Good morning, Readers!

Yesterday was a day filled with distractions and irritations, namely that, being the lowest peon in the office, I am subject to everyone else's schedules.  That means, if someone poorly manages their time, and then has to do a shit tonne of work in a small amount of time to meet their deadlines, then all the shitty little things they don't want to do gets dumped on me.

That was my day yesterday.

It was irritating, but honestly, I have nothing to complain about.  I'm thankful to be employed, for starters.  And when things aren't dumped on me all at once, I have time enough to do other things.... like write, or, currently, edit.

Speaking of, on the agenda today is editing more.  That will be on the agenda today.  All day.

Gods it's clinical and boring.  But it needs to be done.  So I'll do it.  Sigh.

There isn't even anything to report.  I have training tonight.  I'm looking forward to it.  I get to punch my frustrations out.  I did some other training this morning, and suffered for it.  I was hurting a bit from Tuesday's escapades, though not as much as I thought I would be.  The swim yesterday really did help me work out the pain (I swam very slowly).

And that's where I am right now.  Yep.  I lead an exciting life.

I did manage to finish editing together the highlight reel from last week's live stream, so if you wanted to waste more time, here it is:

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Last night was the first night back at martial arts training in a while.  In almost exactly a month, actually.

While I wasn't inactive during the break (thankfully), I still managed to lose pretty much all of my strength.  Weights last night was a terrible blow to my ego.  I thought I'd be alright, seeing as how I'm on week three of my new regimen. NOPE.

I didn't do very well.  I'm not impressed with me.  Luckily, I'm too exhausted to waste my time with anger and frustration.  I have a base level.  I can only go up.  Hopefully.  I tell you what, though, I'm not looking forward to today's swim.  It's going to hurt.

Tomorrow will be worse.  It's always worse on the second day.

Still, I survived.  Despite being utter shite during weights, I'm feeling good about it all.  Soon I will be uber strong!  Heh.  Nope.  But I'll keep trying all the same.

I have finally finished writing the rough draft of Soldier. I'm currently in the process of dividing the enormous block of text into chapters and doing a quick edit to make sure everything is at least readable.  That's going to take me a while, though, because there are a lot of gaps that need to be filled.

Today, however, I have video editing to do, so if you'll excuse me, I need to get that done.  Hopefully I'll be done quickly enough to get in some editing today, but likely not.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

From the Can*Con website:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

There's a lot here that I love.  First, that the convention has been announced.  Can*Con has a very special place in my heart, and wherever I end up in the world, I will come back every autumn to attend.  Unless, you know, the world has ended or something.  It's not currently outside of the realm of possibility.

Anyway, the point is, I'm really, really happy that Can*Con is going so strong.  It makes my wee black heart happy.

I have already purchased my table.  I won't be able to eat for a bit, but that's okay.  It's totally worth it.  For the first time in a bit, I won't have a new book to add to the table.  Maybe I'll do a sculpture or something.  I need something new there.

I'm thrilled to have registration open already.  I'm contemplating booking a hotel room for this one, even though I live in town, so I can attend the parties and get to a bed without having to wait on OC Transpo... which I hate with a passion.  Travelling on public transit in Ottawa at that time of night is roughly an hour and a half.  I can walk home in a similar amount of time.  But I won't want to, having spent the convention on my feet.  We'll see how my finances shape up, but the hotel room is tempting me.

​I really also love their pay it forward initiative.  I didn't have the funds to do it at the time of purchasing my table, but I definitely will be buying a random ticket for someone who wants to get in but wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it.  It's such a great thing to do, and I'm so glad they thought of it.

I told you, the community here is absolutely wonderful.

Right, so, if you're one of the regulars, and you live in town, do consider volunteering for the convention.  They could always use a hand, and they're wonderful folks to be around.  Plus you get in for free, so there's that.

I'm so ridiculously excited, and so happy, and I cannot wait for the event.  It's my favourite time of the year, and my favourite people in the world.

So go, register, and join in the fun!

Now I have editing to do, so I'm going to goof off... obviously.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Last week, good friend and awesome human Eric Desmarais posted this.  It's an article about how some books are given a pass because they're considered silly fluff and therefore not important, and how that's not either good or accurate.

