Bryce Moore's Blog, page 197

New Geek Badge Unlocked!

I’ve been playing Magic: the Gathering long enough now that I’ve started to accumulate a fair number of cards. Lots and lots of cards.

Thousands of cards.

Denisa, being the keen observer of all things in our home, has noticed these cards. They have a tendency to accumulate and have little card parties all over the place. On bookshelves, under dressers, under chairs, on tables, in rooms, under the bed. You name it. They’re organized (because I’m me), but they do tend to sprawl.

So this week, I took a major step in my life. I had Denisa pick me up an old card catalog.

For my Magic: the Gathering collection.

That’s right, people. I store all those cards in an old-school librarian storage container. Let that sink in for a moment. The cool thing? I’m not the only one who does this. I learned it from friends. You might think it’s the epitome of nerdiness. I think it’s pretty much awesome. It only has six drawers, but the thing drinks in cards like a sponge. I only have half the drawers filled, which means I probably have a good 2-3 more years at least before I need to get a second one.

Unless TRC wants to use some of my storage space. He’s got his own collection . . .

But for now, the card menace has been stopped. Denisa’s happy. I’m happy. Life is good, peoples.

Quick Writing Update

I finished my rewrite of THE BOOK BINDER’S CURSE today. (This is my new working title for my Peter Pan adaptation that I wrote as part of NaNoWriMo six months ago. It’s been called other things, and it might yet get a different title. One never knows, with titles.) If you’ll remember back to when I was writing the book, I experimented with a lot of new approaches in this one. Specifically: (1) It’s written in third person, a point of view I hadn’t used in over a decade, if I’m remembering right. (2) It was written without a firm outline at all. Just a very simple set up, central conflict, and goal. Think of it like a “solve this maze” approach to writing. You know where you start, you know where you have to get to, and then getting there is most of the fun. (3) I wrote it very quickly. There was no time for me to question my plot or go back and make changes to things. I had to get 2,000 words done every day, and with my schedule, I didn’t have time for any waffling.

So when I approached the book for my first read through after I wrote it, I was more than a little nervous. For one thing, I couldn’t remember a lot of what I’d written. My writing group had gotten through about 2/3rds of the book, but I myself had been away from it for pretty much the whole time. Also, you respond to a book differently when you’re only reading it a chapter every two weeks. How would it work as a whole? Would I dislike it? Would I be able to tell I’d rushed myself in spots too much?

I was worried.

Now that I’ve read the whole thing through and revised it to get it as consistent as it can be at this point, I think I have at least some inkling of how it went: very well.

The voice was a lot of fun, the characters engaging, the plot pretty smooth, and it didn’t feel like a rush job. Huzzah! In a nutshell, I enjoyed reading the book. Does that mean it’s great and ready for primetime? The jury’s still out. I’m sending it off to my alpha readers and my agents today, and we’ll see what they think once they’ve had a chance to read it. I realize that I’m often unable to really assess my own writing. I wish it weren’t the case, but such is life. Will they like it? Time will tell.

But I like it, and that’s a big something. You have to celebrate the somethings.

Now what will I work on? That’s a valid question. I’m not ready to turn back to MAGIC AT 30,000 FEET just yet. Too soon. And I haven’t heard back about how my latest version of OUR LADY turned out, so that means I guess I’ll . . .

Work on an (as yet) secret project that I hope to be able to tell you about next week. The blog post is already written. I was gunning to publish it this week, but it was not to be.

Keep your eyes peeled, folks.

Pick Your Own YA Fantasy Part 10

[Welcome to part ten of my continuing blog series. I write the book, you pick the plot. For earlier parts, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, and part 9.]

John scrambled to come up with an answer. Riddles were tricky things for him. He loved reading them over from the comfort of his bed or a sofa, thinking about what the answers might be before he inevitably snuck a peek on the really hard ones. But it’s one thing to try and answer a riddle when you’re in your pajamas on a snow day. Trying to figure it out when an ancient sphinx is staring you in the eye . . . that was a whole different experience.

Still, there had to be a trick to it. He just wasn’t seeing it. What was found once in a while and twice in a billion years? Did it have something to do with the seasons? What came in spring and winter, but not summer or fall? Snow? Flowers? Once in a while, I can be found . . .

And then it hit him. The riddle was a trick. A game. The answer was in the set up and the actual question: Once in a while, “i” can be found. What am “i”? Sure,  the grammar was off by a bit, but it had to be:

“The letter i,” he blurted out. “The letter i.”

The sphinx gazed into John’s eyes, unblinking and unmoving, as if weighing his response and seeing if it passed muster. The stare went on long enough that John began to second guess himself. Had he gotten something wrong? Was it a different letter, or an entirely different sort of answer? Had it been “time”?

“That is correct,” the sphinx said at last. “I shall not destroy you.”

Liese breathed a sigh of relief, a sigh echoed by John. But once again, the sphinx said nothing. Those feline eyes just stared at John in much the same way a cat might watch a mouse it was thinking about eating but hadn’t gotten around to killing yet. “Great?” John said at last.

More silence.

John cleared his throat. “How do we get to the entrance to the library, then?”

“I shall aid you, but only in my own way. Every answer is a riddle. Three paths lead from this spot in the maze, and every path branches seven times before they reach their end. Branch leads to branch, and way leads to way, but only one leads to the goal you seek. The way you face now lies north. Every season in a single year is a passageway, starting in the east. Go down the path of the final season, traced in the pathway of the sun in the sky, then follow its course, never turning, except when you’ve taken the number of steps found in thirty weeks. Take that passage, and your destination lies at the end. Good luck, young man and woman. Be wise, and be vigilant. There are many much harder tests to come.”

And with that, the beast turned and padded onward into the darkness. John and Liese watched its tail swish as it passed, then turned to each other. “Did you understand any of that?” Liese asked. ”

John couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. He’d been hoping she would have the answer for him. He shook his head, admitting, “I got lost somewhere with the weeks and seasons.”

“I think I understood some of that part,” Liese said. “We’re supposed to count off the seasons in a year in the direction the sun moves, so that’s east to west, starting with the passage on our right, with every path getting one season, until we come to the end of a year. Then we go down that passage until we’ve stepped . . .”

“The number of steps in thirty weeks,” John finished. Maybe he’d caught some of it after all. It had seemed difficult at first, but when he broke it down, it seemed clear. Count off four seasons: that would mean the passage on the right was the first, the left was the second, behind him was the third, and then back to the passage on the right for the fourth. They’d go down that 210 steps, turn, and then take that path to the entrance to the library. When he explained this to Liese, however, she hesitated.

“It seems too easy, doesn’t it?” she asked.

And John had to admit that it did. Would the sphinx really make things that straightforward? But they still needed water or a way out of the pyramid. If he couldn’t come up with a better answer, then he’d just have to go with this one. He thought it over for a moment, then made up his mind.

Make a Choice

Is John going with the straightforward answer, or does someone have a better idea? I need a specific alternative if you choose something else. Feel free to talk it out on the blog, but as usual, the most popular answer wins out.

And to make things interesting, I’m putting this on the table: all but one of the paths John and Liese might choose will bring them to a fate they’d really rather avoid. Let’s do our best not to kill them, shall we?

Throw It All Out: A New Approach to Cleaning Kids Rooms

Keeping rooms clean is a never ending struggle. I know that. You know that. (Well, if you’re mortal, you do. I’m not convinced some of you are mortal when it comes to cleanliness, though. We normal people have to scrape by somehow, however.) Kid rooms can be particularly difficult, as I’m sure you’re aware. I came back from my conference (where maids magically cleaned my room every day) and moved furniture around in the kids’ rooms. While I was doing that, I was dismayed to see just how much stuff TRC had accumulated since we did this the last time.

I’ve cleaned his room with him before, and it’s a long haul. Every item he had was a decision: keep it, toss it, donate it, etc. And decisions are hard for people to make if they’re like me at all when it comes to stuff. In other words, I realize I have a hard time letting stuff go. TRC has the same issue.

So as I was looking at all this stuff in his room, I came up with an impromptu offer. If he would let me, I would clean his entire room. Drawers, horizontal surfaces, and all. I would make all the decisions for what should stay and what should go. I’d put everything in a “Go” pile, and when he came home from school, he’d be allowed to pick 5 things out of it that wouldn’t go. Anything beyond that, he had to buy back from me.

