Pilcrow

Underworld, "Two Months Off" (radio edit), A Hundred Days Off (video embedded below)



(The radio edit doesn't really do justice to the whole song, but the video's kind of cool and it's what's available.)

I didn't really intend to take two months off from posting in my journal. As I noted in my last post, I had a lot going on in October, between volunteer work with KEXP for Decibel Festival, the fall membership drive, and the City Arts Festival, and paid work also at KEXP for a week full-time, followed by a couple freelance projects that took a lot more time than I was expecting. That carried on into November, which was one of the busiest months for work I've had as a freelancer. It was a bit odd in fact, as although I did still get out at least once each week to hang out with friends, I felt like for a good six weeks I spent all my waking time working. However, that was a much-needed counterpart to the six weeks in July and August when I spent no time working at all. In any case, although I did take one evening a week to do something fun with friends, I skipped trivia night a few times and I also had to skip all of my intern work for KEXP—I made it in once during my busy time but had to work on photos and blog posts for City Arts Fest coverage, rather than my usual content management tasks. Obviously, I also stopped trying to keep up with daily journal posts, not that there would've been much to say most days other than that I was still really busy.

Work eased up just before Thanksgiving, partly in volume and partly in pressure. I actually still have a fair amount of work to be doing, but I've been having a terrible time motivating myself this month to focus and get things done. That's a serious problem of course, as I do have work to do and I do need to keep up a good level of billable hours not just to finish recovering from the disastrously slow summer but also simply to carry forward with supporting myself—making a living, not just staving off collapse. I have some ideas for turning that around, though.

At first, I wasn't really interested in resuming my journal posts, either. Not that I intended to abandon the journal entirely, just that I knew I'd missed a couple music-related posts and didn't feel like catching up yet, and also didn't really have anything else to say. But I've had a growing restlessness in the past week or so, partly because my usual Internet haunts haven't offered enough distraction to keep me occupied, and partly because I've been wanting to dive into some good inspirational gaming fantasy material, but not finding anything in the usual places nor looking elsewhere, I've felt the urge instead to write more of my own. Perversely though, I deliberately waited until today to return to my journal just so that I could post the "Two Months Off" video, two months after my last post. 

Anyhow, I am still here (don't call it a comeback), and I will be posting more regularly, again, if not daily. I do still have some music-related posts to do, including a long-overdue review of the album Uncovered Volume 1 that I owe Unwoman, and also belated posts about Decibel Festival and City Arts Festival. And as I say, I want to do some more creative writing, more about Cetak and maybe other stuff further afield. I really have no good idea who reads this journal anymore; every now and then a friend mentions that they read it, which is cool, but now that Facebook is no longer automatically importing posts into the Notes app, I don't know whether people there will follow the Networked Blogs link back here to read. And of course with two months of silence, I may have lost some people too. But then this has always been an outlet for me before anything else, so I will write because I want to, and hope that someone else still reads and enjoys it.

As a sort of footnote: posting the "Two Months Off" video prompted me to listen to Underworld's 2010 album Barking, which I've only listened to a couple times since I got it, and not at all in months and months. I'm pleased to be reminded it's rather good, though I think it could use a bit more diversity in song styles, like A Hundred Days Off and Beaucoup Fish.

There are no cemeteries within the core area of Cetak—at least, not within the prime world. 

When a person dies in Cetak, the body is brought to Morticians' Row down in the Under-Square. One of the mortician houses will prepare the body for a fee, and then, once the Ceremony of Severance has been completed, bring the body in procession through the Sunderground and out into the Shadowfell. Emerging from the slopes of Cap-Ill, the procession wends its way back westward to the mausoleums.

The mausoleums of Cetak are one of the great wonders of the land, shocking in appearance to most outsiders. They are vast monolithic towers reaching high into the heavens, far taller than any trees, higher than the surrounding hills. The towers appear to be formed of stone and glass and metal, but some wizardry must have been involved to raise structures so high. And each of these towers is a mausoleum housing thousands upon thousands of the Dead. 

