mojowriterblog

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Photo of the day: VW Barber

While riding home from the pub this evening, I had to take a little detour, park my bike, and get this shot. Why? Because I love VW Microbuses.

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Biotech firm Colossal has announced plans to recreate the extinct dodo bird using gene editing, making it the company's third "de-extinction" project after the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger. Colossal raised $150 million in its latest funding round, valuing the company at $1 billion.

The last recorded sighting of the dodo was in the late 17th century, just a few decades after European arrival. The "de-extinction" process will involve inserting a modified bird egg cell into a host egg to create a fertilized egg that contains reproductive cells resembling the extinct species.

Here's the weirdest part: the procedure has attracted investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency, which invests in cutting-edge technology for intelligence gathering.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cia-funding-mission-reincarnate-dodo-193700465.html

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An article about coffee and the robots that make them, including the one that you probably have in your house. Even if you didn't realize it was there.

And yes I had to plug one of my books because it genuinely features roving coffee robots that cause trouble.

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I felt the need to air my probably totally wrong opinions, but maybe your cat is a space alien.

#UFO #UAPs #extraterrestrial

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Is this the Dawn of the End of the Artist? 

Are AIs going to take over, leaving us creative types behind? I'm conflicted.

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I asked the Midjourney AI to design me a batch of late 1960's inspired science fiction book covers. It did not disappoint.

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Today I’m celebrating my 30th anniversary of becoming a professional writer. On this date back in 1992 I sold A science-fiction short story 12 paid professional magazine. What an awesome feeling that was.

 https://www.groovymojo.com/p/30-years-ago-i-received-this-message

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My character, the witch Eva Parker

Spending my lunchtime playing with #Midjouney AI again. This is a pretty spot-on rendering of my character Eva Parker, the witch from "No Such Thing as Mermaids." https://www.amazon.com/No-Such-Thing-as-Mermaids-ebook/dp/B08F36P63S

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I am enjoying Sandman so much that I stopped binge-watching on purpose because I don't want it to end so soon.

Sandman starts on Netflix right now. This minute. Here’s our first review to show up. It may contain spoilers. And it also contains bad news for any of you who had planned to skip episode 5…

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Obi-Wan Kenobi

So, what did I think of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney plus?

I just finished it. It took a while because I struggled to maintain interest through the first few episodes. Friends had to encourage me to keep going. "It gets better!"

It did get better. The bond between "Old Ben Kenobi" and young Princess Leia hooked me. As it progressed I saw how they were building Leia's character toward the one we're familiar with. Having Darth Vader merge into the story was good.

Some things that happened made zero sense, but you can say that about all the movies. I enjoyed it nonetheless, but it left me a bit disappointed. It took a while for me to figure out why.

Here's what it needed:

It needed George Lucas to come in and do the final edit and cut it down to three episodes. Compared to the Lucas movies, these episodes plodded along at a painfully slow pace. The part where they were on the refugee ship that was being pummeled by the star destroyer dragged on and on. They should have been dead a dozen times over. It's like the battle stopped cold so they could have their moments.

It wasn't until the last part of the last episode did it actually feel like Star Wars.

As much as I enjoyed The Mandalorian, it suffered the same uneven pacing, but the Mandalorian was more charming and didn't feel like Star Wars, so it didn't matter. It was a spaghetti western in space. Obi-Wan was Star Wars, and it needed that fast-cut Star Wars pacing.

Disney needs to study the new Sandman series on Netflix to learn how to make a TV series that doesn't feel like a TV series.

[mojowriterblog]

Poetry Teaches Better Writing

I’m often shocked by how vehemently some people react to poetry, and I mean in a negative way. It’s like you’ve asked them to eat spider soup, or drink rat gut beer.

I think poetry is terribly misunderstood by the majority of would-be readers — and also writers, I might add. All writers should write poetry, specifically structured poetry, because it teaches you how to say more with less and how to make word pictures that are more vivid and immediate. That’s a skill that can improve any other type of creative writing.

Sometimes if I’m having a hard time putting a scene together, I’ll outline it as a poem. That works for me like adding lighter fluid to a fire.

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My New Dedicated Fiction Writing Nook

Even before the pandemic I had a home office, primarily for my writing, podcasting, and video editing. I also occasionally worked from home, but that was on a whim, because I was blessed with that choice.