He's absolutely right in many regards.

Snobbery is rife in the writing world.  You would not believe the number of "literary" writers who willingly and furiously turn up their noses at genre writing.  Any genre writing.  And plenty of writers in genre turn their noses at genres other than their own (some science fiction writers turn their noses at fantasy, and many writers of other genres turn their noses at romance (I, ashamedly, used to be one of those)).  The most common reason for this snobbery is, frankly, the mistaken belief that one's own genre alone is best for examining the human condition.

So.

That's bullshit.

Look, I get it.  People want to be important.  So they try and trump (heh, not a deliberate word choice, but strangely apt) up their own importance by dragging other things down and pretending they're less important.  But that not how it works.  That's not how any of this works.

Your genre, literally or otherwise, is not more important than any other genre.  Your particular tone in your writing is not more important than any other tone.  A dark book is not better than a light read.  It's just different, so shove your judgement, please and thank you.

Honestly, everyone needs to get over themselves.

That also means that fun, light reads—fluffy stuff—doesn't get a pass just because it's light and fun.  If the writing is bad, the writing is bad.  The tone doesn't matter.   Eric used the example of Ready Player One, which was covered by our video podcast Nights at the Round Table.  Two of the panellists really liked it.  I... did not.  You can read my review of the book here if you're really that interested in what I thought of it.

Eric's complaint is that terrible story and lazy writing got a pass because the book was considered unimportant fun fluff.  Fluff, for him (and many others) is an insult.

I can totally see why, if you're constantly lumped in with objectively terrible books like Ready Player One.  Or if you're continually dismissed by other writers, even in your own genre, because they somehow think that the tone somehow devalues the work.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, guys.  Stop doing that.  You're not right.  You're just obnoxious.

Look,just because a book uses familiar tropes and is a light, fun romp, doesn't mean that it doesn't tackle really important issues, or explore what it means to be human any less that something dark and dour.  As a general rule, I like my books dark, and heavy, and complicated.  But my personal reading preference is not a case for superiority.  It just means that I'm not-so-secretly an emo kid revelling in torment (from the safety of my blankets where I can put the book down if it all gets too much).

Fun adventure books that are not challenging reads can and do still explore really serious issues.  No young adult book is difficult to read, but damned if many of them don't tackle really fucking serious issues.  Even the funny ones.  Even the silly ones.

Just because a book doesn't have a death every second page doesn't mean it's not great writing or doesn't have something really important to say.  Most of them do.  Some of them, genuinely, don't.  They're pure escapes, and don't particularly care to make a commentary on the human condition.  And that's okay too.  So long as they don't let their writing, story, or characters suffer because of it.

Bad writing is just bad, no matter the genre or tone.

By the same token, just because you feel like a book doesn't have anything important to say doesn't mean it should get off scot-free for terrible writing or harmful characterisations.  And, I would argue (given the number of articles that sound off about these issues in media), that they aren't.

I don't consider fluffy to be a pejorative in writing, though I do know that many people do.  All I mean is that it's a fun romp with a light tone.  But some people, for some reason, think it means terrible or boring writing without much to say.  Those people are twits.

Does that mean you should feel ashamed for really enjoying a book that is, if you think about it at all, pretty bad?  No.  Of course not.  If you loved Ready Player One that's more than alright.

It's like video games.  God of War is a game filled with awful things including terrible representations of both masculinity and femininity.  But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy slashing my way through hoards of enemies with plumes of pixelated blood going everywhere.  It's fun.

You can enjoy the bad stuff.

Who am I to judge?

But one genre is not better than another.  One tone is not better than another.  Let's all just get over ourselves, m'kay?

Good morning, Readers!

This morning was a shit storm of stupidity.  Actually, it wasn't that bad.  I'm being dramatic.  What this morning was, was a series of small inconveniences that added up into creating a colossal irritation.

First, the weather.  It's not raining yet, thank goodness, but the footpath is slippery AF and I nearly wiped out getting to the bus stop.  The bus was only a little late, but late enough that I missed my connection, which was early.  I took a different bus that meant a little more walking, but it wasn't the worst.  Except that I nearly wiped out twice on the way to the gym.  The slower pace necessary, plus the longer distance meant that I was a little later getting to the gym than I'd like.

