The Angel and I

My survey is still ongoing, so if you haven't already filled in the answers, please consider doing so.  Also, if you have filled in answers, please leave me a comment if you were one of the people who were interested in doing a guest post on my blog or in having me do one on yours, because otherwise it's going to be hard to figure out who you are.  I didn't think that part through quite far enough.

One of the questions asks about things you'd like to see me cover in this blog, and at least one person (maybe more, I haven't checked the results today) wants to know more about my experiences with publishing.  I've talked in bits about my online publishing experiences, the most recent of which is a new and interesting gig writing local genealogy articles for Examiner.com.  They have localized content from all over the United States and are always looking for more writers, so if that sounds like something that might interest you, click here.

The thing that I tend to be questioned about the most in my writing career, though, is When are you going to publish this novel you keep talking about?  I guess it's a legitimate question, seeing as I've been working on it for two years.  The problem is that my narrator, Gabe, has a tendency to only really get chatty at inconvenient moments.  Like, for instance, while I'm driving, and thus unable to write down what he says.

Setting aside time to work on my novel isn't always easy; as my friend and former boss Anne once pointed out, I'm too apt to consider it something I do for myself, so it gets a lower priority than it should.  But even if I do this, Gabe doesn't always cooperate.  Today, for instance, I could be working on it.  It's raining, I don't have to be at work for a few hours, and it would be ideal to sit here with my laptop and talk to the angel.  (Yes, my narrator is an angel.  No, he's not that Angel Gabriel.  It makes sense in context.)

I got up.  Spent a few minutes talking to the cat.  Came downstairs and put frozen waffles in the toaster.  Started a load of laundry.  Opened my laptop to read my email, respond to a few messages on Twitter and Facebook, and get my daily chuckle from NotAlwaysRight.com.  Then I opened my word processing program.

I stared into the abyss the computer screen.  The angel stared back.

I love Gabe, actually.  I sometimes get some very entertaining private laughs out of him.  He's entirely too literal to be allowed, so he comes up with some really odd ways of looking at the world around him and, consequently, around me.  His companion is Sarah, a perfectly ordinary teenaged girl who looks at the world in perfectly ordinary teenaged ways...usually.  She does maintain the belief that butterflies can't be trusted, so these two understand each other better than you might expect.

I'm at my best when I'm writing down their conversations.  Sometimes I wish the novel could be nothing but their conversations.  Their interactions are just so...real, to me.  I'd like to finish the manuscript by the end of this year, sort of a Christmas gift to myself, which is why I do a lot of reading about the publishing industry and try to figure out how I want to go about it.  (Hat tip: I read this article just today and found it interesting.)

A few of the survey responders were pestering me to share an excerpt of the book here on the blog.  So I'll close out today's entry - and hopefully inspire myself to do a bit of work on the manuscript - by sharing one of Gabe and Sarah's conversations.  Be sure to let me know if you like it.

"So I have this assignment and it makes no sense," Sarah told me as we walked home one afternoon. October was upon us; the first few weeks of the school year, during which the teachers will somewhat ease their students into the routine, were over.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We're doing this unit on ethics in social studies." She sounded mildly irritable, although it eased somewhat the farther we got from the school. "The comparative value of human lives. Is one life worth more than another? Like, is the life of a nun worth more than that of a bank robber, or something."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know. Like I said, it makes no sense."

I rolled my fingers around in my coat pocket for a moment, and pulled out two quarters. "What about these?"

"What about them?"

"How would you describe them?"

"Well... this one is really filthy and looks like it might have been run over by a truck a few times," she said, "and this other one is almost new."

"What's the dirty one worth?"

"Half a can of soda," she quipped.

"And what's the clean one worth?"

"The other half."

"So you agree that they have equal value?"

"More or less. Unless you're a serious collector."

"What's the difference between them, then?"

She paused. "What's been done with them?"

"Exactly." I pointed to the newer quarter. "Every life starts out fresh, like this. The choices that are made over time will either enhance it or tarnish it. But that doesn't mean it ever loses its value."

"Okay, note to self, Gabe is my new homework guru." She pocketed the quarters. "Thanks."

"I never said you could keep those," I protested. She just laughed.

A Post About Jobs - Not Steve

R.I.P., Steve Jobs, which is all I have to say on that subject.

I'm still plugging away at my book, which is coming along slowly but surely.  In the meantime, though, I'm trying to expand on my writing repertoire by searching for freelancing opportunities.  I write, I proofread, I take pictures, I blog, I sing, I dance, I tell jokes.

Well, I don't dance, actually.

