Rish Outcast 79: You've Got To Want It More

So, Rish goes for an extra long drive, thinking about the recent writers' conference, the people he saw there, and the encouraging/discouraging things people said in panels.  So he gets kind of inspirational too.*

Can we be frank, kids?  I think this is my best episode ever.  Yeah, I said it.

Your mileage may vary.**



Go ahead and Right-Click THIS LINK if you want to download it.  I dare you.

*Warning: a bit of language and a bit of "La La Land" in this one.  So, double-warning.

**I made some kind of promise in this episode, so here's the link to that story I vowed to not only write, but to publish.  Me and my big mouth.

Oh, and feel free to Patreon me.  Nothing's stopping you.

July 30 & 31 (the end)

July 30th.

This was another of those cases where, right before bed, I figured I'd jot down a few words, and wrote more than I had intended.  Which is fine.  You see, I have three projects I've been working on the last week or so: 1) typing up "A Mark on the Sky" from my notebook to the laptop, which sometimes involves writing new bits, 2) my YA novel/novella/short story in my notebook, which is not well-organized, and I just write random scenes for, and 3) a new project I just started on the laptop, but am much more interested in than the other one, and am writing linearly from the beginning.  This writing was on that third project, and what can I say, it's more fun.

Words Written: 533
Total Words: 16,381

July 31st. 

My favorite summer month has ended.  I was planning to go see DUNKIRK with that friend from work, but it fell apart, so I ought to write instead, right?  Salvage the night, maybe at the library?

Alright, damn you, I went to the library, and stayed until they did their obnoxious announcement and flashed the lights.  I really wanted to get all of "Mark on the Sky" typed up, but I didn't make it.  I still have five or six notebook pages left to get down, but it's never just a matter of typing up my handwritten stories; there's always revising, expanding, and occasionally trying to figure out a better line or joke than what I originally wrote.*  Sometimes it's just trying to make heads or tails of my handwriting.  I really ought to work on that.  But I won't.

Words Written: 316
Total Words: 16,697

And there you have it, the end of July.  I wrote every single day, never cheating, never completely failing.  And that's something.  Still, look at those total words.  Not particularly impressive.

And if we look at the total words in February, we got 23,969, and the total March words were never tabulated, so, I guess that gives me a little perspective.  Or half a little.  Why I was so much more dedicated in February than July is hard to pin down.  Maybe I've been working more in July, maybe the hot weather kept my ambition in the shade, maybe the projects I'm in the middle of now are less compelling than the ones from a couple of months ago.

Nevertheless, I don't think I'm going to quit there.  Not entirely, anyway.  I plan on going to the family cabin for another night in a Friday or two, perhaps staying an extra four or five hours longer (or a second night, if I really want to stretch myself).  And yes, I'm going to write every day in August, and I'll TRY to keep up a word count, though I don't think I'll blog it every other day like I did this time.  Unless that's entertaining, I dunno.

Regardless, the month of July was a writing experiment that wasn't wholly unsuccessful, and there will be more to come.

Rish Outfield, Writer.

*For example, in the notebook today, I had a character exclaiming, "Holy god."  I had to decide whether or not to capitalize God (I did), and then I wondered if there wasn't a better expletive for the character to say.  I am ashamed to admit I wasted an inordinate amount of time on this, first changing it to "Mother of God," then changing it to "Jesus wept," and then trying to figure out a clever variation on "Jesus wept."  Jesus slept?  Jesus leapt?  Jesus swept? (that's the one I picked).  But then I thought, why not having it be something totally absurd, like "Baby Jesus' dirty diapers."  Was that funny, or just a mouthful, or more blasphemous than even I had intended?  I changed it back to "Jesus swept," but ended up dissatisfied with the whole thing.

July 28th & 29th

July 28th.

This is strange.  I think I went to the library again on this day, but now I'm confused.  Did I really go two days in a row?  I--

Yeah, yeah, I did.  The day before, I'd gone right before closing, sitting on the first floor, and the second day, I went a couple hours before it closed, and went to the Quiet Floor, where the only interruptions would be in my pants.*

I didn't get a ton of new words written, but I did get very close to having all of "Mark on the Sky" typed up.  Only one more session ought to do it.

Words Today: 433
Total Words: 15,079

July 29th.

Saturday was going to be a difficult writing day, because I had to get up very early and drive down to the family cabin with my mom and brother, where we were going to stain/varnish/paint the outside walls/paneling.  I'm not sure what the word is where you put on a coat or two of brown glossy stuff, and then a layer of clear-coat over it.  But that's what we did, and with three of us working, we managed to get quite a bit of it done with zero casualties.

Although, technically, my writing might count as a casualty.  I did bring my notebook with me, and sat down at the table while my brother was mixing up the clear-coat, and tried to get some words in.  My mom kept coming over and talking to me, mostly about the flowers outside or the amount of cobwebs inside, or the amount of people that could stay at one time or where did all the paper towels go?  I think she may have just been talking to herself some of that time, but because I was there, trying hard to focus, I appreciated it less than I should have.

Not a lot of words.  On the drive back, she asked me to tell her about what I was writing.  I basically told her the entire story, at least all that I have, and she asked a couple of questions I don't know the answer to, and seemed to think this was a book series instead of a single YA novel.  She may be right, but if I was intimidated at the idea of writing a novel, how much worse would writing a series of novels be?

There was a get-together of old high school friends that evening, so I had enough time to get home, get showered (I was very dirty from all the painting, and I still see brown varnish on my elbow and fingernails), run over to Walmart to buy "a side" for people to eat (I got chips and salsa; I don't know what a side dish is, let alone a side), and get there only a half hour late.  I hobnobbed with some of the guys I knew in high school, but I was literally the only person there without kids, and that made me a bit of a third wheel (if not fifth or seventh).  It was kind of an eye-opening get-together, a reminder of just how old I'm getting, and also of how much less grown-up I am than the people I went to high school with.  It was still good to see them, but I have a lot less in common with those guys than I did decades ago.

I got home and felt like I should try to write just a little more, but I was too tired.  And in counting up the words in that terrible notebook, I suppose I did get a lot more writing done than I thought I did.  Maybe I wrote some of it in my sleep.

Words Today: 769
Total Words: 15,848

*Sorry, that's a bit of an overshare, yeah, but I sat down, got my notebook and my craptop set up, and then suddenly, had to run to the bathroom, if you know what I mean.  In the past, I've been savvy enough to take all my belongings with me to the restroom, because you never know, but this one was indeed an emergency, and I didn't really decide to leave my stuff on the desk, but was rather forced to.  I made my way, as fast as I could without drawing attention to myself, to the nearest toilet, and thank Bossk there was no one already in there . . . things would have ended badly.  Or worse, anyway.
When I came back to the cubicle, everything was as it had been, except for the note on a 3x5 card that said, "I kNOw wHaT yOU dID," that was put there by a librarian.  That was unsettling.

July 26th & 27th

July 26.

I don't know where the hours go.  I had some time to myself today, and even though I posted two episodes of the Rish Outcast, mowed the lawn, and sat down to perform a Fake Sean Connery song, the hours of the day were not enough, and it was night by the time I checked what time afternoon it was.

I did manage a little bit of writing, during lunch, and hopefully tonight, but I'm just as undisciplined as one of James Cameron's Colonial Marines.

But as I've said (what, ninety times now), maybe July was just a jumping-off point, and August can be truly productive, at least by comparison.  I'm not in a race with you, I'm in a race with mys . . .

Oh, I just checked.  It IS you.  I'm sorry, I didn't realize.  I'm a race with you.  Sorry.

Words Today: 659
Total Words: 14,502

July 27.

Today, I decided it was time to head back to the library and force myself to write for an hour or two.  After all, it is the end of the month, and though I did well three or four days this past week, I'm still pretty far from where I wanted to be.  I thought I could write a whole novella this month, or a short story and part of a novel.

Well, I was on my way to the library when I ran into what I guess I have to consider the only friend I have left.  I chatted with him for a few minutes, figuring I'd hit the library immediately after.  But as the minutes became an hour, I started to wonder if I would miss my chance to hit the library and write*, and the bigger question occurred to me: is hanging out with my friend more or less important than going and getting my writing done?

I'm something of a recluse and a misanthrope, and living on my own in the big city showed me that I'm at least partially capable of being alone and just fine . . . but dude, it would be nice to have a friend or two, you dig?

