Everywhere you look, people like to talk about the power of motivation. We all think about it at some point or another, we’ve seen plenty of self-help books try to sell us the secrets to it, and we’ve all collected our personal tricks to reignite it in ourselves. Why wouldn’t we? There’s a school of thought that proper motivation and the power of positive thinking are enough to achieve anything. And it’s true, you do need to be moving to be able to make things happen. But something I’ve come to recognize is that we don’t just have to understand the value of motivation but also the nature of something else often at play: inertia.
Continue reading Inertia and PotentialCategory Archives: About me
My Resolution
It’s 2020: a new year, a new decade, and for many people a new opportunity to measure their expectations. It’s a time of reflection and a time of trying to come up with goals that you hope to obtain in a year’s time, even if resolutions don’t always work out for the best. But still, we keep trying, because for this one window of time we feel like there’s hope that things will be better the next time that ball drops. Maybe we aren’t coming out of one of our “worst” years, maybe we’re even coming out of one of our best – but even then we still want to try to make sure this next one’s better. And, for at least the first couple of months, most of us think we can.
Resolutions are a bit of a funny thing. We always want to make big, sweeping changes in our lives, but study after study shows we’re less likely to make those changes than we are to make smaller, more reasonable changes over time. We make general, feel good declarations, yet those same studies say that specifics are more likely to succeed. So, ideally, we want to make specific goals with defined milestones that can be achieved in steps.
Of course this means that my resolution for the year is to make sure every day counts and that I take advantage of more opportunities – because I’m terrible at taking advice.
Continue reading My Resolution
Identifiable Names
Though I’ve spent a few years writing my blog on this particular page and in this particular format, it’s likely no surprise to anyone that it wasn’t always this way. I’ve been writing nonsense on the internet for two decades in one form or another. For some that might date them, as no one wants to admit they’ve been writing articles for longer than some of their readers have been alive, but I’ve actually been doing it since I got access to my first computer. I got my start writing lengthy forum posts arguing with other teenagers about trivial things, but eventually moved on to writing in places where that was expected and no one had the ability to ban me for being a nuisance. Ever since then I’ve bounced from website to website and various pen names before eventually deciding to pull the trigger, reveal my real name, and come home.
But even this blog wasn’t originally posted to my personal website. Though I had the website at the time, I kept them separate for a while for reasons I cannot for the life of me remember anymore. And when I first started this blog, since it wasn’t actually hosted directly on my website, I needed to give it a title for people to see. In fact, that title is still there if you look at the top of one of the navigation bars. It was a little joke that I made long ago that some friends thought was amusing as I decided to call it “Dreams from Walnut Dust”.
So, of course, my very first entry had to explain what the hell that meant. (tl;dr – the only mind altering I get is from allergy medication)
Years down the line I’m a little bit better at naming things, I’ve written two novels, working on a third, and have written a lot more short stories and TTRPG campaigns than most people I know. Though a lot of my work toils in obscurity or was never released to the public, I have created dozens, if not hundreds of characters, alien races, countries, and whole worlds that require names. As they say, practice makes perfect. But that practice has taught me something that is difficult for a writer to accept.
Continue reading Identifiable Names
A Patchwork Soul Returns
When they revealed themselves to the world, they changed everything. Creatures of legend that were thought to be little more than myth and superstition came out of hiding to found a new nation for their kind and those who would be willing to live with them. The Republic of Argyre, founded on an artificial island they built in secret over half a century, would act as a safe harbor for the creatures now calling themselves “Alters”. But it wasn’t enough to just construct this haven, they needed to ensure the rest of the world would accept their kind as well. Realizing that not every Alter could reach their island, Argyre established the Alter Control Task Force – an international organization meant to act as police in Alter situations. These stories follow the ACTF and the Agents of Argyre.
Returning with new editions, a new format, and new covers, the Agent of Argyre series is back to tell the stories of the Seattle branch of the ACTF. And now, after the rerelease of Shards of Glass this July, we come to the return of the second book in the series: A Patchwork Soul.
