Everettrenshaw.com

171 entries. 77,055 words.

October, 2010

• Star Wars Archetypes. 2010-10-26 2:04 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It’s odd that so many web sites discussing literary archetypes use the characters from the movie Star Wars as their examples. Aren’t there ANY other movies that have classic archetypes? Or is Star Wars such a cultural touchstone that literally everyone on the planet recognizes it? 46 words.

August, 2011

• John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. 2011-08-11 11:06 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  What is the backstory of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Why is his name the same as my name? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Jingleheimer_Schmidt 19 words.

October, 2011

• Perdido Street Station. 2011-10-20 11:53 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which I read because it was supposed to be an example of the “fantasy steampunk” genre, although it turned out to be more in the “Lovecraftian horror” genre. Mieville’s writing is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and he’s pretty creative with his vocabulary, too. In other words, I was using the Kindle’s dictionary feature quite a lot. It wasn’t quite pretentious, but it seemed a tad unnecessary at times. 195 words.

December, 2011

• Post-NaNoWriMo Depression. 2011-12-05 10:41 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m suffering from a major case of post-nanowrimo depression right now, which I would assume is pretty similar to post-partum depression. Or drug withdrawals. It’s pretty simple really. The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day. It’s really bad after nanowrimo because a lot of concentrated creative energy is released in a short time, which makes the corresponding crash even worse. 196 words.

January, 2012

• Update. 2012-01-28 12:05 AM.
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I like to keep both of my fans informed of my work, so here’s what I’m doing. This month I have been working on revising my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel, and it hasn’t been going very well. I finished close to half of a second draft, wherein I rewrote a lot from scratch, but I had to stop when I sensed a rather major flaw. I like the characters and I particularly like the character relationships, but there is unfortunately a startling lack of plot around them. In fact, the plot that I had intended to be the main focus of the novel back in November doesn’t start until about the halfway point, which I’m pretty sure is not the way these things are supposed to work. Breaking it up into two different novellas is the only way I can imagine rescuing it. I have patched together the first one as a third draft, but it still needs considerable work before it turns into a Three Act Story. 298 words.

February, 2012

• Learning From Mistborn. 2012-02-08 1:41 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been listening to the Writing Excuses podcast lately (which is excellent imo), and Brandon Sanderson often refers to his own works as examples of the points he’s making, so I thought I’d read some of his stuff. First up is Mistborn. I’m reading this book “critically,” as opposed to reading for pleasure, so I’m making notes along the way about what I think works and what doesn’t. (I think a big part of learning to be an author is learning one’s writing preferences, which might sound silly, but one doesn’t always know what one likes writing when you start.) By the way, calling Mistborn an epic fantasy really stretches the definition of the genre, if you ask me. It feels more steampunky or urban fantasy-ish to me. 975 words.
• Reading Makes Me Sleepy. 2012-02-10 10:30 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  For some years now, I have spent roughly the last hour of my day before sleep reading. I now realize this was a gigantic mistake, and I don’t recommend any writers do this. Why? Because now when I try to read at any other time of the day, it makes me incredibly sleepy. I have accidentally trained my brain to associate reading with going to sleep. This is an awesome trick if you have trouble sleeping, but it’s not cool at all when you are trying to read more during the day. So I need to figure out how to reverse this. 102 words.
• Tinderbox Demonstration. 2012-02-19 12:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I was about to write in my medieval fantasy story about a character entering a dark room and lighting a candle he found on a table. Then I thought, hey, how exactly would one have done that before the invention of matches? Apparently you would have used a tinderbox. But I couldn’t figure out from the descriptions and pictures how all the pieces of a tinderbox actually worked together, so I watched this YouTube video. Then I realized there is no way any medieval person would use a tinderbox just to light a single candle in a dark room. They would either build a roaring fire and light the candle from that, or they would not light the candle at all. Stupid reality! 123 words.
• Learning from Servant of a Dark God. 2012-02-23 2:41 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finished Servant of a Dark God by John Brown the other day, and I thought it was a pretty good epic fantasy. It is the first in a series of books (as is the unspoken requirement for “epic fantasy”), but it was still very self-contained. Ie. the book had a satisfactory ending, and I didn’t feel like I was being coerced into rushing out to get the next book. (Don’t get me wrong, there were many questions left unanswered, but answering them would begin a new story.) 753 words.
• Learning from Kinshield Legacy. 2012-02-24 11:15 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So in my continuing quest to read more modern epic fantasies, I started The Kinshield Legacy by K.C. May. I honestly don’t remember where or why I got it — it’s possible it was a free Kindle offer at some point. Actually it looks like it might be self-published since Peach Orchard Press isn’t exactly lighting up a Google search. Here’s my question: How many pages should I give a book to grab my attention before I set it aside? I’ve read 69 Kindle pages, which is 19% of the book (it’s short). Thusfar it’s not grabbing my attention but maybe I’ll stick with it until the 25% mark. Okay that’s my new rule: From now on, I will give a book 100 pages or 25%, whichever comes first, to become awesome. At least, for authors I don’t already know. 861 words.
• February Update. 2012-02-26 2:14 AM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Time for another fan update. Because real writers do that, or so I’ve read. Last time I mentioned a short story about a magic sword with a bad personality. Well, I got bored with that. I was trying to write it from the perspective of the sword, which sounded very cool in my head, but, well, it didn’t work out. I did, in fact, write a short story called Lucas the Jewish Vampire, which I thought was hilarious, but it will probably not be as funny when I go back to revise it. (In it, I learned that vampires are afraid of rabbis… who knew?) 418 words.
• There Is Too Much To Read. 2012-02-28 10:27 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It is said that new authors should read recently released books in their genre to get an idea of what publishers are looking for. It is also said that new authors should read everything in their genre to avoid repeating what has come before. The problem is, in the fantasy genre, that is quite a daunting task. I actually thought I was reasonably well-versed in the classics of the genre, but guess what? There’s an enormous list of people writing fantasy now (I mean books published since, say, 2000), and every time I look at another “best of” or “worst of” fantasy list I have to add more: Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Jacqueline Carey, James Dashner, Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Terry Goodkind, J. V. Jones, Scott Lynch, Robert Newcomb, Patrick Rothfus, Fred Saberhagen, R.A. Salvatore, Brandon Sanderson, Naomi Novik. Those are only the most famous names; there are probably ten times more out there. And these are not small books we’re talking about. Many of them are the 1000-page whoppers we’ve come to expect from epic fantasy, not to mention that many of them are series of anywhere from three to one-hundred-and-fifty-three books. 344 words.

March, 2012

• Rolf Sighting. 2012-03-02 1:02 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I find it amusing and heartening for some reason to see “famous” authors using a character name that I’ve thought up for one of my novels. I somehow feel like it validates my own work as an aspiring author. The other day I was looking at the description for Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East, and noticed that the protagnist’s name is Rolf. The five of you who have read my Lute of the Sparrow may recognize that as the name of Jasper’s quirky sidekick. 135 words.
• On The First Book of Swords. 2012-03-04 1:20 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I read most of The First Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen. I’m not sure, but I think I was supposed to start with Empire of the East. But I didn’t feel like I missed any essential pieces of story. I stopped reading about 75% through because it was pretty clear there would be no ending, and I would have to read all of the other Sword books. Saberhagen’s writing has a more literary feel to it. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what makes it seem so. Perhaps it’s the average sentence length and complexity, which seems higher than average. Perhaps it’s just the natural quality of an experienced writer I’m seeing. 355 words.
• On Wizard's First Rule. 2012-03-06 1:12 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In catching up on the fantasy genre, I wanted to read popular books that were considered good, and popular books that were considered bad. So now I’m reading Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, the first in the Sword of Truth series, which for some reason is often seen as the “rival” to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Goodkind is a very devisive writer. People seem to either love him or hate him, which I suppose, is exactly the reception that Robert Jordan gets. Usually people like one or the other, but rarely both. 861 words.
• Wizard's First Rule, Part Two. 2012-03-07 3:34 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Well, I don’t know how Goodkind did it (which makes it a good topic for study, I guess), but somehow Wizard’s First Rule crawled up under my skin and embedded itself there. It kept getting better and better and in the end, I am shocked to say that I had a hard time putting it down and enjoyed it. Why? I think because it had a lot of “heart.” The characters won me over. First Kahlan, then I even started rooting for Richard in the end. Though I must admit I thought the final solution was a bit cheesy (spoiler alert: love conquers all). I guess the whole book was cheesy too. It’s basically Romeo and Juliet where the tragic ending is narrowly averted. It’s a fairy tale, with a (spoiler alert) fairy tale ending. 776 words.
• On Kushiel's Dart. 2012-03-12 2:19 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In my continuing look at other modern fantasy books and authors, I landed on Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey (2002). It consistently ranks high in top ten “best fantasy” lists. From this book I’ve learned: The “inciting incident” should be early in the book. The characters need to struggle early in the book. A beautiful setting isn’t enough to make a good book without the above. (Also, just now I learned that my WP Theme doesn’t do bullets for crap.) Allow me to explain. Carey’s prose is beautiful. The world of Terre D’Ange, an alternate history version of Renaissance France, is complex, lavish, and exotic. It reminds me a lot of Dune in its … I don’t know … what’s the word? Grandiosity? Splendor? Otherworldliness? 741 words.
• On The Fifth Sorceress. 2012-03-15 1:01 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I half-heartedly read the first five chapters of The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb (2002), knowing it had received generally unfavorable reviews from fans of the epic fantasy genre. (It has an Amazon rating of like 2.25 stars, which is pretty bad for a book from a major publisher.) Five chapters might not sound like much, but the chapters in this book are miles long. Five chapters works out to 149 pages or 25% of the book. 562 words.
• Critiquing. 2012-03-18 1:06 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve signed up for a couple of online writing critique groups. I’m not ready to submit anything yet, but I thought it would be a good thing to try. It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be! If you think reading 5,000 words from someone else and writing a constructive criticism is easy, think again. The hardest part is being positive while still being helpful. I’m well aware of how fragile a writer’s ego is, so it feels like walking on egg shells. You want to say, “Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever read!” But, well, it’s usually not. There’s always something that can be improved (I know this from my own writing). But you can’t exactly say, “Wow, this is terrible. Don’t quit your day job.” Because that’s probably what they’re telling themselves. 193 words.
• My Outline Is Letting Me Down. 2012-03-20 1:03 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  For my current WIP, I spent what I considered to be a fairly lengthy amount of time writing a cohesive outline of the events that would take place in the novel. I actually did it three times because I had to toss out the first two. So imagine my surprise when I reached somewhere around the 2/3rd mark of the story, consulted the outline for what comes next, and realized, “This outline is incomplete, and all wrong.” 187 words.
• Kindle Edition Editors. 2012-03-25 1:23 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Can I have a word with you people who take published books and turn them into Kindle books? Let’s talk about the Kindle version of The Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. Seriously, what kind of crack were you people smoking when you gave this project over to a high school intern? The number of typos is astronomical. The intern apparently speed-typed the text without ever looking back at what he’d typed. Possibly on a smart phone with auto correct enabled. Or, more likely, somebody OCRed it but never bothered to look at the results. 267 words.
• March Writing Update. 2012-03-26 12:08 AM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  At the end of this weekend, I should be around 50,000 words into The Sovereign of Tel. I hope to be finished with a decent first draft by the end of April. I am not completely happy with it right now, but I’m soldiering on anyway in the hope that I can patch it up in a rewrite. My coolest achievement for the month is this nifty spreadsheet to keep track of my word totals. It does nifty gradients and everything. I set a 7,500 word goal for Monday through Friday, and originally I set a 5,000 word goal for the weekend, thinking I would obviously have more time to write. Well, perhaps counter-intuitively, it turns out, after a week of a day job and writing, I don’t seem to have the energy to write a lot on the weekend. So now I’ve shifted it back down to the regular 3,000 words. (I can’t remember where I read it, so I can’t give credit, but somewhere I read that setting a weekly word count goal might work better than a daily word count goal. So far it’s working for me.) 515 words.
• Four Is Enough?. 2012-03-28 11:46 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I thought I would next tackle The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. But I don’t seem to have the same enthusiasm I did with the first four books. After reading the prologue and one chapter of Fires, I’m getting a bad feeling. The Prologue was a mind-numbingly gigantic info-dump that went on forever. Chapter One follows Min with Siuan, Leane, and Logain. It wasn’t terrible but Min is the only one I care about in that bunch. Then Chapter Two gets us back to Rand, who, I’m sorry to admit, is one of my least favorite character in the books. (Possibly eclipsed only by Mat.) Reading Rand and Mat chapters always feels like a chore. 186 words.
• Epic Terminology. 2012-03-30 11:37 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I read another chapter of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings the other day. All right, I get that it’s an epic fantasy with an epic world filled with epic people, lands, animals, and plants. But in the first non-prologue chapter, the reader is slammed with an epic number of unfamiliar phrases and terms. I usually enjoy these kinds of things, but in this case I found myself asking “who or what or where is that?” quite a lot. So much that I started highlighting them: 279 words.

