First Cup of Coffee - January 3, 2019

Creaking back into the working schedule and talking about more about habit and routine - and how those fit into the creative life, or anything we try to do. I also talk about obsessiveness and why we need that, ponderous prologues, and three strikes that let me bail on a book. I also rant a bit about banishing the trope that with the loss of tech, human societies revert to male domination. 

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, and I'm here with my first cup. It is Thursday, January 3rd. Getting back into my intermittent fasting cycle. Although, even though I had it in my head that I was going to fast today, I still make my London fog with uh soy with my steamed soy milk. So I'm drinking it anyway. Um but it's half a cup of so unsweetened soy milk, and I sweeten with stevia. So I don't think that'll impact the fasting significantly. That's not ideal, but I think I'm just gonna have this and then I'll switch over to green tea and maybe some detox tea and call it good. Um as with all things, it's tempting to draw hard and fast lines and rarely productive to do so. I think um, you know, there's a obsessiveness is an interesting thing because especially for creators, um, for writers, for um anyone who's trying to accomplish any kind of goal, you know, remodeling or whatever, uh it requires a certain commitment to getting the thing done, right? Um, which can sometimes it needs to be an obsessive commitment to getting it done. Because if you're not that committed to getting it done, then it won't, right? You know, you there's just too many reasons not to do the thing. And so a lot of people who are passionately invested in whatever it is that they're working on tend to be labeled obsessive. And and to an extent it's true, and I think you know, really what's important is finding those lines, finding that finding those boundaries where you determine what is um oh reasonable of you know, being willing to say, okay, I can have a little soy milk this morning. You know, having the determination to do the 24-hour fast once a week, but then also being like, eh, I already made my steamed soy milk, I'll just drink it. It's that um, you know, moderation and all things, even moderation. So uh everybody is more or less back to work. I think uh I think actually some people are less. I I suspect a lot of people are still out this week and things will really kick in next week. It felt um pretty quiet around the interwebs yesterday. Uh I don't know what what you guys think. It's hard to tell here because we've had so much winter weather. Um, I did go and get my nails done yesterday, and that was pretty much all anybody at the nail salon could talk about is how we have so much snow. And all around us, the mountains are covered with snow. I'll put up a photo of the Ortiz and Sandia by manicurist Ruby said, uh, everywhere you look, it's white. And it's just funny because last winter we got barely any snow at all, so it just feels um feels unusual for us. And I think everybody's a little bit in a in hibernation mode, even though the roads really aren't that bad. Um, people in New Mexico are a little bit like southern folk that way, and that there are a lot of people here with um not great tires and poor winter driving skills. Um and it's it's the luxury of living in a place where our winter storms and the residual effects are short-lived. We have the luxury of um waiting for it to melt, you know. It's um why why deal with icy roads when you can wait a few days and or a day or two and it'll be dry? It kind of gives you incentive or doesn't give you incentive to go out. You know, I lived in Wyoming for over 20 years, and you know, there you didn't wait for the roads to melt because um you'd be waiting till June or July. You know, it was like, well, you had to get out there. So anyway, I think we're feeling a little bit in hibernation mode still, uh, which is alright. Um, so yeah, I'm just sort of getting back into my routine. It was funny uh going and getting my manny petty yesterday. I've been going to the St. Gal for a couple of years now, and uh Ruby took off time over Christmas and New Year. Um, also, uh, like me, and she had not done this in quite a while. They've been building up this shop, building up the business. It's three gals who run it, and they do an amazing job. It's really a wonderful salon. Uh, but she took off, she was gone from um I think the 20th, yeah, the 20th uh through New Year, and then to yesterday was her first day back, and it was funny because um she was out of order on doing things. Uh she forgot to hand me the, you know, she was sorry, it was sort of elbows deep in the you know, the tub of water on my feet, and we both realized she'd never handed me the colors for me to choose. We were out of order on that, and then she um left the wraps on my nails to take the gel off for too long. She's like, I should have taken those off by now. And there was one other thing I can't think of what it was, but you know, it's a fairly simple process, right? And something that is very habitual. I talked about that a lot yesterday, the habitual thing. Uh, but you know, her her patterns weren't there anymore. She was sort of starting back into it again, and that's how I feel. Uh yesterday I did work on Sorcerer's Moons. I revised the first two chapters. Uh and yeah, you know, if I if I got my 3,000 words a day, I'd be done in three days. The benefit of doing it this way is, and I I do this sometimes on books, and I don't know if I've done it since I've started doing the podcast, but sometimes I get close to the end. I get within about 10,000 words of the end, or within the last 10 to 20 percent of the end, and then I go back to the beginning and revise from the beginning and then steam through to the end. It depends on the book. It's funny, I don't know why some books I need to do that and others don't. Some I revise through to the end and then I turn around and go back and revise the first third. I used to do that a lot more when I started. I don't do that nearly so much now, but I do do this thing where I start to inch up on the end and I sort of I've slowed down so much that it's like, okay, time to go back to the beginning, and that way I can kind of pick up all of my threads. I think this is partly a thing of me not outlining. So the great thing is, is once I finish this, it will be done and can go to the copy editor. And then I'll go into book six and get that written. I've got the cover for Ariah's Enchantment. It's up on my computer screen now to provide a little bit of inspiration. I had to look at a few things. Um you know, it's funny. It's um we forget things like uh, you know, like I keep going back and forth on whether or not Lonan has a beard, and I know Corinne will growl at me for that, but I keep thinking, didn't I mix him up with my other heroes? I have to go look at the cover. So anyway, we will do a cover reveal on this soon. Um maybe when I know what the release date will be once it's through editing. Well, Warrior of the World, the third book in the Chronicles of Desneria trilogy, comes out next Tuesday. And even though that feels very, very done to me, that's been done for a long time now, uh, I don't I feel like I need to prioritize uh, you know, promo for that. I changed all my Facebook headers and everything on that yesterday. So, and I know Rebel Base will be has already started hitting the uh social media with posting various stuff, so I kind of have to keep an eye on that and wait for that to come out and give it, I don't know, like a week after it's out, and then I'll start posting information. We'll do a cover reveal on Arias Enchantment. I know Corrine sent out some stuff to uh bloggers on our list to see if anyone wants to participate in a cover reveal. And yeah, I'm you know it's kind of too bad with uh we lost a couple of our good online places to do cover reveals. Things change, things morph as time goes on. I've been continuing my project of I don't know if it counts as a project, my mini project of catching up on XKCD from the very beginning, and I am now at uh what number, let's see if I can find it here, 800 something. Um, 802. 