Not waiting any more
Okay, so I had this big post about feeling like I'm waiting for something, and the realization that I have to make things happen if they're going to happen. And I turned 40 since then. And I think the "scary" thing about turning 40 isn't the realization that you're getting older, as many young folks thing it is... it's the realization that your time is limited and you haven't used the past twenty years as effectively as you wish you had. Which is a lot of what my "waiting" post was about.
Over the years, my wife and I have passed up tech-related business opportunities because they were risky. But looking back, I can see several points where we could have been the pioneers, if only we'd been willing to take the risk.
But those were just wish-I-hads... it's the dreams that have stuck with me for years, slowly being squashed by the weight of daily routine, that I'm most concerned about.
So I've enrolled in a 12-week "Fundamentals of Fiction Writing" workshop, through http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/, which is a branch of Writers Digest Books. It's not cheap (to me), but I've got some birthday money which cuts it down to something I can squeeze into my budget. (I'm in the class starting 08/14, if you'd like to join me.)
I know a lot of "theory" about writing fiction (I have a huge library on the subject, in the guise of "it's good to know story techniques for my roleplaying"), but it's amazing how little I've actually written. I'm afraid of writing crap, really, even though I believe in the "million words of crap" theory (attributed to Ray Bradbury, but that has been requoted and reworded so many times, I can't find the original quote). So taking a workshop is as much about deadlines and outside expectations as it is needing someone to teach me the craft. "Fundamentals" syllabus does pretty much what I want... stepping through exercises on scenes, characters, dialog and so on, finally ending with writing a complete 3000-word short story (or a full novel chapter) as the final assignment. I've never finished a short-story in my life. I've never written a full novel chapter, though I've started a few.
I don't have real specific goals, other than to learn to work through the process of writing fiction. I don't have any real dreams of publishing a novel (though it'd be cool), and the most I'm realistically hoping for is to sell a short-story or two. At this stage, I want to overcome the obstacles that keep me from moving past opening paragraphs. My dream is to write a novel, while selling it is just icing on the cake.
So there... moving forward. Making my dreams happen instead of waiting for things to change. Yay, me. :)
And I’m one day older
I turned 40 this past Saturday. My mom threw me a birthday party and, as a surprise, managed to get my best friend from high school to come. It kind of blew my mind.
Tom and I played D&D and read SF, and 22 years later, he's still playing D&D and reading SF... he's introduced his 14 and 17 year old daughters to the game, too. It was somewhat surreal, having a discussion with the high school senior daughter of my best friend from high school about whether 3.5 or 4E was the better game. :)
I'd only seen Tom once since high school, and that was about 17 years ago when he was visiting town briefly. He was living in Colorado at the time, and quite too far to visit except on special occasions. Now he's living just a couple hours away... to far for a weekly game, but close enough that we could justify getting together a few times a year.
Social media and our many faces
Social media is weird.
So here I'm looking at Twitter, and discovering that I'm being followed by couple locals interested in writing. One of them is a reporter for the local newspaper, the other is a student of mobile computing and social media.
But my Twitter account is primarily to talk about roleplaying and writing of RP and SF, and I expect that the only people who will follow me are those who are interested in my thoughts on roleplaying and gaming.
See, this is where things get weird. It's why I have more than one blog, and at one time had five or six of them. I don't believe that the people interested in my roleplaying writing are going to necessarily be interested in my ducks. Or the people interested in starting a SF writing group are going to care about my social life.
Whenever I write, even on Twitter, I'm thinking, "Who is my audience?" And that's why the blogs are segregated... because each blog has a different intended audience. I don't assume that the audience is interested in me, but that they're interested in the topic which I write about.
Which is what makes Twitter awkward for me. I follow a handful of people, and there are others I might want to follow... but where I'm interested in reading what someone is doing in their roleplaying writing, I'm not necessarily interested in what they had for dinner, or how annoyed they are at having to stand in line, or how boring jury duty is. But Twitter doesn't lend itself to multiple accounts easily.
This pure "social media" thing seems much better suited to close friends... people who are interested in the person as well as the content. Maybe that's why it's "social" media.
Of course, that makes me wonder about people on twitter who follow fifty or sixty people... are they really interested in them as people? Or do they just become a stream of data to interact with?