He agreed.

It was such a different experience. This wasn’t my stuff I was making decisions about. I had the distance from the attachment that I could just objectively decide if something was worth holding onto or not. I put a whole trash bag of stuff into that “Go” pile. Knickknacks, Happy Meal toys, rocks, papers. You name it. By the time I was done (it took two hours), the room looked fantastic. But I didn’t know what TRC would think when he came home. Would we have a big confrontation about some of the decisions I’d made?

Nope.

He picked five things, and he paid for three more (a total of $3), and that was that. Denisa did go through the pile once on her own to see if anything was needed elsewhere, and then off it all went to get donated or tossed. Somehow, seeing all the stuff clumped together in one big pile made things a lot easier for TRC. Better yet, he had the ability to prioritize what he wanted and didn’t want. When you’re not willing to pay $1 to hold onto something? You don’t really want it. I think that extra cost made a real difference. Too often we don’t view holding onto things as coming with a price, but it does. The clutter can just drown a room. But by quantifying that price, suddenly you can reanalyze what you do or don’t want.

In any case, I just thought I’d pass this experience on to all you lovely people. It might not be new to you, but it was new to me, and it worked really well. Now to see if someone will do it for my drawers . . .

The Week I Fell off the Sugar Wagon

So last week I was at the Leading Change Institute, as you know. It was a great time, yes, but there was one thing that was decidedly not so great for me: the desserts.

Don’t get me wrong. They tasted great, and there were plenty of them. But that’s exactly the problem. My willpower to resist sugar was put to an extreme test, and it was found woefully lacking. I put up some resistance the first few days, but the longer time went on, and the more I was just sitting in a room with no windows but plenty of chocolate cake . . .

By the end, I was eating a whole lot of sugary things every day.

In a way, I suppose it was useful. I found out that sugar and I really don’t get along as well as I always thought we did. All those sweets left me feeling pretty crummy at the end of each day. I was sleeping plenty, but I didn’t feel nearly as well rested. I just felt worse, plain and simple. Worse enough that toward the end, I cut back on the intake some.

The good news is that I’m home now, and I was able to go right back to my old (new) habits. Strange to think that it really only took three months of going without sugar until I felt like that’s my new normal. Though I do miss that chocolate mousse . . .

Anyway. We’ll see in the future if this experience will be enough to persuade me to be more careful the next time bottomless desserts present themselves. The biggest problem I always have is that as soon as I break the rules I’ve set for myself, I feel like I might as well really break the rules. I need to get better and self correcting more quickly.

There’s always something to work on, I suppose.

What I Learned at the Leading Change Institute

By the time you read this, my time at the Leading Change Institute will almost be over. I’m heading back to Maine this evening (cross your fingers and toes for a smooth flight). Before I came to this conference, I had a really hard time figuring out exactly what I’d be learning for these 6 days. I knew it was a really prestigious conference, and that it would be full of high powered people and ideas, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what we’d be doing for those 6 days.

I get it now.

In essence, these 6 days have been full of leaders in education coming to talk to our cohort about the issues facing higher ed today. We were exposed to perspectives that ran the gamut: chancellors, presidents, public relations, business office, government agencies, technology, librarians, board of trustees, and more. Each one offering their considerable insights into the issues they see from their perspective. It’s been an extremely eye-opening experience.

Many of them touched upon similar themes, but because each was informed by their own perspective, it was possible to get a much richer understanding of the nuances of those problems. Up until this point in my career, I’ve always approached things from a fairly limited viewpoint. I have experience at my library and through talking to other librarians. I have a few faculty friends or friends over in IT. But even trying to talk to friends and acquaintances, I was only able to see what was going on in my neck of the woods.

This really helped fix that. Better yet, it did it by adding a national viewpoint on those issues. By taking things and separating them from the day-to-day issues I’ve seen facing my campus, I was better able to get an objective understanding of those issues. And because all of this happened in a 6 day firehose-to-the-brain format, I could get a much better idea of the complete picture.

In many ways, so much of what’s facing higher ed feels like the blind men and the elephant, with all sorts of very intelligent people being very correct about what they see, but still coming to an incomplete conclusion. An experience like this really helps counteract that limited information.

