Episode #233: Am I Forever Destined To Be A Scribbler?

This was a silent friend that I'd met during my walk. He be chillin' and profilin' with the best of them. Fortunately, he has moved on, probably involuntarily, to a happier place.

The other day, I made a lighthearted Facebook post about the progress I was making with my "Hot Mess" series. I had plainly stated that I had cracked the 1,000 page mark and maybe I was a medieval scribe in a previous life. Which a lot of people found amusing.

The main reason(s) why people found it funny, was that:

1. All my original content is handwritten prior to computer transcription, as I find it much easier on my hands to print than it is to type (additionally all the other skills required to elevate one's game is fully on display when I do pen and paper);
2. Presently, the formula to produce one page + one paragraph of a Gdoc (my preferred OS) is two handwritten pages. This translates to 2,000 + pages, or in a smaller digestible chunk, 22-25 handwritten pages produce a 12-13 page chapter.
3. Finally, the fact that I managed to churn out 1,013 pages of text to begin with. I don't think anyone sets out with such a ludicrous goal of 1,000 pages on purpose.

So I got to thinking, was I an actual scribe some five hundred years ago and somehow got reborn 10x to what I am today: a person who writes like a medieval scribe? For those of you who do not know what a scribe is, a scribe is how copies of books/documents were made prior to the advent of the printing press. To whit:

1. A person, usually a man, who would be hunched over a desk or a table of some kind, with a quill and ink, and spend the next ten hours or so painfully transcribing/copying text from said book or document to another document or book {I do this, except not for ten hours, but three}
2. More often than not, they would use the natural light of the sun and maybe a candle or oil in the middle ages in order to complete their task {I use old fashioned incandescent light bulbs and if I tried natural light I would probably melt}.
3. They would probably develop bad posture {check}; cramped and gnarly hands {double check}; no social life {triple check} and an overinflated importance of self {golden sombrero here}.
4. Can't forget the absolutely crappy eyesight because spectacles weren't invented until the late 13th/early 14th century, and most certainly were meant for those who had money {well...I gots the crappy eyesight, so there's that}.
5. The occasional inhuman taskmaster {well...if I count myself, then yeah}.
6. Finally, being a medieval scribe was probably the modern day equivalent of "ya'll want fries with that?", aka hard work/little pay.

I think I pretty much meet the basic criteria for a medieval scribe, in that I can churn out the modern day equivalent of one quality page of work; I am quite the perfectionist, in that I have re-re-re-re written up to one half page of the same piece of work because it didn't meet my unbelievably high standards {seriously}; I actually sit hunched over a t.v. try with my face less than four inches from said parchment paper in order to see what I'm writing, gripping my pen so tight that the ink screams for mercy.

However, the one skill I probably don't share in common with a medieval scribe is the ability to write legibly. I mean, let's get real here. Their livelihood depended on their ability to write cleanly, legibly and smartly. I, on the other hand, do not. Let's break it down, shall we?

1. Cleanly: this is something that I have major issues with, in that I am the universal king of mistakes. I use, with great vigor, excessive amounts of liquid white out {I think I'm on bottle number four} and blank labels {packs of blank address labels that I trim down to fit on the notebook paper, and packs of blank file folder labels that I also trim down}, in order to fix my mistakes, because as you know, ink is where it's at.
2. Legibly: this is also something I have issues with, as I've managed to now print at the same speed that I used to write cursive. This has often led me to stare at, a few days later, certain words trying to ascertain just exactly what I'm looking at. Sometimes this requires me to re-read what I wrote leading up to the word as well as after the word.
3. Smartly: this is another issue I have, because why use five words to write a sentence when you can use eleven to describe the exact same thing in five. In fact, why use eleven when you could use sixteen?

Even with the glaringly obvious defects in my writing ability, I still think I got the chops to make it as a scribe. Sure, I may be slow, I may be sloppy and I may even question the validity of what I'm being told to copy, but I am dependable, spineless, worthless and weak. I lay around all day playing that, sick repulsive electric twanger...whoops, sorry, just channeled my inner Twisted Sister.

