A.J. Race's Blog, page 14

5:4

I had decided early on that no matter what SCOTUS’s ruling was on both cases that it was important to remember that we had made a lot of great strides. We may have set backs but that does not mean that we will not continue to fight. But the truth is, in spite of all of that, I was still on the edge of my seat watching the SCOTUS blog live blogging the ruling’s decision. By seven Pacific Standard Time the ruling was in… the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. The exact wording according to SCOTUS blog:

DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment

What this means in it’s simplest terms is that legally married same-sex individuals will now be recognized Federally under the law.

In a similar vote, the Supreme Court also announced it would not be ruling on Proposition 8 because the proponents who had defended the case in the CA Supreme Court did not have the legal authority to do so. Basically meaning that same-sex marriage will return to California after nearly five very long years of debate and controversy.

It’s worth noting of course that none of this makes same-sex marriage a constitutional right on a federal basis and therefore it’s still at the whim of states to decide whether or not they wish to allow it. It also means that theoretically there can still be challenges in the future as to the meaning of SCOTUS’s decision with regards to Prop 8, however for the time being these are historic decisions that pave the way for bigger and better things to come.

I confess that while I’m proud of today’s decision, it does not diminish the fact that yesterday’s decision was an unfortunate step back. In Justice Ginsburg’s own words: “Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA.”

My New Heroines

If you know nothing else about me, you should probably know that I’m something of a political junkie. I’ve tried to keep my political postings to a minimum here on this blog because for a long time I’ve viewed it as strictly about writing. However one of the added benefits of renaming and thus rebranding my blog is that it allows me to step away from just being about writing….even if only for a moment and/or in small ways.

Even if you’re not politically inclined it’s likely you have heard or at least have some small idea about what happened in Texas last night. Senator Wendy Davis staged a thirteen hour filibuster in which she stood and spoke all the way up to about an hour and a half before the midnight deadline in which it was decided (by the men in the room) that she was off topic and therefore she should be stopped. What ensued was an hours long debate on whether or not she had actually strayed from the topic at hand and who’s turn it was to speak. Literally. They were arguing, who’s turn it was to speak. It was a little confusing admittedly. Because of her literally standing for thirteen hours and talking for thirteen hours, Wendy Davis is my new hero, but she is not the only one.

Senator Leticia Van de Putte left her father’s funeral early to lend her voice to Senator Davis’s filibuster. She like Senator Davis is one of my new heroes however not just because of this but because when it came to the presiding officer Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst continuously ignoring her inquiries  Senator Van de Putte had finally had enough and uttered what will arguably go down as one of the best lines in Texas legislative history, “At what point must a female senator raise her hand, or her voice, to be heard over the male colleagues in the room?” to which she received a roaring and thunderous applause.

It is thanks to these women, and the loud voice of the people that could be heard around the entirety of the chamber that SB5 was unable to pass. Democracy is a crazy thing sometimes, just when you thought people didn’t care enough to actually stand up and fight, people surprise you. The absolute chaos that was the end of that filibuster was a beautiful thing in politics because it says to me that when pushed hard enough, eventually the people will push back. They will fight back against the so-called party of small government and their sweeping laws  that try to undermine what is already a constitutional right. It’s interesting to me that the far-right that has taken over a large part of the Republican party claims that they’re all about small government and protecting the Constitution when their record clearly shows that they’re only about small government and protecting the Constitution when it suits their own political whims. Such as when it regards guns. Make no mistake, there is nothing small government about forcing medically unnecessary ultra sounds on women or telling people who they can or cannot marry. And you are not protecting the Constitution by trying to gut a right that is protected under it.