April, 2012

• Book and Chapter Word Counts. 2012-04-01 10:35 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Since I’m an aspiring writer, I am intensely curious about some of the “inside baseball” facts of the books I read. A took a random selection of Kindle books (the ones that just happened to be on my hard drive at the time) and figured out the approximate word count for each book when converted to plain text.** In the table below, the number of pages is as shown by Amazon. 776 words.
• Meta Writing. 2012-04-04 9:26 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So I thought I would start writing a bit about what I’m writing. Get it? Meta-writing! It occurred to me that somebody out there might actually be curious about the process of writing, or the process of becoming a writer, and since I happen to be in the position of “aspiring writer,” perhaps somebody else could benefit from my experiences. I know I would want to read something like that from another aspiring writer. 900 words.
• Vence hires a mercenary. 2012-04-05 9:45 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Another meta writing post. Yesterday I finally finished a scene between Vence, Ril, and Ali inside the castle. I know you don’t know who those people are, but I’ll get back to them. Chronologically, it is the most recent part of the story, but I kept stopping in the middle and going back to write other scenes, because frankly I’m not precisely sure how all these pieces are going to fit together so that Elenora can retake the castle. (This despite having written a nice outline for the whole story, which has been utterly useless after I passed the halfway point.) Anyway that was about 500 words, which I wrote in bits and pieces during the day. 465 words.
• The Fires of Heaven, A Rant On Dense Characters. 2012-04-05 10:44 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve read ten chapters of The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. In Robert Jordan’s world, ten chapters is about 205 pages. I really have a love/hate relationship with these books. Sometimes they are brilliant. Other times they make you want to throw the book (aka. Kindle device) at the wall. And it’s almost never in the middle. It’s usually one of those two extremes. 688 words.
• Poison and Pain. 2012-04-06 10:55 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In the continuing adventures of authoring The Sovereign of Tel: First I wrote about Vence, who had infiltrated the castle, starting his plan to weaken it from the inside. First he had Ali (the cook) add some poison to the food supplies going to the castle soldiers, then, after dark, he dumped a bunch of poison into the castle’s well. When I’m writing about medieval life, I worry a lot about “getting things right.” So when I put an indoor well into this castle, I wasn’t sure if actual castles had indoor wells, even though, to me, it seems like a pretty logical thing to do. If you’re building a castle to withstand sieges for months on end, you would need to have some supply of water inside the castle walls, right? So why not build it inside the keep so it would be super convenient? I couldn’t think of any reason this couldn’t be done with 14th century technology. I found a few references to castle wells in my primary research sources (Google), so I feel pretty good about that bit. 741 words.
• Rescue In Progress. 2012-04-07 11:50 AM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Only wrote 800 words yesterday, which still put me 500 words over my 5-day goal. Most of those words went into the continuation of Vence’s subversive mission to bring down the castle. After poisoning the well, his next goal is to rescue Hayden and three Metherel cousins from the prison. (Except when he gets to the prison, only the three cousins are there. Mila took Hayden upstairs the day before.) The two guards at the prison are easily dispatched, so now he’s ready to open the cell doors. Not much to say about it, really, except I thought the guards were a little too easily dispatched (but really, they deserved it, since they were not paying attention). I might go back and make it a little harder in a revision. 130 words.
• 2012 Hugo Award Nominations Announced. 2012-04-07 9:35 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  2012 Hugo Award Nominations. I have to say I’m a little surprised that A Dance With Dragons is a nominee. It was an awesome book, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t think it was quite as good as the previous ones in the series. Still, you could do a lot worse. I haven’t read any of the other book nominees. 61 words.
• Burning Grain, New Characters, and Names. 2012-04-08 1:23 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday’s writing: Vence rescued the Metherel cousins from the castle prison. Of course, as planned, he was caught in the process. Then I started a new chapter from Mila’s POV, where Lord Garret receives the news that someone has poisoned his troops, burned up his food stores, and freed his prisoners. He goes to have a chat with Vence, now a prisoner. There’s another “getting things right” issue I worry about here. Does flour burn? :) I have no idea. I’m just assuming that if you dump lamp oil on a bunch of sacks of flour and grain and then set them on fire, they would actually burn. I seem to recall stories of grain silos exploding, and I think they did something like that in Mythbusters. I’m also making the possibly bold assumption that a fire would actually burn for a while inside a closed stone room inside a castle. 488 words.
• An Unintended Day Off. 2012-04-09 11:27 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday was an epic fail of a writing day, the biggest failure in recent memory. I suppose I could lie and say I was too busy with Easter festivities, but the truth is that I didn’t do anything special and in fact had the same amount of time for writing that I always do on Sundays. I managed to write a single sentence during the day. Actually, I wrote two versions of the same sentence. (Because someone asked, that sentence was: “Mila thought the man deserved a beating for displaying such insolence in front of the sovereign.”) Then, around 9:00 pm, I buckled down to put 2,000 words on the page before bed no matter what … and got through about 100 words before giving up for the night. 215 words.
• Monday Meta (4/9/2012). 2012-04-10 9:42 PM.
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Not much to say about yesterday’s writing. I worked on another “beginning” scene, from Ordicus Metherel’s POV the night he falls into a coma, which sort of sets the whole book into motion. I am still not happy with it, so the search for a way to start this book continues. (This one fails because there is too much information delivered. It’s really frickin’ hard to introduce a new world in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the reader.) 148 words.
• On The Hunger Games. 2012-04-12 9:39 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finally get around to reading Hunger Games. (See what I did there?) I think it’s not terrible. It’s a decent action adventure yarn, but it’s not very deep, which I suppose is normal for a young adult book. It has a Dan Brown sort of flavor to it. I would have given it three stars out of five (“I liked it”) on GoodReads, except I did not like the ending, so I went back down to two stars (“it was ok”). 760 words.
• Hunger Games Dialog Tags. 2012-04-13 9:31 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  One thing I forgot to mention about The Hunger Games: The dialog tags. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re an aspiring writer. Suzanne Collins uses the “X said” model when Katniss says something, but uses the “said X” model when other people speak. Like this: “I’m leaving,” I say. “You can’t,” says John. But then, if she uses a pronoun, she goes back to the “X said” model. (Obviously, because “says he” would be dumb.) 147 words.
• Hunger Games Descriptions. 2012-04-15 12:34 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  As I’m reading the Hunger Games trilogy (I’m on the last book now), I am trying to analyze why it is so popular and addictive. The story is okay, the characters are okay, the setting is okay, but somehow it adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe it’s all marketing. One thing I noticed just now, which contributes to the fast-paced, concise text: There are hardly any descriptions of the settings. Most of it must be filled in by the reader’s imagination. As an example, from Chapter 6 of Mockingjay: 270 words.
• Like Me!. 2012-04-15 1:55 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Everyone go Like my Facebook page. Sometimes I put stuff there. UPDATE 8/8/2022: Yeah, don’t do that. 17 words.
• Subject-less Sentences. 2012-04-16 11:28 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I noticed another little trick Suzanne Collins used to pull readers along at breakneck speed in The Hunger Games. I hadn’t noticed it in the first two books, but I saw it often in Mockingjay, the last book. She often clips the subjects off of sentences, especially in scenes of intense action or confusion. For example, she might take a paragraph like this: I walk into the room. I open the curtains. Then I put some clothes in the washing machine. 199 words.
• The Sovereign of Tel Draft Completed. 2012-04-22 11:54 AM.
  • News
  • Process
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, here’s the sitch. I have finished what could loosely be defined as a “first draft” of The Sovereign of Tel. (Although, technically, it is the third draft of the March project. It’s hard to define these things. The first revision might not count since it was a totally different story and world.) Now I face the same dilemma I had after I finished a draft of Kubak Outpost. I’ve imported everything into Scrivener for Windows, which, sadly, is the best thing out there for novel management on Windows, as far as I can tell. So now I can look at the draft from a very high level for the first time. (I used WriteMonkey during the actual writing.) 259 words.
• Scrivener for Windows 1.1.0.3 Beta. 2012-04-26 9:19 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The folks at Literature and Latte released beta 1.1.0.3 for Windows. I am ignoring their friendly warnings and using it for my precious, irreplaceable novel project despite the fact that it could destroy all of my work at any moment, because I live dangerously like that. 46 words.
• On The Fires of Heaven. 2012-04-27 10:28 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I finally finished The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. I say “finally” because, compared to the three Hunger Games books, Fires of Heaven reads like an encyclopedia. Apparently this is the book where most people gave up on the series, and I can certainly see why. It’s kind redundant at this point to say “half of the text could have been removed without any effect on the plot,” but it’s never been truer. Yes, yes, it’s all very rich and imaginative detail about the world. But in writing, story is king. 445 words.
• First Person Writing. 2012-04-29 12:55 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Read using a Seinfeld impersonation: What’s the deal with first person writing? It seems like nearly every popular book these days is written in first person. And it seems to be a mandatory requirement for the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy genre. They all have the same sort of dry sarcastic narrator. It’s almost like reading a blog post, except a really long one. It’s getting to point where I groan whenever I see another first person book. 398 words.
• Slightly Belated April Update. 2012-04-30 9:28 PM.
  • News
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I was scheduled to finish the first draft of Tel on April 30. I think I did pretty well on that, in that I was indeed finished Monday night. Until I thought of a tiny thing I needed to add to resolve one plot line. Then on Tuesday morning I thought of one other tiny little thing I needed to add to explain what happened to one of the characters. 631 words.

May, 2012

• Four Dreaded Words. 2012-05-07 9:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  “What’s your book about?” It seems like a simple question, until I, as a newbie author, try to answer it. In my mind, my book is about 100,000 words of carefully interwoven plots that took months to get right, complex characters that grew and evolved on their own, colorful and exotic places and worlds, literary devices, clever uses of punctuation, good parts, bad parts, terrible parts, loathesome parts, unfinished parts, and a title. 114 words.
• May Update. 2012-05-23 11:17 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Brainstorming for my next writing project is scheduled to begin in June. I intentionally left a month of “space” between projects because I figured I would need time to recharge, but I realized I didn’t want to stop writing altogether, so, when last we left our intrepid hero, I had decided to revise Kubak in this “off” month of May. I’m relatively pleased with the revisions so far. At one time I thought I needed to break it into two novellas, but then I realized that I couldn’t query two novellas, so I went back to working on it as a single novel. That basically meant trying to shift the focus of the first half of the book a bit more toward Caudren than Fen. I moved some Caudren scenes to the beginning, and wrote some new ones. I also re-wrote some scenes that were from Fen’s POV to make them Caudren’s POV. So far so good. 309 words.