So, I went to the library, and it was closing in just under an hour, and I sat at the first empty desk I came to and tried to make the most of it.  I had made the mistake of stepping into the audiobook section and catching the eye of a helpful young man who, despite not being a library employee, asked me what I was looking for.  I glanced to my left, saw the Veronica Roth books, and said, "Oh, there's a book by Patrick Rothfuss I've always meant to read.  Just checking to see if it's here."  The young man nodded.  "Is it The Name of the Wind?"  "That's right.  But it's never here."

I went and sat down, booted up the computer, and managed just a few words before the helpful young man walked up to me.  "Well," he said, "I looked it up in the computer, and there's no audio version."  "Excuse me?" I asked.  "The Name of the Wind.  The library does have eight copies of the paper version of the book, but they're all checked out."  Apparently, the chap had gone through the aisles looking for me to let me know.  "Well, thanks, man," I said, still puzzled as to what was happening here.  I suppose attractive young women get this kind of reception all the time, but for me, it's baffling.  "You can put a hold on it," he said, ever helpful, "and when the library gets a copy in, they'll set it aside for you."  I considered explaining that I never manage to read physical books, that I fall asleep, and that's why I wanted the audiobook, but instead, I just said, "I'll do that.  Thanks again."

He walked away, ostensibly looking for old ladies to help cross the street, and I resumed writing.  Or attempting to write, because despite having very little time before the building closed, the blind Japanese guy who seems to live there has some kind of device where you push a button and it screams, "THE TIME IS EIGHT TWENTY-ONE PM!!!!!!!!!" which, I suppose, is to help him know how much time he has left, but he just kept pushing it, and the machine announced it to everyone in a two-block radius.  It just bothered me, that he'd push it, and two minutes later he'd push it again.  And then the library did their actual announcement, and I guess their policy is, after they do the audio announcement, they flip the lights on and off, in case, I dunno, the Japanese blind guy has a Japanese deaf best pal with him.  The second time they toggled the lights on and off, I actually said, "Fuckers!" out loud.

It's okay, I wasn't on the Quiet Floor.

Words Today: 144
Total Words: 14,646

*At one point, I mentioned my library intentions to him and he said, "Why don't you just go to Starbucks and write, like the rest of the jagoffs?"  He may or may not have used the word "jagoff" (okay, he didn't; I just like the sound of it), but it was a good question.  Why does it HAVE to be the library?  Back before my laptop became, first a craptop, and now a gigantic piece of shit, I used to be able to take it to the park and write, or heck, just into the backyard for an hour or so, but now it constantly needs to be plugged in, so my options are limited.
Although I did take it to Arby's once, and that wasn't an unpleasant experience.  Maybe I will again (though I'll definitely have to start donating plasma to afford to eat at Arby's.  Either that or donate a kidney.  That ought to cover my meals there for a good month or so).

July 23rd, 24th, 25th

July 23rd.

Well, I be a back-slider.

After two days of really good, solid progress (no, not compared to YOU, Your Highness, but for me, Friday and Saturday kicked ass), I got very little writing done.  Guess I should've stayed another night at the cabin.

But in my defense, Your Honor, I was working a big chunk of the next two days, and that is kind of important, due to having a dollar sign attached to it.  Heck, I should be working right now instead of writing this.*

Just managed to jot down a paragraph or two in my notebook at lunchtime.

Words Today: 88
Total Words: 11,636

July 24th.

Another day just like the one before.  Except that, at the end of the day, I sat down and wrote a little bit, just so I didn't feel like the loser who only wrote eighty-eight words.

Which reminds me: I've been sort of revisiting a story I abandoned with a teen protagonist, and I keep struggling with how to expand it from a short story to a novel, and one of the additions I've made is to have a love interest in the story, someone who notices our guy, and because she's paying attention, sees that he has a secret nobody else can see.

Unfortunately, I already had a male character, a new best friend kind of thing, who served that purpose, and it makes me question the purpose of the love interest character.  Is she just there so that there's the potential for kissing?  Is she just there because I fear someone saying, "Why are there only male characters in this??"  Is she sort of tacked on and worthless, just because I'm not talented enough to do something with her?

Don't answer that last one.

