Little Bird after her t-ball opening game

It’s funny how I shoot several photos during the game for Photo Friday, yet it’s the quick candid on the way home that makes the grade. I suspect it’s because I’m just not trying too hard.

I’m also a bit disappointed in the performance of my Canon 55-250mm lens. It’s not bad, especially given its an entry-level lens, but I’ve noticed it just doesn’t get very sharp photos of subjects at longer distances. Granted I need to work on my sharpening skills in Photoshop and Lightroom, but I feel like I should be getting better results straight off the camera. If I start saving some bucks now, maybe I’ll have enough for a real lens by the time the rugrats get into high school sports.

Bonus photo: while one rugrat was playing baseball, another tried to sneak up and take me out.

He tried to shoot me in the back!

He didn’t count on my keen powers of observation as he crept from tree to tree behind the bleachers, and my shutter finger beat his trigger finger. To his credit, though, none of the other families on the bleachers noticed. Solid Snake would be proud.

For the first time, I feel like I can actually finish this crazy Warrior Dash thing.

I’m not going to pretend it was a record-setting pace or a particularly outstanding run, only that for me it’s a milestone. My first lap or two I started to worry I didn’t wait long enough after dinner, as I’d started off better during my last run on Wednesday. However, by the end I kept telling myself “just one more lap” and decided I’d keep doing so until I knew I’d put three miles under my feet. Even better, while  my calves did start to lock up, by the end of the run they’d loosened back up and I had no problems.

Now I’m going to celebrate by doing the weight lifting workout I missed last night: arms and shoulders.

Also, a reminder: my Warrior Dash run is also an attempt to raise some cash for the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I’m a little over halfway to my goal of a mere $250. If you would like to help out, please click on over to my fundraising page. Thanks!

It’s a great and entertaining talk, one that designers will find interesting and anyone looking to self-publish their own work should watch to get an idea of how much thought can go into book design.

Around the 13:00 mark, though, Kidd says “Try experiencing that on a Kindle!” and starts to discuss the things that can’t be done with an e-book and the differences in the experience between a print book and an e-book. He makes some valid points, of course: I know few readers who haven’t smelled their books, relished the feel of deckled edges and raised type, or played around with die-cut dust jackets.

Can we say for certain, though, that e-books will never produce a related experience?

Right now, e-books are still in the gimmick stage. There are guys throwing short animations or sound effects into comics, embedding video in e-books, developing books that are interactive apps, and so forth. While they are cool things a book’s paper counterpart can’t do, they have yet to become an integral part of the story or a part of the experience of the book. Sure, it’s an experience with the iPad or the Kindle, but not necessarily with the book itself.

As much as I enjoyed Kidd’s presentation, I would love to see people like him turn their disdain for the e-book experience into a creative drive to elevate the e-book experience. It doesn’t have to replicate the paper experience (hell, maybe it shouldn’t), it just needs to bring its own experience. If the words on the screen aren’t enough, then shit, Chip, tell the damned software engineers what else you’d like them to do.

I bet Amazon and Apple will listen.

Davidoff Special R

This cigar came in a three-stick boxed set I received as a Christmas gift, so I’ve been sitting on it a while. I really needed a cigar Saturday night, and a good one, so I picked this one.

I didn’t think a lot about the flavor as I had a lot of other things on my mind. I remember it being medium-bodied, clean in taste, with maybe a little leather. I remember it not tunneling despite the wind coming right into my face, and in fact it still had a nice, conical cherry every time I tapped its ash (it’s as pleasant as it sounds dirty).

It was the right cigar at the right time, just as a premium brand like Davidoff should be. I just wish they were easier to come by around here, as I only have one left in the box.

I wonder what tonight’s weather is supposed to be like…

Almost too quiet.

The wind is steady and strong, blowing through the trees and drowning out even the toads and cicadas in the fields. An American flag flies over my neighbor’s driveway, and it snaps and pops in the breeze while the orange streetlamp shines through its stars and bars. After that it’s just the sound of the living room stereo streaming tunes through the window behind me.

“Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me…”

I’m sitting under this year’s Supermoon with a Davidoff cigar. It’s a half hour before the first car comes down the street, a dark blue, late model Mustang with a throaty growl from under the hood. It pulls over three doors down and seconds later a pickup backs out of the drive. They roll off up the street together.

