Sentential Links

Linkage….

:: I’m wondering what others do to get inspired and keep themselves from getting distracted? It is definitely something I am still trying to do. (I try to incorporate distraction into my routine, inasmuch as I even have a routine. I should probably get a routine. Hmmmm….This is a brand new blog, by the way. I met this fellow on Instagram. Check him out!)

:: So reading fantasy novels is perhaps a second best to being able to distract myself with my own stories, but at least it lets me go to sleep without focusing on the ugly stuff happening in the world.

:: I suppose I don’t have a great emotional attachment to it. If I found a much better one I might give this one up. Maybe. A thing doesn’t have to be very good or very special to make one happy.

:: All female Doctor Who companions have been held under intense scrutiny since the show returned in 2005, and while the narrative of critique often starts out with “let’s look at how the showrunner/scriptwriters have screwed up in portraying female characters” somehow it often seems to come down to burying those female characters under criticism and complaints while the Doctor and male companions get away largely unscathed.

:: If I’m a curmudgeon about Gravity, it’s because it turned out not to be the movie I wanted to see. I wanted an Apollo 13 about a problem the space industry is seriously worried about right now. I want a movie of Downbelow Station and The Forever War and The Stars My Destination. I want a movie about living and working in space that’s actually about living and working in space. If I squint real hard, I can turn Gravity into that movie. But it’s not, quite, and that made me just a little bit sad.

:: Getting upset, brooding and/or feeling despair over things you cannot possible change prevent you from changing what you can, and moving forward, and enjoying your writing life. So: let it go. Accept that there will always be things about Publishing that you can’t change, and that will stop them from depressing you and getting between you and the page. (Oh, so, so hard! Letting go the frustration of my currently unending sea of rejection is the hardest of things for me to do. I read an article a few weeks ago about self-publishing in which the writer indicated that “You won’t get rich doing this”, which…well hey, I’m not rich now, so what of that? But then he said, “You can’t even live off it, really.” And then he named the figure that he makes per month…and it’s more than I’m making now, by a comfortable margin. Hmmmmm….)

:: Why conjure an illusion when you can spend a quarter on a cheap prank? “And I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids and your dumb Asgardian God of Thunder!”

:: My wife was baking muffins and was out of baking soda and wanted to know what she could use instead. I have no idea, and in fact, have confused baking soda with baking powder. I do know, once upon a time, I used one instead of the other in making pancakes, took one bite of the bitter batter concoction and threw them out.

More next week!