Writing

Finding the end of a book is a miracle, and I'm still waiting for mine.

Audiobook

Was on a good spree of editing Part II, and then discovered several chapters that need to be re-recorded due to poor audio quality. Not sure what happened to them but they sound awful and unsalvageable. Don't have to start over, but will have to get in the swing of narration again.

Music

Been playing and writing, and I've experienced real joy in creation, but it has also been hard. It has been very humbling to discover my limitations as a guitarist. I found my limits much faster than I wanted to and while YouTube has been an invaluable resource for music theory and song-learning, it also makes me feel like I know nothing in comparison, and that as far as I come it is only a fraction of the way up a colossal, endless mountain. And yet I know that mountain is one that every guitarist scales forever, except maybe Hendrix, who stood next to it and chopped it down.

Podcast

Have mostly finished editing the six episodes Eric and I recorded in person. Feels good to reach the end of the editing and have things to publish. We're also launching a Patreon! So stay tuned.

Reading

Read Part II of East of Eden in preparation for the podcast (Part 1 out now!). Also re-reading LOTR, and it's wonderful. It is amazing how much I have forgotten. I think there is some idea in the cultural conversation that we understand and remember LOTR because it was so huge and is such a presence in the fantasy genre, but when you go back and read it, it still feels fresh and different, and I have discovered things in the reading I had forgotten, like the Dimrill Dale and Unfading Grass of Lothlorien. I highly recommend going back and taking your time with it. It is not one to speed read or try to get through for plot. It is like a living vision, filled with magic and whimsy, that must yet face the evil without as well as the evil within.

Listening

Hendrix and Slash for inspiration and humility on guitar. Picked up a copy of Handel's music at the thrift store I plan on going through. Perhaps I am preaching to the choir, or this statement may sound trite, but I have been awed by the richness in classical music; and while I know that it is still played and enjoyed today I can't help feeling that there has been something lost from the public consciousness, which does not have the patience to sit through a concert or appreciate the nuances of music that takes time to build themes and tell stories in sound without lyrics... A fair amount of that is probably my natural curmudgeon, but give this a listen and tell me how you feel: La Creation Du Monde, Op. 81 (Creation Of The World) (1923)

Found it on a local radio station and it took me places more modern music can't.

#update #reading #writing

First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Music | Patreon | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github

Book 2

Work continues. People ask me about it and I wish I had more to give or show, but the truth is I won't until it's published, or very close to published. I have taken to using my wife's old typewriter to try and find the end. For now I'm re-writing draft material to try and stitch it together into coherency, which will hopefully be a springboard towards the end end. I have been going back to Tolkien as an inspiration, since that is where all this started for me, and I took heart from the fact that he finished all of LOTR before it was published. He considered it all one novel. So I'm sorry if it takes longer before you see anything new, but I have to find the end in the way I see fit.

Other Writing

I published Playing Wolfenstein II this month. It was a draft that I dug up and edited a bit. Unfortunately Book 2 is my main focus, and my limited free time doesn't leave much left over for other projects. Which is maybe a good thing. I've been possessed by a reactionary distaste for contemporary publishing (as always happens when I'm in the midst of drafting) that I've been using to fuel my time at the typewriter, and I'm not convinced I could write any other project without bitterness.

Audiobook

Work continues. It has fallen a bit by the wayside as I focus on getting my pages for Book 2 before anything else, but I've been editing and putting up chapters on Patreon. It will probably be awhile before people can listen on YouTube, since I also plan on doing a map for the videos, but I have a workflow for editing the chapters now, so if you want to hear Part II you can get access to the RSS on Patreon.

Music

Jammed with some friends for my birthday, and played music with another dear friend. As always happens after these sessions, I am beset with a deep desire to start a band. But I think I just need to be patient. I can see a lot of things coming into place in the future, and I know God will show me my place in it in due time. In the meantime... I'll keep writing songs, and I may even have something else to share this month.

Reading

Who else could I read this month but Virginia Woolf? I gave her a toast on her birthday (because it's also mine!), while reading the essay Modern Fiction, and let me say it is no less true in 2024 than it was in 1925:

”...the analogy between literature and the process [...] of making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making literature. We do not come to write better; all that can be said to do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle.”

