I feel like I should start this blog posting off by apologizing to every teacher that ever tried to teach me math.
See, I was a horrible student in school. My grades were good (with the exception of math) but I have to admit that I didn't put a great deal of effort into 90% of my schooling. I was the kid in the back of the class only half paying attention because I was reading a book hidden under my desk or because I was just daydreaming. About the only exception to my goofing off was any math class.
I'm a writer and a one-time English major. Math just didn't translate into the way I saw the world. I had to actually work hard in some of those classes just to have a passing grade. A "C" was a cause for celebration. A "B" or an "A" was almost unheard of and accomplished only with stacks of extra credit. Where the histories and sciences (except chemistry, which is just math in disguise) and English classes all came naturally, math was like being taught how to speak in a foreign language by someone who only spoke that language and not English. It just didn't translate into something I understood.
Now, nearly six years after receiving my associate's degree from Dabney, I have a job that's purely math based...land surveying. Everything we do here, from the field work to the drafting, is based on algebra, geometry and calculus, maybe even some trig. Once in a blue moon I'll be working on a project and a light bulb clicks on above my head because something I learned in high school and thought I had forgotten comes back to me and actually makes sense.
Just this morning, after battling the elements to make it into the office, I spent a couple hours calculating the grade of a slope using algebra I learned as a freshman. All that talk about slopes and rise over run didn't make a bit of sense then. Seeing it applied out in the world brought it all together for me.
I'm still not a person who looks at the world and puts math on it and probably never will be, but when the situation calls for it I can figure it out with a little help now. So all those times I shrugged off math because I thought that I'd "never use it outside of school" now seem a bit ironic. I earn my bread money by doing math every day.
Somewhere, I'm sure, my former math teachers are having a nice laugh about that.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A Sneak Peek Among The Snow
The snow here is never-ending apparently. I just heard that we're supposed to get an additional 3 to 7 inches on top of the 2 to 3 inches we weren't supposed to get today. Word is that there will be 30 inches heading our way this weekend.
Amazing.
I just knocked off a few pages of Blood & Steel and decided to take a break for a different kind of writing and see what's happening on the blogs I'm following. You can check those out yourself by scrolling down just a bit and clicking on any of them that interest you in the list to the right.
I'm excited to say that Blood & Steel is starting to tell itself. I mentioned earlier today how I was hoping it would happen and it is. The blanks between the major plot points that I know exist are being filled in by the story. There are some major things happening in the life of our stalwart hero Sam and he's going to have to face the unforeseen consequences of his choices in The Crownless King. Without spoiling anything, I'm going to offer a little preview from the opening of Blood & Steel.
For now it's time to bundle up against the cold and snow that's piling up against the house and do a little reading.
Amazing.
I just knocked off a few pages of Blood & Steel and decided to take a break for a different kind of writing and see what's happening on the blogs I'm following. You can check those out yourself by scrolling down just a bit and clicking on any of them that interest you in the list to the right.
I'm excited to say that Blood & Steel is starting to tell itself. I mentioned earlier today how I was hoping it would happen and it is. The blanks between the major plot points that I know exist are being filled in by the story. There are some major things happening in the life of our stalwart hero Sam and he's going to have to face the unforeseen consequences of his choices in The Crownless King. Without spoiling anything, I'm going to offer a little preview from the opening of Blood & Steel.
There are lands where kings rule by divine right. There are lands where kings are elevated to the level of godhood by the people they rule. The idea is that monarchs are infallible, that to question them is to question the divine. Kings are supposed to be perfect.
The sad truth of it is that we kings are just as flawed and imperfect as the next man. We make mistakes just like anyone else. Heaven knows I've made my share. Unfortunately, the mistakes of kings have consequences that touch the lives of thousands. My mistakes started a war.And there you have it. Here, for the first time, the world premiere of a little piece of Blood & Steel. I know it's not quite as exciting as a cool trailer for an upcoming movie, but it's exciting to me. I'm nearly 30 handwritten pages into the story and things are starting to move along in the plot. I'll keep you posted.
For now it's time to bundle up against the cold and snow that's piling up against the house and do a little reading.
Libraries & Days Gone By....
