Category Archives: thoughts

thoughts, windshifter, writing

A Big Decision and A Big Commitment

19 Comments

As you may know if you’ve been following me for a while– for months I’ve been sitting on a book, wondering how to go about publishing it. I’ve had a lot of people telling me I should e-publish for various reasons, and then I’ve also had a lot of people telling me that I shouldn’t and that doing so would be shooting myself in the foot. And so, for at least six months now, I’ve been sitting here trying to weigh the pros and cons and decide which option would be the best for me.

Then, two things happened. First, I saw this, and second, I realized that if I continue to sit around trying to decide how to publish it, it’s never going to get published. So, I’ve decided to commit to e-publishing. Here are just a few reasons for my decision:

  • I Really Do Think This is the Future. I predict a future when books are akin to, say, CDs.  They still make them, and people still buy them, but most people just download the mp3 and stick it right on their iPod or whatever.  It’s just so convenient to have everything there in one spot, and owning a Sony Reader these past few months has made me acutely aware of how nice it is with books as well.  There are other reasons for thinking this is The Future, but that will turn into a huge essay, I’m sure, so I’ll refrain from going into much detail.
  • It’s What My Characters Would Do. That sounds cheesy, but it’s true.  Why shouldn’t I create my book the way my book’s characters would want it to be created?
  • I Learn From My Own Mistakes. If I’ve calculated wrong and e-publishing becomes the worst decision I ever made, at least it’s my fault and not the fault of a publisher or agent or bookstore or whatever.  If there’s one thing I know for sure about myself, it’s that I don’t ever learn my lesson unless I’ve been through the fire and thoroughly embarrassed myself through my own actions.
    • And now, a bouncing Scootaloo to break up the wall of text.
  • I Don’t Care About the Darn Ribbon. There’s a saying I’ve heard somewhere– I’d cite the source but I can’t remember where it was– anyways, the saying is that being traditionally published is like running in a big race, winning, and getting an official ribbon for it, whereas self-publishing or e-publishing is running a race alone and then printing out a ribbon for yourself.  The connotation is that it’s silly and embarrassing and no one will take you seriously.  Truthfully, though, I really don’t care about the darn ribbon.  I’d rather ten people read and enjoy something I wrote than no one read it because it gets stuck at a gatekeeper somewhere.  I do realize that the gatekeepers are there for a reason, and that if I keep trying and pushing and I believe in what I wrote, then it’s bound to get through the gate eventually.  But how long might it take, simply because I’ve got the wrong word count or genre or something?  And even then, how would a new and untested author be marketed?  How much shelf space would a bookseller be willing to spend on me?  Would there really be any more people who saw my book wedged between others on a shelf than wedged between others on a website?  There are just too many variables.
Rainbow Dash talks almost as much as I do.

Now, I know there are a lot of downsides.  Believe me, I know, because I’ve been agonizing over this decision for months. I realize this is a risk I’m taking, a big leap of faith that requires me to be a little brave, a little hopeful, and just a little bit conceited– and that last one there is probably the hardest for me. But if I don’t try, then I’ll never know!

So, that is that. Once I do actually have the thing online, I’ll link to it pretty much everywhere, so I’m sure you’ll see it. It may not be for a few months, because I want to give the manuscript some final edits, but I’m pretty committed to all of this actually happening. We’ll see how it goes, eh?

thoughts, writing

Writing Is The Easiest Part

3 Comments

Occasionally I get comments or e-mails from people who want to know why this fabled “book” I’ve been talking about for years hasn’t yet materialized. It flatters me that people would actually want to read the book so much that they ask me these sorts of questions, so I feel that an explanation is owed and in order.

Here’s the truth, then: Writing is the easiest part.

Forcing yourself to go back and read through your drivel and edit it is hard.

Deleting or changing scenes or characters that you loved in the name of plot or story flow is hard.

Staying motivated on your project when you’ve got so many other things vying for your attention is hard.

Working on a creative or artistic project when you’re not in the right mood is harder than any non-artist could ever imagine.

Gathering up the courage to talk to an agent is hard.

Heck, thinking about agents is hard because it reminds you how difficult this whole thing is going to be.