So am I ready to go out and conquer the world tomorrow? Not quite. I have a lot to think about and process, however, and I have a much firmer idea of how I can contribute to my library and my institution. Where it goes from there remains to be seen, but in the end, I’d have to say this really was an incredible opportunity, one which I’m very happy to have been able to experience. Many thanks to Educause and CLIR for organizing the program, and to the Jane N. Ryland Fellowship program, which helped pay for my attendance.

Sweating the Small Stuff

If there’s one thing I could change about me, it’s probably my tendency to stress out too much about small things that don’t really matter. (Okay, maybe that’s not the only thing I’d change, but it made for a good intro to this post.) Case in point: this last Memorial Day, Denisa and I had a cookout with the kids. The only problem? I almost never use my grill, and so I’m far from comfortable when it comes time to put it into action.

You’d figure most normal people wouldn’t be too worried about something like that. After all, it’s a private family dinner, no one else is going to be there, and if things go wrong, what’s the big deal? But I just couldn’t seem to not worry about it. Was I lighting the charcoal the right way? Was it hot enough? Were the burgers cooking right? Were they too burnt? It sounds silly to write it all now (and I felt silly for feeling that way at the time), but I was seriously getting upset about those things. To the point that I was grouchy with my family and had a hard time relaxing.

Second case in point: my dislike of flying. It’s something I know is silly. It’s something I can recognize as being unfounded. I’ve been on planes plenty of times, they’ve always gotten me where I wanted to go (sooner or later), but I just can’t seem to talk myself down from being anxious each time I know I have to fly. It takes me out of commission for the days leading up to the trip. Once I’m parked and past security, I’m usually a lot better. I don’t know why.

Both situations are facets of the same thing. I just get so worked up about things that there’s no need to be worked up about. I can mentally acknowledge it, and I can wish I were different, but I haven’t been able to actually do anything to correct it.

So I turn to you, smart friends of mine. Are there any experiences like that you have, where you know the easy solution (“just get over it”), but you can’t seem to apply it? It’s not like I let it stop me from doing things (most of the time), but I sure would appreciate it if I could figure out a way to get this part of me straightened out.

Sigh.

Pick Your Own YA Fantasy Part 9

[Welcome to part nine of my continuing blog series. I write the book, you pick the plot. For earlier parts, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, and part 8.]

In the end, he followed his gut this time. John grabbed Liese’s shoulder and pulled her into a side passage.

“What are you–”

“Shh,” John broke in, whispering. “Turn off your phone and just be quiet for a minute. Let’s see if we can get it to pass us.”

Liese nodded, and the two of them stood in the sweltering heat, sweating, able to see nothing as they listened to a resounding silence. The footsteps had disappeared. John didn’t doubt that he’d heard them, however, He knew the whatever-it-was was just waiting, confused. And sure enough, after a minute or two, they resumed, just as before: soft footfalls accompanied by scrapes that had to be claws. John was certain of it.

What could make a noise like that? A crocodile would have a swishing noise, wouldn’t it? It would have to, because of its tail. It couldn’t be an asp, and he doubted it was a mummy. Did they have bears in Egypt? He didn’t think so, but the thing sounded massive. He almost thought he could feel the floor vibrate with each step. That couldn’t be possible. The beast would have to weigh over a thousand pounds.

But the noise grew louder and louder, until John didn’t have to imagine he was feeling the vibrations in the floor. There was no doubt about it. At last he heard the thing pass right by the passage he and Liese were hiding in. It was still pitch black, of course. How was the thing moving around? Maybe it could see in the dark. Maybe even now, it was staring at Liese and John, waiting to lash out with its claws and–

“John.” The voice was loud and booming. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was all John could do to keep from fainting in shock right then. He was left speechless. Had the creature said his name? Did it know who he was?

“John,” it repeated. “And Liese, is it not? I can hear your thoughts, and I can smell your fear. Turn on your light again that I may see your faces.”

Liese reached out and fumbled for John’s hand, squeezing it tightly before she took out her phone. The light clicked on, revealing an enormous human face peering down at the two of them. Behind the face was a furred tawny body and tightly furled feathered wings. The beast was enormous, filling the entire passage, almost as if the passage had been designed with the beast in mind.

