Vanishing Point News
Alright, so here’s what’s happening with Vanishing Point:
The first set of posts — the prologue — is written, and we’re gonna post the last two this week. Cool, huh? Kinda nice to know what you’ve been reading for the past week is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m going to post them Tuesday and Thursday, so keeps your eyes peeled.
After those are posted, we’re gonna start getting into the real story. That’s gonna start the following week, with the first episode up on Monday the 26th. I’ll be adding new posts three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the way I have things planned out, we’re gonna be in it for a long haul — the first “book” is going to take about six months to go through at that rate, and we’re gonna have three “books” for the full story. Sounds like fun, no?
So the party’s just getting started, and we’re gonna have some good times — I promise 
I need to get going and get some of my ideas out of my cluttered little mind and onto some cluttered little pieces of paper. Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Freelancing for Sanity
Well, it’s mid-June in El Paso, which means one thing: it’s hot. Plain and simple. I’m sitting in the shade on my lunch break, and it’s just miserable. Sure, I could go back inside where it’s slightly air conditioned, but I’d miss out on my only chance to smoke during the work day.
Anyways…
Yesterday I spent some time looking into finding freelance writing gigs, and it was a lot more difficult than I expected. I did find a couple of sites that seemed reasonable and signed up with both of them; we’ll see what happens.
There’s two reasons I’m trying to get into freelancing, and they’re vaguely related in the “if you squint really hard you’ll see what I mean” kind of way. The first is obvious – I’m terrible at “regular” jobs. You know the kind I mean: get up, get dressed, go to the office, put up with crap all day, come home so you can rest enough to do it all again the next day. I’ve never been any good at that, plain and simple. I always start a new job gung ho, ready to take on the world, and before long something inevitably happens that knocks the wind out of me.
Along with such jobs comes the mental (and physical) energy expenditures. That leaves me bone dry, and most companies – all the ones I’ve worked for anyways – frown upon taking time to rest yourself unless it falls outside of the hours they decide you’re going to work. Makes sense, and I can’t argue with it, but it doesn’t work well for me.
The lack of mental recuperation (and therefore energy) leaves me pretty much useless when it comes to doing the stuff I love. Writing, spending time with my wife, music, anything. The first two are most important to me at this time (not in that order; my wife’s happiness is far more important, but that’s a topic for another time), and those two are the ones that suffer the most.
Aside from addressing the mental drain, there’s a much more practical reason. I’ll be able to (hopefully) support my family by doing something that can only help improve my writing abilities, and that in turn could lead to better (and therefore more profitable – let’s not gild the lily here) artistic pursuits, like novels and stories.
Will I make a fortune with it? Probably not. But it’ll be a foot in the door and it could very well get me out of the computer industry. Right now that’s definitely a major consideration as well.
Anyways, I need to get back to chain smoking for the duration of my lunch hour. Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Breaking the Rules for Fun and Profit
One of my favorite quotes of all time is (regarding music theory) “Learn it, and then forget it.” I’m probably misquoting it, but that’s the gist of it at least. I think its from Eddie Van Halen, but I could be wrong on that too.
Regardless of how wrong I am on all of that, it still is an extremely important piece of advice for anyone in the creative arts, not just musicians. And that’s the underlying point to today’s post:
Learn the rules, then forget them.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance, does it? Why go through the trouble of learning something if you’re just gonna scrap it? I mean, the whole point of learning the rules to anything is so you can follow them, so you can apply them. Right?
Right.
The key, though, isn’t so much forgetting the rules as it is forgetting that you know them. You need to learn them to the point where they’re always in the back of your mind, but they’re rarely a conscious thought. Getting caught up in the rules, where they’re more than just background noise, is a great way to really screw yourself over. I know this from my own experience – not just writing, but music as well.
Many moons ago, I fancied myself a bit of a musician. I was a pianist and composer throughout high school and even got a scholarship to Texas Tech university for it. I was stoked to start getting “advanced” music training instead of just private lessons and choir at school.
Didn’t happen too well. I took to music theory really well, but it didn’t like me very much. The rules just swarmed through my head everytime I sat down trying to write something. “No, that chord shouldn’t lead into this chord.” “That melody doesn’t harmonize with that background.” So on and so forth, ad nauseum.
