Time Supply

Aug 20, 2010 Daily Writing, Life

I love the “new world,” this place where everyone is connected all the time, this thing that the internet has gradually morphed into that allows such close and constant contact. It’s a glorious place.

But it’s also a major time sink. And given that time sink, it’s also a major worry. that worry being this: if I’m not participating, I’m not succeeding.

As you can tell, I’ve been away from the keyboard often recently. The day job has been monstrously huge for the past six weeks or more, and there have been vacations and events and travel both within the US and international. I barely have enough time to write a little, better yet read, and better yet keep up with the blog and my fledgling attempts to absorb what Twitter can do for me. And that’s the order of priority–family & work, then writing, then fitness, then reading, then socializing, then anything else.

I admit that I’ve gotten a bit worn down the past couple weeks, and allowed the “anything else” to step in front of socializing–just because it’s easier to sit like a lump on the couch than to actually think.

Regardless of any particular order of priority, I wanted to take a moment to say that one of the things I don’t like about this new and wonderful world is the aspect of competition that seems to be inherent in this social element of the game now. By that, I mean that by stepping out of the blog for a week or two, I find myself feeling that I’m losing ground to everyone else–that going silent is akin to not swimming in the tides required for success as a writer in today’s new world. The intellectual side of my brain says that writing a good story is still the main element of success in this field–that if you write as well as you can write, the rest will take care of itself. But that’s not what the emotional side of my brain says (and I’m apparently one of those weird people who is not dominated by one side of my brain or the other, instead they just bicker back and forth until settling on some compromise).

The intellectual side of my mind says this world of writing fiction is not a competition, but my emotional brain looks at the intellect and semi-calmly calls bullshit.

This is my current little paranoia as I settle back down into something that almost resembles a normal cycle of life and working. I’m sure I’ll recover just fine, and be back to it around here in no time flat.

In the meantime, I suppose I should not that I’ve been progressing moderately well with my efforts on the latest novel. I have one issue that needs to get resolved before I can say I actually know the full story, but these things have their ways of working out.

So fear not, those few of you out there still wandering around here, my silence does not mean that progress has stopped. Only that time is in short supply.

Back from India

Aug 8, 2010 Life

I haven’t posted about it, of course…but I’ve been in India for the past ten days or so for business purposes. Got lots done, experienced a truly different culture, and had much fun meeting its people on their “home turf.” I’ll write more on this in the future, I suppose. We shall see.

And, yes, managed to do some writing, too. But not a ton.

Returned home Saturday, and have basically slept from that point forward (I don’t sleep well on airplanes, so I had been awake for about 48 hours when I got home).

After three weeks of travel and hosting the parents and whatnot, it looks like life will get back to normal starting tomorrow.

Definitely nice, I think.

Chicago Survives Us

Jul 22, 2010 Life

So, yeah. It’s been a few days, eh? Sorry about that again. Work has been a pain, and we’ve been traveling, and blah, blah, whah, whah…

But, it’s all true. I swear it is.

Here’s a picture I took of Chicago to prove it.

While there we also saw several interesting things like the Cirque Shanghai acrobats, and the art institute. So, there’s my get out of jail free card. What’s that, you say? I could have updated in the hotel room? Well, yeah, technically that’s right. But by the time we got back there each night we were pretty well done-in. Chicago for us, you see, is all about the walking (I estimate we did 13+ miles the last day).

Other good things about the trip:

- Lunch with Brigid & Nick (twice!)
- Seeing parts of Transformers 3 being filmed
- A boat tour (first time after all these years)
- Berry Chill

So, anyway. I didn’t mean to talk about that today. Instead, I was going to talk about the publishing industry. I’ve been thinking a lot about things the past few weeks–past few months actually. And since I’m in this weird space where I was coming up through the ranks five or so years back, then took a detour, and am now back again, I’m in a personal position to make some commentary about what’s changed and how it affects us newbies (yeah, I know I don’t qualify as a newbie in some circles, but I figure that I’m a newbie until I’ve been publishing novels for five years. So there you go).

After working in this new world for a few months now, I’ve got a few thoughts about the publishing industry, and so for the next few posts I’ll be stringing along a running, stream-of-consciousness ramble about things I think are relevant to newish writers as well as to readers as a whole.

Consider this your warning. [grin]

The Search, The Conversation

Jul 14, 2010 Life

I was looking for my jump drive this morning. It was nowhere to be found. Lisa watched me with some reasonably self-contained humor as I determined that it was probably still at work.

Run time up to later this morning. Here is a rough copy of an IM conversation we held.

Ron: BTW, I found my jump drive. It was in my shoe.
Lisa: Of course.
Ron: I thought you would like that.
Lisa: My only question is whether you found it before you put your shoes on or after.
Ron: I always check my shoe for jump drives before putting them on.
Lisa: Uh huh.
Ron: You never know when those buggers will crawl in there.

Filters … Grrrrr

Jul 9, 2010 Life

I enjoy work, and I support a corporate environment’s right and need to filter what their employees are allowed to see while at work. That’s all good. And I work at a place that has a very workable and professional policy toward the use of the Internet. I like that.

I admit, however, that I struggle to see why we let ESPN and stories about Lebron James through, but block Scientific America. I’m sure it’s something in the group we’ve (likely) outsourced to.

But these are the kinds of things that just make you wonder.