The kid in me says there are no drivers; they’re two Transformers heading out to kick some ass. Are they Autobots? Decepticons? Either way, it’s gonna be epic.

The crime/horror writer in me says they’ve got devious work planned. Someone, somewhere, is about to have a very bad night.

The displaced, suburb-raised dad that I am? He knows better. Local teens off to waste gas because there ain’t shit else to do around here.

Five minutes later the county deputy drives by. Someone wearing red riding shotgun. A ride-along, maybe. Neither of them so much as glances in my direction. Hope the ride-along is prepared for all the quiet and nothing.

That’s not to say this place doesn’t have its share of secrets. The paper may be full of small-town politics and fluff pieces about what’s happening at the school or the nursing home, but there’s still a crime blotter. Most of it is elsewhere in the county, but there’s the occasional local possession charge. Or warrant served. Or domestic battery arrest. The divorce listings tend to be longer than the marriage listings.

All signs of secrets bubbling and festering beneath the veneer. They’re not the dark secrets Writer Mike may conjure, but there are secrets nonetheless. From time to time one will break out into the open and make the shift from secret to scandal, something to be whispered about in watering holes and at water coolers. Then it will fade away, and things will be quiet again.

Almost too quiet.

Not that it stops me from writing about places like this. What am I writing, you ask? Well. That would be telling.

First up, an example of how the real writing work gets done:

Yes, both glasses are mine. Why do you ask?

This is an improved shot from the night Cullen Bunn and I got together to chat about the writing biz and do some brainstorming. There in the foreground you can see my trusty Moleskine notebook. Nothing fuels a night of brainstorming like a few drinks, a belly full of tacos, and pencil in hand.

The Cerveza Rita, aka Corona Rita, is mighty tasty, by the way. Mix up a margarita, upend a bottle of beer in it, and drink up. As the level of the margarita drops, the beer starts to pour in. It mixes for a bit, until pretty soon you’re just drinking the last of the beer. If you’re the type of person who likes a lime in your Corona, I would suggest asking the bartender to drop it in the bottle before upending the bottle into the margarita glass.

This, by the way, was the small Cerveza Rita. (Hey, we’d just polished off a pitcher of the regular stuff.) They make a regular size with a regular bottle of Corona, and they make a large which is big enough for two bottles of Corona. Drink up!

This week’s photo is once again off the smartphone:

Scare Bear attack!

Little Bird is so bad ass, she chases bears up tress!

We’ve seen this a statue a few times before, but this is the first I came up with this idea. Once again I’m reminded to carry my Digital Rebel with me more often. Sometime I’ll go back and re-shoot this with the Rebel, but we had fun with this oen and for now it stays in the set.

In other news, another hellacious work week has come to an end. I think I’m finally through the worst of it and I can get some real work (otherwise known as writing) done for a change.

It’s been a long week, followed by a long weekend of travel.

This happened:

BRILLIANT!

I enjoyed it with Cullen Bunn, who deserved to celebrate because this happened:

You must buy it.

My copy arrived from Amazon today. I may crack it open tonight.

The Cerveza Rita/Corona Rita followed a night of Irish Car Bombs. A night in which I intended to be a good boy, but B had a bad day and a birthday and there was much commiseration and celebration (and he got his ass handed to him by a waitress).

Like I said, long weekend.

Also, I saw these:

Homina homina homina

Brand spankin’ new with the 103 engine. I kept hoping the owners would come out while we were waiting, see if I couldn’t try one for fit, or at least hear them fire them up. Lenore’s a good bike, but her engine doesn’t hold a candle to the 103 and she isn’t made for long hauls.

My son kept eyeballing that Ninja in the right of the fame. We explained to him the error of his ways. “But Dad, it’s called a Ninja!” Some kids have to learn the hard way. We can only hope he’ll figure it out when he sees the insurance quotes.

We have three weeks of school left, so things will quiet down soon. Then I can get back to some real business around here. Photo Friday pics were taken, some writing got done, but for now I figured I’d best close out April with something on the page.

More later.

So I used a photo filter. The lighting sucked.