The morticians bring the body to the Chapel, where the Ceremony of Internment is performed, and then leave it there and make their way back through the Sunderground to the prime world. It is said that when the moon rises over the eastern mountains and lights the way westward, the body makes its way down into the necropolis and finds its place within one of the mausoleums, there to wait—no one knows for what, or how long. Some speak of the Dead moving about the necropolis, others that they merely stand and wait silently within the mausoleums. 

It is known that if a body should be left untended for too long, the body will rise on its own and begin seeking to make its way to the mausoleums. A body denied the proper Ceremonies of Severance and Internment will become restless and angry with the living, and filled also with a craving to return to the life it can no longer hold, and thus do ghouls arise. Therefore, although the morticians perform their services for fees, the mortician houses will also be paid by the city to tend to bodies unclaimed by any family. Magics are used to ensure that a body has not been merely abandoned by family seeking to avoid the fees, and any family caught trying to do so is fined and punished heavily.

Guh, that was a long week. Up by 8 am most days, working a full 8 hours at KEXP three of those days, and then staying up until 2 or 3 or even 4 in the morning to do some last-minute quick turnaround editing jobs. And then for the weekend I didn't get to bed any earlier, although I got to sleep later on Saturday and Sunday. I'm pretty tired, is what I'm saying. So I won't be staying up late tonight, and I don't have to get up early tomorrow, although I also can't let myself stay in bed late because I do have things to take care of now that my time is open again. And I should have some more editing work dropping on me some time this week or next week. 

Here's a thing I want to post quickly, though:



That's the spike caused by posting my photos of the Fremont Solstice Parade. I didn't even use any tags or titles or descriptive text like "nude" or "naked" or "bodypaint" about the bicyclists; I just tagged all the photos "Fremont Solstice Parade". Well, apparently posting photos within hours of the event is enough to get lots and lots of people to check them out. My previous largest spike, to my knowledge, was for the Go Play NW 2009 photos, and that was a mere 1,566 views. I can only imagine how many more views I'd have had if I had used those tags.

As an editor, I'm often confronted with the problem of impact. Impact and its derivations are very very popular in marketing writing. You see, it seems that "effect" just isn't strong enough for some writers.* They want to be sure that customers believe that their product or service is more effective than anyone else's. I mean, you could tickle someone, and that's an effect. You don't want your customers thinking, well, that product or service will nudge our problems away, it'll coax them away, it'll erode them away gradually over millions of years and we don't have time to wait for that! We need solutions now! You have to make sure your customers understand that your product or service will have an immediate and strong effect: it will have impact! 

Naturally such an important and effective word as impact cannot be limited to a single use, as a noun. No, if something can have an impact, then it must be able to impact other things. Now to be fair, impact has been in use as a verb for a long time—apparently since its introduction into English in the 17th century, going by my dictionary. But the Microsoft style guidelines (as a purely non-random example) have been quite clear on the matter for at least the past seven years that impact is to be used only as a noun, not as a verb. Of course, nobody reads those guidelines anyhow, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't let that get in the way of some impactful writing! It's crucial to impact the customer with the most impactful writing so that the sales pitch will have the desired impact. 

I'm certain the problem is obvious, now. By trying so hard to impact customers all the time with impactful writing about the impact they can get from the impactive products or services they're selling, impact itself is losing its impact. So today I would like to propose that marketing writers adopt a new term into their vocabulary: kaboom. KABOOM! It's much more than just an impact—it's explosive! Think of the kaboom that customers could get by using the kaboomful products or services to kaboom their productivity issues, for example. The kaboomfulability of kaboom to bring new levels of kaboomfulness to marketing writing so that it kabooms the customer much better than impact could ever impact them should be clear. Think of all the leverage you'd get by leveraging kaboo—hey wait. Leverage. Now there's a word that's getting tired too. And really, it's kind of dry and spineless and corporate sounding, isn't it? We need a word with some sweaty oomph to show people that you really mean it when you're using something, and leverage just doesn't have that. Might I suggest… manhandling?


*Not to mention the real reason is probably that most of them don't understand the different meanings and usage of "affect" and "effect".

I'm all caught up on my concert reviews! It's about time.

I'm way behind on the monthly list, though—once again, I've barely touched any of it, and I'm expecting to be busy with other things in the next couple days so that I won't get any of those items done. Maybe on Thursday I can tackle a couple things, it depends on whether work that I was expecting to start showing up yesterday actually starts coming in by then.

