Retreat 2020

Blog No. 379

It’s retreat time again and after missing last year, I’m eager to try my hand at some intense all day work again. Also, I’m nervous. My history with the retreats has been a mix of amazing, mediocre, and terrible. Last time (in 2018) I went in with Thinking Machine to edit and found that spending eight hours editing a single project was not within my wheelhouse. The year before, I wrote something (or part of something). It was a time when I was still figuring a lot of things out and I’m pretty sure I was trying to get away with using just a tablet and it wasn’t the most amazing. The first retreat, on the other hand, was when I first finished a story in a day. That story turned out to be Dead Planet, which was my last story in the collection, No Light Tomorrow.

Pew, Pew, Pew

Blog No. 378

I’ve been picking away at small things while waiting for people to get back to me with the beta reads for Broadcast Wasteland. I did a layout for Christian’s re-release of The Space Between Houses (it only took me half-a-dozen tries), I wrote a chapter of a new potential project (nothing I’d be willing to talk about any time soon), and I sorted through all the ongoing and on-hold projects that have been kicking around. I even reorganized the file where I keep all my writing stuff on the computer. Basically, mostly busy work. I also have had busy weekends at the day job, but I think I’m going to steer clear of that subject for now. What I want to talk about is playing video games with my brother.

Sort of Limbo

Blog no. 377

Broadcast Wasteland is in the hands of the first group of beta readers and there isn’t much I can do for the book now other than wait for them to finish and try to rope some other poor saps into joining the next round. The layout (being practically identical to Neon Heart) is all but done. The cover image is waiting for the layout to be finished so that I can get the cover template from the printer. The book has to be at least at the printers before I do any sort of social media push (and/or getting the book and info to the usual places), but the content for that is mostly ready. I know I have potentially hundreds of other things I could should be doing both with writing and outside of it, but picking up that torch when I am waiting to be handed several back at any time is worrisome.

Thanks for the Leap Year

Blog No. 376

I blew it. As I write this, it’s February 4th and I still have five chapters to finish for the fourth draft of Broadcast Wasteland. I have exactly two months to have the book in my hand (one of them being a short month) and the next step relies on other people. That’s not a dig on working with others. We have all had terrible group projects in school or work assignments that have required us to deal with terrible partners. In this case, the other people are all trustworthy, reliable, and give valuable feedback. The issue I have is time. I have to get the book to the printer (talk about reliability issues) by mid March at the latest (very, absolute, definite latest) if I have any chance of getting copies for the April 4th launch.

What I Meant to Say, Not a Marathon

Blog No. 375

I’m going to try again. Last week, I meant to write a post about the way I do some of my writing. I had been chatting with a friend about what we were both working on and how we’re handling it. I happened to be racing to finish the third draft of Broadcast Wasteland (now onto the fourth). She mentioned that she found the differences in our approach interesting, and said that I should do a post about it. Then, instead, I pulled an old man rant out of nowhere and the blog was about how I wish I could keep all my communication methods straight. Swing-and-a-miss. Here I am, a week later, to try again, though. I’ll try to keep on topic, but I make no promises.

Was it on email or chat?

Blog No. 374

Communicating with people is a really complicated thing in 2020. I suppose it has been for some time and that before things like telephones or radios, it was much more complicated. Maybe I’m combining difficult and complicated. Now, it’s complicated, then, it was difficult. What were the ways to keep a conservation going? In person, letters, passing on a message? I’m sure there was some form of semaphore or flower arranging that had their own deep meanings and methods, but I don’t know much about that, and I’m talking about keeping in contact with people as you drift apart.

Working on a Monday

Blog No. 373

I can hear some (maybe one) of you now. You look up at the title and mutter to yourself, ‘so what?’ Who doesn’t work on a Monday, right? I don’t. Not normally. I work for a rental place (a place where the public can rent a room for events) and it makes way more sense for us to work Tuesday to Saturday than the “normal” Monday to Friday. I know way more people in a variety of jobs who don’t do the “normal” week. But that’s just a little side complaint from me. The whole concept of the dreaded Monday gets under my skin way more than what’s reasonable. What about the forgetful Saturday, the timid Wednesday, or the exaggerated Sunday? Day jobs can suck any day of the week. Sure, weekends are awesome, when you get them. When your days off are Monday and Wednesday with the occasional Sundays, the system breaks down.