Diary of a Network Geek

I think I’ve lost her.

Seriously.  My muse is like a missing person.
Oh, I could blame it all on my impending birthday.  My forty-first, incidentally.  It’s odd to be so old all of a sudden, since I certainly feel no different, physically, than I did ten years ago.  In fact, I’m probably in better shape now than I was ten years ago.  Okay, maybe not better, but probably not any worse and, I hasten to point out, I am getting better, more fit, with virtually every passing day.  And, of course, aside from being a cancer survivor with fucking lung scars and some lingering high blood-pressure issues.

Or, I could blame it on the fact that it’s been three years since I’ve been in a relationship or, hell, even on a date.  You know, the holidays can be depressing all by themselves, but facing the damn things alone are worse.  Worse still is having been with someone through these troubling and troublesome events and then finding ourselves alone again.  People who have never been partnered up during the holidays don’t know what they’re missing.  But, those who have, er, “loved and lost”, so to speak, remember…  We remember all the family that’s not ours anymore.  We remember only the best parts, though.  The happiest part of the holidays.  The laughs, the fun, the happiest memories.  Not, thankfully, the bitter, angry, often drunken, rants and tantrums.  Oh, the tantrums.  How I miss them.  No, it’s not that, though the holidays have been a little strange this year.

I could blame the past several months of non-writing behavior on the scans I have scheduled later this week.  That old favorite scapegoat; cancer-survivor.  The medical bills and the continuing scans seem like a great excuse for the creative well to have run dry.  And this time around, they’ve dealt me a wild card.  A scan I haven’t had yet; an MRI.  See, when I do this workout stuff to slim down and lower my blood-pressure and draw in those hotties like bees to honey, my throat tends to close off a bit.  The muscles in my neck get tight and the veins and arteries choke and throb and I find myself having a hard time swallowing.  Not all the time, but enough to concern my doctors.  And enough to generate concern warranting an MRI to take a closer look at just what the hell is going on there, since we can’t seem to figure it out any other way.  So, top that off with the usual readioactive enema and I suppose that could induce enough anxiety to choke a muse and make her run off with that guy she met on the internet.

But, honestly, it’s not any of those things.
Crap, I don’t know what it is.  It’s a phase, a cycle.  It’s just a bit of writer’s block or cock block or whatever horrible cliched phrase you want to use.  Temporary, I suppose, but I don’t know what I’d write if I were to suddenly be inspired again.  Is the blog writing?  I mean, really?  Does it tell a story?  Or is it just a nut rambling?  I don’t know.  I just sort of run my mouth at the keyboard and on the best days, I just pull out all the stops and safeties and just turn that dragon loose.
But, I have to tell you, good readers, blathering on about the horrid mundanities of my life isn’t the same thing as writing.  Writing is about plot and character and building a storyline from a hook into compelling scenes.  It’s about the reversal of fortune, or at least circumstances.  It’s about change and development displayed through dialog and narrative.  And, all that seems to run away from me like mercury when you slap it.  It skitters away from my grip and shatters into ever smaller droplets that never quite seem to coalesce back into a recognizable shape.

But, my advertising revenue goes up with the quantity of my expressed angst, so, as the story goes, all I have to do is open up a vein and bleed it all out on paper.  Or virtual paper in the case of this blog.  This equally loved and hated blog that provides both release and the agonizing shame of need.  I’ve practically forgotten why I started it more than nine years ago.  I think my relationship with this blog has just about outlasted all my other relationships, actually.  Or, given another year or two, will.
Besides, there was a time that I’d have rather written here, as poor as it was, than done almost anything else with clothes on.  Well, aside from this one fantastic apple pie with stars on it.  So, who knows, maybe it’s not real writing, but it does keep me off the streets at night.  Maybe I should do it some more.

All that aside, though, if anyone sees my muse, could you send her home to me?  For real.  There are a couple of nice women I’d love to woo with a bit of poetry and the like but I can’t seem to write it without her.  So, point her this direction if you stumble across her trampy self, okay?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"People may doubt what you say, but they believe what you do."

So, last week I finished You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Bring Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop by John Scalzi.

