For the first time in at least a year, I have made a writing submission. I’m glad I did it. I’m working hard at reviving my creativity and planning the time in my day for it.
It’s not easy to put yourself out there and wait for judgement. I admire people that have developed a thicker skin than I have.
It was a very small risk, small reward submission, but it went.
As I stated on social media – back in the game!
This was originally published in Watch The Skies, January 2024 issue.
For a couple of years now I’ve focused my written pieces for Watch The Skies on films and television. While that sort of entertainment is wonderful, I feel that we need to shift from film to other forms of art. As a group, science fiction fandom has some of the most imaginative and talented creators anywhere. If there’s a way to create something, they’ll find it. If it can tie in with a favorite book or show, so much the better.
My hope is to get some of our members to show off their creations here in the fanzine this year. I would love to see what other folks are making and how it’s related to their fandom.
I’ll go first! Normally our group sees my artwork on the cover of the ‘zine each month. That isn’t the only form of art I create. I draw, paint, model and craft as well. As part of an online crafting group I was able to enter a contest for the creation of a “magic potion”. Using a bottle and a number of other supplies, I was able to create the “magic potion” Release. It’s a real, full size bottle with sculpted pieces, painted glass and hand sketched parchment. While it didn’t win the contest, I was really pleased with the results.
So ~ what are you working on! Let’s show it off!
I’ve been busy doing bunches of things, but I wanted to share this one. Sometimes you should reach outside your comfort zone and try to do a thing.
A friend of mine decided that she wanted charcuterie for her birthday party. Everyone was asked to bring something along. I (with the help of my lovely daughter) laid out a plan to create a balloon and flowers as a board.
So, after discussions and planning and at least one extra trip to a store… I set to work laying everything out. The kiddo jumped in and helped with the flowers as she had looked at the technique back when we first saw it done.
I think the result was really good for a first time ever charcuterie board!
What are some of the things you’ve stretched out and attempted before?
I got an email from Goodreads stating that I was in the top 25% of readers for the year last year. I’ve been logging my books on Goodreads for a number of years now and I’ve always had at least a passing interest in the tally for my previous year. When I looked back I was a bit surprised that I’ve been logging books on Goodreads since 2009. I didn’t realize this was year 15 for me.
Recently, as in the past couple of years, I’ve had a great deal of trouble achieving the level of reading I was previously accustomed to. There are a lot of factors involved there, but in the end those factors combined to stop me from reading as much as I really like.
2023 – 23 books
2022 – 9 books
2021 – 17 books
2020 – 39 books – this is actually a peak year for me
Being in the top 25% with less than two dozen books is, not surprising but a little disappointing I think. Not for me, but for the general statement that makes on how much people read (or more correctly, don’t read).
The numbers for 2023 are a good sign for me. I’m trending back up. I’m working hard at mitigating a large number of the factors that slowed or stopped me from reading. I suspect I’ll be able to meet or exceed 2023 with this year’s total. I’m not going to use a goal setting app or whatever – this is supposed to be a pleasurable thing. I should read new and interesting things and tell people about them because I enjoy it, not because some random app or goal is pressuring me to do that. I’m going to keep reading. I’m going to keep reviewing those books and posting up my thoughts and opinions on them. How many will I get to? Who knows? But I will have read a number of good stories in order to get there.
It took a little work and some fiddly bits needed to be figured out, but in the words of my daughter, “Congration – you done it”.
The Groves of Inan YouTube channel is now live. Videos will be uploaded over the next few weeks, as the channel allows. I’ve still got the training wheels on and YouTube has put limits on the tools I can use and how many videos I can upload at one time. I’ll give more background on here as I go, but if you’re at all interested, here it is:
I’ve talked about my opinion of new year resolutions on here before. I made a resolution a long time ago to never make another one. Real change isn’t a gimmick tied to a date on the calendar. I’ve told the story about the old guys at the gym I overheard one time being grumpy and wishing the pretenders would just get over the fact they’re going to quit and get out of the way.
I related this to a guy at the gym the other day, and he had an interesting thought on the matter. Not something I give weight lifters a lot of credit for honestly.
