Adventures of an Aspiring Author

It's Friday. Thankfully. It's been one of those weeks where the work/effort to payoff ratio has been skewed in the wrong direction. First, to the Texas Rangers. Boo. What the heck, guys? Score some freaking runs and try to get through the middle innings without getting shelled.

I'd thought I'd end the week with a quick play-by-play of a typical night in the life of an aspiring author. Let me rephrase, a typical night in the life of a working/parent-aspiring author. Sometimes I wonder how I ever finished a manuscript at all. Oh, wait, I was in Iraq!

5:00 pm - Horn blows, time to close up shop. Can't wait to get home and finish up the current chapter. I was on a wicked roll last night and there's some fresh ideas that need to be captured.

5:10 pm - Heading out door and phone rings. Higher ups want a copy of every purchase receipt going back to March. Wait, you need this today? Everone's already left... but I wasn't here in... I'm not... I... Oh, crap.

6:30 pm - Walked through the front door, threw stuff on the floor, kissed wife, and sat down for family dinner, a decent meal of leftover, then scolded son for playing with his during grace.

7:00 pm - Shower and change. Set up writing station. Open up Macbook Pro and launch Scrivener (if you don't have this you hurt). Review hand written notes from previous evening.

7:05 pm - Wife calls. My sh*t doesn't belong on the floor. Go and pick up. Assist with dinner clean up. Take out trash.

7:45 pm - Back to writing/man-cave. Put on headphones. I'm writing an action sequence, so I dial up assortment of Tool, Chevelle, Nickelback, and Three Days Grace. Focus Time.

7:55 pm - Tap on shoulder. It's the boy. He's holding a sheet of paper dated two weeks ago. Looks like its covered in dried juice and cracker crumbs. Apparently it's a reading project involving rote memorization, a substantial amount of illustrations, and a wing-board. It's due tomorrow.

9:00 pm - Homework completed thanks to parental intervention and large amount of yelling. Back in front of keyboard. Headphones on and tunes cranked. Another tap on shoulder. It's the daughter. Mommy requests my presence in the family room.

9:05 pm - Wife hasn't sat with me and watched TV all week. She'd like to watch some TV. Turn on TV and attempt to leave, but there's clarification. She doesn't want to watch TV, she wants to watch a movie WITH me. Power up BluRay player and sit.

11:00 pm - Wife is dowstairs getting ready for bed. Finally sit down and attempt to salvage some writing. Wait, I forgot something, something I wanted to do yesterday but didn't get around to accomplishing.

11:05 pm - Run down to garage and fire up irrigation system. I'm in the area, so pack up my sh*t and prepare clothes for next work day. While I'm in the area, trasfer wet clothes from washer to dryer, and fold batch of laundry while watching angry people on Fox News.

11:35 pm - Officially abandon writing/man-cave. Bring laptop downstairs to bedroom. Wife is already asleep. Conduct nightly hygiene regimen, then crawl into bed. Open laptop, review previous night writing.

11:50 pm - Correct numerous typos from previous session as well as some narration that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Frantically type out cool new ideas (now a little stale) in bullet format so as not to forget them before next writing session. Hack through some awkward dialogue, then realize the entire bit is not germane to the plot. Shift-Fn-Up, Fn-Delete.

12:15 am - Word count for the day, 51 words. At least we have a few cool ideas for next time. Check alarm. Wake-up time is 4 hours and 15 minutes away. Run backup software (backups, people, BACKUPS!). Fold up Macbook. Go to bed.

Not every night is so crazy, but all have the potential. I wouldn't be able to write at all if it weren't for the support of my awesome wife, so I'll just take a moment to thank her for being amazing. As a working/parent/aspiring-author, I work when I have to, I parent always, and I write whenever I have the chance. Someday, I'll finish this damn rewrite, then reach for a glass of Scotch. A really tall glass.

Here's to you Mr. Reunion Name-Tag Reader

This weekend I paid $19 bucks for a glass of Scotch. It was a good single-malt, mind you, but I was a little chaffed that I paid for half the bottle with a single glass. A small glass. Of course, I had already ordered a second before I discovered the price. Caveat Emptor.

This weekend I had the privilege of attending my 20th reunion. My wife and I had a blast getting to re-know some of my oldest friends. My favorite part of the evening was some of the folks introducing themselves to my wife with something along the lines of:

(reading name-tag) 'Hey, *wife's name*, it's so good to see you again. You look great!' Yes, my wife looks great. I married a hottee. But dude, I'm the one in your class. Not my wife. And next time make sure you put some tanning lotion on the bleached wedding band line.

So yesterday I woke up with the flu. My voice is zero and my head is about to explode. For me, missing work is rare (like once every ten years rare), but this case was bad enough for the doc to order me home. I thought there would be a chance to work on my manuscript, but so far the only thing I've achieved is power-napping and stalking old classmates on Facebook.

I saw some interesting things this weekend. Some people who used to look great no longer do, while some people who used to not look great have matured into fabulous. Some people have done well for themselves, while others struggle with the rest of us. Not everyone marries their college sweetheart, gets the amazing job and the bulletproof 401k. We're human. Some folks wear their scars like a red badge of courage, others hide it amazingly well.