I ended up mostly giving up on music, for other reasons as well I’ll grant, but that was one of the big things that broke it for me. Too many rules, and it killed the creative side of music for me.
But I missed out on a great opportunity with that, one I’ve since discovered with writing. Learning the rules is half the deal, getting to the point where they’re at your control – instead of the other way around – is the other (and most important) part.
You need to know the rules that apply to your art form so that you have them at your disposal. You need to know what kind of sentence structures you should use, or what kind of chords you should use, or else you’re flying on blind luck.
Once you know the rules, then you can move on past them. They’re there if you need them – which is quite often – but you’ll also be able to knowingly break them. That’s the biggie. Breaking the rules – to a lot of artists at least – is the key to originality, to finding your own voice. Using the wrong chord intentionally can be genius, and even if no one else likes it, you were better geared to express yourself.
I need to get back to the day job here, but keep it in mind: learn the rules, and forget you know them. Then you can break them at will.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Exploding Head and More on Word Choice
It’s miserably hot. Again. The joy of late spring in the desert, I guess. And while my head wants to explode from the stress of work, I find myself wishing it would hurry up and do so.
Not that it would get me out of work, of course. After I cleaned up the mess, they might let me go home and do the rest of the day via VPN, as long as I promised to come in tomorrow. Without a head, driving would of course be quite difficult, so if I were lucky they’d let me schedule my shift around the publc bus schedule. Probably not.
Aside from that, there’s very little happening in my neck of the woods today, so I figured I’d expand a little on yesterday’s post about word choice. (I’m writing this from my phone, as I always do on my lunch break, so forgive the lack of a link back to the post. It should be simple to locate though, I’m sure.)
A lot of times, as I said yesterday, we don’t think about the exact words we use. We don’t really consider why we say a leaf is green or light green or forest green. It comes to us intuitively, we say the word that just seems to suit the setting and the mood, and get on with our lives.
And, for the most part, that’s how it should be.
Like everything else in this world, conversational or writing skills are prone to overthinking. We can sit there and analyze it till we’re blue in the face, but most often our gut tells us the right choice to use. We can worry about how it sounds and what others may interpret it as, but generally we’re clueless when it comes to predicting other peoples’ impression of our speech or writing.
This is going to mildly contradict what I said yesterday, but, as important as word choice is, don’t fret over it. You’ll either make a good impression or not, but the important thing is that you say what feels right to you. That’s all that matters, and it matters much more than whether or not someone thinks you’re smart or funny or a great communicator. All those things will happen if you’re true to yourself, and none of them matter if you’re not.
It may seem like I’m putting too much emphasis on words if the choice is made “for you” by your intution/your gut/the fates/whatever. It’s still important to know what words are right for a given situation, or else your gut won’t have anything to work with. That’s why its rare to find a great author who isn’t an avid reader, or a great speaker who doesn’t listen to the world around him or her. They soak in the outside world and hand it back to you, their audience, through the lense of their own experiences, of the world they’ve seen and interpreted.
Okay, lunch time is drawing to a close and I need to focus on my nicotine intake before I go the next four hours without a smoke. Leave a comment – I want to hear your thoughts. Do I make sense, or does it sound like I’m just blowing smoke?
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Trying to Find a Groove in Twitter
Okay, so I’m on Twitter. For whatever that’s worth. And it’s pretty cool for the most part – lots hilarious people out there, lots of inspirational tweets. Cool stuff, good time killer when I’m waiting on something at work.
But I just can’t seem to get the hang of it myself.
I’ll be bluntly honest: one of the main reasons I’m using it is to get some publicity drummed up for Like Glass when it gets its UK release in November. And one of the main ways I’m trying to do that is by trying to keep this blog updated and post links on there. What I’m having trouble with is getting a connection with people on there, actually communicating – networking, if you will – with the followers I have.
I don’t want to just spam people’s timelines with links to my blog. Even in my short career on twitter I’ve “unfollowed” a few people who do nothing but market stuff. That’s not what I’m looking for. I’d like to start actually talking to people, get feedback, pick their brains and have them pick mine. Get dialogues started, conversations that may lead somewhere or nowhere.
