Writing For Writing's Sake: About Time

Here's an exciting little project that I'm helping to organize for this summer:

Myself and a group of like-minded people interested in creative writing will be coming together once a week to discuss and grow our passions for the art and craft of fiction. We are bringing together writers of varying skill levels and backgrounds, interests and desires, so I'm looking forward to meeting lots of great people and getting to put my Creative Writing Minor to good use.

If anyone else is interested in joining us for this, please contact me and I will send you details very quickly.

A Facebook group will be set up shortly so that common information can be distributed easily, so stay tuned!

B3 out.

Warm Weather Weekend Updates

And without much warning, summer seems like it is here. While I know this weekend's 80-degree weather will not be the norm for the remainder of April and most likely May, it serves as a nice kick in the ass to get me outside.

Time for a hit-list:

• I spent all of yesterday outside: darn near "the perfect Saturday:" it was warm, sunny, a little breezy, but all around inviting. I started the day with a bike ride on the Towpath Trail, then made a trip out to Grand Rapids to walk, then took a walk in Sidecut Metropark. All in all, a very tiring day physically.

• I am helping to organize a very informal weekly meeting of people who share a common interest in creative writing. The people thus far interested in this are mostly interested in fiction over poetry. It looks like every Saturday evening, sometime after 6pm, we will be gathering in Bowling Green or Perrysburg for a light dinner and a workshop and discussion about pretty much anything we feel is relevant to our ongoing creative writing careers.

• Form time to time I do a write-up on the latest Ubuntu release, but this time I can keep it short and to the point: the spring Ubuntu release, 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope, is pretty damn amazing. I've been running it on my desktop PC for a few days now and I find Ubuntu better than ever - the Compiz-Fusion desktop effects work well in Gnome, programs install well via Apt, and out-of-the-box support for the most-used applications is apparent. Even better. As usual, I will fully support anyone who chooses to use Ubuntu for their main computing operating system, with both hardware and software support as it is needed.

I have a hard week of work coming up, followed by a weekend of working in Findlay to get some awesome overtime put in. After that, who knows...

B3 out.

Approaching Normal - How Appropriate

What can I say about the last week? "Yikes" is about it.

I went into last week with a huge load of work to be done at CRI - enough to keep me busy for a while. But at the same time I had a cloud hanging over my head: I was awaiting the results of my Holter Monitor from the week prior, and Wednesday at noon I was thrown into the hospital with the worry that I have a bad heart.

Lo and behold, I do.

Long story short, I stayed the night in St. Anne's hospital in Toledo while I was observed in ICU for ventricular tachycardia (V-Tach): a very serious form of abnormal hearth rhythm that is known to be fatal if left untreated. Scary for me? Absolutely. But as of today I'm on a path towards long-term correction.

Being put in this whole situation at only 24 years old has really taken a psychological toll on me, which I'm doing my best to cope with. I've considered a lot of possibilities lately: did I do something wrong to cause my heart problem, am I destined for a heart attack now, will it hurt if I go out with a failing heart, what would happen to everyone around me if I died so young?

If nothing else, I have found a very, very good starting point for me to finally spring into my "To Do" lists and get working on my short- and long-term goals. While it feels easy to mope around all day long and contemplate the "what if's" of my problems, I would rather pass the time until my death - whether it's next week, next decade, or fifty years out - living life to the fullest.

And that's absolutely what I will do.

B3 out.

To Infinity (err, 2009) And Beyond!

With spring finally almost here and every aspect of my life in turmoil, I need to lay down a couple of goals for the upcoming year and even into 2010, and outline briefly how I intend to hit those goals. Critically Correct seems like a good place to think aloud.

Goal: Go hiking in March 2010.

More than anything else right now, I want to return to the Smoky Mountains to go hiking once again much as I did over Spring Break 2006. I wouldn't even mind retracing the exact same trails we did back then, because to be honest the trails are stunningly beautiful.