The Perdomo Grand Cru is a Cuban seed blend, and judging by the size and color of this bad boy it was a Grand Epicure (vs Churchill, etc.) with a natural wrapper. The moment I went to light it I tasted hints of cocoa, and it burned clean and even with plenty of smoke and a mild flavor.

It had a strange, thorny lump under the cap, probably a twist in a leaf or a stem, which felt uncomfortable on occasion but didn’t ruin the experience by a long shot. I spent about an hour and a half with it, until it went out on its own in the last two inches. While it did not turn harsh, I could see it had tunneled some and was probably done, so I tossed it.

But honestly, a lot of that didn’t matter today. I just needed to sit and relax.

The day job has been kicking my ass since early last week, including over the weekend, making it tough to get anything else done. I could easily have spent a big portion of Saturday there if I hadn’t already had plans for the annual Peoria Jaycees Beer Fest. It was a good chance to go out on the porch, kick back, and flip through a Harley-Davidson catalog I had picked up at the International Motorcycle Show in February.

Edits are back in my hands for Lie with the Dead, the cover for an upcoming anthology showed up in my inbox this afternoon, and I’ve got a screenplay to finish, as well as a handful of other projects waiting in the wings. Just a few more days of this testing nonsense at the day gig and I’ll be able to get back on track and re-examine the exit strategy.

I can almost taste the freedom.

Friday, however, I had things mostly locked down and I took the family out for pizza (before returning yet again to work to follow up on a few things, and then spend a little more time at home logged in to a web server to wrap up—argh). While there, I snapped this photo of the Wife and Little Bird.

This is what makes it all worth while.

I first shot the photo with Instagram, the service which recently made the news thanks to a billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook. I’d been waiting for Instagram on Android for a while, and the Instagram version of this photo has a subtle filter applied.

I’m mixed on Instagram. For the social aspect, Instagram is far more active than picplz and Lightbox. From the first day I saw more activity on Instagram than any photo on the other services, despite all three of them having the ability to post photos to Twitter and Facebook.

Lightbox seems to have made improvements since I last used it a year ago, but I haven’t done more than play with it a little. picplz has better filter handling than Instagram in terms of seeing what a filter might do before the user clicks on it, though it has fewer filters available (the second half of picplz’s filters are the same as the first half, only with borders removed). That’s not a complaint, mind, as it cuts down on confusion and overuse.

I also don’t like that Instagram doesn’t post to Flickr. They seem to want photos to stay on Instagram and be shared from there, driving all traffic through their site. Yes, that’s how business works, but neither Lightbox nor picplz seem to have a problem with granting me ownership of my own photos. In fact, picplz even allows me to upload my photos directly to my Dropbox account.

So I’m torn. Instagram nails the social aspect, but it sucks having to repost photos to other services. Maybe Facebook will force some stupid changes on Instagram and make my decision for me.

In the meantime, people, lay off with the filters. Yes, some of the filters can make some photos look great. However, slapping a burned-out red filter over a shite photo of nothing doesn’t make it look old and kitschy, it makes it look like an even bigger pile of shite. There’s a reason the photography world has moved on.

I realize Instagram is trying to reproduce the old feel of the Polaroid instant cameras. This is why they have the square crop, too. Yet if you shot the same photo with an actual Polaroid instant camera, you’d say “Wow, this is garbage.” Why is it hip to post a digital reproduction of the same garbage to Twitter?

Stop it.

Candids are great. Shoot your food, shoot random objects on your desk, shoot nothing, knock yourself out. Part of the instant appeal is instant sharing. Just keep in mind, while not everything has to be art, not every candid needs a filter.

This is the second Halloween release I tried from Tatuaje, the follow-up to 2010′s The Face, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That memory gave me high expectations for the Wolfman, and after my usual winter difficulties with the humidor, I worried I’d ruined the three Wolfman smokes I purchased. Undeterred by the brisk Spring winds coming off the Illinois River, I touched my lighter to the rough, beard-like foot of The Wolfman and braced myself for the worst.

"Smoke up, lady!"

Wow. Spicy dark chocolate comes to mind with this bad boy. A very bold, full-bodied flavor, harsh on light but quickly settling into a robust, pleasant smoke. I botched the light in the wind and fought an uneven burn though much of the smoke, but it never went out. It had a richer profile than I recall from The Face, which I felt was the right way to handle it: new year, new blend/flavor.