I'm also behind on dungeon preparation. I've been excited about Dungeon World, I've had a lot of neat ideas about the Seattle/Cetak setting, I've enjoyed playing Dungeon World, I had a good time running Dungeon World over Christmas using the "Purple Worm Graveyard" dungeon that Tony created… but when it comes down to it, I don't actually like preparing to run games (or even doing between-session character preparation if I'm a player). This is a serious problem, because I also can't run games off the top of my head without having something prepared. Well that's not quite true, as I've done it successfully on a few occasions, but most of the time I just freeze up, unable to articulate any ideas or make decisions on the spot about what I should present for the adventure. I think I get the most fun just dreaming up setting ideas; it's more about the creative writing than anything else. In the short term, I'm sure what to do: I offered to run a game, I have to spend some time right now preparing to do so tomorrow night, and fortunately I do actually have some idea of what I want to do, I just have to spend the time jotting down the ideas and getting the game stats and such. In the long term, I don't know; maybe I just shouldn't run games.

Anyhow, that'll do for today's journal entry; I've got a game to prepare.

I think the worst part of writing at the end of the day is the scramble for something to say. I was at Caffe Ladro earlier, for about an hour or so, and I was trying to write a review of the new Hotels CD, On the Casino Floor. But I wasn't able to get my thoughts in order during that time; I have some idea of what I want to say, but I didn't get very far even with a draft during that time. So then I came home, put stuff away, fed the cat, and now I've sat down to get today's journal entry done. I wanted the album review to be that entry, but it's not ready. So instead I'm spending this last half-hour before midnight trying to come up with something else to write in a short time, and that's what I don't like—although I have been happy with some of the entries I've written in such time constraints.

I don't really want to switch to writing in the morning. First, I'm generally slow enough to get my day going, I don't want to add that requirement to it, especially as I think that'll just make me unhappy about having to write. Second, sometimes I have a topic that needs more than just a half-hour or so, and I'm more likely to have that extra time to spare in the evening, rather than during the day when I'm supposed to be getting work done. Third, Nimiel usually demands a lot of attention in the morning, whereas at night she'll generally let me sit and do my stuff.

Today, I got up late. I went to KEXP and did my intern work for the afternoon, then stayed for a short review of the tally system for the upcoming membership drive. I went to the Red Door in Fremont to meet my friend and neighbor Garwood, up from his current L.A. home for a visit. And then to Caffe Ladro to attempt to write the album review. Not much happened today to give me an easy topic to write in a half-hour, hence the scramble, and what's essentially another filler post. Well, there's tomorrow: I'm going to see Man or Astro-Man?, which should be a blast. For now, I'll put this post up, and then I think I'll give another try at banging out the album review, so that can be tomorrow's post, up early rather than late.

I didn't really intend to devote this whole week to Dungeon World posts. It's a convenient topic to write about when I have little time, it's more interesting than talking about how I have little time and how I didn't do all the things I feel I need to do, and I am still hoping to start running a game of Dungeon World soon, perhaps as soon as next week, so it's useful preparatory work. But I will return to other topics soon, I promise you. 

Also, I've been remiss so far about pointing you to the source of Dungeon World. When I first wrote some thoughts on magic in D&D and how that related to Tony's Apocalypse World hack "Apocalypse D&D", I did include a link to the discussion forum for his hack, hosted on the Apocalypse World forums. Since then, however, Sage and Adam have taken Tony's initial work and run like mad with it, doing an amazing job of fleshing out the character classes and gradually filling in the other details to help people run the game, moving towards a stand-alone work rather than just a supplement for Apocalypse World. They have been calling their version of the hack "Dungeon World", which is the name I've been using since before I started to detail my Chiaroscuro/Setak/Seattle setting, and you can find the current version of the PDF on Sage's site, as well as occasional entries about it on his blog.

