Nick Bolock's Blog: Nick's Insight to Madness, page 2

"I want them to succeed."

My wife and I went to see Black Panther back on the weekend it opened as our Valentine's Day outing. (Few days late, but whatever.) Great movie, hands down. I joined the chorus of voices praising the accolades of the movie.
But when the credits started to roll - I mean the actual credits and not the graphic, pre-stinger teaser - I watched the names of the cast go by one after another as the music blared on. I had a thought then.
I leaned over to Jess and said: "One day, I hope to see the name of someone I know in the credits. I want everyone I've ever met to succeed in life."
It's not some crazy or profound idea. It's not a generous well-wishing from me. To me, its a genuine thing to want to see everyone succeed at what they do.
Shortly after, I was perusing Facebook when it recommended some friends of mine from middle school. I didn't send any friend requests because I felt like they wouldn't even remember me. (I transferred in for about two years, graduated, and went to an entirely different school than everyone else.) I did seize the opportunity to see how they were all doing. A few clicks and I got to see my old friends as scientists, engineers, medical researchers, and so much more. So much more than I would have expected them to be. They have lives, and families, houses, dreams, ambition, and... Success.
I felt a moment of pride to have known these people and been a part of their lives leading up to their success.
That makes me wonder. What is it I really want?
Well, I won't ever become a scientist or an engineer. I just want to simply become a teacher and pass along the next generation of scientists, engineers, doctors, actors, play writes, video game designers and creators, musicians, and so much more. I'd be happy just teaching a literature class and having that one struggling student show me his or her "aha!" moment. One of those moments where all the circuits line up and they understand the material.
I want to tell stories and make everyone who experiences my vision think "man, this guy is seriously screwy." (You know what I mean.)
Most importantly, l want to see other succeed.

A Send-up to Something I've Cherished, My New Project

I'm coming to the end of the first draft of Run for Me, my one-time-thriller-turned-young-adult-drama novel. At times like these I start to seek out something new to work on. Keeping my momentum is key to my progress.
With that out of the way:

Two weeks ago (from this post of course), my curiosity got the best of me. Now, whether or not I've mentioned it before, Shin Megami Tensei (and its spin-offs) is my favorite game series hands down. The whole law versus chaos, fighting the forces of heaven and hell with mythological demons had me hooked from when I picked up SMT: Strange Journey back in 2010. Since then, I've invest in mostly spin-off titles that opened up new ideas and tactics. At some point since, I'd become acquainted with the idea that the initial entries of the games were based off of a novel series called Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Story.

As far as I was aware all this time, there never was an official English translation of the Japanese novel. That is, until I found a fan translation online a few weeks ago while I was at work. Of course I jumped in to reading it and, without too much detail, was - for lack of a better term - confused and disillusioned by what I read. It was a far cry from what the video games were.

So that got me thinking about how different the two are. That, since I love the series so much, why not write my own love letter to the series. While I'm in the planning stages now, my chaotic way of doing things actually works. I wrote a first chapter and it passed the grade of my harshest critic. I don't have a title for it yet, but I do have a large portion of it planned out. Once Run for Me is done, proofed, and ready to rock and be sent out on another publishing attempt, I'll work on my little send-up.

New Year, New... Everything?

So it's 2018 finally. I know I'm late to the party. Don't rub it in.

Well, twelve days into 2018 and I've managed to not die ONCE. Yes, once. Well... I'm not sure that counts exactly because it happened on Christmas.
I was heading to my in-laws for Christmas brunch, hit a slick spot, and totaled my car. The Wrathful Red Rider - Quantum Flare is no more!
Yes. I name my cars. The 1991 Dodge Spirit my mom and I shared was Panzer, my 2003 Pontiac Grand Am GT was Kiryu, 2013 Hyundai Elantra was as above (too lazy to retype), and now I have a 2013 Buick Verano named The Haunting Orchestra - Twilight Scherzo. My wife says that's too long, but I like it. So it stays.
Anyway, new year, new car, and new opportunities.

My 2017 year in review as an author isn't really firework-worthy. I finished and sent out what I assumed was my killer magnum opus Dragonsbane. Nope. Not at all. I mean, yeah, I didn't try too many publishers and agents, but I tried enough to realize that I might be doing something wrong.
Then I started to have a crisis. I thought about it a lot and, after seeing Facebook ads galore, realized that maybe fantasy wasn't really my thing. Late in the year I would do more studying and realize that it's not that fantasy isn't my thing, it's that I wasn't really taking risks or writing anything new and exciting.
So I moved on and started writing what was a thriller and now moved onto a teen drama. Can't win all the genres, I suppose.
I did NaNoWriMo again, and completed it with my sanity intact. The product was a historical fantasy about Meiji era Japan. Neat stuff there. Hardly ready to even try to proof it.
My cat decided it was a good idea to rip keys out of my laptop keyboard. Now I get to use my bluetooth keyboard everywhere for everything.
I got married and went on my honeymoon. That was fun. Not doing a plane again IF I can help it. Like, I will take a train to the best of my ability. The wedding was a blast, got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in some time.

And that's all I've got for you. See? Not that interesting. It's funny to note that it is a little over a year since I sent Dragonsbane out. Lord knows I wouldn't remember that on my own, but thankfully Facebook memories are a thing.

Looking ahead, I'll end up sending my teen drama out to whatever success. Hoping for the best there. This year I finally graduate college and more than likely start my masters. And I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing here. But hey, no one is perfect.

Good night everybody!

NaNoWriMo 2017: On the other side

Well, I made it.
I made it out of Nanowrimo alive and with my sanity intact. My finished product, an overhaul of The Glass, the Thread, and the Fabric, came out better than expected and in need of some serious rewriting. I laugh because I allowed the characters to flourish more than I am used to. The result was some of the characters who weren't named or one-offs ending up doing more than they should have. Thus, that leads me to wanting to write them in more and give them more to do.
But for now I'm backing off of it and doing other things. It won't be until January at the earliest that I actually work on it again.

So, here's the part where I reflect on what I had done.

I managed to, in thirty days, write a novel by the minimum length. My coworker also participated with some pushing from me. There were several nights where we worked together where instead of our usual hell-raising jokes, we had quiet writing time. This was were my Bluetooth keyboard and portable power pack charger (as well as file sharing apps) became massively handy.
To be brutally honest, I might not have accomplished the task without them. There were 10 hour nights where I literally slammed out thousands of words. There were nights where I just took time off and played Pokemon too. So, fair trade off.
I don't know what the next Nanowrimo holds, but I plan to keep doing them as long as I can, even if I have to attend movie premiers or something like that in-between.
The other thing that saved my can was the outlining I did. I outlined the characters' wants and needs, as well as a sort of basic outline for sections of chapters. What I mean is that in my notebook, I wrote down the major plot points that needed to be covered followed by how many chapters I wanted to spend covering that event. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes that made it harder. Sometimes it allowed me to better see how long a lead-up should be. Other times it had me questioning why I would spend that much time on one area.
To that extent, I want to start doing that more. I went back to Run for Me and its a mess now. I have no idea where or how that's going.

NaNoWriMo and me, 2017

Here I am again, doing nanowrimo because I'm mentally insane. Really, I might be. For nanowrimo I'm doing my total reboot of The Glass, the Thread, and the Fabric after having discarded it for a few months. Its the historical fantasy I was working on then stopped, and now picked up again with a different outlook on it.

So far, its not the greatest. I lost most of my day 1 to things out of my control, day 2 went better. A lot better actually.

Just to keep things in line (I feel like I do this too often), I missed out on two months of blogs. Partly because I had nothing to say, partly because I forgot. Mostly because I forgot.
I've had a lot of (mostly crappy) stuff going on that I don't want to talk about just yet. I'm saving it for a future blog post.

Anyway, twitter is where I seem to be the most anymore. Hit me up there, @nickbolock

See ya around, and if you're doing NaNo, good luck!

Frustration with the Genre Pt 3: Resolution

I'm taking a long sojourn away from fantasy.
I'm leaving to find myself amidst the flowered fields I once so highly prized.

I'll come right out and say it: I am giving up on writing fantasy for the time being.
And all it took was one more free Kindle chapter of another novel that was too much like mine to set me off.

