First Published: 2023 November 11
Earlier this month, I wrote a post where, among other things, I discussed the fact that I’m now learning to embroider. Specifically, I’m trying to learn counted thread embroidery, in a style somewhat inspired by Bargello. I’ve finally finished the small squares of vertical and horizontal stripes that I had been using as a way to figure out what the stitches looked like with different numbers of threads. I now have to make a different set of decisions when working on future projects.
On the one hand, more strands makes a prettier looking design.1 On the other, it is a massive pain to thread a needle, especially when I start threading it with large numbers of threads. Along with the friends from the first embroidery adventure, I went to a local tea shop, where we all worked on our own threadcraft and drank tea and chatted.
I, as mentioned, finished the test swatches and immediately started work on a test swatch for how to use color. The cross stitching friend continued cross stitching,2 and the other two friends both practiced new skills. One kept working on a woven bookmark that they started near the beginning of the month, and the other started a free form3 embroidery project from a kit. It was really nice to spend time with friends, and it was equally nice to work on something creative4 without having to connect it to anything profit oriented.5 There’s something really fulfilling about being able to go from a half formed idea to something real and tangible in just a few minutes. The fact that embroidery, at least how I’ve been doing it, has a really nice texture is just an added bonus.6
I think that in the future I might start looking at higher hole density fabric, though, because as mentioned, threading enough threads onto the needle to make the fabric as thick as I want is a bit of a pain. The smaller the separation between holes, the smaller the thread needs to be. I’ve also learned that there’s a real and legitimate benefit to doing even numbers of threads, which boils down to only needing to worry about ends at the beginning of each thread, because you can loop and double them over.7
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! I also plotted my plot plan in a daily manner, which should help.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? Arguably, since I finished a chapter and started another. In reality, I think I wrote just under my new standard chapter word count, but I know exactly where the next chapter is going, so that’s probably fine.
Did I blog? As mentioned, I said I would revise this. Interestingly, when revising, I think I do far less self talk.8 I think that the post is much better for being reduced in length by around half.
Did I stretch? I forgot to do that! I’ll do it now and then finish this revision. I feel a little better post stretching, which is pretty normal, I suppose.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? No, but I would like to be. I should spend some time tonight, especially because it’s still early, disconnecting and praying.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I tried today, which I’m giving myself credit for. I then realized my pen was basically out of ink and didn’t want to risk half the letter coming out a different color, so opted against writing anything today.
I had an idea earlier today to try writing this post in two drafts. There were a few reasons for that. First, as you may have noticed, these posts have been getting longer and ramblier the longer the month has gone on. There are a number of reasons for that, to be certain, but the net result is still a post that gets longer, even when the content may not deserve it. Second, this ’blog9 was initially created to journal, at least in part, the way that my writing changes as I go through drafts. Though there are still remnants of that process10, that part of the idea has more or less fallen by the wayside, for a number of reasons.11
And so, I thought it could be a fun idea to see what differences come from writing and rewriting the same post. Unfortunately, as I tend to do, I lost track of time. It’s now late enough that I don’t really feel like writing two posts.12 Still, I know that I have a tendency to overinflate the difficulty of tasks before I start on them, and there’s a chance that the same is true now. If so, then that just means that I need to write this post, and I may have the energy needed to rewrite the draft. We’ll see what happens.13
Anyways, onto the meat of the post. I’ve written before about how I’m learning embroidery. Today, I finally finished with my blocking to see how many strands of thread I should use and started on another project.14 I went to a local tea shop with some friends15 and we all worked on our own crafts.
I did my counted thread embroidery, the friend of mine who cross stitches cross stitched, another friend is learning how to weave bookmarks and worked on that, and the final friend16 worked on learning how to do traditional17 embroidery with a starter kit he got. It was really fun to spend time with friends, and it was also really fun to spend some time working on a craft for its own sake, with full knowledge that the skill will likely never benefit me in any professional sense.18 There’s something really fulfilling about having a rough idea for a pattern, trying it out, seeing where you can improve, and then trying again in a matter of minutes. It’s even nicer when the failed attempt is still pretty and has a nice texture.19 I think I might want to start looking at getting higher number aida20, because it’s a massive pain to thread six or more distinct strands of embroidery floss onto a needle to sew. The larger the number, the tighter the grid.21 Right now I think I’m using 20 or 24, which I saw a recommendation online for six strands when embroidering. In either case, I’ve also learned that doing even numbers is nicer, because then you can just cut a length of floss twice as long as you want to use and then double it with the needle. There are a fair number of benefits to doing that, most of which revolve around the fact that you don’t have to worry about the floss falling out of the needle as you sew.22
Ok so wow this post absolutely needs to be cleaned up. Even though it’s been dark for hours,23 it’s still pretty early, so I should have time to revise.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! I also kind of plotted out what my goals are for writing each day plotwise for the rest of the month, which is nice. It made it a little easier to get to the wordcount today, since I had a real goal in mind.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I was halfway through a chapter at the end of last night, which I did not end up finishing. I finished that chapter and started on another one, though, which is like writing a chapter. One chapter was finished.
Did I blog? I did! And I think I’m even going to revise it wow.
Did I stretch? I should stretch. Before revising, I think that I’ll do that.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I don’t think that my rosary last night was particularly rushed, and I did pray an Angelus today, though that one was very rushed.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? So I did legitimately mean to do a good job writing letters to friends. But, when I went to write letters between embroidery projects, I found that my pen was almost completely empty of ink. That was a shame, but one that I should have remembered, since we’re like two weeks into the month, and that’s usually when I run out of ink.
to me, at least.↩
which is, as it turns out, a form of counted thread embroidery↩
that feels like the better term than traditional↩
in the sense of creating↩
as opposed to my writing, which I’ve recently learned also helps me to write for the work that I do↩
it’s soft and well oriented. What’s not to love??↩
I don’t know if I’m explaining it well, but I think the concept should be easy to grasp↩
which tends to come in asides like this (wow (though I did initially type ow, which feels equally fair) that’s really meta)↩
hey look I remembered to do it that time↩
see the fact that every post starts with Draft 1 and has a first posted date↩
ooh I do love lists within lists. Still, I’ll refrain from doing so here, if only because I’m already almost two hundred words into explaining how I was going to write today’s musing, which is about embroidery, without even mentioning the skill once.↩
truthfully, I barely feel like writing one.↩
oof, three hundred words of filler before I even get to the embroidery. If I do draft 2, this is all absolutely being cut. That does raise the interesting question, though, of what the point of my drafts is (are?). If the goal is to tell the same story with each draft, then I should repeat this content. If, instead, the goal is that each draft attempts to muse most effectively, then I probably shouldn’t. Eh, we’ll see what I feel like doing to that bridge when it’s time to cross it, and not before.↩
ok, to be fair, the new project is also a test swatch, but it’s a test swatch with a much more intricate pattern, which is like a real project.↩
I’m realizing now that the group of us who went to the Embroidery Guild and who went to tea today were identical↩
not that I only have three friends, just only four of us did all the embroidery events.↩
honestly I have no clue what the relative age or prestige of different embroidery styles is. He was working on a free piece of fabric doing non bit-wise (is that the term? if not, I feel like it should be) stitching.↩
that may sound sarcastic, but I do truly mean it. Ever since I realized that my habit of writing a lot of fiction also transfers to writing academic text faster, I feel bad, as though I have corrupted that joy somehow by making it useful. It’s a similar feeling I get when friends tell me that I should set up a way for my readers to financially compensate me. It isn’t that I’m opposed to making money off the work that I do, it’s that a part of me feels like it will stop being a hobby and start being a job, and that will change my desire to write/what I write. I don’t know how valid that fear is, but it’s one that I’ve had for a while, ever since I read an article talking about how paying children to solve puzzles makes them solve fewer puzzles than just telling them to do it because it’s a fun activity. Once again, I feel like I’m getting off the point of the post, though. It will be fun to actually do a word count versus footnote count again for this post, because I’m beyond certain that there are more footnotes than in text words for this post.↩
like wow I love the texture of embroidery floss that’s been stitched. It’s soft but also incredibly aligned and ordered, in a way that’s a little hard to describe.↩
I’m sure that this has to be an acronym of some sort, but I couldn’t tell you anything about what it stands for↩
I’m positive that the number is holes per inch or holes per cm or some other metric like that, for all that the specifics don’t interest me right now (right now absolutely the key phrase, because I know that I’m going to geek out about everything related to embroidery someday soon, I just don’t want that day to be today)↩
I can’t help but feel like sew is the wrong verb here. Maybe it is the right one, though, since I guess it does describe the action taking place? I guess that’s something I should look up before I do this musing again↩
wow I love the winter (this one is sarcastic)↩
First Published: 2023 November 10
There’s a tumblr called Flash Fiction Friday Official. I’m not entirely sure why they feel the need to call themselves official, given that I haven’t seen anyone else claiming the title, but it’s that nonetheless. The concept is fairly simple. Every Friday, they1 post a new prompt, and anyone can respond to the prompt for the next 24 ish hours.
