The Idea Machine

 What is the idea machine?  And where does it come from?  

It starts as an inkling in the back of your head, of ideas half thought and concepts not taught.  Perhaps it's a combination of a dozen different things.  Maybe it's something you keep saying over and over again.  And often it's just a creation that came through your brain.  

When the idea machine starts working, it's best to keep track of what it is saying.  Take notes.  Do not ignore the idea machine.  I can't remember the author, but the gist is thus: what you focus on grows.  If you focus on failure, you get more failure.  If you focus on ideas, you get more ideas.  

99% of them are going to be terrible.  But that doesn't matter.  I think it was Richard Branson who said "Opportunity is like the bus.  Another one comes along all the time."  Or something like that.  It's a good point, though.  Keep developing ideas.  Keep thinking.  

How long will it take?  Longer.

That's a pretty indecisive answer.  Some of the ideas in my head have been running around since 1992.  And I still haven't brought them to fruition.  Some of the ideas just require the correct set of inputs.  So I guess the best option is to keep putting in more inputs.  

I've been listening to the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on audio book.  It's a good book that I got from Librivox.  It's the single author version.  Though his focus was primarily on the printing business, some of his ideas are pretty good.  The focus on creating value and frugality are definitely before their time.  

But I'm pretty sure his idea for the dollar bill was not "In God we trust" it was "Mind your business".  Which for him meant a large collection of different things, and fit in his category of what he wanted to pay attention to and focus on.  

Can I be any more broad and evasive than this?  Yes, yes I can.  Because my idea machine has merged into a half formed idea.  Now it's time to start producing the content.  Because the idea is worth very little.  It's in taking the idea to execution that it becomes valuable.  And that is the long slow, dull process.  But it's going to be a process that needs to be followed.  

The idea is one thing.  And that's great.  But executing the idea and bringing it to something that exists in the physical world?  That's the wonder.

That is where the real fun is.  

But now?  Slowly off the cliff into the oblivion of creation, and towards the valley of the unknown.  Somewhere in there, there's a Seth Godin quote.  

New release: Short Stories, Collection One

So...  My 2nd book has been released on Amazon.  Still a Kindle book. 

Short Stories, Collection One is available for sale for a whopping $2.99. 

I think it has some of my best work to date.  Probably because I wrote it.  There's nothing wrong with a little shameless self promotion as long as it is described as such.

I suppose I haven't had much to say as of late.  A lot of doing, but not much talking or describing.  I know I should probably do more describing, but eh well. 

something started, something finished

I've heard it said that writers end up writing the book they need to hear, not necessarily the book they live by.  I think that was true of the post yesterday.  I'm fully convinced that is what happened.  I've been writing a story about what would happen if dimension hopping became a thing, and the guy going dimension hopping was a self-centered asshole out of to save his own skin from his own stupidity.  I've been writing that story for a while, off and on.  It's currently sitting about 19 pages worth of material, but the story isn't finished and it's going to take a few more pages before I even start to finalize.

The problem is that I haven't been adding to the story very frequently.  I'm a proponent of tracking most things you do during the day.   I don't do it near enough, but I'm a proponent.  I can give you a rough estimate when I will finish the book I'm currently reading, and I can tell you the average days between when I write.  And right now that average days number is sitting at 26.

The simple answer is you are never going to finish anything if you don't pick it up but once a month.  It doesn't matter how many words you write during those single sessions.  And I can almost guarantee when you do write for that one session, it's going to be way shorter than you thought.  On Average, I write about 360 words per period.  The max I've ever tracked in a day was 757.   So that tells me is I'm not going to finish this thing any time soon if one of those numbers doesn't change.

Given that collection of numbers: 26 days between writing, 360 words per session, a maximum of 757 words in a day.  The easiest of those numbers to change is the 26.  See, it's all about math.   360 words seems to be where my brain starts to falter.  Or my limited time runs out.  But...  If I got to the point of writing at least 5 days a week, that would cover about 94,000 words in a year, skipping weekends.


I started this post...  sometime back in 2015.  I finished the story back in August.  It took well longer than it probably should have.  I added 9 pages until I finally came to a conclusion I wanted.  Or at least that's where the story seemed to want to go.  It's interesting that stories have a tendency to take on a life of their own after a while.  Sometimes you have ideas.  Other times, the ideas just flow from the characters you create.