Dropping the Daily

I was in a rut. My life had become a sea of avoiding writing, while simultaneously working on a new blog post each day and working on school projects in between. Something had to be done, or I was going to lose it. The answer came in the most unlikely fashion. I had just spent the better part of two or three hours working for the 2014 update to my blog graphics (which I promise I will wait, okay attempt to wait, until 2014 to unveil) when I realized I was spending more time working on perfecting my blog than I was on actually writing. I needed a change. What I really needed was a break from blogging. Shortly before this revelation I had decided that I no longer wanted to be the Daily Racewood.

Initially I had come up with Daily Racewood monicker to showcase the fact that I was blogging everyday. I wanted to show it loud and proud. Instead, I drove myself insane trying to blog everyday rather than write. Once I knew I wanted to drop the Daily Racewood the question was, what next? The Weekly Racewood didn’t quite have the same ring to it, and I really didn’t want to postdate the blog as being either a daily or a weekly deal. The next most obvious choice was to go back to something I had previously used. Magically Yours being the most recent. I quickly decided however that I didn’t want to go backwards anymore than I wanted to put a date on my blog. I needed something completely fresh (it was only after I announced my break that I realized that I needed a fresh storyline as well).

A quickly complied a list of interesting names:

The Cult: If it’s good enough for the magazine it’s good enough for the blog right?

The Racewood Post/Times/Chronicle/Gazette/Prophet: All the most common additions to newspapers and one nod to Harry Potter’s the Daily Prophet (though one could argue it’s also a Cultish reference).

The Propaganda Machine: This particular blog title was my plan to further embrace the Cult theme I had created for myself. The problem of course being that the point of the blog would likely be lost in translation for potentially new followers. It also meant changing the title of my podcast to Propaganda Radio. Deliciously controversial in theory, but the last thing I wanted to do was give the impression that my blog was some sort of right-wing conspiracy theory site.

Ultimately I was left with the Racewood Post and the Cult. Whatever else I could say about the titles in question something about the Cult seemed better suited for the forthcoming magazine than it did the blog (and while I’m all for continuity between the two) ultimately something about the Racewood Post simply fit in a way that I couldn’t quite explain. Admittedly it did take me a minute to get used to the change, but the best part is I’m now not bound under the terms of the daily theme and therefore if I decide not to make a blog post every single day I am free to do so. As it stands I’d like to continue blogging daily (or scheduling posts to go up daily), but it’s nice to have the option if I so chose.

Indefinitely

Nearly seven years ago I created my first blog in 2006, at the time I had no idea what I was doing or even really what I wanted to say and subsequently I had almost no followers. In the last year and a half alone my blog has risen to nearly 300 followers and while I’ve been thrilled for each and every follower milestone I’ve managed to reach, in a lot of ways the blog has become a full time job for me. Don’t get me wrong I love it, but I’ve been neglecting my work in the process and for me, that’s unacceptable.

I’ve thought long and hard on my decision and after a lot of internal debate I think it’s best that the Daily Racewood go on hiatus indefinitely.

At least until I get this draft of Bridge of Memories done… with any luck I’ll be back before 2014… hopefully my blog will continue to serve as a guide to writers everywhere and more importantly I have a lot of ideas for how I want to handle Cult 3.0.

PS: I should still be on WordPress, but if for whatever reason I decide to go blog hunting again I’ll be sure to let you all know.

Plot vs. Prose

A beautiful writing style and a great plot are a combination not often found in literature (or at least not in my view). But maybe the style of the writing isn’t all that important, as long as the plot is interesting.

Earlier this month I learned that Lauren Weisberger author of The Devil Wears Prada had written a sequel called Revenge Wears Prada. I had never read the first book, but I loved the movie and I had been meaning to read the book, so naturally I decided to download a sample of the sequel after reading a quick synopsis. The plot actually sounded fairly interesting, but when it came to the actual writing, I found it rather lackluster to say the least. I could visualize it sure, but something about it just didn’t read right to me… but I still want to read the book because I’m actually really interested in seeing where this goes.

Ever since the Casual Vacancy I’ve begun to wonder which is really more important, plot or writing style. A good book should be more plot/character centric but a great book should balance both plot and style, and for me I didn’t get that with The Casual Vacancy. It was… as always, great stylistically, but I found the plot lacking, and as such I really couldn’t manage to finish the novel. The same was true for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. The writing was interesting, certainly different, but in a good way, but the plot seemed fairly predictable, and the pace was tragically slow.

Admittedly there’s something to be said for good style, and a loud and very clear voice, but if the plot isn’t there, even the best voice in the world can’t make that less true.

IHOR Overhaul

Looking back on a lot of my work I’m starting to feel that my designs are a little bit (or a lot a bit) safe… and in the words of RuPaul:

Safe is a word I have come to loathe…

Safe isn’t the Cult of Racewood way and it certainly isn’t what I want to be known for. So here are some new design ideas and concepts that I’m working on that I think we can agree aren’t exactly ‘safe’.

Starting with…

Logo:

Original logo

I realized sometime in the last year or so that there was just something a little not quite me about this logo. It had two problems, the first of which was that it had a sort of jail cell look about it in the way the letter H covered the R, the purple bar that was meant to represent the i actually only managed to further cement this point as making it look extra doubly locked.

2012 version of IHOR logo

In late 2012 I created a redesign which with the subtraction of the extra white and black circles did seem to lose a bit of the original prison problem the first logo had, I still wasn’t feeling it. I needed something different. Naturally typography struck me first, but through a bit of trial and error I realized there was a lot I missed about the 2012 logo. So… I decided to combine my latest creation with the 2012 logo. This is the result.

 It also comes with more artistic options in:

T-Shirts Before and After:

Trend Setter before

Trend Setter after:

One thing that was important to me from the outset throughout the redesign process of a lot of my designs was that they be able to tell a story. They should be interesting and artistic in their own right but more importantly they say something both in the words themselves and how it’s designed. The idea behind trendsetter in particular was that it should be something atypical, particularly from the original design and preferably something that could be used on a wide variety of places from t-shirts to cellphone cases and more (all to come).

Write, defiant before

write, defiant after:

This redesign is arguably one of my favorites in the group because I feel like out of all of them it makes the most profound statement. If a picture is worth a thousand words then this may actually be a visual representation for exactly what the Cult of Racewood is all about.

Is it Ever Enough?

One of my favorite things about blogging has been coming to learn that for as often as I feel alone, I’m actually not alone in a lot of the problems I feel as a writer. This week was no exception when I came across this blogpost from author and blogger Nathan Bransford, re: When it Feels Like You’re Never Doing Enough.

I cannot possibly enumerate all the times I have had this feeling. As both an author and graphic designer I find this feeling to be so commonplace that I rarely even question it anymore. It just seems easier to assume that whatever it is, I didn’t do enough or I’m not doing enough, because as he points out, there’s always going to be someone who seems to be doing more. I wonder though, do you think they ever have times where they feel as though they aren’t doing enough? And for that matter, when is it ever enough? At what point can one safely say, you know what actually I have done quite a bit and maybe I don’t need to feel guilty for not doing five hundred things at once? Because the reality is, something has to give.

If it isn’t writing, it’s blogging, or podcasts, or schoolwork. But something will give… the key is, as Nathan points out. Balance.

Easier said than done.

In the meantime, as I suspect I will never really shake the feeling that I don’t get enough done in a day, I guess it’s better than knowing that doing too much will likely make everything suffer.

Queries and Agents

After you’ve written your amazing novel you might be wondering how you get it out to the proper people? How do you get agents interested? First you must craft a query letter. A one page letter of inquiry detailing what your book is about and if possible why your qualified to write it. Ultimately you have to pique their interest in a very limited time space. But where do you find agents and publishers that are accepting submissions?

Writer’s Market by Writer’s Digest features an online database of hundreds of agents and publishers as well as magazines and periodicals that also accept submissions.