I’ve done it a few times. At first, I tended to do some short form fiction. As time went on, and I felt less inclined to write small short stories, I used it as a way to write some poetry. Of course, I’ve fallen almost completely off the wagon of doing the prompts at all.
Today, since I’m a little over a week into my one month goal of writing as much as possible, I looked to see what the prompt was. It was “By any other name”, which of course made me initially think of the Shakespearean reference. I immediately wrote that line down and thought about how untrue it was in so many situations.
Of course, that immediately pushed my mind into something poetic. I don’t think that I want to write a poem today for the prompt, if only because poems take me far longer per word and I haven’t really been writing any poetry recently. So, that means I need to write prose.
One interesting thing I’ve realized about my FFF2 responses is that they tend to be far more emotionally driven and first person centered than most of my writing. In part, I think that’s because they tend to be far more poetic, and I find that my poetry tends to be much more emotionally connected than my prose writing.3
Since I didn’t want to write a poem, I then started thinking of what story I could tell. Because the prompts are “Flash Fiction”, there is a maximum word count of I think 1000.4 That’s both a lot of words and not very many all at once.
I’m not writing fanfiction, unlike a large number of the people who respond to the prompts.5 In some regards, this adds to the struggle. In the very limited words I have, I need to not only introduce characters and scene, but then have something happen. When working with fanfic, these constraints are slightly different.
With a single name, you can give the audience the entire background of a known character. There are of course many difficulties to writing fanfic that are not true of an original story. Because I’m creating the entire world wholesale, nothing I do in the 1000 or fewer words can be contradictory to what people know about the characters. If I was using established works, though, then I would have to be careful to explain why my own interpretation diverges from the canon, if it does.
I’m not planning on writing the actual story for the day in this blog post, if only to keep the slightest barrier between the different online presences I maintain. I do want to spend some time and words considering the story I want to write, though.
I think that I want to talk about how changing a name does, in fact, change the thing it describes. Maybe it’s just that I spend too much time around scientists, but there’s a lot of thoughts around me that language does not, in and of itself, contain any meaning or power. I’m sure the fact that I read lots of fantasy inspired by Earthsea also leads me to the idea of names being important in and of themselves, but.6
Probably because of the literary inspirations, I have the initial idea to write something fantasy adjacent. I’ve also got the voice in my head telling me that I should write a very emotional and relationship focused story, for a few reasons.7 Something that keeps popping into my mind is also the idea of how a relationship is, in many regards, defined by the words we use to describe it.
I don’t want to write a didactic story, where I expound on that explicitly.8 However, being too subtle comes with its own drawbacks. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of words to carefully dance around a topic. The medium really encourages direct, if not blatant writing.
Ok, I do feel pretty strongly that it’s in my best interest as a writer to do some realistic fiction exploring relationships. Now I suppose I should figure out the perspective. First person has the advantage of feeling intimate right away. Third person has the advantage of seeming objectivity, which contrasts to the emotional statement that I’m trying to make. Second person has the advantage of being a little weird, and in many ways feeling even more intimate.
From that little reflection, it definitely seems like I’m leaning towards second person. Ok, so then the question becomes who I’m addressing.9 That question also goes hand in hand with the presentation style.
Lately I’ve really fallen in love with epistolary fiction.10 Some famous examples include much of Dracula and This is How You Lose the Time War. I like the fact that there’s an explicit passing of time, and I also like the way it connects me to the letters I write to friends generally.
Ok, so then the question becomes how many letters to send and what story/ plot I want to send out.11 So, things that I know I want are a relationship developing. Since I have such a limited word count, it could make some sense to start not at the first meeting.
I think I want it to take place more or less in the present, so I probably need to address why they’re writing letters to each other. Starting it with just like “I see why Dr. so and so recommended we write each other letters” could be fun. Ooh hey, look at that, we’ve got an implication of them going through marital issues. Ok so I guess that is a question, do I want the couple to be married already?
Ooh, something fun I could do is start each of the letters with a different name, like (person), then love, then etc..12 That feels maybe a little forced, but maybe it could work. With a thousand words, I have room for five to seven of the standard length letters I write, which is pretty nice for storytelling purposes.
Ok to frame this for me13: second person, directed in an epistolary fashion, where I use the openings of each letter as a way of framing what the emotions are at each point. I should probably brainstorm a few different names, but I think I’m ready to try writing the story for today! Exciting.
Well, I have a rough draft done. It’s about 500 words, which is nice and in the middle of the allowed word count. I don’t know if I love the story as a whole, so far, but I think that there’s some potential in what I have. I think that author’s notes are allowed, so I might throw one in and go “so this is what I was trying to do, idk if it worked though.” There’s always a part of me that cringes at author’s notes that try to explain what their goal was in creating a work, but I don’t really know if there’s any way around it. Anyways, I feel like I should probably try to revise the story.
Update a few hours later: I no longer feel like there’s enough time in the day for me to feel like I want to edit the short story. I also don’t know if I’ll post it. On the one hand, it isn’t bad writing, and I kind of like the story. On the other, I can tell a bunch of ways that it could be much stronger, which is almost always true for something I write. I don’t know what my goal is in putting the writing out there, I guess.
I suppose that for the people who make the prompts, seeing responses is probably validating on some level. They do also tend to repost anything you submit with compliments. Ok, the more I think about it, the more that I feel like I should just post it and accept that it’s not as strong as it could be. Maybe I’ll be lucky and someone will be willing to comment on how to make the story better.14
Well, it’s posted now. We’ll see if I get any interaction with it. In either case, I will probably forget it exists for a while, because I posted it from my writing tumblr, which is very far from connected to my real one. My real one is also kept fairly isolated from any other social media that I keep, which probably says something, but I don’t really want to get into what it says.
I might try to look at the post/ the prompt in the future when I run out of things to write about, but for now, I’m just going to leave it in the drafts.
For all that this is probably a rambling mess, I think that it was actually really helpful for me to think about what I wanted to write today. Maybe I should spend more time doing free writing to plan out the books/whatever I want to write in the future. It’s certainly something that’s worth thinking about. Maybe tomorrow before I write for NaNo I’ll spend some time thinking about where, exactly, I’m trying to lead the story.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! I also have in the intermediate days that I haven’t posted here.15
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I finally finished the chapter I’ve been working on for a few days and I’m halfway through another chapter. I’m hoping to have enough energy to finish it off before I go to bed, but we’ll see.
Did I blog? So I have managed to write a post every day this month. The past two days, though, I haven’t felt comfortable posting them to the semi public reality that is my website. Is that still a blog post? Great question.