There is at least one already-published game setting also called "Dungeon World", and I had the vague impression that that name was also already in use in the area of electronic/console games, so I expect that if they ever do offer it as a stand-alone product for sale, they'll have to change its name first. However, I'm amused and surprised and pleased to find that Sage's site is currently the top Google search result for "Dungeon World". I think he and Adam are doing really great work and deserve a lot of attention for this. And I'm not just saying that because Sage had some nice words for the posts I've made so far about the Setak setting.

Thanks everyone for your interest, comments (on Facebook), and support.

Recently I was asked whether I ever find editing work tedious. Although it's not exciting to go through a document and just insert and remove commas as appropriate, which sometimes is all a document needs, it still engages my critical and analytical skills to ensure the text is correct, and it's satisfying to know when I'm done that the document is now correct. It can be a little tedious having to make the same corrections repeatedly, but not so much that I ever feel sick of editing as a profession. What I do find tiresome, though, is finding in a later draft that someone has rejected my corrections and reinstated the incorrect text. It's very vexing.

Here's an example from the document I'm currently working on. In the previous draft, I standardized a set of subheadings to use parallel structure, meaning that each one used the same format, in this case an imperative statement: "do this." "Understand the impact," "provide [stuff]," "deliver through [this approach]." (Note that I'm paraphrasing these to maintain some pretense of confidentiality, because it's a draft.) One of these headings said, "Current resources are probably not best suited to deliver [stuff]," which clearly does not fit the pattern; it's a declarative statement, it simply says, "this is the case," rather than saying, "(you, the reader, should) do this." So I reworded the heading to say, "Use a dedicated resource, not your current one"—which arguably may not be the best rewording, but it does follow the pattern and could easily be adjusted while staying parallel with the other headings. I also included a comment explaining why I was making this change. Thus, it's exasperating to get back the current draft and find that someone accepted all of the other heading changes I made, so that they're using a parallel imperative structure ("do this"), but restored this particular heading to its cumbersome original version, which is clearly inconsistent with the rest. Now I have to make the change again, and explain it again, and it's likely that it will still end up in this inconsistent state in the final version. 

Here's another, much shorter, example, of a typical problem I'm constantly facing: the tendency of writers to unnecessarily capitalize certain terms, job titles in particular. In the previous draft, I corrected "Distributors and Large Account Resellers" to "distributors and large account resellers." Those terms do not need to be capitalized any more than one would capitalize "doctors" or "garbage collectors" or "insurance salesmen." And yet, in the current draft, there they are mis-capitalized once again.

Editing is not tedious for me. Dealing with persistent problems and recalcitrant writers, however, often irritates and frustrates me. You're paying me for my expert knowledge of English usage, do not turn around and dismiss my carefully-explained corrections.

Big ideas need time to come together, more time than I have.

Little ideas are fleeting and scattered, hard to catch and set down.

So I sit down, coming to writing a bit later than I'd intended, closer to midnight. More often than not, it's close to midnight. Sometimes close to midnight is a quarter-hour. Sometimes close to midnight is an hour, or even two. The size of the idea determines how close it is to midnight, but how close it is to midnight also determines the size of the idea that is written. 

Topics are easier and harder than ideas. Not that ideas aren't topics, or topics ideas. But the distinction here is that topics are forethoughts, ideas I've already caught and prepared to write about. Topics are hey my knee is healed, or the next chapter of cosmology, or the concert I saw recently (which reminds me: need to wrap up the 2009 concerts at least, before 2010 ends). Ideas are, it's time to sit down and get today's journal entry written before midnight occurs, so, what's on my mind, what sounds interesting, what do I feel like. 

So I sit down, and: Doom, the world's running out of everything and we have too many people and it's all going to be horrible; no, not enough time for that. "Ordinary Days", a fiction series I want to start; but I don't actually have any story or character ideas yet, just a title and a vague sense of it being post-apocalyptic urban fantasy. What was that other thing that came up in conversation this afternoon, that I thought would also be a good story/essay series? Can't remember. Ummm… KEXP's new digs, again no time and half-formed ideas. Maybe a follow-up on how it's already difficult to stick to using my time better, what with so much stuff going on this week right before I leave for Christmas, but don't really want to write about that.

And so I end up with this kind of meta-topic, writing about trying to write. And that fills up the quarter-hour I left myself to get something written. Well, it's kind of interesting, at least.