One month of Ficly stories

I honestly don’t mean for this to become the Ficly blog. I swear. There’s already one of those, and I don’t need that kind of pressure.

I just felt the need to point out that I am now approximately 1/12th of the way through the Ficly 365 challenge. Upon completion and posting of today’s story, “Ginger Goes to Hollywood“, I have now crafted 31 extremely short tales, one for every day of January 2010.

I’m not only proud of my accomplishment, and my ability to force myself to write every day, but I’m also very encouraged by the excellent company I’ve been keeping over at Ficly. The community there is fantastic, and I’m discovering more wonderful new people every day. I’ve been attempting to try and read and comment on other people’s stories, as well, since so many people have been so kind as to comment on my own. But that’s dreadfully difficult to do. I’m hoping that’s something I can get better at over time.

In any case, the full breadth of my literary prowess is on display over on my Ficly author page (or, alternatively, here on Nerdflood, once I get it up to date). I’ve had some stories I’ve been especially proud of, such as That Which God Did Not Create, Cannelliare, and Rivalry. A couple of awfully goofy entries, including The Garden versus the Undead and the entire Merry Deathmas story arc. At least a couple of absolute stinkers (I won’t point those out). I even entered one story into a challenge and somehow ended up winning. I’ve also been asked to participate in a bit of a back-and-forth series with another established writer on the site (which starts here, with his first entry). This has proven quite difficult to do given my inherent fear in creating sequels to other authors’ works.

But I truly feel that the challenge is working. In forcing myself to grind these gears every day, I feel as though I’m stretching muscles and really getting something out of my workout (I’m aware of the mixed metaphor. My apologies). After I’ve completed my year of Ficly stories and have truly and fully established a daily writing regimen, I think the task for 2011 will be to apply that routine towards the creation of a novel. At least, that’s the idea. I think.

So, it’s one month down, eleven to go. 31 days behind me, and 334 days before me.

Man, that’s a heck of a lot of stories.

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Ficly 365 progress

Well, it’s only been a week, but it’s been a successful one! In conjunction with my new goals for 2010, I’ve created a new Ficly story so far for each of the 7 days of January. It’s been a great experience so far. I feel like I’ve been stretching some muscles I haven’t had a chance to stretch in a long time. I’ve also made a few new friends on Ficly, which is great. The site has a fantastic, involved community that I haven’t really had a chance to tap into yet. Hopefully this challenge will allow me to get to know some great fellow writers and have some fun sharing a great hobby.

I’ve also got some fellow writers that have joined in the challenge! Fellow Colonist Jeffool has been writing stories right alongside me, though he has been momentarily sidelined by a wisdom tooth extraction. To him I say: LOSER! I wrote my very first Ficly365 story the day after I got all four of my wisdom teeth removed! But I digress. Just today I learned that someone else has also joined the fun. He’s a little late to the party, but he’s working to get caught up. It will be entertaining to do this with others and compare notes on the whole process.

I’ve got an 8th story waiting in the wings for today, but unfortunately I’m going to be largely offline for the next couple of days, visiting family. Ficly stories will still be written! I promise. But they won’t get posted online until sometime late on Sunday.

Remember: if you want to check in on how I’m fairing, you can visit my Ficly profile, my Ficly page right here on the blog, or follow everyone’s combined progress using the Twitter tag #Ficly365. Enjoy!

7 down, 358 more to go! Here’s hoping your 365 project is also doing well.

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Good-bye two-thousand nine, hello twenty-ten

Is it the reflective time of year already? My how time flies when you only manage to craft one blog post a month for an entire year. Of course, it should be noted that that is completely intentional.

2009 was a pretty good year overall, with the one exception of the current month of December, which has left some deep, ugly grooves in my soul. You see, December 2009 will forever be remembered as the month I lost my mother. After a long and resilient battle with lupus, my mom passed away just a couple of weeks ago. The past couple of weeks been packed with an exceptional amount of things we don’t ordinarily do. Spending an extraordinary amount of time with my father, my siblings, and their children. Sharing memories, laughing, allowing each other to be comfortable with crying around one another, that sort of thing. With Christmas thrown in there somewhere, December 2009 has been fairly bittersweet. But it has strengthened our combined families more than I ever thought possible. And I suppose for that, I should probably thank December 2009. I guess I’ll take that under consideration.

