Social Distortion
My business partner is an only child. On top of that, he’s an only child of older parents. His parents both worked when he was growing up, so he spent a lot of time alone. And when they did spend time with him, they tried to make up for it by lavishing attention on him.
So it was famine or feast. Not surprisingly, he learned to hate the famine and crave the feast. These days, he doesn’t do anything alone. Not if he can help it, at least.
Now, if you’re like me, you grew up with siblings, so you know the value of alone-time. It’s nice to have some peace and quiet to yourself sometimes. But my business partner never learned the value of alone-time, and he does everything he can to avoid it.
So, why am I telling you this?
Dealing with critics.
Someone recently commented on my last blog post, and I started to write a reply. But then I thought about it. I didn’t want my reply to get buried as comment #63, so I decided to kick it to the top of the blog with a main post.
If you’d like, you can read the original comment. The whole thing is polite and well-written, but I disagree, obviously (or I wouldn’t be taking the time to reply… at length). Anyway, that’s probably enough preamble. Here’s my reply.
And you wonder why I chew the furniture sometimes…
I received this little gem in my inbox this morning—a great way to begin a lovely spring Friday.
I’ll post my reply at the end. In the meantime, “enjoy.”
Up and running… for the future!
Well, after nearly three weeks of work—including one weekend where we spent 20 hours upgrading, installing, copying, moving, testing, and fixing—the new server is up and running.
Let me guess… most of you never noticed. Well, that was kind of the point.
Now, this wasn’t three solid weeks of work. It was work in our free time, after the 8-10 hours a day that each of us spent at our “regular” jobs. And when I say “we,” am I, perhaps, referring to the mouse in my pocket? No, I’m talking about my server admin team.
April Fools
I don’t have an April Fools’ story for you. Seriously. No foolin’.
First, I couldn’t think of anything clever. Second, I wasn’t really in the mood, even if I had come up with something clever. (I haven’t even decided what pic I’m going to use for the POD today. Yeah, it’s that bad.)
So I was going to write a blog post about life in general—either that, or my decision to quit writing and become a Morris Dancer—but then I had a bit of an epiphany.
31
I’m still alive, and still writing. Not as quickly as I’d like, but life is like that sometimes.
Unfortunately, I’m not in a writing mood right now, so even this update will be short.
I finished Ch11, which was a bear to write (macro time as well as the emotions involved). I need to send it to my reality team for a second pass, but I don’t expect many issues. After all, I spent ~3 months editing, re-editing, re-re-editing, and re-re-re-editing. (I edit as a precursor to writing, and I did a lot of precursor-ing.) In any event, I want to put it in the publishing pipeline soon.
I’m about halfway through Ch12, so I don’t really have a buffer to speak of. I have good writing days and then lots of… precursor… days. I’m still in the middle of my marathon, I guess. I know where the end is, but it’s not in sight, and it seems a long way off. That’s a good thing for you, because you get to read more, but it’s not so good for me. I’ll work my way through it, though. I always have.
Anyway, it’s March… and that’s about all the update I feel like writing.
- Nick
When the muse calls…
I had a good day writing today, the first in a long time. I’ve been writing steadily for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been averaging ~200 words a day. I had to claw them out of my heart and bleed on the paper before they’d come. It was macro time, which is no surprise.
But I reached the point in Ch11 where I needed to switch to micro time, and things picked up (just as I expected, thank you very much). The last couple of days have been 500- to 700-word days, which is pretty good these days. (I remember the days of 2,500 words at a time, but I haven’t had one in a while.)
Part of it has been life in general. Part has been the macro time, and having to write something difficult. Part has been real life (my brother and CiL are still being jackasses). Part has been general malaise.
Anyway, I had a good day today.
Well, bless my heart
Southerners have some of the best sayings in the world. I’m talking about gems like “Horny as a three-dicked dog,” or “Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory.”
So, to put it in good Southern fashion, I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.
How busy? Read on…
Survival of the Fattest
Well, I survived Thanksgiving. And if you’re reading this, you survived it too. I didn’t gain too much weight, but I’ll be happy to get back to my regular workout schedule next week.
Unfortunately—that’s getting to be a constant refrain, isn’t it?—I didn’t get any writing done over the long weekend. Or the past week… or the week before that. I never seem to have two minutes to spare these days, much less two hours.
Editing… it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Just a quickie update…
I’ve been doing a ton of editing lately. Chapters 8-10 are nearly 15,000 words apiece, and that’s a lot to edit. On top of that, I’m still busy with real life, which means that I rarely get uninterrupted blocks of time. So it’s been slow going.
While I haven’t had much time, that’s not really the problem. After I finished Chapter 10, I didn’t really “see” how I wanted Chapter 11 to begin. You’ll understand when you read them. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I’ve also been “writing ahead” in my head.