June, 2012

• Bad Character Habits in Wheel of Time. 2012-06-10 12:34 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  There are a few bad habits that the characters in The Wheel of Time have that they don’t seem to be able to stop themselves from doing even after six books, so I think it might be time for an intervention: Scrubbing their hands through their hair. Knuckling their moustaches or their backs. Gaping at anyone or anything. Smoothing their skirts. Sniffing. Obsessing over the neckline of women’s dresses. It’s sort of laughable to see these things in the seventh book. Here’s Rand scrubbing a hand through his hair again. Uh oh, Elayne’s sniffing again. And here are some women entering the scene. What kind of dresses are they wearing? Will their necklines be ‘swooping’ low or just ‘dipping’ low? Will there be an oval cutout? 126 words.
• Not A Good Start. 2012-06-12 10:15 PM.
  • Writing
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, this is not good. After a couple of weeks of brainstorming, I started writing on my new project, tentatively code-named “Curses.” I’ve written perhaps 4,000 words, starting not at the beginning, but at the first sort of exciting milestone. I did this because I wasn’t really “feeling” it so I thought I would start at a “high point.” I hate it. It’s not exciting. It’s not even interesting. The characters are dumb. The plot is moronic. It’s flat, lifeless, and dead. 170 words.
• The Nuclear Option. 2012-06-14 9:22 PM.
  • Writing
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The other day I mentioned that I hated my current WIP (work-in-progress, for you non-writer-types). That night I decided to use the nuclear option. In NaNoWriMo, they say if you’re bored with what you’re writing, you need to shake things up by adding an explosion, or killing everyone off. That’s what I’ve come to think of as the “nuclear option.” So, I blew things up. An angry god descended and pulverized everything. He killed Lyeale, the mad old woman who was going to be an antagonist. He teleported Roduk, the brash young hero, back to his homeland, hundreds of miles away. And then he had the nerve to kidnap Emmie, the young woman who was on her way back to her family in the city. As if that weren’t enough, he took the crystal that the protagonists were there to find. 192 words.
• Raking Instead of Scrubbing. 2012-06-15 12:19 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Oh! I almost forgot to mention this: Raking a hand through his hair, he made himself turn to face her. Jordan, Robert (2010-04-14). A Crown of Swords: Book Seven of ‘The Wheel of Time’ (p. 668). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. Rand raked for once! He didn’t scrub! 46 words.
• Home-grown Wheel of Time Encyclopedias. 2012-06-17 1:49 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  You know what the world needs? Wikis without spoilers. I just finished A Crown of Swords, Book 7 of the Wheel of Time. If you haven’t read these books, let me assure that you will not remember everyone and everything. It is physically impossible. You’ll see a name pop up and wonder who or what it is, and where you last saw him/her/it. In those cases, there’s only three things you can do: 1) Keep reading and hope that Robert Jordan fills you in on the details, 2) Use the handy search feature of your Kindle and hope the name is found somewhere earlier, or 3) Lookup the name on a helpful Internet Wheel of Time Wiki Page. 348 words.
• Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin). 2012-06-28 10:19 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I think this sums up everyone’s feelings on the matter. Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin) 18 words.

July, 2012

• The Blade Itself. 2012-07-09 12:16 AM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m taking a break after Book 8 of The Wheel of Time and reading some other things. I’ve started Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Thusfar it’s not growing on me, but it’s still early. It is, at least, a very different style than Robert Jordan. I know, I know, I haven’t written enough in the last few weeks. I’ll get back to it any day now! I will. Don’t look at me like that. 74 words.
• The Squared-Off Sine Wave. 2012-07-19 1:06 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I forgot to do a status update in June, so this will be a two-month report. So, yeah, I haven’t written much. :) I’ve been playing The Secret World and Rift and rebuilding my computer and watching tv and other non-writery type things. If I had a deadline coming up and an editor or an agent or something like that depending on me, they would probably be quite distressed over it. 332 words.

August, 2012

• Getting Back Into It. 2012-08-22 2:04 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been distracted a bit by moving into a new place. Which is a flimsy excuse for not writing, to be honest. Even in the middle of moving, one can easily take an hour out of one’s day to write a thousand words if one really _wants_ to. The truth is I have gotten out of the habit of writing every day and getting back into it is kind of hard, which is why 95% of potential authors don’t ever write 179 words.
• The Blade Itself, Part Two. 2012-08-24 10:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have heard for quite some time that Joe Abercrombie was more of a “gritty” fantasy writer, more in the vein of George R.R. Martin than Robert Jordan. So that’s what I expected in The Blade Itself. What I read was not gritty. I would describe it more as an action-adventure with a fantasy flavor. Actually it felt more like an urban fantasy style of writing in a medieval fantasy setting. The characters had a lot of flippancy in their dialog, and it was very fast-paced with no setting descriptions. But I’ll admit I only made it 15% through the book before I got bored. 134 words.
• Protected: Curses, Abandoned First Draft. 2012-08-24 10:13 PM.
  • Curses
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  [The following is the abandoned first draft of “Curses.” If enough people say, “Wow, this is awesome, you should finish it!” I might try to resurrect it.] Olivaer Toebem woke from another dream in which had two arms, startled by a loud commotion in the common room downstairs. He threw off the bed covers and tried to stand, fumbling for balance in the near-darkness. He staggered to the doorway of his small room to find out what had happened. Perhaps Tias had dropped a stack of books. 10,201 words.

September, 2012

• Airworld Experiment. 2012-09-02 12:03 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment. You may have already noticed it. I’m going to post the text of my novel draft “Airworld” as I write it (more-or-less). Some days I might post thousands of words, and some days I might post a couple of sentences or nothing. (Lately it has been more of the latter.) I’m also trying an email subscription plugin. The idea is that you subscribe and new posts are sent to your inbox, so you have a serialized story delivered right to your doorstep without the hassle of using a bookmark link. The emails don’t seem to be working yet, but I’m still tinkering with it. 184 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 2. 2012-09-08 11:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Liveblogging Dr. Who stream on BBC thanks to a proxy … 00:35 - Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on without rewinding a bit. 01:40 - Oh, the dog barking outside was actually on the stream … 02:30 - Wow, he doesn’t even ask anymore. 02:50 - That was a super-fast setup. 06:00 - Wait, is that a two-headed dinosaur? Oh, it’s just a pair of them hanging out together. 181 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 1. 2012-09-09 1:30 AM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I really don’t remember how the last season ended, and I haven’t yet seen the Christmas episode. (Thank’s for nothing, Netflix.) 00:00 - Who’s Hannah? Oh. 02:30 - WTF! They’re all grown up! And broken! 04:15 - Why doesn’t Matt Smith look human? His face is all … weird … 05:20 - And why is he slurring his words? I mean, more than usual for British television. 06:00 - The intro looks different somehow. The tunnel is more blue-green than blue. And, oh, that red fire is definitely new. 240 words.
• A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones. 2012-09-12 1:12 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones was a hard read for me, but I made it all the way to the end. I should warn you that there is no resolution whatsoever; it’s one of those series books that simply stops, rather than providing a self-contained story. According to the Internets, there are four more books planned, but only two have been released. 403 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 3. 2012-09-15 11:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  00:00 - Took forever to get the stream running tonight. 01:48 - Dr. Who in the Old West is just weird. 04:45 - His face still looks weird. 08:13 - I guess this is a nod to steampunk. Well, more like a jumping up and down pointing frantically to steampunk. 09:38 - I wonder if this actor is American or if he’s a British dude with a great accent. 10:33 - So far Rory and Amy are props in this episode. 195 words.
• Writin' Like A Pirate. 2012-09-19 7:39 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Arr! 'Tis fittin' that I do be a'writin' about piracy on Talk Like A Pirate Day. 16 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 4. 2012-09-23 10:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Starting Episode 4 stream as soon as I find a working proxy… Ah, it’s working now. Starting the stream in a second… wait, maybe it’s not working after all… Ah, I see. Had to add bbci.co.uk to the auto-proxy-switch list. And here we go. For the record, I am eating heated up leftover vegetables from a can while I watch. 1:09 - “The year of the slow invasion.” Woo, cool concept. 281 words.
• Not So Paranoid After All. 2012-09-28 5:44 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Yesterday I decided that I was being stupid and paranoid for embedding secret adjectives in my text, so I stopped. Today, I see in a Google Alert that someone jacked that exact same post!! On one hand, it’s really annoying and disappointing to see that my Internet fears were completely justified. On the other hand, it’s like, Yes! People are stealing from me! Hello, free exposure! Anyway if you find me on Google, make sure you’re actually clicking on a link from everettrenshaw.com. 83 words.
• Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 5. 2012-09-30 10:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Getting spaghetti made and getting setup to watch Episode 5, “The Angels Take Manhattan.” I’m not sure I really want to watch this one. It’s the “half-season finale” (whoever came up with such a ridiculous concept?) and … it’s the last episode with Amy and Rory. It says, “The Doctor’s heart-breaking farewell to Amy and Rory” on the site. This does not bode well. Okay, food ready, now playing! 2:25 - Neat imagery… 215 words.

October, 2012

• Doctor Who Redux. 2012-10-01 6:38 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Back on the subject of Doctor Who for a moment. Tor.com posts “reviews” of each episode, which I find interesting to compare to my own reactions. In their review of The Angels Take Manhattan, the author had a lot to say about the “inaccuracies” in the episode regarding the Angels and how they affected their immersion. Sure, it makes no sense if you think about it. But I didn’t really notice. This is Doctor Who. Inconsistencies are not unusual. If you haven’t figured out that you have to suspend your disbelief by the seventh series, something is seriously wrong with you. Still, the author ultimately praised the episode. 373 words.
• Back!. 2012-10-01 9:42 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Sorry, I forgot to update my credit card info so the page was down for a bit. :) 18 words.
• Upcoming Schedule. 2012-10-02 5:22 PM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Looking at my schedule, which is really a virtual schedule, in that there is nothing to physically look at, I see that October has just begun, and I’m currently a little over 15k into Airworld, and writing at what I estimate to be a slothful rate of 500 words a day. NaNoWriMo begins on November 1 and runs through November 30. Naobi still has to have an adventure in Sarin Morn, some kind of discovery or adventure in Leavon, and, assuming nothing else happens, she still needs to deal with the Council. Which does not even consider events going on back in Motiva. Basically what I’m saying is that there is very little chance I’m going to be done with Airworld by the end of October, unless I miraculously begin writing closer to 2000 words a day. 162 words.
• Prologue to NaNoWriMo. 2012-10-04 11:33 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just totally cheated and wrote the first paragraph of my NaNoWriMo novel. I couldn’t take the chance that I would forget it before November 1st! First there were sounds. Indistinct, without description. From far away. Then there were shapes, shadows on shadow, fluid. But something familiar about the shapes. Some took on forms that were recognizable. A tree. A house. A home? My home? A face, lips moving, speaking words just out of reach. Mother? Sister? All so strange, so far away. Who am I? What is that feeling? Coldness in the air, clutching his skin, shivering his bones. I am dreaming. I am a he. I have a name, and I am waking. Why should that seem so strange? 150 words.
• The Blade Itself, Part 3. 2012-10-09 7:15 PM.
  • Writing
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m sure you’ve been wondering what I’m reading. After The Cavern of Black Ice I wanted to read something a little less heavy, so I went back to Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Previously I wrote such scintillating endorsements as “it’s not growing on me” and “I got bored.” Well, the book *did* eventually grow on me. In the second half, I was glad to be reading it. The author did some very interesting things with the narrative voice. Normally, books tend to have a single voice throughout, but Abercrombie was able to change the narrative voice depending on the POV character. For example, the chapters from The Dogman used very down-home, earthy style, like you might hear from a southerner. Whereas the chapters from Jezel, a cultured city-dweller, used more grammatically-correct language. Only the chapters from Glokta had self-dialog, the italicized talking-to-oneself kind of text. I found those things interesting, at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective. 355 words.
• That or Which: The Bane of My Existence. 2012-10-10 12:10 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Is it: She thought it must be stuck, a problem that was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Or: She thought it must be stuck, a problem which was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Grammar Girl is not helping me. I think it is “that” instead of “which.” UPDATE: Looking at this post on 7/25/2013, I now think it should be “which” instead of “that.” 66 words.
• Second Thoughts About My Story Seed. 2012-10-13 12:24 AM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  NaNoWriMo is flying closer with every second, and I’m terribly unprepared. Last year, I spent months worldbuilding beforehand (and then used almost none of it). This year, I have a story seed that’s been in my head for quite some time, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about it. Mainly because this “seed” is not much of a story. It’s just a collection of ill-defined characters and the barest thread of an excuse for them to come together. It doesn’t feel “ready.” 281 words.
• Lute of the Sparrow Available Again. 2012-10-13 7:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have re-published my first novel Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon and CreateSpace. I disabled it a while back because … well, I don’t actually remember why. Possibly because I thought it might hurt my “career” as an author (such as it is). Perhaps I thought that if I ever did submit that novel to a publisher, they might Google it, find it on Amazon, see that only four people have read it, and drop my manuscript in the trash. However the odds of me submitting that manuscript to a publisher without significant alterations is pretty slim. 169 words.
• Going Rebel for NaNoWriMo. 2012-10-22 7:12 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Drumroll, please! I have decided to go Rebel for NaNoWriMo this year and continue my current WiP, instead of starting a new one. Possibly as many as 2 people could like this news. I finally decided to drop my previous story idea (which I had sort of dubbed Mixtime - for mixing up people from different times.. get it?). I just couldn’t think of a goal for these disparate characters from different times to work toward once they were together. Every plot idea I wrote down sounded ridiculous, so I would have been writing 50k of pointless nonsense. 128 words.
• What the heck are these things called?. 2012-10-22 11:31 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Consider this contemporary engraving of a woman by Wenceslaus Hollar, from around the mid-1700s: From here, btw. Sadly, I am a complete moron when it comes to clothing. If I look at that picture, I see a woman wearing an old-timey dress thingy, with a hat thingy on her head. But for some reason, that description wouldn’t go over very well in a published work of fiction. So, what the heck are these things called? 219 words.
• NaNoWriMo-izing Imminent. 2012-10-31 7:13 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  You may notice some changes in Airworld’s writing style now that NaNoWriMo is starting up. Until now, I have made some small efforts to write grammatically correct sentences, avoid too much repetition within a paragraph, find the right words to describe things, put events in the right sequence, etc. With the start of NaNoWriMo, all of that is going out the window. I will need to roughly double my daily output, so I will have to go into a more stream-of-consciousness sort of a writing mode and discard all filters. I will at least try to keep the story in order, although I can’t guarantee I won’t put in a “flashback” chapter to events in Rorco, if I find myself stuck. And I will try to avoid writing parts that have nothing to do with anything, like a unicorn charging in from nowhere and stabbing people, or a squad of WWII bombers flying overhead, or a hole dropping the characters into an alternate universe. 164 words.

