Day 90

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

18 Apr 2016

Contains affiliate links.And the distractions continue. I can’t seem to help myself - bidding on freelance projects, bidding on remote-work language teaching projects, coding (failing at JS more like), and it continues.

But at least I’ve made some progress on the primacy factor. Writing comes before the projects, even if it means I may lose opportunities by ignoring them for hours/days at a time… And then, of course, my dad just resigned from his role, which means I’m editing resumes and hashing out negotiation points. It’ll prove a great move for them in the long run, since Abbotsford is a black cesspool of self-absorption and sub-par mental faculties, but makes for a lot of drama in the short term. And of course, eats into my productive hours, once I have two people banging about the house all day long, all week long. I don’t know how writers with kids manage! Respect, JK Rowling . Respect.

Just finished James Patterson’s final Maximum Ride book(Maximum Ride Forever ) - the series that went from engaging YA thriller to preachy environmentalist propaganda and back around again. Which is not to say that I have any real argument with his premises, just that the writing felt pretty stilted and goofy when it got all cause-driven. Especially the Fang’s blog tie-in. Did anyone under the age of 30 actually buy that? But a middle-aged guy writing believable teen-speak is a stretch anyways - to think that he mostly got it right is a marvel.

Already, I think I’ve passed the point of maximum cultural relevancy (if I ever was relevant…) Case-in-point, just over a year ago I really wanted to correct jr. marketing team boy every time he used the phrase “shit-ton”. Like, really? Turns out, it’s now being used all over the web in journalistic attempts at casual cool, which means… yup. Call me a dinosaur and install me in a museum. I am officially out of date.

Which is perhaps why I have to write fantasy/sf/supernatural/post-apocalytpic… when you make up your worlds, you can define the trends, craft the slang, and sidestep the unending, regionally-siloed trends in language and youth culture. Maybe. Thank you Scott Westerfeld ! Oh, and Joss. Just rewatched Firefly with my mom and still can’t believe that Shiny never made it into popular slang usage. Or rutting. Sounds so much more cultured than f()#$.

Anyways, back to James Patterson and the final Maximum Ride novel. Guess what? Present first-person narrative by the protagonist plus third-person past sections from the perspective of other characters. So I didn’t invent it, but I sure as ** can use it.

Now I just have to go back and fix all the sections that I ‘fixed’ and wrote in the wrong mode. Talk about patchwork… The writing is taking twice as long as I projected. The rewrites are looking to take that and at least double it again… ugh. Will never finish.

Some dung-face just wrote one of those helpful listicles about how to enter ‘flow’ zones for writing/coding/artistic vomiting. Eurgh. That only exists for introverted thirteen-year-olds who are bolstered in their determined focus by the hovering of irritating relatives.

But anyways… Guess I’ll just keep plodding along.

Tuesday

Start Time: 12:00 pm

Location: couch/living room

Drinking: Los Sietos Mezcal

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