State of (the) Mandaland: 2011 Edition
Holy crap wow it’s been a whole year since my State of (the) Mandaland post.
Where the hell has time gone?
Apparently last year my vows for 2010 were semi-on par. I mean, not entirely, but for the most part. I wanted to travel a lot, and I did. I went on a more-or-less cross country road trip (twice!) and visited like ten new states. I did not make it out of the country, but moving to the midwest, well, I might as well have. I wanted to read a lot, and I didn’t finish as many books as I wanted to, but I certainly did do a lot of reading. I wanted to do something “bigger.” I think the changes overall that I made were pretty big.
It’s strange looking forward to another year, especially now that January has more or less come and gone. I have plans already for June, August. I’ve been in this apartment for two months already. I’ve been away from home since last August. Where has the time gone?
I’m really not sure what I could say this year, you know? Predictions are so far off, goals are so unattainable. I almost jinx myself by saying “I want to do _______ this year!” because…lets face it, by setting it as a goal I’m that much more likely to fail.
That said, I don’t know where the year is going to take me. Last year took me a thousand miles away from everything I’m familiar with, doing and experiencing so many new things. Hostessing at a restaurant, Disney World, Universal Studios, stepping into the world of Harry Potter for the first time, publicly talking about my website and having people become interested, having my website absolutely take off, meeting people off of the internet, meeting a boyfriend off the internet, staying in a hotel room by myself in a place I’d never been, going to Miller Park, seeing Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and a ton of other performers I’d never thought I’d ever get to see in person. Accepting freelance web design as a career, having my car switched into my own name so it’s really mine, standing up for what I believe in, booking a flight at the last minute, leaving my cat behind, exploring places I’ve never been, watching a football game in a bar, seeing an indie film at the Sundance theatre, getting cds signed by my favorite band, judging a parade on the 4th of July, finally feeling confident enough to wear a string bikini, just so many things I never thought would happen.
This year is going to be a roller coaster. It is going to be unpredictable. I’ll be in Georgia in June and Indiana in August and spending my first birthday entirely away from home. I’ll be starting up a Yoga class in a few weeks. I’ll be launching two new websites and who knows what else beyond that. I want to see a Brewers game. I want to meet more people off the internet. I want to see the bean in Chicago. I want to do more.
The state of Mandaland is good. It is perfect. Blissful. Ongoing.
How is your world?
Read MoreStories, Tales, and Other Things
For the past week or so, Nick and I have been reading before bed.
Years ago, we both discovered (or, I discovered and shared) the author John Green, thanks to the YouTube channel he had started with his brother Hank – VlogBrothers. To me, this story is best finished with a clever “and you know the rest,” but just in case you don’t, I’ll tell you. John and Hank agreed to – for the course of one year – not participate in textual communication with one another. They could talk on the telephone, they could skype, but they could not send emails or text messages or instant messages. Every day, they had to make a video, alternating in turn so that January 1, 2007 Hank made the first video, and on January 2 John made his, and so it began.
As it would turn out, John Green was also a pretty well known YA Author. You know, one of those people who’s books are shelved somewhere near the Harry Potters and the Twilights and the Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and whatever else they’re shoving there these days. Nick and I both, from a thousand miles apart, went out and purchased matching copies of Looking For Alaska. We both finished in, more or less, one sitting.
Maybe it’s because John Green is an absolutely phenomenal author, or maybe it’s because his characters are extremely relate-able, but each of the books beyond Alaska I scooped up with equal enthusiasm. An Abundance of Katherines forever emblazoned in my head the concept that there are “dumpers” and “dumpees.” Paper Towns was my guidebook and companion for moving so far across the country without so much as the faintest idea what I was doing.
Then came Will Grayson, Will Grayson.
I purchased the book…awhile ago, while I was back home. I had Leslie special order it and rushed over to get it and took it home…and didn’t read it. In that time, I guess I thought Nick had already read it, but when we moved in and combined our book collections and looked at our double copies of Paper Towns and Looking For Alaska, I noted that there was just one copy of Will Grayson. So we decided to read it.
Here’s the thing about this book – it’s written in two parts. Half of it is John Green, and the other half is this guy David Levithan. It takes place in and around the various suburbs of Chicago and follows the lives of two teenagers. Each named Will Grayson, each voiced by a different author. One boy lives by the rules “shut up and don’t care,” and the other is quietly participating in an online romance. Eventually, their lives intersect completely in what turns out to be a completely enthralling tale that you literally cannot put down.