November, 2012

• Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 1. 2012-11-04 11:08 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay so I’m a little bit ahead in writing today, so I thought I would finally sit down and watch the first episode of Walking Dead Season 2 on Netflix. I thought the first season was “okay” but I didn’t see where it deserved all the nerd praise it got. I guess it’s a generational thing. Zombies are “cool” with the kids and whatnot. But since Walking Dead is now in it’s third season and everyone is still raving about it, I thought I should give it another chance. 651 words.
• It's all fun and games until someone gets their throat cut. 2012-11-14 12:04 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I started out writing Airworld as a sort of light-hearted adventure. Despite a somewhat serious premise (the home town is dying!), I didn’t intend for anyone to get into any real trouble. But somewhere along the way, things got pretty serious. People are getting their throats cut. People are getting their heads smashed on stone walls. People are getting framed and tortured. People are coming face-to-face with their worst nightmares, and doubting their own convictions, and having to make life-altering decisions. 99 words.
• The Missing Word. 2012-11-18 1:32 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I am sure you have all seen this photo by now. https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/269785942326398976/photo/1 I am SO glad that this picture came to light, so I can ask this vitally important question: WHAT IS THIS EXPRESSION CALLED?? Preferably in a past tense verb form. The president _____ ed for the photo. Here is the context in which I would like to use this word. 277 words.
• When The Pitch is Better Than The Book. 2012-11-20 1:30 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In a fit of inspiration, I wrote out a “pitch” for Kubak Outpost, in case I wanted to write a query letter for it. This is what I wrote: Fen, a man who has lost his love and his livelihood, enlists in the army to fight in the war against magic-wielding kaanfar warriors encroaching on the border. Along the way, he meets The Demon Hunter, who has to drink the blood of his victims to power his own form of magic. Together they must find a way to stop the kaanfar from summoning a powerful ancient foe before the king’s defenses are overwhelmed. 133 words.
• Comments…. 2012-11-22 12:49 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Hrm.. something wonky is happening with comments. I am investigating. UPDATE: Okay it’s working again. It was not displaying any comments, even though they were there in the system. The Facebook plugin was the culprit, so I have disabled it. 40 words.
• The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 4. 2012-11-23 12:20 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A while back I was making fun of the first episode of Walking Dead, Season 2. I still think that episode kind of sucked. But I diligently carried on and the show got much better. I thought the pacing was really slow, though, and then everything happened all at once in the season finale. So of course I had to watch Season 3. But that’s the current season, so it isn’t on Netflix. And I don’t have cable or even a television (I’m watching on an iPad), so I did something I’ve never done before: I bought Season 3 on Amazon Prime. 125 words.
• Analysis of a Blank Page. 2012-11-23 2:12 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo 2012
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So this is what I’m staring at today. 8 words.
• Rachel Aaron Talked To Me!. 2012-11-28 1:19 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Squee! A real live fantasy author answered my question! (This was actually the second one she answered - the first one was more about my own personal insecurities though.) This is what I asked: Hi! Me again. Early in this thread you said: “Fantasy has changed a LOT as a genre over the past few years, and if you’re not reading modern books, you might be surprised.” I didn’t see where you had already done this, and if you did, feel free to ignore this, but I wonder if you could expand on that a little (or a lot, that’s fine too :). In your view, what’s changed about the genre? I am curious to hear your take on it. Thank you! 1,050 words.

December, 2012

• This Is First Publication? Really?. 2012-12-01 2:21 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Soooo um, ahem. I may have screwed myself a little bit by posting the Airworld story as I go. There’s this concept of “First Publication Rights” which is apparently kind of a big deal to publishers. For some very strange reason, many of them are only interested in publishing things that have never been published before, and some of them might think that posting on the Interwebs is publishing. Oops! 226 words.
• How To Keep Reading Airworld. 2012-12-02 11:50 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay, if you want to continue to be an Alpha Reader, here’s what you need to do. Click on the link on the right that says “Register,” under Meta. (If you’re reading on a tablet or mobile device, it might be way at the bottom of the page.) Pick a username and an email. Don’t use a fake email because it will send a password there. Copy the password in the email and click on the link below it. Enter your new username and paste the password into the box below. That will take you to your profile page, where you may want to change your password into something that you can actually remember. (It’s near the bottom of the page.) It would probably be best not to put anything secret in your profile, since this is WordPress and everybody likes to hack WordPress. 204 words.
• Airworld Agenda. 2012-12-04 12:05 AM.
  • Writing
  • News
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  After two whole days without writing anything (where it felt like I had about 5 hours of spare time each day), I’m back on it! However, I’m going to take a short break from Naobi and Cheton and work on some scenes from Motiva that have been in the back of my mind for a while, which will hopefully become relevant toward the end of the story. I’m also going to wait a few days before I start posting again. Thanks! 81 words.
• Adult Fantasy–Worst Genre Name Ever. 2012-12-07 1:39 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I stumbled on this post from Rachel Aaron entitled “We need a new name…” which made me laugh. Me, “I’m a fantasy author!” (always so cool to say) Lady, “Oh wow! So like Harry Potter?!” Me, “No, Harry Potter’s YA, I write adult fantasy.” Lady, “………….” Me, “NO! Not THAT kind of adult fantasy!” This is probably one of the main reasons I’m using the name Everett Renshaw. Because it is unbelievably embarrassing to say to real people in real life that I write in a genre that the industry calls “adult fantasy.” I don’t even like telling people that I read in this genre. It would be marginally better to call it “epic fantasy” or “urban fantasy” but unfortunately I’m not writing those. Pretty much anything with the word “fantasy” in it makes me cringe and want to resign myself to a life of cubicles. 225 words.
• Outlining The Rest of Airworld. 2012-12-13 2:34 AM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve not forgotten about Airworld. I’m outlining the remainder of the story. I find that I can only be a pantser up to a certain point (usually that point is about now, where the story needs to start moving toward a resolution), at which time I really have to sit down and figure out how to resolve things without using magical faery dust. In this case it’s harder than I might have expected, because Airworld became rather complex, and there are many threads flying about loose right now. I suppose this is why writers always advise you to know your ending before you start. It’s good advice, but extremely difficult for me. Unless you count something like, “Then they figured everything out. The end.” 399 words.

January, 2013

• Sanderson Takes Over. 2013-01-01 12:53 AM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been trying to get through the Wheel of Time books before A Memory of Light comes out on January 8, and since I am now 20% finished with The Towers of Midnight, I think I can safely say that I am going to make it. Light! What a reading frenzy. I was keenly interested to see what Brandon Sanderson would do with the series, and so far I’m quite pleased. I can definitely see the change in writing style (mainly in shorter sections and paragraphs and sentences), but I expected that. What I didn’t expect was the emotional impact that Sanderson brought to the series. Sanderson did something that Jordan never managed: He made me actually care about Rand for the first time since the first book. Rand’s been such an insufferable, stubbornly indecipherable butthead of a hero for so long that I frankly hoped the Dark One would win the Last Battle. 399 words.
• What Would a Professional Do. 2013-01-06 12:20 AM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So yeah, I’m still stuck on Airworld. The main obstacle I think is my complete lack of confidence in the outline I have sketched out for the rest of the book. It sounds like it will be terrible. Nothing makes sense, nobody is anywhere for a reason, entire plotlines are pointless and stupid. And what’s worse, according to my 3-books-a-year schedule, I should be starting a new book in February. That’s less than a month away, if you’re somehow unable to look at a calendar. 456 words.
• Finished A Memory of Light. 2013-01-15 8:22 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The Third Age is finally over. I powered through books 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 all in a row, which has left me exhausted, yet exalted. Say what you want about it, but you can’t deny that The Wheel of Time is EPIC. I quipped on Facebook that they should retire the category of “epic fantasy” after this because nobody else could possibly write anything as epic. I’m trying to think of anything I’ve read that had a similar scope. Lord of the Rings, obviously, but that was only three tiny, tiny books. The only other books I can think of (that I’ve read) that came close in terms of sheer immersion were Stephen R. Donaldson’s _The Chronicles of Thomas _Covenant and possibly The Sword of Shannara, which I remember as incredibly epic in scope, even though it was only one book, and I read it when I was a teenager. 291 words.
• Dissecting What Went Wrong. 2013-01-16 1:35 AM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  In the continuing saga of what to do with Airworld, I believe I have figured out why I don’t particularly want to continue it. Somewhere along the way, the story stopped being fun to write. It seems pretty obvious in retrospect. If it was fun to write, obviously I’d still be writing it. But what happened? This exact thing was something that Rachel Aaron addressed in her NaNoWriMo question-and-answer thread again and again. She advised not to continue writing something that wasn’t fun. She also advised that you should figure out why it isn’t fun to write, because it probably indicates a problem that needs to be fixed. 296 words.

March, 2013

• Update on the Lack of Writing. 2013-03-02 9:24 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Since it’s now March I should probably write an update. I am still struggling with writing, and failing miserably. This is the result of many factors which are incredibly easy to identify, but not very easy to resolve. The first is NaNoWriMo. I’m wondering if I should skip it in the future, because the blitz of writing during that one month has always been followed by a period of severe burn-out which is hard to recover from. As it is now three months later, that’s probably the least of my problems. 402 words.

April, 2013

• A Writing Uniform?. 2013-04-06 3:30 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The most recent episode of Writing Excuses introduced me to the concept of a “writer’s uniform.” I think they were referring to the clothing an author wears while conducting writer business, but I am thinking about it in terms of clothing to wear while writing. In general, I don’t particularly like dressing up. But I have to admit that the act of putting on business casual attire does make me “feel” more like a professional in the ol’ day job. So I’m wondering if there is an outfit I could wear that would make me “feel” more like writing. 246 words.

May, 2013

• Game of Thrones Season 3. 2013-05-23 6:42 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Okay I’m going to say it. Or write it. Whatever. Game of Thrones is getting a bit dull. In the books, it’s fine to have twenty different storylines, because it’s an epic fantasy after all and you get to stay with the characters for at least a chapter before moving on, and they are usually long chapters. In the television series, you get to spend roughly thirty seconds on each story in each episode, so it’s nearly impossible to form any kind of attachment with what’s going on. We see so little of Daenerys that I really don’t care what she’s doing over there in the desert anymore. Every time we see her, all she’s doing is whining about slaves. I almost wish they would devote each episode to one specific character’s story instead of trying to weave them all together. 199 words.

June, 2013

• A Minor Variation. 2013-06-03 6:18 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  With apologies to Billy Joel. I had a minor revelation for my Airworld story last night. It occurred to me that things would work out much better if the location of the Council of Life is known when we start out. For some reason I had set it in stone that Naobi was leaving Motiva to search for the Council of Life. Now she is leaving to visit the Council of Life. With that minor variation, some other things fall into place nicely. Mainly, it removes “finding the Council of Life” as a condition for ending the story. I was having major problems with the ending because it wasn’t symmetrical with the beginning. 113 words.
• Ready Player One – Start!. 2013-06-18 4:26 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m finally listening to the audiobook of the much-talked-about Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Internet super-celebrity Wil Wheaton. Though I’m only a handful of chapters into it, this book is clearly an 80s geek subculture nerdgasm from start to finish. It’s fascinating, hilarious, and depressing - despressing because of how many of the obscure references I understand (like, roughly, all of them). Now I’m going to take the fanboy hat off and put on the author hat. This book has a lot of exposition. I mean a lot of it. There are what I assume are pages and pages and pages of telling, not showing. I think there was one whole chapter telling Halliday’s life story. He’s basically John Carmack on steroids, which is neat if you know anything about computer gaming history, but it really didn’t do much to serve the story right then. 505 words.

