The Importance of Showing Up

I am sick, sore, and more tired than I can possibly put into words.

Time to write anyway.  It won’t be my best, but it will be, and more often than not that’s the key to success.

Just showin’ up.

As far as Providence goes, that’s all she wrote for now.  I wanted to do a lot more things for that particular story.  I wanted to spend more time fleshing out both the character and the world she inhabits.  It’s a fascinating world, one full of intrigue and interesting technologies.  The alien menace also struck me as a wonderful mixture of technology and mysticism.  It’s hard getting that mixture right, and in the end all my work devolves into sci-fantasy given enough time.  There ought to be a principle, a mathematical equation which shows how long it takes for me to write a work before it becomes a mixture of science and fantasy.

When I go truly professional, when I get to hang up the day-job hat and focus exclusively on writing and content creation, I’m going to make research a much bigger portion of my work.  I want the science to be as absolutely dead on as I can make it.  I want to correspond with scientists in various fields, make sure I’ve done something as close to accurate as I can make it, then I want to crank on the magic.  Just a touch, nothing insane, but enough so that it makes a really fantastic shift in the known sciences.

Imagine the recent technology push for charging electronic devices without a wire by using an ambient power station which sends the power out in waves.  Your things charge automatically and without your knowing.  It’s highly mobile, almost unnoticed.  What if you had a power device which was mobile, provided nearly limitless amounts of minor power (think your mobile USB charger levels of power output), and allowed for a device to be powered almost constantly.  So long as you kept the power station, and kept the electronic device from being damaged, you’d have power.  Rain, shine, flood, hurricane, tornado, power blackout, crash landing on an alien planet with only those two things.  I mean, the sky is the limit, and I’m just spit-balling, but it’s not like I’ve spent serious and significant amounts of time contemplating that very thing.

*throat clear catawampus*

So here’s another interesting twist on things that I’ll be pursuing.  What about Native American fiction, only instead of it being about what happened to their culture at our hands (spoilers: it was genocide), I’m thinking that I’ll flip the script.  Anglo-Saxon Christian culture has significant blind spots when it comes to Native American histories and practices.  I’d love to write a story where a young Native American woman is the Chosen One, and a DOOM is visited upon the planet that is Native American in origin.  I’d have to study to find something that fit, and something that would be culturally appropriate as a thing which wanted to end all of humanity.  Instead of being abused and marginalized (like they are now), instead we would be entirely dependent on them to survive said doom.  It would require the NA protagonist to learn about her cultures history, to rediscover the ancient ways of her people, and using their long history and accurate interpretation of the spirit world, we would all be saved.

I write because I like giving marginalized groups a face and a voice.  I know that I’m just a run of the mill cis white guy, and I know that I’m neither smart enough nor wealthy enough nor savvy enough to make a more lasting change to improve their fortunes, but this is what I can do.  I can give them stories where those like them, whose culture is theirs, are called upon to save the world.  Where it is their knowledge and connection to nature and their balance with the land that saves everyone from the apocalypse only they saw coming.  It is those sorts of stories that motivate me to sit here in my chair at 5 AM and continue to mash the keys like they owed me money.

I mentioned earlier in the week that I would be using today to review a book, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t really read much anymore.  I had a really, REALLY bad last two years, and my mental state is not what it once was.  I’ve put on more weight than I could’ve imagined, and I also have a lot of problems with getting enough sleep and being able to focus.  Things are resolving themselves into more clarity, but it’s been extremely hard to push myself to read like I once did.  I used to crush multiple books at once and finish them in a week or so.  Now?  Now I’ve been reading David Butler’s first book for almost three months and I’m still not done with it.  I have his second one waiting in the wings, and he was even incredibly nice and sent it to me for free.  I think his hope was that I would read it and review it.  He knows me well, for I shall indeed do both.  I just hope I manage to finish it before the next Ice Age starts and we’re all robots with access to all knowledge instantaneously.

Anywho.  I know today’s post was mostly just me rambling on about various projects, but the new format requires a lot more windup than the usual 500 – 750 words.  The new length is nearly four times that amount.  So I’m going to use Sunday as the day where I write the whole story in one go, then I’ll simply update the story on Monday and Friday.  Maybe that will give me a chance to get some sleep without feeling like I am shucking my responsibilities.

All my love,

The Unsheathed Quill