This evening I signed up with Freelanced.com, where I can track down such opportunities.  It's a little... daunting, I think, is the word I want.  There are a lot of freelancers out there.  I've also been (somewhat shyly) submitting queries to periodicals about possibly writing articles for them, and checking into potential markets for short fiction.  Of course, I have to write some short fiction before I can submit it anywhere, but hey, details.  I've done freelance journalism in the past, as a newspaper columnist and a magazine writer, but it's been a while and in the case of the magazine, I was lucky enough to have gotten a contract through an editor friend.  I only stopped doing it because they decided they were going to do all their articles in-house.

So I was just wondering - are any of my readers familiar with the search for freelance creative work?  What have you found works or doesn't work?  What pitfalls should I watch for, what scams have you encountered?  Success stories?

Things I Hate About Writing

I self-identify as a writer, which - if I think about it too much - sounds a little pretentious.  It's like I'm just begging people to say "Oh!  And what do you write about?" which is usually not the case.

In largest part, I love writing.  I wouldn't classify it as fun, per se; some of what I write is fun to do, but not all, and there is a level of work involved.  But it's work I love as opposed to, say, mowing the lawn, which I regard as more of a necessary evil.  Still, it's not fun.  And there are a couple of things I hate about it.

1.  Writer's block.  No mystery there.  I hate not being able to take my thoughts, which are sometimes very complex to the point where even I don't understand what's going on upstairs, and put them into words that will adequately convey what I'm trying to express.  I once read a maxim that said "If you think in words, paint.  If you think in pictures, write."  I'm very much a picture thinker - actually, to be more precise, I tend to think in film.  This doesn't always lend itself quite right to the written page.

2.  Being told what to write.  I experienced this a lot after my first book came out several years ago.  For some reason, a lot of people I knew thought it was appropriate to respond to this news by saying, "You know what you should write about?  [Insert their preferred topic here.]  That would be an awesome book.  You should write it."  No, no I shouldn't.  Because I have no interest in the topic.  If you find that topic interesting, that's great!  Then you should write a book about it.  Not me.

3.  Inopportune moments for creativity.  The characters of my stories "talk" to me, and I realize that's not something that will necessarily make sense to you unless you have also written fiction.  They basically sit in my head and tell me their life stories, or have conversations with each other that I get to hear.  The trouble is that they invariably do this at times when I am unable to transcribe them.  The main character of my current novel loves to talk while I'm driving, for some reason.  I get 'muse ramblings' when I'm at work, in the shower, eating out with friends...anywhere that I can't write or type.  And of course, when I have the paper or the laptop?  Radio silence.   Leading to #1.

So I have issues with writing.  But I love it.  I need to do it.  It's almost as critical to me as food or shelter.  I'm just lucky to live with someone who accepts this as a necessary part of my personality, and doesn't even blink when I complain about characters who won't talk (or, occasionally, won't shut up).

Rain, Reading, and Reviewing

I'm writing this from an extremely soggy Pennsylvania, which - after being lashed by the fury of Hurricane Irene - is currently suffering the additional indignities of the remains of Tropical Storm Lee.  This past Tuesday was my birthday (I continue to be thirtysomething), and it was suggested that I had wished for more rain on my candles.

In all truth, the weather around here is a little scary of late.  Flooding is happening all over the place; the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is recommending no unnecessary travel through the eastern part of the commonwealth.  Rivers in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey are approaching levels they haven't reached since Hurricane Agnes visited us in 1972.  I didn't exist yet at that point, so this is the worst it's been in my lifetime.  The Weather Channel people are referring to it as "the Historic Northeast Flooding," capitalization theirs.

But despite the delightful squelching noises that the ground now makes when walked upon, we move forward.  Today is International Literacy Day!  A day when people around the world celebrate the written word!  Being able to read is hugely important for adults to make informed decisions and steer this planet toward a better future.  Yet almost 800 million adults are still unable to read.  Check out what the International Reading Association has to say about this occasion, and find out how you can help to maybe bring that number down some.

On a final note, I recently started a second blog.  The Opinionation Station is for reviewing the story quality of video games.  I'm finding I have a little less to say on this subject than I originally expected.  However, I may end up not needing it anyway.  I'm very excited to announce that your intrepid blogger is the newest staff writer for AngryWeb, and will be doing all manner of geeky writing therein.  This includes video game reviews.  My first article went live a few days ago, and I think I'm going to like this gig.

Besides, hunting for nerdy news will give me something to do while I'm listening to the rain.  The Weather Channel just informed me that it's expected to continue all the way through the weekend.