July, 2013

• Latest Audibooks I've Listened To. 2013-07-01 3:13 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve been on an audiobook kick lately. I realize it’s “cheating” to listen to a book instead of read it, but it’s just so darn convenient. You can actually accomplish other things simultaneously while listening to a book (like driving, washing dishes, playing games, paying bills, etc.), whereas if you read a book, it’s pretty much all you can do. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton. Great nostalgia book, although I could have lived without the cliche “real world is better than the virtual world” moral. 411 words.
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. 2013-07-10 1:12 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I started listening to steampunk audiobook Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, which I have heard from multiple sources is a great series, and the premise intrigued me as it is an alternate history of World War I. Also, later books in the series won awards and stuff. Unfortunately, nobody told me that this was a young adult series, where the two protagonists are 16-ish. In fact, I would argue that this is not just young adult, but middle grade, because the kids act like middle grade kids and are usually accompanied by adult guides. They aren’t “rebeling” like most of the kids in young adult books. 444 words.
• Ender's Game. 2013-07-22 6:49 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just finished the audiobook for Ender’s Game, which I have never read before. I’ve missed quite a few science fiction classics over the years, so I’m trying to make up for it with my Audible credits. The audiobook, by the way, was very well read. I don’t know what I would have thought if I’d read this book when I was younger, but now, I found it to be a tragically depressing story. Basically it’s about the military using a child to commit genocide on an alien race. 420 words.
• Deconstructing The Hunger Games. 2013-07-24 12:45 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  (This unpublished gem has been sitting in my drafts since April 16, 2012.) Stolen image of The Hunger Games’s book cover from Amazon.com. Okay, I have figured out the magical formula for making a hit Young Adult book. It’s really quite easy. The story elements in The Hunger Games: A smart and tough, but emotionally vulnerable hero. 283 words.
• I Think It's Dead. 2013-07-26 2:34 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Iconic image of a funeral pyre.. you know the movie, right? I think it’s dead. Airworld, that is. It’s been almost a year since Naobi strode from her Orderhouse without looking back, determined to move forward. It was an opening sentence that was carefully crafted to show that the character had autonomy right from the very beginning, taking action instead of reacting, physically moving through space. All the things that we aspiring writers are told will make readers more likely to keep reading. 846 words.
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. 2013-07-31 7:31 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Someone at work recommended Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, so I got it from Audible with one of my credits. This same person also recommended Hunger Games, so my expectations were not very high. But as it turns out, Gone Girl is a pretty good psychological thriller/mystery. Overall the book makes some pretty strong feminist statements, as well as having some brutal social commentary about the state of the media and judicial system. It had a pretty big twist about halfway through, which I did not see coming at all, so congratulations to the author for completely fooling me. I can’t elaborate without spoiling it, so if you haven’t read it, you might want to skip the rest of this. 280 words.

August, 2013

• The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. 2013-08-02 2:17 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I started reading The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold … and this time, I actually *mean* reading, not listening to the audiobook. (There are people who insist that listening to an audiobook is the same as reading, but IMO they are very different media consumption experiences.) I picked it up because I saw that it was the next book in The Sword and Laser book club, so on impulse I got it. Not because I wanted to participate in The Sword and Laser, but because I’d wanted to read a Bujold book anyway because her name appears somewhat frequently on the Hugo award winner list. 276 words.
• He Had His Liberty. 2013-08-03 4:16 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  What does “he had his liberty” mean? Say, in the early 17th century? I came across it reading Edward Wingfield’s account of his removal from the first Council in Jamestown in 1607, in the book The Jamestown Adventure. (Edward Wingfield could be considered the first elected governor of Virginia. Or the first elected president of North America. Or something along those lines.) 266 words.
• Jamestown is a Fertile Source of Story. 2013-08-05 4:53 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  For the last few days I’ve been researching the beginning of the Jamestown colony, because I’ve been tossing around the idea of basing a story around similar events. (I know, everyone else has done it — Disney, James Cameron — so why not me? It’s a freakin’ timeless story after all, even if you totally leave out the whole John Smith/Pocahontas angle.) Actually “researching” is probably not the right word. “Voraciously obsessed with reading about” is probably more accurate. I can understand why it’s been a popular story for all these years. It’s the perfect storm of human drama, all rolled into a 5-10 year period. 372 words.
• Page of Scribbling Technique. 2013-08-05 11:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Just for posterity, here is a page of scribbling I did trying to block out what I thought would be the final 10,000 words or so of Airworld. What ended up happening is that I raised more questions than I answered, and all the answers started branching off into all these other fairly massive sub-plots. You may also notice there is a whole new, vitally important character in there that was introduced very late in the story. (Just in case I ever do finish the story, I blurred out some spoilers.) 106 words.
• The Curse of Chalion, Part 2. 2013-08-19 6:33 PM.
  • Books
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  This book really grew on me. I almost stopped reading it at about 20%, but pressed onward, and I’m glad I did, because I feel like I learned something important about writing from this book. When I got to about 35% I was hooked, and when I got to about 40% I was riveted. I won’t spoil it but if you’ve read the book you probably know the events that caused the riveting. The book has a lot of religious themes after the 40% mark which are really interesting. 529 words.

September, 2013

• Revolution. 2013-09-01 12:09 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Being super drained after moving, I wanted something that I could sit and stare at for hours on end without thinking, so I started binge-watching this TV show that Netflix put into their Top 10 Shows We Know You Will Like. It’s called Revolution. After five minutes, I thought, “Oh God, seriously? Another post-apocalyptic, civilization-has-collapsed show? Like Jericho? Falling Skies? Under the Dome (kind of)? Um… all those other shows I can’t think of at this moment? And J.J. Abrams is involved? Hasn’t he done enough damage with Lost and Fringe?” I was thoroughly prepared to turn it off after five minutes and move on to something else, because I knew without a doubt it was going to suck, and it would be filled with stupid science and clichés put in by clueless TV executives. 368 words.
• Science Problems with Revolution. 2013-09-02 2:27 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Don’t get me wrong, I like the show. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction I guess. And it has a lot of “heart.” But sometimes television writers are just really lazy about basic science. It’s why this country is like last place in math and science, I guess. 1. Pilot When electricity goes off, screens don’t blink and distort. They instantly go black. I’ve been through power outages. I know these things. Cars wouldn’t stop dead if the electrical system died … at worst I think they’d drift to a stop. But I feel like the engines wouldn’t just shut off, right? I mean they would keep running until they ran out of gas, then you wouldn’t be able to start them again. Anyway they certainly wouldn’t stop in perfect columns on a highway. Planes definitely wouldn’t fall from the sky. They can glide. You know, aerodynamics? Come on. It’s not Y2K for God’s sake. So all of civilization collapsed and rebuilt itself in the 15 years since The Blackout. Seems like a short time. The voiceover said, “Not even car engines or jet turbines. Hell even batteries.” Okay that kind of implies that internal combustion doesn’t work any more? Is that what they’re trying to say? Does that mean all chemical reactions don’t work? Would a match not strike? Lighters not light? How are they building fires? Or are they saying the current just doesn’t flow out of the battery any more? “Physics went insane.” This is the exact moment when the show jumped the shark. I thought to myself, “This show totally sucks and should not be watched.” But I was way too tired to stop it. While the kid eats the last melting ice cream: “I want you to really remember what it tastes like.” People made ice cream before electricity, ya know. Gus, from Breaking Bad! The show started looking up. What is up with these crazy-looking swords/machettes with hilts that look like brass knuckles? They look terribly uncomfortable and impractical. Ugh, crossbow bolts don’t throw people backwards like that. I’ve never seen anyone shot by a crossbow bolt, but I’m very sure of that. Even if physics did go insane. Here’s the inciting incident of the Hero’s Journey, where our hero is thrown from her normal world and forced to go on a quest. Gus has amazing facial expressions. He has another name in this show but I can’t remember it at the moment. Ow, getting hit in the face with a pipe probably hurts. What the hell kind of poison makes people spit up blood within seconds? Shards of glass? You’d think they would notice that. I can’t help wondering how people survived asthma attacks before there was medicine for it. Uncle Miles reminds me of a badass version of MacGyver. This woman with the shotgun looks like Diana Ross to me. Muskets?? Well at least some kind of chemical reactions still work. It sort of implies that they can still make musket balls easily but manufacturing jacketed bullets is beyond them. I assumed that car engines didn’t work because spark plugs didn’t work. (But then, spark plugs are only used to start an engine.) Oh my. A shocking revalation. Very unusual for a J.J. Abrams production. Oh my. Another shocking revalation! 2. Chained Heat “Oh there’s a sale on heroin.” Ha. Why does everyone have freshly-washed hair except the ex-Google millionaire?? And why is he wearing those gigantic black-rimmed glasses?? Total geek discrimination!! I thought that accent was Australian. It never occurred to me that it was supposed to be British. Why would they sleep next to a swamp? They probably would have gotten malaria. And why did they wake up at what looked like noon? Why would they use human prisoners to pull a helicopter when they could use horses or mules or a hundred other draft animals which would be far more effective? I think this exact same sniper guy with dark aviator shades has manned every prison tower in every movie ever. When she typed “Randall is here” I immediately thought of Stephen King’s The Stand. Another shocking revelation! 3. No Quarter The opening sequence of this show is pretty lame. “We’re hoping someone will come and light the way.” Really? Stu Redman! Frannie! Another reference to Stephen King’s The Stand. It’s easier to “scavenge antiques” (muskets) than to find “smokeless powder, copper jacket” bullets. We have more muskets than moden firearms laying around? Sniper rifles are more rare than muskets? Okay, sure. That makes perfect sense. Okay. Let’s talk. Nobody working for Google is going to know what an 8-bit register looks like. An 8-bit register would be a total antique to anyone working at Google today. Only somebody that’s like 50 years old or more (today, not counting the 15 years after the blackout) would have even a chance to be able to pick up an 8-bit register chip and recognize it. And we all know that Google doesn’t hire people more than like 22 years old. And also, an 8-bit register is going to look like a huge microchip, not a little circuit board. AND! Why build a whole cabinet-sized computer from spare 8-bit registers when you could just pick up a freakin’ Rasberry Pi which is a whole freakin’ computer in a package the size of a pack of gum? I am not a trained sniper, but I have a feeling that shooting people in the sternum is not the best way to kill someone in a single shot. Danny’s disgruntled guard is the best actor in this episode. Why don’t people in television know how to tie people up? I mean, loose-hanging rope around the chest and upper arms is probably not going to work very well. 4. The Plague Dogs These people seem to be able to walk a long way in a short time. So these dogs are running away from fresh food to chase after people? If electricity doesn’t work, why is there still lightning?? This kid is apparently the only tornado-sniffing expert in the post-apocalptic world. These people sure do recover from injuries fast. The sailor with the big funny ears said: There are “no more steam boats.” But wait … in the very next episode we’re going to see a steam train. He also said all the ships were “destroyed in the wars.” What wars?? What a minute. These two groups are only a day apart on foot. But one of them is in the middle of a tornado, and the other one is in bright sunshine? Come on Danny. Did you even watch Breaking Bad? Gus cannot be trusted! Couldn’t she have just, like, tilted her head to the side? Instead of trying to rock the chair back and forth? I’m not a contortionist, but I can move my head at least a foot sideways. Aw dammit. Stupid emotional scenes. I’m trying to make fun of this show! There can’t be touching moments in it. 5. Soul Train Gus holds his fists funny when he fights. Awwww, sad puppy dog eyes. Okay, so apparently steam engines still work. Because there’s a steam engine train. So why haven’t we seen a lot of steam engine technology before now? Why didn’t the major governments immediately revert to steam engine technology? What the hell kind of name is “Bass”? Not like the guitar, but like the fish? Where did Monroe get that “M” pin that he wears on his collar? So they can make “M” pins but not bullets? “Fuses are unreliable.” Again, implying that chemical reactions are messed up? And yet, somehow throwing logs into a fire is a sure-fire way to set off a bomb. Not even a fifth-grade science teacher for a consultant on this show, is there? And how/why did they put “M” signs all over the buildings? Finally, sad puppy dog eyes girl grows a spine. Oh snap! Another shocking revelation! Ah ha! Twelve of them! Just like the Apostles. And the lost colonies of Battlestar Galactica. 6. Sex and Drugs Horse and carriage with rubber tires! Not a flaw in the show, I just thought it was funny-looking. Actually one of the first things that actually makes logical sense. Of course they’d put rubber tires on a carriage. What, are they going to build wooden wheels? Oh, I see they are doing the Lost strategy of giving each character a backstory in each successive episode. Okay, I see, so only regular cars stopped dead at the time of the blackout. But giant tractor trailers that need to serve a plot purpose keep rolling along like a ton of bricks. Oh, he pulled a Lando! “Is she Latin?” Um, shouldn’t that have been “Latina?” Hrm, well, sad puppy dog eyes girl is going a little too far into sociopathic territory. I think I can see where this is going… Come on dude. Someone smart enough to work at Google can learn to hunt. Aw dude. You’re better than this! Nooooooo! Not sure what to make of that. Was it a brilliant plan or just dumb luck? I’m thinking the latter, which is unfortunate. 7. The Children’s Crusade The Lord of the Flies episode, apparently. They’re like the A-Team. I think that’s the kid from Under The Dome. Well, at least The Militia supports gender equality! I’m not sure why they went to the trouble to make themselves uniforms. They must have a pretty good tailoring industry going on at least. I know this is totally stupid but I really wish it was fashionable to wear a sword. :) I guess it would be impractical to get into a car, though. Oh wow that’s inconvenient. But it’s a very convenient distraction. Wow, go Google dude! See, I told you smart people can become violent sociopathic killers! A weapon that inhibits electricity would be more dangerous than any kind of bomb. Just sayin'. That’s Randall! And he was in Stephen King’s Storm of the Century! It all comes back to Stephen King with this show. 8. Ties That Bind Hey wait, a few episodes ago they said fuses were unreliable… Ohhhh, she’s coming back. Don’t be so sad. Oh snap! A shocking revelation! Damn people walk fast in this show. Ugh dude take that rifle with you! On second thought, probably a good idea to leave the rifle if you’re going to jump into a raging river. I swear I’ve seen Charlie in another show but according to IMDB I haven’t. Aw man. Uber bad guys! 9. Kashmir The one with that cool Led Zepplin song, right? Hrm, they’re playing the wrong Led Zepplin song. “This pendant powers up anything within its range.” “It’s like a wireless battery.” No, it’s nothing like a wireless battery! It’s like a wireless MAGICAL AMULET THAT DEFIES THE LAWS OF NATURE AND COMMON SENSE. “It has very limited range; only 9 or 10 feet.” Okay so she moves away from the CD player and it stops. Then she moves it back in range, and the CD player starts again … at the same place in the song. I realize CD players are rare now and maybe kids aren’t as familiar with them, but surely everyone knows that when you cut the power to a CD player, it doesn’t just resume where you left off! Even if it had been an iPhone playing an MP3, it wouldn’t have resumed at the same place. If it had been a record player it might have worked, with the appropriate spin-up warbling. Or a cassette tape player. Or an 8-track tape player. I’m not even going to comment on the whole “pendant” concept. I mean. It’s just. I can’t even. Her explanation of the pendant “powering up anything within its range” is obviously wrong anyway. Obviously, something is actively inhibiting electricity over the whole world, because electricity is a natural phenomenon. I can only assume that the uber bad guys from the previous episode are inhibiting the world’s electricity with orbiting satellites of some kind. So these little pendants must be inhibiting the inhibitors somehow. Which means … oh man, I don’t even want to go down that rabbit hole of what that means. Okay I will. I guess they’re trying to say that radio waves or microwaves or something is inhibiting electricity, and the pendants put out waves which cancel the other waves. That makes perfect sense, right? TO A SCIENTIFICLY ILLITERATE PERSON. And/or the average American school graduate. Oh snap, I just burned the American school system. Not enough oxygen in the tunnels. Um. I’m not sure about that. I am not very well-versed on oxygen depravation, but I feel like if they were so low on oxygen that the torches weren’t burning and they were hallucinating, that they would not be physically able to walk around. Also, I mean, they might want to consider putting out some of the torches if they’re burning up the oxygen. Also, the tunnel like just collapsed, and it’s a pretty big space, so I feel like the oxygen wouldn’t run out that fast. Explosions in that enclosed space would probably make them all deaf. :) Oh wow, they finally played the cool Led Zepplin song! 10. Nobody’s Fault But Mine Another Led Zepplin reference in the episode title. I just realized that Episode 3 “No Quarter” was also a Led Zepplin song. Again using the fuses that are supposed to be unreliable… So the Google guy can’t get matches to work, but somehow flint works? That seems pretty random. Dual-wielding swords looks badass and all, but it’s not very practical. Also, everyone knows that real sword fights only last like 2 seconds, right? Erol Flynn-like duels never actually happened. Even fencing duels are rather fast. Have you seen the pros? 11. The Stand Stephen King reference in the episode title. I can’t help but wonder why everyone’s pendant works all the time except the one that Aaron carried around which only turned itself on sporadically at the most inopportune times. “Audio cannon.” I’ve heard of audio weapons before but I seriously doubt you could put one in a handheld weapon the size of a pistol that would do anything more than annoy people. Aw dammit. Another touching moment. Feels like this episode is the end of a story arc. Like they only expected to make 11 episodes. Randall Flynn … obviously meant to be a variation of Randall Flagg! (A Stephen King reference.) Dubya tee eff is that?!? 2,420 words.
• Star Trek: Into Darkness. 2013-09-14 8:41 PM.
  • Movies
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Now and then I listen to a podcast called The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, which is basically about debunking popular myths like UFOs and ghosts and homeopathy with scientific skepticism. Sometimes they also review the science in science fiction movies, and a while back they looked at Star Trek: Into Darkness. I skipped it because I hadn’t seen it yet, and I’ve been waiting for Amazon Prime to let me rent it ever since. This week I finally got around to watching it. 742 words.
• Breaking Bad Is Over. 2013-09-30 5:17 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Breaking Bad is over now. One of the best shows of all time ended after five years. And I think it was time. It’s extremely rare to see a really good show stay good after five seasons. After that, you just play along because you have fond memories of the first few years, on the off chance that a good episode comes along and brings back the magic. Honestly, most shows peak in two or three years. 447 words.

