Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Imagery and sentiments that whisper my name, had to invite others to enjoy it.
Getting dirty isn’t civil,
So we roll among the roots.
Shy sunlight peeks around,
Stretching fingers of the shoots.
Escape from concrete jungle,
To see my long-limbed friends.
Humanity is at war with them,
And yet none demand amends.
Make mine a quad.
Today, I’m only having a little pot (of coffee, that is) but tomorrow I’m having breakfast twice. I’ll tell you all about it then.
Meanwhile, let’s get the day started right, eh?
Tsk. I’d forgotten about the reset button.
I knew I had one. Every human has a reset button but I think most of us find using our reset button is like using ice cubes as charcoal briquettes. Speaking for myself, the biggest problem with my reset button is that it’s not clearly marked and easily reached. Be wonderlicious if my reset button was labeled to my navel’s left, “Press here to reset.” I’d even deal with it if I had to reach down on my bottom and thread a straightened paper clip into a tiny hole to find and press a minuscule button. But my reset button isn’t that easy.
Yet (sigh) a reset was indicated. The computers are freezing me out. I’m like a cave man, except I’m hairier, live in a house, don’t hunt, gather food at stores and markets, wear shoes, have electronic fun stuff and the electricity for them, and I don’t drive as well as a cave man. I’m reduced to not writing or writing in notebooks. I decided not to write in notebooks, except for notes, as the muses intended.
But it’s a painful withdrawal, not to sit and back space and click across a keyboard. Scenes bloom like red algae in my head. I tell myself, “Remember this to write later.” But my brain is an express lane. Only five items are permitted. Putting in notes to remember to write later bumps out my name, address and telephone number. Once they’re gone, matters like other people’s names and where I’m going have as much chance as an ice cube on a hot grill.
Took several days to remember the reset button. I owe it to Amazon. Entertaining myself, I watched a show, “All or Nothing,” about the Arizona Cardinals and their efforts to win the NFL championship. Someone made a big boo boo on the field and another player encouraged him, “Hey, that’s done. Reset.”
Yes, reset. Drop those past frustrations, errors and irritations like soiled underwear. Forgive and forget what I would normally be doing (writing) if my computer was here and working (sob). It’ll be back in two weeks, so reset.
Yes, reset. One lesson I once learned a dozen forty times is that vacuums don’t work for us as humans except when we can apply that technology to suck shit up. So I set to mind sucking that shit up and out. The other thing is that it’s not enough to proclaim that I’m resetting, dumping negative energy and going forward with a glowing positive aura. No,the things that provide me that delicious negative energy that I feast on must not only be rejected but needs to be replaced. See, that’s where the vacuum thingy comes in. Dumping the negative stuff creates a vacuum. See? Follow? Create a vision for going forward, I tells myself, as I’ve tolds myself eleven million and eleven times to the power of eleven before. That’ll bring in positive stuff to replace that negative stuff.
So, yarp, here I go again, on another day, hitting the reset button like it’s my existence’s snooze button. Let’s do this.
But first, some coffee.
Okay, reached the coffee shop with the Thinkpad and the Mini. The Mini is used for web connections to look up information and distract me while I play with my mind. The Thinkpad would only be used for writing in Word. This is the process as evolved through the previous days.
First, whatever the Thinkpad is doing, eating resources for a while, it’s unresponsive for the first fifteen minutes. My actions have reduced the lag but that lag still exists. While it’ sharpening, I end up re-committing to calm patience by gnawing off body parts (don’t worry, they’re from my body). The Mini permits me to check mail and news, read blogs, etc, basically be a time killer while I await the Thinkpad’s permission to start writing.
But it went to crap today. The mini refused to participate in posting a comment to this blog, and then, while typing another post, the words all disappeared. Actually, that’s an incorrect description. I would type and words would not appear beyond the first two paragraphs. Oh, it would pretend to type, moving along like words and spaces were showing up but there wasn’t anything discernible to my feeble, human vision.
I shut down that post, giving up on it for now, for my TP was ready to receive me Word input. Off I went, merrily clicking along –
Dead. No warning. Lights out.
I powered up again but about forty percent of what I’d written was gone. Using computers since 1981, I have a habit of saving frequently, yet it was no more. Of course, the machine was having trouble saving. It’s behavior has been inconsistent and bizarre. All tests are ‘normal’, and no hardware issues have been found. I’ve run exhaustive tests, attempted new profiles and other battles against corruption, but it remains troublesome.
I accept all of this today, though, as signs from our new masters that I’m not to do anything on computer today. Maybe it’s a take on that wonderful short story, “Friend’s Best Man”, but it’s the machines rising up through our keyboards, instead of the animals, and my computers are trying to save me.
So, later.
If we survive the revolution.
I’ve decided beering is my new verb.
Why not? We once had a company named Google. It was and is, a company with a search engine.
People loved searching with Google. Remember, this was a different era, what, almost eight years ago? Google and the Internet were very different then.