I wish I knew what filler and wrapper they used, but the Tatuaje website doesn’t list The Wolfman in the Limited Release section. I feel like there was a Cameroon leaf in there somewhere, which is not normally a favorite of mine. If I’m correct, it worked in this blend. Once again I find myself thinking I need to seek out the Tatuaje brand in a cigar shop or online.

I’m going to save the third Wolfman for a celebratory occasion, probably the turning in of the final draft of Lie with the Dead. I plan to take it indoors, too, to see how much more enjoyable it may be without the wind to tangle with.

I’m already looking forward to what Tatuaje does for Halloween this year.

This covering movement gets one clear of an opponent's weapon

I stuck with my Canon 50mm 1.8 prime lens during the graduation, and this time had an additional challenge of a couple of burned-out lights in the ceiling. After a few tweaks to white balance to several of the photos, though, I was happy. Next time I may camp out on the other side of the dojo, though, as much of the action came a bit close for the lens to capture.

The rest of the set can be found on Flickr.

Look, Ma! No CGI!

If your cable service doesn’t carry ChillerTV, smack them upside the head and ask ‘em what the hell they’re thinking.

And don’t sweat it, there will be a DVD. Hopefully it will show up on Netflix and Amazon streaming as well.

Congrats, B. You’ve earned this.

There’s so much speculation and whining out there already analyzing this flick’s suck potential, but I just don’t care. It works for me. Scott’s done some odd things in recent years, but I trust the guy. I dig the cast. I dig the look and feel of what we’ve seen so far. I dig the hints at ties to the Alien franchise.

Bring it on. My ass will be in a theater seat.

Dropping Guy Pearce in character into a future TED talk was a nice touch, too:

The local grocery stores sometimes stock fresh-ground chorizo, but more often than they just have your standard country pork sausage or Italian sausage. As a result, I finally decided to pick up a tube of this stuff:

Pork? Not so much.

That soylent orange color? Yeah, pretty accurate, unlike the lies the fast food giants like to tell us.

I got the package out to make an omelette this morning. The instructions say to “remove from casing” before cooking. Apparently they meant the packaging, because there was no casing around this pasty muck, near as I could tell. I squeezed it out into the pan and tried to ignore the funky lumps as I attempted to crumble it for cooking.

After a few minutes over heat, I noticed no change in color or consistency. Meats are supposed to brown, right?

Time to look at the packaging again. “Cook to an internal temperature of 160°.” They don’t seem to care how. Okay, the stuff is sizzling and parts are starting to look a little crispy. Gotta be done.

Still bright, nuclear orange. Hmm. Are we sure this is pork? To the ingredients!

Yes, first ingredient is pork. But then came the dreaded parentheses. What, pray tell, pork products are included?

“Salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat (cheeks).”

Back up, Mr Butcher Man! I don’t even know what salivary glands and lymph nodes look like! A series of tubes you just chop up and spice to hide all hint of flavor? I understand you want to use as much of the animal as possible, but is this really necessary anymore? We’re not all Andrew Zimmern or Bear Grylls. You know why? Because we’re not paid to be!

But hey, I can be adventurous. Is this how it was done back in the day? Maybe it’s like pig’s feet or haggis, a remnant from a time people really did have to find a way to eat every bit of an animal to get a meal. Maybe this is what I’ve been eating all along at Mexican restaurants and just didn’t know it. Ignorance is bliss, right?

So I poured in my beaten eggs, cooked it up, flipped, added cheese, and slid it onto the plate.

Understand, chorizo is greasy. Just like any other sausage or fatty meat, you’re going to get some runoff. This stuff took it to a whole new level by leaving a liquid even brighter and more orange than the original product.

Okay, okay, thought I. Let’s not panic. It’s wrapped in egg and cheese. Man the hell up and take a bite.

I tried. I really did. I even had myself psyched up enough I expected a pleasant surprise. Sadly, this tasted nothing like the stuff I got in the local Mexican joints, nor was it anywhere near as tasty as the ground chorizo I bought from the grocery stores. Maybe it was just the thought of the ingredients getting to me, right? Took another bite. Now that it didn’t catch me by surprise, is it really all that bad?

Yes.

Okay, one more bite.