October, 2013

• One Month Until NaNoWriMo. 2013-10-01 10:21 PM.
  • Writing
  • Tel
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  With NaNoWriMo coming up in a month, I’m not sure what to work on. There’s a distinct possibility that I might free-write 50k words. That would probably be good for me. It will be an exercise in keeping-the-writing-fun and not-worrying-if-it-doesn’t-make-sense. First I need to come up with a character that I like, because I feel like that’s the main thing that keeps me writing. I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting started on any other writing projects, so I’ve been spending most of my writing time revising last year’s Sovereign of Tel. I figure working on revisions has got to be better than doing nothing at all, right? 175 words.
• The Walking Dead Season 4 Has Begun. 2013-10-17 3:26 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Since Breaking Bad is gone, I guess The Walking Dead moves up to become the best drama on television, now starting its fourth season. This is traditionally the point in a show’s lifecycle when it starts to die out. Maybe not in TWD’s case, though, because the show didn’t really get going (imo) until its third season. The first episode of Season 4 didn’t do much but set the stage for what’s to come in the rest of the season. Apparently, we are going to see a lot of: Muddy ground, bleak skies, bleak conditions, bleak people, and zombies. 508 words.
• Story Locked In for NaNoWriMo 2013. 2013-10-18 12:26 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I have my story idea for NaNoWriMo this year. I’m kind of excited about it. At least I was when I thought of it. It’s a bit of a meta-story, a pure fantasy that could not in any way happen in real life, or even alternate world life, and I would be lying if I said it did not in some way resemble John Scalzi’s inexplicably-Hugo-award-winning Redshirts­. I would say it has some elements of Redshirts and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One mixed up together. Possibly with a dash of Disney’s Tron. 178 words.
• Silencing Your Inner Editor. 2013-10-25 1:40 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Writing Excuses recently challenged the standard newbie writing advice that you should “silence your inner editor” while writing. Instead, Mary advised that you need only silence your “inner heckler,” while harnessing your “inner editor” to tell you when you need to improve your writing. Personally I think Mary completely missed the mark on this one. (And I got the sense that Brandon wasn’t on board either.) The “inner editor” as I’ve understood it is not so much a heckler as it is someone who is obsessed with good grammar and who is terrified of making a mistake. Such a person will constantly revise and re-revise and re-re-revise every sentence before moving on to the next one. Listening to this editor will result in never finishing a book or never thinking it’s good enough to release. This is not the kind of thing you want to think about, particularly when you’re writing a first draft. 243 words.
• NaNoWriMo Starts Tomorrow. 2013-10-31 2:13 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more apathetic about it. A few weeks ago I was very excited about a story idea, but now I’m in that classic writer’s mood that goes something like this: “So what if I write a cool story, nobody is ever going to read it anyway.” At least I think it’s a classic writer’s mood. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it means I’m writing for the wrong reasons. Shouldn’t I be writing because the writing itself is fun? But if nobody ever reads my writing, there is exactly zero chance of supporting myself as a weirdo reclusive author who lives in a cave. 109 words.

November, 2013

• NaNaWriMo First Weekend. 2013-11-04 2:55 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  NaNoWriMo is off to a mediocre start this year, as I am running about 900 words behind after the first weekend. Not too bad, really, considering what a collosal chore it has been to get writing. I feel like there’s a compelling story in this mess of text somewhere but I’m having a hard time getting to it. I am writing this year with zero preparation, by the way, other than some ideas jotted down so I wouldn’t forget them. Also, I’m not doing very well with my main goal of making myself laugh, because what I’m writing is not very funny so far. 104 words.
• NaNoWriMo Mid-Month Update. 2013-11-15 5:58 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I am all over the place with this year’s NaNoWriMo. Some days I write enough, some days I don’t. Overall I am behind, but not so far behind that it’s impossible to make it up. My heart is definitely not in it, though. This story is bad. I mean, really, really bad. There is a kernel of a seed of an idea that I don’t think is too bad, but everything else around it is as bad as it can possibly get. And also the writing is bad. 387 words.
• A Typical Day In The Life Of NaNoWriMo 2013. 2013-11-19 6:57 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Last night I once again approached my NaNoWriMo writing at about 9:00, which is the absolute latest I can possibly start writing with any expectation of getting anything done. Once again I stared at a blank document, not even looking at the previous day’s writing, wondering how on earth I could possibly come up with 1,667 words to write of a story that has no outline. Not just 1,667 words either. I actually need slightly more than 2,000 words a day to catch up again. 553 words.

December, 2013

• NaNoWriMo 2013 Post-Mortem. 2013-12-06 3:46 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  This is an example of how to make nanowrimo harder. I won NaNoWriMo, barely. Scrivener said I had 50,140 words, but NaNoWriMo only gave me credit for 50,005 words, which I turned in on the night of the 30th. You might be surprised to know that I actually did “end” the story as well. I didn’t just stop writing. 997 words.
• The Time of the Doctor. 2013-12-27 5:23 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I didn’t understand much of anything that happened in the Christmas Special The Time of the Doctor, Matt Smith’s final episode as Dr. Who. I didn’t understand the story, I didn’t understand why he was carrying around a Cyberman head, I didn’t understand why the crack was back, I didn’t understand why there was a town called Christmas or why The Doctor was stuck there, I didn’t understand where the Church of the Holy Whatever with the soldiers came from, nothing, zip, zilch. It seemed like a completely random jumble of people, places, and concepts. Was any of that in the last half-season anywhere? I sure don’t remember it. I guess I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention. 341 words.

January, 2014

• Writing Plans for 2014. 2014-01-02 5:40 PM.
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The first week after NaNoWriMo I had to force myself not to write a new story draft because it had become such a habit. The second week it was kind of a relief not to have to write anything, and that terrible story had finally left my brain. In the third week I was anxious to get back to planning or writing something, lest I fall into a not-writing habit. Then came the holidays and the end of the year, and I predictably fell out of the writing habit. 507 words.

