Author: vincentdehaut

2018 Resolutions

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As may be apparent, I’m currently not as gung-ho about this whole becoming-a-writer thing as last year.

Doesn’t mean I’m quitting, just that I’ll be taking it a lot easier on myself this year. So our goals for the year are:

1-Read twnety books I’ve either never read before, or which I never read critically. I’m going to go easier on myself on the actual book choices, however. No complaints if ten of those twenty books turn out to be from a midlist fantasy series or whatever. I will still be venturing out of the comfort zone some times, and I’ll definitely keep going on Proust. Beyond that, it’s whatever I want.

2-Fifty-two blog posts. These can be anything, from a one-line note that I caught Paraguayan Death Flu to more Bonus Creativity. That’s an easy enough goal.

3-Get Book the First out of my head. That means finishing the current round of editing, throwing say twelve more queries out, and if that doesn’t pan out e-publish the thing and be done.

4-Work on the actual, not abandonned Book the Second. Goal for the year is to get to the “better finish it than abandon it” stage (so probably about 66% done or so)

5-Make progress on improving this site.

Overall, the goals aren’t super ambitious I think, but I want to focus on the means this year. So our ground rules:

1-No taking on distracting projects. I’ll take paying writing work, but beyond that it’s just the projects I’ve talked about (and sorry, but the Europa Universalis Let’s Play isn’t going to pan out, at least not on a World Conquest.)

2-I have to put some work in every day on actual “writing career” stuff. It can be editing a single page of the book, just doing some updates on the tags and categories for old posts, writing one goddamn sentence in Book the Second, or whatever. For what it’s worth, I’ve put that rule into effect a bit over a week ago, and so far we’re good.

3-No putting myself into crazy pressure situations. So no big to-do lists, no challenges, no NaNoWriMo hopes.

So that’s what we’re focusing on this year.

More Steps Forward

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I’m having trouble getting over the last few shots life has taken at me.

The writing career isn’t progressing. I’m not enjoying my current job situation. And as mentioned, my personal life has been hell lately.

So for now I’m going to go easy on myself. The goal for now is to make small progress every day, no more and no less. A page of revisions, some work on a synopsis, minor improvements to the blog/site… that’s enough for now.

Reading-wise, I’m not being super-ambitious this year. Another Proust book, a pair of current-gen fantasy author… that’s pretty much it. We’ll see how I feel in a week or two.

Fuck 2017

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Well, 2017 was a mediocre, frustrating year on the “becoming a writer” front.

It was good on the personal side, until we lost our unborn daughter (and I almost lost my girlfriend to infection too.) So any motivation and goodwill I had left for that year is gone.

Honestly, I want to write an upbeat, “but 2018 will be DIFFERENT” post, but I don’t have it in me yet. Right now, I’m in a hell of a funk and I can’t seem to find a way out of it.

It just feels like I should throw in the towel on everything, just focus on watching TV shows, and otherwise stop trying to accomplish anything of note.

I imagine it’ll pass, but…

Just my Opinion: Pride and Prejudice

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Pride and Prejudice is another classic, albeit of a different style than Ulysses or Du côté de chez Swann.

Let’s start with the obvious: I’m not a romance fan, and Pride and Prejudice wasn’t going to change that.

It’s also lacking a certain something, and part of me can’t help but think it’s considered a classic by virtue of having been the fashionable novel at some point in time.

I mean, it’s well-written and I can absolutely see why it’s going to hook anyone wishing to fantasize about the Regency period. I also understand why it’s such great adaptation fodder.

But it’s just not on the level of Proust. It’s nowhere near. If I had to fit Pride and Prejudice in modern book categories, it’d fall squarely in the “commercial fiction” bracket. Maybe, on a good day, it’d be considered upmarket commercial.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. It’s just not something I’d necessarily recommend as part of a “become a good writer” reading list, except for someone wanting to write Regency romance.

(As a pure entertainment vehicle, however, I imagine that it’s a great read for anyone who likes romance. )

But that’s enough Austen for me for the next few years, I think.

Crunch Time!

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So, where are we on our goals for the year?

1-Read ten (10) new books:

I’m at 9.5. Last one is Pride and Prejudice, which is a bit of a slog (it’s good, but just not to my taste.) Definitely doable by end of year.

2-Write one blog post every week:

Already done. Admittedly a few of those were low-content notes and the like, but I think I’ll post enough by the end of the year to make that a moot point.