I had forgotten how nice it was to read things aloud, to connect with someone over a book. While one of the Will Graysons was describing his conversations with his internet boyfriend, we laughed about the conversations we used to have before I moved. While the other was recounting day to day high school drama, we laughed over what our high school days were like. It was fun. Reading the book was fun, the story was fun, it was just enjoyable.
The funny thing about reading YA novels is that they aren’t so watered down you feel like you’re going back to See Spot Run, and they aren’t so overdone that you wonder why the author felt it necessary to throw in a 45 point scrabble word in every sentence just to sound educated and “adult.” The story is about the story, and the characters, and the relationships between them. It’s about how the internet is “real” and how people are “real” and how truths are true and sometimes not true. And then, you know, there’s the reading in general – being immersed in a story. It’s one thing by yourself, but it’s entirely different when you share it with another person.
Have you been reading anything good lately? Do you share reading with someone else, or do it alone? Leave a comment! Lets talk books.
Read MoreStay on target. STAY ON TARGET.
2011 has been, thus far, Year of the Scrambled Eggs.
Not literal scrambled eggs, of course – in fact, I’m astutely positive that I have not made scrambled eggs even once this year. Or any kind of eggs for that matter.
No, I speak of a more figurative egg. Scrambled everything. Ideas! Stress! Projects! Plans! My life has become one great, big, hulking platter of scrambled eggs.
First there’s the projects. A few half written stories for a half a dozen anthologies that will likely not be selected, should they even reach completion. A few things over at the Vault that have been more or less “in progress” since December. The resounding promise to finally fold and put away the last of the clothing we still haven’t unpacked or bake those brownies that my stomach has been nagging me for or, more recently, call about those tickets for that show that’s going on in our apartment complex.
I have another short list of things that I’d like to do in the near future – things that aren’t up yet, but need to be, etc. Web design work mostly. And even just now while writing this I got distracted and went to work on something, then had to reel it back in. Scrambled eggs. Can’t focus.
For awhile it seemed like I was spending 90% of my time awake stressed out and accomplishing absolutely nothing because of it. Waking up at 7:30 to get on the computer by 8:00 to stare at twitter for six hours until it was time to take Nick lunch at work. Sometimes there was Angry Birds or Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop! or reading through Chuck Wendig’s latest short story collection or perusing my new role playing books but mostly, nope, mostly just staring. I even took a few days “off” to no avail: the scrambling continues.
So, internet, I petition you – how do you relax? How do you get yourself organized? Do you have a particular routine each day to get things done? What about when it doesn’t work?
Stop in, leave a comment. Even if you haven’t before – I know you’re out there! How do you buckle down and get things done?
Read MoreBook Heresy! A Kindle Tale.
I like books.
Not just the reading or being taken away to some place that exists solely in the imaginations of myself and the writer, but the actual, physical books. I like cracking open a hardcover for the first time or thumbing through the soft stack of pages in a paperback. I like seeing the goofy, usually-outdated author photos in the back. I like how they line up on the shelf, and that satisfying feeling of having absolutely everything in alphabetical order.
And then came the e-book.
E-books are not a new thing. They’ve been around awhile. Just, you know, man decided that having these cheesy bulky hard-to-access files wasn’t enough and created the fire that is the Kindle and nook and so on, and it was good.
I should stop here, before I continue, and get back to the book thing. My good friend Leslie owns a bookstore. You know, the small town order-it-if-it-ain’t-in-stock type. She is very anti-Kindle. In fact, I am pretty sure that if she is reading this, she already had a heart attack at reading the words “Kindle” and “good” in the same sentence. Leslie’s entire existence depends on people not purchasing the Kindle. Or, well, you’d think.
So about the e-book thing. Nick got a kindle for his birthday back in October. We were both a little fascinated by it and at first not really sure what to do with it. I mean, after all, he already had so many books, and the e-books generally cost more than the actual, physical books, but hey! It was pretty cool! He started off with a bunch of free books – stuff like Frankenstein and other old things that have already passed into public domain. No harm there, nobody’s losing out.
Then he found a series of short stories by Jim Butcher, meant to fall alongside the Dresden Files series. Available only in e-book. That was fun.
And then came Amortals.
I’ve made a few friends thanks to the internet – alright, a lot – and a vast majority of these folks are writer types. When these folks publish things, I want to read them. I’m interested. So when Matt Forbeck announced his latest, Amortals, I was on top of it. It was exactly my kind of read. I wanted a copy right then.
Except, at the time, it was only available in e-book. I hesitated. I hemmed and hawed about it a little bit. And then I whipped out my card, punched in $3 to Amazon, and the book was zipped over to the kindle. Just like that. I was laying in bed and suddenly I had a brand new book to read.