Anyways, what this post really boils down to is this: I managed to devote an entire blog post comparing myself to a medieval scribe, which if you think about, is a tiny bit similar to Jerry Seinfeld's show about nothing.

And I managed to prove to myself that I still got the ability to latch onto something extremely trivial and create something interesting for others to read.

Happy Monday!

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #232: Changing Musical Tastes? Maybe, Maybe Not

The legend that is Oreo the Chihuahua. Absolutely no fear, and sometimes, doesn't fully apply his brain cells. But we love him just the same.

As I've gotten older, I've often wondered from time to time, if my musical tastes had really changed in the past 47+ years of my existence {the starting point would be 1976}.

Like the majority of people, I was initially exposed to what my parents were listening to, which in this case was 50's rock, late 60's folk and early 70's country. All of which at the time, I really didn't like much. I also would listen to the 70's pop when it was actually fresh, and not super stale like it is now. And most importantly for this post, I had my first real exposure to both classical and 40's pop, courtesy of that well known animation company of our childhood: Warner Bros.

In the preceding decades, I've grown to appreciate classical music, to the point where I would often tune into it on the car radio and in one memorable instance three straight weeks on YouTube. I've also revisited a portion of the music from my childhood {60's folk and 70's}, and subsequently acquired a deeper appreciation of those genres. But, one might ask, did your musical tastes actually change in your later years? I believe it has radically changed, and for the better.

During the 25+ years spent working for the state of Connecticut, I was exposed to the endless wonders of college/independent radio. We have three very good college stations near where I live {Univ of Hartford, Trinity College and Wesleyan Univ} and subsequently I was exposed to genres that I never really thought too much about or even knew existed.

Under the rock genre, I was exposed to the 50's rock that was either high on the regional charts or near the absolute bottom of the national charts; I was soon exposed to the heavy metal genre {mostly through film and book at first} and the sub-genres, which was quickly followed by punk music of the late 70's/early 80's {e.g. Dead Kennedys and Sex Pistols}; under the "oddities" classification, I was exposed to all forms of jazz music {note, I really detest the heavy brass versions of jazz}; all types of Bluegrass, cartoon music and a newish genre called Americana {note: this is still one my favorite songs from that later genre, Happy Boy}

Again, all of this took place after the age of 30, so as you can see, I came in way late to the musical exposure game. However, that isn't to say that I went hog wild with the other types not previously mentioned. There are a few that I have either developed an overall dislike that has mellowed over the years to the point where I will sample it from time to time {e.g. rap, electronica, pop and country pop}, or just simply an intense dislike that will never change {e.g. today's R&B and death metal}.

So to answer the question, has my musical tastes really changed all that much? Perhaps. I mean, in an indirect way, college radio had/has both opened and reopened my musical horizons. When I say "opened", it has allowed me to explore other types of genres at my own pace and at my own speed {for example, jazz is a genre that you really do need to explore at your own pace}; and when I say "reopened", it has allowed me to revisit and reexamine the music from my youth, and actually gain a level of appreciation that I still enjoy to this day.

Also in an indirect way, my children have showed me how to look at their music with a slightly less critical eye than previously. I still don't quite understand/like huge swathes of their music, but now I'm a shade more open minded about listening to it {occasionally being trapped in a car will often force you to confront music that otherwise wouldn't be on your radar}.

There are still certain types/eras of music that I absolutely will not listen to unless I am truly desperate, like classic rock from the Rollicking Stone/Fred Zeppelin era to the Glam Metal era {that's mid 1960's thru the late 1980's}, the 1st/2nd wave of Alternative {1990 thru early 2000's} and roughly 97% of today's country pop {mid 2000's to the present}. 

There is, however, one particular type of music that has spurred me on to explore different genres: cover songs. College radio, and to a lesser extent, a particular channel {Covers} on the Internet station SomaFM, have played cover songs that go above and beyond what you would tiredly hear on commercial radio {ex: I heard a cover of "I Fought The Law" by the Dead Kennedys that prompted me to explore their music}. Most of the artists that performed those covers would often prompt me to explore that artist's catalog, with very good results.

