Forging Ahead

I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but after feeling less than thrilled with the results of my just-finished second novel, I have begun to write my third. My wife thinks I have lost my mind. Now let me clarify: there was a lot I liked about my second book, tentatively titled "The Crystal Hills." There were some good characters and some exciting situations, but ultimately I have this feeling that it wouldn't sell. Now, I have long followed the axiom that says you should write what you want and not worry about the market. Considering the market makes you a hack. A HACK! I hate that word. Anyone who considers themselves an artist at any level doesn't want to be one, because it connotes that you have sold your artistic soul for commercial success. I would like commercial success for several reasons:

1. It would allow me to focus more on my writing. Between work, my kids, Querytracker and other things that I have going on, it is difficult to really focus on the craft. And for me to be able to do it well, it has to be focused on.


2. Commercial success would give me confidence. Knowing that people like what I write and want to read it would allow me some measure of freedom from second-guessing myself. I doubt I will ever reach the point where I no longer ask myself, "Is this a bunch of crap?" At least I hope not.


3. It could give me more freedom to pursue projects that might not necessarily be as "mainstream" as others. I say "could" because previous success does not necessarily mean future success. But once you are an established author, you have a little more leeway in what you can submit.


4. I get to write for a living. Self explanatory, no?

So taking these things into consideration, I have shelved my newly completed novel and began one that I thought might have a better market. I still like the story I am telling and I like the characters involved, so I feel like it is a better use of my time. There are others who want to beat me over the head for not finishing what I've already started, and, honestly, sometimes so do I. But I feel that if I have a story that will be easier to sell, I will have a better chance with my second novel in the future. I don't know what that says about me, but there it is. Sorry honey. Yet another first draft for you to suffer through!

Crisis

I am suffering an artistic crisis. I feel completely silly even saying that, but I am self-observant enough to be able to tell what is going on. I have lost faith in my ability (it is even difficult for me to write ability. I was going to say "talent," but somehow that seems far too lofty) and I am having difficulty pushing on. Logically, rationally, I know that pushing on is the key, but the lethargy is setting in and it would be so satisfying to just wallow in inactivity. I won't lie, I can be a lazy person, and it is much easier not to write. Writing takes effort, and when there is no external reward for that effort, it can be easy to put it aside. I convince myself that I suck, and so why bother anyway. Just sit on the couch and watch a movie you've seen a dozen times. Or read a good book. That's kinda like writing. You can at least identify with the skill and hard work it took to write it. Anything but writing myself.

Writing is a difficult craft, because it is very hard to judge whether or not you're any good. Very bad writers can make plenty of money, and very good writers can and do remain unpublished. So how can you tell if your writing is any good? My wife tells me I'm a good writer, but she loves me and wants me to be happy. I don't doubt her sincerity in saying what she says, but she is too close to me to be able to make a clear judgment. People who don't like me will say that my writing is terrible, but they are biased in the opposite direction. I have even had people who have no idea who I am read my work, and the results have been mixed. How fair is that? If unbiased people universally disliked my work, I could easily say I suck and should just PUT THE PEN DOWN! On the other hand, if it was universally liked, I could easily make the argument to myself that I just haven't found the right agent yet. But when some like it and some don't, all I can safely assume is that my work is mediocre and appeals to a narrow audience. Great. So how do you know?

I have been told that I have a materialistic view of success. Meaning that I would view my writing as successful if it was accepted by the current process, ie, if I got an agent, got published, and made some money. That is the way I look at it. But there is another factor involved. I do write because I like doing it. I enjoy the process of creating a story and bringing it to life. But at the same time it is a lot of work, and seems horribly futile if I am going to be the only one ever to read it. Boo-hoo, poor me, I know.