It's interesting forcing those characters to life.  It sometimes feels like a birth.  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe that's where the real interesting stuff happens.  It's between the point where the idea ran out and the execution is all there is left.  That's where the most complicated bits lie.  It's also where you end up having the most fun and force the best of life out of the story.  Or the worst.  It's also at that point that the characters start taking on a life of their own. 

There was a point in the story I was talking about where I thought about adding a secondary character.  But that didn't fit with the character I had created.  It just wasn't that person.  So I moved forward and changed the idea.  All based on the character that I created.  It was...  the way things needed to be. 

I can't say I'm really an impressive writer.  What I can say is that I try to show up.  And that's where I'm at with that.

I should probably go back to working on the story I'm currently working on.  It's the nightmare I had turned into a story.  Not sure whether it's a horror or something else.  It sounds like it.  But we'll see.

finishing projects

I actually finished Causality Crimes today.  At a whopping 21,123 words before editing, it probably shouldn't have taken me more than 2 years to finish.  I started (keeping track) in January of 2014.  At that point, I was at 3,000 words.  August, 2016 I'm finished at 21,000 words.  It didn't go the way I would have expected.  I don't know what I thought about the story going in.  It's probably going to require some serious rewriting.  I started out in a first person omniscient and moved towards a third person.  I'm not sure that was the right thing to do with this story.  It might have been a good transition.  I don't know.  I'm going to have to get a break from the thing to figure that out.  I'm not even sure I like the title any more.

With that complete, it's off to finish the second story I was writing before finally publishing my second work.  Short stories, collection 1.  I may try to find a physical book, but I'm doubtful.  It will probably be another Kindle release.  I'm okay with that.

Now it's off to re-read what I've written about a nightmare turned story called The Gray Lady about an intergalactic space virus.  It might be interesting.  It might not.  I've got to finish it to figure it out.

And yes, it really was a nightmare I had that started the entire thing.  I took notes.  They were...
-nasty intergalactic space virus
-makes non-sentient life forms sentient
-tries to kill sentient life forms. Red bands on top of armsthat wrap around to cover the wrist and slice through.

Bands are capable of being cut or broken
-Creates telepathic capabilities in sentients, but none have ever lived through a case of it.
-Called the Gray Lady because it creates a gel/smoke/shade likeshadow around the foot when infected.
-100% infection rate. 100% lethal. Any ship infected is blasted out of the sky, no questions asked.

Amazing what a completely screwed up dream can turn out.  

Random Ideas

So, I keep running into ideas for new stories.  The most recent idea (and it’s an idea that I’ve had before, but the specifics have changed).  The first time I had the idea, I was exploring the Cult of the Damned in World of Warcraft.  Now, I’ve been playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the idea is necromancers.  Essentially, the idea is to take a group of friends.  Most end up becoming adventurers.  The last ends up becoming a necromancer.  The final result is one side versus the other.  But the main thought is the person getting drawn into necromancy through seduction and misrepresentation.  And by the time the person realizes necromancers are bad, they’ve gone too far and can’t go back. 

It’s a distinctly Christian idea in the post-Jesus US era that would create such an idea.  It’s easy to combine incorrect theology (unforgiveable sin) with flawed characters.  I think I realized in my writing, I needed to quit making characters Superman.  Too often, the people themselves only have externalized problems as opposed to real character flaws.  Taking those flaws and blowing them out of proportion makes for a more interesting character. 

In many ways, the world I think of is two different worlds.  One is midevil and fits somewhere between Berserk, Oblivion, and Skyrim.  The other is future modern and is closer to the worlds described by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.  I’ve contemplated creating a giant, all encompassing arc that would merge the two worlds together in some fashion that would be interesting and epic.  But then I have to finish the other two stories I have half-finished.   Or I could just merge it all together in one and make something akin to Shadowrun.  Which I suppose would work pretty well if I didn’t make it too crazy.