Still, I went for my half hour run... Only to have one shoelace come undone during one of the run things.  I had to stop.  Then, I accidentally hit the emergency stop button (now I know what that red thingy in the centre of the bottom of the treadmill screen does), catching my phone as it fell. Again.  Then, my other shoelace came undone and I had to stop running again or risk my neck.  For the record, double knots are not as secure as they would lead you to believe.  Fuckers.

It was a bad run.

But I did it.

I managed to get most of my frustration out during the weights session.  But honestly, I cannot wait for martial arts training to start again.  There is nothing like punching the shit out of stuff to get rid of all your frustrations.

Part of this, is, I think, my fault.  I did stay up later than usual streaming Assassin's Creed Origins.  I think I will have to cut back from four hour streams to three hour streams in order to get enough sleep.  That will help with the crankiness, I think.  With my new schedule, eleven o'clock is too late for me to get to bed.

I'm disappointed with this morning, as yesterday was such a good day.  I got my video editing done, went for a swim, wrote two thousand words, and hung out with friends while I mucked around in ancient Egypt.  It was a really good day.

*grumble*

Anyway, now that I've eaten breakfast, I'm much less cranky, but still really looking forward to training starting again. I miss punching and kicking stuff.

And pretty sure I'm going to bed as soon as I get home tonight.

In happier news, though, I'm pretty sure I'm almost done writing Soldier.  There are just a few more scenes to go.  Then I get to go back and do a shit tonne of editing.  Yay?

I hope your morning was way better than mine.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Yesterday was not as brilliant a writing day as Monday, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at two thousand words.  The story is pretty much done, really.

Today I will likely not get to writing.  I have a video to edit together.  Taking four hours of footage and bringing it down to around ten minutes is a surprising amount of work.  It will take me all day, is what I'm saying.

Man, I need to make more money so I can pay someone to do this for me.  *snort*  A girl can dream.

Health stuff is still going.  I'm no longer feeling like a horrible blob (thanks for that me, for doing nothing over Christmas).  So that's a plus.  But I'm not feeling particularly fitter or stronger.  Oh well.

Happily, I'll be starting training this week.  I kick it off with teaching on Saturday.  I'm so excited for this semester, because I'll be starting the first ever women's intermediate kick-boxing.  A few of my ladies have been attending my classes for several terms now, and I want to take them up to the next level.  Thankfully, the coordinator at Carleton was totally down with it, and got it all together really fast.  I wasn't expecting that to happen.

It works out well, because there was a substantial waiting list for the beginner's class, and now at least five spots have opened up for others to step in and take the course.  It's a win for literally everyone.  My advanced students get to take it up a notch, and more people get to step in to the beginners course.

I'm so happy so many women are looking into martial arts.  It's a love of mine, and I'm thrilled to share it.

Right, I have video editing to get to.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Things are going well for me all of a sudden.

Don't cheer yet, this is only the second week of 2018.  But so far, I'm doing pretty well.  This morning, for example, despite Persephone doing her darnedest to keep me in bed (you don't understand how cuddly she was being. It was so sweet. I think she wanted me to stay), I still got up and went to the gym.

Related: my left arm is considerably weaker than my right and I'm continually surprised by just how much.  Also quite annoyed by it.

I was particularly impressed with myself yesterday.  Not only did I do the stuff that I wanted health-wise, but I also got in some writing.  I sat down just after lunch to write.  And I wrote.  I wrote for the full two hours I had set aside to write.

I got in three thousand words.

In two hours.

That's the rate of writing I managed at my very best a number of years ago.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I checked my word count at the end of those two hours.  I might have high-fived myself.  Maybe (I definitely did).

Last week, I decided that instead of going for a word count this time around, I would opt for a solid period of time.  I settled on two hours, figuring three might take too much from me, and one simply wasn't enough.  I think two was a good decision.  By the end of yesterday's session, I was starting to get fidgety.

So I think I'll continue with the time thing and take the burden of reaching a word count away for this one.  With that kind of pressure off, I might do better and writing.  Not that there's much left to write.  I'm almost done, in any case.  I'm really looking forward to writing 'The End.'  That will feel good.

Right, I have some stuff to do this morning.  Have a great morning!

​Ciao!