Please follow me on Twitter for updates on where you can find it! In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from the new edition:
Continue reading A Patchwork Soul Returns
Resolutions
There are certain patterns of human behavior that are inescapable. We’re likely to fall back into old habits unless we’ve made sure to replace them with something else and make a dedicated effort to reinforce our new habits. We have tendencies to hold onto ideas even if they’ve been disproven. There are certain reflexive actions and reactions which we always promise we’re going to try to sort out but usually find ourselves too rooted in to really deprogram on our own. And all of these, of course, tie into the notion that many of us have that the “new year” is a time that provides us with a clean slate and that this is exactly the time to make the resolution to change all of that.
Of course, another pattern is that more of us fail at those resolutions than we’d like to admit – especially we creative types.
Continue reading Resolutions
Universal Themes
A couple holiday seasons ago, I wrote a post on this blog that felt like it was too trivial to really matter to people. It was just a thought that occurred to me after talking to a friend about how made for TV holiday movies were usually poorly written. Specifically, we’d been talking about Hallmark, as one of the leaders in the genre and probably one that had really defined the genre in several ways since they got into TV production back in the early 90s. Though they aren’t the only ones in the field, it feels like there’s a certain style to their movies that other networks and production companies have tried to recreate.
There have always been movies of this kind, and made for TV movies have always had some issues to them, but Hallmark drew my attention because it’s never felt like budget was ever the reason why Hallmark movies felt a little off. When you watch the made for TV movies made by others you can usually point out the places where budget became a concern. But for Hallmark? The reason why their movies have always been love ’em or hate ’em is because of something in their formula and not in their budget. And, at the time, I figured it was a cute observation to make that would pass by without much notice.
I was incredibly wrong because that post is the #2 most viewed post on my site and it’s still getting hits daily.
The thing about it is that two very distinct groups read that post and comment regularly. The first group to comment regularly are those who agree with the premise that the genre’s formula relies too heavily on artificial moments to the point that the rest of the movie feels wrong. The second group, on the other hand, are actually the die-hard Hallmark fans, who seem to be about as passionate as my fellow Trekkies (who I’ve also pissed off in the past). And, I’ll admit, I was needlessly dismissive of them in the original post for the sake of a quick chuckle when I said that the people who loved it were either heavily scouted or had possibly been drinking. Because, the truth of the matter is that there was something far more fundamental that I left out of the equation at the time.
The reason why those moments, while artificial, still happen to work is because they’re almost universal – so much so that both sides of that argument can probably agree on some of the themes. Continue reading Universal Themes
Monday Musing: Rules and Progress
Years ago, when I first started writing this blog, I wasn’t quite sure what exactly belonged on the blog of an aspiring author. I knew that I needed to show people the inner workings of my mind and let them get to know me, but the specifics of that eluded me for a while. Before long, I came to the conclusion that a lot of writers come to for blogs like these. I eventually settled into a routine of posting one of three categories – content, opinion, and “the process”.
When I say “the process”, I don’t specifically mean what I’m doing on any given day. The actual day-to-day process of writing is often full of mundane annoyances, minor detours, inside jokes that won’t make sense until someone can see the whole product, and a shocking amount of time spent playing casual games like minesweeper or Bejeweled while trying to figure out how exactly that last scene went completely off the rails. Instead, topics related to the process are usually the broader aspects of putting words to the page that apply to equally broad strokes of the community. These sorts of topics are things like the stresses of the occupation, the general direction of the industry or specific genres, and – of course – writing tips.
I’ve always done my best to not make those tips into steadfast rules (though I may sometimes call them that). I always keep it in mind that I’m approaching things from a certain perspective and that I may miss things. A tip can be expanded on or adapted to fit situations outside my viewpoint, but a hard rule doesn’t change to fit you – it’s either followed, bent or broken. Tips also tend to make things easier while rules tend to make things harder. Every rule is another thing to add to an already existing pile of stress while tips are generally just helpful advice along the way. But, recently, I saw a much more successful and influential author put out a series of rules and realized another good reason why I shouldn’t treat my advice like rules.