Realizing and coming to grips with the fact that thousands or tens of thousands of people out there are just as talented as you are, if not more so, and also trying to do what you are doing, is hard.

Rejection is hard.

Feeling pulled every which way by friends and beta-readers giving you conflicting advice is hard.

Trying not to be scared about making the wrong move in this whole process is hard.

You see, the past couple of years have been a mind-opening experience for me in terms of this whole writing thing. I always used to figure that getting published was easy. You just had to sit down, write your story, toss it at the nearest publisher, and then POOF, you’d be set. In short, I always assumed that writing was the hardest part.

But it’s not.

Getting the story out of my head and onto paper was the easiest part of this journey so far. And, guys, that wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.

So bear with me while I get this all sorted out. You’ll have your book, I promise. Heck, you’ll have more than one. Writing more stories is, after all, the easiest part. So I guess that’s the upside to all of this!

life of pike, thoughts, windshifter, writing

*blows away dust*

6 Comments

Wow, I stink at updating this blog, don’t I? I’ll admit, I kind of fell out of it for a couple of weeks. As such, I also owe you all lots of Classic Video Game Mondays. Derp.

Exciting news, though, if you are one of the two people who haven’t heard yet because I’ve posted/shouted this everywhere. A publisher… a real, live publisher… has the manuscript to that novel I wrote a year or so back. Yes, they liked the query letter and synopsis I sent them and now they’re reading my book. It’s got me terrified and it’s giving me the weirdest nightmares about sudden random major errors in my book that I forgot to fix.

ANYWAYS, if everything goes well, they’ll like what they read, and hopefully this will eventually lead to physical copies of this mythical Pike Project that I’ve been dropping hints about for so long.

Oh, and my apologies if this turns into a Writing Blog for a while. I was attempting to dump all of my Writing Rambles in one spot, namely another blog that no one reads– which is fine, since a lot of my rambling is for my own benefit more than anything– but sometimes I get that itching for feedback, so you might see some stuff here, as well.

TODAY’S WRITING RAMBLE: Writing down a story is like pulling a tooth. It just sits there and bothers you until you go through the painful process of pulling it out, which sucks, but then it feels a lot better when it’s out.

(“Weird Metaphors” is my middle name.)

rambles, rants, thoughts, writing

Storycrafter’s Pride Parade

6 Comments

You know, when I was in film school, it was all about being super deep. Everyone worshipped “Memento” and “Fight Club”. David Lynch was viewed as some sort of deity.

But you know what, there’s a reason why “Avatar” is the highest-grossing movie of all time. And it’s not just because of 3D or because James Cameron has more money than God.

No, it’s because he took a bunch of familiar character tropes, mixed them up in a blender with “Dances With Wolves”, made a very tantalizing dish out of it and served it to an audience hungry for exactly that sort of thing.

…why is that bad?

Hint: it’s not.

We live in a world where there is much emphasis on absolute originality in creative pursuits. If you make a story and some character or plotline has already been done, everyone sees it as some sort of grave unfortunate error. But the truth is that that’s how stories work.

As a storyteller my job is first to entertain you and secondly to hopefully teach you something. Both of these things are best done by allegories, fables, and parables. By the familiar hero that is almost like us, if maybe we were just a little more brave. By the familiar character arc that is almost like our own, if we had been born a little different. In that world that is almost like our own, if you hold a funhouse mirror up to it. That’s where you make emotional connections and that’s where you tell the best stories.

Yesterday I watched “Elf“. It was completely unoriginal. But it was thoroughly entertaining, it made me laugh, the ending made me go “awww”, and I loved every minute of it. That’s what movies and stories are supposed to do.

Guys, if you’re a writer or a dreamer or an artist or what-have-you, and your goal isn’t to make the next “Ulysses” but to make the next “Warcraft: The Last Guardian”, then stand up and be proud. Who cares if you’re not super hardcore or deep? Who cares that students won’t have to BS their way through long papers about your work sometime in the far future? You made someone’s day a little better.