I've been writing and pondering and thinking and scribbling, but I have to face the writing on the wall. As well as I can do with writing fantasy, I have a bugger of a time selling the books. Yes, people love them and my friends were all ecstatic, but that doesn't give me that satisfying *jingle-jingle* or the success I so desire. (Jingle-jingle is a stretch because I rarely use actual cash.)
This leads back to my last two blog posts. They were full of struggle and, often times sadly, shame. I felt weird saying that I would walk away from a genre that I'd essentially built my life around. I mean, yeah, I've read other genres here and there whether or not I could help it. (Sometime I'll tell the story of night school and how I made the teacher there mad because she had us read her prized novel and I figured out the ending without reading it.) My wife says to move on, one of my best friends nearly beat me to death over reading the first chapter of a thriller I worked on, and my parents both are salivating over the historical fiction I want to try my hand at.
You might say to yourself as you read this, "Self, I understand his frustration, but what does he want?"
Simple. I want to be noticed and gain traction and tell stories that people are actually reading. And I don't think that is going to happen writing fantasy right now.
It comes at a point when I've been feeling down on myself for writing and what it's come around as; but then, as always, I end up finding the exactly right advice from the right persons.
This time three different authors gave direct and indirect advice to me. One directly critiqued Glass, Thread, Fabric, and gave me a thumbs up but said to reword it, to cut to the chase. I'll admit, there was a lot of force feeding, but that's what I (Poorly) assumed historical fiction needed first and foremost: vivid detail.
The second was from a Goodreads question I'd asked months ago of a publish author about his motivations for writing what he did and how he chose some of the components. "I wrote what I wanted to write, I used the dinosaurs I wanted to use."
Third was indirect advice on how to write, how to get started, and, most crucially, eased a fear I've been struggling with lately. The biggest part was saying that it's alright to have multiple projects going at one time to avoid writer's block and keep mobile. That helped a lot.

So I'm moving forward. Yes, I know that both the current setting of The Storyteller War and Dragonsbane both end in a weird spot, but that's were they'll stay until I'm good and ready.

Good and ready to return to fantasy after I try everything I want to try.

Music to Move My Soul

If you've kept up with my blog since the beginning, you've no doubt heard me ramble about a game called Legend of Mana. It's an old PS1 game that inspired me and captivated me due to the sheer number of stories involved in the game. While this was a turnoff for some, it was amazing for me as a child. That is one of the few games I've played over and over and over.
One thing that always captivated me was the music. It was catchy, well-written, and became a soundtrack for my childhood in a way, and even for my friends and I when we played the game.
About a year and a half ago I learned that the soundtrack was actually published in a full, two disk set. About two weeks ago, I got my hands on the rare collection. For reference: game came out in 1999, as did the CD. Amazon had 10 for sale, all used of course. No biggie.

Once I received it I couldn't help but listen to it everywhere I went in my car's CD player. Who couldn't resist the sounds of their childhood? The flutes and pianos, the trumpets, the searing guitars and techno beats. For reference, go on Youtube and look up "Legend of Mana Theme", "Bedight orbit", and whatever else pops up linked to the game. All sounds I loved to hear over and over again, much like playing the game itself.

But in listening I learned somethings about myself that I had forgotten, or never realized. I forgot that I had used to play the game to hide away when things weren't going so well. I was able to help people in the game when i wasn't able to in life. I was powerful there where I was powerless here. I'll always remember the turbulent time my grandmother passed away. It was, sadly, the time I learned the true colors of my extended family. People I'd not seen much growing up were suddenly displaying for me their wickedness and depravity over money, jewelry, and other things my grandmother left behind.

And in all of that I just wanted to get away from them to play Legend of Mana.

But there was something else that came to mind that I'd forgotten.

My reason for writing.

Another blog probably mentions how I became (more so) determined to write after listening to the Nightwish song Storytime.
In reality, my interest in writing, or storytelling I suppose, goes back even further than that to when I was a kid.
Because of Legend of Mana. I was so inspired to see all of these stories and how they played out that it brought me into the world of myth, the power of stories, and the wonders they brought people.

The Storyteller War was, at one point, to be more like Legend of Mana. A collection of stories that would come together at one point to resolve the story. I've gotten a little away from that as I stripped out several parts like Dragonsbane and more, but I want to return to it as it should be.

Frustration with the Genre Pt 2

Last Monday prior to writing this blog I received a (very?) late rejection notice from an agent I had queried. It was for Dragonsbane of course. His suggestions and advice were the same as everyone else: the market isn't viable for this right now, find a focus group to hone your writing, etc etc.
That of course lead me to discussing it with Jess, and she immediately asked if I was going to get all mopey. When I replied maybe, man did I get it after that. Phew. Man, oh man.
But she did bring up something interesting to me about my workings.
Now, you see, Jess has been wanting me to turn the mystery/thriller I wrote for a short story contest about a stalker student into a full novel. I promise, after some convincing, to put it in the docket for the future.
This time, she told me directly that I should write that fully and option it out to publishers. No ifs, ands, or buts. Put everything aside and try a new genre.

