May this $38.65 be the first of many, and to all of those out there who are writing away but never daring to publish, I tell you this: IT CAN BE DONE.

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-neurojack-chronicles-streets-of-asperian/6466071?productTrackingContext=center_search_results

It’s a tabletop role-playing game, and this book is the primary rulebook. Other supplemental material will follow, including more detailed backstory, pre-made adventure campaigns, equipment and vehicles guides and a host of other information. But for now, this humble tome contains all the knowledge one needs to step into a new world. Why not go somewhere new?

Tonight is a brain chatter night. I wish it would just be quiet and let me sleep. But it won’t. Jerk.

I saw people texting, working on laptops, chatting and drinking coffee…but surprisingly few people were actually reading or looking at books. Call me crazy but…how frakked up is that?! Who goes into a bookstore without the intention of reading or buying a book? If you’re looking for a place to type, try [Franchise coffee bar]! Have bookstores just become a quiet, warm place with free wifi where idiots can go to get out of the rain?

Judging by my experience yesterday…yes, they have. *Shudder* If this is the direction the country is headed in, I’d like to get off a few years ago please.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The first draft has Ferris with two more siblings (which add nothing to the story), he steals, empties his college fund to have his day off, jerks off, hacks the jumbo tv at Wrigley Field and displays his nude drawing on it, and is generally a much less sympathetic character. Clearly, a little editing did the film some good.

Star Wars. The opening has a couple extra shots with Luke, Biggs and some other Tatooineites that is, in a word: superfluous. It tells you nothing that isn’t revealed a few minutes later, or which cannot be easily deduced. The dialog is also filled with excess jammed in between the lines that actually made it into the movie. Again, some trimming worked wonders here.

Alien 3. Wow. COMPLETE rewrite, from beginning to end. The first draft kills Ripley in the first page, then never mentions her again. Instead, the protag is a marine named Sam Smith, who is a middle-town America kinda guy who gets torn apart by a giant alien (Queen?) That stowed aboard the Sulaco at the end of the second film. It tears his arm and leg off, yet somehow leaves him to die and be found by a second rescue team? Meanwhile his dad (a General) is experimenting with alien DNA, which is apparently predatory on a cellular level (read: it eats human/animal DNA if you inject it, turning us/animals into hideous alien hybrids.) The list of differences between the original draft of Alien 3 and what came to the screen is next to endless. As far as I can tell, the only two similarities: a character named Ripley that, ultimately, does not survive and the alien. At least for a little while, until it mutates.

I saw a quite by Scott Fitzgerald a while back that I used to keep close. “The first draft of anything is shit.” It’s the kind of thing cynical writers like to hold to, but a friend of mine convinced me to see first drafts as “work in progress” instead of shit. Personally, I find this approach much more user-friendly, especially for the writer that wishes to maintain their sanity.

Getting past that point where you don’t “feel” like writing and getting to that point where you really *should* be writing is one of the hardest things to do. Lots of things can hold us back; apprehension, uncertainty and outright fear at what will come through our fingertips when next we continue. But continue we must, for if we stop whenever we get to a hard part, nothing will ever get done. Our stories will remain unpublished, unseen, unread and unenjoyed.

Writing is a funny thing. It can be a blessing or a curse but like few other things in life, it truly is what you make of it. You can struggle, fighting your writing every step of the way, or you can learn to flow with it. And believe me, learning to do the latter is way the faulk easier than trying to struggle the whole way. A lot easier on the ol’ sanity too.

So the next time you’re writing and you get to the hard part: keep going, if only just a little longer. You’ll be glad you did.

If you sit down and observe most people for even a short while, it will become apparent that they live their lives on autopilot. They live, eat, sleep and breathe on schedules laid out by people who have little, if any, connection to their lives and they are content to go through life not thinking overmuch about what is transpiring around and within them. Think I’m wrong? Sit down at a bench in a shopping mall for half an hour, you’ll see what I mean. People go about their lives, living from one moment to the next, maybe thinking a little bit ahead, but on the whole not terribly concerned with the world at large. For most of us, the world we know is nary larger than our own heads, and that’s not a comment on the intelligence of the average American (though it could be,) but is rather a comment on how we see the world. For the writer, particularly the writer concerned with speculative fiction, the world is quite a different place.

Now, I’m not saying that writers are inherently smarter than other people, nor am I suggesting that writers are somehow more equipped to deal with things than the average person. In fact, quite the opposite of the latter. Being a writer concerned with creating other worlds forces one to take a microscope to one’s own world, and not just the world inside the brain. It forces you to watch people, to watch yourself, to be cognizant of yourself, your actions and your words. It forces you to live apart from all but those closest to you, knowing that you aren’t operating on the same plane as everyone else.

It is neither a good fate nor a bad one; it simply is. And if it does not kill us, we will be stronger for it.

And on a quick note: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger” was said first by Aeon Flux’s Trevor Goodchild; not The Joker. Just in case you were thinking otherwise.

Any geek, nerd, otaku or insert-clever-name-for-social-pariah-here will tell you that there are many distinct subcultures within the general culture of people who tend to consider themselves “outsiders.” There are also what you might call ‘social butterflies’; people who shift between all of these groups, but do not distinctly associate themselves with any one group in particular. This is me. It can be terribly alienating, knowing that while you can relate at least partially to the otaku sitting next to you, they probably can’t relate to you on hardly any levels except the one where you exist as an otaku. We are forever on the cusp of things, never really diving deeply into one subculture or another, and if we do, it is never for long.

It is both a terrible and wondrous thing, to be both of something and not. It allows one glimpses into many worlds and a very rich view of all the different types of people that exist in this world. It lets you try many points of view and meld many into your own unique perspective. But it is also horribly alienating, knowing that you will forever be in the doorway of everything.I struggled with this for years, particularly in high school. What was I? Who was I? Where did I belong?

Am I the only one who struggles with being too much of everything and not enough of anything? Does everyone do this on some level? Are all the hardcore people out there really just hiding their inner desire to be something else? Maybe I’m just frakking nuts. All things considered, I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.

Do you know what you are? Are you an oddity? An idiosyncrasy? I sincerely hope so. It’s a lonely existence, and I’d hate to wish for anyone to be the only one.

Recently, I’ve gotten into Battlestar Galactica. Both the remake and the original have caught my interest. The stories are great, but me being the hardware nerd I am: I’m into it for the hardware. The weapons and more specifically, the starships. I think that in all probability, the Viper Mk 1 and Mk 2 are among the coolest starships I’ve ever seen. I thought they were so cool in fact that I purchased the Revell kit of the Viper Mk 1 (the Mk 2 is due to release early next year.)

It’s not often that I feel moved to comment on a model kit, but the Revell Viper is without doubt, one of the finest models I’ve ever built. Most models I’ve built (garage kits are famous for this) require a great deal of cleanup before you assemble and paint them. Whenever you clip a part from the sprue, it leaves a mark which must be filed/sanded off. On most models, you need to clean these up or they stand out a mile on the model. Not so with the Viper! Nearly every clipping blemish was concealed either by the natural construction of the model or by a decal. All the parts fit together easily. Directions were practically unnecessary, as the model is extremely intuitive. A paint guide was included, as well as detailed directions on where to put decals and a handy example to work off of (which is handy if you plan on weathering your Viper.)

Again, I try not to gush, but if you’re even something of a hobbyist, like Battlestar Galactica and have about $30 to spare, the Viper Mk 1 kit is a great way to spend a couple days. Pictures to follow.

It had come to my attention recently that trying to make a living as a writer is seriously hard work. Not only do you have to struggle through the agony (and believe me there’s plenty to go round) of having to write, we have to send it to people in the hopes that it will get published and make ends meet for us. Submitting to publications is singularly a terrifying and extremely gratifying thing. The trick is to make it more of the latter and less of the former.

Think of submitting your work as a learning experience. If it gets accepted, you just need to keep doing more of what you’re already doing. If it doesn’t, you’ll receive one of two things: a generic “no thanks” note, or a slightly detailed “thanks, but” note. Either way, this is a sign that your story needs a second look and that you need to submit it somewhere else.

I know oh so well how nerve-wracking submitting to a publication is. You wait with white knuckles for a few weeks (or months, depending on where you submit) for a reply to come back and let you know if you’re a successful writer or not. For some of us, the risk is not worth the payoff. Yes, you might get published. You might also have your fragile self-worth as a writer shattered into a million pieces by the cold, hard hammer of an editor. I mean no disrespect here; it took me a hell of a long time to submit a story again after my first two rejections and I felt like complete shit after they came. I felt slighted, worthless; I was a failure. But here’s the catch: you’re only a failure if you give up.

Most writers will have a trove of rejection letters. Stories about of very famous writers who coated entire walls with them. For some, the negative serves as a reinforcement for the positive: all these people have said your work is no good, so you need to try harder. Me? I threw my first two away. I think I might keep the rest, but I doubt I shall make a wall of them. I’d like to keep them around for the day things happen, I can look back and say “Ah, editor so and so, if only you knew what you said no to.”

I always love to quote Red Dwarf, as it’s appropriate for so many things. In this case, it was something Kryten said. “If you don’t gose up a program loop, you’ll never get a subroutine.” Roughly translated: if you don’t submit, you’ll never know if you would make a great writer or not. If you’re looking to become an accomplished working writer, the simple fact is that you can either try and get published, or you can drown in a sea of unanswered questions, broken dreams and mediocrity. Call me crazy, but I’d rather not aspire to mediocrity.