[The view southwest from the new GRCC parking ramp on Lyon Street in Grand Rapids, MI.]
Not much to report from this past week. Many distractions intruded into my life and left not much room for relaxing and enjoying the little things. Like sleep. And silence.
Reading
Just before this post went live I finished Tim Marshall‘s excellent Prisoners of Geography. The ideas therein will be quite helpful for the world building phase of my current work-in-progress.
Writing
I didn’t write much this past week. Work tasks, an unexpected power outage, and cat drama used up most of my free mental energy.
[A Green Darner dragonfly, soaking up the sunlight on our front steps.]
For this whole past week, the daytime temperatures were at or above 90°F. And at night the air seldom dropped below the mid-70s, and that usually around dawn. The humidity has been 80% or above, so even with the cooler temperatures and windows open, the air was sticky.
So I haven’t had a lot of sleep this week.
But insomnia has benefits. I have managed to read a little more, and some of the knots in my muscles have relaxed in the constant, sauna-like air.
Reading
I finished Eat Your Mind, the Kathy Acker biography, and it was most excellent. I also finished Glen Cook’s novel The White Rose, and am now reading Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. I have put Capital Hates Everyone on hold until the air cools off and my brain can handle works of that complexity.
Writing
I’m doing some world building for my NaNoWriMo novel-in-progress Cacophonous, and have identified a place where it could be tied into the work from the previous NaNoWriMos, Up the River to the Mountain and its sequel Racing the Flood Down to the Sea. While the “vibe”, characters, and approach to storytelling are different, they could all take place in the same universe, and indeed, in the same city, and using some ideas from the earlier stories could plug up some potential logical holes in the world building for the current story. So I feel tentatively optimistic that I can knock out a new first draft by the end of the year. Or earlier, if I get laid off from my job, which is always a possibility.
[Closeup of one of the plants filling our landscape.]
I spent some time over the past week updating the AI Notebook page. I looked specifically for articles comparing corporations to AI (a la Charles Stross‘s idea that corporations are “slow AI”), and instead discovered articles about AI incorporating itself, which was disturbingly familiar, as in one of Stross’s earlier books, Accelerando, AIs incorporating themselves is one of the early stages of the singularity.
Reading
I just finished Jason McBride’s biography of Kathy Acker, Eat Your Mind. It was a hell of a good read. I was aware of Acker when I worked at the bookstore in the mid to late 1990s, but only by the titles of her books, not Acker qua Acker.
Writing
Came up with a few more story ideas based on previous writing prompts. Also did some worldbuilding for one of the previous half-finished novels, which might go somewhere at some point this summer. And I knocked out a draft of a poem about ageing, which makes me the first middle-aged dude to ever write a poem about getting old. And not one word in it about how I wear the bottoms of my trousers. Take that, Elliot, you hack!
Subject: Empire, Cryptids
Setting: Urban
Genre: War
Listening
I listened to a LOT of Moby at the start of my career as a web developer. Play had just been released and every song on it was, by the standards of the time, a banger. “South Side”, in particular, struck a chord with me. This version, featuring Gwen Stefani, is particularly good.
Interesting Links
US supreme court unanimously upholds access to abortion pill mifepristone (PDF of decision here) in the case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Given that the court decision rested on the plaintiff’s standing, not the merits of the case, there is every possibility that the Christofascists will try, yet again, to reduce child-bearing people to the role of expendable incubators, which is the sole purpose behind every attempt to limit access to, or outlaw, abortion.
[A thistle plant in our back yard, lit by the morning sun.]
The schools are out and summer is in full swing for the next two and a half months. I have arranged some time off from work at the end of July, and now my partner and I can begin to plan an adventure of some kind.
This past Wednesday was my fifth-fifth birthday, which means we are probably approaching the middle of the of the Age of John, or the Winkelcene (not to be confuse with the Winkelscene, which is my yet-to-be-created slam poetry/martial arts cafe, where any disputes between poets will be handled in the ring).
Writing has gone surprisingly well this past week, thanks to a concerted effort to spend less time fucking around online and more time being of use to myself. I have a folder with a document for each of the weekly writing prompts here, and I have been going back through and jotting down story ideas for each of them, three or four or five a day. Some of the ideas resonate, and may well be turned into full stories when I get the time. But for now the ideas are captured.
Happy birthday to me! I am now officially part of the “55 and older” cohort, which both simplifies and diminishes the experience of no longer being young here in the 21st century.
30 years ago, as of this post, I was in Saint Petersburg, Russia, celebrating my birthday with friends and classmates in the restaurant of the Hotel Rus. The above photos is from that trip, when we visited the prison where Dostoevsky was held just prior to his mock execution. I am just to the right of the window, with glasses, shaggy brown hair, and a black shirt.
This trip, more than anything else at that time, seemed to be the dividing line between my young life and my adult life. I still pull out the photos once in a while, and I still have the dozens of books, all in Russian, which I picked up on that trip. Can I read them? Not really. Not any more. My Russian is almost nonexistent at this point. Had I time and energy to do so, I would start learning the language again. I know just enough Russian to be able to pick out the line from The Master and Margarita which became my first tattoo.
If my fifty-third year was one of re-emergence, this past year was one of re-connection. I have made contact with a number of people I have not seen in years or decades. It has been a wonderful experience, and from what I have seen of the next several months, is a process which is likely to continue for quite some time. I have heard it said that as we get older it becomes progressively harder to make new friends. This may be true, but as we get older, if we are lucky, we have more and more old friends with whom we can both share old memories and make new ones.
And now, off to work. Only ten more years to go until I retire, and I am counting the minutes.
(If you are looking for my IWSG post for June, it is here.)
Today (June 5) is my birthday! The above photo is Pepper, expressing her excitement at the thought.
May was another busy month, though the writing was sparse. I spent some time reviewing some old manuscripts and rearranging my virtual space so I am ready to begin edits on the more promising of my many, many drafts. I feel like this is a make-or-break year for my writing, for no specific reason. I need to get out of the habit of confining all of my creative writing to November, and the best way to do that is to just start writing. Again.
The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for June 2024 is: In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?
I view the IWSG as a support group more than a resource, though I am probably in the minority here. That aspect of the group is invaluable.
For me, the biggest industry change over the past several years is the advent and growth of ChatGPT and related tools. Therefore perhaps the most pertinent offering would be a list of publishers which expressly forbid the submission of AI-created content.
[A small bumblebee, laden with pollen, attending to a flower outside our house]
Happy June, everyone. And happy Pride Month! This past week was, for lack of a better word, good. I had a productive and relatively stress-free (and short, thanks to the holiday) week of work. I read a lot. I wrote a little. I spent quality time with my girlfriend. I relaxed with our cats. And I put the finishing touches on our raised bed/container garden. Not bad for someone who will turn 55 in a few days.
And best of all, Donald “Trouser Trumpet” Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump, being a coward, is crying foul and saying that it was rigged, and that he was the victim of a witch hunt, etc. To the surprise off nobody, his brownshirts are already threatening the jury, the lawyers, the judges, etc. Basically all the things he has been saying from the first time anyone ever told him “no.” Which was probably when he was about four years old, and that’s apparently when his personality stopped developing.
Just to be clear: Trump has never been a victim of anything except delusions of adequacy (and possibly child abuse, considering the father was very much like the son). Not once. Not ever. There has never been a witch hunt. There has never been a conspiracy. Trump and his coprophages, bootlicks, and other assorted enablers have spun a wildly false narrative of being downtrodden fighters against overwhelming odds.
MAGA behavior is textbook “predatory victimhood” which is part and parcel of the supremacist mindset (white supremacist, male supremacist, Christian supremacist, etc.) Anyone who is a member of an in-group, who tries to spin being a member of that in-group as really being part of an out-group (vis. the people complaining that there is no “straight people pride month” to counteract June being Pride Month), is a person whose every utterance, indeed their entire world-view, can be dismissed without further consideration. Ignorant cowards, one and all.
And that’s all that needs to be said about convicted felon Donald J. Trump, and his ilk.
Reading
The Black Company by Glen Cook. This is a re-read. It is of a similar vibe to how I want one of the novels I am working on, so I wanted to get my head into that space before I dive into a major re-draft this summer.
Writing
I spent some time moving the more promising of my NaNoWriMo drafts to new folders in preparation for re-writes and edits. So more prep for writing than actual writing.
Analog Worms Attack was released in October 1999, just weeks after the official start of my career, which began when I volunteered to build the first website for my employer at the time. The fact that I only lasted about six months in that role should tell you how well that went.
I only lasted about eight months at CyberNet, which should tell you everything you need to know about how THAT job went as well. Thus was my career born in pain and sadness.
But at least I had Flat Eric to help me through the worst days.
Zig Zag Claybourne, Breath, Warmth, & Dream (Obsidian Sky Books) [2024.05.20] – This was a Kickstarter reward from a recently-completed campaign. I met Zig Zag at ConFusion, back in, I think, 2016. He is a superb writer and overall a most excellent human being.