The thing about Amortals is that it’s futuristic. It’s very sci-fi. And, if I dare say it, it was an absolutely phenomenal read on the Kindle in particular, because the device is so futuristic and sci-fi. It pulled me into the story in a way that I’m surprised to say I’m not sure an actual paper copy would have. Except that by the time I was done, I wanted the paper copy. I had sampled the book for $3 and now I wanted to really, actually own a copy of it. The Kindle was seeing the movie at the movie theatre, and now I wanted it on DVD.
Last night, or early this morning, or something like it – Chuck Wendig also put his latest out for the Kindle. A collection of short stories by the appropriate title of Irregular Creatures. Unlike Forbeck’s novel, it’s exclusively for the Kindle – in fact, Chuck’s doing a sort of experiment with “Can Self-Publishing Be Profitable?” Naturally, I picked up a copy of that too.
I think that’s what makes the Kindle so useful to me – not as a replacement to actual paper books, but as a supplement. So far most of the things Nick and I have loaded up onto his have been things that aren’t available as paper books – Amortals being the lone exception, and even then I’m holding out for a regular copy. Despite my allegiance to the local bookstore, I gotta say – maybe we’re on to something good here.
John Green, a New York Times bestselling, Printz award winning author recently stated that he doesn’t care how people are reading, he cares that they are reading. Isn’t that how we should approach the subject? After all – if you like the book, you’re probably going to want to go get a hard copy sometime anyway. So take it for a $3 test drive, and then get the hell out there and support your local bookstore.
Any other kindle owners out there? Thinking about getting one? Staunch anti-kindleist? Leave a comment. Lets talk books.
Read MoreThings That Don’t Matter
In case you came here from somewhere else, have been living under a rock, or skip the vast majority of my blog posts – I run a role playing forum. Of the Harry Potter variety. An absolutely massive one, by role playing forum standards. The average board these days has about 20 players and lasts for 3-6 months. Mine has several hundred and has been kickin’ it since 2001.
The thing about having a board this size is that there is a constant demand for new content. A lot of rpg owners don’t seem to realize that in order to keep things fresh you have to keep adding stuff – they come up with a winning formula and ask themselves why after three months, everyone is starting to get bored. You have to keep creating. You have to expand.
For me, this involves writing. A lot of writing. My end goal as a writer has been for some time now to work on role playing games – not the forum variety, but the kind that publishes books and people play at the kitchen table with their friends. The kind that requires you to draft up scenarios that will challenge and interest the player. You know, World of Darkness. Dungeons and Dragons. FATAL.
Okay, well maybe not FATAL.
My writing for the Vault over the past few years has probably equated to about the size of Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. Writing that consists largely of things like rules – what you can and cannot do, how to create a character, how to do this and that. Even more, I’m responsible for coming up with completely original content to supplement the information that J.K. Rowling gives us in her novels. My board allows people to play characters from America, so naturally I should be able to inform them what American wizards are like. We don’t hear anything about the foreign schools Beauxbatons and Durmstrang in the series, so I have to provide that information too. We need a few things to make us stand out from the crowd, so I have to do write ups on things that are completely original to our board. Six vampire clans complete with a clan history, abilities, weaknesses, and other assorted fluff. Three completely original magical schools – the most recent one being so far off of anything we see in the Harry Potter series it could probably stand alone as a Mage: the Awakening supplement. Thousands of words, basically for nothing.
The problem with what I’m writing, for starters, is that at a glance it becomes glorified fanfiction. Taking someone else’s world and making it my own, adding things that were never there in the first place. It’s not so much fanfiction for me as it is filling in the blanks – nothing is added that changes the original story or contradicts the canon of the series. It is only ever things that we do not know about.
I suppose in a sense it’s more along the lines of what the folks at Margaret Weis are doing with games like Serenity and Supernatural. People want a sandbox, so I give them the bucket and shovel. No harm in that. Except, perhaps, the knowledge that the tens of thousands of words I pound out every year will never be published or receive any kind of acknowledgement beyond my players’ excitement that they have new information to work with – which, don’t get me wrong, is usually more than enough for me.
The thing about all this is, though, about writing things that don’t matter at the end of the day or don’t give anyone beyond a select group of people something to bat an eye at, is that I genuinely feel accomplished after finishing a new pile of information. I feel like I’ve written something worth reading, and more importantly – I can feel myself honing down a skill. I’ve already got the write-edit-write-edit-edit-smash-your-face-in thing down pat. I can create entire worlds in minutes and improvise answers completely on the spot. Especially in the Harry Potter variety, I know that world – and more specifically, the variant on it that I have created – so well that I can answer nearly any question about it without batting an eye, even if the query calls for information we never even see in the books.