Which... Makes sense.
After my last blog about being frustrated with my viewpoints on the stagnation of the fantasy genre, maybe it is time I try something new? An entirely different direction perhaps?

Frustration with the Genre

I'll finally admit it openly: I am frustrated with the fantasy genre.

The endless Facebook ads of dragons this, sex that, coming-of-age this, and forbidden magic that have all worn me down to a little nub. Why, you ask. Simple. There is so much more out there than all of this. These tropes, even though I've used them and have begun to maybe resent that, are so worn out after most of the indie ads I see are trying to cap the fantasy crazed sparked by Martin's TV success with Game of Thrones.

What started this all was I recently saw an ad on Facebook that stuck out to me. It was an indie author of course who PROMISED a youth-friendly fantasy romp about a mixed-heritage boy, something about magic rocks, etc. As always when I read Amazon pages for indie books I check the 1 star reviews first and read my way up. Again, why, you ask? It's a personal thing where I dislike five star reviews. I'm a hair jaded against them after seeing too many *5 Stars: This (insert product here) is amazing! BLAH BLAH BLAH.* I can't stand shallow things.
Now I know that any star reviews can be that, but I've developed a my own method.
One and two star reviews can hold a lot of truth, a lot of unbiased truth that breaks through the clods. Such that several one star reviews all mentioned the same thing: the author used sex and rape and blood shed as a shock factor and not for much progress. Dragons used as a godlike being, etc.

And it bothers me. A whole heck of a lot.

There is so much more to fantasy, or any genre. Example: take horror for example. A lot of people try to piggyback the Cthullu mythos when Stephen King has been writing about haunted cars for decades.
The other thing that's bothering me is how a lot of them are falling into a structure based so specifically on the hero's journey. Young person finds magic, finds mentor, loses mentor, fights evil, stops evil, goes home. Done.

By now you might think I'm insane, but I won't argue that Rising Seas or Regolith or Dragonsbane are much different. They might be, but I never really analyzed them.
The bit about dragons bothers me in part because there is so much more to the bestiary of fantasy than dragons and zombies. Let's try talking chimera, or manticore. Show me a Mind Flayer or a Skeleton King. I'll take a terrible rip off of Frankenstein's Monster for god's sake! JUST STOP WITH THE DRAGONS! Personally, it's come to the point where I don't even want to use dragons in Dragonsbane (ironically) anymore. I want to avoid them just to be different.

I know there is more to fantasy, and I know its out there. I'm not talking best sellers, I want all the indie writers to get better, to raise the bar, to shake off the chains that bind them to thinking they have to tell the same tales and beat them to death!

And unfortunately, I suppose that might start with me.

Airplanes and Airpains

So I'm back at my desk after my honeymoon and have a great blog post brewing...

About how much I detest flying.
No, really. Not a fan of planes. Which comes as a little weird to me at first, but then not so much.
My first plane ride was to Florida with my cousin to go to Disney. That was fine, no biggie. I was more excited then somehow. I even made a gag comment when we landed "Aw, no bump?" then the airplane slammed down on its landing gear.

These four times? To hell with it. Man was born on the ground. One does not naturally coop him up in a giant metal bird and say FLY DAMN YOU. Nope. Not cool. Every little pitch and pull had me freaking out just a bit more and more.
Then, we get off the second plane and THEN they announce that THAT plane we JUST got OFF has a broken anti-ice machine. WE JUST FLEW ON THAT YOU JACKWAGONS!

So, I'm not big on flying. But the cruise was a lot of fun. I got to see a reef, swim with dolphins, run up and down stairs, and nearly got mauled by a crazed old southern lady in a Jazzy chair that seemed to be able to drive significantly faster than normally allowed by... Law? Physics? Mechanics? Whatever the hell governs those sort of things. I also managed to develop a lot of ideas I've been sitting on for a little bit and got some reading done.

Refreshed, am I? I guess? I don't know, but I'm back and ready for action.

(PS. Rollar Coasters aren't good for me either.)