It's officially snowing outside. Again. It is going to stop snowing here in a little bit but only because it's going to turn into ice that will then turn into rain that will then turn back into ice. It seems Old Man Winter was ready for the world this time around. I can't remember the last time we've had a winter this wet. It makes getting things done in the world of surveying increasingly difficult.
Bethany has started singing again with the Greenbrier Valley Chorale in Lewisburg, W.Va. Weather like this can make getting to the weekly Tuesday practices a challenge and if this keeps up she may not make it this evening.
One nice thing about the weather, though, is it lends itself to staying home and pursuing hobbies that otherwise get pushed to the side as we're out and about. Monday evenings between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. are devoted to CBS since it's the one evening of television we watch a week, but as The Big Bang Theory ended last night I wandered back into my library and picked up the Strat and tried my hand at Gravity.
From what I've studied, the actual picking pattern isn't difficult. What is difficult, however, is timing the slide from the third fret down to the ninth and making the bends and vibrato sound right. The entire intro to the song and the solo are both built off of two strings as best I can tell, so fingering is pretty simple. It's just the little techniques that I didn't realize were in there until last night that are really difficult. I played the opening two or three measures repeatedly for 20 minutes trying to work it out. The way the weather is it looks like I'll have the chance again tonight.
After reading a little bit of Arms-Commander to put me in the mood for writing I cracked open the working notebook for Blood & Steel. I haven't put a great deal of anything down on paper for a week or so. There have been some scenes I've mulled over as I went about other tasks and I'm just about to an interesting point in the writing of this novel.
As with The Crownless King, I know where Blood & Steel will end. I had a pretty decent idea of where it began, though it needs some smoothing over at this point. I'm just about to the point where I don't know what's going to happen next. I have perhaps two more "scenes" to write that I know what's going to happen. After that there's a long stretch to be written that's as much discovery as it is writing before I get to the next scene that I have planned in my head. I have rough outlines of a couple of possibilities, but I'm hoping that the story itself will decide whether or not these will be included.
Here is as good a time as any to mention some good news about The Crownless King. The Clifton Forge Public Library, one of two libraries I begged my Mom to take me to when I was a kid, called last week and wanted to know if I'd be interested in making an appearance there in March. Of course I was excited to do it. Not only does it mean publicity for me and the chance to get my story out there, but it's also an opportunity to bring people to the library.
Libraries may very well be one man's best inventions. I remember being a kid and asking Mom to take me to the library nearly every time she went to town. We lived about five minutes away from the one in Clifton Forge and about fifteen minutes away from the C.P. Jones Memorial Library in Covington. Both libraries have undergone extensive renovations since those days, but I can still remember walking in and being hit by the smells of stacks of old books. I remember distinctly that the C.P. Jones library had a big, long desk bent like an "L" by the door and directly in front of that was the kids science section. At the other side of the building in two narrow aisles crammed with books was the science fiction section, where I spent the bulk of my time.
I could've spent hours in the library each visit, wrapped in the smell of old books and the silence of reading that was broken only by the "ka-chunk" as the librarian inserted the due date cards into the machine that automatically stamped them. When I was older and finally able to drive I did spend a lot of spare time in libraries. When I worked at the paper I'd gobble down lunch as quick as I could and spent the rest of my hour (and sometimes more) reading and writing in a cubicle at the C.P. Jones library. Sometimes on days off I'd just go sit in the Clifton library and read. When it was late and they were closed, I'd go down to Dabney and find a comfortable chair near one of their big windows and spend some time reading. I went there a lot to do homework during my college days, but truthfully the homework would be put aside after only a few minutes to pick up a book I'd found while wandering among the shelves.
Reading this and thinking about it, I realize now that I probably need to do more to support the local libraries. I haven't checked a book out in years, mainly because I've found the funds to work on building my own private library, but the libraries for me were gateways to other worlds and my own dreams of writing began to take shape among those shelves.
It was a pretty big thrill for me to walk into the Clifton Forge library and see a book I'd written on a shelf, waiting to be checked out. I'm looking forward to that experience again.
Bethany has started singing again with the Greenbrier Valley Chorale in Lewisburg, W.Va. Weather like this can make getting to the weekly Tuesday practices a challenge and if this keeps up she may not make it this evening.