But what to talk about? I don’t want to be entirely mundane, and fill the world with “At work now,” “Going to lunch now” type posts. Too boring. And if I write about the two topics I’m most passionate about (at this time, anyways), software development or writing, then I’ll probably attract only writers or coders and leave out the rest of the world. And, alas, I have very little commentary on world events, and on the rare occaisions I have anything witty or poignant to say, it generally takes much more than 140 characters to say it.
Ah well, it’ll come in time, I’m sure. Only been on it a few weeks, so it’s not like I can expect to take over the world. Well, I can, but I’ll probably be somewhat disappointed.
Anyways, I’m going to lunch now.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Freelance Editing and Writing Services
I’m now offering my services as a freelance writer and editor. Before long I’ll get more details up, but in the meantime contact me on Twitter (@MCoryAuthor). Right now, I’m working on building a portfolio, so I’m willing to work for either free or really low cost (depending on the size of the project).
To my credit, I do have one novel coming out in November (Like Glass) and several short stories available here on the site – just go to the Writing section. (FYI, the shorts were mostly seat of the pants with little editing, and geared as quick stories for this site. They probably have typos and whatnot since I have yet to go back over them.)
I’ll work with you on getting your project perfect, and as a writer I completely understand that somethings may be “intentionally” wrong – I use a fair amount of improper grammar (and even spelling sometimes) in my own work.
If you’re interested or know someone who might be, hit me up either with a comment here or on Twitter (@MCoryAuthor). Hope to hear from you soon!
–Matt
Author Stuff on Twitter
Quickie post while I finish up my lunch break. I just set up an account on Twitter for the writing side of my life. Follow at http://twitter.com/mcoryauthor. That’s where I’ll most likely post quick news and writing-related stuff during the day, since I can’t do much on here during work.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
Now on Twitter
Just a quick post while I’m on my lunch break at work. I set up a new twitter account – follow me at http://twitter.com/mcory1. Back to the grind…
–Matt
Health Care and Cable
Before I get started, I want to throw a disclaimer out: Generally speaking, I despise talking about politics. It’s pointless, and all it does is get people riled up and pissed off, because — from my experience, at least — no one ever agrees on anything. I also have other things going on in my life that I’d rather devote my time to, like work, my family, relaxing, whatever. I don’t want to sit around and listen to someone get bitchy because things would be so much better if so-and-so were running things. And, for what it’s worth, if I absolutely had to label myself as one or the other, I’m probably more of a liberal than a conservative. I don’t think it’s right to pigeonhole one’s self into one category or the other, but everyone else seems to think you have to, so what the hell.
That said, I’ve been doing some thinking about the recent health care debate because of some comments that a friend of mine posted on Facebook. Actually, let me narrow that down: it’s a single aspect of it, and a single comment (one that I’ve heard thrown about in a few other corners of the internet as well).
My understanding — and I well could be wrong in this — is that the new health care legislation will mandate that companies provide health insurance for their employees, or they’ll be fined. If this is wrong, well, the rest of this post is probably invalid, so go ahead and skip it. I’m going to continue on the assumption that it’s correct though.
The argument I’ve heard against that is that the fine will be less than the cost of providing health insurance for the employees, so companies that currently provide insurance are going to just drop it like a bad habit.
At first glance, there’s some sense in that: why pay (for example) $300 a month per employee, when I can just shell out $150 (or whatever) a month to the government for each employee? As a business owner, you’d have to be stupid to want to pay more to provide health insurance, if you could get away with paying a smaller amount to the government as a penalty, right?
Or — how about this — what if you could get by with paying nothing at all, either to the government or to the insurance companies? Let the employees themselves foot the bill for their own health coverage. From a business perspective, wouldn’t that be best of all? Hell yeah, I say — that eliminates a hefty chunk of overhead right there. Guess what though: you can do that right now.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no federal requirement for a company to provide health care (and if I’m wrong on that, let me know, cause I’ve got a few companies I’ve worked for that would have a decent lawsuit coming). And yet, strangely enough, companies do pay X-amount-of-dollars to make sure their employees have health, dental, optical, even life insurance. It helps the employee out, makes them more loyal, and it’s definitely something that a lot of people consider when they’re looking for a job.
