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.
[Above photo: The landscaping is filling in nicely.]
‘Twas another busy week with naught to show for it except continued employment. So I have that going for me.
Reading
Still plugging away at The Reactionary Mind, which is still very good if unpleasant reading. I also pulled Moonbath by Haitian author Yanick Lahens off the shelf for some fiction to read in my evenings before bed. It is excellent so far, if heartbreaking.
Writing
Not much to show, writing-wise. I feel the urge to write, and the ideas are all lined up and ready to go, but I have not yet bridged the gap between wanting to write and actually sitting down and writing. I chalk that one up to burnout.
[Pictured: A mother opossum carrying a baby, photographed on Mother’s Day while walking to Kaffeine Place for breakfast.]
I am not quite as busy as I have ben in past weeks, but that just leaves space for stress to creep into my life. So it goes.
Reading
I finished Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, and it was wonderful! I will definitely be looking into more of her work in the near future. I am still working my way through Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. It is slow going not because of the writing, which is excellent, but because the subject matter makes me feel…guillotiney. In my spare moments I read Joäo Gilberto Noll’s short novella Atlantic Hotel, which was decently good and weird.
Subject: Evolution, Cryptids
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Solarpunk
Listening
Hot Chocolate, “Every 1’s a Winner”. I heard this song – possibly for the first time every – when Z and I walked into Bobcat Bonnie’s for dinner this past Wednesday. I didn’t recognize the song but I knew the voice, though it took some time to remember that it was the same voice from “You Sexy Thing,” which received much airplay after The Full Monty was released.
Interesting Links
“The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?” (Peter Watts and Dan Brooks, The MIT Press Reader) – Watts interviews Brooks about the inevitable, human-caused, ecological collapse, and what we may do to increase our chances of surviving, since mitigating is no longer on the table. This link comes via a post on Watts’ blog, where one of the commenters pointed out that the path up the technology mountain, post-collapse, will not look like the path we took to get where we are currently, because the availability and distribution of resources will be much different than it was last time. Food for thought.
“AI ‘art’ and uncanniness” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic) – A long article exploring the short- and long-term implications of banning the training of LLMs on copyrighted works. To sum up: There are nuances. It’s complicated. And the real bad actors are probably not the most obvious bad actors. Well worth the read.
These are photos taken during the evening of Friday, May 10, during an amazing display of the Northern Lights. I took these photos with my Google Pixel 7 Pro phone, from a back yard in the middle of Grand Rapids. This is only the second time in my life that I have seen the Aurora Borealis, and it was everything I could have hoped for.
[The above photo is of a pair of Mallard ducks resting on a tree trunk which is stuck at the edge of the Sixth Street Bridge dam just north of downtown Grand Rapids.]
All of which is to say, I look forward to what she has planned for the next three years.
Reading
Still working my way through All that is Evident is Suspect. I love this book so much! I also started The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, based on its mention in the Cory Doctorow link at the bottom of this post.
Writing
Not much to show this week, though I finally got into the groove of writing at least five story ideas for each of the weekly writing prompts. Those ideas are now scattered across two journals, and when I have the time I will transcribe them into a Google doc.
April was insanely busy, even by the standards of my already-overfull life, so this post will be brief.
The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for May 2024 is: How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?
Writing for me generally doesn’t start until after I have already dealt with most potential distractions. Therefore my writing time is fairly distraction free, aside from interruptions from the orange maniacs (one of which is pictured above).
And as for the internet-as-distraction (social media, doomscrolling, etc.), well, that is kind of the background radiation of 21st century life, and if I am not immune to the lure of arguing with strangers on FB, or whatever, I have become fairly good at compartmentalizing.
But don’t let me keep you from your writing. How’s YOUR focus these days?
April was National Poetry Month, and I didn’t read as much poetry this time as I have in past years. Part of that was my specific choices for poetry books, and part was general business and mental exhaustion. As you can see from the list below, I have spent most of my reading time buried in All that is Evident is Suspect, a collection of writing from members of Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or “Workshop for Potential Literature”). The writing therein is frying my brain in the very best way. Highly recommended.
The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
