Many Words

In celebration of Independence Day in my native Burkina Faso¹, I’m taking this week off. The finale of Nathaniel Cannon and the Lost City of Pitu will land when I’m back.

1. *cough*

As nearly any of my friends would tell you, I’m possessed of a healthy¹ ego. As large as my ego admittedly is, I know better than to pretend I’m better at this whole writing thing than I am. It would be the height of arrogance for me to offer advice on what you should do as a writer, and it would be stupid of you to take it. Since you’re not stupid², I’ll stick to something that I’m much more qualified to do: telling you about mistakes I’ve made in my infant writing career.

Today’s unforced error: what TVtropes calls Attention Deficit Creator Disorder³. It’s a serious problem of mine. You see, I’m a first-rate geek, and as you probably know, that entails an attraction to what might be termed ‘the shiny’, which I’m going to lean on as an explanation for the extensiveness of my Steam library, the rate of growth of my firearms collection, my propensity for saying things like, “Let’s build a trebuchet,” and most pertinently, the way I bounce around my ideas file. Some writers have the ability to keep a lot of plates spinning at once, but that’s absolutely not me. I can spin one plate, and if I try to get a second one going, they both end up on the ground.

It’s almost certainly exacerbated by the number of settings I have that cry out for attention (five separate universes comprising at least ten time periods and sets of characters), but in honesty, that’s neither here nor there. Every writer I know is tempted to flit from project to project, but I’ve only heard of the sort of writer who can do so and still finish projects (professionals probably have it easier than we amateurs).

So, how have I pushed myself to the finish line, as easily distracted by shiny new ideas as I am? It’s a three-pronged approach. One: I post my writing here. Having a deadline helps, even if it’s one I have a tendency to simply ignore. Two: I’ve stopped trying to write novels⁴. Unless I go at NaNoWriMo speed, I can’t keep my attention on one thing for long enough to make it work. The short story and the novelette are easier for me to bring to a conclusion. Three: I write in universes I delight in. Skypirates is one of those, as is Nexus (which I’ll be revisiting for my next story, although it won’t bear much resemblance to We Sail Off To War). The fantasy world needs some attention before I can include it in that category again.

That’s all, I guess.

1. Fortunately, they’re not writing this. Otherwise, I expect I’d have been given a less flattering adjective.
2. As evinced by how you saw what I did there.
3. Which is a fantastic name for it. I’m almost willing to forgive them for their preference for prosaic titles on articles like Eye Awaken (Eye Open is good, but Eye Awaken used to be Eye Opening Closing, and that’s a pun on at least three levels) and Complexity Addiction (descriptive, but Blofeld Complex is so much more evocative).
4. Even though that prevents me from writing a story in a world I really, really want to write in.

Happy weekend, dear readers!

As I sit here watching the London 2012 opening ceremony and wondering if they’ll ever get around to mentioning the five hundred years of naval history to which Britain owes its very survival¹. So far it’s not looking like they will.

That aside, though, I’ve been having a great week. On Thursday at work, I accidentally solved a pernicious problem with a certain GSM modem and emergency calling functionality while testing a different, more complicated variety. My first indication that I’d fixed something was the emergency dispatcher on the other end saying, “Hello? Hello?” Some hurried explaining and some removal of superfluous code later, I wrapped up two weeks of work with about six hours of actual work.

In other news, a new counterweight arrived for my trebuchet, a 50-pound kettle bell² that should turn the marginally-performing trebuchet into a 140-foot screamer. Unfortunately, it’s much too wide and not nearly long enough. Picture the scene: standing in my backyard, the trebuchet creaked under the weight of its potential energy. Also standing in the backyard, I pulled the rope that released the main arm. The long end swung up in a graceful arc, trailing the sling. The short end dropped, then swung back past the centerline, pulling the whole trebuchet over to fall pathetically backward to the ground. I’ll need to hack together an outrigger so it’ll stand up all the way through a firing, and I’ll need to go buy some more sling rings from Lowe’s (since it flung one of them off into the yard somewhere). I should also probably learn to tie better knots.

In endeavors that don’t require knot-tying skills my years as a Boy Scout somehow failed to instill in me, I added a Chinese-built Type 53 carbine to my firearms collection (built in 1955). It’s a pretty good shooter, probably on par with my M91/30, but it’s in an ancient, badly beat-up Chinese stock³. Since the action’s still in good shape, I’m going to move it into a Boyds’ thumbhole stock and add a long eye relief scope to turn it into something after the scout rifle pattern. Pictures may be forthcoming once I’ve started the project.

Finally, on writing, I’ve released We Sail Off To War in its complete edition to my elite cadre of volunteer editors. It’ll be available in e-book form, revised and expanded, with some never-before-seen bonus content, soon⁴. There’ll be an information page coming before the e-book does, with a justification for selling something that’s free here and details on availability.

1. If you remember We Sail Off To War, you’ll understand why I’m steamed about that.
2. Did you know that cast iron is really, really dense? The box it was in broke while the UPS guy was carrying it to the door.
3. I understand they used soft woods to deal with rot problems.
4. i.e. when it’s ready.