Happy Gojira Day! May you get strong and embrace the world. Loving the new album so far, still learning it. It's 100% Gojira with their chug chug chug weeerrowrow riffs but also a lot of new stuff too. A Wilson Phillips cover? Not quite but I did think my phone had went on shuffle the first time I heard Hold On.

In light of this auspicious and beautiful day I move that we extend the tax deadline to next month. All those in favour? Hello? Hello?

I know I have been pretty quiet this week, just been working away. April was a good month for writing for me. Entered two contests, lost both of them! But the stories I wrote are fun and may see the light of day in some other venue. One was about hitch-hiking, and the other was about mining. Two things I know a little about. Then I wrote the flash fiction I posted last week- more of a bonus than anything else. Also wrote and submitted a fun story about the River Styx and am just now working on yet another story about a cthulhu-esque monster. I was worried I didn't have any more of those in me but it turns out I still got one or two! But not done that one so I guess that will count towards May's writerly output. How are you doing? Urg now I need to do taxes.

Started the next Natalie Goldberg book, Wild Mind, and also started a new notebook for my writing warmup/practice. Naia got it for me for Xmas! In today's chapter of Wild Mind, Natalie said to write the first sentence of a story, and just keep going. So I did, using the cover for the inspiration. Came up with a fun and quick story, presented below:

She taped a sign that said “Super Great Ideas” and sat back to see what would happen. It was one of those community-wide garage sales and she had secured a table. Many people wandered by carefully avoiding making eye contact, but she didn’t have to wait too long for a curious customer to come by. 

“How much for one super great idea?” asked the man.

“Ideas are free,” she replied. “It’s putting them into practice that’s costly.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Alright, give me a super great idea.”

“Hmmm. Let me think. For you, the super great idea is to go home and clean out your garage.”

“That… doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. That just sounds like hard work.”

“Yes, it will be hard work. But once you’re done you will be able to use the garage for something super great.”

“Like what?”

“Sorry, one super great idea per person.”

“Ha. You know, I’ve always wanted a home gym, just been too lazy to start…” The man wandered off, dropping a five dollar bill in the tip jar on her table.

The next person who came by also asked how much ideas cost.

“It’s pay what you want. Ideas are so relative, what I think is a great idea you might think is just really bad advice. I don’t want to make anyone angry.”

“So, I can pay you after you give me the idea,” the woman said, nodding thoughtfully.

“Yes. Or! You can choose not to pay at all. Paying me zero dollars totally counts as pay what you want.”

“Ok, I’m ready. What you got?”

She thought for a second or two. “My idea is a combination coffee maker and poetry dispenser. But you have to write the poems.”

The woman raised her eyebrows and looked away to her right, squinting and thinking. “I’m not totally sure I can make it work mechanically, but with a little tinkering… maybe a little fudging on the actual delivery system…. I think I can make that happen! Thank you.” She dropped ten dollars in her tip jar.

And so it went, all day. She dispensed many super great ideas, and brightened many people’s days. She even made over a hundred dollars, which she donated to the women’s emergency shelter that this community sale was in support of. She walked home, which wasn’t far at all, and her Mom was there to greet her.

“How did it go?”

“Really good,” she replied. “That was a super great idea, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

I've found a bit of a rhythm the works for me as far as writing goes. In the past I did all sorts of things, especially sitting in a coffee shop. Or the library! I haven't been to a library in over a year... 

But these days I sit at home with my coffee (BB-8 mug!) and read from a book on writing. Writing Down the Bones is a good one, which I just finished today. More about the writing life rather than how to write, exactly. No one really knows how to write, I think. I certainly don't! I find I have to relearn for each piece. Especially when you have an idea but no clear route to get there. It's kind of like being dropped off on a completely featureless plain and told to find your way home. You know where you want to get to, but not how to get there, necessarily. 

So I write longhand, kind of like a journal but not one that chronicles my life, just talks about what I'm working on. What I need, what I'm unclear on. Then I will take another notebook and do a quick prototype, as they say in board game design, just get something to the table, don't worry about how ugly it is. Can always fix it later if it's worth fixing. This current story I'm working on I think I did mourner five rough prototypes before I finally figured out my way forward. Once I have a pretty confident idea I'll write up a neater, more precise draft in yet another notebook, often switching between notebooks and writing notes and revising and adding stuff.  

Finally I'll open up a document on the laptop and start typing. By the time I get to the typing phase I'm pretty confident that I know how to finish and that it will be a good story, at least a story that I would want to read, which is the only metric I really know how to judge my writing by.

It's not the most efficient, but it works, and it is robust enough that a lot of quality control kind of happens in the process. I do miss the days when I would just open up a new blog post on this very blog and come up with a poem or whatever in like an hour. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and it didn't require any editing afterwards. I have no idea how I did that! Writing is a complete mystery sometimes. No one really knows how to write and if they say they do, give them a hug (or a virtual socially distanced hug) because in an hour or a day or a week, they will be crying because they will realize they have no idea.

A year ago today I took these photos.  22 Loader, its electrical cabinet fried, retired. Shovel 10, parked and retired. Might still be right where we left them, I don't know. Maybe they were dismantled and sent away or scrapped. Oh and a photo of me, wearing a shield when all the pandemic stuff was still new and weird. Now it's old and weird.

 One day I hope to have an entire shelf of books I've written or contributed to. So far I don't quite have enough but slowly slowly. Other than The Ursus Verses there's three anthologies and a beer can. This one will soon be added:

I think it's looking good! The publisher says it should arrive sometime in the summer. Here's the Table of Contents:

Meantime I'm just writing away, little of this, little of that. You know. Having fun.

 Happy Easter! We are all just being chill. Taking Ahsoka to the park. Watching the Sam and Bucky show, maybe some King Kong Vs Godzilla later. Yay kaiju! Anyways we made Easter eggs and mine are (of course) a tribute to Gojira. Not the kaiju, the band. Here we have The Link:

And The Way of All Flesh: