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Falling Leaves Of Summer
As I’ve gone to deliver and/or pick Dorothy up from school, I’ve noticed something absolutely glorious! 🍃 Fall is starting early!!! 🍂
🍂 🧡 ☕ 🤎 🥧 Yay! 🥧 🤎 ☕ 🧡 🍂
So, the last scorcher in our neck of the woods came yesterday. Observing the forecast for the next couple of weeks shows me no more of that high 80s and 90s nonsense!!!
Autumn doesn’t officially begin for another 24 days or so, but ?¿?WHO CARES?¿?
It’s basically 🍂 Autumn 🍂!!!
And not a moment too soon. Maybe we can finally all take a gigantic collective chill.
Psy-Ops
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. ~Saul Bellow
Invested in ignorance could very well be the catch-phrase of the year.
The mainstream media is still playing the propaganda for vested interests inside and outside of the government. I don’t know when we’ve been subjected to such a tremendous raft of never-ending 🐂💩.
Peaceful protests all seem to show burning cities in the background. Y’all! Peaceful protests are people calmly standing around holding their signs or marching in an orderly parade that has been arranged in accordance with local ordinances, that has appropriate police supervision to redirect traffic, EMTs on hand in case someone gets dehydrated or physically overwrought and a set beginning and end time.
Peaceful protests do not block traffic without police on hand to redirect the traffic safely around the protest.
Peaceful protests do not involve people dogpiling on the vehicles of people who just want to get from Point A to Point B.
Peaceful protests do not involve people being dragged from their vehicles and kicked in the head.
Peaceful protests do not involve:
- looting stores
- destruction of property not belonging to the protesters
- widespread vandalism
- threats against people tasked with cleaning up after the vandalism
- screeching violent threats against random people on the periphery
- invading outdoor restaurant areas to harass people who just want to be left out of the nonsense
None of that constitutes a peaceful protest.
Swarming a U.S. Senator on the streets of DC making violent threats and screeching “Say her name” is not a peaceful protest.
It’s got to stop.
But how can it stop if spineless, soulless Democrap mayors and city councils agree to defund the police rather than letting them do their jobs?
If you get rid of the police, the only options that remain are to be cowed by violent anarchists or to join in the madness as a vigilante. Neither is particularly attractive or viable as options go.
What if we did this, though?
Fuckin’ get over yourselves…
Okay, you’re upset about this, that and the other thing.
You’ve got outstanding grievances about whatever it is that burns your ass.
Guess what! So does everyone else.
How about you just settle the fuck down and go back to trying to deal with it rationally.
If you need to sue someone, do it.
If you need to confront someone, don’t do that with a Molotov Cocktail in hand or a gun or even a fist. Arrange a meeting with a rational, impartial arbitrator and try to work it out.
Everybody wants to jump straight to violence. It might make you feel better in the moment but let’s agree that it’s actually a last resort instead of just flying off the handle and making matters worse.
There’s Never Enough 🦇 Batman 🦇
THE BATMAN Trailer (2021)
Take Batman, for instance. He actually is the last resort.
In Gotham City, like any other city, crime happens. For the most part, the police deal with it. Sometimes, when the police can’t deal with it, Batman deals with it.
Thing is, Batman actually has a code.
He’s not just running around beating up people because he can. He is trying to deal with the stuff that is outside of the scope of what the police can handle.
Out of control criminal gangs? ✔️
Insidious crime bosses who own the cops and do horrible things with impunity? ✔️
Crazy supervillains with maniacal schemes? ✔️
Dishing out a little humble pie to the likes of Superman? ✔️✔️✔️
Okay, that last one was because he was being psy-opped by Lex Luthor, but he still whupped Superman like a red-headed stepchild. So…
Been Thinking
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself. ~Plato
One of the things I really hate about 🌞 Summer 🌞 is having to sit there simmering like a sausage on a skillet. I can’t even think because I’m so overwhelmed with discomfort.