Writing About Writing, Days 13, 14, and 15

13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

Amestrian. Seriously, I have enjoyed writing fanfiction for Fullmetal Alchemist more than I've enjoyed writing almost anything else in my entire life, and its people have such a rich world to be my playground that it allows me to do all kinds of thinking.

14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

No, because I rarely if ever do any mapping. I'm not good at it - I can't draw to save my life, and my spatial understanding isn't always accurate.

15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!

I want to be J. K. Rowling when I grow up. She just seems like she has an incredible amount of fun with her stories and her fandom, and that's what I want for mine. I wouldn't mind her paycheck, either.

Writing About Writing, Days 11 and 12

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

Speaking strictly of my own characters, I think Gabe is probably my favorite to write. He's sometimes extremely literal, so I have a lot of fun getting him confused by idioms and slang; for instance, he once looked at a sign that said WATCH YOUR HEAD and complained about how it was impossible to watch one's own head. His much more world-savvy companion, Sarah, rolls her eyes a lot.

Least favorite would have to be Sam Davies, Gabe's antagonist. He's very oily, very cold. He's plenty interesting, but he's hard to write because I dislike him so intensely. Fun fact: in my original outline for the story, he didn't exist. He only showed up when a friend of mine suggested that an antagonist might help the story to flow a bit better. I'm still not completely sure I agree in this instance, only because in my own opinion, the best-written parts are the interactions between Gabe and Sarah. But Sam is proving useful in his own way, and some of his conversations with Gabe are quite illuminating.


12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

Well, I actually live in the world of Gabe and Sarah's story, so I can't claim to have done much world-building there. I do find world-building a bit difficult sometimes, because I'm not good at mapping and my spatial understanding can sometimes be a bit distorted.

Writing About Writing, Days 9 and 10

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

This question kind of amuses me because I don't think I've ever consciously created a character. They have this interesting tendency to show up in my head, fully formed and with complete histories, although they don't necessarily tell me everything about themselves right away. But I don't maintain that I create them at all. I don't feel like I decide who they are or what their personalities are like. They tell me what they want me to know.

To give an example, the protagonist of my novel-in-progress is a guy I call Gabe. He came about because of something my friend Dawn told her friends, about how she was late to work due to a traffic jam caused by a terrible train accident. I tried to imagine how that might have looked...but as I saw the scene in my mind, I saw a person standing there, a tall blond boy in a trenchcoat. It made no sense. And then as I looked at him, I realized who he was and why he was looking at the accident scene, and everything fell into place.

Between ourselves, it was a little freaky.


10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

Haha. I actually lampshaded this in one of my fanfictions, when I had Tom Sawyer comment to his friends, "Is it me or are our lives getting progressively weirder?"

Some of the time when weird things happen, it's my doing. But more often, it's just that the characters themselves have told me that something weird is happening. In the fic series where I used that question, the narrator stopped talking in the middle of one of her diary entries - in the middle of a sentence in fact - and then it turned out that she'd had to leave off writing abruptly because of an explosion down the hall. Until the very end of the story, I did not know who had caused the explosion or for what reason. They simply didn't feel it was necessary for me to know until it was time to tell the readers, I guess.

Probably my favorite weird situation that I invented myself was in one of my Fullmetal Alchemist stories, in which series protagonist Edward Elric planned to get married only to have his friend, the ruler of another country, decide to crash the wedding and thus turn the whole thing into something of an international incident. It was crazy, it was silly, and it was so much fun to write.

Writing About Writing, Days 7 and 8

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

Whether I listen to music partly depends on where I am. If I'm at home, no, I usually don't. Sometimes if I'm in public, I will put on headphones to listen to music in order to drown out ambient noise. I like soft rock, Celtic music, and movie soundtracks.

I don't usually deliberately apply songs to my characters, but sometimes when I'm hearing a song I will find that the lyrics are appropriate to them. Once I did wander around on YouTube specifically looking for songs that suited my novel characters, and actually found a couple.


8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

My interests are so varied that it's really hard to pin down a favorite. I mean, my favorite book is Pride and Prejudice; I love Austen, and Shakespeare, and Doyle, so you could probably say that my favorite genre to read is classic literature. I also love fantasy, and have a soft spot for fantasy geared toward younger readers. Harry Potter is one of my favorite things in the world, as is Fullmetal Alchemist, although I can't for a moment believe that's intended for kids. In non-fiction, I love history, especially biographies of English monarchs (I'm a bit of an Anglophile, which is probably fairly evident from my other remarks here).