Anyway, I was able to call Big Anklevich after work and talk to him about this quandary, and he gave me some suggestions.  Maybe there's something I can do with the love interest if I make it a quartet of teen characters instead of just a trio.

There's also a female antagonist that shows up on or about the midpoint of the story, and she sort of throws everything our main character knows into question.  I wondered, is it stronger if she's his long-lost sister, or just his cousin?**  And then I got the "brilliant" idea of, what if I combine this cousin/sister character with the love interest, and that way she's definitely got something important to do in the story?  Yay!

Of course, a lot of folks find incest slightly distasteful, them not having written a sequel to "The Calling."  And I dunno if I want to tackle that subject again . . . so soon, anyway.

Big told me not to worry about people thinking I'm repeating elements from previous stories, by asking if there's really anyone out there that's a big enough fan to have read everything I've written.  It's probably okay to have more than one story about a family with supernatural abilities, where some of them are good and some of them are evil.  Just talking through it out loud is helpful, as I have discovered when doing the Voice Recorder feature on phones and mp3 players (go ahead and look up what those were), and I think I'm in a better place having spoken to him.

So, while the conversation with Big doesn't count as writing (and neither do these blog posts), I think it might encourage me to write more tomorrow.  And the day after.

Words Today: 993
Total Words: 12,629

July 25.

I did work a little harder on this day, especially THINKING about writing the YA book.  I don't really know how to do it, but I keep coming up with scenes I want to put in the book, and I've been writing those.  That may end up being a disaster, but to me, it's kind of like I'm writing little connected short stories, and that may be what I have to do to get a novel written.

I sat up late tonight, meaning to jot down a few notes, and ended up typing quite a bit.  And those words add up.

Words Today: 1214
Total Words: 13,843

*That reminds me, there was this podcast (which shall remain nameless, but it's similar to a line in the attached sentence, which I kept trying to listen to, but had the most godawful theme song in the history of music (and I ought to put "music" in quotation marks, that theme was so unlistenable).  The content of the podcast was solid, and would have helped me, but every time I heard that theme song, I had to turn it off.  Sad.
Then one day, a friend of mine sent me an email with an episode of that podcast attached.  "You'll get a kick out of this, I bet," he wrote.  I listened to the attached episode (it was from months or years after the point I'd stopped listening to the show), and right at the beginning, the host comes on and says, "You may notice that, starting with this episode, we have a new theme tune for the podcast.  This was because of the endless complaints we would get here about it.  I personally thought the music was charming and it made me smile whenever I heard it, but due to the constant stream of angry comments, we have retired it.  Enjoy."
And I did.

**Originally she was going to be a cousin he had never heard about, but I thought, what if she's his sister, and like Luke and Leia, one was taken by one parent figure and one was taken by another?  But I don't know if that works as well as it just being the daughter of his mother's brother he didn't know existed, rather than the daughter of his mother he couldn't remember.  I still don't know.  Hmmm.

Rish Outcast 78: Remember the Future

So, a year or so back, Rish went into the woods and recorded this episode in front of a campfire. He shares the story "Remember the Future," about a teenage girl who receives a rather unfortunate gift (with an appearance by a character or two from past Rish Outfield tales).

Warning: A bit of TMI.

Do you really want to download this episode?  Okay, just Right-Click HERE.

Do you really want to support Rish?

Do you really want to hurt me?

July 21 & 22

Alright, I really did it with these two.  Sigh.

I packed up a bag, got some lunch and my laptop, and drove down to the family cabin.  I'd never gone down there by myself before, and except for a run-in with a ginormous woodchuck (and perhaps a ghost*), it wasn't particularly terrifying.

Could've been, though.  I kept imagining people standing outside the windows (or inside the room with me), and there were noises I sort of had to convince myself to ignore (including one that sounded remarkably like some fingers tapping on the window behind where I sat reading).

I intended to go rowing, get some exercise that way, as well as podcast, edit audio, watch a video, and write.  I managed all but the first one.

July 21st.

After talking to Abigail Hilton, I started a new project, sitting down and sort of forcing myself to write an entire prologue before I would allow myself to watch the DVD I'd brought along.  That made me feel pretty good.

I would've been fine to hang out at the cabin, but I did force myself to drive over (a real man would've walked, but what you gonna do?) to the lake and watched the sun go down.  Just me and my only friend.  Took a picture or three.

Words Today: 1332
Total Words: 8375


I take a lot of pictures, but I rarely share them.  It'll make me seem like I'm ninety years old, but it's just so much work to plug the camera into the computer, find the photo, transfer it over, and then find it again on my PC.  Where's my Geritol?


July 22nd.

Then, amazingly, I awoke nearly two hours earlier than I normally do, and more than a half hour before the alarm I'd set went off.  I wrote for a while before breakfast, made myself some sandwiches, went outside and recorded a Rish Outcast, then came back in and sort of forced myself again, this time writing until the end of a chapter of the YA novel I called "Balms & Sears" back when it was going to be a short story.

I'm pretty proud of all I accomplished, though of course, I could've done more.  If I had planned Friday better, I might've gotten an extra hour or more in at the cabin (instead, I drove a half hour out of my way so I could buy sandwich makings and a couple peaches that cost what a watermelon should), but Saturday was pretty productive.  I even had time to sit among the deer, hummingbirds, and squirrel-tarantula hybrids and read my book, which was nice.

I think I should do this again in August, just head down on a Friday, and come back sometime on Saturday.  In fact, I might have simply stayed the night tonight, had I brought another change of clothes and another DVD.   We'll have to see.

Words Today: 3173
Total Words: 11548

*I never did figure out what closed the door when I first arrived.  Let's just put it out of our minds.

July 19th & 20th

July 19.

I wrote close to nothing, choosing to write a blog post during my lunch hour, which the judges have decreed, does not count as word writing.

Guys, this is really hard.  I can't even say why.  Maybe it's the project I'm working on, maybe it's having taken a couple of months off, maybe it's the 100 degree weather outside (and in my pants). but I just can't motivate myself to REALLY buckle down and write.

I dunno.  July is, crazily, nearly done, and it looks like I won't even have ten thousand words accomplished this month.  Which, again, is better than five thousand or no thousand, but it just doesn't feel like it did in February and March, where my novellas practically wrote themselves, and I had the strength to throw in short stories between them.  It may be that "A Mark on the Sky" and "10,000 Coffins" were better stories than "Taste the Blood" and "Balms & Sears," both of which are stalling on me.

I dunno, a real writer would just finish both of them and do better next time.*

I heard my nephew screaming outside today, and went out to see what was the matter with him.  He had fallen down and his brother said there was something wrong with his arm.  Turns out the child had broken his collarbone.  That was pretty awful.  He's a good kid; should've happened to me instead.

Just think how much writing I'd get done then.

Words Today: 192
Total Words: 6523

July 20th.

Okay, we're hitting the last third of the month now.  I do hate counting words, so the last few "writing" sessions have all been on computer. 

Today, I went to the library again, and made myself sit and try to work out the logic/time flaw I found in "Mark on the Sky."  It MAY have been as easy as just having one conversation happen on Thursday and the other conversation happen on Friday.  I imagine I'll have to do one more revision, once it's all done, but for now, I think that solves most of the problem.

Due to that, I did get quite a few words in today.  Happy about that.

All day today I was thinking about my dad's cabin in the woods, and how I always wanted to go there, by myself, and write and edit audiobooks and maybe podcast.  At this moment, I'm about 60% determined that I will do that tomorrow afternoon: just drive down, spend the night, and come back at some point on Saturday.

I think, if I were a real, dedicated writer (what I keep hitting on this whole damned post), I would do that.  It won't cost much more than a half tank of gas, and I'd probably also get a hundred pages of reading done.

Alright, I'm now 65% sure I'll go.

Words Today: 520
Total Words: 7043

*I was editing the interview I did with Abigail Hilton tonight (instead of writing) and I got to the part where she mentions, pretty casually, that she wrote a 80-90 thousand word novel in three weeks recently.  And I seem unlikely to reach a tenth of that.  It makes me pretty disgusted with myself. 
I had a conversation once with someone about the future, where he was talking about how much money there was to be made selling on eBay, and that one day he would quit his job and just do that, instead of just selling things in his spare time.  I was impressed.  "How many items do you have on eBay right now?" I asked, thinking the number would blow me away. 
And it did: he had zero items up for sale at that time.  He just never got around to it, he told me.
Who's the real monster here, I have to ask myself.