Thankfully, summer is effectively over and I can get back on track.
I’ve also been distracted by the process of getting set up on my contract work. It serves a fairly immediate need, so it’s been foremost on my mind of late. That’s almost ready to roll so, along with the departure of icky awful summer, that’s another thing off my roster of distractions.
Fortunately, there’s the matter of letting things simmer in the subconscious.
Planting an idea into the back of your mind and letting it sit there and brew a while is no bad thing.
It may annoy my wife, but it really is a productive thing to do.
Even though it seems you’re doing nothing, your subconscious mind is busily doing a lot of important work. This is the essence of intuition and intuition is the heart of orchestrating an excellent, believable story.
Pondering may seem ponderous but it produces a preponderance of preposterous products. It’s on me to winnow out the wheat from the chaff in my conscious, rational mind. Writing is a partnership between the conscious and unconscious facets of your mind.
I hadn’t been letting my subconscious do its part, which is a big part of why I’ve been stymied. There are other matters that have hindered progress, but a big part of it was that I wasn’t letting all the parts of my mind do their jobs properly.
Haste makes waste.
It’s often said but rarely understood, except through bitter experience. Measure twice, cut once. All that sort of thing. You can’t rush a story.
I’ve learned something recently that changed my entire perspective.
There are a lot of people who are claiming to be able to bang out a novel per month.
Okay, yes, you actually can do that and people are. Depends on your definition of novel, though.
Cranking out a 50-80K word novel in 30 days means cranking out about 1,700-2,700 per day. That’s obviously doable since I’ve done as many as 7,400 words in a day.
Thing is, either these novels are highly formulaic and they’re just pumping out penny candy or they’re spending massive amounts of time plotting to such a degree that the actual typing of the end-result prose is just a matter of slapping the icing on the cake.
One guy I’ve been watching has a habit of 5K, 7K or even 10K words per day and he has cranked out a novel in as few as 15 days. However, he revealed in a separate thread that his “plot gardening” can take 6-12 months. He’s got enough projects in the pipeline that when one of them comes ripe for picking, he’s able to bang it out in record time.
It all depends on the point of view. Either he’s got a process that works for him (he does) or he’s blowing smoke and it’s really sort of cheating to say that he whips out a novel in a month since it’s only a tiny bit of what he actually does from beginning to end (it is).
So, in the spirit of full disclosure, whenever I actually have a story that’s genuinely ripe for picking, I’ll probably be able to bang it out in 2-3 weeks because I can crank out up to 8K words per day when I’m in the zone. Problem is, the stories aren’t completely formed in my head, so I can’t whip them out like that.
Whether one dithers from one chapter to the next or whether a concrete plot is devised that merely needs to be spackled with prose, writing a story takes some time and a lot of mental effort.
I remain undaunted.
When I worked at the county, I personally maintained a dozen projects between my ears. I could stop work, turn on a dime, attend to any “emergency” fixes or enhancements and get right back to where I was before the interruption occurred.
If I could do that, I can manage 3 fantasy/sci-fi series and an annual Christmas RomCom novella. All I need is time for my ideas to ripen and some research to make the stories and milieux believable and enjoyable.
That’s why I put such an effort into getting my Christmas monthlies and pins done early. Honestly, I was planning to be done the RomCom at this point and focused more on formatting it for daily release, but that’s part of the reason I finished the monthlies early. I wanted to provide some room for the possibility of distractions.
Thank God 🍂 Autumn 🍂 is finally here unofficially. Things are really coming together nicely. A bit of patience and a lot of hard work will result in some really wonderful stories.
Next time, I’ll talk a bit more about the plan. It’s still a bit of a vague notion, but I’ll have time to concentrate on it when I’m not drowning in my own perspiration. 👍🏻
Goodbye, Summmer, and good riddance. I’m more than satisfied with the early arrival of autumnal conditions. Break out the cider and the spiced wafers. Bake some apples and stew some savory, gravy-laden stew. Good times are here…