One nice thing about the weather, though, is it lends itself to staying home and pursuing hobbies that otherwise get pushed to the side as we're out and about. Monday evenings between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. are devoted to CBS since it's the one evening of television we watch a week, but as The Big Bang Theory ended last night I wandered back into my library and picked up the Strat and tried my hand at Gravity.
From what I've studied, the actual picking pattern isn't difficult. What is difficult, however, is timing the slide from the third fret down to the ninth and making the bends and vibrato sound right. The entire intro to the song and the solo are both built off of two strings as best I can tell, so fingering is pretty simple. It's just the little techniques that I didn't realize were in there until last night that are really difficult. I played the opening two or three measures repeatedly for 20 minutes trying to work it out. The way the weather is it looks like I'll have the chance again tonight.
After reading a little bit of Arms-Commander to put me in the mood for writing I cracked open the working notebook for Blood & Steel. I haven't put a great deal of anything down on paper for a week or so. There have been some scenes I've mulled over as I went about other tasks and I'm just about to an interesting point in the writing of this novel.
As with The Crownless King, I know where Blood & Steel will end. I had a pretty decent idea of where it began, though it needs some smoothing over at this point. I'm just about to the point where I don't know what's going to happen next. I have perhaps two more "scenes" to write that I know what's going to happen. After that there's a long stretch to be written that's as much discovery as it is writing before I get to the next scene that I have planned in my head. I have rough outlines of a couple of possibilities, but I'm hoping that the story itself will decide whether or not these will be included.
Here is as good a time as any to mention some good news about The Crownless King. The Clifton Forge Public Library, one of two libraries I begged my Mom to take me to when I was a kid, called last week and wanted to know if I'd be interested in making an appearance there in March. Of course I was excited to do it. Not only does it mean publicity for me and the chance to get my story out there, but it's also an opportunity to bring people to the library.
Libraries may very well be one man's best inventions. I remember being a kid and asking Mom to take me to the library nearly every time she went to town. We lived about five minutes away from the one in Clifton Forge and about fifteen minutes away from the C.P. Jones Memorial Library in Covington. Both libraries have undergone extensive renovations since those days, but I can still remember walking in and being hit by the smells of stacks of old books. I remember distinctly that the C.P. Jones library had a big, long desk bent like an "L" by the door and directly in front of that was the kids science section. At the other side of the building in two narrow aisles crammed with books was the science fiction section, where I spent the bulk of my time.
I could've spent hours in the library each visit, wrapped in the smell of old books and the silence of reading that was broken only by the "ka-chunk" as the librarian inserted the due date cards into the machine that automatically stamped them. When I was older and finally able to drive I did spend a lot of spare time in libraries. When I worked at the paper I'd gobble down lunch as quick as I could and spent the rest of my hour (and sometimes more) reading and writing in a cubicle at the C.P. Jones library. Sometimes on days off I'd just go sit in the Clifton library and read. When it was late and they were closed, I'd go down to Dabney and find a comfortable chair near one of their big windows and spend some time reading. I went there a lot to do homework during my college days, but truthfully the homework would be put aside after only a few minutes to pick up a book I'd found while wandering among the shelves.
Reading this and thinking about it, I realize now that I probably need to do more to support the local libraries. I haven't checked a book out in years, mainly because I've found the funds to work on building my own private library, but the libraries for me were gateways to other worlds and my own dreams of writing began to take shape among those shelves.
It was a pretty big thrill for me to walk into the Clifton Forge library and see a book I'd written on a shelf, waiting to be checked out. I'm looking forward to that experience again.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Directing The Rambles
Well it's Monday again and back to work. I enjoy my job, though it does have some very steep moments that make me question what in the world I'm doing climbing a mountain with all that gear on my back. It's challenging, both mentally and physically and I appreciate that.
It was a good weekend, though Saturday was snowy and hectic with the wedding. I didn't get anything written but I read a bit of Arms-Commander and continued to pick up the main riff of One Last Breath by Creed. It's the longest riff I've attempted to learn to date and I figure on being at the polishing stage (hopefully) by the weekend.
