On being lazy and relaxing

Wow, this has been another rough week for drafting. This week and last just have not amounted to much and I'm not sure why. I'm just not seeing things very clearly in my mind, which is a pretty sharp reversal from most of April. Maybe it's a delayed reaction to day-job stress? Things have lightened up these last couple of weeks and maybe it's made me relax? I don't know.

Although now that I say that, it seems true. I've been slack on my workouts these last couple of weeks as well; today was just the second lifting day in as many weeks, and I've been running once. Not good when I have a 5k scheduled next Sunday.

And I wouldn't be surprised if all of this is tied together. Things relax at work after a couple months of pressure, and that triggers my natural laziness. I relax on my workouts, I relax on my writing, I start thinking that I've earned to some rest and enjoyment during the week.

Which is bullshit. I haven't earned shit, and I need to remember that. Getting the timeline started on Battlesongs doesn't count for accomplishments. That's going to happen no matter what, and the only thing treating the publishing process like it means anything will accomplish is making sure I make mistakes. Best case scenario, Battlesongs gets me halfway to the goal. So with BSoH on autopilot, the most important thing right now is getting Nomad's drafted. I'm still on schedule to finish by the end of the year, but I'm starting to run out of wiggle room.

The good news today is I set a new PR on 5x3 overhead press, and would have gotten a PR in 5x1 deadlifts if I hadn't let my grip relax on rep 3, which threw off my form and made it so I couldn't pull the last two reps.

I'm starting to notice a pattern here.

It's most obvious on squats. At the bottom of the squat, something in my brain at least tells me that the easiest way out of this rather uncomfortable position is to relax my hamstrings and lower back and drive up with my quads. And it would be, if not for the fact that doing so will tear up my ASIS tendons and get crushed like an accordion when I run out of gas halfway up. We call that a "bad thing".

The lesson I have to learn, that I already know, that I have to actually fucking respect is that I am lazy by nature, and if I want to be of any use to anyone, I cannot relax. Weekdays are for work. I am supposed to get up, go to work, come home, work out, write 800 words, make lunch for tomorrow, and go to sleep. That's it. That's what my days should be like.

No sitting around for a half hour looking at email before I start lifting. No reading forums before I start writing. One thing to the next, as efficiently as possible, and no rationalizing deviations from the schedule. No cutting myself a break because of a hard day at work, no blowing off workouts because it's raining/cold, no taking it easy because I did well the day before.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

I give myself more than enough slack already. My Fridays and Saturdays are completely free, at least until Girlfriend schedules things, and later this year I plan on spending all day on Sundays watching football. My word count quotas for Nomad's are a fucking joke compared to what I did for Battlesongs. And if I can't handle a workload this light, maybe I need to tighten things up so I don't get a chance to relax.

Tighten things up, get mad, and get ON this shit.

The timeline starts today

This is when things start to get interesting.

Today I sent out for quotes for formatting and cover design suitable for ebooks. The plan is to release Battlesongs of Hope on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords by the end of August.

I decided to self-publish rather than follow my one lead with a for-real-life publisher after I started following Joe Konrath. In September, I'd gotten farther with a publisher than I ever had before; they read the entire manuscript at least, and requested further edits before they could offer me a contract. Which is a rejection, but it's a qualified, not entirely final rejection.

But after I made the changes and started following Joe, I realized that even if I could get a book deal with this publisher, I may not be much better off. They are an ebook only publisher, which means no shelf space in Walmart, and they charge $5-$6 per ebook, regardless of the author. I don't know what their royalties are, but I'm willing to bet they pay a lower percentage than Amazon's 70% for a $2.99 copy.

So I'm jumping in the self-publishing world. I'm looking at $200-$500 for cover design and formatting, and plan on releasing at $1.99 per copy. Self-pub royalties scale with price, so I'm looking at about $1 per copy. If I can make $1 more in royalties than it takes to get this thing out there, I'll at least have not failed.

But however far I go past that, well, I'll find out in time.