Oil World

I am really interested in alternative fuel sources, especially lately as gasoline prices go through the roof. I have three oil refineries surrounding my city and yet I still pay $3.15 a gallon for gas, and my cars only get 17-24 miles to the gallon. I hate math, so I'll leave the doing of it to you, but needless to say I, like most other Americans, pay a lot of money for gas every month. So I started looking into alternative fuel vehicles before I bought my most recent vehicle, and it seems the progress we have made in this area is surprisingly limited. On a lot of models it seems like the car manufacturers just slapped the word "Hybrid" on their vehicles to make people feel better. In all models that I looked at except the Toyota Prius, gas mileage was no better than 25 mpg! My Toyota RAV4 gets that on a regular gas engine. So why should I pay the extra $10,000 to get the same mileage? Fuel cell vehicles look promising, but they are also at least a year or two off and promise to be even more expensive than hybrids. So what if, for $7,000 to $10,000 , you could retrofit you current vehicle to run on a fuel that is plentiful, environmentally friendly, and that you can manufacture yourself? Well guess what? If it wasn't for your government looking out for your safety, you could!

There is a company in New Mexico, United Nuclear, that has designed and successfully tested a retrofit hydrogen fuel system that will work on modern gasoline engines. Check out their site and read the information. http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ And even better, part of the package is a hydrogen generator that will create all the fuel you will ever need out of nothing more than air, water, and electricity. Too good to be true, you say? There must be a catch? Well, you're right. There is a catch. The Consumer Product Safety Commission shut down United Nuclear's program because some of the main components in their system could also be used for illegal fireworks manufacturing. Now, call me crazy, but do we really have an epidemic of illegal firewoks in our country right now? I know we have toys imported from China that are poisoning our children, and yet they still flow over the borders. I know that some of the commissioners were busy taking luxurious trips paid for by lobbyists and manufacturers, so they probably didn't have time to make sure that imported toys didn't have significant levels of lead paint, but they did take time out of their crowded travel schedule to take notice of the fact that some of the key components of United Nuclear's hydrogen fuel system could possibly be used to manufacture illegal fireworks. Here's a link to the CPSC's injunction against United Nuclear, if you are interested in reading the actual document. http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml07/07249.pdf

Who, I wonder, would have anything to gain by shutting this cutting edge technology down? Who would have the most to lose if this technology became prevalent? I think you already know the answer too. Big oil. And who is a major influence for big oil? Why, it's the President of the United States, George W. Bush, who continues to push Congress to give billions of your tax dollars to oil companies like Exxon, even when they are reporting record profits! Can you imagine what would happen to those companies if we could suddenly make our fuel with solar panels and water? I can think of many scenarios, among them a huge shift in our economy and a major change for a lot of people. People would lose jobs, and oil moguls like the Bush family would have to look for new ways to exploit Americans so they can maintain their standard of living. But at least our children might be able to look forward to having a planet that they could still live on. That would be nice.

Now, I know people love a good conspiracy, and many of us have heard stories about the guy who posted the design for an engine that gets 100+ mpg on the internet, and the next day the plans were gone and no one ever heard from the guy again. And Bob Lazar, the gentleman who runs United Nuclear catches some flack because he claimed to have worked at S-4, a super secret military base near Area 51 where he claimed to have studied and worked on the reverse-engineering of the propulsion systems of extraterrestrial space vehicles. Regardless of what you think of this, the fact remains that Lazar is a physist who has worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, so it would be an understatement to say he knows his science. The facts still remain that the US government, with whom Lazar has tangled before, took notice of this small science supply company. Why? Because they had a revolutionary idea that threatened interests at the highest levels of our government. With something like this hydrogen system powering our vehicles, we would no longer be beholden to the middle east for our oil and the costs for shipping products would drop dramatically. There would be difficulty, without a doubt, but this country has faced and overcome adversity far worse. That's part of what makes America great.

Feedback

Okay, this is going to be a blatant case of down-on-the-knees begging. I'm gonna do it, and I'm not ashamed. Ready? TALK TO ME, PEOPLE!! :-) I know there are a few of you who read this, and I appreciate it. I love it that there are people reading my words because I am an egomaniac and I need to be validated by having others tell me how much they think of me. No, what I really would like to see is just your comments or your thoughts on the subjects that I put out there. Boring? Fine, tell me. Lame? I know. What do you think is interesting? Let me know. Though I indulge my own little fantasy that people like to hear what I have to say, I know that I would like to hear what YOU have to say. Let 'er rip!