What medicine for a grumpy writer like me. And if, reading this, you have a bitter reaction against my curmudgeonly ways, I'm sorry. The whole point is: write the way you want to write and read what you want to read. If that matches with the contemporary style in whatever genre you fit into, then go for it; but if not, do not be afraid to break the rules and trust yourself. No one but you can write your words for you.

If you'd like to read the rest of Modern Fiction you can rent the Common Reader (in which it was published) for free on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/commonreaderfirs0000wool/page/194/mode/1up

Black History Month

This month I'll be finishing Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, and hot damn, what a book so far. The man has made something truly beautiful out of the speech and vocabulary of the black church and community surrounding it. It's been really difficult to stop reading, and the way the characters wrestle with faith and life and church and family and society has hit pretty hard.

I also plan on listening to Son House, as I love the blues but have regrettably neglected a lot of the old stuff besides Robert Johnson. I also like that Son House started out as a preacher. His song “Preachin' Blues” has some great lines, and the man's dobro playing is gut-wrenching. It is so fresh to listen to because you can hear him growling as he plays hard notes. It's a great antidote to the “showy” style of playing today, that seems more about impressing people on Instagram than expressing an emotion.

I also recommend Shemekia Copeland and Don Shirley. Seriously, Don Shirley is an American treasure. His Gershwin Medley is a masterpiece, and his version of A Bridge Over Troubled Water is my favorite of all time...

A final quote from Virginia because this is my blog and I can indulge myself if I want to

“But any deductions that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far apart [Russian and English] are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit to the horizon, and that nothing — no “method”, no experiment, even of the wildest — is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. “The proper stuff of fiction”does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.”

#update #writing #reading #blackhistorymonth

First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Patreon | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github

Speaking of deficiencies, my resolutions this year are to organize my tools and spaces (kitchen, basement, garage etc), and to read all those “dangerous” books for myself (Book of Mormon, Marx, Quran, Mao). I've started the Book of Mormon already and it's rather strange. I'll try to reserve my harsher judgments until I've finished it.

Book 2 and Audiobook

I'm making progress, currently adding previous draft material to the end, and I'm enjoying it, which is nice. Will have to start drafting new stuff soon but I don't really dread it.

Sorry for all the fans waiting for part 2 of the audiobook. Though judging from YouTube there aren't many of you. Still, I slacked off and will try to get in the habit of chipping away at it so I can be almost done. I also have to start drawing my map. The sooner the better since I know I'll probably have to practice a lot before it starts to look publishable.

Other stuff

I've got a 100 word story I might try to submit to some places before I publish it on here, and I'm also toying with querying some for book 1 and 2. I've got a friend who is going through the process and it has been convicting me. My query is a little awkward now since it is a hybrid, but I think the industry has evolved enough that I won't be instantly rejected if I submit to the right places. I'll never know if I don't try.

Reading, listening

Have been reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. I also read a random Halo book. Jane Austen is really remarkable and I'm glad I finally listened to my wife and picked up Mansfield Park. It is very seamless, and the reading is a bit difficult, but like a lot of good Lit it is very rewarding. Once you get used to the prose you just sort of sink into the novel and get enfolded in the narrative and the connections between the characters. Austen seems very conscious of what she is doing, giving you points of views and internal dialogues just when you start to suspect people, so that she confirms your suspicions and makes you feel like a detective whose theory has been validated. Fun stuff and very good exercise for my writing muscle.

Three Guineas has also been wonderful, and I'm going to try and finish it for my birthday and Virginia's. It is a difficult one to quote since Virginia builds on everything that comes before and she is very intricate. She starts by trying to answer how we are to prevent war (an unfortunately relevant question going into 2024), and since Three Guineas was written when women were starting to join the workforce she asks how women are to help prevent war (and protect culture and intellectual liberty). I'm sure a lot of people read it as strictly feminist, but there is a lot of meat with Virginia and it has a lot of applications (especially for writers). I am considering doing an essay on Three Guineas, so I won't try to do a full summary here, but it's too good not to quote, so I'll just leave here Virginia's concept of intellectual Chastity:

“By chastity is meant that when you have made enough to live on by your profession, you must refuse to sell your brain for the sake of money. That is you must cease to practise your profession, or practise it for the sake of research or experiment; or if you are an artist, for the sake of art; or give the knowledge acquired professionally to those who need it for nothing.”

Read Here.