Did I stretch? It’s been far too long since I stretched. After finishing this, though, I’ll do it.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? No. My prayer life is starting to suffer, which in part is probably because of how sick I’ve been feeling these past few days. Still, that isn’t really an excuse, so I’ll make sure to pray tonight.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I’m ready to write letters tomorrow, but I’m ok with the fact that I didn’t write any today either. I’m sick and I need to be ok with that fact.
since it’s a collective, as I’ve learned↩
the obvious initialism for the site↩
is there something to unpack in that? Probably. Do I have any intention of unpacking it? Not even a little right now↩
though I should really confirm this number↩
not in a judgemental way, just in a statement of fact way↩
but nothing, honestly. It absolutely does, and it’s wild to me that people forget that she kind of created that entire genre trope.↩
in short, because of the aforementioned desire to do things poetically, and because I don’t do much of that writing generally, so practicing seems like a good idea right now.↩
though why I don’t is probably worth investigating. It certainly has something to do with the fact that I don’t love didactic fiction, but there’s probably more to it than that↩
obviously the reader, but that’s too meta for me right now↩
that is, fiction told through letters.↩
hmm, is this what people mean when they say that they’re plotting a book? Because I kind of like this, and would like to get better at it. Right now my NaNo book is kind of stalled because I feel like I’ve got nothing to do but fill space before the final climax of the book, since I’ve hit more or less every plot point that I meant to hit.↩
it feels weird to put two periods back to back, but I think that’s the proper stylizing for etc. at the end of a sentence. I suppose I could look it up, but that seems like a lot of work that I don’t really want to do.↩
since I’m about to go try and write the story, will report back with findings↩
for all that I do sincerely doubt that will happen. The site is not super encouraging of unprompted criticism, which I generally think is a positive.↩
more on that later↩
First Published: 2023 November 7
As I alluded to yesterday, I’m currently playing a Pathfinder 2E campaign with some friends. It’s an interesting concept, where we groundhog’s day1 back to the start of the dungeon every time that we die. Due in large part to that being the agreed upon mechanic, the game is primarily combat focused.
Our GM had the stated goal of getting better at creating and executing combats during the course of the campaign. He is one of my alleged cousins,2 and the party consists of me, my brother3, the GM’s brother4, and the GM’s former roommate.5 It’s been a fun experience, in large part because of the lack of consequences. Often when I play DnD or an equivalent game, I try very hard to both focus on the specific combat and having a good time there and also on the broader story arc. That can be a little exhausting, because fighting optimally is fun for me, but is not necessarily reflective of the characters I enjoy roleplaying outside of combat.6 In this game, however, I’ve decided to play a character who is concerned about the fact that he hasn’t died yet.
More than that, the DM has given us free reign to rewrite our character sheets between attempted delves, which adds a layer of dehumanization as an RP’er. My character no longer really knows what is real, since he truly remembers being born of Black Dragons, but now seems to be born of Blue Dragon.7 It’s been really fun, and I’m excited to play again. The rest of the post will be written tonight, when we’re finished with the session. It may be a first person log, from my character, depending on how I feel.
Well, this time I was the only fatality. The issue with playing a game where everyone8 has an undergraduate degree in chemistry, and the majority of us are getting degrees in something at least vaguely related to chemistry is that you run into some dangerously real world interactions. In PF2e, there’s a Class9 that allows you to create metal structures. There are a number of monsters which create acid, which our GM ruled can erode metal structures, because metal, as we know, dissolves in acid.
One of our group members, being a chemist, recognized the redox reaction that implies. Iron, when dissolved in acid, converts to Iron Oxide. The oxygen, obviously, comes from somewhere. In the case of dissolving in acid, that tends to come from water.
Now, water, as we all know, is made of two hydrogens and an oxygen. When you pull the oxygen out of water, you are left with hydrogen. Through potentially relevant situations, the monster we were fighting ended up on fire.10 When the monster then ate away what the GM decided was 60 pounds of iron, that meant that we had reacted away approximately 550 moles of iron.
That ended up making something around 1200 liters of hydrogen gas.11 The GM ruled that was worth 40 d6 fire damage. I, stupidly, had just jumped next to the monster, and so was caught in the blast as well. Had I been at full health, it would have almost killed me at once. Since I was doing my job as a bartender and tanking the hit, I completely died at once. I’m excited to be revived next week, and to have learned absolutely no lessons from the experience.
Update a few minutes later: I apparently got to come back to life.12 Now we’re going sailing, for some reason.13 Thankfully, I have taken the nicest feat in pathfinder14 We found a river drake, and through situations completely outside of our control15 it tried to fight us. It’s very fun being a barbarian, because my strategy is very simple. If I am close enough to punch, I use a war flail and smash it. If not, I either throw a bomb or a javelin, depending on how much of a threat the object appears.
In the case of the water drake, it was very easy to dispatch, likely due to the fact that we are all fifth level and got a turn off before it did. With a couple of lucky criticals, we dispatched it before it had a chance to fight. A part of me feels bad, but that voice is a small one. I realized the group did not know that I dislike dragons, which is the only part I feel bad about.
We then encountered some other creatures that also do not speak Draconic. As a result, we were able to tell them that the river drake had attacked us for no reason. Unfortunately, they also wanted the eggs, so we had a bit of a disagreement over how to make that happen. After offering them other foods, they tried to fight us.16
Annoyingly enough, I failed my single attack roll, which meant that I mostly just stood around as the rest of the party killed the monsters. I did my job, however, and soaked up the damage that they wanted to output. In such a regard, I really do a great job of playing damage sponge for the group.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? Once again, it was a successful day of writing for NaNo. I still don’t love the story, and I don’t think that I’m going to at any point, but that’s fine. It’s good for me to do something I only kind of enjoy sometimes.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? So, I did not end up finishing last night’s chapter. It ended up being exactly six hundred words shy, which I wrote this morning during my hour of writing time with a friend.17 I have not yet finished today’s chapter of Jeb, but I have hope that I will do so before I go to sleep. If not, I’ll have to finish it tomorrow as well, or accept that a long chapter of a book a day may be too optimistic of a goal for me to take on in addition to everything else I’ve done. I did, semi-relatedly, write a 1200 word draft of a methods section for a manuscript my PI has asked me to start writing. Maybe that explains some of my lack of desire to keep writing right now. For all that my creative writing total is about 5200 words today, my total wordcount is apparently closer to 700018
Update as I kept working on this blog post: I’m now much closer to 6000 creative words today, and I’m almost positive that I’ll finish the chapter tonight, if only because I still have like a hundred words left to write and I have nothing to write here.
Did I blog? Did I ever! Look at me, continuing to send out content into the void that is the website I have.
Did I stretch? I ended up falling asleep midstretch last night, which isn’t great. After this post posts, I’ll start.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? Not really, honestly. My rosary last night was done while half asleep. I did the Angelus today, and I tried to focus on it, though.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? Not today! I got another friend’s address, which is a form of progress, I suppose. In terms of putting ink19 on paper, though, I did not make any progress. There’s always tomorrow.