802, uh which is great because it's that was actually labeled with a date because it's online communities too, which was the spring and summer of 2010. And somewhere in the last um 25 or 50, I'm recognizing most of them now. So I'm starting to lap the time when I was really following XKCD, which is funny because that's all since we moved to Santa Fe. And I know I remember reading it years ago before that. Um, but it was amazing I did not recognize many of them. And it's it was in you know, it's kind of fun when I can figure out what the exact dates are. Uh I know I was able to pick out 2008 when uh uh Obama was elected. There was a he had a comic that was like the day after the elections. So I could place that in time. So it's nice to get this ongoing communities of 2010, which is a cool one to see. Um, and I'm I imagine he's he may have updated it since. We'll have to see. But um, I remember that one very clearly. What he does is he takes the amount of activity on all of the um communications. He he does, you know, like he has voice communication, and then what part of that is the internet, and he represents it as a landmap. So it's kind of cool to look at how much of it is is Facebook. Even then. I wonder if uh Facebook has diminished in comparison to other ones. So I don't know that I have much else to tell you guys. Um my my other thing is that I have been reading some not as exhaustively as I thought I would. Um I think maybe I needed a rest from stories altogether in my brain. But now I've been going back and reading a few things. Uh and I'm trying to read these books that are sort of like these big epics because I wanted to read about battle strategy and so forth. And geez, another one that started out with a ponderously long prologue. I mean, 50 pages of a prologue. I'm not a big fan of prologues, regardless. I think that if you have a prologue, it means your story starts in the wrong place. And people argue with me about this because people always can come up with examples of good prologues. But especially reading digitally when I don't realize that it's a prologue, and I keep thinking, where in the hell is the story? When is the story gonna start? And it's like, oh well, you're still on the prologue. Um, so here's a second one. The prologue was way too long, and I so I was so relieved when I hit chapter one, and there was actually some kind of story involved. And it's it's funny because on Orchid Throne, which comes out in September, at least now we're in the same calendar year of when that releases, uh, Orchid Throne, my editor asked me to add a prologue to explain some of the world building. But I think mine's like two pages or three pages. I made it very short. Uh, you know, and now I kind of wish I could take it out altogether after being so enraged by these prologues, but um, these stories take are so slow to start. I just don't um I don't know. I I I guess I have um I don't I can't tell if it's me or the story. So I'm gonna try sticking with this one a little longer and see how it goes. Uh Green mentioned that she's still sticking with her first 25% rule, unless she hits three strikes. And then if she hits three personal strikes on the story, then she can bail. And that certainly happened with this other book that I read, the um David Weber off Armageddon Reef. And I can understand why people like that book, but I'll tell you what, one of my pet peeves, and one thing that I would really like to see disappear as a trope is this idea that if a civilization goes away from tech, if it recedes from tech in some way, that that means that women will go into a subservient role and men will dominate. And you see this all the freaking time. Anything post-apocalyptic, um, any kind of thing, you know, like the fantasy world where they revert to non-tech for any reason, and that's what happens in Armageddon off Armageddon Reef, and he says it on there. You know, it's like there is this one kind of prominent female character, but you know, she's like, oh, and unfortunately, in the time that, you know, like this, they've been left, the civilization's been left alone and they haven't had tech, they have of course reverted to a male-dominated society, and that will make things harder for her. You know, and I think that it's such a reflection of the rewritten history that somehow the male-dominated society is the default state rather than having it been a characteristic of a certain period in our history, which has been grossly exaggerated by the uh rewriting of history, you know, that women have been, and people of color, systematically written out of history, you know, and we're seeing so much of that now, you know, like with some of the um archaeological finds that there were, you know, among the Viking warriors, that there were women warriors, you know, with buried with their weapons and who had obvious um emblems of rank. Uh you know, and and they didn't get noticed before because you know, there was this assumption that, oh, if this skeleton was buried with weapons and insignia of rank, then therefore it was a male. You know, so there are all of these assumptions that have gone to creating this idea, and it just drives me up the wall that it continues to be perpetuated, that it's like, oh, you know, as soon as you lose tech, boy, you know, women's they go back to that subservient rule. And and I would buy it to some extent if you want to argue that women being able to lead independent lives hinges on control of birth, of whether or not they have babies. I do think that that can be a key, a key component of a woman's independence. But if that's the case, then why not incorporate that into your society? Why not have um cultures of women who do have access to birth control and therefore are independent instead of just going to this massive thing of, oh well, if they don't have the advantage of tech, then physical strength becomes the only thing that's important. At least I assume that's what I don't even know if that's what it is. I because I struck out on that book. I was just like, uh it was uh those were my I don't know if it counts. I ponderously long prologue, um preponderance of male characters, and then oh yeah, male dominated society, and that those were my three strikes, so I got to bail on that one. And so the good news is that this one that I'm reading now that I might bail on, we'll see, is a 2015 uh list orphan. So at least I'm taking care of that. All right, so enough ranting about all of the things. Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye.