A Child Can Change Everything (544 words)

I find myself in a situation I honestly thought I would never be in; and yet I am not altogether surprised at the turn of events bringing me here, just greatly disappointed. An event that should have been heralded with cheers, celebrations, and loud buffetings of congratulations has instead been met with shock, stunned silence, and a general miasma of upset feelings. I have been made an uncle, by my very own brother-in-law, to a bastard.

A Break From Hiatus (134 words)

Life has been a whirlwind these past months. Some say time flies like an arrow, but I rather think time plays tricks on us advancing forward when no one is looking, and before you know it half your life has passed you by and all you did was blink. I should be back from whatever blogging limbo I was caught in. I have a few things on my mind that I will make time to write about, and as we decide to sell our house and buy a new one I’m sure that will present all manner of blogging fodder (read: I’ll have one thing to write about which I will put off due to packing and un-packing, and will then forget about and thus make up some drivel about the stress of moving).

Misconceptions About Insurance (559 words)

Two things came to my attention this week that coincide with each other and serve to demonstrate a frustration I have. My wife has been going to physical therapy to correct some injury(ies?) done to her back and shoulders. She’s been nineteen times since the start of the new year, and was just told that her insurance will only cover thirty per year. Some good friends of mine had a child with severe heart defects and requires quite a lot of medical attention (though I hear she is doing well) and had to fight with their insurance to get their daughter the medicine she needs to stay healthy, and I assume, alive. I think you can see where this is going.

When Life Intrudes, and Changes Everything (983 words)

I’m no fan of change; it tends to throw things in chaos and turmoil. The bigger the change the longer it takes for the proverbial dust to settle. The only thing worse than change, are changes. Back around Thanksgiving I was offered and took a new job, and nothing has been the same since. Things are finally beginning to settle down, and I finally have some form of control, albeit slight, on my life once again. Not since marriage has my life been so thoroughly altered, and if this is but a prelude to having children I better understand vice.

Life Long Learning (521 words)

There is a sentiment, a goal, an ideal floating about mostly in “Higher Education” circles (as far as I have observed) where the goal or aim of a college is to create life-long learners. It’s not a bad goal at all actually, in fact it makes good societal and financial sense: one four-year education to result in the ability to learn whatever you want the rest of your life, without the need for more college. In one sense I think that goal has been achieved, but in another I think there is still some room to improve. The skills to learn are being taught and reinforced, but what of the environment?

What I Like in Horror

I made a personal discovery last night: I finally know what it is I like about H.P. Lovecraft's stories, and by extension what I like in the horror genre. For a long time I have been trying to figure out what I like in these stories and what it is that draws me to Lovecraft that does not draw me to other horror writers. At first I thought it was just that Lovecraft wrote "weird fiction" but that is too vague a category to be of any help at all. While some may argue that what I'm about to say would be an inaccurate summation of all of Lovecraft's work I would like to point out that this is the element I like about his stories (and thus his stories that lack this element are not among my favourites).

Lovecraft's stories are detective mystery stories. The stories I gravitate to are the ones where something unexplained has happened and now the protagonist will go about figuring out what is going on. It is the same reason I like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and a host of other detectives. What I like more about horror mystery-detective stories is that the story is not about a murder and a who-dun-it.

So now I know. I like stories where something inexplicable has happened. An impossible thing has occurred and our protagonist will seek to uncover the truth. She may be an unwilling protagonist, caught up in an event far beyond her ken or control. He may be an intrepid investigator on the trail of a great mystery, soon to engulf him in a world of madness. They are tales of the bizarre and the unreal, but made real, and told to reveal the mystery (but not quite!) in a detective sort of way.

Congratulations? For what?

I'm always a bit puzzled by people congratulating me when they find out we are expecting our first baby. Aren't they about 18 years early? Just what are they congratulating me on anyway? My ability to have productive sex? Seems to me we ought to congratulate parents sometime after the kid is raised. There's more to be congratulated.

Video Diary for Your Child

So I got the bright idea that maybe the wife and I would want to record some of our time while we prepare for the baby. Now, for the life of me I cannot imagine who would want to watch it, nor when they would want to watch it, but the idea struck and the little woman got excited (as anticipated). So we may be buying that camcorder earlier than we thought.

The question I have, what would you say [to your unborn child]?

Edited: There's been some apparent confusion regarding the question. I've added the implied direct object.

What Salary Am I Worth?

How does one assess their financial worth as an employee? What do you do when you look around you, assess your budget, and realize that you are barely paying the bills, with no savings, no retirement plan, and no hope for the future? How do you go about proving your value to the company in terms of salary and benefits? How do you ask for, and justify, a raise?

