For most of this year I haven’t been reading many books. This is because I was helping a friend beta read their book, and I had made the choice to not read any other published novel of that particular genre so that I could avoid mixing up details or making comparisons. I wanted to keep the experience a little more contained and untainted because it’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and it was honestly a lot of fun! It gave me a bunch of insight into how people will latch onto different details as they read the same material while we shared the same objective of trying to provide constructive feedback on how we felt as we read.
Well, tonight we finally finished beta reading that book and had our last meet up to discuss things. At least, for a little while. Then we’ll pick up with another one!
In the meantime, I think I can get back to reading one or two other books out of the MANY I have in my backlog, but I’ll probably be looking at things differently for a bit.
How far off from your current life and daily routine is this vision of your dream life you previously described?
In previous posts I’ve shared different pieces of what my ideal or dream life would be like, and I have to say, as far as this prompt goes, I’m still a ways off.
I’m still working a full-time job, so my weekdays are occupied with that instead of writing. Also because of this, I don’t have the flexibility to go do things during the day that I currently would have to do outside of work hours or over the weekends (such as video games or going to the gym.)
Someday, maybe, if I keep at it and get lucky enough to become a published author (I’ve said this a lot, but still.)
The sound of the Admiral’s boots clicking against the steel floor of the hallway were receding as the lights of the teleporter platform dimmed back to normal levels, and Calvin was still collecting his thoughts.
We spent all that time and effort collecting strange golden mice, that I was told was a rare delicacy, for cats… Calvin sank to his knees, reliving the previous 48 hours trapping an exotic animal on a backwater planet and his hands began to twitch, a psychosomatic after affect of having his hands regrown over a dozen times by the ship’s doctor. The snap of a pen against a clipboard made him flinch and grab his hands as if he had just failed to properly set another trap to try and catch thousands of Mirage Mice in a strange alien jungle. Therese cleared her throat to get his attention. “Calvin,” she tried to speak up and give him his next assignment, but being brought back out of the horrified trance, back to the present, made Calvin leap up and chase after Admiral Slodpolk.
It only took a few seconds for Calvin to run through the hallway, his heavy footfalls on steel echoing along, before he caught up to the Admiral. “You said they were an exotic delicacy, the likes of which, when provided to the RIGHT buyer, would yield something EXCELLENT for the SHIP!” Calvin was fuming.
The Admiral stopped and looked the young man up and down, assessing his intern. “Why yes, my boy, and as I recall, you were all to eager to volunteer!”
“I was EAGER to volunteer because after my first month of interning, of negotiating with various angry factions, that we would have a simpler job!”
“And it was a rather simple job, was it not? Besides, you did fine work, and the job went well enough that we may have made a solid friendship with the Void Cats. As I stated before, they developed a special technique for dry-cleaning, and it’s especially useful for old military hats like mine!” He said, brimming with excitement over the retrieval of the hat now adorning his head and what he thought it might symbolize.
Calvin’s eyes slowly drifted up from the old man’s face to look at the hat before snapping back to lock eyes again. “YOUR HAT?! I LOST MY HANDS FOR YOUR HAT?!”
“Well, of course. My hat is special. Do you see the golden braids around it? The Sol Interstellar Military had discovered years ago that Mirage Mice fur was an exquisite material for clothing, but at the time they couldn’t produce enough to make anything more meaningful in size. Their fur offers a special quality that I’m technically not at liberty to discuss as it is classified, which is part of why we had such a short window to collect. The Milky Way Trade Regime took that classified status as a means to deem the planet ‘off-limits’ to protect the Mirage Mice, and the Void Cats needed to get their paws on a large quantity to try domesticating them as a food source.” The Admiral puffed up a bit and beamed with pride. “The black market smuggling industry is very fast paced, so I’m glad we were able to assist them in time. Fingers crossed they call on us again soon, as my coat is looking about due for a cleaning.” He said before spinning on his heels to keep strutting towards his office, leaving Calvin to stand like an angry, vibrating statue in the middle of the long gray corridor.
The reflection of the hallways artificial lighting, normally cast upon the pristine finished steel flooring and walls leading to the Admiral’s office, was eerily disrupted by the black cat that Calvin was following to the teleporter room nearby. It padded along silently, a bizarre sheen flitting across its fur every time they passed a light, combined with the near void-like coloring, made it seem like he was following a shimmering hole in space with a tail casually whipping back and forth. Only moments before, Calvin had asked Admiral Slodpolk what the assignment was, but all the crazy old man said was “Follow the cat and bring back it’s goods.”