Age

I am 38 years old this month. That is getting dangerously close to 40. There is a lot of pressure to "succeed" before the age of 40, and though I don't usually think a lot about those sort of landmarks, this one is weighing on me. My 20th class reunion will be this summer and I don't think I will be attending. I tell myself that I there is really no one that I need to reconnect with, but I hereby admit that part of me is embarrassed that I am twenty years out of high school and still just plugging along. I never became an actor or a musician or made a million dollars. I still live in the same town, just a few blocks from the high school from which I graduated. I have a wife and three great kids, and I am proud of them, but I have no need to parade them in front of these people hoping that they will pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful my family is. Their opinion of me never mattered all that much then, why should it matter now?

I'll let you in on a little bit of geek truth. Yes, I was a geek in high school. Not a full-blown nerd, though I don't think I was very far from that, but still, I didn't play football or basketball or wrestle. I was in choir and drama, and I did pretty well. I was in the most prestigious choir in school, and my partner and I won the state championship for serious duo in competitive drama. Thanks for holding me together on that one, Traci. I still remember having to cut a couple of minutes out of a scene that we had been performing all season when one particularly competitive coach (TED!!!) timed us and found that we were over the allowed time limit. He threatened to file a complaint if we didn't get under the time limit, and I freaked. Traci held it together, though, and we did it and won state. That was a good year. However, the fact that I lettered in choir and drama was, and still is in some cases, a joke to a lot of people. So the bit of geek truth is, no matter how much we hated and resented those people who ostracized us because we didn't fit their ideal, we still want them to be impressed with us now that we are adults. We want to come to the reunion with better jobs and hotter wives and smarter kids than those jocks that laughed at us back in school. But WHY, for God's sake? Why should I care what they think? My wife loves me for who I am now, and my kids love me because I am their dad, why should I give a rat's ass what a complete stranger that I barely knew twenty years ago thinks about me? It upsets me to even acknowledge it.


But to return to the focus of this entry, when I think about my 20th class reunion, I begin to feel old. Not ancient, but at that point where a majority of people no longer consider me a young man. I have mentioned before that I have always had a youthful perspective on life, and think that I have a pretty young attitude, but if I ponder how old I am, I begin to feel older. So that got me thinking: how much of aging is dependent on how old you feel? I know that I am wiser in some areas of my life than I was when I was sixteen, and I know there are some things that I used to do when I was sixteen that I can't now that I am thirty-eight, but I still feel sixteen in my mind. So at what point to I begin to feel thirty-eight? Is sixteen the age at which I finally became fully aware of myself as a person and therefore am permanently fixed there, rooted in time? I just don't know, but when I'm sixty-four and my mind thinks I'm sixteen, I foresee problems.

Failure and Determination

I recently participated in Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page contest, found here: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/01/surprisingly-essential-first-page.html That was a difficult thing for me to do, but I had a current work in progress that I thought I would put out there and see what kind of reaction it got. It didn't get shredded by the few people that took on the task of trying to critique all the entries (there were nearly 700) but it didn't get any "wows" either. And I didn't win. Or even make the finalists list. I don't think I was even considered to be honest, and I can see why. The finalists really did have awesome first pages, especially the winner. Duh, right? Well, often I can find a way of saying, "Pshaw, my stuff is as good as that." Ha! Not this time. There were some good pages. The winner, who went by Heather!Ann! wrote a great first page that I definitely want to read more of. Nicely done Heather, if that's your real name. I was impressed.

There's nothing quite like a contest to make you feel inadequate. Well, not if you win the contest, but if you don't even place in a contest like this you begin to question yourself. If my first page wasn't good enough to be in the top ten of 675, then how is it going to be good enough to stand out in the thousands of stories that agents see every day? One person commented on the blog after the contest and stated that he wished he had never entered, because now his confidence was shaken. I can understand that. But does that mean I'm going to quit. Nope. I don't think I'm going to get any worse at this whole writing thing, at least I hope not, so what do I have to lose? I keep writing, I keep getting better, and maybe one day, that awesome first page will be mine. I still have plenty of stories to tell, and who knows which one of those might be the one that makes everyone stop and think, "Hmm. This might be the next big thing."

