It's not easy to get back in gear after a decent vacation; the family and I had a pleasant six days to get nice and spoiled by not doing much of anything. I casually did just a bit of outlining for the next novel, and started a story string which I will probably use for a stand-alone Urban Fantasy novel sometime in the future (I took my tablet along with me so no one would suspect that I was up to anything), but mostly what I did was relax and drink an awful lot of beer with my father-in-law. It was nice to set the novel aside, set Scrivener aside, set work, and all the other day-to-day stresses aside and just focus on existing -- I went after the Zen of the vacation, and did pretty decent in my efforts... it's the most, honest-to-God, down-time I've had in a really long time.
But all good things must come to an end, as the old adage goes; the return to work was bumpy and the week (although it was a short week since I went back on a Tuesday) seemed to drag on... I was back performing my job duties, but my brain was still very much on the beach of South Padre Island. The Monday of our return, I purposefully didn't jump back in to writing because I wanted to get everything completely unpacked and put away... plus I knew I'd just end up sitting and staring at the screen because of the aforementioned brain problem... which is what ended up happening to me on Tuesday night. It's one of the dangers of putting something like a novel aside for a little while, I guess. No regrets though: even if it felt like I was shitting lava rocks, I still managed to get my target word count out on Tuesday and again last night. I didn't write Wednesday night because my new toy was delivered.
I got a Google Nexus 7 tablet. Why? Because, that's why. Actually I got it because the price is very nice (199 bones for the 8 gig), it has a quad-core processor, the seven inch screen form factor makes it very easy to take along with me anywhere I go (I've composed some of the chapters for my novel on my Android phone which, as you might imagine, isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to do on a four and a quarter inch screen... a seven inch screen is better), and the reviews I read (for example, this one and this one) were largely positive. I have an Asus Transformer TF101 which I like a lot and which I took on vacation with me, but it's not exactly the lightest thing in the world. With the keyboard dock attached it weighs almost as much as some laptops, and it's a 10.1 inch screen with a big chunk of Corning Gorilla Glass on it. The TF101 is great, but I don't see myself tapping away on it on the bus or at a restaurant... and, honestly, the keyboard on the dock isn't great. Mobile authorship, that's what I'm after, and the Nexus 7 is just too good a deal to pass up.
I was looking at a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 seven inch model, but they're pricey and I was already impressed by a tablet made by Asus... which the Nexus 7 tablet is, under the direct auspices of Google. Needless to say, I got a bit excited about it... and when it arrived... I received one with a defective screen... The upside of the story is that Google customer service was actually very nice and I have a replacement tablet on the way; the down side, of course, is that I got a taste of the device and then had to send it back... I was so impressed by Android 4.1 (Jellybean) that I'm considering laying down the $350 for an unlocked Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, since it will receive the update to Jellybean long before any other phones do... hell, mine hasn't even been upgraded to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)... I'm still on Gingerbread...
Wow, sorry... this posting went tangential and wound up being about tech rather than writing... but in a round-about sort of way, it's about writing since that's exactly what I intend to use my technology for. See, this is what I'm talking about: I went on vacation figuring I'd come back focused and ready to tackle the rest of the novel with gusto... it just didn't turn out that way... but it will. Eventually (hopefully, sooner as opposed to later) my brain will kick back into gear and I'll hit it with abandon... I'm almost finished.
Cheers!
About Me
- Mr. G
- Dan Garcia resides in San Antonio, Texas, in a household ruled by a dog and a cat. These benign overlords allow Garcia, his wife, and two daughters to live with them so long as they are served unquestioningly. The dog and cat compel Garcia to write stories of imaginative fiction and fantasy; their rationale being: the potential for supplementary income from the sale of these stories means the possibility of more treats and toys for them. Thus, when not at work at the San Antonio Public Library, Garcia is permitted to craft his tales despite the fact that this activity limits his availability for scratching and petting. Hell-Kind is Garcia’s first novel which he was allowed to type because of his opposable thumbs and agile digits; the dog and cat did all of the actual heavy-lifting for the story, and are not particularly concerned with receiving credit for the book.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
Quick Post
Hey everyone out there in internet land, I just wanted to put up a quick post primarily as an apology but also to make a quick update. I didn't post last Friday because our house was being used as a bed & breakfast by out of town guests. It was a good time, and I was too busy playing host to do anything like post a blog or work on the novel, so I just let it go... and I really should have posted an away message or something because I've committed to posting every Friday and I like to meet my commitments. I had a fine time with my guests, so I really don't feel too bad about not posting... but I feel just bad enough to make the apology, so there it is.