But as to what I like to write...that's pretty much exclusively the impossible. I think I'm slightly bored by reality. :)

Writing About Writing, Days Four, Five and Six

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

I actually did this a while ago, when I regaled the world with my sordid confession about my first "published" story involving an evil tube of toothpaste and its dognapping exploits. Please don't make me do it again.

Since four is basically a freebie, I'll throw five in here as well.

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

Again, I'm speaking only of original fiction here, not my fanfiction, which would have completely different answers. Age-wise, my youngest character is Gear, the focal character of my currently shelved project Tempus Fugit. He's thirteen. The oldest is Gabe, who is...I have no idea. Very old. I can't even explain how old without giving away the crux of my novel.

In terms of creation, the youngest are Tobiah, Liadan, and Sable, from the upcoming serial fiction. The oldest is harder to identify, because so many characters and stories have come and gone that my memories have become quite fuzzy.

All right, that seems like a freebie too, so I'll throw six in as well.

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol’ pen and paper?

Computer, definitely. I type much faster (and more neatly) than I write, and I can accomplish more in a shorter time frame. Or at least, I can if I'm not distracted...which, if I have access to the internet, I am very prone to being.

I actually feel like I do my best writing on my laptop in a place that isn't my house. I like my local Panera or Barnes and Noble best. I'm not completely comfortable, which is good because I stay more alert and focused if I'm unlikely to doze off. I have access to snackage, but since I have to pay for it, I'm less likely to be getting up every five minutes for something else to put in my mouth. The environment is climate-controlled, which is important with my health issues, and I feel like being there forces me to accomplish something because I don't want to feel like I made the trip for nothing.

Writing About Writing, Day Three

Continuing with the questions...

How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?

I usually have a wide variety of name inspirations.

When I want a meaningful name, I'll usually pull up a baby name website and plug in some of the character's attributes. That's how I named Liadan, the central character of my upcoming serial fiction; the name is old Gaelic for "grey lady," which cracked me up because Liadan's formal title is "Lady Gray. Quite literally, therefore, her name is Lady Grey Lady Gray. But I only use names that I actually like, so if I find a name that fits but I hate it, I generally shy away from using it.

Some characters are "born" with their names already attached. Gabe and Sarah, from my novel, had their names from the get-go; I honestly can't imagine them being called anything else, even though Gabe isn't that character's real name. Supporting characters Talia and Sam(ael) required a bit of research. Sarah's mother, Rowena, had her name plucked out of thin air.

Occasionally, I name characters after other characters. In my novel, Sarah's father Alan is named after Allan Quatermain. In my Fullmetal Alchemist fan series, Ed Elric's son Lucas is named after Luke Triton, from the Professor Layton games.

Often, characters get named after my friends. So do places. In the novel, Gabe lives on Jaclyn Court; Jaclyn is a friend who has been mentioned in this blog more than once. I also name places after famous people, though much more rarely and usually more esoterically. For instance, in a writing project that is currently shelved for possible future resurrection, there is a town called Shiger. Most people would not recognize the name, but it's actually named after Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of my favorite video game franchise, The Legend of Zelda.

In some cases, I'm sneakier about naming something after something else. I mentioned in a previous post that Ironboro, in my novel, is based on my own hometown. The name also comes from that same town, which used to be known by the nickname "the iron borough."

Writing About Writing, Day Two

Continuing from the last post, the second question.

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

Speaking strictly of original fiction, I have...well, let's see. The novel has two leads, one male and one female, and two major supporting characters, also one male and one female (one of those is the antagonist). The upcoming serial fiction is a bit tricker; there's a main trio of characters, two male and one female, and one of those males is the audience-surrogate. There are quite a few background characters, but most of them haven't fleshed themselves out yet.

I think on some level I prefer males - the narrators of both the novel and the serial fiction are male, and while the female characters are very important to both stories, it's the male perspective in each that becomes my own. I'm not sure why this is. Possibly I have a secret fear of being accused of writing the dread Mary Sue or another equally annoying self-insert, so I shy away from writing female perspectives so that people don't think I can't tell the difference between myself and my character.

Trust me, I know the difference. My characters tend to be infinitely more interesting than I am, for one thing. Also, I have a tendency to write people who can do things that I can't do. Like dance, or swordfight, or see. (That's not to say I've never written a self-insert; show me a fanfiction writer who hasn't written at least one in their day.)

At the same time, though, it should be acknowledged that part of what makes the male characters tick is how they respond to the female characters. This is most literally true of the serial fiction, in which narrator character Tobiah is living a perfectly ordinary life until he gets swept up in the adventures of the actual focus character, the demon hunter Liadan. And Liadan, to a point, is something of a self-insert; we have a lot of the same negative characteristics, but she's a lot more badass than I am, and a lot less generally happy. Tobiah, by comparison, is borderline useless on these adventures and doesn't actually want to be there.

In my novel, the narrator is Gabe, and he is where he is precisely because of the character of Sarah - he's her protector. Unlike Tobiah, Gabe is not useless. He is a pacifist, but he can and will kick the antagonist's ass (so to speak) if he must. Ironically, it's because Gabe is Sarah's protector that the antagonist Sam takes an interest in her in the first place, so Gabe has to protect her from someone who probably would have left her alone if Gabe weren't protecting her.

I've completely wandered away from the original question, haven't I? Oh well.

Writing About Writing, Day One

Before I start, I do want to point out that I still have that contest going on. I had intended for it to end with June, but time kind of got away from me and there have only been two entries, so I'm going to extend it until July 11th.

Sometimes I miss making posts on this blog because I don't actually have a topic handy. To help with this, or at least I'm guessing that was her intention, my friend Kate recently sent me a list of 30 writing-related topics, with the idea of posting one each day. I'm notoriously bad at keeping up on this kind of thing, but I thought I might give it a shot.

Where this list originated, I don't know. Kate got it from a guy called Kieran Roy, who got it from someone else, et cetera.

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

Well, I'm assuming this is all supposed to be about my original writing and not about fanfiction. Which is a shame, because I do love me some fanfiction.

I don't have a lot in the way of original fiction floating around, that's the main problem. I have multiple worlds that I've created, but they mostly exist on my hard drive and in thought. My more realistic attempts at fiction have all taken place in a little town called Ironboro, which is basically an expy (for lack of a better term) for my own hometown.

Ironboro's probably my favorite world to play in, just because it's the easiest. I know it, intimately. It's not precisely like my own hometown; it's more of an idealized version, what I would make the town if I could. In appearance it's very much the same, to the point where an observant reader could recognize it in my descriptions. My upcoming novel is set there, if only because the novel was tricky enough to write without the added difficulty of creating a location.

That said, I do enjoy world-building. I'm hoping, sometime in the next few weeks, to launch a second blog which consists of serial fiction. I'm still fleshing out the world in which that takes place. It's a darker location than I normally write, kind of steampunkish but with magic going on. I like it a lot; unfortunately, it still doesn't have a name. The best I've come up with for it is Arcadia, which I don't want to use since it was essentially cribbed from the old Legend of Zelda cartoon (no, really), but it's serving as a placeholder until I come up with something more original.

You're Caller Number Twenty

First of all, today is Memorial Day here in these United States. So a big, big thank you to all the servicemen and women, past and present, who sacrifice everything up to and including their lives to make it possible for us to live in freedom.

So a few posts ago, I talked about how the acquaintance of a friend was holding a giveaway to celebrate the fact that she'd reached 200 followers. I snarked that I didn't have the patience to wait that long and would possibly do something when I had twenty.

Well, guess what I have.

In addition to twenty followers, I am less than three hundred views (currently) away from reaching my 10,000th hit on this blog. Given my fondness for round numbers and my burning desire to be vaguely entertaining, it seemed like a good thing to celebrate.

I'd like it to be something fun and interactive. I'd also like it to possibly do some good for other people, because that's how this blog rolls.

How's this? I'll open it up for your submissions. If you would like to do a guest post in this blog to spread the word about your favorite charity/non-profit/other do-good type of venture, leave me a comment and tell me what it is. From the responses I receive, I will pick three winners who will each be allowed to submit guest posts on their chosen topics. Those three winners will also receive a little something special in the mail from me, maybe from my box of books that I'm no longer keeping. I'll work that out with the winners themselves.

Hopefully there will be at least three entries, because otherwise I'm gonna feel really silly offering three prizes.

The Lens and Eye

Before I get started on today's (very belated) post, I do want to apologize for something. On a recent post about stuff I learned in my first con experience, I made remarks about con funk which at least one person thought might have been intended rudely. That was certainly not my intention and I am sorry if it was interpreted as such. I've seen many people comment about "con funk" -- I was just participating in the ongoing joke, as I suppose it to be.

I don't apologize, though, for referring to congoers as weird. Those of you who know me personally can back me up on this. I am at least as weird as anybody else at a con, and on some levels, possibly weirder. :)

Moving on. I think I've said pretty much all I can say about my first con experience, and since I was at a loss for what else to say in today's post, I decided to share some personal writing of a different kind. This is an essay I wrote recently, originally with the intent of submitting it to a writing contest. I think I've pretty much decided not to do that, but it's a halfway decent bit of wordsmithy so I thought I'd share it here instead.