But ultimately, 2009 as a whole was a pretty exceptional year given the fact that it brought us our third beautiful child. Harlyn was born just five scant months ago, and it feels like she’s been with us forever. I suppose I’m thankful that mom was able to spend enough time on Earth to meet her eighth grandchild before passing. We’re already considering all the myriad ways in which we plan to pass the fullness and breadth of my mother’s life and experience on to Harlyn, who will never know her. I’m thinking it may start with a lot of stories, and maybe end with my wife teaching her a few recipes. That will come later, though. Much, much later.

Now, I take a look at the coming year: 2010. The sequel to “A Space Odyssey”. Maybe a metaphor for rebirth and rejuvenation? That’s really for each individual to decide on their own. I’ve loosely assembled an array of thoughts in regards to 2010. They are arranged here in no particular order.

Make our house more livable. Since every attempted sale of our home seems to fall just short of completion, we’ve decided that we need to invest some time, energy, and — ugh — money — into the house in order to make it A) much more livable for us in the short period, and B) more salable in the future. New roof, maybe some windows, some siding, a bit of landscaping. Who knows where the madness will end? All I know is that I’m encouraging the wife as much as possible to get a garden going. She’s been wanting one forever, and has always held off. No longer. 2010 is apparently the year of the Vegetable.

Health and happiness. Along with the potential garden, the wife will be making us eat healthier and (possibly) working out, as well. 2010 is the year that I get back below 200 pounds. Yes, that’s the actual number. No, I don’t necessarily look like it. Yes, it’s all in there somewhere.

Family bonds. As I would hope is usually the case, family will continue to be a priority. Especially now that we’re a bustling, cacophonous band of five jangling automatons. But even beyond the walls of our home, I’m really hoping to spend more time with my siblings and their families in 2010, as well. Since my mom has passed, we’ve all leaned on each other quite a bit for love and support. Honestly, I don’t want that to end anytime soon. I mean, we’ve always been a fairly close-knit bunch. But I want to make sure we all stay very close in touch, get together with everyone at least once a month, if not more often, and especially spend as much time with dad as he will allow. Only good things can come from so much togetherness, I would imagine. Right? Right. We’ll just assume that to be the case.

Reading and writing. This past year I’ve fallen way out of practice on both, unfortunately. I worked pretty hard during the month of October on a short story for a collaboration project with some friends. After much time and discussion, the effort fell apart just short of its planned goal. Nevertheless, I feel words stirring and a restless desire to fit them neatly onto paper. To that end, I’m joining up with some online friends doing their own 365 projects. A 365 project is one where you start with some creative effort on January 1st and do something along those lines every single day until December 31st. My plan is to write one flash-fiction story on my favorite short collaborative fiction site, Ficly, every day of 2010. This will be an especially intriguing effort considering the fact that I will have my wisdom teeth extracted on December 31st, and will likely spend the first couple of days of 2010 as loopy as a sideways loon. But I will nonetheless persevere. On the reading front, I plan to keep up with reading some of the stellar pieces of more recent fiction, likely attaching my interest to those titles that pop up from time to time on John Scalzi’s Big Idea posts. I’ll be starting with The Wind-up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, a Christmas gift from my wife. I’m considering purchasing a subscription to some scifi/fantasy magazines, as well, such as Asimov’s and Locus. I also really should become a Clarkesworld Citizen, I’ve been grazing their content for free for far so long. My thought is that if I wish to eventually become a scifi/fantasy author, I should probably look the part and actually ingest some of this material that those I hope to one day emulate are in the process of creating. Or something like that.

Gaming. Oh, video games. You are such a vile temptress. I desperately enjoy playing video games, but they suck up so much time, it’s getting really hard to justify. My plan in 2010 is to spend far less time with the Wii since there’s really very little there that I actually want to play, aside from what I already have on my stack. I’ll definitely be spending more time with my DS since there’s a veritable TON of stuff there I want to play, and it is much easier to pick up and play in short bursts.

So, there you have it. So long, 2009. You won’t be missed. Welcome, 2010. Let’s get started, shall we?

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Obsessively over-analyzing the word “grey” (or “gray”)

Someone on Twitter that I follow mentioned the allegedly “British” spelling of the word “grey”. I love discussing the word “grey” because it’s one of those beautifully awkward words that has morphed its way through our meat grinder of a language, and one of the few words where I have a specific personal set of guidelines that I follow for its usage.

In Old English, “grey” was actually written grǣg, using the terribly underutilized grapheme “æ“, which essentially amounts to a short “a” sound (as in “bat”). Over time, as the æ fell out of fashion due to typesetters breaking their machines attempting to set both the a and e so close in proximity to each other (I just made that up — it’s not actually true, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were?), most of the æ sounds came to be spelled with an “e” in British English, and alternatively, an “a” in the other non-English Germanic language origin variants.

Today, you could poll a thousand Americans and the divergence between using “grey” versus “gray” would likely be nearly 50/50. We have no real attachment to either spelling, and the “ay” and “ey” endings for any short word have very little variation (for instance: day, play, and stay all rhyme with whey, hey, and convey). So, for all intents and purposes, there really is no “preferred spelling” of grey. Or gray. You can theoretically use either one if you so desire.

My personal philosophy on the word “grey” is simple: I spell it differently based purely on my mood. The “e” spelling to me evokes a darker, more depressing aesthetic. “Grey” with an “e” is the traditional gloomy, overcast day, where you beg the sun to burn through the clouds and brighten your dismal countenance. “Gray” with an “a” on the other hand, feels light and whimsical. It’s the lovable old coot down the street, the amusing forgetful elephant, and the adorable cartoon mouse. There’s definitely a distinct emotional attachment to each spelling that is independent of the way the word sounds when spoken. Being a writer, I can appreciate that.

Okay, I think I’ve over-analyzed this enough.

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Hulu Viewlu: Stargate and Dollhouse

I’ve been on a bit of a Hulu bender recently, attempting to slog my way through the deluge of queued-up television shows that need to be watched before they expire, like a bad piece of fruit. I’ve probably got roughly 372 videos in my queue. Last night I calculated my total remaining watch-time and it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve years. So, you know, I have to get through some of that before my oldest graduates high school.

In an epiphany likely sparked by my algebraic formulations, I realized that I’m simply following too much television. So I decided to cut some shows from my subscription list that I really don’t need anymore. I’ll keep favorites like Castle, The Office, Community, and Flash Forward. But there’s some things that just don’t need to be there anymore. I missed season one of Fringe, so I’ll drop season 2. Warehouse 13 got boring, so it’s gone. I was interested in Modern Family due to Ed O’Neill, but I really don’t know a whole lot about it, so I guess I don’t need to watch it. The Dresden Files? Maybe I’ll pick it up on Netflix.

Then I came down to Dollhouse. I was a fan of this show through season one and I was initially one of the seven people disappointed when news came out that it had been canceled. Then it came back for a miraculous second season. I knew that the show (and Joss Whedon in particular) enjoy a somewhat rocky relationship with Fox, so I assumed from the get-go that it wouldn’t survive another season. This is likely the case, as the show’s ratings have apparently been so bad, the show is being temporarily pulled from the November line-up and then brought back in December to conclude. Those are not the signs of a healthy production.

So, I considered dropping the show. But then, last night, as my cursor hovered over the “remove” button, I decided to go ahead and watch the first episode of season two. That was a bad idea. It was, in a word: disappointing. After such a hail-mary last-second rescue of the show by dedicated fans (and a miserly Fox network looking for potential cost savings) I fully expected the first epsidoe of the second season — which by all accounts simply should not exist — to absolutely blow me away. It didn’t. It was bland and flat. I learned some things, but not the things I wanted to learn in order to continue to be interested in the show. I aired my distaste on Twitter and received some good feedback. Most people were telling me that I should give it another chance. That it starts slow, and builds from there. But honestly, builds to what? I feel very strongly that this show will not survive to see a season three, regardless of my feelings on the issue. I’ve decided to keep watching through the Summer Glau guest-star episodes and see how I feel after that. If it can’t capture me after five episodes, it has no business being on television (or my Hulu queue) at all.

