Heinlein’s rules

/ Shane / 1 Comment

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

To follow them or not to follow them, that is the question. These rules are a hot topic among writers. I think everybody agrees with most of them, maybe all of them except for #3. 1, 2, 4, and 5 I think tend to be pretty logical, but ole #3 feels like the exact wrong answer. In general, the people I’ve come across who follow the rules tend to be professional, earning writers. The people who tend to complain about #3 tend to be wannabes (no disrespect intended of course, I am as much a wannabe as anybody else!)

For me, I mostly took them as I take any advice: with a grain of salt. I figure that system works well for many people, many very good, very talented people (Heinlein not the least of them) but I’m not them, I’m me. So I learn as much as I can and I apply what I can. However, I came across something on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog that clued me in to something very important about rule #3.  (Side note: if you are a writer and you don’t read Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, you’re doing yourself a disservice. It might be the best one out there).

I think what feels wrong to people about not rewriting is that they think, “Well, I’m no Heinlein. My stories aren’t good enough to sell after the first draft. Fine and well for important authors who have a Name to fire and forget their stories.” But then I had my “ah ha!” moment. I realized that rule #3 wasn’t arrogance about not redoing the story, it’s all about moving on to the next one. It’s easier to start from scratch and write a better story than to try to fix an existing story into a better one. So Heinlein’s not saying your story is so good that you shouldn’t ever try to fix it, he’s saying don’t waste your time trying to fix it, just write a new (better) story.

It’s like that old ‘evolution of man’ picture.

When you first start out, you think this picture depicts one story, and each step along the way is one iteration on that story. In reality, each step is a new story. You, the writer, are evolving, not the story.

To put it another way, each story you write will hopefully be a little bit better in some way. If each story is your best story to date, there’s no point in rewriting a story. It’s already your best story anyway, and the next story is probably going to be better. And, let’s face it, some stories can’t be fixed.

So, in summary, keep working, keep improving, and don’t look back. You will improve, not the story. That’s the secret to Heinlein’s rules.

The Fracus

/ Shane / 3 Comments

On Friday I wrote a post about the Olympics and Chicago. It went live at 10:49 a.m., as soon as I heard the announcement. I had actually written the post the night before, and I was so sure Chicago was going to be awarded, that I wrote the whole thing as, “Yay, we did it!” So I had to totally re-do the post that morning.

At 11:54 I was notified that my post was promoted to the top story on wordpress.com, where it stayed for the rest of the day as the only Olympic related post. I was pretty excited about this. Too bad I had just completed my important moments in blogging timeline post! As expected, the post proceeded to blow up, dwarfing all of my previous high traffic numbers. I had over 1,500 hits on my blog that day (my previous high was like 150) and around 22 comments on the post, many of them from Brazil (and some not in English!) It remained on the front page Saturday and Sunday, netting me another 28 comments and 1,400 hits and 20 comments and 1,300 hits respectively. So, in three days, my blog had over 4,303 people visit, and that post received 70 comments.

I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t stop compulsively checking it all weekend. I would go away for a few minutes and when I came back, there would be more comments. I was trying to approve the comments as fast as possible to keep the discussion going. It’s kind of funny because I didn’t really put any more time and effort into that post than any of my other posts. So it is kind of interesting to read all of the comments and really analyze that post in detail. I’m guessing my post was picked because it is somewhat informative, with a hometown view, without being critical or nasty. I wonder how much thought they put into picking posts for the front page. It’s probably totally random. 🙂

Anyway, in order to capitalize on the traffic, I put posts up for Saturday and Sunday as well. Many people who stopped did go and check out the next post back, to see if there was anything interesting. What post was it? The Toot Hole. <sarcasm>Lovely. I couldn’t have picked a better one if I tried, that’s exactly the post I would want the world to read. </sarcasm>

As of today the post is still on the front page, though it’s not the top post anymore, moving down 7 spots. I don’t know how often they change it, but it seems like it might be up there for a couple of more days. As much fun as it was to constantly see the stats going up, I don’t exactly feel like personally accomplished. After all, it was more of a “right place at the right time” kind of thing than a “my blog is awesome and deserved it” kind of thing. Still, I guess you make your own luck to some degree, and if you put enough stuff out there, something’s bound to catch on.