If you've been coming to this blog for a while, or even if this is your first visit, you might have noticed a little ad-type box on the lower left of each page. It has a counter attached to it. Clicking on that little ad-type box helps to raise money for the Vision Charity, which assists children with vision problems. What might have caught your attention is the part where I mention that I'm going blind.

I'm not providing a full explanation; it's not necessary. But this essay explains the connection between my blindness and my enjoyment of photography. They're related, you see.


If you can't use one lens, I suppose you just have to make do with another.

I've always liked photography; this is nothing new. My first camera was the Fisher-Price children's model, a Christmas present when I was nine years old. It was blue and rectangular and required flash cubes as well as film, and my parents probably soon came to regret introducing me to such a relatively expensive little hobby. That's really all it's ever been, though. When it comes to art, words are my preferred medium, with photography running a close second.

It wasn't what I had planned, to see the world in a picture frame.

It was eleven years ago, in April. I was young, relatively healthy, generally happy, a year away from being married, gainfully employed and overall content. And then my world became suddenly and irreversibly darker. Quite literally, I went to bed one night having two eyes that worked, and woke up with one.

At first I didn't think much of it. It just looked like a 'floater' in my field of vision; I assumed I had rubbed my eyes too hard upon waking. Several hours later, when the 'floater' was making it impossible for me to see what I was doing at work, I knew something was horribly wrong.

To make a long and frankly very irritating story short, I was diagnosed with a blood-borne disease that nobody had ever heard of, or at least nobody in my personal acquaintance. It can't be cured; I have a rarer form of the disease that can't even be treated; and there's nothing that can be done about the vision loss. The disease left permanent scar tissue on my retina, which chose that April night to tear open and leak, and where it leaked onto the retina it destroyed the vision forever. I remember the sweet-natured doctor seeming almost devastated when he delivered the news; I suppose to him it must have seemed tragic in its way, telling a young woman that some of her sight was gone for good. But I was sanguine. It was not the worst thing that could have happened to me, after all; I still had my left eye, and I had only lost part of the vision in my right. The effect was essentially the opposite of tunnel vision. I couldn't see what was in the center of my field of vision, but I could see everything around it, and the doctor assured me that it was over and done and would never ever get worse.

Five years later I found out that he was wrong.

I've read everything I can find on the subject, and essentially, he told me it wouldn't get worse because it rarely does. I manage to fall into the tiny tiny percentage of people with the condition who experience progressive loss of vision. As I put it to a young friend of mine, I have the rare form of the rare form of the disease. There's no guarantee that tomorrow I'm going to see as much as I do today. It might stay the same, or it might get worse; the only thing I know for sure is that it won't get better. What's gone is gone, and when the vision is gone, in this case, there's no getting it back.

There's a popular video game series, Metal Gear Solid, in which one of the characters wears an eyepatch over his right eye. Metal Gear Solid 3 shows the story of the character, and explains just how he lost that eye. His attitude is brusque and battle-weary. "It's not like I can't see. I've got one good eye and I can still fire a gun." I don't handle guns, but I try to remember that quote whenever another tiny piece of periforal vision vanishes into darkness.

What I do handle is a camera. Since the onset of blindness, my interest in photography has increased dramatically. At first I didn't quite know why. Part of me really wanted to distort the pictures, to try to remove the portions that I can't see if I close my left eye, so that the people around me might finally have an understanding of what I see on a daily basis. Maybe then they'd really know what I'm talking about.

Gradually, I realized that what I really want to accomplish by taking the pictures is to create a record of what I can see while I can still see it. I want other people to experience the colors, the settings, the moods, just the same way I did when I photographed them. I want to give life to my vision while I can, before the disease swallows it whole. Sure, the day might never come when I open my eyes and the vision has blanked out of the left one the way it did in the right. But at the same time, that day might be tomorrow. I don't have any way of knowing.

The truth is that nobody does. The difference between me and the rest of the world is that I know that I don't know.

So I take pictures. Detailed shots, when possible; I'm fond of focusing on the center of a wildflower, or getting an extreme close-up of a butterfly. I want to show you the minutiae that surrounds us, the easily-overlooked details that make up the world. I want to help you remember the colors and the textures and the shapes, because I want to remember them myself, once the light fades.

Going blind is what taught me how to see.