No. No, no, and hell no. Just plain wrong. Into the garbage can.

Just to be sure, I consulted Wikipedia for a second opinion. The chorizo article has a history of the meat from several countries, but nowhere does it mention goddamn salivary glands. From the “Mexican chorizo” portion:

Based on the uncooked Spanish chorizo fresco, the Mexican versions of chorizo are made from fatty pork (however, beef, venison, kosher, and even vegan versions are known). The meat is usually ground (minced) rather than chopped, and different seasonings are used.

Fatty pork. Like where the bacon comes from, perhaps? Or at least somewhere where there is actual meat, not just leftovers. It’s no wonder the taste and texture of the stuff I’ve been eating is completely different from this spicy sludge.

Learn from my pain, my friends.

Next to the pork chorizo I bought is a tube of beef chorizo. I haven’t gone back to see what it’s made of, yet, but I can’t imagine it’s any better.

"Please take me home with you!"

The tamarins are usually the first exhibit we see when walking in through the gift shop, and I had to snap a photo of this little guy’s sad eyes. His buddies were busy trying to figure out how to open the small door at the back of the cage or bust their way through the mesh ceiling, but he seemed to already understand the futility of those actions.

I only brought my 55-250mm lens, and its aperture makes indoor shooting rough at times. As such, I was happy with the way this one turned out. In fact, it was challenged a few times as many of the animals had moved indoors and I had to shoot through glass.

For example, the mandrills were all behind a large pane of glass:

You'd be bummed if you were stuck in a cage all day, too.

I was able to tweak this a bit in Lightroom, but I think the color would have been more vibrant and the eyes in better focus had this been shot in open daylight.

At least this guy cooperated by reclining in the sunlight:

"Go, save yourselves! I'll... be fine..."

The kids, of course, insisted he’d croaked and discussed the many impossible ways he might have died, ranging from bullets to swords to ramming the glass head first. Then the monkey moved his left hand and shattered their dark little imaginations.

They come by it honestly.

All in all we had a good day. There are more photos on Flickr, including a few of the male lion who is usually sound asleep when we visit.

In the prose world, writing your own work is straightforward: you take your own ideas, put them on the page, and push them out to the public in some way. Writing for someone else usually means a media tie-in (writing a Star Wars novel) or ghost writing (writing a book under a celebrity’s byline).

In the comics world, we have creator-owned and work for hire. In a creator-owned situation, the writer and/or artist create the characters and stories and manage their publication and own all the rights. Work for hire is contract work, usually writing for a company like Marvel or DC. The company owns the characters and the stories, but the writer is paid to come up with the script.

The difference comes down to profit for the writer.

By retaining the ownership of the work and the rights to things like foreign language editions and movie adaptations, the work can be a lot more lucrative in the long term. The writer is more likely to receive royalties, perhaps an advance, but it may also take a while to actually produce a profit for the writer (especially rookies). In a media tie-in or work-for-hire situation, the writer is usually paid a set rate and sent on his way. If the author is given a one-time fee, the book could sell a bajillion copies and make the bestseller list in twelve countries and he’ll never see another dime.

(And yes, there are exceptions out there, but don’t expect to be an exception, precious.)

Some pros will tell you to avoid media tie-ins and work-for-hire work like the plague. Sometimes they will tell you it’s because you can make more money if you handle a creator-owned property correctly, sometimes it’s for more artistic reasons and the satisfaction or reward of forging your own path.

Let me tell you why I’m happy to do both.

To put it simply, work-for-hire gigs pay the bills. While I expect Winter Kill will pay off bigger in the long term, my single biggest paycheck came from adapting a finance textbook into comics format. As I write this, I am punching up the dialog in another of their books, again for pay. This guy pays well and pays on time.

I wrote my Phantom short for Moonstone on a work-for-hire basis. King Features owns the character and now the short story I wrote him into, and I got a small paycheck for my effort. However, I know a few people who sought out my other work after they read my short story, so it paid for itself in intangibles and potential future sales.

This is why many creators are happy to write for the larger comics companies if given the chance, or don’t turn down opportunities to write about someone else’s characters. The page rates the Big Two pay can mean the difference between writing full time and writing in the meager lunch break between shifts driving the forklift. I’ve heard of movie tie-ins that pay tens of thousands of dollars for a month’s worth of punching keys.