Drafting on slow days

Put up a new story today, clearly. Or rather, not new; it's actually rather old. I wrote it the summer before my last semester of college, which was a rather dark time in my life. Many nights I found myself walking around at night, and the things I saw and/or imagined on those walks had me a little worried for a while.

In fact, I knew I had this somewhere. A few days before I wrote "Of course it's not real.", I saved a file called "hrm.txt" It's pasted unedited below.

For the past couple of days I've been seeing imaginary bugs darting accross the floor, the walls, etc. It's always in my periphreal vision and they always disappear when I look for them. This could do with the earwig I had crawling on me a couple nights ago right when I was about to fall asleep. I've been around bugs my whole life and there's no other reason I have to really fear them. But it is somewhat unnerving. 6-23-06

To me, the interesting part of the story is that I found it creepy enough to include every distinct image in it when I wrote Battlesongs of Hope a year later. The horns-for-eyes monster gives Jacob a scare early on. And the smiling guy in the hat is actually the main antagonist in the book I'm working on now, The Nomad's Wilds.

Speaking of, I'm 15,000 words into drafting Nomad's and have been hitting a pretty good clip these last couple of weeks. Not today though. I'm at one of those spots where I know what has to happen to move the plot, but I just can't get things going.

Part of it is I know that whatever I write for this part probably won't last past the initial edits. It's a narrative in the middle of a book, which is almost always bad practice, but I need to get the ideas down so I can move onto cooler parts. And right now, knowing that has me tripped up.

The good news is I kicked 858, 528, and 600 words on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which means I almost hit my goal of 2000 words per week already. Won't be getting anything done tomorrow because of a road trip followed by a party followed by chores on Sunday. So I guess that's how things will stand until next week.

I may try to add something about drafting every week on here, on the off chance my books actually find an audience someday. Girlfriend says some strange people enjoy 'relating' to other people, and I suspect that if any of my books do sell copies, some of those readers may want to write their own books. So, future friends, this is the first drafting entry.

"Of course it's not real."

The problems come when nightmares start invading your waking hours.

Out of the corner of your eye you see an insect, impossibly large, a foot or more, more legs than you care to count, black pupil-less eyes, visible fangs. And it's moving. Fast. Up your wall, across your floor. Darting behind you, dashing under a chair as you approach. Then when you look it's gone. Nothing. Just a trick of your imagination.

Now it gets worse. Animals you've never seen: gray cats with a single eye and fangs that dip past their chin and jut past their nose. Dogs with wire scraggly fur and no lips to prevent the rabid foam from dripping past their snarling jaws. There's one running before you on the other side of that fence. Oh, but that's just a shadow played from a streetlight. You're reading on your couch and out of the corner of your eye you see one perched on the back of the couch; just inches from your face, watching, watching, watching, licking its lips. You snap around to see it and it vanishes. Silly you.

Now you're walking across a baseball diamond in the fall. The season's over but the afternoon sun is warm. You don't see the second base anchor and you stumble a little. As you fall you see a man standing over home plate. His hair is black and thick and sticking out from under a black wide brim hat. This mans' jeans are stained darker than dirt could ever get them. You can't see his eyes but you see his smile, grinning man. He has something in his hand. Something terrifying. But you can't see because now you hit the dirt. You scramble around, rolling in the dust. You look towards home plate and the man is gone. Must have been a whirlwind blowing some leaves.

But the man doesn't stay at the diamond. Oh no. He follows you. There he is in the back of that passing car. You see nothing but the silhouette of his head and hat and that ridiculously wide grin. Gone. Above you in the tree, crouched on a thick bough. Dangling something from his hand. He has an axe in the other hand. Not an axe. A hatchet. You don't want to look up but you do. Gone. At home, through the crack of an almost closed door, you see that Cherise cat smile; hidden eyes watching you. Spring open the door; gone. You drive. Drive to clear your head. Tell yourself that you're a rational, educated person. Perhaps it's stress. Perhaps you should see a doctor. But then the grinning man is standing in the road ahead and you're going too fast to stop in time. He throws the horrid thing in his hand at your windshield and it sticks. That's the way you part your hair, just a little crooked there. That's the scar you have from when you were a kid and you got cracked in the head with a bat. The saggy thing leaving blood streaks on your windshield, your hood, is your own scalp. But in front of your car is just a dead possom.