3-Be done with Book the First:

As a reminder, here’s what that goal meant:

That means either finding an agent, or self-publishing the book. 

I’ve mad a lot of progress on e-publishing the book, but no way I can do it by end of year. And I’m not planning on querying any more this year, and I have no live query. That’s a failure (though not from lack of trying.)

4-Finish and start shopping the short story I’m currently writing:

Project dropped, because it was splitting my focus too much at a time when I couldn’t afford it. I still think trying to get a short story published would be a good idea but it needs to be a better short story project than the one I had.

Still a failure.

5-Take this website to the next level:

Nope. Admittedly, I kind of need an art direction for this first. But failure so far (although I doing at least the backend work would be a good first step, and that’s doable by end of year.)

6-Finalize my plans and start work on the Next Series:

 

I think that’s a success. Not a definite, clear success, but good enough for a pass.

So – my focus for the last month of the year will be backend work on the site, and finding a short story idea that I can somehow get published (and hopefully, at least make a good start on it.) Three acceptable successes and two goals in significant progress are good enough for me to accept my output for the year.

Corner Turning?

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For the first time in a while, I have free time and the mental energy to create something.

Let’s not get carried away: it’s an afternoon (and parts of an evening), not a five-week vacation. But I will write a few words today if it kills me!

I also will push through at least one chapter revision. I’ve received my newest post-manuscript rejection, and it was… honest. As in brutal. “Not agent-ready.”

So yeah, I think I need to finish that editing pass, and probably do another one (if I can’t find the money to pay an editor.) All the while enduring that nagging feeling that my time would be better spent working on another manuscript.

In addition, I’m getting frustrated by the life-preventing-me-from-having-a-writing-career trap. It’s probably easier to write when you don’t have to hold a job, can pay an editor, and are famous enough to be able to deliver less-than-perfect manuscripts to your publisher (I’ve read ARCs by famous authors which were far less well-edited than my current manuscript.) But there’s nothing I can do about that except to keep rolling the dice.

In any case, I need to get back to work 🙂

Sick Again

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So, the one no-qualification-needed downside of having a kid is that they get sick, and that their bugs tend to mutate into sci-fi style superinfections.

My son brought home a common cold that morphed into an ear infection for him. For a dad, that’s hard to take: I want to make sure he’s fine always. So goodbye free time, I need to take care of my boy.

And then I get sick too, but I don’t get the common cold. I get something that’s a mixture of cholera and terminal sepsis. Or so it feels like, anyway. Kid-empowered common colds do that, apparently.

So… I’ve literally done nothing in the last two weeks. I mean, I was able to get to work and take care of my family, but beyond that it was “crash on the couch, hope to be able to go to sleep before five AM.”

Good thing the “get the book e-published by December” is off the books for the moment. I’m still pushing through the latest reread, because regardless of how things turn out agent wise another reedit cannot hurt, but it’s slow, slow going.

But I have vacation time coming up. Which probably won’t result in any meaningful progress given the way things have been going this year, but we’ll see!

Not So Weekly Update

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Well, the last few weeks have been demanding. Not bad, but exhausting.

On the plus side, that’s in part because I’ve received a manuscript request (based on the revised-for-self-publication version of the manuscript) following a query I sent on a whim a few weeks ago. But that added some work (integrating my latest revisions, mainly) that I didn’t expect, I ended up spending even more time than I expected at work, and so on and so forth.

On the minus side, I was exhausted, which meant I basically focused most of my energy on the Let’s Play project. In other words, I’ve been messing around on EU4 way too much and not producing a lot of actually marketable content.

Let’s be honest: I’m going to allow myself to relax on the LP a bit more, then return to writing as my main “leisure time” activity afterward. But I really need to find the correct balance of work/play/be a dad/write, and right now I’m going the easy way of ignoring writing. I needed the break, but I want it to be a break, not the new normal.

 

Let’s Play Europa Universalis 4: Dealing with the Unexpected

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Date: January 1464

Country Size: 46 Provinces (plus vassals Georgia, Syria and Wallachia)

Status: Perturbed.

So… we have two unforeseen problems. A stronger-than-usual Hungary and an Hungary/Mamluk alliance.