I would rather make the next “Elf” than the next “Apocalypse Now”. And I’m not afraid to admit it.

rambles, rants, steampunk, thoughts, Uncategorized

Pike’s Anti-Anti-Steampunk Rant

14 Comments

Hating on steampunk seems to be the cool thing to do lately. It seems like I can’t turn around without my invisible fluffy bunny tail brushing up against some author or blogger somewhere who found a cogwheel in his or her soup and isn’t happy with the waiter, and wants the entire Interwebs to know about it.

Art by http://thatoddowl.deviantart.com/

So obviously I’m going to step in here and address a few of the issues that seem to be cropping up the most. As a disclaimer before I begin: I obviously do not speak for all steampunks, just the clockwork rabbit variety.

1.) Steampunk is Overdone

I’ll actually concede the point on this one although I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. Steampunk is getting a lot of press and attention right now and I think it’s primarily because of a few reasons: One, it’s attractive to a lot of different pre-existing groups and subcultures (goths, punks, geeks, makers, etc.), two, it’s so different than traditional fantasy or sci-fi, and three, it just plain looks cool if you need a spiffy wedding or Halloween party in a pinch.

There seems to be a concern that a lot of people are jumping onto the steampunk bandwagon, and a lot of non-steampunks are ranting about it. Guess what, though, a lot of bona fide steampunks are ranting about it as well. (Trust me, “Steampunk is going mainstream, everyone run for cover” is basically the most repeated thread subject on the steampunk forums I frequent.)

My overall opinion is that the exposure is good because yeah, you’re going to get the bandwagoners, but you’re also going to get the people who finally realize “This is it! This is the term for what I have loved all this time!” and in the end the wheat will separate itself from the chaff and it’s not a huge deal. I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms and it’ll happen again here.

2.) Steampunk is just a bunch of plastic gears glued onto nerf guns and top hats.

This stereotype is perpetuated by what you see so often on Regretsy and truthfully some steampunks themselves. To which, in response, I invite you to really dig into the culture and spend some time on the “maker” sections of steampunk websites. Not only will you figure out within five minutes that “glued-on gears” is largely (though not universally) frowned upon within the culture itself, but the steampunk subculture has an inordinately high percentage of members with backgrounds in engineering, mechanics, and other related fields. These are people who value items with function. Things that are beautiful and that work. “Post pictures of your workshop” threads are pages and pages long. These aren’t just people who are sticking old clock pieces on random items and calling it steampunk, these are people with garages filled with lathes and power tools.

You know, like this thing.

3.) Steampunk is silly and is about stuff that doesn’t work in the real world.

This is a criticism that is frequently leveled against steampunk literature by the serious hard sci-fi folks. While there is some truth in this generalization, that’s frequently the nature of the genre. It’s fun! That’s why we’re here.

That said, do refer to my previous answer. Most steampunks are well aware of the fact that their imaginary tech bends the rules of physics. Several of us, myself included, work hard to make sure that said fantastical objects are at least almost real. I have seen several multi-page forum threads that delve into the detailed minutiae of mechanics problems presented by various sorts of imaginary airships or automatons and said threads always impress me with the vast amount of knowledge in this area that many involved in steampunk possess.

4.) Steampunk fans want to bask in the glory days of upper-class Anglo-Saxon masculinity as embodied by the Victorian Era, or some such.

No, seriously, I see this a lot, and it always cracks me up. These people apparently don’t know that the possibilities offered by non-European steampunk are a frequent topic of discussion, enough that there are entire blogs and websites dedicated solely to said concept, oh, and that most steampunk is less about the upper-class and more about the middle and (especially) lower classes. That’s where the “punk” comes in to play. Sure, there are the dandies among us, and items such as top hats and monocles are fun to play with, but it’s not like we’re part of some vast steampunk conspiracy (although I like the sound of that) to return the world to 19th century imperialism. We are all aware of the fact that the 19th century had major problems. We think the 21st century has some pretty big problems, too, and that’s the connection and that’s the point.

Once we invent our time machine the Global Steampunk Conspiracy will travel to the Cretaceous period in the name of science.

5.) It’s not a “real” subculture/genre/etc., it’s just a fad, et al.