Three Monthaversary

Today it's exactly three months since this blog officially opened. It's an absolutely frigid day here, following a surprisingly unproductive blizzard that gave me a harrowing drive home from work but left us with little snow to show for it. Fortunately, it's also my day off, so I'm at liberty to wear fleece all day and think about things like what this blog has accomplished in just three months' time.

Truth is, at three months old, the blog is already farther along than I would have expected. Things have happened. Good things, at that. So let's take a look at some of those things.

Regarding Origins

If you've read my page of questions that may or may not be asked frequently, you know that the blog's name comes from my desire to head off the obvious question. The truth is that the name comes from the answer to that question, which I was asked back when I was pondering starting the thing. A well-meaning friend was playing devil's advocate, asking me why I wanted to do this, and I could come up with no better reason than "It seemed like a good idea at the time." It did, and it still does.

It amuses me that some time after the blog began, I learned that it shares its name with a specific trope at the TV Tropes website. (That site is addictive; enter at your own risk.)

Following Up on Some Stories

For a while, of course, the blog focused solely on humorous experiences from my own bizarre little life. That all changed on November 8th, when I decided to break tradition in order to post I Like Them Apples, a commentary on the situation involving a publication stealing copyrighted work from the internet. And suddenly the blog exploded. My hit count went a bit haywire, which I later discovered was almost entirely thanks to one Mr. John Scalzi. He had been involved with the story and had linked to my post from his own blog, resulting in my being read by a lot more people than I expected. To this day, that post has the second-highest hit count of anything on the blog.

Of course, the Cooks Source incident hardly stopped with my blog post. For those who have not heard, the magazine which was responsible for the unification of the entire internet has been forced to close its doors; it lost its advertisers, its reputation, and its credibility. The magazine's website, with its full badly-written farewell message, has been taken down; but salient points remain forever readable thanks to this article at Gawker.com. We internet people are mean indeed.

I don't have too much of an update regarding my next subject, the TSA pat-down incidents, since that whole situation is still ongoing. I can say, however, that my friend Naomi flew in to spend Thanksgiving with me, had a layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport, and was disappointed not to see a single kilted protestor.

The 'Apples' post remained my top hit until December 2nd, when I posted twice. Shortly before I went to bed that night, I saw where a relative had posted on Facebook about sending holiday cards to recovering soldiers at Walter Reed. You can't do that, and I realized that a lot of people still thought you could. Looking up the Twitter hashtag #walterreed was enough to prove it. So I wrote about Walter Reed and the Holiday Mail Snafu, passed on the link to several of the people on Twitter who had circulated the bad information, and shared it with a few message boards I periodically haunt. The estimable Chris "RolloT" Larios of Channel Awesome was kind enough to share it with his many Twitter followers.

Apparently, what efforts I did make to spread the news was enough to send the darn thing viral, because seven hundred hits later, it's the most-read thing on the site. Hopefully, this means that a lot more recovering soldiers got holiday greetings this year than they might otherwise have done. Hands down the coolest thing to happen as a result was the message I received from the staff of Walter Reed Hospital itself, thanking me for writing the post. (You can read their comment on the original post, and yes, it really is from them.) I sort of felt like I'd done a small service for my country. My Twitter followers also increased as a result of the post, and possibly the most surprising one there was the fact that I'm now followed by the official Twitter account of the New York Post.

At least, I'm assuming they follow me because of the Walter Reed thing; the only other possibility would be that they started following me because of my post about St. Margaret's Center in Albany. My friend Jaclyn was working hard to raise funds and clothing for the residents of this complex medical needs facility, where she volunteers, and I lent her whatever power my blog may have to increase her visibility. I put her in touch with the wonderful Debbie Tenzer of Do One Nice Thing, who only too enthusiastically jumped on board to help.

How much I may have helped, I don't know. But Jaclyn was overwhelmed by the response to everything; her bake sale, which was the primary focus of my post, raised almost $500. Her clothing drive brought in about ten large black garbage bags full of clothing, and they received four big boxes of books for the residents as well. There were also boxes of other generous donations too, and the residents had themselves a wonderful Christmas. I'm so proud of Jaclyn for her hard work, and so grateful to any of you who took the time to spread the word or contribute to the effort.

So now, with the December festivities (and, you know, the year) drawing to a close, we come to this post. If I get just 600 more visits in the next few days, I'll reach a hit count of 5,000 by the end of 2010, which would be amazing. There's also that whole Blogger's Choice Awards thing, which I don't expect to win but find terribly amusing all the same. And really, how cool would it be if I could say that mine was voted "Best Blog About Stuff"? That's about the best way you can possibly describe it.