February, 2014

• Sovereignty Summary. 2014-02-21 12:35 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  So yeah, somehow two whole months have disappeared and I haven’t done much writing. It’s actually more intimidating to try to revise existing manuscripts than it is to try to write new manuscripts. Anyway, in order to spark some positive momentum, I challenged myself to write a 100-word summary of the plot of The Sovereign of Tel. That probably sounds trivially simple, but for me to zoom that far out from the story and give such a super high-level overview of it is quite a challenge. I have tried to write “pitches” of my books before, but those only included the setup for the story. For this, I wanted the entire story arc from start to finish. 459 words.

March, 2014

• Sovereignty 1000-word Summary Completed. 2014-03-07 5:08 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  FYI, I completed a 1000-word summary of Sovereignty, but I won’t post it here because it’s filled with spoilers, just in case it turns into a real book some day. It’s now abundantly clear that there is no place for my original story in the book. Not even as a side plot. One of the original driving forces for this book was: What if there was a culture of people who bred servants in the same way that we breed pets? The original main character was going to be one of those servants. 460 words.

June, 2014

• June Writing Update. 2014-06-24 5:56 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It’s been a while since my last writing update, so I will now write one. Ha-ha. Get it? Write a writing update? So funny I am. Let’s see. Where was I? Hold on a moment while I read my last post from March. Oh yes, I was writing 50-100 word summaries of each scene that would be in Sovereignty. That did happen, sort of, but I never actually finished an outline that I felt comfortable with. There are still holes in the plot that I can’t fill in. Still, I wrote about 1,000 words of a new first chapter. Unfortunately I was not happy with it. I just can’t find a “hook” for that story. It remains tantalizingly out of reach. 507 words.

July, 2014

• RE: The Leftovers. 2014-07-23 12:17 AM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I feel like there should be some sort of law against television shows (or the books they are based on, I guess) that only raise questions without giving any answers in the first four episodes of the series. I can handle two episodes of story without context. I could even go to three episodes without any context. But four? Nope. That’s too much. I should have a basic understanding of where The Leftovers is going by now. (I have talked before about my need to understand the goals of the characters early in a story.) But now I have lost faith in the writers. Didn’t we learn anything from Lost? They are clearly just making it up as they go. 120 words.

August, 2014

• July Camp NaNo Results. 2014-08-13 1:36 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I suppose I should finally reveal the results of my July Camp NaNoWriMo experiment: Total failure. I was doing all right until things at work took a turn for the stressful, and then it became impossible to write in the evenings. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s hard to be creative when you’re totally drained. I tried to set myself up for success anyway, by changing my target word count from 50,000 to 15,000. (You can do that in the summer NaNoWriMos.) That goal was well within reach until things at work took a turn for the even-more-stressful and exhausting on top of it. So I wimped out and gave up. I ended up completing a little over 10,000 words. 234 words.
• RE: The Leftovers, Episodes 8 and 9. 2014-08-28 1:52 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I just finished watching episodes 8 and 9 of HBO’s The Leftovers, and something finally clicked. Yes, I know, I said I wasn’t going to watch more than 4 episodes, but I was intrigued by a television show (and a story) that does nothing but raise questions without ever answering them. Oh, that crack I made about Lost? Turns out, Leftovers producer Damon Lindelof did write for Lost. No wonder! Spoilers below if you haven’t seen the show yet. (I don’t recommend it, by the way. Unless the 10th and final episode of the season blows my mind, I just don’t get the point of this show.) 660 words.
• August Writing Update. 2014-08-29 4:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  With August coming to an end I thought I would release another writing update. Being temporarily unemployed (which I prefer to think of as a short sabbatical), this is the first month in forever (aka. 2000-ish) where I have had nothing but time to write. So you would think that I would have written tons of stuff, particularly when I’ve had this ongoing crazy notion that I should someday get paid for writing. 640 words.
• Two Days In A Row. 2014-08-31 2:20 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve written about 1200 words a day for two days in a row. That may not sound like much, but it makes me feel like a rock star. I’m working on adding the middle part that goes between the beginning and ending of Moving Day. I couldn’t just leave it hanging the way it was. (Also I did some brainstorming and came up with some neat ideas for it.) It’s sort of morphed from a science fiction story to… I don’t know… horror? But not the frightening kind of horror. It’s like the later-era Stephen King kind of horror that is really more of a plain story with some external supernatural forces that put characters into conflict, but it still gets labeled horror because he’s Stephen King. I’m not sure what you’d call that. “Fiction” I guess. 137 words.

September, 2014

• The Killing, Season One. 2014-09-01 4:17 PM.
  • Writing
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Why didn’t anyone warn me about this show? Don’t start watching The Killing unless you’re willing to put in the time to finish the entire thing in one sitting. Because it’s really addicting. And in case you’re thinking you can get away with just watching one season at a time: The murder is not resolved at the end of the first season. The story just keeps right on going into the second season. I’m writing this paragraph to avoid spoilers, but my full thoughts are way down below: I had an idea of who the murderer might be after four or five episodes, based on my award-winning strategy of “picking the least plausible person it could possibly be.” Through the whole first season I was more and more convinced I was going to be right, because they never showed anything that directly refuted my theory. Once, it was close, but I can think of a way to explain it. At least until they arrested that dude in the last episode of season one. But then some evidence surfaced that made me think my theory could still be plausible, so I’m sticking with it as I start watching season two. In many ways, The Killing is a stereotypical cop show. It’s got the cop obsessed with finding the murderer at the expense of her family. It’s got the victim’s family coping with the loss of their daughter and the morbid depictions of how a victim’s body gets back to the family after the crime. It’s got the cop who went too far undercover and got hooked on drugs. It’s got the crusty police lieutenants. It’s got the city hall with their political agendas that are more important than the truth. But somehow it’s still a compelling show. 436 words.
• The Killing, Season Two. 2014-09-02 11:14 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The Killing really should be regulated as a controlled substance. It’s impossible to stop watching it. I finished the second season, and you may or may not be happy to know that they do finally reveal the murderer, and it looks like you can walk away from the show after two seasons. Spoilers way down at the end of the post. (Not really, though. I don’t tell you whodunnit, but I do sort of rule out one person.) They really punch you in the face with feels in the second season finale. Get your hankies ready. 248 words.
• RE: The Leftovers, Season Finale. 2014-09-09 4:00 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I should have known. There were no explanations. No resolutions. No whys or wherefores. No way to tell if my theory was correct or not. The story just reached a convenient stopping place (sort of) and the season ended, all questions left up in the air. The only thing that we found out was what the Guilty Remnant had been up to. It occurred to me that by leaving out an explanation for why the people disappeared, we the audience are left in the same position as the characters in the show. After all, they don’t know why the people disappeared either. Although I would swear that at some point (or points) during the season I was convinced that there was an explanation that someone knew. Maybe not someone in town, but somebody somewhere. 425 words.
• Thoughts on Mr. Mercedes. 2014-09-15 4:00 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A while back I decided to cancel my Audible.com subscription, because my income was decreasing. I had somewhere around eight credits saved up that I had to use before I could cancel, so I picked up a bunch of random audiobooks. One of them was Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. I pretty much like anything that Stephen King writes, so it’s no surprise that I liked it. But it was the first time I had ever listened to Stephen King read as an audiobook. (Actually that’s not true, but it was the first time I’d listened to a full-length King novel as an audiobook.) 236 words.

October, 2014

• The 100 First Impression. 2014-10-29 1:26 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’ve just watched the first episode of The 100 on Netflix. Well, actually, I started writing this at about the 35:00 mark. Is it wrong for me to want every single one of these whiny teenagers to die horribly? I mean, it’s not just that I don’t like any of them. It’s more of a deep-seeded loathing, a visceral hatred of everything about them and everything they stand for. I don’t just want them to die. I want them to die suffering, only lingering long enough for them to finally realize in their last moments-too late-just how awful they are as human beings and potential role models. They must, in the end, die knowing that it was the only just fate for them. Because if these whiny teenagers are the last hope for humanity, then I think we can all agree that it’s okay for humanity to die out. We should, in fact, celebrate the end of this breed of whiny teenager. 533 words.

December, 2014

• Holiday Binge-Watching. 2014-12-29 2:51 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The holidays means sitting blankly in front of a television screen. My recent Netflix binge-watches include: Broadchurch. BBC murder-mystery series starring David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame) and also the guy who played Rory in Dr. Who. This is a gripping series of 8 episodes. Great, great acting. Gracepoint. Of course, I then had to get a week-long trial of Hulu Plus* to watch the American version of the Broadchurch murder-mystery, which also stars David Tennant, using a different accent. (I actually thought this is what I was watching when I started Broadchurch, because I remember seeing ads for Gracepoint, but it quickly became apparent that everyone in Broadchurch had an accent.) Gracepoint is a decent series of 10 episodes with some slight but interesting changes from the original, but it’s nowhere near as good as the British version. If you have to pick one, definitely watch Broadchurch. (It was interesting to see that the American script had clearly been edited so that scenes and lines were much shorter.) 224 words.

January, 2015

• My Writing In 2014. 2015-01-05 12:50 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Well 2014 wasn’t my greatest writing year ever, although compared to some years where I didn’t write anything I suppose it was still pretty good. I started the year trying to revise the Sovereignty manuscript, which ended in miserable failure. After a lot of fiddling, I still couldn’t figure out the story I wanted to tell and basically realized I needed to start over. By June I had hit rock bottom, so to speak. 262 words.

February, 2015

• February Status Report. 2015-02-06 4:21 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Perhaps if I update my blog more often, it will inspire me to do more writing, so that I’ll have more to talk about in my blog. So… As February begins, I’m still working on my post-apocalyptic novel that I started in NaNoWriMo 2014. I’m up to about 70,000 words, so you can probably figure out that I’m not writing very fast-typically I only put down about 500 words a night, somewhere around four a five nights out of a week. (I went from 50,000 words in one month to 20,000 words in three two months.) 372 words.

March, 2015

• February Status, Part 2. 2015-03-09 1:24 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  My last post was a “February Status” but it was posted at the beginning of February, so in reality it was more of a “January Status.” It’s now the beginning of March (sort of), so this writing update will actually cover February. As of now my manuscript from November is over 80,000 words, and Scrivener says I wrote nearly 12,000 words in February. Not great, but better than nothing. A couple of interesting story twists occurred in February: 1) I killed off a character that was no longer doing anything interesting, and 2) I came up with a new idea for an interesting group of people to encounter in the post-apocalyptic wilderness. 263 words.
• Mockingjay Part 1. 2015-03-21 12:17 AM.
  • Movies
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Am I crazy or should they have skipped Part 1 and gone right to Part 2? The entire movie seemed like a prologue. Which, I guess, it was. For Part 2. Other than that, it was a great depiction of rubble. 41 words.

April, 2015

• April Camp NaNoWriMo. 2015-04-05 10:09 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I am off to a terrible start in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event. I set myself a modest goal of 30,000 words (since I don’t think this story is a full novel), and I’m already about three days behind schedule. I’m just not “feeling it.” My story idea seems like an awful idea again that makes no sense. (Exactly what happened to me the first time I started writing it.) 137 words.

June, 2015

• Hardhome. 2015-06-07 1:12 AM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  “Hardhome” (Game of Thrones, season 5, episode 8) did a fantastic job of reminding us why we (and The Seven Kingdoms) should care that “Winter is Coming.” 27 words.
• Years in Westeros. 2015-06-08 1:00 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It occurred to me: The seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire are many years long, right? In the show, Old Nan said that men were born, lived, and died all without seeing the sun (presumably in winter, in the north). But when the characters talk about how long the seasons are, they use the word “years.” (At least, I think they do. I would have to comb through the books to be sure.) But since for us a year is defined as one revolution around the sun, or one cycle of seasons, how do the people in Westeros know how long a “year” is, since it would be some fraction of the length of their seasons? Why would they even have a concept for a fraction of time shorter than a season? 275 words.

July, 2015

• It's July!. 2015-07-04 1:20 AM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Oh crap! It’s July! This is Camp NaNoWriMo month, and it’s Day 3, and I haven’t started writing-haven’t even thought of an idea. Didn’t even realize it was July until this third day. Should I write something? Coincidentally, I’ve had a story in my head for the last few days. Actually, I should say I’ve had a setting in my head for the last few days. It’s from an old idea I wrote down years ago, which was rekindled by running across The Conjunction Of The Spheres in the The Witcher 3 which I’ve been playing. 173 words.
• Spelling Right: On Standard Spelling. 2015-07-19 1:31 AM.
  • Grammar
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Reims Bible, Wikimedia Commons. Spelling was pretty important for monks. Spelling is important, right? I saw a post on Facebook about this Grammar Girl article, which was a response to a Wired article by Anne Trubek on spelling. I started to type a pithy comment about it, but then I realized I kept thinking of new things to say that went far beyond the scope of a pithy comment, so I figured I should turn it into a long, rambling blog post. 1,071 words.

