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Hope Is The Antidote

Giving up always seems like the easy way out of a bad situation. All my life, when things got hard, I wanted to quit. When I hurt and was lonely, and it seemed that nobody cared whether I lived or died, then it was easy to say I didn’t care, either.

But my perception of the situation was always wrong. When I was lonely, it was because of my own actions. Because I pushed people away. When I was hurting, it was because I’d let people into my life that I knew would hurt me, or because I’d hurt them first. It was almost always my own doing. I’d complain about failing again and again, when I wasn’t doing anything to fix my problems. I would complain, and turn right around and bury myself in a pity party.

I was my own worst enemy.

Not surprisingly after years of this, I ended up in a very dark place. I filled my mind with negativity, hatred, anger, and bitterness. I had no hope of ever living a happy life. I tried to convince myself it was justified, that I was the victim, but in reality I was killing myself slowly. Inexorably pushing myself towards a cliff that I couldn’t see, and any day, I would have fallen clean off of it. I’m ashamed to say I contemplated suicide more than once. Continue reading “Hope Is The Antidote”

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A Supervillain’s View Of Fatherhood

There are some days, as I sit in my gold-encrusted throne inside my lair on a remote volcanic island, that I wonder why I wanted to become a supervillain. I mean, World Domination is always nice, but really there’s more to living than being all-powerful and feared by nations.

At some point, I wanted to pass on my legacy as an evil genius. And since I hadn’t gotten my cloning vats functional yet, the next option was to have offspring of my own.

So- I became a supervillain dad. After eighteen years, I’ve just graduated my first Evil Minion, and am in the process of doing the same for the rest. What have I learned on the way? What’s the secret to being a dad with aspirations of taking over the world? Continue reading “A Supervillain’s View Of Fatherhood”

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Thoughts On Anonymity

Most people’s opinions on anonymity are fairly polarized: either they love it, or despise it. And not so surprisingly, it’s pretty easy to guess which group has not the most to hide, but the most desire to find out what others have to hide. And as anyone who reads here should know, I value protection of privacy greatly, even if I don’t take advantage of it regularly for the sake of convenience.

The truth is, there is much more out there watching us than conspirators or the government. Every single thing you do on a computer is tracked and sold to marketing companies. Every time you turn your phone on, it leaves a digital paper trail. Your bank, your insurance company, your employer, your mortgage company, even your regular shopping trips, all track what you do.

So how do you balance convenience with security? Do you really want corporations, banks, and politicians knowing everything you do? Well, up front we don’t. But our actions say otherwise. Privacy, as we know it, is dead. Continue reading “Thoughts On Anonymity”

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Everything Is A Choice

For years now, we’ve seen the rise of a “progressive” political/cultural movement in the United States, and all over the world. But sadly, its central problem is that you can’t get something for nothing. It’s not realistic, because it assumes you can have your cake, and eat it too.

Let’s face it: everybody wants things to be “better.” And by that, we mean “better for us.” Because, who would want things to be worse?

Most of these assumptions are based on the simplistic idea that actions are isolated and can have simple solutions, which observably isn’t the case. Everything is a choice between one thing or another. And in the case of Progressivism, everything is skewed one way or the other, with no one wanting to accept that there’s a middle ground, because no one wants to admit their idea could possibly have negative consequences.

But every decision you make is an “either/or” choice. It may not seem like it, but even taking the time to do something easy is still a choice, to use your time for something. There is always a cost. It may not be apparent at first. It may not be a large cost. But if you look hard enough, it’s there. Continue reading “Everything Is A Choice”

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Mindset, Focus, and Knowing Thyself

A large part of figuring out how to live life and get things done is being honest with yourself.

Let me explain. Productive people understand themselves to the point where they know that they can or can’t do something. They don’t waste their time doing things they know they can’t do. Therefore, they have more time to get important stuff done.

Unproductive people keep trying to do something they can’t do, and then blame it on everything else when the results are predictable. When I say “something they can’t do” I’m not talking about a particular skill. I’m talking about their ability to focus on a task, or follow through.

For instance: I know if I sit down and try to write something while the kids are playing loudly, or the TV is on… I’m not going to get anything done. Honestly, my ADD kicks in and it’s all downhill. If I’m at my desk at work, and I’m trying to get stuff done, and I have a browser open with a Twitter feed… guess what? Not going to get much done.

We lie to ourselves and pretend we’re better than we really are. But the way to get things done is to be realistic about our shortcomings, our personal weaknesses, and plan for them in advance. Continue reading “Mindset, Focus, and Knowing Thyself”

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Live-Writing Blog Books

I’ve read several books recently about self-publishing books by writing them on your blog, one chapter at a time. (One of them was written this way!) Most of these work for non-fiction, however. I’m genuinely curious about writing a fiction novel (or series) by posting it chapter-by-chapter.

