Category Archives: Personal Observation

Preservation

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I give way too much thought to my legacy for somebody that has barely cracked a dozen published works. Thing is, I can’t help it. I have binder upon binder of notes. I have this addiction to paper and all sorts of sketching and annotation and random outlining of ideas. It is admittedly less organized than I would want it to be, but in there is the culmination of years and years of world building and character notes and map sketches.

Who cares?

A fair question. First and foremost the person stuck cleaning things out I suppose. This is a difficult and sometimes tragic situation.

A long time ago I was asked for my opinion on some works left behind by a young creator. This young person had been killed in an accident and the grieving parents, in their quest for answers as to why this young person was gone far too soon, were lashing out at any and all entities involved in the accident. I was shown a sample of the young creator’s works and asked if I thought this was the seeds of a potentially legendary career cut short too soon.

It’s heartbreaking to see this kind of thing. One of the biggest factors in this particular case was the parents clearly having no interest or understanding in the work presented. Was this a factor in the so deemed ‘accident’? Hard to say. I had very limited access to information about the case (for that is exactly what it became when the parents brought lawsuits and criminal accusations). The scattered papers were gathered up and some notes attempting to bring order or sense were clipped to the front of the stack.

At the time I said I couldn’t see the level of potential claimed by the parents. The sketches were indifferent in skill, copying media available at the time. Fan fiction and use of copyrighted works without permission. I think about this from time to time. Would I see it differently now?

So, I have these thoughts. I have stacks of binders and reams of sketches, some in books and some floating freely across reference books or folded into game manuals. Will somebody look at those and claim there is more there than there is? I have my doubts, but I think about it anyway.

Then I wonder ~ what sort of gap in history will there be when these millions upon millions of words just go away? Yes, I have this addiction to paper, but how many notes, feelings, personal letters and all the other ephemera of an author’s life will be lost when (notably not IF) all the electronic records fail and the internet is gone? How will a researcher dig into the various aspects of what brought a story to life when all that life was held together with circuits and lights?

This is a thought I’ve had before, and one that will likely crop up again. The topic is worth the thought. How many thousands of my words would disappear if my website went away? Would anyone other them me care? What sort of personal correspondence would come up when somebody wondered if I bounced ideas off other authors? Will there be anything to find?

I think this article (link) is both hopeful and naïve at the same time. Not everyone has that addiction to paper. It’s worth reading and definitely worth considering.

Endurance

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Is endurance enough?

No, clearly it is not. There are many other factors involved in creating something that others can enjoy. It does bruise my spirit to see others I know and respect, people I have shared creativity with, lose the thread and stop.

This has happened recently to a friend. He posted a lengthy set of words describing how he was leaving the world of the ‘author’ effective immediately and switching back to creating things in a style and manner much more suited to his preferences. He has multiple books published. He’s creative and has a vision for his work. His words have inspired me before… and he’s quit.

I think that’s a harsh word and sounds sharper than I mean it to. He’s changed back to creating in other media, not listing piles and piles of words and mashing them onto pages for others. He’s won awards in this other format, and bluntly I agree with the people who gave the awards. Fantastic work, but watching the walking away of a creative person stings a little.

Part of this might be me seeing parallels. Part of it might be that his word production out paces mine by an order of magnitude (or more). I simply don’t produce words at the pace he does, even when he believes they’re not landing. Part might be the reality that success at any level beyond your local circle of friends is astonishingly rare.

This is not the only bit I’ve noticed, but it worries me to approach the rest of it.

I’ve never been a person to indulge in ‘crisis’ activities. “Mid-life” implies an end point is known. There are so many things to do in this world, there are so many places to see and even people to meet that giving in and wallowing in bad feelings seems like time that could be better spent trying to do all those things. And yet.

Maybe it’s as simple as being a sign of age.

I was at a second hand book store and found a very nice looking collection of old game books. Being a lover of Dungeons and Dragons, it was my first instinct to pick them up and inspect them despite owning all these works twice over already. Clearly my first mistake. When I picked one up and opened the cover it had the name of a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time written inside. Admittedly, we’d lost touch over the past couple of years, but we gamed together. His smile and his characters and his enthusiasm were always a bright – sometimes to the point of being insufferable – spot in the game. Why would he, being of similar age and mindset give up these most prized of possessions from the past? I went in search of his contact information… only to find out that he had died and nobody had said anything to me about it.