Soon you find yourself wondering in the morning and evening if you are really awake or asleep. You touch a door handle that turns into a vicious snake head; you wake up. You see an oblong scaled hand reaching under your window; you slam the window and the hand disappears but you're still awake. Something tall and man shaped, pure midnight black with two wicked growths where its eyes should be is standing in your kitchen when you go to fix dinner; you stay awake. This thing doesn't go away. It walks toward you. Your rational brain tells you that you're imagining things. Your heart is hammering too hard to tell you anything. It reaches out a hand. Four clawed fingers, powerful and swimming with scores of little blisters roaming just under the skin. You close your eyes. Not real. Not real. Not real. You tell yourself this even as the things hand grips your shoulder. Cold. The claws pierce your skin and whatever was swimming under the blisters now rushes into your open wounds and you can feel tiny worms winding their way under your skin and through your veins and into your eyes, eating as they go. You cry out to an empty kitchen. The thing is gone and your shoulder is unscratched. You decide you need a doctor.

Hrm, hrm, hrm, says the doctor. You're laying on a nice red leather couch; he's sitting in a matching overstuffed armchair. You're very comfortable. You keep asking for coffee. Oh yes, I've heard of this, says the doctor. He says you must have some repressed fear that you haven't come to terms with. How are your dreams? You don't know, you can't tell the difference any more. Insomnia, says the doctor. Take some sleeping pills; they'll make you feel better. As he says this his forehead wrinkles in concern. He's very very concerned because you're a highly valued patient and oh, did he tell you about how he and your father used to go golfing. Little tendrils are coming out of his ears as he says this. Little black strands of spaghetti with minute mouths and minute teeth. Forehead wrinkling. Wrinkling and cracking. Sloughing forward from his face.

Maybe you need to get out more, the doctor says in his doctor voice, which is currently issuing from a melted rubber mask of a face. You look away and look back. I can write you a prescription, says the doctors voice. Hundreds of wispy tentacles wave in some unfelt breeze, each with a tiny mouth, tiny teeth. They come from a black head bleeding red blood. No eyes, horns. Curved goat horns growing from the eye sockets. Grinning mouth with too many and too large teeth. A hatchet in one hand. Your father and I used to go fishing, says the doctor's mask from its position on the floor. Weird insects appear on the walls. Scurrying from one place to another, bumping into each other. You hear gurgling barking from the hallway. On the ceiling, hanging from its enlarged claws is a one eyed cat. Watching you, licking its lips.

You wish you could wake up.

Crotch Squats

I've been loosely following Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength program since November and have gotten some decent results on it. Between November 1 and January 10, I gained 24 pounds and brought my squat up from 170lb for 3 sets of 5 to 250lb for 3 sets of 5. But when the weight started to get heavy, a number of old nagging injuries, combined with inconsistent recovery forced me to deload and re-evaluate my squat form.

And today after two months of experimentation, I finally figured out what the Starting Strength book describes, but never explicitly states as the key to good squat form.

You squat with your crotch.

You squat with your crotch because the squat is a hip movement, not a leg movement, and if you're going to drop your pelvis below your knees without giving yourself tendonitis in every joint below your shoulders, you need to squat with your crotch.

To get a feeling of what the key muscle involved is, do a classic adducator stretch before you start.

The muscles stretched are the ones you want to load on the way down in the squat. Rippetoe can tell you how to start the squat here. But the key cue for me is not to shove my fucking knees out, which is Rippetoe's constant refrain, but to make sure the adducator muscles take the load on the descent and initiate the bounce out of the bottom.