I suppose it just goes to show that what they say about practice making perfect is true, or that writing just for the sake of writing helps keep things fresh. I may not be looking to be published or even thinking about a full-length novel or some great new game idea that will revolutionize the industry, but I feel confident that when that idea finally hits or an opportunity strikes – I’ll be ready for it. By the time that opportunity rolls around, I have absolutely no doubt I’ll have what it takes to break through and write something awesome.
Until then, I have some Potter-verse to muse on. Excuse me while I step into this vanishing cabinet.
Read MoreComing Off the Code Binge
Somehow, I survived the past week.
I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure how. I usually spend several weeks bunkered down writing and coding and preparing new content for the Vault, and yet still manage to spend somewhere around 42 hours straight in front of my computer surrounded by the carnage of empty soda cans and crushed Junior Mints boxes. This year was no exception.
Somewhere in the middle of my delirium last night I asked Chuck Wendig how to deal with the brain goo that comes of working for too long without a break. His response? “Stop for the night.”
Mine? “Pppppbbhhhhh buh-buh-buh code?”
It always feels like a sort of feat of strength – see if I can finish six weeks of to-do list in one night. Unlike most projects, it’s not a matter of getting put off so much as it is a matter of having to shut the site down. I only ever shut the site down for upgrades and emergencies. I try to limit this to once or twice a year – the days following New Years being the most important. Once the site goes down, it’s do or die: get the content up. Get the people what they want. Get people back into the game as soon as possible. Do I pass the point of needing to stop for the night? Absolutely. Is it worth it to work through?
Maybe not every time, but sometimes you just gotta keep on keepin’ on. Yeah, okay, I am not going to treat every project with a two day caffeine high and a truck load of candy (well, okay, this is entirely possible – just with like, you know, sleep added.) …but once in awhile? It feels good just to get it done.
I stopped making resolutions years ago, hardly being able to keep them – but this is always so much more satisfying. Having a work-a-thon to kick off the year on a strong note always feels more productive. It’s like I’m looking at 2011 and going “Hey, you see this? This batshit crazy writing asskickery? THIS. ALL YEAR.”
I suppose if I had to set any kind of goal for this year, it’d be to keep up the momentum. Keep writing. Keep coding. Get these background projects out of the wings. I’m finally in the position I need to be, able to work freelance and with a ton of opportunities on the table – I’d like to keep it this way. I’d like to make this a “thing.”
So, 2011 – I guess there’s little else to say other than “bring it.” After all, I survived last year – what’s another 360-something days?
Read MoreTis the Season
You know how it is – you sit down to write a blog post about Thanksgiving and then the next thing you know Christmas has come and gone and it’s almost 2011. I’m not really sure if a recap of the past few weeks is even possible – especially not right now while I’m just thoroughly baffled that tomorrow is the absolute last day of 2010.
I don’t normally get a lot of time to reflect this time of year – January 1 is traditionally a big content release day at the Vault and all of my energy is usually focused on adding new features, writing descriptions of new and exciting things, and prepping for the 12-or-so hours of downtime we often have to roll out the new stuff. I haven’t cooked (or had time to) in about a week – tonight is going to be a leftover night, too – and the usual staples are scattered about: the white board is crammed with half-finished ideas, a dozen notebooks are sprawled open on the dining room table, my Pandora only has about two hours left of it’s free time, and my parents knowingly sent two boxes of Junior Mints to get me through. It’s that time.
Yet, this year – it’s hard not to reflect. I always found this kind of thing cheesy – after all, Saturday is going to be just another day; another blip on the calendar that’s hardly worth noting. But this year…this year has actually had plenty to reflect on.
This time last year I was holed up in my bedroom at my parent’s house, after having moved back home. I was going to make either the stupidest or best move of my RPG-running career: the site I’d been running for eight years or so was getting a name change and a complete overhaul. Turns out, this was the best idea I’ve had in my life.
I’ve moved several times this year, picked up new hobbies, abandoned some old ones. My life is completely different – far removed from the sand and wind blowing off the ocean and tucked away in a typical middle-American town where people still say please and thank you and use checks at the supermarket. It’s perfect.
I’ve got a good feeling about next year – even if I have to sludge through all this last-minute work over at the Vault to get there. Here’s to a repeat of all the good things from 2010 – only better than ever before. :)
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