I’ll be the first to admit that the definition of steampunk as both a “subculture” and a “genre” still seems to be rather tenuous. Most steampunks, being a largely intelligent lot, will admit the same. “What is steampunk?” discussions inevitably derail into long, complicated, rambling essays and no one ever comes to a conclusion. Perhaps the one conclusion that most people make is that right now it’s a bit of a jumble. Art and literature that defines itself as steampunk or steampunk-inspired runs the gamut from retro-styled science fiction to relatively accurate historical fiction to pulpy action novels to fantasy/alternate universe stuff to post-apocalyptic stories, and that’s just the surface.

Likewise, if you identify as a steampunk, you could be one of many people that fall under that umbrella: literature fans, art fans, writers, artists, musicians, people who dress up, people who don’t dress up, makers, people who view it as nothing more than a fashion style, and people who take it very seriously as a sort of political/social statement. When you throw all of those people into a room and they all choose to identify as one label, things get a little muddled, and you know what? That’s completely understandable.

Ultimately, I see the steampunk movement as one that is about camaraderie, imagination, beauty, science, and above all, optimism all mixed up in a blender and topped with a shiny pair of goggles that you modded yourself. It’s about figuring out why something works the way it does, making it better, and making it stylish while you’re at it. Some of us think we could to do that to society. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Plus, did I mention the airships? Because the airships are awesome.

Admit it: you wouldn't complain if this was the preferred transportation method of the future.
fangirling, rambles, random, thoughts

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And! Robot suits.

3 Comments

I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this anywhere but I have this massive infatuation with most types of modern transportation. And I’m not even sure why.

FLYING! I love flying. Airplanes are like the greatest thing. I’m that person who insists on the window seat, uses up every exposure on her camera within ten minutes of takeoff, and generally geeks out over the entire process. Last time I flew it was probably comical; twentysomething me bouncing around in the seat, in stark contrast to the six year old kid next to me who spent the entire flight quietly reading a novel. I dunno, maybe it’d be different if I had to fly everywhere as part of business trips all the time and I was jaded, but I don’t actually fly very often so I get to geek out over it, thank you very much.

CARS. I love cars. And not so much in the whole sup dawg, pimp-my-ride kind of way either. No, my love of cars is more abstract. I love cars because I love driving and I love driving because unless I win the lottery, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to flying my own plane.

AC on, music cranked to 11, cruisin’ down the freeway. One With My Machine. I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take my road from me. That’s what I’m talking about.

Now this little love affair of mine tends to put me at odds with the increasingly common zeitgeist that I should be carpooling or biking or something. Putting aside the fact that I hate bikes for various reasons (Hyperbole and a Half is pretty spot on here), or that carpooling is out because I get nervous when other people are in My Car (perhaps because then I can’t get away with squeakily belting out Poker Face)… I understand the sentiment behind said zeitgeist. But it’s hard for me to get into it when I am so very in love with my 2002 Toyota Corolla which allows me to be blissfully free for ten minutes a day.

See, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m fine with tree-hugging, so long as I can do it in a specially constructed tree-hugging robot suit with all the extra bells and whistles and lasers and jetpacks.

Basically my idea of the future is nature and fuzzy animals living in harmony with robot suits and lots and lots of mechanical bunnies.

I like my idea of the future.

Also, lemme know if you find any tree-hugging robot suits laying around that are in need of a good home.

thoughts

Balance!

11 Comments

“Balance” is an attribute that I find really important to my life.

Not that kind. Although BRB, dying of cute.

In wandering through life I have often found that most things do not work best in absolutes, but rather, in a gradient between said absolutes. I think it’s just sort of how I operate: I look for the middle ground. At worst, this makes me a wishywashy fence sitter who can see both sides of nearly every argument, but at best it gives me an interesting and possibly unique view of the world.

I am, in fact, going somewhere with this, and it mostly has to do with my thoughts on technology. I’m a bit of a techno-fiend. I think progress and new inventions are great. I love tech, all tech– old tech and new tech. It speaks volumes to me about optimism, ingenuity, and creativity.

And robot suits.

I love when we use technology to figure out how to make something better. (Or how to make a robot suit.)