I’m not going to claim some wrong doing or severed kinship here. This is not some odd missed connection internet story. It was just sad. I was sad that I hadn’t known. The certainty of never having those conversations again was a blow. I closed the cover and placed the book back on the shelf. I haven’t been back to that shop since then. I don’t want to dig into that chapter again.

More and more of my peers quit, fade away from the community we’ve had over the years or die. It is becoming more of a struggle, but one that I intend to continue. There is still so much to do and see and experience that I must go forward. I must do all the things. New goals will be set. New paths made to move ahead.

So I endure.

The Speed of a Dream

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The most difficult thing to me is the speed that the stories cascade across the screen in my mind in juxtaposition to the glacial pace they can be placed on the page by way of my fingers. What is the speed of a dream?

I’ve tried the voice to text tools and they’re far better these days than they were before, but there’s something to me about sitting in front of the blank page and tapping away at a set of keys. It feels right. The tactile nature of transferring a story from one medium to another. It can be soothing, it can be evocative, it can be infuriating. It happens at a faster pace from time to time. Sometimes I catch inspiration and the words just flow. The problem of course is that inspiration is fleeting and the stories I have to tell want… need, to be much longer than a few hundred words spilled onto a page in a moment when the images are willing to flow.

If the dream like state could be maintained then the words and the works would be created so much more quickly. There are those who believe the artist must, based on the maintenance of that dream like state, take measures to ensure the dreams don’t leave. It’s a fallacy, and worse, detrimental to the truth of the story one has to tell. IF one is the creator of the story than it should be a true creation, not one based in and biased by whatever concoction or substance the author consumed in desperation to grasp the dream.

Perhaps that’s the key. It’s not a dream, or if it is, it’s a dream that belongs to others. The creator is simply the channel and the words and the works are designed to be fleeting. The creations dash forward and away, in search of the place where they may take up space for all the others meant to experience them.

It’s whimsical to sit and ponder these things and more so to believe I have any insight into these things. I am peeking through the keyhole, glancing into the partially opened door in hopes that the light spilling out will work toward a greater success for those passing by in the darkness. Folly on a good day.

Working toward becoming the conduit for these misty visions and half formed myths isn’t easy. The words rarely match the clouded view, out of focus but evoking such strong emotions. How do you match the speed of a dream?

Someday. Eventually.

30 YEARS

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The real world will be intruding on the blog here for a moment.

Today, February 4th, 2025 I will celebrate 30 years together with my wife. The ‘pearl’ anniversary will probably slide past without much fanfare, but it’s a pretty big deal to me.

All the adventures, all the fun, all the amazing times and the brutally difficult times. All the wonder, all the sadness and everything in between… I would not trade any of it. This has been the most difficult, wonderful, challenging, amazing journey. If I was given the opportunity to back and change the past, I wouldn’t. I’d do it all again.

I love this ride we’re on and I hope for 30 more years of this crazy ride.

Happy anniversary my dear!

Happy New Year!

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I’ve stated here before that I’ve got some trepidation about the upcoming year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have a small celebration about the calendar rolling over one more time.

Happy New Year. May you have a wonderful year.

Anniversary again

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This one is a little different from my other anniversaries – it’s the website’s anniversary.

This year will be 17 years. It’s another year and another collection of posts, but one that I can’t say is super significant? Why do we attach more significance to round numbers?

Whatever the case, here we are at 17. It IS important to note the passing of time and the fact that I’m still here. I’ve not made anywhere near the progress I’d wanted way back in those dreamy start up days, but I’m still here.

I’m not a website developer. I don’t know how to manipulate the back of house stuff here – I can only work with the tools I’ve got on hand. I went looking to see what kind of statistics were available for me to check out and it turns out… not many. One of these days maybe that will be a thing I can change or update.

I’ve got no small amount of trepidation about the upcoming year(s) as we change to another political administration, but hopefully I’ll still be here for #18 and beyond. Happy anniversary to me.

Year In Books

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I don’t like the retrospective posts looking back at the whole year behind. I’ve written before about that and I’ve written at length in the past about my resolution to never make another new year’s resolution (still going strong). New year, new you is fine for some, but making a significant change can happen whenever if needs to.