What’s more, work-for-hire gigs are easier because half the work is already done. For example, Batman is already written and there’s not much most writers don’t know about him. Star Wars has a meticulous history and character gallery to draw ideas from. With the textbook adaptation, I just had to put someone else’s words to scenes, dialog, and captions. It can be tedious work if it’s not something the writer would read or watch on his own, but compared to starting with a clean slate it’s a piece of cake.

Every one of those projects gets me closer to being able to write full time. Royalties that never materialize will never put food in my kids’ bellies. Until The Pack and other works I’m developing start generating real income, I’d be an idiot to turn down work-for-hire gigs.

Bring ‘em on.

"I'll swallow your soul! And recycle it."

As a result, you get this lazy entry of a funky recycling can spotted at a rest stop off I-74 west of Indianapolis.

If only it weren’t so dark in the bar around the corner. We found ourselves surrounded by biker dudes and biker chicks and their old ladies. I guess what happens in Fort Wayne stays in Fort Wayne.

It would be easy. Just introduce a letter and play the movie. Would be a lot more fun than Zoophonics.

Plus it would give the school psychologists and counselors a chance to really earn their paychecks.

This weekend, the Wife locked the back door into the garage. Note: we have no key to this lock.

Last night the Rugrats left the van’s gate open, then closed the garage door on it. This morning, the garage door opened two inches, the rails on the door hit the van’s gate, the opener felt the resistance and quit. We had a 2″ gap to attempt to squeeze a van and a motorcycle through.

The windows on the side of the garage are locked. We have no other way in.

Locksmith? Nobody local, going to cost bucks. Furthermore, the Wife has no sick or vacation time. The hours waiting mean lost wages.

The cost of a door? Not too bad. We almost had to replace it once already.

Cost of Locksmith + Cost of Lost Wages < Cost of New Door

Therefore?

Karate!

I delivered a front thrust kick just right of the door handle. Bang, crack, crash. Wood flies, door opens.

And thus violence is mathematically justified.

Update: The photo requested in comments.

Oops.

You’ve all heard it before: use it or lose it. You’ve got to keep at a skill to stay sharp.

Every Spring before I get back on the bike, there’s that brief moment of readjustment before I hit my stride and really take off. I know several motorcyclists who took a decade or two off their bikes, then caught the bug again. They remember how to ride, how to shift, but the little things like looking through the turn (something you don’t have to worry about in a car) take conscious effort to bring back.

Not that we'd ever forget our first ride

I know several people who took martial arts as a kid or a teenager. Ask them to demonstrate a kata ten years later and they have no idea. Some barely remember how to throw a proper punch. It’s no different from people who took Spanish in high school, never had cause to use it, and now don’t remember a word.

It doesn’t take decades to lose it, either. A good friend and fellow karateka missed a lot of class time last year due to injury and a return to college. He remembers the basics, but when he performs one of the more recent kata for his rank, he’ll stop in the middle of it and get that blank “oh shit” stare as he tries to remember the next step.

The knowledge is locked away, waiting to be rediscovered

My instructors use a phrase frequently: “Practice makes permanent.”

On the motorcycle or in karate class, muscle memory will often take over. I don’t think about shifting gears, it just happens. If I consciously think through the steps of a kata, my body will often be three steps ahead already. I’ve learned to relax my mind and let the body take over.

In a sense, this works for writing, too.

Staying in the habit of writing makes it easier to slip into the groove. Your mind knows “this is writing time” and things click into place. Some writers need a trigger, like a walk around the block or a song playlist. Others have a specific time of day to write, such as right before work or after the family goes to bed. Full-time writers may have a set routine; Richard Laymon said he wrote in the morning, had lunch and a nap, wrote in the afternoon, and spent the evening with his family.

Even brainstorming flexes the creative muscles

Practice brings routine. I ride the bike to and from work. I have class three times a week. I write… well, I’ll admit that routine is often shaken up by my schedule. But now that it’s warmer, if I sit outside with a cigar and the iPad I’ll be able to produce some serious word counts again.