The alliance I can break pretty much whenever I want, for now. But a very strong Hungary is a really troublesome issue, mostly because it’s in my way in my usual invasion path for the HRE. Taking away HRE provinces would be very useful, as it’d eventually prevent the reformation of the HRE and ensure that it remains a patchwork of weak provinces.

We have time to act, but we don’t have forever.

(On the plus side, this particular game opening is VERY interesting to play through.)

So – war with the Mamluks, eh? Let’s get really, really ready for that before we make our move.

First, I can improve my fleet situation a bit by building a few more light ships. These tend to pay for themselves over time anyway. I also need to build my armies up, and to let my manpower recover. Finally, I need to wait until my claim on Cyprus has been fabricated.

Then I realize that by waiting a bit more, I can have a technological advantage over the Mamluks as well. So I wait until late 1467 to launch a war, after allying with one of the Mamluks’ southern neighbors just to ensure superiority.

The thing with a war like that is that I can’t really afford any mistake. I need to focus strictly on jacking up my war score, on ensuring that I can secure my objectives, and on avoiding taking crippling damage. Securing my cores, an additional province and breaking the alliance is the goal. If I can get some gravy by taking one or two Mamluk provinces too, great, but that’s not the goal.

So I wage a long war, end up taking Cyprus and removing a grand total of two provinces from the Mamluks and vassals. It’s unfortunate but inevitable (and I figure having stabbed the Mamluks that way, that they’ll end up drawn into dumb wars with their neighbors.) Plus, of course, I force them to break their alliance with Hungary.

In the meantime, while I’d like to recuperate… Qara Qoyunlu is at war with Persia. Time to eat some easy land!

So I end up taking a handful of provinces, fighting literally no battle for them. I really would have preferred to go for a 100% warscore win, but Qara Qoyunlu has a big rebel problem and I didn’t want to lose men fighting somebody else’s problem, especially since I still have a big, big manpower deficit to overcome.

Besides, there are other opportunities around. Like Hungary, which is currently embroiled in two wars while they have almost no allies left. So I join in, and grab some land for me and Wallachia while the grabbing is good. And then it becomes time to rest some more, because now I need men to join my new regiments of cannoneers.

MECHANICS: Ideas – Administrative Idea Group

So, a few years back I earned my first Idea Group. So what are Ideas?

They’re small buffs you can buy with monarch points. They’re split in fifteen Idea groups, five per type of monarch power. How it works is that at certain levels of administrative tech, you unlock a slot for a new Idea Group. You pick one group to fill the slot, and then you buy the Ideas in the group in order.

As you unlock ideas, you also unlock your national ideas as well.

Picking the right idea groups is vital to long-term success. As a would-be world conqueror, however, my first pick is unfortunately almost mandatory and is really more of a long-term investment

The Administrative Idea Group takes Administrative points as payment for Ideas, in exchange for:

1-A reduction in the cost of mercenaries, both to recruit and to maintain them;

2-A reduction in future Admin costs (by lowering coring costs and the cost of Administrative technology)

3-Small bonuses like lowered interests, increasing my number of possible advisors, etc.)

4-An increase in my max number of States (more on that later)

The real gamechanger is point 2. So far, my expansion hasn’t been spectacularly fast, but that’ll eventually change. And once I start really expanding, I’ll need to core many provinces…. which will cost me lots of admin points, which may force me to delay getting administrative tech levels… So over time I’ll recoup the admin point investment many times over.

Although mercenaries are important too. Right now my finances don’t really allow me to rely on mercenaries, but as I grow the ability to summon a sizeable army quickly in the middle of nowhere will be very useful in order to cut down on travelling time for my armies.

Weekly Report: New Position

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Life got fun. A week ago, I was promoted at work. Obviously, that means more responsibilities and opportunities.

Short-term, it mostly means extra work. I kinda know, in general terms, what my additional responsibilities will be. I need to figure out the specifics, and since it’s a small business, I kind of have to do it on my own.

In the meantime, I’ve fallen back to the tried-and-true “be structured, document everything you do” method of task handling. So I’m writing more, which is good I guess?

It’s also been tiring – which is not conducive to doing good creative work, but even less for reviewing. I’ve been disciplined in my editing schedule, but I know the work I’m doing isn’t as good as it could be, which means I will be spending more time going over what I’ve reviewed lately. But it’s progress.

On a more personal front, Baby #2 is on the way. Which is cool from a blogging perspective, at least.