I’m not capitalizing this even though it’s a holiday (should be capitalized) and referencing the movie, which was then verbed (should be capitalized). If pressed, I’ll argue that it’s like a double negative, for all that I just really don’t want to capitalize it right now↩︎
if you don’t know what I’m referencing, just substitute family friend↩︎
the one I have actual blood with (if you know from outside of this ’blog that the number of brothers by blood I have is not equal to one, you’re welcome to ask me for clarifications, because I presumably know you in real life↩︎
who is technically the person I claimed to be cousins with, but that was more a system of convenience than anything else↩︎
who I don’t know if I’ve ever actually met in meatspace (an expression I love)↩︎
for those not seeing the issue, the optimal way to fight in a game like DnD is to be a complete sociopath. I generally like to play characters with empathy, which makes killing hordes of defenseless creatures have some cognitive dissonance↩︎
Barbarian with the Draconic Primal instinct. We started fighting monsters that were resistant to lightning, so changed the design so that now I deal Acid Damage instead.↩︎
I think, at the very least 4 of the five of us↩︎
I think, maybe it’s an ancestry↩︎
persistent damage in pathfinder is great, and my only regret is not having more sources of it↩︎
don’t ask me for that conversion, because I just relied on a friend’s number↩︎
in universe reason: we keep respawning because shrug. Out of universe reason, it was early and everyone else wanted to continue exploring.↩︎
being totally honest, I tuned out a little bit while I was dead, because I role play very hard.↩︎
assurance, which just lets you always roll a 10 and ignore any circumstances on a skill of your choice. As a barbarian, that means athletics, which is my most useful skill, and meant that we navigated with no struggles at all↩︎
read: I am the only member of the party who speaks draconic, and my character hates dragon related creatures, though the party doesn’t know that↩︎
this time I don’t think it’s my fault, because I tried hard to make peace and failed unintentionally↩︎
got a pr for it i think, with 2819 net words at the end of the hour↩︎
I really don’t trust the count on this site, so I don’t use it for anything real↩︎
I write with a fountain pen, yes, why do you ask? I really like the ink color, and wow it just writes so smoothly, it’s such a nice change. I tried to write with a mechanical pencil the other day and it was so hard.↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 6
Oh gosh, it’s been a long time since the last time I blogged about dnd. I had a fun campaign with that druid, though it fizzled out for reasons.1
Since then, I’ve started playing pathfinder with another set of friends, and I just had the session zero for another dnd campaign that’s about to start. I’ve realized that I really enjoy playing a simple character in DnD, probably because my own life is less than simple. Barbarian is a class that tends to take a direct path to the solution of each of its goals, which is something that I really like.
This character is a plasmoid2 zealot barbarian3 For my background, I took something that was called like raised by giants, which has the fun effect of making my first attack each turn do even more damage. It’s going to be a fun character to role play and roll play4, and I’m excited to hang out with these friends more.
One consequence of session zero just happening today, though, is that I lost the evening, which is when I tend to do a majority of my writing. I was told that the event would end by half past eight at the latest, but then we started chatting and playing other games. I certainly don’t regret the time I spent with them, for all that it will absolutely make getting to my writing goal today a little more difficult.
I don’t have much more to add about this, so I may as well start brainstorming some information about my character. I randomly rolled myself into Neutral Evil, which I think means that I’m intrinsically selfish but have a normal attachment to the laws. I think that works well with the background I gave my character, who I’m realizing probably deserves a name. Let’s go with Goob.
Goob landed in the wild mountains outside of (insert setting’s mountains)5 when it was a small creature.6 As I grew, surrounded by the giants, they adopted me as one of their own.
I always knew that I was different than the other children. For one, they never seemed to relax quite as much as I did, always holding onto their weird bones. For another, they were all much larger than me. Still, I grew up loved and supported, as much as my parents were capable of expressing what that meant.
In time, I grew older and chose a path for myself. Something about the stark beauty of the mountains called to me, and I found myself meditating on the beauty that I saw. One day, some goblins7 came up to our mountain and disturbed the peace. I felt a divine presence guiding my blows as I grew more enraged, throwing the goblins off of the cliff.
When the fight was over, I found that I had gone into what my people called a battle trance. It did not seem safe for me to stay among them any more, for what if I did something I would later regret while under the throes of a trance? I went down the mountain to learn to control the urges that called me towards violence.
While in the (insert name of whatever political entity the campaign starts in)8, I began to make a name for myself as a sword for sale. Well, to be more accurate, as a battleaxe for hire. I joined with9 my party because (insert whatever plot reason here). My dream is to control my rage well enough that I am once again safe to live with the other giants.10
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! I don’t love the way that the story is going still, but I’m hopeful that it’ll start to turn around. If not, eh, I will finish it anyways because I want to practice some skills that writing it will help me practice. Maybe if I start each session with what I hope to learn, I’ll do a better job of writing.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I’m about a fifth to a sixth of the way through. I’m planning to finish the chapter after posting this blog, since writing the blog felt easier when I got home.
Did I blog? Wow! Another day with another blog post.11
Did I stretch? Whoops! Need to stretch still.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? My rosary wasn’t rushed last night, but it wasn’t particularly good. I did the Angelus at around noon, but it was somewhat thoughtless.12
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I did end up addressing another letter to a friend last night, and I posted the letter that I wrote on Saturday this morning. That’s technically progress, so I’m counting it.
people got busy and then moved away, to be exact↩
which is a race I’d never heard of in 5e. Wildly, it also is not a humanoid, which I suppose makes sense like explicitly, but is a fun thing because of how many low level spells explicitly only target humanoids↩
a subclass I’d never heard of. Tl;dr, it gives me extra damage on the first attack of each turn.↩
get it?↩
I legitimately have no idea, it’s some homebrew campaign, so this whole story is of course only as canon as the DM wants it to be. I think it’s good to consider what my character’s motivations are, on a slightly more visceral (fundamental? low?) level than the DMG often recommends↩
Using it here, because I’m going to say that plasmid has no gender/sex. Given that I’m explicitly an amorphous blob that can change shapes if I want to, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to think that I wouldn’t have any explicit sexual characteristics.↩
n.b. I’m happy to switch this for whatever other cannon (or canon I suppose) fodder mook we’re going to be killing by the million in the campaign↩
wow this is a fun game of madlibs↩
or am about to join with? Not totally sure what the party is getting together over↩
hmm not a great character motivation, but I suppose it’s as good as I’ll get.↩
I keep forgetting to type ’blog, but I also don’t know if the two words are identical to me. Might be worth thinking about at some point↩
it’s kind of cool that I now know the prayer well enough for it to ever feel thoughtless, not going to lie↩
First Published: 2023 November 5
It’s been quite a while since my last reflection on the Sunday Mass readings. There are a number of reasons for that, but especially in light of my recent musing where I said I wanted to do more religious writing, spending a musing a week explicitly reflecting on the Bible feels like a good way to practice that. Also, since the last time that I’ve written a reflection on the readings, I finally learned at least one reason I tend to have trouble connecting the first reading and Gospel to the second reading. According to the notes in the edition of the Bible I use most, the Gospel passages were chosen to try to give a relatively full accounting of the different Gospels over the three year sequence. Each of the first readings is chosen to match the Gospel, whether by showing something prophetic Christ did, or simply just by focusing on similar themes. The second readings, however, are not chosen to match the other two. Instead, they are just supposed to trace through the letters, with the goal of giving a good summary of each letter.1
Anyways, nearly two hundred and fifty words later, let’s talk about today’s readings. The first reading comes from the book of Malachi, which I’ve now learned is the final of the twelve minor prophets in the Bible, and is the final book before Matthew in almost every translation of the Christian Bible. Malachi, as it turns out, means messenger, which leads some to believe that the name of the book is referencing a title, rather than the given name of the author.
The first reading is a warning to the priests of the Jewish people. It can be read a number of ways, I am certain. However, the choice of Gospel passage makes it clear to me what interpretation we’re expected to take from the reading.
In the Gospel, Christ talks about the way that the Pharisees and scribes of the people are not living in accord with the covenant the Almighty established over His people. Despite that, Christ acknowledges, along with, it seems, every Gospel and New Testament Letter writer, that the Pharisees still have authority over the people of Israel. He says “do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,”2 before immediately warning the listeners not to act as the Pharisees do.
That is an interesting admonition for me to reflect on. I feel like I tend to have difficulty accepting truths that come from people who I know do not act according to them. If someone tells me that something is healthy and will make me a better person, but does not do it themselves, there is a level of disconnect that I personally struggle to connect through. And yet, as the Gospel points out, this is not a unique or novel situation that I find myself in.
There are two ways that I can read the instruction.3 First, people in authority over us making orders that are within the standards of their authority should generally be obeyed.4 That is, if a boss tells his employees to clean the building, that is his right.5 If the employees do not clean, even if the boss does not, then they are in the wrong.6
The other way that I can understand this is that people can be flawed and recognize that about themselves. I, for instance, know that exercising regularly makes me feel better physically and emotionally. I know the same is true for me about having a regular prayer life. Despite this, I do not exercise regularly, and my prayer life7 needs plenty of work. If someone was feeling generally down about things, I would8 advise them to try praying and exercising more. Even though I do not do it, it’s still good advice.
