Instead of recording the IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! slated for today at the office, I brought my USB headset home and tried plugging it into the desktop system here at home.
Windows didn’t like it. I run XP on my desktop since there’s no way on God’s greenish-brown Earth I can afford a legit copy of Vista or 7, and it stubbornly refused to acknowledge the proper drivers to use the headset. I could have used the webcam microphone, but that thing tends to make my voice sound like wet expulsions of ass. So I tried just about everything I could think of to get it working and nothing took.
Over to my laptop, then, I figured. It’s something of a clunker, the display occasionally fizzles and its XP installation is at least partially on a bad sector of hard disk, but Ubuntu runs like a champ 9 times out of 10 and I figured it wouldn’t let me down. However, after playing with a few audio packages it seems that while it’ll record sound from the headset, the resulting sound is a stuttering mess.
At this point I was pretty pissed but I resolved to get the audio recorded anyway despite it being almost 10:30 at night. I might still be something of a slacker, but I’m a professional, dammit, and I promised a generous donor I’d get their ICFN up by tomorrow. So I sat down at the desktop to fire up the webcam microphone and tried opening a browser to see my draft of the post.
The Internet didn’t work.
Apparently the last time I removed the USB headset, the associated drivers took the ethernet connector’s drivers with it. Muttering curses to just about every deity I could think of, I rummaged through my disks to find the one for my motherboard. Wham, into the PC it went. Bam, it found the drivers and began to install.
Boom.
Blue screen of death.
I rebooted.
BSoD again.
Cue the Blue Ink Alchemist screaming obscenities.
So, for now, the desktop PC is bricked. The laptop has no reliable way to record audio. And by the time you fine and patient people read this, I’ll have gotten my face cut open and some hard little bony bits torn out.
So. The Project. Nice and enigmatic, but I doubt people will be flocking to Amazon to download it to their Kindles. Mrs. Alchemist keeps asking me why I haven’t given it a real title.
Honestly, it’s because I can’t pick one.
What we have here is a story with a fantasy setting. The protagonist, Asherian, comes from a magocracy of floating cities that exist behind a protective wall that is part stone, part magical whoseewhatsis. He’s an apprentice and his class takes a field trip out into the ‘Wilds’ on the other side of that wall. Let’s just say that doesn’t end well.
The idea is that his life has been somewhat cloistered up until this point, and he’s stranded and alone out in a world he’s unfamiliar with, where his use of magic might end up killing him for one reason or another. So it’s something of a hero’s-journey/fish-out-of-water deal. So what am I gonna call this thing? I’ve had a few ideas, but none of them really seem to be sticking.
Arrow of Fate
Ash’s instructor gets arrow’d which dooms the field trip. Now, this was what I originally called it back when this was a short story instead of a novel, and Ash was a chick with a different name. However, it has a few problems. Ash isn’t an archer so the title isn’t about him, arrows don’t play a huge role in the overall story, and the title in general feels kind of Harlequinesque. So I’m inclined to scrap that one.
Beyond the Wall
Since 80-90% of the story will be happening, well, beyond the wall, this one makes more sense. There’s something about it that bugs me, though. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe it just feels too much like other fantasy novel titles. Maybe I want to avoid the whole “blank the blank” formula of title creation. Maybe it said something nasty about my mom. I don’t know.
Asherian’s Journal
Ash happens across a book a classmate of his had just bought which is blank, and he starts keeping track of his adventures in it. It’s something of a device to help us get a view of things from his perspective between chapters, but it’s not a very big part of the story. Mrs. Alchemist also pointed out that it “tells [the reader] nothing.”
What am I missing, here? Why can’t I pick a title? Which title do you think I should pick? Let’s make some alchemy happen, folks. Bring your disparate elements into the mix and let’s see if we can’t transmute some of these random ideas into the handle for the next bigass fantasy epic of all time. Or at least a little yarn about magic, dragons and interesting people that doesn’t suck.
I have almost an entire season of 24 sitting on my DVR at home. I’m going to need to watch it all in the next few weeks, since my wife and I will be moving sometime around May. When we move, it’s likely we’ll be leaving the television behind.
Well, we’ll be taking the television set with us, but the television service is another matter. This is a shame, and not just because we’re fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. We also like the shows listed below. I’ve gone into detail previously as to why these shows rock our collective socks, and someday I’ll talk about Bones and a few others. But, for now, here’s what we’ll be missing when we move.
I mean, we’ll still have the internet so we can probably snag episodes online after the fact, but still…
It’s been a while since I’ve put together a PT post, and this seems about the right time. Why? Because after the last week I’ve had, wallowing in self-loathing and lamenting my state of affairs, I realized there was something I desperately needed.
A swift kick in the ass.
Going through transitions in life can be taxing. Changing job descriptions, if not entire careers; moving from one domicile to another; cutting back on utilities or luxuries; getting by on basic foodstuffs as much as possible just to stretch out one’s currency. Any of these things can take a toll on a person, and having to deal with more than one at once can be harsh. A lot of negative feelings can arise from such a predicament, but those feelings are not all that different from others that you can use.
As a matter of fact, here’s a rehash of what I discussed previously in terms of using negative emotions.
I know I’ve covered using your anger previously, but invoking a Star Wars reference never gets old. Still, if something is making you furious, with fists and teeth clenched regardless of how other people are telling you how to react (doesn’t the words “Oh, you’re over-reacting” make you want to punch someone in the face?) you need to expend that energy, and preferably without damage to property or invoking personal injury lawsuits. If you’re a writer, what do you do?
Write a fight scene.
Get into the headspace of a person involved in a barroom brawl. Hell, write about someone starting said brawl. Did someone say something to a significant other you didn’t like? Is someone chatting up a friend of yours without permission? Not enough booze in your drink? Write about how it makes you feel, how the fury wells up inside you and how the sensation of wheeling around and letting someone have it right in the face touches off the kind of chair-breaking bottle-throwing grand melee unseen since the days of John Wayne.
You’ll probably feel a bit better, and nobody will be suing you.
Let’s face it. We’re all afraid of something. It could be bugs, rejection, alienation of friends, cars, bacteria, being laughed at, loneliness… I could go on. The bottom line is, sooner or later your fear is going to grab hold of you. Grab hold of it right back and go dancing.
Try a ghost story.
Something goes bump in the night. You catch an unfamiliar or unexpected motion in the corner of your eyes. The lights go out, and the shadows seem to grow to fill the empty space. Do you start sweating? Does your hand start to shake? How fast is your heart pounding? What voices do you hear? What do you imagine is lurking there in the darkness? It could just be the cat. It might be your spouse in the next room unaware that you’ve hit the light switch. Or it could be a phantasmal fiend from beyond the grave. Write it out and see where your fear takes you.
More than likely, it’s not a place as frightening as you thought it might be.
Despair, anxiety, paranoia… they’re all cut from the same cloth. “Should I have said that?” quickly becomes “I shouldn’t have said that,” which leads to “I’m an idiot for having said that.” Sure, sometimes you make a legitimate mistake and need to clean the egg from your face. Other times, something with good intentions turns out getting tossed under a steamroller paving the road to Hell. Whatever the cause, you’re left with this cloying feeling of inner doubt and depression, and you need to do something about it, otherwise it’s going to consume you.
Time to write a walk through the rain.
Rain is an evocative weather condition. The sky’s the color of gunmetal, the sun or stars hidden from view, the rain cold and relentless on the weary traveler and the wind makes sure that every surface of the body is wet. Yet people walk through it, alone with their thoughts. “What if I’m wrong? What could I have done to keep this from happening? How much have I lost, and can any of it be rescued? And what the hell am I going to do now?” Write through the thought process. Describe the rain drops, the thunder, the looks of people cozy in their warm homes or places of business, the way others are ignorant of your inner conflict. Work with the emotions. Coax them out of the shadows and into your hands where you can change them from a disability to an advantage.
Those, to me, seem to be the big three negative emotions that can come out of daily life’s trials and tribulations. My point is no less sapient now than it was then, at least in my humble opinion: When you’re wrestling with a negative emotion, the temptation can be to put off writing while you deal with ‘important’ stuff even if there’s no way you can further your cause. You’ve made phone calls, written checks and begged for ways to avoid filing for bankruptcy or shopping the local dumpsters for usable cardboard boxes that’d make fine apartments for you and your family. What are you going to do in the meantime, wallow in your self-loathing? Play more games you’ve already beaten? Pick your nose? It’s better to try and do something useful. Even if nobody else is going to see it, even if it’s just to get something off of your chest, if you are a writer then you need to write. Stay in practice. Put words on paper. Write.
It can be tough and this is advice that more often than not I need to follow myself. But it bears repeating which is why I’ve essentially repeated myself here.