Writing in a write-when-I-can method means taking a few minutes to shake off the rust, even if it’s just been a few days since my last session. I fiddle with iTunes, scroll through email, maybe open up Instapaper and see if there’s a short article or piece of flash fiction I saved. I have to find a trigger. If I sit outside on a warm night, though, all I have to do is light a cigar and connect the keyboard and I’m off to the races.

We learn a skill or take up a craft for a reason. Keep using it, keep learning, keep practicing.

Stay sharp.

Get your bearings, people

I would love to have had some lights and creamy bokeh in the background, but we can’t have everything in our shots, can we? I also went to black & white because the colors in the photo were actually very drab and boring.

I knew I’d be on my feet and walking a lot that day, so I just went with the 50mm prime for the day. It’s light, travels easy, and I like its focus (especially compared to my 18-55mm Canon kit lens—bleah). There were times I could have used the flexibility of a zoom, but the prime did its job and it’s become my favorite of my three lenses.

This is when it’s time to seek an outside opinion.

In riding a motorcycle, I simply have someone follow me. It may be my wife following in a car, or I may take a short trip  with a more experienced rider. When I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s riding class, our instructors watched us ride around the course and told us what we were doing right and what we could improve.

In karate, my instructors watch us in class and offer pointers. Even when they say nothing and move on to the next person, it tells us we’re doing just fine (for the moment). It’s also not uncommon for us to ask our fellow students to watch for something specific as we perform a kata.

Then we have writing, where feedback gets a lot messier.

Yet we keep at it anyway.

First and foremost, we have to understand who we are seeking feedback from. Your mom, for example, is probably not going to give you an objective opinion. If that writers circle at the local coffee shop is full of romance writers and you ask for a critique on your splatterpunk opus, you’re not going to get an objective opinion.

Second, fans and reviewers are great, but don’t take their feedback individually. Know up front that no matter what you write, your work is not going to please everyone. You won’t even please all of your fans all the time! Don’t let a glowing, five-star review inflate your ego (too much), and don’t let a mean-spirited, one-star review shatter your hopes and dreams. Look instead for trends. There’s a big difference between one reader saying your protagonist is an unlikeable prick and half your reviewers saying they just didn’t care about your characters.

Third, not every editor is truly an editor. Examine their track record. Take a good look at what they’re asking you to change or what questions they’re asking about your work. Pay special attention if you’re getting the same feedback from several editors or agents during the submission process. I’m not just talking about laziness or inability, either. Some editors simply want to rewrite your manuscript the way they would have written it. This is your work and they should be helping you develop your voice, not molding you into their clone.

Fourth, stay out of the comments section on news and review websites. Seriously. It will save your sanity. Forums can be iffy, too, with their frequent circle jerk and sympathy threads. There’s a fine line between participating in a community and drinking their Kool-Aid.

Finally, it’s okay to pay an editor or book doctor. Not every rejection letter is going to come with comments and suggestions, so you may need to find an objective third party to help you out. Just be sure to get references first, and don’t be afraid to talk to their other clients. Just as anyone can claim to be an editor, any hack will be happy to cash your check in exchange for reading your manuscript.

Practice is critical, but nobody thrives in a vacuum. Seek feedback, but learn to separate the good from the bad.

When I jump on the motorcycle, I can twist the throttle and go if that’s all I choose to do. In the “it’s just like riding a bike” sense, it’s that easy. Motorcycles want to go in a straight line.

Hey, this is EASY!

Then come those pesky turns to mess it all up.

A rider needs to look through the turns. In regular riding, his knees should hug the gas tank. He should know when to roll on and off the throttle, how much brake to apply, how far to lean, and when to up- or downshift. It sounds like a lot, but in time it becomes natural, and when a turn doesn’t go quite as planned, it’s time to break it down and figure out what can be done better next time (especially if the rider just slammed into a tree on the corner).

This doesn’t take obstacles into account, either. Ride behind motorcycles long enough, and eventually you’ll catch a rider doing some lazy swerves back and forth in his lane, or performing sudden changes in his riding line. It may be simple boredom, it may be he’s trying to warm up or clean his tires, or it may very well be the rider getting a feel for his bike. Riders can run over rabbits and squirrels, but if a child or large animal runs into the street, the rider needs to have his avoidance technique down pat.

Practice, practice, practice, and study the result.