My house guests included my long time pal, and all around good egg, Andy Perez and his lovely family. Andy is a artist of some note, an independent comic book publisher, and one of my closest friends in the entire world (you can check out some of Andy's work here). Andy and his peeps were with us for a few days, and on the day they left my brother, Mikey, and his lovely girlfriend arrived for a stop over at Chez Flores y Garcia on their way back to El Paso. Any visit from my brother is a cause for celebration, and we did it San Antonio style with an outing to the First Friday celebration in the historic King William district and several pitchers of mighty fine beer at Beethoveen's Maennerchor und Hallen. Coincidentally, Mikey and Andy are collaborators on two independent comic books: Lonely In Black and The Afterlife Chronicles of a Zombie. Neither of these visits were about talking shop, they were about having a good time, and that's exactly what we did.
On Saturday afternoon, when all the guests has departed and the house was quiet, I got back to work on the novel and had an excellent bit of output... I guess it was all kind of pent up in there. Sunday and Monday were low output days (this is normal for Monday nights), and Tuesday I hit the wall... For some bizarre and unknown reason, I had a big bout of self-doubt on Tuesday... it was just awful. I reread some to the work I'd produced the preceding days and just felt like it was all crap... this led to me feeling like the whole novel was crap, and I was at a point where I might have scrapped it all and said, "fuck it." I can't explain what brought on this feeling, it just happened. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling blue and it just got progressively worse from there. By the time I made it home from work, I was in no mood to write... so I decided to distract myself.
Something good came out of that black Tuesday: I accidentally stumbled upon the news that Scrivener was now available for Windows... well actually, that it's been available for Windows since late last year. Never being one to enjoy using buggy, first generation technology/apps, I was a glad as I could be that day to discover that there was a much more stable version available for purchase. Scrivener is what I wanted to use during NaNoWriMo last year, but it was only available for Mac then and I wasn't about to run out and buy a Macbook just so I could use the program. It brightened my day at least a little to know that the program I wanted to use was now available to me. I've been using WriteWay Pro which is a good product (I know I've mentioned it in previous posts), but Scrivener's feature set is considerably more robust, and it's what I would've been using all along had it been available to me before I invested in WriteWay Pro (still, it was money well spent, and I'm happy to support and promote that product).
So, rather than stew in my own feelings of authorial inadequacy, I spent the evening learning to use Scrivener; yesterday, I set up the novel in Scrivener's manuscript template, and I was back to writing. Now the software didn't cure my self doubt, I did that on my own (well, with a little help from my friends); all it took was a bit of grounding and a change of perspective... stepping away from the novel for a night helped too. Writing is a hobby for me right now, but it's a hobby I apparently take very seriously and like any creative endeavor there are emotional components you never realize are there until you confront them. Is my writing good enough? It's not, and never will be, to me... that just comes with the territory. I feel like every once in a great while I write something particularly clever or insightful, but for the most part my writing needs work and it always will. Besides: "good enough" for what? Publication? Perhaps... perhaps not; I'll never know until I try, and I have no intention of trying any time soon, so I need not waste energy worrying about that now.
My goal is to get as good as I possibly can at what I love to do without causing myself an aneurysm... but writing a novel is a challenge, an intellectual challenge that no one is really ever prepared for until they undertake it. At 77,534 words, this novel is the single longest thing I've ever written in my entire life and I still have five chapters to go... My desire is to have a 105,000 word final manuscript by the time I'm done with edits, revisions, and rewrites. Why do it in the first place? Because I'm bat-shit crazy, that's why. Writing a novel is the intellectual equivalent of climbing a mountain: you do it because it's there and you have the balls to try.
Huge, huge, huge news, (IMHO): one of my favorite authors (if not my absolute favorite), Neil Gaiman, has just signed a five book deal with HarperCollins; but wait, there's more... get a load of this:
A Sandman prequel... my geek heart is going to explode with excitement... but I have to wait until 2013... Oh what a glorious thing to look forward to.
