tap into my own potential.  I'm a work in progress, and I think the best is yet to come.

Check out Margie's greatest accomplishment from yesterday, and then head on over to Sarah's blog tomorrow :)

Blog Chain - We All Float Down Here

Happy November!  I know a lot of my friends are covered in snow, but down here in Florida, I'm just happy the highs are down in the 80s.

We're back with another blog chain, this time brought to us by Matt, who wants to know:

Who is your favorite monster?

My horror movie fascination was kindled at a young age by my older brother.  He introduced me to a frightening world of monsters and psycho killers and crazies.  And with my overactive imagination, he spent many nights sleeping on my floor to keep those same monsters away.

The two that stick out in my mind, and have had a lasting impact on me are this guy:

And this monster here:

To this day, I'm incapable of watching IT and then taking a shower.  The scene in the showers where Pennywise comes up from the drain, is forever imprinted on my brain.  Even though I remind myself that Pennywise the clown is still just Tim Curry (it's just not possible to be afraid of Dr. Frankenfurter  or The Butler), I'm still absolutely petrified of that stupid clown.  I haven't seen that movie in years, and it still gives me nightmares.

CUJO, however, is a beast of a different breed.  When I first saw that movie, I lived out in a heavily wooded area.  A place with dirt roads, where people rode horses around.  And there were plenty of big dogs.  My next door neighbor had a big dog, and I vividly remember a day when I was walking to his house.  I saw a dog that resembled my friends standing in the road.  I tried to go put it back in the yard, but it wasn't my friend's dog.  And it started to chase me.  I ran as fast as my skinny little legs would go, thinking about that stupid dog Cujo, thinking that I was going to be some rabid dog's dinner.  And to this day, I still have issues around big dogs I don't know.

So that's it.  That's my tale.  Check out Margie's answer to this (which includes an awesome Buffy shout out), and then head over to Sara's blog tomorrow to see what monster's scare here.  Happy Halloween!!!