People loved searching with Google so much that they would say, “Search for that on Google.” Go ahead, you can search for that on Google. Then folks just began saying, “Google that for me,” and we all understood that meant to perform a search using Google.
So I’m embracing beering in a similar way. It used to be I’d say, “I’m going to have a drink,” or “I’m going to drink a beer.” It’s easier and saves time for me to just state, “I’m beering.” For variety, I could state, “I’m aleing,” or, “I’m portering.”
And now, I’m toileting. But first, let me tell you, auto-correct made this really difficult to type.
The computer doesn’t like ‘beering’.
Yesterday was a dark day but not of my usual sort. Pain of the exaggerated ‘don’t bother me, I’m dying’ breed began around the Sub-occipital muscles and stampeded my skull and my brain’s right hemisphere. Being the whiner I am, I wasn’t happy.
Suffering computer and writing withdrawal contributed to my low tolerance for pain. Hey, I’m STRESSED OUT! Writing on the old Thinkpad reminds me of traveling on an old coal fed steam locomotive. Lot of chug-chug-chug action to open windows, or even change words or write more than thirty characters in Word. Chug-chug-chug. I write in snapshots so I’ll have parallel scenes in development, requiring me to jump between docs. Chug-chug-chug. Looking up something on the intertubes…chug…chug… Chug. Chug chug chuuuuggg. Chuuuuugggggggggggg. The computer then paused, let out a gasp and wiped its screen, telling me, “Whoo, this is tough hauling. All up hill to get to the good data.”
So, while back at home, logging changes made and attempting more fixes, I sat back in the office chair, closed my eyes…and napped.
I dreamed during the nap. I was walking on gray asphalt. It was sunny and hot. My shadow was about fifteen degrees off true. Right was part of a bridge’s cement structure. Painted white, it was last touched up a decade or more past and its facade was worn.
All I saw was my shadow, my feet, the asphalt and the cement. Then I drew near the bridge’s end. Ahead was the gravelly dirt shoulder with heavy green weeds and brambles. I stepped off the bridge. While doing so, I looked down and saw I was stepping into a hole between the bridge and shoulder. I fell off into nothing.
Blackness rose before fear shook me awake. Telling my wife about it, she noted the bridge and it’s possible significance, and the fact that I was walking into the unknown, that I didn’t know it, and I was frightened. Yeah, but…isn’t the future unknown? So aren’t I always walking into the unknown?
So, no simple interpretation arose, but my headache was gone, and that was worth the dream by itself.
Turn off the word corrections
process me with dna
gmo me in the mall
market me in the home
spin the spins that I hear
pour the sugar into my mouth
shoot me up with immortality
Skin me with spf
plop me down on a couch
arm me against death
warn me against settling
And point me toward a pokemon
give me some credit
I’m streaming 5G
dancing while I shop
winter is coming
And you know nothing,
can you hear me now?
I’m fine
Just countin days till I die
Tryin to dredge up a will to survive
veggin on tv scenes
I’m fine
Wishin death would come
Permittin me to end this run
sleepin with my eyes open
I’m fine
Talkin to my machines
Because they’re the only ones who seem to seem
to care about what I say
So when you ask how r u? 🙂
I don’t care if you smile and walk away
Bcuz we both know what I’ll say
I’m fine
Words from the the spectrum’s dark side
Definitely checking this out. Love flash fiction but I’m too unwieldy with my words, so maybe I can gain insights while learning and being entertained.
Flashes of War, by Katey Schultz
Sadly, there’s a lot to write about war in recent years, and there’s sameness to much of what’s written about it, whether fiction of non-fiction. The horror of combat, in which one’s mortality is constantly at the fore. The comradeship between combatants, something hopelessly misunderstood by most readers. And the alienation of combatants upon their return home, home a reality that doesn’t seem as real as that within a war theater.
Katey Schultz writes of these tropes, but she does it with deep insights into the humanity of those involved. Her stories here are set in Afghanistan, Iraq, or “back in the world” today’s soldiers left to fight its generation’s war. Never one-sided, her stories are sketches of these people, the American combatants, the Iraqi and Afghani civilians, the families back home in the U.S., all of whom cope with the trials of trying to…
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This is exactly the process I’ve evolved, and for the reasons given. While I’m an organic, feel it and follow writer, structure and focus are critical needs for me while I’m editing and revising. The outline isn’t fancy, and varies in length and complexity, depending on the scope of the novel, but it’s a very useful guide and reference.
by Kelsie Engen
Today we’re going to talk about how to approach the next revision step: developmental edits. Basically this means addressing the major, structural issues of your WIP before moving on to the minor things.
This step comes after you’ve read your first draft, made some comments or jotted down ideas.
Of course, whether you’ve merely jotted down ideas, or come up with new pacing suggestions, or discovered some character motivations, etc., at this point you should create a new outline.
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Michael Seidel, writer 