Level Up! (...or an elaborate excuse for not writing)

Nothing is more life affirming than stepping outside of one's comfort zone and learning a new skill or ability.  Sometimes these moments are recognized by a public acknowledgement or even a ceremony.  But oftentimes the smaller achievements go unacknowledged.  There is no great sin in this--at least on the interpersonal level.  But I do think it's important to give one's self credit for the little things that we do.

In the world of video games, new and incremental achievements are often accompanied by an electronic fanfare and the congratulations that the player has "leveled up".  Many persistent online games use this concept to entice players to keep coming back for more.  There's always the next attainable milestone, and with it the recognition that you've done something meaningful (in game terms).  Attaining that next level or that special item in the game is often an accomplishment that will be recognized by your peers, as well as theh computer.

Maybe the reason for this semi-pointless exploration of small accomplishments is that I want to pat myself on the back for wiring up a new dryer this weekend.  Unfortunately, it consumed some good writing time.  But I did learn a new skill: I used a multi-meter to make sure the circuit wasn't live before I started working.  And I think I can make the assertion that I "leveled up" in electrical wiring.  Perhaps more importantly, I earned an "achievement" with my spouse.  Last time I checked, spousal achievements are much more valuable than gaming achievements...

So, finally, we've arrived at the real reason for this blog post.  It's really meant to try and make me feel better about not working on the next Hemlock novel this weekend (although short story writing played a part in that, as well).  I think the time off may be good for the Hemlock project, though.  As I usually do when a project goes on hold, I have been thinking about it a lot and getting some ideas in place: specifically in the hard to define areas of mood and pacing.  I hope to report tangible progress on Hemlock very soon!

Ants Marching Toward Their Fate?

We all arrive at destinations in our lives.  Sometimes we feel a clear sense that we have arrived as a result of our prior choices and actions.  Other times it feels like our arrival is the result of chance--or some interplay of choices and chance.

I was watching some ants crawling around a candy jar in our office kitchen this week.  Ants always fascinate me because they have an uncanny ability to show up around food--and they seem to do so by using some mysterious system of patrols, pheromone markings and perhaps...fate.

If I am feeling imaginative, it's not hard to imagine that the ants arrive at the food because it's there--and that their path to finding that food is reverse generated back to some point of origin.  I think of this in terms of some sort of system of temporal milestones connected by a chain of choices and coincidences.  Maybe these milestones are fated and our choices influence them in various directions.  Maybe drastic choices can even eliminate and/or create new milestones.  Now I don't necessarily believe this, but it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to consider it. 

It's undeniable that there are certain points in our lives that seem more significant than others.  Why do we remember certain things and not others?  For instance, when I was in high school our school won a contest sponsored by a radio station.  The rules of the contest were simple:  whichever school sent in the most petitions would win a free concert by a popular rock group.  I have a very vivid memory of one day in science class when the intrepid girl who was organizing our drive to write petitions stopped into our class to rally the kids to write another round of them.  I find it odd that I remember this day in class far more vividly than the subsequent rock concert!  How could that be?  Could it be that that exact moment in the classroom was a powerful and deciding moment in the outcome of that contest?

The passing of Steve jobs has triggered a wave of sadness in many people.  After hearing the news, I watched his commencement speech that he gave at Stanford University.  During this speech he discussed how seemingly trivial actions that he took early in his life turned out to have a significant impact on his later endeavors.  He mentioned that he took a calligraphy class that he assumed that he would never use--but when he was designing the user interface for the Macintosh computer, his knowledge of calligraphy helped him to make the Macintosh the most advanced desktop publishing computer ever made.  He also talked about having faith--even during the most trying of times.  His great trial was being fired from the company that he conceived by someone that he had hired not a year prior.  At that time, he could not forsee where his life would take him, but he persevered, and his later life took many remarkable turns.  He ended up being re-hired by Apple Computer when they acquired another company that he had started after being fired.

Jobs didn't come out and say it--but it sounded like he had some belief in the power of fate.  And as I looked at that ant in the candy jar this week, I wondered whether it was somehow destined to find that candy, or whether it was the beneficiary of random chance.  As a part-time fantasy author, I'm sure tempted to believe the former, even when my rational mind insists that the latter is true.

Just a tiny morsel

In lieu of a proper blog post, I offer up this silly little poem that I wrote today.  Hopefully my brain will untangle enough to do a normal post very soon!

The Whirley-Whimples

I know a place where the Whirley-Whimples play
they are dwellers in our cellars to escape the light of day
when they dance their whirley-whirley dance
they're wont to skip and frolick
and they sing a whimple-whimple song
with tunes like Jackson Pollock

Fear of Flying

I'm a nervous flyer.  I'm not paralyzed with fear in the air, but I am nervous throughout a flight--especially during takeoff, and to a lesser extent during turbulence and landing.  I intellectually understand that flying is safe--safer than driving, as a matter of fact.  But my body seems to instinctively know that flying in an airplane at thousands of feet in the air defies all primordial notions of safety, and is basically an act that requires placing complete faith in science.  The "meat" doesn't buy what the intellect is telling it, and only feels comfortable on solid ground.

When I refer to "the meat", I mean my physical body, of course.  By making this statement and separating the perception of my body from that of my intellect, I am making an assertion that the mind/body connection is not as simple as a mindless body inhabited by an all-controlling mind.  I believe that there is more to the "mind" than just the functions of the brain. 

