I got it! Next time, I’ll over commit even harder so I get more stuff done before burning out!
I am so smart.
Coincidence?
The Aston Martin Valour looks almost exactly like a Mustang.
We all see this, right? I like Mustangs. I’m just confused.
Today, in Wildly Unexpected News No One Saw Coming
My strategy of overdoing everything until I burn myself out seems to have significant flaws.
Productivity
There’s no time better to write then when I should be doing something else.
Hot Take
The Fountainhead is a legitimately good book.
Neglecting the Ayn Rand-isms of Objectivism, the book itself is a good read. It does battles of ideas in a way I’ve never seen elsewhere.
Imagine Adam and Bob get into an argument. Adam tells Bob to do something. Bob says no.
End scene. There’s not much room to keep going there.
In the Fountainhead, at one point Roarke is trying to get some investors to fund a resort, and Rand talks about a hidden third party, a faceless, voiceless other member of the negotiations who sits in the room with them. The investors are in some way performing for this third party, but there’s no one there. Roarke can’t see what’s happening.
First of all, the leverage of the scene with the hidden agenda is beyond the simple argument and refusal. The investors are bound to something that matters to them in a way that’s significant. The persuasion isn’t unreasonable of inexplicable. You get it. They are completely in their own characters and not talking to the reader at all.
Secondly, I absolutely have conversations with people in the real world who are performing for an audience when it’s just the two of us. I have spoke to someone who made a joke and then looked around as if to see if everyone else noticed how good her joke was. There’s no one else there. We don’t live in the Truman show. It’s not real.
I don’t know if they’re practicing for social media, like they’re going to make a video about this conversation later. I don’t know if they’re showing off for other people they used to know. But the invisible third party is absolutely a real thing people do.
Ayn Rand hits a few things like that, social phenomena that no one else seems to touch. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen social conflict like that anyplace else.
Vacation
I’ll be back in a bit. I just need a break.
Take care, everyone. I’m rooting for you.
Sunday Evening
Did a 18 miler today, and now I’m reading by an open fire. Tonight, life is good.
Thoughts
I don’t really need this website until I’ve written and published more books/stories.
It takes money, energy, and time. There are evenings when I could be going over a plot thread, and instead I’m trying to put together an update. LC is a distraction.
Callbacks
Reading Fireborn by Munda. The female lead is named Antigone.
That’s…a momentus name.
Twilight in Heaven Slang
I use a lot of fake slang. Most of it is intended to be similar to real world slang. In a lot of fantasy stories, the author indicates impossible/unrealistic things with italics or something similar with an aim to aiding the reading. I don’t like that because it breaks immersion; I want the characters to react to in-world things as if they’re just as normal as other in-world things. But I do understand that it makes life easier for the readers.
With regards to made up slang, hesh is similar to brother, though a bit more informal and close.
When Kog refers to getting hip action double-dirty, that’s not an extant boxing term, but it’s the sort of term people use in martial arts. Think baseball players calling pitches ‘stinky’ or ‘dropping bombs’ in striking.
The hungry plants have no analogue in the real world. They’re big things that look like Venus flytraps, but they eat trash. They will eat people if they can. Now a sober person, even sleeping, will probably wake up when the thing closes on them, but a drunk or injured person won’t. Hungry plants do have large, wet tongues they use to spread trash and introduce bacteria and other decomposing agents into a mouthful. They don’t have teeth, but they do have coarse hairs.
The words of power are a little different. They’re even more alien to reality, but in-world, they’re literal words. These are utterances that must be said with power, and they’re part of my world’s Cassirer magic system. In-world they’re not magic, though. They’re not sorcery. They’re verbal physics. Saying them with power means shouting, and their range is acoustic.