He said, “Part of me absolutely agrees with those guys. There are going to be two or three weeks of being absolutely annoyed that I can’t get to a bench or a weight stack and wishing the quitters would do just that. The other part of me, the one who really loves this, wishes them all the best. I hope they actually stick with it and get healthy or buff or whatever it is they’re trying to do…”
It was so simple and positive. Yes, newbies are annoying and they get in the way and they don’t know the rules (or ignore them) and they’ll probably quit soon. But we shouldn’t want others to fail that way. Going to the gym to be healthy isn’t about winning some kind of competition. It’s not like they’re going to “use up” all the gym and leave none for others when they get there. People of all levels should be able to get in there and do what they do. It’s not like I’m some kind of record breaking work out monster. I’m there to do what I still can in an effort to stay as healthy as I can. I see people there who look like they’re 80 or older. I’ve seen at least two different folks with what are classified as disabilities who are there working hard at the parts they can work. Dude in the wheel chair benches more than I do by far (part of me wants to make a terrible joke about leg day, but I don’t know him well enough). I see a family that’s in there every morning trying to be healthy together.
So no matter how much I don’t care about the whole “new year resolution” thing, I’m not going to put anyone down for trying to get better. I hope you succeed. I hope you get what you need out of the change you’re trying to make.
I’m going to keep doing what I do, only (hopefully) with a little more regularity than I’ve had for a while.
Happy New Year. I hope your year is amazing and wonderful and all the great things you desire.
Writing scripts – the list of what I want to say when starting off a video – is now a thing.
I suppose I’ve been doing that for quite some time actually. I never really thought about it when I was playing in my friend’s game and he was twitch streaming it all. It was just our little group doing their thing. Then I started running my D&D game. That was when I realized that I was making little things to say at the start of each session. I’ve never thought of it as “script writing” really, but I suppose that’s exactly what it is.
Until now (and maybe still beyond now) I’ve been physically writing down the things I want to say using a color coded piece of graph paper and sort of reading from that. Even when I write the words, the things I say don’t always line up with what I wrote. Sometimes that works, sometimes I “out clever” myself and screw up what was a funny written line. Of course, recording live, it’s not like I can just say “cut” and do it again. We’re live, and getting ready to play.
Our little videos are not production pieces (clearly).We don’t have makeup, wardrobe or sponsors. Nor do I expect we will have those at any point in our lives. It’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get a group of friends together and have fun.
So, I’ll keep writing my little intro bits but maybe I’ll make them electronic and post them up along with the videos of my game sessions. We’ll see. This is a learning process. It will take time for me to figure it all out.
Here we are – old enough to drive.
Yup. The Pretend Blog has been around for 16 years now. It hasn’t always been on my own website, but it’s always been mine, for better or worse.
These days the creativity is still a struggle, but this place contains various parts of my musings, criticisms, art and general nonsense. More than 590 posts in all. That’s not a lot when spread out over sixteen years. That’s about 36 per year (or around 3 per month) on average. Thing is, “average” took a big hit from about 2016 through Covid reaching endemic stages. There was a lot of depression and inability to create during that time frame. That lingers, even now.
Creativity, and the mindset that comes with it take a long time to recover when suppressed for too long. Much like muscles that have atrophied from lack of use, creative things need practice. They need to be flexed and worked out. Sometimes they even need to be taken out and shown off to others.
I’m going to consider it work in progress. I’m going to stick with it and keep at it – after all, I am still pretending people still read blogs.
Happy 16th birthday to The Pretend Blog!
This Christmas season has had me more out of sorts than normal.
One thing that hasn’t changed is our family tradition of having a themed Christmas tree each year. We’ve been doing our own thing for more than 26 years now. This year, perhaps the grouchy has shown through in what our tree theme turned out to be.
The tree is clearly grouchy too…
Merry Christmas! May all your celebrations be warm and bright… now scram!
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am always leery of stories of the “before times” that are published after the original story was published. It’s not an easy thing to pull off, let alone doing it well. I went into this reading with trepidation, and might have skipped it had a local book group not selected it.
I enjoyed the story well enough. Cozy fantasy stories are a good thing. Having something that isn’t saving the world is a nice change. This book was clearly about saving a book store. It wasn’t about Viv and her healing process. It contained a stack of missed opportunities to make the attachment to various characters deeper and better than what was presented.
There were some neat bits in here. I did really enjoy Satchel, even if it was shaky world building to have him switch sides. He is roughly equivalent to Bob the skull from the Dresden files, albeit better behaved. I liked the book with magical spaces inside the pages, but again, shaky world/magic system building.
Don’t look deep into this one. Just read it and roll with it. If you really want a little story about saving a bookshop, this is the book for you.
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