Anyways.

Sometimes this gives me a bit of a dilemma. Since I love old tech as well as new tech, it’s occasionally hard for me to say farewell to something old in order to embrace something new. We live in an interesting time. There is so much that I’ve seen fall by the wayside over the course of my own short lifespan that thinking back to my childhood is like thinking back to an alien world that somehow managed to get by with landline phones, fax machines, snail mail, and these newfangled things called VCRs.

So I’ve seen a lot of things change in just two and a half decades. As I see things change I pause to kind of contemplate what it means (I was that middle-school kid who actually stopped to think about the impending repercussions of DVD), but then I move on, because that’s life, right? Change and improvements! Awesome!

But occasionally something changes that I’m close to. Like film.

Between my love affair with the darkroom in college (a place to which I’d happily sneak away to after hours, to print my own non-assignment-based pictures) and a year-long stint of working in a One-Hour Photo Lab, I know a lot about film processing. I think it’s a fascinating and amazing process that combines my love of chemistry with my love of art and my love of, well, a lot of things. But who uses film anymore? When I worked in the One-Hour Photo it was a big deal when the percentage of digital orders we processed surpassed that magical 50% mark and usurped traditional film. And that was in… 2006, I think? I sort of don’t want to know how the number looks now.

That’s not to say I’m anti-digital-photography. Au contraire, the digital camera is an awesome technological achievements in and of itself, offering unsurpassed convenience in a variety of ways.

But there is something in that magical darkroom that I don’t want to lose. Just as there is something in my mechanical watch that I don’t want to lose, either.

Or maybe I’m just being a nostalgia geek. That’s possible, too. In the meantime I’ll continue to balance the best of the Old with the best of the New, because I don’t want to limit my love to just the New and Shiny.

life of pike, thoughts

So I Asked Twitter for a Blog Topic.

7 Comments

@morkuma: “blog about gaga”

The great thing about liking Lady Gaga’s music is that regardless of peoples’ opinion on her I have an awesome excuse to listen to her. If the person I am talking to thinks she is brilliant, I can nod my head and agree, and if the person I am talking to thinks she is terrible and most awful thing ever to happen to the world, then I can remind them that my musical taste is absolutely horrible and that I’m that person who listened to Dragostea din Tei on repeat for about a month. Win/win situation!

@etherjammer: “PokéWat! Gotta time ’em all!”

Haha, ok, pocket watches. My taste has changed over time, perhaps like it would for a fine wine or something. I used to just want the pretty ones, now I want the vintage ones. My idea of beauty in a watch has shifted from physical beauty to the beauty of design and a mechanical device being able to run for over a hundred years. That said, if you can find one that is beautiful in both ways, please let me know. (So I can cry, because I obviously won’t be able to afford it.)

@Brunty: “you could blog about cake”

Blogging about cake inevitably turns into blogging about Portal. My sister’s birthday was a couple weeks back and she got a plushie companion cube. I was jealous.

Her cake also looked like the one from Portal. It was kind of a Win Birthday all around.

@Faulsey: “Tinned Spaghetti!”

You know what I love?

It doesn’t even taste like spaghetti. Which is possibly why I like it, because I was never the world’s biggest spaghetti fan.

Horrible musical taste, and horrible food taste. I’m on a roll!

@softthistle: “i want you to tell us just how AWESOME you are!”

This is hard, because I have terrible self esteem. Even when things happen that seem to imply that I might be a slightly interesting human being, I counter it with my brand of logic. When I was a little kid, I mean really little (like five or six) I went through this battery of tests and it got me into a school for “gifted kids”. I never quite understood why. I have a distinct memory of telling my parents a few years later that I had no idea why I was going to school with all these smart kids, because “all I can do is read.”

That same sense of uneasiness haunts me today. I’m probably an above average writer, but you know what, SO IS EVERYONE ELSE ON THE INTERNET, at least in my friends’ circle. That’s why they’re blogging. Since I am merely doing something that everyone else can do, it negates any sort of specialness and makes me a pretty average person. So, there you go.

@kerrsplat: “Tesla coil inside a Faraday cage turned into a pocketwatch! Go!”