People often talk about "gut feelings"; and, in fact, science has proven that there is tissue in the gut that is remarkably similar to the brain.  There are also the notions of instinct and racial memory that seem to transcend the traditional idea of the separation of mind and body.

So where am I going with this?  I assert that fantasy is the intellectual playground of the "gut".  It is an imaginary realm where instinct and gut feelings are more important than cerebral reasoning.  It's a realm where if things "feel right" then they probably are.  In fantasy, magic is a power borne of belief, faith and feeling rather than observation and science.

That's what fantasy is about--it's about the notion that life is more than the purely mechanical dance of your body and your neurons through the world.  Fantasy embraces the idea that our lives are more than just a giant deterministic dance of  cells leading to a scientifically destined outcome.  It embraces concepts like emotions being meaningful, the journey of the spirit, and magic-- which is often the acceptance of an occurrence without an accompanying scientific explanation of a chain of cause and effect.

I think that a good grounding in fantasy can play a role in connecting with the "mystical" part of our lives.  It's almost  a parallel concept to religion because both involve the acceptance of a chain of causality outside of empirical sensory experience.  Without this mystical connection, I think you can spend your entire life locked in "rational" analysis, and perhaps by doing so, end up missing the entire point of your journey through life.  That's just one man's possibly irrational opinion...

Notably, I did find some comfort on that flight by imagining myself flying in an Atreides ornithopter.  Since I was dealing with "the meat", I had to comfort it with an imaginary image that it was familiar with and fond of.

Returned from Reality

I've just gotten back from a short but exhausting trip.  It kind of sapped my creative energies, so my focus now is on re-fueling them.  This will likely consist of a frivilous purchase (or two) and a lot of relaxation.  I hate the feeling of being creatively "tapped out".  It often leads me to want to try to write "harder", when the reality is that I simply need to rest.
So, I apologize for the long break since my last blog post.  I expect to be resuming normal posting frequency now.
I did write a little bit while I was away, so the process of writing the next novel has not completely stalled.  I continue to be excited about the project, but I have to take a little break.

Shorter but Faster

I have decided that I am going to split up the next Hemlock novel into three volumes so that I can release each volume more quickly. Volume One of Hemlock and the Dangerous Depths (working title) should be released by the end of the year.

I realize that part of the allure of fantasy is the immersion, and I do regret that the volumes will not provide the same immersive length. But it took me the better part of four years to complete Hemlock and the Wizard Tower, and I don't want to wait that long between releases. And it's not just a matter of writing more--the act of imagining the storyline (which I have dubbed "Imagineering") is hard to put on a timetable. It just comes to me, and it takes as long as it takes (especially in the face of the competing priorities of real life).

Volume I will likely be value priced at $0.99 due to the shorter length (it will technically be a novel, but will probably be around 50K words as opposed to 133K words for Hemlock and the Wizard Tower). Hemlock and the Wizard Tower is also priced at $0.99. How can a shorter Book Two, Volume One also be priced at $0.99? The answer is that I consider Hemlock and the Wizard Tower to be priced as a loss leader. It is the entry point to the series, and therefore it needs to have an enticing price and deliver superior value (word count). With the later releases, I will be trying to at least cover the production costs of "publishing", which are editing and cover art (never mind my time-hah! But, as you probably guess, it's a labor of love).

I am going to make a pledge right now: each volume will have a complete story arc and a satisfying ending. I'm not just going to chop Book Two into three parts and call them volumes. Each Volume will be a stand-alone novel, but will advance the overarching story arc as well.

On a personal note, it continues to rain and rain in Philly. I will try not to wash away before the next blog post!

The Virtue of Forgetting?

Sometimes I'll be sitting somewhere and I'll get the feeling that I should be remembering something. Often this will be accompanied by a feeling that I should also be worrying about something. Lately I've been tempted to just ignore these feelings. I figure that if I am feeling OK, then maybe I should just "let it ride", so to speak.

I experienced this phenomenon today. I had been worried about losing my phone charger but was hoping that it would be waiting for me at work. Alas, when I got to work there was no charger to be found. So I started working, got distracted, and suddenly I was feeling good; and then I got the nagging feeling that I described above. Wouldn't it be great if we could just let go of responsibility and live in the moment more often? I once had a friend who embraced this notion of living in the now. He ended up living in an abandoned bus in the wilderness and talking to insects. Seriously. But he was also the happiest guy that I knew at the time. Go figure.

I think there must be a balance to be struck between the anxiety of constantly worrying about things and the care-free feeling of just letting go. One glorious tool of the modern world is calendaring--especially when it's integrated with your mobile phone. I'm hoping that by the time I reach senility that there will be a fully programmed neural computer waiting to guide my every thought and step. Maybe the twilight of my life will be like one of those "Dark Rides" where you sit in a car that's mounted on a rail and ride through an amusement just taking in the sights. I might be OK with that once I hit 90 or so. It would sure beat sitting in a room somewhere rotting away like a zombie!

Imagineering is still underway on the next Hemlock novel. It is mainly centered around the second act of the novel and specifically concerns a character that I had intended to be moving offstage pretty quickly but that is now seeming to merit some additional "screen time". In the meantime, I need to get back to writing the first act, which is completely "imagineered" at this point. I feel bad that this process is taking so long. I saw a recent Goodreads.com poll that said that 1-2 years is the acceptable window for the next novel in a series. I hope I can hit that. Being a part time writer makes it a big challenge. And I guess I'd rather be sure that it's good than have it be just OK but completed faster.