Thanks for reading, gang. You've helped to make the last three months a lot of fun. I hope you'll stick around and see what's coming next, because I myself have no idea.

Milestones, Monoliths, and Other M Words

I'm writing this, my last blog post of the month of October, from my mother's house. With as many windows as this place has, and as many trees surround it, it seems like it was basically built for the express enjoyment of autumn. Autumn is my favorite season, and October is my favorite month (usually). There's something about the smell of wood fires and fresh-pressed cider that makes me a little nostalgic, even if I don't always know what it is I'm feeling nostalgic for. With that in mind, I thought I would offer this retrospective of some of the highlights from my writing career.

I use the words "highlights" and "career" with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Just saying.

I first decided to become an author when I was nine years old. I have long since forgotten exactly what prompted this decision, but unlike most of my other childhood ambitions, this one has never wavered. Other career options I considered during my youth were to become a minister, an English teacher, and the first female President of the United States. Turns out that I hate teaching, I hate politics even more, and -- well, I was a church secretary, so I did at least work in religion for a time. But I was writing all the while.

Very shortly after naming it my lifetime goal, I actually became a published author... as long as one subscribes to an extremely loose definition of the word published. Actually, what I did then is not entirely different from self-publishing in today's media world, except on a much smaller scale. I received a typewriter for Christmas that year, on which it was generally expected that I would hammer out a magnum opus. What I wrote instead was my first short story, a thrilling mystery starring myself, my sister, and several of our neighbors and my classmates. We were out to solve a recent ring of dognappings throughout our extremely small community, and ultimately discovered that the dogs had been stolen by a gang of thugs. The reason for the animal thefts was never explained, nor did I ever bother coming up with one. This story is memorable chiefly for the fact that the leader of this gang of thugs was an anthropomorphic tube of toothpaste.

I'm not even going to try to guess what freakish logic my younger self was employing here. I've long since forgotten and I think that may be for the best.

Anyway, the reason I say this was published is that my grandparents had just acquired a copy machine for their home office. It was an early-model copier, the kind that still required the use of carbon paper, and my grandmother (bless her goofy heart) decided that my story deserved to be copied and distributed to some of the neighbors and other relatives. So she ran off about ten copies, had me autograph them, and shared my genius with our extended acquaintance.

As may be expected, I was praised by the adults (if only for my spelling and punctuating skills) and mocked extensively by my peers, though at the same time they were laughing hysterically they were also asking to be in the sequel. There was a sequel, actually. We were assisted in our efforts to solve another mystery, concerning a genuinely haunted house and with no toothpaste anywhere, by the Ghostbusters, but I don't recall that one ever getting finished.

I continued writing, usually at my grandfather's typewriter, which was much bigger and cooler than my own. He saved everything I ever wrote, too, and gave it to me in a folder shortly before I was married. It was mostly short stories of varying quality, and poetry.

In high school I attempted to write a horror novel, and used the school as the setting. I recruited volunteers from among my classmates to serve as victims and had possibly the most deliciously morbid fun of my life constructing elaborate, disgusting deaths for them all. Oddly, I don't even like the horror genre, so I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish, but members of my graduating class declared me "Most Likely to Be the Next Tim Burton."

I started freelancing in my twenties, thanks to a college friend who worked as a magazine editor. She added me to their stable of regular freelancers, sending me completed interviews and having me turn them into articles. I also wrote my first book, Saving the World in Your Spare Time, which hasn't aged very well but hey, I wrote a book. I was even interviewed by CNN and got mentioned on their website, which kind of resulted in me screaming. (The book is about volunteering, and CNN was doing a very short piece on the subject.) The biggest deal about that whole thing was that it turned out to be the only book I completed before the deaths of my grandparents, so I was frankly just grateful they got to see it.

I've just completed a second book, although it's not really a showcase for my writing. God is in the Details is a small gift-size book of my photography, and is only available through its publisher, Lulu.com. I'm at work on a novel, though, and hope to have it finished by the end of the year; expect some shameless self-promotion when the time comes. If you'd like to see the photo book, just click on the handy link on the right where it says "Store!" and you'll be taken to my Lulu spotlight; click on the book to view it, and then click on it again to see some preview pages. It was just something I did for fun. Right now I'm trying a bunch of new things.

Like this blog. This was honestly just an experiment -- sort of What should I do now? combined with That looks like fun. And it really did seem like a good idea at the time. I must be doing something right, too, because Blogspot's stats have just informed me I'm on the verge of breaking 1,000 pageviews. That's much more than I expected or even hoped to get in the space of the first month! So thank you all for reading.