My next musical goal in life is to pick up John Mayer's Gravity and Free Fallin'. Yes, I know that Tom Petty originally did Free Fallin', but I actually prefer Mayer's acoustic cover. I think I'm going to start looking into lessons again. They're good to keep me honest on reading music and playing techniques and I need to pick up more musical theory if I want to write my own music someday.
I guess that here is as good a time as any to talk about the changes in the ol' blog here lately. This project started out as a way to reach out into the worlds of photography that I enjoy. While that still happens on occasion, I've found that I'm turning more to exploring writing and the creative process, be it in music, photography or writing. It's turned into a notebook of sorts that I use to explore what happens in my every day life and look for deeper thoughts among the mundane.
After watching Julie & Julia Sunday afternoon I became enamored with the idea of dedicating the blog to a project and sticking with it. After some careful thought (mostly in a long shower because that's where some of my best thinking happens) I decided that devoting this blog to one project in particular would be a bit boring. After all, writing is a solitary art for the most part and the process is generally of interest only to other writers.
So I've decided to dedicate this blog to exploring the creative process itself. You'll see the same sort of posts you have been seeing lately. Sometimes they'll be about writing, other times about guitars and music. Sometimes I'll just write about what happened that day and what I've been thinking about and then I'll throw in a dash of photography. When it's all said and done I'll tie it, however it fits, into the projects I'm working on.
That does seem to be a broad outline, doesn't it? Truth is I don't know where this blogging project will take me. I'm enjoying it, especially now that I'm finding both time and opportunity to blog on a daily basis. I don't know if there's even anyone out the reading this, but if you are, thanks. Feel free to pass it along to people you know, be sure to sign up to follow (it's free and easy to do) and definitely feel free to add some comments of your own.
I'll also be experiment with new features, just like the media player at the bottom of the blog. I'll add some different music when the mood strikes, quite possibly some instrumental stuff to minimize distractions as you read.
So keep in touch and keep reading. I have no idea where it's all going to take me. It'll be fun to find out.
It was a good weekend, though Saturday was snowy and hectic with the wedding. I didn't get anything written but I read a bit of Arms-Commander and continued to pick up the main riff of One Last Breath by Creed. It's the longest riff I've attempted to learn to date and I figure on being at the polishing stage (hopefully) by the weekend.
My next musical goal in life is to pick up John Mayer's Gravity and Free Fallin'. Yes, I know that Tom Petty originally did Free Fallin', but I actually prefer Mayer's acoustic cover. I think I'm going to start looking into lessons again. They're good to keep me honest on reading music and playing techniques and I need to pick up more musical theory if I want to write my own music someday.
I guess that here is as good a time as any to talk about the changes in the ol' blog here lately. This project started out as a way to reach out into the worlds of photography that I enjoy. While that still happens on occasion, I've found that I'm turning more to exploring writing and the creative process, be it in music, photography or writing. It's turned into a notebook of sorts that I use to explore what happens in my every day life and look for deeper thoughts among the mundane.
After watching Julie & Julia Sunday afternoon I became enamored with the idea of dedicating the blog to a project and sticking with it. After some careful thought (mostly in a long shower because that's where some of my best thinking happens) I decided that devoting this blog to one project in particular would be a bit boring. After all, writing is a solitary art for the most part and the process is generally of interest only to other writers.
So I've decided to dedicate this blog to exploring the creative process itself. You'll see the same sort of posts you have been seeing lately. Sometimes they'll be about writing, other times about guitars and music. Sometimes I'll just write about what happened that day and what I've been thinking about and then I'll throw in a dash of photography. When it's all said and done I'll tie it, however it fits, into the projects I'm working on.
That does seem to be a broad outline, doesn't it? Truth is I don't know where this blogging project will take me. I'm enjoying it, especially now that I'm finding both time and opportunity to blog on a daily basis. I don't know if there's even anyone out the reading this, but if you are, thanks. Feel free to pass it along to people you know, be sure to sign up to follow (it's free and easy to do) and definitely feel free to add some comments of your own.
I'll also be experiment with new features, just like the media player at the bottom of the blog. I'll add some different music when the mood strikes, quite possibly some instrumental stuff to minimize distractions as you read.
So keep in touch and keep reading. I have no idea where it's all going to take me. It'll be fun to find out.
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