Association of Author’s Representatives: Almost every literary agent is a member of this organization so it’s a wonderful resource for finding agents but also how to craft the perfect pitch, query and so much more. It’s also a good place to go to find out what exactly an agent can and can’t do for you.

AgentQuery.com: A free database to help you find a literary agent.

Preditors and Editors: Writer beware. There are many who wish to scam you. How do I know? Because I’ve been there. Thankfully Preditors and Editors is a handy guide for finding out whether or not an agent/publishing house is reputable (and even includes some self publishing resources)

Ms. Snark (Archives): While the literary agent’s blog may no longer update, you can still find the fascinating and sometimes educational and hilarious rantings of the literary agent known only as Ms. Snark.

Query Shark: All about query letters, helpful hints and tips and even a critique or two if your brave enough to send yours in.

SlushPile Hell: A grumpy literary agent (their own words) shares amusing and sometimes exhaustingly hopeful query letters. If nothing else it’s a great what not to do guide.

Word Processors

Writing software and word processors aren’t really difficult to find. In fact, a quick Google search will likely find you about a few thousand actual bits of software and a zillion articles about software. But the good ones depend entirely on what your operating system is and what you generally need it for.

I’ve written a fairly great deal about my love for Scrivener. It can be simple if that’s what you need it for and it can be fairly complex if that’s also what you need it for, it has amazing features like snapshots which allows you to save versions of your novel within the same document (rather than making multiple copies as I often did before) and compare and contrast the versions with each other. You can even have a two-up view where you can look at any other sub document with your main document, like saved PDF files for research or previous chapters while writing your current scene or chapter. With Corkboard you can see your individual scenes as little notes on a board to allow you to outline in a more visual fashion, or you can use the Outliner function. The great thing is, Scrivener has everything you could possibly imagine needing and it’s not just for novelists.

But if all of that hasn’t convinced you to at least try Scrivener, here are some other options for you.

Google Drive: It’s not quite as exciting as Scrivener by any means, but it’s collaborative (if that’s something you need) and like all cloud accounts it can be accessed from anywhere. Don’t have your laptop on you? Visit your Drive on your tablet or smartphone or from a local computer at the library. It’s simple and best of all it’s free which isn’t something you can say often these days.

Writer’s Cafe: If there’s any other software I loved as much as I love Scrivener it would have to be Writer’s Cafe. One thing I particularly enjoy is the daily quotes from authors, writing prompts and character naming generators.

Write Room: If your the sort of writer who needs a clean, ultramodern, distraction free writing space then this is the app for you. It’s all about minimalism. Although having a Mac is sort of a pre-rec for this particular app.

Word and/or Pages: Depending on your platform will work just as well, but they aren’t as preferable as the aforementioned options. Scrivener is by far my favorite writing application of all time because everything you could possibly want is right there. The only way they could improve is by adding prompts and and web browser right in the app for research without ever having to leave your document. (There is a writing application that offers this, it might be Writer’s Cafe but I confess I don’t entirely remember).

Outlining

Everyone has a different style for outlining. I personally prefer not to do so… kind of… if what I do is considered outlining it’s more like notes than anything. But one thing I do know about outlines is that if you like to do them digitally there is good news for you. And it’s called

Scapple by Literature and Latte. The same brilliant minds who brought us Scrivener which I will discuss later. Scapple is a lot like the brainstorming pictures you likely made in grade school. Unlike those brainstorming creations however, you have the ability to add photographs if your a more visual thinker.

Storyteller by Amazon Studios: This one is kind of exciting. It’s general use is for screenplay writers to help them create storyboards, for their scripts, but according to one blogger it may have a much broader appeal than merely for scripts. If you’re a writer who wants help with visualizing characters you can upload your story into storyteller and watch your characters come to life. Or build your own scenes, with custom backgrounds and additions as needed. It won’t necessarily be something you want to share but it could give you a visual idea of how something a scene should look.