Then the pandemic struck and working from home became the norm. As time passed this created an unforeseen problem: I now associate my personal home office with my day job, and after the work day is over I don't want to be anywhere near it.

This is a problem because this is where I would write my fiction, which is my catharsis. So my fiction writing started happening away from home, mainly in my local pub.

Spending a lot of time at a local pub added up to its own set of problems.

It gets expensive.

Beer caused me to gain weight.

Increased exposure to the pandemic germs.

So I stopped going to the pub, which is sad because I love it. Still, I don't like the excess 30 pounds and the drain on my wallet.

Because I was no longer going to this home away from home, and I was avoiding the home office, I needed a new place to write fiction. So I thought, well, there is space in the basement.

The previous owners of my shabby but comfortable little house had bought the place to flip it, but ended up not being able to do so, and the result was a not-quite-completed renovation. It appeared they were aiming to convert the basement to a bedroom, and there is an unfinished area that was probably meant to be a closet.

My old gaming desk and a set of wire shelves fit in there perfectly. I put in a cheap old lamp from Target, a HomePod for music, a heater (because it gets chilly), and bought a cat-proof wooden chair off Amazon -- and the whole thing came together.

Lo and behold, I sat down in it and wrote a good 4000 words last night, the first solid fiction writing session in months.

Success! A new novel is on its way.

Fingers crossed.

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"Describe something you like about a friend from the past."

Um, which friend? That's the hardest part of this challenge.

Okay, I know which one. He's the curly-haired redheaded friend who I met at science camp, and who is still a great friend now, all these years later.

Here is what I like and admire about him.

Even as a kid, he knew what he wanted and he was not afraid to go for it. As a teen, he bucked the system and made his own choices, and did things that raised eyebrows and challenged the norms.

When he started something, he finished it.

He follows his passions and does the right thing.

I really wish I could be more like this friend.

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These question cards are more challenging than I'd imagined. This is forcing me to consider some uncomfortable things, especially if I'm being honest to myself and to you, the reader.

A year ago I was obsessed with working on my fiction. That is about all I would do after work hours. I had characters whose stories demanded to be told. I fought through difficult scenes, trusting my wonderful muse to guide me when I was stuck. The weaving tapestry of the storylines unfolded as they should, and ended up where they should, and once finished, I'd stare at them and know that what was written didn't come from me. I merely channelled it from another dimension. Another reality. Another plane of existence.

That was a year ago.

This year, as of right now, there is no story flowing out of me. My muse is on vacation. I must have worked her too hard over the last three years. I have ideas, and I have storylines, and I have characters, but like my muse they too seem to be off on a cruise ship somewhere enjoying the sun, and here I sit in my treehouse, closed off from the rest of the world, spending time I would normally be writing by playing on my Nintendo Switch, or zooming through galaxies on my gaming laptop, or exploring the metaverse with my Oculus headset.

I am determined that in 2022 I'll start this writing machine up again and call my muse back from vacation. There is a knight who needs to save his queen from a murderous king. There is a family, after living through a tragedy, who has discovered the last colony of living gnomes.

These stories are there, waiting for me to channel them out of the ether and into our world. I can see them, I can feel them.

Calling my muse: come home! I need you!

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As a Writer You are IMMORTAL

Writing is one of the oldest and most important skills that humankind has ever developed.

As a specie on this planet it’s enabled us to game Nature’s systems to the point where we’ve become the ultimate overachievers. The ability to accumulate knowledge over the centuries, and even accelerate that accumulation, is supernatural in scope.

And yet we take it for granted.

As other species plod along through evolution, slowly storing up success stories in their DNA, we’ve leapfrogged them in a manner akin to putting on a red cape and hurling ourselves over tall buildings. We can now easily know something that someone else has learned, and yet we have never done.

Think about it.

Here’s a question for you: Do you believe in telepathy?

Mind reading? Think it’s a myth?

No, we do it every day.

Writing is the pure magic act of taking our actual thoughts and encoding them into symbols which, when someone sees them, the writer’s very thoughts are transcribed into the reader’s own mind.

Think it’s not magic? Let’s take a closer look at the process.

Consciousness itself is magical. No one truly understands it, but it happens to us constantly. A writer takes these ethereal, magical objects we call thoughts and assembles them into physical codes. Particles of light carry these codes into our eyes, where they are reassembled back into thoughts.