Chasing Down a Dog with a K-Bar

Saturday before Halloween

Go to a neighbors birthday party.
Come home.
Sit down to carve pumpkins on the back porch
Wife brings the dog out.
The baby sits on a blanket on the back porch.
Other two kids are hanging out, picking designs for the pumpkin.
Go inside to pee.
Wife yells for me.  Trouble kind of yell.
Neighbor's dog is fighting my dog.  Baby is down and crying.
I scream at the dogs and chase down the neighbors dog.
Neighbor dog runs away.
This is the second of my kids to be attacked by that dog.
I go inside and grab my K-Bar
Stuff the K-Bar in sheath into the back of my pants.
Time for Thunderdome.
Injury check.
Dog saved by being a giant fluff ball
Baby just got knocked over.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
You won't fool me again.
Time for the dog to die.
Hunting party.
Stalk the dog down the alley.
Runs around and tries to get back inside it's fence.
I yell at the dog again.
Dog runs off.
I yell at the owners through the front door to come get their dog.
Back to stalking the dog.
Owners catch the dog, bring in through back entrance.
Guess the dog gets to live.
Go home.
Carve pumpkins.
Break the plastic tools.
Get a power drill and finish the pumpkin.
Owners get rid of the dog that night.



True story.

Clarity, and plan-monkeys

I’ve talked about taking action and doing things, but I want to add a bit of clarity.   There’s a difference between smart action and dumb action.

Smart action involves small steps towards a goal.  Such as staying up late and writing a blog post or studying some new material.

Dumb action involves taking large steps towards a goal when you have no idea of the first step.  A good example of this would be to think you are going to make money blogging on day 1. 

Sure, go out and blog to make money.  But don’t jump ship on your day job until your blog is close to replacing your current income or replacing your current income.  Case in point: I still have an 8 to 6 or so day job.  Should the Android app I’m writing take off, I’m still going to have my day job.  Deciding when to quit the day job is more complex of an answer than I can give right now, because I haven’t quit my day job.  I’m still here. 

But, I’d have to say this: 12+ months of living off the income of the side job alone.  And by that, take your day job paycheck and plow it against any debt, emergency fund savings, or investing (in that order).  Personally, I wouldn’t quit my day job until the only debt I have is my house.  I don’t own a house, so that’s a ways to go. 

I guess I need to add more clarity to what I’ve muddled up quite a bit in this mess.  Smart action will often result in failure.  Dumb action will also result in failure.  The difference is in scale.  A smart action that fails and costs you $20 has been an interesting learning experience.  Continue to lose $20 here and there to learn at a small scale and with little hope of bankrupting yourself.  There’s a mental thing that happens when you lose $20 on a venture.  Because if you can’t make money on the small scale, you can’t make money on large scale.

If the only way to make money is invest at least $100,000, your plan sucks and you need a new plan.   Any plan that can make money for $20 invested can be scaled up to $50 invested.  From there, your plan out to feed itself.   If the plan isn’t cranking out at least the amount you’ve invested by $50, you should seriously think about shooting that plan. 

Somewhere in that last sentence, Dave Ramsey’s speech about employees carrying problem-monkeys came into my brain.  Maybe these are plan-monkeys.    Dave’s discussion was on decision making.  Essentially, every person that comes to you with a decision that needs to be made has a monkey on their shoulder.  When they tell the boss, the monkey goes from the person to the boss.  The goal of the boss is to make sure the monkey leaves with the person. 

So the goal with these plan-monkeys is feed them a bit in the form of money.  If they don’t start handing money back to you, you need to quit feeding them money.  Simple as that. 

Time invested is a different thing, though.  In creation of this blog I have invested zero dollars and a lot of hours.  And I’m okay feeding this monkey, because it doesn’t cost me any money.  It doesn’t make me any either, but it doesn’t cost me anything.

When do you shoot the non-cost plan monkey (like the blog)?   When you want to.   It’s not costing you anything, so you won’t suffer if it goes away.   If you need more time to do other things or if you feel you aren’t gaining any traction, then just shoot the monkey.  If people miss that monkey, they will let you know.

measuring task without end

I think I’m faced with an endless task quandary.  Or at least I think that’s what I’d like to call it.  I’m working on a new short story that will go with a collection of other short stories from various times and eventually be published as my next book on Amazon Kindle.  I’m currently sitting at about 11,000 words on the book.  It’s probably going to take a good six or seven thousand more to finish the story the way I want to finish it.  It will be a nice section in a fairly decent outpouring of work.