I also discovered a blues artist, Shemekia Copeland, on the radio. The song I heard was “In the Blood of the Blues,” and the lyrics were powerful. If you like blues, I'd encourage you to give it a listen. Shemekia flips the typical blues paradigm of “my woman done left me” and does a lot of creative and poignant things with the framework. Some other favorites are “The Talk,” “Driving Out of Nashville,” “The Wrong Idea,” and “Would You Take My Blood?”

Until next month.

#update #reading #writing #january2024

To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Patreon | Ko-Fi | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github

Book 2

I am chipping away. I'm reading through it again after adding some draft material. On this read through I am tweaking prose (always tweaking prose), but also reorganizing and borrowing a scheme from Steinbeck's East of Eden. Essentially I am adding a subheading, and having a new chapter every time I switch locations. This will hopefully add some clarity for the reader, and break it up into nice chunks that can be read in short sessions. I will undoubtedly run into difficulties with this, but hopefully it will be worth it, and at the end of the read through I'll be looking at adding more draft material and trying to draft new material through to the end of the story.

Dawn Must Follow Night Audiobook

This fell by the wayside as I tend to prioritize writing book 2 when I don't have time for anything else, but I did re-record a section of bad audio that was blocking my editing. So now I should be able to pick up the editing and start getting chapters exported. Those will go up on Patreon when I get them done. Then I will schedule PeerTube videos, and lastly weekly YouTube videos. The best way to get and listen to the audiobook is definitely Patreon, since the YouTube process is slow, not to mention the organization of everything. All Patreon subscribers get access to a podcast feed, and you get to listen to new chapters as soon as they go up.

I should mention that I will be working on a map to use as the background of the audiobook videos (as well as Book 1 2nd edition and Book 2), and I will probably upload it to Patreon when it's done.

Music

Was able to jam with the guys and it was a lot of fun. I have been thinking about recording an album for Bandcamp and trying to perform out at a couple places for a long time — but the key phrase there is “thinking about it”. I don't know when I'll have the time to make it a reality, but I'll keep trying.

Podcast

Eric and I haven't forgotten about it. We just have a family and kids. Might not get anything recorded until after the holiday season.

Marketing

Ugh. I'm trying to get more comfortable with marketing and self-promotion. It is difficult, but I am tired of making virtually nothing from my work. I do feel the quality I put out is at least as good as some bigger channels/authors/musicians. I don't really have much ambition beyond having a few supporters and readers, and maybe enough income to allow me to do more writing once the kids are in school, and it's time to get back into the workforce. Right now I'm just trying to start with a newsletter through this blog.

My approach to marketing can be summed up by a couple Needtobreath songs:

“All of this work and I ain't seein' any wages. I ain't gonna stop until I do” — Tyrant Kings

“Don't wanna know where the money is, it's just another tragedy trying to take its toll again, Don't wanna know where the money is.” — Where The Money Is

It is probably not the most lucrative approach, but I don't want marketing to take me over. I am not too proud to think that I can't be influenced by that world. In a way, I am kind of glad I didn't find much success with the first book. I wonder what it would have done to my ego. I am at a place now where I can say with some confidence that I don't think I would change my process even if I became a bestseller. I have always valued the art more than what the art earns, and I don't really want to compromise my creative freedom just to sell some copies. And if I were successful, and I could write full time, I might not have as much to draw from because I would not be living a real life. I would forget what it is like to struggle at a job, to take care of kids, to budget tightly.

I often think about this quote from Francis McDormand: “You have to get away from the theater or from the set and live life. If you work constantly from job to job, you're living in a fantasy world and you have nothing else to offer than fantasy.”

I am speaking from a place of privilege since I don't depend on my writing income (thank God), but with AI threatening writing jobs, isn't it time we stop valuing art for what it earns? I think most people would tell you they don't like things just because they are popular, yet it seems the only way to communicate that something is “good” or successful is if it has sold a lot of copies. What about artistic success? What about the vision? What about the message? How many of us can truly look at a piece of art or read a book and say with confidence that it is “good” unless we also know that a lot of other people say it is “good?”

I wonder if we should start labeling art the same way we label our food. It would introduce similar difficulties with food in that the labels can be misleading. But maybe we could say art that is made by a single person or a few people whose primary motive is art for art's sake is #organic.

I don't have any answers, and I'm not really in a place where I can find them. Regardless, I'll keep writing. I hope you do too.