August, 2017

• August Writing Update. 2017-08-26 11:20 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  My last post was some time ago, so I thought I would update everyone on my writing progress. Um. Well. You see. It hasn’t been great. I did participate in NaNoWriMo 2016, and I did win, so that was something. I wrote 50,000 words on a historical fiction novel set in Belgium during World War I. I’ve never written historical fiction before so it was a big stretch. I felt completely unqualified, but I pressed on and tried to stick with what I knew and avoid obsessing about the little details that I was sure I was getting wrong. 291 words.

December, 2017

• NaNoWriMo 2017 Post-Mortem. 2017-12-01 3:48 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • News
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Hi! I’m finally back with another writing update. I completed NaNoWriMo again this year, and here’s my assessment of my performance. Summary This year’s novel is code-named “Survey.” It’s a science fiction/fantasy set many thousands of years in the future, in a time after a long war between humans and aliens has finally resulted in a treaty. A human captain leads a ship on a mission to survey a planet, where a lost colony had once been established thousands of years before. They find a struggling pre-Industrial human society, and alien ships in orbit. 1,111 words.
• The Editing Process. 2017-12-15 3:30 PM.
  • Editing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment: I’m going to try not to completely abandon the novel I wrote in November. This experiment has failed every year since 2010. NaNoWriMo drafts from 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 languish more-or-less in exactly the same state they were in on December 1st. Drafts from 2010 and 2011 have been edited a lot, but remain woefully unsuitable for submission. But this time I have a plan. Well, a first step in a plan, at least, which is better than I’ve ever done before. 679 words.

January, 2018

• Survey Revisions Continue. 2018-01-17 3:30 PM.
  • Editing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I promised myself I would try to write two writing posts a month. Technically this should be the second one, but it’s actually just the first one. Oh well. While I have not been extremely happy with my progress on editing “Survey,” my 2016 NaNoWriMo project, I have at least *made* progress on it. Last time I described how I was highlighting sections of text that needed attention, and I have more-or-less completed that. 697 words.
• The Authorities by Scott Meyers (Audiobook). 2018-01-26 9:58 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Published by Rocket Hat Industries. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by … Scott Meyer? (Presumably the author paid Luke Daniels to make the audiobook.) Sinclair Rutherford is a young Seattle cop with a taste for the finer things. Doing menial tasks and getting hassled by superiors he doesn’t respect are definitely not “finer things.” Good police work and bad luck lead him to crack a case that changes quickly from a career-making break into a high-profile humiliation when footage of his pursuit of the suspect—wildly inappropriate murder weapon in hand—becomes an Internet sensation. 316 words.
• The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong (Audiobook). 2018-01-26 10:36 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The Land: Founding: A LitRPG Saga: Chaos Seeds, Book 1 by Aleron Kong Self-published. Read by Nick Podehl. Produced by Tamori Publications LLC. Tricked into a world of banished gods, demons, goblins, sprites and magic, Richter must learn to meet the perils of The Land and begin to forge his own kingdom. Actions have consequences across The Land, with powerful creatures and factions now hell-bent on Richter’s destruction. This is definitely a winner for the largest number of sub-titles within one title. I have no idea where I heard about this book or why I got it. 302 words.
• Pandemic: The Extinction Files by A. G. Riddle (Audiobook). 2018-01-26 11:08 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Pandemic: The Extinction Files, Book 1 by A. G. Riddle Published by Riddle, Inc. Read by Edoardo Ballerini. Produced by Audible Studios. In Africa, a mysterious outbreak spreads quickly. Teams from the CDC and WHO respond, but they soon learn that there is more to the epidemic than they believed. It may be the beginning of a global experiment-an event that will change the human race forever. Another one where I have no idea how or why this book got into my Audible library. I don’t know if it was recommended to me or if I just randomly clicked on something on the front page of the site to try to use up my Audible credits before I cancelled my subscription. Probably that latter one, because I had a lot to use up, and I try to vary my genres now and then. (I think this is a “thriller.”) 1,083 words.
• Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Audiobook). 2018-01-27 1:41 AM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 by Steven Erikson Published by Tor Books. Read by Ralph Lister. Produced by Brilliance Audio. The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen’s rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins. 461 words.
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Audiobook). 2018-01-27 11:31 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu) Published by Tor Books. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Macmillon Audio. I got this a long time ago because it won the Hugo in 2015, but I only just got around to it in my January 2018 listening binge. Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. 492 words.

March, 2018

• A Very Morose Writing Update. 2018-03-19 2:14 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  # Monday, March 19, 2018 I promised myself that I would write about writing twice a month. The last writing post I published was January 17, over two months ago. Brace yourself for a shocking revelation. My writing is not going well. This could explain why I haven’t been rushing to tell you about it twice a month. I am writing this post in Visual Studio Code, because perhaps it will inspire me. I love VSCode. I am writing in Markdown format, and watching the little preview window on the right-hand side update as I type. It’s very satisfying. 1,277 words.
• Why Self-Publishing Might Be A Mistake. 2018-03-28 6:09 PM.
  • Writing
  • Process
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Recently I saw a tweet from someone contemplating self-publishing some of their writing. They didn’t sound confident about it. It prompted me to write this post. I’ve thought about this for years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to self-publish Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon. It was an informative experience, true. But the only thing I really gained from it was the first-hand knowledge and experience of formatting a book for e-publishing. At the time I thought that would be worth something, but in retrospect, it’s not. The process has probably changed entirely since 2011 anyway. 1,515 words.
• Besieged by Kevin Hearne (Audiobook). 2018-03-30 5:32 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Published by Del Rey. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Random House Audio. The ancient gods are alive and well in the modern world in this hilarious, action-packed collection of original short stories featuring Atticus O’Sullivan, the handsome, tattooed, 2,000-year-old Irishman with extraordinary magic powers from Kevin Hearne’s New York Times best-selling Iron Druid Chronicles. Listen time: 8 hours, 46 minutes, between 1/26/2018 and sometime in February or March? I finished listening to this a while ago, but forgot to write about it. There isn’t much to say, really. It’s another book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, and if you liked any of the previous entries, you’ll like this one, too. 229 words.

May, 2018

• The Tragic End Of A Bird Nest. 2018-05-22 5:06 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  A couple of “flycatcher” birds returned this year to nest outside my back door. (I don’t know their exact species but I think they might be Eastern phoebes.) I watched in fascination as four little baby birds grew up in the nest this Spring. I took tons of pictures of them. I setup a streaming webcam so I could watch and listen to them from my computer room. (The parents would chirp and scold me if I stood at the door to watch.) I even figured out how to stream an image from my DLSR camera fitted with a telephoto lens. 1,639 words.
• Scourged by Kevin Hearne (2018, Audiobook). 2018-05-24 12:28 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Published by Del Rey. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Random House Audio. Unchained from fate, the Norse gods Loki and Hel are ready to unleash Ragnarok, a.k.a. the Apocalypse, upon the earth. They’ve made allies on the darker side of many pantheons, and there’s a globe-spanning battle brewing that ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan will be hard-pressed to survive, much less win. Listen time: About 9 hours, 5/22-23. (At 120% speed.) 599 words.
• The Bear and the Nightingale (2017, Sample) by Katherine Arden. 2018-05-25 4:06 PM.
  • Books
  • Reviews
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Published by Del Rey. A magical debut novel for listeners of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman’s myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice. I have this idea that I will try to read a sample of a Kindle book every day or at least a few times a week for a while. I don’t read enough, but I can’t really bring myself to buy Kindle books if I’m not sure that I’m going to like it and read the whole thing from start to finish. I feel pretty guilty if I buy a book but then don’t like the first chapter, and I feel pretty resentful when I try to read a whole book that I don’t like. So I’ll just take advantage of these free Kindle samples while they’re available. 566 words.

June, 2018

• The Expanse Re-Watch – S1E01, Dulcinea. 2018-06-05 2:30 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I started to write a blog post about The Expanse Season 3, Episode 7 (Delta-V). That episode seemed to be the beginning of a brand new story arc, perhaps the start of a new book in the source material. I didn’t particularly care for the episode, and I ended up ranting about all the things I didn’t like about The Expanse, especially in Season 3. I’m fully aware that others love this show and praise it endlessly, and most consider Season 3 to be the best one yet, while I’m over here struggling to find a single thing to hold onto and enjoy. I wondered what I was missing. Surely I must be missing something? 2,943 words.
• The Expanse Re-Watch – S1E02, The Big Empty. 2018-06-07 2:30 PM.
  • Television
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Join me as I re-watch The Expanse, Season 1, to try to find out where the show went wrong for me. Summary I’ve decided that I’m just going to quote Wikipedia’s brief episode summaries here, instead of spending all of my time writing my own summaries. The point of these posts is to explore what I think of the episodes, not retell the episodes. The Big Empty was written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, and directed by Terry McDonough. I am noting the writers and directors, by the way, to see if I notice any patterns in which writers or directors create the episodes I like or dislike. 1,630 words.

October, 2018

• Winter Arrived Today. 2018-10-22 1:51 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I woke this morning to an almost literally freezing cold house, which means that we can no longer pretend that the cold months of the year won’t happen. By “we” I mean “me,” because there are some people who actually like the transition from summer to fall. I personally spend most days between November and March in three or four layers of clothes, moving slowly, barely staving off uncontrollable shivering fits, unable to concentrate, hiding in the darkness that consumes most of each day. 582 words.

November, 2018

• NaNoWriMo 2018 Vlog Experiment. 2018-11-03 12:37 AM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  I’m trying an experiment this year for NaNoWriMo. Instead of writing blog posts about my progress, I’m recording “vlogs” about it. I created a YouTube channel where you can watch me ramble about my NaNoWriMo journey this year. My goal is to record a short video every day talking about my progress, the challenges I run into, how I deal with them, etc. Things that I think might be educational or inspiring or helpful or just funny to other writers. A lot about “the writing process” and how I’m feeling about the project as I go along. Thrills, chills, spills. Stuff that I would normally write about, but I’m just going to talk about them instead. I would rather reserve my writing energy for the NaNoWriMo draft as much as possible. 302 words.
• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 3 Vlog. 2018-11-04 12:36 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Vlog
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Kind of a long one. A better day. Hilarious text-to-speech on the iPad, switching scenes, what I like about my writing so far, blanks between writing sessions, thinking about getting Scrivener for iOS, starting fresh every day, finally getting into the world of the story, bringing complex modern sociopolitical themes into the backdrop of the sword-and-sorcery city setting. 58 words.
• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 4 Vlog. 2018-11-05 1:45 PM.
  • Writing
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Considerably more talking than writing on day 4. Morning update: Irish accents, daylight savings, second Mythica movie, nervous about iOS Scrivener, feeling mute when I’m not able to type on a keyboard, struggling to differentiate character voices in dialog. Evening update: the story so far, NaNoWriMo community and me. 49 words.
• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 7 Vlog. 2018-11-08 3:06 PM.
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  It’s interesting to watch view statistics when you upload a series of videos to YouTube. You might think, as I do, that if you say, “I’m going to upload a series of videos to YouTube, one every day, and here’s the first one,” that people would know and understand how to find and watch the complete series if they’re interested, and you’ll get similar view statistics on each video. But you’d be wrong. The first video will get some views, if you have any followers at all, and then the remainder of the videos will get zero views because everyone will wander away and forget about you amid the rest of their busy daily lives. So from time to time you have to keep reminding people, on social media, or in blog posts like this one. :) 194 words.

December, 2018

• NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 30 Vlog. 2018-12-01 2:37 PM.
  • Writing
  • NaNoWriMo
  • everettrenshaw.com
  
  Last vlog for NaNoWriMo 2018, unless I record one more epilogue a bit later to show how I reorganized my Scrivener project. Validating 50,247 words. Lack of editing. Thoughts on what to do next. Reflecting on the month. There are in fact 31 vlog videos, which you can find in this NaNoWriMo 2018 Playlist on YouTube. All the ups and downs of writing for 30 days. 66 words.