Here’s the problem.  I don’t know when this story is going to end, so I have no idea how much more I’m going to write on it.  I don’t know if it’s going to be done in ten sessions or in thirty.  I know I’ve still got quite a bit to go, and making it all interesting and worth reading is part of the challenge. 

In comparison, I’m reading a book about 30 minutes a night and have completed about 1/3 of the book.  I can keep track of how much I’m reading every day and realize just how close to finishing I’m am.  I can judge progress so I can put a deadline on finishing.  With the story I’m writing, all I can do is write, and continue to write at a decent pace so the word count increases on a steady basis and I can see progress being made. 

Since I started taking good track of how much I write, I’ve probably written 4,000 words.  And I’ve done that in less time than it took me to write the original chunk.  So I guess I need to go with what Steven King said and just write.  Write and write and write and write.  Show up every day and write.  Because that’s the only way the story is going to get done. 

If you’d like to know why I haven’t added a new story in three or four years it’s because I haven’t put the effort into writing that I originally put into creating the first story.  I wrote Seven Days over a decent amount of time, but the main part of it was finished in about 2-3 months.  I’d go to the Student Center every day, find a bench and sit down with my laptop and crank out story until my laptop battery died.  Which sometimes didn’t take long, because my laptop battery sucked in those days. 

In the end, it was nothing more than sheer work to get the story finished.  Really, it seemed to me like I had to treat it like a job.  I had to show up every day, regardless of what my brain was telling me.  Because there is always a little part inside your brain telling you to wait until the motivation strikes.  Or wait until you “get an idea”.  Strangely enough, most of the ideas I used in the story flowed together in the midst of writing the story.  I had no idea where anything was going until I started writing it, and even towards the end I still didn’t know.  I would reach the end of an idea, and a new idea would be there, waiting for me to work on.

Hence the purpose of keeping track of my writing.  To see progress and to make sure I’m actually doing the work necessary to complete the story.  

Not as much oomph

Day two doesn't have quite as much oomph as day one so far.  I was up late working on securing a site from itself and didn't get to bed until 11:30.  I’m usually in bed by ten.  So 5 came awfully early this morning.  It’s at this point that I have to remember all the wonderful motivation I’d come up with earlier, because now it’s gone.  I can’t say it’s gone completely, but to say it has been highly minimized would not be an understatement. 

So, almost two and a half years later, Seven Days has a cover photo.  I kept thinking I ought to go wandering around, taking all sorts of pictures and then I’d finally come up with the perfect picture.  And I realized since I finished the story, I haven’t really thought of it.  I could probably read the first dozen pages or so, and it would all come back.   But I haven’t done that, and the memory of it is mostly faded. 

Let me tell you about that cover, though.  I combined a picture I took with some horrendous text in Paint.net and slapped it up there.  I’m sure there are Photoshop heroes out there, but I’m not one of them.  Much as I’d like to be able to draw pictures of the things in my head, it doesn't work.  I just don’t have the talent.

I couldn't find the kind of picture I was looking for.  I’d be honest if I said I couldn't describe what I was looking for.  It was always just some vague idea that never formed.  So I gave up on that and went with a picture my kids drew with sidewalk chalk on the patio.  I guess it seems like a stretch, but I have to realize Seven Days was released back on September 11, 2011.  That’s almost three years ago.  So That’s pretty crazy that it never got a cover, though I can see where the indecision of finding the perfect cover lead me to never develop a cover.

I can’t say it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it’s my first story.  And sure, it didn't sell even 100 copies so really why should I worry?   I've sold two copies in 2 ½ years, and I’m worried about whether the cover will be great or not.  There’s some misguided mind-trip crap for you right there.  

Two Things

Two things.  One.  I’m back to working on the CCENT, though this time the pace I’m taking is excruciatingly slow.  There is no point in moving on until I get each section learned and memorized.  I’ve got my memory  process written down in partial, but as I said, it’s excruciatingly slow.  The point is that I spent too much time acquiring information that wouldn’t be remembered ten minutes from now.  So the time spent was wasted.  Now, I’m moving to where you’ve either got the idea memorized and stored in your memory palace, or you don’t move on.