This year I was interested to see how my reading had bounced back. A couple of years back my reading and creativity had dropped off a cliff. I don’t think I broke double digits in terms of books read, and that’s tragic. Goodreads creates an annual summary that includes number of books read. This supposes one has actually entered all the books read, but I generally try to keep up with that.

I decided to take a look at my overall stats for the past decade. It’s actually a very nice feature of the site. I’m a little bit off my pace of last year, but far outpacing that bad year. Then I started going further back. Turns out I’ve been very hot and cold over the past decade. I don’t know if those years connect with specific things in my life or things going on in the world, but it’s an odd wave pattern. Somehow I thought I was further along in the “many books read” department. I am interested in how this will look going forward.

By the numbers:
Year – Books Read – Approximate page count
2024 – 21 – – 6,700
2023 – 23 – – 9,100
2022 – 9 – – 2,500
2021 – 17 – – 5,300
2020 – 39 – – 12,500 (pretty sure this was Covid Year)
2019 -16 – – 4,600
2018 – 9 – – 3,000
2017 – 26 – – 9,700
2016 – 25 – – 8,700
2015 – 16 – – 6,000
2014 – 24 – – 8,300

This year played out like this:

I’m going to take some time and ponder these numbers. Some of them I think I know what was going on. Some of them are a mystery. Hopefully I’ll have a bounty of books to show for the coming year and I can continue to track these stats.

Easy to me…

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I meant to post this earlier, but my writing time has been limited lately. Too many hours at the computer doing the day job. Working 50 or 60 hours a week is taxing.

I don’t talk a lot about my day job here. In part this is because I want to keep this space separate from what I do for a paycheck everyday. Having separation and balance is vital to maintaining a healthy self. Blurring the lines between home and work spaces is a new thing, but not necessarily a good thing. We’re in the midst of learning how to set boundaries and use these amazing tools constantly at our literal fingertips.

The day job. I’ve worked in commercial architecture for more than two decades now (almost three if I’m being more honest). The work is creative, mentally taxing and rewarding. At the end of the day you can (if you’re close enough to the project site) go to a place, point at it and say, “I was part of that”. I am part of a team that solves complex three dimensional puzzles and draws out the answers on a daily basis. I have logged thousands of hours at this.

As part of my work I browse a number of articles, news stories, and magazines related to my field. I have seen a number of variations on science fiction-esqe buildings and cities and beyond in recent years. Not that these visions didn’t exist before, it’s just easier than ever to create something vivid and eye catching then share it around the world in an instant. This trend has been ramping up recently with the expanded use of artificial intelligence based tools. Type some words, feed the machine some images and get all sorts of pretty, pretty pictures. This is wonderful for making splashy ideas. AI does not mean easy.

In all the years I’ve worked in the commercial field – and that’s an important distinction here – I’ve never seen any structure succeed without the efforts of a team. Small shops, residential work, local additions are easier for the solo practitioner. At a certain point the scale and scope of required work gets far beyond what one person can handle. There is simply too much to detail. This is the ultimate group project.

Taking on a project with the number of things tied into a whole city is no small undertaking. It is in fact, the opposite. It’s massive and daunting. Multiple buildings and all the things associated with getting a structure built is the work of a huge number of people. Getting locations, districts, connections, utility functions and all the things we don’t routinely think about in well established places ready and mapped out is huge. Having a pretty, pretty picture of your dream is great. You need more than a dream, you need a clear vision coupled with a significant amount of studying urban dynamics, infrastructure and a host of other things.

I applaud people who really do have that clear vision. True visionaries are rare. Many times that vision fails to survive the process of being made real. What we do is great in pictures, but it is certainly not easy. I don’t know who Akon is, but he’s not the only one who’s had an idea and it hasn’t gone anywhere. What the people in my field do is important to the health, safety and welfare of the people who live, work and play in and around our works. Some of the best of these works are amazing and unforgettable structures that can move you emotionally with their beauty.

It’s more than a pretty picture. The picture, the idea is the starting point. That’s when the real work starts – and it is as creative, artistic, businesslike, and challenging as anything else.

I hope the ideas and the grand visions continue. We need that in our world. We also need to do the work to make it real. Check out the article here.

Fleeting Magic

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Bear with me. This one is going to be rambly and possibly incoherent but I’m going to do my best to tie it together.

