"It's easy to sit down and type. The trick is hitting the letters in the right order."
I don't know who said that, or where I saw it. It's probably not an exact quote, either, but that was the gist of it.
Like a baseball pitcher rehabbing a bum arm, I'm going to make the effort to hit the keys more often in my free time. This is primarily because I have a desire to dive back into the writing pool after a long period of being dry, and have discovered that I allowed the muscle to atrophy.
I write all the time at work, and I still enjoy doing that. I write a dozen or so news stories that I will later read out loud. Sometimes more than a dozen, sometimes fewer. The urge to write fiction at home in my free time has slipped its moorings and drifted out to sea, alongside the barnacle-strewn barge called The Item Podcast. So it's time to commit to getting back in the wheelhouse.
I have wanted to write, and have a few stories percolating at any given time, vying for the attention of my brain-meat. But no blood was going to that part of my brain at all. So it's time to hook up the electrodes, insert the appropriate stents, or whatever.
Step one will be committing to write something, anything, at this website, at least once per week. Step two will likely also turn those scripts into an Item, as they happen. In order to return to the writing I want to do, in other words, I'm giving myself homework. This blog and the subsequent jumpstart of the podcast I've neglected is that homework.
In my defense, Item has been placed on a shelf because I've been busy with the podcast We Drink And We Know Things with my friends Brad & Zach, which has been a black hole of timesuck every week. It was a labor of love, to be sure, but a lot of work went into putting it together every Sunday and Monday. It was designed as our fan's perspective of the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones, and now that it's over I feel like I have a chance to breathe a bit and get this thing started instead.
If you haven't heard it, you can look it up wherever you listen to podcasts, and look for the one with this name and this logo:
Oh, and Indiana has decided that it is never going to stop raining, which is fine by me. But this Destructive Tornadoes Across the Country bullshit needs to knock it off, already.
Status Report
What I'm watching: The Beloved Kim and I are just about finished with our binge of a Canadian TV series that was lingering in my Netflix queue for ages called Frontier. Jason Momoa of Khal Drogo and Aquaman fame stars as a half-Irish, half-native fur trapper who gets swept up in the intrigue and backstabbing (sometimes literal) of the Hudson Bay Company fur trade in the late 18th century. It's pretty good, reminds me a bit of that Turn show that was on AMC a while back, especially since it's set around the same time. What the show lacks in some of the storylines it more than makes up for with the incredible scenery that pops up in the background, usually behind Momoa running with a hatchet he's about to fling at a British Soldier. It's a B or a B minus. Enjoyable.
What I'm reading: I'm diving deep into the work of Clint Eastwood right now with a book you should check out if you're a fan of his. After a bit of his personal history, Clint: A Retrospective goes film for film for film through his entire career, on both sides of the camera.
What's been great about this has been the access the author has had over the years to Mr. Eastwood, who is a friend of his, and the way he presents movies I've never seen before. I can honestly say that I can't wait to see The Beguiled now. And I'm going to have to finally get off my ass and watch Million Dollar Baby, which I have in a set but have never sat down and watched. I'm not sure why, because I enjoy boxing movies.
What I'm Hearing: My current podcast obsession is called Rock & Roll Archaeology, and for the life of me I can't remember how I found it. It was probably recommended to me by Castbox, which I have hooked up through a direct I.V. into my entertainment vein every day. The host of this podcast needs a strong cup of coffee or a 5 Hour Energy or something, but overall I like what he's doing. And he really knows his shit.
Also: Memorial Day weekend has brought about the joy of the Free XM Radio Preview, so in the car I'm living with trusty 'ol X-018: The Beatles Channel. I occasionally wander over to the Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Grateful Dead channels when they do the previews...but I've been solidly Beatles-loyal since Saturday, for the most part.
What I'm Working On: "When is the true sequel to The Rift coming?"
I've been hearing this question since I splintered off from the original novel and presented a different story within the same world and circumstances with the underwhelming Beneath A Diminished Sun, which myself and perhaps six other people really enjoyed. Writing that novel and ignoring the cliffhanger and characters from the first novel was not one of my smarter moves.
The final edits are underway for book three, Hope For Passage, which will hit this summer, unless a meteor does first. Or unless The Rift was prophetic, and we go back in time (spoilers). Which, though inconvenient, would give me another year to figure out how to pay for Emily's wedding next year...
Bye for now. Time to get back to work, finish my day here at Planet Radio, and pull on my rubber boots so I can splash around in the puddles.