They arrived in front of the teleporter room, and the cat, now facing Calvin, looked up at him expectantly with brilliant emerald eyes that almost seemed to float in nothingness. Calvin sighed but opened the door. He followed the cat into the room and instructed the computer to beam them down to the planet’s surface. The cat leaped up on Calvin’s shoulder and let out an aggressive, but not angry, meow that caused Calvin to jump back from the console. The void-like cat, now perched on his shoulder, dug in it’s claws to help maintain balance, and then meowed again, this time a little more politely, and the computer lit up with new coordinates that appeared to be a mile below the planets surface. Calvin was wincing in pain for a second before his jaw dropped. The cat gave a slight purr and gently bumped the side of Calvin’s head before jumping off his shoulder to pad over to the teleporter platform. Calvin instinctively rubbed his shoulder where the claws no doubt left some marks in his skin beneath his uniform, all while staring at the computer console.
Another meow caught his attention and caused Calvin to sputter a moment as he realized the computer was waiting for a second entity to join the cat on the platform. He walked over but stopped short of stepping on the platform, looking down at the cat that was watching him. He could have sworn it was smiling at him for some reason. It meowed aggressively again, and Calvin took that as indication he should probably stop hesitating and just get on with it.
The platform lit up as Calvin got in position. He opened his mouth and was about to address the teleporter console when, in a sort of pleasant chirping sound, the cat apparently issued the command to begin transmission. In an instant they were in a dimly lit cave deep beneath the planets surface. Calvin blinked his eyes several times, trying to adjust to flicker torches that lined the walls, and stifled a coughing fit from the dust he was waving out of his face. This cat is sophisticated enough to somehow communicate with our technology, and yet they’re using fire to light up a cave? Calvin thought to himself.
The cat nuzzled against his leg to get his attention before it walked over to a spot in a nearby wall between two torches. Calvin followed along, still confused as to the circumstance he was in by following this cat that almost blended into the very shadows of the cave. It scratched a few times at the wall, and then waited. Calvin picked at his collar, the heat of the cave now apparent to him in his stifling pseudo-military uniform that the Admiral made all crew members wear aboard his ship, was starting to make him sweat. He started fidgeting and looking around at the shifting shadows caused by the torches and realized they were in a very long tunnel. A few moments passed, and an almost child-like voice spoke up from somewhere near his feet. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you back to your ship and it’s precious climate control in a few minutes.” Calvin stumbled back and looked around for where the voice came from. “Holy shit! Who’s there?!”
“Calm down, calm down, it’s just me.” The void-like cat had started speaking, and Calvin started to fan himself in the heat.
“I must be hallucinating. This is probably another of the Admiral’s prank like tests.” Calvin thought he was losing it.
“No you dummy, I’m just forbidden to speak in other languages when off-planet. Our kind have a reputation to uphold.” The cat spoke again, and then before Calvin could ask it anything the cave wall began to shake and slide back. A seemingly normal light source, relative to Calvin’s usual situation aboard The Last Opportunity, issued from a slit in the wall. As the wall continued to slide open with a grinding sound, the cat slid through as soon as there was room. A rush of cooler air escaped and washed over Calvin, his shoulders sagged a little with the relief it brought. He hurried to get himself inside, determined to be in a more comfortable and air-conditioned area. As soon as Calvin was in, the opening began to close behind him, and he realized he was in a much more sophisticated space that was all white. The cat would have stood out in this space but was nowhere to be seen, and Calvin slowly walked through, looking around at tables, chairs, desks, and large, clear plastic cases. It dawned on him that he was in a lab of some sort. The cat leaped up on a desk at the far end of the lab-like space, Calvin finally seeing the hundreds of stations lined up from one end to the other. It took him a minute to cross, but he could hear the cat scratching at something on the desk, the sound of its claws scraping across the surface echoing through the lab.