I read an article recently by an author I have had an opportunity to interview before. This article (linked here) is about people idolizing celebrities. The author states it differently, however that’s what it amounts to. Idolizing, much like western religions have taught against for many hundreds of years in fact. I have written in the past about my experiences with relatively famous or infamous people and how I felt about them versus how I felt about their work or how they have portrayed themselves in their public facing persona. Your protest may vary. This is why I wanted to try to pull these thoughts together. This isn’t going away. People are always looking for the next wondrous thing that will give them good feelings and happy memories. In reference to the title of this post, Fleeting Magic, the things that we tend to find the most valuable or particularly special are things that do not necessarily last.

I have worked behind the scenes for some conventions that brought in celebrity guests. My experience with those particular people actually matches relatively closely to what is presented in Scalzi’s article. The people I wanted to meet the most, frequently turned out to be the worst people to meet. The people I met without expectations from me generally became my favorites.  Working behind the scenes and being part of the creation of an event rather than a consumer of an event has helped me shape this point of view. Creative people are putting on public faces. I’ve seen a pro at work and she was amazing (cold read of a work that she just crushed) and when she walked off stage, out of sight from the crowd she said, “that was a really hard room to work”. She was right, but the people she performed for had a very different view of the entire experience. For them, the magic was there.

I have often daydreamed about being successful. I think most people do. I do not daydream about being famous. I don’t want to be famous. These days that’s far too invasive. There will, without question, be people who appear from my distant past with stories of how rotten I was at the time. They’re probably not wrong. Everyone is the villain of somebody else’s story. I don’t want or need to relive any of those times. I have grown and changed. I’m working on my version of success and being a better person every day. The real question, or catch, here is can you be successful (particularly financially) and not become famous?

How you define success is the most important part of that question. What is success to you?  I guarantee success from your point of view does not match success from my point of view. One of my written goals when I started creating (both artwork and writing)  was to become successful enough to be an invited guest at a science fiction convention and not have to pay to go. I have, in fact, achieved that first goal. It’s not my only goal, but it is the first one I have achieved. It is something that makes me happy. It is not something that makes me famous nor does it make me any money. I get to continue to do some of the things that I genuinely enjoy and visit and chat with other creators in the genres I love.

Where is the fleeting portion of this?  That’s easy to pinpoint. My behind the scenes convention work is done. Those conventions, no matter how  wonderful they were, no matter how amazing my team was, are done. The company is defunct and those teams disbanded. There are wonderful memories from that time, but they are just that, memories. They were snippets in time that gave me a view into event creation and minor celebrities behind the scenes. I suspect that my interactions with celebrities, both good and bad, are what have given me my disdain for putting them up on a pedestal. As is stated in the article, they are just people. Those people are doing their job and trying to get paid. That’s it, nothing more. Sometimes those people are wonderful, sometimes those people are assholes. Pretty much how people always are. Even your favorite people have bad days.

Should a bad day count against the person? Maybe not. Will it count against them in YOUR book? You bet it will. It will color all of your thoughts and interactions with them going forward. Will they notice? Unless you see them every day, no they will not. They probably won’t remember. If an egregious transgression comes to light, some heinous act that you will not stand for, should that destroy the joy that you once had from their creative work? Maybe not,  but it will certainly color your point of view from that day forward. It will make you not want to give them money. It will make you question what went into that thing you love and have you wondering if that thing that has been brought to light was part of the process of making the creation you’ve enjoyed so much.

I wonder if media, including social media and sports, have become the modern equivalent of religion. People are searching for something or someone to believe in. They want an example to look to. This makes failings and shortcomings significantly more devastating when they are discovered. Thing is, this happens. People are people and they will screw up. It’s fair to be disappointed and it is also fair to withhold further support from somebody whose actions have been proven to be in opposition to what you support. Don’t give money or fame to those who stand against what you believe in. Simple, right? Just how well do you know them? How well do you know the structure of your religion? Where are the lessons and will they survive being brought into the light of public scrutiny?

