The Random Update

As usual, it’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these.

Perhaps the biggest monkey on my back lately has been the writer’s block. I’ve had such difficulty putting pen to paper, and with my son becoming more interactive, and with some great video games available, I’ve found it easy to occupy my time with other things. The most recent “controversial” post that I did, in which I personified an M1 Garand rifle and interviewed it, went a long way toward breaking through the barrier of my block. I wouldn’t say I’m back in top form, but at least I’m writing decent stuff again.

That might be sort of the problem. I’m entirely too hard on my own work. I suffer from the never ending edit cycle to my detriment. I need to get my ideas on paper and shuttle it over to Kate, Static, and Blitzfike for their comments before I edit. I’ll get a lot more done that way. When I continue to dwell on the mistakes that I make, or when I beat myself up for not getting a scene correct or a little piece of dialogue, I become discouraged and I want to quit. I’ve written approximately 250,000 words in short stories, novels, and novellas, and I still just want to chuck it some days.

As I mentioned before, my son is developing into a curious little dervish. He is mobile (pray to the Lord for strength and patience), he is intelligent, and he is persistent. All of these qualities come in one form or another from his mommy, so I tend to blame her when he puts the remote control in his mouth or when he scoots across the tile floor to sample some of Trapper’s dog food. He will be eight months old in November. Where has the time gone? Just last spring I spent the night in the NICU, holding a tiny hand and watching his heartbeat and respiration nervously. Now, he’s a chubby, happy bundle or energy. I can’t imagine life without him. What did my wife and I do?

I finished Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. *shrug* By the end, I could see why readers called it anti-religion. Pullman should definitely receive votes for the atheist poster boy position, but his prose is solid, his works are entertaining, and his parallel to Paradise Lost  is astonishing. If you aren’t offended by having your beliefs challenged, you should check it out.

I also recently started the biography of Major Dick Winters (101st Airborne, World War II). You can check the book out in my Now Reading section to the bottom right, but suffice to say that the book is fantastic so far. The writer has a keen grasp of the events that took place in the latter days of the war, and he writes with a warmth and sensitivity that is sometimes missing from war biographies. All too often the prose is antiseptic and obsessively factual. In this biography, the characters are human through and through. Pages are colored with real events and anecdotes, skillfully mixed into a fast-moving narrative. If you’re a history buff, check it out.

Team Fortress 2 continues to entice me. I gained skills quickly, and have since peaked. The rest of the world has caught up with me, unfortunately, so my earlier stints as the dominator now leave me in the top 5%. The developers keep changing the game balance in every patch, causing me to re-learn the game to some extent. I wish they’d pick something and stay with it so I can cruise for a few weeks without having to adjust my style.

The fall Turtle Bluff trip is Veteran’s Day weekend. I’ll be out for a whole four days (in which Kate will be guest-posting) shooting, hunting, using tannerite, and cooking gourmet food over a campfire or a propane stove. I need this trip in a lot of ways, not least of which is that I need the time to decompress and be Pete for a little while without the demands of two full time jobs (writing and being a chemist) on top of my family responsibilities.

What’s going on in your world?