When Calvin finally stood over the cat on the desk it stopped clawing at a small case and looked up at him. “Here.” is all it said. A button was blinking on the case while a strange cross-hatched pattern faded on a pad next to it. Calvin, more than a little perplexed, slowly reached out to press the button. The cat jumped off the desk and casually padded off to somewhere else in the lab, calling back to Calvin as it went “Tell your Admiral thank you for the food.” The case opened with a pressurized hiss, and some sort of white smoke wafted out with a fresh scent. Calvin waved it away and reached inside to pull out the Admiral’s hat. “Hey wait a second….” was the last thing Calvin got out before he was unceremoniously beamed back up to the ship, where the Admiral was waiting for him in the teleporter room. The Admiral snatched the hat out of Calvin’s hands and popped it onto his hands. “Ah, much better! Those cats are great at dry-cleaning hats.”
Calvin sputtered, still standing on the teleporter platform, and watched as the Admiral strutted out of the room. “You mean we smuggled all that food for cats?”
Recently, I hit the one year mark of writing every day here on the blog, and I was using the daily writing prompts provided through the WordPress dashboard. Unfortunately, I’ve now come full circle and been getting the same prompts. Because of this, I’ve been struggling with trying to find things to write about when I feel like I can’t reuse the prompt of the day.
So, starting today, I’m going to try and expand into creative writing instead of just my usual ramblings.
If I see the daily prompt is something I don’t think is worth answering again (because I can’t add on to what I shared the last time) I’ll instead be looking up different creative prompts and trying to throw them at my good buddy Calvin aboard The Last Opportunity. If you don’t know who Calvin is, he is the protagonist from my NYC Midnight short story challenge entry called “The Smugglers Intern“. (I’ve shared the original, unedited entry here, so feel free to read it and possibly provide thoughts or critiques!)
Before I dive into Calvin’s misadventures as an intern aboard a decommissioned military space vessel, I’d like to make sure you know that I don’t plan on these creative writing posts intentionally maintaining any kind of cohesion with each other. There may be some that continue off of others, but it is not guaranteed, as I will be writing entirely off the cuff for the day. At least, that is the plan at this time. Finally, they may be any length I choose. They could be a simple paragraph, or they could be another multi-page short story.
Without further ado, here is today’s prompt for Calvin!
None of it seemed real, but after several months of helping Admiral Slodpolk negotiate market contracts across the galaxy, Calvin was getting used to his new normal. Except for today. The smell, although cloyingly sweet and nauseating, wasn’t the problem. It was the sight and sound of Yugarth VII’s Root Beer Pigeon’s falling out of the sky like a plague of Terran Locust’s. Thousands of creamy brown and white birds slamming against the ground, against windows and sides of buildings, while Calvin and the Admiral took shelter beneath an awning. Everywhere Calvin looked, they splashed with unsettling squawks like muted fireworks. Cascading rivulets on glass that would then reform into the strange birds, cooing on the sills. Dripping off the corner of the awning, creating tiny versions of them to strut around with the terrier-sized ones that congealed out of large puddles. A few seconds after their “rebirth” they would explode into vapor that hissed almost like carbonation escaping a freshly opened can of soda. None of these things, individually, would have bothered Calvin to such a stomach turning degree, but the assault on his senses was overwhelming. He wouldn’t be able to drink root beer for a while, and the strange rain of exploding carbonated pigeons would likely haunt his dreams for a couple days.
A year ago when I answered this prompt I had a very different mindset going into writing out my thoughts. Reddit had changed a bunch of things that really upset the general public, so I no longer actively use it except when it pops up in Google search results. (Maybe I’ll go back to it more frequently someday, I don’t know.) I also brought up different social media sites and how I had been using Instagram more.
This time around I want to share a few quick links to some actual websites instead of talking about social media.
Crunchyroll is where I’ve been getting my fill of anime. I’m a huge sucker for the Isekai trend, even if the anime isn’t really that good or has trashy writing.
I’ve been watching a LOT of stuff on YouTube, particularly on the channels Dropout, Dimension 20, Nerdforge, and Mythical Kitchen (just to name some of the most common ones on my list).
On the more creative side of things, I love Inkarnate for the world building/map making stuff, and then World Anvil for the writing parts. These tools are super handy for visualizing and organizing my thoughts.
I think I’ll stop there, or else I could potentially just go through all my bookmarks and that would just be tedious and overwhelming.
Are you actively trying to learn to use AI to complement your work? Or are you trying to learn more unique skills that cannot be easily replicated by AI?