But, from what I hear, if this bill gets passed, companies are going to stop their benefits packages and through money at the government instead, simply because it’ll be less money. Never mind that the money no longer provides anything for their employees — and then to the company, in a way. Never mind that they’ll have to worry about whether their employees get sick and can’t get reasonable health care, so they end up taking more time off than they would have had they been able to get appropriate medical treatment. And never mind that their employees will be more willing to jump ship if there happens to be another company with an opening that just happens to provide some kind of benefits package.
It’s cheaper to pay the government than to pay for health insurance, so that’s what we’ll do, right?
Let’s look at it another way, in a more personal light, since I’m betting most anyone who reads this is more of a person than a company. For example’s sake, let’s say you pay $30 a month for basic cable. The next bill that gets passed mandates that everyone must have basic cable (at least), or else they pay a $10 fine. What would you do? Would you drop your cable — something you’re already paying for every month, and something that you use — just because you can pay $10 instead of $30, although you then wouldn’t have any cable? (If you would, why the hell are you even paying for cable in the first place?)
The way I see it, the companies affected by this bill — in this manner, at least — would break up into three categories:
- Those already providing health insurance for their employees. These companies would just say “Fuck it, I’m already paying it every month, it makes my employees happy. Doesn’t matter to me.”
- Those companies that are either too small to afford or too cheap to provide health insurance for their employees. These guys will just pay the fine.
- Those companies in the middle who aren’t providing health insurance but could. These guys could go either way, but I’d wager they’d be more apt to put their money into something that could give them returns (i.e. benefit packages for their employees) than just throw it away to the government.
This argument is a case-in-point as to why I hate politics. As soon as some of the facts come out, everyone just flies off the handle and makes assumptions without bothering to try and think about what could really happen. 9 times out of 10, things won’t change as drastically as everyone fears. And instead of trying to come up with a better compromise, people just get angry. Let’s say the original argument was really what would happen — why not lobby to raise the fine to a point where it would be better for the companies to provide benefits? No, because that would be giving in to those damned, bleeding-heart, socialist/commie/hippie liberals.
On the other hand…
Your Argument is Invalid
Exhausting Weekend Over in Time for the Work Week
Whew… Finally have a few minutes to breathe. Been a busy weekend, but we’re finally moved. Well, mostly moved, I should say — there’s still some odds and ends at the old house, but everything important is here. Which means my laptop, the internet connection, and the bed. Oh, yeah, and the wife and the cat and dog. I guess they count too
The new house is definitely different. No garage, which means I don’t get my morning coffee/cigarette/laptop combination. And it also means that Chloe is going to be spending more time as an outside dog. I have mixed feelings about that. I mean, it’s great she gets to be outside and get some fresh air, but it’s El Paso. Even in the shade around this time of year, we’re talking 95+ degrees. Of course, the other option would be to make her a completely “inside” dog, but you know how dogs can get when they’re left to their own devices. The minute you walk out that door, they have all their friends over, drinking your booze, ordering dirty movies…
The place is smaller than where we were too, but that’s not that big of a deal — just took a little creative decorating (hey, who the hell else has their own dresser in their office?) and we got it all taken care of.
Other than that, just been worrying about work lately. There’s a project that needs to get done this week — and it’s a group effort, not just me — and if it doesn’t happen, then it appears I’ll have much more spare time to work on my next novel. Can’t say I’m terribly crazy about the idea, but at the same time I can’t really go into details about it. Suffice to say it’s one of those situations where it just ain’t fair, but there ain’t a damned thing you can really do but cross your fingers. (I’ve been trying that, but it makes it a bitch to type, which is a rather large job requirement for a software developer.)
Let’s see… Novel stuff… Ok, no recent news regarding Like Glass, but the publisher’s a little busy at the moment. The told me they’ll be able to focus on the book later this year, maybe start talking contracts next year. A little disappointing, but what can you do? Besides, I’ve got plenty else on my plate at the moment and not having to worry about the novel is a bit of a nice break. I’m also still throwing around ideas for book #3, minor sketches and a scene or two, but nothing that’s really catching my eye. Maybe the change of scenery will help with it.
Anyways, I’m exhausted and I need to shave and shower and all that happy crap. Catch you on the flip side…
–Matt
Networked Blogs (on Facebook)
