Is it just me?

When I am reading a book, or watching a film, I become engrossed. If it is well written, I become the person to such a degree that I am no longer just experiencing the story, I'm living it. It gets to a point where I sometimes have to consciously separate it from reality.

Sometimes I will have dreams that wouldn't look out of place in reality. While I am still in the dream I will find myself considering the repercussions of my dream persona's actions; mapping a path out of the mess that I have created. I cannot tell you how relieved I am when I wake up and realise it was just a dream. I think I have always been like this. When I was about four years old, I first questioned whether I truly existed. Did I have any effect on the world around me? I then hatched a devious plan to test this by cutting holes in the skirting of my bed. My mom soon proved to me that I did. 

I now believe that everyone impacts the world even if that impact is not immediately apparent. Your world is ruled by your perceptions and interpretations. You have the ability to be happy, angry, start wars, make friends, do nothing. Not everything is measurable but you will know from your internal barometer whether you have made a difference. Change is realised internally before it is ever perceived externally. The mere notion of questioning whether you have an impact on the world is enough to do just that. Every great person has started with a dream that they have chosen to share with reality. So pay attention to your dreams as it might just hold the key to ruling your world.

Book Two is underway

Ah yes. The second book in the Zed Trilogy has commenced. It is nice to see a beginning ... now all I need to do is see an end! The start has been unrealistically smooth, with a smooth first chapter and a pretty good introduction to the key antagonist of this book (I'm sure you can guess who if you think hard enough).

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It's all been pretty smooth and now I'm leading into the first major battle of our grisled protagonist, which should be a little trickier to orchestrate. I'm taking my time, ensuring that it plays out imaginatively and makes sense to my readers. It should be 'awesome' to use an American vernacular. And hopefully you will be on the edge of your seat and filled with, at least partially, some awe.

Anywho; It's a short post so I'd best get back to writing my book! Oh, and Happy Birthday Mom!!

Putting on a spit-shine

Knowing when to put down your brush is one of the hardest thing to determine. When another brush stroke will detract rather than add is hard to distinguish - there is such a thing as too refined. Take Van Gogh; do you think if he revised each bluntly-applied stroke, would the final painting look as good? It would lose the impressionistic aspect that makes his work so appealing - it would look like any other painting. However, knowing that you still need to revise your work is just as hard. At what point do you define something as done?

Is it at the point that you no longer find something to criticize or is it when the rest of the world thinks it's fine even if you don't? I'm not sure. All I know is that when I revise my work it is better. Maybe at some point any change or addition will no longer be an improvement but I have yet to reach that point. I think if I am not careful I could get into an infinite loop. I hate unnecessary iterations in my code so it seems logical that I should have a predefined limit on the number of iterations I can take when revising and tweaking.

That's it. That will fix the situation I find myself in.

Now all I need to define is what my limit actually is. I can't simply define a number - a limit needs to be defined relative to context; relative to the complexity and subjectivity. Grammer Grammar and spelling should be easy to limit. Revising punctuation: trickier. Story arcs? Pacing? Plot holes? Dialogue? Character development? Factual accuracy?

...this will probably take a few revisions before I can define a steadfast set of rules.