The Journey vs. the Destination

If you read some of my posts on the other blog, you’ll be able to glean that I’m a big GTD and lifehack geek. One of the areas GTD encourages you to monitor and consider on some regular basis is a list of your goals and/or direction one or two years out. The stuff that comprises “Where do you want to be in area X, this time in the next year or two?”

I had three items on a sublist in this category, six months into 2007.

  • Get a domain name, which I did yesterday.
  • Plug into a networking/support group, which I can now cross off twice over as of today.
  • Membership in the SFWA – Well, two out of three ain’t bad, especially when 1 & 2 are bound to help me do that within the next year or two.

Now my other sublist that has the item “20 pices in circulation by 12/31/07”? I’m really off track, but not horribly so. Twenty might have been unrealistic. Yet what I’ve accomplished so far puts me waaay ahead of where I was this time in 2006. The journey vs. the destination…I think I’m starting to get it now.

In the 21st Century Now

I’ve referenced Warren’s Burst Culture post before, which also jammed this firmly into my brain:

The hurdle to credible publishing on the web, now, is the nine dollars it costs to buy a domain name from GoDaddy, which can be mapped on to a free Tumblr or Blogger space.

Well, I shelled out a couple extra bucks to maintain one latex-thin prophylactic against those ready to spam my email and home address, because I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head to go ahead and own…

www.warmfuzzyfreudianslippers.com

Tomorrow, the world!

Of course, if you’ve just now clicked without reading ahead to this sentence, you’ve just discovered that it takes you right back here.

Progress

This is something from the private journal that I thought was worth mentioning here.

If you asked me as recently as a week ago how I felt about my progress as a writer in 2007, I would’ve said, “Piss poor.” If you look at sheer numbers, I’m way behind. However, there’s just no comparison between where I am right now and where I was this time last year. Not only that, but since last week, I’ve made quite a few strides in networking with area writers, not to mention some pretty serious cats via Teh Intarnets.

It’s all about seed-sowing, which is what I’m doing right now and what I’m feeling pretty good with right now.

Grumpy Old Villains

Written World: 50 Things I Love About Mainstream Superhero Comics

8) The core team of the JSA is essentially a bunch of cranky old men who probably get together with old supervillains to play poker.

This sort of fuels an expansion of this idea in my mind.

I wrote that story as part of my deconstruction of the supervillain archetype. But, I want to take it further. We all know the various and sundry reasons why any superhero keeps fighting the Neverending Battle. But why do villains keep going? Why keep get your ass handed to you on a regular basis? Why cope with the various life disruptions caused by jail time or faking one’s own death?

Because they’re EEE-VIL? That might be a plausible explanation if they won something really worthwhile on occassion. Being psycho might be a better explanation; certainly that’s the one given to us by a lot of villains lately.

Gotta think more about this one…

Fonts

Jonathan Lethem, Richard Posner, and others reveal their favorite fonts.

Jonathan Lethem, author, You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Novel
I dislike the temptation of making a raw draft look like it’s already typeset. Before computers, I wrote three novels on a typewriter, and there can never be anything but 12-point Courier (double-spaced) forever: I write on an eternal Selectric of the mind. I can even hear the rattle of the metal ball against the sheet of paper, I swear.

Ditto. What’s the point of anything else, at least when I’m generating a manuscript? Although the labels on the folders of my GTD reference files at the day job are all typeset in Trebuchet MS.

Fanfiction

Whatever: My Policy on Fanfic and Other Adaptations of My Work:

“First: I do retain and reserve all rights to my work. I’m not very squishy about that fact. Just so you know. If you play in my universe, you implicitly accept I have the right to come around, say ‘mine!’ and then stomp off with all your pretty toys. Yeah, I know. I’m a dick. What can I say.

Second: As long as you can deal with that first point, as far as I’m concerned, you may play in my universe(s) as long as the emphasis is on ‘play.’ This means that nothing you do in my universes may:

a) Generate any sort of economic benefit for you, in any form;
b) Generate any sort of economic benefit for any third party;
c) Cause me economic detriment of any sort.”

Not that I ever expect anyone to ever write fanfic about anything I create. Nor have I ever written any fanfic of any kind (unless you count a DOCTOR WHO story I wrote back in the 7th grade as an assignment).