The other thing is I’m back to working on Causality Crimes.  That’s a short story I started a long time ago, but haven’t finished.  I think I’m going to spend time writing on it for the next few weeks until I have it finished.  Once that’s done, I need to finish off another story I started but have yet to finish.  I don’t know where I read it, but if you write 300 words a day, you will finish 40 full length novels in your life time.  As you can see, writing a long piece is just about showing up and working every single day.  If you want to write a novel, all you have to do is write every single day.  No one said what you wrote had to be the best thing in the world.  But you do have to produce. 

I guess I knew this when writing Seven Days, but I’ve since forgotten.  And I seem to have forgotten a lot of the really important things I should be remembering and driving through.  I think that’s what breaks are good for, though.  They give you the opportunity to refocus and remember what you forgot.  All things are doable, it’s just a matter of doing them. 

Seven Days was written on a daily basis for a couple of semesters on an old laptop that I had to plug in to get to work.  I don’t remember how many times I walked down to the old ASU student center across from the library and sat down to write. 

It took a while, but I finally finished it.  And now, it’s time to buckle down and finish another.  

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Matthew-Heyman-ebook/dp/B005MGPAEI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1393790550&sr=8-4&keywords=matthew+heyman

But then maybe I should quit being lazy, and create my book a cover...    I was always more concerned about what went into the book than the outside, anyways...

knowledge of the law

I keep thinking about how to fix the problems in our country.  One solution presented is that "kids should be taught right and wrong".  Or the coloary, "we don't teach kids right and wrong".  I'm going to start at the beginning and say teaching the right and wrong is a waste of time.

The Bible is my text for this thought experiment.  The Jewish people knew very well throughout the Old Testament the difference between right and wrong.  The law was given to Abraham on stone tablets so he could tell everyone else the law.  So it would be hard pressed to say that the Jewish people didn't know the law.  It would also be hard pressed to say the Jewish people didn't teach the law.  There was an entire tribe whose sole purpose was to act as priests. 

Based on all that knowledge, how many people followed the law?  Zero.  Not a single one.  So knowledge of the law didn't get a single person to follow the law in the entire Old Testament.  Which I would say is pretty telling.  Because if you have a period spanning several thousand years and not a single person can follow the law, then knowledge of the law is not what keeps people from breaking the law.

Another thought experiment.  Traffic law teaches that a driver should always signal before changing lanes.  Not signaling before changing lanes means you have broken the law.  Not signaling long enough causes you to break the law.  Everyone who drives is required to pass a school of traffic law.  Yet next time you drive, observe how many people use turn signals.  I would guess the ratio is three to one against.

So, will teaching "right and wrong" solve the problems we are having today?  No.  The Jewish people knew the law in the Old Testament and not a single one followed it throughout their entire lives.  Traffic law teaches that a driver should signal before changing lanes.  That law is followed infrequently. 

So if knowledge of the law doesn't get people to follow the law, then what does? 

New Stories and Kindle

I started a new story today.  Not sure if this one is going to be long or short.  So far, it’s reached a page.  Part of me is screaming that I need a break from work, and the other part is telling me to shut up and get back to writing.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to look back at the previous sales I’d accumulated.  My royalties from Kindle Direct Publishing are sitting at a whopping $5.56.  And that is giving me some sort of strange hope.  Sure, it’s not a lot of hope.  But there is a bit of hope.  Because someone actually bought my book and I earned some chump change from it.  You can still buy it too.  

I should probably quit being lazy and get a picture for the cover.  Eh well.

But yeah.  I guess the motivation is there to finish this thing out.  I may not be making millions out there quite yet, but it’s better than working at a job you hate.  And I don’t necessarily hate my job, I’m just a bit tired of it and wanting something that provides more opportunity.  Because my goal right now is to learn as much as humanly possible, and keep slogging through work requests like a crazy man.  Because that’s what I can do to produce. 

Or, I can quit trying to learn every single thing in the world and start producing a steady stream of small little Kindle books that sell at $0.99 a pop and see what I can do to make a living off of that.  Because I’d much rather sit at my kitchen table and write books than I would go to work and deal with other peoples’ problems.

I did look at my situation a few weeks back and decide I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of life.  And it didn’t seem like it was going to change anytime soon.  So it’s now time to try a different approach, and that approach is an approach I tried before but never finished.  So what I need to do is finish two different stories I’ve been stalled on.  One is about an intergalactic space virus, and the other I just started.  Merge the two stories and sell them as a collection of shorts, and boom!  Profit!