On the other hand, Stargate Universe has absolutely enraptured me. After just the opening pilot. I was never a big SG fan. I’ve seen the movie and watched a handful of SG-1 episodes. I completely missed SG: Atlantis, but when John Scalzi talked up the show (he’s a creative consultant for the production) I felt the need to at least check out the pilot. Out of courtesy, of course. And I’m immensely glad that I did. I love the premise and how it’s tied into the SG universe as a whole (pun unintended). I’m hoping beyond hope that the show doesn’t end up going straight downhill after the pilot, but I have faith in SyFy’s ability to create quality productions.

On a somewhat-related sidenote, isn’t Hulu just the greatest thing ever created? For viewing television shows on the internet, I mean.

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Steampunk Darth Vader Lego

This weekend, I was showing my son some artwork based on the steampunk Star Wars concept and explaining the general idea behind the steampunk subgenre as a whole. Being an avid Lego builder, he was apparently inspired to put together his own steampunk Star Wars creation. I present to you Caleb’s steampunk Darth Vader Lego fig.

There are a couple of beautiful details in this build. I love the white piece on his back that my son tells me is a turbine generator that powers Vader’s suit. And he also thought to re-purpose a telescope from his Lego pirate set as a brass lightsaber handle. Fantastic. I love it!

There’s a couple more pictures on our Brick Boys Flickr photostream.

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Help us name our pulp fiction anthology!

So, myself and an eclectic collection of wanna-be authors are presently working on writing short stories for our very own anthology. The catch is that the stories are all pulp fiction (this pulp fiction, not that one). We have quite the extraordinary mix at the moment: a handful of hard-boiled detective stories, at least one superhero missive (that would be mine), a sword and sorcery tale featuring an unchained barbarian, and I think there’s even a zombie story in there, as well. Beautiful genre fiction with clear-cut heroes and villains and lots of action and intrigue.

The only problem is, our anthology doesn’t yet have a name.

We have quite a few potential candidates wistfully wandering about in our heads, but nothing that a majority of us are really falling in love with. So we leave it up to you, Unknown Collective Internet Beings™®, to help us nail down a title and move past this so we can focus on the stories themselves. Yes, this really is the sincerest form of cat vacuuming for us.

I’m throwing a random (alphabetically ordered) assortment of titles we have come up with into a TwtPoll and leaving it up until Friday. GIVE US YOUR VOTES! Or feel free to suggest other options not previously considered. And re-tweet amongst your fellow banditos to your heart’s content. We don’t mind the free publicity.

And thanks! If a clear winner emerges I’ll be sure to post it here for everyone to ignore.

Because that’s what you’ll do.

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Marvel vs. DC: Zombies eating your brains

I must have a thing for Brad Guigar since this is the second post in a row where I link to him. However, in this case, we are definitely not in agreement. Read what he had to say last week in regards to DC’s current Blackest Night storyline.

Feh. I still say this plot reads like “DC Zombies” — a cheap rip-off of a popular Marvel concept. But it’s the dominant story in the DC Universe right now, so I’m going to at least pick up the core Blackest Night title. But I’m avoiding Blackest Night Batman, Blackest Night Superman and every other off-shoot right down to Blackest Night Metamorpho when it eventually comes out. So I’m gonna pick it up, but I’m holding my nose.

Incredible. Let’s take a look at the two series’ and draw comparisons, shall we?

Marvel Zombies is a standalone series set in an alternate universe from the regular Marvel universe. Essentially the hook is “Hey, it’s Marvel characters! And they’re all zombies!” Hijinks ensue. It’s meant to be humorous, and the first run absolutely was. However, it’s now on its FOURTH incarnation, each one a slight variation on the original theme, and the series has become mired in a thoughtless plot and some horrendously cliched storytelling concepts. Yes, we get it. Zombies are hungry for brains, and they have super powers. Hilarious. At one time, it made for some good jokes, but now it’s become fairly empty, hollow, and repetitious.

DC’s Blackest Night has been building for over a year. Unlike the Marvel Zombies concept, Blackest Night takes place within the actual DC universe. The story is connected primarily to the Green Lanterns, since it’s based around the idea that each reincarnated super hero is given a black ring, but the story is touching every aspect of the entire DC universe: from Superman, to Batman, the Green Lanterns, and even the Teen Titans. Also unlike the Marvel Zombies series, these reincarnations are not necessarily “zombies” in the traditional sense. They look like zombies, but they aren’t hungry for brains or shambling along mindlessly hunting the living. They’re working for a sinister evil shadowy master trying to kill as many heroes as they can. In a parallel story to Blackest Night, you also have the establishment of the entire spectrum of Lantern colors, each representing an emotion. The black lanterns and their connection to death ties into this story. If you look past the idea of “oh, it’s just zombies” you quickly realize that there is actually a unique and complicated story being woven together.

The plot to Blackest Night does not in any way, shape, or form read anything like a “cheap rip-off” of Marvel Zombies. You have to completely remove yourself from reality in order to claim that. If anything, DC is giving us an example of how you are supposed to do a “zombie story” in a comic book universe. It’s practically a giant middle finger to Marvel saying “your stuff was kinda cute, but let us show you how you really do a zombie series.” And it works.

How well does it work? Well, I see in the most recent Previews that Marvel appears to be currently doing a brand new, more serious (can you use that word in regards to a zombie comic book?) reincarnated super hero zombie series called Necrosha as a part of their series’ X-Force, New Mutants, and X-Men. My goodness! How completely original! So, wait a second, wait a second — I thought Blackest Night was nothing more than a cheap knock-off of Marvel Zombies? Now Marvel is doing their own cheap knock-off of an existing cheap knock-off? Man, I’m really confused now.

Moral of the story: there’s a reason I don’t read Marvel comics anymore. Read Blackest Night. You’ll be glad you did.

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Art is work and writer’s block is a myth

It’s obviously a fairly incendiary title for a blog post, but one that I feel is for the most part true. My thoughts on this were sparked by a blog post by Brad Guigar over on Webcomics.com called Writer’s Block: It’s a Myth where Brad muses in a straightforward way that writer’s block is not an excuse for an artist’s inability to create something.

Some ideas are good, some are mediocre and others are brilliant. But they’re all nearly equal. Why? Because art — all art — isn’t ideas.

Art is the execution of an idea.

Look back on any time you’ve experienced what others call writer’s block. I’ll guarantee you that you had ideas in your head, but yet you were unable to move forward. You were unable to move forward because you lacked confidence in any of your ideas.

I’m in nearly full agreement with Brad on this issue. Any time I’ve had “writer’s block” in the past, it hasn’t been for a lack of ideas. Ideas are easy. It’s in selecting the right idea and moving forward that stills your hand and chills your spine. There’s a certain level of fear inherent there, I think. What if I pick the wrong idea? What if the entire concept falls flat because I chose poorly? What if? What if? And the cascade of “what if” scenarios form into a wall of trepidation that we commonly refer to as “writer’s block”. One commenter on the Webcomics.com discussion really nailed it on the head. Writer’s block is really a problem of perfectionism.

Consider a sculptor. He’s worked hours on completing a sculpture of a person. He gets 95% of the way through and gets to the face. And he doesn’t know what to do with it. The problem here isn’t an external blockage of creative flow. It’s the fact that that sculptor knows whatever he does to that face will affect the quality of the rest of the sculpture. If he makes a mistake, he might feel compelled to ditch the entire thing and start over. Perfectionism is causing him to lose confidence in his abilities.

In reality, when faced with those situations, we need to push through and just get it done. If you’re writing, put words on the page. Painting? Put some color on that canvas. Sculpting? Chisel out those last details in any way you can. It may not be your best work, but it will get done. Then you assess the completed work, and either start over from scratch, or call it good and move on to the next project.

NaNoWriMo is a perfect example of this. Write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Don’t worry about how well it comes together, don’t nitpick over details or obsess about the tone and pacing. Just write. Write like you’re on a deadline, because you are. And someday, when you become the amazing author you hope to be, you will be under an actual deadline. You don’t have time for mythical beasts such as “writer’s block” to get in your way, because you have a work to complete and an editor that wants it done now.