I wish the best to the class of 1990. We've come along way. For the folks who didn't go: Shame on you. It would have been nice to see you again. Several months ago, for a very brief moment, I debated attending. I had assumed that not all my close friends would be attending. I also assumed that my wife might not appreciate getting drug to an event that would be largely all about me.

That ended up being so-not the case. Everyone made her feel very welcome. Especially a couple dudes who mistook her for one of our class. And looked at her boobs. Several times.

WTF?

A Review of Sorts: Bulletwisdom Goes Hungry

I don't know if this is so much a review as it is me reminiscing about the mixed feelings I have about Suzanne Collins impressive YA series, The Hunger Games. First, I need to say thanks to author of the upcoming Newsoul series, Jodi Meadows, and her agent from the Strothman Agency, Lauren MacLeod. On Twitter, one comment led to another, and when the two were interested in my opinion on the series, I felt obligated to take up the challenge. Since I had not reviewed a book, let alone a series, in years, it made for an interesting experience.

***Stop here if you don't want any spoilers. I address specifics across all three novels***

The Hunger Games is a complex, dystopian YA series that well represents the best themes from a long list of dystopian/sci-fi works: Ender's Game, The Most Dangerous Game, The Running Man, and Brave New World. Okay, that's a heady list, and maybe I'm overstating, but at the end of the series (particularly the first entry) I couldn't help but be a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of the themes. If you're an author and you're picking and choosing your inspiration, those are some of the all time greats.

I'll play loose here. A young girl lives is thrown into an arena and forced to hunt other children (The Most Dangerous Game). In the Hunger Games, the audience revels in the killing while even the victors are portrayed as losers (The Running Man). The people of the ruling district, the Capitol, are extremely detached from the society they're oppressing (Brave New World). And the main character finds herself at the end of her victorious struggles haunted and depressed, wondering, 'What was it worth?' (Ender's Game) I could probably throw in themes from Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies for good measure, but needless to say, I really enjoyed reading Collin's series.

But that's not why I'm here. On Twitter, I became involved in a discussion surrounding the violence presented in The Hunger Games. Was it excessive? Is it appropriate for a Young Adult audience. I'm a Soldier, I've been to war, and my life experiences force me to look at things with a slightly different perspective than most.

So to answer the questions: Yes, the violence is excessive. And yes, it's appropriate.

Now, I don't think I'll be passing Catching Fire and Mockingjay to my ten year old anytime soon, but my field-worn, water-damaged copy of The Hunger Games is already in her hand. To point out something about the list of novels I referenced earlier, they all were considered controversial or at the least, avant-garde, and they all contained a considerable amount of violence.

Oh, and by the age of sixteen, I read them all. The Hunger Games is no more inappropriate a literary work for tweens than anything else on a banned high school reading list.

It's necessary to take a moment to comment Collin's handling of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It's all over The Hunger Games. All the games' former victors portray significant degrees of PTSD. All the tell-tale symptoms are there: flashback, nightmares, alcoholism, drug addiction, hallucinations, etc... the list goes on and on.

I see PTSD everyday. I have a friend who will randomly streams tears while he sits in meetings or at his desk. There are Soldiers in my command suffering from chronic insomnia and night terrors. One time in my house, I actually dove for the tile at the sound of a backfiring car. It's real. It's affecting our Soldiers, and it's not something you can wish away.

By the third book, there's a PTSD scene every other page. Maybe it's a bit overdone, but by the end the effects on the main character are permanent and lingering. Good triumphs over Evil and there's no happy ending, just a quiet torment tempered by drugs, counseling and the passage of time. The characters find a tepid happiness, and like many Soldiers from today's ten-year War on Terror, a return to true normalcy after experiencing the horrors of war is all but impossible.

Some of the concepts weren't all that well done. I laughed when one of the engineers lamented about their inability to reproduce high-altitude aircraft, this coming from a dude with invisible hovercraft. Uh-huh. And their combat tactics weren't all that smart. I felt it was like two insurgencies fighting each rather that a bunch rebels versus an actual nation. And in Mockingjay, the defense of the Capital hinges around a city-scale version of the X-Men's Danger Room. That would look great for the movie adaptation, but for battlefield tactics, it's just silly.

I guess also lost along with representative democracy and the 'advanced' technologies from the old United States were simple fundamentals of war like Mass, Maneuver, Economy of Force, Security, Surprise.... and Tanks! Oh, how this story made me long for good ole' days of war where civilized men slugged it out with mechanized armor and artillery (that's a poke at today's counterinsurgency warriors). The war in this book is what I imagine would happen if ten-year old politicians staged a fight with legos, army men, and toy dinosaurs. I digress. What I enjoyed about this book weren't the technologies and tactics.

Maybe the takeaway from The Hunger Games isn't just the simple the 'war is hell' theme from Red Badge of Courage or Saving Private Ryan. Maybe, when you experience something that traumatic, that horrific, the effects last a lifetime. Time will not heal all wounds. Some injuries never go away.

Should my two children ever face going to war, and I pray they never do, it's a lesson I want them to learn.

The Hunger Games, highly recommended.