“So,” it said. The voice sounded female. More or less. “It is true. You have come. Do you have the Tome?”

John wasn’t sure if he trusted himself to answer, but he held up the Tome in front of him, his hands trembling as he made the connection. This beast was a sphinx, no doubt about it. And even though he’d already come face to face with a djinn earlier today, this was an entirely different experience. He glanced down at the thing’s paws, each of them the size of a dinner plate, with strong, thick claws peering out between the fur. If this creature wanted to, it could make short work of John without even trying.

“Excellent,” it (she?) said. “And wise of you to stop fleeing from me. Had you continued down this path, you would have come to the gate to the underworld. Once a human has set eyes on it, they can never go back to the land of the living again.”

“Oh,” John said, trying to resist the urge to glance at Liese. She’d seemed so sure it was the right way to go. Everyone made mistakes, he supposed. “Thanks?”

“You do not have my aid yet. To receive that, you must answer me a riddle. Give me the correct answer, and I will show you the way to the entrance of the library. I know of your quest, but I must continue my purpose. I was placed here to protect the entrance. Answer with the wrong choice, and it shall not go well for either of you, sorry though I may be. Are you ready for the riddle?”

And what choice did John have? He shrugged and nodded, hoping the riddle was the one the sphinx always used in the stories: the one about how people are born and crawl on four legs, then grow up and use two legs, and then grow old and use two legs and a cane.

The sphinx cleared her throat and said, “Once in a while, I can be found, and twice in a billion years, but never at all in summer or fall, nor yesterday, today, or tomorrow. You can search forever and not catch a glimpse, but then you’ll find me at once when you check every inch but lose me again when you search a foot or a yard, but find me again in a mile. What am I?”

John licked his lips, thought the riddle over again, and checked Liese for hints.

“The riddle must be solved on your own, John,” the sphinx said. “And I need an answer now. What am I?”

Answer the Riddle

Give it your best shot, folks. Let’s see what you’ve got. Most popular answer wins, and we’ll see what the sphinx does when you give it.

Settle Down, People: Dealing with Anger on the Internet

I’ve purposely waited on this post for a time when there wasn’t something happening online that some of my friends were in a huff about. Then again, since I’m writing this ahead of time, I suppose there’s a chance that something blows up in the next day or so, but that’s the risk I’m going to have to take.

The thing is, everyone seems to get all upset about something or other these days. I’m as guilty about it as the next person, I know. There have been times that I see something online, and I just go into rage mode. I write an inflammatory post lambasting whatever angered me, and it feels really cathartic.

But we need to do less of that.

Because what good is it doing anyone at this point, honestly? I’m not talking about open, frank discussion of serious issues. Rather, I’m looking at people who view the internet as one big game of “Gotcha!” They lie in wait, lurking, waiting for someone to say something that can be misconstrued or something that’s ill advised, and then they jump all over that person. Or they jump all over the people who jumped all over the person. It goes both ways.

Life is too short, folks.

Why does this happen? Some of it comes from the fact that we can find people who think the way we think so easily these days. The internet has made the world a much smaller place, easier for people to connect and share opinions. At the same time, it’s made it that much easier for upsetting opinions to come in front of us as well. In a way, it all reminds me of a PvP server.

Drawing on my World of Warcraft experiences, there are two basic types of servers. In the first, people are only allowed to fight other people if other people allow it. In the second (player vs. player, or PvP), anyone can fight anyone else at any time. So you’d just be sitting there, calmly picking herbs or fishing, and this huge high level player might ride by and slaughter you, just for kicks.

It was a bad feeling, to say the least. And so what people would do then is tell their buddies about the guy who’d just slaughtered them, and the buddies would show up with higher level characters to get some revenge, and before you know it, you had all out war. Of course, because this was an online game, it was a war that resulted in nothing more than some hurt feelings and wasted time.

Which pretty much sums up most of these forced internet eruptions, when you think about it.

The other day, one of my posts on Mormonism started getting a few comments from people who clearly thought I was an idiot. The post wasn’t new, and I was curious where all the traffic was coming from. Maybe it was just one person who’d decided to try and annoy me by posting with different names. So I checked out my site statistics, and I found out a ton of people were coming to the site from an ex-mormon Reddit site. Clicking over there, I discovered someone had posted a link to my blog, along with some choice words of exactly what they thought of me. And then other people chimed in to agree. For a brief moment, I was a pretty popular guy to mock over there.

I was faced with a choice. People were making fun of me online. I could try and defend myself. Write back against the people who were criticizing me. Or I could issue a call for help on Facebook or Twitter and see if other people could rally to the cause and defend my good name.

What did I choose to do?

Not a blessed thing. I just read over the comments, bit my tongue, and stayed silent. Why? Because for the most part, these were people whose minds were already made up. They weren’t really interested in carrying on a conversation, and I had no real desire to get into an argument that would do nothing more than waste my time. True, there were a few who seemed reasonable, and who I would have liked to talk with, but if I started responding to them, then the rabid ones would know I was paying attention.

Don’t poke bears with sticks when you’re on the internet. (Or in real life, for that matter.)

So I ignored it, and in a day or two, the traffic had gone elsewhere. I honestly think I’m better off for choosing that approach, and I think a lot of people would be happier if they would follow suit.

At the very least, take some time before responding to things immediately.

Then again, some of this isn’t caused by emotions, but by something that’s far worse in my opinion: the desire to get eyeballs.

Having written a blog for quite some time now, I know all about this. I put a fair bit of effort into my posts, and I pay attention to what gets a lot of views and what goes unnoticed. When I come across a topic I’m pretty sure will get a good discussion going, it’s hard to not want to write it up as soon as I can. I want people to listen to me, after all. And this is on a very small scale. There are some people out there with much, much bigger soap boxes and loud speakers. In those cases, I think it’s even more important to be careful with what you post. I’ve seen friends and acquaintances start falling into this trap, getting into very public scrapes about some very petty topics. In general, I end up walking away thinking the less of everyone involved.

Then again, maybe that’s why my blog has continued to be relatively unnoticed. Such is life. My blog reflects who I am and what I value. Other people are certainly entitled to run their blogs the way they see fit.

Anyway. This isn’t just about blog posts. It’s intended to be about anything social media-related. The same principles apply to things we share on Facebook, or comments we make on Facebook posts. Is this post going to change the way the internet works? Nope. But maybe it’ll change the way a few people think about interacting online, and that would be nifty. If it does nothing else, it’s helped crystallize a few thoughts I personally have been having, and that’s a plus for me.

And that’s about all I have to say about that for now.

Down in DC for the Week

Howdy, folks. I’m down in Washington DC this week, attending a week long conference called the Leading Change Institute, one of the premier library/IT conferences in the country. I came down Saturday, and I’m here through Friday, and in the time between, I’m busy busy busy. It’s an all day sort of thing, with proceedings starting around 8:30 or so and going until the evening.

On a practical note, that means I have no idea how many blog posts I’m going to be able to get to. My hope is to write a few ahead of time and have them autopost to Facebook for me, but a lot of that plan depends on my ability to come up with interesting things to say all at once. Believe it or not, coming up with good topics is a continuous struggle. Sometimes I’m more successful than others. Doing it all at once? That can get dicey.

My biggest worry is actually that I won’t have time to write my weekly Pick Your Own YA Fantasy entry, so I’m going to try and make sure to churn that out as soon as I can. I’m also lucky from a writing perspective that I’m in revision mode at the moment. That means I’m just rereading my PETER PAN adaptation each day. As I’m looking over it, I’ve been very happy with how well it turned out so far. A very fun book to read, and not a whole lot of work needed to make it consistent with my original vision. (That isn’t to say it won’t need a lot of work. I’m just looking over it now to make sure I’m happy with what it looks like. After that, it’ll go to alpha readers and my agents for a closer look. No matter how good of a reader I think I am for others, the sad truth is that evaluating my own work accurately is something I’m pretty bad at. No idea how to get better.)

But for now, I just need to read some every day, and I get to feel like I’m getting my necessary writing time in. Yay for planning things out ahead of time!

Anyway. That’s my schedule this week. If I seem less present online, it’s because I’m otherwise occupied. Try not to break the internet while I’m distracted.