How much more true can that be for people who have dedicated their lives to studying and interpreting the Word of the Almighty? When a priest or bishop today makes a theological point that I disagree with, I have to recognize that he has gone through significantly more formal theological training than me. Even when what they say is clearly wrong to me, it is still worth the time it takes to understand where they are getting their thoughts from.
In the time that Christ was preaching, the Pharisees were the voice of the people, speaking with Mosaic authority, rather than the priestly power that the Sadducees spoke with.9 It’s interesting that we start today with a reading discussing how the priestly caste will be ignored, and then we see Christ disagreeing with the major opposition to the priestly caste. I’m sure that there’s something deep and profound in the framing, but I can’t find it right now.
The second reading, in stark contrast, is simply a message of evangelization. We, as Catholics, are called to spread the faith to the whole world. I know that I’m not great about doing that, both because I am afraid to evangelize and because I do not live a good Catholic life. There is nothing I can do but try better tomorrow.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did, but I don’t really like where the story is going right10 now. I hope that’ll change tomorrow, but I’m worried it won’t.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I finished the chapter that I started last night. It felt either like a really strong chapter or a really weak chapter. My beta reader thought it was an incredibly strong chapter, which is nice. I think I’m a little in my head about the book because I got a review which glowed about how different my writing style is from the normal. I didn’t think I had a distinctive tone, so that was a bit of a shock to me.
Did I blog? See that? It’s been almost a full week of daily posts, all of which are quadruple digits.
Did I stretch? Oops! I’ll stretch when I post this.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? My rosary was incredibly rushed last night, I did a rushed Angelus today, and I struggled to pay attention during Mass. So, all in all, prayer is not going great.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? Shoot! I knew I forgot something. Ok, before I stretch, I’ll address the letter that I wrote last night so that I can post it in the morning. Depending how I feel after a few minutes away from the computer, I may also write another letter or at least address an envelope.
I’m less positive of this claim, but it’s what I remember interpreting the answer as. At the very least, I am positive that it said the second reading is not inherently connected to the other two readings, but that the other two readings are intrinsically designed to work together.↩︎
Matthew 23:3a (ish)↩︎
standard disclaimer: I am not a theologian or a consecrated. This is me thinking and reflecting as I write the musing, not a guarantee of a normative theological opinion, let alone the absolute truth↩︎
even with all of these disclaimers, I feel uncomfortable with the sentence, which says a lot about me↩︎
interesting that I A, assume that the boss is a man, B, call it his right.↩︎
again, in this entirely hypothetical situation I’m constructing↩︎
as I’ve discussed numerous times↩︎
of course assuming so many things here↩︎
apparently, if I trust Wikipedia↩︎
typed write at first↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 4
I think I mentioned this in my last monthly reflection, but last month I went to an embroidery showcase!1 It was a really cool experience, in part because i hadn’t realized how diverse the field of embroidery was. I had in my mind an image of just like the way you can add a small pop of color to a piece of clothing as the whole of embroidery.2 I was3 wrong about that.
The first exhibit4 was a display of temari balls. Temari, as the display informed us, is a Japenese form of embroidery where you make intricate5 designs in a ball filled with rice hulls.6 The designs were beautiful, and they had pieces at every level of finish, beginning with raw rice hulls and ending with a beautiful almost fractal pattern.7
That, of course, was only the first table we saw. There was a lot of free form embroidery, which I had expected. There was also a lot of cross stitch, which I had not realized was considered a part of embroidery. Again, in retrospect, it makes sense that cross stitch would be featured in the Embroidery Guild, if only because the materials and skills cross over so well between the two hobbies.
There was another kind of embroidery that instantly caught my attention, however: counted thread embroidery. Similar to cross stitch, it is worked in a regular fabric8 Unsurprisingly, as a child of the digital age,9 the fact that the designs were worked onto grids was fascinating to me. By and large, the designs worked in counted thread embroidery did not rely on different stitches to add texture and design elements, instead relying on color, material, and to a small extent, thickness of worked thread to make their designs.
Anyways, as the four of us walked through the exhibit, we were stopped multiple times by older women who encouraged us to join the guild. It was really sweet, and all of us were tempted, though I think we all decided independently to wait to join until next year. When one of the recruiters found out that we were all getting our Ph. D.s in Chemistry10, she was elated and told us that there was a former chemical engineer for the state DNR in the guild. We met her, and we bonded a little bit over the fact that embroidery, especially counted thread embroidery and cross stitch, are very rewarding if you have the sort of mind that a Ph. D. chemist does.11
In a fun turn of events, she was the one who had set up the temari ball exhibit, and was more than happy to tell us a lot more about the craft. It was fascinating to consider the fact that a lot of the skills I’ve been working to develop as an analytical chemist12 apply really well to a craft like making a temari ball. The fact that all four of us had taken a course on machining and CAD made the conversation all the more enjoyable.
When we’d gone through all of the art at the show, we stopped by the sale they had. I got a book on designing Bargello patterns, mostly because it was filled with pretty designs and had a section explaining terminology. The others each got their own different books, and we went to a craft store to get supplies.
Since then, I’ve started trying to learn how to embroider. Right now, I’m still new enough that I keep being surprised to learn things. It’s fun, especially since I haven’t been a novice in this way in something for a long time. Dealing with not knowing what questions I should be asking is a skill I’ve let fall a little bit by the wayside, especially during my latest degree, which is meant to focus almost entirely on delving deeply into one or two small questions. Still, it’s something that I really enjoy, especially because I can see the ways that it intersects with so many other skills that I have or want to have at some point. The fact that there will be a social aspect to the craft in the future, as my friends and I join the guild, only adds to that.
For all that the only print resource I have for embroidery is a book on designing Bargello patterns, I do not think that I will likely end up doing too much Bargello work. Bargello embroidery, for those not in the know, is a form of counted thread embroidery based off of some extant art in Bargello, Italy. Its emblematic style13 is relatively long vertical stitches being used to the exclusion of any other stitch. As a person who personally loves the textural differences that vertical and horizontal lines can make, I don’t think that I’ll be too reliant on the style. That being said, I am also now enough of an adult to do the scales of my different hobbies.14 I’m perfectly willing to believe that practicing a simple Bargello pattern will become essential for my development as a fiber artist, and I’m willing to grit my teeth and bear it, even if I do hate working on the pattern.15
Thus far, I’ve almost exclusively made a small pattern with gradually increasing numbers of threads, to see the way that the shape differs as it gets thicker. It’s interesting that the object seems shorter when it has more threads, especially since I can pull out a ruler and see that the grid based fabric is, in fact, still a grid. I also find that I generally like the more filled in look more, which makes a fair amount of sense. I’ve always been interested in texture as a part of creative media, but that interest has tended to be more in the way that light reacts16 with the media being worked. I suppose the canvas I’m stitching into is, in many regards, the media I’m working, but it doesn’t really feel like it, at least right now. There is a part of me that really does enjoy looking at the canvas underneath the thread, which I’m now realizing might be my issue.
I do enjoy negative space in art, but I tend to feel like its use needs to be intentional. Right now, the designs I’m working don’t feel like the sort of art that need explicit negative space. It’s more than plausible that I will change my opinion as I continue into the craft and make more intricate artwork. In fact, I’m almost positive that I will find a use case for nearly every thickness of thread I’ve worked so far. I just don’t know that they’ll be my standard block.
Anyways, this has been a shockingly long and rambling musing. In summary17, I went to an embroidery show with friends a few weeks ago. It was filled with really cool art and decorations. I’ve started embroidering and I really enjoy it.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I didn’t start the morning with a writing coworking session, which meant that it took me far longer to write the NaNoWriMo words. That being said, I still managed to get them all out.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I’ll say I finished it, despite the fact that I need to find a way to wrap it up. It’s only 2000 words, which feels too small nowadays. Then again, that’s longer than an average chapter for the book has been, so I guess I could stop here, but I’m about to go write with a friend, so that feels like a bad idea.
