Sunday, December 20, 2015

The time is 12:34

The biggest news of my week, I almost avoided spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but was bum rushed by someone who thought they were being clever and funny.

A little PSA about spoilers kids. If the thing that you're spoiling is universally adored, with no way to have any prior knowledge (i.e: from a comic franchise or book that it was adapted from) of the event, then it's a dick move to spoil it for anyone. Sure, it's frowned upon to spoil anything, but if you've never seen King Kong, and someone tells you about him being shot down by airplanes, you can't be mad at that. It's part of the cultural memoriate and it's your own fault for not being up on it. If you don't know Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father by now, where have you lived for the last 30 years? Hell, the last decade? But say if a new Indiana Jones came out and Indy died at the end and Shia LeBeouf takes over the hat and bullwhip, and you blurted it to anyone that hadn't seen it yet, especially in an open space, that's fucking rude.

Now that that's out of my system, I'm glad I had faith in JJ Abrams to do justice to the SciFi franchise he actually wanted to make since he was a kid.

Aside from that, another boring week trudging through the holidays. Still enjoying a mini-vacation from writing stuff. I wrote a lot this year and I'm pretty burnt out for the time being. Still haven't tacked on the ending to that short I've been talking about for three weeks. On the bright side, knowing I have a weekly obligation to update 3 people on the status of my writing does make me feel guilty for making no progress.

Anyway, I'm out of words for now. I'm gonna enjoy this lazy Sunday while I can. Make sure you do the same. If you don't, I'll know.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Dispatches from the edge of a whole lotta nothing.

What a terrible blogger I am. I skipped a week and almost skipped this one.

To be fair, I haven't really been doing any writing. After NaNo, I've spit out about 2300 words into my current short. I barfed out a cool intro really fast and realized I had no way to wrap it up cleanly by 5000 words, so I've been mostly reworking the story and writing myself out of a corner. I have the ending all planned finally as well. For a change, I'm trying to write something for publication opposed to something I want to write just for myself to self-publish and retain full control.

I have been giving a lot of thought regarding the indie book/self-publish scene in light of "the establishment". Unfortunately, as much as my punk roots are showing, DIY is awesome to keep things how you always wanted them, but you can't get established without an establishment. The great publishing beast has been in existence since people started putting writing implement to surface and handing it out to people too lazy to remember oral stories. It's seen every technology come and go from cuneiform to eBooks, and it's just adapted every time. So, if you can't hunt and kill the great beast, get eaten and become one with it.

But yeah, really I'm trying for actual publication not just for the legitimacy, but because it's more of a sure paycheck as well. I mean, if you want to make a living doing what you love, you kinda need to make money to live. And working day jobs is bullshit.

The new story is kinda on a solarpunk kick. Mostly because the "movement" (as it's been described in like 3 articles that have been reposted all over the internet) really has nothing to read as far as I've seen. Outside of some book from 1996 written by some spirit-den-mother hippie chick. But it's more optimistic in regards to trying to actually rebuild a world after great catastrophe.

If it doesn't get legit published, it'll fit in nicely with the first wave 2 short story collection I have partially completed. I really need to get on some rewrites with my novel so I can close out wave 1 already. Why do projects never complete themselves in the way you plan them?

So, yeah, that's been my last couple weeks. Farting around writing a story for an aborted genre that claims to want to supplant cyberpunk by sticking solar panels on postcyberpunk, and working/finishing school. About to take my last final of community college. After about 3 years of attending classes over a 15 year span of time, it'd be nice to stop being a statistic and finally transfer to a real university. One can't attend Greendale forever. Right Leonard?