You guys know me all too well. <3 I wonder if it would even work, though. Well, there's only one way to find out >.>

@demeternoth: “the French football farce.”

I had to google this. I guess the players are revolting or something? (…”revolting” as in the verb, not the adjective.) Well that’s just silly, becauZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

@EforExtinction: “the beauty of a well-oiled machine?”

So, this thing?

I’m pretty sure I need this in my life, post haste.

@Rilgon: “Ayamiss and how awesome of a wasp she is.”

Rilgon’s wasp is big, orange, huggable, and awesome. It’s also no longer tame-able in game. Apparently Blizzard doesn’t want you to tame something that shares a model with a raid boss. Which is really too bad, because I would like to tame the following creatures please: Shade of Aran, Curator, Nightbane, Void Reaver, XT-002, and Heigan the Unclean.

A Curator mount is fine too.

@scouris: “the current political situation in Cambodia”

I had to wikipedia this. Turns out they have a king, a prime minister, a parliament, political parties, et al. I couldn’t find anything particularly exciting here but maybe I was just looking in the wrong place.

Back in the day, though, they totally had cool wars and stuff.

@Slash2Rustee: “Thoughts and Reflections on Whats eating Gilbert Grape the movie.”

I actually had to watch this movie in tenth grade. I remember all of two things about it: Somehow it tied in with “Of Mice and Men”, and Leonardo diCaprio was in it.

…okay, just wikipedia’d it. Apparently Johnny Depp was in it too? Shows you how much I know about movies. *sobs*

@lufitoom: “Being naked and eating cheetos while playing WoW.”

Man, that would make such a mess! Orange dust would be everywhere. On your keyboard, on your mouse, on you… not sure I wanna try it.

@faeldray: “‘i want you to tell us just how AWESOME you are!’ – seconded!”

Bah, fine, you’re not going to let me get away without doing this, are you??

Okay, the three awesomest things about me:

1.) I taught myself to read and write before I was three years old.
2.) I got 5’s on the two AP English tests. I didn’t study and I was taking the tests the morning after spending the night in the hospital because I had a bad case of influenza or something. I also hadn’t eaten in probably 24 hours. It was great.
3.) I got a 104% on my Algebra II final. (All questions plus the two extra credit questions correct.)

…I really can’t think of anything else about me that is particularly awesome, sorry >.>

Also let it be known that this is probably the only time I will ever talk about supercool things that I did. *retreats back into humility hole*

@Dechion: “How about free energy devices?”

I actually saw a really neat video clip this morning about a fashion designer in New York who is making his own nuclear fusion reactor at home in his spare time. He said his reasoning was trying to discover an efficient new energy source. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s an awesome idea. I’m one of those people that misses the days of anyone just up and inventing the Next Big Thing in their garage. The Wright Brothers did it, The Woz did it, but it doesn’t seem to happen very much anymore. Free energy devices? I’m all for it, and I wanna see it invented by some goggles-wearing geek somewhere.

@Nim_Ankh: “write about how awesome an idea [asking twitter for questions] is.”

I’m a pretty big fan of this idea myself. I’ll have to ask Twitter for blogspiration more frequently.

@Meadhbh: “Bubbles?”

Things I cannot do: Blow bubbles with bubble gum. Every so often I get some bubble gum just so I can try it and see if I’ve stopped failing yet, but it’s all to no avail. I also can’t curl my tongue into a little roll. I heard somewhere that this was actually a genetic issue (which wouldn’t surprise me, since I am basically just a bundle of awkward recessive genes), but then I read something else refuting that, SO I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE ANYMORE.

(As an aside, I swear, 50% of what I learned in high school science classes has since been refuted. Remember back in the day when Biology was simple and you got to do things like play “Evolution: The Board Game”? Don’t get me started on my rant about the poor game design on this, by the way. Because you could only win if you evolved into a human by the end. So if you evolved into a dinosaur halfway through the game you were done, GAME OVER MAN. But at least you get to be a dinosaur, I guess.)

@Doug_Williams: “If you were a hot dog starving in the desert, would you eat yourself?”