Preposting edit: I did end up finishing the chapter, and I added about five hundred words. It’s now the longest chapter of the month, clocking in at a solid 2465 words18. Actually, I think that this may even be my longest chapter ever for the book. I’m not going to fact check myself right now, but it feels at least mostly true.
Did I blog? Woo! The streak is extended to day five.
Did I stretch? Oops! Forgot to stretch today19 I have stretched now, though I don’t know if the way that I stretch these days is very similar to the way I used to stretch. Lately, I’ve focused almost entirely on my neck, shoulders, and hips. Historically, I think shoulders used to be a focus, but I can’t remember ever really focusing on my neck or hips. Eh, I’m older and live a different lifestyle than I used to. It makes sense that my flexibility needs have changed.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? No. I was very rushed in my rosary last night and forgot to do the Angelus today.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? There was some reason I thought that I would be able to say I did a good job today. As I think about it, it was probably because I thought that I would, in the completely empty day I had, write a letter to a friend. I suppose I could do that during the coworking session with a friend tonight.20 After all, there’s nothing that says I have to be doing the same kind of writing. You know what, I think I will!
Preposting edit: As of beginning this21 edit, I have a total daily word count22 of almost 6400 words, trumping Thursday’s record of 5367. It’s possible that I would have beaten that yesterday, but I had to draw a line for what words I would and wouldn’t count in my word counts. On the word writing site, where I’m explicitly incentivized to inflate the numbers, I’m more or less just writing everything that I can justify doing on a web platform. On the spreadsheet that I keep for my own purposes, though, I only count creative writing.23 That means that I’m not counting the work I did on a manuscript24 for the group, despite the fact that the website thinks it was almost a thousand words. Anyways, that’s a very long winded way of saying that I am not counting the writing I’m obligated to do for work or anything analog in my counts for the month. While that may not totally reflect the number of words I write, I feel like it’s more accurate to my goal, which is writing more creative words. Sorry, I lost the thread there. I did end up writing a letter to a friend, and I think it ended up being around two hundred words. As I said above, though, I’m not going to count it in my word total. It is nice to have made progress on that monthly goal, though! Now I just need to address and send the letter!25 Unfortunately, as I mentioned in yesterday’s musing, my writings do not always align perfectly with the word goals I have in the application. When that happens, I find that I tend to put the extra words here, which is certainly an interesting reflection on how much I value this blog compared to the other two writing exercises I’m doing this month.26
as it turns out, I did not. Interesting. Ah, I put it in my daily reflection, so unsure why it didn’t count for the month. Anyways.↩
it sounds ridiculous to say so now, but I didn’t have anything else to connect the word to then↩
obviously, in retrospect↩
I feel like that’s the wrong word. Table? unsure↩
and, relevant for the crowd of physical chemists I went with, very mathematical↩
traditionally, at least. As I looked up the art elsewhere I saw people using more or less anything you would use as a replacement for filling.↩
the entire room was filled with signs asking for no photography, which we respected.↩
wikipedia informs me this is called even weave fabric, and happens when the warp and weft are the same size. I had never considered that a fabric might not be like that always, but I suppose it makes sense.↩
we’ll ignore the fact that not all of the people I’ve known feel similarly about grid based designs and imagery↩
which, in retrospect, is probably not the most common answer for a group of four twenty somethings at an event to give, for all that it’s a common one for me↩
I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s there↩
e.g. tolerances, how to fix mismeasurements, how to understand what a physical change on one part of an object will do to the rest of it, how to fudge (which is technically slightly different than fixing a mismeasure)↩
as far as I have been able to ascertain↩
I think that the common phrase is eat my vegetables, but I happen to enjoy eating vegetables. That is, doing the parts of the hobby which feel less rewarding as a task you have done but which better enable you to achieve what you would like to do in the hobby. I feel like the concept of practice your scales is something I could (should) absolutely go into much more depth over sometime this month, both because I’m realizing as this footnote grows ever longer that I have a lot to say about it, and also because I know I’ll run out of ideas for what to blog about well before December rolls around (to say nothing of the fact that I also would, as of now, at least, like to continue this blog well into December and onward. I’m a little sad when I look at the whole month of October and see only two posts.↩
not that I think I will. Truthfully the only part of embroidery I haven’t fallen in love with is threading needles, but that just seems like a skill I’ll get better at with practice, especially given how little I see people complaining about it/struggling with it↩
I tried a number of words, and even though I don’t really like reacts, it’s the best one I could find↩
for the youth, tl;dr↩
by count of the software I’m writing uncompiled .tex into. I don’t know if that’s one to one for actual words written, but I assume that it’s at least relatively true.↩
read: the hours passed by me in a flash because I motivated myself to write 100 words by reading 2000 (numbers rounded less than accurately, but the general gist was that I had many breaks)↩
in retrospect, writing all day before doing a fun writing hang may not have been my best choice. I count a net words of almost 5700, which is already a personal best. Another hour of writing means that I’ll have to find something else to occupy my writing anyways, since I’ve already done as much writing for NaNoWriMo as I’m letting myself (I forget if I mentioned why, but my goal is to write one fifty-ish thousand word novel this month. If I let myself write too much in a given day, that means that won’t happen, probably)↩
second↩
not counting the letter I’m going to say I’ve written in a few more words↩
fairly consistently, though I’m pretty sure that I have counted other writing before. This month, at least, I’m not planning on doing that.↩
research paper draft↩
and write the other letter I’ve addressed an envelope, and address and write the other letters I was planning to send↩
anyways, this now puts me to almost sixty eight hundred words, which really goes to show you how needlessly verbose this entire edit was, given that I started it at around 6400 (can you tell I needed just a few more words still?)↩
First Published: 2023 November 3
Interestingly enough, one day ago today I sat in front of my computer without any idea what I would blog about. Today I have a slightly different issue. I am going to play games with friends tonight,1 and had2 every intention of musing about that experience. However, as I may have mentioned before,3 I’ve started writing on a website which I find very helpful for getting me to write often and well. One feature of the site is that it sets semi-arbitrary goals for me to hit with regards to word count and pace.
Unfortunately, though the overlap is close, it does not always align perfectly with the number of words that I have left to write in a chapter of my web novel. In this case, I finished a longer than standard chapter with 200 or so words in my arbitrary goal.
“But wait,” I hear you4 ask, “why not simply let those remaining words go to waste? Or, even better, why not simply start another chapter?”
To that, I reply,5 “I hate losing progress for work that I’ve begun, and I need a blog post more than I need another chapter of my book at this exact moment.”
Now that I’ve addressed the concerns, I can start writing about the game night I went to tonight. It was a good time! I got to spend time with friends, and I got to play a fun game of chance and skill!6
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? Once again, I managed a 2000 word hour with a friend, and did my writing for the day.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I did! I finished it and sent it to my beta reader hours before this post. Once again, it felt even easier today than yesterday.
Did I blog? As you can see, we are now on day four of the streak.
Did I stretch? I did! This morning no less.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? Once again, I did the Angelus. Last night’s rosary was pretty rushed.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I got a friend’s address, which is technically progress in writing letters. Tomorrow I should actually write a letter, though.
specific games not listed for a variety of reasons↩
have?↩
though I’m not sure when, given that I more or less stopped blogging↩
I don’t know why I assume my readers (who don’t exist) are going to loudly comment on my writing↩
I guess that since I did, in fact, take a break from writing in the middle of the last footnote, I am the reader↩
or many iterations of a fun game of chance and skill, I suppose, depending on the framework you take.↩
First Published: 2023 November 2
Yesterday I talked about how my goal for this NaNoWriMo is writing something more explicitly Christian. I said that I did not have the time or energy to discuss what that meant in that post, and I do stand by that. However, as I tossed and turned in my bed last night, I thought about what it means to have Christian writing.
Of course, like anything else, the concept exists in a spectrum. At one end is something like the Golden Compass, which is a fiction book meant to mock and denigrate the Church.1 At the other end of the spectrum2 is something like Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth, which is wholly a reflection on the Lord, more a work of theology than of creative writing.3
Closer to the areligious side would be the works of Ernest Hemmingway, a devout4 Catholic who actively tried to avoid being labeled as such in his writings. My scale may not be absolute, because I don’t know how to rank Tolkein, who created a wold which was completely in line with the Catholic faith, though not meant to be seen allegorically, against Lewis, who wrote didactic tracts on faith with the slimmest metaphor.
Of course, there are plenty of non Christian fictions written by non Christians. As someone who is, however, I wonder about how it should be reflected in my writing. I don’t think that, at this phase of my life, at least, I’m called to be writing pure theology. Certainly I’m not well enough read in the theology or formed in my faith5 to feel as though I have things that need to be said to the world of theologians.
However, I do also have a platform. As of this morning, I have almost twelve hundred followers on my webnovel, and my chapters are read an average of almost 4000 times. With an audience like that, I have to wonder if there’s something I can do to spread the Gospel, if only covertly. Certainly I don’t want to suddenly shift the tone of my book to something explicitly religious, for two reasons.
First, I don’t really love didactic Christian writing as a genre. There are books I’ve read that I really enjoy, but I find that I tend to get too caught up in where the metaphor falls apart. I don’t feel confident enough in my ability to portray nuance to where I think that I could write something without leading people astray.
I also feel like didactic Christian writing tends to only stand when read with that intention.6 That is,7 while I feel like a work of art tends to stand on its own, even when divorced of its context, I find that a lot of didactic writing requires people to be seeking out a book that will lecture them in order to be enjoyable.
That leads to the second concern I have, which is that a blatantly Catholic piece of writing is not what the readers of my book have sought out. Now, there is an argument I respect that people do not always know what they want, but I don’t know if it really holds here. After all, there is almost no cost to people dropping my story if they do not like it, and I don’t know if the morals I’m espousing in the book are particularly non-Christian.
I guess that question is certainly one that I have. To what extent does a work I write become Christian and what are the important parts of a Christian fiction to me?8 There’s something to be said for the idea that a Christian book can be as much about the worldview it espouses as any particular theological point.
In that regard, I think that my web novel is at least somewhat Christian in its view of the world. Violence is not something that the main character idolizes, and his family is filled with people who care deeply for each other. Man made institutions are ultimately fallible, but people by and large are good and motivated by a desire to see the world improve. Without adding a messianic character, I suppose that it’s hard to get too much more Christian, especially given that Christ is9 central to the Christian faith.
I don’t know if this musing did what I wanted it to. I think that I wanted to find a way to write in a way that I considered more Christian, despite never really having considered what that would look like. Instead, I think that I’m walking away from this posting with the idea that I should just be more intentional about the morals I’m espousing implicitly and explicitly in my writing. I don’t think that I’m good enough at writing or thinking to effectively weave in allegory yet, though that is something I should consider.10
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? Yes! I did a writing session with a friend, and it was really fun. I think I ended up writing close to 2000 words in that hour, which is near what my maximum WPH has ever been.111726/1700. I continue12 to grow ahead of schedule.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I did! I finished it and sent it to my beta reader before finishing this post. Interestingly, the writing of the chapter was far easier than it felt yesterday. I guess there’s something to be said in consistency, especially in terms of making something which is not inherently difficult seem easier.
Did I blog? I did! I thought about the post over the day, which was good, and wow we’re now on a three day streak! That’s super cool and I’m excited to continue it further.
Did I stretch? Unlike last night where I forgot, today I was too rushed before leaving home13, and I wore dress clothes14, so couldn’t really stretch during the day. As with last night, I am again going to stretch after posting this.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I did an Angelus again today around noon, and I went to mass. I also went to mass last night, which I forget if I mentioned or not. I also tried to focus on the rosary last night, but did not do a great job.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I thought about one of the letters I want to write.15 I did not, however, write the letter or in any other demonstrable way make progress on my goal of writing more letters. I didn’t16 know if I would be able to today yesterday, though, so I’m ok with this.
I
I think? I’ll be honest, I heard that as a child and saw a few things which corroborated that story and was never interested in researching further. I’m fully willing to believe that it is not true.↩
in my own world view, and compressing any orthogonal things into one single projected axis↩
Ok so I’m absolutely realizing that I should have two axes (hmmmm, maybe not. I don’t actually know if that’s the case↩
maybe faithful? I’m not sure which word is better for describing someone who was self professed a poor Catholic but who still believed strongly and deeply.↩
despite framing like this, I’ll be the first to say that the two are, though not mutually inclusive, at least fairly well linked. It’s not two distinct axes, but the two don’t overlap exactly↩
Hmm that’s not well phrased, let’s see if I can say that better↩
the two words that every author afraid of not making sense loves↩
if you couldn’t tell, I’m using this posting as a way for me to consider these questions, not because I already have the answers and I’m leading you to them as readers. It would be funny if I, the person who just said that I dislike didactic writing, would have done so, and I won’t say that I never do that. Here, though, I’m really exploring the thought as I type. (One side effect of learning to type without self editing is that thoughts become much less filtered as you type them. In the book I’m writing, this often manifests in new plot threads being picked up, often in ways that I never could or would have considered. Here it means that I’m approaching the question through the lens of each word I type, which is a weird thing to realize)↩
shockingly enough,↩
I suppose I’m trying some allegory in the NaNo book I’m doing.↩
which is funny when you consider that my sprint writing pace can often meet or exceed 60 wpm, implying that I’m writing for less than half of the hour.↩
maybe the wrong word for day two, but c’est la vie (la vie)↩
see the whole doing a writing session with a friend before work↩
because I was singing at a mass tonight↩
A year ago today, a friend invited me to go pray with her. She’s one of the people to whom I want to write a letter, and so it seemed somehow relevant↩
It will never not be strange to me that didn’t and did not have such different connotations↩
First Published: 2023 November 1
Well, it’s another November, which means it’s time for another installment in “I1 try my hardest to drive myself insane by doing something related to NaNoWriMo again.” In 2018, when I began this blog2, I did not have the drive to actually write a novel. Instead, I attempted to add fifty thousand words to my ’blog postings over the course of the month. As I am sure you3 can guess, I was unsuccessful at that mission.
By 2019, I had forgotten about my musings well before November rolled around. 2020 and 2021 likewise passed by me without anything to point at.4 I suppose that there may not actually be all that much from 2021, given that I worked on the same journal from November of 20195 through August of last year.
Last year, as I certainly remember, I attempted to do NaNoWriMo for what I had a vague idea was my first time ever. As it turns out, I had made an account back in 2011, and had attempted to do NaNoWriMo that year. I, unsurprisingly, failed at that goal.
Last year, however, I was successful, at least in terms of writing 50000 words of fiction and finishing one narrative. The two did not align with each other, as I needed to start a sequel in order to get to the needed word count. Of course, I gave up on the story almost as soon as I could. One year later, I have no interest in revisiting that story.
I also wrote a story this past April, as part of a writing competition for the website where I currently post my ongoing novel.6 I made it to the word count for that book7, but was tired of writing it by the end of the word count and rushed the ending.
Well, rushed may be a bit of an understatement. The book was set over the course of twelve years. I spent all but fifteen hundred of the words on the first three weeks, then rushed through the next twelve years in the remaining word count. One commenter’s reply was that they were grateful that I did not leave the work unfinished, for all that the ending was incredibly unsatisfactory.
So, that brings us to November. As I mentioned yesterday, I am also trying to revive this ’blog and get further ahead in my other book at the same time. Will it work?
Who knows.
Will I burn out before the month is done?