I’ve been a frustrated writer since I can remember.
I’ve read more books on writing than most people even realize have been published! But, this book was different. Most writing books focus on the techniques of writing, dispensing all sorts of marginally useful advice, but Scalzi has some different advice for hopeful writers. He talks mainly about the nitty gritty that the other books leave out. For one thing, he talks about giving up the idea that one should only write “art” pieces. He talks about approaching writing like any other job. It makes sense, really, when you think about it. I mean, if you want to make a living at writing, then you have to write regularly, just like you’d work at any other job. You work regularly to get paid regularly.

Mostly, the advice is hard-nosed and drawn from his own years as a full-time, professional writer. Also, the sections are drawn from his blog, the Whatever and many are answers to questions from readers of that blog. Granted, he’s edited many of the original blog entries for the book, but I honestly don’t care that it’s mostly duplicated material I could get from the web. I find reading it from a book, an actual, bound book, far easier than trying to chase it all down on his blog. It was well worth the price.

I can’t recommend this book to most of my readers, but if you’re an aspiring writer and are tired of reading the same well-worn advice about how to write, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Bring Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop may be just the book you’ve been looking for. It won’t tell you much about how to write, but it will give you invaluable advice about the writing life and how to make a living at it.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the New Year. The workshop of character is everyday life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost or won."

Just a short entry today.

I was tired last night and went to bed reasonably early, for me. Not sure if it’s the lack of cable or what, but I’ve just felt a little more tired this week. But, still, it’s Wednesday and time for, well, something. Some thought or some vague semblance of a statement about, well, something. Because it’s Wednesday and, if you look back at the last couple of months archives, you’ll see that the pattern is for me to post something on Wednesday. Or, more precisely, to post something every other Wednesday. That pattern of posting has become a promise of sorts. A promise of consistency to the small hand-full of readers who still show up to see what strange ramble, screed or rant I’ve thrown against the wall. Will it stick?

When I think about it, it bothers me a little that I’ve written so much here, but so few have read it. I suppose that my playing it safe and being careful what I write has lead to that steady decline in commentors, if not readers. Oddly enough, when I was in the middle of my divorce and not caring at all who saw my raw emotions was, perhaps, the hey-day of this blog, its peak. But, then, as I started to worry and fret over future employers seeing this blog and thinking that I might alienate them, or potential dates, via something that I wrote, my topics changed and got safer and my audience dwindled, or at least changed.

I don’t know what that all means, really, other than the fact that I’ve noticed it. Oh, thankfully, there are a few die-hard fans who stick with me, even through the boring, normal life periods like this one. If they hold on long enough they know that things will turn and I’ll get hooked up with a disgruntled house-wife looking to score some Hemingway or some Poe, maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll be looking for Lovecraft. Then things will get lively again with tales of being shot at by angry husbands or chased by dogs.
Or the cancer will come back and give me something to whine about.
Or some other horribly funny tragedy will befall me and compel me to write about it, much to the amusement of … Someone.

In the end, of course, I’d probably write this blog just to write. I don’t think I could keep from writing it, not even if I wanted to!
And, in the end, I suppose the compulsion to write is as good as any excuse to spit up these words on a page for everyone to read.

So, I’ve got that going for me.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
   --George Elliot

I have a strange relationship with the written word.

Okay, for anyone who’s been to my house and seen the sheer volume of books and magazines that “decorate” the walls, tables, chairs and floors, well, let’s just say that this is a bit of an understatement.  I have thrown out one book, that I can remember, ever.  Just one.  And, that was a Tony Robbins book!  It takes something monumental for me to sort through my pile of “keeper” magazines to find things that I realistically want to keep and read or save for long-term reference and get rid of the rest.  Truly, I revere the written, and more specifically the printed, word.  Oddly, I haven’t been reading that much lately, even though I still can’t get rid of old books, even my ex-wife’s books which hold no interest for me.