The problem is, everything I’ve read about this style of publishing is strictly about non-fiction. And as far as that goes, all the non-fiction stuff I write, you can pretty much read here. And I have to ask myself: could I write a non-fiction book based on what I know? And that begs the next question:

What exactly is it that I know?

The truth is a bit more complicated than me being an “expert” on anything specific. There’s a few things I’m considered an expert at… playing the saxophone, cycling for fitness, using Linux, or being an idiot… I’ve got decades of experience in those fields.

But those things are practical, and with the exception of playing the sax, they’re all things I taught myself for practical reasons. I don’t necessarily want to teach people how to do something specific, as much as I want people to learn how to think in a manner that will let them accomplish and learn things. I want to teach them my mindset. I want to get people to learn how to direct their unguided yet limitless  energy to accomplish great things. Continue reading “Live-Writing Blog Books”

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After NaNoWriMo: So What Now?

What do you do when you’ve been on a creative binge, and you find yourself taking a break? If you’ve written a novel (or most of it) in November, and now you’re sitting around, wondering what comes next?

Fear not! There is plenty of work still to be done.

For now, I will catch up on my much-neglected reading list. I’ve got piles and piles of books that aren’t going to read themselves. I want to pick up the rest of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series. Highly recommended. I’m also reading books on blogs and fiction book marketing, so that should be interesting.

I’ve also got several podcasts that need listening to, but I haven’t set up a proper podcast catcher yet. I’ll get around to it eventually.

I started riding my bike again. This in itself is a good thing.

Now that my rush to reach 50K words is passed, I can start re-working the outline and plot of the novel, and spend some quality time world-building and fleshing out the setting, which will directly impact the story further down the road.

This will require me to schedule time for editing and re-vamping scenes, and fleshing out parts of the story that need fixing to align with the setting and antagonists. I’ve got lots of ideas and several may work, but I need to work through them to nail it down, especially if I’m going to expand it into a multi-book series. And there’s the real possibility of trying to write the book chapter-by-chapter here, on the blog… that would be interesting, to say the least.

Plus I’m still writing a weekly blog post for The Badass Forge, mostly cycling-related stuff. And of course, I have to come up with something insightful and witty to post here, at least occasionally.

I’d say, overall, I’m still going to be pretty busy, but now I have the freedom to work on those things when they’re not interfering with family time.

Let’s get to work!

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Writing Is Hard

 

I barely pulled this one out. Did I write 50,000 words in 30 days? Yes. Was it pretty? No.

As I’ve said before, NaNoWriMo isn’t a challenge for me, as much as it is a learning opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard. But I learned so much from it compared to the last few times I’ve tried and failed.

In fact, I learned more during this month’s 50K challenge than I have in the last few years combined. I learned how to outline a plot, I learned how to focus better, and I learned that actually putting words on paper is only half the work. Continue reading “Writing Is Hard”

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Happy Thanksgiving

I’m going to be traveling without internet access this week for the holidays, so I’ll resume regular blog entries on Monday, November 30. Coincidentally, that will also be the last day of NaNoWriMo…

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Update On NaNoWriMo

I’m past the halfway point in writing a draft for NaNoWriMo. I’ve written more than 25K words in the last two weeks. I’m a writer, and gosh darn it, I #amwriting.

I’ve had some successes, and some setbacks. This is not my first, or even my second (or third) attempt at winning NaNoWriMo. But I think I’m going to win it this time, and the funny thing is, it doesn’t really matter if I do or don’t. Maybe that’s why.

Success:
I was able to outline my whole story plot, and let me tell you, it has made all the difference! It felt dumb at the time, but as I’ve plowed through the story, it’s helped tremendously. I have no one to thank for that except Larry Correia and John Brown.

Setback:
The down side to this is that I’m realizing my story is lacking in several areas as I go through it. Specifically, I haven’t done enough world-building and fleshing out of the setting. It was vague, and for making an epic urban fantasy realm, vague doesn’t cut it. It needs more detail, and so I’ll have to dig deep and come up with something original.

I’ve also been watching and reading stories that are in the same genre as mine, to get a feel for what amount of detail is needed to really bring the world to life. Like, how do you write awesome fight scenes? What’s involved in magic? What kind of weapons do they use, what kind of terrain is there, what are they fighting? I outlined some of that stuff, but not enough to make it really stand out.

Essentially, I didn’t outline enough. Which is crazy, cause I spent like 2 weeks on just the outline!

Moving forward, I will try to throw in tidbits of detail to really bring the story to life, and hopefully the story will take on a life of its own.