We as a society love to think of art as INSPIRATION and BEAUTY and PASSION and HEART. And don’t get me wrong, it absolutely is. But there are those that think any artist should be able to throw paint on a canvas and have art simply appear from the midst of chaos. Unfortunately, creative efforts are seldom like that at all. Let us not forget the old motto, which holds true today just as well as it did when Thomas Edison said it back in the early 20th century: “Success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration.” There’s a flash of GENIUS, a spark of INNOVATION, and then nothing but WORK and TOIL and PAIN and EFFORT until your piece is completed.

Art is work and writer’s block is a myth.

The idea here isn’t to suggest that all artists that claim to have experienced some sort of creative block are lazy or weak-willed. Absolutely not. What I’m suggesting is that collectively we within the artistic community need to work diligently to pound the concept of creative block into submission. If it isn’t a myth to you already, you need to make it a myth. It needs to be the stuff of legend, locked away in an ancient tome to be discovered by archeologists centuries from now who pore over the script and interpret all of the myriad ways in which our society chose to build up imaginary barriers to our ability to create magnificent works of artistic appeal.

Don’t make writer’s block the bogeyman that comes to steal your precious artistic talent. It isn’t there, it doesn’t exist. There is only you and your art, and nothing can stop you from creating something unique, powerful, emotional, and beautiful except for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It simply has to be. It isn’t going to be the last thing you ever create, so don’t act like the world rests on it being absolutely flawless.

Just. Create.

Iowa State Fair 2009: some observations

So, yesterday AND today we hauled the entire family — myself, my wife, our two boys, and our brand new (1 month old) daughter — to the Iowa State Fair. It’s a trek we take every year, though not always twice. This year was slightly more problematic than in previous years, though not necessarily for reasons you might expect. The brand new baby was probably the simplest and easiest to manage element of the entire undertaking, which is really saying something. Though please don’t take my language to mean that we had a bad time this year. The experience taken as a whole was definitely more positive than negative. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for how difficult the boys would be this year now that they have become more opinionated than ever before. I also wasn’t prepared for how poorly I would react to their combined grating irritation. But we survived! And that’s something that can definitely be said. With gusto.

And now, here are some of my general observations and tips about the Iowa State Fair.

  • Park at the Park & Ride at 7th and Center downtown. Free parking on the weekends, and a nearly empty shuttle to and from the fairgrounds. Only $2 per adult and $1 for kids 5 and up. Pretty good deal if you ask me.
  • If it looks like it might rain — even if you think there might just be only the slightest chance — bring your umbrellas, ponchos, galoshes, and ceremonial rain sticks, because let me tell you; there is NO WHERE to go when it begins to downpour and several hundred-thousand people make a mad dash for every available enclosed space within the entire fairgrounds. Yes, this happened. TWICE.
  • The night before, take washcloths and soak them. Store them in a Ziploc bag and toss them in the freezer. Fill a couple of water bottles half-full of water and put them in the freezer, too. The next morning, throw them in your bag. The washcloths are awesome for applying to the back of your neck when it gets hot. Put some fresh water into your ice water bottles to enjoy cold, refreshing water the entire day.
  • You’re welcome.
  • Kiss your wife for how awesome she is if she is as prepared as my wife is.
  • “On-a-stick” food is not necessarily as good as “eat-with-your-hands” food. I didn’t have any food on a stick, and quite a few foods that were wrapped in wax paper. And even more cup-based foods (generally referred to as “beverages”). The difference in quality is negligible.
  • While I’m on the topic of food: steak sandwiches at Butcher Boys.
  • You’re welcome.
  • Last thing: if there’s any one thing that the Iowa State Fair does well, it’s would have to be its uncanny ability to make you feel like you really need to diet and exercise.

Will we go back next year? Of course we will! It’s an annual tradition. Harlyn will be more alert and potentially mobile than she was this year. Caleb and Alex will both be … well, Caleb and Alex. I might just have an aneurysm! Wouldn’t that be fun to watch? Tune in around this time next year to see how we do at the Iowa State Fair 2010!