The regular daily prompt was something about a big risk that I haven’t taken yet, but since I answered that one a while back, I decided to fill in with my own. It did pop up in the back of my mind again, though, when I stumbled upon the one I added above while scouting for a new idea.
First, I’d like to mention that I have already dabbled with AI a bit for different reasons, but I haven’t made the leap to trying to use it for my own benefit. I’ve learned a smidge about how they work, and how they’re being used in different industries, but shelved the idea of leaning on them when what I saw was giving me an icky feeling (at the time).
One of the things I did was mess around with ChatGPT a little to try and see what kinds of information it had access to from Dungeons and Dragons so that I could try to possibly use it as a little Assistant DM (should I ever actually get a group together and play). This was early on in my research for trying to understand the hype, learning a bit about Large Language Models, and I kind of liked how things were turning out. It could pull up all kinds of information on short notice and offer explanations (to the best of its ability) on how certain things worked or where the information was sourced so that I might look into it myself to confirm.
After tinkering with it for a bit I got the idea to see what kinds of ideas it could string together to help me from a creative writing aspect. Then I got cold feet. I put that idea aside for a bit, and went on my way. Not long thereafter was when I stumbled upon an issue that was springing up in the indie-publishing world for fiction authors. Apparently, the market, especially on Kindle, had been getting flooded with stories. What tipped me off were comments and posts on different social media sites and on reddit that all mentioned how they felt similar, and were poorly constructed and almost rushed. People started putting two and two together, and realized that it had to be AI-related. This gave me some serious pause. Several months went by and I saw someone comment about how people were being caught and screened for trying to submit AI built manuscripts to traditional publishers, which caused these reviewers and some editors to start including phrasing concerning these kinds of manuscripts. So, while I didn’t get my hopes up to begin with, it did severely stifle the idea of using AI for creative writing purposes.
At least, until someone pointed out (it was probably Brandon Sanderson, since I listen to a lot of his podcasts and such) that it’s still up to the writer (me) to actually sift through the AI responses and craft things. I don’t HAVE to use exactly what is generated. Which just took me back to my original idea for the D&D stuff. I can use it for ideas, maybe throw in a more developed prompt to see what gets churned out, and then further customize everything (or even throw things out entirely!) So, I may circle back around to trialing it at a later date if I feel like I’m getting stuck. For now, though, I’m still running on my own brain.
One other area I dabbled with AI, actually very recently, was with coding/scripting for work. I didn’t actually use my work device or any sort of sensitive data, so as to avoid risks, but I was stuck trying to figure out a way to make something work in Microsoft Power BI for some reporting I work on. I wanted to try converting DAX scripting into M code to see if it might help improve processing data from a massively customized date table I had constructed. So, I plugged in the idea to a different AI service via my phone, and tried to work with what was given back. Sadly, I couldn’t make it do what I wanted, so it was a bust. I’ve not looked toward AI for work purposes since then, and doubtful I will again since I really should be developing that knowledge and skill set on my own and not relying on AI to do it for me (or else why bother having me do the work at all?)
At this point, all things considered, I still haven’t messed with AI as much as some people, and I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to dabbling with it for creative writing purposes or as a sort of Assistant DM, but I know I’m definitely not intending to use it for work again any time soon.
What goals did you set for yourself this year? What goals do you have for the next few years and beyond?
Today’s prompt is another amalgamation I created from ones I saw on Sage and Bloom from their post on personal growth and self-improvement.
After I read a couple of similar prompts around goals, I did a little introspection and looking back over the year to see what I’ve accomplished versus what I had planned for. A couple of my goals I won’t reveal specifics but I will give an idea of progress.
Starting a year ago, on about October 15th, I had put up a couple of goals for myself with a target completion date of my 36th birthday in late March. One goal was focused on physical fitness (and I failed spectacularly) while the other was on writing. On the physical fitness side, I was planning to do one of two things at least 4 times a week: go to the gym to work out, or do body weight/resistance bands at home. I think the total count targeted was supposed to be around 120 and I made it maybe a quarter of the time. The writing goal was a little more straightforward. Write every day and hit something like 160 posts for the blog. (If you’ve been following along for the last year, you know that I absolutely CRUSHED that goal!)