What I've been reading

This month I read a collection of Wordsworth's verse, selected by R.S. Thomas (a random library pull) that I really enjoyed. I took my time with it since it's old poetry, but man was it worth it. Some of it definitely flies into the stratosphere, but when it lands (and it often does), it sticks:

“Sweet is the lore that Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: — We murder to dissect.”

— From The Tables Turned

The power of Nature to teach and feed our soul is one theme I noticed, as well as the power of childhood memory and the way it shapes and informs the rest of our lives. It saddens me that the long form poem is going out of style, and even when long poems are written they are barely read. It is a rich experience that can be compared to listening to a concept album, but more rich lyrically, and more free to branch out and paint with impressions and visions.

Some of my favorites were the Ode to Duty, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, and To Sleep among many others. I felt like underlining and/or sharing on every other page.

I also read a random Terry Prachet book about Poo that was fun, and Alan Noble's You Are Not Your Own. I really loved You Are Not Your Own, and while I think Noble sometimes overstates in his effort to challenge culture and its way of thinking, his thesis is very solid. He asserts that we live in a world that tells us that we are our own and responsible for our every action. This is a great freedom and also a crushing weight, since life often runs contrary to what we envision for ourselves. The result is that we turn to coping mechanisms such as social media, TV, online games, porn, drugs, and more. But those coping mechanisms let us down. Ultimately, our only comfort is belonging to Christ. Maybe that thesis turns you off, but he tempers it and balances it with a lot of examples and a balanced presentation that I would recommend for anyone whether they are a believer or not.

#update #reading #writing #organic #december2023

To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Patreon | Ko-Fi | Podcast | Mastodon | Twitter | Github

I have decided to start doing semi-regular updates for what I am working on and what I am reading and consuming. At most I will publish one once a month.

Writing

For those wondering, yes, I am still working on a sequel to Dawn Must Follow Night. I have made a fair bit of progress, but I still don't really know when I will reach the end. It feels close, and we will see how it comes out. I could very well conclude the series in a second book, but the pull of the trilogy for fantasy writers is strong. If I get enough draft material it will be hard to resist it.

I also have some ideas for fiction/non-fiction. I have a short story completed that I will take a look over and probably put up on here. It's quite weird, but some of the sentences I found are really fun. I also can't get Colonization of the Internet out of my head, and like the video games in my backlog I refuse to uninstall I swear I'll finish it. It is long overdue.

I have now narrated all of Part II and am starting on editing. I already know I'm going to have to re-record one of the chapters due to a weird microphone mishap. The chapters will go up on Patreon when they're done, and then once a week on YouTube. I might also take the opportunity to finally make a version of my map that I can use in the video, and also in 2nd edition of book 1 and eventual sequel.

Podcast

We will be on hiatus for a very important reason, which I plan to announce on a short episode. Our comeback episode will be Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. You can pick up a copy if you'd like, or read my essay on here. We also plan to announce that it's time to start reading East of Eden, and how many pages/chapters for our first episode on it.

Current Reading List

• The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

  • I've been barreling through this one since I want to start East of Eden on time. Jordan's overstated prose and meandering for over 600 pages is starting to wear, but some of the scenes are truly worth reading for. Notably Rhuidean, Perrin back in the Two Rivers, the dream sequences, and others I'm sure I've rushed through. I've also enjoyed a few quiet moments between characters that are otherwise always glaring at each other and cutting each other down. Elayne and Thom got to have a pleasant chat onboard a ship while dolphins glittered alongside. And Perrin got to sit under the moonlight overlooking a Whitecloak camp. Nynaeve remains my least favorite main character because she bullies literally everyone she meets, and is so powerful she rarely gets humbled. Aviendha was a surprisingly fun new character, and I mostly liked the other Aiel characters. But I'm definitely going to need a break before starting Book 5.

• The City of God by St. Augustine

  • Have been dipping into this and meditating on it. I'm due to dip back in soon. Usually come away convicted and fascinated at how applicable Augustine is to the modern day and church. It's a different culture and a different time, and it's not easy reading by any means, but the Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and it is inspiring and helpful to see how a mind like Augustine's applies It. I've been mulling over his indictment of plays that depict the immoral deeds of the gods, even when the play paints them disapprovingly. I thought of popular television shows fascinated with awful people. Whether or not the show depicts their deeds in a favorable light, they still show the deeds, and Augustine would assert that it gives people an example to use as an excuse.

#update #writing #reading