Writing, day 2
Spent a bit more time writing today. I'm at roughly 2,500 words between yesterday's start, and today's session.
I've recreated my tracking sheet, which is a Google Sheet, I created when I was doing NaNoWriMo. It allows me to track words per session, and the rough time of the session, to track my progress on the book. Obviously I'm not doing NaNo, I'm just writing. But the sheet works well for me, and allows me to easily see a visual of my progress, etc.
I'm keeping this very casual, not locking myself away to write all day. In total I've written for less than 90 minutes so far. I just write until I begin to feel myself slowing down, but - crucially, I try to stop before I am out of ideas. So that it is easy for me to hop back in during the next session. This is great advice from Ernest Hemingway (allegedly.)
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Inspiration struck
I have had a premise/framing for a story in my head for several years here but that premise had no story that went along with it. And, in the last... 24-48 hours? The story began to burble around again in my head.
I went out to dinner with Katie to try out a local poke place and on the drive home it was suddenly just there, in my head. So, I told her I needed to write this outline down before I lost it. And in about 30 minutes I outlined probably 90% of the story's beats.
So, I guess I'm about to start writing it.
Edit: Wrote for only 30 minutes tonight, but hammered out 1,288 words. And so it begins.
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‘Brothermine’
The following is what I wrote as I processed my grief for my sister at her passing, which I read (mostly) during her memorial last weekend.
It was the week before her death, Jennifer called me from the hospital, giving me the update on what she was going through. We talked about how she was doing, the prognosis and plan, about how Katie and I were doing; but towards the end of our conversation we talked about books. I remember she mentioned she had been reading a lot and she mentioned both Tad Williams and Isaac Asimov. I have only read one or two Tad Williams books, though I've read many more Asimov. We moved on in our chat and soon enough we hung up, intending to talk again soon.
I tried to call her a few days later to see how she was doing but she didn't answer. Little did I know that Williams and Asimov would be the last thing we would speak about.
Given that, as I wrestled with the reality of her passing and my emotions, I found myself drawn to those authors as a bridge to hold onto as I worked through my mourning and grief. I went looking for quotes by them and was struck by this quote from Tad Williams.
"The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it."
Wisdom is a fickle thing, and it is up to each of us to be open to the wisdom of those who came ahead of us and who lived life. To me, Jennifer lived this quote, going through a period of her life rejecting the wisdom of our parents and grandparents, but eventually coming around to, well, some of it. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone here that my sister could be... stubborn.
She taught me a lot, both directly and indirectly as well as both up close and from afar. One thing she never taught me was how she managed to be my elder sibling while also managed to somehow remain only 21 years old for something like 30 years or so...
But, I digress, I did learn a lot from Jennifer. I learned, as you'll hear, about love, family, and passion. And I also learned a lot about what not to do as I went through adolescence and into adulthood learning from the road she blazed being a rebel. I watched the path she took and learned what I could from it; from her.
And, as I wrote this, I kept thinking of the affectionate turn of phrase for how she would refer to me and our brothers: "brothermine." That and sistermine. They were words emblematic of how she operated and viewed her family. We were hers. As a family, we were hers.
She loved us, and despite our differences at times, she was quick to remind us that if someone messed with one of us they were going to deal with all of us.
Jennifer loved us all, but without question, she most loved and was most proud of her children and her grandchildren.
COVID was rough for us all, and during that time we started having family Zoom calls to stay in touch through it. They filled a small bit of the needed socializing in the heart of the pandemic.
I'll always remember how her entire face lit up and her voice raised in pitch at the sight of her kids and grandkids on the call. She loved fiercely and openly. Another lesson I take to heart from her.
This brings me to the second quote I found which spoke to me. This one, from Isaac Asimov, "Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists." For Jennifer, this work IS her children and grandchildren.
Jennifer was passion incarnate. She lived life on her terms and despised all which stood between her doing that.
Death is the ultimate unfairness. A fact this family is all too familiar with. There is an unfairness to life that those who are most important to us all leave at some point. Children lose parents. Jennifer lost her birth mother, Jackie, in 1976. At the age of 12. And a loss like that leaves a mark on you. Then, she lost her adoptive mother, my mother, Dale, in 2007. Our father died in 2014. And last year she lost the love of her life, Bill.
We're no strangers to loss, and yet it never gets any easier. This is the way of it. The journey we each go on.
And this is a reminder to each of us to passionately fight for the time we have with one another, never forgetting that each moment, each hug, each laugh, and each phone call, might be the last we get with one another.
Tad Williams, again proving himself a quotable author, wrote, "We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take." And it is true. It is on us to fight for everything along the way to that final breath.