Ironically, that strange reverence for books and story, in particular, makes it hard for me to write.  At least, to write something other than my blog.  The blog is easy, because there aren’t any rules, to speak of, and any story is incidental.  Okay, I’ll grant that my writing for the blog wasn’t always very good.  I mean, eight years ago, I was pretty stiff and stilted and, well, mostly, boring.  Maybe I ranted a little more than I do now but I don’t think too many people were particularly motivated by my screeds.
Writing an actual story, real or fictional, is a whole different thing, though.  My goal with the blog was, originally, far, far different from what it’s become.  Honestly, I originally just wanted to have a way to regularly use all the right industry buzz words to maximize my search engine optimization.  But, along the way, something happened and my blog changed along with my writing.  But, it’s easy because I don’t think of all the things I should be doing.  I just sit down and write whatever crazy thing comes to mind.  In my mind, it just doesn’t matter much, so the writing flows out naturally, and, most days, almost effortlessly.  So, why can’t I do that with my fiction?

Well, the bottom line is, I don’t know.  Somehow, I get all caught up with how I used to write fiction, so effortlessly and still at a semi-professional level.  But, that was fifteen years ago.  Really, it’s been almost fifteen years since I wrote often enough to be at anything close to that level.  Foolishly, I want to be able to pick right up where I left off fifteen years ago, before my main career really got started and before I got married and divorced and before…  Yes, before the cancer.  All those things changed me, changed how I see the world, my life, my writing.  Somehow, it made everything more important and left less room for mediocrity.  And, somehow, it made everything I wrote less…  Less beautiful, less brilliant, less true.  The blank page, the empty screen, has become my enemy, a battlefield for the purity of my soul.  I know, a bit melodramatic, but still true.  At least, true enough to make my fiction taste less like marzipan fantasy dipped in chocolate fudge and more like ashes with a side of bitter, unrealized dreams.
So, how to change that…  I don’t know.  I honestly don’t know.  Why do you think I bought a camera?

Stay tuned.  Later this week, a review of Tropic Thunder and those music sites and stuff I’ve been promising.  Oh, and in a week or so, I’ll have a guest post on another blog.  More on that as it unfolds.

What an interesting idea…

So, as many of my long-time readers know, I tend to straddle two worlds. By day, I’m a highly proficient, one-man, network-ninja death squad, but, by night, I’m a frustrated, hopeful writer who’s always looking for high-tech reasons to procrastinate. I think I may have found a project that bridges these two worlds in an article titled Subversion for Writers.

Subversion is a version control system which is primarily used by software developers to, well, track the version of their programming code. But, code is just specially formated text with very specific syntax and a really boring plot, so there’s no reason at all to not use it to track versions of a story or novel. And, in fact, that’s just what the author, Rachel Greenham, is proposing. I think it would be especially useful for novelists, since you could keep track of all the possible plot deviations and revert back to an earlier branch if things started to “go wrong”. In any case, it’s worth a look, even if you don’t use Linux or OS X, which is what she uses. (In fact, if you’d like to use Windows to do this, LifeHacker, who linked to her article, has a post with links to Windows clients for Subversion.)

Well, anyway, if you write a lot and are a geek like me and have some time to waste, it’s worth looking into, at the very least.

Simple.

Follow these eight rules from IO9. No, really, just follow their Eight Unstoppable Rules for Writing Killer Short Stories.

Now, ‘scuse me while I go write something.

The biggest excuse that “wannabe” writers give for not writing is that they don’t have the time.

“Q) What does a typical writing day look like for you? How long do you write, that sort of thing?

A) I do most of my writing during my lunch breaks at work. Typically, a few minutes are spent actually eating, and then there are a few minutes of stalling and procrastinating before I dig in and start typing. 50 minutes or so isn’t a lot, but I’ve found I can do about 5000 words in a good week, which allows me to write a book every year in addition to some short fiction.”

– from Wyrdsmiths; Q&A with Jim Hines–Goblin War So, um,yeah, an hour a day really is all it takes, if you really want to write. Really. So, uh, guess what? Yeah, that means no more excuses…

Also, I recently purchased a book titled Time To Write, with the intention of finding ways to make regular writing part of my normal weekly routine.  Well, writing beyond this blog, that is!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time."
   --Winston Churchill