Karate works the same way. It’s not unusual to see someone just walk through a kata and throw some weak-ass punches. They may know “step into a front stance, throw a right front kick, shift 90° left, middle block,” but it doesn’t mean it’s going to look good.

Years of proper practice shows.

To improve our karate, we will examine our hand positions before and after techniques, or the angle or depth of our stances. We will perform our kata in front of a mirror or video camera. We ask ourselves if that last kick would have been effective, or what exercises might improve our speed, flexibility, and/or power. It’s not just about getting the technique out there, it’s about getting the technique correct.

And yes, this applies to writing.

Dashing off a draft, calling a work done and uploading it to Amazon isn’t doing the writer, the work, or the reader any favors.

A little tunage doesn't hurt the process

Writers study the craft by reading and rewriting their own work as well as reading the work of others. Word choice, narrative tricks, plot, and characterization are just a few of the tools a writer wants to master. All that grammar and sentence structure our English teachers forced down our throats? Yeah, kind of important, too. Know the rules, then know when to break them.

We have to examine our work with an objective eye. This is where reading a work aloud comes into play, or why some writers will set a draft aside for a few days or a few weeks before coming back to it. Any writer who believes their work is perfect isn’t looking hard enough.

So yes, by all means, keep punching those keys.

But punch them with purpose.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Every time I get the motorcycle out of the garage for the season, I feel better about my riding skill than at the same time the year before. Turns feel more graceful, shifting feels smoother, and I feel more relaxed in the saddle.

Lenore likes the way I handle her

Every ride is practice. I may take the long way home from time to time for fun, but it’s also an opportunity to put more miles under the tires and more time in at the controls. If miles are reps, then I’ve got some time before I hit 10,000, but I’m plugging away.

It applies to karate for sure, whether we’re talking about kata or specific techniques. My dojo stresses hard the importance of practicing at home, and when review rolls around, it’s easy to pick out the students who have been practicing and those who haven’t been. Some say those of us progressing through the ranks make it look easy, but they’re only seeing our class time, not the many hours we’re putting in at home on our own.

Shihan Joseph Walker and I when I received my 1st degree brown belt

I’ve been spending more time on the weights and on the track than doing karate at home of late, but I still get my ass to class and get my practice in. Over the next two days, I plan to put in at least an hour each day as last-minute prep for a karate seminar this weekend. I don’t want to be a guy they pick out as not practicing my art enough.

It’s all about practice, practice, practice, and it applies to everything, even writing.

Yes, that’s right, you should be practicing writing. Though instead of 10,000 repetitions, you’re looking at a million words or so. The saying goes something like this:

Every writer has a million words of bullshit stuck in their head. Once he gets these million words out of the way, the real writing starts to appear.

I first heard this from Mike Baron at a comic convention, and it’s been attributed to Ray Bradbury and several other greats. Get your butt in the chair and get writing if you want to get better. Writing is a craft that can be learned, practiced, and improved, just like any other skill.

It's cigar season again!

It pains me to look at my older work. Everything from my word choices to my sentence structure to my dialog just seems… raw. I have no doubt I’ve become a better writer over the years, and I think many of my colleagues and readers agree.

Every writer will tell a similar story. Ask Tom Piccirilli what he thinks of Dark Father sometime.  Most of us have trunk novels that we later came to realize are part of the million words we needed to get out of  our brains (I have two). Many writers who appear to have just arrived on the scene have a stash of cringe-worthy sales to now-defunct small press rags they hope will never see the light of day again.

Now, are these works really that bad? Not necessarily, but you get the idea. A writer’s craft changes and evolves. Some may contribute it to age, or maturity, or studying others’ works or taking classes, but it all amounts to practice. Keep hammering the keys until the words start to play nice. Write, rewrite, and repeat.

Which brings us to the only bit of writing advice that counts:

Put ass in chair.

I first heard it from Norm Partridge who said he heard it from Joe Lansdale. Whatever the source, you have to love its simplicity. Sit down and write. Practice your craft.

You can get better.

You will get better.

It feels so metal leathering up and blasting down the road, even through the barren, unplanted fields of flat ol’ Illinois.

Twist on the throttle and go

It’s good to be back in the saddle. The threatened rains have held off, the winds aren’t as bad as people would think, and I can deal with temps down into the 50s.

I’m sensing some quick bike trips in the near future.