A Lesson Driven Home

It's taken me a year, one full year to the day in fact, to realize something it appears I already knew: in weird fiction/horror atmosphere is of utmost importance. In an effort to come up with an acceptable haunt for my Halloween story this month I've hit brick-wall after brick-wall. Tonight it suddenly dawned on me: if I render down all the good weird fiction stories I have ever read I have weak-sauce for the haunts. Nearly all of Lovecraft's antagonists are simply aliens aeons old and supremely powerful, but aliens nonetheless.

The haunt is not as important as the atmosphere. The thing about weird fiction that makes it great is the atmosphere it paints, the way in which the haunt is revealed, and how much is revealed. The author may know that the thing in the dark is just a misunderstood trans-dimensional creature scared out of its mind and looking for it's mommy, and while that isn't weird or horrific the presentation can be.

Will this mean I can find some banal source for the weirdness in my Halloween story, and still tell a chilling tale come the end of this month? I'll find out!

Welcome to the Hive

I cannot remember a time when I did not suffer from seasonal allergies. My mother tells a story of when I was little and told my father that having allergies was awful, and he surprised me by saying he didn't have any; I'm told it made both of them rather sad as they realized I'd never know a year without allergic reactions. Every year about this time my allergies start up, and I get downright despotic about the opening of doors and windows in my house. It's something I live with, and yes, it has made me hate the spring, but it is nothing compared to the allergic reaction Holly has had to suffer since Emma's birthday.

Nursing Sucks When you Don't

A baby, when hungry, will cry. A new mom, upon hearing this cry, will try to rectify the solution. Usually this involves waking up, contending with an IV, struggling with the snaps on some unfamiliar hospital gown, staring at the thing that just fell out of her gown, wondering whose it is because it looks so terribly unfamiliar, and then . . . cramming the baby's head into what is suspected to be a breast and hope all goes well so mom can go back to sleep. They tell you that both mom and baby need to learn to nurse. What they don't tell you is what to do when it's not working, and for us it was not working.

Labor: the Unexpected

My pastor and I meet on Thursday evenings to talk ministry and get to know one another; eventually I will be more involved in the church's ministries, maybe even doing some preaching. The Thursday before Emma's birth I gave Holly a good-bye kiss and drove to my meeting. When I came home forty minutes later I looked at Holly and remarked that Emma had dropped. Holly tried to quietly dismiss it, but I insisted she had dropped, which I proved by feeling her belly and pointed out that the top was like pudding, and not a hard knot like it had been. Again Holly shrugged it off and we eventually went to bed.

Labor, Delivery, and Home, Oh My!

The full story of how Emma greeted the world and her first day of firsts will come later, when I get a chance to sleep, collect my thoughts, and stop letting Emma take naps on my chest. This is the Reader's Digest version of the event, but for an even shorter version I have one word to sum it all up: OUCH!

Labor is Annoying

Holly went into labor this morning at 2:30AM. I won't argue with her when she says it's labor; I figure she's the better expert than I am, and she knows its different than a Braxton-Hicks. I had to get up around 4AM to answer the call of nature and she quietly told me, "I don't think you have to go to work today." It's funny how a few simple words barely whispered can shock a poor sleep-deprived man into sudden wakefulness; I couldn't go to sleep after that, and believe me, I tried.

Day One: A Good Start

The good news is I hit my goal of 2,000 words for tonight, and even better, I had time left over to relax and watch some TV. That was the good news. The not-so-good news is in a few different forms. First of all, my writing program of choice decided to stop counting words after it reached 354; so while I was hammering away well beyond 1,000 it still read a paltry 354. I've sent a little message to tech support to see what they have to say, and I suspect this is a Leopard induced bug. The second issue is one I was afraid would happen and is the reason I am not sharing my story: the tone is all wrong.

If I am to hit 50,000 words this month (and really the story should probably top out at 40,000 words) then I'm going to need to just write. But since I want to write a weird fiction tale in the vein of Lovecraft I need to pay attention to mood, tone, and atmosphere. Already I've had to eschew those things for the sake of getting the skeleton of the story down "on paper". This means, that as I suspected, I will need to edit the story (probably more than once) before I'm willing to let people read it, because the tone and atmosphere are really supposed to be important.

In the end, if starting a project is the hardest step then I'd say things started well. I was a little distracted trying to figure out the word count issue, and if the developers cannot fix it soon I'll have to spend time and effort switching my writing software. Hopefully I can cope until a patch is made available. Two thousand down; forty-eight more to go!

Welcome to The Shrouded Asylum

I have decided to write a Lovecraftian story for NaNoWriMo this year, and as if that were not enough of a challenge the protagonist is a woman. Not only will I be conscious of atmosphere, pacing, tension, and suspense, but I'll need to maintain a believability in regards to how a woman would act in the situations I'll be putting her in. This should be interesting, and my wife has offered to help me out, to which I am grateful.

Ready for NaNoWriMo 2007!

I threw my hat into the ring for NaNoWriMo earlier this month and I am now happy to say I am as ready and prepared for it as I can be. This afternoon I completed my outline and while that puts me at ease I am a bit concerned. This year's outline is the most detailed I've ever done, and while it's also one of the longer ones I've come up with I'm not sure if I have enough of a story to hit the word count. Time will tell, and if I finish my story early I'll either have to concede defeat or blather on intending to cut it December first. I can now safely rest the rest of October!

Writing Group

We had our final meeting tonight. Not a meeting so much as a small party, a time where we could relax from the pressure, talk about writing in general, and then take the plunge and read an excerpt from our novels. It was by far my favourite meeting of the entire time, and not just because I did not have to write anything; I rather enjoyed the social time. It was fun to get to know the people behind the frantic looks, the hurried typing (or writing), and those moments of frustrating writer's block. I will not miss the stress of writing, but I will miss getting together with other writers and talking about our shared passion (at least I hope we would all have some level of passion for the craft).

I have already been encouraged to join a critique group, and I will keep that in mind, keeping my ears open for any mention of a local group. I think I would grow and develop as a writer meeting with others, pointing out the excellent work, and politely marking the sections needing work. I liked the moral support of the group, knowing there were others out there struggling with me. I liked knowing I was not alone and that any pain I was suffering they would be able to identify with it. But that is over now; I am not laboring under any stress or agony of a shared deadline, just my own pressures (which can be crushing).

I will miss the times spent with other writers, but I will enjoy the memories. Who knows, perhaps I will stay in contact with a few of them online. Two of them have blogs (one, two) and I think all of them have email. Time will tell.

Life After NaNoWriMo

I will say this past month has been eye opening. I never thought I would be able to achieve what I have without more work than I put into it. That does not mean I didn't put forth a mammoth amount of effort to pour out 50,000 words in just 30 days; that was something akin to a herculean task. In the aftermath I now know that I could most likely accomplish a mere 20,000 words a month and consider that comfortable. The shock I have in making that statement makes November worthwhile. I would have thought it impossible to write close to 200 pages in a month (double spaced). And yet I did it. I did it because it was only 50,000 words, which meant 2,000 words a night, and after I figured out I could do 1,000 an hour . . . well the math is rather obvious is it not?

I like living post-NaNo because I proved to myself (and I am my harshest judge, critic, jury, and executioner) that you can eat an elephant if you only eat it one bite at a time. Looking back I amazed myself. My usual critical self was locked in a closet and threatened within an inch of its life and I was free; I was free to write whatever I wanted to write no matter how bad I thought it was, and in the end I no longer thought it was bad. When I came across a spot that I did not know what to do with, not knowing how to comfortably get from once scene to the next, I told my critic to, “Shut-up!!” and simply made the transition happen. When the outline was getting stale I kept on writing and found new life hidden under some frond of a fern decorating the forest trail of my outline, and I was excited again. Indeed, this entire month was exhilerating, to the point that I cannot wait to start writing again (and I need to, I have weekly obligations with Promethean Logophile).

There is one thing I do not want to forget, something extremely surprising to me. There were two days that I managed to write out 5,000 words in a sitting/session (I didn't remain seated the entire time). I thought those two days would be the hardest days I would face. I went into those days completely dejected and defeated, convinced I would not do more than 3,000 words before losing interest and desperately wanting a break. I was wrong. I was right in the effect that I did want a break, but that was before I started writing, and I did want a break while I was writing, but that was probably due to my deprivation of fun. Those two days found me digging deeper into my story, pulling out more detail, and more interest on my part in my tale. I don't really want to have to do it again, it was not much fun spending an entire Sunday afternoon and evening writing and not resting for Monday's work activities, but knowing that I have enough interest in my story that prolonged exposure actually got me excited instead of tired, that is something I want to keep with me.

From here I still have a long journey ahead of me. I only completed five chapters (for a fun exercise, calculate the average length of my chapters) and am perhaps a third of the way through part one (oh dear, oh dear). It has been suggested that I write a trilogy instead of a novel, and I might have to do just that. I'm not sure what will be involved structurally speaking, but I do know I will have to add in more climaxes and some resolutions (and probably more sub plots so individual books can seem complete). As for my writing in general, I will contribute to the afore mentioned site as well as my blog (which as been sadly devoid of new content most of the month of November). I will keep this site around to jot down any further notes as they come to me, reflections of NaNo. I do not yet know if I will keep a writing blog or journal in general. I'm not sure if I will need one, but if I do, I will announce it here. I do plan on cleaning up my five chapters and releasing an eBook version, which I will announce or post here, so stay tuned.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

P.S. I will take a least a week off to watch T.V. and movies, read books and magazines, and generally relax. Consider the sloth, for I will be he.