I think, someday, we will sort this out and come to some balance. Perhaps. Right now I believe the best thing that people can do is practice moderation with any form of media. As Mr. Scalzi suggests, do not put creators on a pedestal. Do not idolize athletes. Change your priority. Enjoy art or sport in all its forms, but not at the expense of what is real and around you every day. Most people don’t get to interact with the famous or successful every day except through the media. Take some time and get away from your screens. Go outside and meet your neighbors. Go volunteer locally, do something good, treat people around you with kindness whenever you can.  It’s not a big ask and that’s what I think will make it successful. Handle the small things and enjoy the things around you. When you have the opportunity to participate in something that could be magic, take that opportunity. Create that magic. Be part of that team. If it doesn’t last, just know that being part of that magic has given wonderful memories to others that they will carry with them. No matter how fleeting your magical creation is, enjoy it and cherish it.

Combo Platter

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In catching up with my news feeds and other posts that I have missed over the past few weeks I found two that have some synergy. The first is a post about how much science fiction is created and published each year.

SFF is Too Big?

There are so many stories published at this point that no fan, no matter how quickly they read,  can keep up with what’s out there. There are hundreds and hundreds of stories that come out regularly. I particularly enjoyed the math portion of the article that showed a certain rarity of story from decades ago. It seemed that it could have been my faulty memories from when I was young that the stories I enjoyed so much were so desperately hard to find. As it turns out, the numbers show it actually was hard to find those stories, as fewer of them were published each year compared to today’s standard.

This is certainly not a post, or commentary about how things were better back in the day. I don’t believe that. Things may have been more clear, or more clearly defined with less overlap,  however, it didn’t mean that things were better by definition. I enjoy the simple fact that I have a huge number of choices when I’m looking for a new thing to read. I say “thing” simply because it might be a novel, it might be an anthology, or a series of blog posts, or an online published story or a graphic novel… you get the idea. There are SO many choices out there. I love it.

The second post is Just Plain Good.

The post praises things simply being ‘good’, and enjoys recommendations that match that qualification. Quality and popularity are not always meshed together, in either direction. There is a modern standard that they discuss where reviews and commentary need to be hyperbolic in order to get attention. I agree with the author of this post that there is a need to be circumspect in our word choice.

I have been posting my book reviews for many years. I always try to show why I felt the way I did about any given work. I have some small understanding of how difficult it is to get any work published, so I always hope that an author reading my review understands that my review is precisely that, mine. My opinion and nothing more. I also attempt to avoid hyperbole. I have a special and specific shelf of books in my house that hold the books that have truly changed me or impacted my thought process so much that I return to them again and again. It’s a single shelf and that’s it. There are so few it’s easy to keep them in one place. I’ve written essays in the past about what sort of works changed me. I don’t want to be extra dramatic or willfully polarizing. I hope the clear and simple choices I make in reviewer terms will help people who read my reviews to understand how that affects their choice.

That all seemed a little convoluted as it fell out of my head. Let me see if I can explain this more clearly. If you read my review of a book, then you go read that book and you agree with me, you could then trust that my next review might better match for you.If you read my review of a book, then you go read that book and you think, “my God that was terrible! How did he praise that? I hated it all”, then you could understand the next time you read one of my reviews that if I loved it you won’t. I often find that an ‘opposite’ reviewer is just as helpful as one I match well with. That is the idea behind being as authentic as possible. If you find a match, then you will look to that person or those reviewers, whoever they may be, as a trusted source for finding the next thing you want to read. The screaming noise makers just don’t fit that category.

That is where the synergy comes in with the article about science fiction publishing becoming too big. Finding a reviewer or a series of reviewers you can trust to give you honest and clear opinions on things, without exaggeration, will help you sift through the hundreds and hundreds of choices and perhaps even guide you to finding works that you would never have otherwise found. I suppose it’s very similar to panning for gold. You spend a great deal of time trying to wash away the grit and find the shiny treasure that you can then show to others. 

Revel in the multitude of choices that you have when looking for your next entertaining read.  Look for, or perhaps even become, a trusted source for your circle of friends. It takes time to learn and see the pattern of things you enjoy,  but once you find it, be authentic about it. It’s okay to say that something is good and that you enjoyed it. Everything you read doesn’t have to be a revelation of the highest order, nor does it have to be something that you despise and would publicly denounce. Sometimes just finding something enjoyable is enough.

This is how I approach my reviews and why a one-star or a five star are so vanishingly rare among my reviews. The highest high or lowest low truly should be rare. Reviews should not fall into the same category as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Scream and yell on too many occasions and people will presume that is your default setting. Keep panning for that gold and be sure to share your treasured fines with others.