July 16, 17, 18

Sigh.  I'm getting tired of this whole blogging thing.  Yeah, I've been writing every day.  No, I haven't been writing a lot. 

16th.

I wrote a tiny bit in my notebook during the day, and that's all I managed.

But . . . this was another case of insomnia being my friend.  I woke up around five am, and couldn't go back to sleep.  I was just laying there, like a beached whale, thinking about how I ought to be writing but I was too lazy, and finally, I forced myself to get up and grab the first thing handy (an envelope), and wrote on it until it was filled.  By then, the sky was going from black to blue, so I went to sleep, happy I'd done more than just be a beached whale.

Words Today: 1301
Total Words: 5855

17th.

I sat and typed for a little while today.  Not a lot.

Words Today: 389
Total Words: 6244

18th.

Nothing so far.

Got a rejection letter from a magazine for a story (one I wrote specifically for them, so that's either supremely sad, or a supreme waste of my time).  It hasn't totally bummed me out, just a little.  If I were a tougher, more balanced human being, I'd be thinking, "Well, now I can self-publish the story, and make a buck or two on it."

Glass is halfish empty-ish, I guess.

Words Today: 87
Total Words: 6331

R.I.P. George A. Romero

I went to the Beverly Center mall in 2004 with my friend Matthew after work one afternoon. We weren't going to buy anything--we had no money--but wandering around the mall was a good way to kill a couple of hours, look at girls, and talk. Up on the third floor was a movie theater--a fairly crappy one I think I only ever saw one film at in all the years I lived in Los Angeles. But eventually we went up there, and I saw a familiar face walking around.

"Is that George Romero?" I asked.

"Who?"

"George A. Romero. He's the director of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD."

"Uh, how the heck would I know?" (Matthew tended not to use profanity)

I watched the old guy a moment. The same super-thick glasses, the same tan vest, longish grey hair. Yeah, I was pretty sure it was him.

The man basically had a costume that made him recognizable.

So I went up. "Mr. Romero?"

He turned. He didn't acknowledge that that was him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Just visiting. Seeing a movie." He had an assistant with him, standing impotently by (after all, Romero towered over a skinny-fat kid like me), jarred that someone knew who his boss was.

"I wondered if you saw the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD."

He nodded. "Sure."

"And what did you think?" I was genuinely curious. It was a pretty good film, but it was no 1978 version.

He paused, shrugged, and said, "Why would you care what I think?"

I don't know if that meant he hated it and didn't wish to say so, or had been asked that question too many times, or what. But that's my big George Romero memroy--actually running into him in a mall.

Romero is the creator of the modern zombie mythos--now a billion dollar industry. Director of CREEPSHOW, THE CRAZIES, NOTLD, DAWN, and DAY OF THE DEAD (all remade in the past decade or so?), I saw Romero speak once, on Fantasy in a series of lectures at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Hollywood, where he spoke about his career and influences.  And you know, he stayed afterward and signed autographs for everyone who wanted one.

 He'd always sign "Stay scared, George Romero."  I've got it on a couple DVDs and a poster, and saw him recently at a San Diego show where he was promoting a comic book series about, you guessed it, the living dead.

As recently as this year, I went to a comic-con panel and asked if Romero would be ever recognized, (during his lifetime or after) as the creator of the modern zombie.  The panelist said, "Fuck yeah!  He totally is!" which was exuberant, but didn't answer my question.

Well, now the man is gone, and it's hard not to make some kind of comment about that fact and his greatest creation.

There was not much media coverage of his death (at least to me)--he was seventy-seven, died of lung cancer, and it's too bad. If not for the unfortunate snafu causing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD to be declared in the public domain, he might have had some kind of recognition (and dollar signs) as the father of the ghoul/flesh-eater zombie, and I always wondered if he'd be one of those guys only appreciated after he was gone.

Maybe I'll find out now.

Here's George signing my CREEPSHOW poster.  He laughed when I told him I was too young to see it, but my mom rented it because it looked like a comic book movie.

Stay cool, George.  We'll stay scared.

Rish Outfield

The Podcast That Dares 19: The Big Goodbye

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