I think I will stick with my answer of "Perhaps". I still listen to most of the same music from my youth, but I have accentuated/enhanced that music with other types that in turn has made me a more well rounded, musically that is, individual. And isn't that what we all strive for in our lives?

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #231: Research Is The Writer's Way Of Playing Roulette

For the past week, our neighborhood has been visited by a doe. So far, this lovely doe has grazed in our front yard, snoozed in the shade in the back yard and grazed in the side yard. Note: I live some twenty feet away from Cedar Mountain, and this photo was taken while I was walking home on 7/11/24, at a distance of about fifty feet, give or take.

Over the past fifteen plus years of writing, I have done research on a plethora of nouns and other assorted parts of grammar, both the old fashioned way and the modern way. By old fashioned, I mean waddling my butt down to the local library and thumbing through the Dewey Decimal card catalog to find a particular book or wandering through the library shelves looking for a particular subject {e.g. baby name books or classical literature}. And by modern, using both the Google and Bing search engines AND by asking people certain sensitive questions.

Let me clarify the statement of asking people sensitive questions. I was actually doing a bit of research as well as soliciting a bit of feedback while writing my first novel, and a former friend had pointed out that I was writing a few of my female characters unrealistically. She clarified when I asked how, which sent me on a very odd research mission that could've gone so terribly sideways if my coworkers didn't know that I was doing that serious writing gig.

T.L.;D.R.: I asked a coworker of mine about what the letters A, B, C, and D meant as it pertained to bra sizes.

Now, the other bizarre research question that stood out from that same time period had to do with breast milk. At the time, I was writing the original 1st draft of Hot Mess series, and I thought it would be really interesting if one of the main characters had the ability to produce breast milk at will. So I actually asked this question in a blog post from that same time period, and the consensus was that my readers were even more enlightened than I was on this particular plot device.

With the two person-to-person research questions out of the way, let's discuss the overall oddity of what research I actually performed for my various stories.

In general, because I was such an early fan of having hybrid people {half human/half animal} in my stories, that required quite a bit of research into the lives of the various members of the feline species, both domesticated and wildlife. This animal research obviously involved other species such as horses and other types of wildlife.

We then went off on a small mechanical tangent doing basic research for certain cars and motorcycles (how to drive a true manual motorcycle was an adventure, since the required info translated to just one measly sentence in the aforementioned first novel). With my current book that is now out, that research delved into about a half dozen types of cars before splintering off to other things like...

Nature. I'm a big fan of Mother and Father Nature, to the point where I often write various parts of that charming couple as anthropomorphic beings. We've also done a large chunk of research into one of my very favorite topics...

Religion. Specifically, the aspects of what I consider to be very malleable to play around with: Hell and Purgatory. Oddly enough, I have always been drawn to those two members of the afterlife than I have to Heaven, probably because they've been more interesting to doodle around with. When I got more serious about my writing, those two particular topics opened my fictional world to endless possibilities.

Possibilities like, Hell being run like a well oiled family business in my current series, military style. Or in my recently released novella, the main villain is a modern day version of Satan. But seriously, I did do a moderately deep dive in both concepts, as well as a few of the archangels.

People. This one was one of my bigger research projects that is perpetually ongoing, with the methodology being almost even divided between asking people, observing people and the strange world of the Internet. The observing and the asking people almost exclusively dealt with clothing and everything associated with it, with a few related tangents such as body art (metal and inking) and hair; while the Internet was used to basically brush up on a few historical generalities, like different cultural time periods (e.g. the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans), certain pop culture events (e.g. the world famous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the 90's) and even certain mores/values of a given time period. Using the Internet also allowed me to confirm certain things like...

My memory. This is an interesting research topic, as a lot of the background info that I use for my stories involve my home state of Connecticut. I've done a lot of intra-state traveling in my lifetime, and a moderately sized chunk has made it into my stories, either as a major part or a minor touching upon.