Almost certainly.
Am I still going to ride this train for as long as I can, in hopes that I might be able to salvage a number of words from the situation?
Absolutely.
Anyways, the book this year is something I’ve never tried before. I realize I’ve only really written third person limited in the past, so I’m writing this book in first person. Now, whether that’s going to be a good idea is yet to be determined.
The general plot of the book is that there’s an order of vampire fighting werewolf priests in the modern day United States.8 I’m not sure how much of the balance I’ll have between conversation and action, but given that I’ve spent all of today’s content9 on the main character getting ready to meet with the monastery, odds are good that this book will also end up somewhat rushed.
In any case, it’ll be the book I try to write.s I’m hopeful that I can tell a story, and a story with faith, since I haven’t really touched my faith in any of the writing I’ve done.10 I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it to anyone’s satisfaction, let alone my own, but I have been thinking a fair amount about how to interface my faith and writing.
I feel like that topic deserves far more consideration than I can give it at this point in the night.11 It’s currently past my bedtime, and I’m well above my word goal for the day.12
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? Yes! I did two fifteen minute sprints13, 1798/1700. Nice I am 100 words ahead of schedule now.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I did! I just finished it, and, as seems always true, it felt much harder to write the chapter at the beginning14 than it ended up being.
Did I blog? I am blogging now! Currently working on a streak, which is nice.
Did I stretch? Shoot! I will do that as soon as I finish here
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I remembered to do an15 Angelus just before noon, when my alarm went off. Otherwise, I tried to be more mindful about my prayer last night, for all that I don’t know if it really was.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I found my stamps, envelopes, and cards. I also addressed an envelope. That feels like enough for the day, especially since I want to make the letters feel as easy as possible. Tomorrow I’ll try to address another letter, but we’ll see how I’m doing on time.
I
Initial draft said my first name, but I am unsure if I’ve ever posted it here, and may as well do a little bit of not self doxxing if I haven’t↩︎
I keep wanting to say ’blog, and I think that I might just start doing that from now on↩︎
the hypothetical reader↩︎
on this site, at least. I am almost certain that there are any number of artifacts that I can look at.↩︎
interesting, I had not connected that I finished that journal midway through what could have been another NaNoWriMo↩︎
the more I write, the more uncomfortable I get with ending sentences in prepositions. I know that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the prior sentence reading “for the website I currently post my ongoing novel on”, but the construction reads weirdly to me now. I wonder if that’s a sign that I’m getting better at writing.↩︎
fifty five thousand, five hundred and fifty five, to be exact (on the word count, not on what I wrote. I think I got somewhere closer to 57,000)↩︎
well, in the modern day. I think that the plan is for the order to exist across the whole world, but the main character, and therefore, story, all will take place in the US. Right now I have it set near Ann Arbor, but that is entirely just because I wanted a single location cue and it was the first vaguely metropolitan location that popped into my mind↩︎
two words less than eighteen hundred↩︎
well, at least I haven’t touched on my faith intentionally in any of the fiction writing. The many reflections on the readings I’ve done here aren’t counted, for obvious reasons. It’s also probably obvious that I have a Catholic world view given the other writing I’ve done, but I am not the person to analyze that.↩︎
I wrote this post in three sittings, the third of which begins with the final sentence of the prior paragraph.↩︎
which is approximately 5000↩︎
with pauses as needed to complete quests↩︎
and middle and end↩︎
admittedly rushed↩︎
First Written: 2023 October 3
Shoot, somehow it’s the end of October. I really feel like I blinked and suddenly the month has completely vanished.1 Despite the fact that this month is gone without any blog postings, I still managed to keep up my five a days.23 As a result, I can still give some highlights for the month.
This past month I:
Went to a fancy PChem banquet in the department
Gave my last planned talks for a while!
Talked to children!4
Met with a high school friend
Visited home
Made ravioli
Went to Rocky Horror Picture Show!5
Went diving for the first time in ages!
Let’s see how that lines up with my things I was excited for from last month’s reflection.
I have a friend staying with me! That’s always exciting.6
I’m giving two real talks this week!7
There’s a cool dinner tomorrow I get to go to8
I’m going to a school to talk to the kids about careers in STEM!9
I’m going to a science fair next week!10
Hey, that’s pretty close to overlap. As always, there are new and exciting things that I did not know I was going to do at the start of the month. I also set my standards incredibly low, which made it easy for the lists to overlap. Let’s see how we did against last month’s goals, though.
Blog more. I somehow blogged less.
Get ahead on Jeb. I am planning to write another chapter of Jeb right after I write this post, which will technically be slightly ahead.
Keep my home clean. My home is about as clean now as it was at the start of the month, which is nice. It fell apart in the middle, but I got it back.
Pray better. I’ve started doing a daily rosary before bed, which is, at the very least, more prayer.
Stretch more. I stretched a total of five times, compared to 6 in September. Whoops.
Get back into writing letters to friends. I wrote not a single letter. I didn’t even address a letter wow.
So, as expected, I did not do a great job on my goals. But, there’s always the future to improve, and that’s what my goal is now. Next month, I’m excited for the following:
Going home for Thanksgiving
Doing NaNoWriMo with a friend
I’m guest teaching a class, which is fun.11
I’m going to a cool discussion about Pascal.12
Once again, a fairly small list, though one that’s spaced a little more over the month, which is probably good for me. Goals for the upcoming month:
Write 1700 words a day for my NaNo project. I averaged more than this last year, and I think that I can do it fairly quickly, especially since I even plotted this novel.13
Write a chapter of Jeb every day. So, this is such an outlandish goal, except that I don’t do as many social activities anymore, and I will already be in the swing of writing for NaNoWriMo. If I cut myself off from writing too much more than 1700 words a day for that, the extra creative juice will have to flow somewhere, and it may as well be into Jeb.
Blog every day. Now, lots of people say that the correct way to build a habit is by picking a single incremental change to your life and implementing it. They’re probably right. Nonetheless, I want to do my best here, rather than simply doing something. I very often have monthly goals of writing more blog posts, and this month I will already have the daily momentum of Jeb and NaNo to keep me blogging.
Stretch every day. There is really nothing about my life that is not improved when I stretch more. Given that I will be hunched over a computer more this upcoming month14, it is almost certainly going to be necessary for me to at least stretch my neck, shoulders, and hands. Also, there’s now a club diving team at my school, so I can go diving again. My body was not flexible enough for it last time, but that’s only more reason for me to improve.
Improve the cleanliness of my home. Last month I raised my standards for what my home should be like. I would like to do that again.
Pray better. I have gotten to the point that a daily rosary is what I do, but it’s not always15 particularly mindful. At a minimum, it would be good for me to be better about that.
Write letters to friends. At a minimum, there are three people I owe a letter to and at least one other person I would like to send a letter to. We’re almost at the time of year that holiday cards become appropriate, and I could consider doing those this year.
This means that I’ll have a daily reflection that looks like:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? /1700
Did I write a chapter of Jeb?
Did I blog?
Did I stretch?
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary?
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends?
Of course, there are reasons for this (which I will not be discussing on this blog but it seems important for future me to remember) (also present me)↩︎
I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but, in short, (hmm is that too many commas in a row? probably, at least in that the essay as a whole will suffer)↩︎
with a few exceptions that I fixed↩︎
I keep being told there’s a better way to frame this, but wow I cannot find it↩︎
a live cast version, which was fun↩︎
Saw this in my notes but wasn’t sure if I’d already mentioned it↩︎
They were fun!↩︎
mentioned↩︎
I did not end up talking to kids much about careers, though I did enjoy talking to them↩︎
I did not do that. Oops↩︎
though I should really reach out to the prof and figure out what, exactly, that will entail↩︎
I’m not entirely sure what about him, because I didn’t write that down, but the bishop will be there, which is cool↩︎
unheard of, I know↩︎
or, as I am right now, reclined with my arms cocked weirdly↩︎
read: often↩︎