Tracking those two goals was easy. I have a small whiteboard in my room where I marked out a grid space for the calendar month and a space above it for reminders and tracking totals. In the grid space I would use a red mark to indicate the fitness activity for the day (just a simple check mark to say I did it) and green for the writing. Then, at the end of each month (or beginning of the new month if I forgot to do it before bed) I would tally up the marks and add them to the running total in the reminder space above. Easy stuff! It felt good to add the marks, but the writing goal was so much easier to manage because I was literally able to do that anywhere at any time because I was using my cellphone and posting from work during breaks or downtime between meetings.
Anyways, those two goals were meant to be short term ones that would help me build a habit and routine. The writing one has worked out great! I went from aiming for less than six months to just keeping up that momentum for over a year now. (I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and do some reflecting on that fitness goal.)
I did have a couple of other writing goals that I put together earlier in the year, and even made a checklist on my phone as a reminder of some “six month strategy” goals but I haven’t made as much progress on them as I would like. One was just a reminder of doing my daily writing prompts, the other two were other writing projects which, although I HAVE worked on, I’m still just in planning and world building. Technically speaking, I still have time in my “six months” but not a lot at this point. Those will likely roll over into the new year.
So, current goals from the past year? Daily writing: crushed. Fitness, writing projects: needs a lot of work.
Goals for the future? Well, I’ve mentioned before in various ways that I struggle with setting goals and sticking with them when they’re focused on myself and I’m only accountable to myself. So, while I might have goals I’d LIKE to achieve in the next 2-5 or 5-10 years, actually getting them across the finish line is a different story. A simple list of those goals is getting some novels written and published, owning my own home, being debt free (outside of the house, most likely) and being self-sustained financially on my writing. Will all that happen? Well, only time will tell.
Looking back at the year so far (we still have about two and a half months to go) I’d say I stand a fair chance at actually accomplishing what I want. I just need to make some changes.
Since it seems like today’s daily writing prompt is another repeat, I’ll go into something else I was thinking about recently.
Today should be, I believe, the 362nd day in a row that I’ll have posted something to the blog. Given that I’m closing in on a 1-year streak, I decided to look into some stats. How many words have I written? How many posts? How does it compare to writing a full length novel in the same time frame?
Well, WordPress collects some of these things, but not in the way that I needed. So I decided to do some extra leg work today and check the word counts of all of my posts since October 16th, 2023 when I first started down this path of trying to write every single day. I’ll also be incorporating some numbers for last November’s NaNoWriMo, as proof of effort.
According to my calculations (I used Excel to help track all of this):
371 individual posts written
111,245 words just for the blog
151,143 words when including NaNoWriMo 2023
299.85 average words per post
2,925 words in the longest post (although admittedly that was copying what I wrote for a writing contest)
1,230 words in the longest post that DIDN’T include the writing contest results
That’s all I think I’m going to share, which is basically everything I was concerned with at this time (although, I totally did consider making some graphs.)
The key takeaway I want to point out, for myself as well as others who might be thinking of writing a full length novel (or two or three) is that even if you can only get down 300 words per day during some spare time, if you write every single day then you can definitely make it in a year and have the potential wiggle room for editing to bring total word count down to a reasonable level. Aim for that 100,000 word mark at just a few hundred words per day and you’re golden.
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
I don’t set a lot of personal goals. For me they have a tendency to feel imposing and put a lot of pressure on me mentally. I mainly just focus on the idea of something being a normal, consistent part of my life so as to avoid all of that. That doesn’t mean I haven’t set any recently.
Two personal goals that are tied together that I set recently were participating in NaNoWriMo last year and trying to write on my blog every day for a few months.
I didn’t meet the word count for NaNo, but still made significant progress, and considering I was simultaneously working on my blog every day, I technically wrote a lot more. Combined, I still didn’t hit the word count goal, but that isn’t what is important. I learned a lot about how I approach writing stories versus my blog, and although I haven’t made significant progress on my stories since then, I haven’t stopped writing. I’m still picking away at the ideas from NaNoWriMo, building new ideas and running into new stories that I want to write, all while still doing these daily prompts.
I may have failed at hitting 50,000 words in one month (it really is challenging!) but I haven’t fully given up. NaNoWriMo is coming up quickly again, and I might see if I can do it this time. Even if I don’t, I do know that, at the very least, I’ve managed to hit an unspoken long term goal for my blog. Next week, October 14th, should be the one year mark of writing daily. With that in mind, it seems even more likely that I could succeed at 50,000 words for NaNo.
The Dragon's Grove 