For example, in a novella that I'm looking at a 2025 publishing date, I have references pertaining to Connecticut sprinkled throughout. Like, a major highway and state routes that run South-to-North and from North-to-South; I've used a few major towns and cities as minor-to-major focal points; I have used an semi-abandoned hospital and my local mountain as key turning points.

In another example, two stories within this particular trilogy, take place in my local park and local library, while the other takes place at the local town festival; while in another short story collection, one story takes place inside my local mountain and the other takes place, weirdly enough, in the center of town and my house.

One topic I do enjoy researching is names. I was never that much of a fan of using regular names for my characters. I was more in the realm of either using mythological names, old fashioned names, regular names that are misspelled, names based on other languages or names based on different types of nouns.

We delved deep into various kinds of mythology: Roman, Greek, Incan, Celtic and Christian. We dabbled a bit in the Victorian age, The Edwardian age, other languages and the classic cartoon age. And because a few of my female characters from my current WiP are a neat-o mixture of amoral/psychopath/sociopath, we researched a few various plants of the mortally dead variety, like various off-shoots of Nightshade. So those particular characters are named after Atropa Belladonna & Brugmansia, two very lethal members of that particular genus.

In regards to classic cartoons, back in the day, I watched (and still do) a ton o' Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, and I grew to appreciate some of the very old fashioned names used, so I decided to use a few of them on my secondary characters.

Finally, as odd as this sounds, especially since I do not write the type of fiction this knowledge would be needed for, I did quite a bit of research on the human body (almost exclusively internal). For better or worse, I have a slightly above average quantity of violence (both gratuitous and non) in my stories, which required me to have an above average understanding of the human body.

So not as to not gross anyone out, I now have a passable understanding of the human body as it pertains to my type of writing. I know it's something one shouldn't really brag about, but for better or worse, it's something that I managed to cultivate over the years and successfully apply to my storytelling.

Grammar. I am a lover of the English language (mostly American but some occasional forays into British), but it became a full bloom passionate love affair (shhh...don't tell my muse nor my wife) once I began blogging/writing in 2008. I absolutely fell in love with the dictionary and thesaurus, and was always on the lookout on how to properly work in different words to express the same thoughts without turning any reader off. I simply started with reworking old cliches/adages and it just blossomed from there, to the point where I liberally sprinkle viable words that actually mean/say something in my stories. Grammar is the be all to end all when it comes to writing.

I think that about covers all of the very odd research I have done, and still do, for the stories that I create. So, what kind of research that people have looked at you rather oddly, that you have done for your writing?

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #230: How Much Is Too Much? How Little Is Too Little?

Canadian geese....the bird species we loathe more than high gas prices, who in return leaves entire swathes of property naturally decorated as a tacit acknowledgment of our loathing.

Early on, one of the basic rules of writing that was drilled into me was, "write what you know." Which is all well and go if you're writing a piece of fiction that might require you to do basic research in order to get certain parts of the story correct {e.g. attire, accessories, traits, characteristics and other assorted nouns}.

But what about when you're wanting to add your personal viewpoints about certain topics/beliefs to the characters or the overall story? How much is too much? How little is too little? Where do you find that balance where some of your personal views bleed into the story/characters, but not so much where it might turn off a segment of your potential readership. How true do you want to stay with your values? Do you want to be completely inflexible, regardless of the time period you're setting your story in? Or, do you want to tweak them just enough that they don't seem too out of place for the time period your story is set in?

Believe it or not, this is the fine line that I'm constantly balancing on with my current low-fantasy series that has the working title of Hot Mess here. I have some particularly solid beliefs about certain things, but I've learned over the years not to be so inflexible about them. I'm very skittish about sharing them publicly in certain platforms {both Cyber and IRL}, mostly due to the hardcore trolling/harassment that I've experience whenever I've shared them {and that includes my immediate and extended family}.

I am one of those old fashioned individuals who actually knows how to reconcile the social mores/values of today versus the social mores/values of yesteryear quite effectively. This ability to sensibly think logically and rationally for myself has served me well in writing this series, as in this series, I'm dealing with multiple societies who have certain social mores/values at various levels on what is considered to be normal acceptable behavior/traits in a medium sized chunk of the modern world.

In this series, dealing with the overall societal norms for each particular society/time period, has been a very delicate balance when applying the title of this blog post to this series. Most of you probably have an inkling about one of the subdued themes that has permeated this series, and that's the first three letters of the alphabet community, L/G/B {I'm 59, so I've read/observed way more than the average person in their lifetime, and we'll leave it at that}, along with the quaint letter of S that applies to a majority of the population.

Now, about the only belief I will share here on this blog, that is directly related to the previous paragraph, is that it's all genetically based. You either are or aren't. It's just that simple. However, I understood from the get go that I could not apply all of those letters equally/fairly with the various societies that permeate this series. It's just not possible nor prudent to strictly apply my values to those societies in question. I had to specifically tailor that general belief for the particular society in question. 

Let's take the planet Earth for example, I'm dealing with two different societies whose beliefs on this touchy topic are polar opposites. One believes that the particular genetic trait of the first three letters is simply not acceptable, while the other finds it to be very acceptable. With the former, I decided to play it a bit safe by creating the legality of the popular "Don't Ask/Don't Tell", with the premise of "we don't ask, you don't tell, but if brought to our attention, we will investigate and punish both the offender and the informer equally."

The latter society, it's the accepted behavioral norm to be one of those four letters, and people go about their day with no one the wiser, because, unlike today where people decided to make their personal state of being known to everyone else, it's no one else's business what you are.

With the two other societies: one I consciously chose to basically skirt the issue, as they're not as completely involved with the story as the others, with the only exception to the issue is using a deity that is actually considered to be, in their mythology, male and female, depending on the situation. As for the latter, it's currently a mix between "don't ask, don't tell" and "your secret might be a tiny bit exposed but we will protect it just the same".

Now, the other 800lb muscular elephant in the room, which very much ties in with the four letters mentioned, to use a perfectly acceptable word substitute, GRAPHIC SIX. While I have absolutely no qualms in writing about GRAPHIC SIX, I have serious qualms about writing about THAT which involves the first three letters. To put it bluntly, I can't do it without it having to turn out like an outline for THAT KIND OF MOVIE. So, we decided to go lightly-to-overtly suggestive with certain scenes involving two of the first three letters mentioned. The other letter I haven't fully explored yet, other than trying to keep it at the level where discretion was highly valued among the societal upper crust in the 19th and early 20th century.

I've pretty much written certain scenes where you can 100% tell whether it's friendship/family involved or something very deeper is going on, without actually crossing that particular line. Again, the philosophy of "how much is too much" is at play here, as well as trying to stay within the cultural/historical boundaries that are conducive for that particular society. 

It's the simple principle of wanting to work my personal viewpoints in, but not so heavy handily that my personal viewpoints thoroughly corrupt my story. Which is why I've been constantly doing research for the past 2 1/4 years with this story, just to make certain that make my viewpoints gel with a given society being used at various points in the story.

So a good question to finish this post with, would be the title of this post, and have you been successful in straddling that very fine line of blending your personal views without turning off the consumer of your content?

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #229: When Your World Is Shaped By Statistical Observations....

My family sometimes wonder if I have friends. This is Mr. Squirrel, who along with Mr. Chipmunk, calls my house their low budget eatery. These are my low budget zero maintenance, albeit animal, friends.

When I was a lad growing up (teenager too, and probably into my twenties), I had an absolute fascination with numbers, math and statistics. I was one of those very strange people who read all sorts of encyclopedias, especially sports and specifically baseball. In fact, my favorite go-to baseball encyclopedia was called "The Sports Encyclopedia of Baseball", which had stats for each year and each league 1901-2007.