The goal requires considerable work. For one, I need to get in shape hardcore... I got my butt kicked last time I went, and if it wasn't for Brent's persistence I would have turned back on several trails and stayed at a hotel. But making fourteen mile hikes daily, combined with steep elevation changes, makes for brutal torture of the body. I don't necessarily need to lose weight to go hiking: I simply need to be strong enough to be able to carry my weight and forty extra pounds up a mountain. Once I can do that, I'm good to go.

I'm planning to start on this goal now. Weekly exercise, particularly walking and jogging, is part of my routine. I'm avoiding putting on excess weight by changing my eating habits to include healthier foods for breakfast and lunch (but leaving room for dinner to be what I want). Eventually sometime this fall I plan to begin long-distance walks with weight on my back to simulate the stress I'll be putting on myself, and by next March I hope to be on my way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Goal: Move out of my house in 2009.

I'm really hoping to see this happen over the summer since I've been putting it off since January already. I want to live in Findlay, closer to my job, so that I can have more time for myself. Right now I dedicate two hours of my day to driving to and from Findlay and fill my gas tank twice a week. Living in Findlay would cut two hours of driving down to ten minutes (give or take), which means I could stay up later at night, get up later in the morning, and overall be happier to get more time for myself. I could spend more time at work without being too stressed about having to drive so far to get home, and more importantly, I could finally live on my own, hopefully before I turn 25!

I plan to do this simply by doing what I have been doing: saving money. I have specific targets that I want to hit in my savings before I move out, and by the middle of June I should be there. Hopefully I can celebrate my 25th birthday in my own apartment.

B3 out.

Welcome to Spring 2009

I typically wait for the first 70-degree weekend to kick off my summer plans, but to be quite honest, I'm tired of waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Fifty-five-degrees and sunny will work just fine, thank you very much.

I'm working on a whole slew of things that have been in the pipeline for a while now, and I'm using this weekend to get some of them off the ground. In no particular order, here are some updates from the front lines:

• Critically Correct: Hopefully this is obvious to you, but I'm tweaking a few things here and there to make my blog a bit more interactive and attractive. I'm gradually rolling out some design changes that have been sitting on my hard drive for weeks now, and I'm generally sticking to this darker theme with sharp, defined lines. I originally wanted to out-and-out replace the original Blogger template with my own custome design, but I have thus far chosen to stick with the original framework so I can instead work on adding custom functionality in a few places. First up: see the random images in the sidebar. Everytime this page loads a random image will appear. I'll try to add new images every week. I will be adding a few new tidbits like this to the sidebar as I see fit, including integration with Facebook, my primary hub on the Internet.

• Biking Season 2009: Today I pulled my bike out, polished it up for the riding season, and am ready to rock and roll any day of the week. With daylight sticking around until 8:30 or so every night, I actually have time to squeeze in a ride or two during the work week, which I hope to do from time to time. Otherwise, as long as the weather holds out on the weekends expect to catch me biking somewhere both Saturday and Sunday, no questions asked about that. I'll be organizing group trips with old and new friends alike as we get a bit closer to summer. Can't wait for that.

• Tear Down the Wall: For the last two months or so I have felt rather isolated, and I think I know why. Above all else I need to reconnect with old friends, friends that I let go too easily for the sake of short-term happiness. While I can't get along with everyone on equal footing, I am learning that my lack of social diversity is not the way to go: simply shutting someone out of my life because of a couple of bad traits does not seem like a great idea anymore. I want to learn to live with and respect everyone's difference, not shun them because of a crappy past, previous mistakes, or annoying quirks. There are literally dozens of old friends that I miss, and one way or another I want to seek out once again. I will make the time to get together with old friends this summer and no one can tell me otherwise.

• Bash '09: This idea is still very tentative, and still very early... but I have always wanted Bash '06 and Bash '07 to be a trilogy of sorts, to round out with one final Bash in '08. Didn't happen. People were busy and I was pretty broke. With a slightly different set of people and a different slant on the idea, I'm considering pulling together one more Bash in 2009 to finally welcome all my friends to adulthood and capping off the end of college (finally!). Stay tuned.