Jennifer lived a full life. She touched all of us here. She brought four wonderful people into this world, who together, are finding their own ways through life. Facing their own challenges. Making their own journeys. Journeys which, today, are steeper, scarier, and darker than they were while she was with us.
But, as she would be quick to point out to us all, you're not alone. You have each other. You have us. We are a family, we are friends, and we're here for you. You just need to call and we'll be there, by your side, ready to help however we can with whatever is needed.
Jennifer's passion, and love, lives on in each of us.
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Project Statuses
Taking a cue from Brandon Sanderson I thought I should start doing reports on the status of my projects. He has status bars which just get updated on his site, I'm not doing that (yet?) - I'm doing a post which summarizes the status of various projects underway. My intent is for this to be a monthly check-in.
Coding Projects
Pick'em
Status: Active
Summary: The site is up. There are two major features which I need to work on, one of which is underway. They are: Redoing the Match page & Implementing split-season scoring. The former involves rebuilding the page where users view and pick matches, as well as implementing the pick logic client side so they don't have to try and wait for the server to reject their picks.
Next Steps & Timeline: Finish my work on rebuilding the match page (2 weeks?) and then work on revamping player scoring to implement split-season scoring (finish by end of April)
Glowbug
Status: Active, mostly idle
Summary: My homebrew blogging engine. The work this week was the most I've done in a long time. The system works, it's just about making it better at this point.
Next Steps & Timeline: Nothing major, just coding when it strikes me. No timelines on it.
Clerk
Status: Mostly idle
Summary: Currently my personal weight and exercise tracker, but long term it's meant to be my full personal hub for managing daily life. It's up and I use it daily (need to weigh in today, in fact.) There are some active bugs which need squashing, but they are low priority.
Next Steps & Timeline: Bugs will be squashed when I need a coding distraction from whatever I'm working on.
Fixture Picker
Status: Needs rewrite
Summary: My fixture picker works but it isn't great and it needs a rewrite. This project lost a lot of stream as I thought it might have business viability but some surveys and research led me to abandon it as not overly viable.
Next Steps & Timeline: Unclear. I might abandon this project altogether simply to clear the deck for other things.
Cement
Status: Idea phase
Summary: A homebrew collection management tool. This promises to be a coding project near the size of Pick'em if not larger. I have done a lot of thinking and have a database schema but I haven't begun on this project. I'm earmarking it as a project for the 2nd half of 2022.
Next Steps & Timeline: Want to start work before 2023 and have this be my primary project next year.
Secret Project
Status: Prototyping
Summary: There's a fairly new project I've started toying with in the past few weeks. As I think it might have commercial viability, I'm keeping wraps on it and have only discussed it with a few people.
Next Steps & Timeline: Unclear, doing research and planning.
Writing Projects
Urban Fantasy 1, "Thorn" - My NaNoWriMo book for 2020. It's "complete" and just needs editing and tightening of the plot. Thorn is the working title I started with, I'm not settled on it as the final title.
Urban Fantasy 2, "Untitled" - I started it for NaNoWriMo 2021 but have not finished it. I hit a bit of a wall and am struggling to find the next section of the book.
Sci-Fi 1, "The Stars in the Canopy" - I've had the idea for a science fiction story but have not really started on it yet.
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From the Archives: The Evil F-Word: Fine
It's easier to convince us that what we're feeling is happiness, simply because we can't tell the difference. If I'm not in active pain, then I must be happy, right? I must be fine, right?
I originally wrote this post 7 years ago, but it is more applicable today than ever before.
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18 pages of editing left in the first pass of my first book. It's still a bad book I think. But it is important I finish it so I can know I've done it. I still am chewing on the plot for my next one, I have the premise, now to find the actual story.
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Was trying to do some late night editing and suddenly realized I had dozed off at the laptop and held the W key down for 23 pages. Guess it's time to turn in
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The Guardian Newspaper has a new automated tool for copyediting
Newspapers follow style guides. Rules which define how they grammatically write. When do you write eleven vs. 121? How do you refer to individuals who cause an uprising in a country? Etc. etc. Essentially, it is the programming language rules for that newspaper's use of language.
Heck, I've even thought about my own style guide rules for this blog.
Here is a link to the virtual reference of the Guardian's own style guide. Chicago Manual of Style. And here is the Associated Press's Stylebook. You get the idea.
The linked article is a coder focused deep dive in the system the Guardian set up for improving automated fixes of the style guide for the paper.
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These last few months have reminded me of a short story idea I had, about a man who resisted government observation and privacy invasion by creating a dark web site dedicated to tools to resist it. From face masks, to apps, and everything in between. And that to do this, he had to continue to be observed, and live a life like someone completely unaware of these things.
Never wrote the story, maybe I'll give it another go one of these days.
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