Writers often hear stories of how many times they were rejected before they finally got a book deal, just as entrepreneurs and inventors hear about how many time businesses and inventions failed before they finally succeeded. That's what I like to keep in the back of my mind. Every failure is another step toward success. There are those who succeed with their first novels and I congratulate them wholeheartedly. Jessica Verday, one of the members of the Querytracker.net community just signed with Rachel Vater, and she had the enviable displeasure of having to choose between four well-known agents that offered to represent her book. Wow! Is that better than paying your dues and getting rejected hundreds of times? I would say so! I also think Jessica paid her dues through her work, perfecting and polishing it until it was ready to go out. Alas, such fortune did not occur for me. I have learned much, and I do believe I am improving, so I will continue to tap away. I will wear keyboards out. I will watch laptops go obsolete, and maybe one day, it will happen to me, too. I just hope I'm still young enough to enjoy it.

Ninja and the Geek

Yes, ninjas. I have had a fascination with the whole idea of the ninja ever since I saw Berry Gordy's "The Last Dragon" back in the '80s. Sho 'nuff! Great movie, for as campy as it seems now. Taimak was really fantastic in it and at one point he dressed up in shinobi shozoku, or ninja uniform, and went to rescue his girlfriend from a group of thugs that were holding her captive. One guy armed only with some throwing spikes (shaken) and his fists taking on gangsters with guns! Man that would be awesome! Completely insane, as I learned from years of martial arts training, but, hey, it was a movie. And it was a lot of fun. Anyway, that inspired me and several buddies to spend the summer of 1985 skulking around our neighborhood in really cool black uniforms that we ordered from some martial arts catalog, throwing cheap shuriken at poor, innocent trees. Yeah, we were living the dream. Never once were we spotted taking out those trees either. You better believe it.

In the next few years I did a lot of research into the martial arts that the ninja studied and their methods, and as is usually the case with these sort of fantastical characters, once you start to learn about them, you find your illusions being shattered. The real ninjas were mercenaries, spies, and assassins. They handled the jobs that were too dirty or dishonorable for the nobles or elite samurai. There is a very famous story of a ninja who hid in an toilet for three days until the nobleman he was hired to assassinate came in to use it. I mean down inside the outhouse hole. You know there wasn't going to be a samurai doing that. Certainly not the glamorous image of a black-clad warrior throwing deadly blades and then disappearing into a puff of smoke. Though they were used, they were always looked down on by the upper class. They were thugs and gangsters, and though they had their place, they were not respected in the culture of the time. And worst of all, ninjas almost never wore the black uniforms that we all associate so clearly with ninjas! Their objective was to blend in and get close to their target, so they would most often dress as samurai or monks or peasants, whatever allowed them to assimilate with their surroundings. A peasant ninja? How boring, right? But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Even when ninjas performed night raids, they often wore dark green or blue, even purple to blend with the natural colors of the night and the surroundings. A purple ninja?? I could hardly even stand the thought! So many of my preconceptions about what made the ninja so cool were disproved, and I found myself disenchanted with them. I studied the samurai for some time and found that though their code (bushido) was appealing, it turned out that many of them were just as bad as the ninja. So now what? Well, sadly, I gave up on them.

Then, after a long hiatus from the ninja obsession, broken only by the revival of GI Joe and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, I played a game on PS2 called Ninja Gaiden, and you know what I decided? Who cares if the fantasy ninja never really existed? The fantasy is still fun and interesting. Yes, I know I'm probably too old to want to be a ninja, but I refuse to let it go. I probably won't be attending Ninja Academy this year, but I will always be a ninja in my mind. Who knows, I might even write a book. The world needs more ninjas.