When the adducators take the stretch, it is impossible for your knees to slide forward or in, and it is likewise impossible for your lower back to round at the bottom. It's an odd feeling to load a muscle so rarely used by an office worker, but doing so allows for a surprisingly heavy weight to be moved with no form degradation. And moving weight with good form means the only thing to worry about on recovery days is sleeping and eating, rather than stretching or icing tender spots.

Battlesongs of Hope World Almanac Part 2: The Ancients

When humans first settled into cities, they did so alongside or at the behest of creatures known as Ancients. Unlike Dragons, which were part of the world itself, or Wizards, which were born naturally from humans in a magical world, Ancients instead evolved out of the energy of Humanity as a whole. The Delphi Archives note that there is some debate whether the Ancients shaped humanity as an amalgamation of themselves, or whether humanity unwittingly created the Ancients to embody aspects of human psyche. Whatever their origin, the Ancients were long the driving force of Humanity's history.

They were powerful creatures, taking the names given to them by humans but never changing their forms, which were as varied as their personalities. No single description could possibly fit all Ancients. Save perhaps for these: the Ancients did not age. Nor were they immortal, as the Two Houses displayed. They could exert great influence upon the world and its inhabitants, although the form by which this took varied widely. Some were exceptionally physically powerful, others raised armies of their progeny, others could conjure magical devices, and still others could transform life into their own image.

The Ancients spawned many of the magical creatures in the world. Shadow men, vampires, orcs, gremlins, fairies, nymphs, and a dozen other species were either created to serve the Ancients, or as a result of their influence. These societies were as varied and as lively as their human counterparts, and lived alongside Humanity for thousands of years. They feuded with humans and each other, had kings and presidents and merchants and parents, and found their way in the world just as humans did.

Few of these societies and even fewer of their founding Ancients survive today. There used to be an Ancient of alchemy and plants, one who was very tied to the earth, but they killed her. There used to be a great inventor Ancient, who created machines for every use and user, but they killed him. There used to be one who was like the sun, a bringer of light, but they killed her too. Michael the storyteller survived, as stories often do. There is still an orc lord living in the mountains, a lord of war, who fought and lost against the Wizards before the Two Houses arose, and his being driven to the mountains at the top of the world saved him from the Two Houses.

Some wonder if the Ancients could return, now that The Anarchist Murmur has come and gone.

Becoming a more sophisticated drunk

I'm an unapologetic beer snob. I drink beer like most people drink pop because I lost my sweet tooth years ago. And while I have my favorite beer (Goose Island Honker's Ale) and my favorite type of beer (American Pale Ale), I'm quite partial to most styles of beer given certain circumstances. Wheat beers are better in summer, and stouts are exclusively for snowy days, for example.

Yet for the longest time, when I felt like drinking liquor I drank whiskey. Scotch at first, until someone turned me on to bourbon so I could branch out. Two ice cubes and a splash of water, pour whiskey on top, stir. Whiskey. Man's drink.

But now that I'm living with a lady, I've been informed that there are OTHER types of spirits. And despite what I learned in college, you can make a mixed drink that doesn't involve pop or kool-aid.

So I've been experimenting, starting with, what else, whiskey. Had to make a stop at the bottom shelf of the liquor store for some Seagram's 7, because mixing $40 Woodford Reserve made me a little ill. I decided I like the idea of an Old Fashioned better than I like the actual drink, and the Manhatten I made tasted like syrup, so it was time to try Science.

After a number of experiments I came up with something I call a Brambly Forest. It's named for its taste; try it and see:

2oz mixing whiskey.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
1 pinch dried mint leaves or 4 fresh mint leaves.
A dash of bitters.
A splash of water to taste.
Muddle the mint in the vanilla and water. Add two ice cubes, and top with whiskey and bitters. Stir.

Some more experimenting lead to what I'm told is a modified Whiskey Sour, but in REAL life is called a Puckered Canadian:

2oz mixing whiskey.
5 drops lemon juice.
Just enough real maple syrup to thinly coat the bottom of the glass.
A splash of water to taste.
Mix the lemon, syrup, and water until the syrup is dissolved, and then top with whiskey and ice. Stir.