As ironclad as you think your rules may be, art and communication are never set in stone… Continue reading Monday Musing: Rules and Progress
I Am Not A Robot (I Think)
It’s funny when you think about it, but the most productive times for some forms of writing are generally the ones that look the most idle from the outside. You know that you wrote 2,000 words in a day and edited a couple chapters from your last project, but the outside world isn’t going to know the difference until you’re ready to publish. And in a stroke of irony, the people who look the most productive to the outside world, broadcasting their progress and talking about their process, are the same people who had to step away from the work to do it. It’s a balancing act, how much of your mental bandwidth are you going to dedicate to the actual tasks at hand and how much are you going to dedicate to making sure others recognize what you’re doing. But some people are masters at doing this and come across making it look effortless, weaving between productivity and self-promotion with grace and charm.
I am not one of those people.
I’ll make a confession today that I’m sure is no surprise to anyone who’s actually spoken to me: social media is exhausting. I’m an introvert and spend a lot of time in my own head, so the notion of spending time specifically trying to appear social is actually more tiring than just doing the work. It’s not that I hate people either, just that I kind of like to daydream and if I am going to talk it’s going to be a long form ramble about some silly idea I just came up with which is far too long for a 280 character limit. To put it simply: I am an opinionated blowhard and twitter can’t contain me.
But recently, after finally getting caught up on a couple projects, I discovered something amusing: apparently my recent twitter activity made some people (and “people”) think I was a bot. Continue reading I Am Not A Robot (I Think)
A Jackass Never Forgets
Over the years, talking publicly about creative industries and the patterns I tend to see, there have been a few instances where I make predictions based on the things that I’m seeing. Obviously, that’s not unique to me, everyone tends to do it. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes we’re wrong, and generally people just shrug and move on with their lives after it’s all said and done. But from time to time we may say something stupid that gets us stuck with the prediction we’ve made. If we’re lucky, the thing we said didn’t involve the words “I’ll bet you $1000 that I’m right.” Fortunately, in this instance, I wasn’t stupid enough to say it. Unfortunately, though no one’s actually held me to this, I did happen to say that I would admit that I was wrong in public. So here we go:
I was wrong about Disney’s live-action adaptations, and specifically, I was wrong about Dumbo and the writer behind it.
Fear of the Future
There are a few quirks of my personality that I can’t quite blame on outside influences. Though I could probably find a root cause somewhere in my past, probably when I was a toddler and can’t remember anything, there is generally no rational explanation I can think of. One of them is a tendency to hold myself to oddly strict rules that no one else will generally recognize or care about. In fact, even when I outright announce some of these rules I hold myself to, most people tend to forget them if given enough time – but I never do. And one of those is that every blog entry that I post to this site has to fit a certain variety of topics for specific days. It’s not iron clad, there’s always some wiggle room involved, but from time to time I’ll have a blog idea that I want to write or have already written and think, “man, that feels more like a Monday or Wednesday topic.”
It’s a little silly, but I’m often a silly man.
One of the topics I’ve allowed myself to post on Fridays is anything having to do with the future or sci-fi. At first it was because I momentarily considered calling it “Futuristic Fridays”, but then a few eyes were rolled and I realized it was a bridge too far. Still, it’s one of the approved topics for the day, and it’s ironic because a few things I’ve seen on twitter over the last few weeks and a few personal experiences have had me thinking about the future, specifically how much we as a species get freaked out about it. I’ve touched the topic before with talks about technophobia and the like, but all of the individual fears of future times really kind of root back to the same essential fear when it comes right down to it.
We don’t like uncertainty, we don’t like things beyond our control, and the future is full of both… Continue reading Fear of the Future