I know I have a bad habit of putting too much on my shoulders, but really, you’d think that simple household chores would be manageable.
That is, until you realize you’re working all week and thus only get Sunday off to handle everything that needs doing around the house.
I’m afraid this will have to be a short post today, as I’m looking over the list of “Who’s Helping Where?” at the office and I see my name on another walking route.
You’d also think that management would want to avoid using one of their senior employees for extra work after calling them in, but apparently this supervisor doesn’t know what happens if I go over 8 hours on a non-sched day. It’s going to be expensive for them.
Yesterday turned out to be an over-12 hour shift, so I am entering a building I’ve officially spent more time inside than my own house in the last 36 hours.
12 hours, 18 miles walking, and a new baseline for the concept of “cranky postman”. Hopefully, management will get the hint and leave me alone.
…I know, might as well wish for an automatic typing keyboard so the books will write themselves.
Unfortunately, this means there was no writing yesterday. I made it home in time to cook a large meal, setting up my lunch for the next day, and stayed awake just long enough to eat.
So now, it’s back to work with little sleep and physical strain getting to me. But at least I have company in my suffering.
He’s mad at his haircut, and dragged a toy to show his displeasure.
Hopefully, things will slow down enough for me to get the writing done. Until then, there are letters to sling and miles to walk.
As the title should tell you, there was an attempt!
The moment of downtime from yesterday was taken up by the reason for the title’s question, which I will get to. Instead, I went about my traditional writing time, late in the evening and struggling against the exhaustion of being a late-30s guy with a manual labor career.
This is to say: I got another page of story before my sleepiness started influencing my typing, resulting in an additional two pages of incoherent babble. This means, unfortunately, that my late-evening awake period was spent cleaning up what I had worked on earlier and deleting the word salad.
Maybe I can sell the latter parts for political speeches. They’d probably make more sense than what those folks keep trying to promulgate.
In regards to developing the Lightspear Forms, I’ve come across an interestingly frustrating snag. I’ve been trying to find an artist who could help me with visuals to those Forms (who hopefully will understand that payment arrangements would be made; I support artists, but I am also poor and could never pay a full commission right off the bat) much like the Lightsaber Forms do.
These are absolutely gorgeous illustrations.
The snag was when I realized I couldn’t find the artist of the above illustrations in order to credit them or seek them out for possible work/references. I’m going to find out who made this artwork eventually, but the initial searches proved fruitless. That’s irritating to me; no artist should have their work up without their name attached to it. If any of my readers knows who created these illustrations, please let me know.
In the realm of the day-job, I was shown some kindness by my customers and presented with a gift: a new hat!
This is now my favorite work hat and I will not be accepting anything else.
We postmen complain about bad customers, but I have to say that I have good people on my route.
And finally, a moment of startled embarrassment. I’ve been learning what I can about the business end of being a writer, limited as I am without a higher education in the field (or any field, really; learned more math through my work than ever did in a classroom), and I was told by several folks that “I need an agent”.
‘Why’ was my first question. I’ve known of writers having agents and that doing so could help the writer with selling a series, but that’d make sense for an established author. For someone like me, who’s been writing for 20-odd years and hasn’t had a single response to his submissions, it strikes me as wasting the agents’ time. But I looked into it, nonetheless.
After a morning of research and not really finding any definite answers (ah, the internet; so vast and full of information, but dammit does need a library system to sort that information into ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ essays), I came across an agent who had some big names on his list. Terry Goodkind, Mercedes Lackey, Harry Turtledove, and what caught my full attention: Timothy Zahn.
I managed to find the firm and agent who represented authors I was a huge fan of (and vaguely interact with online; Turtledove is very polite to his fans), so what do you suppose I thought to be a good idea?
I wrote him an email. After reading his page and seeing how he went about taking on clients, I thought he’d be the person to ask for advice on the world of literary agents. I wrote about my personal science fiction story I was working on (I won’t be putting it up here, as there is a slim chance it could be publishable) and asked what I’d need to make it presentable.
That’s all par for the course with me, understand. I’ve gone to people seeking advice before, and thought nothing of asking questions of high-level writers (and when they respond, they’re genuinely helpful), but I’ll admit I was nervous about writing to someone like this individual. It wasn’t until after I hit “Send” that I realized something: my email has this blog’s address attached to its signature, as I write emails to current and prospective players.
I basically wrote a fan letter to a high-level literary agent, asked him for advice and what I needed to gain an agent, and sent him an invite to read a blog. My best case scenario is that the email was deleted before being read. At worst, he’s read it and come here to look my fan-fiction over, and that’d be the end of my writing career. I need a very deep hole to hide myself in from the sheer embarrassment.
So, with that story-time finished, I’m off to sling letters and hope for a few moments to whittle away more at the Sidewinder Stories. To the agent I inadvertently invited over here, if you’re reading this: I apologize.
Stay safe out there, readers, and check your email signatures.
The kids noted two things while we were ambling to leave the house this morning: “Dad, it’s still dark out here!” and “It’s way too cold!”
Sigh…they’re Louisiana kids, and they don’t have experience with autumn or winter temperatures. Gotta give them slack.
I, on the other hand, have fond memories of the South having actual seasons. Today is what we call “Mailman Weather”.
Amazing.
The kids will learn eventually that having triple-digit temperatures is not preferred, most likely when they realize that they’re not slowly cooking while playing outside.
While they’re struggling with weather changes, I’m handling my own struggle. I knew that it would happen eventually, but I was not expecting it to happen so soon: Math homework is confusing to this old man.
I have no idea what’s going on.
If this were algebra, geometry, or even basic calculus, I could help the kid. But I read the instructions and stared at this sheet for a solid minute before the 6yr old took it from me and said “It’s okay, Dad, I’ll ask Mom.”
Thank God Sarah is in the education field and an actual mathematician. I proved to be no help at all, and I find that to be deeply insulting.
There will be moments throughout the day that I’ll be able to work on the Sidewinder Stories. At this point, I’m pushing myself to finish Mardek’s Side-Arc so not only you can read it, but I can read the thing. This is what happens when you keep telling yourself to finish a story: you start obsessing over seeing the finished product.
With that, I’m off to sling letters and handle route maintenance to finish the half-day. 400 addresses to update…yay…
I had tasked one of my players to come up with new combat forms, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t deliver.
It’s proven to be an interesting challenge, and it makes me wish I could draw so we could have visuals.
In an effort to figure out if the Forms could work, or what needs fixing to fit game mechanics, I went to my Sifu for help.
This being Star Wars, and Sifu being a fellow nerd, this can mean only one thing: test the forms in a sparring session.
That, readers, is going to hurt. The Jow-Gows (black belt/sash level students) will also enjoy the experiment.
While I’ll be nursing bruises in my effort to deliver a good story, I’ll be working on the plot for the Main Arc session this Saturday. If the plot takes too long tonight and Tuesday, the Forms will have to move down a rung on the priority list.
Off to letter sling and ready myself for a voluntary ass-kicking. Stay safe out there, readers.
It was mostly a day of chores, but one of my players sent me the results of their homework and I was all kinds of happy.
Yes, if a player contributes to the campaign, I give them rewards. It’s usually experience for their characters, but I do give rewards for work.
At the moment, we’re mostly expanding on the culture of the Barbel. But it’s having a lot of influence on a new fighting style that I’m very proud of, and once it’s finished, I’ll welcome everyone to read it over. For the moment, I’ll set up it’s page and will link it here as the information is set.
Until then, I’m also welcoming any questions or criticisms. What would you, the reader, want me to work on?
For my players going into Arc 3: This post has a spoiler detail.
I haven’t worked an over-12-hour shift in a long while, but today was especially drawn-out for the mail route. This does mean I’m going to see a nice increase in the paycheck that will cover this week, but it also means I will have to explain my actions for today. The irony to it is that I did not take any rest stops while on the route, meaning I never stopped moving. But by the time it was around 3:30 PM, I was dragging myself along through 100-degree heat.
Maybe management will hear that explanation and stop haranguing me for my rest stops. Most likely they won’t, but it’ll be fun to explain that to them and watch them struggle to rationalize with the facts.
But I’m finally home, the kids were put to bed, and I have my notes up for writing. I might be tired but I also have been wanting to get my ideas down, so there’s a small pot of coffee brewing. As the players step into Arc 3, named “Wartime Diaries”, I wanted to explore the aspects of ground warfare within Star Wars. We’ve seen parts of it in several novels, and Rogue One did a great job at portraying it on the screen, but I wanted to reflect the background of The Empire Strikes Back in this Arc. In my writing, I went to one of my favorite Star Wars authors for inspiration: Timothy Zahn.
I knew I wanted an overall antagonist for the Arc, but I didn’t want the focus to be on just naval combat. I didn’t want to use a Grand Admiral. I knew the primary focus of the combat scenes would be on ground/personal combat, so I needed a type of military leader who was an equivalent of a Grand Admiral.
So, the Galactic Empire has a new rank: the Field Marshal.
Whereas the Grand Admirals were numbered 12 and in overall command of the Empires’ Fleets, the Field Marshals were numbered 7 and responsible for the tactics and uses of the vast Imperial Army. So far, there’s only one Field Marshal in the story: Field Marshal Erdan Tam.
Marshal Tam will be the ultimate antagonist of Arc 3. I haven’t decided yet if he will become personally involved in any interactions with the Field Group, but I’m looking forward to seeing the Group overcome his plans.
I’ve never had a very stellar memory. One day, I’m going to remember that.
…I make no apologies. That was funny.
I tell myself, and my family, that if there’s something I need to remember to write it down. I keep notepads at my desk for this purpose. That way, when I inevitably forget something, I can go back and look it up.
Ironically, this most likely came about through my day job. Everything needs to be written down and catalogued when handling mail, and somehow I’m able to remember the exact day a customer moved onto my route, and yet I can’t recall if I had moved my keys from the desk to the counter (when they’re in my pocket).
Now, I have a Side-Arc session this evening, and I’ve written out how I want to present the story for the player. But in the chaos of wrangling my two kids through their evening routine, I forgot to write down a note to give that player necessary information for his character. Until I made it to work this morning.
So, there was a panic.
I think I’m going to set aside a page somewhere around here that’ll show what I’m working on and it’s priority placement. That way, a player needing something from me can notify me and it not get lost in the shuffling cards that is my memory.
It was my regularly scheduled day off today, but management wanted me to come in. I was expecting this, but I had not expected them to attempt putting me on a route that was not my assignment or anywhere near it.
I ended up having an argument with the supervisors and was given the day. While this is normally a victory for me, it was also a message being sent to management: I was standing up for myself.
This means I have to be well-informed about the various contracts and union regulations that are integral to my day job, so while I was running errands for my household, I was also downloading every PDF even remotely related to my union.
I was the Local’s Reference Librarian for the day. This is both fun and infuriating, as I enjoy looking through various sources for similarities. It’s actually a very regular occurrence for a GameMaster/DungeonMaster, so I’m comfortable with the research. It was infuriating because I was wanting to write during my downtime, not read through five different manuals.
Alas…
This action led to multiple carriers calling/texting me with questions about the contracts. After several asked me to print up the rules I was looking at, I asked the Local steward if we had a website I could refer the questions to.
Turns out, none of our union representatives set up a site for us. My immediate thought was “Well, that’s not right”, and before I knew it, I was building the thing.
Y’all owe me, just saying.
Why am I doing this? Because it’s necessary. Also, I’m a glutton for work. I’m going to have to put my writing off until the evening, after the kids are put to bed. That’ll make for a fun challenge.
I’ll be updating the Session Schedule with what will (if I’m lucky) be finished tonight and posted. Might have to make a pot of coffee to get it all done, though.
Gonna be a fun evening. Stay safe out there, readers.
Welp, it’s just after dawn and it’s time I got back to slinging letters.
Yay…at least it’s pretty in the morning
The irony to this is that while my writing time is about to be severely reduced, the walking helps me go over my ideas. Hopefully, I’ll still have energy left to me by the evening to get at least a couple pages.
Though I did pack the tablet with me, so maybe I’ll be lucky and have a few moments of downtime. Here’s hoping.
With the kids off to school, it’s time I walked back into the office and the world of the postmen.
Swift's Corner 