• Get Up and Go: With a ton and a half of cash just floating about I have plenty of things that I want to do this summer, and... quite honestly, I finally can. I'm not talking just trips to Sandusky, I mean bigger-ticket items: my own road-trips into Amish country without my mom leading the way (too much shopping, not enough eating), a trip to the Smoky Mountains (Gatlinburg just for fun!?), and eventually a trip to Mammoth Cave with a whole group of friends packed into my car. It's a weekend kind of thing - lots of driving but short and sweet, the perfect way to blow some cash and get away for a while.

Sounds like I have a busy summer coming up, and rightly so. I simply. Cannot. Wait.

Of course, I haven't even factored in the usual stuff. My personal favorite summer trip is a day at Cedar Point or Soak City / Margaritaville... three or four times over.

I certainly have a lot to look forward to this summer, which is why I wanted to get started a bit early this year.

B3 out.

WiiDD

Attention Deficit Disorder is a serious developmental problem that affects a very sizable portion of the population, particularly children.

ADD is also an easily used way of saying that a person's attention span sucks. While I sometimes feel bad using ADD in this sense, it's quite true sometimes: I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time when I should, and bounce all over the place.

Ever since I started playing video games around 1993, I have developed what I call Gamers ADD: the inability to pick a game and stay focused on it for any substantial length of time. Now certain games can be enjoyed in as little as a few minutes, so I define "substantial length of time" to mean the time it takes to get something accomplished in a game, to move forward. Playing a title for thirty minutes and beating a few levels of a platformer is progress. Playing for two minutes then quitting is not progress. This happens to me from time to time.

In the days of the SNES and N64 I would sit with a stack of game cartridges next to me and play a couple minutes of a game, lose interest, pop in another cartridge - rinse and repeat. The GameCube was a bit different. While I had the console from Day One in 2001, I didn't have many games for it until 2004 or so, when a lot of games were in the $30 price range. While I enjoyed most of the games I own for the GameCube, none are particularly awesome, which made my GameCube Gamers ADD all the more crappy.

In the era of the Wii I'm finding that Gamers ADD is accelerated quite a bit. With dozens of games on my Wii Menu homescreen, I can literally switch between games in a matter of seconds. Compounding this problem is the save-states that pre-N64 games use: I can drop a game and pick up right where I left off, which makes switching games seem less "wrong" - or in other words, a way of justifying my Gamers ADD.

Recently I sat down at my Wii and in ten minutes' time I blew through 15 different games; a mix of Virtual Console games and Wii titles. I have games I need to finish: Twilight Princess, Lego Star Wars, Endless Ocean, Zack& Wiki - and about four or five Virtual Console games as well. That's already months of gaming lined up right there, and yet I cannot stay focused on one game long enough to get anything done.

Maybe it's a sign that my current tastes in gaming are changing, or maybe it's a sign that my current taste in entertainment is changing...

B3 out.

Characters Make Fiction

Characters do make fiction. I wasn't just told this in my years of studying creative writing at BGSU, I know it: a strong character that a reader can relate to is at the heart of all good fiction.

I began as a writer with plots: I wanted to share a story that I devised, and tried my best to lay out the story as a plot. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another, and so on. Since early college, fiction for me has become all about establishing a cast of characters that the reader can connect with in some way or another.

Today, I'm going to look at some characters that have been featured in my fiction, some characters that are in unfinished fiction, and some characters who are still in my head, but are still all the same, close to my heart. What follows is broken up by story, then followed by a list of characters with a quick description about each character's birth (creatively speaking), history, context within each story, and importance to me as an author.

"Almost Home" / Almost Gone

Benjy
Creative Conception: 2004
Age: 20

Benjy used to have another name: Brandon. Originally borrowed from another work of fiction that I used to work on, Benjy was closely modeled after myself in many respects. As "Almost Home" fleshed into a complete short story, Benjy eventually became his own person, and with the sequel, Almost Gone, on the road to becoming a novel someday, Benjy is now a full, independent, complex character. Benjy stands some six feet tall and features deep red hair that is unmistakably a throwback to the hair I myself miss. "Almost Home" told the story of survival, and in "Almost Gone," Benjy is caught in a changing world where he tries to hold on to everything familiar to him, doing all he can to avoid growing up.

Ashley
Creative Conception: 2004
Age: 20

Ashley is the tall, beautiful, well-rounded affection of Benjy's infatuation in "Almost Home" and Almost Gone. In "Almost Home," Benjy's affection for Ashley was considerably absent, but in Almost Gone, she is fully pursued by Benjy. Ashley is based on a former friend of mine, and although her and I haven't been in contact with one another for years, she is still the heart and spirit of my character: Ashley in Almost Gone features all the same smiles, beauty, and happy-go-lucky attitude.

Event Horizon

Kalman Kennard
Creative Conception: 2005
Age: 21

Event Horizon is my secret love affair. Although I have much more serious fiction in the pipeline, Event Horizon is the story that I've wanted to write for quite a few years now. It's also my newest piece of fiction, even if it is generally unfinished. Kalman, shortened to "Kale" by in-fiction characters and text, is my first completely-original fictional character. He's based in part on elements of my past (late-bloomer with the ladies, socially awkward, but persistent as hell in all aspects of his life). He is also an avenue of exploration for a college life that I didn't get to experience: dorm life. While I have been through many of the "usual" paces of college life, I never particularly got to explore dorm life, and Event Horizon is an oddball chance for me to explore what I thought dorm life might be like. Of course, I do have friends who stayed in dorms, so they are a great influence on my writing. More than anything, however, Event Horizon is a love story buried within a twisted realm of dreams versus reality. Tasty.

Shaylee
Creative Conception: 2005
Age: ??

Shaylee is my second fully-fictional character, and her character mirrors her development: always changing. When I began writing Event Horizon, I was not quite sure who Shaylee would be, but Kale needed a romantic interest in the story, and Shaylee was born from this idea. Physically she represents an ideal I have in women: long, silky flowing black hair; short, skinny frame with moderate yet tempting curves - nothing physically extreme nor boring. Emotionally she is a blank slate, devoid of emotion save for the first time Kale meets her. Shaylee is young in appearance and spirit, but Kale never learns of her age, and by the end of the story, he understands why: she is a resident of Horizon Dormitory, the ominous complex at the center of Event Horizon. To keep her situation brief: Shaylee is a prisoner of her own lusts and desires, aided by the mysteries of Horizon, and has no ability to distinguish her dreams from reality.

Minor Thirts Series

Unnamed Man / Unnamed Woman
Creative Conception: 2006

Although I have only published one story in this series, I have a whole collection of unfinished short stories that feature these two generic characters. An unnamed man and woman on the verge of becoming "real" adults as they near 30 years old struggles to survive in a near-future Earth that is suffering from a severe shortage of potable water: millions of poor die every year from lack of access to water, the middle class fights constant international wars for water, and the upper class (these two characters) are reduced to finding their way in a world where their former comforts are all but history.

More importantly, I created these characters to be generic on purpose: each fills a gender role, a personality role, and a societal role that I use to try to abstract a lot of ideas about our modern day way of life. I then put these abstractions in difficult situations brought about by this world of war over something so basic as water, and see how they react. I've received criticism from peers that these characters are a little too abstract and hard to relate to, but if any of my readers can picture themselves in the shoes of these nameless figures, then I have succeeded.

Meltdown

The Entire Cast: ???, Brent, Lindsey, Jana, Erin, Pat
Creative Conception: 1998

Pardon the triple question marks up there, but I'm currently rewriting a lot of my characters featured in Meltdown and some of this involves finding new names for my characters, including the lead. But until that is done, I will go ahead and use the original character's name: Brandon.

Yes, authors are never, ever supposed to use their own name for their characters, but when I began writing Meltdown in 1997 and 1998 I ripped every character in the story from real life inspiration, including names. Over the years, as Meltdown evolved into a more sophisticated project, I began to see that my naming scheme and character development felt awkward, so I embarked on a mission to rewrite all my characters into their own fictional people, rather than being entirely based on former high school classmates.

Today Meltdown consists of a cast of six core characters. It seems ironic that my first foray into fiction turned out to be my most complicated: it's hard to write a cohesive story that can successfully tie two characters together, let alone six. In light of what I learned in college, I've begun to restructure Meltdown to be more than an adventure story; rather, I'm using each of my characters to contrasts one another, each his or her own unique person with a personality and historic background that will contrast one another quite well.

My first aspect of differentiation among these characters is what I call "facet of human characteristics." For example:

Brandon is a risk-taker, as where Jana keeps a cautious head. Pat looks forward to the future even in a bleak world, while Erin consistently struggles to overcome the loss of her family and past. Lindsey becomes physically weak in the story, while Brent grows stronger against all odds.

Meltdown is turning into quite a diverse story, and I'm plucking away on it in tiny, controlled bites every day. Piece by piece.

Guitar Hero vs Rock Band

Well here's an article I never thought I would be writing. My love for Guitar Hero is quite extensive, but I've recently found a new love, a game so awesome it actually has caused me to cast aside my loyalties to past loves.

Hello, Rock Band.

My overarching point is this: Rock Band 2 is a better game that Guitar Hero: World Tour. The differences between the games are small conceptually, but there is an underlying feeling that each game has that is distinct and familiar all at the same time. Ultimately, the differences between the games can be traced back to the development history of each.

Guitar Hero 1 and 2 are the grandparents of Rock Band 1 and 2, and it's very evident in how Rock Band plays. Rock Band is a logical extension of the genius mechanics established in Guitar Hero 2, particularly with regards to song difficulty (and difficulty progression throughout the course of the game), as well as note chart layouts (realistic but fun), and overall presentation (raw, concert feel at every corner). Harmonix Music Systems is a company full of talent and it shows in every aspect of Rock Band.

The Guitar Hero series was picked up by Neversoft for Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. This change in talent from Guitar Hero 2 was immediately evident, and my opinion of Legends of Rock and World Tour reflect that. While GH3 and World Tour are great games overall, they are only awesome when considered from within their own bubble, a bubble created by Rock Band - in other words, competition breeds evolution, and Rock Band has evolved while Guitar Hero is still stuck in the rut that a delevoper new to the genre is still learning to climb out of.

The developmental differences between GH and RB are evident most in the subtleties of how each game plays. Rock Band is a game built from the ground up to be played multiplayer (band set-up, online features, and Overdrive display this the best), and there is a genuine need to develop a certain level of skill to succeed in Rock Band.

Guitar Hero, on the other hand, is more about flash - the best example of this being sparadic note charts. I've noticed that World Tour's songs tend to be overdone and over-exaggerated, which means that a skilled player can definitely show off quite a bit, although I find the skill-based charts of Rock Band are more exciting; in fact, I think some of World Tour's charts feature extra notes not in the original songs, an extra bit of flashiness that, for me, takes away from the gaming experience.

And then there is the online music stores. Rock Band 2 blows Guitar Hero away yet again, featuring weekly releases that sometimes tally up to be greater than what Guitar Hero releases in a month. The endless flow of great music ("Ten," anyone?) will certainly contribute to my long-term interest in the game. On the flip side, Guitar Hero's music store seems spotty at best, sometimes releasing really awesome track packs (Boston, SSPU), while otherwise getting second-rate songs from classic bands (Queen, for example). If nothing else, World Tour's music store feels unfinished, and I wouldn't be surprised if Guitar Hero 5 or 6 ends up breaking the current functionality for a new store set up, rendering all current tracks useless in newer generations of the series.

I shouldn't bad-mouth Guitar Hero so much. I did get quite a bit of enjoyment out of World Tour when it first came out back in October, but the truth of the matter is that since playing Rock Band 2, I can safely say that my loyalities lie with Harmonix and their style, not with the brand name "Guitar Hero."

Anyone on Rock Band 2? If so, hit me up and we can certainly play online sometime!

B3 out.