So, if you were wondering what was going on here over the weekend, now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is getting your lazy keister off the couch. If only G.I. Joe would have had 10 more seconds each week to explain the second half of the battle, they could have changed the outlook of an entire generation.

To sleep, perchance to dream

/ Shane / 6 Comments

One night Evie was crying in her sleep. I went to see what was the matter and she explained to me that, while she was lying in her crib, a frog was trying to eat her legs. I explained to her about dreams and she went back to bed, but this dream stuck with her for several days, until we had to have a lengthy discussion about good dreams and bad dreams, and why bad dreams couldn’t hurt you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a horrifying dream to me, even as an adult. There’s something particularly creepy about it being a giant frog, I can totally picture it. I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth.

The fact is, I have very vivid dreams that I almost always remember on a nightly basis. When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I would lie awake nearly every single night with the sheet pulled up to my eyes, getting carried away by my very vivid imagination. Naturally, I would rather Evie was spared from that.

The other day she told me about a dream she had. She was flying down a long hallway, like a bat, while “something with no mouth and no feet” walks behind her. Creepy to the max. On one hand I am proud that she has such a vivid imagination. I think that will serve her well in life.

I’m sure every kid has nightmares. It’s probably not a big deal. Anybody else have any experience with this? How old were your kids when they started having nightmares, and when did they grow out of it?

Project BLT

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I can’t embed this, but check out this graphical tree depictionof making a BLT from scratch. And when I say from scratch, I mean from scratch. Follow the bacon tree branch down to collecting sea water for sea salt, and distilling raw sugar cane for the pork rub. The homemade mayonnaise branch alone has 17 sub-steps, 8 of them under homemade mustard.

And if staring at the delicious pictures makes you hungry, you can go sign up for the bacon-of-the-month club. What could be better than delicious bacon delivered to your doorstep every month? And you can’t dislike a company with a motto like, “It’s a bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon world.”

Bacon-of-the-month club link via Meg, who teased me by saying she would have gotten it for me for Christmas, but she didn’t. 😛

No Olympics for Chicago in 2016

/ Shane / 74 Comments

Chicago will not be hosting the 2016 Olympic games.

Goodbye skyrocketing  property values! It is quite a let down. Towards the end there, there was really a feeling of inevitability about it. I guess we were overly optimistic.

I remember when we went to London during their bid for the 2012 Olympics. There were “back the bid” signs everywhere we went and I thought, “How exciting! It would be neat to be a part of that.” I never really got that feeling here in Chicago, like everyone in the city was pulling for it. Certainly, everyone in my neighborhood was not pulling for it. There were some legitimate reasons, and some not.

For example, one concern was that bringing the Olympics, specifically to the poorer South Side neighborhoods, will raise property values pushing out the people who live paycheck to paycheck and therefore rent instead of own. If the property is more expensive, the rent will be forced up, and they won’t be able to afford to pay. This is a legitimate concern, however, I don’t know how I feel about that exactly. I do see the point, but on the other hand, A) I don’t rent, I own, so rising value is good for me, and B) I want my neighborhood to be nice. I refuse to accept the argument that improving the neighborhood is a bad thing, and I refuse to accept a crappy (sometimes dangerous) neighborhood.

Other concerns are ridiculous, such as the people complaining about how the Olympics will create traffic or parking problems. Sheesh, talk about self-centered. I don’t want this major ridiculous event that half the world would kill to get because for 2 weeks I might have trouble getting a parking spot! Waaah! I also reject the arguments about keeping the stadium out of the park that hardly anyone wants to go to now anyway. I hear people complaining that hosting an Olympics is a money losing venture. That is probably true, if you look at it on a city wide scale. But if you live in this neighborhood, at Olympics ground zero, it is not true. Think about it: all of the infrastructure that will be built, will be built here. But all of the cost will be split across all of Chicago. So the people out in the suburbs are essentially paying for your infrastructure improvements. They should be the ones complaining, if anybody!

I don’t know if the public opposition had anything to do with it or not. There could have been a whole host of reasons. And, hey, if Rio de Janeiro wins, I won’t feel too bad. The Olympics have never been hosted anywhere on the South American continent. That is a shame. I can’t begrudge the judges if they award it to them over the U.S. who has hosted many.

By the by, there isn’t quite as much excitement over the Paralympics, but don’t discount them…I just learned of the existence of wheelchair fencing!!