Seriously, ponder this for a moment. It’s mind blowing when you really realize what’s going on between a writer and a reader.

Now, if that wasn’t amazing enough, here’s an even deeper layer of magic. The thoughts you’re receiving via someone’s writing reach out across time itself.

Long dead ghosts still talk to us through their writing.

Your thoughts that you write can be experienced in the minds of people across vast expanses of time, hundreds or thousands of years later.

Writing is so magical it can even cheat death.

Now let’s talk about story. Story goes hand in hand with the ancient art of writing. It’s even older, going back to the origins of language itself.

But, what is story?

Storytelling is the art of making your thoughts interesting to other people.

Basically, that’s what it is.

It relates the storyteller’s experiences so others can experience them, and learn from them. Stories themselves, like ideas, are living things. They propagate from one person’s mind to another. They evolve. They split and become more than one story. They merge to become a different story. A story that goes from one mind to another is actually a child of the original, because the original still lives in the teller’s mind, and a slightly different version now lives in the listener. The listener then becomes the storyteller, and that story’s children are implanted into the minds of new listeners.

Like seeds.

Before written language stories were in constant flux, handed down from one generation to another through oral traditions. Each teller of a tale would either inadvertently, or perhaps purposely, alter the tale to fit the current circumstances. But then came written language, and the art of writing.

This made it possible to make identical copies of a story, and being that early stories carried important information for survival, this was humanity’s secret weapon against Nature herself. It was the Konami code to beat the elements.

And also, of course, it served as pure entertainment.

But the craft of storytelling inherently carries a message, either overtly or subconsciously -- whether the writer realizes it or not. And you, as a writer, are that which from the message springs.

So, are you a writer? Do you tell people you’re a writer, or do you say you want to be a writer?

Here, let me tell you something: if you write things, you are a writer.

Period. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

As writers -- all writers -- we improve with practice. Practice is in the form of writing. The more you write, the better you get. If you enjoy the act of writing, then you’ve got it made. Just keep doing what you enjoy, and learn as you go.

You don’t need a certificate saying you’re a writer. You don’t need a license. You don’t even need other people’s approval. All you need to do is write, keep writing, and never stop writing.

That makes you a writer.

As a writer, it’s a good idea to practice all sorts of different techniques so that you learn them, and then later make up your own. But then again, writing and storytelling are not like mathematics. There is no one true answer. Two plus two in math always equals four, but in storytelling two plus two can equal five*, just like one plus one can equal eleven.

Ultimately as a writer, you will find your own way.

Just keep writing.

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*bonus points if you get that reference

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Life reaffirming must-watch TV. :-)

Ellen Alaverdyan: Stevie Wonder Bass Guitar Cover

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It took me a while, as this one almost stumped me. I don’t really remember having a particularly unusual meal. Then I remembered this one, which I’ll write up as a recipe:

Serves three, or one bachelor for three days.

Ingredients:

4 cups water

1 TBS margarine

3/4 cup frozen onion/pepper mix

Wal-Mart Great Value Chicken Stuffing Mix

Wal-Mart Great Value Chicken Flavor Pasta & Sauce

Idahoan Four Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Bring water and margarine to a boil in a medium saucepan.

Add package of Chicken Flavor Pasta & Sauce.

Add the frozen onion/pepper mix because, oh, what the heck. Onions and peppers are good.

Continue boiling over medium heat for seven minutes, stirring occasionally and wondering if it is supported to look so soupy.

Realize you used a 2 cup measure instead of a 1 cup measure, which means there is twice the water that’s supported to be in there.

Panic and search the cupboard for more pasta.

Finding none, throw in the stuffing mix because — what the heck — it’s been in the cupboard for at least two years now.

Determine that it still looks too soupy to eat, so search for something else you can throw in to soak up the water.

Discover the package of Idahoan Four Cheese Mashed Potatoes and wonder how long that’s been up there.

Stir in the entire package.

Describe over the phone how disgusting it looks to your girlfriend. Wince as she laughs hysterically at you.

Take it off the heat and let it congeal as you look up the phone number of the local pizza delivery place.

Right before you dial the pizza number, you take an experimental taste.

Surprise! It’s delicious!

Wash it down with a bottle of good beer.

Yes, this is a true story, and really did turn out good enough to eat.