No new post next Friday; I will be away for a nice little family vacation, and I anticipate not having internet access during that time.
Cheers!
My house guests included my long time pal, and all around good egg, Andy Perez and his lovely family. Andy is a artist of some note, an independent comic book publisher, and one of my closest friends in the entire world (you can check out some of Andy's work here). Andy and his peeps were with us for a few days, and on the day they left my brother, Mikey, and his lovely girlfriend arrived for a stop over at Chez Flores y Garcia on their way back to El Paso. Any visit from my brother is a cause for celebration, and we did it San Antonio style with an outing to the First Friday celebration in the historic King William district and several pitchers of mighty fine beer at Beethoveen's Maennerchor und Hallen. Coincidentally, Mikey and Andy are collaborators on two independent comic books: Lonely In Black and The Afterlife Chronicles of a Zombie. Neither of these visits were about talking shop, they were about having a good time, and that's exactly what we did.
On Saturday afternoon, when all the guests has departed and the house was quiet, I got back to work on the novel and had an excellent bit of output... I guess it was all kind of pent up in there. Sunday and Monday were low output days (this is normal for Monday nights), and Tuesday I hit the wall... For some bizarre and unknown reason, I had a big bout of self-doubt on Tuesday... it was just awful. I reread some to the work I'd produced the preceding days and just felt like it was all crap... this led to me feeling like the whole novel was crap, and I was at a point where I might have scrapped it all and said, "fuck it." I can't explain what brought on this feeling, it just happened. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling blue and it just got progressively worse from there. By the time I made it home from work, I was in no mood to write... so I decided to distract myself.
Something good came out of that black Tuesday: I accidentally stumbled upon the news that Scrivener was now available for Windows... well actually, that it's been available for Windows since late last year. Never being one to enjoy using buggy, first generation technology/apps, I was a glad as I could be that day to discover that there was a much more stable version available for purchase. Scrivener is what I wanted to use during NaNoWriMo last year, but it was only available for Mac then and I wasn't about to run out and buy a Macbook just so I could use the program. It brightened my day at least a little to know that the program I wanted to use was now available to me. I've been using WriteWay Pro which is a good product (I know I've mentioned it in previous posts), but Scrivener's feature set is considerably more robust, and it's what I would've been using all along had it been available to me before I invested in WriteWay Pro (still, it was money well spent, and I'm happy to support and promote that product).
So, rather than stew in my own feelings of authorial inadequacy, I spent the evening learning to use Scrivener; yesterday, I set up the novel in Scrivener's manuscript template, and I was back to writing. Now the software didn't cure my self doubt, I did that on my own (well, with a little help from my friends); all it took was a bit of grounding and a change of perspective... stepping away from the novel for a night helped too. Writing is a hobby for me right now, but it's a hobby I apparently take very seriously and like any creative endeavor there are emotional components you never realize are there until you confront them. Is my writing good enough? It's not, and never will be, to me... that just comes with the territory. I feel like every once in a great while I write something particularly clever or insightful, but for the most part my writing needs work and it always will. Besides: "good enough" for what? Publication? Perhaps... perhaps not; I'll never know until I try, and I have no intention of trying any time soon, so I need not waste energy worrying about that now.
My goal is to get as good as I possibly can at what I love to do without causing myself an aneurysm... but writing a novel is a challenge, an intellectual challenge that no one is really ever prepared for until they undertake it. At 77,534 words, this novel is the single longest thing I've ever written in my entire life and I still have five chapters to go... My desire is to have a 105,000 word final manuscript by the time I'm done with edits, revisions, and rewrites. Why do it in the first place? Because I'm bat-shit crazy, that's why. Writing a novel is the intellectual equivalent of climbing a mountain: you do it because it's there and you have the balls to try.
Huge, huge, huge news, (IMHO): one of my favorite authors (if not my absolute favorite), Neil Gaiman, has just signed a five book deal with HarperCollins; but wait, there's more... get a load of this:
A Sandman prequel... my geek heart is going to explode with excitement... but I have to wait until 2013... Oh what a glorious thing to look forward to.
No new post next Friday; I will be away for a nice little family vacation, and I anticipate not having internet access during that time.
Cheers!
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