Like I said, I was a bit strange when it came to statistics. And eventually that strangeness led itself, in a roundabout way, to creating all kinds of lists/files for all kinds of weirdly personal things/collections/observations.

Some examples included, at various points:

1. an index card filing system for all my LPs, cassettes and 45's. Conservative numerical estimate pre-basement flooding of the aforementioned items was 2,000 +/- items of recorded music
2. a very old {20+ years} M$ database for my music.
3. an extensive paper list for my c.d. collection. Conservative numerical estimate post basement flooding currently sits at 710 +/-.

Now this penchant for creating statistical lists for stuff that I do in my day-to-day activities really began to manifest itself when I started writing my magnum opus almost two and a half years ago {Jan 2022}. Because of the way I had decided to actually write this thing: pen and paper before transcribing it to the computer {t.l.;d.r.: my hands suck genetically}, it naturally led me to wanting to keep track of all the various things that were directly associated with it. Things like:

1. Since that starting date, I've estimated to use nearly two dozen packs of filler paper {aka loose notebook paper}, where each pack contained anywhere from 100-125 sheets (e.g. Dollar Tree or other discount store), to 200-225 sheets (e.g. WalMart, Target or Staples).
2. Considering that my current page count stands at 950 pages, and that roughly 2 pages of handwritten text equals about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pages of printed text, means that I used 2,000 +/- pages of notebook paper.
3. Those 950 pages of text translates to just a shade over 430,000 words written {printed}. That also works out to about three packages, @ 10 per, of pens, both black and blue, as I have a four pen rotation per chapter written. Oh, and that's not including any other stray pens in my collection, so you can probably add another 5 to that total.
4. Staying in the same vein of paper products, I'm currently working on my fourth ream of paper. Now, I'm sure you're thinking that four reams in two years isn't a lot of paper and if I was a normal person, it wouldn't be. But considering that prior to 2022, it took me on average about 7-8 months to use one ream of paper, then by my metrics, spending around $45 for four reams is...excessive.
5. Because we're handwriting this wonderful four volume series, fixing mistakes is very labor intensive. We used four dry-liners, but that ended very quickly due to strength issues, so the next option was to go all Luddite by using good old liquid paper (presently on bottle number 6) and by also use blank mailing labels, because sometimes it's much easier to trim a label down to size than to use enormous quantities of white-out. Currently working on package number 2, with two others in the queue.
6. And of course, nothing screams "I AM A LUDDITE!!" better than three ring binders and multi-tab dividers. Used nearly two dozen packages (5-10 per package) and currently have binder number 6 in the queue. If you're wondering why, and I know you are, it boils down to that one word that brings us to our knees pleading/begging/cajoling: Editing. Oh and, if it says "220 page capacity for a one inch binder", rest assure they actually mean 170 pages, including dividers.
7. Handwriting oodles of text is not for the faint of heart, nor the strength of mind or the tenacity of over-confidence. In fact, it often takes me a minimum of one actual calendar day (aka twenty-four consecutive hours) before I actually start putting either blue ink or black ink to paper. This point actually has nothing to do with any kind of statistical observation, but in fact I just needed to perform a brief recalibration of my very follicle challenged bald head.
8. I don't think that I have a number eight on this curiously odd list, as some of the stuff that is now creeping into my head mostly pertains to a routine that I minimally, if at all, do not deviate from when it comes to writing new content.
9. I just thought of something, ala Columbo: I'm a bit nutty when it comes to tracking my precise word count in general, but when I'd written the final two chapters to volume three, I decided to track the overall amount of handwritten product vs what the actual outcome was. In short, doing this allowed me to state in point #2 what the current ratio of bloated text to polished text.

So in general, it's really weird what one can notice in their peripheral vision of the overall process of writing. Especially if you're doing your very best impersonation of John Boy Walton when it comes to creating your stories. 

Many thanks for stopping by to partake in the consumption of the excess brain spillage this week. Hope you have a happy Monday, followed by Taco Tuesday, Wacky Wednesday, Timid Thursday and Closet Freak Friday.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved